Thought for the day: it's top chef, not top monkey ass stuffed with fried banana on an empty clamshell.

Actual thoughts below the cut, for the spoiler-phobic.

Stuff to check out: spiffy photoblog by my pal Ace Flyrite.

And, to wrap your week up right, here's a little gem from the mighty mighty Leprechaun Brothers:

The internets come thru for us again: the Beaker in DC meme. Is this an actual meme? If so, what does it all mean? I've read the post and I still don't know. But I like it!

So, ya know what sucks? Waking up at 4.30 in the morning, turning over and consoling yourself that at least it's the weekend and you don't have to get up early and then realizing that not only is it not the weekend, it's Tuesday.

good times

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 25 jan 09)

Welcome to the Party :: various
Coba Coba :: Novalima
African Scream Contest :: various
Fajar Di Atas Awan :: Suarasama
Clash Mandingue :: Kante Manfila & Sorry Bamba
Around the World :: Señor Coconut & his Orchestra
Gracias :: Omara Portuondo
Reprezent :: Gipsy.cz
Mansa America :: Fula Flute
After the Carnaval :: Zuco 103

this week's video feature: Fula Flute

Last Saturday, Sarah and I went to see Shen Wei Dance Arts at Duke. Really amazing. She had seen them last summer at ADF (brief write-up here). The program Sat. included part one of "Re-", a dance triptych based on Shen's travels in Tibet, Angkor Wat, and western China and the Silk Road. Part one is inspired by Tibet. It began with the company on stage, finishing up a giant mandala on the floor. Clearly inspired by traditional sand paintings but using shredded colored paper. When the dance began, they moved through the paper, sliding, rolling, kicking it up, trailing it behind them. Music was traditional Tibetan songs and chant. The second half began with Shen and the company's director sitting onstage. They talked some about the process of creating "Re-", Shen's inspiration and process, and showed slides from his travels. Then the dancers came back on and did three sections from Part Two, which was inspired by Angkor Wat.
The complete dance will premiere this summer at ADF. We're definitely planning to go.

Duke Performance has some excellent photos of Shen Wei Dance Arts posted on Flickr.

Note to self: in future, stop being surprised when it snows in the middle of January. See, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005.

Where Is Matt? goes to videogame land. (via boing²)

WTF? Did I really just see a 9/11 truther bumper sticker? Why, yes I did. Stuck to a trash can outside Kroger. I know... sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Time for the obligatory Oscar nomination post. As usual, I've seen basically none of the movies nominated for anything. Two this year: Wall-E and Iron Man. There are four other movies I'm somewhat interested in seeing: Kung Fu Panda and Hellboy 2 (already in my Netflix queue), Waltz with Bashir and Slumdog Millionaire. Speaking of which, I think the most fascinating category is Best Song, with two A. R. Rahman songs from Slumdog... vs. a Peter Gabriel song from Wall-E. I expect Gabriel to win and I expect him to be (on some level) appalled that he's beaten out A. R. Rahman.

It's morning in America, y'all...

So, the Lawn Rangers were as awesome as I expected. They definitely have that art car spirit. Parade high point, for sure. Altho second prize has to go to whoever worked out the segue from the Lesbian & Gay Band Association to the Mobile, Alabama Azalea Trail Maids (50 young women in pastel-colored Southern belle cotillion dresses) to the marching band playing "Over the Rainbow." Brilliancy!

So, FWDFA is definitely in effect. Maybe not quite full effect but I'd say a good 2 or so inches in Durm. A bit more out near RDU where it was still snowing quite heavily when I left work. Snow is over here. And so is W.

...good times

No snow pics, alas, as my camera is up in DC w/ Sarah.

ETA: Gotta say I was pretty unimpressed with the coverage on BBC America. The only thing that separated their two hours of yammering from what I'd expect from any US network was the accents. Plus they kept gaffing it up. The three that jump to mind are their announcing that Aretha was going to sing the National Anthem, that Michelle Obama's dress was glittery gold, and their assertion-as-fact that giving the invocation meant that Rick Warren was now America's pastor. I know there were others but I don't want to slog thru it again to remind myself. Glad I got to hear it live on NPR while I was driving home. I also recorded the C-SPAN coverage. I might watch that later.

Hey, hey, it's the Frozen White Death from Above 2009 Tour, coming soon to a town near you (if you live near me, that is). Trust you've all stocked up on bread and milk to appease Grom, the Angry Sky God of French Toast. If it turns out the roads are all fubared tomorrow and I can't get into the shop, I am gonna be well and truly pissed at my inability to see into the future and know that I should've blown off work and gone up to DC w/ Sarah. Oh well.
Why this is happening

As I said elsewhere, the fact that legendary wanksters Metallica are going into the Rock & Roll Hall o' Fame this year is somewhat mitigated by the inclusion of Run-DMC.
If you feel any impulse to wonder why, go check out "Rock Box" and come back when you've figured it out.

