27Jun2007 2029: Emergency Update

Awesome. Thanks, Raharu.

27Jun2007 1959: Yankovic

Weird Al Yankovic stopped by the Red River Valley Fair on Friday and rocked fifteen minutes longer than Ted Nugent. The rocking was not as constant, mind you. The Nuge kept up an uninterrupted stream of guitar and chatter once he got on stage, while Weird Al has to take breaks for costume changes. He did fulfill a long-standing dream of mine, though: at the last two Al concerts I went to, our group would chant for "Albuquerque"...partly in jest (it clocks in around 11 minutes long), but mostly because that song rules.

Al played it. All of it. I saved a piece of the confetti for my trophy case, where thirty years from now I can point and say "I was there when Al played Albuquerue (Extended Donut Mix)."

I've put off the music review as long as I can. Simply put, they're not good. [Till Bronner - A Distant Episode] is the best just because it doesn't outright offend. It doesn't do much of anything, really. Till gives us five and a half minutes of wispy jazz trumpet which made a decent accompaniment to me making dinner, but it's not something I'll want to keep around. [Mala Rodriguez - Por la Noche] brings us overproduced pop-rap from across the border. [Marc Billz - Let It Go] brings us even more generic rap from this side of the border, and he has a stupid name to boot. Big thumbs down for this entire week.

Weird Al's at the Minnesota State Fair on Aug 27th. Who's with me?

20Jun2007 1909: Death Note

Man have you heard of this shit? No wait, don't read the spoilers. Just: wow. This is the best anime I've seen since Haibane. Okay, see, this death god is really bored with the death god universe so he decides to drop his notebook on Earth. If you write somebody's name in this notebook while picturing their face, they die. The notebook is picked up by a psychopathic high schooler -- Yagami Light -- that wants to wipe crime from the face of the Earth...so that's what he does. One criminal at a time. Or sometimes twenty.

All that up there? That's episode one. Eventually a high-school age detective codenamed "L" gets involved in the case and begins a thrilling game of cat and also-cat with Light. Every episode is an expertly crafted mini-mystery thriller as Light and L battle with their mighty logic! The animation is high-quality as well, apparently TV budgets can afford the type of stuff I used to see in theaters not too long ago.

Music time! [Orishas - Una Pagina Doblada] is okay but doesn't really grab me. I'll probably delete it unless I hit my head and suddenly start speaking Spanish. I'd like to think the title means "Taking a Page from Your Bladder", and the song is subtitled "(Piss Off)" in the uncut CD version.

[Findlay Brown - Losing the Will to Survive (Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve Reanimation)] two-ups that by (a) being in my native language and (b) actually having a ridiculous subtitle. It very nearly scared me away, but I stuck with it and was pleased with its spaghetti-western stylings. This one is worth a listen.

[Sara Bareilles - Love Song] is a tad banal but is otherwise exactly the kind of pop music I like. Female vocals that don't diva out of control and some nice piano slot right in between Lisa Loeb and Natalie Merchant.

17Jun2007 0005: Ted Nugent

Just got back from the Nuge concert and it was rockingly odd. He played a couple songs from a new album, and...the deal is, he has had a long and storied career in rock and roll. This fame and longevity can be a problem, especially when you begin to run out of metaphors for "vagina". But I will give it bonus points for forcing a crowd of hard-rocking gun-toting deer-hunting manly men to shout "Girl Scout cookies!" at the top of their lungs.

13Jun2007 1824: Primer

The SciFri group watched Primer last week and it was full of win. I'd have to sit down with a physical list and perform complicated soul-searching to be absolutely sure, but I am prepared to say that it is the best sci-fi movie I've seen in my entire life. It doesn't have flashy lasers or oppressed aliens or a cynical view of The Man, but it is grounded in the kinds of characters that we can relate to. Shit, the kind of characters we are in real life. I urge y'all to watch it without spoilers of any kind; do not research this film, just rent it.

Free Music Tuesday is back in full swing:

[Elvis Crispo - La Foto Se Me Borro] returns to the traditional Latino sound, and by "traditional" I of course mean "heard in Mexican-themed restaurants". I guess Apple realized what I did - that it would be impossible to top Solta O Frango. They've wisely decided to cause a precipitous drop in quality so they can slowly ramp up to the Next Big Thing.

[Mike Farris - Sit Down Servant] was labeled as "Rock" on iTunes, but only in the earliest-50s sense of the word. I'd call it "Blues", perhaps "Christian", and certianly "Deleted".

[Justice - D.A.N.C.E] tried to make spelling exciting, but falls quite a bit short of B.E.C.K.Y. (of Rumble Roses fame). I'll keep this at a solid three-star, but the 70s funkiness doesn't quite match with the children's choir's counting.

09Jun2007 2308: Ascorbic!

The oral LD50 for Vitamin C is 11900 mg per kg. If my math holds -- and gin always helps me with my maths -- that's toxicity for eating 1% of your body mass in pure ascorbic acid crystals. I, Monthenor, have a fantastic chance of surviving up to two pounds of unadulterated Vitamin C.

At that point all you can do is hope and pray that it kills you. Even in doses as low as "eating Vitamin C pills while believing they are Jolly Ranchers", your urine will have the color and feel of burning magma.

That was the second-worst Christmas ever.

07Jun2007 2054: Bonde do Role

Remember when I recommended that really weird Spanish song? I swear to you, I stumbled upon this in a completely unrelated chain of events. And there's the first one again. This band is perfectly aligned with my interests but for the language barrier.

07Jun2007 1552: Jarhand

Hey guys I found some free music. I had gotten so used to the Free On iTunes section that I just scrolled right past their Single of the Week button, situated as it is in the middle of a bunch of similar-looking ads I don't care about. So here: [Immaculate Machine - Jarhand] is a peppy, surreal tale of somebody with a jar on his hand who's crying on the couch. Some or all of that may be a metaphor just as some or all of the song may be a pleasant toodly synth solo. This is an easy recommendation to make, as you will know if you like this song or not within ten seconds.

06Jun2007 1843: Hunger

A mostly unremarkable story about a few Congressians grandstanding for their eventual reelection a good cause would normally not enter into my sphere of consciousness, but it seems to have inspired hack journalism from a national bevy of C-list special-interest-story hacks. One of our lucky airheads even made it to Fark and was summarily and metaphorically executed for her foolish spending. Another sullied the local Fargo paper and managed to do even worse, trading her Mother's Day budget for a brownie by day 4. Also: juice boxes!

Two data points of bad journalism are just enough to form a line. A worrying trend line. It is mathematical and in italics, you cannot resist. Oh look, how appropriate.

I have never been forced to such dire straits in search of food, not even during college, but I'd like to think I could do better than brownies and intentionally draining away the tasty caloric fat from my ground beef. The aforementioned Fark thread really delivered, though. Witness the perfect 3.3 cent brekkist, as well as The Hillbilly Housewife. Their miserity surpasses my own, and I wish to subscribe to their newsletter.

Well. Ran that topic into the ground. Hm. This is usually where I put my reviews for the Free iTunes Singles of the Week, but this week iTunes decided to screw us with one audio book and a bunch of TV episodes. So. This is pretty cool. It's not, like, free music cool, but...yeah.