XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 28 march 10)

Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas - various
Lazy Bones - Witch
Secretly Famous - the Spy from Cairo
Ali & Toumani - Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabate
Pomegranates - various
San Juan '73 - Fania All-Stars
Bollywood Remembers: the Best of the EMI Years - Laxmikant Pyarelal
Oro - Choc Quib Town
Magical Radiophonic Heart - Banda de Turistas
San Patricio - the Chieftains featuring Ry Cooder

this week's video feature: Banda de Turistas

So I'd lost track in my email of this link to Wonkette from back in February. But it's back for another round as the latest scandal outraging Wingnuttia. Sometimes I wonder how those people get thru the day without their heads a-sploding all Scanners-style.

Also leftover (from last week, I think), is this definite quote-of-the-day winner from Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"I hear GOP folks and Tea Partiers bemoaning the fact that media and Democrats are using the extremes of their movement for ratings and to score points. This is like Drew Brees complaining that Dwight Freeney keeps trying to sack him."

Here's some important info on the arrival of scary, scary socialism in America. On a related note, I read that Harry Reid suggested buying dictionaries for tea party types so they could learn what socialism actually means. Good luck with that and all but, really, good on ya, sir.

On a completely unrelated note, John Scalzi was en fuego for his AMC column last week, a look at the pros and cons of living in various science fictional universes.

Everyone's seen this already I'm sure. Further proof (as if nominating Mean Old Man McCain in 2008 wasn't proof enough) that the Republicans are now the party of "hey, you damn kids get off my lawn!"

K-State losing to Butler pretty much sunk the final nail into the semi-animated corpse of my brackets. I had way too much wrong but did take a flyer on KSU winning it all on one bracket. Actually, I think I have Duke winning one so that's technically still alive. But if you're going chalk in the finals you've got to be a lot more accurate than I was (I'm looking at you Georgetown, Villanova, Kansas...) in the earlier rounds. A good visual illustration of how most people's brackets are looking (and of the fact that you apparently don't have to have any skill at predicting games to get a job at ESPN) can be found here. Well, that won't be there once the tourney ends so I'll describe. It's a graphic of the final four picks of 12 ESPN experts. How expert were they?

Kansas: 12/12 (actual: TBD, Michigan State or Tennessee)
Syracuse: 7/12; Kansas State: 4/12; Pitt: 1/12 (actual: Butler)
Kentucky: 8/12; West Virginia 4/12 (actual: West Virginia)
Villanova: 5/12; Baylor: 4/12; Duke 3/12 (actual: TBD, Baylor or Duke)

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 21 mar 10)

Lazy Bones :: Witch
Pomegranates :: various
Rising Sun :: SoulJazz Orchestra
Balkan Beats :: various
Secretly Famous :: the Spy from Cairo
San Juan '73 :: Fania All-Stars
Magical Radiophonic Heart :: Bande de Turistas
Me Lo Genté :: Calle Real
Alma do Nordeste :: Jovino Santos-Neto
I Speak Fula :: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba

this week's video feature: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba

Okay, let's try to wrap up Friday on a slightly less hostile note. I mean, wingnut meltdown notwithstanding, it was a pretty okay week. So how 'bout puppies eating ice cream. Or maybe you'd prefer a golden retriever eating mashed potatoes.
If dogs aren't your thing, here's a pic of Yellow Submarine at Biltmore House. I met Gary (the driver of this awesome art car) at the Louisville parade a few years ago. Very nice guy. I think this photo was taken last summer when he was road-tripping up to Bawlmer for Artscape.

So once again the House has passed reconciliation. Hey, maybe the GOP can come up with some other obscure point of order and force another re-vote which they will lose. Clearly, as seen by their week-long hissy fit, they have not yet lost enough to understand that, hey, they lost and elections mean things and change things.

Speaking of meltdowns, here's the quote of the week:

Um, when, and really I mean, when is Twitter going to offer some sort of eyeball scan or keyboard stroke idiot meter? I'm thinking if you pound voraciously certain words some kind of pop up screen should appear that says, "Hey, nutbag, do you really want to say that stupid, fucking thing you just typed? For yes...slam your enlarged cranium onto the keyboard. For no...with all your might walk away from the computer now, no one will get hurt, and lay down quietly and we'll forget this ever happened

(from a commenter on this Gawker post)

Also right up there in the crazyass dept, this little gem:

Place a piece of bread in your toaster. "Cook" it until it is charred black. Place charred toast in a suitable envelope. Mail said envelope to your representative in DC.
They'll get the message...

(Actually found this via one of the food blogs I read, I guess because it mentions toast. It's from Freep which no way in hell am I linking to. A classic example of wingnut myopia. It's bear DNA all over again. Makes perfect sense to them and the rest of us have No Idea WTF They're Talking About)

I'm not generally a fan of knee-jerk contrarian BS (also known as about half of slate.com). Y'know, the kind of article that only exists to tell you that everything you think and that most everyone thinks and that basic common sense indicates is probably true is in fact completely wrong. It's easy. It's lazy. And it's often tricked out with sweeping statements of contrarianism that are wholly unsupported by any evidence. OTOH, it's always interesting to read someone dig into an issue and point out something that I might have missed, or find an angle on the issue that runs counter to what most people are saying. For example, here's Matt Yglesias on the vital role of Mitch McConnell in getting universal health care passed. Snarky? Well, yes, I guess so. But damn insightful while he's being funny.
note: title yoinked from this highly useful debunking of health care reform myths.

Figured out today that someone I'd hidden on Facebook back last fall when they said something egregiously stupid about health care reform had unfriended me. Not sure when but I think it was recent-ish. I can only hope it was something I said in the last few days about HCR or something else political that offended them. Alas, I'll probably never know. Which is too bad cos it's always handy to know what things are gonna offend stupid people so one can keep them in the repertoire.
Social networking WIN.

Stayed up way too late last night watching the vote on health care reform and then reading the wrapups and whatnot online. Apparently this ushers in a new socialist utopia (wait... what? they told me that was mutually exclusive). Which my only question is: if it starts this morning does that mean I don't have to go to work today? Cos if not I could really use the sleep.
Other than that, I have to wonder if some of the haters-from-the-left have noticed (or will any point) that they've made common cause with people who think spitting, yelling insults and slurs, and generally threatening violence are good political strategies. Yeah, yeah... I'm sure everyone at FDL has already internalized some bullshit about how they're not like that. Or the enemy of my enemy etc etc yadda yadda stfu...
ANYway, Balloon Juice and Great Orange Satan got out first with this but I couldn't resist. I read something last week, in response to all the Repubs concern trolling about how the health care reform battle was gonna be President Obama's Waterloo. It was by a British writer (can't remember where I saw this or I'd link to it) and he pointed out that, from the British perspective, Waterloo was actually a great moment in history. Either way, it's never a bad time to hear some Abba:

Of my actual brackets we shall speak no further other than to say: Ohio? Northern Iowa?!?
Another fun pop culture bracket (and probably my fave so far): cake vs. pie. Unlike the beer bracket, this one's done by online voting and not just the opinions of the blogger. Which can give a more diverse perspective. But also can lead to results that are just wrong!wrong!!wrong!!! I know... if I want results I can 100% support, I should create my own bracket.
Maybe next year. (Okay, probably not)

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 14 mar 10)

Lazy Bones :: Witch
Rising Sun :: SoulJazz Orchestra
Undersea Poem :: Undersea Poem
Medicine Show, vol. 2: Flight to Brazil :: Madlib
el Inolvidable :: Tito Rodriguez
Umberto Echo: Dub the World :: various
Me Lo Genté :: Calle Real
Blood Spirit Land Water Freedom :: Curtis Brothers Quartet
Balkan Beats :: various
Zebu Nation :: Razia

this week's video feature: SoulJazz Orchestra

Serious Eats discovers mini-donuts. The place is called Sil's and it's in Milwaukee. So my first thought, of course, was: when am I going to Milwaukee? Cos the state fair's not until October. But I am forced to conclude that the physical distance from here to Wisconsin is actually much greater than the temporal distance from here to October.

Also, it's Marching to Madness time which means lots of fun things on the internets which are bracket-shaped in one way or the other. Last year I think there was a meat bracket and of course there's the fug brackets over at GFY (I'm pretty sure I blogged about a couple last year but search function on House of Dioxin is broken right now and I'm feeling too lazy to sift thru the archives to check). The first one I've seen this year is a beer bracket. I'll be interested to see how blind his tastings are going to be cos some of those it's gonna be pretty visually obvious which is which.

A couple of interesting things about this song, which is themed around the Holi festival. For one, the music is by Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia, who I know better as classical musicians. I've reviewed at least one of Chaurasia's albums for XDU and we saw Sharma last spring in concert at Duke. I had no idea they had an ongoing career writing music for Bollywood films. The other notable thing is that, at least according to IMDB, Amitabh does his own singing in this number. That's pretty uncommon, as I understand it. Almost all songs in Bollywood are done by playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar or Mohammed Rafi.

