New Banner!

If you read my blog from the actual site http://heylookitsart.wordpress.com, you have noticed I have a new banner. It is no longer the standard blue this-and-that that comes with a free Word Press account. I cropped the image all by myself and even added text! I have done this all for free.

To crop the image, I used a combination of the Mac programs Preview and iPhoto. I then discovered that Word Press has a cropping tool built into its back end and realized I wasted an hour trying to figure out how to crop to a specific size using those free tools.

I got the text on there by using my favorite find of the day: Picnik. I’m probably pretty late to the party on this one, but this is a free, web-based basic photo editor that lets you actually add text and stuff to your photos, as well as resize, crop, mess with colors, etc. It’s pretty easy to use.

Also, you’ll notice new punctuation on my blog name. It’s no longer a statement of excitement. Now it’s supposed to read like an embarassed explination.

The image I used is from when I ate 12 chicken strips at Applebee’s one day. That’s what I looked like right at the end. Unable to hold my head up. I’m only moderately satsified with this image, so I’ll probably find a better one and throw that up there some time. But for now: Full of Chicken Strips.

New Music

For the past three months or so I’ve been using the iTunes shopping cart feature. This means, when a song or artist or album came to mind that I just had to buy, I put it in my iTunes shopping cart. Then, when I have enough money I buy it. It’s called fiscal discipline and I try to have it.

Well, Christmas was recently and with it came enough money to buy my entire iTunes shopping cart. $164.81 of music that I can’t live without. 15 hours of music. 17 albums, 3 a la carte songs. 240 tracks. 68.3 cents per song. 18.3 cents per minute of music. Heckuva deal!

Let’s just say I bought a lot of music.

What I bought can be split up into a few categories:

Jazz

Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson: Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson

I’ve taken to listening to Jazz 88 and I heard them play a song I know well by an artist I know well, but the pairing of the two had never crossed my mind. It was Louis Armstrong singing I Get a Kick Out of You, which the more I think about it the less that song fits her persona (it’s much more believable when Sinatra sings it). Well, I just loves me some Satchmo, so I figured I’d get the whole damn thing. So I did.

Wynton Marsalis: Magic Hour

I took a relatively safe bet buying this album. I’ve liked everything I’ve heard from Wynton Marsalis over the past few years, but for some reason I would never commit to actually buying one of his albums. I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve gotten into it a bit more.

Zoot Sims Quartet: That Old Feeling

The Zoot Sims are featured on the Rushmore soundtrack and that song convinced me to buy the only album of theirs on iTunes. Additional encouragement came when I found out the first track on the album is 9:20 Special, which is off another all-time favorite album of mine.

Lady Singers

Feist: The Reminder

I’d been meaning to buy this album since my 23rd birthday. It was in my iTunes shopping cart in 2007 when I was trying to decide what music to buy then and didn’t quite make the cut for some reason. When I saw Feist on Steven Colbert’s Christmas special I instantly developed a HUGE crush on her (like, huge) and I decided this year I wouldn’t let her music pass me by for a second year.

Fiona Apple: Extraordinary Machine

I’ve been an on again/off again Fiona Apple fan for probably six years. The past year I’ve been very much on. I heard the title track off this album about a month ago and didn’t realize it was Fiona Apple at first. I then knew I must buy this album.

Alt Pop? Is That a Term? or: Artists I Heard on the Current

Gogol Bordello: Super Taranta!

Gogol Bordello has probably been one of my top five bands in the past 15 months. I heard Immigrant Punk on The Current in the summer of 2007 and asked specifically for Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike for my birthday that year. This year I got another one by them and I’m already in love with it.

Cloud Cult: Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

This is the new Cloud Cult album. I don’t have any of their other albums but I needed to start somewhere. I’ve heard them all year long on the Current, especially selections from this album, and for a while I’ve known that right when I get the money this would be at the top of my list. I nearly cheated and got it without dedicated funding a few times, but I decided not to. I am fiscally disciplined!

Art Brut: It’s a Bit Complicated

Ok, how can I not buy an album by an artist with this name? I’ve heard Art Brut on The Current a fair amount and I am really happy each time I do. Also, this album contains my favorite new song discovery so far (in this batch): Pump Up the Volume. Let’s just say I completely relate to the lyrics, except instead of “a pop song” it’s “this hilarious movie.” I’m a terrible man, I know.

Devotchka: A Mad and Faithful Telling

This is the album I’m least confident about. I like their song Clockwise Witness, but I’ve listened to a bunch of the other tracks on the album and they all seem to run together. Nothing stands out. I’m just not sure about this one. We’ll see.

Oppenheimer: Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It

Ok, so I didn’t actually hear Oppenheimer on The Current. I saw them open for They Might Be Giants twice. The first time they were fantastic but I didn’t buy their album (lack of cash). The second time I saw them they were even better and I did buy their album (the last ten dollars out of my pocket). It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might have additional albums past the one they were selling at the show and I was very pleased to see that they did.

Artists I Appreciate Now that My Tastes Have Matured

The Pixies: Surfer Rosa

When I was in high school, everyone in my lit class but me loved the Pixies. I had just never heard them really, and their fawning obsession (or what seemed like it to me at the time) sort of annoyed me. I’ve gone back to a compilation disc made for our class by a classmate and discovered that indeed the Pixies are pretty good. I decided on this particular album purely based on the fact that it contains a track entitled “Oh My Golly!” And it’s actually a pretty good song.

Wilco and Billy Bragg: Mermaid Avenue

I never used to like bands with depth. Or country overtones. I do now. I think it is past time I got this album. I’m really looking forward to it.

Tom Waits: Mule Variations

I have a pretty extensive hodgepodge of illegally downloaded Tom Waits songs. Now that I download legally, I figured it’s time to have actual full albums. I am really excited to have full Tom Waits albums. I will play them on repeat, I’m sure.

Tom Waits: Rain Dogs

Hell yes I bought two Tom Waits albums at once. I couldn’t decided between these two, so I didn’t. I love the polka and the voice. Can’t go wrong.

And the Rest

Adam Green: Sixes and Sevens

Adam Green is so fucking weird and another in that list of my current top five. I got the song Novotel from the album Jacket Full Of Danger in 2006 when it came with a free iTunes student sampler. I made it my business to march right down to the store and buy the CD and I’ve had it in my car’s CD changer (only 6 slots!) for a year and a half. I heard a review of this album on MPR (news and information) last summer and had to force myself not to drive right to the Best Buy to pick it up. It was one of the first albums into my shopping cart when I began this process three months ago.

David Bowie: Space Oddity

When I went to Britain last spring, I decided to bring a bunch of British media (books, music, movies) with me to appreciate while I was over there. One of the CDs I bought for the trip was Best of Bowie. I was immediately ready to buy full Bowie albums, and I swore the first Bowie album I got would be Space Oddity. And so it is.

Soundtrack: Rocky Horror Picture Show

I bought this on sort of a whim. The plan was to go to the Otter as a group and have everyone sing up to sing through the entire soundtrack. I realized I didn’t know any of the songs well enough, so I bought it to study up. That plan ended up falling through, so now I have this soundtrack. Forever.

Three tracks from They Might Be Giants tribute cover album Hello Radio

I got the tracks They’ll Need a Crane by the Wrens, Letterbox by Ok Go, and The End of the Tour by Hotel Lights. The best part about all these songs is how they emphasize the lyrics to these songs in ways the originals don’t. Which is to say they emphasize the lyrics at all, and furthermore to a more appropriate pace, I’d say. Especially They’ll Need a Crane: that’s actually a bittersweet lovesong that an up-tempo tune robs of sincerity, I think. I mean, yeah, it’s still very much TMBG in that very particularly weird way, but it’s still better, I think, when done by the Wrens.

Whew.

This is by far the most music I’ve bought in one sitting ever. Yes.

Good News Everyone!

I was at the delicious barbecue restaurant Hickory Park in Ames, Iowa the day after Christmas to have lunch with some of my dad’s side of the family. My mom and I got there early (yes my parents are divorced and I was having lunch with my dad’s family with just my mom–don’t ask) and we were wasting time waiting in the big lobby of this kitchy restaurant.

One of the numerous crazy-crap-on-the-walls-style items they had sitting around was an old scale that, if you paid it a penny, it would tell you your weight. It was obviously out of service, but it did give me one very happy surprise: according to the little sign on it, per Army standards at whatever time this scale was put out, a 5′10″ man (my height) should weigh 165 pounds (my weight). This is fantastic news!

In case you didn’t know, until I moved back to Minnesota in the spring of 2007, I never weighed more than 145 pounds. When I was at shool in Boston I walked everwhere, and this helped faclilitate my consistant slenderness, despite what was obviously a vast reduction in my metabolic rate.

This resulted in me putting on 20 pounds and having a slight jiggle belly for the first time in my 22 (at the time) years. I felt fat. So it is quite reassuring to know that in fact I am not fat. I am simply normal.

Although, I’m sure the Army expects those 20 pounds are muscle. let’s just not bring that up, how about.

Look What I Can Do

People in my family have had a talent I have always thought was pretty routine: we can hang spoons from our noses. A spoon was brought to a bar I was drinking at about a week ago, so I put it on my nose. Some of my friends were able to do this too (I was actually not even the first one to dangle the spoon from my nose that evening). Other of my friends thought it was weird. It’s not weird:

And just in case you think this is some sort of optical illusion, check it:

There is no chin-resting. That is all spoon-on-nose friction holding that sucker on. And just in case you think this is something that requires me to sit perfectly still, no, it is not that either. I can walk around, turn my head from side to side, and even sing God Bless America at the Uptown VFW:

I look forward to hanging a spoon from my nose in many new and exciting locales. I will even teach you how to do this yourself… if you have the nose for it!

Hairy Fish Bus

And a snappy Jew beer.

