i poured a bag of pistachios into a bowl a couple of hours ago and wanted to snack on them while reading some blogs. but after just a couple of bites, i couldn’t stop peeling the nuts and eating them. it is close to impossible to start a bowl of them and stop after just a couple of those tiny green nuts. i guess pringles should check out what makes pistachios so addictive since, for me at least, they are way more addictive than pringles chips. if anyone knows why, let me know.
another week in which i didn’t find an album worthy of $10. it is not that i didn’t look, i just didn’t find anything that sounded interesting.
so i took a look at what was on the top of my playlists, and the first thing that came to mind was the first song of the imix i put together with my favorite 2006 music. the song is the sweetest and it is on in a space outta sound by nightmares on wax.
and it is not only that song that got a lot of playing time over the last week (actually month) but the whole album. and this despite my usual tendency to listen to less electronic and hip hop during the dark months of the year.
but this album is special. the beats are just so amazing. the sweetest is the second song of the album and right after listening to it for the first time i gave it the full five stars, once the beats kicks it, it kicks in. this is a song that has to be listened to over a full set of speakers that can handle base sound, it is not a song for flimsy computer speakers. oh and it is a song that needs to be listened loudly. this is by far not the only good song, the first song passion is a great, slow beat song that might initially sound a bit boring, but after a couple of times it grows on you with the layered beats. pudpots has this touch of ’70s tv show theme while throwing in some amazing horn-beats. damn following pudpots again has great beats (just like all the other songs) but comes with a nice soul voice, just as i am you, and of course soul purpose. overall this is a great album, can be listened to at a quite candle light evening, or before going clubbing, or just on the way to work.
i recently met an old friend of mine when i was in ny. over the years we always exchanged emails to let each other know about some new band we discovered. so at the end of dinner he said, btw, i put together this mix cd with the best songs of ‘05, why don’t i burn it on cd and send it to you? i said, sure, cool, yes, would love to listen to it. so i got it the other day and it sounds great, i love the songs.
then i thought about getting started on a ‘06 mix myself. so i went into itunes and browsed through my library to find all the ‘06 songs and then put together a playlist with the songs i like best. so at this point i was about to hit burn when i thought about this itunes store feature imix. since i haven’t really used it before i didn’t know what it would do, but i looked around my itunes app and found this option to publish an imix, which i did and within a couple of seconds my “best of ‘06″ playlist was a “best of ‘06″ imix. i thought cool, this is great, so now i can just gift imixs rather than mailing out cds.
after i got the itunes confirmation email that my imix was published, i went there and while there was a button to add all songs, there wasn’t an opportunity to gift the imix. WHY? isn’t this what playlist, mix tapes, imixs are all about? putting together a compilation and then sharing it with friends? so instead of being able to gift an imix i now have to burn my playlist and mail it to my friends. well, maybe apple will make imix gifting possible before christmas.
in case you are interested, here is a link to my imix 2006 Mix
there are two genres that i really like to listen to, electronic and jazz. and over the years there have been quite a few bands that have been great at combining the two, like dZihan And Kamien for example.
last week browsing around coolhunting i read their review of radio citizen’s new album berlin serengeti. btw, it is funny, i just saw that they posted a review of game theory by the roots today. i went to the itunes store listened to some of the songs and got it, and it is a great album. the songs are a great combination of good, deep electronic beats, jazzy tunes, and african, but mostly south american influences, like on density.
one of the things i like best about their songs is that they don’t shy away from slowness and quietness as on love serenity blues. but my favorite song on the album with the highest playcount so far is mondlicht, this is the one song you should get if you get only one song. it has a great beat and a wonderful melody. a close second is the bit more funky the prophets with its big band quotes (just as the whole album has a lot of ’50s flashbacks, including some vinyl crackling).
