Well, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning President is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, for various hawkish, empirical, or politically calculated reasons. If I knew more than three anti-war songs offhand, I’d have made an entire playlist, but really, you only need this one to get the point:
Holy shit. I have a heart made of some sort of outer space rock with a Mohs Scale of Hardness rating of about 13. At least, that’s what I thought until Mason Jennings turned me into a blubbering mess by the bridge. Not sure I’ve ever heard so much genuine sadness in one song.
After seeing the fam and eating pumpkin cookies from the Allentown Farmer’s Market, the best thing about going to Pennsylvania is coming back to DC with a bag full of random foods that I may or may not need but will definitely eat. This weekend, I agreed to take an extra cauliflower off of my mom’s hands. They were really, really, really on sale, she told me, so she couldn’t leave with just one!
“Well, I’ve got some cauliflower in my fridge, but it’s going to go bad soon, and I like it, so, yeah,” I agreed.
Apparently I missed the part where my mom described the cauliflower as “freakishly large” or “possibly superintelligent.” For comparison, I present the photo above. Bear in mind that I’m a pretty huge lady. So huge that most women’s hats don’t even fit my fat head! So huge that when Liz, Wes, and I take photos together, it looks like Liz had her head shrunk by some Conradian witch doctor. Continue making your own “fat head” jokes at my expense.
Now I’m faced with this enormous cauliflower that is going to rot if I don’t eat it. So I’m going to cook it, and chronicle my adventures here. I like to play music when I cook, so it’s very tangentially related. Here we go!
Happy belated Thanksgiving, friends! I’m thankful for YOU.
I bought this album for a buck over the summer, and it’s taken about five months for me to fully appreciate it.
There’s something really triumphant about this song, especially the chorus! It makes coming back to work after the holiday slightly less blehhhh. And it’s common knowledge that I love orchestra instruments in my indie rock. Srsly. I can’t put my finger on who singer Simon Balthazar sounds like (besides Zach Condon), but it seems like it should be much more obvious. I ALSO REALLY LIKE HIS BOW TIE.
Fanfarlo will be at Iota on Friday, Dec 11th. You should come with me!
SXSW has announced some 200 of the artists who’ll be playing at the festival this March. Probably, I won’t be able to afford to go, unless someone wants to make a generous donation of $1400+ to the Misanthropes. (I wouldn’t leave Mikey hanging!) Instead, I welcome you, my dear readers, to look forward to me perusing the band list and letting you know which ones I deem worthy of listening to. It’s nothing you couldn’t do yourself, but that is one of the basic tenets of unsuccessful blogging. (The others should be evident elsewhere on this blog.)
Excitingly enough, about 97% of the names on the list are brand spanking new to me! I already enjoy Fanfarlo, Ha Ha Tonka, and Miniature Tigers, and have heard good things about one or two others, but that is it! Consider this a musical Carnival Cruise, with slightly less environmental degradation and significantly more hip snobbery! Excelsior!
I hope you haven’t maxed out your credit cards on deals already! (I’m writing this at 1 a.m. and I did. JK!) Wes showed this video to me and Liz the other night. I and Love and You has been out for a bit, but I just heard it while driving from DC to suburban Pennsylvania on Thursday. If you can get past how much the chorus sounds like “Summer of ‘69″ you will probably find this song charming. Either way, the video is pretty funny.
… then let me be the first to introduce you to the Muppets version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
As Mary Poppins would say, that’s hot.
Question: do children watch the Muppets (not the Sesame Street Muppets, but the ones in this video) any more, or do they exist solely to quench the nostalgic thirst of aging kids-at-heart? Part two: will Miss Piggy ever stop being fabulous?
It seems that every other week I am at The Bowery Ballroom now, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is an expensive thing. In an attempt to subsidize this, I petitioned my dorm to pay for my ticket by having me “host an event” where I would take 5 people who live in my residence hall to see Blind Pilot last week. Little did I know NOBODY WOULD WANT TO GO. So, sadly, this will probably be the last time I get a free concert.
Well, FUCK YOU RESIDENTS!!! The show was amazing, and you were all too stupid/lazy to know it. Luckily, my concert buddy Paolo was willing to tag along.
Last week, I made a Monkees station on Pandora that was far superior to the infamously lazy Beatles station. Then on Sunday, Liz and I were in Remix, a sweet vintage store on Capitol Hill, and heard the Monkees again! It was fate. So here’s the song we heard in the store:
We used to listen to the Monkees a lot when we were kids. In high school, Davy Jones performed at Disney World while I was there, but I thought the neon, flowery posters were some sort of retro throwback decoration. My mom couldn’t believe I missed him. Neither can I, really. So a few years ago, Liz and I saw Peter Tork play at a festival in Greenbelt. We also saw and cringed at the Little Miss Greenbelt pageant.
Props to Gimmy and Pandora for bringing Miniature Tigers into my life. It’s all about the adorable melodies with these delightful Arizona boys. They’re so sweet, they make my teeth hurt. Even “Tell It To the Volcano,” lyrically a bitter breakup anthem, makes me want to float around on a cloud made of cotton candy and feathers that rains Starbursts. (Any scientists reading? Christmas is coming.)
This video’s quality isn’t awesome, so you should definitely listen to them on MySpace, or wherever the kids are listening to the new myoo-zik these days. Miniature Tigers play very radio-friendly, playful pop songs backed by acoustic guitars and the occasional slide on a string or blast from a trumpet. Overproduced? Mmmmmaybe a little, but the instrumentation is simple and the songs retain their warmth and fuzziness despite it.
If “Cannibal Queen” and “Tell It To the Volcano” don’t sway you, wait until you get to their cover of “Mamma Mia.” It’s just serious enough to be awesome, without being grating.
SXSW has announced 