Did a radio show last night. Here's the playlist. Sure there were no calls but there were also no fubars and I gotta love any show where I can work in old Teardrop Explodes, new DJ Shadow and Basement Jaxx, Commodity Fetish (which gave me the title for this semester's show), and even a song about cannibalism.

I love these plates. And lots of other way stylish swag on that site. It's the kind of site where I'm amazed I can click away from a page w/o spending 10$

Nice rant over at Film Threat. I don't buy all his arguments but I definitely endorse is his call for more non-cliched characters. All that and gratuitous slams at Tom Hanks...

While writing this post I was watching Food Network and I saw an ad for a new show starting next month called the Hungry Detective. Doing a bit o' digging, I found out that it stars the cop who played tour guide for Alton Brown in episode 4 of Feasting on Asphalt over the summer. He absolutely stole the show and I remember thinking that he was so good on TV that they should give him his own show. (better him that another Rachel frikkin Ray programme). So now they have. How cool is that?

(yes, I'm having a fairly random evening. why do you ask?)

Holy zot! Gourmet's list of the top 50 restaurants is just out. And two local restaurants made the list. Magnolia Grill at #11! Lantern at #47!! w00t. Obviously everything about a list like that is subjective, from who makes it at all to how they're ranked. I think I'm more surprised to see Lantern at all than to see Magnolia Grill so high up the list. Not that Lantern isn't deserving just that I'm surprised to see them recognized, as they're a lot more "off the beaten path" than many places on the list. Of the places I haven't been, I must say I'm surprised to see Chez Panisse ahead of French Laundry. I'd gotten the impression from what I've read that the buzz was that Chez Panisse had slipped in recent years and many seem to think French Laundry is the best in the country. Oh well. See previous comment on subjectivity. Alas, we haven't had the chance to go to any of the Vegas based restaurants on the list. We had reservations at Babbo when we were in NYC last year but had to cancel them due to a family emergency. It's kinda interesting to me how high the price scale at some of those places runs. Which again is all relative, I suppose. But if you figure that a meal at Magnolia Grill, say, is probably going to be seen as so expensive as to be unimaginable by many (if not most) people, then how do you deal with Robuchon which is probably 2x or 3x as expensive? Or Masa (at one point the most expensive restaurant in the country) which might be 8x to 10x as expensive? Is there a point at which there's no food (or no experience of any kind) that can be worth that much money? Or is it just a question of percentage? Perhaps a $300 price fixe meal doesn't seem expensive if that's what you're making in an hour.

Yes, that's the Metropolitan Opera doing Madama Butterfly, simulcast on the jumbotron screens in Times Square. Gotta say, that's some pretty impressive cultural outreach.

A bit closer to home (and with fewer giant TVs), Julie Powell will be doing a reading this Friday. Sarah's read Julie and Julia. I haven't gotten around to it yet, altho I did read bits of the blog when she was still doing that. We might go to that, or perhaps to AV Geeks. This time it's movies for "the modern housewife" and (bonus!) they're showing in a Masonic lodge in Hillsborough.

These pics of the grand opening of the Providence, RI Apple Store reminded me of the rainy Saturday morning we all went out and stood in line for the Durham store opening.

good times...