And in the spirit of whatever the hell motivates R&R HoF voters, here's an "It's Tricky"/"Enter Sandman" mashup.

Or: baby, it's cold outside. The exact dimensions of how cold it is outside vary depending on who you consult. Online I got reports of 9°F, 11°F, and 13°F. Oddly enough, in reverse order of how cold they predicted it would get. On TV they're saying 10°F. A bit less cold down towards Raleigh. Quite insanely colder (5°F) up towards the Virginia border.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 11 jan 09)

Around the World :: Señor Coconut & his Orchestra
Gracias :: Omara Portuondo
Reprezent :: Gipsy.cz
Sira :: Ablaye Cissoko & Volker Goetze
Mansa America :: Fula Flute
Que Viva el Canto! Songs of Chile :: Rafael Manriquez & Friends
...at Carnegie Hall :: Buena Vista Social Club
After the Carnaval :: Zuco 103
Inspiration Information :: Amp Fiddler/Sly & Robbie
Piano Jondo :: Diego Amador

this week's video feature: Señor Coconut

The other day I was in a Kroger parking lot and I saw an oldschool Mini. But not just an oldschool Mini but an unmodified one, with the steering wheel on the UK side. Now this is what I call commitment to your choices. I can't imagine how weird it must be to drive around from the passenger side.

New entry in the vanity plate watch (non-geektastic division): USA MYOB
That may be the most political vanity plate I've ever seen.

While reading the NYTimes on Sunday morning, I noticed a link on the home page to an op-ed by Bono (first, Stanley Fish and now Bono... just what are they smokin' over at Times HQ?) all about what he learned from Frank Sinatra. Which I, of course, did not read. Pretty much the last thing I need with my morning coffee is a side dish of bloviating rock star. Turns out I wasn't the only one who noticed. Yes, it's a contest to best sum up Bono's pretentious twaddle. As previously mentioned, I'm not the one to judge since I couldn't bring myself to actually read the op-ed. But I sense they're probably right on target. Now, you might be thinking that having a professor of international politics from Tufts going after Bono is kinda like hunting moths with air-to-air missiles. And you'd be right.
That's what makes it funny.

ETA: Apparently, NYTimes had to run a correction to Mr. Vox's debut effort after he mistakenly identified Nelson Riddle as the arranger of "My Way" instead of Don Costa. Now, in Bono's defense, the wiki entry for "My Way" does not name the arranger of the Sinatra version. So he had to take a guess. Or he could have looked at the wiki entry for Riddle which notes that he mostly stopped working with Sinatra in 1966 and remembered that "My Way" was done in 1967.
I'm just saying...

A new occasional feature (until I get bored w/ it or YouTube runs out of good clips): Cabaret Voltaire Video Nite. Up first, one of the first CV vids I ever saw. I'm pretty sure they played it before the show when I saw them live 24-ish years ago (eek!)

Stopped for a morning coffee at Copa Vida. On the upside, they're brewing Counter Culture, which is never a bad thing. On the down, they're charging 2.50 for a large cup, which definitely puts them on the high end of Durham coffee pricing. Also, I wouldn't recommend them as an option if you're a hurried-on-the-way-to-work type. Unlike BT, there's no self-serve press pots for just a regular cup of coffee. Not much wait this morning but there were only two other customers.

This just in: people like food

So we're having dinner at Rockwood earlier tonight w/ S & D and the Panthers/Cardinals game was just about to start. Our table ended up being right under one of the TVs where no one would really be able to see what was going on. And I said, oh this game will be a blowout so I doesn't really matter. Well, I had the blowout part right but I didn't figure it to be the Panthers being the ones getting dope-slapped.

Completely unrelated: Barry went with XTC for his most recent Best Song Ever post. Which inspired me to drop this for ya -- one of my faves

Been watching a lot of Top Chef since we got Bravo last week. So far we've only seen the current season and about the last half of last season. One thing I really appreciate is that the show really seems to be a meritocracy. Even more than Project Runway (which has always had an element of reality TV backstabbing), it's a show about people doing stuff, there are concrete results to be judged, and it really seems that the chefs rise and fall based on what they do. Either that or the producers are much better at hiding the machinations.
In one of the episodes from last season, Colicchio asked a really smart question: which is more important, that a dish be well conceived or be well executed? Of course, there's never an easy separation between the two. Bourdain said earlier in season 3: "it's top chef, not top cook." But I think maybe it's not even a question of whether you can execute your ideas but rather that a lack of technique/execution can limit your ability to come up with good ideas.

1. There may not be artcars at the Inaugural Parade but there will be a precision lawn-mower drill team. How cool is that?

2. Stanley Fish has a top ten movie list. As a subhead to that, someone (NYTimes) actually cares enough about what Fish has to say to give him a blog. Anyway, the movie list isn't all that -- a bit too heavy on the treacly sentimentality for my tastes, no major surprises (I bet all of them are in the AFI Top 100), nothing controversial, except maybe the omissions.

I really appreciate the symmetry of Norm Coleman suing to keep his senate seat. I mean, sure, Coleman's a complete tool but this is a fitting close to the Bush years. Eight years after bullying their way to the Supreme Court and stealing an election, the permanent majority goes out on its knees, desperately trying to cling to power, a pathetic shadow of its glory days, unable to defeat the man who was Stuart Smalley.
...good times, indeed...

This ran back in December, during the height of pre-holiday baking madness, but it's still worth checking out -- a state of the cookie roundtable from Slate. Participating were food writer Sara Dickerman, Dorie Greenspan (baker, author, and one of my personal baking gurus), and former pastry chef David Lebovitz, whose blog may have been the first place I ever read about bacon ice cream. Lots of interesting conversations about exactly how you define a cookie (this might strike you as a silly question but it's hard to come up with something -- sweet? round? contains butter? -- where there aren't lots of things which don't fit the description yet are still obviously cookies) , what makes a cookie uniquely American, childhood favorites, and possible future trends. I share their disdain for over-sized cookies which are too easy to underbake plus just too damn big to eat in one go. Then you're left with a half-eaten cookie that you've got to find a way to store until you can finish it later.

Now, no one likes snark as much as I do. Well, there are probably a few people but whatever... But there's definitely such a thing as unearned snark and this article from yesterday's NYTimes is a classic example. In just over 1200 words, he dope-slaps: downtown hipster bars, drunk account execs, cigar bars, puns, Steve Miller Band, Interpol, designer sneakers, John Varvatos, soul patches, brushed nickel appliances (huh?), puns, theme bars, happy hour, publicists, the Lower East Side, the Upper East Side, getting gifts from your parents, Carl Bernstein, licorice, Sambuca, hand-rolled cigarettes, key parties, earrings for men (what? is it 1979 again?), tattoos for women (note: men w/ tattoos apparently still OK), pole-dancing aerobics, TMI blogging (probably all blogging implicitly), stoner culture, Williamsburg, Chuck Norris, RPGs, the entire internet, and newspaper trend stories. Oh, and absinthe, dissing which was the point of the article. Not that many of these things don't invite ridicule but, yeah, okay, I get it. He hates everything. From his lofty perch as a NYTimes free-lancer. Talk about unearned sophistication.
(and now I've bitched about it in a blog which completes the circle of pointlessness)
(or would, if I was drinking absinthe while I wrote this)
(note: I was going to point out that the NYTimes tends to bury this kind of stupidity in the less-read Saturday edition but that's a print edition distinction that doesn't have much meaning in the online version)

XDU wrrld music top 10 (year ending 31 dec 08)

Venus on Earth :: Dengue Fever
Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump - Original Heavyweight Afrobeat, Highlife and Afro-Funk :: various
Super Afro Soul :: Orlando Julius
Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru :: various
Nigeria Disco Funk Special: the Sound of the Underground Lagos Dancefloor, 1974-1979 :: various
Sprechen Sie Pop? :: various
New York City :: Brazilian Girls
Funky Nassau: the Compass Point Story, 1980-1986 :: various
Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul and Calypso Crossover :: various
Sonantes :: Sonantes

So world music at XDU was down by percentage from last year (21% for 2008 vs. about 30% in 2007) but much better at the top. Five of the overall top 10 at the station were world CDs and that's pretty cool. As you can see, it was an afrobeatastic year.
I'll be hosting Mondo Mundo next Saturday, 1/10, from 1-3pm and spinning some stuff from the top 100 plus some more of my faves from 08.

And following up on yesterday's followup, here's a whole blog dedicated to dropping oddball things on New Year's Eve. Not only that, but it's local. He notes the walleye and the sausage and has an excellent feature on the Mt. Olive pickle drop.
...good times, indeed...

Following up on last night's post, here's a story from Ohio about different and interesting things being dropped to celebrate New Year's. The giant electric sausage is weird and Mad Anthony Wayne bears a disconcerting resemblence to Buster the beleagured crash test dummy from Mythbusters. But the giant walleye is mad impressive.

Also on the holiday close-out front, here's a tragic tale of pickles at the holiday season.