It’s that time again. The State Of The Union drinking game. ~

It’s our new trademark, S and I: We seem to find ourselves in weird places doing off-kilter activities and loving every minute of it. With someone who is willing to look past the irony and obvious kitschy overtones things like flea markets and over-the-top bowling alleys can be as wonderful as any place you can think of. And those are just two places in which we found ourselves laughing and goofing off on this meeting in Kentucky.
It also makes me realize that finding all those dangerously hip flea markets for my favorite TV show is probably a really hellacious full time job, and isn’t as easy as pointing the car at the nearest 60 foot sign emblazened with the words “MOST AWESOME FLEA MARKET EVER. SERIOUSLY. TURN RIGHT YOKEL.” The one we visited had a vibe reminiscent of a dollar store throwing up into an airplane hangar, but with puppy adoption thrown in for good measure. (I suppose some of the more enterprising locals see this as the sale of both companionship *and* livestock; imagine the space savings!) It also helped us to understand that, given enough time, anything can be made camouflage and/or orange.
Louisville itself however, weighing in at approximate Raleigh/Durham size, is not altogether bad. Just off Muhammad Ali Blvd. is Fourth Street Live, a sort of outdoor atrium built under the canopy of some of the taller buildings in downtown. With lots of shopping and food, including a British pub and the aforementioned over the top bowling alley, there’s something for every sort of bored out of towner.
In other (but related) news I am a bad bowler, and slightly competitive. ~

God bless you, Robert Pollard and your band of renown! (Good night…)

James Frey will be on Oprah today and Gawker has someone live-blogging the taping. She goes at him pretty hard, too, which he richly deserves. Good thing we had someone live-blogging at the Oprah taping. (Note to the author: You were live-blogging at the Oprah taping?! WTF?!)

Thursday Tunes:
Mushaboom (Demo) - Feist
Plan of the Man - The M’s

I recently acquired the new Feist record. For the uninitiated Feist is actually Leslie Feist from Broken Social Scene, Kings of Convenience and others.
Her solo album is absolutely, positively gorgeous.
I love a record that can start in one place and end up somewhere else entirely, all without seeming contrived when you get there. The track I keep coming back to is “One Evening”, a track so authentically inflecting Ricki Lee Jones and the smooth feel of 1970s singer-songwriters that I spent 20 minutes trying to make sure it wasn’t a cover. Beautiful. No one loves that stuff more than me. Another wonderful thing about Feist is her absolute fearlessness; she has no problem with making aongs that are aesthetically pleasing and yet carry great emotional weight. No one really does this anymore. As a group I think a lot of songwriters have decided that you get one or the other; I’ll either be important and discordant or pretty and mindless. Dumb.
Someone might find another way to marry seriousness and beauty, but it won’t be like this. This is four out of five, easily.

Your listening is requested required

Here, for my enjoyment if no one else’s, is a list of the top 3 artists that will be forced down your throat in 2006. There will be nothing you can do about this. They will be everywhere. And long after you’ve stopped caring they will be all over commercials for the things that your demographic buys. Here we go.

3) Cat Power - Ok hipsters, here’s how this one works. You talk shit about Fiona Apple for years and then Chan Marshall makes a record where she spends 13 tracks trying to sound just like her. You will buy the record in droves. I will hang onto my bootleg of the version of “Extraordinary Machine” that Fiona didn’t let that hiphop asshat ruin.

2) Jenny Lewis - Not content to cure insomnia with Rilo Kiley only, Lewis has a solo record out. Expect to see her in an article in Time or Architecture Digest now that she has “broken”.

1) Belle & Sebastian - Someday we’ll collectively realize that Belle & Sebastian only had one Boy With The Arab Strap in them. Until then, there’s always Nissan commercials.

Google to censor Chinese search results. I was in a strategy meeting just today talking about how much I admire Google for their firm stand on free speech for the internet at large, and not just the US. Let’s hope they come to their senses.

Disney to buy Pixar for $7.4 billion. Disney 2004: “We don’t need you anyway.” Disney 2006: “Hey, can you call us back? We’d love to talk…”

I’ve been messing about with Movable Type 3.2 a lot today, courtesy of a free upgrade performed by these nice folks. I’ve had a bear of a time getting some features to work though, but not because of the MT upgrade. StyleCatcher just does not work as advertised, plain and simple. But the new icons and swanky new interface are welcome changes from the boring old days of 3.15.

The 50 most loathesome people in the US. My favorite is the sentence for Paris Hilton’s crimes against humanity:

“[to be]Locked in a room with a high steel ceiling which lowers a centimeter per hour, until she either solves a Rubik’s cube or is crushed; whichever comes first.”

This is how our “allies” do it down on the Gaza strip.

This essay says a lot of interesting things, and they’re all sort of nested inside one another. I think it’s more than a bit Christian, too. But it’s a good read and worth dissecting.

I’ve read a lot of different theories about this, but I find that my meditation gets a bit more rapidly to the core if it’s accompanied by music. This is not something you put a stopwatch on, but I usually find that I’ve been at if for about 20 minutes when I stop and look up. With music I estimate that I get to the kind of place I want to be–the one where it feels like I’ve been on vacation for two weeks–in about half that time when I’m listening to music. And right now nothing works the charm that Sigur Ros does. Their new album, Takk, is phenominal and majestic and by the middle of the third track on a good day I have no idea I’m listening to them anymore.

Thursday Tunes:
m83 - “don’t save us from the flames”
pretty girls make graves - “The Nocturnal House” (TBR April 2006)

Apparently all the noise about the Apple/Postal Service commercial ripoff was for naught. It’s the same directors. No one said anything because SubPop didn’t even know until recently.

In 1975 Russian engineers sent Venera 9 to Venus. Once there it transmitted telemetry data for 52 minutes before failing in the harsh environment.

InsideOut is a project to put cameras in the hands of migrant workers in Singapore. (via designobserver)

My favorite book when I was five, now in crappy HTML slideshow mode. My mom used to read it in Grover’s voice. Parents always get mad props for reading in character.

Everyone keeps raving about We Are Scientists. I picked up their record and I have to say that it succeeded only in making me feel old and incapable of “getting” whatever it is they’re trying to do. I love the dance punk revolution just as much as the next person, but I swear I heard these guys on The Real World once. Ick. In my humble estimation an appearance on that show is not the cred builder it once was. Anyway.
Bob Pollard’s new album should be a work of genius, as usual, and I’m set to see him here on the 27th. That should more than make up for the middlebrow scenestering of We Are Scientists.
I should also mention the new m83 record, which is pretty excellent and has something for anyone who loves this “new shoegazer” stuff coming out right now. The production is even tricked out to sound a little like vinyl.

Give it up, turn it loose

For a few weeks now I’ve been brainstorming a new way to organize all the online assets I’ve acquired. I use Flickr, del.icio.us and digg. I also use backpack and basecamp. I love all of these things very much but there is a problem: it’s just too damn many websites. When I thought of how many places have just one portion of my stuff it made me want to make something better. Enter Longing.
Longing is a system for organizing all your stuff–bookmarks, wishlists items, pictures and more–in one place. I’m really excited about it and I need your help. If you’d like to beta test when the time comes, or you have some great suggestions about how such a system could make your life easier, please sign up! Longing will launch incrementally over the coming months but it can only be the best website of its kind with your suggestions, because it’s made with bloggers and other smart folks in mind. Let the Longing begin!

Remember segregation. When I arrived in Greensboro at the end of my train trip last week it was at the restored 1920’s train depot. Originally built by the Southern Railway Corp. and turned over to the city upon Southern’s dissolution. It had fallen into a state of severe disrepair in 40 years. It was essentially rebuilt a few years ago at a cost of millions. Almost every detail has been restored, including the hand painted map of the eastern seaboard rail lines and the chalk board for arrivals and departures. There are blank spaces on the walls here and there, though, and I asked my dad later on what had been in those spots. Dad had taken a lot of trains in his youth and remembered the depot’s former glory. I knew that answer before he said it. “Colored water fountains.”