XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 19 feb 06) ::

Rough Guide to Bhangra Dance :: various
Congotronics 2 :: various
Time for Change :: Apache Indian
Una Noche Inolvidable :: Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra
Rough Guide to Urban Latino :: various
LDA v. the Lunatics :: Los de Abajo
Rasta Still De Bout :: Josie Mel
Jamaican Soul Shake, vol. 1 :: Sound Dimension
Lost in a Moment :: Shrift
Beleza! Beleza!! Beleza!!! :: Trio Mocoto

flashback meme, for no particular reason... what are the next 12 songs on my iTunes shuffle? (cos 10 is boring, innit? everyone does 10)

"wear your love like heaven" :: Definition of Sound
"gentleman" :: Meshell Ndegeocello and Yerba Buena
"kiss" :: Age of Chance
"death by venom" :: Portion Control
"get misunderstood (quantic remix)" :: Troublemakers
"soif conjugale" :: Kisanzi Congo
"smiling monarchs" :: Abecedarians
"the strangler" :: Underground Resistance
"cikan-le message" :: Transglobal Underground and Tata Pound
"just you and i" :: dZihan & Kamien
"toothbrush" :: Roots Manuva
"kiting checks at the blood bank" :: !!Swanhunter

I'm back. Altho I haven't blogged it (much? at all? i could search but i'm feeling too lazy right now...), some of you may know that Sarah and I were planning to get married this coming Saturday. In Vegas. That will not be happening at this juncture as an ongoing family medical situation means that travelling to another time zone isn't an option. As they say, I'll keep you posted. Thanks to all for the kind words, and esp. to Ms Pants for stepping up to organize and to Howard for covering the wrrld music show I was s'posed to be doing last Saturday.

Need a drink? Let me recommend the Ten Years Alt from Victory Brewing Company. It's their take on a German ale, in celebration of their 10th year. I don't usually go for the German beers, and (honestly) I hadn't been all that impressed with the few other beers I'd tried from Victory but the Ten Years Alt is outstanding. I'll have to go back and revisit some of their others now.

In more mystifying food-related news, here's a chocolate covered Cinquecento. Your guess is as good as mine.

Finally, lemme share a little link-love via scrubbles. Or in other words, brava, diva Brini!. Now with podcast goodness. (I wonder -- in a few years, will we look back and be thinking... "oh podcasting... so 2006!" the way flashmobs now seem so 2004)

Here's my second favorite album of the year: Congotronics 2. While it's not as startling and unexpected as last year's Konono No. 1 CD, it's still every bit as amazing. I'm of two minds about much of the critical response to both CDs. The use of DIY instruments and amplification does give the music a sound quite unlike more familiar African styles. References to krautrock, Lee Perry and various forms of electronic dance music are not unexpected. I certainly am not saying that reviews of congotronics bands/music shouldn't reference that stuff. But I read enough and I'm starting to wonder why so few mentions of the fact that this is African music. It starts to seem like critics can't get their mind around the fact that African musicians have created such a new sound. Yet it's so rooted in the styles of the Congo, in the drumming, the beats, the trance traditions. I think if you lose that in the buzz & rumble, then you're really not understanding what's going on. And you'll end up making some absurd comparison to Aphex Twin.

but maybe that's just me

Anyway, things are getting very raggedy around several edges. I may be awol for a few days. Again, talk or drink amongst yrselves

So I mention my fondness for Olympic biathlon and what happens? Carabinieri are conducting midnight raids on small Alpine villages. Guys are chunking bags full of used syringes out the window. Sketchy ex-coaches are crashing Fiats (or other sporty Eurocars) into police roadblocks. Wacky hijinks indeed. I'd link to the NYTimes story, which sums things up pretty well, but it doesn't seem to want me to. Instead, here's an article from Slate which has an interesting take on the sports anti-doping issue. And check out the biathlon logo. Very hip and retro-cool. Very CQ. (oh those stylish Italian designers...)

Of course, all you cool kids already know about FMU's blog but I'm late arriving (again). Anyway, boing² linked them yesterday or the day before for this amazingly cool Django Reinhardt movie. Hot jazz and cool French guys. Almost as much fun as TMBG meets Doc and the band from earlier in the week.

