Show: Explosions in the Sky

Rarely am I happier than with a cool light domestic beer in my hand and live music streaming into my ears.  It excites the soul and calms the mind.  Thus, it shouldn't surprise you to know I go to a lot of shows and  I always take iPhone pics -- though I've been bad about sharing them on the blog.  No more! Last night I went to see Explosions in the Sky at Radio City Music Hall.  

Radio City is awesome -- in the old-skool "awe-inducing" sense of the word.  I am not a fan of seated venues, because they suck the life out of the crowd, however RCMH has my props.  Anyway, the beauty of iPhone pics and why I purposefully do not bring a real camera is that they are not perfect and often you can get cool effects going between the clash of the stage lights. See exhibit A after the jump.

New York, New York...

I love living in New York City, but it is truly a redonkulous place in both good and bad ways.  On the one hand, you have the best of everything at your disposal.  On the other hand, you have to work a million hours to pay the exorbitant costs of all of these amazing things.  On top of that, New Yorkers live in these expensive, teeny, tiny, little spaces that realtors like to call "cozy."  My parents paid less for their 4 bedroom house in Minnesota than I do for my one bedroom apartment (even though I rented during the worst recession this country has seen since the Great Depression).  A few days ago, I came across this quiz (yes, quiz, kinda, sorta like the kind you used to take in Seventeen magazine*) about whether someone belongs in New York City (apparently, the key is to be unhappy and to want to be unhappy).  Then, N sent me the below video (with accompanying article) about a woman who pays $700 to live in a 90 square foot apartment on the Upper West Side.  Redonkulous.  But...like most of you reading this blog, I'll continue to live here and be unhappy.  But I guess that's ok because I want to be unhappy. 



*Apparently, I can be Justin Bieber's Prom date.  Can you?

Everyone Hates Orange

We tend to think of pink as being a girl's favorite color and blue as being a boy's favorite color, but it turns out that everyone loves blue and every hates orange.

Lots of other interesting tidbits about people's color preferences are found in this Techi article which I discovered through another "orange" blog: How About Orange.

Crazy Taxi Medallions

I took cab to LaGuardia once with a Russian immigrant cabbie who proceeded to tell me all about his life here in America, beginning with his gradual purchase of 8 taxi medallions over the span of 30 years and ending with sending his daughter to law school last year.  It was quite the inspiring story.  Then, as I began to crunch the numbers he was giving me, I realized that this cabbie had a higher net worth than 8 of my lawyer friends put together.  Each New York taxi medallion was worth approximately $641,000 and since he's only required to actually drive the taxis part time, he could rent out the remainder of his medallions and make rental income.  According to this USA Today article from 2009, New York taxi medallions have out performed every index imaginable.  Oh the American dream...at least for those fortunate enough to own a medallion...there's much to be said for the plight of those who scramble to lease a medallion and then must work to make enough to cover rent, but today, I'm all about optimism so I'll just leave it at that.

ATE live videos

Airborne Toxic Event is releasing new music later this month.  Until then they're giving us a preview with these live videos. I've always thought ATE was better live than on record, so these are quite a treat. 

Happy Friday?

Tallest Man On Earth - The Dreamer

This is not my video, but I was at this show. I love this song: it quells the angst. 

StayFocused Chrome Extension

I came across this on Lifehacker, but basically, you install this extension in Chrome and it blocks distracting websites once you've reached a time limit.  You can customize which website become blocked and after how long.  Not very useful now that I'm a working adult (because we all know we'd go crazy at work if we couldn't distract ourselves with blogs, youtube etc), but I could definitely have used this when I was a student.

Wikipedia-ing New York

I never think to Wikipedia (verb) things that are familiar, like New York City.  Tonight, while waiting for someone to get back to me at work, I did.  Most of it is what you'd expect.  New York is the most densely populated city in America, 800 languages are spoken in New York, there are five boroughs in New York etc.  Nothing too spectacular, until...about a quarter of the way down there is a really really long panoramic picuture of Manhattan.  I've tried to save the picture to put on Dos Orange but this is how small it has to shrink in order to fit: 



Click to see the full picture.

