Big thanks to my friend Sharon for letting me know that Beck has covered The Velvet Underground & Nico and posted the music videos online.
Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico ‘Sunday Morning’ from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.
It’s part of an on-going project by Beck called Record Club, covering classic albums, rehearsing and recording each single track in a day. Read more about the project in the Wall Street Journal.
I love the super-simplicity of Beck’s website. No frills, no fuss.
Gone but not forgotten
Where did the rusting, peeling paint go?
This won’t mean a thing to anyone reading this post via Facebook, LinkedIn, or a feed reader (which is most of you), but I’ve changed the design of my blog.
Instead of creating my own blog template, whipped up in the late hours of a weekend night or patchily repaired when I had a spare moment, I’ve opted for the clean, lean, and now nearly ubiquitous design of the Thesis theme.
What am I, a web designer, doing using a blog theme created by someone else?
I would like to focus more on the content of the site and less on the layout of that content. I would have used another theme before, in fact, if I had been able to find one that was configurable enough and well-made enough not to drive me crazy. Now that I’ve found Thesis, I can spend time on the important stuff: digging up more obscure cocktail recipes and strange videos for your entertainment.
Truth be told, we (my company, Big Big Design) are deploying Thesis on certain client blogs as well. It’s cost-effective for the clients, so there’s time and budget left in a project to help the client focus on their message, process, and strategy — areas where we offer greater value. Everybody wins.
The rusting and peeling paint may return soon though. There’s clean design, and then there’s *too* clean design. I like to see a bit of mess. Expect a few layout and design tweaks in the near future. And photos in the random photo area that are, you know, mine.
My friend Sherrie Flick has written a novel, and it’s now available for the world to enjoy.
The book is Reconsidering Happiness. Here’s the summary from the publisher:
I had the chance to read the first few chapters a while back, and I’ve been longing for the book to come out ever since.
You can check out an excerpt on Sherrie’s website, then visit the University of Nebraska Press site to order a copy.
I learned about Eleni Mandell through an interview on The Sound of Young America podcast.
Eleni Mandell (her Flash-based website and MySpace page)
In the interview, she seemed a little nervous and hesitant, but also charming, thoughtful, and well-spoken. She comes from the Los Angeles music scene of the 1980s, a big fan of the band X, then got connected with Tom Waits, and has been making music under the radar for all this time.
(You should add The Sound of Young America to your playlist too, by the way.)
The occasion of the interview was that she was promoting a new album, Artificial Fire, and so she played some songs, just her singing and playing acoustic guitar.
You know how you’ll hear an interview with a musician, and he talks about his influences and how he writes, and you’ll think, “Oh, he loves exactly the things I love! I’m going to love his music too.” And then you hear the music, and it’s just completely different from anything you would ever like or choose to listen to, and so you vow never to listen to interviews of musicians again? Maybe that only happens to me. It happens to me a lot.
Anyway, so that’s what I expected would happen. But Eleni Mandell played a few songs from Artificial Fire, and she turned out to be exactly the kind of musician I have wanted to hear lately. Her voice is warm and lush, a little deep and sexy, and her lyrics are smart without being uber-clever, and the songs are interesting and melodic, sometimes hummable and sometimes complex and layered.
Incidentally, the song that most knocked me out was “Personal.” You can hear it on the Eleni Mandell website, and you can order the album there too. If she ever releases an acoustic version, it will be the best thing ever recorded.
Artifical Fire represents something of a departure for her style. Prevous albums are what you might call “folky chanteuse,” while this new album is a bit more rocking and varied. I like it all, but you might want to search through her catalog and see which flavors you prefer.
Eleni Mandell – video for “Girls”
My best decision of the year thus far was choosing to go in for a share of weekly vegetables with the Northwest PA Growers Co-op. Fresh, organic veggies every week = delicious.
I’m typically not a great eater of vegetables and especially not of salad, but what I’ve received has been so beautiful and flavorful, I’ve turned over a new leaf. (Hah!)
Plus, the fact that they’re pre-paid forces my penny-pinching side to bully my lazy, non-cooking side into using them before they wilt and rot in the fridge. So, I’m eating greens and getting roughage, and feeling grand in all ways.
Last week’s bag included red cabbage, as apparently did every other bag from every other local farm share in western Pennsylvania. On Twitter, @SandyU mentioned a salad she was making with red cabbage and ginger, so I asked for the recipe. I made it today, and the above is the colorful, flavorful result.
The recipe came to @SandyU via email from her farm co-op, so I share it (and my notes) here with you in the spirit of good eating and good sharing. If you know (or are) the originator, plus say so in the comments.
Combine 4 c. shredded red cabbage, 1 c. shredded carrot, 1/2 c. minced parsley (which I had but forgot to put it), and 2 c. finely sliced green onion (I used much less, and it was plenty onion-y).
Grate or mince 1T fresh ginger and squeeze out the juice in a garlic press or similar. (This was too much hassle for me. I grated the ginger really fine and used it as is, no squeezing.) Combine ginger juice with 3T lemon juice, 1T honey, 4T sesame oil (I used 2T sesame plus 2T extra-virgin olive oil), salt to taste, and toss well with shredded vegetables.
Toast 2T sesame seeds in dry heated skillet until they start to pop. (I used them cold, as I was getting very hungry.) Sprinkle these atop the salad. Mmmmmm…. (That was my reaction exactly.)
As Sandy noted to me, this makes a whole big bunch of salad, and lasts a few days. I expect the flavor will continue to improve, plus the cabbage will soften a bit.
Enjoy!
(Photo credit: photo, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.)
Lately I have been on a 70s kick. This afternoon, apropos of nothing, I found myself thinking of 70s songs, which got me thinking of 70s clothes, which had me thinking of bellbottoms.
Which had me thinking of this song — which is not 70s at all, although it certainly is something.
(iPhone visitors: You will have to make do with the even lower-quality vid on YouTube.)
Yea-ahh!
I’ve received many compliments on my new Twitter avatar.
Me, sorta
These compliments are nice, and yet I feel like I’m cheating in accepting them because the avatar took no creativity on my part whatsoever. In fact, you can have a very similar avatar (or iPhone background or Facebook picture or desktop background) in a few minutes.
Use this: Mad Men Yourself.
This fine gadget is part of the promotion for the third season of AMC’s Mad Men — one of my favorite television programs. (UPDATE: For more about the pervasiveness of this promotion, see this from the New Yorker: “Poster girls.”)
I particularly like this gadget because it uses the artwork of Dyna Moe, a performer and artist in NYC who started drawing scenes from Mad Men season 2, just on a whim, and posting them to her Flickr account and her blog.
What’s nice about this story is that AMC didn’t send her a cease and desist letter. It seemed that the people on Mad Men, and in particular the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, really loved her artwork. They invited her to meet them and other important AMC folks, and to come along when Jon Hamm was guest hosting Saturday Night Live, and so on and so on.
It may have helped that she’s a performer in the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and knew some of the actors via that. But mostly I believe it’s because her art is clever and awesome, and because she wasn’t afraid to put things out for people to see and enjoy. Carpe diem and all that.
You can read all about this and more on Dyna Moe’s blog, I Let My Fists Do the Talking.
I made another Mad Men me, which I’ll start using next week when the new season premieres. Swanky, eh?
Here's me being Mad
On a day when things just aren’t going right, when every small step morphs into a major climb, when the sky is gloomy and dark, on such a day it can seem like what one needs is someone like Mr. Fred Rogers — someone kind and gentle who will say, “You are special. You are my friend. I’m glad you’re here.”
But when one is a grownup, one feels strange tuning into Mr. Rogers Neighborhood after work. Sure, the sentiment is right and maybe just what’s needed, but the delivery doesn’t quite work.
One those occasions, here’s the solution: Those well-known songs of Fred Rogers — warm and friendly lyrics and oh-so-familiar melodies — delivered in a swanky, grownup style. A jazzy, cocktail style.
What you need is “Mister Rogers Swings! Holly Yarbrough Sings the Fred Rogers Songbook.”
All the classics are here: “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” “Please Don’t Think It’s Funny,” “You Are Special,” “It’s Such a Good Feeling,” and more. You can hear many of them on Holly’s MySpace page.
My particular favorite is “It’s You I Like,” which comes across a bit sultry but still wholesome enough to play at a preschool. I think of it as a counterpoint to the backhanded compliment of anyone’s version of “My Funny Valentine.”
Ms. Yarbrough was kind enough to send me a special edition copy of the CD to review, and the case and CD themselves are special too. The CD looks like a little vinyl album, and the case is a beautiful three-fold number. If you’re able to order one of this limited pressing of 5000, you’ll enjoy it.
Let’s make a snappy new day.
