March 2008 Archives

recorder grot (rallying)

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It’s surprisingly nice to know that I can still go to a grimy little basement in NYC—in this case Cake Shop—to see a band play—in this case Ida—and run into Jenny Toomey. 1992 forever!

My review of David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague is up at the Boston Phoenix.

project omniherbivore: kiwano

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Lisa and Sterling and I took a little trip to the Oregon coast a couple of days ago—to the seaside town of Seaside, where I ended up wandering into The Seaside Candyman, one of many salt-water-taffy stores lining its two major streets. The distinction of this one is that they have “The Candy Man,” the song, playing on a continuous loop. Loudly. All day. The two employees had smiles frozen onto their faces. They also have 170 flavors of salt water taffy, all of which taste… more or less the same.

But that’s not something I hadn’t eaten before. For that, we turn to our trip home, at which we stopped at the mighty Uwajimaya, an Asian superstore (which also has a branch in Seattle). They actually had a number of vegetables I was unfamiliar with, most of them roots I wasn’t sure how to prepare, but the fruit section included a kiwano. It was a little pricey, but really pretty—bright orange and covered in spikes, with near-fluorescent green seeds on the inside. A lot of the links I’ve found for it online give it a bad rap, but I thought it was delicious—Lisa said it reminded her of passionfruit in both taste and consistency, and I’d add that it’s a little like a sweet cucumber. A very messy fruit, but worth eating.

revelations, condiment stations

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Time to reveal another secret project, I think: Mincing Up the Morning, which I’ve been doing for close to two months now and originally figured I’d keep secret while I figured out if I liked doing it enough to keep going. I do, so now you get to know about it. It’s a daily blog where I post a couple of videos by musicians whose birthday is that day. I recommend digging through the archives for the Betty Hutton, Mark E. Smith and George Harrison videos, for starters.

I’m still linkblogging up a storm at Circle the Globe—I’d integrate that stuff into Lacunae if there were an easy way to do it, and I may eventually give up on Movable Type and just go for Tumblr here.

Recently posted elsewhere: my interview with Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley about Trinity, and my interview with Stephen Malkmus about being Stephen Malkmus.

And me? What have I been doing? Putting my house in order, in the most literal sense as well as the Ruth Fisher sense. Tonight we went to Nhut Quang, the new-ish vegan Vietnamese restaurant out on 82nd St., and had tasty cheap noodles and fake chicken with lemongrass.

Oh, fine. And playing way, way, way too much Scrabulous.

equal nights

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My, February went by quickly. I haven’t been posting here a lot, but I’ve been doing a whole lot of linkblogging over at Circle the Globe. Still, I feel a little self-conscious that Dave Sim has already revealed two of his secret projects and I haven’t revealed any.

Well, here’s one: I’m going to be DJing at Shouting Fire, beginning this week. Just an hourlong weekly show, called “Crickets” after an Aram Saroyan poem—although, actually, not that one. I’m still fumbling with how best to assemble my shows on the computer, but it’s good to be doing this stuff again.

Oh, yes, and there was that cover story in Billboard a few weeks ago, about Starbucks and its entertainment division. It doesn’t seem to be online, but it was a lot of fun to write.

More news soon, I suspect.