Awesome things still happening in Wisconsin

This video is remarkable. Wisconsin Republicans barrel through committee a revised union-busting bill over the Democrats claim of illegality of procedure. I find these procedural fights in legislatures incredibly interesting and this one is up there with the best, complete with folksy Midwestern accents.  

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After weeks of insisting the union provisions were there for fiscal reasons - although evidence shows the existence of collective bargaining rights has no fiscal impact whatsoever, and after having virtually no public support for these provisions, the Republicans decided to agree with the rest of us that stripping collective-bargaining was a non-fiscal issue. Therefore, they pulled all the union-busting provisions into one bill and voted on it within minutes. Problem is a) they violated Wisconsin's open meetings laws and b) there are those unsure whether this bill had some fiscal provisions -- for example the benefit changes.  If the bill does have fiscal implications, they do need a quorum and the vote was improper. So it looks like this is going to court, which bodes well for  JoAnne Kloppenburg, a Dem (?) running for Supreme Court Justice, April 5th. She's running against the incumbent.  This may be a good test of whether there is truly enough electoral support for successful recalling of the eligible Republican senators. Ah, democracy.

Of course, this could all just be a trick to get the senate Democrats to come back to the state: so far it seems they're staying firm, somewhere in Chicago, knowing that if they return before this bill is signed into law they can get locked into the state capital and forced to vote. Ah, democracy.

New Music Alert! An Horse

Few things make long monotonous stressful days at work better than discovering a new little band.  This week, for me, it's the Aussie duo An Horse.  I "picked up" (downloaded from amazon) their 2009 LP Rearrange Beds today. My favorite song off that album after the jump, but below is a preview of their new album, Walls, that sounds like it's going to be awesome and drops April 11. 

I'm excited, so excited that I bought a ticket to see them at the Knitting Factory in April. The most important thing about the video above, however, is that a) they use my tuner and b) she has one version of my dream guitar -- an orange strat w/ racing stripes. Few things make long monotonous stressful days at the office better than watching people with fun interesting cool jobs.

A Cool.gif

When I was a kid, I was a huge web-dork. I spent inordinate amounts of time with html and java-script. But you need something cool to put within all that code, so I was soon spending inordinate amounts of time with Paintshop Pro and its accompanying .gif creator. I don't know how many hours up through college I spent creating .gifs, but I was awesome at it.  Remember, in the late 1990's, before we had easy to stream video (you know, before I could watch downtown Cairo live on my phone while on a sidewalk in Manhattan) .gifs were an effing big deal. It's an image! It moves! Now .gifs are like a pair of chucks or Vans: sure, we have the technology for better, more comfortable shoes, but the old-skool shoes are just so cool. .Gifs are just so cool.  Kinda as cool as this high-five:

Now in 2011 to create a .gif you go to a website, enter the youtube link, and press Create .gif. Not as exciting a process, but just as exciting a result.

Tinashé: Mbira version of "Zambezi"

I once had to make a Mbira (aka Kalimba) for Science Olympiad.  For an event called the "Sound of Music."  Yes, I am a nerd.  Unlike this guy, I was never very good.  AIK showed me this video over the weekend and we watched it a few times while we drank before going out.  Weird pre-game music, I know, but it's a pretty awesome song. 

 

Everyone and their mom is in this video.

...Well, not everyone, but a lot of great random musicians are acting goofy in the very fun new Sara Bareilles video for the song Uncharted.  It's refreshing to see a well-made low-tech video, and here's definitely a case where the video makes the song. Watch below, because when else will you see Pharrell and Sara Quin battle for most adorable in the same video:

I don't really know anything about this Bareilles musician and from the sound of  it I could write her off as radio friendly singer-songwriterzzzzzz...., but there's just 4 too many cool folks (Pharrell Williams, Tegan, Sara, Ben Folds) who agreed to be in this video to not give her more of a chance. Will do so.

Heartfelt acoustic music Part III? I must tired all the time.

If you're wondering, I'm listening to Our War by Lovedrug right now.  Lovedrug is a band I saw open for some other band at The MidEast in Cambridge. That venue will forever be one of my favorites because it's quality and I saw one of my top 3 best shows of my life there (Brand New and fans all screaming their little hearts outs). But I digress, Lovedrug impressed me live largely to the distinctive and just-rough-enough vocals, and though I didn't feel their album at the time, they are in the process of recording a new album. They've released a string of EPs over the past couple months to raise money and certain songs just kill it (others I don't love as much), but anyway, stream it below. You can stream the whole EP here.

