omg it’s been like a totally long time duderZ. this post is dedicated to ema who left me a comment and reminded me that 2 or 3 of you read this thing! omg!

ok so let’s begin.

crap i forgot the ascii code for a bullet point.

• ok i found it.

• ok. first order of business: the national’s new album, boxer is effing brilliant. i dug alligator kindof but i didn’t really listen to it that much. this is way better. like way better. it’s really really good.

• i’ve been totally listening to silver jews a lot lately. especially american water; you know, that one with stephen malkmus

• the new modest mouse keeps growing on me more and more and i keep loving it more and more every time i listen to it. i am definitely a fan of johnny marr being in the band.

• i got a dui on sunday morning about 5 minutes after i had woken up :( apparently i blew over from the beers i had the night before. had to spend the morning in jail and i didnt have my phone and didn’t know anyone’s number so i had to walk 15 miles home in flip flops :( it was a bummer of a day.

• i’m really pissed that ohio state made the finals. i hate greg oden so much. they should have lost to xavier

• curb your enthusiasm is pretty much the greatest show ever.

• the prestige is one of the best movies i’ve seen in a long long time. i totally thought it was going to be retarded when i saw previews for it but people told me i had to watch it so i did. and BAM, it was good. also i love christian bale <3

• the new black rebel motorcycle club has leaked.. although i haven’t seen a version that isn’t a transcode. it’s totally good though. a little harder than the last one, a little bit back to the neo-jesus-and-mary-chain-style they used to be.

• there’s a new chevelle. it’s kinda boring. they’ll probably never top wonder what’s next

• i heard this wicked cover of tv on the radio’s staring at the sun by the subways. check it out.

• oh and some bad news. the dude i get free hosting from said i’m using too much bandwidth.. so i had to take down the mp3s :’( i’m sorries

til next time!!
<3

• Okay, so I must confess I hardly ever update this blog anymore and probably no one even reads it.

• BUT, here is some new content for you, the loyal reader(s?).

• The first order of business is that Blonde Redhead’s new album, 23 is STUNNING. Holy freaking crap this album is good. It’s possibly better than Misery is a Butterfly, even. Some of it reminds me of Kevin Shields a bit. But just get it. Trust me.

• Oh, also, I just ordered 13 vinyl LPs. Teh hottness.

• The second order of business is about life + the internet. The internet is weird. This week one of my old, old, old friends that I went to high school with and hung out with added me to Myspace. I haven’t talked to her in probably, 8 years!!? So strange. Not only that but I find out her brother who was in my grade is now an indie stud with a song on the Bridge to Terabithia soundtrack and the tv show Brothers & Sisters. And I dig his music, too. (tylerjames.com)

• It snowed here like 13 inches yesterday. That is both good and bad. Also I got my car stuck this morning and last night.

• The Black Angels‘ album Passover keeps getting better, every single time I listen to it.

• I’m assuming all of you dudes & dudettes have heard the new Modest Mouse album!?@??@ HOLY CRAP I LOVE ISAAC BROCK WITH EVERY OUNCE OF MY SOUL. I think in the end I will probably end up saying I like Good News For People Who Like Bad News better, but this album is HOTTT. My personal favorites are Dashboard, Parting of the Sensory and Spitting Venom. This is another must have.

• Ever heard of The Good, The Bad, & The Queen ??? It’s Damon Albarn’s (Blur, Gorillaz) new project. And it is really good. I like it far better than anything else I’ve ever heard him do. It was produced by Danger Mouse.

• HEROES is quite possibly the best show ever. Now that Lost sucks and 24 keeps writing the same season over and over and even Prison Break seems to have a pretty obvious ending coming up… trust me and watch HEROES.

• Idiocracy is pretty hilarious.

• The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible is probably the best album I’ve heard so far this year and that includes Blonde Redhead and Modest Mouse. This album is just otherworldly it’s so good. In my opinion much better than Funeral, which was also (obviously) unbelievably good.

• The Donkeys. This band is rad. Kind of reminds of me Brian Jonestown Massacre a little bit. Check them out.

• Ken Andrews (Failure, On, Year of the Rabbit) has released a new solo album. It’s his best work since he was with Failure, in my opinion. Why does Ken get no love??? Dear everyone: please love Ken.

• The new Kings of Leon album is REALLY GOOD. I have never really dug this band, but damn if I have to admit that this album has been completely kicking my ass the past few weeks.

• THERE’S A NEW DINOSAUR JR!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND IT’S AS GOOD AS ALL THEIR OTHER ALBUMS!!!!$!$!$!$!$

• Additionally, Mice Parade have a new self-titled record out. As can be expected it is mellow and great and makes me want to shake my ass and light candles.

