sweet british shoes alert

need to get your feet into something fresh, new, sporty and stylin? definitely check out the british gola sportswear. I dig the men's centennials in gold, although the ladies can get an even cooler silver version. both are part of its limited edition 100th anniversary collection.
(thanks, sizod.)

chinook ones, part 2

hahaha watch this kid confuse spelling bee judges with his odd napoleon dynamite impression.

the worst album cover in ages!

digable planets fans rejoice: ladybug's solo album, trip the light fantastic, hit stores a few weeks back. the little bit that i've heard so far is pretty good, but damn -- who the fuck signed off on this? major ouch!

you've probably heard that google has launched their video search along with a player. how might this day go down in history? the beginning of the end of cable tv? google stepping directly in the ring with microsoft? john battelle speculates.

at last weekend's glastonbury music festival, basement jaxx filled in for kylie as the closer for the 3 day musical extravaganza (she stepped out after her breast cancer diagnosis, which scared me so much because she's so loveablely wonderful). couldn't make it to the uk? the austin city limits music festival has a billing of every top act on the charts at this moment. you can't even count all the performers-i tried.

(thanks, ranjit.)

another amazing project from all tomorrow's parties: all across london from late august until early october, classic bands will be performing classic albums in their entirety. the stooges start it off with funhouse. reformed versions of the lemonheads, gang of four, mudhoney and the melvins will also perform.
[via pitchfork]

they'll reissue ANYTHING these days!

terrible, terrible rappers

totally unnecessary reissue of the week: oaktown 357's wild and loose, with remastered sound and bonus dvd content.

can't afford an air conditioner? make one for $25 canadian, which is like 74¢ in america!

j. ralph's music hasn't made him famous, but it has certainly made him rich.

his job? making volvo, volkswagon and other "edgy" brands sound rad. typical assignments? make it sound like the tv is broken. make it sound like music from a student film by stanley kubrick. npr talked to the 29 year old who is releasing a cd of his much of his commercial music called the illusionary movements of geraldine and azu.

if you aren't drooling in envy yet, you should know he records in a retired silent movie theater in lower manhattan.

new tupac dvd on the way. live at the house of blues features pac's last taped performance along with snoop and ex-weed carriers the outlaws. most notably, the extra footage includes an interview with suge knight. in this unseen footage, he may or may not make vague threats against everyone on earth, gross accusations of homosexuality and hints at secret porn videos featuring every famous female ever.

when you want to buy a $130,000 picasso, there's only one place to go

"Atelier De Cannes"
by Pablo Picasso
Original Crayon Drawing 1958
$129,999.99

only available at costco. that's right. costco.

snapple unveils 17.5-ton popsicle in NYC on the first day of summer; it melts and floods union square.

the ny times pays tribute to snarkiness in blogs by praising the blog the shins will change your life at the expense of believer magazine's professed earnestness. people may make fun of zach braff's effusiveness, but really garden state did for indie rock what breakin 2: electric boogaloo did for turbo's career.

If The Believer's music issue is more problematic, that's because it's also more neutral. In an effort to stamp out snark, the editors also seem to have stamped out skepticism, and so the magazine takes it for granted that indie-rockers are the most important musicians on the planet: the harpist and songwriter Joanna Newsom, for example, taps into "a deep, universal pain." (Might those words appear on a certain blog sometime soon?)

(thanks, rarce.)

stop emo haircuts!
(thanks, ken.)

the onion celebrates its 300th anniversary with their july 22-29, 2056 edition. highlights include the hilarious lampooning of social trends, anachronistic personalities and finger-banging robots.

Here's something I don't understand: We can develop a robot sturdy enough to mine the Saturnine moon Enceladus, strong enough to withstand the fierce ionic winds and burst through the 40 meters of scorched onyx that covers the planet, and smart enough to collect the vital crystals from amidst all the worthless rock, but the designers at USR labs can't figure out how to stop them from finger-banging my wife?

as much as you love myths where god destroys the earth because we are bad, you will enjoy these tasty noah's nuggets. they're inspired by scripture, folks. that's how you know that god loves us.

