Stuff I want to do: Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto tours

The first Thursday of every month the Dept. of astronomy and astrophysics at UofT hold a free public tour where you get to explore with their telescopes. The upcoming tour includes an additional discussion by PhD student Mubdi Rahman.

http://www1.astro.utoronto.ca/~gasa/public_talk/iWeb/Welcome.html

Song of the day: George Jones - Cup of Loneliness

Song: Cup of Loneliness right click to download.

Lyrics: http://www.mp3lyrics.org/g/george-jones/cup/

ugh.. so beautiful. Makes you love all of life.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jones

Song of the day doesn't do this dude right.. more on him later...

More theoretical physics..

In search for the theory of everything. I'm still on this crusade that the LHC peps are lost and know what they are looking for is wrong. Hence the buying time and lack of results. Here is an option....

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_wallacewells?currentPage=all

You may want to be high for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xHw9zcCvRQ&fmt=18

Song of the day: The Constantines - Time Can Be Overcome

Song: Time Can Be Overcome

Lyrics: http://lyricwiki.org/Constantines:Time_Can_Be_Overcome

Live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIFBppxkDFA

Pitchfork: I'm also struck by the numerous references to time on this record. Many of the songs on Kensington Heights deal with confronting age ("Our Age"), generational conflict ("Brother Run Them Down"), and even overcoming time itself ("Time Can Be Overcome"). Why such a preoccupation with these themes at this stage in your life or career?

BW: I think anyone our age-- we're all around 30-- starts to get nostalgic or reflective about life. Writing a song is my way of coming to understand something, and I try to write from a few different angles. "Time Can Be Overcome" was me trying to understand time as a force-- something that acts upon your perspective of things.

Pitchfork: Such perspective often comes after a sort of maturation process, and I think this record chronicles this. Yet this process hasn't mellowed you, and such songs as "Hard Feelings" and "Credit River" seem genuinely distraught or even angry. Is there still a place for such emotions as one gets older?

BW: Yeah, absolutely. I think that part of me wants to write songs that celebrate people. That really seems like the most exciting type of song to me-- the most valuable. But I do believe that anger or expressing resistance to something is an interesting place to start when you're writing a song. And maturity may just be about accepting your limited perspective on such things. I don't try to articulate a single perspective in songs. I don't think that's really the way it is. And I am definitely having some trouble articulating where anger fits into that-- what its place should be in music. I think there is some truth to Public Image Limited's notion that "Anger is an energy," but I'm not always sure what exactly to do with that.

Toronto shows March 31st and April 1st, 2009 - Phoenix. 2008 Album of the year, as far as I'm concerned.

Members of Smashing Pumpkins, Hanson, Cheap Trick, and Fountains of Wayne Form Band

I can't come up with a better title than that...

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/149251-wtf-members-of-smashing-pumpkins-hanson-cheap-trick-and-fountains-of-wayne-form-band

Heads up Neville.

oh twitter.

http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html

Fantastic blog entry re: twitter and The Real Shaq.

The Boxtops

Bob Odenkirk?


From wiki: The Box Tops were a Memphis pop music group of the late 1960s. They are best known for the hits "The Letter," "Neon Rainbow", "Soul Deep" and "Cry Like A Baby," and are considered a major blue-eyed soul group of the period. (ed: legit white soul pop band)

the money maker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD9mCp8SifM

Joe Cocker cover, 1970: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps

aside, has Cocker's voice ever changed? short answer, no. :

1986; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoW81x4j7ow
2007; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n6V2NzkXO0

http://boxtops.com/btnew.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Tops

Additional songs:
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXeLn8zzoDk haha.. listen, not watch. It's a fucking 45 spinning. ... sounds a bit like Joe Cocker no?

(2)
meh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrigYjpsbjY&f

(3)
great voice, but not the emotion of, yes, Joe Cocker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHtI1Z5xWE8

http://boxtops.com/w_door_you_closed.htm

- Another Alex re-introduction band. Procol Harum next!

New Mando Diao album

http://isohunt.com/download/65992605/mando+diao.torrent

One of my top ten shows ever has to be Mano Diao at the Horsehoe, 2007, just after my birthday if I remember right. My friends and I had just discovered, for some reason, that we could buy pitchers at the front, walk them (the pitchers) up the three steps, and have them inside the band area.

I'm sure you've encountered those assholes at shows, who stand in the middle, dance and sing along together to every song, in their own world. We were those guys that night. Fortunately for us only, I suppose. Anyway, great night, great album they were touring on (Ode to Ochrassy, plus great old stuff), and i can't wait until they come back again.

PUSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBLUp5sgL5Q

To China with love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBgXDyewKlU

Welcome home Luc Robitaille: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yJV2-AW1TI
- A Hayden-esque mic breath-closeness, but in a rock song...

Mr. Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hUnTTkBCfc&feature=related

Mr. Moon live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-NfRNMPGY

New Beirut album

http://www.mininova.org/get/1193271

From what I've heard sounds great, but no development of self, sound, from their last album. Which is totally fine. Maybe this type of music never develops?.. I don't know, there's something missing between this album and the last... over production.. too tight. You can really hear the (over)production at the beginning and end of the songs... not loose. Still good, but loosing that feeling. Umm.. knowing a few gypsy folk, I think they would like, and I would/have introduced their, Beirut's last album, to them. This one I would not...

I have some great stories about a gypsy woman working for us as an administrator - mostly about interactions involved in a dominated male work place. Man, great girl, very secure and sure of her ways. Very bright girl. And in the same way (what may have formed that greatness as well) is a structure in the very different and lovely culture.

Song of the Day: Calexico - Sunken Waltz

Song: http://www.imeem.com/people/Y_Kpa/music/7YAzHxmt/calexico_sunken_waltz/

Lyrics: http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/calexico/sunken_waltz-lyrics-277848.html

Discussion: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1618284

Live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yB_AmfCHFM

Moneyball

An article by Michael Lewis on bball and the redemption of Shane Battier. Mike's caught on to baseball, tackled football, now traveling to basketball...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?pagewanted=all