Safe As Milk

Via IGN:

March 30, 2006 - The next Halo is coming in March 2007. According to a Microsoft source who asked to remain anonymous and a second source close to the company, IGN today learned that Microsoft will publish the next Halo game (as predicted in January) in March 2007.

That’s a little longer than I wanted to wait, but I know it will be worth it in the end.

The best way to get me to investigate or purchase something is to have small references to it come to me at the same time from two distinct directions. It’s how I first heard of some of my favorite things. Travis, Neal Stephenson, and Douglas Coupland’s Generation X some 14 years ago.
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My beard was long but it was never prehensile.

This has been me on so many occasions. From Normal Life.

Jon Baliles of River City Rapids lucked into tickets to see George Mason’s games last weekend so he was there when they did the impossible.

See video from the stands here. It’s pretty damn cool.

This is my Xbox360 Gamercard. It’s a brief summary of how awesome I am, in a video game sense.

The 3-star rep is because I haven’t played much 360 online outside of the bi-weekly Halo2 I play with the PRH and the SaltBugs. I think only 360 games count in that Rep score and even then you have to be actively rated by other players. Plus, I also only have 2 games, Call of Duty 2 and Project Gotham Racing 3. When I get more you will see that icon tray fill up.

Look! And marvel at one man’s futile efforts at Photoshop Competency!

I love mixtapes (I say ‘mixtapes’ but I mean ‘mixdiscs’ ‘mixtapes’ just sounds better). I used to make them for myself and my friends all the time. I always loved taking time to get a mix properly sequenced so that there was good flow from song to song. Or if there was an overarching theme I would scour the racks of cd’s looking for the perfect song. I enjoyed it. I still do it but not as often. I always make a year-end Best Of, for instance, but the 3-4 other mixes a year I used to do have given way to kids and other grown up stuff.

I also like getting new mixtapes. There are lots of very cool mixes all over the internet if you’re willing to look. I download them all the time but I have a problem with them, generally. They’re too long. I love looking for new music and these mixtapes are a great way to find it but a 14- or 15-song disc of songs by different artists that I have never heard of is just too much for me to get into in one bite.

That’s why I came up with the idea of a ‘Nice 6′ downloadable mix. It’s just a e.p. worth of tunes, a snack of sound. And since it’s just 6 songs I can update it more often than an album-length monthly mix. Click on that Nice 6 button up there to download the .zip of the 1st mix. (email me for a copy)

1) The Comas - Oh God
2) Quarks - I Walk (Superpitcher Schaffel Mix)
3) Feist - Mushaboom
4) Grizzly Bear - Owner Of A Lonely Heart
5) Beth Orton - Heart Of Soul
6) The Stone Roses - Straight To The Man

Enjoy.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists played a free (for students, $5 for the rest of us) show at the University of Richmond campus Saturday night. When Ted Leo plays in town you go see him. It’s a rule. Look it up (and I know I broke that rule the last time he was in town, won’t happen again).

He has been on tour with The Duke Spirit and Les Aus. We caught the last 2 songs of the Les Aus set but they were enough to get me to buy the cd. It’s just 2 dudes, guitar and drums, but they make sweet, sweet noise. Plus they’re from Spain.

The Duke Spirit are a British quintet with a fuzzy guitar sound that took me a while to warm to. Liela Moss definitely has all of the ’sexy frontwoman’ moves down pat and the band backs her well, they just weren’t what I was expecting. The second half of their set was smoking hot so they went out on a high note.

The highlight of the night was when Ted Leo, who looked like death and still played a terrific set, closed a song with, “okay, so that’s usually the end of the set and then we walk offstage and then hope you liked us enough to cheer us back on stage for a couple more songs. If it’s okay with you guys, we’ll just skip that middle part and get right to the last 3 songs.” It was obvious the guy was hurting but he didn’t want to cheat the kids at the free show. Do you see why we have the Must See Ted Leo rule? And then to top his little speech, he closed the set with Suspect Device, an all-time classic.

I got my Buddha Machine by FM3 yesterday.
Basically, it an ‘ambient music machine’. It’s not much bigger than an ipod, it runs on 2 AA batteries, and it plays 9 different ambient loops. It’s a neat little toy.

I only saw it for the first time the other day, but there are plenty of people talking about it out on the internets.