Red Chuck

People Say

Terry Gross held a great interview today on Fresh Air with one of my all time favorite bands, the Go—Betweens. Grant McLennan and Robert Foster sounded polite, witty, and intelligent, just the kind of repartée you would expect from an Australian rock band.

Here's the song they described as a cross pollination of The Monkees and Bob Dylan.

And here's part of the Robert Christgau quote that started the piece.

"There's no denying that the Go-Betweens are a bookish taste--if you're bored by the literary, you won't get 'em. But rather than lyric poets, as I once thought, Forster and McLennan are better conceived as short-story writers, with the concreteness and forward motion of voices and music compensating for imagistic technique and low word count."

—from A Long Short Story.

And since I am quoting Christgau today, here's his most recent Go—Betweens review:

Oceans Apart [Yep Roc, 2005]
Robert's songs more tuneful in their maturity, Grant's more atmospheric, they punch 'em all up to make a stronger impression than on their comeback album, thus proving that it was one. Settled down in real life, Robert recaptures his peripatetic past with a clear conscience and a sharp eye; still questing, Grant couches his romanticism in instrumental subtleties that soften his detachment. Robert so fond, Grant so elusive, both so beguiling, they're deeply civilized for the leaders of a working rock band. And for just that reason they can follow the calling until that distant day when strumming itself is too much for them. A

Links:
An Archive of Robert Christgau's Go—Betweens Reviews

Calling All Facial Hair

mp3

To celebrate the release of iTunes 4.9 (and to test iTunes 4.9), here's a garageband slow jam with a shout out to the big chief and/or someone with facial hair.

I got your podcast feed right here.

Survey Says

Trying the Belief-O-Matic survey, I returned a Liberal Quaker. Hmm. Lately we've been talking about Process theology at my house. I wonder what George Fox would think about Charles Hartshorne?

Links:
The Center for Process Studies
Quaker Web Guides

Naked Mole Rats

Katherine and Helen went to see the new exhibit at the Little Rock Zoo this week — naked mole rats. Katherine's description was fairly disturbing. Imagine a large, squirming pile of hairless, wrinkled, fanged rodents clawing and biting each other. The rats are about the size of small cucumbers. They are long, skinny, and. . . well, Helen's description took the prize. Really, kids say the darndest things some times. And rather loudly as well. But I'm sure she's not the first person to state the obvious regarding those priapic, naked mole rats.

Random Image Rotator

Here's where I got my banner image rotator. I can't tell you how happy I was to find someone who wrote this script in php instead of java. Thank you Automatic Labs.

Found Footage Festival

Have you seen the Found Footage Fest preview?

Red Chuck favorite, Winnebago Man makes a brief appearance.

New iTunes in June

AppleInsider reports that the new, podcast friendly version of iTunes could be available by the end of the month.

Anthimeria

This came up last night at dinner. It describes the use of a noun as a verb. For example:

At the poetry reading, the symbolist nouned us for over an hour.

or:

His talking parrot nouned loudly.

or:

Don't you hate it when people verb nouns?

Anyone Know What This Emoticon Means?

.{

I'm thinking:

M.I.A. in the Mix

M.I.A.'s Online Piracy Funds Terrorism is an interesting play on the whole file sharing and piracy conundrum. Here the Sri Lankan "hip-hop, ragga, dancehall, electro and, dare we say, punk" vocalist invites budding and or established music producers the oppurtunity to re-work her songs from the ground up. M.I.A. allows for her vocal tracks to be freely downloaded. You can then remix her vocals anyway you like and then upload an mp3 of your mix to her site. Your uploaded mp3 is in turn offered in streamable m3a form for review. Visitors are then encouraged to rate your mix and others based on M.I.A.'s 3 AK37s scale.

Why do I care?

1) I love the whole open source vocals idea. With everyone trying to protect their musical assets in this day and age, I love it that an artist is saying: here ya go, have at it, show me what you got.

2) I love what I think I see working on the server side of her site (Indy stop reading now because this is extremely nerdy). I think her ISP is using Apache::MP3 to handle the different file formats offered. Maybe I am wrong, but I can't imagine how else they could have created a streamable jukebox that so cleverly invites visitor interaction — download, mix, upload, vote. I also appreciate how the Online Piracy Funds Terrorism section offers several unique mp3 trafficing options that are uniformly easys to navigate and operate (1 click downloads for all formats). Hell, I even downloaded the vocals. Rest assurred, I'll post something both here and there if I ever get around to making a mix.