I should have had it done in time for Talk Like a Pirate Day but I only this weekend got done with reviewing Rogue's Gallery. Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski took some of their fat Pirates loot and hired Hal Willner (producer of Lost in the Stars, the excellent Kurt Weill tribute album, among many other things) to do a set of pirate songs and sea shanteys. Too much fun! All sorts of everybody showed up -- Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Van Dyke Parks, Lucinda Williams, David Thomas, Bill Frisell, Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), Gavin Friday (I'm pretty sure that one of the tracks is a Virgin Prunes reunion), Sting (who gets into the spirit o' things), Bono (who does not, turning in a bloated corpse of a tune... easily the worst track on 2CDs), Stan Ridgway, Lou Reed, Akron/Family and more. (what? Tom Waits was outta town that weekend?) Pete Thomas (of the Attractions), Eyvind Kang, Robyn Hitchcock, and Wayne Horvitz turn up in the backing band on some tracks. Non-singing-types like Warren Ellis, John C. Reilly, Ralph Steadman, and Ricky Jay also appear. Jay's number is probably the most disappointing (I expected the Bono cut to suck). He can't sing worth a damn but they weren't able to work the song around that -- it just sounds like someone talking w/ unrelated music overheard from another room in the background. Which might even be the point but it didn't work for me. The Bryan Ferry/Antony duet is a high point. Both of the John C. Reilly tracks are excellent, as is Sting's. I love the Ralph Steadman song about "the custom of the sea." Nick Cave kills, as usual. One of my regrets is that there's this one Loudon Wainwright track that'll never get played on the radio. It's kinda like a sea chantey version of the Artistocrats with each verse seeming to top the preceeding in just being flatout nasty. Even though it doesn't use any of the classic "bad words" it's clearly way too obscene for airplay. I have to admire that kind of commitment. Apparently it was part of a collection of bawdy sea songs published by Maurice Girodias.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 24 sept 06) ::

Savane :: Ali Farka Touré
Chicago Afrobeat Project :: Chicago Afrobeat Project
Afro :: Novalima
Mr. Anonymous :: Mr. Anonymous
Boulevard de l'Independence :: Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra
Elysium for the Brave :: Azam Ali
Boujeloud :: the Master Musicians of Joujouka
Bricolages :: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Raleigh :: Rey Norteño
Artology :: JPP

Here's the playlist from earlier this afternoon. Loaded with wrrld musical goodness. It went off about to plan and I discovered a couple of things that I'd never heard before. I think one of the advantages of having multiple DJs doing Mondo Mundo (at least for me) is that if I was doing it every week, I'd quickly settle into a rut of playing the same things over and over.

In one of those moments of serendipity (or something something), we had dinner at Milltown, a new restaurant in Carrboro, last night, and today the local paper shop gave it a review. It does show it's Federal roots pretty clearly. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The bottled beer list is quite overwhelming and the draught list, while much more compact, is loaded with good stuff, from the obvious (Dead Guy) to the quality locals (13 Rebels) to the Belgian (a couple... I can't remember which right now). We shared some nachos, which were damn good. Sarah had the fish tacos which, from the taste I had, definitely merit the praise in the review. I had the burger -- while it's not in any danger of cracking into the top of my burger list, I would definitely order it again. I'd rate it slightly ahead of Federal's just for not being swathed in pepper. I wasn't as knocked out by the frites as Cox was, but they were mighty tasty. Another advantage over Fed is that Milltown is non-smoking. The big disadvantage (for us) is that it's in Carrboro.
Well, you can't have everything. (where would you put it?)

Seen this afternoon, what has to be the worst idea in the history of vanity license plates: HAMMERED. I think you should get a ticket just for having that plate on your car.

Buncha federales in Louisiana busted Willie Nelson for possession yesterday. 1.5 pounds of pot & around 4 oz. of shrooms. Willie, by the way, is 73 years old.

Willie Nelson is an American hero.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 17 sept 06) ::

Chicago Afrobeat Project :: Chicago Afrobeat Project
Mr. Anonymous :: Mr. Anonymous
Boulevard de l'Independence :: Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra
Boujeloud :: the Master Musicians of Joujouka
Radiodread :: Easy Star All-Stars
Afro :: Novalima
Bricolages :: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Elysium for the Brave :: Azam Ali
Lenine :: Lenine
Metal Notes :: Gamelan Son of Lion

From the dept. of unanswerable questions dept: 5 things you've eaten that you think everyone should eat before they die. Found this via Gluten Free Girl and I agree with her that the only way to answer questions like this is to go with the first thoughts = best thoughts approach. So my answers are no definitive, in that if tried again tomorrow, I'd probably come up with 5 (or 10) completely different things.

