Friday, April 15, 2005

Free Music

One of the best sites for free and generally legal downloads of music is the Salon site above. The editor has consistantly good taste, and if you hate the song, throw away. You might have to wait for an ad in order to access this part of the site but it's worth it. In particular in the April 14th installment is a song by Squeak E. Clean and Karen O (this is why I mention generally legal---you get the choice of legal or not) with cellos and accoustic guitar, strange rhythmic backgrounds and addictive vocals by Karen O of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. Apparently this song is in a Adidas ad right now. There's a new EP by David Garza who was the chosen boy of JR's back in the day. Not to mention a free song from Spoon, one of my favorite bands right now. Talk to you later. Leave a note if you have any love.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Side One

We played Pink Flag by Wire up in Fayetteville a few weeks ago. We rocked fair amazing, but here's the deal. You could really tell, listening again and again to the CD, where the first side of the original album ended. It's organized like a small set at a show: start interesting, build, relax, build, build, kick ass. Or something like that. So, when you're programming a CD, everything is different, you have a bigger canvas, I guess. Anyway, the whole point is this. The first side of Tonights the Night by Neil Young is one of the greatest things ever. If you don't have a copy of it, you really need it. If you do, you need to get a glass of wine and listen to it.
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Photo Fun

Most of you might have seen this already, but if not here it is. You type any word or words into the search slot, and it searches for photos on Flickr with those keywords. From there you can just pick up different pictures off the desktop and go to the photographers photo book. It's like finding an infinite number of cast off photo albums in the dumpster.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Poor Andrew Motion

It's a tough job. Motion has to write a poem for the upcoming royal wedding. Here's a clever article from the NYTimes including this bit: "But the royal poems invariably attract the most attention, and the most sniping. Poets as a group tend to be thin-skinned, jealous and suspicious, and the elevation of one to such a public post invariably opens the door to everyone else's rude comments."

Sorry registration required for NYT.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Smiling Dogs and Easter Eggs

This is my favorite picture I've seen in awhile. For one, it has my nieces in it, for another, LOOK AT THAT FREAKIN' DOG! I do believe this dog is grinning in an unsettling way. I love this. Tell me I'm crazy.

Free TV

I'm cheap. I admit it. This is a site devoted to free computer tv. I don't have cable, so it's really nice to know this is here. Right now they're showing, Phantom from Space on one channel and Mau Mau Sex Sex on another. This last thing isn't as interesting as it sounds. But last night they were streaming When We Were Kings and Reefer Madness--uh, this is a bad movie. I saw it at the Union one night along time ago with a bunch of freshmen too high to realize the true badness of this film. There are some great scenes from time to time. Anyway, they have pretty good horror and space movies--movies produced for a buck eighty during the cold war/nuclear heyday. Enjoy.

Writing about Drugs

As per James' request, I'm going to try to start posting here some of the things I find on the internets rather than sending to him alone. Call him unselfish. This is a piece I found through Metafilter.com, and the reason I put it up, is this guy can write. I'm amazed at his ability to be so honest, funny, horrifying and truthful all about Drugs which, judging by a whole ream of writing is really hard to write about. Don't do drugs. Here he talks about his childhood attempts to get high from drinking mead from a recipe from the library: "I kept my mead in a pair of empty plastic Coke bottles. Every day I'd have to twist the cap off and release the carbon dioxide, or the stuff would explode. On New Year’s Eve I poured my first glass. It was warm, almost hot. It wasn’t sweet at all--it tasted like some kind of milky lard. I couldn't drink it at first, but I made myself chug the stuff. I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden it was dark outside, I thought I heard Dick Clark talking about his balls, and I couldn't stand up."