I love that feeling

June 6, 2008

when you’re looking for a song, and it’s really hard to find and you’re looking and looking and finally you find it, and it’s downloading so slowly, and all you have is the name of the song to go by, and you’re imagining how incredible it must be, and you have this idea of it in your head. Before you’ve heard it. Apparently this is how Talking Heads wrote The Overload on Remain In Light - based on an idea of Joy Division, even though no one in the band had ever actually heard Joy Division.

I love Born Under Punches from that album; here’s a live performance of it in Rome, 1980. Sometimes classics are best.

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| music |

Jackets

May 28, 2008
  • Interesting contrast today between a newly translated Juan Freire lecture about new hybrid public spaces and a typically stark Paul Graham essay about the public nature of existing cities. Both are interesting. Great footnote from Graham:

    One sign of a city’s potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat’s there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.

  • Scans from T. Hayashida’s (out of print, expensive) Take Ivy - a photoessay from the 60s on Ivy League prep style. I jokingly mentioned J. Press in the context of Obama a few days ago - the truth is, that company is now a privately held subsidiary of the Japanese company Onward Kashiyama and the prep look has become a complete affectation. When I was in school, the second-to-last local menswear shop was closing down, and the last one standing was looking awful lonely, with its stacks of $280 lambswool sweaters on walnut tables.
  • Amazon Kindle news out of the D: All Things Digital conference - it seems, despite the 10% price cut, that the Kindle 2 is not near. To hear Bezos talk, it sounds like they have a ten-year investment in the device, that there won’t be a touch screen any time soon (”There are issues with using a stylus on an e-ink display, and putting something like a digitizer causes visibility reductions.”) I almost bought one of the things yesterday - I have, I don’t know, printed copies of maybe 300 public domain works, so I pay Amazon $30 in 10¢ conversion fees to get the Project Gutenberg versions on my Kindle, and in exchange they keep them in my cloud forever? Sounds like a good deal - I get all that physical space back, Goodwill gets to distribute the paper copies to the less fortunate, and some books I buy in the future don’t demand the sacrifice of trees and fuel. Something to think about. UPDATE: Amazon-converted files aren’t stored in the cloud, aww.
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| current events |

Memorial Day

May 26, 2008

4083 dead in Iraq, more than 29,000 wounded, and 300,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder between Iraq and Afghanistan.

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| current events, holidays |

OG Saturday

May 24, 2008

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| current events |

The zoo

May 21, 2008
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| music, nature |

Local culture

May 20, 2008
1
| current events |

Cherries are in season

May 19, 2008
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| current events |

Lunch pasta

May 18, 2008
  • Obama stylewatch: he wears Burberry suits, apparently. Dude, if you’re going to skip the J. Press route, why not go all out and rock Dior Homme?
  • Paul Graham: I have a second computer for using the internet because I’m addicted to it yet need it for work, like an alcoholic wine critic. I used to have a separate account that was just for the web I’d flip over to with OS X’s fast user switching - it became too onerous, but I still think it’s kind of a good idea.
  • GasLight frequency spectrum visualizer for iTunes - simple but pretty and it runs fast.
  • I just added Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics to my Amazon wishlist and noticed that it’s available for Kindle download for $10. If I had a Kindle, I surely would have just downloaded it. I get why people aren’t into Amazon’s whole closed hardware DRM can’t-lend-it-to-a-friend-or-resell-it thing but I actually thing the social good of not using paper and burning fuel for delivery outweighs that. So bring me a refreshed Kindle for $300 and I’m sold.
  • Can anyone ID this chair? I’m way into it:
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| current events |

Takashi Murakami “Mr. Wink”

May 17, 2008

FINALLY MINE. I had a chance to buy a small Murakami painting in 2000 for $800; turning that down was the worst financial mistake of my life. I understand if you dislike him or aren’t into the factory aspect or whatever, but art is personal and I’ve always liked this piece in particular. Click to enlarge!

6
| art |

Acquisitions tomorrow

May 16, 2008
  • Hey, should I buy a house in Queens?
  • Awesome Fallout 3 concept art, via BoingBoing Gadgets. I’ve posted about Fallout before - it’s one of my most anticipated PS3 titles - but now there’s this whole steampunk thread which seems to be growing in popularity since 1974 or whenever The Difference Engine came out (okay, 1990). My take: steampunk is total reactionary bullshit. But Fallout is still going to be rad.
  • I’m totally buying one of these utilikeys.
  • Poem: Sweeney among the Nightingales.
  • Song: Sebastien Tellier, Look. We talked about Eurovision already. This is a solid album. I think there’s an Air connection?
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| current events |

Go get married if you’ve been waiting, right?

May 15, 2008
  • Unaired 30 Rock pilot with Rachel Dratch as Jenna, torrent. I just love television so much.
  • Insane auction results from Sotheby’s - Takashi Murakami’s My Lonesome Cowboy sold for FIFTEEN POINT ONE MILLION DOLLARS. It’s part of an EDITION! What the fuck, anonymous bidder?!
  • Song: John Otway & The Wild Will Barrett, Really Free. Kind of like a Buzzcocks song sung by an older Sid from Skins with a little noodle-y wah-wah-wah tossed in.

  • Destroy the binary
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| current events |

Custom

May 15, 2008
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| current events |