First thoughts:
fior de latte in Tuscany
fresh-picked tomatoes from your garden
roast chicken at Bouchon, Las Vegas
gelato di riso
bread you've made, fresh from the oven

Second thoughts:
NYC pizza
really fresh sushi
tomato jam
Texas 'cue (brisket!)
chocolate cake at Magnolia Grill, Durham, NC

Can't remember where I found this article. I think I read a shorter version of it on the NYTimes op-ed page last weekend. But I've had it tabbed in Firefox for a couple of days, trying to figure out how to write a temperate post about it. And I just can't do it. I just start screaming. Fortunately, Jon Stewart's on the job to sort it all out for us.

Okay, I hope you're all sitting down because I'm going to say something nice about Cary. On our way back from plant shopping out in Raleigh, we detoured over to Cary. I thought I knew where I was going but we ended up not where I was expecting. Fortunately, where we ended up was Chatham Square, home of two Indian dessert shops, a Korean restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a tortilleria, and Suchi Indian Restaurant, which specializes in Hyderabadi cuisine. Great buffet! Lots of good stuff, both veg. (I highly recommend the mushrooms) and meat (goat curry!). Tomato rice, chicken biryani, a cauliflower dish I can't remember the name of... it's all good. It even comes with a complimentary (fresh, hot) masala dosa. And the TVs were showing a program of Bollywood videos. Restored my faith in the buffet experience.

After lunch we went around the corner and bought some fresh corn tortillas. Would have bought some bread or rolls -- everything smelled great -- except we'd somewhat overindulged in the buffet experience and the idea of seriously contemplating a food purchase was just too much to contemplate. Next time for sure...

Another sure sign of fall: World Beer Festival coming up in Durham, on October 7. Just like last year I'm still waffling on whether or not to go. What it comes down to (for me): real cask ale, probably Dogfish Head on tap, beer geeks vs. crowds, bad music, type-A ex frat types looking to get hammered. I should decide early, cos tix are cheaper that way but I'll probablly wait until the 7th and just see how I'm feeeling that night.

In long-distance beer news, NYC's wonderful Blind Tiger Ale House has re-opened. They were doing craft beers back when Sam Adams was still cutting edge and hard-to-find. Altho I didn't go there as often as I'd have liked -- I had less disposable income in the mid-90s and I had friends who were fans of other bars -- it was always a fine time. They got priced/developed out of their old location. (And the Sarcastic Clerk was right). As you'll note from their site, they've only partially re-opened in the new location as their liquor license has been held up. Even though you've probably never been there, you could cast a vote for craft beers, artisanal food, good coffee, and locally-owned businesses by signing the petition.

Here's the playlist from last night's show. Which was a pretty good one, I think. Probably the first time in months I didn't have any major fubars (stopping a running song, dead air, etc). No calls or requests but still I had a fine ole time.

Today, apparently, my sinuses have decided to kill me. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration but they're at least conspiring to see that I'm as miserable as possible while still being ambulatory.

Oh and the latest season of Survivor started up tonight. The whole tribes-divided-by-race thing wasn't as clunky or stupid as I'd feared. Not surprising: the only contestant to say that race wasn't an issue was one of the white guys. Fun fact: one of the Caucasian tribe members is named Parvati. High point of the show: the African American tribe laughing at Probst when he asked them about how/if the tribes being divided racially (or "ethnically" as he put it) changed the game. Gee, I can't imagine why a group of black men and women would find anything amusing in a (apparently sincere) question about how they found the experience of being segregated...

"Why is it so funny?"
"Because it is."

Hey now, this is pretty cool. It's a major arcana done with picto people. (found via boing²). I really like the elegant simplicity he gets with the pictos. And I find them highly evocative of the major arcana images. Then again, I've spent a lot of time looking at tarot cards. YMMV. One of the things I find interesting is that he's using the order and names from Crowley's Thoth deck. In some cases, he's actually mirrored the Crowley card design quite impressively (particularly the Chariot, Hanged Man, Art and Aeon). Others (esp. the Fool, Magician, Priestess) are much more influenced by the "standard" Rider-Waite images created by Pamela Coleman Smith. Seems to me I remember (from when we were working on VTW and I was paying more attention to all things tarot) that Crowley and the Thoth deck was more popular in the UK than the US, where it seems almost all new decks are Rider-Waite-Smith based.

