The Gloaming, or Softly Open our Mouths in the Cold

So I was listening to Hail to the Thief this morning, not because I'm a Radiohead fan, but because they tend to be a perennial punching bag of mine, and it was time for a revisit. Surprisingly, I actually liked the album this time around, but more importantly, the experience reminded me of Stylus Magazine's incredible Top Ten Pictures of Thom Yorke Looking Pretentious, now lying in sad ruins that only hint at the brilliant material of its heyday. I was unable to track down any archived or cached versions of the page, so I've decided to make my own. I've attempted to use ten photos not currently found in the ruins of the former page, so really you're getting thirteen pretentious photos for the price of ten, which was...free, i suppose. In any case, I'm very proud to present:



Top Ten Pictures of Thom Yorke Looking Pretentious






10.



9.



8.



7.



6.



5.



4.



3.



2.



1.




I just can't make fun of this guy anymore, he's too cool.
Free free to post any more you find in the comments section, newly added.



And now, some links:

• World Map of Happiness
• What, you missed the Deerhoof show at the Cradle, and your hipster friends just found out? Now you can easily fake your innocence.
  
• Control your iPod's functions using this umbrella. Be sure to check out the product page. I really want to kill someone right now.
• If you hear a great song on the radio but don't know what it is, you can now use this site to find out. WSRN does not seem to exist, sadly enough, so just call into the studio for that. Alternatively, a user comment notes that:

  Cingular also has a feature in which you can dial 43# (ID#) and hold the phone up to the radio for fifteen seconds and they will text you back with the artist/title info.
  

• Now you'll know exactly how long to boil your eggs. It seems sort of ridiculous, but the more I think about it, the more surprisingly practical it becomes.
• A new stunt vehicle from the makers of the Segway!
• If you need a new watch, get a geeked-out one fo sho.
  
• Really great photos from the Paping Soapbox Derby. There's more here as well.
• I've linked to it before, but this is another good time to introduce The Comics Curmudgeon, as today's post rocks.
• Rare marine life recently found in the waters off Great Britain.
  
• Photos of the old Penn Station where Madison Square Garden stands today. Also, extensive info on lost stations of the London Underground.
• Maybe it's my inner geography nerd, but I've always been fascinated by territorial disputes among nations, and here's a list of
  lesser-known but potentially important disputes that are currently running.
• This car looks absolutely stunning. Great show by the way, thanks Colin.
  

Sweet, Sweet Ambrosia of the Gods

It was almost three weeks ago when I began to view the Swiss Farm Stores with curiousity. It's a small grocery chain located only here in Delaware County, and their two main selling points are 1) that it's a drive-thru grocery store, and 2) the buildings are shaped like large white silos. These two gimmicks alone practically assured my patronage, but the question was when that destined visit would actually occur.

This morning, I decided that today was going to be the big day. My stocks of Florida Orange Juice had been severely depleted, and this week's schedule of soccer, frisbee, and intense research coring demanded vast amounts of Gatorade and/or Powerade. Visiting the website, I found that both Gatorade and Powerade were on sale, with the offer expiring today, imagine that! It seemed that destiny was already on my side.

So I quickly printed out an order form (not neccesary, but I'd rather fill out a form than talk to a person), and scanned the contents. Orange juice, check. Powerade (which was cheaper), check. Eggs, check. Breakfast muffin sandwich since I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, check. That was all I needed, I thought. But on one final scan, my eyes suddenly caught onto one additional product, inconspiciously listed and not on sale.

In my senior year of high school, I had three major concerns about coming up to Swarthmore. First was Swarthmore's infamously brutal workload. Second was the cold yankee winters, and having to deal with snow in increments of feet rather than quarters of an inch. And third, the one which everyone laughed at me for, was how I could possibly survive without sweet iced tea. It was my favorite drink since childhood, the perfect complement to almost twenty full years of meals in the South. What else was there that I could possibly drink? I didn't know, and I was scared, and I seriously considered staying close to home at UNC just for the sweet tea. I didn't know what to do. I was lost.

Somehow, I've endured two long school years without my ambrosia. But here, on the Swiss Farm Stores order form, I finally found my salvation from the lonely months of suffering. When I saw that they carried Southern Brew Iced Tea in 1/2 gallon and full gallon containers, my heart exploded with joy. This is where I leap into the air, in slow motion, with a face filled with pure ecstasy, fists pumped into the sky.

My mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of sweet tea as I drove to the nearest Swiss Farm Store. I'm sure that I sped through about four red lights and didn't even notice or care. Sweet tea is like my heroin, and I will go to whatever lengths necessary in order to obtain it.

The actual ordering process was completely anticlimactic. A surly high school dropout took my form and trudged into the silo. A few minutes later, he emerged with a few plastic bags filled with my goods...except...no sweet tea...I was sinking into a sea of despair...and loneliness...

"We ran out of the 1/2 gallon size of the Southern Iced Tea. Do you want the full gallon?"

The siren's song lifted me out of my black seas of darkness, and I answered yes as angels began to descend from the clouds above. After I paid, I drove home and my car seemed to levitate above the ground, lifted by the white angels. So yes, it's actually exactly like heroin.

So now I'm sitting at my computer drinking this Southern Brew Iced Tea. It's not bad. There's way too much lemon, for one. Certainly no Bojangles iced tea, but then again, what is? It's better than Nestea or Lipton at least, and it's the closest I've come up here in this foreign and hostile country of The North. All I can think about right now is: I need another fix.




Links to come later.

Ghostride the Whip

Oh man, so I just tried to ghostride the whip in the empty Science Center Parking Lot.

