Nice slideshow up on Slate now about Joseph Cornell. Interesting text, and any chance to see nine more Cornells can't be a bad thing. And a good way to wrap up November.

The freakishly warm November continues. Which is just making the arrival of Xmas cards seem even odder and out-of-joint. Even tho, of course, it's not. I've pretty much given up the illusion that I'm not completely out of step with how the American mass mind views the holidays. That is, that they start in late November and end at 12:01am on Dec. 26. It is what it is. At least it's now close enough to December that hearing Xmas music isn't inspiring in me thoughts of near-homicidal rage and baseball bat swinging mayhem.

In the spirit of compromise, here's a nice flickr set of this year's Lord & Taylor holiday window displays. Also, for any hipper-than-thou children in your lives, here's the block version of NYC.

So I planned on writing something else here, but I'm watching Hungry Detective and he's in Houston eating waffles & wings at the Breakfast Klub and they actually had an answer to the question "why waffles and wings?" And not just an answer, but a good answer, that it was a meal enjoyed by jazz musicians after gigs (since they didn't know whether they wanted dinner or breakfast, as the owner of the restaurant put it).

While I'm distracting myself with TV, let me put in a plug for Worst Jobs In History. History Channel International were running the Victorian episode tonight; we'd seen this show before, altho this time we avoided the shaking, chills, and gastric distress. I love Robinson's enthusiasm for all the nasty jobs he takes a try at. Watching the segment on the Victorian workhouses tonight, I had this insight into Victorian prisons, which I'd done some reading on for the VTW book. I'd wondered how the Victorians had gotten so attached to the pointlessly punitive (having to move piles of cannonballs back and forth from one stack to another, etc). But people in the workhouses were set to tasks like breaking rocks or picking rope down to oakum --in order to stay in the workhouse, they had to do horrid, menial work; work that was needed but they probably couldn't even pay people to do in the "free market." So if that's what was going in the workhouses (punishing people for being poor), then clearly prison had to be even worse. Thus, horrid, menial back-breaking labor that was completely pointless.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 26 nov 06) ::

Rio Baile Funk: More Favela Booty Beats :: various
Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock, 1965-1975 :: various
Infinito Particular :: Marisa Monte
Blues Around the World :: various
Panic in Babylon :: Lee "Scratch" Perry
World Musette :: les Primitifs du Futur
the In-Kraut, vol. 2 :: various
Electric Gypsyland 2 :: various
Heritage :: Mamadou Diabate
Oye :: Aterciopelados

Yet more evidence that the internets work hard so you don't have to: Slashfood taste-tests the Jones Soda holiday pack. Let us all pause and salute this fearless blogger.

In food news of a more personal nature, today was the day of partially successful cooking projects: we tried to convert the Weber into an Alton Brown style smoker (w/ hot plate, pie pan, and wood chips). Sarah has some pics. What we ended up with was not so much barbecue as a medium rare brisket with excellent smoke flavor. While that was ongoing, I whipped up a sweet potato pie. Much closer to success but still not quite there. Crust good and filling flavor good but filling texture wasn't quite right. Well, I just followed the recipe on the can of sweet potatoes so I'll have to experiment a bit and see what I can figure out.

Had another wonderful breakfast this morning at Nosh. (Big props to Xta for the recommendation). Then we worked some more out in the yard. Evidence of the stump from hell to the left there. It's hard to tell from this close-up but trust me, it's damn big. I've no idea how we're going to get it out of there. I'm thinking dynamite sounds like a choice option.

Sad news 1: the great Anita O'Day died earlier this week. "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" remains one of the oddest tunes in the divaville genre, and one of my favorites. I also love the album of Cole Porter tunes she did with Billy May.

Sad news 2: excellent memorial to Robert Altman over at Roger Ebert's site. Includes several interviews and Ebert's reviews of most all of Altman's movies. I was pleased to read his four-star review of Cookie's Fortune which I thought had been unfairly dismissed in a lot of the other Altman obits.

Well, that's enough sad news for today. I may have had to work but at least it kept me out of the mall. I'm pretty sure this guy wasn't doing any shopping either.

This just in from the mall: we're hip I tell you! Hip hip hip! V.I.P hip! (no word on if they were wearing their sombreros). Oddly enough, I got this link not thru my SI connection but thru my Apple connection. I guess everything really is closer than you think...

So I learned something new at XDU last night. I was working with a DJ-in-training and discovered that, if you've got the board set to monitor "air" (the signal going out over the air) -- which is what all DJs are trained to do -- and some other DJ has turned the delay on, then when you go to talk on-air, you'll speak into the mic and no words will play into the headphones. You'll then get confused and stumble over the opening phrases of the PSA you're trying to read. You'll then hear your inane stammering play back into the headphones eight seconds later. Like fun!

