New Blog Mission Statement

Wow, sounds serious. I think only a handful of friends bother reading this, though I will be exposing all of facebook to it as well.

1) Food Journal entries - notes to myself about things I want to make, recipes I've tried and succeeded or failed with, pictures maybe.

2) Music Journal entries - youtube videos, mixes, lots of lists

Ten Albums...

Not my official Best of 2009, but definitely my favorite new stuff over the past few months.

1. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

2. Japandroids - Post-Nothing

3. The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

4. Clues - s/t

5. Crystal Antlers - Tentacles

6. Disappears - Live over the Rainbo

7. Yppah - They Know What Ghost Know

8. The Poison Arrows - First Class, and Forever

9. From Monument to Masses - Of Little Known Frequencies

10. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains

Honorable Mentions:

Wooden Shjips - Dos

Antlers - Hospice

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Dan Deacon - Bromst

Random Observations and a Mix made in August

If you find some Raw Jock Power, you can do a pump double max. That's what Clif said anyway.

Safety first.
No sweets before dinner.
You have to grow your beard, before you can trim it.

All words of wisdom.

My new TV and I are pretty happy together (we were very happy together, then I spent a week not watching her and she got jealous).

1. Tortoise - It's All Around You
2. Wilderness - It's All the Same
3. Califone - Wade in the Water
4. Radiohead - Nude
5. The Timeout Drawer - There is so much love here...
6. Channels - Mayday
7. Yppah - Southern Sky Tells
8.Clues - remember severed head
9. Elbow - Mexican Standoff
10. The Drift - Smoke Falls
11. Japandroids - Heart Sweats
12. Calexico - Guero Canelo
13. Red Sparowes - A Brief Moment of Clarity...
14. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
15. Grizzly Bear - While You Wait for the Others

Randomly Assembled Mix, ides of July...

1. Sunset Rubdown - Us Ones in Between
2. Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin
3. Tortoise - Tin Cans & Twine
4. Wilderness - Beautiful Alarms
5. The American Analog Set - Come Home Baby Julie Come Home
6. Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes
7. Bon Iver - Skinny Love
8. Bottomless Pit - Dead Man's Blues
9. Buring Airlines - Song with No Words
10. Calexico - All Systems Red
11. Caribou - Niobe
12. Elbow - Mexican Standoff
13. Faraquet - Conceptual Separation of Self
14. From Monument to Masses - Deafening
15. The Poison Arrows - Future Wine

For July, a new Top Ten....

Bands I've been listening to a lot/shall be listening to a lot:
(in no particular order)

1. Obits
2. Bottomless Pit (slightly disappointing show on Sunday though)
3. Disappears
4. Cave
5. The Poison Arrows
6. Tortoise - just got Beacons of Ancestorship
7. Elbow
8. Channels
9. Constantines
10.Grizzly Bear

Commuting through Architecture...

My tuesday routine requires me to drive in to work, find the best (read "cheap") parking available, and then resume my regular work day when I walk out of the parking garage. The Tuesday commute has become a guilty pleasure for me, especially when Chicago's various weather gods call a ceasefire in their war against nice days and let it actually be 65 and sunny at 7:30am.

I love walking out of my three flat and into nice weather, on a residential street. A great change of pace from three apartments in a row that never had the residential street feel because they were either right next to the neighborhood's main drag, or right on it. The first part of the drive is about the music and the rush of zigzagging around bored drivers. They must hate their commute because they do it everyday, or hate their jobs so much they drive slow just to delay the inevitable. The skyline is just visible east of all the West Town neighborhoods, kind of hovers there like the Emerald City or some other majestic destination.

The real fun of the commute begins downtown though - by then I've settled into the music, the windows are down, today even the sunroof was open, sleeves rolled up, and as the car makes the last left turn of the morning, I'm facing east and its all skyscrapers and train stations and at the very end of the route, before the last right turn...the Frank Gehry designed Pritzker Pavilion sits there, like a transformer in between forms, or Robo-Crab.

A Note to Self...

This WSJ article on the Muses totally misses the way in which the muses and ancient philosophers in general, thought about art, the artistic/creative process, etc. Memory and imitation were part of that process...its the recombining of existing forms that the ancient Greeks admired.

Califone - Bottles and Bones (Shade and Sympathy)

Nervous john
Rescues all the whores
Bleeding nose and all
Taste
of metal
When you’re hit straight on
Frozen dimes and
throwing flashes
Clouds of angels liquored pink and
underage
Steal your sweet decline
This is the longest
goodbye
Loose breaks on
A one eyed continental
Engine willing
Interior stained
China rattles
wish
The cold pacific shallows
Spells and fits
resurrected
Calls you in
Forget your sweet decline
This is the longest goodbye
Aching to get your pocket
picked
Bottles and bones shade and sympathy
Kick the
glass out of your path
Calls you in
Traps for your
fingers
Fire for your mouth
Stones for your passage
Brass for your jaded
Underneath the baking clouds and
hardening starless skies
Lick your collarbone clean
And repeat.

The New Commute

There's always two ways to do the commute to work, given where I work and the fact that both the Red and Blue lines go downtown into the loop. First, get on a bus. Thank you ctabustracker.com. Right now, the 66 bus down Chicago Ave makes the most sense because its a shorter walk than the 65 Grand bus, and its next to a coffee shop. Logically, the faster I get on a train line, the faster I'll get to work, but logic doesn't work well with the CTA. In fact, it generally fails. So I decided to snub logic and just stay on the 66 bus all the way to the red line. Took me basically 40 minutes, which isn't awful, but could be better. Wednesday I can test out of the 66 bus to the blue line and see if its actually faster.

In other news, I've had no hot water or gas at the new apartment, not until Tuesday morning. Nothing like going to the gym to shower.

A Top Ten...

Ten Bands I'm Listening to A Lot...

1. Maserati
2. Wilderness
3. Red Sparowes
4. Bottomless Pit
5. Obits
6. Constantines (especially the cover of "Islands in the Stream" with Feist)
7. The National
8. Elbow
9. Miles Davis (think Bitches' Brew)
10.Beulah

It's Alive...

This seems as good a place as any to start spewing forth random observations, thoughts, comments, etc.

My new apartment, i.e. the new Headquarters of SethCo Worldwide, is starting to take shape a little. Tonight, I paint. Post-move organization is going to be a bitch, I'm sure. Not exactly one of my strengths.

Very interested in watching the Cats adapt to the apartment (if you're just stumbling upon this and don't know, their names are Grendel and Tweez) .