(thanks, elkins.)
[via boing boing]

feist was on kcrw's "morning becomes eclectic" this morning. get your listen on!
(thanks, blumberelli.)

even if you aren't a fan of his music, the fresh air interview with judas priest's rob halford on NPR today will definitely be a very interesting listen. their long history is mixed with heavy metal innovation and social/legal controversy.

Judas Priest pioneered the heavy metal sound in the 1970s and '80s. Lead singer Halford left the band in 1991, citing internal tension, and in 1998, he disclosed that he is gay during an interview on MTV.

(thanks, noah.)

if i lived in detroit...

i'd go see Wilco play tonight at the meadow brook music festival. then I'd head to st. andrews hall on thursday to see the best band in the world, Café Tacuba. wow that city has a lot of good shows this week.

diss warz, lit-style

neal pollack on persona and his experience with mcsweeney's in this past sunday's new york times book review (reg req'd).

I can barely remember century's dawn, before my persona arrived. I had a job, I owed no debt, I rented an apartment, I wasn't married. My knees didn't hurt when it rained. Then I got involved with McSweeney's, which, according to most dictionaries, is an old Gaelic word meaning "trendy literary scene."

and dave eggers' response (complete with a response-to-the-response from pollack).

He quotes me as saying, "We're about to enter a new age of literary celebrity." When I read this online this morning, I had to re-read it a few times, looking for some postscript that indicated that, as Neal usually does, he had made the quote up. ... The quote doesn't sound like anyone, really—no one would have said something like that, unless they were addressing, in a bad late-'80s TV movie, some kind of misguided depiction of a glitzy (ha!) book-industry convention.

a delicious glass of sizzurp

how do you make sizzurp? turns out there are several schools of thought on this provocative question.

i've been listening to a promo copy of cage's upcoming hell's winter cd, and it's pretty good stuff. beats by el-p, rjd2, and dj shadow (!) (rollie p has the shadow-produced track available for dl here), as well as instrumentation from members of yo la tengo, on some str8 wtf shit. i haven't really kept up on what cage has been up to for a while, but he has sure switched his style up (in a good way) since his days of ultraviolent rapping about eating people's eyeballs or whateverthefuck gory zaniness he used to be into. the new album has a lot of political content and "regular dude rhymes" mixed among all the x-rated-ness. the end result is something as equally inspired by slug/aesoprock as it is by the grimy rap styles of onyx (not to be confused with the grime rap styles of all those british dudes). i RIKE it.

that's the best we have for battery technology?

turns out i was mistaken when i thought that battery science was moving right along. wiredblogs reports a discovery that the ibook battery is made of simple rechargable AA batteries. jeeeez guys, that's embarrassing!

however the hard drive scientists continue to squeeze more info into tiny crevices. Seagate just annouced the first 160gb laptop hard drive. Its the first drive to use new "perpendicular recording" which allows for larger yet more efficient drives:

Standing bits on end also improves the reliability of read-write performance in demanding environments. The Momentus enhancements come without increases in power consumption or heat generation - crucial as remote users look to work longer between battery charges and system builders seek to pack more performance in smaller notebooks.

i think the "battery scientists" owe the "hard drive scientists" a round of beers for making them look like they're actually doing something good...

fun futurama taglines. damn, i miss that show! but it looks like a full-length movie or two may be on the way.

(thanks, jesus!)

attention video editors:

NBC has job openings for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. Additionally, 39 other jobs are posted, including producer, audio assistant, camera operator, hair and makeup artist, etc.

old people are boring

william powell, the author of the anarchist cookbook, wants his book taken out of print.

During the years that followed its publication, I went to university, married, became a father and a teacher of adolescents. These developments had a profound moral and spiritual effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had written earlier and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the ideas that I had put my name to. In 1976 I became a confirmed Anglican Christian and shortly thereafter I wrote to Lyle Stuart Inc. explaining that I no longer held the views that were expressed in the book and requested that The Anarchist Cookbook be taken out of print. The response from the publisher was that the copyright was in his name and therefore such a decision was his to make -- not the author's. In the early 1980's, the rights for the book were sold to another publisher. I have had no contact with that publisher (other than to request that the book be taken out of print) and I receive no royalties.

[via]

leonard cohen is in a legal battle over his retirement savings. here's hoping he pulls a trent, assuming he's the good guy.

buck 65's upcoming record, secret house against the world, features collaborations with tortoise (and, presumably, others). sneakmove-pal newageynofriends slid me a track from the album called (i think) "le 65 is me," which seems very much influenced by serge gainsbourg and blonde redhead. not my fave thing ever, but pretty cool and certainly waaaay better than anything off this right here is buck 65. i'm real interested to see what the buckster has in store.

sf weekly talks to feist. she's so rad.

Listen up, any Oakland city planner/city government types who might be reading this: you gotta follow through on the Wayans brother's proposal to turn the former 70-acre Oakland army base into a Universal Studios style movie production facility (as reported in the East Bay Express). Lets not let such prime Bay Area real estate go to waste--lets use it to make more jobs. Cool jobs. Jump on it, please!

"They liked the fact the fact this is a city that could really benefit from this." She says they want to bring the film industry to Oakland, a kind of Hollywood North where urban youth could join apprenticeship programs: "They've really developed an affection for the city."

(thanks, sizod.)

watch the first episode of stella. michael, dave and michael promise dumb comedy dressed up in suits. i just call it the 90s-hipster-version of the monkees with no sweet neil diamond songs.

bjork and babydaddy matthew barney have collaborated on a film called drawing restraint 9. although she said she'd never act again, bjork stars in the movie and composed the soundtrack with help from mark bell, will oldham and other folks. get your scroll on for audio samples.

the portland mercury interviewed john lee and vernon chatman, creators of the supergreat wonder showzen.

The raw style of Wonder Showzen seems to come straight out of public access.

V: Well, thank you for that insult. Thanks for shitting on our hearts. And our baby!

J: Yeah, you just threw our baby in a dumpster. How do you feel now, prom mom? We actually try really hard!

check out these ridiculously great pics of michael jackson fans standing outside the courtroom and rejoicing in mj's "not guilty" verdict. the woman releasing a white dove into the air is definitely the best thing i've seen all month.

the subject is tired but i still never thought i'd see this as a headline

and why do they show a picture of Yoko Ono?
(sorry sorry-- that's the last of this i'll do)

a whole new meaning to "tubeless tire"

Michelin is making flat tires and beautiful vintage whitewalls a thing of the past with its innovative yet unsightly airless tires. Segway inventor Dean Kamen has already signed on to offer them for his four-wheeled constructs--hopefully that won't dissuade major vehicle manufacturers' consideration. Its name, the "tweel," also leaves something to be desired, but the photogallery is a fun peek at a possible future.

(thanks, Noah.)

do i hear a flushing sound?

AOL is taking steps to emulate their rivals for a more ad-based revenue system. To sweeten the pot for us users: they'll move move much of their music and video downloads from "members only" to "free for everyone." Hurry and get some before they finish spiraling down the toilet.

dmb fans to bring apple to its knees re: drm? sony bmg seems to think so. yes, nyt registration lamely required.

i just read this in-flight sedaris masterpiece on a return trip from sweaty orlando.

On the flight to Raleigh, I sneezed, and the cough drop I’d been sucking on shot from my mouth, ricocheted off my folded tray table, and landed, as I remember it, in the lap of the woman beside me, who was asleep and had her arms folded across her chest.

neurotic brilliance, i tell you.

get your "fibber mcgee and molly" on!

