Playlists of a Wayward Son

It’s snowing, or at least it was, today in New York. That means I’m headed north to learn how to snowboard. I’m bringing my camera, so maybe when I come back there will be some funny photos of me falling down. I think giving the camera to Jared should work out okay, he was almost a photography major.

Today’s post is actually a question for you, the readers:

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ALBUM FOR A ROAD TRIP, AND WHY?

My current favorites, each for a particular part of the trip, are as follows:

• 1. Ratatat’s “Classics” starts the trip out of town, because it’s a nice instrumentals album that won’t get me distracted.
• 2. I don’t know if I’ll listen to all of “Classics,” but eventually I’ll move on to “Hell Hath No Fury,” by Clipse, especially if I’m enduring some New York traffic.  “Ride Around Shinin” is a great song when you’re in a slow paced situation, and the album’s dark mood matches the city as the sun goes away.
• 3. After that, it’s “Return to Cookie Mountain” by TV On The Radio, because songs like “Province” and “Wash The Day” have this great sense of hope about them, which you need after “I Was A Lover,” the track 1 that’s going to pull me back down to earth after Clipse pushes me up.
• Between most of those albums and a lot of songs also from Jared’s iPod, this will be the soundtrack going upstate. Last time, he got control of the stereo when we got to Kingston and I took over driving, and I think this won’t be much different.
• 4. Bob Dylan’s recent album “Modern Times,” is the start of the trip home, Bob’s really firey and instrospective on the album and he still manages to keep his head on through it, because well, he’s Bob Fracking Dylan.
• Again, Jared will be his music, for half of the time we’re driving so I’m only going to put one more item on this list:
• 5. Beck’s “The Information,” is  perfect for coming into the city in midafternoon. Literally, Beck’s weird little album with it’s variety of styles and paces, is a perfect match for the Sunday afternoon sun, they’re each about 10 times more effective when combined.

So, as I said above:

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ALBUM FOR A ROAD TRIP, AND WHY?

Please, people, start your commenting!
This blog will be so much more fun if there’s ample support from the readers.

Was That Really Necessary?

A random table at the office, where the cup of media has runneth over.
A co-worker dubbed this workstation the “Staten Island” of the office.

The “That” in question could refer to a number of things, the very least of which being the absurd amount of self-obsessed tacky rhetoric I had to print at work today. Imagine 250 pages of Ralph Lauren’s greatest phrases. That sounds like something I made up, doesn’t it? It’s not. Also, imagine having to print that gospel, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RALPH, 4 times. That’s 1000 pages of Ralph Lauren. Imagine also having to print out another couple of thousand pages of transcribed Ralph Lauren, including “The Ralph Lauren Philosophy” video transcription. I almost printed another copy of the whole lot of it out for me to take home and podcast a preposterous reading for all of you.

But, in actuality, I’m also referring to the subject of the following headline, screen-capped from Wired’s website, for your enjoyment:

Hehe … Pirates. HA. If that’s too confusing, here’s a picture to clarify:

Yes, your hunch might have been right, an RIAA SWAT team was employed to take down DJ’s Drama and Cannon for pirating music. That’s right, the RIAA not only thinks they have to take down Mix Tape Kings, and that they need a SWAT team to do it. That’s how they do overkill in Atlanta, I guess. I’m quite exhausted from work, so if you want a better analysis of the story, click here for Oh Word’s take on things.

For more unneccessary stupidity, we go to the greatest source of superfluousness: Jessica Simpson. Jessica has now gone on record with the following statement:

The 26-year-old was asked not to sing solos in church, because men found her feminine assets too distracting. However, having found fame and success as both a pop singer and an actress career, Simpson now “wears” her breasts proudly.

She says, “I always felt they disabled me from what I wanted to do. Now, I own them. They’re like wearing a great necklace. You can’t pay for that sort of accessory – though I know people do. But they never look as good at the real ones.”

Now that’s what I call comic gold. For more on this story, and for photos of Jessica, go to Egotastic!, where I got this story from.

I’ll be back tomorrow to talk road trip playlist, from an undisclosed location in the Catskills.

The Backup, one Area of My Expertise

I have a lot of media to backup. Over the last few years, it became increasingly easy to download tv shows, movies, and albums, and to complicate matters, these means became increasingly illegal over the same period of time. That last part has little to do with the backup process, except that you might say it’s not the smartest thing to have all this ill-gotten media in an obvious location, like say, a big gray brick of data resting nearby my laptop.

Tonight, I am taking another step in the arduous process of backing up my library of stuff. That photo up top (which combined with the soon to follow photo, qualify as photos of the day, as I took them today), is a somewhat absurd stack of DVD-R discs that I have just picked up from the drug store across the street. For the record, it seems that blank, recordable media is one of the last things that Sony knows how to be good at anymore. I bought blank Maxell DVD-R’s and they wouldn’t even start the burning process on my relatively middle of the road iBook G4.

I’m doing this now, because some time in the next few months, I’ll be placing my savings into getting a sweet new setup soon, so I need to gear up. If I could be using the external hard drive, pictured below, for backing up the actually important data I don’t want to lose, and not the not-as-important tv shows I really don’t need to have on hand, it would be really nice.

I’m not sure exactly when I got this LaCie 160GB external hard drive, but ever since I did acquire it, my packrat tendencies have only been enabled, not quelled. Currently, it has 105 GB of TV shows on it that I need to burn to DVD-Rs. That’s over 20 DVD-Rs, easily. The obvious question to ask is WHY THE HELL DID I THINK IT WAS NECESSARY TO DO THIS? The first answer I came up with is as simple as the question is obvious (a benefit of drafting both the question one has to answer), the four alternative answers that follow the first answer are, sometimes, as ludicrous as that SNL skit where Luda played a male captain on a lesbian cruise who was trying to find some ladies to turn straight.

