Safe As Milk

Jet Lag and Walk of Shame are those two songs from Shipwrecked that I told you about.

They are good.

Since mentioning the Bops in the Madvillain review I did a little Googling for them. People like this cartoon. They should. It’s a classic. Here are some stills:

These are The Bops. Man, do they swing!

This is the big, bad wolf. He really wants to swing with The Bops.

The wolf just dosn’t have it. The Bops show

Madvillain is Producer/DJ Madlib and MC/Producer MF Doom.

Madvillainy is the album.

This is a total underground hip-hop release so it might not trip everyone’s trigger. For me it’s pretty heavenly. I lurve Doom’s flow. The cat is sick. And the beats are way, way out there.

My favorite part? They drop in this sample from an obscure cartoon (and I don’t even know what studio it’s from) that is one of my all-time favorites. It’s about a guy who who dies and is telling his life story to St. Peter. The guy is a hipster from the 40’s (maybe 50’s) and he’s telling his story with all of this goofy lingo. The joke of the cartoon is that we watch what St. Peter is thinking when he hears this crazy story “…I hot footed it across town…but it was raining gats and dogs…he was just feeding her a line….” Well, it’s a great one to me anyway. Along with “The Three Little Bops”, it is one of my favorite cartoons ever. The fact that they would drop such a random sample in there makes Madvilliany a lock for top-10 status for 2004.

Highlights are “Figaro” which showcases MF Doom’s sick, sick flow. And “Shadows of Tomorrow” which features Lord Quas and some of the spaciest work I’ve ever heard from Madlib.

I’ll try to get an example or two up this week if I get a chance. You need to at least try this stuff out.

“Shipwrecked” is the new album from John Reis’ Rocket From the Crypt side project The Sultans. It’s one of the better ones, too, IMO. Lead singer Slasher (aka Speedo aka John Reis) is in full blown heartache mode. Song titles such as, “It Meant Nothing”, “I Can’t Change”, and “I Just Can’t Take It” don’t leave much doubt as to how Slasher is feeling.

The whole album moves along pretty quickly in a RFTC vein, and the sound doesn’t suffer from a lack of horns. These are short bursts of rock and roll; only 3 of the 14 tracks go over 3 minutes with most of them under the 2:30 mark. The standout tracks are “Walk of Shame”, which sports a sharp organ jab (!) as an almost new/no-wave gesture. And “Jet Lag”, an almost Rancid-esque bit of high speed punk.

This is an excellent record but I think the appeal might be a little narrow. If you dig RFTC then it’s a no-brainer. I’ll try to get one of those songs up soon so you can hear them for yourself.

I was very glad, and very relieved, to see the Giants make the trade that got them Eli Manning. When they first announced the trade to San Diego they called it as a 1 and a 3 next year when it was really a 1 and a 5. I think next year’s 3 would have been too much, I don’t care how good he might be. The 5 is more in line with what I think is fair.

I see this as a pretty low-risk pick for (my beloved) Giants. There is zero chance he’s a flake. The Manning name guarantees that. Now he just has to be better than Kerry Collins. While I think that will take a year or two, I feel almost as certain about that. The trick will be getting some OL help in the meantime to keep him from getting killed.

I’m excited about Giants football.

Over at the Onion AV Club is a nice little interview with Ricky Gervais (He won the Best Actor and Best Series Comedy Gloden Globes for The Office). If you don’t know, The Office is a Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary that follows the World’s Worst Manager as he runs a branch sales office of a paper manufacturer.

“O: Really, only your character [David Brent] and Martin Freeman’s [Tim Canterbury] acknowledge the camera all that much on the show, although you do it in different ways.

RG: Yeah, he does it to say “Are you getting this? Are. You. Getting. This?” It’s almost a savior for him—when Finchy or Gareth are making complete twats of themselves without knowing it, he can look at the camera and go, “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s not just me.” Whereas I do it for two reasons: Directorially, I do it to remind people that it’s a fake documentary, but within the character, within the narrative, I do it because he’s showing off. And then I use it again to let people know that I know I’ve made a fool of myself. Because I’m always fascinated with how we make faux pas. We say silly things every day, but usually it’s to a bus driver or a friend. When the nation’s watching, it must be worse. It’s a sort-of theme of The Office. I was fascinated by this spate of docu-soaps where normal people had their Andy Warhol 15 minutes, then came out and got an agent and wondered why it didn’t last. [Laughs.] Like they thought “I’m the new Bill Cosby!” No, you’re not! You let someone film you in a bakery for a week. That’s it. Well done. It’s like Brent thinks if he just gets enough airtime, people will love him.”

Of course, The Office is being adapted for American television where I am sure it will be distilled to an unwatchable state. On that subject:

“O: Do you have any fears about the U.S. version of the show?

RG: Uh… [Laughs.] No, I don’t have any fears, because I didn’t do it. [Laughs.] From what I’ve seen, it looks really good. I didn’t make it, but they used our script for the first episode that I’ve seen, and the cast are really good.”

April 17th may have been the most productive greatest Saturday of 2004.

The weather was supposed to be perfect and I wanted to get going early. I even set my alarm because I knew I wanted to get up early and have a productive day. The last few months have been so baby-intensive that the house and yard have suffered a bit.
I was out of the house to Target and Home Depot by 9 am (a new personal best). Michelle had dropped off a bunch of film at Target for developing, including two rolls Emma shot (I’ll get highlights posted soon), so now we have some decent pictures of Stella to share.
I also needed some new gloves. I poisoned my old gloves with the insecticide we’re using to kill carpenter bees. I got a new latex pair for chemical use and then a washable leather pair for the yard. I don’t think the washable leather is going to hold up. That split cowhide might be necessary after all. The new ones feel like batting gloves and it’s only a matter of time before some dry brush or

The poison was first on the list. I hate those damn bees. Did you know that a carpenter bee does not fit through the holes between the strings of a tennis racquet? An important side note: male carpenter bees cannot sting you. So I have that to entertain me.

By 10:30 the poison was up and the lawn was mowed. I even broke out the weed eater for the first time this year. And the weed eater only comes out a half a dozen times a year, so this is a big deal.

Then I washed the cars! Michelle’s car has a problem with the sunroof where water leaks in if she uses a drive-through car wash. It doesn’t leak in the rain and it doesn’t rain under the lawn hose. Weird. This was a lesson Michelle learned while in a drive through car wash. (She would also like me to point out that I am the cause of this problem. She had warned me that the sunroof wasn’t working properly and told me not to use it. I used it but didn’t get it to close all the way. And now it doesn’t move at all. My bad.) I even washed my car for the first time in the two years I’ve owned it. This was a red-letter day, indeed.

The whole neighborhood was out for the sunny Saturday. In honor of my early start I knocked off after the car washing and sat with a few of the guys for a cold, cold beer and a Punch. I smoke, maybe, 4 or 5 cigars a year but if they were all as perfectly timed (and as tasty) as this one I might smoke more. And cold beer never tastes better than it does in the warm sun.

So yeah, I did get a lot done but it wasn’t the Most Productive Day of 2004.

And that’s cool by me.

That’s what our home inspector laughed and told us when he looked at the fence that came with our house. We love having a white picket fence, but it was rotting badly and falling apart in places. This weekend, we replaced it. Thank god the posts were sturdy and in good shape. I don’t know if we would have undertaken this otherwise.

Here’s before:

Taking it down took no time. We have a rubber mallet that made short work of it. It practically fell down by itself.

Next up were the stringers. Thanks to Laura’s help and Aaron’s model fence across the street (not to mention every tool under the sun), this was pretty easy. By the end of Saturday, we had made only one (!) trip to Home Depot. The stringers were up, and all the pickets were cut down to size and waiting in the driveway.

We made so much headway Saturday, that we got a late-ish start Sunday. Mistake. Turns out the nails we bought were waaaay too big for the task. After a bonus trip to HD, I was ready to go with the nailgun.

Nailguns rock. My arm is going to kill me tomorrow from the constant lifting of the 13-pound gun, but that beats the crap out of quadruple-nailing 179 pickets by hand.

After one more trip to HD, the fence is done. We still have to build the gates and paint the thing, but so far so good. We could not have done it without the help of Laura, our neighbors Fred & Freddie (father & son) and Brett, and the guys at the HD Tool Rental center. I have been known to curse HD, but not today.

It takes someone from a certain demographic profle for that logo above to mean something. To me, it really sounds the gong of childhood nostalgia. The Electric Company was the really the apex, for me, of the drug-addled visually stunning and musically funky educational television factory at CTW (now Sesame Workshop) .

The folks at wohmart.com have put together a ton of mp3’s and .mov’s of all of the hits. From their description:

Created in 1971 by the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), The Electric Company presented a new approach to learning for older children. Following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Sesame Street, The Electric Company taught its viewers more advanced reading skills, social interaction, and storytelling with a giant heaping spoonful of psychedelic fun. The show’s production was quite radical for its era, including the use of an analog video animation system called the Scanimate and analog synthesizer-produced sound effects. The show’s staff won many awards, including the 1972 Grammy¯ for Best Recording for Children for the album The Electric Company TEC featured such well-known actors as Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby, and Rita Moreno (best known on the show for her ear-splitting call of “Hey You Guys!”). Sesame Street’s Joe Raposo was brought on as the Musical Director, and wrote many of the show’s songs along with Gary William Friedman. Together, this incredible ensemble helped make The Electric Company a timeless classic.

They have a video page and an audio page. Both are totally worth your while if you dug The Electric Company.

I got the tip from the always-ahead-of-the-curve BoingBoing.net.