this made a whole lot more sense when i was younger

Merry Christmas to you from me, Grace Jones' crazy dress, and the delicious sandwich I had for lunch today.

no you can't have a new favorite band (not yours)

Why aren't more people talking about New Young Pony Club?

The uninitiated should hypemachine (new verb):
Ice Cream
The Bomb

it's dangerous to go alone, take this quiz

Hey Underground Dragon, I scored an 80. I completely forgot about Anticipation until seeing that quiz. Wow.

By the way, give me your Wii code. I need someone to trade friend medals with in Metroid Prime*.

* To those not playing Metroid Prime, I am completely aware of how totally and entirely whack that sounds.

Intermittently Updated List of Songs I Never Need to Hear Again In My Life, For Real

Fatboy Slim - The Rockafeller Skank

the jet lag makes it even more hilarious

We flew home yesterday/last night (hello time zone craziness!), had an amazing trip, but I felt bad inside when I realized I had no idea what was north of Greece. Now I feel smart!

am i the only person who thought he said "i like puddles"?

We are officially entering the next phase of the internet meme, folks:


http://view.break.com/347523 - Watch more free videos

Intermittently Updated List of Songs I Never Need to Hear Again In My Life, For Real

Don McLean - American Pie

i actually don't know what to say

Two that came my way via Towleroad:

Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years.

Frozen Smoke will save the world.

dude, like wtf is up with china?

dude, like wtf is up with china?

Intermittently Updated List of Songs I Never Need to Hear Again In My Life, For Real

Rise - Public Image Ltd. (Otherwise known as "I may be wrong you may be right" repeated 20 million times by an annoying British guy)

So.... Sanjaya is kind of like the minus world in Super Mario Bros?

An Oxford professor proposes that it is 20% likely we are living within a computer simulation.

Things to learn from this article:
- Everyone probably has that Truman Show phobia to a certain degree
- It's nearly impossible to for us to think outside of our own "fishbowl" of sorts, and it's only recently become relatively easy for us to consider the possibility that extra-terrestrials could exist because 99.9% of our entertainment revolves around fictional situations in which extra-terrestrials exist
- Oxford professors probably smoke a lot more ganja than I had previously considered

remember "cotton eye joe"?

This is the best record review I've read in a while.

getting ahead in the lucrative field of artist management

A lot like checkers, but exactly like pool:



I can't begin to imagine what the rules of the game could possibly be. Origami instructions make more sense.

why don't they just call it "stand on stage so people can clap for you!"

Just like everything else I love, Japanese Human Tetris has been ripped-off and made completely lame. I present to you, Human Tetris, with easier shapes and more attractive contestants:



These people have the reflexes of.... something with really slow reflexes. Anyway, this will be the last you ever see me reference Human Tetris ever again. Now excuse me while I go cancel my flight to Japan, hide under my desk, and sulk. Anybody got any Morissey CDs?

By the way, what's the guy in the second team hiding here? Can I get a translation, yo?

so that's how they stay so thin

More fun Japanese gameshow stuff in case you have a case of the Mondays.


http://view.break.com/311278 - Watch more free videos

when i download music, it makes me dance

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this blog has once again proven to be its very own psychic friends network. Remember when I discussed that Freestyle digital archive organization? Well, it's here... in blog form!

still not as exciting as plinko

Sometimes I'm convinced I should move to Japan just for the game shows. Why on Earth doesn't the Game Show Network show this stuff?

still way better than the Go-Bots

New Transformers movie = kinda awesome and kinda really bad at the same time.

i'm losing control... i'm losing control

By the way, if you ran over to apple.com to check out Safari for Windows like I did, you might want to uninstall it for the time being.

it was kinda minimal, and kinda the best night ever

So, I ended up dragging my tired bum to Mayer and Boratto at Cielo. I'm pretty sure that the last time I enjoyed myself this much at a club, Clinton was our president and the Twin Towers were still standing. I left about three hours later than I set out to (that was three hours of looking at my watch and going "OK, just one more song and I'll go").