Basically, the car was going a lot faster than I expected, and it was very nearly lost on the steep hill down into the Crum Creek, hahaha. Probably should have kept it in a lower gear.

In any case, I basically stepped out of the car, panicked, and sprinted back in and jammed on the brake, blaring Public Enemy the whole time (probably terrible ghostriding music, but it's the best I had in the car). So at the time, I was scared out of my wits, but in retrospect, hilarious. Talk about being a clumsy white loser. Well, I guess not white, but you get the idea.

These guys clearly know what they're doing. At least more so than me.

I was also planning on trying out a fast u-turn as outlined in the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, but I completely chickened out because of the failed ghostriding attempt, haha.

My favorite aspect of the wikipedia ghostriding article is the following statement:

In recent events, the concept of ghostriding has been applied to several other types of transportation, with varying degrees of success. Many bay area residents have attempted to ghostride watercrafts including: sea doos, fishing vessels, kayaks, and canoes. For unknown reasons, this ghostriding has been extremely unsuccessful and dangerous. The ghostriding of bicycles, motorcycles, and segways have been reported with success.

(00:29:56) Shaw: i really like the concept of ghostriding a kayak
(00:30:02) Porcaro: haha
(00:30:07) Porcaro: you just start rowing really fast
(00:30:09) Porcaro: then jump out
(00:30:11) Porcaro: and....?
(00:30:24) Shaw: swim for a while? alternate between some different strokes?
(00:30:28) Shaw: then climb back in, i guess?
(00:30:29) Shaw: awesome

We'll be working out a more serious attempt at this when I get back home. Preferably not with my car this time, haha. Mr. Porcaro and I are currently at work on a ghostriding cd, which may or may not get posted in this space later.

Until then, we'll ghostride the links:

• This is actually how I throw out all of my trash, haha.
• Tomahawk Missile accidentally spills out in I-95 traffic accident.
• A clever one-question IQ test.
  
• Turns out North Korea isn't using Photoshop for its counterfeit operations, because it's not actually possible, interestingly enough.
• NYC is still working on water tunnel no. 3, due for completion in 2020.
• Why do we like music?
• And ending on a pleasant note, here's a map detailing the locations of suicide attempts on the Golden Gate Bridge in the home of hyphy and ghostriding.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

The recent talk of classic rock has made me consider the possibility of modern classics. What recent albums have been unanimously praised upon release, and will likely be remembered for decades to come? I'll consider turning this into a series of reviews at some point, but first I'll talk about Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, certainly one of the most written-about albums in recent memory, and for good reason.

The two things nearly every review of this album mentions are the uniquely experimental production values, and the fight to release the record. I remember reading of both around the time of the record's release, but I don't remember actually hearing much about the quality of the music itself, only that Wilco had a struck a blow for artist's rights, and for that reason alone was worth praise. So I didn't even bother to hear the record for a while, until I noticed that the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which chronicles the making the of the album, was coming to the Carolina Theater in Chapel Hill, right across the street from UNC campus. Arriving at the theater, I found myself surrounded by area hipsters and by middle-aged country men who looked as if they'd probably worshipped at the altar of Tweedy long ago in his Uncle Tupelo days.



My first impression of the film was that it wasn't terribly well-made, and that the unquestioned highlight of the film was Wilco's music. I immediately went out and bought a copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and popped it in with high expectations.

My feelings were very mixed at first. I found the production to be fascinating, and the songwriting to be relatively fine, but I was let down by the fact that several songs from the film weren't actually on this album, or were heavily reworked. On a second viewing of the film last year, I noted a surprising number of songs from Being There and Summerteeth were showcased, which strikes me as a bit odd, especially the gratuitous studio performance of I'm Always In Love, one of the highlights of the film.

Despite that initial disappointment, I grew quite fond of the songs that did find their way onto this album, and I was even more enthralled with the maverick production, full of noisy static and samples of numbers stations that I felt complemented the songwriting perfectly. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot quickly became one of my favorite albums, and at one point I think I'd memorized how to play the entire album on guitar, which was actually surprisingly simple. So I began to seek out other Wilco albums. And that's when doubts began to grow.



I stayed with YHF for almost a year and a half, exploring all its little subtleties and quirks, before going on a Wilco spree and purchasing their new album A Ghost is Born, the YHF-predecessor Summerteeth, and the Summerteeth-predecessor Being There, all in the space of two or three months. I was riding high on Wilco, and they quickly became one of my all-time favorite bands, as I soaked in the glorious pop of Summerteeth and the brooding majesty of A Ghost is Born. What took me awhile to realize was that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was suddenly lost somewhere in the shuffle, and I had completely forgotten about its songs. When I did finally revisit YHF, almost a year later, it sounded...boring, and dull.

The noisy production was no longer novel to me, and so I began to explore the quality of the songs themselves, and that's where I found the critical flaw in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Over the past year, I had found Summerteeth to be an absolute revelation, full of tight and concise pop songs ranging across the entire spectrum of tempos and moods. On the other hand, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was stuck in a stylistic rut with nowhere to go, and after stripping away the production, I found myself left with some decent, but not brilliant songs. Many songs seemed to be just barely written, with mountains of lush production filling them out and propping them up. And in other cases, the songwriting is fine, but the recorded performances sound tame and almost smothered, as if Wilco were trapped inside the walls of production they'd created. Juxtaposing YHF with Summerteeth especially brings out the tired sound and weak songwriting of the former, while the latter is a joyous ride all the way through.

