springtheme

I haven't quite caught up with today yet. I heard a Sam Prekop tune on the radio which, coupled with the sun, made it seem like it was spring. But alas, it was the tail end of february, which turned out to be pretty eventful.

Made tracks to denver friday evening. Started out at the Bank with robert, joaquin, eric, and all the lovely ladies (you know who you are) for happy hour & some pool, then bopped over to the Uptown for a change of scenery, eventually commanding the entire back room with our increasingly large group of several new faces. After a while, in an effort not to gather moss, we rolled on over to our final destination - the Atomic CB, where I shared mini doo-dahs with sara, spoke of art classes with brooke, and enjoyed watching an extrememly festive sami in all of her revelry. The night eventually ended back at carolyn & robert's hut for a nightcap - sorry about all the noise angie!

Made my way back to boulder saturday, just in time to have lunch with jody bah (whom I haven't seen in about 10 years!) and her new husband ed, who were in town for the weekend visiting with jacq & dyl. Went home to get some real rest during the afternoon hours but wound up watching a couple of classics on the telé, Grosse Pointe Blank & the Goonies, before heading out to sync up with everybody at the Rio. Never a dull moment, drama ensued amongst those of us not acclimated to the altitude as we made our way down an abreviated portion of death row, winding up at the Catacombs, where we all parted ways.

Took it easy sunday. Watched a relatively boring Academy Awards / Beyoncé talent show, where an extremely uptight Sean Penn failed to see the humor in one of Chris Rock's jokes about Jude Law - riiiiight. Kudos to Eternal Sunshine & Sideways for winning the original & adapted screenplay awards respectively.

Song stuck in my head today: Parasites by Ugly Cassanova - so, so catchy

-nephin-

custom

pope on a rope

Quentin Tarantino has signed on to write and direct the season finale of CSI this May. I sure hope it has ninjas.

The pope underwent a tracheotomy yesterday to open his windpipe to help with breathing. To the dismay of many christian folk, he has been advised not to speak for several days, and may never fully regain the ability to speak. His recent sickness has, however, sent copies of his book, Memory and Identity, skyrocketing. Within it's papally written pages he compares abortion to the holocaust, calling it a "legal extermination," and he denounces gay marriage as "part of a new ideology of evil."
You may now choose from the following witty retorts:
1. Oh wait, maybe it's a good thing the pope might never be able to speak again.
2. Imagine if it was Ward Churchill who had written this instead of the pope.
3. I wonder what Hunter S. Thompson would say?

Friday techno of the day: Godskitchen Global Gathering discs 2 & 3

-nephew-

out with a bang

The latest news on the late Doctor of Journalism, is that his remains are to be blasted out of a cannon. Two thumbs up for the appropriateness of this send off. Gladly would I give greater praise, would but that I possessed more thumbs.

los presidents

Had another great day at Copper on saturday with paul, dylan & derrick. They got over 18" of new snow throughout the week which was great for riding through the trees and down the mogul runs. I had planned on going out that evening, but crashed from exhaustion around 8.30 that night. I wasn't too worried about bailing on a saturday night though, because I had found out at the last minute on friday that I indeed had a three day weekend (thanks to our late former presidents).

Hit up La Rhumba's patio on sunday for a late lunch /dinner and took full advantage of the $3 dark & stormy deal (if it's snowing, they're half price). Of course, we finished our meals outside in the snow. Monday was casual, went to the gym, then had lunch at Mountain Sun w/ jacq - februaury is stout month.



(I love the two new types of terrain this year - the orange lozenge is freestyle terrain, and the double black diamond EX is for extreme terrain.)

trogdor shrimp

The current bid for the Trogdor Shrimp on ebay is $34. Don't worry, it comes frozen so you can still eat it.



If you are missing out because you don't know who Trogdor is, then I suggest finding out.

human for sale

Want to find out how much money you're worth? Try Human For Sale, and fill out a quick survey which magically calculates your worth in dollars. Make sure you answer truthfully, otherwise it's no fun. I'm currently worth $2,199,030.