Highlights of the night:
- The opening DJs dropping better music than I've heard most top tier NYC favorites spinning for the past seven years
- Boratto spinning the prime cuts from his Chromophobia album, each new blip and thud eliciting roars from the crowd
- Mayer bopping around in front of his laptop (remember records?)
- A rather euphoric clubgoer informing me that I was actually the person that killed Laura Palmer
- Learning the Cielo economy:

- Watered Down Stoli Orange + Tonic = $10 plus $1 tip
- 12oz Amstel Light = $7 plus $1 tip
- 22oz Sapporo = $10 plus $1 tip
- 22oz Sapporo = bargain
- 2 x 22oz Sapporo = bloated on the dancefloor

-Mayer dropping the Carl Craig remix to Junior Boys "Like a Child" at 3 a.m.


Uh-oh point of the night:
- Getting into the cab after everything and realizing I was pretty darn tired after all

Also:
-The back of my head and my arm ended up in a picture on Resident Advisor (I really wasn't trying to make shadow puppets, really I wasn't)
- The New York Times liked it too
!

Intermittently Updated List of Songs I Never Need to Hear Again In My Life, For Real

Beastie Boys - No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn
Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right (To Party)

It will be so minimial that it will be hardly anything at all

Believe it or not, but despite the deep deep sorrow that I've been in since learning of Jerry Falwell's passing (what a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible loss!), I've been able to muster the strength to think about other things.

Like, should I go out dancing in a couple weeks?

Before you go "Yeah, wtf?" like you always do, keep in mind that I would need to go out dancing on a Thursday night.

In two weeks, Michael Mayer and Gui Boratto will be spinning together at Cielo. Michael Mayer is my current favorite DJ, and like, never spins in New York. Gui Boratto has just released one of the best albums of the year. Cielo is one of the few decent clubs left in the city. This will easily be one of the best nights out this year.

The thing is, if I go, I'll be really really tired the next day at work. And, I'll need to pull myself out of there kind early-ish if I am to be functional at all the next day. And, I'll be really really really tired. Like, really tired.

What do I do?

Oh..My...God...Happy Friday Y'all!!!

What I am about to link to is the greatest internet link of all time. Although it may not have been obvious before, the internet was invented for the sole purpose of distributing this link.

Listen to the audio on this page, which features an off duty police officer calling 911 because he is convinced that he and his wife are overdosing on marijuana. He tells the operator that they're dead, and then a couple minutes later asks for the score on the Redwings game, and then his mother in law stops by. I love this stuff.

Laundry Day Can Be Fun!

By the way, this is amazing, it actually works, and saves quite a bit of storage space:

How to Disappear Completely and Order a Grande Skim Latte

Nobody really cared that much when Paul McCartney signed to Starbucks' new record label. But now, rumors are going around that Radiohead may be signing with Starbucks as well. Before today, I could never have imagined running down to Starbucks to pick up a new Radiohead CD, but with the music business completely in the toilet and nothing in the foreseeable future to turn sales around, I have a feeling this may actually end up being one of the less bizarre music related stories this year.

The gym by work just replaced a bunch of their treadmills with Tread Climbers. What is a Tread Climber, you ask? Well, it's a cross between a treadmill and a stair climber, silly. And you know what? I tried one out, and after 20 seconds I was positive that I was going to have an embarassing, perhaps paralyzing incident if I stayed on it any longer. These things are insane, have made it even more difficult to get on a treadmill after work, and need to go away now. I hope a pack of wild baby elephants go on a rampage and destroy all of them so I can have my beloved treadmills back. That is all.

The Roxy closed for good Saturday night.

Although rumors of its eventual demise had been going around for years, like cockroaches and Cher, I always felt the Roxy would outlast everything. The many nights I spent there were a mixed bag, sometimes transcendent, sometimes downright awful, always memorable (if I was actually sober enough to do so). So, in saying goodbye to the Roxy, I'd like to take a stroll down memory lane.