And that's where my opinion stands today. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot pales in comparison to the rest of the Wilco discography, but the fact that YHF still ranks among the best albums of recent years is a testament to the consistent quality of Wilco's output. It's just that the songwriting is relatively weak in my opinion, and isn't songwriting the basis of...songs? No amount of production or studio trickery can cover up poor songwriting; the studio has become too much a of a crutch for bands, and that's a cardinal sin in modern rock music. I'll give Yankee Hotel Foxtrot a 9.2/12.

1. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart - Probably my favorite track. Musically it's one of the most simple that Wilco has ever penned, just the same three chords and the same melody repeated over the entire 7-minute span, but the catchy and heartfelt melody and surrealist imagery is enough to carry it forward. The amazing production takes a backseat to the simple tune and complements it perfectly. This doesn't feel like a long song at all, the pacing is absolutely perfect, a testament to the production on this song. The chaotic ending is a little strange, but it's not too jarring. Would've been a nice song to end on a pretty note, I imagine.
   
2. Kamera - Makes a lot of sense coming after I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, but doesn't stand up too well on its own, as the production is a little stifling and seems to smother the performance. Tweedy and co. sound completely bored on this track, with only the production adding any sort of life. Wilco seems to know this too, as there's some sort of fill in-between almost every single line. At least the production's not too over-the-top, this easily could've been turned into a disaster of a track.
3. Radio Cure - Was my favorite track on 1st and 2nd listen, but it's painfully obvious now that this song owes everything to the production; it's a very weak musical idea propped up by lush production. The song takes too long to reach the chorus, which is abruptly cut off, and so more trudging through the awkward verses continues. Only the apple-picking line and the final chorus can save this song somewhat.
4. War on War - I really love the opening, with the doubled acoustic guitar coming in on the left channel. The blasts of noise are relatively appropriate here, I can tell the song would become entirely too monotonous without them. This is another very simple tune, with most of the song sitting on just one chord. The piano melody is absolutely essential though. A relatively fun tune, one of my favorites for no real reason. Another bizarrely chaotic ending, again I wonder if a prettier ending would suit things better.
   
5. Jesus, etc. - Everybody seems to love this song, and it is quite a beautiful tune. I'm a bit embarassed to admit, however, that I've tried it out on a solo acoustic guitar, at a much slower tempo, and things sounds much better then. It's a very sensitive song, and I feel that the brisk pace makes it a little too cheeky and rushed. If everybody else likes it just the way it is though, I won't level too much criticism on it.
6. Ashes of American Flags - I've never been a fan of this song. It simply plods along with no real musical movement, and it's one of the few tracks in which I feel that the production really goes too far and interferes too much. Like Radio Cure, this feels like another weak idea propped up by production, though it's done far less successfully here. I cringe every time I here the fake woodwinds on the return to the chorus. What's with all these chaotic endings and transitions? At least they're here, and not in the middle of songs. This transition is the location of the infamous Tweedy vs. Bennett fight that is shown in the documentary.
   
7. Heavy Metal Drummer - I was a huge fan of this on the first few listens, it's a very catchy and concise song. However, like in Kamera, this sounds like another very bored performance that's covered up by all the ecstatic production. They did this kind of upbeat pop far better on Summerteeth.
8. I'm the Man Who Loves You - Has always been my least favorite song on this album. The noisy guitar solos are unbelievably grating and distracting. And again, there's the brass on the final chorus, especially the overmixed low brass, which is unbelievably cheesy, and very unwilcolike. For such a mellow and low-key album, you have to rely on tracks like this and Heavy Metal Drummer to pick up the pace and keep the record from bogging down, but this track just ends up being incredibly jarring. It's another tune that could've sounded better slowed down on just an acoustic guitar.
9. Pot Kettle Black - Very underrated in my opinion. I love the opening, with the feedback-laden guitar rising in and out of focus. The unusual chord in the verses sounds great as well, with the additional production elements adding nicely to the second verse. The chorus is one of the few truly uplifting and joyous moments on this album for me. It's a well-penned song, and the production only enhances its qualities, making this the quintessential YHF track for me.
10. Poor Places - Arguably the most unique melody on the album, too bad the production is way too over-the-top here. Tweedy has no chords behind his voice on the first two verses, providing no sort of musical context, and the piano on the third verse adds very little. The song then sadly collapses into the aimless coda. The "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" numbers station sample is incredibly distracting, especially when laid over Tweedy's vocals, before everything falls into further chaos. Possibly one of the worst closings to a song I've ever heard. Tweedy's solo performance in the documentary was fantastic, and I was really looking forward to hearing this on record, but it turned out to be one of my greatest disappointments.
    
11. Reservations - A really beautiful song, but there's too much empty space, and it stretches on for far too long. Not a bad closing, but it's not particularly memorable either.

I downloaded the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos that have been floating around the internet, and they're pretty quality. I would've loved to see well-written tracks like Magazine Called Sunset or Not For The Season take the place of dredge like Ashes Of American Flags. Seek out the demos if you like this album at all.

Seek out these links as well:

• "The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times. They had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives."
• The current state of baseball cards. This is particularly interesting to me, as I have thousands of basketball cards lying around at home. I'd hoped that they'd appreciate in value, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. If anyone's interested, my two most valuable cards are a Shaquille O'Neal rookie ToppsBlackGold card, and a misprinted Jason Kidd card where the front is just all black.
• The current state of country music. Undoubtedly the best part of this article is the GZA's sheepish admission to liking country. The GZA remains one of the coolest humans alive.
  