1. I did it because I could.

2. I want to have every single episode of LOST, and continue to have them until the series ends, and not have to buy over priced DVD box sets. This way, when the show ends in about 2-4 years, I can go back and watch from the start and figure out how many (if any) loopholes there are in the endpoint.

3. The 5th season of 24 is one of the top 10 best seasons of any TV series that has aired during my lifetime.

4. Premium Cable television shows are as overpriced as it gets, and I don’t think anyone should ever spend upwards of 30 dollars on 4 hours of Entourage, no matter how much brilliant either Jeremy Piven or Kevin Dillon are.

5. The current and final season of The Sopranos is so weird that it’s going to need a refresher course in itself before it starts again in April.

So, as I face the giant stack of DVD-R’s, and realize how much time this is going to take me, I ask that you think before you horde. Or at the very least don’t wait until the last bits of space remain on your backup hard drive before you decide that you should be using the external hard drive for regular backups of your hard drive, the reason you originally used to justify spending all that cash in the first place.

Check back tomorrow for my thoughts about either Keith Olbermann’s analysis of 24 that aired last night, or the last Bardian I expected to see on FOX News.

They say these things happen in threes.

I was still thinking about James Brown last night when I heard the news. Gerald Ford’s dead.

Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton about to get all like Lil Wayne and Baby.

And then I wake up to hear from my Dad that the Honda CRV you might have seen me driving has died.

Update: it’s back alive and kicking.

No, I’m not putting the car on the same level as an ex-President or The Godfather of Soul, but that’s just because there’s no clear guarantee that Dick Cheney would be the next one to kick the bucket, and without that guarantee, I hope the death ends there.

GODfather-of-Soul DAMN

James Brown has died.

So this is what passes for a Christmas Miracle these days?

Yes, I’m aware of how obsessed I am with this photo.

A new entry on Pop Cult? Holy Hell, Tiny Tim, we’re gonna have a real Christmas after all!

So this is my first Christmas as a non-student, or as a college graduate. I guess I’m supposed to be an adult, but I wouldn’t go that far. So as I realized I’m not falling asleep any time soon, I took a nap yesterday that seriously messed with my sleep cycles, I thought I might as well publish the thoughts on Pop Cult, to give the appearance that I’m not asleep at the wheel. So checklist: Christmas-y music? Yep, courtesy of an e-mail from Akie, representing The Mimetiks, and that dude whose name nobody over 33 can pronounce.

That’s about it for the checklist, though. Never been a nog-er. I once tried it, and I think I spit it back into the sink and pondered drinking Pepto to get the taste out of my mouth.

We have a Christmas tradition or two in the Casey household. Most prominent of them being that my mother feels that she’s the only one who is captured by the spirit of the holiday, and she mentions it once. I can always tell that she might be right because her presents are always wrapped better than mine (I think I need a professional to give me yearly lessons on how to tie a bow using Christmas present ribbon).

The other sign that she’s better possessed by the spirit of Christmas is that her presents look like real presents. You know, that nice stack of small and medium sized boxes on top of one slightly large box? She’s got that down-pat. The collection of presents that comprises her stack are each of smaller stature. But if the laughter that comes from anything Jason “Wee Man” Acuña did/does on/in Jackass/Jackass: The Movie(and Jackass: Number Two, of course) is proof of anything, size doesn’t matter.

What I intended to talk about when I sat down at the computer is as follows: I was an absent minded schmuckface when it came to thinking about acting like an adult this Christmas. I mean, I’m going to try and make up for what I perceive to be the latest round of my mistakes by being better-than-usual at the afternoon gathering of my Mother’s side of the family, but I don’t think I did a good job on quality/variety of presents for my parents this year. I don’t think they’re going to read my blog before they open everything up, so for all intensive purposes, the following jump cut is my way of “hiding” what I got them.

iPods* are just like vampire slayers

As one dies, another is chosen.

top 5 reasons why I own an iPod:

1. I live literally 3 blocks away from Apple SoHo, does any other MP3 player have it’s own store which opens for repairs at 6am?

2. The iPod was replaced in under a half an hour, with no questions from the Genius Bar employee.

3. Works with OS X better than any other MP3 player, and OS X (Tiger) is better than Windows, and, from what I hear, better than Vista.

4. The GUI** of the iPod is superior to every other piece of tech on the market, even that new Zune, I played with it at a Virgin Megastore, is not up to snuff.

5. Stuff like ZSubway is designed for it.

*Applecare supported iPods.

Requiem for, “Logan,” an iPod

NEW YORK, December 6

This afternoon, at approximately 1 p.m. EST, “Logan,” the iPod died. He weighed approximately 47GB, and died of unknown causes. His owner tried to resuscitate him multiple times during the day, but gave up at around 8:30 p.m. EST.

Tomorrow, at the break of dawn, there will be a last ditch effort to save “Logan,” but experts believe he will only be replaced by a scratch-less version of himself. There is hope that his breed’s time is done, and that the iPod pound at the Apple SoHo location will be forced to replace him with a younger more vivacious breed that plays well with videos. Such is the case when an owner thinks ahead and purchases life insurance for their pet iPod.

Possible names include Farva, Azamat, Malicious, Ari, Yancy, Eghck, and Dick (Pronounced “Rish-ard”).

Got Bluths? (4 hours left!)

arrested development fans:

for the next 4 or so hours (as or 10:30 EST), you can buy all 3 seasons of the bluths on DVD for only 33.73

Too Sick To Blog?

Yeah, so I havn’t posted anything in a good minute, and I thought an explanation was in order. I’m sick. Sick to the point where typing is a chore. Reviews are coming, though, in the next few days: