My Favorite Albums Of 2010

It's the last day of 2010, and I'm an opinionated music fan with a blog, so it's probably the law that I have to make one of these lists, right?

While there are still plenty of albums I've been meaning to check out this year that I haven't gotten to yet (Massive Attack, the new Gorillaz album, etc.), these albums really stuck out to me in 2010:





I feel like I haven't stopped listening to Crystal Castles or Plastic Beach since the albums came out, so those easily get the top 2 spots on the list. Also honorable mention goes to Barking by Underworld. I also thought Tron: Legacy, Inception, and The Social Network had really great film scores.

The cocking of the rifles, the marching of the feet.

Today I faintly overheard my big brother, who is visiting for the holidays, talking to my dad at the other side of the house about guns and the inevitable collapse of civilization. I think some degree of survivalism runs in our family. I wanted to experience that conversation, so I walked into the room they were in to find my dad showing my brother some of his rifles. They decided to go out and shoot his Weatherby rifle, which uses .270 Winchester cartridges, and I decided to go along.

As you might remember, this past fall, my dad and I went shooting with my cousin Patrick and his parents. This time was quite a bit different because there's snow and it's freezing out.

We shot at a target printed out on a sheet of computer printer paper, 8.5" by 11", a small image of which can be seen below.

The smaller colored circles on the target are the shots from a range of 100 yards. We each took 3 shots. My dad's shots are signified by yellow dots, my brother's are signified by blue dots, and mine are signified by red dots. My brother and I each missed the target with one of our shots, so you only see two of the small dots for each of us. I'm pretty proud of how close the ones that hit were to the center of the target.

Next we moved back to 200 yards, and my brother and I each took two shots, which are the larger colored circles on the target. Again, my brother's shots are signified in blue and mine in red. With my brother's and my shots, there seems to be a pattern in the relationship between our shots from 100 yards and 200 yards, but it's probably mostly a coincidence. Interesting nonetheless.

Good Old-Fashioned Family Christmas

I haven't had internet access since Christmas eve, so this is a late Christmas post. I hope you all had happy holidays and also downloaded the new Gorillaz album that was released on Christmas.

I'd like to tell you about some new music-making gadgets I got...

Behringer Reverb Machine RV600

I've wanted this guitar pedal ever since I used the one my cousin Patrick has. I love the "Space" setting.

Now meet my new pocket-sized synthesizers, which I have named Flynn and Floyd.

Korg Monotron - "User Flynn"

Flynn was obviously named after Jeff Bridges' character in the movie Tron. I love the filter on the Monotron, and it's ridiculously fun to play with. Speaking of that new Gorillaz album I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I noticed on the site that the Korg Monotron is one of the instruments they listed as being used on the album.

Stylophone - "Uncle Floyd"

The Stylophone, which is played with a stylus, is probably best known for being used by David Bowie for his hit song "Space Oddity". I thought about naming my Stylophone Major Tom after that song, but I thought more about it and decided I actually don't love the Stylophone playing in the song. I do, however, love the Stylophone part at the end of his song "Slip Away", and so I named it after Uncle Floyd, one of the subjects of the song. I also like the alliteration in Flynn and Floyd. To show you just how much better this Stylophone part is, here's a video of a beautiful live performance of "Slip Away" where Bowie plays the Stylophone at the end of the song:



I wonder if the Stylophone will be one of the objects in David Bowie's new book. Anyway, I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of my new music-making gadgets.

To: Me, From: Me

I went for a Christmas season mall trip yesterday with my sister and Patrick. On the way there we listened to the Low Christmas album. You should listen to one of the songs from the album while you read this blog entry. It's a cover of the traditional Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy". I love how it is noisy and distorted, yet beautiful.



Speaking of noisy and distorted, we first went to Toys "Я" Us, where I bought a First Act distortion pedal for my guitar. I don't have much guitar pedal experience, and before I bought this one, the only pedal I had was a First Act analog delay pedal, which I love. I think First Act is a really underrated company, and their analog delay pedal sounds so much better than any digital delay pedal I've heard from any other company. It has so much character to it, which is something I really love when it comes to music equipment. Seeing as how so many people use all the same stuff from Line 6, I think it's cool to have something a little different, to stand out a little from the crowd.

I found the Series 3 collectible LEGO minifigures at Toys "Я" Us too, which I was very happy about.


Before I got the Series 2 figures from Borders on Black Friday, I was beginning to think my search for these was a lost cause. I brought my "cheat sheets" that I printed out on Black Friday just in case I found any of the minifigures, but they didn't really help me any this time. My sister and I sat on the floor with a box of the minifigures and my cheat sheet and tried to match the new bumpy codes on the packages up to the dots on the sheet, but we realized most of them didn't match up. I know I printed out the American codes, but they didn't match. A lot of the packages had an extra bump, making it just about impossible to match them to the dots on the sheet. When we were picking out my Series 2 figures on Black Friday, I attempted to feel the figures through the bag, but that was much more difficult than I thought it would be, and I went back to just trying to match up the barcodes. This time since the codes weren't any help, we went back to trying to feel what each of the figures were. It took us over an hour to pick out all the ones I wanted. An hour of sitting on the floor groping little plastic bags of toys while customers and employees walking by gave us very confused looks. I got all of the figures I wanted though!

My favorite from Series 3 is the cyborg space villain, because he's an awesome minifigure and he reminds me so much of Lord Dread.


He's just missing his purple cape and cutlass, which are things I have in my LEGO collection. Old friends of mine in the internet LEGO community might remember that many years ago I made some LEGO Captain Power stuff.

So I'm doing quite well at catching up with the LEGO company on the release of these figures. Now I just need to get the ones I want from Series 1, and Series 4 still won't be out for a while.

