Travis Barker is tripping

I guess that Travis Barker is still doing his band thing with Mark Hoppus, but he definitely seems to have plenty of extra time on his hands because he has been officially Travis-Barker-remixing every other hip hop song that hits #1 on the charts.  I mean, I guess they're amusing but how many times is he going to do this?  Is he straining for legitimacy or is this just for fun?  Does he want to go on tour with Flo Rida?  I've always been pretty lukewarm on ridiculously overt rap/rock combinations, but I find these videos' intimacy appealing on some level.  When even little kids can be rock stars, I guess it makes sense that even rock stars can live out their fantasies to be rap drummers in the comfort of their own home.  Over/under on one of these tracks hitting Rock Band DLC is eight months.

Kanye's blog is the craziest, most wonderful blog on the internet.

With blog titles like "I'm posting anything that glows," you know that you're going to be in for something awesome.  Kanye West is well known for his eclectic tastes and his blog is certainly no different.  I promise you, a more bizarre collection of fancy tech toys, high fashion, and old school rap beats you will not find on the internet.  Kanye's blog is a special place and I mean that in more than one sense.  Enjoy.

[kanyeblog]

Forgotten Heroes: Vera Rubin

If there's anything more attractive than a female astronomer [just look at the sexy curves on that integral symbol], I haven't thought about it in the last five minutes.  And of course, if you're going to be a female astronomer, it doesn't get much hotter than discovering proof of dark matter.

I think that Vera Rubin's lack of fame, compared to, say Marie Curie, has to do with the fact that she's still alive and that most people don't have an even rudimentary knowledge of what dark matter/energy is or does.  I certainly didn't until a very, very basic History Channel show I caught the other day.  Watching this show, I couldn't help but get the feeling that watching it didn't give me the full idea.  Whenever I watch something on the pseudo-educational television channels that I have a pretty good knowledge about, it comes off as insultingly simple-minded and often just wrong.  It doesn't make me enjoy knowing a little bit about dark matter and dark energy any less, but it has given me enough humility to not go around and brag about my knowledge. 

Anyway, the bottom line is that Vera Rubin doesn't get enough respect and I probably have a completely misconceived view of what dark matter and energy is all about.   

Belated Best of 07 Entry

[youtube - better audio, unembeddable]

Pros & Cons of Steel Cut Oats

Pros

• Tastes better than Quaker Oats.
  
• Comes in a cool metal can that you have to pop the lid off with a knife.
• Alton Brown likes to use them.
• Named after one of my buddies.
• Irish.

Cons

• More expensive.
• Takes a lot longer to cook.
• Can't or shouldn't make oatmeal cookies out of them.
• Recipe on the side of the can is too much for one sitting and I'm too chained to the suggested recipe to do anything else.

Counter-arguments

• The 45-minute or so cooking time is the perfect interval in which to get ready for the day ahead.  Shower, dress, Jeopardy.
• Good taste knows no price.
• I lost the recipe to my favorite oatmeal cookies.

Conclusion

• I will never go back to Quaker Oats.

Forgotten Heroes: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann

Usually artists who craft objects aren't seen as serious as graphic artists.  However, the Ruhlmann exhibit at the Met just floored me.  These totally impractical objects which belong in a movie [Hitchcock preferred] exude luxury of a past time.  Ruhlmann was an art deo designer and maybe, if you were rich beyond belief, you could fill your home with the cabinets, tables, and rugs that he's designed, you probably wouldn't be able to pull it off unless you're Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman and frequently drink Scotch from a decanter while reading the evening newspaper in your smoking jacket.

The smooth lines and cool wood grains are definitely not surfaces for me to eat off of, but that doesn't mean they aren't incredibly interesting and worth checking out [which they are].  I don't have the vocabulary to properly describe why he's awesome but trust me...  For these reasons, Ruhlmann is a forgotten hero.

The Burden of a Singular Vision: The Curse of Stephin Merritt's Magnum Opus; or, Why Method Man Was Better Than Wu Tang

Ok, so the Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side has brought out a new album.  I'm not going to engage in a full blown review here, but I will say that with the limited exposure I've had to it so far, it is a nice little album.  Like i, it has a unified theme based on its title and embraces the three minute standard song structure.  Like every Merritt-approved project, it has snappy, witty, misanthropic, self-loathing lyrics.  

However, the sad truth is that when discussing Stephin, there is 69 Love Songs, and there is everything else.  It is the album which, obviously, has the most songs, has the broadest scope, and widest range of emotional expression.  At least in my musical world, it is a monolithic work.  Everything else which even aspires to anything less than a massive, life-defining project appears ancillary.  That by no means implies that other Merritt works are per se bad, but they will inevitably pale in the comparisons to 69 Love Songs.

How does this relate to the Method Man show I saw last year and the Wu Tang Clan show I saw last week?  Conventional wisdom states that 36 Chambers is the unmatched, monolithic work in the Wu Tang catalog.  Forever, while an ambitious and high-reaching double album, is generally considered as falling short of the high standard set by 36 Chambers, and the other albums, at this point, are comparatively irrelevant.  When any one act or album acquires a symbolic significance, that burden can very rarely be shaken.  

Method Man has a great energy and stage presence.  His show was amazing.  Also, he has the freedom that his group doesn't.  He is affiliated with a highly respected group but doesn't have one awesome, killer album to live under.  The entire group, live, seems a little bored and disinterested.  People still love them because their songs are great, but these forces keeping the group together [possibly] against their will, or at least only due to convenience instead of passion, result in some subpar products.  The ability to start anew without a history is always refreshing.  But I'll still enjoy the shows in the meantime.

Forgotten Heroes: The Union Army Balloon Corps

There are a lot of silly stories that have to do with the Civil War but perhaps none I've heard are sillier than the story of the Union Army Balloon Corps.  For this reason, the Union Army Balloon Corps and the Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army [with an appropriately awesome Civl War era name] Thaddeus C. S. Lowe are forgotten heroes.  

The very existence of a Balloon Corps which took hot air balloons up in the air for recon purposes is incredible enough, but the actual story of the Corps is even more entertaining.  The wikipedia page [from which, of course, I have learned everything I know about the Balloon Corps] has a host of information, and it seems that the Balloon Corps has some serious success in its time.  However, they ultimately were looked upon as a joke by the military establishment.

Maybe this isn't as amusing to anyone else as it is to me, but I just love creating this almost certainly false image of Lowe in my mind as a strong, true hearted adventuring type but also a seriously geeky scientist and balloonist.  It's kind of sad, in a way, that he was at the forefront of reconnaissance but was laughed at in his time.  But he will get his share of glory here.