(Or I could be completely wrong... as always, there's things you know and things you only think you know)

The definite TV high point from last weekend was stumbling across a half-hour program about Carhenge on one of the public television stations. Totally cool! Carhenge, as you can probably guess from the name, is a version of Stonehenge made out of old cars. It's in Alliance, Nebraska. The film includes interviews with the creator (who reminded me of the Button King), locals both pro and con (inc. the mayor who attempts to be even-handed but it's clear that he's definitely not down with the program), and more. If we ever do our coast-to-coast art car trip, that'll definitely be on the itinerary. At the end of the film, there were some shots of other Carhenge-inspired installations. My favorite of which was Fridge-henge.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 10 sept 06) ::

Boulevard de l'Independence :: Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra
Afro :: Novalima
Boujeloud :: the Master Musicians of Joujouka
Mr. Anonymous :: Mr. Anonymous
Radiodread :: Easy Star All-Stars
Mexaton on the Rise :: El Angel
Elysium for the Brave :: Azam Ali
Artology :: JPP
Lenine :: Lenine
Metal Notes :: Gamelan Son of Lion

Spent the weekend up in New York. It was my mom's birthday so I flew up for that. It was an unannounced (altho not surprise) visit. Had dinner with her and my brother and then just hung around the house doing nothing on Saturday. Sunday I was planning to go into Manhattan and see a museum or two but I didn't get as early a start as I'd planned and decided it was a nice day to just walk around taking pictures -- one of those cool, feels-like-fall weekends you sometimes get in NYC in Sept. You can see the photoset here. I didn't go too far afield but I did walk around a few blocks I'd never been down before.

Or not... I mean, I know I shouldn't complain. Any time you leave one place and wind up in another safely, then that's a good thing. But after an annoying travel day, what else is there to do but rant in blogs? When I flew into NYC on Friday it took me about 2 hours to get from JFK to Manhattan. So I was expecting the same tonight. Alas, I was taking a different subway line, which got me there in about 45 minutes less. Instead of arriving at 7.30 for a 9.30 flight, I arrived at 6.45. No line to check in and not much at security. Still, no problem. I had a book (Eric Idle's Greedy Bastard Diary). I was even able to get a seat at the bar and enjoy an incredibly overpriced Bass Ale. It would've been a long evening but nothing worth complaining about. Except the 9.30 flight turned into a 10:something flight. I'm not exactly sure when we boarded the plane. Possibly it was around 10.30. It was definitely after 11 before we got in the air, because the Alternative had already started on VH1-Classics. So that's annoying enough. The fact that at no point did I hear anyone from JetBlue either explain why the flight was so delayed or apologize. Even an insincere boilerplate apology would have been better than just pretending nothing was wrong. And speaking of which, that was the final kick in the nads. We land at RDU and they can't get us off the plane (some problem finding trained seals to work the jetway or something) so we all have to stand there for another half-hour. One of the flight attendant's finally got on the PA to explain but I'm guessing his "oh well, snakes on a plane" tone of commisseration didn't go over any better with the people up at the front than it did with me cos that was the last word from anyone until they finally released us from captivity. When I was exiting I actually heard that same attendant say something like "tell me about it" to someone a few people ahead of me. It took all the restraint my tired ass could muster not to tell him about it when it was my turn to shuffle past. While I'm sure he was as exhausted as the rest of us, he seems to have overlooked an important distinction. Namely, he's at least getting paid to be there while the rest of us are paying for the privilege of getting home at 1.30 in the AM

(thanks. i feel much better now)

Interesting article in yesterday's NYTimes about differences in reactions, responses, feelings, memories, etc of Sept. 11 between New Yorkers who were or were not living in the city at the time. No surprise that they could barely find 2 people to agree on anything. It was worse if you were in NYC. No, it was worse if you only watched it on TV. No one who was there wants to talk about it. No one who wasn't there can understand. And so on.
What I wonder is: people seeing the WTC site for the first time now, what do they see? If I go, I see what isn't there because I'd been there before. But if you never saw it before, what are you seeing now?