Quote of the day:
"If Obama punched 50 pit bulls in the face and then defeated them in hand-to-hand combat, but still refused to torture detainees, what would that do to his toughness quotient?" - Ezra Klein

I love this piece by Penn Jillette on aging. Give that man some pie!

Or some bacon s'mores. The internets are an endless source of wacky bacon creations and concoctions. Many are better honored in the breach than in the observance. But this I might have to try. Maybe I'll even remember to come back with an update on how they turn out.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 7 mar 10)

Rising Sun :: Souljazz Orchestra
el Inolvidable :: Tito Rodriguez
I Speak Fula :: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba
Fruta Madura :: Viento de Agua
Medicine Show, vol. 2: Flight to Brazil :: Madlib
Undersea Poem :: Undersea Poem
Umberto Echo: Dub the World :: various
Concrete Jungle :: Nneka
Bollyhood Bass :: David Starfire
Rare and Glorious :: Ravi Shankar

this week's video feature: Undersea Poem

So I gotta say that I'm generally a pretty unapologetic food geek. But there are definitely times when I understand why some people hate foodies so much. Today's example is this quote I saw on Chowhound, from a thread discussing a new Indian restaurant opening in Chapel Hill: "why does every place have to make Sag Paneer? That's just so tiresome, I don't even make it at home anymore I'm so sick of it."
Oh where to begin. First off, is this not like complaining about Italian restaurants serving fettucine carbonara or sushi places serving hamachi? Why, yes, I think it is. Also, how in the hell do people get so spoiled and self-involved that they think the entire frakkin' universe is supposed to kowtow to their tastes. Everyone is different. And, hey, that's why there's lots of CHOICES on the menu. If you don't want to order saag paneer then how about not ordering it. Because the restaurant is there to make money by selling things that people want to buy not to satisfy someone's precious ideas of what is or isn't "tiresome."

There, I feel much better now.

Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

You know what I hate? Well, this sinus infection or whatever that's had me alternately congested or runny-nosed since Saturday. Not to get all cliché here but I'm really sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Also highly hate-able, when I make a comment on a friend's update on Facebook and then someone else rolls in and says something dickish. I mean, one wants to respond, right? But it's someone else's wall. And I think that's just really piss poor etiquette. It's like going over someone's house and then getting into a fight with one of the other guests.

Something I don't in any way hate. This insanely cool musical number from the 1977 Bollywood movie Dream Girl. Cory Doctorow linked this over at boing² last week but somehow I misread his description and thought it had been shot in Disneyland. I looked again today and realized, no, it's Disney World. In 1977, which was the same year that I was there with my family. Unlike the kids in the movie, my brother and I were semi-jaded teens so were more into the Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain type rides. I regret not having gone on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and I think the Nemo submarine ride was closed. Otherwise I just didn't go on it for some reason. Maybe the line was too long. I can't remember (it was a long time ago). I also remember the Enchanted Tiki Room being lots o' fun. That was probably my first exposure to tiki/exotica culture, even if in a Disneyified stylee.

Dammit, I think I'm coming down with a cold. I don't have time to be sick. There's too much shit to get done.
Anyway, while I'm trying to figure out if/what I might have, here's an interesting article from Slate (and, yes, every time I've pretty much given up on Slate as nothing but a bunch of professional contrarians, they manage to come up with something like this) about signs and wayfinding. Actually it's part of a whole series, all of which have been well worth reading. I love stuff like this that gives me the chance to learn about something that, altho I encounter it all the time, I've never really had much occasion to think about before.

Here's a squirrel that's really into Shake Shack, which should cute up your Saturday enough.

Also, this

Go, D.C., go!
While this is clearly the photo of the day (week/month/year), here's some more pics from today.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 28 feb 10)

Undersea Poem :: Undersea Poem
Concrete Jungle :: Nneka
Umberto Echo: Dub the World :: various
Rare and Glorious :: Ravi Shankar
Funky Fräuleins :: various
Retrospectiva :: Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca
Bollyhood Bass :: David Starfire
el Arte de la Elegancia :: los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Para Siempre :: Miramar
Agua del Pozo :: Alex Cuba

this week's video feature: Cultura Profética (from Umberto Echo: Dub the World)