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first time is free | edwardthanks | edward
Oh my damn | ronald
not quite that metrosexual | fincher
He can only be killed with a wooden spoon through the heart... | dwight
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countdown | edward
I voted today. Apparently, in DC, you can absentee vote in person (yes, somewhat oddly) at any point now.
Nothing beats being able to vote for yourself on a ballot! Now I just need to pepper the neighborhood with signs and start canvassing.
The other day, I watched this episode of South Park, which took place largely within, and was animated by, the World of Warcraft online game.
It’s a great episode. (Lately some of Parker and Stone’s best works have been parodies, most notably the episodes based around The Lord of the Rings and anime). And its use of WoW is fiendishly original. But it made me realize a major deficiency in my pop cultural knowledge.
I don’t play video games.
It’s not that I don’t play them much. I mean to say that I don’t play them practically at all. In fact, I can’t—I literally do not have the physical acumen to use many of the new controllers. In first-person shooters, I can run and fire or aim and fire, but not both. (Even when I played Marathon on the Mac, I relied on heading straight in the direction of my enemies.) As for Dance Dance Revolution, forget it. Even Donkey Konga—you know, the game where you beat out rhythms on bongo-like controllers? I can’t do it…and I’ve played percussion in a professional orchestra!
This deficiency goes back a ways. I was decent at Atari 2600, Odyssey2, and Coleco, but I never had a Nintendo. I beat Zelda on an emulator and I’ve never made it all the way through Marios 1 & 3 without cheating. On my computer, there’s only Solitaire, Snood, and Bejeweled.
The games keep getting better. Their importance grows. Being featured on a game is now as good for a band as showing up on Grey’s Anatomy. The webcomics and shows I watch are obsessed with WoW, EverQuest, and Kingdom of Hearts. And those tumbleweeds you see in Yahoo! Groups and your favorite message boards are the result of everyone leaving to buy real estate in Second Life.
Am I alone? Do you feel left out? Or are you plugged in? What are you playing? What games drive your mental landscape the way music, TV, and films drive mine?
Tilly and the Wall are part of Conor Oberst’s Omaha posse. If that works for you, great, if not, don’t hold it against them. The thing that most sets them apart from similar indie acts is their emphasis on nontraditional percussion—specifically, the use of a tap dancer instead of a drum kit. Today’s Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now, “Bad Education” is the recent Bottoms of Barrels’s single about a transvestite. Handclaps, horns, Spanish guitar stylings, and Jamie Williams infusing her usual tap with flamenco beats round out the piece to a very full and ebullient work.
The best place to hear “Bad Education” is probably their website, in the Videos section. Or you can join me at the Black Cat this Wednesday (10/25) to see them in person.
Also, while I would not dream of taking bodies away from Porchin’, in the interest of the public good I should mention that British rockers Mojave 3 are playing the Black Cat the day before (that’s tomorrow, 10/24). If you don’t know their work, I recommend listening to “Some Kinda Angel” from 1998’s Out of Tune, or their recent “Breaking the Ice” from Puzzles Like You.
(I should note that while I automatically tend to link to Wikipedia—because it’s easy to read, it usually has links to both the band’s site and fan sites, and since doing so is almost price-of-entry these days—serious music lovers might prefer the detailed reviews and numerous sound clips at allmusic.)
Meanwhile, Bob the Angry Flower continues to offer perspective on American policies like torture.
In a comment to one of my previous posts Edward requested more pink hair updates. So just for him: pink hair plus animal ears! And this is, hands down, the best pirate song EVER.
You have to try this.
Line Rider - beta by *fsk on deviantART
Signs you are a good capitalist:
- You cannot fit your new piece of electronic equipment into your mini cooper convertible.
- You are excited when the new Hermes tie catalog arrives.
- You lust after a refrigerator
- The phone you wish to have costs $700. No diamonds included.
- You sigh occasionally and wish you had more money.
In all seriousness, Brad's soon-to-be-revealed gift to me trumps all of the above.
If Olbermann keeps putting out comments like this, I may have to rethink my antipathy toward cable news.
I haven't been following the DC baseball saga much lately, except to note that the Lerners seem dead-set against making the area of town the new park will be built in an area of actual development.
The solution to creating a vibrant business district is to make the buildings near the new park contain enough development so that people are drawn there even when the baseball team isn't playing. The Verizon center is a good example of this: people are drawn for sporting events, but the movie theater, bowling alley, shops and restaurants ensure people will come to Gallery Place/Chinatown at all hours, on all days, regardless of whether the Wizards or Caps are playing.
I was somewhat disappointed to see Fenty siding with the Lerner's to get cheaper above ground parking built.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has pushed for the garages to be built below ground, leaving space to construct a mix of condominiums, shops and restaurants as an entertainment hub. The Nationals ownership group, headed by Bethesda developer Theodore N. Lerner, has lobbied for free-standing garages that are cheaper and easier to be completed in time for the 2008 season.