-cashing in, neph-

tele-conned

Poor Paris Hilton. It seems as if she can't stay out of trouble. Some clever clogs were able to hack her cell phone. They then posted a list of all her contacts and photos that were contained on her little sidekick (please pardon the porn banner ads on those links). Some highlights - Eminem, Nelee Hooper, Adam Levine, Fergie, Anna Kournikova, and Stephen King.

fear and death in woody creek

I found out late sunday evening that the one and only GONZO journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, passed away (any god that will take his soul, please rest it!) on his isolated (by way of rifles, insanity, drugs, fear & more guns) colorado ranch, near Aspen. I tried to post something about it that night, but the dark & stormy's were catching up to me, and the iMacitron & I weren't jiving.

As it turns out, the passing came by way of a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Apparently Dr. Thompson was suffering from severe pain due to a broken leg / hip combo that wasn't healing quite as well as it should. He was 67. Having been a big fan of his work, I was kind of bummed out. On the plus side, one can hope that some spineless publisher, itching to cash in on this tradgedy, will finally collect & publish all of his old articles written for various periodicals such as ESPN & Rolling Stone. In the meantime, I will have to dig up the old recording I I have kickin' around of a Q&A session that the good doctor of journalism hosted at CU back in 1977.

-we were just on the edge of the desert, when... neph-

a to z

jerk it out

My shuffle arrived today, just in time. If you go to the iTunes site, they have all sorts of celebrity playlists which are kind of nifty to browse (my fave so far is Danny Masterson's). Since I try to keep all my .mp3's at 192vbr or higher, I don't get to put as many songs on the unit as the box says I should be able to, but they sound hella betta. Here's my playlist:

her space holiday - Young Machines Remixed
spacemen 3 - Singles
mercury rev - The Secret Migration
thievery corporation - The Cosmic Game
...trail of dead - Source Tags & Codes
massive attack - Remixes
tomahawk - Mit Gas
moby - Hotel
m.i.a. - Arular
junior boys - Last Exit
mike doughty - Rockity Roll

latent

Today's top stories:
1. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead & (International) Noise Conspiracy will be stopping by the Fox in may.
2. Over a foot of new snow fell in colorado's playground. Three guesses as to where I'll be tomorrow.

On a continual note:
Every morning my office is nice and chilly from the night before because I leave the AC running. Every afternoon it gets sleepy time warm. One culprit, over which I have no control, is the sun shining through my windows with the rocky mountain view. The other, the guy who's office where the thermostat is actually located, is easily manipulated. Just after lunch, I clandestinely enter his office when he's not around and change the setting from 73heat to 73cool - it may not seem like much, but it makes all the difference in the world.

On a discovery tip:
Recently I stumbled upon a 4 disc ouevre by Kimya Dawson, legendary by way of the Moldy Peaches. She continues in the same vein as her previous group with lyrically irreverent sing-songy stories that make you both laugh & wince at the same time. I put these in my small doses folder.

-nephatory-

sugar coated

The House unanimously passed the latest "Indecency Bill", which hikes fines from $32,500 to $500,000 per violation, further hindering the public airwaves (radio & TV) from doing anything remotely risqué and furthering the stranglehold that the conservative religious right has been increasingly gaining over the "Land of the Free". Where's Frank Zappa when you need him? Fuck.

Looks like there is officially no hockey season this year. Oh well. There's only 44 more days until baseball's opening day with the Red Sox in NYC.

More leaks:
robert pollard - From a Compound Eye
spoon - Gimme Fiction
venetian snares - Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett

-nephew-

thumbs up

I just saw a trailer for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I wish they had made it when I was in junior high and the guide was like a bible of sorts.

Hotel, the new disc by moby, was leaked over the weekend. Sounds like typical moby of late - lots of poppy guitar tunes interspersed with some mellow orchestral fair and the token techno nose bleed. There's even a soothing cover of new order's Temptation mid-way through the album.

king of convenience

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Shuffle, which was finally shipped. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of playing around with jacq's (dylan scored her a 512m for v-day; the wait was longer for the 1g's). The unit is super tiny and doesn't weigh a thing. It's essentially nothing more than a usb memory stick with a headphone jack and some controls. You can stash it just about anywhere. I hope it arrives by friday, so that I can test out it's slope worthyness.

The cd disorganization I'm experiencing is out of control. The one album I've been dying to hear all week is lost in my own apartment. Everytime I tear through the stacks, I just create more jenga-like stacks, and on and on. I figure a solid couple of hours of labeling and shelving should solve this problem. Sound interesting? It's not at all. But when it's all said and done, it should make locating discs much easier - and that, my friends, is convenient.

-neither here nor there, neph-

minipol

All the photos from Interpol turned out to be itty, bitty & blurry for whatever reason - oh wait, I took them with a camera phone! Here's one of the little guys anyway:

on point

I am excited to discover that the Mazzy Star meets James sounding song from the Target ad is the Concretes, because I'm pretty sure I have it on a spindle or burried in a non-labeled pile of discs somewhere.

death row

Had a great day at Copper with Paul on saturday. I had just sharpened my edges, so I really got to lean far into my carves, which is such a nice feeling. After lunch, we rode down the slope near the onion roll, and Paul had the most spectacular full hill yard sale I've seen in a while.

As soon as we got back to town, I rushed to get ready for Nathan's b-day festivities and our travels down death row, which began with the return of Bacaro's for real happy hour. The next step was going to be the Brasserie Ten Ten for some muscles, per request of the b-day guru. Curious to find out when their happy hour started, I called information and was connected to the Brazillian Jujitsu studio instead. This snafu, coupled with information on the where-a-bouts of Jen & Janelle (who was also celebrating a b-day), brought us to Styr. We lost a couple of folks to drama and inevitably wound up at Trilogy with "the girls with the hats". Perhaps it's because we usually finish up there, and any caution was long ago thrown head first into a gusty wind, that the debauchery gets kicked up a notch. This night was no different. Once the dust cleared and notes were compared, we realized we had yet another blast.

-nephew-

no accounting for taste

Yesterday's best Grammy moments came, not during the show of course, but during the E! channel's red carpet interviews conducted by Kathy Griffin. Unfortunately her random questioning of the performers prompted some uptight producers to edit out some of the more anticipated answers:

KG: Who are you excited to see lip-sync tonight?
Joss Stone: J-Lo...(the rest of answer edited out by E!)

KG: Who do you think will do lines of blow off of their grammy?
Quentin Tarantino: ...(entire answer edited out by E!)

If anyone knows what Quentin said, please let me know. They were all laughing about it, so it may have been pretty funny.

ones

There's no one left in the office today, and I'm finding it hard to focus without any peripheral energy. Turning up the volume doesn't seem to create more activity either, but it sure sounds good - so loud it shall be. It's friday, and soon the weekend will land with a cold one in my hand.

Friday techno of the day: Tyrant - Fabric 15

-uno neph-

seedling

double secret dissolusion

Pulitzer prize winning playright, Arthur Miller, died at the ripe ol' age of 89. He was known for such works as Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and All My Sons. He was also married to the defacto blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe. Another legend who passed last week after complications during heart surgery was John Vernon, known to most everyone as Dean Wormer from Animal House - "The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me." He also provided additional voices for the popular cartoon series, Pinky and the Brain.

mashed

Here's an oldie but goodie. You will need real player to listen.

quarantinis

For those of you who have yet to see the slightly risqué Martini ad, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow and a Björk video, here it is. Be patient, it starts right after the deodorant ad.

In related gossip: Earlier in the week Mrs. Martin was spotted as a student in one of Ella's yoga classes here in Boulder, along with Courtney Thorne-Smith who frequents the class when she is in town visiting her mother.

goin' to the city

Decided at the last minute to venture to Denver last night to go see Interpol with Blonde Redhead. I met up with the gang (insert alphabetical list of people here) at the Atomic before the show, where I quelled rumours of my alleged attendance at the Churchill speech after Sara & Brooke thought they saw me on TV. I don't get to see them as often as I'd like, and unfortunately our gathering was rather brief - we'll have to hang out again sometime soon. Not everyone at the table wound up coming to the show, only Angie & Robert. En route to the fillmore we picked up Farah who completed our little concert group.

The 1800 or so fans were rather mundane, quite the opposite of the highly spirited bunch at the sound tribe show. Think double mocha coconut lattes before the show instead of a handful of pills. I should have some more of my award winning camera phone shots up here in the next day or so. In case you are interested, here's the setlist: Next Exit, Slow Hands, Say Hello To The Angels, Public Pervert, Length of Love, Not Even Jail, Hands Away, NYC, Evil, Narc, PDA, E:The Specialist, Obstacle I.