• Screenshots of major internet sites 10 years ago. Pepsi's completely blows my mind.
• If you're traveling and need a quick power outlet, try this handy Airport Outlet Wiki, still a work-in-progress.
• Devendra Banhart continues to give the best interviews. This old list is even better.
• If you're getting too good at hitting snooze on your alarm clock, you need this gadget.
• Amazing pool trick.
• How do you build a road connecting two countries that drive on opposite sides of the road?
  
• What kind of social constructs and/or genetic traits lead to a life of crime?
• The Israeli Air Force is quite accurate, it seems.
  
• Ridiculous glitch in MLB 2k6 where an outfielder saves a home run from going over the Green Monster in Fenway. Wut. It's mesmerizing to watch, really.
  

Sweatin' the Oldies

As the rock director of WSRN, people always seem to assume that I know all that there is to know about rock and roll music, and that I've heard most of it too, or at least the quality stuff. While that's very flattering, it's quite far from the truth, which I'm a bit ashamed to admit. Let's hope I don't get impeached from the Board for this revelation.

I know next to nothing about classic rock. Before this year, I'm not sure if I'd ever heard a full Beatles album, from beginning-to-end. I have never heard an entire Bob Dylan album. I heard my first David Bowie album a few months ago. I have not heard a full album from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, or many of the other stone-cold classic bands of decades prior. This list could go on for quite a while. But before you burn me at the stake, or bind my feet in concrete and toss me into the East River, hear me out.



Of course I'm not too proud of this dubious distinction. How am I supposed to write a competent review of the new White Whale EP or any other contemporary work if I haven't heard any of the important bands that have inspired them? Aren't I missing out on a wealth of quality music that time itself has deemed to be Important and Transcendant and all that jazz? The importance and relevance of the classics cannot be understated, so why haven't I visited them sooner?

That's a relatively easy question to answer, and I think it has to do with my upbringing. As a young child, my parents exposed me only to the Classical tradition (which I regrettably have not taken up too well either), and I had no Cool Older Brother Or Sister to show me any rock music either. Hootie and the Blowfish were my favorite band on the radio in elementary school, which probably speaks volumes about my tastes at that point. The first time I'd even heard of The Beatles was when a coworker of my mom made me a double-sided mixtape (still the only actual mixtape I've ever received). And while I loved that mixtape to death, it remained the only exposure I had to them; there were no other records to peruse in the house, and no internet filesharing at the time either. Plus, Beatles albums were expensive, and I wanted to spend my precious allowance on Super Nintendo games and the new Hootie album anyways. So I became familiar with the hit singles, but none of the albums proper, and never gained any sort of perspective on their importance in rock history. So right off the bat, I got years behind all the kids who grew up with Mr. Tambourine Man or Ziggy Stardust, songs I wouldn't discover until almost two decades later in life. Isn't that incredibly sad and frightening.

And for some reason, I continued to ignore classic rock once I actually did have the capabilities, both financial and technological, of actually seeking it out. That's what I greatly regret, but I'm trying to make up for lost time. As we speak, I'm getting through Blonde on Blonde, which bored me to tears the first time I tried to listen, but is currently blowing my mind completely. How did I manage to completely miss this kind of stuff? On my lunch break today I went up into the WSRN studio and listened to Abbey Road on the original vinyl, which was awesome. I just discovered George Starostin's excellent website Only Solitaire, which I find to be incredibly well-written and unswayed by hype and reputation, so i'm using it as a sort of guide. How weird is that though, that the rock director has heard more songs by some no-name indie band Destroyer than by The Beatles and Bob Dylan combined. How have I not heard Abbey Road for so long? It seems completely wrong, so this is now a crusade to right that wrong.



I have to say though that sometimes new music just owns the old. Paid in Full still sucks so hard. I really don't get that one at all.

So there you go, that's my admission. Goodbye, all semblance of credibility. I feel both immensely relieved, and completely emasculated at the moment.


New links, better than the old links:

• Crazy Japanese people fill a house with a ridiculous domino sequence of household objects
• What it's like to fly first-class to the United Arab Emirates. Basically, you get a small room to yourself. It seems fairly cool, if by fairly you actually mean yes.
• No more cash money in Monopoly now, they've phased it out in favor of a debit card. The end of an era, truly.
  
• Really high-tech bags. For some reason this is tempting.
• I just discovered the Fremont Troll.
• Where will you click on a painting? See where others clicked as well. A lot cooler than I've made it sound. Speaking of clicking, this amazing kite brought the lols.
  
• Invention that makes it possible to draw on water. From the same site, I also found this underwater mailbox that is actually used on a regular basis.
  
• Giant nerd buries his bad-luck Dungeons & Dragons dice. This simply cannot be real. People like this cannot exist. This cannot have actually happened.
• Can't identify a cool bug you found? Try out this guide and this guide as well.
  
• Why do I always have news to report on North Korea? Because they continue to rule the world. Now they're becoming experts at counterfeit crafting, and in one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen on the internet, here's a few of their propaganda videos. I srsly cannot stop laughing.

Edit: My mom has reminded me that The Beatles happen to be my dad's favorite band. I do remember when I was a little kid watching Thomas the Tank Engine on tv, that my dad would constantly point out that Ringo Starr was the train conductor on the series, which in hindsight is completely hilarious. But in any case, I was just a young kid who was far more interested in the colorful talking trains than in the strange man my dad kept pointing out. I don't think I made the connection until some point in high school. The fact remains that even though my dad loves The Beatles, we didn't have any Beatles records in the house.



