Two Scoops Of Punk
Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye photographed by Suzie Horgan at a Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store.
America Will Blow Up The Moon
On the eve of this, I couldn’t help but think of this:
Tom Waits Is The Best!
Tom Waits, this Blingee represents my love for you!
Well, he is.
You’d think that his music alone would qualify him for this title… and you’d be right. But there’s so much more to Mister Waits. Soooo much fucking more.
He’s a composer, an actor, a master storyteller, a curator of American folklore, a walking monument honoring his own greatness. He’s undeniably the coolest human being to ever walk this filthy rock. The mere concept of avant-garde was created in an attempt to describe his “beyondness.” He is in fact beyond the bounds of the trivial nature of musical trends and fashions. He is eternally relevant and as constant and familiar as gravity itself.
You know those Dos Equis commercials with “the most interesting man in the world“? Yeah, that man looks wistfully to the sky each night and wishes he was Tom Waits.
Hyperbole doesn’t even do him justice.
He’s in a movie with Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, and yet, Tom Waits is the one who steals the show and totally makes me swoon:
I mean, who would ever think of announcing a concert tour like this:
No one, I tells you! Are you getting all this?! Do I have to say it again?!? TOM WAITS THE BEST!!! NO ONE DENIES THIS!
I don’t know how else I can express my feelings on this. I’m done.
Oh, but you know who else is the best? Steve Buscemi.
Benin Empire Had The Best Flag Ever
The Benin Empire lasted from 1440 until 1897 in what would be modern-day Nigeria. Judging by their flag above, they did not fuck around, but at least they were very upfront about their intentions.
Two cheers for being forthright.
[via BoingBoing]
Photo Of The Year
A farmer sprays milk on police forces during a protest against falling milk prices outside the European Headquarters on October 5, 2009 in Brussels.
[Photo by Georges Gobet, AFP/Getty Images.]
Look, I Made Music Once. Am I Cool Now? Guys. Guys? Where Are You Going?!
Don’t even act like I don’t play guitar. I’ve got proof right here.
The time was 2002 (or 2003… I don’t really remember) and the place was the basement of a house on Vine Ridge Road in Nashville, Tennessee. My roommate and I set forth to record a song with only one microphone, an old computer, and a bass line to aid us. What resulted (amongst other things) was this instrumental track.
James Shadinger played drums, I played bass, and we both overdubbed guitar parts (me in the left channel, James on the right.)
I can positively say that I was listening to a lot of Mogwai at the time and that they had something or other to do with the overall post-rock feeling of the song. It’s definitely a track that takes its sweet damn time to develop. Basically, it requires some patience on your part, but goddam it, it pays off! I swear!
All right, enough talk, why don’t you just listen to the damn thing:
<a href=”http://nearfemme.bandcamp.com/track/no-name-basement-instrumental”>No Name (Basement Instrumental) by Near Femme</a>
If you go to Near Femme‘s (the name for all my music projects) page on Bandcamp, you can download this track for free in a variety of formats (mp3, aac, flac, Apple lossless). It would be cool if you did. I might just start posting more songs in the future, that is, if you’re interested.
As always, thanks for reading, and now, listening.
National Geographic Photographs Giant Redwood
[Note the tiny people in red coats for size reference]
From Gizmodo:
Wildlife photographer Michael Nichols wanted to photograph a 300-foot-tall redwood in a dense forest with no clear lines of sight. So he built a custom camera rig to take tons of close-ups to stitch together. The result is a stunning composite of 83 different shots of this incredible tree. Look for a huge foldout of the image in the October issue of National Geographic, and here’s a video of Nichols talking about the process of capturing the image.
The new National Geographic is on newsstands now.
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