Since it's Thanksgiving, here's a few more food links:
Harold McGee drops some science on turkey.
Hey, it's a book about bacon. According to the NYTimes, it includes a recipe for making popcorn using bacon fat. (wipe that drool off your keyboard and move on...)
While I have a lot of respect for experimental chefs like Adria and Blumenthal, I'm also a big fan of high quality snark. So this is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Torch for 17 seconds with flamethrower... (indeed!)

More with the scary food? Of course. It's the holidays!

Here's something called mushroom fondue, altho it's connection to either seems tenuous at best. Well, I guess there are mushrooms and cheese involved but by that naming standard a slice of pizza could be called mushroom fondue. The picture, btw, is worthy of Gallery of Regrettable Food (it's the uncooked mushroom garnish that really pushes it over the top. Or the edge).

Over at Megnut, she's suggesting Shake Shack stuffing. Obviously riffing on the disturbing White Castle stuffing recipe that was taking blogville by storm last weekend. While this is a far less alarming variant, I think it was mostly just an excuse to post one last photo of a Shack burger this season (they close for the winter today). Cos if you really intended it as a recipe suggestion, you'd have to go for the Shack Stack, which would add portabella goodness to your stuffing.

Cool article in the NYTimes on Mythbusters. I'm looking forward to the Hindenburg episode they mention. Altho I could have done without the writer trotting out the long-in-the-tooth cliché about on-screen duos who don't get along when the cameras stop rolling. Not so much cos I have anything invested in thinking Hyneman and Savage are best buds in real life. My point, rather, is that there's no way to address the topic without it turning into a cliché so why bring it up at all. That paragraph could have been more productively spent with more descriptions of things blowing up real good.

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

Die, Cowboy, Die :: Quetzal
Oye :: Aterciopelados
World Musette :: les Primitifs du Futur
Heritage :: Mamadou Diabate
Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock, 1965-1975 :: various
Rio Baile Funk: More Favela Booty Beats :: various
Panic in Babylon :: Lee "Scratch" Perry
the In-Kraut, vol. 2 :: various
Blues Around the World :: various
Soneros Jarochos :: Grupo Mono Blanco

The other CD I wanted to shout out is Electric Gypsyland 2. Like its predecessor from last year, it takes tracks by some of the best Balkan/Gypsy/Rom bands (Taraf de Haidouks, Mahala Rai Banda, and Koçani Orkestar) and lets the remixers loose on 'em. And once again, they've got a pretty wide-ranging cast. Only Shantel returns from EG1. Some are involved in the whole Balkan/Bucovina Club scene: Balkan Beat Box, DJ Click, Russendisko). Some are noted fusioneers: Smadj (from the Eurodisco-goes-to-North Africa duOud), Oi Va Voi (the Massive Attack of neo-klezmer), and Susheela Raman and 43 Skidoo (Raman's partner is Sam Mills, and 43 Skidoo is described in the notes as a "fleeting reincarnation" of 80s gamelan funksters 23 Skidoo. Altho, strangely, they never mention 23 Skidoo by name. I wonder if there's some sort of naming-rights squabble going on). There are also a few wild-card entries, including Cibelle, Nouvelle Vague and Animal Collective. One of my fave tracks is by ShrineSynchroSystem, which mixes violin from Taraf w/ drums by Tony Allen and kora by Sekou Kouyate (from Ba Cissoko). As a bonus, there's a second disc which contains some non-remixed tunes by all the bands. Altho, again strangely, only a few are from EG2. More, in fact, were remixed on EG1.

Rodney sez: check it out...

Double flashback meme fun (for no particular reason I can think of)

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 twelve 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 twelve songs by four artists, you can if you'd like.

"marta's song" :: Deep Forest
"aawargi" :: Asha Bhosle
"death by venom" :: Portion Control
"la boite de nuit" :: Francoiz Breut
"time out" :: Fanfare Ciocarlia
"root down" :: Beastie Boys
"plunging hornets" :: Venetian Snares
"maxutu" :: Cibelle v. Koçani Orkestar
"el piton" :: El Angel
"minor vamp (basement boys remix)" :: Curtis Fuller
"take ur time" :: Part 2
"86" :: Apollo Nove

