Music

Boom Shadow by Nino Moschella
2nd album from the guy who I anticipate new work from the most. It’s a near-guarantee that I’ll love every piece of music that he puts out.

Good City for Dreamers by General Elektriks
It’s been a while since their last release, but he picks up right where he left off 6 years ago.

Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & the Bee
Easily the closest I get to pop in my listening habits, but I think I’m a sucker for Greg Kurstin’s production.

Runners Up: Carried Away by the People Under the Stairs, BLACKsumers’night by Maxwell, The Ecstatic by Mos Def

Movies

Star Trek by the J.J. Abrams
After the new Batman movies and this, I’m hoping that folks are figuring out how to properly handle summer blockbusters.

In The Loop by Armando Iannucci
Hands down the best use of swearing in the last decade. Even better than the TV series.

The Informant! by Steven Soderbergh
My favorite thing about this movie is that this guy really exists.

Runners Up: Moon, Good Hair

Books

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
I remember the author from one of my favorite super-hero graphic novels back in ’88, but I’m glad to see that 20 years later he’s done his first self-written graphic novel.

Nothing
I didn’t realize it until I started this list, but what the hell has happened to me?! I apparently stopped reading this year. Asterios Polyp is the only book that I can remember reading the whole thing. I mean, I read a few things that were published before 2009 which don’t count, but still…

Man… I better clean up my act.

Time To Jailbreak

The folks over at Teehan+Lax plan to make my iPhone a lot more useful. They’re in the process of working with the Cydia folks to release a new lock screen for the iPhone entitled Element. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the Android, and the single feature that always stood out as heads and shoulders above the iPhone is their notifications system. Hopefully, as soon as next week, that will no longer be a problem. Take a look at some more screenshots.

Watch Out Andy Rooney

I admittedly have a soft spot for Jon Stewart (who, thank goodness, now has a key to Bellingham, WA) and Stephen Colbert, and not so much of a soft spot (a hard spot?) for Christopher Hitchens. I first became skeptical of Hitchens after reading about his stance on the Iraq War. And that feeling only increased after he attempted to join Richard Dawkins at the head of the Atheist movement by trying to mask his lack of scientific background with an even larger combative ego than Dawkins.

Hitchens uses the fact that Stewart was ranked as the #1 trusted newscastor in an online popularity pool to whine and complain that he is no Mark Twain (Is anyone really arguing that point?). His evidence seems to be Al Franken’s books (I’m still trying to figure out what that has to do with the Daily Show). My best guess is that either Hitchens is still bitter 4 years later that Stewart didn’t promote his Jefferson book well enough, or is formally applying for Andy Rooney’s position as Old Crank Laureate.

The Game That Keeps On Loving You

Take one look at this image and say out loud what it makes you think.

You got it right: REO Speedwagon, the Video Game!
Apparently someone is making a Halo killer in the forum of a casual hidden object video game. I am currently going to great lengths to make sure that the video game company I work for is going to sell this.

Twitter fave “Shit My Dad Says” heads to TV

What?! That is enough basis for the foundation of a television show? My pops might not be that cranky, but give him 5 years. He’s on his way; and soon I’ll be rich.

PS: I love that the one person he follows is Levar Burton.

Dan Scanlon covers X-Men 1

Probably the 2nd best post (just behind this one) on one of my favorite blogs.

Dear American Airlines

Interesting:

1. Designer dreams up a redesign of American Airlines’ website and chastises the company (particularly their design department)
2. An employee from the AA design group writes back to say, “You’re right.”
3. AA fires said employee for breaking their NDA.

Lots to take away from this. For me, most of all is that I’ve been in this employee’s shoes and this story reaffirms that I will make sure to never be wearing shoes like his in a company like that again. It sounds clear that AA is a seriously messed up company, and, as folks have said, the original critique is a little naive of the situation: A little screenshot does not a website make.

Chris Ware Does Halloween

This already appeared to make the rounds on the internet, but was too good not to pass up posting. Make sure to read the 4-page spread.

Pet Care For Those Left Behind By The Apocalypse

You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

I am dying to know how much $$ they’ve pulled in from this…

Poodle Doodles

Speaking of pets: This is very, very, awesome.

Star Wars Uncut

Someone took “A New Hope” and cut it up into 15 sec. segments, then set up a site that assigns users to “swede” chunks of Star Wars. Once completed, this will be a surreal mishmash of glorious proportions.

Mario Kart Jamboree

Speaking of collaborations: Over 40 DeviantARTists picked a Mario Kart Character and rendered them in their own style. Make sure to check it out in its full size.

