“You are cynical.”

“Just middle-aged. Ideas used to grab me too. It’s not that you get better ideas, the old ones just get tired. After a while, you see that even dollars and cents are just an idea. Finally the only thing that matters is putting some turds in the toliet bowl once a day. They stay real, somehow. Somebody came up to me and said, ‘I’m God,’ I’d say, ‘Show me your badge.’”

-from Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Well, through the Super Nintendo, anyway. I wasn’t really playing games then, so I’m woefully unable to identify most of these outside of Mario Bros. and some of the arcade ones, but I still enjoyed every minute of this video. Maybe someone will make one for my generation of gaming (i.e., N64-Xbox360, heh), though I don’t think there’s as much nostalgia for current-gen consoles as for the 8- and 16-bit ones. At least not yet. Someday maybe we’ll be all “hey, remember when we played games on a screen? With a box with buttons? How quaint!”

(via Kotaku)

This sort of John Mayer-esque music is not normally my cup of tea but a couple of things going for this group. 1) This video for their song “Kandi” is pretty awesome looking stylistically. 2) There is a lot more going on in this song than in a typical John Mayer tune. They sound a little bit more like Gomez which I am totally on board with. In fact, they’re in my neck of the woods along with Gomez in about a month.

 
 

Don’t succumb to peer pressure.

One of my favorites from last year, A.A. Bondy recently did a Hear Ya Live Session in Chicago bringing the “Slow Parade”, “The Mightiest of Guns” (and a couple more at their main site) which are definite highlights off of “When The Devil’s Loose”, a top ten pick from 2009. A while back I posted some solo acoustic stuff, this time he brings his band along to great results.

A.A. Bondy – “Slow Parade” – HearYa Live Session 11/21/09 from HearYa.com on Vimeo.

Geek clock.

We’re only about an hour from Apple’s big “unveiling.” Early reports are it’s the gadget of the year… maybe of the decade. Follow the up to the minute Live blog with The Times.

Ultimate Oreo Warrior.

Earth meets Saturn.

Hotter than hot New York-based indie rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs have just released the third (I think?) video from It’s Blitz!, this time for “Skeletons,” one of the most mellow and ethereal songs in their repertoire. The video (directed by Barney Clay) is based on the dance style of turn of the century dancer Loie Fuller, known in film circles from the Lumiere film Serpentine Dance, as well as an art installation with image projected on smoke that Clay saw in London. It also has a bit of a Louis Feuillade Les Vampires feel to me. Quite evocative. The second video is a making-of.

(via Pitchfork)

My dad actually forwarded me this little story of musician Dave Carroll, whose custom-made Taylor guitar got broken by careless baggage handlers during a United Airlines flight. After many months of fruitless attempts to get United to at least reimburse him for the $3500 instrument, he finally stated that he would write a series of songs detailing the poor service he’d received at United’s hands and put them on YouTube. The video below is one of the results.

It’s not the type of music I generally listen to, but it’s definitely entertaining, and a great example of the kind of widespread negative publicity companies can get in the age of user-generated social media. It helps that Carroll is actually talented, too. This video has gotten over 7 million views. United has since tried to settle with him in exchange for pulling the videos, but he’s given them the same response he got when trying to deal with their customer service: “Good luck with that, pal”. In the meantime, Taylor Guitars have sent him two new guitars in appreciation for the publicity boost the videos have given them.

Since Phoenix’s infectious Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix ended up on several of our top ten lists this year, I finally succumbed to the hype and listened to the album, and I’m really glad I did. If I’d done that earlier, it would likely have been on my top ten. Ah well. In any case, the last artist you might expect the bright and poppy Phoenix to cover would be Bob Dylan, but they did just that recently for German magazine Musikexpress. Here is Phoenix’s shortened version of Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” (from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde).

Phoenix – Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

(via Pitchfork)

It’s been rumored for a while that The New Pornographers would have a new album in 2010, but now we have confirmation and details. It will be called Together and will drop May 4. All the major players are back together (see what I did there?), with Neko Case and Danny Bejar, as well as John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Kathryn Calder, Todd Fancey and Blaine Thurier, joining New Pornos leader A.C. Newman. Plus some guest spots from Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Zach Condon (Beirut), Will Sheff (Okkervil River), the Dap-Kings Horns, and others. I can’t wait! Hopefully we’ll have some mp3 samples to check out soon. In the meantime, check out the band’s updated site with a heap load of photos from the recording sessions.

(via Stereogum)

In my mind, I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn’t mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other’s face. The thing is, though, I don’t like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you’re supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

-from The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

A friend of mine emailed this to me today, and I wanted to share. The content of the email follows:

“This video shows the winner of ” Ukraine’s Got Talent”, Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch. The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.
It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says:
“I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment.”