Another sure sign of the impending arrival of autumn is the XDU fall schedule. I'll be on at the same time, Wednesdays from 10pm to midnite, on alternate weeks. One interesting thing I noticed is that, over the last few years, the 10pm to midnite shift has gone from being almost all playlist shows to being almost all specialty shows. Well, maybe interesting only to me.

Y'know what's exhausting? Having to think about every single damn thing you do at work all day. And then explain it to someone. That's way too much talking! And the day goes a lot slower when there's never a moment where you can just go on autopilot and get stuff done. Yesterday was improved by several hours of fine animation programming on the DVR: Cartoon Planet, Toon Heads, and an hour of Chuck Jones shorts on TCM. Tonight it was Sammy! on DVD. And both nights I've been reading my way through My Life In France, the Julia Child memoir, which I highly recommend.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 3 sept 06) ::

Afro :: Novalima
Boulevard de l'Independence :: Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra
Mexaton on the Rise :: El Angel
Radiodread :: Easy Star All-Stars
Boujeloud :: the Master Musicians of Joujouka
Elysium for the Brave :: Azam Ali
Lenine :: Lenine
Artology :: JPP
Bricolages :: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Metal Notes :: Gamelan Son of Lion

Here's a plug for the CD I reviewed for the station today, Stupid Rotation, the latest from TBA Empty. Musician/composer/producer Natalie Beridze, from Tblisi, Georgia, teamed up with German tech-house guy Thomas Brinkmann for this set of stripped down beats. While still definitely out there in minimal-land, it's much less chill and stark than Beridze's debut from last year, Annulé. This one's definitely ready for the dancefloor. And it's got some of the sickest basslines I've heard since Layo + Bushwacka.
Good stuff... (Rodny sez "check it out")

Spiffy little article about NYC subway maps in today's NYTimes. And the one illo, of a 1930s map, is fabulous. I note that it points out the Metropolitan but not Museum of Natural History. Had that been built yet? Also you can see the early NYC airfields, like Floyd Bennet Field out in Brooklyn. But I have to wonder, why no more pics? I mean, the whole point of the article is to draw distinctions between different subway maps. Wouldn't that be much clearer with visuals? Were there illos in the hardcopy edition of the paper? I know the Times is printing a paper and not running a website but this article is almost completely useless w/o pics (as they say over on Fark).

It's the beginning of the month and the end of the week and I wish I had something to say to wrap up or start of or... oh anything. Or at the very least, that I could turn my nothing day into a funny story. Well, maybe I could if I felt I had any kind of mental energy left. This is either the 4 hours sleep I had after radio the other night catching up with me. Or maybe the extra hour+ I spent at work over the last two days. Something whatever. At least it's the weekend coming up so I can be a slug with a clear conscience.

But just to wrap this up with something non-sucktastic, here's a fun post from FMU's Beware of the Blog: great songs by crap bands. This is such a college DJ thing, I think. That'll come as no surprise to anyone whose ever heard one of my radio shows. What I find amusing in the comments is how clearly no one can even agree on who counts as a crappy band to start with (I'd cut the Police some slack for their first two albums). Well, there's a bit of consensus on the Eagles. Altho for the life of me, I can't think of an Eagles song that doesn't both suck and blow. Of the other bands mentioned in the Beware of the Blog comments, I'd disagree on Aerosmith (it's "Toys in the Attic") and Cat Stevens ("Here Comes My Baby" -- c'mon, people, Wes Anderson already found it for you). I'll offer a few suggestions:
"the Seeker" by the Who
"Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead
"See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd