catherine's pita |
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big thanks to randi and wendy at react for letting me have their promo copy of the upcoming catherine wheel album. i've only listened it to it once, so i'm reserving judgment. urbanfetch has markedly improved their selection since the last time i browsed. my almost-instant gratification picks were painful, fun house, wreck your life, and tone soul evolution, arriving in 43 minutes. they even gave me a free bag of oatmeal-raisin cookies! ah, happy day. good, good, good: man gets six years in prison for assaulting a girl at woodstock, but his lawyer should be punished, too, for this statement: "The guy had too much to drink and takes an opportunity he should not have taken. But the girl should not have presented the opportunity either." do i even need to comment on that? another disbandment! nice knowin' ya, luscious jackson. uh-oh, cdnow's in trouble. wednesday, march 29 all the kids are blogging it: interview with the search engine. funny funny! i'll bet money you'll like this if you're a girl in her early/mid twenties: somebody still loves sassy magazine enough to keep a frighteningly dense site dedicated to it. one thing i have wondered, though: does jane suck on the face of it, or are we just too smart for that old shtick now? to wit, check out sassy's record reviews, where inanity rules! [via maganda] despite the fact that i filled it out "out of sheer and absolute boredom," the kiss-off quiz (found at riothero) tells me i should not quit my job. not that i was really thinking about it, but the boredom...i am thinking about that. as if when you're bored you can think of anything but. the mind-numbing there-ness of it. even if you find an interesting website for a minute, the boredom is still there, behind it, like wallpaper behind your desktop picture, maybe. monday, march 27 yuppie slayer has a snazzy new design, AND he tells me about the upcoming modest mouse tour. this is good. i am 86 percent loony, how 'bout you? [via megnut] friday, march 24 hate crimes against transgendered people are apparently on the rise. and yet the media pays little attention, even with the obvious news hook of "boys don't cry". strange. this weekend is not just the oscars, don't forget: the lower-key independent spirit awards are on saturday, but i think bravo replays the show a lot. perhaps hilary swank will wear pants, perhaps someone will make a touching speech, perhaps there will be some pretension, perhaps i should shut up now. also: the alternative oscars. [via memepool] thursday, march 23 more jim jarmusch, nothing special, but why the hell not. i seem to be low on links today... maybe i should write 3000 words about my no-account life like ben brown. would you like to know about my mailbox? a few days ago i became a victim of not mailbox baseball but a much more insidious form of vandalism that has no cute name that i'm aware of. it certainly isn't featured in any movie that i can think of. now i don't know why they chose me (perhaps my name emblazoned across the box in thick black letters?), but some punks must have taken some sort of blunt object and bashed in the lower half of my mailbox door, making it impossible for me to open up my mailbox and get my mail. i can just imagine them standing there in the dark vestibule, pounding away with a hammer or something waiting for it to give way. that's not cinematic! where's the joy in that? no pieces go flying! there's no wind in your hair! nothing on the radio! jesus. i wrote a note to the mailman asking him to please try to bash it out when he opens up the top to insert the mail but either the note blew away (no, i didn't tape it down) or he just doesn't care about me and my mail. *sigh* do you? wednesday, march 22 bill werde's multimedia extravaganzous exploration of five subgenres of dance music is pretty impressive, though i sorta wanted a little more text, since i can't play the sound clips thanks to an evil corporate firewall. a visual representation of the relationships between all the styles would have been really nice, with the sub-sub-genres he referred to incorporated. and i still don't know what jungle is. but i think i learned some things, and a house DJ/factchecker here said the people on a snobby music list he's on are saying it's pretty good for the mainstream press, so great job, bill! until a couple of nights ago, when i watched "mystery train" (a consummately cool movie), i really had no idea who screamin' jay hawkins was, and then i came upon this, which told me that he fathered more than 50 children in his lifetime (he's dead now) and there is now a website (what else?) to track down and unite all of them. roger ebert *really* did not get ghost dog. but i bet dumbmonkey knows what's up! both slate and salon use some variation of the "harper's bizarre" headline in their slams on the new "dotcom issue." (they all have themes: next month is "extreme.") but the cover's so pretty! what's their problem?? jeez. i have to say i think siren is a pretty cool name for a magazine, though i had to learn about it from the post and not my friend melissa who works on it. i wonder if it will make a difference that there's already a gay canadian magazine with that title. yo la tengo did a coke commercial? campus police in canada are using the music of the backstreet boys to torture sitting-in students into giving up their occupation of the president's office. twelve of the 20 succumbed, forgivably. tuesday, march 21 in that spirit: a culture jamming manifesto of sorts and the culture-jammer's encyclopedia. you might want to start with the entry for trickster. buh-bye soul coughing. monday, march 20 43-second orgasms and other seeming acts of god at world sexual records. [via illuminatrix] yesterday the times said hollywood is on its way to phasing out formulaic crap in favor of original, fresh, genre-bending movies, thanks to the improving taste of audiences. while i am as hopeful as the next person that they stop making movies like "mission to mars," i think the times might be waxing a bit optimistic, especially when you consider that today they had a story about how formula tv is dying, too. i mean, according to yahoo, ghost dog is playing in 19 theaters in the country while the #1 "mission to mars" is playing in 3054. and that is just wrong, people, wrong! oh my. alanis morissette is going to co-star in the vagina monologues. a group of kenyan women recently stormed a police precinct, demanding the officers give them sex. gillian anderson has told an australian magazine that this will be the last x-files season. good riddance, i say, at this sad, sucking point. correction: it has recently come to my attention that justin timberlake (who? that guy whose french toast was being auctioned on ebay?) is a member of not the backstreet boys, but n sync. the person who was so ridiculous as to point this out and demand a correction is none