my ipod's turn to blog

i'm overdue on blogging what music i've been into these past few months. sometime i'll make a finetune mix of all these guys but in the mean time, check out their free listening links here:

kathleen edwards - simple & beautiful, she's proof that folk music is alive & well.
the hickories - these songs are lovely and need some attention, tell your friends!
lucinda williams - of course
rodrigo y gabriela - these guys are getting really popular in colorado but i don't know about the rest of the world... they're like the opposite of gipsy kings, spanish-influenced music that's subtle and yet robust considering it's only two people.
cat power - i am baffled at how i never knew this artist sooner, she matches all my favorite styles. and that is why... i love pandora!
esthero - i always liked her but finally she has moved out of the UK-only market.
tristan prettyman - featured on g. love's "beautiful" all over the radio right now, she is quite the awesome and as of now, under-hyped talent... her myspace has a funny impromptu smack in the face song for lindsay lohan.
eisley - they look like little junior dandy warhols! how cute. and they sound like little sixpence none the richer juniors.
lucie silvas - another UK star who hasn't crossed the pond - i picked up on her at an H&M store in europe. she sounds like a much softer christina aguilera at times.
amel larrieux - beauty. full. nuff. said.

visit etsy if you dare

ahhhhhh! i've been avoiding checking out the web site etsy.com ever since molly mentioned it to me last february and i just knew i wouldn't be able to resist buying a ton of stuff. i ended up checking it for a gift idea tonight and my wallet will never be the same (or my purse...).

etsy is a ginormous online shop of handmade goods by cute artists and designers. i tried so hard to resist going nuts but here's some of the damage already done:

above this bagonebag is totally me, $43 incl. shipping


hedgehog & lil' peep bobby pins from tashabb, $6


blue & brown baby wale corduroy tote (i've been needing something for yoga class) $40 incl. shipping

and my favorite of all, the below little owl 'wristlet' by designer blissful! only i got it in darker red. was $36 but it's a "custom order".

ahhh, love this site. gotta go to bed now.

absolut times square

absolut launched a new non-bottle shaped ad campaign last month that otherwise wouldn't have caught my attention but i LOVE their innovative makeover of times square that was in rolling stone this month. one thing i can't figure out no matter how hard i google, is who the exlamation points painting on the left, behind warhol is. i thought it might be jasper johns but i can't confirm. does anyone recognize it? sorry i couldn't find a blown up version of the ad yet!

trailer reviews with a few althoughs

all the summer blockbuster / family movies are shit, so i won't even go there.

the offbeat movie 10mph totally appeals to me - although not for the originality and drama everyone is talking about - but because it's the real life story of harry & lloyd! did NO ONE else notice the correlation?

denzel's next movie, american gangster looks great - although - does ridley scott have to put russell crowe in every movie? crowe can do a brooklyn accent (cinderella man) but he can't pull off a generic american accent. enough crowe already.

you're gonna miss me is another example of why it's so great that documentaries are finally getting production dollars & a little commercial success (last year's american hardcore was another hidden jem).

finally parker posey is starring in a drama again - yay!

everyone's talking about judd apatow / seth rogan's genius in knocked up but i think their next movie superbad (super bad title) looks more on par with something about mary. the mclovin scene is already a classic!

then there's the upcoming anime film Paprika whose director Satoshi Kon was described at the New York Film Festival as follows, “His new movie plays like a head-on collision be­tween Hello Kitty and Philip K. Dick…This delightful movie is bursting with ideas about Japanese repression, multiple identities, collective dreams and the dark side of the country’s love of Cute.”

awesome! It's so very Bjork sounding. and speaking of bjork-sounding, check out some of the wacky soundtrack to Paprika here.

in other news, dirty dancing: the video game is on its way... is it just me, or what took them so long? this movie only gets better & better with age.

'sniff

everyone told me last year when i came back from europe, i'd miss it terribly the first few weeks i was home.

it took me a full year to catch up to that, though. every day this month i've been dreaming of my 3 month vacation, and today is probably the worst yet, since last year on this day i was in Cinque Terre, Italy. ugh!!!

flossy miscellany

wholly. check out this amazing blog of re-imagined movie posters, grindhouse-style. i guess my favorite has to be milo & otis, page 8.

um, if you are good at drawing monsters, this guy in the bay area needs your help. it's for a great cause and a really original idea!

speaking of original ideas... i'd love to meet the genius who thought of the bed jump blog (which brilliantly now supports a hotel booking web site). this blog is definitely in my favorites and definitely is going to get addictive!! thanks amy for the fwd.

