XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 29 may 05) ::

Mzansi Music: Young Urban South Africa :: various
Love's a Real Thing: Funky, Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa :: various
Niyaz :: Niyaz
13 :: Javier Garcia
New Zealand in Dub :: various
Fandango on 18th Street :: Sones de Mexico
BataMbira :: Michael Spiro and Michael Williams
Rough Guide to Boogaloo :: various
Tibetan Buddhist Rites from the Monasteries of Bhutan :: various
Impossible Broadcasting :: Transglobal Underground

Had to work today. Which sucked. I was sitting here eating a bowl of cereal this morning and thinking how quiet it was outside. Then I remembered... "oh yeah, holiday..." The kind of day where you don't beat the traffic, you are the traffic.
Wanted to mention a couple of good movies I've seen lately on DVD and DVR.
Over the weekend I watched The Fog of War, Errol Morris' documentary on Robert McNamara. As always, Morris does a great job of finding visual ways to tell the story or enhance the story that's being told. Good use of the Philip Glass score, altho in a couple of spots the combo of music and images is a bit overly reminscent of Koyaanisqatsi. Morris does a good job of staying out of the way. I think it's obvious that he viewed McNamara's story as commenting on Iraq and how we got to be where we are but that's left unspoken throughout. So while I drew that conclusion, others might not, with just as much validity. And whatever dissembling or misremembering he might be doing, I find I have a lot of respect for someone who'll sit down to be interviewed on the record and decide at some point that he doesn't want to say anymore, he's not going to explain why he won't say anymore -- given the choice between "damned if you do" and "damned if you don't" McNamara, at the end, opts for "don't" and I think there's some grace in knowing when you think you've said enough.
Tonight I watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring by Korean director Kim Ki-Duk. First off, it's just a gorgeous looking movie. For that alone, well worth watching. Very quiet. Maybe a bit obvious and predictable, but that's (I think) one of the points of the movie. Very Buddhist, in fact, moreso than any other movie I can think of. I felt there were a few scenes where I was missing some important subtext (it's never unclear what's happening or anything like that) because I don't know that much about Buddhism. Same thing with Korea, about which I know even less. There are several images that Kim uses repeatedly that I'm sure mean something to him and a Korean audience that I'm not getting. I'm thinking especially of the snakes, who appear in most of the 5 sections. The movie takes place at a small monastery set in the middle of a lake in a remote valley. Each section shows us the events of one season, spread over about a 30 year period in the life of two monks, student and master. Contemplative, a bit slow at times, but very involving and well-acted. There are several amazing set pieces, esp. in the "Fall" section. And the "Winter" section is some of the most amazing use of snow/ice I've seen, right up there with House of Flying Daggers or the Winter Guest.

Somehow this turned into the day of productive productivity. Damn! I hate when that happens on a Sunday. Anyway, without really planning to I ended up spending the day weeding, clearing a yard waste container full of stuff out of the storm drainage ditch-type thing out by the street, making sugarfree chocolate mousse, and reviewing six CDs. Warsaw Village Band and Luke Vibert were both great, as expected. The new Cheb i Sabbah was even better than expected. Extra bonus: one of the tracks is "Im Ninalou" which long-time wrrld music fans may be familiar with in its Ofra Haza version. This one's just as good or perhaps even better. And I was stunned at how good the new Death in Vegas is. Even with perhaps the most misleading CD title ever. The CD's called Satan's Circus but while it is in fact pretty much a total departure for DiV it's not death metal but an all instrumental homage to Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Philip Glass, Cab.Volt, Juan Atkins era Detroit techno, etc. Awesome!
Oh yeah, and MRP, day 3 was pretty much a total success. Skipped the muddling, upped the lime, got some light rum... damn, that's a tasty beverage.

How to tell it's going to be a good weekend: get in car after a long day at work and the first song that comes on... Swanky Modes!!! (i luv my iPod)

Here's some random stuff left over from the last few days.
If you're going to have the really stupid vanity plate OVRCLCKD then you could at least get out of the fast lane if you're only going to be doing the speed limit. And yes I think that's moved to the top of the geekiest vanity plates evah list, just edging out the previous leader, NAZGUL.
Over at boing boing, there's a link to an awesome page showing how to make Guinness popsicles. The bandwidth demand has totally killed the photos at this point. But it's still the most awesomely brilliant waste of time I've seen since the guys who were filtering cheap vodka. Put down that science pole, indeed.
Umberto Eco has a new novel out next month. Here (via bookslut) is an interview from the Telegraph. And, yes, I agree with you that the interviewer is an almost complete idiot. But, y'know, it's Umberto Eco so well worth the read.

