bitte orca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Dirty Projectors brought it to the Aladdin last night. Stylish folks with mind-blowing melodies and some crazy guitar work. We'll put that show in a small pantheon of epic concerts. Who else would be in there? Early Modest Mouse. Elliot Smith. The Magnetic Fields. Antony & The Johnsons. The Flaming Lips.

They're killer live and plugged in.
They're just as good acoustic.

There's a little Talking Heads, a little B-52s, a little Zeppelin in there. A little something else, too.
Humming and drumming my fingers on the desk all day.

First show in a while that we didn't want to end. The bastards kept us up past our bedtime. And we liked it.

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A MAN OF FEW WORDS: Dave Longstreth is big on musical chops. No time for stage banter. That's alright by our standards. Keep it short and simple and focus on the damn music. Our kind of man.

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FILE UNDER: ROCK OPERA'S NOT DEAD
An animated opera about a fictional Don Henley? Not a joke. Not even an exaggeration. Here's a taste.

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PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS? I guess there are a few folks who'd like to work with the Projectors. Björk. David Byrne. Big names.

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REQUIRED VIEWING: The Projectors on Jimmy Fallon.



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HOCKETING: That's what you call that sound? 13th century monastic chorale music. Split melodies. Reminds me of singing Row Your Boat in rounds. Whatever the case - it is some crazy shit. The man himself explains it here.

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IMITATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY:
This post finds us in a DDC kind of mood. Good schtick. Good designers. Check 'em out.

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ON THE PLAYER:

01. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
02. Dirty Projectors - Knotty Pine
03. Dirty Projectors - Mount Wittenberg Orca

back in the saddle

You can call us fair-weather cyclists if you want, but the weather today was too good not to ride. So we oiled our chains and pumped-up our deflated tires for our first bike commute of the year. I'm home now and taking stock of how Day 1 went. My breath is heaving, thighs are burning, I'm soaked in sweat, and I swallowed a swarm of gnats. Still, it didn't take long before I fell back into my "competitive commuter" routine and frantically worked to pass everyone I came upon. That's the point, isn't it? To get home first?

I'm so stoked on cycling and the weather right now that I not only want to sit on our back steps drinking gin & tonics, I want to sit on my bike drinking gin & tonics. It'll be good balance practice for staying on my pedals at stop lights.

But as good as it was to be riding again, I have to say that I felt out-of-the-loop without a fanny pack and the latest bike fashions. I guess that it's time to start customizing our bikes. I'm thinking new grip tape for me, maybe handlebar streamers and spoke beads for A?

Then we'll be stylish for Day 2.

(For more Stumptown bike-love, the New York Times just ran a travel piece on biking Portland. The best part was that the article focused on how cycling is a practical way to get around, rather than just recommending that tourists rent a beach cruiser for the waterfront.)

things that make me feel smart

Science, eh? See, we have other interests besides food. Yeah, I know that it was food-related science news, but my point remains the same: we are very well-rounded people. Right? In fact, while we mainly concern ourselves with our stomachs on this site, A and I have voracious appetites for ideas and learning. Dorrrrky. See, we were very into school. Probably too into it; probably to the exclusion of having lives when we were in college. I love immersing myself in reading about a subject, beginning to see all of the relations and overlaps, and crafting my own arguments about it all. Frequently, I find myself compiling website links and book lists and articles for a paper that is coalescing in my mind. Then I realize that people don't just write papers for fun and that this impulse probably puts me in a very lonely category of geeks.

The problem is that these inclinations are harder to satisfy once you've left school, so where do I turn for the reassuring embrace of fellow geeks? The internet, of course! Outside of academia, where else is there a community eager to hazard their conjectures about big ideas and future societies? Nowhere, and for good reason: they'd get beaten up.

Given the space-theme of the recent kimchi post (and in an attempt prove that there is a hipster angle to all this), I thought I'd start off with my favorite blogger for astronomy, astrology, cosmology and science fiction - UNIVERSE. Claire L. Evans writes about cults, crypto-zoology, modernism, pseudo-science, and Carl Sagan (a lot), she makes up one-half of YACHT (see? still cool.), and gives artsy power-point presentations/concerts at places like Rhizome at the New Museum.


For a good sense of the sort of mind-bending, cosmic and comic things she posts and links to, here is a run-down of some of my recent favorites:

• A bit of back-story, myth-debunking, and "remember this crazy stuff!?" on cyronic preservation
• Link to a robot zoo in Portugal
• Super-duo Charles and Ray Eames, their theory of design, the role of the quotidian, and their forays into science for IBM.
• Space smells like arc welding
• A story on tripped-out cosmological theories from the NY Times
• And this.

It is embarrassing enough that I snorted coffee laughing at that. It is even more embarrassing that I've posted it here. Now I probably will get beaten up.

262

The number of cookies and chocolates we made this weekend? The number of times that A played "Cheer Me Up, Thank You" by New Buffalo? I think it might have been both. Needless to say, it was a frantic productive weekend. Amidst a slew of busy weeks and A's trip to New Mexico, we figured out that we had about four and a half hours in fifteen-minute blocks of free time spread between three days last weekend in which to accomplish all of our holiday gift-making. That, and A decided she would squeeze in recording a song for a friend's year-end compilation.



It actually worked. And what do we have to show for it?

50 Shortbread
65 White-Chocolate-Dipped Cocoa Candy Cane Cookies
75 Buckwheat Cocoa Nib Cookies
62 Dark Chocolate Mendiants with Figs, Candied Orange Peel and Marcona Almonds
7 Bottles of Limoncello
1 New Buffalo Cover

I'm not sure whether or not I want to share this recipe - sometimes it is nice to wield the power, to have something for which other people depend on you - but these buckwheat cookies are just so good that I feel like I need to spread their gospel. We came across the recipe on Orangette, who found them in Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. True, their name sounds deceptively wholesome, but when you bite into them, they are nutty and toasty and rich. Addictively so. Medrich's approach to desserts - simple preparations that have the concentrated flavors of their ingredients - has bumped her cookbook up on the next-to-own list. Try the recipe and you'll be in line for her cookbook, too. The cookies were good, but next year we'll be making hand-crafted ponies for all of our friends and family.

The other great weekend accomplishment was A's first go at recording. Yeah, this may have opened up whole new avenues for inane reels of her giggling to herself as she makes funny sounds, but who am I to deny her of her fun? A's friend at infiniteregress.org started up a year-end project to get folks to record cover versions of their favorite songs from 2007 for a compilation CD. With limited time, no instruments and zero knowledge of the recording equipment, A put together a really beautiful, lilting a capella take on "Cheer Me Up Thank You." While you're there, you should listen to Day 1, when A's brother Brandon (B) posted a great version of a Menomena song and Day 7, when Tim, who runs the site, performed a fantastic cover of "Saltbreakers." Seriously, my wife is good at what she does, isn't she?

Now, on the subject of music, can we all just agree on how great this song is?



Just another stock "band-in-the-recording-studio" video, right? And then come the kittens and unicorns and balloons! And rainbows! Its like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper exploded out of their amps; Los Campesinos! are literally overpowered by their own twee-ness. They just moved up my list to be the '08 album release I am most looking forward to. Or the only album release that I know of. Either one. But how can you not love a band who puts out songs like this and who all take Campesinos! as their last name? I feel like I missed out on something - everyone seems to be forming these new family-like groups by recasting themselves with a new last name and here, A and I got hitched and kept our names. It seems sort of cult-ish, but I think they are all too hip to be creepy. Adopting collective surnames is the new black.