A glacier's patience

I can't stop listening to this song:

Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You

Statistics indicate...

... that Super Furry Animals was (were?) the 3rd best band of the aughts.

Juxtaposed With U



(Drawing) Rings Around The World



Venus and Serena



Moped Eyes



The Very Best Of Neil Diamond



It must be true. Statistics said so!

Current Music: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

What Wang Watches

The Daily Show, in Berkeley:



(link for those of you reading this on Facebook)

Over the years I've been known to get excited any time I see Vancouver on TV or the movies, in places like: Smallville; Hockey Night in Canada; X-Men 3; and most notably Juno, which gets extra points for including lots of scenes in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam. This is the very first time I remember getting really excited about seeing Berkeley on TV.

Bonus! In conversation with Dickolas (Random quotes from my past, provided with some context)

me:

[walking by the Army recruiting booth outside the basketball game] So this is the Army's recruiting effort: a Hummer painted with Army logos, a single inflatable free-throw game, and a covered tent? That's like something Pepsi would use... and it's not as good as what Pepsi would have.

Allan:

Well, it's an inferior product.

Vampire Weekend, on SNL:



(link for those of you reading on Facebook)

I'm sure there's all kinds of Vampire Weekend backlash ("more like Vampire Asshole"¹) but hey, I only just found out who they are -- I think I've heard "A-Punk" on the radio but didn't know who it was -- and I love this shit so far. It really appeals to my inner XTC fan, as well as my inner part-that-wants-to-like-the-Police. My first instinct, actually, was that it sounds a bit like what I remember of the bits of Paul Simon's Graceland-era concerts they show on PBS pledge drives. It made me want to check out Graceland-era Paul Simon, but I clicked on one link on YouTube and didn't have the patience to get through the whole thing. I'll keep trying.

Aw heck, more Vampire Weekend on SNL:



(link for you excellent Facebookers out there)

Hawksley Workman's new single:

(link for everyone, because embedding is disabled)

Note to self: buy Hawksley Workman's new album over Spring Break.

Hawksley Workman's old single, featuring an Oscar-winning actress:



(Knock knock. Who's there? link²)

A sporting massacre:



(You know what, Facebookers, that "View Original Post" link at the top isn't there for my health.)

I fully expect the Americans to say I'm an idiot, but the Canadians will appreciate.

Current Music: Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof

1. also, Vampire Weaksauce
2. Link who?

What's Wang This Week

This is my favourite clip -- an outtake, no less -- from the excellent documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, a film about Wilco and the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.



I've been following the news about Jim Balsillie wanting to buy the Predators and moving the team to Canada. I of course would love to see this happen, especially if the Preds go on to win the cup the following year, just like what Colorado did to Quebec City. My officemate is from Tennessee and he tells me that the Preds don't have much of a fanbase in Nashville (hell, he's a Pens fan), so I think this would be great. Living in California, I think I have a good understanding of how little hockey means to Californians and most other Americans I have met. It's like sticking a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work. I imagine it's not much better in Tennessee.

Of course, it's easy to say that as an outsider. However, I was a Vancouver Grizzlies fan, and I still feel jilted by the NBA. I figure it could have worked in Vancouver had they not had inept management and had basketball players actually wanted to play in Vancouver. It would really have helped had the team won more than 22 games in any one season while they were in Vancouver.

Jim Balsillie, if you manage to move a really good hockey team like the Preds to Canada, I promise that I will try not to make jokes about your name ("Bals").

The only thing I have trouble imagining is where they would put the new hockey team. Having never been to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, or Hamilton, I shouldn't say, but I would never have thought of any of them being real major-league sport cities, much in the same way I wouldn't imagine a hockey team in Burnaby or Surrey; yet that is probably where the team would end up. Another team in Winnipeg might be nice, but they can probably afford to hold out until the Coyotes inevitably get tired of trying to keep ice frozen in Phoenix and move back.

[table of women beside ours]:

[office gossip and chatter]

Jen:

[leans over to me, conspiratorially] Large groups of women scare me.

me:

[thinks this over] ... I scare large groups of women.

Current Music: Wilco - The Thanks I Get
EDIT (12:46AM, June 4/07): fixed the spelling of Jim "Bals" Balsillie's last name

And now...

Justin Timberlake is the new Alec Baldwin

Last night's episode of Saturday Night Live destroyed me: Justin Timberlake was great as the host and musical performer. I hope that he'll become a Christopher Walken/Alec Baldwin/Steve Martin, a once-a-season host for SNL.

Because of his undeniable talent as a singer and dancer, he has amazing comedic range. This sketch killed me:

There's even a nutshot!

But this was the pièce de résistance -- one for the ages. (There's an official "uncensored" version on YouTube put up by NBC themselves, but I am posting this one because I feel it's funnier with the bleeps. Even so, I wouldn't watch it at work.)
(EDIT (12:14AM Dec. 22/06): The censored version got pulled by NBC so here's the uncensored version.)

Backstage at the CMAs!

As an aside, am I the only person who loves the new season of SNL? Unlike many (most?) people, I am a big fan of the Tina Fey years, especially the last couple where I felt that the show took a big step away from energy-over-wit (cf. the Spartans and Mary Katherine Gallagher), and took a step towards good, old-fashioned, dirty jokes (like Colonel Angus), the absurd (who could forget More Cowbell), and nerd humour (eg. Lazy Sunday). Seth Meyers as the head writer and the rest of the writing staff have continued down that path, and the style is now closer to what I think of as contemporary internet humour, which as we all know I am a big fan of. Trimming the cast appears to have been a good decision: by cutting three players and not adding any new ones, everyone in the cast gets more of a chance to perform, and that's a good thing, because by and large the cast is a much more polished and versatile one than they've had since I've been watching.

Current Music: Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around

EDIT (10:39AM 18/12/2006): Corrected some poorly-worded sentences

The saddest song

Steve just told me about a study that showed that "The Drugs Don't Work" by the Verve is the saddest song ever. I have only ever known one song to be able to reduce me to tears, and that isn't it.

This is.


Current Music: Golden Smog - Please Tell My Brother

I would do anything for smooth music

I've been watching a tonne of Yacht Rock lately; the cheerful misadventures of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins just crack me up so much. I've definitely been watching too much: as one commenter on YouTube said, you know you've watched too much when Donald Fagen becomes comprehensible. Watching these also got a lot of smooth music stuck in my head: for the first time in my life, I contemplated buying a Doobie Brothers album. Then I listened to some of their stuff, as well as Michael McDonald's solo stuff, on YouTube, and I decided against it.

However, I am fascinated by Steely Dan. I've had "Do It Again" stuck in my head for days now. I feel like this is the real smooth that I was looking for. Like butter. Butter.

But this is getting away from Yacht Rock, which rules. Here's my favourite episode.



And here's the Steely Dan vs. The Eagles episode, for good measure.