One of these days, I'll schedule a wrrld music get-together and more than 2 other people will show up. But that day was not today. Still a fine time was had by all in attendance (myself, Todd, and Carla). Gathering was at City Beverage. Of swanky website and impressive draught beer list (mmm... Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout). It was a good night to sit outside and chat and get several XDU wrrld music issues sorted out. Perhaps I'll try to organize another one next month.

Spiffy little series over on Slate this week, a barbecue tour. Sadly, he's planning to skip Carolina, instead going to KC, Memphis and Texas. Which is a shame cos, (1) I'm in Carolina and I'd have liked to see what he had to say about the local 'cue; (2) he hated pretty much everything about Memphis so other than letting me know that when we finally make that pilgrimage to Graceland there won't be much good barbecue in the area, not too helpful. But overall, I'm enjoying the articles. I'm always up for some good writing about meat. Was struck by two things similar to my own 'cue experiences. The writer has the revelation that, hey, you can get great barbecue at places that don't look kinda scrungy and beat-to-shit. Which is exactly how I felt after eating at the Q Shack for the first time. Also, he talks to a local KC barbecuer who waxes rhapsodic about his first encounter with the 'cue at the legendary Arthur Bryant's. My first real 'cue encounter, as I think I've waxed about here previously, was at Flint's in Oakland. Maybe not as legendary as Bryant's but damn was it good. Definitely one of my top 10 memorable meals. Anyways, coincidentally enough, last night's Cook's Tour rerun was the barbecue episode where Tony Bourdain went to KC, Houston and NC (Wilson and... uh, someplace out near Lexington... I don't remember where exactly).

Some more meme fun (courtesy of !!swanhunter)

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.

'90 aka A Man Like Me - Lemon Jelly
Mast Nazron Se - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
What's Left Breaks the Silence - King Rhythm
Galang-al (Trou Macacq) - Jeff Warren
Strata - VNV Nation
Fried Neckbones & Some Homefries (Dan the Automator Remix) - Willie Bobo
Piporro's Taconazo - el Gran Silencio
Apu: Stoned Teenagers (from the Simpsons)
I'm a Mess - the Murmurs
Blast 'Em Out - Renegade Soundwave

or: Mojito Research Project, day two, in which an actual drink is produced. Results so far are acceptable. Produced a fairly tasty beverage. But not a lovely beverage. Clearly there's more work to be done. First problem, I only have dark rum which produces more of an iced tea look than the limey minty mojito look I'm seeking. Second problem, and the bane of all term-paper researchers out there, I went with the first recipe off the first website that I found last week. Which called for mashing together the mint leaves with the half a lime. Or muddling as they called it. Yah boo, how quaint. But I don't think nearly enough of either flavor was extracted by this process. Further research this evening suggests putting the mint leaves and simple syrup in the glass and then mashing them together with a spoon and then adding the juice of one whole lime. I believe this is what I'll try for MRP, day 3. As soon as I get some light rum, that is.

It was either an 80s flashback or an unannounced Wax Trax reunion in the XDU mailbins this weekend. And now sitting on my desk are the new CDs from Foetus, die Warzau, and Meat Beat Manifesto. I don't expect much from the Foetus disc, frankly. I'll always have a soft spot (in my head, no doubt) for ole JG but his output hasn't been what I'd call consistent over the years. On the other hand, I expect the MBM will be great. Dangers has been working steadily and turning out excellent stuff. die Warzau I just don't know. Their early 90s album Big Electric Metal Bass Face is one of the overlooked gems of the genre IMO. But this is their first CD in 10 years and that's not usually a good sign. We shall see... Before I can start on those I've got backlogged albums by Shantel and Luke Vibert to get sorted out.