Besides that, I bought some shirts. One from a store called Around The World which had a section of shirts made from artists in Thailand I believe. I also bought some really nice quality blank shirts from H&M to work on the prototypes for my Jacob's Shadow t-shirts. I'm excited about finally getting around to doing that, and looking through the shirts in Around The World was inspiring.

Since depending on how fast you can read, "The Little Drummer Boy" might be over now, listen to this other song from Low's Christmas album, called "Just Like Christmas". Now since you won't be reading, you can really pay attention to the lyrics of this one, which I think are clever and cute.

How do we refer to the last decade?

Today a friend of mine posted a facebook status that said, "Has anybody figured out what to call the last decade yet? The Zeros?, 2000s? The '00s? I think this needs to be settled."

It reminded me of a Ian Svenonius interview I heard from 2006 after his book The Psychic Soviet was published. I'm paraphrasing here, but in the interview, Svenonius talked for a little bit about how the first decade of a century is generally forgotten by history because it is rarely referred to since no one knows what to call it. He said that in the late 20th century, he told people to get done what they needed to get done before the 21st century started, because until we figure out, universally, what to call this decade, everything you do during it will be forgotten in the long run.

He referred to the last decade as the oh's, and I like that. I guess that would make the first decade of this century in particular the twenty-oh's. It makes sense to me since people refer to the individual years with the word "oh". For example, '05 is pronounced oh-five and '08 is pronounced oh-eight. This is the only decade of a century where any year's pronunciation includes the word "oh". Just as 1925 is pronounced nineteen-twenty-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Nineteen-twenties. 2005 is pronounced twenty-oh-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Twenty-oh's. It's not perfect, since you can't refer to it with numbers, but it should be simple enough writing "the oh's".

"2000's" doesn't work in my opinion, because it makes it sound like you're talking about the entire century, much like saying "the 1900's" or "the 1800's".

So my vote goes for "the oh's" and more specifically "the twenty-oh's" for the universally accepted name of the last decade.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie

I was just seeing if you were paying attention.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie

I've been a fan of this video for years, but I totally copied Austin by putting it on my blog.

Shortly after finishing work on his album "Heroes", David Bowie was invited to be a guest on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, because Crosby's children were fans of Bowie. It was Crosby's last television appearance, as he died just a month after it was filmed, coincidentally on the very same day that "Heroes" was released. The special aired several weeks later on Christmas Eve 1977.

There's a rather interesting Washington Post article from a few years ago about how Bowie didn't even want to sing the song until the "Peace On Earth" bit was added.

I apologize. I didn't mean to be a downer with all that death stuff and "Bowie didn't even want to sing the song" stuff. I just wanted to give the video some context.

The Making Of Hell

If you enjoyed that music video I posted the other day, and thought it was as clever as I thought it was, you may want to watch this "making of" video:

Like I said the other day, the new album by The Streets, Computers And Blues, will be out on February 7th, 2011.

"Going Through Hell" by The Streets

The music video for The Streets' new single "Going Through Hell" is really creative.

The album Computers And Blues will be out on February 7th, 2011.

UPDATE: Watch the making of this video.

Free live EP from Low

As a holiday gift to their fans, one of my favorite bands, Low, released a free EP today called Live At Eindhoven. Backed by an organist/keyaboardist, percussionists, and a full choir, the band recorded the EP in St. Catherina Church in the Netherlands on January 22, 2009.

The first two songs on the EP, "Monkey" and "Silver Rider" were almost definitely included because Robert Plant's new project Band Of Joy recently covered both of the songs for their self-titled album released earlier this fall. As great as Robert Plant is, I think the original Low versions of the songs are far superior.

Live At Eindhoven is a perfect example of the stripped down yet somehow lush arrangements, and beautiful vocal harmonies that Low is known for.

Low is also known for their holiday spirit, having recorded and released a Christmas album in 1999 and another Christmas themed vinyl single called Santa's Coming Over in 2008. The glittery cardboard sleeve of the Santa's Coming Over record even had a punch-out snowflake tree ornament. They go out on a Christmas tour next week to support the vinyl reissue of the 1999 Christmas album.

You can download the Live At Eindhoven EP at Pitchfork for absolutely free by clicking on the EP cover below.

Low's new studio album, C'mon, will be released in early 2011.

The drum sound of Jimmy Eat World's "Disintegration"

My favorite Jimmy Eat World song is "Disintegration", which they released on their Stay On My Side Tonight EP. I always found the drum sound in the song to be fascinating.



I love when musicians get "outside the box" creative, either in the studio or on stage, and I love finding out what creative and experimental techniques they used to achieved certain sounds. It's inspiring.

Today on the band's twitter account, they posted a photo of when they recorded the the drums for the song five years ago.


As you can see, it's a pretty interesting setup, and there were 4 drum sets being played at the same time to get the huge drum sound in the song. The drummers from left to right in the photo are the producer Mark Trombino, Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind, At The Drive-In and Sparta drummer Tony Hajjar, and Jimmy Eat World singer/guitarist Jim Adkins.

Free Download of "Not In Love"

I wrote in my previous entry about Robert Smith singing on a new version of Crystal Castles' cover of "Not In Love".

You can download the mp3 for free at both Stereogum and Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Crystal Castles' "Not In Love" sung by Robert Smith

The second Crystal Castles album has been one of my favorite albums from 2010. One of the songs on the album is a cover of the 1983 song "Not In Love" by the band Platinum Blonde. Although I'm not a fan of the original version of the song, I immediately loved the cover by Crystal Castles, sung by main songwriter Ethan Kath. I guess it's been around for about a month, but I only just found out the other day that there's an alternate version of the Crystal Castles version with lead vocals by Robert Smith, frontman of The Cure. I can't adequately communicate with words how much I love it. I'm a big fan of Robert Smith, and his voice fits so perfectly with this song that it gives me chills. I also love that it keeps bits of Ethan Kath's vocodered voice as background vocals. Take a listen to the song, you won't be disappointed.

