Day started off good (other than the waking up at 6am part -- the tragic side-effect of the end of DST). Woke up to find email from my friend Lisa K -- she's been staying (and painting) in Delft since August. (and, hey, how 'bout those internets? I still think it's cool that you can send an e-card off to someone you think is in Brooklyn and get a response back from Holland). Then Phil played Ministry while I was driving into work. The day kinda went south when I actually got to work. It was annoying in a Mondayish sorta way in the morning and then got totally fubar in the afternoon. But things turned around again in the evening. Sarah and I made a nice dinner and then I went over to the House of Candy Cauldron and Cthulhu Pumpkins and hung out with Joe, Lisa, Xta, Ray and many wandering trick-or-treaters. Sarah couldn't come cos she had to work. I forgot my camera. Lisa forgot her memory card. But Xta got some good shots. Then it got cold and we all went home.

Okay, so never mind... Turns out Treehouse of Horror XVI is on next Sunday night. But tonight they did re-run last year's, which was a good one. I particularly liked the grab-bag Victoriana in the 2nd segment.
And, speaking of unspeakable horrors, here's something to chill the undead hearts of a thousand Bauhaus fans... mainstream acceptance

Here's yesterday's playlist. And there's a pic from last night's party. Mmm... seasonal decor. More over at Flickr. What a swell party it was (of course). Always fun to drink some drinks with local blogerati, DJs and/or zombies. Fetch hither more limes, barback!

After weeks of relative sloth, suddenly there's all sortsa stuff coming up. Tomorrow I'm on the air from 1-3pm. Par-tay in the evening. Next weekend, I'm heading up to Maryland for a visit with the charming denizens of Pru Corner. Tuesday after I get back, it's wrrld music bowling nite. Weekend after that, Laurie Anderson will be in Durham with her latest show. And then we rocket straight into the holidays... booyah!

Reminder: Treehouse of Horror XVI -- this Sunday at 8!!

Here's last night's playlist. No calls and I actually just remembered that I forgot to check for online requests. Cordless mouse was the sux0r all show long and it was hard enough just to get the playlist entered. Probably the battery's just dying but that doesn't make it any less annoying. There was one point when I seriously did consider just hurling against the wall. But anyway, I was particularly pleased with the way the Kings of Convenience/Shirley Horn/Boubacar Traore segué worked. There were a couple of things I'd hoped to find in the vinyl library that turned out not to be there. I may go buy them from iTunes, if I decide I ever want to hear them again and not just play them once on the radio.

Saw the Wallace and Gromit movie last night. Fantastico! W&G are, usual, completely endearing characters. I also liked the fun touches around the edges, like the vicar with the hidden cupboard full of occult paraphenalia, or the scene after the first attack, in which the constable's speech is almost drowned out by spooky organ music, until they ask the church organist to stop playing so loud. And, or course, bunnies!
Also unexpectedly excellent was the Madagascar Penguins short that preceded the movie. Fast-moving, funny, good CG animation, explosions, penguin jokes... what's not to like?

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 23 oct 05) ::

Coconut FM :: various
Escape from the Dragon House :: Dengue Fever
You've Stolen My Heart :: Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle
Afrobeat Visions :: Bukky Leo and Black Egypt
Choubi! Choubi!: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq :: various
Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar, vol. 2 :: various
Kongo Magni :: Boubacar Traore
Township Sessions :: the Mothers
Mogollar :: Mogollar
Balkan Beat Box :: Balkan Beat Box

I'm trying to organize (to the best of my ability to organize anything that is) an evening of wrrld music bowling fun. Fortunately, others on Team Mundo know more about local bowling options than I. So we'll see what happens. Generally I find trying to schedule anything about as much fun as herding cats, even when there's fun at the end of the line.

Hot fucking damn!! Acto this site (found via boing²), TCM's going to be showing nine Miyazaki movies next January! That definitely deserves a w00t!

Finally remembered the other thing I wanted to blog yesterday. One of the things I'm enjoying listening to lately is the new CD from Bill Frisell. He's definitely at the top of my list of faves I probably wouldn't know anything about if not for XDU. Altho I actually didn't recommend East/West for playlist when I reviewed it. While it's still true that I think CD2 (the tracks recorded in NYC) doesn't really hold up all that well compared to the LA-recorded tracks, overall I'm much more impressed after having it in the mix on my iPod for the last month. Whatcha gonna do... a month to review something is not a luxury we have at XDU. And even tho it's not on playlist at least it's up there in the library and hopefully some folks will find it and give it some spins on the air.

It's end o' the week grab-bag day. Why? Well, mostly because I didn't do much of anything today -- read the Sunday Times online, made some chicken stock, read back issues of Bon Appetit, watched a bunch of episodes of Cash in the Attic. So...
Here's my current fave red wine. Yes, it's wine in a jug. And, yes, that's certainly some of the appeal. But it's also damn good wine at a damn good price.
Here's a link yoinked from Bookslut, a concise takedown of 4 stupid things people often say about Pride and Prejudice. (Sarah covers that in more depth than I'm capable of just at the moment)

(okay, there was some 3rd thing I was gonna blog here but for the life of me I can't remember what it was... got side-tracked trying without success to figure out why the Gangbe Brass Band show got cancelled)

So this afternoon, instead of doing something nice and outdoorsy (y'know, go outside, get some fresh air in yr lungs, yadda etc), I was holed up at XDU moving CDs around. Yes, us college radio DJs sure know how to have us some fun... But it got done and hopefully made stuff easier to reach and easier to find. Had help from fellow wrrld music DJs Christiane, Andy, Lisa B & Sta Salsera. Which was definitely all to the good, cos not only were we moving shelves full of CDs around but we were re-taping a whole subgenre. (Hopefully) Quick explanation: all the CDs at the station are coded by small pieces of tape on the sides of the cases. Por ejemplo, all the rock CDs have yellow tape at the top, all the jazz CDs have blue, all the world CDs have green. In addition, the world section is divided into subgenres, which are marked by a center-spine piece of tape. And that's where the fun starts, as the breakdown used to look like this: black = Africa; yellow = Asia; brown = India, etc. So what we did today was change it so that green = Africa. That's a start at least. I don't think the people that put the old hierarchy in place meant to be offensive. But it's bothered me for years now so I'm glad to have finally gotten it changed, even if just a little bit

Here's last night's playlist. I got a bit self-indulgent in the middle of the show, reeling off a nine song, almost hour long set. I mean, I enjoyed it but by the time it got done I'm sure there was no one left listening but the odd cat wandering into the room where the radio is. Thing I learned last night: that Johnny Cash had recorded a version of "In the Jailhouse Now" (familiar to me from the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack). I was also glad to discover that old spoken word album, Better An Old Demon Than A New God, which had been reviewed for the vinyl backfill bin. That's something new music staff has cooked up -- having DJs write up reviews on albums from the extensive vinyl library, both classics and overlooked gems. Anyway, that was an album I had way back when but I hadn't heard it in 10-15 years probably. In fact, I'd forgotten that the line "bigger is better and biggest is best" comes from the Burroughs piece that I played last night. One thing that kinda pissed me off though. Some anonymous fellow DJ saw the need to write some snarky attempted witticisms about how the artists on the album (who include Jim Carroll and Richard Hell in addition to Burroughs) were all junkies. First off, they made a "smack" pun. For that alone, they should be slapped. Second, however I might feel about snarking and sniping in the margins, I have no time for someone without the cojones to sign their comments. Finally, so what? Anyone who knows anything about the alt/punk/fringe/whatever/art scene in NYC in the late 70s thru mid 80s knows that heroin use was pervasive. So noticing that a bunch of artists on a compilation album put out by John Giorno share a junky history is not exactly much of a fucking insight, sparky...

Meanwhile, I'm tres bummed to discover that next week's Gangbe Brass Band concert has apparently been cancelled.

Yes indeedy, it was big state fair fun today. Highlights included, of course, the Doggies of the Wild West show (esp. the part where Sarah got pulled up on stage for some audience participation during a magic trick), running into Lisa B (at the mini-doughnut stand, where else), duck races, the aforementioned mini-doughnuts. Sadly, I was unable to locate the deep-fried strawberry stand. And I balked at the deep-fried twinkie, once again. Clearly I need to bring along someone else insane enough to think that eating at least part of a deep-fried twinkie is an experience worth pursuing.

But it's all good. And anyway I made up for any earlier restraint by consuming a large amount of pizza at Pizza Palace on the way home.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 16 oct 05) ::

Balkan Beat Box :: Balkan Beat Box
Choubi! Choubi!: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq :: various
Cambodian Rocks 2 :: various
You've Stolen My Heart :: Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle
Para Todos Ustedes :: los Pleneros de la 21
Township Sessions :: the Mothers
Coconut FM :: various
Latin Travels 2 :: various
Achados e Perdidos :: Curumin
Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats :: various

Finished reading Please Kill Me tonight. Which was great, of course. Punk rock, y'all. A little bit soap opera, a little bit magical, a little bit depressing. In other words, something for everybody! I don't know if it's true for everyone -- probably not -- but for me it was often weirdly semi-familiar, as so many of the stories happened in/around places where I ended up hanging around. But probably 5-10 years after. Some well-known (CBGB, Cat Club) while others were, I thought, just places where I used to hang out. I was kinda surprised to see a mention of the Scrap Bar -- one of a series of fine drinking estabs that I frequented over the years but until I read the book I had no idea it had also once been the site of Johnny Thunders clocking Dee Dee Ramone over the head with a beer mug.
The other thing I've been enjoying lately is the Cory Doctorow story ("Themepunks") that's being serialized on Salon. Won't bother linking cos it's behind the wall of subscriber-ness. Altho I guess you can just put up with the annoying ads and get the content for free. It's up to chapter 6 this week and, altho there have been a few passages that just landed with a dull thud, I'm really starting to get hooked in by the story.

Surfed over to boing² yesterday and what did I see? NC State Fair coverage! And the small world gets just a few bytes smaller. The blogger at N&O definitely has it correct - every year there's something new being deep-fried at the state fair. Careful readers, of course, will remember that fried banana pudding is so last year. Good thing I have until Wednesday to decide between the fried piña colada strips and the previously overlooked classic fried Twinkies. But in the final analysis, all right-thinking people agree that it's all about the mini-doughnuts

(ETA: fixed the above link; thanks to Ms. Pants!)

This is what arrived in the mail today. A 1950s suit, which I found at Monster Vintage. For the wedding, of course. I haven't fine-tooth-combed it but looks to be in excellent condition. The jacket fits pretty well, altho the style is more tapered at the waist than I'm used to. The pants, alas, will require some professional assistance. Clearly the original owner of the garment was a tad more pear-shaped than I, as while the jacket is just about right with not much margin of error, the pants are at least a size too large in the waist. And also a bit long.

Here's last night's playlist. Which I mistakenly created under the wrong log-in. (sorry, Jason!) Which came as a bit of a shock when I went to log out at the end of the show. But, all was corrected with a minimum of trauma. At least it was fairly minimal on my end. Anyway, a pretty good show, I think. A week when I can segué from Johnny Hartman to Big Al Davies has got go down in the books as a good one. And I'm surprised to find that, so far at least, it's been easier to do more diverse shows being on every week. I was kinda worried that I'd get into a rut. Maybe it's the playlist manager. Maybe it's self-imposed pressure not to repeat myself. But I feel like I'm doing okay at getting a range of stuff into the mix.

As long as there's something shiny to distract me from the news, where... this just in: we really are going straight to hell. Let's see... gov't either malicious scum or incompetent cronies? (check); natural disaster coverage proving the old Spy magazine ratio of value of life inversely proportional to distance from NYTimes? (check); crushing wave of new puritanism still sweeping across the land? (double check); G.W. Bush?
And etc... But, hey, how 'bout that video iPod?

Last night's movie: Serenity. w00t!! At work today, it was suggested that Serenity was the best sci-fi movie since the Matrix. Which was funny cos driving back last night I was thinking pretty much the same thing, that Serenity was Matrix-good. Yes, I know it lacks the ground-breaking FX and somewhat towering ambition. With luck it will also lack the 2 crappy sequels. It also struck me that I was in just the right demographic for the movie. I'm familiar enough with Firefly to recognize all the characters and their basic relationships and know a bit of the backstory. But not so into the show that I spent the whole movie hyper-aware of changes from the TV series. Most blatant iteration I've seen of that was the reviewer on Salon who turned in 3 screens basically whining about how Serenity was not Firefly. Yeah, and your grandmother's not a schoolbus...

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 9 oct 05) ::

Coconut FM :: various
Balkan Beat Box :: Balkan Beat Box
Choubi! Choubi!: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq :: various
Achados e Perdidos :: Curumin
Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) vol. 2 :: various
Escape from the Dragon House :: Dengue Fever
You've Stolen My Heart :: Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle
Cambodian Rocks 2 :: various
Township Sessions :: the Mothers
Latin Travels 2 :: various

Tonight's movie: Fritz Lang's das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, a cracking good crime drama which turns quite chilling towards the end, as the Mabuse Empire of Crime employs tactics that are all too familiar from the late 20th and early 21st century history of war and terror. The movie was banned by Goebbels (hmm... shadowy figure ruling thru fear and violence, attempting to overthrow the social order... can't imagine why they'd have a problem with that) and not seen in Germany until the 1950s. Altho Lang apparently said that he'd been offered a job directing propaganda films on the same night the movie was banned. He instead fled to France the next day. Also of note, Lang breaks off an amazingly good car chase scene, esp. for 1933.
Interestingly, Lang made three Mabuse films -- a silent in 1922, Testament in 1933 and another after his return to Germany, in 1960. And, from the listings on IMDB, it looks like there were then a series of ever-cheesier Mabuse films (making his career trajectory somewhat similar to Zatoichi's)
It surprising that I've never gotten around to seeing this movie until now, since I've listened to the Propaganda song countless times over the last 20 years.

and to top it all off, when the movie ended and I returned to live TV watching, I was greeted by the sight of the Yankees losing... good times indeed

Here's this week's gem (retrieved from behind the annoying log-in wall of the Sunday NYTimes online): P. J. O'Rourke absolutely takes apart a new book on slanguage and pop cultcha references in speech. There is, I suspect, a mostly unvoiced political edge to O'Rourke's critique. The author of the book in question, Leslie Savan, got her start as a media/advertising critic in Village Voice. But he stays pretty well away from screeding and focuses on ripping the book a new one. Reminds me of what, to me, is still the gold standard of NYTimes Book Review slash-and-burns, a review (this must go back a good 10 years or so) of one of the Tom Clancy books by G. Gordon Liddy, of all people.

Watched the Series of Unfortunate Events movie tonight. In some ways, I had the same reaction to the movie as the books. Namely, I wanted to be enjoying it more than I was. Altho in the case of the movie it's much easier for me to pin down why that's true -- Jim Carrey. He just drags the movie down into a vast pool of suck every time he's on screen. Judging from the deleted scenes and out-takes included on the DVD, the editing process seems to have been to find as much Jim Carrey stuff as possible and cut it out of the movie. Which I appreciate no end.
And of course the movie looks great. It's visually stunning in a way difficult to achieve on a small budget. But according to Sarah, there was discussion at some point that Richard E. Grant would play Olaf. I'd gladly sacrifice several million dollars in set design and CGI for that switch.
My other stray thought for the evening: how is it that Billy Connolly has not been in one of the Harry Potter movies yet?

Here's tonight's playlist. Went pretty well, I think. No requests this time. But anyway, no show that opens and closes with the Ramones can be that bad. Tonight's vinyl surprise find was that live Heartbreakers album, esp. interesting to me since I'm reading Please Kill Me and in fact just recently went thru the section where Dee Dee Ramone was talking about "Chinese Rocks" and the controversy over its authorship. The back jacket of DTK does credit the song to Dee Dee, Hell, Thunders and Nolan. Which is apparently total crap. Dee Dee wrote the song, I think he said, on a dare from Hell to write a better drug song than Lou Reed's "Heroin". Both agree that Hell added a few lyrics, but neither can remember which ones. But either way Johnny Thunders had nothing to do with it. Still and all, it's pretty interesting to hear a live recording from that tour after reading about how influential it was in the development of the UK punk scene.
(the Ramones version of "Chinese Rocks" is better anyway)

One further note on tonight's XDU experience -- the Real Audio stream is all fubar'ed so distance listeners most likely will be SOL.
Last night I watched Ramones Raw which is essentially a collection of home video shot by Marky Ramone while the band was on tour over the years. There's also some rare and odd TV appearances mixed in. Steampipe Alley and Uncle Floyd Show will perhaps be familiar to NYC-based hipsters of a certain age. So, narrative and cinematography are pretty much wholly lacking. This is not in any way to be confused with a documentary like Westway to the World. And it's in no way definitive, since it obviously only covers the years when Marky was in the band. Still, I enjoyed it. Lotsa great concert footage and general goofiness and worth seeing if you're a fan. And, hey, has anyone noticed that the Ramones, unfortunately, have now completed a reverse Spinal Tap and that only the drummers have survived? (okay, not 100% accurate, I know, since CJ -- the replacement bass player when DeeDee left -- is still alive).

Reminder (or warning -- it's all in how you look at it) that Wed. night is XDU night. Altho I don't have to worry about SMP* this week, I will be following the Bunch of Pants radio experience. Which means there'll be fuck all left of the playlist. That's okay. I like a challenge.

No tracking information this week, so you'll have to stumble thru somehow without the wrrld top 10. Here's a couple of artsy links instead.
Gilbert and George did the UK pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale.
Slate's got one of their writers exchanging letters with Michael Kimmelman, the art critic from the NY Times. Among topics covered in today's entry are whether there's any space in the art world between philistines and snobs.
* = spacegrrl mindreading phenomenon

yo! what she said

In other news, yes, today was filled with a high level of work craziness, even for a Monday. But yesterday was quite nice, including a trip to the farmer's market. And I just found out that Gangbé Brass Band will be playing a show in Raleigh at the end of the month.

so, yeah... good times indeed

Well I certainly hope yesterday wasn't an omen for the October to come. Cos it was a total non-starter of a day. Sarah was feeling sick all day and I had all the sharp mental energy of a piece of dry toast. We ended up having to cancel out several social engagements (inc. Serenity, Federating, and a party). About all I got done was answer a phone call from work and send 2 emails back into work. Started watching the back end of IFC's Saturday Samurai movie -- mostly cos it starred Sonny Chiba (as legendary eye-patched swordsman Jubai) -- but it ended with everyone either dead or insane. Apparently the mid-70s fashion for grim "realistic" endings also took hold in Japanese samurai movies. Who knew? So I won't be re-watching that from the start.
ahh, well... grumble snarl feh... let's see how today goes then...