Here's a couple of nice bits o' hundred days humor. Slate has one done inna facebook stylee. Even better is Scalzi's take which breaks the first hundred days down to the personal level. And isn't that how we all really deal with the world anyway...

Okay, I like a good Smoot-Hawley reference as much as the next person, but this is just epic fail. Full of epic fail, in fact.
Proving once again that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 26 apr 09)

Open String: 1920s Middle Eastern Recordings :: various
Black Diamond :: Buraka Som Sistema
la Luz del Ritmo :: los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Hidden Melodies Revealed :: the Sway Machinery
It's About Time :: Orestes Vilato
Sara :: Abdoulaye "Djoss" Diabate
the Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele :: Harappian Night Recordings
Ersen :: Ersen
Nomadak Tx :: Oreka Tx
Royal Family - Divorce :: Storsveit Nix Noltes

this week's video feature: los Fabulosos Cadillacs

Good advice, courtesy of the hover box on today's xkcd:

"Bad flu epidemics can hit young adults hardest because they provoke their powerful immune systems into overreaction, so to stay healthy spend the next few weeks drunk and sleep-deprived to keep yours suppressed."

Too damn hot today (which, as an aside, seems to happen every year -- we get weeks of what seems like semi-spring where it'll still be getting down to near 40 overnight and then suddenly it's boom up in the 90s) but it was still a good day. Hit the farmers market in the AM for donut muffins. This afternoon we joined up with D & S and checked out some of the Piedmont Farm Tour. Well, first we hit Allen & Sons for lunch and I gotta say that was one of the best damn barbecue sammiches I've ever had. I'd only had Allen & Sons 'cue from the Pittsboro resto and this one (the original, off 86 between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough) was amazing. Full of smoky porky goodness. Then we hit Maple View Farms for ice cream (chocolate strawberry... yum!) and then the Maple View Ag Center, which was an okay "starter" location and 2 other farms: Fickle Creek (they sell eggs, chicken, sausage and other wonderful stuff at the Durham farmers market) and Dancing Pines (where there was a very interesting beekeeper holding forth). Sarah's got some great shots up at flickr. I'll have some posted later. We were planning to check out at least one more farm but kinda got wore out from the heat so decided to pack it in for the day after Fickle Creek and go get some lemonade instead.

Back in February we went to the Carpe Durham party downtown at the Pinhook. Well, more accurately, we went down to Pinhook, got tacos from the taco truck that was outside for the party, and hung out on the sidewalk talking with friends. While we were out there, we noticed a couple of people with a camcorder, interviewing and filming folks talking about tacos. They said they were working on a short doc about the Durham taco scene. And so they were. Tacomentary will have its debut screenings on Monday May 1. Looks very cool. And I'm not just saying that cos I show up in the background in the trailer.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 19 apr 09)

the Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele :: Harappian Night Recordings
Open String: 1920s Middle Eastern Recordings :: various
la Luz del Ritmo :: los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Black Diamond :: Buraka Som Sistema
Sara :: Abdoulaye "Djoss" Diabate
Ersen :: Ersen
CuCuLand :: Cucu Diamantes
Barracuda :: Kinky
Royal Family - Divorce :: Storsveit Nix Noltes
Le Pop: les Filles :: various

this week's video feature: Buraka Som Sistema

Last week, TWC-bastardos messed w/ all the cable music channels. And, basically, screwed up two of my faves. The merged the 2 classic pop channels so now instead of all my Ella Fitzgerald, Django Reinhardt and Benny Goodman is being interrupted by Rod Frikkin' Stewart and other contemporary takes on the Great American Songbook. And the retro/new wave channel is now Classic Alternative and seems to include way too much Red Hot Chili Peppers and Oasis. At least they haven't screwed around with the mix on the downtempo electronica station where tonight seems to be "stuff Georg has played on XDU" night. Including a Funkstorung remix of Björk, a DJ Cam remix of Miles Davis, and a Groove Corp. remix of Big Youth.

like fun

Last night's movie: Hana, a period samurai film directed by Kore-eda. Really good. Surprising, maybe, if you know Kore-eda from After Life or Maborosi. It's set in the same post-war period as most samurai movie. You'd think with as many Zatoichi movies as I've seen I'd remember what that was called. The Edo Period, maybe? Anyway, as you might expect, it's much more of a character piece than a samurai flick. Very little swordplay. More (w/ spoilers) below the cut.
It always surprises me when I see a movie I like and then go and read reviews and find out that most people didn't. Altho in this case what I found is that the movie was almost universally ignored. It apparently didn't do great business in Japan and altho it got some good notices at the Toronto Film Festival, there are almost no reviews online. So I'm thinking it never got released in the US. But it's available on Netflix and I recommend it. Probably better if you've got some familiarity with the conventions of samurai movies but I don't think that'd wreck the movie for you if you didn't

Spent the afernoon alternating between fighting it out with the run-amok weeds down by the fence and planning out tomorrow's Divaville Lounge. BTW, I'll be guest-hosting Divaville Lounge this week. So tune in, if yr so inclined. It's the return of the DJ Jilly Rizzo experience. Sun, 2-4pm EDT. WXDU, 88.7fm if you're local. Or wxdu.org (link in the sidebar).
Anyway, I don't know what the hell this vine is but it's everywhere and it's impossible to get rid of unless you dig deep enough to rip the roots out. So that's what I was doing.
And then I mowed and now I'm exhausted. Thank god there's leftovers

Just a bit of followup on one of my posts from last weekend, about the whole Amazon brouhaha, with LGBT books getting de-listed and such. As I'm sure you've read by now, there turned out to be a tech explanation for the whole thing. Here's a really good discussion by Clay Shirky. I actually hadn't encountered any of the lingering blame and mistrust he references when I originally read his article but a couple of days later I did. Don't remember where now but it was someone with a very definite tone of "Amazon did something wrong" and I'm not letting them off the hook. I believe what they ended up landing on was that all the LGBT books were tagged and that made it too easy for the fucked-up coding to make all those books disappear. And it's suspicious that only those books were tagged. I don't think you have to step that far back to realize how ridiculous that is. ALL the books on Amazon are tagged -- there's nothing sinister about tagging. The payoff quote from Shirky (which was also picked up on by Sullivan, which is where I found it): "We’re used to the future turning out differently than we expected; it happens all the time. When the past turns out differently, though, it can get really upsetting, and because people don’t like that kind of upset, we’re at risk of finding new reasons to believe false things, rather than revising our sense of what actually happened."

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 12 apr 09)

la Luz del Ritmo :: los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Ersen :: Ersen
Le Pop: les Filles :: various
Sara :: Abdoulaye "Djoss" Diabate
Crucial Cuts :: Fidel
Royal Family - Divorce :: Storsveit Nix Noltes
Off the Grid :: Chicago Afrobeat Project
Marvellous Boy: Calypso from West Africa :: various
Ateste Smandik :: Ferhat Tunç
CuCuLand :: Cucu Diamantes

this week's video feature: Cucu Diamantes

It appears that too many of the people out protesting today are having trouble with (at least) the following concepts: socialism, fascism, teabagging.

As you may have noticed, I'm pretty cynical and jaded. I expect a fairly high amount of stupidity but even by my elevated standards, this is one of the most egregiously dumbass things I've heard in a while. Maggie Gallagher, professional anti-gay-marriage blowhard, compares herself to Václav Havel. Not only that but when asked why she's confident that NOM (her anti-gay-marriage groop, which would have the stupidest wingnut name of the year if it weren't for the teabaggers) will succeed, she actually quotes Havel: "truth and love will prevail over lies and hate."

I know those words don't mean what she thinks they mean...

