We Could Walk Together

Good news on two recent favorite bands of mine:

The Clientele are touring the states in June, including a stop at DC's 9:30 Club on the 3rd. Looks like they're playing in suppport of a another Merge Records band, Spoon.

I first saw the Clientele a few years ago having only heard a single song. My friend convinced me to go regardless. It was a good show (in fact, it convinced me to buy their excellent singles collection, Suburban Light), but having heard so little of their material prevented me from enjoying it as much I would have otherwise. I'm not too familiar with Spoon, but I'm planning to go just to hear the openers since I've now listened to just about everything I can get my hands on by them. A lot. Oh, and it looks like their second album will be coming out sometime later this year.

Another awesome Merge band, the Rosebuds, are set to release a new 6 song EP on April 12. You can stream the entire record from here. It's good shit. “El Camino” especially floats my boat. There's a Pitchfork review of the EP as well, if you care what they have to say.

No local tour dates from those guys, yet. Hopefully they'll hit DC sometime this summer.

You know what? Merge is a pretty damn good label. I mean, they've put out their share of crap over the years, and I was never really into Superchunk, but the number of their bands I really like is pretty impressive. I don't know if I could say the same for many other labels.

My favs:

The Clean
The Clientele
Ganger
David Kilgour
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Rosebuds
M. Ward

Blossoms

Holy hell, am I bored at work. This week won't end. And all this nice weather has been wasted on staring out to the hotel across the street and a paunchy Asian man in little blue shorts eating shirtless at his window.

In an attempt wipe this image from memory and fortify whatever semblance of inner peace I have left, I headed down to the Tidal Basin yesterday after work to see the blossoms and take some photos. I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the crowd of tourists and their unappreciative kids running around. I walked one time around as the sun set before heading home.

Click through the picture above to see a small set of photos from my walk around the basin.

Why is it Not Friday?

Schiavo Memo Linked to GOP Senate Office
The office of Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida has admitted it was behind a controversial memo that said it would be in the political interest of the Republican party to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. One line in the memo reads "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue." For weeks right-wing pundits have suggested the memo was a fake. Martinez's legal counsel Brian Darling took credit for drafting the memo. He resigned on Wednesday. [DN! Headlines]

Shia named as Iraq prime minister [BBC]

Saddam 'upset' at Kurd's election [Guardian]

Why bloggers hate Blogger [Wired]

Sony patents tech to beam "sensory information" into brain [WMMNA]

Flagpole Magazine's Bush Adminstration Dictionary [via LHB]

Delocator finds independent cafes by zipcode [via DCist]

Wonder Showzen

Why have I not already heard about this? Tim and I were hanging around last night watching Aqua Teen when he told me about Wonder Showzen, this show on MTV2 he caught after watching Subterranean the night before (see my previous post...no, I don't work for MTV). Anyway, it sounded mildly interesting...a twisted kids show with weird puppets and little kids saying crazy shit, strange cartoons, etc. Well it happened to be coming on, so we stayed up to watch.

Let me tell you, it's fucking awesome. It's completely twisted and dark but so hilarious. The kids on the show are great. In one segment, a girl is on Wall Street “interviewing” businessmen, asking them questions like “How many people have you exploited today?” or offering them a napkin “for the blood on [their] hands.” Then there are these bizarre cartoons and old educational films overdubbed and re-edited, some of which are really brilliant. I laughed out loud I don't know how many times, and that just doesn't happen much when I watch TV.

It sort of reminds me of a cross between Robert Smigel's Saturday TV Funhouse and the “Druggachusetts” sketch from Mr. Show. Anyway, if you're into weird dark humour, I recommend it.

+ Go here to see the pilot episode.
+ MTV2 has some clips here.

Slabs of Glue Has No Standards

I realized last night that VH-1 Classic's The Alternative is much less fun to watch alone than with a friend. I mean, when something like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones comes on, who am I gonna talk shit with? My cat? Wally doesn't care about how annoying Eddie Trunk is.

Tim's got it right: They should just rerun every episode of 120 Minutes from beginning to end. That would be cool.

I keep meaning to catch this Subterranean show on MTV2. It looks decent, but for some reason I always forget about it. Oh yeah—because it's on right in the goddamn middle of The Alternative (Sundays at Midnight).

I need a DVR.

I'm a Pro

I decided to upgrade my flickr account to Pro. They cut off your photos at 100 for free accounts, so my older ones were being hidden away. Also, I wanted to be able to create more photo sets, and I have enough fun with that site to make it worth it.

A year's account costs $45+. Which is...not cheap. But, now I have the features I was looking for and instead of a 10MB/mo bandwidth limit, I have a GB/mo.

Click through the flying Snoopy to see some fascinating shots I took while cleaning my room yesterday.

Blue's News

This Just In: the Pope Is Still Dead [W. Post]

Nothing else is going on in the world, really. It's about as exciting as the Cherry Blossom Cam.

44 U.S. Troops Injured In Attack on Iraqi Jail [from DN! headlines]

At Abu Ghraib? Well, you reap what you sow.

Telescopes see 'distant planet' [BBC]

Because it is in a young system, the planet is relatively hot.

Young? Hot? I'm totally moving there.

Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers [Guardian]

"The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren't looking for a divorce," [Kim] told the Guardian. "The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don't want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs."

Just when I think Japan is pretty weird, it always gets weirder. I understand losing interest in sex, but never having it ever? Where's the honeymoon period? Man, those people are advanced.

The Best 90 Minutes of My Life [Wired]

Thurston Moore discusses the art of the mixtape and offers a few words on home taping: “Trying to control music sharing - by shutting down P2P sites or MP3 blogs or BitTorrent or whatever other technology comes along - is like trying to control an affair of the heart. Nothing will stop it.”

Dark Green of My Soul

1. Never be disappointed: expect nothing.

I've been cleaning my room. It's all dust and pennies and unmarked CD-Rs. It feels good to do something productive on otherwise lazy weekend. I didn't get out on Friday, due to the bad weather and my usual end-of-the-week collapse. Saturday's highlight was a good Thai meal with Jonathan and his friend Brent. I've decided that Pad Pik King is a simple yet delicious dish. I wish I had leftovers.

I worked a little on these button designs I've been thinking about for a while. Allison has a button maker thing and will hopefully hook me up after I've printed them. I'll post those when I feel like it. In other semi-creative news, I did some precursory recording of this song I've been fucking around with lately. It's not really a song yet, just a couple different bass parts and basic drums. I really like the bassline I came up with, so hopefully I can take it somewhere.

2. Movies are photographs, twenty-four times a second.

I watched the Criterion Collection edition of Slacker today, a most fitting title for my weekend. Despite being nearly fifteen years-old, I think it's aged pretty well. Speaking of Linklater, I'm really looking forward to A Scanner Darkly this summer. [Trailer here.] I've been reading the novel recently, on loan from Tim.

3. Music is for chumps.

Last night I discovered this little section of reviews on Tiny Mix Tapes where they recommend older records and review them. I love that. You're bound to find out about something cool that you missed the first time or rediscover something you already have but haven't listened to in a while. Give 'er a try.

I found the latest Four Tet album, Everything Ecstatic, on SoulSeek last night (also thanks to TMT). I haven't listened enough to get a good impression, but it sounds at least decent so far. Looks like legal copies will be out May 23rd on Domino.

Coming this week on my little ol' site: recently acquired records I've been enjoying, site updates to the oft-neglected photos and music sections, and The End of Days.

PS: Fuck daylight savings.