Let's Do This! (John's ipody goodness)

I was so pleased to see Matt's post about ipody goodness that I had to post a little quick tidbit of my own. I've recently been fishing around on my own ipod a good bit. Since I got one about a year and a half ago I've been frantically cramming pieces of a huge CD collection into apples sleek little sexy player... slowly taking my 30GB of space and narrowing it to the point where I think I maybe still have 4 GB or so. Along the way I've also become aware of and filled some gaps (never owned any Bob Dylan so I bought a bunch starting with Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks).

Lately I've gotten back into the swing of tracking new acts, and I've got a couple I'm pretty pumped about right now. The are Santogold, a group/performer I think is blowing up in a general sense. The sound is catchy, the beats are good, and the whole package comes together well. Many people make a quick comparison to M.I.A., another musician whose work I love that has come up in the past few years. The shoe fits in that department, and the similarity in their sounds is fine by me, as I like both. I've also heard Santogold compared in sound to other luminaries of fem rock and pop including Sleater Kinney, another group I admire greatly. Worth your time, no doubt, even as the tracks get picked up as background music for Bud Light Lime ads! (ak!)

The second new group I'm pumped about right now is Dr. Dog. I just downloaded a bunch of their stuff in the last couple days, and I'm pretty hooked right now. They've got a clean hooky sound. They're from Philly (as supposedly Santogold is as well... REPRESENT!!!), and they've got a devotion to certain founding rock sounds (think Beach Boys and Beatles) but they've also got a newskool arts and craftsy creative edge. Their arts and craftsy workmanship has me lumping them in with groups like Spoon, Interpol, and others like them who take well used sounds and hustle them into something new and interesting.

Let's hear it for music talk! I WANT MORE!!!

ipody goodness

I have recently finished taking the bar exam, an experience that is nearly as much fun as spending an evening with Karl Rove and Richard Simmons while drinking expired milk. (Apologies to anyone who spent their Saturday night that way).

The one good thing about the last two months is that I was motivated to finally go out and get an iPod, so I could use music to tune out the sounds of the world. When I first got the iPod, I decided to revisit some of the music that I own but haven’t listened to in years and years. For me, this essentially means raiding the vast collection of electronic music that I acquired in college. For the last 5 years or so, I’ve gotten really into –i.e. obsessed with—that ill-defined and venerable genre of music known variously as “classical”, “serious” or “art” music. So I haven’t really been keeping up with the phat beats and crazy mixes.

Anyway, I have thought about making some notes about music and my reaction to it, since I am by nature narcissistic enough to subject my friends to my opinions about this sort of thing. Therefore, you should all look forward to my random, incoherent and very possibly drunken ramblings about CD’s no one cares about anymore! Hurray!

Fun Fun Superfun

I had a great weekend. I went to a wedding in Long Island that was outstanding in a handful of ways:

1. I am pretty sure I've never been to Long Island before... except maybe for a college info session for SCAD, I think, back when I was living in NYC and thinking of going back to school for graphic design (about 6 yrs ago).
2. I have never danced so much at a wedding... I'm talking had to take my suit coat off in the first 15 minutes, legs tired the next day, sweating like a crazy person, legit reason to loosen the tie and undo the top button of the dress shirt style dancing. Damn. Craziness. Seriously, I don't usually dance.
   
3. Great company
4. Oh! and bonus, the vegetarian food was legitimately good! Mmm... veggie lasagna with a healthy portion of cheese baked in. Yum.
   

So wedding gushing aside, I came back and dove into my week happily working away, and this noon I spent a lunchtime moment floating over to my friend Liz's blog where she posts some info about her art, life, books, etc. Recently she's posted videos that represent a shift away from some of the installation/wall art she's been doing for the last year or more into a new direction. She's got four videos up now... and the latest, which shows raindrops on a window at night, is BEAUTIFUL!!!! I recommend checking them out. They're quiet and fun and, to me, very Zen.

So, if you're feeling blue 'cause it's Monday, fear not! It's getting beautiful again outside (after all the storminess of the last week), I've got some Zen stuff to calm you down, and life is good.