• If all this wasn’t enough for you, there’s more thunderous, crushing post-rock from Pelican. If you like wicked drums and loud loud loud melodies, then the new Pelican album will not disappoint you. At all. I am still not all the way through it, but I am digging it so far.

• My trusty Austin-based eFriend Justin told me about Apes and Androids. They are so good. Listen to them. Now.

• I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet on here how awesome The Ponys‘ new record is, either. Well now I did.

• Seriously, at this rate, my best of 2007 list is going to have to be like, 100 albums at least.

• There’s a new Portugal. The Man EP out, called It’s Complicated Being A Wizard. It’s ridiculously good and it even starts with a 23 minute opening track.

• I downloaded Civilization IV the other day. I love sim games and back in the day I was all about the Warcraft and Age of Empires. Anyway I had read a lot of good things about the Civilization series and I was pretty excited to play it and build my empire. Well, this game BLOWS!@!!!@@ WTF there’s like “turns” ?? You actually have to hit [return] like every 3 seconds to tell the game your turn is over. Ugh I wanted to kill myself after playing just the tutorial for all of 5 minutes. Not to mention there were all kinds of horrible animated scenes with ugly cgi characters getting all up in my grizzle about diplomatic relations. I don’t think anything will ever come close to the original Warcraft or Age of Empires. I downloaded Age of Empires III as well and will give that a try tonight. Otherwise I suppose I’ll play some Sim City 4, which isn’t nearly as great as I’d hoped it would be. Why do games always have to ruin themselves?

• Orange Fanta is really good until you drink more than 8oz., at which point it makes your intentines shrivel up and you will feel like gutwrenching death.

• I was bummed to hear about the James Kim saga ending in death. After actively following the story on Digg for a week, I felt so invested in the story. And the fact that it could have happened to anybody just made it so relatable and tragic :’(

• After a month of playing the horribly slowpaced, text-only online strategy game Inselkampf, I have finally amassed 80 points. I will soon be destroying all the weaklings surrounding my island.

• Am I completely retarded or is it impossible to post comments on Gawker-Media blogs such as Gawker and Deadspin?? I wanted to post a comment on Deadspin the other night to tell everyone how to stick it to the NFL Network by streaming the games on their PCs, but apparently it’s just simply not possible to register and post a comment?? WTF? Am I missing something?

• Every time I see a Scion xB business vehicle (about every 3-5 minutes if I’m driving somewhere), a shiver of rage traverses down my spine.

• Apparently The Decemberists accepted Stephen Colbert’s counter-counter challenge and will… compete in some sort of instrument challenge? I have no idea. The whole thing’s weird. And the Decemberists suck. Yeah they used to be good but they went too far with their Renaissance revival shtick and now every time I hear them I feel like I’m supposed to be dressed up as a Midieval peasant driving my friends to the Renaissance fair after our weekly Dungeons & Dragons game.

• Bob Dylan’s The Hurricane is still one of the greatest songs ever.

• Just say NO to the new NBA basketball. I vote for bringing back the cowhide. No one likes synthetic crap.

Well, only three weeks to go in the regular season, and this might have been the strangest yet. A few highlights: the Bears’ offense played about as bad as humanly possible (even worse than that infamous Monday night game against the Cardinals) and won. The Raiders’ defense played about as good as humanly possible and lost. Both the Raiders and Texans had fans wishing it was Kill Yourself Day™ in Oakland. And Ladainian scored again.

• The Colts lost to a suddenly-reborn-with-Vince-Young-at-the-helm Titans team on a last second 60 yard field goal. Yes that’s two weeks in a row the Titans have come from behind to win on a field goal. 78 rushing yards for Young. Steve McWho??

• 178 rushing yards, 2 rushing TDs and 14 receiving yards for Ladainian Tomlinson. Best RB ever? Too soon?

• Trent Green threw 4 TDs and Larry Johnson had 110 rushing yards but the Chiefs still managed to lose to the Browns, on a field goal in OT.

• Rex Grossman, who should probably change his name to Rex Disgustingman pretty soon, completed 6 of 19 passes for 34 yards and 3 interceptions. That’s a 1.3 quarterback rating, in case you were wondering. Amazingly, that wasn’t even the low passing yard total of the day. Yet the Bears still managed to win thanks to a defensive TD and another Devin Hester punt return for a touchdown.

• WTF @ the Jets scoring 38 points. Well, I guess they did play the Packers, but Chad Pennington probably didn’t even know football scores could be this high.

