i've been itching to do this mix for a while and finally finished it this weekend. it's my 2nd fat is flavor metamix, w/ my "favorite" track from each of the 19 mixes from fat is flavor rounds 4 through 6. the actual favorite track from a mix may have been supplanted by a track that flowed a bit better, and although it's very hodge-podgey it doesn't feel too schizo to me, and it's a nice effect to encapsulate several months of mix-making into less than 80 minutes. it was interesting to see which tracks still do it for me (winnie, that squarepusher track is so good) and which tracks were overlooked the first time. so, here it is. don't throw it away best of flava rounds 4-6 5/28/05 1 andy4 . mike scott . bring 'em all in
2 nelson4 . pinehurst kids . spinning out
3 fred4 . joe weiner . since you left town
4 winnie4 . squarepusher . my red hot car
5 austin4 . jarcrew . radar
6 carl4 . django reinhardt . honeysuckle rose

7 austin5 . call and response . all night long
8 andy5 . big audio dynamite . everybody needs a holiday
9 carl5 . jimmy cliff . sitting in limbo
10 winnie5 . robert johnson . last fair deal gone down
11 maggie5 . neil finn . truth
12 fred5 . kerith ravine . fenton

13 christian6 . people under the stairs . earth travelers
14 austin6 . souls of mischief . 93 til infinity
15 andy6 . ivor cutler . go and sit upon the grass
16 maggie6 . old 97's . buick city complex
17 winnie6 . royal city . under a hollow tree
18 fred6 . heather headley . i wish i wasn't (live)
19 carl6 . henry mancini . dreamsville

legumes night Sunday night I had my first experience shelling legumes. In my farm box last week, I got fava beans and english peas. The peas came out of the shells easy, and we sauteed/steamed them and added them to last week's leftover pasta. Yummmm. The fava beans were weird! A totally new and weird experience. You pry open the pod, which is lined with furriness inside. The little light green beans then get boiled briefly, rinsed in cold water, then you pop them out of the light green skin and out comes a green bean. I never realized that broad beans were the same thing -- there's that chinese snack of roasted broad beans that I've eaten since I was a kid. We tossed the favas with some olive oil, salt, and cayenne and ate them while watching the season finale of Desperate Housewives.

i just had to post about what has been the single worst piece of "art" i've seen in a very, very long time, perhaps ever: william finn's falsettos at boston's huntington theatre. i went in with a fairly open mind, having heard finn's a new brain on CD which, although not a masterpiece by any standard, had some amusing moments. but as for this show, where to begin? the plot of the first act can be summed up in one sentence: jewish man with son leaves wife for loser gay man and wife marries his shrink. this is exactly the type of navel-gazing, self-indulgent, and mostly plotless musical theater i despise. the scenes are completely incoherent, in themselves and in relation to each other. the characterization is nonexistent. the music is incredibly repetitive, with the exact same vamp throughout. the rhymes are trite and utterly predictable. the ballads are unbearably saccharine. the acting and direction were valiantly passable but did absolutely nothing to save the show. the really scary thing is that apparently this show is popular; it won tony awards in 1992 for best book and best score (granted that was a slow year, but still), and it ran for some 500 performances. i can understand lowbrow stuff being popular, but someone please explain to me how it's possible for this type of vomit-inducing crap to succeed? i take comfort at least in the fact that it seemed the others in the audience, if not puking as much as i, weren't sitting transfixed and breathless; hopefully boston audiences are more discriminating than most.

this is pretty interesting. in this article brantley tries to dissect why of the 3 female performances of classic plays only 1 received unanimous praise. he examines "Fitting the Part", "Vanity" (i.e. physicality), "Clothing", "Playing Well With Others" (i.e. co-stars), "Direction", and "Continuity". his points are interesting on several levels. first, only 2, maybe 3 of the 6 areas he examines are ones that the actor has control over. although one can imagine an actress transcending a terrible production, it's of course extremely difficult to do so, as theater really is an immersive, symphonic art and everything suffers if even a significant minority of it is out of place. second, i find it interesting, and it has been debated many times over, that brantley assumes that actors are limited in the roles they should tackle. this goes back to my post a while back about actors who are truly chameleons and can easily slip into a wide-range of characters, and those who are not. in theory, in theater we can accept actors who don't fit the characters physically in ways that are less believable on film, and in theory a superlative actor can make himself look older or younger or whatever. so in other words, i completely disagree that brantley's assessment puts the only true judgement of the -acting- at the -end- of his list. yet another reason for me to dislike his opinions. in other news: a muppets version of the wizard of oz?? in his overall very positive review of the new star wars movie, a.o. scott throws in a great quote:

To be sure, some of the shortcomings of "Phantom Menace" (1999) and "Attack of the Clones" (2002) are still in evidence, and Mr. Lucas's indifference to two fairly important aspects of moviemaking - acting and writing - is remarkable.

chunky rice

self-pity bunny

i'm happy to report that craig thompson is even better than my initial impression lead me to believe. i enjoyed blankets, but good-bye, chunky rice (his debut) has more amazing art than that book. in this book his artwork is even more densely solid and filigreed, so much so that they look like they could be woodcuts. here (1 | 2) are links to some sample pages. i actually enjoyed his more recent book more, from 2004, called carnet de voyage which apparently means "travel journal" and is an artists' tradition of putting together a casual sketchbook. in this instance the book recounts thompson's travels through france, morroco, and then spain. at first the daily mundanity of travel depicted in the book put me off a bit, and the artwork, mostly portraits, landscapes, and crowded city/market scenes, grew repetitive, but after i finished i found myself flipping back through it ... repeatedly. yes, the "plot" is about as interesting as any of your or your friends' travels with as many stories of traveler's hardships, but thompson's desire, as a lone traveler, to connect with the people he meets, his battle with homesickness, his self-mocking at his self-pity, and the relationships he forms ring true, and his genius is really brought out in his drawings, particularly when they happily stray from the real-to-life sketches. as an added bonus the book includes some sketches from artist friends he encounters on his travels, including a portrait of the artist by mike allred (the genius behind madman and my personal hero because of his work on x-statix). there weren't really any sample pages online, but i scanned two in (1 | 2), the first of which is esp. for winnie. his site is also worth checking out.

this has to be the coolest find since i first stumbled across the original (now defunct) bjork remix web. andy told me about this yesterday: if you have a library card at the BPL you can go here and login and then access -every naxos recording-. how frickin' awesome is this??!?!?! for those who don't know, naxos is a relatively new classical record label that has evolutionized the classical music industry by selling all their top-notch records at $7 a CD and surprising everyone by regularly outselling every other classical record label. their m.o. is to generally use less famous but still extremely worthy artists (and there are def. some exceptions, like sumi jo in rossini's tancredi), and they've also put out a host of vital historic recordings, world music, contemporary, and historic pop music (inc. the likes of doris day) as well as lots of opera and ballet DVDs. right now i'm listening to a recording i've been meaning to get just b/c it seems so bizarre, of dame edna narrating peter and the wolf. HAHAHAHA. too bad i just bought 2 naxos CDs recently (britten auden song cycle and a random collection of baritone arias). i'm totally going to be listening to their britten song cycles CDs for like the next year.

had to recommend dickens' great expectations, a great, although looong book. wasn't sure what to expect, but this was a surprising blend of gothic, cold-and-rainy british victorian storytelling and beautifully comic scenes and characters (the tea parties at the pockets and at wemmick's house are easily as hilarious as anything in lewis carroll's books). this book is one that you'll have to take repeated breaks from b/c it's def. not written to be read in one sitting, but the characters are wonderfully memorable (i think i'm infatuated w/ both mr wemmick and herbert pocket) and the psychological development of the protagonist is quite touching. and the last 50 pages are a real payoff and had me completely teary-eyed. i can't decide if i should finally see the movie adaptation w/ gwyneth paltrow and ethan hawke (which i've been meaning to do b/c tori has a song on the soundtrack), but i don't think i will anytime soon b/c it'll prob. just spoil my memory of the book.

Oh. My. God. I hate food poisoning.