Veronica - Someone to Hold (Johnny Vicious Remix) - Razor and Guido's remix to Kim English's "Unspeakable Joy" may have been a more obvious choice for the biggest Roxy anthem of all time, but it's really this gem from 1998 that should take the cake. Excessive peak hour hard house to the nth degree, over 12 minutes in length, going from vocal anthem, to a deafening helicopter build-up, to a serene flamenco ballad, this song was epic with a capital E.

Robbie Rivera - Feel This - I first went to the Roxy to check out Victor Calderone, whom rumor had was giving Danny Tenaglia a run for his money. It turned out Danny didn't really have all that much to be worried about, but Victor had certainly mastered seamlessly weaving a night of very, very dark and apocalyptic tribal, and I cannot think of a single set of his at the Roxy during which he did not drop this track at least once. Easily one of my favorite house tracks of all time, it is as timeless as it is influential.

Pete Heller - Big Love - It's fitting that the first YouTube video I found of Roxy's closing night was of Peter Rauhofer dropping this classic. Beyond the music and the dancing, Roxy's largest contribution to my life will always be the fact that I met my partner there on a chilly December night eight years ago. Pete Heller's "Big Love" always signalled that the night was truly about to begin, and my partner and I would always make a point of dancing to this one together, singing and staring deeply into each other's eyes amidst the lights and the beats.

This video is actually making me a litle verklempt today.

Medicare vs. Britney : Why a brainless Mouseketeer gets more ink than the federal budget

This little piece of news about a possible HIV vaccine was released yesterday, although, with the heartbreaking loss of the Pulitzer Prize winning Anna Nicole Smith and the horrifying trials and tribulations of the great philanthropist Britney Spears receiving such attention, it would be understandable if you never heard about this. Surely those stories are more worthy of attention anyway.

By the way, I never thought I'd say this, but go Bill Gates!

Just beating out the Transformers as the #1 movie that I'm hyped about despite being 99% sure I'll hate it is the just announced Milli Vanilli biopic! I mean, c'mon, are you psyched or what?

Remember how much the weather sucked last week? Well, I missed the whole thing!

There is never a better time to go to Los Angeles than when the northeast is about to be blanketed by snow and the general crapulence that snow brings, and while everyone was looking up to the sky pumping their fists with furious anger, i was crusing* down Sunset Drive with the windows down and listening to Indie 103.

As a New Yorker, I'm supposed to hate Los Angeles in general. I suppose I kinda sorta do, but the appeal of the place is definitely understandable:

- The weather is nice
- People are nice and let you turn into their lane
- The beach is nice
- Beverly Hills is nice

On the other hand, I got really sick of driving everywhere (I hadn't driven this much since I gave up my car 8 years ago) and missed the freedom that having to drive anywhere brings (you don't have to pay for parking, never have to ask "how much is gas here?", can get drunk). I'm also not completely jumping for joy for missing the snow storm, as loneliness is pornography and Discount-what'smybloggerpasswordagain?-Kid got stuck at the airport all day, the latter on his way to come see me! Oh, and the bars close at 2 a.m.

Other general observations:

- What's really amazing about being there is observing just how prevalent the entertainment industry is in Los Angeles. I know people also come to New York to make it big, but there's also other things to do in media, and there's the banking and advertising firms too. But there, man, you see so many young kids trying so hard to be fabulous and popular that you're like "wtf".
-Being that the current fashion trend for girls is to wear huge sunglasses and a baseball hat, it's impossible to tell who is a celebrity and who isn't.
-After looking forward to hearing what a major indie rock station would sound like, I was pretty non-plussed by Indie 103, until the weekend hit. Then the playlist was just magical, going from Joy Division to TV On the Radio.
- Our song of the trip was "Young Ones" by Peter Bjorn and John. It's rare that I'll go out and buy a CD from a new band after hearing only one song from them nowadays, but guess what I just did on my lunch break!
- After not going to one since going to school in Rochester, I didn't realize just how much I missed Del Taco.
- For a town in which everybody drives, the drinks are pretty darn tootin' strong.

* stuck in traffic, tapping the break pedal every 2.7 seconds.

Steve Jobs calls for the end of the DRM. All who have ever purchased music on iTunes scream "hells yeah!" in unison.

I truly despise the iTunes DRM. I think iTunes as a store is a truly wonderful thing - you can browse an extensive catalog, hear snippets of songs immediately, and buy what you want immediately. For people that completely flip out when they hear something new that they like (not that I would know this from personal experience at all.... *cough*), this is just the bee's knees.

The problem arises in how the file is then authorized for your use later. From the best of my recollection, you are limited to six devices being able to use that particular file. Then (I guess), it's dead. This would be OK, if it were not for the fact that I seem to be cursed to have at least one hard drive failure a year, whether it be the hard drive on my laptop or on my iPod (usually, both go kerplunk within weeks of each other). As a result, I have now used up three of my six authorizations over just a two year period - even though I am using the same laptop and the same iPod.

The only way for me to not say goodbye to these files is to burn them as full blown audio files to a CD, then rip them back to my computer as mp3s. I cringe when thinking about how these files are going to sound after all of that.

So, someone who wants to continue to support the music industry is thereby punished for supporting the music industry, since you don't have to jump through these hoops with illegally downloaded plain ol' mp3s.

I'm just wondering why Steve Jobs is such a proponent of all this. He says iTunes' proprietary format is not incentive enough for people to continue to purchase iPods in the future, even though just about any product life cycle model would indicate that in five years, that will most likely be the case. Like, what up with that?

My alma mater's psychology department just released some study about the impact of playing video games on visual acuity. OK, so I should probably find the study more interesting than I do, me being a psychology major from said school..... buuuut, tucked in at the end of the article is a paragraph that makes it sound like they're working on a bonafide holodeck! Hello! The future is now!

The teaser site for the new Arcade Fire album features the creepiest succession of images I've seen since the good old Twin Peaks days. My interest is somehow even more piqued to hear what they put out next. Now excuse me while I go have nightmares for years.

The Irrefutable List of Things That I Liked in 2006:

Albums:

Herbert - Scale
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Francois K - Frequencies
Josh Wink - Profound Sounds 3
John Digweed - Transitions
Lupe Fiasco - Food and Liquor
Mylo - Destroy Rock and Roll
Beck - The Information

Singles (Pop):

Timbaland featuring Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back/My Love
Timbaland featuring Nelly Furtado - Maneater/Say it Right/Promiscuous
Lupe Fiasco - Kick Push
The Rapture - Get Myself Into It
The Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Hot Chip - Over and Over
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Fergie - Fergalicious
Jay Z - Lost One
Beyonce - Check On It
Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill

Singles (House and Techno):

Paul Woolford - Erotic Discourse
Mr. G - ECG'Ed (Rekid Remix)
Ame - Engoli
Rocco - Roots 4 Acid
Every - Feelin'
Hardfloor - T2DAC (Claro Intelcto remix)
Nathan Fake - The Sky Was Pink (Holden remix)

Trends That Need To Frackin' Stop in 2007:
-The popularity of boring, growly post-grunge junk (Nickelback, Hinder, that guy that didn't win American Idol)
-Southern hip-hop (with very, very few exceptions)
-The comeback of Weird Al Yankovich (he not teh funny)
-The continued shutting down of New York's nightclubs

When I first came across Will It Blend I was like "Boo yeah! This rocks!"

Then after a few days I realized the whole thing is basically an advertisement for the blender used in the videos, and felt kind of sad. Then I saw the probably-not-a-doctor guy blend up some Barbie dolls and I was happy again!