spasticrobot

late 90's goodies

I've been on quite the late 90's post rock kick this week. I have forgotten how great some of this stuff is. Jim O'Rourke's Eureka is absoultely one of my all time favorites. Here's a mix I made that has been keeping me afloat all week:

Gastr Del Sol - The Seasons Reverse
Jim O'Rourke - Ghost Ship in a Storm
Broken Social Scene - I Slept with Bonhomme at the CBC
Microstoria/Stereolab - Endless Summer
Tortoise - Jetty
The High Llamas - Glide Time
The Magnetic Fields - The Village in the Morning
Nobukazu Takemura - Fallslake
To Rococco Rot - Pantone
Tortoise - In Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were Women and Men

There's something so uplifting about this kind of music. It always makes me think of Scandanavia in the summertime. Crisp cool pine filled afternoons.

panopticon

I've done a little redesigning in order to make room for my new photolog, Panopticon. I'll be updating it with at least one photo a day from now on. My photo albums have also moved over there in case you're wondering.

farenheit

Mainstream America needs to see this film. Sure, some of the stuff in it is pure schlock intended to rouse emotional response. but on the whole Moore raises serious flags about who this administration represents.

From the opening scene where he questions the 2000 elections to the heavily protested inaguration to the wars in Afganistan and Iraq, Moore paints an interesting picture of a family on the make. They protect and promote their interests at the expense of the American people. The idea of the war in Iraq for the purposes that it is being waged makes me sick to my stomach. The idea of the man who is our 'War President' leading us through it is even sicker. Hopefully this will open some people's eyes to the horrible state of affairs not only in our country but in the world at large.

It is imperative to the future of our country that this man and his cronies are ousted from office. To do otherwise would have disastrous effects. Effects that I, for one, will not stick around to see.

caxton

Caxton is a random image and text generator that pulls its text results from Project Gutenberg and images from the googlecache. You put in an image and a text search term and it should pull in a new random combination each time - you can also 'hold' images or texts if you like them individually but not in combination. via Leo@YH!

YH! redesign

The new Yayhooray! has been launched and it's a real doozie. It looks like anyone can be a member now so if you're interested in art, design, photography or just talking shit you should head over. They've added a built-in blog in member profiles, a link database and all kinds of nifty bells and whistles.

I think this YH! will be the biggest and best of them all.

Portugoooooaaaal!

The England/Portugal match was the best game of Euro2004 so far. A tremendous effort by England but in the end they just couldn't do it.

Kudos to Ricardo the Portugese goalkeep that won the game with his amazing save in the penalty shootout.

Boo to Urs Meir, the worst international soccer ref I have ever seen. That guy was handing out cards to the Brits like he was at a convention yet barely noticed any of the Porto's fouls. Also, I think the horribly missed penalty kick is going to spell bad news for Beckham in England. People were already giving him a hard time and now he's really gonna get it.

1,000 movies

The NYT has released their list of the 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made. It's a pretty comprehensive list with some glaringly obvious holes in it. Right off the bat, in the B section, I noticed it was missing Breakfast At Tiffany's and Blade Runner. Surely these two great films would make it into most avid film watcher's top 1,000. I'm sure with careful analysis of the list I could come up with a handful of exemptions under each letter of the alphabet. That sort of subjective bias is evident in every list though and this one is pretty good overall.

Anyway, the good news is that I've only seen 358 of these. That means that even after almost 30 years of active cinema consumption there's still a huge amount of great films left for me to parse. That makes me happy. There's a ton of great titles I had forgotten about or neglected to see over the years. I've already added ten of these to my netflix queue. The one I'm most excited about is Robert Altman's Nashville, a film I've put off for years.

war kayaking

endgadget has a great how-to on War Kayaking. They rented kayaks and took them around the very affluent Lake Washington to sniff out wi-fi hotspots. (via Eyebeam)

bush game

Everyone on earth should be playing the Bush game right now. It's hillarious, educational and fun as hell! Check it out.

Cov Love

We spent a great day in good old Covington today. First we met the Saladinos at St. John's to watch the Tour De Louisiane criteriums. It was great to hang out with old friends and watch the bike races.

Afterwards we spent time with Shanna's Mom & Dad for father's day and great homemade roast beef po-boys. We finished off the day at my Mom's house for her world famous bbq ribs.

Speaking of ribs, Gambit's cover story this week is an investigation by Sara Roahen into the absence of a true native barbecue culture in New Orleans. New Orleans is one of America's great food cities but the lack of really great barbecue is one of life's great mysteries. The best thing about the article is that it highlights a few really obscure hole-in-the-wall joints I've never heard of. I'm going to be sure to check out at least a few of them iin the coming weeks.