Here's some seasonally themed fun: this year's WaPo peeps diorama contest. Some excellent stuff. I particularly enjoyed the Hopper and Escher entries. Also the dragon dance, Twilight Zone, Clue... well, you can check it out for yourself.

good times

Some kind of weirdness has been going on at Amazon. Apparently involving books with "adult" themes being removed from sales rankings and with much of that seeming to overly focus on books with gay themes or content. Or something. There's a petition and Amazon certainly seems to be deserving of the negative attention they're getting for this. Any kind of "adult" filtering that messes with sales ranks or otherwise hides information doesn't seem like a good thing. Content filtering that targets Virtually Normal or Running With Scissors or Hothead Paisan or Tipping the Velvet or the Celluloid Closet (all w/o sales rank info as of a few minutes ago)... well, that's when it's time to think about taking my business elsewhere.
Curiously, Brokeback Mountain, And the Band Played On, Howl and Other Poems, and Take It Like a Man (Boy George's autobiography) all have sales rankings at this time.
NOTE: I've seen several mentions online that Amazon is claiming this was a glitch but I can't find any original source documents to confirm that.

After sitting in on tonight's Durham Noise Network on XDU (short version: the vox pop sounded great, we all had some interesting things to say about Neighborhood College, it was somewhat shambolic due to none of us having ever done live talk radio before), we were gonna have dinner at Saigon Grill only to arrive at 7.45 to find they were closing at 8. So instead we went across the street to Super Taqueria. D & S had been before but this was the first visit for me and Sarah. I thought it was quite good. Not the "oh my god" revelatory experience that La Vaquita was but still pretty awesome. I had the torta cubana, which I thought slightly beat out the Costa Azul version except for the beef which was thick and basically impossible to chew unless you cut it with a knife. Tacos got good reviews from the other members of the party. And the horchata was quite tasty as well. Definitely worth a return visit.

I was just reading a thread on Balloon Juice about world music. Cole mentioned RealWorld and sorta threw it out as an open thread. A few interesting suggestions but not much I hadn't heard already (hey, I have been doing this world music thing for a while now). You can check out the whole thing here. Included within is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever seen anyone say about any kind of music anywhere. Evah.

Most great "world" music is long out of print and available on vinyl only, although there are some contemporary labels doing a good job at compiling it.

And get off his or her lawn while you're at it. I could (and have, many times previously) go off on an extended rant about that. But, instead, let me just sum up. If y'all have seen Ghost World, that is the world music equivalent of the blues geeks from that movie.

From the Odd Things Found On Internets Dept: Addams Family breakfast cereal commercial. This would have been from the early or mid-90s. Sometime after the movies came out. I have very specific memories of sitting around the kitchen at Pru's old house trying to figure out what the "mysterious flavor" (which they actually described on the box as "mysterious flavor") in this cereal was. Sadly, no mention of "mysterious flavor" in the commercial. Found via So Good.

Got all these pics to upload but I'm tired. Radio this morning then work and then Bulls game tonight. Okay, two of those things were actually lots of fun but 5.30 in the AM was still a long day ago. Still, it was fun to get to opening night at DBAP (thanks, S & D!). Bulls were playing the Norfolk Tides (Orioles affiliate) and they won a 2-1 squeaker, including giving up a triple to the Tides in the top of the ninth and then stranding him on 3rd to close out the win. Everyone's still shaking off the rust, I think. Not a lot of offense and a bit of sloppy fielding (mainly by Tides, who had 2 errors). Altho there were a few sharp plays -- a leaping grab at second and a crisply turned double play. And I sense that the pitchers are all on a pretty short pitch count. I think the Bulls used 5 and the Tides at least 3, maybe 4.
In between-innings entertainment, most of the faves were back: ants in the pants, fat suit sumo, t-shirt cannon, race w/ Wool E. Bull, mascot mobile. New for this season was a game where kids were trying to sink mini-basketballs, and one where guys had to spin around and then hit water balloons with a baseball bat while still dizzy.
My one big question from this evening: why does the Carolina burrito contain kielbasa and sauerkraut? I can see that as the Milwaukee burrito. But, Carolina? Shouldn't that contain pulled pork and/or cole slaw?

Bravo's just announced the cast for Top Chef Masters which appears to be Top Chef crossed with Next Iron Chef. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I was suprised, a bit, at how many of the chefs have previously been on ICA, since that's a different network. Just quick off the top of my head: Lo, Bayliss, Smith, Dufresne, Falkner, Lefebvre, Yamaguchi, and Besh, who of course has been on ICA and was on Next Iron Chef as well. I guess it makes sense that there's a group of celeb chefs who are interested in using TV appearances to advance their brand and who have a track record of being good on TV so Bravo would want to cast them. I'll definitely be watching. I might blog this show instead of this year's season of Next Food Network Star.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 05 apr 09)

Ersen :: Ersen
Off the Grid :: Chicago Afrobeat Project
Crucial Cuts :: Fidel
Le Pop: les Filles :: various
Guitars from Agadez, vol. 2 :: Group Bombino
March of the Zapotec :: Beirut
Marvellous Boy: Calypso from West Africa :: various
Ateste Smandik :: Ferhat Tunç
CuCuLand :: Cucu Diamantes
Barracuda :: Kinky

this week's video feature: Kinky

Odd internet thing I read today. One of the blogs I read got a comment on one of their posts from someone saying they were with a new site... your content is really great... we'd love to use it... blah blah... something about linking... etc. And the first time I read it I thought it was odd. Then I thought about it some more, and went to the mentioned "new site" and started thinking, no, that's actually rather fucked up. So, the new site is basically an aggregator. Okay, they're trying to be a resource. But, they're already running Google ads and their "about" info clearly states that they're planning to sell ad space. I guess I don't really see the upside for an already popular and (it seems) well-trafficked site (which does not run ads) to give away their content for free to help drive traffic to another site which is then going to sell ads to make money.
Is it just me or is that what we'd call an unreasonable request?

Another TCM programming note (this is more of a long-range, mark your calendars thing): next month they're continuing their Race & Hollywood series with this year's installment, Latino Images in Film. Last year's Asian focus was excellent and the schedule for May looks promising as well. The movies included run from Ramona (1910) thru Lone Star (1996), featuring actors including Carmen Miranda, Ricardo Montalban, Lupe Velez, Rita Moreno, Edward James Olmos, Ruben Blades, Antonio Banderas.
The movies will be airing Tuesdays and Thursdays in May.

Check it. Recent local art car sighting. And it wasn't UMJ. Following links from the post on Take the Bull..., it was apparently the Great Lakes Ghostbusters Car. Which is, apparently, no longer of the Great Lakes but now locally owned.
How cool is that?
There are some art car folks who wouldn't consider a Ghostbusters car an art car. For all I know, the former and/or current owners of the vehicle may not consider it an art car. But I take an expansive-inclusive view and as far as I'm concerned if it drives and it's decorated, it's an art car.

Tonight's data migration project (from old iBook to new MacBook) was on hold for a few hours while we had dinner at Saigon Grill, new Vietnamese restaurant on Roxboro. Crazy good food. The kitchen and waitstaff were clearly a bit overwhelmed but everyone was really nice about it. Went w/ 2 friends and ran into 4 more while we were there. That never happens!
So far the results of hand-carrying all the data from compy 1 to compy 2 are pretty mixed. iTunes and iPhoto library all transferred but none of my Firefox, email or iCal info. Bookmarks and calendar stuff I can recreate. I would like to get the saved passwords from old Firefox and I definitely want to figure out how to get my mailboxes. We shall see.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 29 mar 09)

Crucial Cuts :: Fidel
Ateste Smandik :: Ferhat Tunç
CuCuLand :: Cucu Diamantes
Picotero :: Monareta
Le Pop: les Filles :: various
Neptune's Daughter :: Luminescent Orchestrii
Off the Grid :: Chicago Afrobeat Project
Marvellous Boy: Calypso from West Africa :: various
Barracuda :: Kinky
March of the Zapotec :: Beirut

this week's video feature: Luminescent Orchestrii

Watching TCM last night and caught a preview of their April programming. Very happy to see that, as part of a bike gang themed night of movies, they'll be showing Wild Angels. Not only is this a Roger Corman 60s biker movie w/ Peter Fonda AND Nancy Sinatra in the cast but it's also the source of the awesome "we wanna be free to do what we wanna do..." sample at the beginning of Primal Scream's "Loaded" (which I've used as an opening for many radio shows). Next Monday (4/6) at 10.30pm EDT.

Several of my fave 4/1 stories from this year:
Raleigh gets corporate sponsorship
Grant Achatz (bloggerati edition)
More pandas more better
Grant Achatz (Raleigh edition)
New frontiers in bacon