If you're on Last.fm (and if you're not, you should be), you can use this handy little tool to generate a pretty cool visualization of your top music. It ends up looking something like this:
I like it.
That first one was my all time chart. This is the last year:
The last six months (yes Linkin Park is on there, don't hate; I loved that shit when I was 14):
Unfortunately it only lets you generate four banners at a time and I spent one dickering around, so my last three months picture will have to wait. I know you'll be waiting with bated breath.
I knew J.D. Salinger fought in Europe during World War II, but I didn't know this:
"For this reader, the great achievement of Slawenski’s biography is its evocation of the horror of Salinger’s wartime experience. Despite Salinger’s reticence, Slawenski admirably retraces his movements and recreates the savage battles, the grueling marches and frozen bivouacs of Salinger’s war. It’s hard to think of an American writer who had more combat experience. He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day. Slawenski reports that of the 3,080 members of Salinger’s regiment who landed with him on June 6, 1944, only 1,130 survived three weeks later. Then, when the 12th Infantry Regiment tried to take the swampy, labyrinthine Hürtgen Forest, in what proved to be a huge military blunder, the statistics were even more horrific. After reinforcement, 'of the original 3,080 regimental soldiers who went into Hürtgen, only 563 were left.' Salinger escaped the deadly quagmire of Hürtgen just in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, and shortly thereafter, in 1945, participated in the liberation of Dachau. 'You could live a lifetime,' he later told his daughter, 'and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose.'"
-Jay McInerney, reviewing J.D. Salinger: A Life, by Kenneth Swalenski in the February 13, 2011 edition of the New York Times Book Review
That is incredibly intense. The fact that Salinger never (well, exceedingly rarely; one short story rarely), wrote about the actual war, rather than life on the home front, says something powerful about his experiences. He was an intensely (famously) private writer, but that didn't keep him from channeling his experiences as a young college-dropout in New York City into his stories. I can only posit that the horrors of war were too horrific for him to even consider touching.
I am an emphatic advocate for the ability of technology to improve our lives, but I found this paragraph from Jonah Lehrer's January 23 New York Times book review of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle, incredibly depressing:
"Just look at Roxxxy, a $3,000 talking sex robot that comes preloaded with six different girlfriend personalities, from Frigid Farrah to Young Yoko. On the one hand, it's hard to argue with the kind of desperate loneliness that would lead someone to buy a life-size plastic gadget with three "inputs." And yet, as Turkle argues, Roxxxy is emblematic of a larger danger, in which the prevalence of robots makes us unwilling to put in the work required by real human relationships. "Dependence on a robot presents itself as risk free," Turkle writes, "But when one becomes accustomed to 'companionship' without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming." A blind date can be a fraught proposition when there's a robot at home that knows exactly what we need. And all she needs is a power outlet."
Most studies have shown that despite fears, technology has not destroyed our social framework. Social networking actually appears to strengthen already existing relationships. It is a tool, not a menace. Indeed, even a sex robot is, to my mind, no different from regular old masturbation. I'm not convinced that a person with that kind of "desperate loneliness" would not still feel intense social anxiety if no such robot existed.
More concerning, and saddening, to me is that such desperate loneliness exists, that there is a market for $3,000 sex robots. I'm not going to try to offer any solutions, or claim that there even are solutions. I'm just going to feel bad, and be thankful that I don't have to experience that.
I submit that this is the coolest picture of all time:
"I'm half farmer and half street people. I've been in jail, in reform school. I get goose pimples every time I think of going back to jail...I haven't done bad for a kid from an orphanage." -Steve McQueen
"He turned and came up beside her. She was standing beside a tall, overgrown hawthorn heavy with red berries. From its top bough there cascaded a white froth of traveller's joy, delicate as a veil, through which the berries shone like jewels. Looking at her rapt face, he thought: 'I only know it's beautiful; she can feel its loveliness.'"
The internet has given me the power to put my favorite music of 2010 out there for at least three people to see.
First, the songs that didn't make the cut but were damn close:
The single song that tugged right at the heart strings:
Second runner-up video of the year: The Black Keys - Tighten Up:
Runner-up video of the year: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Bottled in Cork:
My favorite video of the year: Das Racist - Who's That? Brooown! Das Racist are deadly serious about not taking hip-hop seriously:
A special award for amazingly bizarre album of the year that somehow works: Here Lies Love, a disco-opera collaboration between David Byrne and Fatboy Slim about Imelda Marcos; featuring Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Sharon Jones, Martha Wainwright, Tori Amos and many more. I'm not making this up, it's completely ridiculous and awesome:
Second runner-up album of the year: The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever:
Runner-up album of the year: Meursault - All Creatures Will Make Merry:
Album of the year: LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening:
Second runner-up song of the year: Hot Chip feat. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I Feel Bonnie:
Runner-up song of the year: The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio:
Song of the year: Los Campesinos! - A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; Or, Letters From Me to Charlotte:
And the moment you've all been waiting for, my discerning taste in music combining like Voltron with my mind-blowing mix making skills, kids, This Was 2010:
If you want a copy of that CD, let me know and I'll drop it in the post or bring it to your house or break into your car and put it in the CD player so you'll have perhaps the best of all possible surprises upon getting in in the morning. A broken driver's side window!
OK, please tell me not to buy this. There has to be something terribly wrong with it.
1991 Jeep Comanche Runs - $600 (43204)
Good on gas 4 cyl 5 spd Only used for work and back.
Willing to neg on price.
The truck has been in his family since 1999.
2 Wheel Drive
The miles read 208,855. However they rebuilt the engine 3 years ago and unfortunately i don't know who much is exactly on the engine itself. And i do not have the proof of it being rebuilt he didn't save any of the receipts.
There are some rust, if you can look closley on the photos i presented they are located at: The lower part of the passenger door, a little bit on the tail gate, some on the bumper, and a smudge on the lower part of the driver door.
We never got in any accidents with the truck and the only thing i can think of that is wrong with it is the gas meter dont work and it needs an oil change.
Here we have the same song, by two different disgusting attention whores. One version is the original, a legendary song by a man who can rightfully be called the grandfather of punk. The other is awful.
Fuck you Peaches. You are terrible. How dare you disrespect Iggy Pop like that.
That second song is off of War Child: Heroes, an (otherwise) amazing covers compilation. Check it out. Here's a little something from the same to cleanse your palette after that abomination.
Ok guys, Stan Mott is awesome. This picture is the background on my computer even as we speak:
His surreal car art is pretty amazing. A decent intro to his work can be found here, and a more complete but hellish to navigate place to see his work is here. He's best known for the Cyclops (which was actually built!), but my favorite (besides that amazing aircraft carrier), has to be his History of Tanks.
I'm not actually a huge fan of James Dean, he falls into the category for me of people who are revered for being martyrs, not who are martyrs because they were revered. Not that he wasn't revered, but I'm not convinced he was everything we now associate with him. It's hard to be a true great when you only made three movies. Consider this James Dean talk an aberration. Anyway, I thought this was interesting.
That's not actually what I want to talk about though. THIS is what I want to talk about:
From Letters of Note, an exceptionally solid blog, follow the link above for the transcript.
"I never thought I'd live to see eighteen. Isn't that dumb? Every day, I look in the mirror and say, 'What? You still here? Man!' Like even today. I woke up this morning, you know? And the sun was shining and everything was nice, and I thought, 'This is gonna be one terrific day, so you better live it up, boy..."
Probably my favorite music video of all time. I think looking back nearly a decade later, in the wake of the death of this kind of New York cool personified by the Strokes, Interpol, et. al., it's easy to forget a) just how amazing the Strokes were, and b) what a huge shock they were to music. But that's all beside the point. I love this video. I want to be in this video.
Today I saw a car I don't think I'd ever seen before. Nothing special or exotic, just rare. Yes kids, the Mazda Navajo!
Essentially a rebadged Ford Explorer, the Navajo was only made from 1991-1994 and barely sold.
It was Motor Trend's Truck of the Year in 1991, but eventually became embroiled in the Firestone Tire Controversy. They can be had pretty cheap, but in a cursory search of the internets I found just one for sale. $800 is almost worth taking a flier on, but I'm holding out for a trashy El Camino.
Everyone has heard of the Cadillac Ranch, and someday I will see and graffiti it myself. What I had never heard of, however, was the Car Stonehenge. Check it out.
Courtesy of the always amazing Hooniverse. If you care about cars whatsoever, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Even if you don't, there's some weird and wonderful stuff on there.
Alright guys, this song is by a band I know nothing about. It does feature whistling, so I'm automatically into it. Also, hang on to those cards with the web address on them. They may come in handy.
