you prob. don't really care, but for the sake of being a completist i'm posting about this old mix tape i made in 1998 that i just finished transferring to CD (with some large revisions). i have a bunch of old tapes like this lying around that i'm slowly working my way through. it's always interesting to me how my music tastes have evolved, and this actually ended up being a really short mix for me b/c i rejected so many songs that i can barely listen to now (like a stone temple pilots song and bitter sweet symphony and a sarah mclachlan track, all three of which at the time i included mostly for the sake of variety rather than any real love). it's short also b/c i took out the classical and musicals tracks b/c nowadays i'm a bit more concerned w/ mixes flowing and not being so much of a jumble. looking at these songs now they seem to be generally simplistic (especially the ones that i didn't include), but maybe it's b/c now 7 years later (!) i'm so familiar with them. while putting this together i also thought about how music-wise college seems to be such a fertile period for so many people. there's something so unique about living w/ a bunch of strangers who become friends and borrowing CDs (one of my great hobbies). even though i still share CDs w/ people occasionally, that and recommending mp3s just isn't the same. i feel like i have better and stronger memories about where and from who each of these songs came from than the songs on most of the mixes i make these days. is it b/c i find a lot of music on my own these days (due possibly to the pervasiveness of the internet where i can get recommendations from strangers more readily than from close friends)? or b/c that first year of college is such a unique experience it's more memorable than my current years of monotonous drudgery (well, relatively speaking), a.k.a. full-time employment? i think it's more the former. two last comments: it was fun to rediscover tammy wynette. have a CD of hers i've been meaning to listen to for a while now. the mikado track is a really fantastic song (w/ superlative lyrics. btw, the movie -topsy turvy- was pretty tedious, but the staged song excerpts were worthy, if not completely redeeming, highlights). for those of you who know us, did you know anand and i were in the mikado at MIT in the fall of 1998? feels like centuries ago. i think i even have some ridiculously incriminating pictures somewhere of us from back then. --- making lists in my sleep: 1998 mix revisited 1 ani difranco . not a pretty girl . cradle and all 2 david bowie . best of bowie . golden years 3 pizzicato five . big hits and jet lags 1994-1997 (import) . happy sad (japanese version) 4 bjork . homogenic . jóga 5 smashing pumpkins . mellon collie and the infinite sadness . stumbleine 6 jonathan larson . rent (OBC) . take me or leave me 7 tammy wynette . best of tammy wynette . your good girl's gonna go bad 8 the smiths . the queen is dead . there is a light that never goes out 9 tori amos . miami, FL (10/23/1996) . girl [edited] 10 aphex twin . richard d. james album . milkman 11 gilbert and sullivan, shilling/rawlins, rochester PO/elder . the mikado . beauty in the bellow 12 ani difranco . imperfectly . imperfectly 13 erasure . crackers international (EP) . stop! 14 ben folds five . whatever & ever amen . battle of who could care less 15 tracy chapman . self-titled . fast car 16 the dan emery mystery band . love and advertising . space renegade 17 tori amos . caught a lite sneeze (EP, US) . toodles mr. jim close but no cigar: sarah mclachlan . surfacing . do what you have to do

Learning about the butcher counter Until this year, I don't think I have EVER approached the butcher counter at my supermarket. First off, I was dating a vegetarian and then in addition living with another one, which makes it impossible to cook meat. And I didn't know how to do it anyways. Since I've started my meat explorations, I've been stopping by every so often for whole free-range chickens, and spicy italian sausages. Yesterday I did two "advanced" things -- for me anyways. I purchased some smoked ham hocks to make a stock for a butternut squash soup (recipe from the Gothamist that I am too lazy to link). They were much bigger than I was envisoning, and I asked him to chop it up into smaller chunks. I also got him to cut merely two little lamb chops off the end of a rack of lamb. [Please note that everytime I say that I "asked" the butcher to do something, that really just means that I looked terrified until he said "do you want me to cut XYZ?"] The soup was amazing. The lamb -- dressed with some oregano, lemon juice, and garlic, and broiled for 4 minutes on each side -- was amazing. I will be doing this again soon. My argument about "it's hard to cook meat because you have to make SO MUCH of it every time" is quickly falling by the wayside. I'm well on my way to become a good meat-a-vore.

i never got these messages in college. maybe i just wasn't popular enough. haha. i hope this blog isn't going to get overrun by the really inane iterations of these (like "what color is your toothbrush?"), but it was actually kind of interesting to think about some of these. what is the total amount of music files on your computer? my current harddrive is pitifully small, and w/ all the memory that porn takes up (haha) i periodically burn mp3s to CD. so even though the actual space is prob. less than a couple of GB on my computer, in actuality i have much, much more. i'm more of a CD person in general, though. i love scrutinizing liner notes and the feel of a CD. (and i still love cassettes!) re: liner notes, i'm prob. one of the few people who pay attention to crap like who was playing the melodica on track 11 and the violin on track 3 and who the 100th shout-out was to. i'm weird, i know. (side note: my harddrive isn't 15 GB of porn! actually a lot of it is audio files of songs i'm currently working on. what w/ multitracking and diff. takes and all, one song could take up a whole gig.) what is the last cd you bought? i just won cat power's you are free off of ebay actually. funny coincidence. what was the last song you listened to before reading this message? right before i bought the cat power CD i got this CD of this random one-man band i found online called state shirt. you should totally check out the tracks on his website. i've had "fell out of the sky" on repeat for the past two weeks, and the only reason i haven't told anyone about it yet is b/c i'm jealously hoarding it as one of my great finds for use on a soon-to-come mix. when i first read w's post that's what i was listening to, although right now i'm listening to kylie. haha. five songs you often listen to, or that mean a lot to you: this turned out to be an interesting question for me. i had trouble thinking of things off the top of my head as songs that i adore unconditionally, which was surprising. but in the end i settled on these: bjork: hyperballad -- has everything. perfect lyrics, a gorgeous texture, and it gives me chills. and it's bjork! the sugarcubes: birthday -- for me one of the most perfectly pitched, always feel-good tracks. tori: cooling -- a b-side, but one of my absolute favorite tori songs. sort of a "pretty" ballad, but it has a lot of emotions in it, for me anyway. bach's cello suite #2 -- cheating, i know. the cello suites is one of the few pieces of classical music that i can consistently come back to again and again and feel like i'm "understanding" it more and more, and this is one of my favs. barber's knoxville summer of 1915 (recording w/ dawn upshaw) -- i was surprised that i picked two classical pieces, but this piece is so evocative. it has the best of what i love in classical vocal music: gorgeous, memorable tunes and a really palpable, lovely mood. who are you going to pass this stick to (three persons) and why? umm i don't really know that many people who have blogs, and if i had to think about it i would've picked the same 3 people that winnie did. so i'm going to have to skip this one. heh.

time waster alert I spent hours reading this site yesterday. Improv Everywhere "The Mobius Strip" was my favorite.

rented the work of director michel gondry, vol. 3 of the "director's series". i'd seen the chris cunningham DVD (best known for his vid of bjork's "all is full of love" and aphex twin's "come to daddy" and "windowlicker") and had been disappointed by the paucity of content and lack of range. not so w/ the gondry DVD. gondry is prob. best known for his bjork vids (such as "human behavior") and his lego vid for the white stripes, and more recently from his direction of eternal sunshine (which i haven't seen yet, but am jumping to do so after seeing this). this collection is extremely generous and has two sides filled w/ some 20+ music vids, a few commercials, some 10+ short videos, some interviews w/ artists (inc. segments w/ the seemingly verbally and personality-challenged lead singer of the foo fighters), and a mostly perfunctory autobiographical documentary in two parts. there are recurring techniques and ideas, but also a very satisfying amount of variety, much of it in that sort of charmingly eccentric french way. something that makes gondry unique is his ability to create videos that you want to watch several times in a row. in a short clip w/ spike jonze, jonze says (loosely paraphrased) that gondry taught him that making a music vid is like being a magician: you keep the audience's attention fixated on one hand; meanwhile you're assembling tricks right under their noses with the other. luckily for me his 7 bjork vids turned out to actually be his least interesting. highlights for me included: videos for cibo matto, daft punk, and the chemical brothers. i was also psyched to have my first exposure to oui oui, an endorphin-inducing french band he started in as drummer and whose videos were gondry's earliest successes in the genre. (unfortunately the band seems to be pretty obscure; haven't been able to find anything of theirs on amazon.fr.) my absolute fav, though, was his vid for kylie minogue. i didn't really know a whole lot about her other than she's sort of the australian/UK madonna (although i vaguely knew that her only US hit really thus far was that familiar club staple "can't get you out of my head"), but the video is utterly addictive and, perhaps as a sign of how successful the video is, i've really gotten into the song as well. i don't want to tell you anything about the video b/c the surprises are a big part of it, but i can tell you that i've watched it at least 15 times and each time i still notice something interesting in it. a very, very, very cool mini-masterpiece. so i guess now i can declare myself to be a fan of gondry. i'm currently exploring the kylie territory. borrowed a CD from andy and like it. it's the type of pop that i think most americans would find too saccharine, but being a long-time fan of erasure it doesn't bother me too much. will be digging up another album of hers sooner than later probably.

Dinner last night I've been on this chicken cooking kick lately. I don't think I've written about it here yet. Last night was Chicken Episode 4 (the previous being: Whole Roasted Chicken with Veggies, Beer Can Chicken, Oven-Fried Chicken). Episode 4 was Gothamist's Tarragon Roasted Chicken. Being a weeknight, I omitted the potatoes. I sort of followed the directions -- I used about 10x the amount of tarragon because I wasn't paying attention. At the end of the recipe, I used pomagranate juice instead of cider to make a sauce, which was quite sweet and delicious. And I cooked my spinach in a little olive oil/garlic/anchovy/red pepper flake mix, because I've been fantasizing about anchovies for the past few nights. It was damn good. For dessert, we were going to eat the cantaloupe chunks that were meant for our oyster picnic on Sunday. But then I started fantasizing about prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupes and stopped paying attention to what A. was saying so we had to walk down to the supermarket and buy some prosciutto and olive oil. Yeah, that was damn good too. This is the life.

i've been gone for a long time, but i had to write about my valentine's day food experiences. we had v-day on sunday, i thought it was on purpose, although apparently A. thought sunday really was vday, thus thoroughly confusing the restaurant we went to for dinner.. breakfast: miss millie's, in noe valley we split a savory entree and a sweet entree. sweet: gingerbread waffles with some sort of custard, apples, and candied walnuts on top. it was over-the-top, as most fancy sweet brunch entrees are. but the savory entree! roasted poblano peppers, stuffed with chorizo, cheese and some other delicious things. served with eggs scrambled with scallions and some other things. it was absolutely amazing. lunch: hog island oyster company at hog island, you can go and get a tray of oysters, and shuck your own, which have practically come right out of the water. we ate various sizes of sweetwater oysters (medium, small, x-small, xx-small), french hogs (i think?), and kumamoto oysters. the oyster juice seemed saltier than usual -- i'm not sure if that's a consequence of being right out of the water, or of us getting stuff from the outside of the shell into the inside due to amateur shucking technique! two dozen, plus half a bottle of bonny doon's dry riesling. dinner: hyde street bistro the restaurant is painted in this lovely orange color that i loved -- it's sort of an orangey-er veuve cliquot color. it's little and french with french waitstaff. you sit close enough to your neighbors to eat their food, but it was actually pretty okay. i had the salmon tartare appetizer which came with little bits of toast, and it was sort of like bruschetta but with salmon. it was delicious and mild. on the other side of the spectrum, A. had the carmelized onion tart with blue cheese, and it was seriously intense. i don't think i could've eaten the whole thing. i then had the duck leg confit, which was drizzled with black truffle oil. the duck was delicious, the little side salad was a good counterpart, but then there were these little roasted potatoes that made me think of things you get at your elementary school cafeteria. like little diced fries. i really wish it was appropriate to pick up the bone and munch all the little bits of meat that are stuck to it after you do all you can with your fork and knife. A. had rabbit in a mustard reduction, which was more creamy and less mustardy than expected. the rabbit leg wasn't chickeny like i expected (only because everything tastes like chicken), although A. reported that the rabbit back was a little chickeny. i think it came with linguine and maybe some veggies, but i don't remember. i ordered a wine that the waiter was pleased with, that made me excited -- it was a 2002 chilean cabernet sauvignon that i've been trying to google but i can't remember exactly how to spell it -- something like penalon, but it has another syllable in the middle. i was pleased with the portions -- i had enough room at the end to have dessert. we decadently each ordered a dessert -- a very shallow but broad creme brulee for A. and chocolate mousse for me. the creme brulee was good, but it was like all good creme brulee. the mousse came in three little truffle-sized balls in some sort of white liquidy sauce. it was light and delicious (i was afraid a chocolate dessert would be too heavy) and i didn't feel quite like i had to be rolled home afterwards. wow. it was an amazing food day. [winnie, I think my mom could take on your mom, and it would be at least a draw.. well maybe in a mom-and-dad team, since my dad has his different but just-as-good specialties.]

i was really upset when i found out elvis mitchell was leaving his post at the new york times; he was definitely one of my favorite reviewers there. his, more or less, "replacement", manohla dargis, has been irritating me ever since. in a "conversation" w/ newly appointed head writer (and apparently old friend) a. o. scott in the nytimes soon after the replacement, dargis mentioned that having more women critics in the world is desirable for the simple fact that it immediately provides a different viewpoint from the majority of other reviews. i would agree in general. however, since then dargis has proven that although this may be true in general, it's only true if said reviewer offers up her/his "different viewpoint" objectively and w/out ever resorting to soapbox pontificating. there are so many examples of reviews that have irritated me. one of the first was her review of the sequel to bridget jones. first, she does the tired gimmick of writing her review in the style of the movie. second, in it she barely bothers to talk about the movie at all; instead she rambles on and on about zellweger as celebrity, not as actress. which might be interesting to some people in an essay, but which is incredibly out of place in a movie review. i disliked her review of elektra for similar reasons. the review is dismissive w/out any real analysis, other than a general dismissal of female superheroes. she obviously hasn't done her research, as she blatantly and incorrectly denies the long history of well-developed female superheroes in comics (who regularly outsell their male counterparts, not b/c they're female and their audience is male, but simply b/c they're more interesting characters) as well as neglects mentioning any female superheroes in recent movies (catwoman, the x-men movies, or what about even kill bill?). again, it seemed like dargis has her own female-centric agenda which has little to do w/ writing a fair review. her review today of bride and prejudice is similarly unenlightening. the fact it's a romantic comedy must have damned it from the start, b/c her review is so vague that it could easily have been written w/out actually seeing it. i get immediately suspicious of reviews that are so concerned w/ being hypercritical that they don't even deign to answer the basic question: "yes, it's fluff, but is it fun? is it -entertaining-?" the last straw for me was an article she wrote for the sunday edition a few weeks ago which basically could be summed up with the phrase: "plastic surgery is fake." why do we need to be told this? since dargis resides in LA, this strongly sounded like a personal issue she wanted to spout off about rather than b/c it was anything relevant or new. to be fair, dargis, when not haranguing about her view of females in cinema ad nauseum, writes decent, if not fascinating, reviews (such as of the lemony snicket flick, and hide and seek). if she could just be a reviewer first and get over the fact that she's female then maybe she won't give the rest of us so many reasons to roll our eyes and throw down the arts section in disgust. elvis mitchell: we miss you! xx

finally. this is easily the best map software out there, neatly blowing mapquest et al out of the water. i'm just wondering what took so long. maps.google.com

i know nobody really cares, but i was pretty psyched to find some new frames that i actually like. let me know what you think (or if you're like winnie and you didn't notice the difference at all). is it just me, or do i look like my brother in the first pic? and the second pic looks like an author's bio pic for a book jacket, no? well i think my new frames look rad.