Wanted to put in a good word for a couple of CDs I was listening to for the station today.
First up: the new Venetian Snares disc, Cavalcade of Glee and Happy Hardcore Pom-Poms. As much as I love the title (even better than his previous, Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding) the album's even better. As I said in my review for XDU, it might seem like the sort of thing that only people who like that sort of thing will like. Apart from one track, which includes lots of Nintendo-esque sounds, Aaron Funk (aka VS) doesn't make too many crossover moves. Read any amount of stuff on VS and you'll see references to Squarepusher, Aphex Twin or μ-ziq (aka Mike Paradinas, who also runs the Planet Mu label, home to VS). I'd say his stuff is neither as hermetic as Squarepusher nor as expansive as Aphex. Title notwithstanding, there's not really much of a "happy hardcore¹" feel to this stuff. Within the larger (still small) world of IDM, Venetian Snares gets tagged with micro-sub-genre labels like breakcore or drill & bass. VS seems unlikely to ever reach the move-the-crowd peaks of acts like Mouse on Mars or Luke Vibert. He's maybe not quite an idiosyncratic genius like Richard D. James. But, esp. with this latest, he's managed to drop enough glitches, blurps and squelches to keep the base happy while expanding the sound with offbeat vocal sampling, swathes of 90s ambient/chill (think Plaid or Irresistable Force), and in general more of a focus on melody as a setting for the inhuman percussion breaks.

¹ Happy hardcore was, IIRC, a micro-sub-genre of early 90s techno. If gabba was rave-on-bad-speed then happy hardcore was gabba-on-E

As we move closer towards Thanksgiving (aka "the Eating Holiday"), here's a grab-bag o' food &/or food-related items:

I was cleaning and organizing my desk (at least once every few months, whether it needs it or not) and I found the menu from Hash House A Go Go in Vegas. What a fun place! It managed to be a funky good time without seeming forced and "not fun" which isn't easy. It is, after all, a thin line between clever and stupid. And the food is kickass. And HUGE. Here's a photo Lisa took of me being alarmed by my breakfast. Good times.

If you want to know what internet trolling looks like, this Slashfood post should answer all your questions.

Finally, this recipe for Thanksgiving stuffing is just wrong on every level. It's wrong on levels that haven't even been built yet.

We went to AV Geeks tonight. One of the better programs they've done -- all tonight's films involved lame mascots of one sort or another. Not as fullout insane as the marionette show but consistently fun. The one with the wind-up drumming toy bear was like some kind of twisted Twilight Zone episode. It was attempting to warn kids of the dangers of taking rides from strangers, taking candy from strangers, and wandering into "lonely places" without actually illustrating any of the dangers of any of those activities. All punctuated with a wind-up drumming toy bear. And then there was the giant talking bar of soap. And the 70s musicale with a sentient fire truck (brought to you by Burger King). And the classic "what to do when the bomb drops" film Duck and Cover. From which we learned that it's okay to talk to strangers in event of nuclear holocaust (so they can tell you where the bomb shelter's at). And that turtles need to watch out for suicide bomber monkeys.

Note: When Mascots Attack will be screening again on 11/28 at Kings in Raleigh.

Tonight's playlist. I had a blast. Any week where I get to play a Brian Brain track and it counts for playlist is a good week. Plus I got to roll thru one of those sets that ends up somewhere completely different from where it started, yet got there thru completely sensible steps. At least it all made sense to me how that set got from ABC to Sun0))). Perhaps anyone listening thought it was complete gibberish.

The other day, boing² linked to a bunch of punk and postpunk vids on YouTube, including something by Xray Spex. But it wasn't "Oh Bondage". Quoi? It was their best song. So anyway, there's a linky for y'all. Accept no substitutes. (note: YouTube seems have decided that it hates Firefox tonight so it doesn't want to play anything and so I haven't actually seen that video yet. I'll check it from a Windoze box tomorrow and may edit this entry depending)

Nice piece on the AV Club this week about ABC's the Lexicon of Love. A bit facile, perhaps, but a good intro to why it's such a great album. I don't think it invented the sound of the 80s but certainly it was defining for a whole genre. And I can't believe they didn't mention "Poison Arrow" which was as big a hit as "the Look of Love." I think I'll have to play something by ABC tomorrow night. (btw, I'll be subbing at XDU tomorrow from 8-10pm. Please adjust your radios or internets accordingly.

Y'know, sometime the interwebs just send you down a corner and then you're in an odd new neighborhood. Like this, for example. Found via Wiley Wiggins, who blogged the Tippi Hedren in the Birds doll. Altho I'd have to say that the Psycho doll is even stranger. And this doll gives them both a run for their money. I was, sadly, previously unaware of the Madame Alexander phenomenon, who seems to specialize in dolls that look like drag queens.