Cheers!

Amazing Photo of the Week

I was just on Huffington Post, and I want to know where they got this goofy and amazing picture of John McCain. It's amazing. It makes me giddy. I just can't wrap my head around how awesome it is. Can you? Seriously. Why is he holding that ancient cellphone? It looks like current day John McCain with 1991 John McCain's cell phone. Incredible. It came with an interesting article too.

Incredible.

Amazing.

Hope it makes you smile too.

TGIF.

Scandal, wha???

Confused by the layers and layers of controversy and scandal, crimes and misdemeanors that have swirled around the White House over the last 7 years? Wondering where the Department of Justice firings connect to Coercive Interrogation of Guantanamo Bay detainees? Just want to chuckle to yourself while thinking of John Ashcroft, Larry Craig and Mark Foley in a barbershop quartet together... wait... was Foley in the quartet? I think I'm wrong on that last one. Well if you're feeling the first two, check out Slate.com's supercool interactive chart of Bush Administration scandals! This clever little info graphic is not only fascinating and nicely designed, but informative as well.

The Girl Effect

This is cool. Speaks for itself, really. I just watched it on their website (there it's full screen!) and was impressed enough by both the message and delivery that I really wanted to pass it along. Enjoy.

I'm sorry, but that's just not cool

So apparently John McCain took a pretty nasty swipe at Barack Obama in the last few days, saying something the right wing talk radio hosts might say all the time, but something many were surprised to hear blurted out by a presidential candidate. In essence he claimed that Obama would like to lose the war in Iraq because doing so would be politically expedient. There's video of McCain's statement here. Today, however, I came across an interesting blurb on Andrew Sullivan's blog that adds a little context to the picture. What they raise is the idea that such comments really are, historically, not the sort of thing that presidential candidates engage in. Meanwhile Ben Smith over at politico is on a mission to find any precedent for a presidential candidate (not their surrogates) nakedly accusing their opponent of selling out the US. Assertions of weak patriotism, etc. are certainly all too familiar at this point, but there is something a little more direct about what McCain had to say. Let me know what you think.

MacGuyver Movie?

Alright!

A discussion of the show and the possibility of a movie on Salon.

The author does a pretty great job of summing up why I loved this show when I was a kid:

"Though, actually, when you go back to watch his adventures two decades after they first aired, you discover Mac's target audience probably consisted mainly of boys, not men... This jogged in me memories of boyhood, especially of how, after watching each MacGyver trick, I'd feel a bit invincible: I was small, but I was clever. Like MacGyver, I could take them."

Obama is a Hiphopopotamus

So this past weekend I picked up the Flight of the Conchords CD, which is tons of fun... although I have to say that if you're unfamiliar with the show you should really get to know them by checking out the DVDs of the first season. Below you can check out their runaway hit Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros (feat. Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus). It's classic. Before that, however, or after (whichever you prefer) you should check out political news of the day from Wonkette, where they've documented McCain's inability to say whether he believes or not that Obama is a secret Hipopotamus! Amazing.



There ain't no party like my nana's tea party!

Cheese Rap, Best Way Back

Dear Readers,

I've been away a good bit lately, stressed over relaunching my company's website and playing lots and lots and lots of softball. Still, the website is now launched, so I've got a little more time on my hands... a little! Enough to uncover this gem, sent my way by the "I Love Cheese" group on Facebook (I kid you not):



Enjoy!!

Old Skool Video Game Goodness Redone

I saw a great animation over on Purple State Blog from PES, then floated around checking out a few others. My favorite is below, and features an array of old school video games (Pac Man, Frogger, Space Invaders) redone through awesome at-home animation goodness.

Enjoy, and check out Pes's other stuff too. There's a clip that's basically porn with chairs that is pretty amazing (called Roof Sex, check it out here the sound isn't really safe for work, but the imagery is wonderfully tame yet graphic).