Who the crap is this dude???• The Cardinals actually won a game (over the Rams, who would probably allow over 100 yards rushing to Stanford), and Edgerrin James became the first Cardinals running back to rush for 100+ yards in… over two years. But for some reason, every time they got into the red zone, out went James and in came… Marcel Shipp?? Yes, Marcel Shipp. He scored 3 TDs—the first, second and third time he’s managed to get into the endzone since scoring 3 in a game four years ago… against the Rams.

• Drew Brees threw for less than 300 yards for the first time in like, 100 years. So how did the Saints win? Well, Reggie Bush scored 4 TDs to go with 131 receiving and 37 rushing yards. That’s four times more than he had scored so far this season (not including his punt return TD).

• Kill Yourself Day™ in Oakland saw the Raiders lose another

Sebastian Janikowski sucks at life more than anyone else in the NFLgame despite only allowing 32 yards passing. That’s right, David Carr didn’t even complete a pass in the second half. The Raiders also had 5 sacks, 2 fumble recoveries and a touchdown. Luckily for them they employ the worst kicker in the history of the universe (Sebastian Janikowski) who missed 3 more field goals. And just to make sure you were paying attention, he made sure to hit the uprights on two of them.

• Chris Chambers caught 121 yards against a tough Jacksonville defense, seemingly giving the finger to all the fantasy owners who had him benched because he is averaging like 2 yards a game this year.

• The Cowboys won on a last second field goal despite releasing douchebag kicker Mike Vander Jagt earlier this week and signing Martin Gramatica, who hadn’t kicked in the NFL for two years. He nailed a 46 yarder with 1 second left. No pressure.

• The Seahawks beat the Broncos in the Sunday night game—on a last second field goal that probably kicked the Broncos out of the playoff picture. Also, Broncos linebacker Al Wilson snapped his head back going for a loose ball and laid on the field for quite awhile before getting carted off on a stretcher and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The word is it’s just a sprained neck and he could move his extremities.

I’m watching the USC and UCLA game right now, and I think it’s time for college football fans to rise up and say what everyone’s been thinking all year:

USC does not deserve to play in the national championship.

Michigan does. Do I need to remind you that their only loss this year came by three points, AT Ohio State???

Michigan deserves to play in the national championship, but no one likes a rematch so they’re most likely headed to the Rose Bowl.There are three teams right now that are garnering talk of playing in the BCS title game: USC, Michigan and Florida.

USC LOST to Oregon State, only won by six to Washington State, six to Washington, seven to Arizona State and very well might lose to UCLA.

Florida lost to a good, ranked Auburn team; barely beat a ranked Tennessee; and barely beat Georgia, Vanderbilt and South Carolina. They also played in one of the toughest conferences in the country (the SEC) and appear to be on their way to winning the championship.

Then there’s Michigan. Though the Big 10 isn’t the toughest of conferences, they’ve still managed quality wins over then #2 Notre Dame and Wisconsin. And, to pound you over the head with this some more: their ONLY loss was by just three points AT Ohio State.

When you have multiple teams with one loss all vying for a spot in the championship game, you go with the team with the toughest loss. That team is Michigan. The only reason people don’t want to see them is because for some reason no one likes a rematch. Michigan actually went down a spot in the BCS WITHOUT even playing.

Well I’m here to tell you: I like rematches. I like them a lot. They’re like the good kind of movie sequels (like Back to the Future). If Michigan were Back the the Future and USC were Cruel Intentions and Florida were American Pie, I don’t think we’d be disputing this. Michigan would be safely in the championship—ready and willing to defend Marty McFly’s honor.

Here I am on a Thursday night. I don’t have to work and the Bengals and the Ravens are going to be playing an awesome football game. I love the Bengals, not to mention I have T.J. Houshmandzadeh (yes, I can spell his name without difficulty), Shayne Graham and Mark Clayton on one of my fantasy teams.

I WANT TO WATCH THIS GAME

But I can’t. Because it’s on the NFL Network. And the NFL Network is a complete screwjob. They want over $150 million

T.J. Houshmandzadeh and the Bengals are playing at this very moment, but you won’t be able watch because it’s on the NFL Networkfor cable companies to carry their network, which will result in huge hikes for regular cable tv subscribers (most of whom probably don’t even watch football). So now we’re all stuck with not being able to watch the games because they’re selfish bastards. I guess I’ll just sit here and watch my Yahoo! stattracker :/

Anyway, for those of you fortunate enough (usually I would say unfortunate, but in this case you are the lucky ones with the only alternative options) to have PCs I give you the following links, if you’d like to stick it to the NFL Network and watch streaming, bittorrent style NFL games (I haven’t been able find any with Mac compatible software).