another favorite blog i read this week was the scariness of science fiction-character weddings... eeeeeeeeeeeeyikes. halloween & weddings just don't seem like a good combination in my mind.

the above link is via mental floss, my favorite blog so far. it's everything you didn't know you wanted to know, but are so glad you now know. like that there's such a thing as extreme croquet.

and for a real bust-a-gut laugh, check out these unconventional someecards that say what you really want to say, but never would dare to.

queen of the cheezy

today's news about hilary asking the public to pick her campaign song just made me gag - especially her song choices! jesus jones, right here right now? if you're gonna go back to that horrid era, why not just go with MC Hammer's 2 Legit 2 Quit? and U2... how cliché can you get! hilary is like, so trying to be cool, and it's like, so not working. barack is the one whose web site tactics are working, hil. nobody likes a copy cat.

i still think barack should pick a rage against the machine song for his campaign. well, maybe that would scare a few midwestern voters away. but how about "talkin' bout a revolution" by tracy chapman? yeah?

safe to say one of the biggest things on youtube this week is a bruce campbell commercial for old spice where he sings "hungry like a wolf" lounge-style. i'm more curious about the underlying strategy of this commercial... is it ever actually going to be on television or did old spice just "leak" it on youtube to get free advertising? i'm thinking the latter.

two web sites i'm really addicted to lately, and really crack me up:
the cool kids' dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/yesterday.php boochabla!
and the site for all the news that's random - http://www.mentalfloss.com/

more coffee please.

i love this web site

check out this author's web site for her new book.
http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

so much to say

lots of news this week...
stop the press - paula abdul just released her greatest hits and that gives me hope that she is giving up on ever continuing with her recording career.

Oprah has officially endorsed Barack Obama (which is no surprise) but I was surprised at the impact several sites are predicting this could have on his odds...

in flip flop news... new james bond style flops with hidden pockets under the soles just came out. this will probably sell really well in nudist communities but other than that environment, i can't fathom a reason i'd want to carry cash or a credit card in shoes that are meant to be worn in the water. duh!

dylan sighting

this story about bob dylan singing to a kindergarten class is almost too good to be true. i'd be scared, too! but glad to hear he's getting along with his son & grandson. jakob dylan is one of the most underrated semi-young talents of this day & age.

dig

the dirty dancing's ultimate fan quiz just came out. can't say i'm going to ace this one but lots of my friends will!!! you know who you are.

lastly

here's an amusing and cute story of the guy who came in LAST at the boston marathon on monday. i enjoyed the photos since i have a lot of memories of walking those same areas of comm ave, beacon, & boylston (just never walked it all in one day!).

breaking news!

menudo is back!! the legacy continues...

joss stone's male counterpart

just found out ryan shaw is touring with joss this spring... love them both, but that might be soul overload.

and now for something unrelated msn has a really cool photoblog and my favorite photo of the year is of the hunky jesus contest on Easter Sunday in San Francisco. only in san francisco!!

technology's so cool

i just discovered there's now a way to give money to charity (a little or a lot - depending on how much you're online) just by using microsoft instant messaging. also there's a search engine called GoodSearch that gives money to the charity of your choice every time you search (even at 1 cent per click, it could really add up...) I hope Google acquires them soon and then I'll be really happy!

my hero, will

check out this automated will-farrell-movie generator. too cool! seriously i don't know where people come up with this stuff but it's great.

in other will news, he is launching a web site of original comedy sketches. check out funnyordie.com in the coming days.

yay cranberries & peeps!

dolores o'riordan is back and she has beautiful hair, too! i wonder why she's not "the cranberries" anymore? she's playing a tiny theater in denver on july 17th, note to self. i saw her in boston once and it was one of the best performances i've ever experienced.

and if it's possible, an even bigger YAY was this peep diorama contest on the washington post. oh my gosh, if i had known about this sooner, liz - you could have had a project encompassing hours & hours & hours of fun! these were all so well-done but i think i love the peepmobile the best.

