Archive for April 2006

Saturday 29 April 2006

We’re 2,123,816!

By jekyll | Ink & Pixels ~ Science & Tech

excerpt:

Why are MySpace and YouTube drawing 34M and 18M visitors, respectively, per day?
The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way. If you think collaborative architecture matters more, click the charts: The same Alexa plots that show MySpace and YouTube obliterating top sites reveal that Flickr, Digg and [...]

more jekyll | more Ink & Pixels ∞ Science & Tech

Friday 28 April 2006

A Simple Meal

By cpkpdx | Community & Culture

excerpt:

I occasionally go on a simple meal kick: wine (David Hill 2001 Estate Pinot Noir, for example), cheese (Ossau-Iraty), and bread (New Seasons French). It’s a perfect meal for any time, whether it be cool spring evening when you’d rather shiver blue on the deck simply because it’s not raining and you can sit outside [...]

more cpkpdx | more Community & Culture

Sidelined

By Bon | Family & Friends ~ Sports & Games

excerpt:

A few months before his second birthday, my boy scaled the new fence in our front yard, perched himself upon the top rail and shouted “hey mom, hey mom, let’s play!” As I calmly walked over to pluck him from the fence, I thought to myself, “this boy and I are destined to spend many [...]

more Bon | more Family & Friends ∞ Sports & Games

Blogging Bellingham #13

By Gonzo | Blogging Bellingham ~ Festivals & Fairs ~ Music & Noise

excerpt:

No shame in it
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a county fair.
Having grown up in a New Jersey suburb that was built on what had been farmland for hundreds of years, each summer, when the fair was on, it was practically my only exposure to a rural, agricultural tradition. [...]

more Gonzo | more Blogging Bellingham ∞ Festivals & Fairs ∞ Music & Noise

du that to us one more time

By spaceneedl | News and Talk

excerpt:

does george bush love dubai? yes, he du.
in fact he loves the civil rights hell-hole so much, he’s ready to play naked spoons with it. again.
President Bush on Friday approved a deal for a Dubai-owned company to take control of some U.S. plants that manufacture parts for American military contractors. The proposed deal, Bush said [...]

more spaceneedl | more News and Talk

FlossQuotes

And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words — yes, we can.
– Barack Obama

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally
If anyone's been paying attention, I listen to a wide variety of music, only a fraction of which I've reviewed here at Transcendental Floss. I tend to go through phases when I'll be stuck on a particular artist or genre, really immersing in it for a few weeks at a time, and what I find so interesting and exciting is that during each phase I have this experience where I feel like there's no better music than what I'm listening to right then and there. Well, I've just discovered Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and I can say with complete confidence that this is the best music I have ever heard. Seriously, this is magical stuff. Brooklyn, New York's Daptones Records have managed to produce record after record of fine R&B/soul/funk music using vintage musical equipment and analog recording techniques in the ultimate homage to the legendary Motown and Stax catalogs. The Dap-Kings, serving as the Daptone house band, are the modern day equivalent of Stax's Booker T & The MGs, laying down the tastiest grooves, sweetest guitar riffs, and of course the horns that make this music so electrifying. Sharon Jones is the quintessential soul singer, able to capture moments of tenderness just as easily as moments of gritty passion. Enjoy!
— Gonzo

Van Morrison - His Band & The Street Choir
As much as I love the 1991 movie The Commitments, Van Morrison, some 40 years earlier, had already proven that the Irish have plenty of soul. Perhaps my favorite album of his, His Band & The Street Choir could easily be said to share some DNA with the music of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (soulful crooning, grooves, horns, etc.), yet with a decidedly unique twist that is all Van The Man. This music simply makes me feel good on a deep, deep level. What's so great about Van Morrison is that he's covered such a variety of genres, from soul to blues to country to jazz to celtic to a kind of meditative, almost new age sound that is all his own, and so as I move from phase to phase of musical immersion he's very often right there with me.
— Gonzo

Be Kind Rewind
I was not prepared to love this movie nearly as much as I did. While I've liked a lot of Jack Black's work, he's a guy with limited range who I can easily see wearing out his schtick. However, teamed with a very sweet and funny turn by Mos Def, an equally sweet Danny Glover, and under the direction of the mad genius of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), Black's occasionally formulaic performance does nothing to keep this film from achieving success as a comedy and a bittersweet slice of life in Passaic, New Jersey. I was surprised over and over again how Gondry unapologetically went sentimental, eschewing so much of the cynicism that passes as gritty realism these days, which is music to my unapoligetically sentimental ears. I laughed. I cried. I learned that Mos Def is by far the best artist to crossover from music to acting that I've seen in a long, long time.
— Gonzo

Franny & Zooey - J.D. Salinger
I work at a university where I supervise a team of student employees. One employee, in painfully embarrassing hindsight, reminds me an awful lot of me, but before this hindsight came into focus he was a big, fat pain in my ass. Relentlessly sarcastic and arrogant, yet brilliant, this guy pushed my patience to the limit. Then, one day, I saw him sitting under a tree on campus reading Franny & Zooey and it hit me like a lightning bolt. I know this kid. I WAS this kid. So, I stopped to talk to him about the book and about Salinger in general. He'd read The Catcher in the Rye first, then moved on to Nine Stories, which, with the story A Perfect Day For Bananafish, introduces the reader to the inimitable Glass family. Franny & Zooey, then, becomes the natural next choice, with Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction to follow, and this was exactly the same sequence that I followed 20+ years earlier. Ever since, while we're not buddy-buddy, there's been a new-found understanding between us, a sense that I'd been his shoes, that we shared some interests. Oh, and I went back and re-read Catcher, Nine Stories, and am currently falling in love all over again with Franny & Zooey.
— Gonzo

Lick your chops and chip through the nuggets of past Floss Aid recommendations.
— floss aid

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Archive for April 2006

Saturday 29 April 2006

We’re 2,123,816!

Friday 28 April 2006

A Simple Meal

Sidelined

Blogging Bellingham #13

du that to us one more time

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