• a list of streamed NFL games
• SOPcast (live online streams)
• TVants (live oneline streams)
• TVUplayer (live oneline streams)

• The wonderful Austin band Voxtrot (whom I fondly call Spoon Lite) has released a new single titled “Your Biggest Fan”. It’s pretty similar in sound to their first two EPs, though not quite as catchy. Still, it’s an oustanding little gem that everyone should own.

• A new Yeah Yeah Yeahs remix cd is out (Show Your Remixes). It’s got Diplo’s genius mix of “Gold Lion” plus Nick Zinner’s gorgeous, Grandaddy-esque undertaking of “Turn Into”. Also, a rather boring attempt at “Cheated Hearts” by the overly masculine, disgustingly transexual Peaches.

• The Shins‘ latest album, Wincing The Night Away, has leaked. And it’s damn good, if I must say so myself. Much better and more focused than 2003’s somewhat forgettable Chutes Too Narrow. The standout track is the opener, “Sleeping Lessons” — a subdued and catchy introduction that will surely stir up memories of Garden State. I can already imagine Zach Braff salivating over its soundtrack capabilities.

• I won the Super Bowl in my first season of Madden ‘07. As I’ve already mentioned, this game is ridiculously easy. I think my QB finished with a rating of around 140.

• I had my doubts before this season of Prison Break, but I can safely say each and every one of them has been squashed, smashed and destroyed by the incredible intensity of Season 2. Just watching a single episode is enough to give me an adrenaline hangover when finished.

• Dennis Green’s post-traumatic tirade last week Monday after his Cardinals‘ unbelievable meltdown and subsequent loss to the Bears is my new ringtone.

• Game 3 of the World Series is tonight. Personally I can’t even believe the Cardinals even made it, much less won a game. Hopefully the Tigers will take the next 3. Also this Dirtgate/Smudgegate/Whatevergate thing needs to stop. Now.

• William Shatner is the funniest man on this planet right now. Boston Legal’s 3rd season is head and shoulders above previous years (which were still hilarious, by the way), and Shatner is the reason. He just keeps getting funnier. The man’s a genius.

• The Draft’s In A Million Pieces has been playing almost non-stop since I first listened to it two weeks ago. The former members of Hot Water Music (minus frontman Chuck Ragan) have recorded a stunning album packed with folksy pop punk. Imagine a more poppy Tiger Army or Against Me!. The highlight of the record is undoubtedly the swaggering “Wired”, which brings to mind the aforementioned folk-punk/hillbilly-punk bands but adds a delicate pop sensibility.

I don’t know how rare it is for weirdo hipsters like me to be smitten with sports. I’m guessing the rarity is parallel to an early Modest Mouse vinyl. Or something. My love for sports is just about as great as my love for music. Also, just so you know, I do own some early Modest Mouse vinyl. And just like I do Modest Mouse, I like sports (if women aren’t involved, of course).

Honestly, ever since I was a kid I’ve been kind of sports geek. Minus those teen-angst years, of course — when I denounced the NFL in favor of Slipknot and Hot Topic (yeah, that includes the ONE year the Falcons were good). Over the years I’ve somehow managed to meld my tattooed arms; my stretched earlobes; my fauxhawk and every other element that puts me on the hipster Bingo chart with a career designing sports pages for one of the biggest newspapers in the country. It’s like my own personal peanut butter & jelly vitality.

So yeah, that leads me to the home-run derby. It’s on right now — as I write this in fact. When I was younger (back before all these latin americans invaded the league with their gonzalezy names; when the “foreigners” in the league looked like Jose Conseco) I always rooted for Griffey, Jr. Those days are gone, and now it seems like most of the major steroid-crusted manly-men are too pansy to participate. So we’re left with the likes of Troy Glaus and David Wright. Yeah they’re good hitters, but much better at getting on base than hitting a ball 500 feet.

I got screwed into the 5th pick in our office pool, so I’m stuck rooting for David Wright.

Like everyone in this year’s contest, Wright’s a pretty good hitter, and he’s got the Mets way up in the NL East. But I’m not holding my breath. Where’s Pujols? Giambi? Come on you nancies. Just use an extra needle and you’ll be fine by next week. Hike up your skirts and play. You’re already getting paid millions for playing the world’s easiest sport. The least you can do is give me a chance to win my five bucks back.

Come on David Wright, if you win I can buy the new Walkmen vinyl.