Thanks to that little Minor Threat/Nike fiasco, I did some digging around Dischord's website and learned of Ian Mackaye's new project with drummer Amy Farina The Evens (Dischord Shop). Mackaye on vocals and baritone guitar, The Evens present a beautiful stripped-down, almost "folk-like" version of Dischord brand punk. Some tracks have a quieter Fugazi quality to them, the strongest example would be a part of the baseline on Minding One's Business and Promises from the album 13 Songs. I always thought Ian had a melodic voice, but that was at a much louder volume, so hearing the softer more gentler Ian is quite a surprise and joy. Here are a few favourite tracks.

All These Governors (2.1 MB)
Around the Corner (2.3 MB)

Check out The Evens profile on NPR, where you can also listen to a few more full length tracks.

Sorting through my office hard drives the past few days, marvelling at the amount of digital rubbish acuminated over the years, I've come across a few gems. A good friend of mine used to work for an advertising agency in Tokyo, and regularly circulated some great ads. Of the many, the Peugeot 206 ad easily takes home the gold.

Peugeot 206 Ad (2.9 MB)

The temperature topped off at 37.5 degrees centigrade in Ebisu today, which is apparently a record for June. Venturing out into the heat around 1:30 to pick up lunch from Matsuya, I now know what it feels like to be in a hair dryer. Forget frying an egg on the sidewalk, at 37.5 degrees try spit-roasting large game.

Dear Michael Bay,
"I wasn't feeling the love triangle at all, either. It just seems like Kate Beckinsale's character would hump whoever wasn't dead at the time, and as a result my heartstrings remained untugged."

Dear Michael Bay,
"what were you thinking in the climax where Smith and Lawrence drive the bad guy's Hummer through a shanty town, destroying every building in their way? People have to live there, and they just drive through those houses. By the time this scene arrives we've already seen bodies flying everywhere, an unbelievable number of shots fired all during the film, and really graphic depictions of people shot to death with blood everywhere."

Dear Michael Bay,
"Step the #$%$@ away from Optimus Prime, mother$@%#er."

Dear Michael Bay, or To Whom It May Concern:
"At different moments in your film, whether intentionally funny or not, I laughed several times. I should mention here that I often use laughter as a defense mechanism."

Submit your letters to Michael Bay - submit@vudeja.com

I watched Bad Boys II last night, well about an hour of it, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for restoring, with a vengeance, my dislike of Action movies. For what it's worth, I'm glad it was you. All the best.

I just caught a short documentary on Stephen Wiltshire, one of a very short list of prodigious savants who possesses the extraordinary ability of being able to study urban landscapes and sketch them from memory in great, almost Where's Waldo detail. For the show, Stephen was invited to Tokyo and spent 30 minutes taking in 360 degrees of Tokyo skyline from the roof top (270 meters up) of Roppongi Hills. He was then provided a 360 degree 10 meter wide canvas, a box of pencils and pens, and in seven days had completed what was a remarkably accurate panorama of the Tokyo skyline. His longest ever panoramic drawing, and guaranteed to have given him a pretty bad case of writers cramp many times over. Absolutely Incredible. Understand this is coming from someone who couldn't win a game of memory against his daughter even if I cheated (and often), but most should really be able to appreciate Stephen's gift on both mental and artistic levels.

Check out Stephen's website for more info on himself and his art. His site is also hosting clips of the show narrated in English, as well as a few photographs. Here's a video (1 MB) of the completed panorama.

My photo taking habits have become a lot like my reading habits -- a few exposures on this camera, a few on that one, taking longer than usual to finish any particular roll, if at all.

I received an invite today from Odeo for a preview of their new podcasting service. I knew enough to sign up with Odeo so I could be notified when their beta went public, but that's about all I knew. To me podcasting didn't sound very interesting. The only shows I'd listened to in the past were very geeky conversations between two people with voices not suitable for radio. Five minutes after signing into Odeo (screenshot) my notion of podcasting as simply audioblogging was shattered and I was subscribed to six channels and looking for more. After subscribing to channels you can listen to directly or queue individual shows for download using the slick provided sync tool.

Odeo's still in a very early stage of development so there are bound to be a few rough edges, that said here are my issues. The sync utility downloads files and adds them directly to iTunes in an Odeo playlist, which is nice, but some of the file names themselves don't follow any particular format and would be rather difficult to identify on my iPod without playing a sample. That's probably more up to the individual publishers than Odeo. The BBC, CBC and even Air America Radio seem well represented, but where's NPR? If Odeo's functionality and content selection this early on are something to judge by, then I'd say we're all in for a treat.

Currently enjoying the Beyond Jazz channel, nujazz, broken beats & soulful remixes. On deck, the Free Radio Sub Pop channel.

BitTorrent + The Daily Show = Remind me again why I still need to own a TV.

CommonBits tag: daily-show [via: BoingBoing]

There are still a few things on our wish list to purchase before we leave Japan. Things we'll have a hard time finding once in Canada, new rice cooker, some of Frankie's favourite snacks and a few other small appliances.


On Saturday we picked up three cook books, one Chinese with plenty of detailed step-by-step photos for myself and two more by Japanese semi-celebrity chef and illustrator KENTARO (if you google his name use katakana). The first is the more practical of the two packing 190 pages of his brand of simple, easy to cook Japanese comfort food recipes. The other, and nicer of the two as far as books go is Kentaro's Table. Released this year Kentaro's Table is a mix of recipes and beautiful food photography along side collages and snapshots from his childhood. Here's a video of him introducing the book. I don't find his recipes overly inspiring or creative, very basic, something you could easily expect to see cooked on a daily basis in a Japanese home, which is part of the appeal for us.

More on his publisher's site and his weblog.

(consumer whore alert) Far from needing a new watch, but if I did I'd defiantly be looking at the Nixon line, more specifically the sick Nixon Rotolog. Real wood inlays, and the nice minimal face spins past the window to indicate time.

I'm looking to expand my NetNewsWire feed subscriptions, and interested in what you guys think are some of the best food related weblogs. I'm primarily interested in weblogs focusing on cooking/recipes, and nice photography is always a plus.

Martine, baton received. Slightly discoloured and covered with banana stickers, but intact nonetheless. From reading these the past week or so it seems customary to diss memes, then participate anyway. I hate stupid internet memes, because they're stupid, and I hate them. Now that that's out of the way, let's roll.

Total volume of music files on my computer: 18.91 GB
Song playing right now: A Kick In The Teeth - Fischerspooner
The last album I bought: LCD Soundsystem

Eight songs that give me goosebumps:
Heaven is Falling - Bad Religion
Say it Ain't So - Weezer
California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys
Suggestion - Fugazi
Just what I needed - The Cars
In My Tree - Pearl Jam
Salad Days - Minor Threat
Poets - The Tragically Hip

This is a mere sampling of the top of my head, and if you're so inclined check audioscrobbler as it's doing a swell job of tracking my current listening habits.

Tossing baton in general direction of: Erik, John, Kurt, James and Kevin.

Tonight after dinner, due to a combination of over-tiredness and a momentary flash of insanity, Frankie decided to push the powerbook off the arm of the sofa sending it down to the unforgiving fake hardwood floor. We witnessed the horror from only a few feet away in what felt like super slow motion. I would have guessed an object the same size and weight as my powerbook would have hit the floor and wobbled around for a few seconds like a quarter, instead it landed on the corner housing the battery, paused for a split second and fell flat with a discomforting slap.

It seems to work fine, and it was closed so there was no damage to the display, but the base is a lot more um, bent than I like. Fortunately the bent section on the front right side is where the battery is stored and the weakest portion of the computer, so hopefully it won't affect any of the other more important components. I don't suppose a fix could be downloaded from apple for this? Or maybe I can get her to push it off the sofa arm once more, coaxing it to fall on the opposite side to bend it back into place. I'll weigh my options as I back up the hard drive.

A mailing list I watch, which is concerned primarily with human rights issues in Japan, recently started a letter writing campaign to have Mandom pull an ad for Gatsby facial towels. The ad features a group of black men dressed in typical Rastafarian garb cleaning their faces with the wipes, and as the camera pans across the room a chimpanzee dressed in the same clothing is shown mimicking the others. Personally, I wasn't outraged by the ad. Done in poor taste yes, and I can fully understand how others would be seriously offended by the depiction of black men as primates. So I was happy to hear today that the protest was a success and Mandom pulled the ad and issued an apology. Congratulations to all those involved.

The ad was also removed from Mandom's website, but I was able to capture the stream a few days ago so you can have some idea what we're talking about.

Mandom's Gatsby 'Mogeha' ad (1.9 MB)

Dry any trace of perspiration off your body before it gets a chance to evaporate and cool you down, thus creating more heat and perspiration which of course you're just going to wipe up anyway right?

Habitual scratching, picking, adjusting and chewing gum like a mad cow -- all okay.

Don't even think about opening that window. If you're sweating be a man and use your hello kitty handkerchief.

If you're in charge of the train air conditioning, a good rule of thumb is the hotter the outside temperature the colder the aircon. For example a humid 35 degree day would call for 20 degrees.

Toothpaste is over rated.

Run towards the train at full tilt and leap/lunge inside the car. When you gather yourself and notice the doors didn't immediately close right behind you (and won't for another 5 min), casually fix your tie and make your way to the other end of the car saving us from your embarrassment, Indy.

Priority seats are for business men reading porno.

Another one of my father, aunt and uncle from around 1950. Any guesses as to what kind of car that is?

No big surprise here, but John Wayne made number 8 on the all-time top voices in the movies list. A voice I recognized well before I ever knew who John Wayne was, thanks in part to Full Metal Jacket.

I swung by Seijo Ishii on the way home tonight and thought I'd sample some new beer. We always have on hand about a case of whatever the co-op is selling that week, normally Asahi Super Dry or Kirin Ichiban Shiburi. Masako drinks about as much of that as I do. And Frankie, when asked what she wants to drink for dinner she never fails to request a beer. 17 years to go kid.

Seijo Ishii's import beer section seemed to have shrunk since my last visit, so selection was limited. My eye's gravitated to the bottom shelf display of Kirin Heartland in large label-less green bottles. And keeping with the green bottle theme I grabbed a bottle of Rolling Rock. I must have seen that in a movie before because the bottle looked familiar.

First the Rolling Rock Extra pale. To be fair, I will try my best to evaluate the highs and lows of this product while keeping an open mind regarding my own individual taste. That said,

It tastes like watered down piss. Honestly the worst beer I've ever had the misfortune to have ingested intentionally.

Moving right along to Heartland. Brewed by Kirin, Heartland comes in an old style 500 ml bottle with what I'm guessing is an oak tree logo in the center. I had no idea Japan had a heartland, or oak trees so already it's off to a questionable start. Their website says it's made with 100% barley malt and 100% aroma hops. Well I'm with them on the gentle part. A mid to high level of carbonation, fruity notes and the sweetness is defiantly there. Drinkable, but too light and sweet for my liking. Then again any Japanese beer not labeled Happoshu is worth at least one try in my book.