The single is being officially released on December 6th.

UPDATE: If you want to download a free mp3 of this song, click here.

Mike Skinner And The Technological Void

Over a year ago there was talk of a new album by The Streets, a British hiphop project started by Mike Skinner. You may have heard that David Bowie likes The Streets, but I'm not sure where you would have heard such a thing. It is slightly less known that I am also a fan of The Streets. Needless to say, The Streets' music is pretty awesome.

I had been following Skinner's updates on his site and on twitter for a while, hoping for news about the new album, titled Computers And Blues, but then he suddenly seemed to disappear completely from the internet on October 18th, 2009.

Exactly one year later he reappeared on twitter with a link to his newly designed website. There's a ticker on the top corner of the page, counting down to February 7th, 2011. That's the date Computers And Blues will finally be released. The site's basically in a blog format with written entries and video blogs which featured Skinner answering questions asked by his followers on twitter. It didn't take long before he started getting really creative and sometimes answering them in the form of songs and posting other songs as well. I've been really enjoying everything he's posted so far, and here's one of my favorites:

Autonomy Games by Endless Hallway, for free!

I made an entry in August about Endless Hallway releasing a new song, with a link to a free download of it.

Today on twitter, they said that there's going to be a new album in Spring 2011 (another album on the list of music I'm looking forward to next year), and you can download their debut album Autonomy Games for free.

Click on the cover art to download the album.

If you want to hear one of the songs from the album first, here's one of my favorites, called "Shallows":



If you like the album and you want it on CD, you can get it for the ridiculously low price of $3.64 on Amazon.

The blackest Friday there ever was: The Revenge!

I forgot a valuable part of the Black Friday story until just now. It has to be told.

Throughout the night, we witnessed a lot of shoppers that were very zombie-like, who were usually walking around aimlessly. Patrick and I are both amused by really simple things in life, and one thing that often seems to amuse us is mannequins with unintentionally funny poses. I'd say it wouldn't be uncommon, if you were stalking us at the mall, to see us walking through a store laughing at and doing impressions of funny mannequins. At one point during the night, we were in Old Navy, and Patrick pointed at a mannequin that was up against a column and said "That is the most depressing mannequin ever." Then the mannequin moved, revealing itself to be the most depressing live human being ever, and Patrick felt like a huge jerk. At least the depressing girl had a good enough sense of up to date style that she could pass as a mannequin.

The blackest Friday there ever was.

I wasn't planning on going out shopping for Black Friday. I don't think I've ever experienced it. Thanks to a tip from my cousin Megan after Thanksgiving dinner, I knew that Borders had the collectible LEGO minifigures near the checkout. I really wanted to get them before they sold out, because I've been wanting those minifigures for a long time and I have not been able to find them anywhere. Most the sites on the internet that sell them give you them randomly so you don't have any idea what you're getting, and in some cases limit the number of them you can order to 5 or something. Since there are 16 in each series, that's ridiculous. Anyway, I knew my sister really wanted to go shopping on Black Friday because she's also never experienced it and loves shopping. We talked about it half-jokingly at first and then somehow it became a real plan where my cousin Patrick and his girlfriend and my sister and I were going shopping at 1 AM. I figured not going out on Black Friday is kind of like staying inside during the apocalypse or during a zombie outbreak. It's probably the smartest thing to do, but you're missing out on a unique experience. I wanted to have that experience at least once.

So we printed out a list of the special opening times for the stores in the mall, and I printed out the barcode "cheat sheets" for the collectible minifigures, and we were on our way. First stop was Toys "Я" Us. We didn't have any problem on the drive there or with getting a parking space. We walked up to the entrance and noticed yellow caution tape that we could tell used to hold a line of people, but had long before been trampled over. I was using the apocalypse scenario as a metaphor, but at that point the look of the entrance of Toys "Я" Us looked kind of post-apocalyptic. Immediately upon entering the store, I felt extremely judgmental as I witnessed all of the people in the crowded store, before realizing that I was one of those people. Still, we seemed to have a different mindset than everyone else, almost like we were just witnessing the events of the night. I realized the worst thing about Black Friday is probably waiting in line for the checkout, because I'm serious when I say that the checkout line wrapped completely around the interior of the store, and that is a huge store. There wasn't anything any of us really wanted, at least not enough to wait in that leviathan of a line. As we were walking empty handed back to the car, I declared that some aspects of Black Friday seemed underwhelming, and other aspects seemed overwhelming. The rest of my fellowship agreed and we journeyed to Carousel Mall.

It was pretty strange to be in the mall in the middle of the night. I've talked with friends before about how it might be fun to be locked in the mall over night or something, but this wasn't anything like that would be. It was actually not too far off from being like any normal day at the mall because there were people everywhere, and except for the lack of sunlight coming through the skylights, there didn't seem to be any evidence of it actually being night time. We went to various stores throughout the night, going to each one we wanted to go to just after it opened to avoid having to wait in lines outside the stores. Since there wasn't any specific items or deals we were going for in the stores, it didn't matter if other people got to them first. Everything was surprisingly casual. Like I said, it just seemed like any other day at the mall. I didn't witness any fights, and no one was even pushy or rude. Is Black Friday not nearly as intense as the media makes it out to be, or do I somehow live in a place surrounded by some kind of enlightened beings that only consume in peace? We actually witnessed a few stores opening, and there weren't lines outside them! The employees just opened up the gate things at the entrances, and customers very casually walked in one at a time at the pace of rainwater dripping off leaves after a storm. The only stores that seemed to have lines and heightened security were the electronics stores. Most of the stores didn't even have very long checkout lines.

