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No excuse to be so callous

Posted on Friday February 29, 2008 at 2:30 pm.

Vampire Weekend video from KCRW’s excellent Morning Becomes Eclectic show.

I bought the issue of Spin I mentioned a few days ago. The cover byline is “The Year’s Best New Band— Already?”. Craziness.

Update:
That KCRW performance— new song 37 minutes in! I remember reading something about it, and I think it’s called “Arrows”.

Update 2:
One more VW link for the day. You might know that they got their name from a vampire movie set in Cape Cod that Ezra and friends made. You might not know that there’s a trailer for said movie on YouTube. (The Spin article clued me in to that little tidbit.)

Texas two-step process

Posted on Friday February 29, 2008 at 1:10 pm.

It looks like Clinton and Mark Penn have realized that they’re not going to win Texas on March 4th, certainly not by any significant margin. And because of Texas’ unusual — albeit established — method of selecting delegates, she could very well end up with fewer than Obama.

Now, much like the Michigan/Florida shitstorm, she’s (possibly) challenging established primary rules in yet another last-ditch effort to steal delegates.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that her campaign is willing to doom the party in November — possibly destroy it altogether — just to get Hillary on the (losing) ticket. If Dean and Gore don’t step in after Tuesday, I have to seriously question the party leadership’s judgement.

I don’t understand how people can still stand behind her. I can understand why they would want to vote for her (though I obviously disagree), but her actions of late have made her seem desperate, shrill, and, quite frankly, Karl Rove-ish (though perhaps not as skilled). On the plus side, it’s given Obama practice deflecting attacks skillfully and shown debate-watchers that he can handle jabs with aplomb and humor.

No, it’s bad. It’s real bad.

Posted on Thursday February 28, 2008 at 9:26 pm.

NBC reran the “Launch Party” episode of The Office tonight. Turns out that Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe is a real place— see it here in Google Maps. (What, no Street View, Scranton?)

It turns out that someone put up a hilarious tongue-in-cheek 1995-style website (contains sound, of course) for Pizza by Alfredo, the pizzeria that Kevin compared to a “hot circle of garbage”. Make sure you click through a few of the pages, especially the FAQ and testimonials.

Hyperbole no more

Posted on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 3:50 pm.

Funny story.

Way back when I was in eighth grade or so, my dad joked that there would be no way that a particular member of my class would do IB (International Baccalaureate, an advanced academic high school curriculum), as his parents surely thought it to be a UN conspiracy. We had a good laugh, believing that nobody, not even that kid’s family, could be so ridiculously myopic.

Thanks for proving me wrong, Utah.

(And thanks to Cynthia for the link.)

Extra… cushioning, maybe?

Posted on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 3:46 pm.

By now, you’ve certainly heard that the New York Philharmonic played a concert in Pyongyang (North Korea) over the weekend. Here’s a taste— I can’t wait for PBS to air it in its entirety (Thursday night here).

Here’s my question, though: How does the principal flutist, Robert Langevin, play with such a ridiculous mustache? The picture in his bio doesn’t do it justice— here’s a better one. Who knows, maybe it’s useful; could be the reason that men have traditionally dominated the top flute chairs in U.S. symphonies.

Of course, I know who would have an opinion about that fact… (Though I think she was the one who told me that in the first place.)

Walls louder than the movie

Posted on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 12:14 pm.

The White House Home Theater looks like something straight out of Chairman Mao’s Beijing palace.

I think it’d be distracting during a movie. “I want red… heh heh… lotsa red.”

Getting tempting…

Posted on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 12:06 pm.

Engadget asks its readers a question that’s been on my mind recently— what it would take to get you to buy a PS3, considering the end of the format war.

I responded with the second answer (“Just trying to clear some space on the credit cards”), but a price cut and form-factor slimming certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Don’t get me wrong— I like my Wii, and replacing it with a PS3 probably won’t happen, but the graphics on the Sony platform are pretty stunning. (I got way into Call of Duty 3 about a year ago.) And it’s a Blu-Ray player. And it has surround sound. So it certainly has its advantages.

Feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too

Posted on Monday February 25, 2008 at 4:42 pm.

Wow. Vampire Weekend made the cover of Spin.

It’s almost getting out of hand. Every time I see something like this, I think, I can’t believe I saw them play an off-the-wall show in a tiny dorm basement at Haverford. I’m not bragging, mind you— it’s just really weird.

Iron Tre

Posted on Monday February 25, 2008 at 4:28 pm.

So I’m watching Iron Chef, and I think to myself, Man, the challengers’ (there were two) sous chef looks really familiar. Wait, did Alton say his name was “Tre”?

Yep. It was indeed Top Chef Tre, who used to be head chef at one of the brothers’ restaurants. It took me almost until the end of the battle to make the connection, though.

Also, “Bone Crusher” is remarkably well-spoken about cuisine. Who’dve thunk?

There Will Be Phlegm

Posted on Monday February 25, 2008 at 4:13 pm.

So despite chest congestion and a cough that doesn’t want to let me sleep, I had a pretty good cinematic weekend.

Of course, the Oscars were Sunday night and I thought they were pretty enjoyable— especially since I fast-forwarded through all the nostalgia segments, so it seemed to move quickly. There were a few excellent acceptance speeches (Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem, and the duo from Once stood out), and Jon Stewart was consistently humorous.

But I also got a chance to catch the remaining 60% of the Best Picture nominees that I hadn’t seen— No Country, There Will Be Blood, and Michael Clayton, all of which were quite good. I did not guess that Tilda Swinton would get the statue, though.

Also saw Breach, which was quite enjoyable. I’ve driven by the park mentioned in the movie — Foxstone — several times, as it’s pretty close to my aunt and uncle’s house in Vienna. Weeeeird.

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