-nephadelica-

pushing

Ward Churchill was finally allowed to speak publicly at CU last night, after a student group retracted their claim that they were receiving death threats for hosting the lecture. During his speech, he defended his controversial essay, Some People Push Back, and essentially confirmed that his work was taken out of context. What still fascinates me is his uncanny resemblance to J Mascis:

controversy & ceremony

I've been waiting to comment on the latest Boulder scandal du jour until after I got a chance I to read the whole speech that is at the center of this mess. After doing so, it is quite clear that Ward Churchill's "controversial" passage, that is currently circulating around the nation, was taken entirely out of context and that people should simmer down a bit - let it go folks. Um, oh yeah, and there's the First Ammendment too...

The thrice bankrupted & rather legendary Factory record label has risen from the ashes once again, this time as F4. Only time will tell if any of the three bands on the current roster will amount to anything quite as influential, enjoyable, or disfunctional as Joy Division, New Order, or the Happy Mondays.

-love you on a tuesday, nephew-

from the left

Here are a few shots I took of the STS9 show with robert's camera phone. I didn't bother bringing my rig, which afforded me the ability to roam freely about the venue. There was certain to be plenty of others already subjecting themselves to the rigors of taping from whom I could get a copy of the show.

glowing light board

This the lighting board. I was trying to get a shot of all the stones & crystals that were covering it, but they kept reflecting the flash, which I didn't realize was an option with a camera phone.

way back

This shot's from the back of the Fillmore.

wisdom

dynasties & doshas

Congratulations to the PATRIOTS for winning the super bowl last night 24-21 over the Eagles! You have to love the massachusetts championship sandwhich (pats > sox > pats)! The Pats win also gives me 25/28 points for the Beacon nfl playoff pool - let's hope that's enough to win. Had a small gathering at my place for the game (jacq, dyl, nathan, derrick) complete with a mondo sub, bräts, lots of beer, pizza, chips & dips. With the exception of waking with my eyes dried shut this morning, I seem to have recovered just fine from the weekend revelries.

Here are my favorite adverts from the game:
1. The woman in the Tabasco logo print bathing suit who lifts the shoulder strap to reveal that her suntan is under the suit - very hot, literally too.
2. P-diddy starting a DietPepsi truck driving craze amongst fellow celebrities.
3. The two Ameriquest ads - "Don't Judge too quickly". The first had the guy getting beat down by the quicky-mart clerk b/c he thought he was trying to rob the place. The second had the guy holding a knife and the white cat who spilled the spaghetti sauce all over.
4. GoDaddy.com's busty woman with the malfunctioning tank top testifying in front of the senate committee on decency. Fox decided to pull GoDaddy's second spot due to backlash from airing the first.
5. The two teenagers driving away in a convertible to get married in the night only to be stopped further down the road by the young girl's father who asked that they take her mom's car instead. Although it was clever, the branding left something to be desired because I cannot remember the make of the vehicle.

I just took a survey to determine my dosha. I turned out to be a split Vata / Pitta (air / fire). I guess my air fuels my fire.

-neph, your bedroom's on fire-

soundtribe sounded fine

Picture if you will the franticism of the unbeknownst, even to themselves, survivours just after the crazyness that ensued in the begining of an apocoliptic film such as 28 days later, or maybe even red dawn, and there you will be at the Fillmore Auditorium on Colfax Ave. in Denver, CO. during the first set of the sold out Sound Tribe Sector 9 show where we found ourselves. If ever there was a hell, it was never more prevelent than the will-call line in the moments leading up to the house lights dimming. The first set dragged a little (granted, the sound tribe were debuting a bunch of new material which was a bit on the mellow, jazzier side). The night really began getting good an hour and 1/2 later once all the scroungy folk got their shit together and got inside and sts9 decided to drop kick their second set straight through the posts.

So there we were, surrounded by exceptional auditory happiness (with the exception of a brief 2 song colaberation involving some unnecessary guest mc's). Drip, drip, drop the massive vibes flowed the rest of the night. Imagine the dark and thicker points of Orbvs Terrervm, the imbedded & unrecognizable vocal samplings from the opening tracks off the white Orbital album, and a slew of raging live instrumentationalisms, and insert us (angie, dylan, jacq, marc, pat, robert, & 3494 other randoms). We danced through the night and when it was all said and done, we möwed all the way back to pat's (stopping briefly for some necessary nourishment by way of Fat Jack's Subs). Now we lay to rest.

