I’m very much enjoying Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Somtimes you get an album and it’s like deja vu – you’d swear you’ve never heard it before, but it fits too comfrotably in your head. I’m pretty sure it’s due to time travel, but I have no backup on that one.
November 24, 2009
I sincerely believe that Muse are the best rock band of the current decade (The Naughties or whatever we’re calling it, i donno). Part of that is their sincere awesomeness, but most people would admit that rock music has imploded over the last few years. Instead we’re surrounded by people like lil’ Wayne and Lady Gaga, who exist only as caricatures of better times.
I illegally downloaded Muse’s newest album, the Resistance, earlier today. In short, it is a spectacular, bombastic, and more than a little pretentious follow up to their last album, the scifi inspired ‘Black Holes and Revelations’. It is the textbook definition of the ‘concept album’, which occurs when a band gets popular/successful enough to say ‘fuck you’ to editors, producers, and outside opinion. Radiohead could once be called a peer of Muse, but they tunneled their way to nonsense with their ‘concept’ album, Kid A, which consisted entirely of loosely-associated sounds. Muse have turned the other way, by wholly embracing cheeseball Queenish faux-opera.
But the Resistence captured my affection by sticking a Chopin nocturne in the middle of a rock song. That’s all I really need, in the end.
Oh, and don’t get pissy with me about illegally downloading music. I want to pay large quantities of money to see Muse live, but they don’t seem to be making their way over here anytime soon. I think I’ll go see them at the Stade de France next year. And the death of all those Gaga/HannahMontana-marketing scumbag record companies will go entirely unmourned by the consolidating gestalt of humanity. So there.
As a postscript, i’ve also downloaded Phoenix’s new album. And it is good.
November 21, 2009
I’m currently putting together rough drafts of MBA application essays. I somewhat regret that i’ve lost the arrogance of my late teens – I find it difficult to accurately brag about my achievements. Unemployment and exposure to highly intelligent people tends to do that. I need to repeat a mantra to myself ‘I am the sun of the sky, the world shall shake beneath the hooves of my mighty steed’…oh wait, that’s Genghis Khan..
In other news, my old co-op buddy Ben is coming for a visit. He flies in at about 11am tomorrow, and has requested to meet directly at U Rudolfina, one of the more badass pubs in town. I admire that kind of commitment to one’s ideals.
November 10, 2009
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
Originally uploaded by Bristle’s Film Posters [ A ].
Hey, what a great movie! Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?
November 9, 2009
This post reminds me that I never managed to illegally download the film ‘in Bruges’. bah, i want to see that…
Posted by Nick under Uncategorized1 Comment
So Bruges was fantastic. Using my super-spiffy Digital SLR visual interpretation device, i captured this beautiful and evocative photo
Actually the Frites Museum, where we took this enthusiastically-rendered picture, was great. I now know far, far more about potatos and fries than a normal human should. In fact, I might empathize too much with the noble tuber. Their blockbuster journey from the highlands of Peru to my belly is one of the more underappreciated stories of the last 500 years.
Oh, and Bruges was pretty
Many more photos can be perused on ‘the flickr’.
My only regret is that I failed to drink Chimay on tap.
Oh, and I also regret that I saw the Wallonian town of Charleroi. What a shithole!
November 5, 2009
Well, i’m not actually in Bruges yet – but I hope to be eating fries with mayo and drinking a Trappist ale at this time tomorrow.
November 4, 2009
Someone has turned George Harrison’s ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ into a rap song.
I demand vengeance.
October 15, 2009
Does anyone remember AOL Instant Messenger? I lived, slept, and defecated in that program from 1997-2002. As did everyone else with a friend. Oh, I know, some people used ICQ – but these people sucked, and didn’t deserve my friendship.
Just for shits and giggles, I signed into my account this evening. Not a single one of my contacts was logged on. Not a single one of my 54 ‘buddies’ was even accidentally logged in. Not one. You can easily talk about the total failure of AOL’s business model – holding onto dial-up and protected content for far, far too long. But these guys had the original social network 1.0. And now it’s dead.
October 12, 2009
I’m currently enjoying Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’. I’ve read about most of the subjects he touches on before, but it’s cool to see the ‘original’ argument in one well-written place.
I came across an incredible article today in the atlantic about the history of Native Americans.
and be damn impressed.