Just released recently: Sinatra in Vegas. 4 CDs + DVD. I must admit I'm still on the fence about buying this. The 3rd and 4th discs are from pretty late in the career -- not my favorite Sinatra. And CD2 looks to be pretty similar to Sinatra at the Sands which was also recorded with the Count Basie Orchestra and which I picked up a while back. Maybe I'll save up for the Sinatra in Hollywood box instead.

Meanwhile, please enjoy these robots

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

Rio Baile Funk: More Favela Booty Beats :: various
Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock, 1965-1975 :: various
the In-Kraut, vol. 2 :: various
Panic in Babylon :: Lee "Scratch" Perry
Blues Around the World :: various
World Musette :: les Primitifs du Futur
Soneros Jarochos :: Grupo Mono Blanco
Heritage :: Mamadou Diabate
Oye :: Aterciopelados
Boomerang :: Habana Abierta

Okay so I'm reading this morning's NYTimes (well I was reading it this evening after I got back from work but anyway...) and there's an article in the local City section about some West Village barber shop and its hip (hip I tell you, VIP hip!) history and clientele. And one of the customers featured was Genesis P. Orridge. So in 'graph five they rolled out a quick summation of Genesis' ongoing body modification conceptual art project. Say what you will about the NYTimes but I love the fact that somewhere in Manhattan earlier this morning someone probably spat out their coffee when a seemingly innocent article about hip hair stylists veered off into a description of Genesis P. Orridge's "cheek implants, permanent eyeliner, lip injections, oral surgery, breast augmentation."

Work schedule got flipped from today to tomorrow. So I cleaned out the gutters. That's some big fun, for sure. But who wants to hear about that?
Tonight it was all about the food TV. Watched the finale of Master Chef Goes Large. I'm gonna miss that show. It's been on five days a week for a month or so. What will I watch now?
After that it was on to this week's episode of the Hungry Detective. This time in NYC where we got to see some classic New York pizza. And he made it to the Shake Shack, the second place he's visited that we've eaten (first was Mary Mac's Tea Room in the Atlanta show).

We went out for a splurge tonight, to Starlu, which may be my favorite local restaurant. We've never had a bad meal there but tonight's was especially good. Among the items consumed was a roasted garlic soup, chicken with (I believe) house-smoked bacon, and an absolutely brutal chocolate plate (pot de creme, truffles, and cream cheese brownie).

To answer the question posed by this: no, I don't think chicken fried steak à la mode sounds very good. And apparently, it wasn't. But I'm not sure why that didn't work, but other seemingly no-less-outlandish ideas (bacon & egg ice cream, oysters and essence of soil, etc) do seem to work, at least for some people. My hunch is that to play that far out there on the edge of cooking you either need to have an enormous amount of experience or just some freakishly natural gift for understanding what's going to taste good, before it's even been created.

Back in more conventional cooking territory, I'm totally in love with these mini smores, If I could think of a way to knock them off for large scale production I'd be all over that. They've got the cute thing going like a cupcake but they're different enough that they might sell like mad.

And, finally, in the words of Onion Head Monster: damn goats

I meant to point to this earlier in the week, but what with all the cans of political whupass opening all over the place, I lost track of my intent. Anyway. Interesting post by Michael Ruhlman about what I'd have to consider the fringier end of so-called molecular gastronomy. Altho I read an interview w/ Adria in which he insisted there was no such thing. What I find particularly fascinating is the number (and anger) of comments. But once Angry Screaming Guy™ -- hey, every mailing list or blog has one (look around; if you can't find the ASG™ in yours, it might be you) -- shuts up, there are some interesting points being made. Synchronistically, one of the commenters shouts out Heston Blumenthal, of UK's 3 Michelin starred restaurant Fat Duck, who showed up on Monday's installment of Master Chef Goes Large.

For locals, this weekend is the Durham Art Walk. I'd link to their site except it doesn't want to work on this laptop. I thought the site hated Firefox but then I tried it in Exploder and that didn't work either. Looking at the source the whole thing seems to be in Flash. But I was looking at another all Flash site earlier in the evening. Maybe the site just hates Macs. If you want to see what you can see the URL is durhamartwalk.com

Finally, I must send big appreciations out to my fellow DJ Jennifer who dropped a "Join in the Chant"/"Headhunter" segue during yesterday's afternoon drivetime on XDU. I don't think that my car's speakers have been cranked that loud in months. super good times...

I'm tired. Stayed up way too late last night following election stuff. Other than the Daily Show/Colbert combined hour, I avoided all TV coverage. TV election coverage always sucks. It's hours of live TV w/ no script so of course people will just end up either mouthing platitudes or babbling inanities. Other than that I had ESPN or VH1 Classique on in the background while I was websurfing around.
Pretty good night, though. Scattered random thoughts of the somewhat sleep deprived:
How about some unseemly gloating?
Okay, now that we've gotten that out of our systems, what have we learned? Well, apparently, running away from Bush was not such a bad idea
Harry Reid, btw, is hardly my idea of an inspiring leader. But, then again, neither was Bill Frist.
And, hey, Rummy "stepped down". Bet at least some of the Republican losers from yesterday are way happy that Bush waited until after the election to pull the trigger on that.
The only TV thing I regret missing last night was Santorum's concession. Altho the Daily Show's graphic of Santorum being raptured was pretty awesome. But, hey, I read that his kids started crying. Good times. (anyway, I bet it's on YouTube)
Locals, we should go out and celebrate the hope that the next two years might not suck quite as much as the last six.
Speaking of local, the best news from yesterday for me might be that all politics is not necessarily local. Cos if it was, this year would've really sucked. Extended ramblings after the jump.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 5 nov 06) ::

the In-Kraut, vol. 2 :: various
III :: Mosquitos
the Lost Album :: Salif Keita & Kante Manfila
Boomerang :: Habana Abierta
Panama: Latin, Calypso & Funk on the Isthmus, 1965-75 :: various
Aconteceu :: Ana Moura
Que Viva la Musica :: Ray Barretto
Soneros Jarochos :: Grupo Mano Blanco
Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock, 1965-1975 :: various
Yours Truly :: Natalie MacMaster

Was gonna go see a movie to give myself something to do other than grind about politics but that didn't work out. So I finally ran out of ways to distract myself and had to check in on election stuff. It's too early to say anything (well, it's not too early for CNN but I'm bitter and cynical so I'll hold off on the saying-anything until tomorrow). Except this: based on where the numbers are now it looks like around 50K people thought it was a spiffy idea to vote for Vernon Robinson. I find that, if not alarming, at least pause-inducing.

Yo! It's Election Day. Haul your carcass outta bed and go vote. Because there's someone out there who'd be much happier if you just stayed home and said nothing.

This, apparently, has been floating around the interwebs for several months now. But I just was pointed towards it today. Absolutely from the too-much-free-time dept: George Bush sings U2. Hey, it's a man I hate and a song I hate. Yet I like this clip. Partly just for the sheer degree of difficulty of finding the word matches. Also the sorta house-y trance-y remix actually improves on the bloated ponderousness of the U2 version. (admittedly, not that high a mountain to climb). Plus it's just wacky good fun.
ETA (9/16/08):: Alas, the video linked above has been pulled from YouTube. Probably someone from U2's notoriously overzealous management found it and lodged a complaint. But, hey, just found another location: George Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

Thanks to Sarah for reminding me that today is Guy Fawkes' Day. In fact, it's the 401st anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. How did you celebrate? It'd be hard to top this event in Rhode Island, even if they do hold in October (for some mysterious reason).

So far my plan to do almost exactly nothing this weekend is working out pretty well. Did some random yardwork yesterday, a few bits o' shopping and some stuff around the house. But lots of quality slacking off. It'll all come crashing down tonight, as I'll be hauling my carcass over to XDU to do the music staff half-hour, at 8.30. I'm planning to preview and babble about new releases by Lee "Scratch" Perry, Mamadou Diabate, les Primitifs du Futur and Aterciopelados, and a new comp of baile funk that's just out from the Essay label.

But, hey, any day is improved by some quality lifestyle news about Tim Gunn.
(make it work!)

And, finally, this may be the stupidest thing I've ever seen on the internets. It cracked me up. (It's also yet more proof that, yes, you really can find anything on the internets)

It got down to 27° F last night. Not super-cold or anything but enough to mess up some of the hanging-in-there summer plants like the tomatoes (which I've now pulled out) and the dahlia. Which actually had flowered again several times in Sept. and October. I think it's supposed to get down below freezing again tonight so I'm planning to put some straw around the not-dead-yet chiles and maybe a few other fragile things.

Attention, my fellow food geeks: Harold McGee is now blogging. Happy dancing may now commence.

Via boing², here's some news on Ted Haggard having to resign from his megachurch because of a gay sex scandal. He's denying it, of course. (like they do... /izzard) Haggard showed up in the documentary Jesus Camp, where he was a beacon of hypocrisy in a sea of scary zealots. But I wasn't quite expecting that.

I'd basically been trying to stay out of the news cycle since yesterday, cos if I'd had to hear one more story about J*hn K*rr* I was in severe danger of losing my shit completely. (this just in: it's 2006; J*hn F-ing K*rr* ain't running for anything; STFU).

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