Here's the video game clip:

Wowzers

Anybody missed the Obama New Yorker cover controversy? Nope? Me neither. I the cover is a little... hmm... off color, but then again I also feel like some of the outrage seems outlandish. Is stuff like this going to deepen and extend the outrage into new territory, or is it just same shoe different foot?



Thoughts? An interesting question, to me, is something this cartoon really highlights, which isn't so much the content of the cartoon of the Obamas, but the fact that it ran on the cover of the New Yorker. I can't IMAGINE the National Review running a cover like the McCain one above. Maybe that just reflects how little I know about the New Yorker, but still... feel free to chime in.

h/t Americablog

Typo...or commentary

I came across this headline on politicalwire.com, one of the sites I check obsessively. I leave it to the reader to decide if this was a mistake, or a deliberate commentary on the relationship between the Bush House and FOX news.

Fox Dies at 53

Fox News: "Tony Snow, the former White House press secretary and conservative pundit who bedeviled the press corps and charmed millions as a Fox News television and radio host, died after a long bout with cancer. He was 53."

It's Friday, and that's ADORABLE!

In Amsterdam a cat adopted a newborn red panda cub and is nursing the wee one along side its own kittens. I don't know how popular the red panda is in any general sense, but I think they're incredibly adorable. I've been a huge fan for awhile now, so when I saw this news piece I couldn't help posting it here in my slow slow blogging week.

When Websites (other than the blog) Attack

Wow... I'm off the map this week, oh blogging world. I've got my head down in the relaunch of my company's website targeted for July 18th and it seems like the rest of the world has faded into the background. Still there are occasional tiny moments to realize that the world is still hilariously randomly ridiculously funny. What do I have in mind? How about tiny little robots invading DC?

No Lie: I'm Obsessed

It's true, I'm completely taken with the Smart Car. I've posted about it before and had literally dozens of conversations since returning from Europe in 2001 after a term abroad in college. Spending 14 weeks over in mostly Italy, I saw Smarts EVERYWHERE, and fell in love with their goofy small size, their fun and ridiculous paint jobs, and my perception of their must-be fuel efficiency. Anyway, this is the year of the Smart here in America, with the first dealerships opening stateside (they've been sold in Canada for over a year now) and the first Smarts rolling out onto US roads. A few weeks back I had a huge fit of envy as a little white Smart passed me on the Merritt Parkway headed north towards Middletown, and the fit was followed by days of dreaming up my purchase of my very own Smart (a plan still in the making).

This is all preamble to posting a little video I found on Slate today, their review of a Smart after driving it around San Francisco for a week. Here's the video:



And here are a couple of my favorite lines from the accompanying article:

"...Traverse the city for just 10 or 20 minutes in the Smart and the truth will hit you like a Hummer on its way to the repo lot. While just large enough to realize, on the inside, the comforts of a sedan, the Smart is perhaps the first modern, street-legal car small enough to completely upend your relationship with the city."

"At times it felt like cheating -- like I was the mayor or a diplomat or I had a secret key to every neighborhood, like a metropolitan god had blessed my weary soul. Seriously, it was heady."

You can read the whole article here.

Please Cite Your References

I listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio in my car. Take that as you will. I typically listen mid-day if I'm on my way to or from a meeting, lunch, or an errand since NPR is playing "classic or classical" music at that time of day and everything else on the radio sucks. I tend to listen for 15 minutes at most before I get sick of it and switch off. One of the things that gets me pissed fastest is what I'm going to call meme-fuscating: the practice of developing an idea that explains the world through your perspective and then repeating it often enough that you and your listeners subconsciously or consciously adopt that idea as fact. Meme-fuscating is so common that you can quickly get numb to it while listening to talk radio. It comes in high-level forms (liberals hate the military and think soldiers are dumb) and detail-oriented forms (Barrack Obama won't say the pledge of allegiance). The problem with meme-fuscating is twofold:

1. It gets repeated so frequently that it eventually becomes accepted as fact even outside of the immediate radio audience who hears it;
   
2. The high-level forms take on the feeling of religious belief and are so broad and nonsensical as to be unassailable -they are like inalienable truths to the radio listeners and hosts.
   

