Feist - 1 2 3 4

Awesomely amazing. Cannot wait to get the whole album.

Cat and Girl Anniversary

So tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of the webcomic Cat and Girl. I could tell you why Cat and Girl is so very awesome, but the post would go on forever and you would quickly lose interest. And Cat and Girl is ALWAYS interesting, and hilarious. Anyway, in honor of this important date, Cat and Girl creator Dorothy is giving out free stickers, and also encouraging sending in things to share, like other comics and mixtapes. Immediately I saw myself creating the most ferocious mix possible, sending it in and having it sent to five other people who would listen and later testify about how this mix Changes Your Life. Flush with the glow that only a truly ambitious and anonymous mixtape project brings, I began. Here is the playlist for the end result.

Off the Hook - Y Pants (Rolling Stones cover)
Fun Fun Fun - Tidal Waves (Beach Boys cover)
Send Me A Postcard- The Shocking Blue
I Gotta Get Outta This Town - Nancy Sinatra
Face For the Radio - The View
Science Books - Arrah and the Ferns
Saltbreakers - Laura Veirs
Satisfaccion-Modern Art Studio (Rolling Stones cover)
Poison-Bell Biv DeVoe
Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby-Islands
Yea Yeah (Flosstradamus mix)-Matt and Kim
Earth Invaders (Spank Rock Remix)
Half Invisible-The Shivers
Turn Into (acoustic)-Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Marianne, You've Done It Now-Vandaveer
I Can't Go For That-Hall and Oates
Past in the Present-Feist
I Found Love-Styrofoam and Sarah Shannon

All come highly recommended. There might be mp3 links for various songs later, there might not.

Movies

Since I've had a pretty bad case of insomnia for the past couple of weeks, why not put it to use and update my woefully neglected blog? Gosh, there is just SO MUCH going on in my life right now, it's like I don't even have time to write about it on the internet!

Saw Knocked Up last weekend and it totally lived up to expectations. Jude Apatow and his whole crew (they should really have some sort of collective name and matching T-shirts) are just so funny and real, and the women always get to be funny and real as well, and not just sex with a fringe of conversation. Plus it's basically a big PSA for USE A CONDOM OR YOU WILL GET PREGNANT and boy, that is not fun at all. For me it was a lot like "Undeclared has a one night stand and gets pregnant" since most of the guys were there although the girls weren't. And if you haven't seen the wonder, the hilarity, the awe-inspiring goodness that is Undeclared, I will totally lend you my copy. This is a show that is guarateed to get you laughing within the first five minutes of viewing, no matter where or when.

And since it appears we are in the middle of the Summer of Apatow, there's another movie he produced, Superbad, out in August. It stars Michael Cera, and those two facts should be enough to get my ass to the local over-priced multiplex.

If you like musicals, Ireland, and pretty music (or if you are Kyle Schuster) go see Once. It was touching and awesome and I've already bought the soundtrack, despite the little old ladies (!) who sat behind me complaining that there wasn't enough song variation. THERE TOTALLY WAS, OLD LADIES.

M.I.A. Can Hit That

I'm feeling kinda crappy today but the fantastic Discobelle.net posted the new M.I.A. track and suddenly I'm feeling a lot better. You should feel good too so here it is via Z-share.

M.I.A.-Hit That

The Gossip Column

I was reading the UK Guardian today, and noticed that they signed on Beth Ditto, of one of my fave bands, The Gossip, to do an advice column. Her introductory statement is pretty damn cool (and also confirms that Arkansas is indeed almost entirely interrelated), and the first column, published last Fri, has some sound advice for coming out of the closet at work. What I can't get over is that a major metropolitan newspaper (I think the Guardian publishes out of London) tapped someone like Beth Ditto to do this, and how it would never in a million years happen here in the US. There she's the frontwoman of a massively popular band and voted the Coolest Woman in Rock by NME. Here, The Gossip is mostly an indie band with a fat lesbian from the wrong side of Arkansas on vocals. The difference in culture and attitude really amazes me, and I wish something like that would happen here.

I have just started reading this fantastic book called PopCo by Scarlett Thomas. It is awesome, definitely a book to which I forsee sacrificing several hours of sleep. There is a lot of mathematics involved in it, especially codebreaking, and I feel sort of odd about that, as math has been taunting me unmercifully ever since second grade, when I had the first of many traumatic breakdowns directly caused by numbers. In this case, there was a test and I believe it involved double-number addition. I was toast and I knew it. Ever since, math has been a sorority that'd I'd like to join because they know how to do some cool things with binary, their alumni list is kicking, and they throw comfortably geeky parties where people earnestly debate the merits of nanotechnology. Plus there's no dress code. But I haven't ever been able to make it past rush week. And not the fun part of rush week, at the end, where you've made it through and there's a party and cake and matching sweatshirts. No, I am firmly stuck in the hazing part of rush week, and the harder I try to do everything right, the more Alegbra II (social chair and head of new recruits) hates it and makes me recite the Pythagorean theorem and the quadratic formula while wearing a diaper and scrubbing her convertible with a toothbrush. It's really painful, actually. That's why I decided to join the bookish writers sorority instead, but they told me I overextend my metaphors and maybe I'd be better off the with the art history people, who mainly watch paint dry and then write manifestos about it. Anyway. PopCo is really fascinating. Read it. And then I will write another post in which I say what I had intended to talk about here, but the sorority metaphor took on a life of its own and inadvertently gave my Math Rage some more fuel and thus I need to end this.

Lil Mama - Lip Gloss Video

I heard this a while and couldn't get into it. This weekend I see this video and now I can't get enough. What I love is that lip gloss is now powerful enough to turn boys into girls, nerds into street dancers, and hallways into dance floors.

I am busy working on stuff, most specifically some sort of mix to post on here in the real near future. In the meanwhile you should check out Chazology for the DJ CASIO mixtape cause that is definitely poppin'.