3) Ummm. . . I started thinking my previous post wasn't very funny and even had a faintly misogynist tone, which was not intended at all. So just to show you I ain't a chauvanist pig, I thought I'd hip everyone to M.I.A., who sounds like she could beat my lame-white-boy-snacking-on-a-woman's-energy-bar ass on a treadmill any day of the week.

Eating A Woman's Energy Bar

So Katherine bought all these Pria Bars the other day for her workout. Unfortunately, they are loaded with soy and so, after one bite, her legume allergy kicked in and she had to throw her bitten Pria away. Now we have a surplus of women's energy bars in our panties. . . I mean, pantry.

"So what exactly is in a woman's energy bar?" you might ask.

Though the packaging of these energy bars targets the feminine sex, I checked the ingrediants and didn't find anything that suggested these are ph balanced for a woman. Obviously they have a lot of soy but no other nutrients different from any other power bar. Not wanting these to go to waste. . . crunch, gulp, mmm, wow! Man O Man! What a difference an energy bar can make! This morning, I was supercharged at the gym. Usually I tend to drag during my morning workout but not today. Today, I was rocking. Endurance, strength, speed. Yeah baby. Bring on the Prias.

As a side note I should also say that I also usually don't get teary when listening to NPR's Morning Edition, but that story about the man being reunited with his sister (sniffle) after all those years (sniffle) was just so (sniffle). . . so (big sniffle). . . moving.

San Suggestion

Hey. We are going to San Francisco this summer for a week. We = 2 adults and 2 children (ages 6 & 3).

The first time I visited San Francisco I stayed in a Best Western. Across the street was a video store that had the words "Got Porn?" on the marquee. On that trip I spent my days scouring record stores for John Fahey and Skip Spence lps. Nights found me and my posse hanging at a blues club where the bartenders spit fire balls behind the bar between sets.

The second time I stayed in San Francisco was our honeymoon. We did lots of walking: Telegraph Hill, Haight Ashbury, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. We also ate well.

I love San Francisco. I can think of a lot of things that I would like to do there, but I need some help. I don't think my kids want to go to City Lights bookstore as much as I do. So give me some suggestions of kid friendly things to do. For example, here's a good one from Mary:

Go to the Ferry Building, which is where the ferries come in, of course, but also a very cool market. There's a Peet's coffee (best latte ever, I drank two larges). Also a Cowgirl Creamery cheese place, bakery, other produce, shops and restaurants. It would be great with kids. Take the trolley, grab breakfast and watch the ferries come in.

Comments are open, as usual.

No More Morning Edition?

NPR drops Audible.com.

Black Banana

Respect: 1 black banana, freezer burned to a crisp, rotten to a core now warm and mushy.

Names of Beach Houses for Rent on Hatteras Island

To The Man At The Travellers Game On Whom My Six Year Old Spilled Red Slushie

First of all, we didn't foresee you sitting there. There was no precognition on our part. But, and I want to make sure this fact is absolutely clear, we found those seats first. You came waddling up with your family approximately 11 minutes after we sat down. There were plenty of other places in the stands for you to choose. Plenty.

Secondly, when I returned with 3 Slushies, 1 Sprite, and 1 Corona, I had been through hell. Literally. Hell. Waiting. The slushie line. The soft drink line. The beer line. And, before all that, the Travs Cash line (because I didn't actually have cash so I had to go to the office and use my MasterCard to buy green laminates redeemable for concessions). Plus, it was hot. Hotter than the stands, I presume, because of all the pre-game queues of people crammed together down there in the bowels of the stadium where the concessions are prepared and sold. People sweating. People waiting. People wanting to leave but having to endure. Like I said, hell. Therefore, I was a little grumpy too.

Thirdly, I didn't mean to sit so close to your wife. By the time I returned with my flimsy cardboard drink holder and my melting Slushies, I barely even noticed your wife. I chose to sit on the outer bound of our group. It was a shepherding move. I was the closing paranthesis for our sprawling, squealing, thirsty little collective. I intentionally sat opposite the other parents in our party just so that I could help form an amiable enclosure of sorts. Establish a natural boundary. I was our Eastern Seaboard, our English Channel, our Bering Strait. I didn't even notice that I was also lapping at your shore. Like I said, a shepherding move, not a "making a move" move. I didn't realize your wife was so close to me. So when you, in all your corpulence. . . I mean, god, what a lot of you there was. . . anyway, when you walked up and grunted at me. . . somthing like "I want to sit by my wife". . . your tone was so grim, so clenched, so steely that I immediately bristled, even though I knew exactly what you had been through. Remember. I'd been there myself — the lines, the heat, hell itself. To be so sullen, to be so rude, because of that, I immediately did not like you. But, I did say "excuse me". I tried to speak politley. And I moved.

And then, the accident. Yes. It was an accident. He slipped. He was trying to sit on his bottom but those bleachers are deceptive, wider than you would think (probably to accomodate fat asses like yourself), and so, misjudging his distance from the next step up, he sat straight down, fell straight back, and in that hard landing, released his hold on that precious cup.

And when I said "I am so sorry" while also trying to console him (and boy was he upset, because not only did he hurt his back but also he lost a full slushie), you were silent. And we were all looking at you. My family, your family, my friends, strangers, all looking. And I was foolishly counting on understanding from you. (I mean, it was just 2 silver dollar sized spots on the right leg of your shorts. It could have been much much worse.) I expected civility. We-are-all-in-this-together words of forgiveness: "Aw shucks. . . no worries. . . I hope the little fella is OK" (ed. note: there was a lot of crying. . . OK. . . lets call it loud wailing from the 6 year old). But you didn't speak those lines. You weren't playing that game. No. You didn't speak at all. In your gruff world, a player only stares stoically at an empty playing field and coldly ignores the surrounding humanity in the stands.

And for a split second, I almost took that other step. Mentally I went there. Why? Because I don't like to be ignored. Plus there's gallantry in voicing certain words. You know the phrase. You've heard it before. Perhaps you've used it yourself. The "let me pay for your dry cleaning" phrase. And I have to say, here was the perfect moment for that utterance. But with you, there was no dialogue. You established those rules. So now, let me turn that dry cleaning offer over and present you with this small curse: I hope those red dye #40 stains don't ever come out.

iTunes 4.9

Yahoo reports that iTunes 4.9 will include integrated support for podcasts.

Thank you Dylan for the link but for some reason I had problems getting it to open, so here's the story from some other sources:

Dog Island

Given the rash of recent "incidents", I have reached the sad conclusion that his behavior is not being ameliorated by the prozac. Therefore, I am seriously considering sending him to Dog Island.

Scooters and the Law

David got pulled over on his Yamaha scooter the other day. The officer was very serious. He told David that he had pulled him over because his scooter didn't have a license. David politely told the officer that he didn't need a license for a 49.5 cc scooter. The officer went back to his patrol car and returned with a manual. After leafing through the book, he paused on a page, looked up and said, "You're right. What you're riding is considered a motorized bicycle. You don't need a license." David said, "Thanks." The officer then said, "But let me give you a warning. . . don't drink and drive on that thing." "OK," said David. And then, with a miscevious grin, the officer said, "Cause if I had one of those little bikes, I'd wanna have a couple beers and then go for a ride."

Blood, Sweat, & Beers

. . . and a broken pick up switch. But that's what a guitar should look like after an Easy's gig.

Le Grump

I don't know what it is but I've been grumpy lately. Edgy. Small things that I would usually shrug off have stuck, grown, and bloomed into uncharacteristically fragrant fleurs de colére. Maybe its the Allegra D.

Now I will say these temper blossoms haven't gone unwatered. There have been incidents (the keyboard player, the dog, and those damn kids with their bb guns) but usually I ain't so grumpy.

Anyway, I've found that this helps a little.

New Player

The new Red Chuck mp3 player came from here. I like this interface a lot more. That other thing was getting on my eye nerves. Anyway, lemme know if you notice anything annoying about it.

Current Reading

This plugin allows you to fetch images from Amazon without the hassles of that other plugin.

Wait a sec... you don't care about any of this. Here ya go — music themes from Dutch television shows. Rock on.