I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about the role of vinyl at WSRN. During organic chemistry lab last semester, Professor Paley and I were having a discussion regarding the rash of cd thefts that had occured recently and what could be done about it. We both wondered whether such thefts had occured before the age of cds, when the entire rock library was composed of vinyl. The concept of vinyl theft struck me as completely absurd, and within the past few days I've realized that it's because of another question I have.

Back in the vinyl age, did college students bring turntables with them to school? And does that mean that they carried their record collections along with them? Neither seems to occur these days. I only know three Swatties who brought turntables to school and two are legitimate DJs, and as for record collections everybody seems to have their music libraries in a digital format. Karina suggested that most students likely brought a radio with them, and kept their family's lone turntable at home, and that strikes me as being much more reasonable. It also seems to imply that listening habits have changed, as I don't sense that many of today's students listen to the radio outside of their cars, as the rise of iPods and digital music collections now enables people to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want, rather than having to cave in to the whims of the radio. I've really taken for granted the increasing portability of music; imagine simply having one turntable or one radio in your home, rather than the current network of computers with speakers, not to mention the iPod in the front pocket.

Banana Phone

The three Deer researchers in my lab decided to have a big Ecology lab dinner last night as a final get-together, and we invited Professor Machado, our fearless leader, along to join us. On the surface, this seemed like a brilliant idea, as all of us have grown quite close over the course of the summer, and Prof. Machado is basically one of the coolest human beings alive, so it was destined to be an amazing dinner.

Our Fearless Leader, replete with the coffee thermos that probably doesn't leave a 2 foot radius around him.

But the more I thought about it, the more doubts I had. Firstly, I hadn't heard the greatest things about our apparent restaurant of choice, Peace A Pizza, and hoped this wouldn't make a bad impression on our guest of honor, who'd never been. Secondly, I'd never invitied a professor out for dinner before, and was worried that long, awkward pauses in conversation would form, or the professor would get shunted out completely by the college kids gossiping about dormitory going-ons. And third, we'd decided that we wanted to buy Prof. Machado a token of our appreciation for his guidance and kindness, so we went to Home Depot and bought him...a banana plant. Wut. It was one of the more surreal experiences in my life, ranking up there with the Garden Ruins discovery: five college kids going to Home Depot to purchase a banana for their beloved professor. I hadn't the faintest clue of how he'd react to a banana plant, there was simply no precedent whatsoever.



Fortunately, deep analysis was trumped by superficial impressions, and we had a fantastically fun dinner where we basically made fun of each other for three hours over some really excellent pizza, culminating in the hysterical presentation of the banana. The fact that Prof. Machado could hang with us for that long is testament to just how amazingly cool he is. Probably the coolest professor of all time, rivaled only by Shimamoto who loses out because he teaches multi-variable calculus and is probably less cool in person than in class.



Actually I had nothing to talk about, this was just a puff piece. I'm waiting till today's Tour de France time trail and fantasy football draft to have anything substantive to say.

Links then:

• Inspired by the World Cup, there's now some American interest in following the English Premier League, so here's a humorous primer from Bill Simmons, and another good take here as well.
• In more football news, some CFL team just won the game on a last-second 100-yd touchdown pass. Video included.
• Get all of your running gear in one little nifty package.
• Wind-powered bike light, which is pretty brilliant, not sure why this wasn't made sooner.
• Equally brilliant but far less practical for me personally, you can now take a shower and get a tan at the same time.
• Also brilliant, and with no intended practical purpose at all, a toilet aquarium for your fish.
• New theory sez an evolutionary arms race occured between humans and snakes.
  
• Umberto Eco writes on the possibility of a hollow earth.
  

Let's Call it a Comeback

Seven years of domination by Lance Armstrong was certainly fun, but the drama of this year's Tour de France makes everything so much more exciting to watch. Yesterday, everyone had written off Floyd Landis' chances at a podium finish. Yet today, he managed to tear apart the stage and somehow made up all of the time he lost in yesterday's collapse. Now, everything will be decided by Saturday's time trail, and even then we might still see a sprint for podium spots in Paris, which I don't think has happened in almost twenty years. Landis has to get major props for an outstanding ride today; everyone thought he'd been psychologically crushed, but he's stormed back into a fantastic position. What Landis accomplished today was simply phenomenal.

"It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in 20 years of cycling... Can you think of a comparable performance? This will go down as one of the greatest rides in the history of the Tour."

"Floyd Landis' Stage 17 ride on Thursday was the most amazing ride I have ever seen in my life and will go down as one of the best rides of all time..."

Let's call it a comeback.



Slow links:

• Musician in Beirut improvises minimalist piece to the sound of Israeli bombs. Really moving. How do people sleep through wars? Do people sleep through wars? And in related news, here's the Hezbollah's official website.
  
• Cartogram illustrating the location of liberal voters in the 2004 presidential election. It's interesting to note that in most cases 'blue states' do not exist, but rather blue voters are centered on metropolitan areas.
• Old picture book illustrated entirely with actual bird feathers.
• List of underground US bases. I'm especially intrigued by the tunnels under NYC that connect to the Capitol building in Washington.
  

Bonk

I'm of the opinion that the winner of today's stage in the Tour de France, Mr. Michael Rasmussen of Denmark, looks like a starving Ethiopian child, except he's white. Evidence:



Srsly, as Mr. Porcaro stated, "Someone needs to feed him."

All joking aside, today's stage from Bourg d'Oisans to La Toussuire epitomizes what I love about the Tour de France, and I wish I could've seen more of it. You have an early breakaway led by Rasmussen trying to hold off the peloton over hundreds of kilometers of roads. You have a dangerous rider such as Levi Leipheimer storming out of the main pack on a crucial climb, and coming agonizingly close to turning the standings upside-down. And of course there is the final climb at the end of a already-murderous day of climbing, where the truly great riders emerge and where others simply fall apart.

