P.S. Rest assured, cats will be blogged on Friday.
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I'm going to be on the road for the rest of the week, so blogging will be even more irregular than usual. I'll be visiting NHT's facility in Benecia, CA—so check the Stereophile Galleries for some instant gratification—and I will be putting up new links, just not as early.
As a follow-up to my last entry, I was sitting in my favorite watering hole over the weekend, listening to my favorite jukebox㬎 tunes for 5 bucks–when a couple sitting at the bar next to me struck up a music conversation about what was playing: Elvis Costello, The Shins, King Sunny Ade, Lefty Frizzell, James Brown, Arctic Monkeys, you name it. At one point, talking about the cover art of an album I can’t remember now I said, being the absent-minded old man of the bunch, 'Have you ever seen that record?'
They both stared straight at me and said in an automaton-like…
The River in Reverse
Verve Forecast
Verve Forecast
You know it's hard to tell these days whether Elvis Costello is a prolific genius or if he's just spread too thin. Give the man credit: whatever he’s doing, he's workin' hard at it. In recent months there’s been a live album with a 52 piece orchestra that recast many of his hits and came with a bonus disc of his orchestral suite Il Sogno..
Now, inspired by the travails of New Orleans, DMc and longtime Crescent City musical treasure Allen Toussaint, take on the Toussaint songbook and score a joyous, funky triumph. One listen to…
On June 14, 2004, I made a silly, little mistake.
Today — almost two years later — that silly, little mistake rose up from old, archived e-mails and sauntered out of dusty cardboard boxes, and made itself known to everyone from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to New Richmond, Wisconsin, to New York City. That silly, little mistake had me coughing and wheezing and apologizing for hours.
It's not a big deal, really. Everything will be fine. Not too much time has been lost, not too much money has been spent. Looked at in a certain way, this mistake can even be considered a problem solver…
The link is to The Guardian Unlimited's podcast of Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy. You might think you don't have time to listen to a 78 minute argument? Well, think again—this you've got to hear.
By the way, why is the most impassioned defense of the First Amendment that I've heard in years delivered by a couple of Brits?
The Independent interviews Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The good news? We may not be doomed. The bad news: Yet, that is.
Michael Chabon's rant about the imposition of predetermined boundaries and contours, of a formulary of play—and why Sid in Toy Story wasn't necessarily a Norman Bates in the making.
I have a soft spot for this show, but what really impresses me about this article on the long-running series is that the Sci-Fi network stuck with the show and worked to get viewers versed in its backstory and mythos, instead of just moving it to different time-slots each week like the "real" networks do.
Haven't the mainstream networks noticed that all of the breakout shows on premium cable stay the course and show their best stuff at the same time, on the same days, and frequently? Way to work it, SFN.
"I just want you to know, Stephen, that I spent the entire afternoon recompiling all of the text and graphs and data for the Test CD 2 booklets."
"That doesn't make me feel very good, JA."
"The entire afternoon," JA gently teases.
"Me sorry."
"Are you giving Stephen a hard time over there, JA?," Elizabeth rises to my rescue.
"Well, yeah!"
"Because he made a mistake two years ago, and it resurfaced to bite him in the ass?"
"Well... Yeah!"
"But he's only made one mistake in the entire time he's been here."
"Maybe so, but it…