Most of what I bought wasn't even for sale, so it kind of was like a regular mall trip to me, just at night. I got some new long sleeve t-shirts that were for sale, a Darth Vader sweater that wasn't for sale, and of course...

Collectible LEGO minifigures. When we got into borders, which was our last stop in the mall, I went straight up to the checkout to check out the LEGO figures. A young woman at the cash register asked me if I was ready to checkout and I told her "No," and that I was looking at the LEGO figures. All they had were Series 2 out of the 3 series available, but that was much better than nothing.


Patrick noticed another box of them a little ways away from the checkout so I went over there to avoid feeling weird about the young ladies at the registers watching me match the barcodes on the packages to the barcodes on my "cheat sheet". I was making a pile of the figures I wanted next to the box, and a couple in their 20's walked up and the woman picked up one of the figures I had already selected. I said "Oh, those are ones I already picked out for myself." and she set it down and apologized. I told her that she didn't have to apologize because I'm just a crazy person, and then I made an offer where if they wanted any specific figures, I could find them for them with the "cheat sheet." They immediately walked away, clearly weirded out by me and my weird display of weirdness. It was really kind of difficult to match up the barcodes, but after a while I was successful in finding all the figures I wanted. After hanging out and looking at stuff in Borders for a while, we decided to make our way back home.

I can say for certain, now that I've held it in my hand, that the tiny minifigure trophy the karate guy figure is holding is the cutest LEGO piece I have ever seen.

How to make some computer technologies of your own and become an internet celebrity.

I'm very proud to announce that our special guest speakers today are the esteemed Dr. Steven Brule and the rakishly good looking Mr. Kristofer Straub.

Bowie: Object

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of David Bowie. I love reading about his music-making process on my favorite albums of his, and two of my favorite books I own are The Complete David Bowie and Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town. While the authors of those books did an amazing job scouring resources for information (including from the mouth of Bowie himself in interviews) and presenting it in an organized, unbiased way, for a long time I've thought it would be interesting if David Bowie wrote a book about his music and his creative process. The 2008 compilation iSelect was accompanied by liner notes, written by Bowie, about the songs included. It was incredibly interesting, and I found myself wanting notes written by him like that about all of his other songs. I don't know if that will ever happen so I'll have to stick to using the books I linked to above.

While Bowie hasn't released any new music since his 2003 album Reality, and doesn't seem to be returning to music anytime in the near future, he's apparently been keeping himself very busy with painting, sculpture, writing, and of course spending time with his family.

A few months ago there was news of a book he's been working on called Bowie: Object. Even though it's not a book specifically about his songs, it should be at least as interesting. It seems to be a picture book containing photographs of a collection of objects (100 of them) that give insight into his life and creative process. According to a news post on Bowie's website, the photographs in the book are "annotated with insightful, witty and personal text written by Bowie himself." The book is the first in a series written by Bowie, according to his literary agent Andrew Wylie. Bowie is due to deliver the finished book to Wylie in December, but as far as I know, there is not yet a publication date.

That news post appeared after Publishers Weekly leaked the books existence. As soon as the confirmation hit the official Bowie website, the news spread fast. One article by a seemingly very judgmental Tim Adler condescendingly said, "That, apparently, qualifies as a book these days." I guess book journalists can be even bigger snobs than music journalists. Does it have to be a novel to qualify as a book? I, for one, think it sounds fascinating, and am looking forward to acquiring a copy.

I wonder if a deck of Oblique Strategies cards will be one of the objects or if that's too obvious.

Christmas, Consumerism, & CousinBand

I haven't updated in quite a while. I've been trying to keep myself busy with my various creative endeavors.

I was at the mall recently, and it made me think about how I love the mall around Christmastime. Maybe I'm a stereotypical American consumer, but I realized a big part of the Christmas experience for me is going to the mall and just taking in that atmosphere. Thinking about it made me want to get out my favorite Christmas album and watch classic Christmas movies. I'm making myself wait until at least after Thanksgiving.

Today my uncle Adam was in the area on business. Some relatives went out to dinner with him. I couldn't make it to dinner, but I made it to my cousin Megan's for dessert afterward. We had a big birthday cake to celebrate the birthdays of Megan, Patrick, and Adam, because they all have birthdays this month. Adam asked me about my music and if I had anything close to being done, and I replied, "Nope! Not yet!" or something along those lines. We talked a little bit about CousinBand, which I told him about last year when he visited.

CousinBand is a music project between some of my cousins on my mom's side of the family and myself. We had always half-joked about starting a band together since we're all musically inclined in one way or another. We decided to really go for it, but it's really more of a collaborative music project between us rather than a band. No one has a specific role. So far I'm the only one who has contributed anything (only one song so far, with no vocals or lyrics), but Patrick and Megan have been working on some stuff. It seems like it's finally happening, and I'm excited about it. We have to get some of our other talented cousins in on the action, because I'd really love to work with them, and I think the more ideas thrown into the mix, the more interesting it will be.

My GERTY Halloween Costume 2010

Every year for the past 3 or so years, my cousin Megan has had a Halloween party. Megan made a theme for this year's party: movie characters. I came up with the ideas for everyone in my family going to the party. My parents were Nurse Ratched and McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. My sister was Ellen Ripley from Alien. Her costume was really cool. She borrowed a real flight suit, bought an actual Nostromo patch, and she and I (with the help of my dad and his tools) heavily modified an Iron Man 2 Nerf gun to make something resembling Ripley's flamethrower. Since I haven't gotten really into preparing a costume in many many years, I decided to get really into it this year. I had a few ideas, but after I had this idea, I couldn't not do it. I decided to be GERTY from the movie Moon, one of my favorite movies from the past few years.