I've never been a big fan of Floyd Landis, he doesn't seem to respect the maillot jaune, and I always took his short post-race remarks to be a sign of arrogance and condescension, and not of humility. Obviously I don't know him personally, so all of those attributes could certainly be off the mark, but any preconceived notions I had of his character were out the window this afternoon, and you could feel nothing but sympathy for a man who was so close to winning the entire Tour, only to crumble on the final climb of the most crucial stage of the Tour thus far, essentially killing all of his hopes and dreams of wearing yellow in Paris. Landis was completely shattered.



That emotion is one of the primary reasons I watch the Tour. The only other comparable sporting event I can imagine is the World Cup. In no other sporting realm have I ever witnessed such agony and such joy, so up-close and personal, on such a consistent daily basis. These guys wear their hearts on their sleeves every single day, and you can witness their pain and suffering on every single pedal of their bikes, and you feel as if you're climbing that mountain right there with them. That personal drama, along with the beauty of a flowing peloton and the excitement of the breakaway, have made me a true fan of the Tour de France. Vive le Tour.


Links, links, links:

• Tomorrow, remember to jump! There's no way this will work.
• Two of the tallest flagpoles in the world, as seen from space.
• North Korea's official news agency. Still the best country ever.
• China has scale models of regional geography, for military excercises. Simply amazing. I'd love to fly through these in person.
• Some believe that the current Israeli-Lebanese conflict is a sign of the second coming of Christ. I mean, it's possible, I guess, haha.
  
• A liquid clock
• An interesting building complex in Istanbul, called Kanyon
• Find out the popularity of your name over time. My name peaked at #24 in the 1940s, and has dropped sharply since then, and currently ranks #417.
• And finally, photos of various world leaders when they were young. I can't even begin to describe how hilarious this is. Just look at the second photo of Blair.
  

So many lols.




We also have an epilogue to yesterday's photoshopping quest. Mr. Porcaro was bored and felt the need to go even further.





And Mr. Behrend has one more contribution to the cause:



Completely speechless.

...


...


Yeah.

For Great Justice, Pt. II

At some point in mid-2005, I don't remember the exact time, my friend Mr. Porcaro and I decided to photoshop our good friend Mr. Catchings onto various indie rock album covers. Hilarity ensued. Mr. Behrend later contributed one final album cover, which has unfortunately been lost in our unorganized archives. However, all of the remaining photoshops were saved, to be treasured forever into time immemorial.

But lo and behold, inspiration struck again this evening, and Messrs Behrend, Porcaro, and I collaborated once more for another series of Catchings photoshoppings. The results follow.

Mr. Behrend:

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers

Bjork - Medulla

Deerhoof - Milk Man



Mr. Shaw:

Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs

The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely (this has enormous animated gif potential)

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins

Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock

Basement Jaxx - Rooty


Mr. Porcaro:

Jay-Z - The Black Album

Barenaked Ladies - Stunt

New Kids on the Block - No More Games
The skeleton pants are part of the original album cover, and are not connected with Mr. Catchings in real life in any way. They are just a completely inexplicable aspect of the album. Mr. Catchings is, however, responsible for the elf hostage.


There is a possibility of more products arriving shortly. Stay tuned.



In the meantime, links?

• The top albums of 2006 so far, as compiled from various sources in the blogosphere. Not a terribly exciting list in my opinion, but seeing such consensus is interesting.
• Buy some clothes made of bamboo, reportedly extremely soft, and antibacterial, antifungal, etc etc.
• Creepy stalking in today's comics.
• Use Google Earth to spy on sensitive North Korean military installations, in high resolution. Still the best country ever.
• The Manipur Bush-Quail has been rediscovered!
  
• Make your own low-cost and efficient planners from scratch. Almost makes me want to get organized.
• If you really want to know my views on the tragic Israeli-Lebanese conflict, this sums up my views pretty well, specifically the Israeli response to the proportionality argument.
  
• Bush gettin gangsta yo.

And in birding news, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been quite active on campus recently. I saw three individuals in front of Sharples yesterday, including fantastic looks at a perched female, and this morning I heard one flying by while working in the Wister's Beech site, plot 1. I'm still surprised that I don't encounter them more often, considering the vast numbers of flowers on campus.

No Spinach For You

I've heard many things about Popeye's, both good things and bad things. I've heard stories of chicken destroying digestive systems, and chicken completely transcending the realm of fast food chicken. And everything they have is somewhat spicy, which immediately perked my interest. So Barry and I headed out on a pilgrimage to the nearest Popeye's last week, to dig up the real truth.

Barry is a bit averse to spice, so we ordered mild chicken, along with a side of mashed potatoes and some biscuits. Stunningly, Barry has never had coleslaw before in his entire life, which knocked my socks off. But we decided to play it safe, and ended up finding out that even the mashed potatoes and biscuits were slightly spicy, and amazing.

Meanwhile, the chicken was extremely mild, to the point where even the biscuits were spicier. It was also very greasy and very salty; I really wasn't bowled over by it. But I vowed to return at some future date to sample their spicy chicken, which I hoped would come close to the style of the inimitable and immortal Bojangle's of home.

Turns out, the return trip was made this past weekend, and I strolled up to the counter and ordered the spicy chicken, and some cajun rice, probably to make further Bojangle's comparisons, as their dirty rice was my absolute favorite dish as a child. Somehow, it ranked higher than pizza, ice cream, hamburgers, or any of those other childhood favorites. Combined.