other than ryan cormier. please email him and tell him what a loser he is. thank you. my heart leapt this morning when i learned that my beloved catherine wheel is doing a pre-tour tour. i can hear the opening notes of "crank" right now and i'm sure it will be heaven. quick, run, cadbury creme eggs are in stores now! hurry, easter will be here soon! if you can't get out right away, here are some fun facts to ponder. tons of short stories to read at zoetrope, which was nominated for a national magazine award. sometime soon, too, i'm going to check out some of the sites listed in the back of my o. henry collection, but until then... wednesday, march 15 so the contestant-castaways in the cbs "reality" show "survivor" have been shipped off to the island where they will compete for food and airtime (survival, see?). note the preponderance of single people in their 20s (though, sadly, no gay porn star)....it's gonna be a great show, i can see it already! some of you have been baying for quizzes. well i found one, so shut up about it, okay holly? here it is, porn star or my little pony? my score was abysmal, which is kind of scary considering i used to love my little pony. [from the fabulous folks at memepool] but even more fun than that (!) is playing who wants to be a president? if you get stuck, simply use one of your lifelines: "poll the electorate" or "ask an adviser," just like the real candidates! [via boingboing] "mack" is one of the new words being added to the oxford english dictionary, which is now available online if you have an extra few hundred bucks lying around. i wish i could access it so i could see if they have it as a verb, too. but i did learn a new word: magstripe. tuesday, march 14 the most infuriating thing about today's lead story on salon is not the very idea of it, that feminism is partly responsible for the actions of abusive men, though that is infuriating enough, but that it doesn't even come close to being convincing. at all. in fact, it admits in paragraph 5 that the number of "intimate" homicides has not changed, in fact has declined, since 1976. how in the world did this story survive? aren't those little piggies just the cutest?? beck says one or two interesting things in this interview. cooler: this. i'm a few pages into the heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and it seems like every other page i've already read, quoted in some goddamn review. why did they do this to us? it's like i've been softened up, or hardened, i guess, because i haven't yet had my heart broken. i did burst out with a strange sob during last night's freaks and geeks, however, when the tallest nerd cried out, "i do have a dad! i just saw him three months ago!" maybe i *should* help save it. i like digitalcity. not as much content as citysearch, but the listings are pretty good, and i'm still bitter about the death of sidewalk. type in a zip code, find out who has made political contributions in that area. try 90210, says randi, though it is not quite so fun as she had suggested. friday, march 10 perhaps the last end-of-decade list, for real now: the signal drench 100. what you really need, if you're a girl, is a breastee. oh yes you do! [via usr/bin/girl, appropriately enough] thursday, march 9 this is probably wrong of me but...did you know that the mysterious box has taken its first baby steps into the world of pitas? yeah, pitas rule! and now i expect to see updates, baby, updates! (though, yes, i'm sure it's hard work revolutionizing the web and all...) new belle & sebastian album on the way! and i just got the collected ep's! of course, now it's four dollars cheaper...and a couple weeks from now probably even cheaper: i got the heartbreaking work of staggering genius, which is now resting at a UPS center due to some not-insignificant incompetence, for a mere $11.50! and you can too. oooh, scary: stephen king drops an e-book. wednesday, march 8 people, you *have* to go read slate's archives of bushisms. so funny! it's hard to pick a favorite, but i like: "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" at least clinton knows the difference between "is" and "are"! hooray for mutant cinema! whitney has outdone herself with the latest pop candy, the funniest ever. it's a bunch of non-bridget joneses' diaries, and includes this excerpt from spike's: Oatmeal cream pies consumed: Beanbag. Daydreams about The Fonz: Yellow. wheeeeee!!! tuesday, march 7 german mothers wishing to abandon their infants now have it easy: they can just put them down the baby chute, and the child will land on a warm, soft bed inside a clinic. how comfy. monday, march 6 kate betts sighting! i was hoping she'd look at me scornfully, so i'd have at least a little story, but she was across the room, putting on her coat. so now i have laid eyes on the boss lady, but still not met her. exciting, i know. thursday, march 2 it seems that i vastly underestimated some people's dave eggers obsessions. i received via email a list of no less than thirteen relevant links, which i will provide here since the guilty party does not bother to update her weblog anymore, so that you too might develop an eggers affliction. and they are: ny observer writer annoys eggers at readingi am also informed that if you do a google search you can get all the pieces he's written for salon. perhaps one day. in the what's-he-been-smoking department: president clinton finds screen-saver 'amazing' [via looka!] for my journofriends: check out websites for journalists, where there's a huge listing of job sites, among other reference-type stuff. [via memepool] wednesday, march 1 yo la tengo were pretty boring, i must say. don't get me wrong, a lot of it was very...pleasant, and i like a good drone as much as the next person, but when you start to making your mental grocery list, it's just not a sign of an engaging show. it's more of looking-at-your-fishtank kinda music. but there were a handful of rockin' songs that made up for the rest, so it wasn't a total waste. the one good thing about a bush presidency would be that we could laugh at him every single day. uh, this is kind of anti-girl power. it's this game from the founder of word, called sissyfight, which looks to be a simulation of high school hell. and i quote: SiSSYFiGHT 2000 is, like, an intense war between a bunch of girls who are all out to ruin each other's popularity and self-esteem. The object is to physically attack and majorly dis your enemies until they are totally mortified beyond belief. You'll never come out on top without making the right friends, so be careful who you're nice to. Because in the end, only the shrewdest will survive with their social status intact!sounds like fun, huh? here's dubya and al playing who wants to be a millionaire. people who are obsessed with dave eggers, and you know who you are, will surely click here and here. [thanks metascene!] |
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