This month’s banner is taken over July 4th weekend up at Mt. Riga, a cabin on a mountain by a lake in CT. The cabin originally belonged to my Great Aunt and Uncle, but since they’ve passed it’s been inherited by my dad’s cousins. It doesn’t have any electricity, so all the lighting is by kerosene lamps, and the fridge and stove are gas powered. The water is from a nearby well. They have an outhouse. Staying there is a major mental battery recharge. Although, as my sister says, you have to get used to the silence.

Max took this picture, and the dappled light is spectacular. You can’t see very well, but there’s laundry hanging in the background. I’m playing an old tenor ukelele that lives in the house. It’s only got 3 strings, and I tune them like a guitar, but it’s surprising how much music you can get out of it. My dad is enjoying a bourbon and watching on. My favorite tenor uke moment was when my mom (extremely randomly) requested that she wanted to hear some Fugazi and I was able to pick out the bassline for "Waiting Room". My sister and I then did our best Guy & Ian impressions. Magic moment.

I’m working on how to change the blog title color…it’s killing me…I only know enough css & php & so on to get me into trouble…

UPDATE – got the title color under control…results of my first experience of posting a problem on a support forum and people actually taking the time to reply and help me fix it! Who are these people?! Can I give them an award?

Hey, did you guys know that one of my sister’s closest friends used to be the Celebrity Assistant for Al Franken? It’s true! One time my sister called me up and said "Guess what I’m doing?" and I’m all like "How the hell would I know?" and she goes "Well…I’m eating Al Franken’s ice cream!"

Which made me go "Wha?!"

It seems that Al was going on some kind of diet and had to get rid of all the ice cream he had in the house. He invited his assistant to eat it, and she, not being able to handle the quantity, called upon my sister to help. Crazy. KT, you correct me if I got that wrong. But I should say that if it is wrong, I’m still going to tell the story like that, ‘cuz it has a nice vibe to it…

I also remember reading a biography about Saturday Night Live and there was one great story about Al & his writing partner trying to come up with a sketch and taking LSD…both of them began imitating Nixon, making "V" signs and pretending they had tremendous jowls, and harrumphing. They did it all night long, two weird Nixons. What a weird image.

Plus don’t even get me (or Al) started on how much coke he’s reported to have done.

And now he’s Mr. Senator. And apparently he’s going to play it straight, but we’ll always know him as the ice-cream loving LSD-Nixon cokehead. And if we ever forget that that’s who he used to be, why we can just go to the videotape…

Actually, let’s not.

Photo is Philippe Ramette ‘Balcon II’ Hong Kong 2001.

[via]

pix are back?

Originally uploaded by jjgranger

if this works, then maybe I fixed the post pictures by phone, which
would be amazing…
it broke a while ago, and def contributed to the feeling of no posts
going on around here…

(the first image that shows up when you search google for "gomorrah")

Every now and then, I’ll load up the ipod with stuff i haven’t heard and go walk in the park. I don’t do it enough, and every time I actually get around to doing it, I try to remind myself that I need to do this more, beause it is amazing, and recharging, and world-re-orienting. The last time I did it, I was working on a mix my friend AD, and auditioning a bunch of Transglobal Underground tracks to see if any would be good enough. I like Transglobal Underground, but their tracks tend to be really hit or miss, so I don’t listen to them that much.

Then I hit this one and my eyes popped open. The song tells a story, so I’d definitely wait to hear it until you can pay close attention, maybe use headphones, maybe go for a walk in the park. It’s a blast…

Transglobal Underground – Drinking In Gomorrah

If you’re going to talk dead celebrities, I have to say I think I was more surprised by Heath Ledger than MJ. Even then, I don’t think I could say "moved" or "effected" by the death, but surprised, and maybe a bit bummed ‘cuz I thought he’d probably do some great stuff at some point.

A while ago, MT and I went to this place in WBurg (Brooklyn) that was funded by Heath Ledger and some of his friends. If you didn’t know, you’d never be able to tell it was a celebri-joint, it was nicely understated, the food was fantastic, and the service was warm. It was a great brunch experience. Also, they were playing 12" records that were really great. Some re-issue of a deep Jamaican dub release, and something by this band called Beirut, which sounded like old stuff, all accordian-y and the cover of the record was great. It looked like this:

Did a bit of reading about them, and discovered they’re a modern band. One of the songs was unbelievable, I’ll have to track it down. But in the meantime, I recently came across this mashup where they took the instrumental from a Beirut song (obscure, weird) and mashed it up with a vocal by Ghostface (dope, fresh). It works well…

Save Me Concubine – Ghostface vs. Beirut

[audio:ghostface_killah_beirut.mp3]

I know, 3 posts in one day might be a bit much, but these are things I’ve been wanting to post for a while and haven’t had time…

I won’t write some big thing about MJ, but it is amazing that because of the new digital world, it’s likely that he’ll always have the top-selling album of all time. Here’s a tribute…DJ this one late in the party when everyone’s on the dance floor and you’ll have a riot on your hands…

Usha Uthup – Chupke-kaun-aya

I still can’t quite wrap my mind/eyes around this, but apparently in this picture below, the seemingly bright green spiral and the seemingly light blue spiral are actually the same color. Whoa.

Check out the original post to read more about how this is possible, but be prepared to still not believe it! We can’t believe our eyes! Psychedelic to the max(ine)!!

hey, here’s some footage of an octopus squeezing through a one-inch hole…

Not our cat, but looking so similar it’s dam weird.

Ours isn’t shaved, ps.

Look how many amazing things there are in this headline, I can find at least four that just sound fantastic:

Mexico finds cocaine haul hidden in frozen sharks

This story is wild. they found over A TON of cocaine! Check it:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s navy has seized more than a ton of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the United States.

Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan, the navy and Mexican media said on Tuesday.

"We are talking about more than a ton of cocaine that was inside the ship," Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters after X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative ways of getting drugs into the United States — in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture — as Mexico’s military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.

Sealed beer cans?! Maybe there’s a way to get the stealth beer involved…

There were a bunch of interviews done with the people who film and produce all the BBC natural history stuff, and I’m going through the transcripts to find bits…lots of highlights there too, but this one stands out:

There’s another wonderful story in East Africa of a tribe of people, the Akumba, who have learned how to collaborate with a bird in order to get honey. [11:06:58:03]  Now, this is a bird that will lead them to honey.  Um, the, the people can’t smell the honey, the bird can.  But the bird cannot access the honey because it’s only this very small size.  The people can access the honey.  So the bird will sing a song and lead these people to the honey, to a, to a hive.  And then the bird waits patiently while the people get the honey out of the hive, and the people have learned that if they give the bird a little bit of honey, that the bird will do it again.  So that’s an amazing relationship between man and nature.
 

Hey, remember in the early 90’s when they switched the way they measured top 40? They introduced Soundscan, which actually measured the number of CD’s being sold. The way they used to measure top 40 was a bunk method of radio play and the number of records ordered by stores, etc. So when we felt like top 40 was being foisted on us, it actually really was!

Anyway, once Soundscan went into effect, the numbers turned on their heads, and we got a much better idea of what people were actually buying. It was at this time that country and hip-hop exploded in popularity. Because that’s what people were actually buying, and then when the rest of the country saw that stuff in top 40, they went to go get it too. Pop basically expanded (or was replaced) to include country and hip hop.

So how come there’s no American Idol for hip hop? You know there are a million young rappers and DJs out there, wouldn’t it be a monster hit? Why the focus on saccharine pop? Obviously, you’d have to make it a grittier format, lose the shiny sheen, but I think it would be huge.

This idea is so massiv that I’m pretty sure it’s already being pitched and in production somewhere. Million dollar idea.