This is an interactive post, sort of a musical S.L.A.M book. Instead of trying to review some new music, I thought I’d list a few new ones I like, and find out what everyone else is listening to lately. So please respond in the “comments” (or ‘Dillas, as a post if you’ve got a big list!). Maybe we can broaden our collective musical taste (I need to help mine). I didn’t want to write about music that sucks, but if there are any CDs you’ve bought lately that you wish you hadn’t, feel free to warn us (ya know, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 style).

New-ish Stuff:

• Shapes and Sizes, “Split Lips, Winning Hips, A Shiner” – sounds like The Thinking Fellers Local Union 282 mixed with, uhm, I-have-no-freaking-idea, it’s unique (thank god)

• Ex-Boyfriends, “Dear John” – fun sing-along pop, a la Weezer style! Super cute S.F. boys, got a song on HBO’s “Big Love”

• Broken Social Scene, “Beehives” – I can’t get enough of them

New Stuff From the Old School:

• Sonic Youth, “Rather Ripped” – the ‘pop’ album their daughter dared them to make, I love “Incinerate”

• White Stripes, “Icky Thump” - I like guys masturbating with guitars, what can I say

• Bjork, “Volta” – I told you that bitch was crazy!…crazy-cool

• Beastie Boys, “The Mix Up” – instrumental=sweet, now this would have been a great soundtrack for Ocean’s 13 instead of that regurgitated mess they used

• Paula Frazer and Tarnation, “Now It’s Time” – alt-country songstress, it’s real purty

• The Fucking Champs, “VI” – (this one’s for my husband) instrumental, flying V guitar sound, 70’s metal, hesh, guys really masturbating with guitars

Old-Old School:

• Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “The Best of Elvis Costello: the First 10 Years” – you can’t go wrong here

• Dee Dee Sharp, “The Best of Dee Dee Sharp 1962-1966” – good summer music, gotta love “Mash Potatoes” and it’s b-side “Gravy”

(gracias al Timbotron por el cuadro)

Fire dancing …. now bringing feelings of empowerment to even the most hairy of participants.

“People who go to seminars and come away from them thinking they no longer have fears are a real nuisance . . . Seminar people are a pain in the ass. In a pinch, it’s always easiest just to blame your parents. Your parents’ mistakes are your get-out-of-jail-free card.”

- Douglas Coupland in “JPod”

As promised in New Extreme “Sports” Vol. 2, I now am turning the Eye of the ‘Dilla to SportStacking– an odd, but amazingly captivating ’sport’ that originated in the US in the 1980s but has grown internationally and has a burgeoning fan base in Germany.

In SportStacking, individuals (predominantly teenagers and younger) attempt to assemble and disassemble stacks of cups in groups of 3, 6, and 10 as fast as humanly possible. Competitions take place in real life, but one reason as to why this sport has flourished of late on the international scene has been the the ability to videotape record stacking performances and submit these videos to the World Sport Stacking Association over the Internet. As a result, world records are falling at a pace the sport has never before seen as popularity grows.

If this doesn’t sound all that interesting to you, watch this video. Ready… get set… FLASH!

For more SportStacking footage, check the following links out:

• Doubles World Record
• Yannick Zittlau - (Check out the facial expressions this guy makes!)

And as I’ve found is the case with most SportStacking videos, note the often interesting choice of music!

A couple weeks ago, Heywood and I posted photos of two of the 7-Eleven “Kwik-E-Mart” conversions (from Mountain View, CA and 42nd Street, NYC). Blogadilla reader (and our new best friend) Kulle sent us some nice photos of the Kwik-E-Mart in Burbank, CA. Thanks Kulle!

Kulle’s Kwik-E-Mart Burbank slideshow

Yep, you read me right. Salim Sdiri was warming up to compete in the long jump at the Golden Gala in Rome on Friday (the 13th!) when Finnish thrower Tero Pitkamaki slipped while hurling his javelin.

The result: the javelin flew out of the left side of the normal competition area and left Sdiri with a 1 inch punchout in his right side.

Amazingly, Sdiri was not seriously hurt internally, which makes this all the more amazing as well as something I’m able to joke a bit about. I mean, couldn’t Pitkamaki at least have yelled, “Fooooooore” ?

(story via ESPN.com)

Soon after its creation in 1971 (in the mad scientist labs of General Mills), many disdraught parents discovered that FrankenBerry cereal turned more than the milk pink. Apparently the red dyes in FrankenBerry did not break down in the disgestive tract, producing what medical professionals have come to refer to as “FrankenBerry stool.” Red and pink stuff was coming out of childrens’ bodies and parents were taking them to doctors to screen for internal bleeding. These incidents were common enough for the term “FrankenBerry stool” to make its way into medical literature.

In the name of science and all that is sophomoric, I took it upon myself to personally test this. Behold: “Operation FrankenBerry.” It is a hard-to-find cereal in my area, but luckly I was able to buy FrankenBerry on Amazon.com (also available through Hometown Favorites). Earlier this week, I had two sequential meals consisting of FrankenBerry.

The results: No FrankenBerry stool. They have changed the dyes since 1971. FrankenBerry comes out the same as Count Chocula.

Stay tuned.
Next research project: “Operation BooBerry” (accounts from friends indicate that it does turn things purple). I will post the results soon.

Note: Though the resemblance is uncanny, Al Franken is not affiliated with FrankenBerry.

“There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can’t.”

- Warren Buffet

What’s up with all the freakishly large, and/or ancient, animals coming out of the wood work lately?! Have they been super-sizing it? Is it the Al Gore effect? Are we going to see Loch Ness and Bigfoot soon?