So I haven't blogged much about the Olympics lately. Not just because everyone's doing it -- and most of them a doing quite the craptacular job of it (Slate) -- but because I haven't watched all that much. Busy week with not much time for TV. We have seen several biathlon events. Sarah's gotten me hooked on that. I tried to watch curling, which is what all the hip sportswriters seem to be grooving on. But it's so slow it makes cricket look like an X Game. I remember watching it some four years ago, late at night, in real time, and it does have a zenlike calmness. At least, at 3am it does. At 9 or 10pm on DVR maybe not so much. Have not seen any of snowboard cross. Well, not any of the supposedly good stuff. Just the qualifying heats. One guy snowboarding down the course. Over and over and over. Even sped up on the DVR it was like watching paint dry. But it sounds like it would be fun to watch. Four maniacs on snowboards careening around the course and over, around, or into each other.

Here's the playlist. Maybe not my most diverse show ever, but I had a good time. Altho I really do need to come up with a new name for the new semester. Andre Kostelanetz is so 2005... Only downside was that the midnite DJ was no-show. So I played an extra 20 minutes of !!Swanhunter music and then shut the station down. What else? I'm certainly not staying there until 3am. Now to go watch some poker on the Travel Channel until I fall asleep. Or until curling comes on...

Fourfour has last week's Project Runway recapped. I also note that he has a link to comments on the runway shows by the final four that just happened during Fashion Week. And also, in the comments there's someone disagreeing about who of the final four had the best/worst shows. (more on Project Runway, with stuff that might be spoiler-ish, if you're waiting for the Season 2 DVD, after the cut)

I'm off to make some radio in about an hour or so. Usual drill -- 88.7fm for locals, wxdu.org for those near or far.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 12 feb 06) ::

First Flight :: Mighty Sparrow
Mu :: Jah Wobble
Time for Change :: Apache Indian
Le Pop 3 :: various
Silva :: Vinicius Cantuaria
Miero :: Varttina
Aparelhagem :: DJ Dolores
Beleza! Beleza!! Beleza!!! :: Trio Mocoto
My Hope :: Anthony B.
Blessed :: Soweto Gospel Choir

First off, let me send out a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my bro (who's probably not reading this but you never know...)

Boing² was on fiyah today, with links to DJBC's newest Beastles mashups, proof that Gamera really is full of meat, and the cutest DIY project evah (so cute that it even overpowered my +10 aura of cute resistance)

Spectacularly unproductive weekend. But it was a good break from the recent day-to-day -- let's just say that the last week had a bit more "the hell?!?" than I usually care for. But if you're gonna be unproductive (and no I don't think liveblogging the opening ceremonies counts as productive), might as well go all out. So we spent most of last night and this morning watching tapes of the current season of Project Runway which, of course, rules in its fabulosity (thanks, Alicia!).
OMG!! TMBG!!! (once again yoinked from Gothamist, where they're all sitting under 2 feet of snow today but still bringing the bloggy goodness)
And then there's this. Which has, yes, been blogged to death here, there and everywhere. But it's still worth a mention, slotting right between Addams Family and Mr. T for coolest cereal tie-in. Or as Pru put it, nothing says "breakfast" like the combo of milk and unwashed, drunken pirates.

There's still an hour left in the derangement but I don't know how they're going to top the live tableau of Botticelli's Birth of Venus that just went by. Altho the bizzaro Montgolfier Bros. meet Cirque du Soleil thing that's going on now is taking it's best shot.
Did get to see a bit of sbandieratori (traditional flag waving) -- we saw some of that when we were in Siena, as part of the Palio ceremonies. Of course, NBC spent most of the performance cutting away to crowd reaction shots.
Hey, cool, an F1 Ferrari doing donuts! Most excellent...
Wrapping up the parade o' nation states, I counted about twenty 1-person teams. There's really not much to say about the clothes. It's all mostly non-descript winter wear. Special mention though for Germany and Kyrgyzstan for some truly heinous headgear. On the flipside, shout out must be given to India and Mongolia, who definitely had the coolest hats in the room (snark from the Costas-bot nothwithstanding). The best branding? Had to be Sweden with their Swedish flag themed mittens. Ikea should start selling those. Worst national branding? Oh, Canada. Name-of-country on hat: tacky but not beyond the pale (several countries had that). Name-of-country on jackets, in six inch high letters: call Finola Hughes.