The cajun rice was quite good, but surprisingly it was still outstripped by the spicy biscuits and mashed potatoes. But not too bad at all. The chicken, meanwhile, was still salty and mild; I'm pretty sure they got the wrong kind of chicken for me, but by the time I found out I was already far far away, in the magical realm of Mary Lyons.

So in terms of spiciness, Popeye's ranks its dishes as follows:
Mashed potatoes > Biscuits > Cajun rice > Chicken
Whereas at Bojangle's, the ranking is:
Chicken > Cajun rice > Mashed potatoes = Biscuits
Nearly the exact opposite. Funny how the two are supposed to be compared then.

Overall? I'll give Popeye's a B thus far, though that grade will not be final until I have some truly spicy chicken. I find it amusing that I'm applying such culinary criticism to a fast food joint like Popeye's, because I'm not even sure how I would go about giving grades to my fast food mainstays such as McDonald's or Burger King. All I know is that Bojangle's still gets an A+++. All you yankees and left-coast denizens just don't know what you're missing. Oh man, just thinking of Bojangle's makes images of sweet iced tea and dirty rice dance in the air above my laptop's keyboard.




A lot of links comin' at ya:

• See if you have what it takes to dodge a bullet shot from various distances. I'm averaging around 0.2 second responses per shot fired.
• I hope this gets made into some sort of infinite movie loop: the Great Lakes within the Great Lakes.
• While you're using Google Maps or Google Earth, play a game of Battleship.
• Another use for Google Earth is to find out the striking range of Hezbollah's missiles. Not shown is the striking range of Israel, which I believe to be more more extensive than that of the Hezbollah.
• Atlas Shrugged to be made into a movie. Wut.
• Analysis of art in North Korea.
• Assorted highlights of the World Cup, and an impressive diagram of the passing in the final match.
• I'm a big fan of the current fad of personal submarine purchasing, though these ridable robots are quite slick as well.
• Put your iPod through the washing machine cycle in order to increase its storage space to 2 freaking terabytes.
• I'm consistently amused by virtuoso guitarists who don't actually play music, but have legions of fans who aspire to be as soul-less but technically brilliant as their idols. If you fall into that category, maybe you should get this guitar strap and guitar pick.
• If you are a scientist, a mathematician, intellectually curious, or intellectually vain (I love the differences between those last two categories, I found them in an intellectually vain moment from Borges' Collected Non-fictions), you may be interested in this summary of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. I'll admit that I don't have the guts to touch this.
• The infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper has now been identified, probably.
• And finally, I'm going to save the best for last. Here's 18 tricks to teach your body, and they inexplicably work. One of the coolest articles I've ever found on the internet.
  

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Saw the original, extended 1976 version of the classic Cassavetes film The Killing of a Chinese Bookie last night. It blew me away completely.



While I was watching the film, I noted that really, there's no plot whatsoever except for the titular killing, which only takes up about 20 minutes or so in the middle of the film. The rest of the film is just empty dialogue to build character, or to settle things towards the end. And the dialogue really is empty. There's a completely random anecdote about girls eating gopher tails, for example (srsly, wtf). This is no Waking Life, where every line of speech builds towards some Greater Artistic Truth, and it's not even like the esteemed Chinatown where seemingly every other line is some sort of sarcastic gangster comeback. And when it comes to portraying everyday life, at least the block residents of Do the Right Thing play off each other and have genuine dialogue. Life in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie takes place in the business world, where people use speech to give orders or status updates, and nothing more.

Yet despite the overall lack of plot or interesting dialogue, I was somehow absolutely engrossed in the film, and I realized that it had to be the direction of Cassavetes. The acting was fine, and the cinematography was quite good, but they couldn't hold up the film by themselves; somehow every aspect of the film just clicked together perfectly, making an extremely well-made movie, and that has to be the role of the director.

A few years ago (sorry, I don't have any sources on hand for this), a growing debate emerged out of Hollywood pitting the directors against the screenwriters, specifically regarding who should get the lion's share of praise in the credits, the press, and the awards ceremonies. Obviously the directors have the upper hand at this point, as you always see titles such as A STEVEN SPIELBERG FILM on posters and trailers, with the writers receiving little or no mention. The question was whether or not this bias towards directorship was indicative of the true balance of power within the making of a Hollywood film.

In the past months, I'd been leaning more towards the side of the writers, as films such as Chinatown, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind blew me away with taut and inventive scripts that probably could've been made into brilliant films by any competent director. If a script is written, and actors interpret their roles based on said script and perform in front of the cameras, where exactly is the role of the director? In my mind, probably due to my lack of experience in the realm of theater, I saw them only as weak consultants pacing on the sidestages, occasionally giving advice regarding role interpretations, camera shots, and movement about the set, but nothing major. I felt that a good script could inspire brilliant performances from the actors, and render the director obsolete.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie changed my mind on this debate completely. It's really quite an uninteresting script, yet Cassavetes is able to transform it into a beautiful, landmark film in cinematic history. Other than that bizarre gopher story, I'm really not sure if I can recall a single line of dialogue from the entire film, and the same is even somewhat true of the camera shots or the acting. Yet somehow, the film as a whole created an indelible impression on my mind.



Looking back on my film collection, I notice that there a few other films I love that have with relatively weak scripts that are saved by brilliant direction, such as Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking Breathless, and my favorite film 8 1/2 somehow makes this cut as well. I can't believe it at all, but really the script for 8 1/2 really isn't too great either; it's quite messy and unorganized in fact, when I look back.