Check out this 550 lb, 26 ft long, squid that washed ashore in Tasmania a few days ago. WTF?!

What about “octo-squid”, the half-squid half-octopus that was discovered off the shore of Hawaii last week?!

And the 40,000 year old, almost fully intact, baby mammoth found in Russia. Amazing.

[Update, by Timbotron]:
Here’s a nice brief video of the giant squid (from Reuters and Scientific American).

The celebrity formerly known as Posh Spice, whose NBC special “Victoria Beckham: Coming to America,” airs July 16, insisted this week in an interview with the AP that she’s “just a normal girl from London.”

(News flash to Vicky: normal girls have this strange thing they do. It’s called EATING. Try it sometime. It’s fun. Trust me.)

Beckham, who will live with her family in a $22 milllion, 13,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills, also called herself a “working mum.” Which makes this working mom want to slap her with my last daycare bill.

I’m sure her special will make for absolutely gripping television. Still, I think I’ll save my precious TiVo space for something else.

Three of the more recent (among several) concerns about products imported from China:

•Over 8,500 cats and dogs have died from pet foods containing melamine-laced grain that came from China.

•365 reported deaths (100+ confirmed) in Panama from Chinese cough syrup that contained diethylene glycol (a sweet-tasting ingredient in antifreeze).

•Chinese toothpastes containing diethylene glycol have been found on the shelves of import stores in the United States and Canada.

Due to growing concerns about Chinese products, the Chinese government followed through with an obvious and logical response: yesterday they executed Zheng Xiaoyu, the chief of China’s State Food and Drug Administration. Everything is better now, Chinese products are once again safe.

Secret Blogadilla insider sources have revealed the real reason Zheng Xiaoyu was executed:

The bones of the Chief of the State Food and Drug Administration are a powerful traditional remedy for melamine and diethylene glycol poisoning; they will be ground-up and sold in herbal markets and on eBay for $50/g.

(image from Wikimedia)

This is a great story:
One of the employees of Suicide Girls [link NSFW - too much buttcheekitude and nipplery] named James had his L.A. apartment robbed several weeks ago. His response: set up a webcam in his apartment to watch his home from work. Yesterday his apartment was robbed again and he was able to call the police and take photos of the perpetrator. The police arrived in time and caught the thieving freak in the act!

Geeks: 1
Thieving A**holes: 0

Congratulations James!

(via Susan)

For all my blathering about living on the “Correct” Coast …

link

I’m not being mean. It’s true. A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that “29% of American men report having 15 or more female sexual partners in a lifetime, while only 9% of women report having sex with 15 or more men.” (My question: who cares?)

The study used “high-tech methods” (i.e., people answered the survey questions on a computer instead of in face-to-face interviews) to “solicit candid answers.” In other words, to keep people from lying, because your average co-ed isn’t going to admit to some researcher that she had sex with 23 guys named Biff last Spring Break.

Personally–and NO, I’m not going to tell you where I fall–I think there’s a major flaw here. (You know, ‘cuz I’m such an sociologist, having written 3 books on sex.) The data was collected from 6,237 adults aged 20 to 59. Now, isn’t there a higher probability that a 50-year-old San Franciscan will have had more sexual partners than a 20-year-old in the Bible Belt? I’m just saying.

Other factoids from the survey:

• 96% of adults in the U.S. have had sex. Some of them make up for the other 4%, and then some. You know who you are.
• 17% of men and 10% of women have had two or more partners in the past year. These people are also known as “divorcees.”
• 25% of women and 17% of men have had no more than one partner of the opposite sex. Ever. Just thinking of all the bad sex these folks have missed makes me want to weep.

The survey doesn’t take into account marital status or geographical location. And it didn’t include the homeless, prison inmates or other “institutionalized adults.” Draw your own conclusions. I’m afraid to.

“You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”

- George W. Bush

The New York Times is reporting that iPhone resales have been a poor investment for would-be resellers. Apparently everyone had the same idea: buy two phones and sell one on eBay/craigslist/et al. for a profit that would pay for the first phone.

Problem is, when everyone has the same idea, the market is instantly flooded and supply greatly outweighs demand.

Couple this with the fact that Apple learned an important lesson from Nintendo (and the Wii) and quickly restocked stores with product, all of the people who camped out for 2 iPhones were stuck a second phone that they could barely sell for a profit. The result: most of the phones went unsold in secondary markets, and are simply being returned for the original price people paid for them, as secondary adopters buy their iPhones straight from Apple.

Whether or not this whole ordeal will have an overall impact on Apple’s sales of the iPhone is something we can’t know, but what we can take away from this all is that Apple did one of the best jobs in the history of marketing to engineer ridiculous demand for one specific product, albeit a cool one.

(story via NYT)

Maybe you have to watch the show “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” (from Craig McCracken - the guy who created the Powerpuff Girls) for this to be funny, or maybe not. Or, maybe, I spend too much time with kids. Help me.

Went to the Lego® store, bought the cool new LEGO® ice brick tray. I’ve been doing colorful juice LEGO® experiments all week (Actual photo. Otter Pops are the best source for blue and green, dark purple on the bottom is açai-blueberry juice):

We captured on video one of our clients licensing the first song ever on an iPhone. He does it in three minutes using MusicLicensingStore.com, which is our online tool for licensing music. Pretty sweet. Check it!

Shrunken heads: they smell like beef jerkey and look like your grandma (or vice-versa).

•Tired of the same old “pine tree” air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror? Salangome Exotic Imports offers a delightful line of shrunken head reproductions.

•Tiki Farm offers the stylish Jivaro Shrunken Head mug - perfect for coffee, a maitai, or human blood.