And the deranged-ness continues... On their second appearance, I realize the inline skater actually didn't have flaming jetpacks, they had flames shooting from their helmets. Rivaling the Armanis from earlier, the placard carriers leading each nation's athletes are wearing Moschino, with the skirts cut to look like the Alps (complete with trees). The guy co-hosting with the Costas-bot is even more annoying. He's been instructed apparently to include some incredibly facile political analysis and or background whenever possible. So far we've been graced with capsule stupidities on China, Korea, Bosnia, Canada, Azerbaijan, and (of course) Denmark. Music of choice for the nations parade: disco (the solid gold classics variety) and new wave (ditto). After an hour, it's a tie between Mussolini references and 9/11 references. (updates as needed)

I tell ya, there's no kind of deranged like Olympics opening ceremony deranged. In just 20 min. so far I've seen Armani-does-Logan's Run costumes, in-line skaters with flaming jet packs, waltzing fiberglass cows, the Ricola guys, people dressed like giant pine trees, and one actual XDU playlisted singer (Carla Bruni). I also note that the Italian PM (Berlusconi) is not in attendance. The somewhat slightly figurehead-ish President of the Republic is representing for the gu'mint. The Bob Costas script-reading 'bot mentioned that Silvio B. is standing for re-election in the spring, as if that explained his absence. I'd think the reverse. Was he concerned people would start booing? Throwing slushy snowballs? I was gonna say it'd be like sending Cheney to open an Olympics in the US, except he's hardly a beloved elder statesman and powerless ceremonial figure.

It's been a while since I've featured a beer o' the week (or month or whatever...) So here's a worthy choice, BridgePort Brewing Co.. They're from Portland (Oregon's oldest craft brewer, or so it say on the bottles and website). I'm currently sipping some of their Black Strap Stout. Fantastico! I love a good dark beer, esp. in winter. Mostly I've been sticking to the "holiday" ales lately but nothing new and interesing in that genre has crossed my path. I wasn't impressed by Carolina Brewing's offering (Frostbite). Snow Goose is decent and all but nothing to get excited about. Fortunately, there still seems to be plenty of Old Jubilation around. But my local beer emporium just got the BridgePort in and gave it a "must-drink" recommendation. Which I definitely second.

And while we're at the bar, here's some helpful tips on pouring beer. If nothing else, this serves as a corrective to those stupid Bud Light ads (or is it Miller Lite?) (Coors Lite?) that tell you to pour your beer straight down the middle of the glass. (Note: this link is to the slashfood story not direct to the Beer Advocate, because the BA page automatically starts a QuickTime movie on how to pour a beer. Which is actually interesting and helpful but I hate links that start playing movies and sound at me without warning)

I'm not gonna link to this until I can figure out how to do a screen cap (cos even if they don't fix it, the home page rotates thru ledes pretty quickly) but right now the headline at CNN.com reads "Bush urges end to cartoon violence"

Daffy Duck, you're on notice.

On slashfood today, there's a story about low-carb potatoes. But their link only goes to something which is obviously just a re-worded press release passing as news (I know... I know... making it different from most major media how?) A bit o' googling later, I got to the company site for the potatoes in question. I dunno. Maybe it is a new breakthru in crop science. But the way it's written they could just be saying that by some test or metric their potatoes have lower carbs than others. Hard to tell. The site's a mess anyway.

Like all aging hipsters, I maintain a deep love for Chuck Taylor All-Stars. I'm glad they're still around. But they are now owned by evil insect overlords (aka Nike). If you have qualms about, y'know, the whole sweatshop thing (I'm not usually prone to qualms but I might feel one coming on), here's an alternative: No Sweat. Note: I yoinked this link from Wil Wheaton. You're on the internets, so of course you've known about WWdN and the now long-term interim site WWdN: IX. Probably much longer than I have. And he hardly needs a plug from me. But it's good stuff. Yes indeedy.

My first favorite album of the year: LDA v. the Lunatics by Los de Abajo. Here's a press release. Here's a review.

kickass!!