And when I spoke of the great scripts of Charlie Kaufman and Robert Towne earlier, I seemingly overlooked the fact that Chinatown was directed by the unbelievable Roman Polanski, responsible for another weak-script-turned-amazing-film Knife in the Water. That movie takes place almost entirely on a small boat, with two men staring each other down, you can't get more spartan (and awesome) than that. Kaufman's two films have been directed by relative newcomers with little previous or subsequent directing experience, so I can't make any complete judgements on their directorial abilities, though both Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have shown amazing skills in the music video world. I now have to say that perhaps I overestimated the writers and underestimated the directors. Certainly writers still play a crucial role, but I have to give the directors their credit where credit is due. Thank you Mr. Cassavetes for your beautiful film, I really hope to see more of your work in the future. Rest in peace.



Links:

• Thomas Pynchon has a new book available for pre-order, scheduled for arrival on December 5th. I'm floored. Interestingly, Thomas Pynchon provided a synopsis for it, but I now notice that Amazon has taken it down! Doesn't matter, I want the book. [Edit: synopsis now posted below links]
  
• A thief in Germany steals the judges' keys.
• "I still don't understand what I'm being charged for and who is charging me," he said. Kent Hovind, who often calls himself "Dr. Dino," has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.
• A letter from inside Beirut.
• WHERE MY SHIPS AT?! The two cyclones in the Pacific completely make this for me. The Great Lakes, too. [Edit: suddenly, there's only one cyclone! And check out all the ships above the Arctic Circle, and around Antarctica. What a great site.]
  
• And finally, the top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs.

Edit: Here is what Pynchon initially wrote on the Amazon preorder page, taken down for unknown reasons. Perhaps it's not authentic? It sounds authentic enough:

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

Off the Tracks

After a miraculously productive morning in the field with with Karina, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon driving Marissa to the Delaware Museum of Natural History, to look at some dead birds, and hopefully bring home a dead baby owl. We considered the possibilities of either letting it perch on the dashboard, tying it onto the roof, or letting it roll around in the trunk. In retrospect, what a bizarre reason for a road trip. I'm not sure what single aspect of it could be considered normal.

In any case, turns out no owl was received, the transaction was delayed in order to hammer out further details. But on the way back, we decided to take Smiths Bridge Rd back to the Wilmington Pike, and oh man, what a road. I will attempt to sum things up with the following formula:


Smiths Bridge Rd =



+



And there was even a covered bridge over the Brandywine Creek. In other words, it was just about the greatest road of all-time. Top 5, at least. I had a lot of fun driving on it, and I'm semi-seriously considering making the hour-long one-way trip out to drive it again. The car 10 ft in front of us would consistently drop out of view completely, and suddenly the ground below us would disappear into the abyss, while cornfields camly rolled on to the side. Absolutely perfect geography for the Dukes of Hazzard, if they suddenly became yankees.


Let's hit the links:

• The US Naval Observatory has high-resolution scans of ancient books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Very cool constellation interpretations abound. However, I have to admit that the Sumatran Ground-Cuckoo still rules my wallpaper.
• Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame considers the psychological damage he must have caused to his vanquished opponents. Outstanding, one of my personal heroes for sure.
• West African Black Rhino, R.I.P.
• Machu Picchu on Google Maps satellite-view. I really like that road, it certainly has Smiths Bridge Rd potential, but with longer length.
• Lightning strikes around a rainbow in Arkansas.
• And finally, some pranksters turn their friend's room upside-down. This is just completely beyond my realm of comprehension. End blog.
  

Captain Crunch; The Beacon of Hope

I was beginning to suspect that everything Trader Joe's touched turned to pure gold, in other words I was beginning to become one of those frighteningly cultish Trader Joe's fans who seem to shop there everyday, and have started their own blogs dedicated solely to Trader Joe's products and openings. Fortunately, I will not be heading down that road, as I've discovered that this Mango & Apricot Yogurt O's Cereal is not one of the more delicious things I've ever tasted, and in fact ranks fairly close to the bottom.

I'm now intrigued by the silo-shaped Swiss Farm Stores that seem to populate the area, and how good their breakfast is, and will explore that possibility at some future time. Looking at their official webpage, which is basically one long flash cartoon with very little actual information, this has tremendous upside potential.


Today's links:

• How have I completely missed this? Amazing blog which analyzes Garfield comics, similar to the still-hilarious Goosebumps blog
• Starving African children use a merry-go-round to pump water. Absolutely brilliant.
• Boeing's redesigned 747, due to hit the runways around 2008, has these incredible curved wings that supposedly make it more aerodynamic and environmentally friendly. I'm all for that.
• New billboard in Chicago uses the sun to tell you what to eat at McDonald's. Possibly the best billboard ever.
• Google Maps sez Malta is underwater.
• Manhattan will turn into Stonehenge today.
  
• I'm really saddened to see that Jon Brion's tendinitis has forced him to cancel all of his Friday-night Largo shows indefinitely, and that he's unavailable to do anything for the foreseeable future. I was really really hoping to see him live at some point.
• And finally, the rare Sumatran Ground-Cuckoo, which has had no confirmed sightings since 1916 and was largely considered extinct, has been photographed by scientists orginally seeking Sumatran tigers. This is the best news I've heard since the Ivory-billed Woodpecker discovery, though I'm now beginning to question the accuracy of the latter. I'm beginning to get tears in my eyes from this beautiful Ground-Cuckoo photo. I'm going to make it my laptop's wallpaper now.

Another photo: