Month: August 2004

The Conet Project

conetThe Washington Post profiles Akin Fernanadez, the guy behind the mysterious Conet Project box set of shortwave numbers stations that’s all the rage with the kids these days – especially now that it’s back in print after the Wilco settlement. As I recall, I’m #180-something on Aquarius Records‘ big list of Conet purchasers but it’s “extra cool” because I picked it up at Terrastock II in San Francisco.

mp3s of all four discs are available directly from Irdial, along with mp3s of everything Irdial has released (shout outs for Stephen McGreevy’s Electric Enigma VLF recordings also). Additionally, Conet-heads should check out Black Cat System’s The Numbers Racket CD-ROM.

The 2005 colors are in

The 2005 colors are in, and the theme for next year are “colors that convey a respectful, serious nature, yet touch the soul.” Yet at the same time “by 2005, the attitudinal cycle will swing toward indulgence and away from the current mood of abstinence.”

What does this mean? Prepare for colors such as Bucko, Atomic, Fire Copper, Northern Lights, Thistle Bloom, and Sulphur. Did you purchase a silver car? Gotta sell it now because for transportation:

The popularity of silver evolves to anodized metal finishes, grays, and color tinted silvers. However, cost reductions and technology limitations challenge designers to be creative and innovative. Weatherized, burnished patinas and finish alternatives replace silver and chrome. Embossing creates new textures and new technology facilitates variable color effects. For interiors, special effects enhance “touch and hand” of surfaces.

Briar – Straight from the European high-fashion runways, this natural interpretation of red moves to automotive interiors and exteriors.

Miami Ice – Light, clean, and sophisticated, this retro blue, without special effects, is new to transportation. Inspiration for Miami Ice comes from the usage of this warm blue in fashion, graphics, home furnishings, and cosmetics.

Silver Leaf – As silver evolves, this minty pastel is a new way to do green. Silver Leaf is inspired by the widespread usage of glass in architecture, electronics and product design.

Driftwood – Borrowed from fashion, electronics, and architecture, this complex warm gray is more conservative than silver. Driftwood is a cost-effective and comfortable alternative to nickel, chrome and stainless steel.

Chiblonde – A fresh interpretation of gold, with white highlights. Inspired by European fashion and cosmetics.

Who the hell is behind this? The shadowy Color Marketing Group:

CMG members forecast Color Directions one to three years in advance for all industries, manufactured products and services. These Consumer/Residential and Contract/Commercial products include: Action/Recreation, Consumer Goods, Technology, Home, Visual Communications, Transportation, Juvenile Products, Fashion, and environments for Office, Health Care, Retail, Hospitality/Entertainment and Institutional/Public Spaces.

Al Dvorin R.I.P.

R.I.P.

IVANPAH, Calif. (AP) – Al Dvorin, the concert announcer who made famous the phrase “Elvis has left the building,” was killed in an auto accident. He was 81.

Dvorin was thrown from the car he was riding in Sunday after it swerved off a desert road near Ivanpah, the California Highway Patrol said.

The night before, Dvorin performed his signature closing line at Trump 29 Casino in Coachella, with “American Trilogy,” a concert by Elvis impersonator Paul Casey that included conversations with Dvorin and other Presley friends.

A former bandleader and talent agent in Chicago, Dvorin was with the King from his early days as a performer and was on his last tour in 1977, the year Presley died.

I’ll spare the obvious “Al has left the…” headline here. What I find interesting is that this is the only time I’ve ever seen Ivanpah namechecked in a news story. The “town” is basically just an intersection with some cows and joshua trees with little else around. I used to camp out that way quite a bit.

Punk songs about Reagan C70

A couple months ago, I threw together a list of ten punk songs about Reagan. Thought of a couple more and made it into a full-blown C70.

  1. Ron And Nancy Reagan – “Pro Marijuana PSA”
  2. Dead Kennedys – “We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now”
  3. Accelerators – “Reaganland”
  4. D.I. – “Reagan Der Fuhrer”
  5. D.R.I. – “Reaganomics”
  6. Dayglo Abortions – “Ronald McRaygun”
  7. Government Issue – “Hey Ronnie”
  8. Accelerators – “Reaganomics Fuck Off”
  9. Teenage Depression – “Reagan’s Gestapo”
  10. Inferno – “Ronald Reagan”
  11. J.F.A. – “Jody Fosters Army”
  12. M.I.A – “All The President’s Skin”
  13. Dead Kennedys – “Moral Majority”
  14. NOFX – “Reagan Sucks”
  15. M.A.D. – “Holocaust”
  16. Tongue Avulsion – “Libyan Hit Squad”
  17. D.O.A. – “Fucked Up Ronnie”
  18. Ramones – “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg”
  19. Social Unrest – “General Enemy”
  20. The Fartz – “Battle Hymn Of Ronnie Reagan”
  21. The Minutemen – “If Reagan Played Disco”
  22. Rattus – “Reagan In Joululahja”
  23. Toxic Reasons – “Destroyer”
  24. Shattered Faith – “Reagan Country”
  25. Sector 4 – “White House”
  26. Suicidal Tendencies – “I Shot The Devil”
  27. Wasted Youth – “Reagan’s In”
  28. Ism – “John Hinckley Jr.”
  29. The Crucifucks – “Hinckley Had A Vision”
  30. The Prima Donnas – “Reagan’s Dead”
  31. The Damned – “Bad Time For Bonzo”
  32. The Simpsons – “Rappin’ Ronnie Reagan”

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream

Quote of the month from the London News Review

This fact – that The Scream is forever being stolen – has added a new layer of meaning to the original. The sickly fear, the angst which radiates out from the ghoulish face of the screamer, is now shot through with the uncertainty that at any moment the canvas might be wrenched from the wall and shoved in the boot of an Audi. The scream is as much a cry of help as a cry of anguish. The strange stretched lips twist to form the plaintive words: “Please stop stealing me” – but in the empty eyes you can see the dreadful certainty that the theft will take place.