"radio memories" is podcasting radio shows from the 1920s through the '50s.

i found a fun interview from a few years back with brendon small, creator of home movies, which is currently enjoying a second life as part of the cartoon network's adult swim programming block.

learn to tie your shoes in 24 cool new ways.

music to drink sizzurp by

dj screw, creator of screwed music

chopped and screwed: a history, by mtv.com's joseph patel.

Screwed Up Records & Tapes is the store that keeps alive the memory of Robert Earl Davis Jr., a.k.a. DJ Screw, the local hip-hop DJ who was the inventor and namesake of screwed music. No one knows for sure how or exactly when Screw created the slowed-down sound, but members of his south Houston crew, the Screwed Up Click, say that Screw was playing around with his turntables in 1991 and serendipitously discovered that dramatically reducing the pitch of a record yielded a mellow, heavy sound that resonated with the slowed-down pace of H-Town.

a sad day for michelle, kelly

BREAKING: destiny's child announces split!

"We have been working together as Destiny's Child since we were 9, and touring together since we were 14. After a lot of discussion and some deep soul-searching, we realized that our current tour has given us the opportunity to leave Destiny's Child on a high note, united in our friendship and filled with an overwhelming gratitude for our music, our fans, and each other," the statement said.

lemon-red kicks off its mix series with a killer set by dj/rupture.

"pissing calvin" stickers came up in conversation recently. where in the world did the trend originate? why hasn't calvin and hobbes creator bill watterson ever sued to stop their production? this awesome article from 2003 about the reculsive comic artist answers a few questions.

The pressure on Watterson must have been enormous, but he steadfastly refused to sell out, even a little bit. "I look at cartoons as an art, as a form of personal expression. That's why I don't hire assistants . . . and why I refuse to dilute or corrupt the strip's message with merchandising," he said in his Festival of Cartoon Art speech. "Characters lose their believability as they start endorsing major companies and lend their faces to bedsheets and boxer shorts."

have your away message talk to my away message: hollywood is using instant messaging for more than the hilarious links and ambiguous flirting that god intended it for.

Instead of displaying simple "away from my computer" messages, Hollywood buddy lists now overflow with come-ons, from "need work" to "wrapping up shoot." Producers hiring for a new production can tell at a glance who's available now, who's not and who might be free in the near future.

clearcontext is a san francisco-based software start-up being funded by the founders' online poker winnings.

[Brad] Meador, who is head of operations at ClearContext, and Deva Hazarika, the chief executive officer, have been playing poker in lieu of collecting paychecks for the past year while working to get their three-person company off the ground. After logging 50 or more hours a week at the office, each one spends another 10 to 15 hours, usually on weekends and evenings, at their favorite poker sites--mainly Partypoker.com, Ultimatebet.com and Pokerstars.

if you haven't yet checked out antony and the johnsons' i am a bird now, do yourself a favor and get on it! it's beautiful. for some background on antony, check out this article in the observer.

great roundtable discussion about creative commons licenses and web comics.

Traditional copyright faces webcomics with an uncomfortable choice. Its restrictions, properly enforced, would mean a virtual end to crossovers and homages, fan art, fan fiction, and many other staples that make the webcomic a more entertaining creation and foster artistic growth. A total lack of copyright, however, leaves unscrupulous readers free to “bootleg” subscription sites, program tools to deprive comics of advertising revenue, and even profit from others’ labor without permission.

joanna newsom to headline jeff tweedy-curated show in chicago on june 22, as part of wired's nextfest.

artist michael paulus draws the skeletal systems of popular cartoon characters.

check out this awesome homemade barbie usb drive.

awesome hipster geekery: the lyrics to lcd soundsystem's "losing my edge," annotated with links and lots o' mp3s.
(thanks, noah.)

this thing is great: plusdeck2 is a $150 tape deck you can plug into your pc. (nyt registration required).