i have to tip my hat (if i were wearing one) to wolf blitzer on cnn. in this interview with dumb-butt (and sorry if i offend anyone here, but once you see this guy speak and reason you have to agree that he is a dumb-butt, if not worse) republican congressman mchenry, who makes the claim that the democrats are behind the publication of the foley messages, blitzer asks for evidence, which dumb-butt obviously not has. so what is dumb-butt’s response?
do you have any evidence that they [the democratic party leadership] were not involved [in the publication of the messages]
i know not every member of congress needs to be a lawyer (which is ok) but here we are talking about a fundamental part of the legal system, which is that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. it seems to me dumb-butt’s understanding is that suspects should be guilty until proven innocent. makes me wonder if they have a prison problem in north carolina.
at the same time it makes me wonder if he might not be guilty of animal cruelty or better having had sex with a prostitute (which i would assume is a crime in north carolina), let’s see if he can provide any evidence to the contrary.
the full interview can be found here:
here just a couple of the facts we know in the foley case:
-foley (a republican) exchanged sexual messages with congressional pages (who are mostly to my knowledge under age)
-since foley is a superior this would certainly be a sexual harassment case in any US company
-members of the republican party knew about this for at least a year (doing nothing) — so even if the democrats now leaked the story the republicans could have easily leaked it last year during a year with no election
the so called liberal republican senator mccain yesterday attacked clinton (actually the clintons, both of them, he attached hillary for bill’s policies — which in itself is quite amazing) for his failed north korea policy.
according to cnn mccain said:
“I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration’s policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.
“The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They’ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,” he said.
well, can i maybe remind mccain that since early 2001 and that is more than five years now there has been a republican in the white house, who knew full well for most of the time that north korea was up to no good. a stupid blame game like this would have maybe worked five years ago, but now in 2006 this is really only stupid.
frontline has always been one of the best tv magazines and a favorite of mine for years. their show on cheney and his role in going to war with irak “the dark side” is one of the best views into the white house, “merchants of cool” provides an in depth view into big business’s teen marketing campaigns, and “the meth epidemic” is a truly shocking portrayal of the spread of the drug. nearly all of their shows are online, and all of them are worth watching: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/
their latest show which aired last week, “return of the taliban” is a great piece of journalism, showing how a weak and non-commited partner in the war on terror, pakistan, and missing focus on and too few military resources on the group in afghanistan, mostly due to the focus on irak, are helping the taliban, and with that also al qaeda to regain strength and make major inroads into afghanistan, just five years after the initial US offensive there. the whole show as well as background information can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/
just saw this daily show clip on youtube. it is another testament of the failure of the so called real media and press and at the same time the amazing quality of the daily show to point out the lies and the bullshit.
well this was an easy one. what is even more amazing is that finally a good movie is attracting a large audience. the new scorsese movie the departed is a roller coaster ride. the story is great, the directing is amazing, and the acting is close to phenomenal. jack is back and as good as he gets. the only problem in this movie seems to be that leonardo is actually good. well this is not really a problem since it only makes the movie that much better, but it is amazing to see him in a role in which he outplays some of the best actors. another amazing thing about the movie is that it gets boston quite right. scorsese was certainly right in putting some bostonians into the movie, but this still left most of the crew there having to act like they are from boston, and unlike mystic river (which was still a good movie) this movie gets boston right, especially the accents.
the twisted story of twisted loyalties doesn’t really get boring, despite the movie being quite long, the movie never really feels long. the supporting actors (most of which could easily the starting line up in most other movies), especially alec baldwin are great and add some of the best line to the movie.
just on a side note, i watched district b13, a french movie which was co-written by luc besson on dvd, and as always french movies don’t disappoint. it shows that even on a low budget you can make amazing sci-fi action movies. don’t have the money for special effects ala the matrix well make the future not look like some completely different place, but just like it actually could look like in 2010 (which is not that much different), and don’t invest in crazy cars and planes, but have your actors chase each other through a end-time paris. a great movie, fun to watch, and i have to say, bad guys speaking french are just classy