[via Scrubbles]

The world’s only Greenlandic-Chinese restaurant

Note to self: when in Greenland, send out for Chinese food.

When you are in Greenland, don’t miss its loveliest town – Sisimiut.  And when in Sisimiut, don’t miss Greenland’s special restaurant – Misigisaq!  You will find Misigisaq Restaurant down in the atmospheric and historic port area (JM Jensenip Aqquserna), just where you disembark from your ship or where you enter town from the airport.

Misigisaq serves Greenlandic ingredients cooked in an authentic Chinese style – some of the best produce in the world cooked in the style of one of the world’s great cuisines.  

By using a big variety of Greenlandic ingredients, Misigisaq’s cooks have added a new dimension to Chinese cuisine:  Hot pots cooked on the table, popular in Beijing, in Sisimiut use Greenlandic lamb from Neqi (the national lamb supplier), which we cut into paper thin slices for fast cooking, with an option of adding caribou and musk ox meat. The Davis Strait Hotpot is a fondue packed with local seafood.  The traditional rejuvenating Chinese herb, Heavenly Grass (a distant relative of the other type of hemp), is added to caribou in a clay pot. The Chinese vegetable suancai is cooked with cod to give a spicy flavour, as in Sichuan cooking. Fragrant and Spicy Snow Crabs is a dish based on cuisine in central China.

Julia Child R.I.P.

juliachild_primordialI can’t add anything more to what everyone else is saying (her Snopes page is hilarious), but one of my earliest recollections of her was a science film she did where she talked about how life on earth formed from the early amino acid chemicals and made “primordial soup” in her kitchen.

The Exploratorium has part of it streaming online. Scroll down to “Life’s Ingredients” and watch the webcast.- it’s about six minutes in.

Indian Superman

OK, the list of rip off films is getting ridiculous now. We’ve had Turkish Star Wars, Soviet Star Trek, North Korean Godzilla, etc. What’s next? Behold Indian Superman! “You will believe a movie can suck.”

Shekhar takes the Kryptonian vibrator and, with the assistance of a heaping helping of stock footage, creates the Fortress of Solitude and transforms into Superman. He flies over India, courtesy of more stolen footage and some aerial shots of Bombay. We are also introduced to an odd fish-eyed lens effect that is used to signify Superman flying from time to time. It appears that the camera operator simply placed the camera on a tripod in the middle of Bombay, tilted it up towards the skyline, and spun around a few times. This is supposed to give the illusion of buildings whizzing by when the silhouette of a prone Supes is overlaid on it, but instead gives the incredibly real sensation that you are just on the verge of throwing up.

Little did I know that “something black in my lentils” is the Hindi idiomatic equivalent of “something fishy is going on.”

In praise of the Angry Diner

DATE: 6/2/04 SLUG: JAVA DESK: METRO A sign posted on the shuttered Brooklyn storefront of Josie's Java coffe shop at 462 Court Street, between 3rd and 4th Place in Carroll Gardens, informs customers of the death of the store's owner and long-time neighborhood persona Josephine "Josie" D'Esposito, who died Monday of heart failure at the age of 76. photo by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times photographer contact 917-586-0916
DATE: 6/2/04 SLUG: JAVA DESK: METRO A sign posted on the shuttered Brooklyn storefront of Josie’s Java coffe shop at 462 Court Street, between 3rd and 4th Place in Carroll Gardens, informs customers of the death of the store’s owner and long-time neighborhood persona Josephine “Josie” D’Esposito, who died Monday of heart failure at the age of 76. photo by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times photographer contact 917-586-0916

Jody (via kottke.org) links to Calvin Trillin’s article on Shopsin’s (and its cantankerous owner Kenny) in the Village and I realized that I completely forgot to link to a NY Times remembrance of Josie’s Java in Carroll Gardens.

Between the shoeshine man and Caputo’s, there is a dank, grim coffee shop where the customer is often wrong. The place is called Josie’s Java. It resembles a truck stop, and breakfast and lunch are served every day. Get dinner someplace else. In the evening, the door is covered by a grate painted to depict a full cup of coffee with an arm reaching up from inside the liquid, drowning or waving.

You do not pour cream into your coffee at Josie’s; you say when. She pours. She opened the place as a video shop two decades ago; that explains the free movies that sometimes come with coffee to reward good behavior. Once, in recognition of a 20-cent tip, she bestowed a copy of the Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense.”

Josie’s may not have been the last angry diner, but there was only one Josephine D’Esposito. Wish I coulda met her.

Meanwhile, over at Shopsin’s (assuming your retinas can withstand the menu) Kenny is kicking ass, taking down names, and making soup from scratch to order:

One evening, when the place was nearly full, I saw a party of four come in the door; a couple of them may have been wearing neckties, which wouldn’t have been a plus in a restaurant whose waitress used to wear a T-shirt that said “Die Yuppie Scum.” Kenny took a quick glance from the kitchen and said, “No, we’re closed.” After a brief try at appealing the decision, the party left, and the waitress pulled the security gate partway down to discourage other latecomers.

“It’s only eight o’clock,” I said to Kenny.

“They were nothing but strangers,” he said.

“I think those are usually called customers,” I said. “They come here, you give them food, they give you money. It’s known as the restaurant business.”

Kenny shrugged. “Fuck ’em,” he said.

An attitude I greatly respect. Right now, I’m ready to just drive directly to Shopsin’s the minute I’m finally in NYC for good.