The deck also allows you to play tapes through your computer. But its most important feature may be validation: pack rats who saved hundreds of tapes, to the annoyance of their significant others, will suddenly seem to be masters of foresight.

national geographic talks to a planetary scientist and an astronomer about the real-world science behind star wars' science fiction.

No matter what atmosphere they drop into, they're able to breathe. It seems odd that the Wookiee planet, for example, would have the right amount of oxygen for people who grew up on Tatooine, when we know that even going to a higher altitude on Earth becomes a problem in terms of oxygen. But now I'm just nitpicking.

british scientists have come up with a mathematical formula to predict the success of sitcoms.

"Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognizability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V), and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).

"The difference in social status between the highest- and lowest-ranking characters (S) is added, and finally the total is divided by the success of any scheme or stratagem in the show (A). Each term in the formula is assigned a value up to a maximum of 10 to give an overall scientific score."

modern guitars interviews les paul. it's his 90th birthday today. happy birthday, lp!

check out this dmc dj competition video, in which scratch bastard uses the intro from buck 65's "centaur" (which is made up of a loop from pino donaggio's score for carrie), to play the star wars imperial march theme. careful though, the audio came out super loud on my computer.

tinymixtapes on april's wired-sponsored jeff tweedy and lawrence lessig discussion.

Both Tweedy and Lessig support a general freedom of access to intellectual material; only in a community of shared ideas, they believe, can creativity thrive. In keeping with that belief, a recording of the discussion can be downloaded, free of charge, in its entirety, right here.

The CVS pharmacy chain is selling disposable video cameras. As if the clicking of disposible cameras wasn't bad enough, we now get to sit through our kid sisters' graduations while looking over a sea of hands holding $30 ipod-sized boxes above everyone's heads. How's the quality? You'll find out when your uncle and aunt invite you over to their house to watch the 20 minute (max record time) DVD of their trip to the Wisconsin dairy fields.

Pill called the film good VHS quality, but acknowledged it isn't on par with that produced by some personal camcorders.

"George Lucas isn't going to use this to shoot Star Wars IV," he said, "but a budding George Lucas may use this to shoot something in his backyard."

primal scream remixed.

We don't pretend to think this comes close to the Scream's masterpiece, but then nothing else does. So what primalscreamremixed.com offers is a different spin, moving from chill through dub via glitch to drum & bass. Not a million miles away from the eclecticism of the source.

rad craigslist job posting of the day: NEW REALITY TV SHOW-Could you run your own RECORD LABEL???

banksy is killin' it with pieces like this. more on banksy.

ac/dc's "back in black" cracks america's all-time top five best selling albums list.

[The album] has been certified for U.S. shipments of 21 million copies, tying it for fifth place with Billy Joel's "Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & II" on the Recording Industry Assn. of America's all-time best-sellers list.

float my ride: coast guard intercepts cubans in floating taxi. how f'ing awesome is that thing?

crazy cat lady action figure.

There she stands -- ratty bathrobe, checked pajama bottoms, headband, wild hair, and a fanatical look on her face. And she's surrounded by six cats that own her heart and soul. The Crazy Cat Lady stands 5-1/4" tall and can be posed however you like.

crappy bootleg dvd covers.

the new project from justin frankel (creator of winamp) is ninjam, which allows geographically-distributed people to play music together.

It’s like Skype for musicians, though the music is delayed a few measures to keep everything in sync. You plug your instruments in, the software provides a beat. Then you find out what a crappy guitar player you are.

sneakmove has a new site feed: http://www.sneakmove.com/atom.xml is the NOWness!

money isn't everything: itunes is now more popular than most p2p networks.

On NPD's list of the top 10 digital music services, iTunes was ranked ahead of file-sharing companies such Kazaa and iMesh. Other paid online music services such as Napster and RealNetworks' RealPlayer store also edged onto the list. "These (paid) digital download stores appear to have created a compelling and economically viable alternative to illegal file sharing," Crupnick said.

prefix talks to roots manuva.

looks like the long-promised simpsons movie will happen soon.

the boston globe has a nice profile of rounder records, focusing on the company's new digital initiative. (registration required).

