dear you,

this song is nearly musical perfection.
everyone should own this album.

take that corn farmers!

months ago i made a post, comparing the pro corn syrup ads to the old pro smoking commercials.
well it seems certain companies are begining to rethink this high fructose corn syrup stuff.

pepsi natural

honestly snapple, i don't think you were looking hard enough.
(this is one of the "painful" ads i was referring too, it's just... ungood.)

doesn't make me want to drink pepsi and snapple anymore than matt and kim make me want to drink bacardi, but it's good to know companies are taking a step in the right direction.

so kudos to both compaines, i hope others will follow suit.

bacardi, matt, and kim.

a neat journey through history, featuring the charming and odd music of matt and kim.
it's nice when commercials aren't painful, and actually well made.

the conchords

just saw flight of the conchords a few hours ago up in portland.
it was awesome like tube socks.

the 90s

the nineteen nineties were odd, and i miss the music.
here's the twenty most interesting one hit wonders i grew up listening to.

laid - james

i once told a girl this song was always lurking in the back of my mind, she replied that made her want to pick around in my mind.
'nuff said

cannonball - the breeders

ex pixies reggae song.... or something. great song!

natural one - the folk implosion

it's so odd, and awesome, you can't go wrong with lou barlow.

flagpole sitta - harvey danger

no working link to this one i'm afraid. although i'm sure you all know it by heart. this song contains one of my favourite lines of all time "if you're bored then you're boring"
i would salute if it were to run it up a flagpole.

six underground - sneaker pimps

much like "laid" this song is often somewhere in my mind. i would however always forget the name, fortunately this song is what made me start this list and i haven't forgotten it since i started brainstorming.

unbelievable - emf

it's a shame this sound never caught on. these guys had talent, shame they never had another hit.
this is my favourite song by them.

good - better than ezra

this song was everywhere in the 90s, it reminds me of trips to salt lake city. it also brought about the great joke, "what if less than jake was better than ezra?"

mmm mmm mmm mmm - crash test dummies

those wacky canadians.
when i was fourteen they had another odd song i quite enjoyed

never was a hit here in america though.

possum kingdom - toadies

one of the best songs about vampires.

in the meantime - spacehog

this is just one of those iconic 90s songs.

stars - hum

whatever happened to space rock and shoegaze?

sex and candy - marcy playground

mmm disco lemonade, and when i was a young teen this song was dirty, i mean it comes right out and says "sex" egads! saw these guys live at their peak, first show i ever went to alone, opened up for everclear, ah eleven years ago, i was so young.

save tonight - eagle-eye cherry

i learned to play this song on guitar just to make the girlies swoon.

would you go to bed with me? - touch and go

as a girl once said to me, "well, that's direct"

where have all the cowboys gone - paula cole

lalalala dawson creek song doesn't exist.

i disliked this song greatly as a kid, pretty much because my mom overplayed the hell out of it.
now that i'm older i recognize that is has a unique sound, and it makes me miss the pissed off chick music of the 90s.
speaking of...

drop dead gorgeous - republica

kind of cheating with this one, ready to go was their big hit, i just heard this one first, and i like it more.

saffron was totally hotter in this video anyway.

battle flag - lo fidelity allstars

this song is just a remix of this song of the same name. and what an amazing remix it is.
one thing though, i honestly prefer the censored version.

low - cracker

nobody wants to be a disgraced cosmonaut (although i for one would rather sail the cosmos than the stars)
this song still gets radio play, because it's that damn good.

circles - soul coughing

kind of cheating with this one as well, i suppose super bon bon, was a hit as well, possibly even bigger, this song just found me as i was developing a good taste in music i suppose, and i keep el oso in regular rotation. even though he mellowed out, mr. doughty still puts out awesome music.

better days - citizen king

and what better way to to end this than with a great song from 1999?
much like emf, i'm sad this is a sound that never caught on, "mobile estates" is an album worth listening to.
and researching this list i was excited to find the lead singer has a new band.
if the internet is to be believed anyway.


trying to find videos for this was more frustrating that it should have been.
what exactly would record companies be losing by letting people embed videos?

grand duchy

last night i caught the first ever show of frank black's new band grand duchy.

i apologize for the sound quality, there's only so much a phone can do.

fun fact: part of my head is in this picture.

comics shomics

so i've been burned out on comics lately.
i think a large part of this came from two series i was following.

