Entries from March 2008 ↓

MF DOOM - MM..FOOD?

Another album I don’t want to go on and on about. I tried to get a friend excited about this once, and as I explained that all of the topics were brought back to food metaphors, he was like “oh, I get it.” But you don’t get it. I can tell you that MF DOOM jumps from topic to topic, using food jokes and metaphors as a central theme in his writing, and you can’t possibly think it’s as well done as it is. It’s not what it’s about, but how it’s about it. This is phenomenally smart, wickedly funny, and fairly adventurous. Even if you need to be sold a little bit on rap, this is exactly how people go from being innocent bystanders of hip-hop to full-blown fans.

amazon | mp3s
torrent

(ADAM has just helped me buy something at Best Buy.)

ME: Thanks for your help. You’re a good little friend.
ADAM: Don’t call me that.
ME: Well, you are. You’re my best little boy.
ADAM: You can call me the best big little boy.
ME: Okay.

Talking Heads - Little Creatures

I didn’t really “get” Talking Heads until I was probably 14. Some of their earlier, artier stuff was in the record collection at home, but I never sought it out. That seems odd, now, because they’re super-consistent and their old stuff is brilliant, but it might be a little adult.

We wore this tape out in my mom’s car over a few summers. I’ve probably got an emotional attachment to it for that reason, but if I’m wrong and you don’t like this, you’re saying no to nine really top-notch, tight pop songs. I could go on and on, but that’s not what we’re here for.

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The Onion nailed it today, as usual:

“How embarrassing. I hope the media doesn’t make too big a deal out of this story of big money, unbridled power, and hot sex.”

The media have been unusually irresponsible here, though. The stories for two days said that Spitzer “is involved with“, “has been linked to“, or “is tied to” a “prostitution ring”, which carry connotations much larger than if they’d simply said he “was a customer of” what appears to be standard prostitution.

Second, I’ve only seen it mentioned a couple places, but this angle really warrants a follow-up:

But here is where it gets odd. The wire tap goes live toward the beginning of January. They listen in to numerous conversations between clients and the escort service owners/operators all through January and early February.

Judging from the affidavit, they obviously have more than enough to bust all four employees and numerous johns. But they don’t.

They sit on the wire until February 11, when Eliot Spitzer contacts the service. Importantly, the investigators would have known that Spitzer was a repeat user. So, if they bring charges in early February, they get the brothel owners, but they don’t get the big prize - the moralizing Governor of New York state.

Were they waiting for him? I don’t know. But look at the timing: Spitzer has his liason with the prostitute on February 12, and suddenly, the Feds wrap up their investigation. They file charges just three weeks later. They had their evidence.

Nobody else was involved with this, huh? Just the governor? And he’s the only high-profile client of an obscenely expensive call-girl service? The rest were all garden-variety nobodies? OK.

Third, it’s sad to see the media fall all over the woman named in the initial paperwork. I’m not saying she’s not part of the story, but when you’ve got someone using the services of prostitutes for months or years, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t exclusively with one woman. Her part of the story is the prurient part, so the lurid bits are getting too much attention. Apparently she changed her MySpace page over the past three days. Really? Wouldn’t you?

The final thing that the media are dropping the ball on is the discussion about prostitution itself. I’ve heard arguments on both sides - that this is really a personal matter (and Spitzer is himself a victim) and that this is a great time to start talking about how prostitution needs to be made more illegal, since obviously what we’re doing is no deterrent. On one hand, it’s totally worth pointing out that the potential blackmail threat against the governor of New York is indescribably potent. It doesn’t need to be illegal to be terribly embarrassing, and history is full of not-terrible men who did terrible things for terrible people to keep embarrassing news from breaking. At the same time, most of the arguments given for the criminalization of prostitution center around a lot of harms that only happen because prostitution is illegal. (Prostitution wouldn’t be linked to the illegal drug trade if it were legal. Women could get protection from an abusive work environment if they could, for example, call the police without fear of getting arrested themselves. It’s much more likely to stay dangerous as long as it stays underground.) I’m not saying that the legalization argument is a great one, but it should be fairly represented if it’s represented at all, and as I pointed out at the beginning of the paragraph, it’s not really material.

Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master

Catchy title, huh? This is my favorite record of 2008 so far. I first came across these guys a few years back on MTV with “High Voltage“, and then was reminded of their existence again when TMBG’s John Linnell put “Gay Bar” on an iTunes Celebrity Playlist (really!). Another track from their last record ended up on one of my MP3 blogs, but then “Dance Pattern” and “Fabulous People” showed up on a couple more MP3 blogs and I had to check this out. I’m glad I did - I’m finding myself pretty comfortable with things people call “electro-pop” and “dance rock”, and this is in there somewhere.

The sense of humor is sort of obnoxious - I can imagine why you might dislike them. But I can think of a lot of reasons why you might really like them: the zesty chord selections in “Lucifer Airlines”, the momentum built up during “White Train”, and the frantic energy of “Down at McDonnelzzz”.

amazon | mp3s
torrent

You know what’s a lot of work? Putting together a podcast. Jeez. Think about it. Easier than that: linking to some Amazon MP3s or a torrent and letting you people know what I like to listen to while I code away at work, or play video games at night.

If I worked at a record store, I would treat recommendations as the most important part of my job. That little CD stand, the 3×5 card of explanatory text - if it gets you thinking about what I like, then that’s awesome.

I’m going to try to post something every week - maybe impossible, but I’ve basically given up internet poker and I’m coming off four weeks where I’ve worked a ton of overtime. I am presently highly motivated to do this, but we’ll see.

Oh, if you want to recommend music to me, get a blog. It isn’t hard.

Behave yourselves around the torrent links. The first post goes up soon.

Aren’t test posts fun? I like them.

This is testing out dynamic text replace, a new plug-in on my wordpress system (officially available here).

It does stuff. It’s complicated. Enjoy the new Electric Six record. I worry about telling you guys about that, since they’re kind of irritating, but they’re funny and absurd.

I was reading something about SXSW (pet peeve: when “news” sites cover parties, festivals, concerts… you went out. That’s not news), and it turns out that there’s a SXSW meebo room.

So what’s a meebo room? (First off, what’s meebo? It’s a chat client that runs in your web browser, so you can check your MSN / AOL / ICQ / what-have-you. I am registered there but I have not used it a ton.) A meebo room is a group chat, with a media window. Any youtube link pasted into the conversation queues up in the media player and people can check it.

Are you already thinking what I’m thinking? Schedule an hour for you and your friends to get together, and start pasting youtube links in, and it’s like a virtual MP3 tennis with videos. Yes? No?

I’m actually not positive this would work right. For it to really match up with my vision, it has to run the same videos at the same time for everyone. (It looks like every user can start / stop the group media whenever they want.) It’s not fair if you’re watching your own videos (Counting Crows, let’s say) instead of being subjected to what I want you to watch (even if it’s Ween).

And it’s almost a complete waste for people in the same room as each other - they’d all need their own laptops to queue stuff up. Maybe we need some kind of youtube queueing app that users, in the same room or not, can add to a playlist. (Cratchit and I - mostly Cratchit - worked on an idea like this for MP3s a way, way long time ago.)

This is just a test of TextMate. Wordpress added support for tagging, so I don’t need any tag-related plugins anymore, but I had made some changes to TM to accommodate things of that nature, so this will probably fail. Or just not work. Who knows.

Hey, it worked. Can I get tags to work? Why, I can.