An Actual Christmas Eve Exchange

My sister: Kyah [our mom's dog] poops whenever she’s mad! She’s such a… *pause* … well, I don’t want to say, because feelings will be hurt.

My mom: You don’t want to say “bitch”? Because she is. She’s a total bitch sometimes.

My sister: No! I don’t want to say… (whisper) “bad dog.” Kyah might feel bad right now, and I don’t want her to.

Me: You could just say she’s a canis horribilis.

Guess Who’s Coming to Twitter

Last night I got an unexpected email in my inbox:

Hi, artallen.

thecosbyshow (thecosbyshow) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out thecosbyshow’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/thecosbyshow

This is really neat! What the Tiwtter feed gives you is little updates on what the actors are doing. For example:

thecosbyshow Phylicia Rashad (Clair) Nominated for Best Actress SAG Award for playing Lena Younger in “A Raisin in the Sun” – http://tinyurl.com/9tclts

This might seem kind of pointless and stupid, but I actually really like it. I actually wish some other shows would do this. Like, if Star Trek TNG or M*A*S*H had feeds like this I’d follow them.

Oh, and then there’s the question of how the Cosby Show knew to follow me on Twitter. A quick search.twitter.com excursion finds one two three tweets that contain the word “Cosby.”

Also, if you’ve spoken to me in the past month and a half you know that it’s all I can do to wait until Christmas Day to get some Christmas Monies so I can go to Best Buy and buy each of the eight seasons of the Cosby Show for $20 each. Heckuva deal! But getting this email connected for me (for some reason) that I could buy this show on Amazon, and it’d probably be even cheaper. And it is! The Cosby Show: 25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (1984) $89.99

I cannot wait.

The Star Trek Post

Two things:

First and foremost, RIP Majel Barrett. I’m not going to go on and on, so I will just paraphrase a classic Star Trek quote in memoriam:

Goodbye, computer.

Additionally, watch this:

On Women’s Shoes

Today I tried to buy a Christmas present for my sister. It did not work.

I called her last week and asked her what she wanted. “I told you!” she replied, reminding me of an email she had sent me saying she wanted seasons 1-3 of the popular 1990s television program Friends. “No,” I said, “That is a boring gift. What else do you want?” She said she wanted a specific pair of shoes from Macy’s and that she would email me the exact details.

She did not email me these details, so this morning I called her and asked her for the details so I could write them down. This is what I heard:

First of all, yes, I did put the stars in for the name “MACY’S.” I wasn’t sure if they used an apostrophe or not, so I put in a star and an apostrophe, and stars around the apostrophe just to be safe. Corporate identity is important, you guys. (After looking it up just now, it seems I’ve erred hilariously: there is only one star, and it takes the place of the apostrophe. Heh.)

Secondly, evidently if you’re a woman you’ve probably already noticed something wrong: there is no such brand as “DCBG.” The correct brand is BCBG, which I had never heard of before. In my dyslexia, I thought DCBG was some sort of Dolce and Gabbana (which I had misspelled just now and had to look up in Google) abbreviated-chic sub-brand. It is not.

And let me just say, I’ve spent years honing a very fine understanding of booties. I have many opinions and much knowledge on the subject of booties. Sadly, none of this came in handy this afternoon.

Nonetheless, armed with the information on the paper, I went to the mall. I followed the signs to the women’s shoe section at the Ridgedale Macy’s, and I looked around for the shelf with the DCBG shoes (I had not yet learned that there was no such brand). They were nowhere to be found, so I looked around this partition to see if there were more shoes on the other side of it, and there was another area just as big as the first area. I thought this made a little more sense, as women’s shoes are a very popular item. This seemed like a more appropriate size for a shoe section in a department store.

As my search continued, I discovered another four sections as big as the first two.

After my disorientation (yes, really) at the size of the shoe section, I was able to find and ask a salesperson about the shoes I was looking for. “Do you have DCBG high heeled booties with a quilt pattern?” I asked, feeling absolutely ridiculous for stringing those words together and praying she knew what the hell I was talking about. Because I had no idea.

“Um, do you mean BCBG?”

“Yeah, sure. I probably do.”

She asked me what color and size I was looking for–questions I had neglected to ask my sister. “Bring me a size… seven! In brown and black. I’ll decide after looking at them.” I then quickly called my mom’s cell, and she provided me with the facts: black, size eight. Close enough.

After a few minutes of being in the back the salesperson approached me and said “I’m sorry, we don’t have any more.” I asked her, “Brown and black? Size seven? Because I need a size eight.” and she said, “No, none of any color or size. Sorry.”

This was a very disappointing end to my saga at the Ridgedale Macy’s. I will try the Southdale and Mall of America Macy’s locations this weekend, but who knows. I may have to buy some boring DVDs instead.

The Only Way to Eat Pickled Herring or Delicious Cheese

I will be driving in this weather to procure some of these most delicious crackers so I can eat pickled herring and some delicious cranberry chipolte cheddar. That is how necessary they are.