Received an invitation tonight to have dinner at chez spacegrrl. And a fine time was had by all. Wonderful food. Tasty beverages. What better way to wrap up 2005? Pictured here is the sweet potato pie I brought. I did not make the crust; this I must admit. But I have to immodestly say that the filling (from a Ruth Reichl recipe) turned out great. yummy!

good times...

and here's hoping for a great year ahead for us all (with adequate central heating)

Still no sign of land heat... The rustic charm, shall we say, has definitely warn off. But there have been a few upsides scattered in the frost. Scored some snazzy Xmas cards for next year, plus a Futurama calendar, at Borders tonight. And the other night, I discovered (and we watched) a DVD that I'd bought last year and promptly forgotten about: Eddie Izzard's Glorious. Actually I bought a multi-DVD set and we'd worked our way thru the others but lost track of this last one. This, I think, was the tour right before Dress to Kill and even though there are bits here that directly anticipate stuff that shows up in Dress to Kill (James Mason as God), this is the first one I've seen where I didn't spend at least some time comparing it unfavorably to Dress... I know that's unfair, really. It's like expecting a band to be as great the 2nd or 3rd or 18th time you see them. Nothing can ever really match the thrill of discovery. Anyway, that said, I'd rate Glorious a solid 2nd fave of Izzard standup concerts.
note to self: rewatch Circle sometime soon...

Here's my playlist from today's Afrobeat show. I had a total blast. Even though I did have to wake up at 3 in the AM. 19 songs in 3 hours, which is about on pace with the all-long-songs wrrld show I did back in the spring (or whenever). If I'd played more Fela I probably would've gotten out in 12...
Big ups, again, to all the participating DJs and esp. to Lisa for burning a whole mess o' stuff onto CD.

eta: I've been listening all day -- it's definitely added some funk to my usually non-funky workspace. My absolute fave thing so far today (if I had to pick only one) -- Afrobeat Down...

re-eta: should you be interested in perusing the playlists, here are most of the other 24 hours of afrobeat::
Sean; Andrea; spacegrrl; Xiane: Howard; Lisa B; Reechard; Courtney

As I think I mentioned previously, I cooked up an idea for a special programming day at XDU. So all day tomorrow, from midnite to midnite, it's 24 Hours of Afrobeat. Tune in (or log in, if you're long distance) for some funky funky sounds. I'll be on from 4am to 7am.

Of course, sometimes your cares kick back. That, and some other stuff, but mostly things are okay. It's actually not all that cold in the house right now, altho I'm sure I'll be humming a different tune around 7 tomorrow morning.
Tonight we watched Porco Rosso. This is definitely Miyazaki in full "ripping yarn" mode. But much less goofy than Castle of Cagliostro. It seemed much more firmly placed both in time and space (late 20s, Adriatic coast of Italy) than many of this other movies. Anyway, highly recommended. Pirates, biplanes, a chain-smoking pig... what's not to love? So I've now seen all the Ghibli movies except My Neighbor Totoro. And Disney's finally getting around to releasing that on DVD next spring.

Here's my original tinsel tree, which I bought back when I had a big apartment and no furniture. Sarah and I have to set it up out on the front porch -- that's the only place there's room enough for a full sized tree. On the upside, it looks really cool from the street.

In other tree news, I noticed yesterday while driving over to the station that the Xmas tree lots had all closed up and disappeared. (I wonder if they broke their stuff down after they closed on Friday or if they came in early Saturday and hauled everything away) Nothing left but piles of leftover trees. Free trees! And it's still the day before Christmas? It's like Calvin's father's dream come true... Even though Sarah and I do our decorating in the first couple of weeks of December, I come from a family of procrastinators traditionalists, and when I was a kid we never even put the tree up before Xmas eve. So on some level it's still weird to me to see all those trees just left abandoned on the 24th.