The city had agreed on a plan for developer Herbert S. Miller to build the garages along with mixed-use development. But that agreement collapsed last month when the two sides could not agree on financing.
Williams developed a new plan for underground garages, but the city's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, ruled that the mayor's plan violated the stadium cost cap.
Fenty, who is expected to win easily in the Nov. 7 general election for mayor, sought to resolve the deadlock after several city officials appealed to him to get involved last week. On Tuesday, Fenty met with city officials and the Lerner group and settled on his proposal for the $56 million garages.
In my mind, the Lerners are going with the cheaper solution to save money. But in the long run, such a move could jeopardize the entire project. I didn't really weigh in because it seemed a zero-sum game: if building them below ground was too expensive, there's no way we could come out on top. Fenty's proposal for above ground parking costs $56 million alone.
But that was before I received an e-mail from Jim Graham this morning:
Today the Washington Post reported that I voted in favor of a plan for stadium parking financing. As the recorded roll call vote shows, that did not occur. I--along with five of my colleagues--voted "no". The final vote was 7-6, short of the nine votes supporters needed to pass this as an emergency.
I did so principally because I had no confidence in the $56 million price tag of the garage project, estimates that had been reportedly prepared by those who have given the contract to build the garage.
To my mind, this would have been a second opportunity for inflated initial costs perhaps followed by cost overruns.
Right now we are building in Columbia Heights a 1000 space garage--with ALL underground spaces unlike the proposal on the table yesterday--for under $40 million. That tells me that we need to scrutinize the projected $56 million cost for 900 above ground spaces (with only 300 below grade).
So if we can build a 1000 space parking garage below ground in Columbia heights for under $40, why does it cost so much more to do so in a currently vacant part of the city? (And keep in mind, the $56 was for above-ground parking!) Better yet, the team only needs 1225 parking spaces! So we're not talking about a huge amount of parking, regardless.
The Columbia Heights parking garage (and the entire project) will be completed well before the stadium. So something doesn't match up here. Fenty needs to redo the numbers (or perhaps Tony does, before he leaves office) to see if we can save the below-ground parking. For only 1225 spaces, it seems like an awful lot of effort has been expended:
Shortly before the vote, Williams expressed frustration: "Take any major project from the pyramids to Stonehenge. The stupid parking lot has taken more hours and meetings per parking space. It's incredible."
I concur.
I'm not sure what creeps me out the most about these new Count Chocula boxes. The image, or the repetition, or what-have-you. Judge for yourself:
Back to the Ron and Dwight show, already in progress...
As I mentioned in my last post, I got a Yaris recently. This means that for the first time since…um, ever…I have a decent sound system. I haven’t even used the MP3 jack yet, but I’m definitely rocking the radio and the CD player.
It’s no coincidence, then, that my interest in hip-hop, reggaeton, dub, and similar genres (typically passing spring/early summer fancies for me) has soared recently, because I finally have the tech to play them. As I phoned my friend after my first windows-down foray through Baltimore: “I’m finally who I always wanted to be: the over-privileged white guy going Office Space in the car next to you.”
So I have not one, but two Tracks You Should Be Listening To Right Now. The first is Damian “Junior Gong” Marley’s “All Night,” from Welcome to Jamrock. First time I heard it on WTMD’s Altered Fridays, I called up and demanded to know what it was before the first verse was even over. Then it got even better, with ghost beats and syncopation halfway through keeping the rhythm interesting and provocative, and the lyrical styling transforming into something fiercely island. A very nice track to turn up the excitement at a party, since it starts relatively straightforward, then segues into a hip-grinding surprise—always a valuable addition to the arsenal. I don’t yet know the rest of the album, but online reviews are favorable.
TYSBLTRN #2 is “Proletariat Blues,” by Seattle’s Blues Scholars (on Wikipedia here and MySpace here). This is rap you actually will feel justified blasting from your car, since it’s not about the experience of the streets but that of the cube farms—in a good way. I can’t find track samples from The Long March EP to link to you now, but if you ask me (or perhaps Forrest) politely, I’ll burn you a copy of the track.
Honorable mention goes to “Devil’s Pie” by Rhymefest. And while I would have to think long and hard before ever recommending Dave Matthews on these pages, I have to admit I’m enjoying his contribution to Jurassic 5’s “Work It Out” on Feedback.
Do you have an HD radio yet? You should. I highly recommend getting one, especially if you live in D.C. But I can’t tell you why. At least not until the ink is dry…
Meanwhile, the culture wars continue. Am I bad for not seeing much difference between this and this?
I’m a big fan of Gene Weingarten’s chats in the Post, especially when he references, as he did the other day, his Distinguished Ultra Male Behavior contest, won by friend and fellow Eph Seth Brown.
Finally, my friend B. takes very nice pictures of things smashing together. Specifically galaxies. Read more here.