Growing up, I was really into science fiction and robots. Building a robot or a robot costume out of cardboard seems like a pretty common experience for kids that were into science fiction. Although I remember spending a lot of time making things out of and playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid, I don't recall ever making a robot. When I thought of the idea to be GERTY, I realized it was my chance to finally have that experience.

I spent several weeks brainstorming how I was going to make the costume, creating plans for it, and acquiring the materials needed. I wanted it to be a little more special than just a cardboard box strapped to my torso, so I decided I needed to make the screen and the camera "eye" light up. The eye part itself is the bottom of a Gatorade bottle, which I thought looked perfect.


Here's my sister and me as Ellen Ripley and GERTY.


Here's a view of just the costume without it strapped to me. I couldn't read one of the post-it notes, so I just amused myself by writing a grocery list with space and moon related items. Freeze-dried ice cream, half-moon cookies, and Tang. Notice the eye is lit up.


Here's a photo better showing that the screen is also lit up. It showed up much better in the dim lighting where the party was.


One of my favorite details on the actual GERTY is his cupholder with the mug. I knew I needed a plastic mug because a regular ceramic mug would be much too heavy and fragile. It seems like I see cheap plastic mugs in stores all the time, but then when I actually needed one, I couldn't find one anywhere. My mom finally found this perfect one at a second-hand shop. I carefully scraped the original logo off, and made a stencil to put the Lunar Industries logo on instead. The mug is held into the cupholder with magnets, so it can easily be taken out of the cupholder, but won't fall out while I'm wandering around the party.

There was a costume contest at the party. Of the three categories, my sister won "Best Overall", and I won "Most Original/Creative" and "Most Effort/Detail".

Gluten-Free Saul Pancake Williams

I recently wrote about a new song by Saul Williams, one of my favorite creative people.

Saul was featured in a video on Soul Pancake, the philosophical website started by actor Rainn Wilson and friends. You can watch on the site by clicking here, or watching in the embedded player below:



Although I don't share all of the same beliefs as Saul, this video is quite interesting. I particularly found it interesting when he talked about deep breaths being the relaxing aspect of smoking cigarettes. When he was talking about an innermost power as opposed to a higher power, it reminded me of my own beliefs about many people maybe giving too much credit to God and not enough credit to people. I have faith in the potential of myself and the potential of others.

Pretty Hate Machine cover artwork reimagined.

Nine Inch Nails' 1989 debut album, Pretty Hate Machine was remastered and is being reissued.

Although it's far from being my favorite Nine Inch Nails album, I really like the new cover of the album. Trent Reznor asked his creative director Rob Sheridan to reimagine the original Pretty Hate Machine cover, getting rid of the pink and changing the font. Here's what Mr. Sheridan came up with:

Man tries to kill spider, causes explosion in bathroom.

This article is a few months old, but it amuses me seeing as how I regularly have to fend off spiders.

My favorite part is:
"We're not entirely sure whether the spider got away or not but there was no sign of it at the scene."

Creationism

I bought LEGO Creationary today. I've been wanting to get the game for a while now, especially after the Penny Arcade comic and Gabe's news post about it. Todd and I played it for a few hours and it's a lot of fun. The different difficulty levels of the cards don't seem very accurate though. Even the "easy" cards were really difficult, and I've been building with LEGO for over two decades.

The booklet of rules instructed to photograph models you're particularly proud of before taking them apart, and so I took a photo of the lawnmower I built. As you can see, it was pretty heavily based on the image on the card.


The wheels and axels aren't actually attached but held in with friction. I didn't want to use the tires that came with the game. After building the lawnmower, I noticed there was an example of one on the box for the game, and my lawnmower was way better than the one on the box.

After we finished playing, I was fooling around with the pieces and made Wall-E from memory. Having looked at an image of him now, I'm quite impressed with how accurate my LEGO version is.


I definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes board games and LEGO.

The Cheesecake Factory

Today I went there for the first time in my life.

I think I'm in need of medical attention.

Late Night, with Shawn Smith and Happy Chichester

Shawn Smith made an announcement a month or so ago on facebook that his band Brad would be playing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and that if you're "flipping through the channels... and see a large bear fronting a band," that it would be him.


I know of Shawn Smith mostly from his work with Greg Dulli, in his bands The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers, which are two of my favorite bands. I am not that into Shawn Smith's own bands, except for a few Pigeonhed songs, like "The Full Sentence":



There's also a Pigeonhed song from over a decade ago that there's a really wellknown remix of, which I can guarantee you've heard before, even if you didn't know what the hell it was.

Regardless of me not really caring for his band Brad, I wanted to see that large bear on television. I waited patiently until the night of the performance, trying my best not to forget about it. Fifteen minutes or so before I figured the band would go on, I went to my television to tune in to the show and wait. I was having technical difficulties due to the satellite signal or something, and missed the performance.

I finally got around to watching the Late Night episode today. Since that episode is only up on the site until the 27th, and you might not want to watch the full episode anyway, here's a youtube video of just the performance:



I seem to have a talent for recognizing voices, and as soon as the chorus began on the words "stay low," I was thinking "Hey, that sounds like Happy Chichester singing backup vocals." Sure enough, a bit later they showed a closeup of him playing keyboard and singing backup. For being behind a keyboard at the back of the stage and just being a backup singer, he sure got a lot of camera time and closeups throughout the performance.


Harold "Happy" Chichester has also worked with The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers. In fact, he and Shawn Smith were in the first Twilight Singers album, Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers quite a bit, and sang together on some of the songs. Here's a song called "That's Just How That Bird Sings" where Greg Dulli, Shawn, and Happy all sing:



Shawn Smith's voice is the first you hear, off to the left, and Happy Chichester's voice is the second one you hear, off to the right. I'm sure you can hear why I love their voices. It was cool seeing them on a television show, even if it was actually on the computer.

Annual Halloween Party, Annual Todd

I wrote an entry about being excited about Halloween this year and trying to make it special. My cousin Megan is having her annual family Halloween party on the 30th, and this year I'm actually putting some effort into my costume. I've been working pretty hard on it, and it should be pretty cool, but for now I'm keeping it a secret. Look forward to seeing it though, because after the party (maybe even the day of Halloween) I'll definitely be writing an entry all about it, with photos!

This weekend I'm going over to my good friend Todd's house. I realized the other day that I haven't hungout with him in a year. The last time we hungout was the weekend of the AFI concert last year. In fact, when we hangout this weekend, it will be exactly a year after that concert, as it was on October 16th 2009, and October 16th 2010 is this Saturday. Time goes by really fast.

The NBC Thursday night shows are on tonight. I'm looking forward to the live episode of 30 Rock. Now I'm going to go take a nap until the shows are on. :)

Options - 100 Different Spellings

My friend Brian Asbury recently released the first album, 100 Different Spellings, from his latest music project, which he calls Options.


I met Brian almost 4 and a half years ago when Patrick and I were visiting some relatives in Cincinnati, Ohio. My aunt basically set up a "play date" between us and Brian. He came over for maybe a couple of hours and we talked about music the whole time. Over the years since then, we've stayed in somewhat sporadic contact through social networking sites and e-mail correspondence.

Brian has previously played with various bands and released a few solo albums, but he wanted to try something different this time. He described Options to me as "a networking tool for myself and the musicians I've worked with on many occasions." My cousin Kelly Klein has been a frequent collaborator of his, and she was one of the collaborators on 100 Different Spellings. Her voice can be heard on several songs. Her sister Caitlyn Klein (also my cousin) created the beautiful album cover seen above as well as the digital booklet that comes with the album when you download it.

The music on 100 Different Spellings flows from track to track and is meant to be listened from front to back. A lot of the music comes off as a collage rather than songs, with Brian being the collage artist with his role as producer. Although there are separate tracks, moods, and musical ideas that could be referred to as songs, the project effectively blurs the lines between easily definable endings and beginnings, aside from the obvious beginning of the album and obvious ending of the album 33 minutes and 41 seconds later. This concept doesn't sit well with all listeners, challenging beliefs as to what constitutes as music. The album was described to me by one listener as "just noise" since there was no beginnings or endings.

I enjoy the album quite a bit, having listened to it three times already, and I hope I get to collaborate with Brian sometime, maybe on a future Options album.

For the time being, Brian is offering the album for free, but you can pay what you want for it. He has it on Bandcamp. You can download 100 Different Spellings by clicking on the beautiful artwork above, or you can listen on the Bandcamp music player below.

ExplainMyHeart, a new song by Saul Williams

Apparently, Saul Williams is releasing a new album in early 2011. I seemed to be one of the three people on the whole internet talking about it. That changed when Mr. Williams made a cryptic post on his facebook page with the phrase "De-code My Heart" along with a link called "Volcanic Sunlight".

For reasons unknown to me, I immediately went to youtube and searched for both phrases, and a video came up with one of the images from the Volcanic Sunlight website. It said the video was uploaded "one hour ago". I pressed play, and a song started playing. It was unmistakably the voice of Saul Williams in the song. When the song finished playing, I noticed there was one play on the video. I was possibly the first person on the entire internet to watch it. Here's the video, which is the still image accompanied by a wonderful new song.

It sounds very different from his older music, but I like it a lot.

The percussion in the song made me immediately remember an old Wired magazine interview from November 2008 (almost two years ago now) which was a year after he released his last album. He mostly reflected on that album, but he also talked about some of the newer material that he was working on.

"The focus of the new album is percussion. For all intents and purposes, it’s a discussion of percusson. If I have to label some of the songs, maybe some are dance punk, dicso-y, or prog-rockish, but I really don’t know how to categorize it. Some of it makes me think of De-Loused in the Comatorium, The Mars Volta’s first album — there’s a lot of live instrumentation with a hip hop filter. I lived for a year in Brazil as a teenager, and percussion was always present in my appreciation for music, but not necessarily in my music. So that’s where my head is at."

I imagine he was talking about the album Volcanic Sunlight.

You can download the song "ExplainMyHeart" for free by clicking here. I recommend it. As I said, it's a wonderful song.

UPDATE #1:
It turns out one of the images was a code that needed to be decoded by some fancy device apparently known as a "smartphone" to give you the url to download the song. I have never owned a cellphone, so that all sounds like another language to me.

I also found out that the song or a previous version of the song was featured in a video from over a year and a half ago that I've never seen called Saul Williams: Writer In Residence on Current TV. It's kind of shocking how something can exist for so long right under our noses without us knowing about it.

Update #2:
Saul Williams retweeted one of my tweets regarding my excitement about his new album. :)

Turtle Eclipse Of The Heart

Being a lifelong fan of awesome LEGO stuff and robotic turtles, naturally I loved Peter Reid's and Simon Burfield's turtle factory.



It gets better. The machinery and conveyor belt move! Watch this video:

Columbus Gay.

Today is Columbus Day.

About 518 years ago, three ships mistakenly sailed to the wrong continent, the passengers therefor discovering a completely new continent, which just so happened to be already inhabited by various thriving societies of native people (who are still, after all these centuries, commonly incorrectly referred to as "Indians"). As a result of all this, I don't have to go to work today, and apparently I can buy furniture interest-free.

Today is also National Coming Out Day.

I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that wearing these little Speedos and grinding against each other is an equally valid and successful option.

Iron Maiden & Vexillum

Two of my favorite LEGO builders are Nannan and Tyler. As if their work wasn't amazing enough when they built solo, they have been known to collaborate on conceptual projects where each of them contribute a series of models with storylines that weave together. Every day, they'd each post at the same time a model from their part of the storyline. I wanted to share their latest collaborative project. Nannan's models are on the left and Tyler's are on the right. Click on the thumbnails to see bigger images and to read their captions, which have some really interesting details themselves.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby

Ben Folds' new album Lonely Avenue is a collaboration between he and novelist Nick Hornby. Hornby wrote the lyrics, e-mailing them to Folds, who made them into songs.

I've read several articles about the album, but I was surprised that none of the articles mentioned a past collaboration of theirs, because it seems pretty obvious to me to mention that. There's a song from William Shatner's album Has Been called "That's Me Trying".



Ben Folds was the producer and arranger of Shatner's album, which was written in a similar way to how most of Lonely Avenue was written. For most of the songs, Shatner wrote prose poetry and Ben Folds made songs out of it, however, for "That's Me Trying", Nick Hornby wrote the lyrics.

Has Been is an amazing album, and I really love Nick Hornby's lyrics in "That's Me Trying". If that song is any indication of how Lonely Avenue is, I think I'm going to need to check it out.

Was losing all my friends, but I got 'em back.

Although I think people pay far too much attention to lyrics in music compared to how much attention they pay to the actual music, I love lyrics and the art of lyric writing. I love interpreting the meaning behind lyrics.

I'm a few years late with this one, but I was just thinking about it again today. I've been a fan of the band Brand New for about 9 years. Fans of the band often cite Jesse Lacey's lyrics as their favorite aspect of their music. I've heard many people say that he's their favorite lyricist. I think the lyrics in Brand New's second and third albums are particularly good.

When their third album, The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me came out, I was struck by the first few lines of the very first song, "Sowing Season (Yeah)". The reason I said I'm a few years late is because the album came out in 2006. Here's the song:



Was losing all my friends.
Was losing them to drinking and to driving.
Was losing all my friends, but I got 'em back.

They made me think "Ah, that's clever." because I thought I saw something he did, which I still believe is a possibility, despite the fact that I've never heard anyone else mention it.

Ignore the fact that the second line makes it sound like "drinking" and "driving" are separate actions, because I do believe he is talking about drunk driving. It is probably just worded that way to fit the melody he created. Stuff like that happens in songwriting all the time.

Now, most people who hear the lyrics seem to think he's talking about literally losing friends to drunk driving, which doesn't really make sense if he got his friends back. I, however, think there is a rather clever double meaning which references an older song of theirs called "Seventy Times 7". Here's the song:



"Seventy Times 7" is about betrayal, Jesse Lacey's reaction to the betrayal, and his message to the person that betrayed him. The lyrics in one particular section of the song say,

Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads,
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
And again when your head goes through the windshield.

It seems to me that in "Sowing Season (Yeah)", the friends he lost to drinking and to driving aren't people he literally lost to drunk driving. He's talking about friendships that were ended over betrayal. Not only does the line "but I got 'em back" make much more sense that way, but it then acquires two different possible meanings. The first is that he and the friends made up, so he gained his friends back. The second is that he got them back, meaning got revenge on them. I think the first one is more likely. It's a sign of maturity, getting rid of grudges. It's kind of a way of saying "Remember that first album we made, and that song where I was really pissed off? Well I've grown up since then." That's an especially fitting statement for the first lines of the first song of a more mature album.

That's the way I interpreted the lyrics the first time I listened to the song. I don't know if that's what Jesse Lacey had in mind, but I think it's possible. I like that it's ambiguous that way, so the listener doesn't know if he's speaking literally or if he's talking about betrayal. I'm just surprised I've never heard anyone else interpret the lyrics that way, especially considering the popularity of the song "Seventy Times 7" and people's love for over-thinking lyrics.

I'm quite curious to know if there's anyone else who has interpreted the lyrics the same way that I did.

The Patience And Productions Of Alan Moulder

Maybe about a year ago now I came across a great little biography about Alan Moulder on triple j. I just listened to it again, and I decided I wanted to post it.

A while back I posted an entry about Steve Albini, and mentioned that I'd love to work with him someday. There's kind of a long list of people I'd like to work with. One of them is Alan Moulder.

Alan Moulder is kind of known for being able to work with musicians that have difficult personalities. He must be really easygoing. Apparently, I like several musicians with difficult personalities, because Moulder has worked on some of my favorite albums.

He produced and engineered The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails. Here's a song from The Fragile called "Just Like You Imagined".

He engineered Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Here's a song from Loveless called "Sometimes".

And though it's not one of my favorite albums, I think it's worth mentioning he co-produced Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins with his semi-frequent collaborator Flood (another producer I really like). Here's a song from Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness called "Tonight, Tonight".

The first nineteen minutes of the biography or whatever you want to call it is really good because he talks about all three of those albums. Some of the most interesting parts are where Moulder talks about working with Kevin Shields, Billy Corgan, and Trent Reznor, all of whom are known to have rather difficult personalities. There's a lot of great little bits about the making of The Fragile and having to deal with Reznor, and there are little clips of Reznor talking about working with Moulder. I loved hearing about how Reznor had issues when it came to his singing voice, because I do too. It's motivating in a weird way learning that someone you're inspired by has struggled with the same things you struggle with. Anyway, it's a really cool listen if you like any of those albums.

Firearms & Frozen Treats

I have been sick the past several days with a sore throat. I really wanted popsicles, but we didn't have any, so I had to make some Jell-O popsicles. That entry is from a little over a year ago. Anyway, I made strawberry banana ones with chunks of banana.

