Wonderful Electric

I’ve been binging on plenty of electropop lately because it mirrors how I have been feeling: strange, upbeat, and strangely upbeat. A band that has me standing at attention and listening attentively is Brooklyn-based The Epochs, who marry sensible pop with catchy synth beats. Dreamy and addictive, you will set their tracks on replay without knowing what hit you. They play New York city on February 12th, so if you are within range of their loudspeakers (Alamak!), I suggest you draw closer to the source of the music that has you nodding along to its bassline.

Another interesting electro-leaning team is Balkan Beat Box, whose members are actually alumni of Gogol Bordello and Firewater. As their name suggests, they weave electronica beats with traditional Balkan-inspired (imagine that) riffs, which brings about very surprising results.

(Speaking of Gogol Bordello, it appears they’re set to embark on a transatlantic tour of magnificent Gypsy punk proportions. Rar, they play Chicago and Detroit early March. Road trip, May?)

eMusic and FreeIndie are two portals that provide super access to artists that rock the same boat. Also look out for Goldfrapp’s fourth studio album Seventh Tree, with a UK release date of February 25th and lined up for release in the US on February 26th. Can’t wait!

(Last post of the day, I promise)

The Slacking Begins

The Charter guy has come and gone, he has transformed our living room television into a mecca of digital cable channels. BBC America! VH1 Classic! Biography!

But no Boomerang, boo. It looks like I’ll have to get my fix of classic toons on DVD, but here to pacify my broken spirit is The Military Channel. Be still, my beating heart.

Still Cannot Sleep

Jakarta synthpop outfit Goodnight Electric has made it big Time (heh heh, get it). Keep at it, boys!

The Charter guy is coming tomorrow to upgrade our analogue receiver to a digital one. We also upgraded our cable subscription so we will be receiving wonderful things like BBC America and the incredibly important Boomerang. Success! My housemates have made the mistake of leaving the Charter guy alone with me when he will be doing the installation. Who will be there to make sure I do not asphyxiate the poor man out of happiness once he has completed the necessary wiring?

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Also, I cannot sleep. The jet-lag has worn off. BALLS.

Stream Of Consciousness Ahead

You know when you see someone go bungee jumping you think hey I can totally do that and then the next thing you know you’re on the platform 150 meters above the earth and there’s nothing to save your pathetic brains from being splattered on the rocks below save for a big rubber band and then you think hmm maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all?

Apply that above analogy to my taking on multiple filming projects this semester, combined with a schedule of classes I am less than happy about. Now imagine my brains splattering on the rocks below (keeping in mind that my grey matter has more elastic properties than your standard issue grey matter, thus expanding the splatter radius.). This semester is going to kick my ass, I can feel it.

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Carol Stanforth is so wonderful that I would happily throw my body into the flight path of an angry charging velociraptor so she may live to continue making the world a better place with her charity and contagious kookiness (or at the least live to call animal control for me).

On a recent layover in LA, she spirited me away in her fine chariot. We spent half an hour deciding where to go, half an hour getting lost, and another good hour discussing what we would do in the instance of being trapped in an underground carpark with velociraptors during an earthquake.

Carol is a devout practitioner of passing on unnecessary information, so in the spirit of Carol, I would like you to know that the seams on the crotch and inner thighs of my favorite pants have frayed.

(Darling, I need your CA address)

That’s It Man, Game Over Man, Game Over!

If you are reading this, I am flying somewhere over the Pacific. One of the four (!) books accompanying me on this long haul is a book called Nostromo by Joseph Conrad of Heart of Darkness fame. I picked it up because the title reminded me of Sigourney Weaver’s ill-fated space barge from Alien, and I thought it’d be interesting to see what kind of inspiration and themes the filmmakers pilfered from the book.

Inspiration indeed! Flipping past the introductions and onto the first chapter, imagine my surprise when the first sentence I read contained the word Sulaco (if you know your Aliens, you know what I’m talking about). How a hundred year-old story about the mining industry in turn-of-the-century South America fit into a series of movies about slimy, salivating Xenomorphs simply blows my mind.

Things are simplified when you are buckled down onto a chair in the slim fuselage of a commercial Boeing carrier. Highways that hug the curvatures of impossible hills and long stretches of asphalt carved on desert wastelands are no longer testaments to the inherent industriousness of man, but premature wrinkles on the earth’s epidermis. The Grand Canyon is downgraded from a geologic formation formed by centuries of water erosion to the remains of a pint of chocolate ice cream in the hands of a hungry four year-old with a soup spoon.

Some things, like the human mind, take strange turns (something to do with regulated oxygen, maybe). One instance of such strangeness takes place in the in-flight shopping catalogue of one American airline: it offers everything from recliners to vintage hot dog carts. What I covet is the friendship of the person who boards an airplane and thinks “Hey, I’d really like to buy a vintage hot dog cart right now.”

On a sombre note: goodnight, Aleksandr. My wonderful little workhorse, a four year-old iBook G4 running OS X 10.3, has been retired, its duties downgraded to harmless internet surfing. Taking its place will be a shiny black MacBook running OS X 10.5. I will miss that little bugger, it has been very kind to me.

If this post reads like a scatterbrained English major, then this has been poor reading.

Joke’s On Me

So I go out and order this, and twenty-four hours later, they announce this.

THE VEINS ON MY NECK ARE THROBBING.

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Attention, attention. I have just paid for a two-year subscription to Harper’s Magazine and have been given full access to its online archives. I would like to take a moment to say that 1960s American Progressivism fiction is king.

“1960s American Progressivism fiction is king!”

But I’m Not Even A Philosophy Major

An e-mail received on the first morning of 2008 went as follows:

“If our sun was the size of a baseball, our whole Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of China.

Astronomers say there are billions of galaxies. Where does it all start, where does it all end, and what does it all mean??”

Tell me, how do you respond to something like that?