Far Foods

Interesting design concept for grocery receipts to drive the point home about the thousands of miles your food travels to get to you and the result it has on global warming. I bet this would have a dramatic effect on people’s food choices. They’d either shop locally or stop buying fruit and vegetables.

Fancy Fast Food

Speaking of food: Take the shittiest food possible, and make it look convincing enough that you might eat it until you realize that you’re about to loose a couple years of your life. Great idea for a website.

Well, no reason to keep it all for myself. Inspired by teehan+lax’s iPhone PSD, here are the basic GUI elements, built using vectors to scale, for the Android. It’s far from complete, but I’m willing to expand it. If you’re interested in other elements, let me know.

DOWNLOAD: Android_GUI.psd.zip (104 KB)

For Steven’s buzz cutting in Baghdad, Obama worked with the Colbert Report prior to the show to pre-tape a segment. It was pretty interesting to watch them work out the timing.

Paul Tebbott’s Portfolio

He’s like a less-busy version of Scott Hansen. Great use of color and texture.

Windowsill

I highly recommend this quick addictive little puzzle game. It used to be a $3 download, but now the first half of the game is available for free online. It’s beautifully designed and worth every penny.

Give Me Your Lunchmoney, Nerd

If there was to be a Wes Anderson Film Festival, this is what it would look like.

How Do They Do Scribblenauts?!

I got a deal on a Nintendo DS a few years ago because I was curious about New Super Mario Bros., but I haven’t really touched it since. Now I better find it, because this game looks amazing. You have to lead your character toward the star within every level through solving puzzles. But to do it, you have at your arsenal any object in the living world you can think of. They did it by sitting down 5 people for 6 months and scour the Dictionary and Wikipedia. Comes out in September.

And Here’s The Kicker…

Upcoming book with TONS of interviews with some of the most important people in comedy, including:

• Jack Handey
• Harold Ramis
• Allison Silverman
• Robert Smigel
• Bob Odenkirk
• Stephen Merchant
• George Meyer
• And tons more…

David Cross stars with Will Arnett & Spike Jonze in UK Pilot

Doing another sitcom is a weird thing to do when “the sitcom framework really [feels] like a drag on [your] energy and sensibility.” But it’s cool. I don’t mind.

American Todd Margaret (David Cross) bluffs his way into an apparently great job opportunity, heading up the sales team in his employer’s London office. All he has to do is sell several thousand energy drinks before his boss visits him in a week. Simple. Apart from the fact that he knows nothing about British culture and nothing about sales. This is further complicated when he lies continuously to cover his ignorance and spectacularly fails to impress Alice the first beautiful girl he meets. Dave his British co-worker, soon takes full advantage of Todd’s situation and chaos ensues.

1/1000th of Wikipedia Bound As A Book

When I was a kid, I used to have dreams about binding books this big (seriously). My pops has these *huge* pharmaceutical books and I wondered that if the bindings could be that big for his books, what would the limit be. Turns out that it’s pretty big.

DUPES

DUPE #1: Exiled Cuban Blogger Dupes Castro’s Son. I love this story. I now want to add Claudia Cartagena to the stable of imaginary characters (Mabbie & my protégé, Le Prince) that I hang out with.

DUPE #2: Bolivian TV News Airs LOST scene as Flight 447′s last moment. Silly TV people. Don’t you know that LOST Island (right next to Torture Island) is in the Pacific Ocean and *not* the Atlantic Ocean that 447 crashed in?

Sorry I’m Late

Great stop motion video project that reminds me of the Her Morning Elegance video. Make sure to check out the “Making Of” video.

Things That Can Go In My House

No more need for power-strips.

I like this faucet because it looks great, but more importantly, it’s probably easy to clean.

Sly Stone News

The original Woodstock soundtrack only has a few songs from Sly & the Fam’s legendary set, and for the last several years
I’ve been listening to a Woodstock bootleg that comes from a pretty crummy board mix (still interesting to hear the differences in the performance from the edited official release and the bootleg release). BUT FOR NO LONGER: On June 30th, Sly & The Family Stone: The Woodstock Experience (2CD) will be released featuring the best live performance ever (TRUTH).

Also, somehow KCRW was able to coax Sly out of hiding for his first on-air interview in over a decade. Interesting bits in the interview: If You Want Me To Stay is a literal edict to fans that he’ll stick around as long as people want him around; and that he used to get into arguments with Charles Manson at Doris Day’s place around the time he recorded Que Sera Sera. Listen below:

Previous thoughts on Sly & the Family Stone