On the 12th my dad and I went to a shooting range with Patrick and his parents (my aunt and uncle). I've shot guns only a few times in my life. Although I very much hate the idea of hunting in this day and age, and am generally kind of weirded out by gun nuts, I am really quite interested in guns. Maybe it's the survivalist in me, but I think it's probably a good idea to know how to use a gun, just in case you ever need to use one. You never know when there's going to be a zombie outbreak, or when Skynet is going to attack, or when a group of cowboys or a biker gang is going to ride into town and start causing trouble.


I started with a .22 caliber rifle, which is the only gun I've ever shot in the past. I spent most of the time shooting .22 caliber and .357 caliber revolvers. I loved those. They made me feel like Doc Holliday or something. My dad kept saying I looked like Clint Eastwood. I was hesitant to shoot any of the semi-automatics, but I ended up shooting a 9mm Hi-Point, an AR-15, and an AK-47. I didn't really enjoy shooting the AR-15 or the AK-47 because of the recoil, but I actually liked the 9mm Hi-Point quite a bit. I wasn't a bad shot either. I was no Deadshot or Martin Riggs or anything, but I wasn't bad.

My aunt took some photos of us, but I haven't seen them yet. If and when I do, and if I like them, I'll post some here.

Halloween is coming up. So this is my...

Spooky, isn't it?

This year's X-Entertainment Halloween Countdown started yesterday. Sometimes I go for long periods of time where I seem to completely forget that X-Entertainment exists, but I've been a fan of the site for probably a decade. It's not necessarily hard to believe, but it's a little bit crazy that it's been over a decade since Matt ate Nad's hair removal gel. That remains, in my mind, one of the highlights of internet culture.

Even before Matt started doing Halloween Countdowns, the holiday was celebrated extravagantly on the site. Sometimes he wouldn't even wait until the month of October to start the extravagance, so it seemed like the countdowns were created as a way to rationalize starting to celebrate early every year. I used to love Madd Matt.

He is not afraid of the dark. He is the dark.

The Halloween Countdown has just started, but it already seems more exciting than the past several years' countdowns did. It seems like Matt's putting more enthusiasm into it than he previously did. Witnessing it is probably not unlike a new parent witnessing their young children experiencing their first few Halloweens and Christmas's. It makes visiting the X-Entertainment site feel like it felt years ago. It's fun. It's making me in the mood for Halloween.

The past few years I had plans for Halloween, but I was let down at the last minute each time, and ended up sitting in my room, watching John Carpenter's Halloween (I'm forced to make that distinction now since Rob Zombie decided to make a terrible remake a few years ago) or Ghostbusters.

I have no plans this year, so I can't be let down. Suddenly the idea of sitting around that night and watching movies by myself sounds fun, when it's not in the context of broken plans. I'm going to go buy some exquisitely delicious Halloween candy, and watch movies, and have a wonderful time. And I'll be counting down the days until that night with X-Entertainment.

Reformatting the planet, and going overboard with links.

The first season of Penny Arcade: The Series is over, and they haven't started the new season yet, so they've been putting up other programs on PATV.

2 Player Productions (actually comprised of four people. Weird, I know.), the production company that produced the first season of Penny Arcade, produced a documentary about chip music called Reformat The Planet. I originally saw it on Pitchfork TV a while back, but now it's on PATV.

I talked about Tristan Perich in my last entry. He has a few scenes in Reformat The Planet.

Jesse Novak is also in Reformat The Planet. I know of him from the comedy group Olde English. His brother is BJ Novak, the writer of, producer of, and actor that plays Ryan Howard on the U.S. version of The Office. I believe Jesse has written music for The Office at least once. One of the Dunder Mifflin jingles in that episode where the office makes a commercial for the company.

I love the concept of chip music, but I rarely hear any I like. Reformat The Planet is an interesting movie, but I didn't really hear any music that interested me in it. There's a very gimmicky aspect to chip music where regardless of how well composed a piece of music is, as long as someone uses that medium to make music, it's automatically considered as valid as any other chip music. I rarely hear what I consider to be interesting compositions and textures in the medium of chip music. I'm not saying any music is invalid, but I wish people would be more daring. I think that the reason old video game music is so memorable and moving has more to do with the interesting compositions rather than the 8-bit sound.

Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony

I've thought a lot about ways of presenting music, but usually my ideas are based on new or interesting ways of presenting widely-used, existing formats, such as CD, vinyl, or MP3's.

One of the most interesting ideas I've come across (Tyler from my previous entry linked to it from his facebook page) is this:



"A complete electronic circuit - programmed by the artist and assembled by hand - plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case itself."

It's not a recording in the traditional sense of the word. I think it's probably more accurate to think of it as an electronic music box, and I'm fascinated by music boxes.

Another interesting way of looking at it is that it is not a stretch to see the mounted circuit itself as minimalist album art when it's in the context of a CD jewel case like that. I love the idea of physical objects being used in album art rather than just images. This is not only a physical object, but it's what plays the music. The album art plays the album.

Of course, I think one downside to a presentation like this is that it's such an interesting idea that it is in danger of becoming a gimmick and overshadowing the music itself. Although that doesn't decrease the validity or quality of the music, people like me are only talking about the album because of the presentation and not because of the music. Maybe that's alright though, because maybe the music isn't the only part of the art as a whole. Maybe the circuit idea isn't there to compliment the music, but the other way around, and the music is there to compliment the idea of the circuit. That doesn't mean that the music is any less important. It's more like a film score complimenting a film. The music is very important and enhances the film, but the film itself, as a whole, is the most important thing.

You can download a free recording (provided by The Rambler) of the first movement in the 1-Bit Symphony by clicking here.