What I learned last night: it's actually quite easy to make simple syrup using Splenda. The proportions are a little different I think (I didn't go back and fact-check against a sugar syrup recipe). But for the Splenda syrup it's one-to-one. The only weird thing was when I added the Splenda to the water, it didn't just sink or start to dissolve like sugar would. It sorta hit the water and fizzed. Well, maybe not all the way to fizz but it wasn't what I expected. Might have been cos the water was already on heat. Or maybe just a reminder that Splenda is a freaky-ass chemical (as my brother the chemist never fails to point out when the subject comes up, "it's chlorinated sugar"). But the process went smoothly and as expected from there. Raise to a soft boil, simmer for a couple minutes. Good to go.
When Sarah was planting the dahlias yesterday she displaced several bunches of mint, so I decided to follow one of the recipe variations and do a mint simple syrup. Wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it until today when I searched around and ascertained that simple syrup is an ingredient in a mojito. Perhaps I remembered this on some pre-conscious mixological synaptic pathway. Either way I am now almost set to create some reduced-carb mojitos (need some club soda and limes). Results to follow...

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 15 may 05) ::

Love's a Real Thing: Funky, Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa :: various
Rough Guide to Boogaloo :: various
3: Calcutta Slide Guitar :: Debashish Bhattacharya
Choro Ensemble :: Choro Ensemble
Tibetan Buddhist Rites from the Monasteries of Bhutan :: various
Rough Guide to Celia Cruz :: Celia Cruz
Afro-Latin Party :: various
Russen Soul :: various
Brother Moses Smote the Water :: the Klezmatics
Local Ground :: Altan

Found this bit o' language fun at bookslut.com (which is always worth checking out and I didn't link them in the text here cos I'm planning to get around to linking them in the sidebar one of these days real soon now). Anyway, like them I'm just geeky enough to find this fascinating. And I had noticed the faux subtitles under the Nilsson song in the Lime Coke commercial. By the way, can I just say... Lime Coke?!? Blergh. Also, Lady Mondegreen sounds like it should be the title of a John Wesley Harding song. Which reminds me that Wes just had his novel, Misfortune published. It's on my list to read. Although so are a lot of other things.

I'm still mostly exhausted from "yard machines are go" weekend. See Sarah's blog for more details but I'll just say that roto-tilling is quite a bit exactly like playing tug-of-war with a 5hp engine. Esp. when you're having to grip an ergonomic nightmare of a deadman switch. Maybe some plant-y type pics tomorrow.
And, hey, Tom won Survivor so it's all good...

Interesting article from NYTimes this week about avant cuisine. Which lemme just say I do not get. Okay, that's a slight overstatement. I mean, I understand what chefs like Ferran Adria are trying to do (at least I think I do). It's interesting, certainly, in the sense that it's a good read. I just have no desire to eat any of it. Bruni tosses around a lot of adjectives in his article (and can't seem to decide whether he's burying or praising the chefs he's writing about) without ever hitting on the description I'd use: stunt cooking. To put it another way, just because you can make passion fruit foam inside wheels of dehyrdated proscuitto on a bed of microsprouts doesn't mean I'm going to eat it.

Super quibbly nitpick extraordinaire for the week: there was a link on boingboing today -- some guy has come up with blog-themed Monopoly. Okay fine and all but shouldn't it be Blogopoly? After all, it's not Monpoly nor is it blogsphere. Blogpoly just sounds like ass.
That's all... you may now return to your regularly scheduled snarking or snacking or whatever.

Okay, I lied. Two other things:
(1) swing by Crankyrants for some speculative bio-philosophy. What indeed would be a greater disadvantage in a futbol match, having no feet or having no knees?
(2) XDU summer schedule is just out. I'll now be on Wednesday nights, 10pm to midnite EDT. Starting May 25.

So it's May sweeps and thus time for the end of another fun-packed season of (insert ominous pause) Survivor. Here's a link to the TWOP recaps. I think Palau's been one of their best runs in a while. They actually managed to come up with several interesting twists that took the episodes off in unexpected directions, something's that's often not been the case. There have been plenty of seasons where it just became a slow crawl towards the inevitable. And at least one where I gave up before the end. One of the things I've enjoyed most about this season is that there have been several players who mostly seem to understand, y'know, that they're playing on a freaky-ass game show. The now-departed Gregg had one of the better grasps of the meta-game. And the decision by Tom and Ian to force a tie and take their chances with randomness as over against the certainty of losing if they sat on their asses and did nothing... well, given how many times I've had to watch people completely miss that moment, it was refreshing to say the least. Not that it's all been perfection and loveliness. Altho many will disagree, I found Steph supremely annoying. As I find all contestants who come off convinced that they somehow "deserve" to win. And of course the continuing presence of Katie and her do-nothing strategy of coat-tail riding, attempted backstabbing and high moral dudgeon is a dispiriting reminder of several winners from previous seasons who successfully employed that strategy. It's all too often been true that, when called on to vote for a winner, people will petulantly refuse to give the money to the one who outplayed and outwitted them, instead rewarding someone whose major effort was to make no decisions and let others do the heavy lifting and long knife wielding.
And while it'd be nice to see Tom win (c'mon -- best Survivor evah!... the man killed a shark with a pointed stick) I think they might have been setting up his coming-up-short on tonight's episode, with the stuff about him bullying Katie, and suggesting to Ian that strong-arming her was the only way to keep her on their side. I'm always wondering why they're showing us what they're showing us.