Full set list & photos to follow early next week...

-slerpin', neph-

still making sense

Scene for an as for yet un-named film:

Setting - Pat's back wood floor hallway, with the ever-so-slight slope towards the bathroom.
Scene - "whomever" finds the skis and decides to take advantage of said slope.

der freitag

Me & jacq took Meg out to Rezzo last night for her birthday. We were joined by lauren & dylan. Paul was jetsetting around Hong Kong so he couldn't make it.

Finally got GD U2 tickets for the second night at the pepsi can. What an ordeal that was. Four years ago when I saw them at Phillips, I was lucky enough to have scott show up an hour before the show with a pair of practically front row seats he got from his old roomate heath, who conveniently enough was working for Universal at the time... Back to the present day - we wound up with 2 extras for the first night which we're not going to. If you would like them: cost=face+fees.

Friday's techno of the day:
MOS - Clubbers Guide to Berlin 2005

-die vorstellung ist aus, nephü-

in case you're not feeling up to it

state of yo

Missed the state of the union last night, I wasn't really in the mood to dissect political rhetoric after working out. So I numbed my mind with some S&tC re-runs instead, which was particularly odd because Sloan appeared to be undercover for SD6 in one of the eps. Go figure.

More leaked albums I'm listening to:
mogwai - Government Considerations (BBC Sessions 1996-2003) :standard mogwai bombast, and that's a good thing
magnolia electric co. - What Comes After the Blues :pretty boring, not at all what I'd hoped for after hearing some of this material debuted on Trials & Errors

booty

Boulder's mobile pirate radio station, KBFR, was shut down for good by the FCC yesterday. Boulder Free Radio had been operating off & on, here & there for the past 4 years or so. The station's reliabilty was terribly sporadic depending on where the broadcast was coming from, and the content was horribly juvenile. To be quite honest, I never even bothered to listen. But they had a cool logo, and we all loved Pump Up the Volume, so goodbye KBFR!

-neph-

style eyes

The final brick seems to have been placed in the tomb wall of analog recording. Quantegy, the last remaining production facilty of professional reel to reel analog audio tape filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy sending tape heads scrambling to buy up any remaing reels they could find. The last European manufacturer of 2" tape, BASF, stopped production in 2002. All may not be lost if Quantegy can muster up the $11 million it will need to restructure & keep afloat. Does anyone remember AAA & AAD?

North Korean men will no longer have to worry about lengthy hairstyles anymore. Kim Jong-il, the 5'3" dictator who has been known to wield a popadorian-type doo himself to appear taller, has ruled that hair be no more than 2 inches in length, or slightly longer if you are going the comb-over route. KJ-i believes long hair hinders bodily nutrition and intelligence. Oh yeah, and it's recently been discovered that North Korea may have sold processed uranium to Libya.

Trainwreck of the week award - Keira Knightley for living in the 80's. I'll bet the North Korean men have it more together than this:



-double naught, neph-

hello day

I'm in an obnoxiously good mood today - could be the sun, the lack of sleep, the raging good show last night that fostered the lack of sleep, or some combination of the three. But, I just had a Lerk Sker cheesesteak that's kind of taking the wind out of my sails so let's see what's going on elsewhere...

Google vs. Apple. It looks like Apple has reclaimed its crown from Google as the world's leading brand according to a survey of ad industry folks. I guess that's how I got suckered into patiently waiting 3 weeks for my 1g iPod shuffle.

Strong Bad is back with a completely random email regarding the origin of the stick.

In keeping with the spirit of 1985 Patriots fans' slogans (squish the fish, berry the bears), jay has come up with the derogatory chant for this sunday's big game - Flock the Eagles.

Today's leaky albums:
fischerspooner - Odyssey
boom bip - Blue Eyed in the Red Room
thievery corporation - The Cosmic Game

goodnight moon

My final Luna show last night at the Fox was a great one. Angie & Robert came along and the tapers were out in force - there were 5 full rigs including mine. Bumped into Rich later in the evening. Had the pleasure of meeting Dean & Britta after the show, both of whom were very pleasant (those are their signatures scrawled on the setlist).




NOTE: They also played California All The Way, sandwiched right in between Bewitched & 23 Minutes, which truly made the night.

-nephpark-