Following up from yesterday... the Roadrunner tech guy finally showed up at 7 tonight and replaced the modem which does indeed seem to have drastically improved things. I was able to download all the software updates. Getting the OS current does seem to have enabled Safari to actually work. So far, so good.
Also good: a nifty haul of new wrrld music into XDU, inc. new CDs from Los de Abajo, Shrift, Apollo Nove. And, most especially, Congotronics 2. w00t! double, in fact...

So I think I may have mentioned that our 'net connectivity has been for shit lately. Sarah's called several times, usually to get the same run-around. It must be your router. Restart everything. Yadda etc. Which makes no difference. Taking the router completely offline and running from the cable modem makes not a whit of improvement. Today I called. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe TW's helpdesk has a testosterone detector on its phones so only calls from guys actually get routed to someone, y'know, helpful. But the person I talked to was very helpful. Turns out our average time connected is running about 48 min. (it should be about 72 hours). Also we're losing about 20% of incoming packets (or was it outgoing?). At any rate, clearly something is wrong. Possibly the modem is fubar. Possibly something else. As long as someone shows up tomorrow, as promised, and gets it fixed, I'll maybe be able to stop wondering why it took this guy less than a min. to figure out there was something wrong when everyone Sarah's talked to has told her they were looking at our connection and everything was running fine.

I think I mentioned back at the start of January that we'd marathoned thru all the Season 1 DVDs of Project Runway. The news that Carrboro has Bravo while Durham does not is one of the few things that's ever made me rethink my allegiance to the City o' Medicine Trees. I did get to see a bit of this season when I was up to Staten Island visiting the fam earlier this month, including the Nicky Hilton episode, which was a lot like the party episode in season 1, except unlike the sleazy NYPost gossip columnist, Nicky Hilton was not caught on camera ogling one of the models. Anyway, until the DVD comes out (or wordnerdy gets a marathon on tape -- looks like there's one next Wed. from 2pm to 11pm, hint hint), I have to make due with this, clearly the best Project Runway recap evah!! (found via Gothamist)

Just the other day, Sarah and I were talking about possible casting for the Order of the Phoenix movie, specifically Dolores Umbridge. I suggested Imelda Staunton. And now, this just in. To be strictly accurate, after I suggested Staunton I quickly dismissed her as being perhaps not quite right for the earlier, less-unpleasant Umbridge. It occurs to me now that, as much as they're having to compress the books to fit them into a reasonable movie-length, that they might skip over the early scenes where it's not clear yet just how horrible Umbridge will turn out to be

Here's your cheese story of the week. I esp. love that it was a multi-agency task force keeping the good people of California safe from the horrors of artisanal cheeses. I might have thought that somewhere in the entire state there was some sort of crime slightly more worthy of gu'mint attention than illicit fromage. (blessed are the cheesemakers, as long as they have a permit)

Your results:
You are Wash (Ship Pilot)

Wash (Ship Pilot) 75% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 70% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 55% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 45% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 40% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 35% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 30% Alliance 30% River (Stowaway) 25% Inara Serra (Companion) 20% A Reaver (Cannibal) 10%

You are a pilot with a good if not silly sense of humor. You take pride in your collection of toys. You love your significant other.

(via spacegrrl)

Here's the playlist from last night. Upside: got a request. Downside: wasn't able to play it cos the CD in question has disapparated. And I know we used to have it because I once played the song in question ("Sharks Patrol These Waters" by Morphine) outside of safe harbor and it's actually indecent. That's the sorta thing that stays with you. But overall, I thought it was a good show. And the midnight DJ showed up this week. Right now I'm still missing being on every week, but the spring will be busy enough that it wasn't an option.

Interesting obit for Nam June Paik on Slate today. I think it must have been Pak's "anything can be art" Fluxus background that put me in mind of Rauschenberg. But I did have one wtf moment while reading -- Fluxus invented mail art? Is that correct? I don't know enough about either Fluxus or mail art to know whether my kneejerk skepticism is wholly unfounded or not

I was at Kroger tonight, walking past the reach-in pastry case, when what do I see but a donut with garish blue icing with gummi bears on top. (so I guess a gummi bear is a sprinkle after all) Since the Simpsons are clearly becoming reality, I can only assume we'll see Skittlebrau on the market within the next few years.

I also spotted, for the first time ever, an inappropriate use of ellipses: "employees must wash hands before returning to work..." Huh?