DAM that's great art

I visited the newly rebuilt denver art museum today, finally. I really am not crazy about the funky angles, angles, angles architectural style of Daniel Liebskind. It's taking the theme too far for me, like when someone collects cows and there's cows in every room in their house, cows on the toilet paper, cows on the door knob...

but the new space definitely does a great job accomodating the modern art work and the layered levels remind me a lot of the guggeinheim, so I can see why Denver is so proud of the darn thing. more photos are on larasue.photosite.com.

probably the most thought-provoking and powerful part for me was a temporary exhibition called RADAR which featured a private colorado couple's interesting collection of surreal contemporary cartoony artists including yoshitomo nara (left) and michael joo (whose beheaded buddha statues with plastic Ken dolls for heads, were hard to accept as art, yet amusing).

the most interesting painting that is still on my mind is gottfried helnwein's epiphany (click for link). it's stiking how the mother and baby are so beautiful, so sharp in focus, and clearly from a different era than those around her. also just fascinating how much it looks like an actual photograph. even close up, it is so real.

i finally got about 100 photos from the last year of walking around Denver up on Picasa, so you can see the neighborhood where I work. it's certainly... what's the word... unpredictable.

here's what's dope

i keep forgetting to mention that if anyone wants to listen to my favorite mix that i have on at work (no login required) click here.

i love finetune. it's like sharing your ipod with friends! lots of similar sites are cropping up too. i'll try to make more mixes throughout the year.

thanks to slammy for tipping me onto a new craze - credit card skins! I can’t believe no one’s ever thought of this idea before. And I can’t believe I already bought one. (I got the one called "ohmigawd", appropriately).

Dang!

i know i've afore mentioned this but it's so not fair!!! (and yes, i'm stomping my feet right now) that beastie boys are playing a number of european festivals this summer. especially my favorite cities of Lisbon and Barcelona. why couldn't it have been LAST summer?

here's a quick ditty about their new album. so, is it going to be sick?

blah.

sorry for the stretch of quiet. there's just nothing good to report this month - i turned 29 (yuck), there's been no progress / responses to resumes when it comes to moving to CA (owch), i am getting weekly accupuncture treatments for ongoing allergies which are not necessarily working and not cheap... yadda yadda.

this past weekend i was a little cheered up because we had a heavy rain day, good for being lazy on saturday, and then gorgeous "flip flop weather" on sunday which was refreshing. knowing Spring in colorado, it will at least snow a few more times before we're in the clear, but i'm content with a couple warm weekends in between!

so here's a couple fun news stories of the weekend:

united way got free advertising on saturday night live over the weekend! yeee! it won't be on youtube for long but you can always go to snl.com.

yessss! finally silver spoons season 1 is on DVD. a true 80's classic! now i just need punky brewster to complete my collection. (kidding, i never watch dvd's of television. i prefer tvland)

and one for the "why didn't we think of this" file.
according to popcandy blog:
"Before the Internet, if three friends [or two roommates] wanted to take a road trip, they just hopped in a cruddy car [such as an '84 dodge minivan with a stickshift] and traveled where the wind [the alcohol, oh - i mean - the wind] took them. Now there are things like CashRoadTripUSA.com. The premise: Three friends want to travel across the country, but first they're selling ad space on every inch of their van. Ads cost $100 per square. The website just launched, so a lot of van space is still available. The gang is also offering the chance to wear company T-shirts during the journey. That can cost up to $7,500 a day, if you want a female to wear the shirt."

$7500 is more than our entire road trip (including the car) itself cost. but then again, we broke down in shasta. with a few thousand dollars, we probably could have bought a newer (like a VW!) van. but then again, after all my stickers were on the car, there wasn't much room for ad space.

stuff like this makes my day

ooooh. lauryn hill finally returns to recording! she's on one song of the very cool new joss stone album. this may actually be one of the few weeks of the year i get off my ass to drive to a record store, instead of just typing a password into itunes. yeah, it's a few bucks more, but itunes doesn't provide the same instant gratification as when you unwrap the plastic and pop a new CD into the car stereo for the ride home.

The New Yorker just launched a new web site with animated cartoons! i like the snail one.

this death by caffeine web site lets you fantasize about how many grande cups of starbucks coffee, or how many reeses peanut butter cups, you could eat before it would kill you. is that meant to actually warn you or just disturb you?

home, alas

wulp. i had a nice trip out to CA, had fun visiting molly & josh, but it sounds like moving to CA is not going to happen yet.


the only thing i'm actually mad at is my fortune cookies lately have been very misleading. : )

so i'm trying to tell myself something bigger & better must be around the bend.

'till then, here's a couple photos of favorite things on my trip - above, a sign on telegraph in berkeley (exactly!), molly's kitchen table, the puppies - siena & sadie, going for a ride to the dog park on friday.

R2

R2-D2 may be moving to a street corner near you soon! how fun. only 400 nation-wide, i wonder if i'll ever see one. also there will be star wars postage stamps on May 25. i think USPS finally has a marketing genius on staff.

(follow up: here's an interactive map of where you can find R2-D2 mailboxes)

laughs from this week

- best / weirdest moments of the muppet show

- the headline says it all "Grown Man Cries Over Not Having His Blackberry" - a hilarious and eye-opening story of technology addiction

- forbes' cover story on Rupert Murdoch says soon MySpace will be automatically matching up advertisers with users based on products mentioned in their profiles! prepare for the onslaught of junk mail, suckers!! ha ha, told you so.

- the movie may suck, but hugh grant's imitation 80's video makes me laugh all day long. I wish I could pay Hugh Grant to get drunk and dance at my wedding someday.

sweet tooth day

so like... sorry i've been mia for a couple weeks. a lot is going on, most especially an unexpected call to interview at my favorite film company (can you guess?) in san francisco this friday. so chris and i are flying out to visit monterey thurs through tues. looking forward to relaxing - or trying to relax anyway. yay beach.

noteable mention this week is the new music site, finetune.com which you can post MIXES for free for the entire world to share! yesssssssssssssssss. does this mean no more all-nighters making my mixmas CD on December 21st? stay tuned, i will no doubt be getting very into this site.

and best of all, if you forgot to buy your sweetheart something, you could get really creative with this make-your-own necco candy hearts site though words have to be 4-letters. (um)

or you could just get them with a ring pop. that always wins me over.

other funny stuff:
- unfortunate / disturbing valentines (you'll laugh out loud)
- stephen colbert gets his own ice cream flavor?
- hoops & yoyo belting out "close to you"

wake up call.

music news -
i am still scratching my head that i have never discovered patty griffin before this year, especially since she's a boston girl.

i am trying really hard to cut back on my itunes junkie habit, but i did have to download Paolo Nutini tonight, he's just so likeable. also recently I'm into Nina Gordon (former lead singer of Veruca Salt)... what else... well I'm not buying any of last year's American Idol contestant's albums...

there are rumors flying everywhere that iTunes is going to get the Beatles library on Valentines Day. I tend believe it's not a coincidence that these rumors leaked the same day that Vista launched, or in other words, it's one more of Steve Jobs' slap-microsoft-in-the-face marketing tactics. it will be interesting to me if and when they ever do sell beatles songs as singles on iTunes, to see what song is downloaded the most. early prediction: it won't be YESTERDAY. and it sure won't be GOOD DAY SUNSHINE. i have to give this some thought... (anonymous tip: if you ever want the whole beatles catalog in mp3 format for about 3 bucks, just take a vacation to Moscow)

and youtube highlight of the week: spike jonze commercials

anyone have an estelle getty fettish?

talk about people who have too much time on their hands. this is the prime example of how the internet provides the ultimate opportunity for ANY freedom of expression and with youtube... there's no need to license the music, or get rights to the video footage.

ran-dom. hilarious. check this out:
the estelle getty workout video remix!

as you know i don't patronize myspace (because it sucks) but if i did, sue teller would be the first in my friends. this old lady's dope.

patty g

i don't know why it took a road trip to texas for me to discover patty griffin because she crosses over with tons of my other favorite artists, but somehow she flew under the radar all these years for me. she even wrote one of my favorite dixie chicks songs, 'Top of the World'.

but she is one of those rare artists i heard once in the car and then i couldn't stop replaying the song over & over...

perfect timing that she's playing at a little theater in Boulder March 22. now if she would just tour with Lucinda, that would be my dream show.

maybe it's just my trip to texas talking...

this is random for me because I'm not usually one to have a lot of PRIDE in Colorado, but it's really bugging me that some reporters in Denver are outright saying that the Democratic National Convention in Denver will "put us on the map" and "dispel stereotypes about Denver being the land of cowboys" (paraphrasing). None of my friends or relatives have ever stereotyped Denver as a cowpoke town in my years here...

And yet stories like this one on our local news last week http://cbs4denver.com/local/local_story_024141109.html
always make me humbly realize that there are parts of our state, not even two hours away, where cowboys and ranchers actually still rely on cows and hay to make their living. It's remarkable to stop and think that industries exist where physical factors like cattle, weather, and train deliveries affect the business (as opposed to bluetooth and blackberries).

Denver's annual stock show and rodeo, also last week, is consistently a huge money and tourism generator for Denver, so I especially find it disgusting of certain snobby reporters to say we can finally "dispel the myth" about cowboy culture here. WTF.