nyx: no way home

i loved the first nyx story, high school kids with mutant powers and all the hate, misunderstanding. it was nice to see something with mutants that didn't involve super hero acts and plots to destroy famous monuments... or whatever. i was hoping for more of the same in this series, but mostly it was just a lot of "wtf?"
okay so first off, i figured out lil' bro had mutant powers in the first book. i assumed kiden's ghost dad was a manifestation of this, and this later seem confirmed when lil' bro used his power to make dragons and other such monsters appear, they were the exact same colour as dear old daddy. but no, it couldn't have been that simple, instead it really was the ghost of her father, the time traveling ghost of her father who decided to put her through hell as it was the only path she wouldn't die.... oy.
then there also appears to be some evil version of xavier collecting mutant kids, and was really interested in lil' bros powers, that's fine, could've been interesting, it was lame however that his main operative was "immune" to kiden's power. that doesn't make any sense! kiden's power is all about time relative to her, she speeds up as everything around her nearly comes to a stand still, this is how she broke that kids arm by poking him in the original series. so either this chick is stuck in "no time" everytime kiden phases out, or this chick has the same power and phases out when she sees kiden disappear, but even by then kiden would be long gone at the that point.
yes, yes, i realize this is just a comic book, but suspension of disbelief only takes me so far.
would've been so much better without ghost dad's epic woes and impossible chick's powers.

el diablo

i picked up the first issue of this mostly because i liked the art, and the idea of hells assassin. i ended up being pleasantly surprised. it started out great, a gangster betrayed by his second in command, this happens during a bust, he gets crippled and ends up in a hospital room with a comatose cursed cowboy. obviously the cowboy passes the curse onto the gangster and now he's determined to get vengeance on his old buddy. and as a great bit of info that comes later, it turns out his second in command was a corrupt undercover cop. of course it doesn't that stay that simple or interesting, they throw this random insane killer "vorpal" in the mix, and he's a demon too! and then some random story about sumerian gods.... if this were a video game i believe yahtzee would say it has indigo prophecy syndrome.
seeing him fight uncle sam and co was fairly entertaining, the whole demon babe wanting to devour the world however, was not. it should've been skipped, and the focus should have remained on his ex partner and figuring out his powers.

i think that's my main complaint about comics, they take a simple idea and make it far too condiluted.
i mean lets face it, most superhero stories are worse than day time soap operas.

not all is bad in comic land, i might as well do my latest pull list for the hell of it.

icognito
great series about a "rehabilitated" supervillain. basically he's stuck in a crappy office job after being forced to take drugs to dampen his powers. he starts doing illegal drugs because his life sucks, and this somehow counters the government drugs. so now he gets his kicks by running around at night beating the shit out of thugs and would be rapists. i haven't read the latest issue yet but at the end of issues two his old bosses found out he's still active, and likely the one that squealed to put them behind bars.

kick-ass
fun series. can't say i didn't see the latest twist coming, but the back story on hit-girl and big daddy was interesting, must be fun to right a crazy right wing killer.

echo
interesting dream sequince in the latest issue, it's a great ongoing series, but nothing much to talk about with this issue, harlots, zealots and the golden ratio.

air
this is probably my favourite series now that i kill giants has ended. at first i was a bit worried when this went away from realism and into fantasy, but it's been handled beautifully, it's one the best written and fascinating comics out there.

whatever happened to the caped crusader?
this was wacky, and i loved it. if i understand it correctly gaiman is saying that there are endless versions of batman out there, all depending on who is telling the story. the common thread of course is that they're all batman for the same reason, the death of his parents, and he will always be killed by doing what he needs to do, batman will never retire. i know some people sort of wtf'd at the end, but to paraphrase the beginning of batman r.i.p. "batman will never die!" as a reward for a life of torment, he gets a few years of happiness in being a kid before being made into a whole new version of batman again.

black lightning: year one
now this is a superhero miniseries done right. not knowing anything about black lightning i was worried when it appeared his nemsis was going to be a demon, i was relieved when it turned out to be a somewhat immortal wizard with connections to ra's al ghul. apparnetly that's good enough for my willful suspension of disbelief. fun story though, definetly made black lightning one of my favourite superheroes.

comics i have yet to read:

criminal: a wolf among wolves
another brubaker title. blair bulter called this comic the best stand alone issue of last year, and she has yet to lead me astray, i'm realling digging incognito, so i figure if i like this , i'll eventually get around to the rest of the series.

pax romana
ah hickman, another author blair bulter has turned me on to. basically it's a story about the vatican of the future sending an army back in time to save the roman empire from collapsing, and making the world a better catholic one. sounds interesting, i'm quite glad i finally got a hold of the first two issues of this.

comics that need their next issue out already
rasl & red mass for mars