Last week, the Cambridge company launched a new website called Rounderarchive.com, which offers out-of-print albums from its early days through digital downloads and limited-edition CDs. It's an attempt to bring vintage folk music into the cyber-age -- and it's a trend that's starting to catch on with other boutique specialty labels.

Everyone loves hacking their ipod, right? Oh wait they don't? Well, enabling your linux-hacked ipod to play .avi videos makes an interesting read at the very least. And while the demonstration videos don't give you the best idea of the video quality, your anticipation as they load up will feel a little like waiting for the rest family to come downstairs on Christmas morning.

The hack works on the mini through the photo (sorry, not on the shuffle). Obviously, the photo has the best video quality...

more copyright ridiculousness: wal-mart won't print photos that look too professional.

One of the benefits of digital photography – the fact that amateurs can take better-looking photos and doctor them using photo-editing software – is also becoming a bane. Photofinishing labs increasingly are refusing to print professional-looking photographs taken by amateurs. The reason: Photofinishers are afraid of infringing on professional photographers' copyrights.

reggie noble

mp3: redman - "gillahouse check"
forget limewire, here's the m4a-ripped new redman joint straight from the funk doc's webquarters. i'm betting this means the song won't show up on his next def jam album--now scheduled for a september release.
[via]

the oft-awesome julianne shepherd takes on the ying yang twins and misogynist rap apologists. great, great stuff.

ipod hoodies: cute in an annoying way.

savage beast and siren systems are two bay area firms developing tech that analyzes the music that consumers like and makes new recommendations based on the data.

[Tim] Westergren, who previously played in bands and worked as a composer, compares the concept to isolating the spices, sauces and other ingredients that might go into a given meal and determining which will appeal most to the consumer.

apple martin's no coldplay fan.

Chris Martin's chart-topping hits don't impress his baby daughter. ... He says, "She prefers an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros to Coldplay. She hasn't heard X+Y - we don't play it in the house.

hahaha: 5 Movies I Wish People Would Stop Quoting

1. "Swingers" -- It takes a special kind of douchebag to STILL be shamelessly quoting this movie ... Guess what, idiots? You're so NOT 'Fucking Money' - and you don't even know it. You're the opposite of money. You are the abject poverty of culture and style. Keep reading Maxim and deluding yourselves into thinking that girls love drunk assholes, then wondering why you go home alone every night and masturbate unsuccessfully to boozy fantasies about your friend who thinks he's Vince Vaughn.

the new york times profiles music for robots.

Only a handful of music blogs, with names like Fluxblog, Stereogum and Largehearted Boy, have any influence, but even those still have a long way to go to fundamentally alter the landscape of the music industry. Many labels view blogs as little more than potential providers of free publicity; even a blog like Music for Robots, which gets about 8,000 unique visitors a day, is little more than a blip on the radar of major labels. But blogs are acting as incubators for new talent like the Hysterics. It's doubtful that MTV would have discovered the band as quickly otherwise.

there's more g-unit beef brewing. this past weekend, the game dissed 50 cent at the wqht summer jam concert in new jersey. this is the same venue jay-z used back in 2002 to display childhood pics of mobb deep's prodigy dressed up in a ballet outfit. that was fucking hilarious.

While backstage, the Game described the reaction to his 50 Cent disses. "I feel like a couple of n-ggass are mad at me 'cause I said what I said, but me, I'm the type of n-gga that don't give a f—k,” the Game said. “I didn't ask for this sh-t, I got kicked out the group cause n-ggas hated on me man so f--k them n-ggas. It's GGGG-Unot."

book geeks will love the shit out of this sweet literary map of manhattan.

Here's where imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks.