the best new development in music since ipods

A trend has been starting. It is still not in full effect, but I'm thinking that within the next year, it will be. The big companies that sell vinyl have jumped on the bandwagon, so hopefully it won't be long until they all follow suit. I'm talking about the little slips of paper that have been showing up inside albums.

Basically, the last few LP's we've bought from subpop, polyvinyl, and a few others labels, have included little slips of paper like this. The paper entitles you to between 1 and 3 downloads of the entire album that you just purchased on vinyl in mp3 format! This is very awesome, because it means you can purchase the LP for home listening enjoyment, but still get the album in crisp, mp3 sound for your ipod/home computer. I really think this is an excellent invention, and it means i'll never have to buy a cd again (and, note, LPs are typically 2-5 bucks cheaper than a cd anyway).

So, the times are changing, and i'm excited to see what other great inventions are on the way.

Owls are so hot right now; or, what is the deal with owls?

Has anyone else noticed how "in" owls are right now? I've been attending a lot of local crafty art design fair things lately (tis the season) and seriously, every table is filled with "owl" items. Owl charms on necklaces. Owl cards. Owl scarves. Owls on shirts. It is very interesting. Like, remember when "guns" were "in" for a while there? And then maybe doves? Well now it is owls. Here are just a few random samples of owl items:

(sorry about my lack of html skills - you will have to cut and paste)

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5077871

http://store.shoporangebutton.com/b0036.html

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=526715

I could go on. But I won't. Anyway, seriously, keep your eyes peeled and you too can discover the omnipresence of owls!

My brush with superman

I just watched "superman returns" tonight. Although I'm not really up on my superman lore, I actually enjoyed it. Anyway, as I was watching, I was thinking that the actor playing superman looked mighty familiar, though I couldn't remember having seen him in anything before. So, I got on IMDB and looked him up. Nothing looked too exciting, though I saw that it said he was on MTV's fabulous show from the late 1990s, "undressed." "Hmm," I thought, "...undressed, I was on an episode of that..." Then I remembered that the actor who played the fellow that got "undressed" on my episode had brown hair...and I remembered that he was from Iowa, as we had this long conversation about how he had just moved out, this was one of his first gigs, etc...So, I looked at the IMDB bio, and sure enough, superman was from Iowa! It had to be him! Some quick googling led me to this picture of his appearance on the show, and low and behold, there I am sitting right next to him!



Granted, you can only see my chacos and my hippie-tastic sweater, but it's me alright! Very exciting. I'm glad to know that someone who stuck it out out there in LA has "made it."

dogs and pigeons

I just read this great article by the great JSF (brooklyn wunderkind, after whose character Oskar I modeled my halloween costume).



It's about his relationship with his dog, and animals generally. One of his paragraphs made me think about pigeons. It said this:

...the older we get, the less exposure we have to animals. And nothing facilitates indifference or forgetfulness so much as distance. In this sense, dogs and cats have been very lucky: they are the only animals we are intimately exposed to daily.

This made me think about my concept of pigeons and why I like them so much. It is true, as JSF states, that many of us interact daily with pets. However, as we know, most of our pets are domesticated. They no longer possess most of their wild traits. This brings me to the pigeon. At least for us city-dwellers, the only wild animal with which we interact on a daily basis is the pigeon. We see it scurrying about, eating crumbs, flying too close to our heads...it is living in its natural (at least with respect to the recent past) environment.

Most people who live in or have grown up in the City have nearly NO exposure to animals in their natural environments. The closest they get is the zoo, and that is hardly life as nature intended. The pigeon is a champion of survival, of being flexible and thriving in its surroundings. Similarly, people should be kinder toward pigeons - this attitude of "rodents with wings" really saddens me. Pigeons are one of our last connections to the wild, to nature, to real animals. And they are the targets of so much hatred. About a month ago, walking home from work, I saw a pigeon whose head had been cut off. It was just laying there on top of a newspaper dispenser with no head. I started crying because this is what people are doing to wild creatures; to animals; to nature itself. Sigh. Anyway, the point is, we should all respect the pigeon, and be glad that there are still some things in this world that haven't been caged, domesticated, or genetically altered.

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lemony snicket and stephin merritt

Andy, Neshemah, Iris and I went to a random little performance on saturday. it was billed as a book reading and musical performance by lemony snicket and stephin merritt (of magnetic fields fame). i got tickets because stephin merritt is my favorite songwriter and he seems to NEVER tour, so this was my chance to see him. anyway, it was actually a very entertaining performance. The author played himself (instead of lemony snicket) and was funny - they had sort of a skit thing going on, and also played about 3-4 songs (stephin on ukelele, 'lemony' on accordion).


afterwards, we got to meet stephin merritt (i think i freaked him out) but he signed my cd, which was exciting. iris also took a picture of him with my camera.
then we had to wait in a very long line, but neshemah and i got our books signed by the author, who was very nice, and seemed like he was ready to talk to us about normal things (music, etc) after all the many kids he'd been seeing. he told us that he played accordion on the new magnetic fields album, that it would be done soon, and that it would be "LOUD." hmmm. should be interesting.

lord listen lover

Can someone please help me figure out how to play the metric song "the police and the private" on either the guitar or accordion? thanks!

a lu is a lu

Tonight I saw a commercial for these cookie things called "LUs." It reminded me of an advertisement song from my childhood about lus. I started singing it and andy said that he had never heard it! I couldn't believe it, as I knew it by heart. So, I of course googled it, and to my chagrin - no results?! impossible!
Here is the song, as I remember it:
Well a cookie is a cookie and a lu is a lu
Both are great but one is tooooooo
Good to be a cookie so we call them lus
So please don't call them...
COOKIES!
it's a really catchy song.
I may have to cover it in my next band.
Does anyone else remember it!?