This morning, I was driving from the doctor's office and listening to Neal Boortz who was going on and on about Wesley Clark's recent comments regarding John McCain's qualifications to be President. Clark has come under fire for comments purported to slam the idea of McCain's military experience qualifying him for the Oval Office. Boortz ran in two directions with this story. He first wondered why Clark had stated that John Kerry's military record qualified him to be President in 2004. He then went on to say that Clark's comments and the spin on them in liberal blogs gave credence to the idea that liberals hate those in the military.

Let's just ignore the second prong of Boortz's attack. The first point -that Wesley Clark said John Kerry's war record qualified him to be President- made me wish that Boortz would cite his sources. The thing is that in the act of meme-fuscating, citations never occur. That would get in the way of the flow of the sermon. Perhaps I've spent too much time writing research papers, but I really think it's irresponsible to make such claims without backing them up. To help Boortz out, I did some research and found a transcript of Clark's speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention (hat tip to the next right). He said, in part:

John Kerry has heard the thump of enemy mortars.

... He's seen the flash of the tracers. He's lived the values of service and sacrifice. In the Navy, as a prosecutor, as a senator, he proved his physical courage under fire. And he's proved his moral courage too.

John Kerry fought a war, and I respect him for that. And he came home to fight a peace. And I respect him for that, too.

... John Kerry's combination of physical courage and moral values is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander in chief.

It certainly seems that Clark is implying that Kerry's military service prepared him for office or at least that it reflects up on his character. He never directly says it qualifies him for office, but he does come close. How hard would it be to just mention the date and location of this speech instead of just talking in abstract terms? How hard would it be to admit that Clark never explicitly said what you claimed he said?

What's worse is that Clark is taking heat for something he didn't do. It turns out that in the course of an interview on Face the Nation this past Sunday, Clark was in the process of heaping praise on McCain when Bob Schieffer turned his comments around to attack Obama. Clark simply said that Schieffer's argument didn't make sense. Taken out of context with the rest of the interview, Clark's dismissal of the argument has somehow been taken as a criticism of McCain. If you don't believe me, watch the video here. Then consider what Clark had been saying before Schieffer interrupted:

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world.

Now how is that slamming McCain? Why are we going to have to keep hearing about this story for days if not weeks?

Clearly Boortz shouldn't be alone in taking the blame for this episode of meme-fuscating. The major media outlets are running with the story as well. Maybe this is just an unfortunate side-effect of our rapid-fire media cycle, but some people are knowingly running with this story in a direction they know entirely misrepresents the truth.

Boortz's comments (along with dozens of others echoing similar cries) should not and cannot be understood as individual commentary when in fact they are emblematic of a larger movement that is entirely at odds with helping people understand the news of the day.

Wow That's Amazing

I'm a little at a loss for what to say about this video, except to say it's fun and very cool. They (Marginalia Project) are playing with a video technique, and I pulled some description of what it is from their website, pasted it below.


Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.

Their Description of what you're seeing: The image is digitally manipulated by fragmenting it into horizontal lines and then combining lines from different frames in the display. The result is a distorsion of the figures caused by their motion in time, or, as Brazilian researcher Arlindo Machado calls it: chronotopic anamorphosis.

The effect was completely based on Zbigniew Rybczynski's "The Fourth Dimension", but transposed to Processing programming environment and performed in real-time.

The software still has some memory issues, specially when the image rendering is combined with video recording, as it can be seen in this video.

hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

Another One for the "Words Mean Things" File

Apparently words mean quite a lot to the American Family Association, so much that they have computers that scrub their way through AP stories before posting them swapping out the word Democratic Party and renaming it the Democrat Party. Interestingly, yesterday, a different scrubber went awry, changing an athlete competing for the Olympics' name from Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual. Hmm... that's interesting. Seems Mr. Homosexual "eased into" this year's Olympics, so perhaps we'll hear more about his exploits in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, coverage and a screen capture of the erroneous and bizarre event was posted at hte Salon.com war room here.