Finally, here's some non-tree-related art talk

Having a wondeful day. You? Last night we had dinner at Second Empire, in Raleigh. Amazing! It was a splurge, of course. But completely wonderful, pretty much from start to finish. Made some overnight oatmeal in the crockpot so that breakfast was all ready when we got up. Watched the Yule Log on TV. Exchanged presents. I went over to XDU and spun a couple hours of holiday tune-age (maximum Xmas density of 100% achieved). I'm planning to make some pumpkin ice cream later this afternoon. Holiday Inn arrived from Netflix. It's even stopped raining for a bit.

good times...

Here's today's playlist. I actually ended up playing way more Xmas music than I'd expected (66.66%). Sure, I was dipping into that Caribbean compilation a lot -- but it was really good. For the rest of the show, I did the end o' year recap thing. Altho, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure the Sandoz was not re-issued this year, it's just that XDU finally got around to getting it. Oh well... it's never a bad thing to be playing some RH Kirk.

Hey, it's the night before the night before Xbox... and I dunno about you but 'round here it's all about the food. So here's some holiday-ish food writing (and whatnot):
meat-based hilarity ensues over at Slate;
good baking advice from the author of the Cake Bible (the site's got some organization/navigation problems but all the tips on scratch baking are totally worth it);
major overhaul in progress over at Alton Brown's site (it's still largely content-free but I'll certainly be checking back frequently);
a few years ago I got into a long conversation at work, trying to convince someone up the chain that, no, rugelach were not a traditional Hannukah dessert -- what, they wanted to know, would be an appropriate dessert to list on a Hannukah catering menu? Donuts, I said. I'm sure they thought I was joking. I was not;
finally, another great holiday bottle, Double Decker by Otter Creek. Yes, yes, the full name and labeling is quite twee but damn it's an amazing beer. I had one Wednesday night. Went back to the store on Thursday and bought all 4 bottles they had left in stock.

The return of a great holiday tradition, now with updated 21st century type options available. Do not let the disturbingly high hipster quotient deceive you. The yule log is the real deal™...
eta: with it's own website. w00t!

What time is it? Santa Rampage time!! (everybody scream real loud)

so yeah I'm blogging from woik... bad bad me...

Here's last night's playlist. If you're keeping score, the show was 33.33% Xmas music. My only slight regret is that I didn't get to the one indecent song on the John Waters compilation -- it's not all that funny but it is enjoyably and crudely anti-Xmas. And thus a nice change o' pace. I might have played it last year anyway so I'll manage to cope. But I did get to re-use my two favorite Xmas segues: Tom Waits/Art Carney and the Fred Waring/Banco de Gaia train sounds fade. My fave non-holiday music pleasant suprise was finding "Do It Properly" on a Clivilles & Cole comp. I'd pulled it out looking for some cheesy C+C Music Factory tracks or something. But "Do It Properly" is a gem -- a big white-label underground monster smash from the late 80s. I've got a mix of it somewhere on a tape from back then.
I will, it turns out, be doing that Xmas morning show, from 10am to noon. So, do tune in and get yr holiday on.

Solstice today. Actually it was a 1:35pm EST. Here's a fun site where you can geek out astronomically.
Radio radio update update: I'll be on tonight at 10pm, as usual. Except with more holiday goodness. And you absolutely must tune in whatever it is you use to tune in on tomorrow from 6-8pm when Sarah will be hosting her annual Divaville Xmas Xplosion. It's loaded with swanky goodness! I'll be on again Saturday from 1-3pm for the Wrrld Music Yuletide Show & Yearend Wrapup Thing. And possibly again on Xmas from 10am to noon.

Small victory for the forces of sanity today as the US District court lays the heavy smackdown on the untelligent design crowd. Well it is a definite setback for the Pastafarians...
Meanwhile, it's fullon stupidity time back in my native land (aka NYC) where the transit strike has now spread citywide. And let me just return the favor to the union and send them a big fuck you on behalf of all the minimum wage health care workers, janitors, temps, grocery clerks, and nannies trying to get from their homes in Harlem, Bay Ridge, and Elmhurst to their jobs in Manhattan. In December. Hey, maybe someone will die walking 50 blocks to work... that'll show 'em. Solidarity forever.
And yes I'm sure that the MTA had their heads up their collective asses and failed to negotiate in good faith. I don't care. Any idea that TWU is some sorta representative of the downtrodden proletariat or whatever is just absurd. Starting salary is 25K (if I'm googling accurately) and the avg TWU member is making more than NYC firefighters or teachers.

Well, that concludes this evening's pointless rant. Tune in tomorrow for more of the usual babble about Xmas specials, craft beers, and wrrld music.

eta: I'm feeling a bit less vitriolic now. thanks for asking. here's a link to some good transit strike coverage

Well it's Monday so, no surprise, it's mostly been a day of things pissing me off. At least, though, they've mostly been minor things. Like the XXXmas Ale by Left Hand Brewery that turned out to be spiced, with no warning on the bottle. Or the fact that TCM is not showing Holiday Inn this year. Two hours of valuable network time they can waste on Sleepless in Frikkin' Seattle but no Holiday Inn... The only actual serious complaint, though, is that our internets connectivity which has been for shit for days now. Feh on roadrunner and the tortoise it crawled in on...

Just found out that the Metropolitan Museum (in NYC) is about to open a show on Robert Rauschenberg. Which means it will be open when I'm there in early January. w00t! I am such a babbling Rauschenberg fanboy... I couldn't even begin to guess how many different gallery exhibitions I've seen except that it's pretty much every one I've heard about and been in the same town as. So that more than makes up for missing all the Xmas decorations and foofara cos I'll be there after Jan 1st.

And I really was planning on getting over to XDU music staff tonight. I only got 2 CDs reviewed but still that's something. But when I went to print out the file, I discovered the cyan cartridge was empty and the printer wouldn't do anything, not even in black & white. So I went over to Staples to get a replacement only to buy the completely wrongwrongwrong one so I was completely hosed. At which point I just gave up in a fit of pique. Cooked dinner. Watched the Simpsons. Which had me howling -- even funnier than last year's holiday episode and a new high water mark for blasphemy

Xmas music on the radio, egg nog, shopping for pressies, cards in the mail... while these may all be markers of the season, for me yuletide is not in full effect until the first viewing of Year Without a Santa Claus. Which happened last night. Too much!

We also watched the Gene Wilder version of Willie Wonka which I hadn't seen in a long time. If I ever knew, I'd long since forgotten that Roald Dahl had actually written the screenplay. But it's been even longer since I've read the book so I don't feel I can comment intelligently on Dahl's script v. John August's for the Tim Burton version. One thing that struck me immediately though is how much more horrible the 70s version of Veruca Salt was. I mean, the whole point of the character is that she's horrid, spoiled, etc. But the 70s version is all that and then some. It's a massive, scenery chewing performance. I suspect also that it's closer to Dahl's original vision in the book -- as he's typically a pretty bleak and misanthropic SOB (but again, I'll have to reread to say for sure)

Here's the playlist from Wednesday night. I actually meant to play more Xmas tunes but I got caught up in this, that 'n the other thing and never quite got around to it. Next week for sure then... My big thrills for this week were: finding the MC5 album with the original of "Looking At You" (which I still always think of as a Damned song); finding the Peel Sessions Damned CD with "Looking At You" (since the station doesn't have Machine Gun Etiquette); finding (while looking for the Damned, obviously) that Data-Bank-a album. That was one of the cooler finds in the vinyl library cos it was a total surprise and not something I'd gone hunting for (like Sleep of Reason or Commodity Fetish).
The Dreaded Wintry Mix has come and gone, with not much impact. Well, unless you were one of the 8 people I passed on the way to work Thursday either wrecked, in a ditch, or both. And this morning I passed a tow truck hauling an SUV outta someone's front lawn. The approach to driving in icy conditions around here seems to be either to pretend there's no difference and barrel along at 80 or go into a complete panic shutdown and crawl along at 20.
Turns out that Irvine Welsh likes White Christmas. Which I'm not sure why that's so surprising. I like Trainspotting and White Christmas so why not Welsh. I can't believe that even the writer of that article finds it actually surprising. It's just a lazy journalist hook... ooh, he writes edgy stuff about drug addicts so he couldn't possibly like a goofy musical. (yes, we are all as one-dimensional and unimaginative as you Mr. Hack Journalist Guy...)

Cpl. Cupcake over there just wants me to remind you that, yes, once again I'll be on the airwaves tonight, 10pm to midnight. Etc etc as usual... 88.7fm or wxdu.org for the non-locals. And, yes, you can expect that Xmas tunage will be deployed. A bit sparingly, perhaps, since I'll get one more crack at it next week. I've been enjoying the new Six Degrees comp, Christmas Remixed 2. It's maybe not quite as good as the first one, from a couple of years ago. But it's still quite swanky

Tonight's our first chance locally for the dreaded wintry mix. Sleet, snow, freezing rain... supposedly rolling in around 3am. Panic will no doubt ensue. But by tomorrow afternoon it's low 40s and rain so there's really not all that to get excited about.

Tonight started out as another comedy of errors, slightly missed connections, and dead cell phones and was saved only when Sarah and I flukily ran into each near the pay phones at Southpointy. We then went on with our evening and another excellent dinner at City Beverage. I had the lamb which was so good that not only do I forgive them for giving the dish the noxiously twee name "lambsicles" on the menu, but even for playing not one but two Billy-Fucking-Joel songs while we were there. Altho if I wake up tomorrow with "Piano Man" running thru my head I may have to go back there and slap somebody...

and remember -- don't hate the shellfish, hate the game

Here's tinsel tree #2, decked out in all its holiday festiveness. Sarah did all the decorating yesterday while I was at work. And, yes, it sucks being at work on a weekend. But it is what it is... After I got done working I was running around town trying (with no success) to find a non-tacky stocking holder for the mantel. Went to many many stores; saw nothing that wasn't hideous. Altho I did see two bits o' coolness at Target, which I'm hoping will survive until the post-Xmas discounts -- light's that look like the classic C9 bulb except about 3" or so long (so cool!) and a line of Isaac Mizrahi ornaments. Perhaps taking brand extension a bit too far...

Only about six months until Triwizard Tournament World Cup. That'll give me time to figure out how to say "World Cup" in German. And read up on all the sides so I'll have some vague chance to knowing what's going on while watching the matches on Univision. Unless FSN or whatever Murdoch-owned channel it is that shows FA Cup will be running it. I much prefer soccer coverage that's enthused (if unintelligible-to-me), whether Spanish or Geordie, to the soporific blandness usually found on US networks' game broadcasts

It's (as they say) getting on towards that time o' year again, and since others have already got the summarizing party started, I thought I'd look back at my year in music. Looks like I'll have to do some actual thinking about it this time. I don't remember last year being a tough call at all. Either this was a better year, or I'm paying more attention, but after a first pass I've only got it narrowed down to about 40. This would be, in the parlance of British literary prizes, the long list: Royksopp, Lemon Jelly, Ye Ye, Moussu T e le Jovents, MIA, Kronos Quartet & Asha Bhosle, Tinariwen, Thievery Corporation, Amadou & Mariam, Balkan Beat Box, Tosca, Trio Mocoto, Gabin, Konono No. 1, Cheb i Sabbah, Four Tet, Treva Whateva, Transglobal Underground, Luke Vibert, Part 2, Zuco 103, Shukar Collective, Curumin, Warsaw Village Band, Ojos de Brujo. And then there's the comps & re-issues: Rio Baile Funk, Ghana Soundz 2, Konk, Naz Nomad, Coconut FM, Orange Juice, Scritti Politti, Love's A Real Thing, Mzansi Music, Another World is Possible, I Can't Live Without My Radio, Cult Cargo, New Zealand in Dub, King Sunny Ade, Bucovina Club, Latin Travels 2.

So I've really been enjoying the first few episodes of Isaac, the new Isaac Mizrahi talkshow on Style. One of the things I'm enjoying is that, like many shows in their early days, they haven't settled into predictability. It doesn't appear to have been focus-grouped out the wazoo. Basically, if you liked Unzipped you'll probably like the show cos a lot of it is just Isaac being Isaac. A personal fave moment from this week: Mizrahi encouraging Elle MacPherson to plug away for her lingerie line, then cutting her off for running on to long by screaming that this wasn't an infomercial.

Here's last night's playlist. You'll note that I managed to get the Woodentops worked in finally. Only one call, from some wacko ranting about politics or something. I was coming up on a transition so I hung up quickly. Apparently, this is a longtime wacko who has called many other DJs to scream down the phone at them. The weird thing was that the call started with that short moment of dead air, like you get with an autodialer. Which would demonstrate, I think, an unusually large commitment to your insanity -- to go out and buy an autodialer so you could yell down the phone at a bunch of college radio DJs.

A bit of good news for taco truck fans in Nashville. The city had been considering an outright ban but it looks like they're working on a compromise.

In other news, well there's not much other news. I'll be on the air tonight, as usual. Did manage to get everything nailed down for 24 Hours of Afrobeat, which will be on 12/29, as previously rumored. I'm trying to manage to not catch this cold that I've felt on the verge of for the last few days. It's working so far.

While I was asleep at the switch, Lisa B blogged the DJBC Santastic collection. So, yeah, what she said. Except I won't be playing any Xmas music tonight.

As Sarah mentioned, we saw Goblet of Fire again over the weekend. And I also enjoyed it even more this time. After the movie we all had dinner at Federal. I had the carnitas, which I'd never had before because Sarah usually gets them and well, I just can't bring myself to order a dish if someone else has already ordered it. They were damn good. A different kind of experience than, say, taco truck carnitas but still easily in the top 5 I've had in NC.

We didn't do much in the way of Xmas decorating over the weekend. It's still too damn early for me (as I've said previously) but we did set up the new tinsel tree, as seen here. That's not actually where it's going to live for the season but there's no decent light in the dining room until I can get around to replacing the ceiling fan with Ikea light fixture.

A few odds & ends to wrap up the week...
Watched Ong Bak tonight. Awesome bone crunching good time. Saw fu. Refrigerator fu. Gigantic Buddha head fu!!
We were gonna have dinner with some friends but their oven blowed up. Well, it didn't actually a-splode but it did become non-functional sometime during the day. So we stayed in and watched a movie (see above)
Even tho it's my general rule to avoid all things Xmas-y until at least Pearl Harbor Day, I've made a few small gestures towards festiveness. Bought another tinsel tree (this one's blue). I only ordered it on Sunday and it arrived already today. We also watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Not the best Rankin/Bass -- even a puppet Fred Astaire can not make up for the sad lack of Miser Brothers -- but still cheesy fun. And I quaffed the first eggnog of the season.
Finally, a radio update. If you're the sorta person who marks their calendar, you might wanna do so for Thursday, Dec. 29th for Afrobeat Around the Clock on WXDU. 10 DJs. 24 hours. And as much Fela, Antibalas, Femi and similar stuff as we can play without sittin' down.

Sending out get well wishes to a House of Dioxin fave, supastar Amitabh Bachchan, who is recovering from abdominal surgery.

Dishoom!

Here's tonight's playlist. I had fun. It was not as spontaneous as some weeks in that I had a lot of ideas about what I was going to do before I got there and I mostly just went ahead and followed thru. No sudden inspirations sending me off in completely unexpected directions this time around. Altho for at least the third time in the last month, I pulled Woodentops and never got them fit into the show. (next time for sure!)