After the jump, one of my favorite new songs of theirs live. 

Awww... crap!

This is what happens when you don't go to that small show at Mercury Lounge because you're "too tired."   Sara Quin (of the Tegan and ... fame) produced FENCES' new s/t album, which I like much ($5!!). Fences is very good indie heartfelt non-whiny/sleep-inducing acoustic dude-with-a-guitar music.

So, I had planned to go to the show because I suspected -- as you can see from the videos -- he's even better live.  Turns out Sara Quin was there -- she duets on the song My Girl The Horse --  as you can also see from the videos.  Note - Sara Quin is my Beiber, as the kids say. Post on this later. So I could have seen them perform together live on a small stage in NYC; but instead I decided to stay home and be lame on my couch. Lesson learned: in NYC you will always pay for being lame. I apologize to you all that instead of Sara Quin and Fences photos, I have a re-blog.


Fences: My Girl The Horse (feat. Sara Quin) from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.


Fences: Sadie (A Shoot The Player Film) from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.

SOURCE

New Music Alert: RAA

The new album from Rural Alberta Advantage came out today!  DEPARTING is a great follow-up to the amazingly steller, Hometowns (2009).  There's something about Canadians that allow them to make energetic and moving indie rock, without the pretension. RAA is marked by an acoustic guitar being propelled forward by strong drums and growling melodic vocals singing of heart ache and winter. Here's the single off the new album; it's called Stamp:

They are playing the Bowery Ballroom on March 10th (which I am attending so stay tuned for iPhone photos from the show) and Knitting Factory, Brooklyn March 12th.  After the jump, my favorite track off the 2009 album:

The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect

Sign me up for three giant pills and a machine thing.  Courtesy of MSK.

This Land Is Your Land: the lost verses

Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine/The Nightwatchman) and friends sang This Land Is Your Land at a rally in Wisconsin last week for the protesters, public and private employees, who want to kill the union-busting bill.  The whole video is worth it, but if you're in a rush start at 4:20.

Mahlon Mitchell, President of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association on Democracy Now Friday morning, talked about himself and 60 firefighters sleeping in the capital rotunda alongside 600 protesters, even though their union is exempt from the bill: 

"Well, it just shows how important union work is and how important the union is to the middle class. There is not one employee, public employee, state, municipal, local employee, firefighter, police officer teacher, that does their job to get rich. We don’t do our job to get rich. We do our job to have a decent life, to have a decent middle-class family and not have to struggle like a lot of our other people do. Well, what this bill will in essence do is bring the middle class back down lower. And that’s really where the Governor wants and the corporate backers want us, so that we’d have less power and we have less influence on elections. So this is not about just unionism. This is about an attack on the middle class. This is about Wisconsinites, and this is a hard-working Midwest state, and we need unions to help take care of our middle class."

 Video Interview, which I highly recommend.  I think we'd all be better off if we reminded ourselves that we must share this country, it belongs to us all, "us" being a very general term; and we need to make room for everyone to retain their individual potential.  It's not a race to first place, it's a society.  The bottom-line is that you (meaning everyone) should be worried about the middle-class shrinking. How are we doing with that?  Glad you asked.

More about the song, after the jump (because originally this was a music post).

My friends are clever people: Dictator edition

Today my friend had as his gchat status: "News outlets of the world: he spells it 'Moammar El-Gadhafi.'  Get it together."  This plethora of spellings had annoyed me as well, so I shared with him the most ridiculous official spelling I'd seen, and he responded with this piece of gchat gold:  

"That is ridiculous.

Why is this even an issue?

The man has spelled his own name in English

that should be the end of it.

That's the one thing you should be able to act as a dictator over,

your own name"

So very true. 

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - The Important Question

I just received my copy of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and I'm super excited to see what kind of insight it gives me into how I was raised and what influence that upbringing may have had on my adult life.  After reading the inflammatory portions of her book in the Wall Street Journal, I can say that no matter what you think about her methods, the scenarios described are common in the memories of many Chinese American children and adults.  But...let's cut to the chase...the really important question is: how on earth does Amy Chua look so young?  According to Wikipedia, she was born in 1962 which would make her 49 years old.  See for yourself in this interview on the Colbert Report:

Liberate!*

S is the political/current events junkie of this blogging partnership.  My google reader is filled with fashion blogs, and the only section of the New York Times website I read is the "most emailed" box.  So, for example, I had no idea that dozens of Chilean miners were trapped (and then rescued) until I saw a documentary on it.  But it hasn't escaped even me that the world is changing right now, and rapidly.  In the words of a good friend, "I got the flu, I went to bed for a week, I woke up and the world is different."

In an effort to catch up, I've been reading Al Jazeera's live blog on Libya and came across this neat visual representation of the last couple of months:

*The exclamation point in this post's title is brought to you by Wellstone!

"I'll do better, I'll do better, I swear I will"

Best new song of Tuesday. Jarrod Gorbel, formally The Honorary Title, released his EP Bruises From Your Bad Dreams last week.  This is the strongest song: I'll Do Better.

More after the JUMP

Dictators who care more about their video sets than their people

Al Jazeera English, Live Blog

7.34pm: In case you missed it - the backdrop to Gaddafi's speech - a piece of artwork showing a clenched fist crushing a US fighter jet, in front of the words "Allahu Akbar" [God is the greatest]. 

The man is crazy, a nut.  But a very well armed nut; who's vowed to continue using these weapons to massacre his own people.  This is going on in the world right now. People are fighting it.  And I am still awe-struck by the horror and bravery.  As I have been since mid-January.


As always, the definitive source for all things revolution this winter is the NPR twitter curator, @acarvin

I like my eyes just the way they are...

Yesterday, the New York Times had this interesting article about how different plastic surgery procedures are popular in different cultures.  It's pretty common knowledge that different traits are considered desirable in different cultures, so this article isn't ground breaking in any way, but it is interesting to see exactly what is popular these days amongst different groups.  Supposedly, Asians want big earlobes.  No thanks!

I promise I'll blog about music and sneakers next week...

Just words on cardboard, sure. But wouldn't it be cool if all citizens were more empathetic and less suspicious of other peoples and cultures; instead of seeing them as subjects of leaders and extensions of polices?

Another at SOURCE.

Happy Friday

It's Friday so let's focus on Wisconsin, which is surprisingly giving me the warm and fuzzies.

The video below shows firefighters - LEAD BY BAGPIPERS!!! - walking into the state capital building to join their fellow public workers, who have taken over the retunda. Why is this so important? The voice explains:

"The bagpipers and the uniformed men you are seeing coming into the rotunda right now are firefighters, they are getting huge applause because in this bill they are technically exempt from [Gov.] Walker's proposals. But there has been a huge showing of firefighters in this area."

If you didn't catch that, it's important because the Governor exempted these unions.  These unions, however, protested in solidarity nonetheless.  

SOURCE 

If you are confused about the bill, here's one quick article.  But to understand what's actually going, this may help 1) a month ago Wisconsin was set to have a $120 million budget surplus for the year and 2) watch this (after the jump)

Pop Chart Lab

Lots of clever things come from Brooklyn these days, Pop Chart Lab being one of them.  I never knew I wanted a poster visualizing the migratory patterns of fresh princes until I saw this:

More awesome charts after the jump.

"Gettin crunk on brewskis with my broskis"

This is a fitting "first post" for me (J would concur). The amazing comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates put out a new video for their song, This Party Took a Turn for the Douche. The song is kind of amazing, as you can tell by these lyrics:

Did my last keg stand like General Custer

And I'm assessin' the damage like a claims adjuster

I ain't your Daddy but I'll call you son

Yeah I get metaphysical like fuckin' John Donne

There's also few things more gratifying than singing For the douche, for the douche For the motherfuckin douche!!!!!! If you want to feel cool, you can see their old-skool video, which I kinda prefer. See it after the jump.

Welcome to Dos Orange

Welcome to Dos Orange.  This is our blog.  We're glad you're here.  We will post things that interest us that we hope will interest you.

J & S