Got all up in the artsiness last night and watched Kieslowski's La Double Vie de Véronique. Rewatched rather, altho since I hadn't seen it in almost 15 years I found that my memories of it were vague and in some cases just flat wrong. I'd completely misremembered what happens to Veronika. If you're familiar at all with Kieslowski, you'll know what to expect from Véronique -- that you won't really know what's going on much of the time. And that's okay. Like Trois Couleurs he's looking at the connections between people, but not really trying to explain them. Someone (I think in one of the IMDB threads) asked "are they twins?" Which on the one hand, since both Veronika and Véronique are played by Irene Jacob (who is outstanding, as ever), doesn't seem like a bad question. But on the other hand, yes it's a bad bad question which indicates that the person asking did not understand the movie on some very basic levels. It's flatfooted, prosaic and very very American in the most negative stereotypical sort of way. And I say that as someone who, while watching the movie last night, found myself thinking, in response to several lines of dialogue: oh stop being so goddamn French!
Here's what IMDB had to say. And here's Roger Ebert
And while we're talking movies, here's the trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Right now all I have to say is: w00t!

File this in the overlooked gems dept: after one of the recent office clean ups at XDU I was looking thru some bins o' CDs. Mostly looking for envelopes that might have been addressed to me, or to World Music Director, that had gotten overlooked. Didn't find any of that but I did find a promo CD from last November -- remixes of "Wipe That Sound" by Mouse on Mars. Two of which feature Mark E. Smith. (or Mark E. Fucking Smith as the handy label hypesheet that accompanied that CD single helpfully pointed out) One is sorta weird Mark E. Smith spoken word over snippets of "Wipe That Sound" and is merely marvelous. The other is a full-on remix, using a lot more of the song (which is easily my fave ever Mouse on Mars track) and its just monstro. It's months old and only 6 songs so it's probably not playlistable but I'll be getting it back to the station this weekend so it'll be in the library and available for on air spinning.
...like fun

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 08 may 05) ::

Rough Guide to Celia Cruz :: Celia Cruz
3: Calcutta Slide Guitar :: Debashish Bhattacharya
Afro-Latin Party :: various
the Order of Things :: Mouth Music
Choro Ensemble :: Choro Ensemble
Tibetan Buddhist Rites from the Monasteries of Bhutan :: various
Ghana Soundz 2 :: various
Russen Soul :: various
Impossible Broadcasting :: Transglobal Underground
Piove en San Telmo :: Cuarteto Cedron

Had to work today. Which kinda sucked. Well, no actually it pretty much totally sucked, since I ended up being there for 6+ hours. But I've taken a couple weekdays off the last month or so and been covered for, so the least I could do was return the courtesy. However, the day was largely redeemed by Kung Fu Hustle. Yowza was that fun. My initial reaction was that it's better than Shaolin Soccer but that might not be a fair comparison since I only saw that on DVD, not the big screen. But Kung Fu Hustle is just so insanely over-the-top. And yet, altho it bends the laws of physics in ways not usually seen outside Daffy Duck cartoons, it's not nearly as goofy as the trailer might lead you to believe. Which I chalk up to the trailer using Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" but the movie actually reaching us relatively intact both in dialog (subtitled) and music which was not terribly memorable but effective and at the very least wholly absent the current US film scoring tendency towards over-use of iconic/ironic oldies -- yeah yeah okay Tarantino makes it work for him but Pulp Fiction was 10+ years ago and even he's expanded his horizons a bit (see RZA soundtrack for Kill Bill por ejemplo). But I as usual digress... KFH is frikkin' awesome and y'all should go see it, seen?

Just finished reading Travels With Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture in America by Ken Wells. And a fine, fine read it was. Probably wouldn't be of as much interest to those not at least partly of the beer geek mindset. Not necessarily, though. I've read and enjoyed books that were all about stuff I knew nothing about, places I had not interest in going, or things I'd pay good money to avoid doing. But I digress. The book looks at both the big bizness of beer (Bud, Miller, etc) and the craft beer and homebrew movement. Wells does a good job telling the story of Big Beer but it's clear his heart is with the beer geeks. But that's okay cos so is mine (he says, finishing a Black Hawk Stout). I particularly enjoyed the chapter where he goes to Dogfish Head Brewery up in Delaware, one of my favorite craft brewers. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the beer he's writing about (120 Minute IPA) was one of the ones Dogfish was pouring at the beerfest I went to in Durham a couple years ago. One of the other things I took away from the book was a strong desire to visit Portland, Oregon. Perhaps it was the description of the Lucky Labrador, a brewpub where your dog is as welcome as you are.

Radio tonight. Which was fun. Even though I completely fubar'ed the segue from Cab.Volt's "L 21st" into a track off the new Daft Punk CD. Retrospectively I know what I shoulda done but I didn't and it was a trainwreck. But mercifully short at least I'm sure. Those kinda minor radio disasters only seem to last 5 hours if you're actually in the MCR perpetrating them. In the outside world listening you can barely notice.

The next big wrrld music project for XDU will be reconfiguring the sub-genres and moving some stuff into the spiffy new shelves that were just built and installed. Ah, the glorious luxury of space. The downside, of course, is that now I have to figure out how to break out the sub-genres and what all the different implications of the various choices/options are. Back in the early 90s I was working for a small library and one of the things I was doing was keywording their database. I think that was one of my first introductions to the fluidity of definitions. It was always especially tricky figuring out regional and geographic stuff. Where, for example, exactly is the South? You think you know. Until you're forced to look closer. And then maybe you're not so sure. Same thing with the XDU shelves. It'd be nice to have a consistent system but I don't think that's going to happen. Instead there'll probably be some version of the current mashup of geography (Africa, Brazil, etc) and genre (reggae, klezmer, etc). Several people have suggested to me that there just be one big World section with everything in it. That would bring it in line with other genres (Jazz, RPM, Blues, etc) but I don't think it would much improve the usability of the shelves.

So, did I mention that we got a new dog? No I don't think I did. She's Ms. Jane Lane. Very sweet. Very big. More details at Sarah's.

Here's something I meant to link last week. Interesting article on Slate by Gish Jen about the history of Chinese restaurants. Well, specifically about an exhibit on same at the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas, in NYC. The MOCA website doesn't give an exact end-date for the exhibit and I'm really hoping it will still be up when we're in New York this summer.

And, hey, while I'm linking to things on Slate, here's a photo essay that just went up about Max Ernst.

In a surprise reversal of my expectations (or most of them) Steamboy is opening this Friday in Raleigh. Also needing to be seen is Nobody Knows, the latest Kore-eda movie, which is also suprising me by hanging around for another week. Plus I still haven't seen Kung Fu Hustle. At least it's supposed to be a rainy weekend.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 01 may 05) ::

Ghana Soundz 2 :: various
Nouvelle Vague :: Nouvelle Vague
Tibetan Buddhist Rites from the Monasteries of Bhutan :: various
Russen Soul :: various
3: Calcutta Slide Guitar :: Debashish Bhattacharya
Impossible Broadcasting :: Transglobal Underground
Afro-Latin Party :: various
the Order of Things :: Mouth Music
Local Ground :: Altan
the Early Years, vol. 2: Rare Recordings 1983-1984 :: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Here are the photos of this year's Kinetic Sculpture Race from KineticBaltimore.com. Good accompanying story as well.

The other high point of the weekend was seeing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. w00t! I'm with BW Ventril here. And honestly amazed that many of the critic-types are so whelmed. Fuck all, boys... what more do you want from a movie?!? It's got singing dolphins, Stephen Fry, sock puppets, oldschool Marvin, Oolon Coluphid, Simon Jones, cool FX, and Alan Rickman as a manically depressed robot.

I was bummed though that I had to go to IMDB when I got home to correctly recognize Bill Nighy (Slartibartfast) as having played Philip in Shaun of the Dead.

We also watched Hellboy (which was fun), Starship Troopers (which was stoopid and over-the-top in that Verhoevenian manner) and the latter sections of Pirates of the Caribbean (supa-fun, and the sequel to which will include the aforementioned Mr. Nighy, or so quoth IMDB)

Well. I'm actually feeling rather good about this. I think we've all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually. Ecumenically. Gramatically.