Sunday, July 30, 2006

It's a million fucking degrees here (here in Chicago not here in my apartment where there is air conditioning and iced hibiscus tea) and I am not at the Pitchfork Music Festival.

It was a last minute thing, I got a set of comps for the festival on Friday morning. Yesterday, while running errands in the heat I realized that there was no way I was going to anything outdoors, at all, even though Diplo is spinning. So while in Trader Joe's I went to the customer service desk and told the manager that I had passes, I'm not using them, and would he please give them to somebody on staff?

Instead I saw an awesome movie and made chili.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

I don't know that I would actually use this but I love the concept. It's a program called BillMonk and it tracks the things you have borrowed and the things others have borrowed from you.

Borrowing is awkward because people forget, notes the site, urging me to click on a friend's name for details.

When you drill-down for details about a particular friend, you see the money transactions between the two of you, as well as the stuff that you are borrowing and have loaned out .

You owe Bob for gas and the cable bill, and he owes you for lunch. We do the math to find the balance: $30.50.

And for a spectacularly bad, very 1990's idea there is Dinner in the Sky. A big-ass dining table is hoisted into the air on a crane and then you eat. To build your team or whatever.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

I haven't done much in the way of predictions but here's one I'd like to make.

Remember in the mid-late 1990's there was that resurgence of swing music? It was kind of affected and seemed to be largely an upper middle class, white kind of activity, kind of a charming anachronism.

I just get the feeling that we are in for not a revival precisely but more like a re-birth. Not white kids aping the past but non-white kids who believe that they are inventing something new but which looks remarkably familiar.

There's a dance in Chicago now called Wild 40's. It's a wiggly leg move, similar to the Charlston (the dance's name references the decade, not malt liquor) and I can't find an example on YouTube. But kids here know Wild 40's just as much as they know how to dance the Lean With It, Rock With It.

If you watch the Ken Burns multi-part Jazz documentary, well, bless your heart, but there is some fantastic dance footage. And it shows how swing dance is not just partnered, jitterbug-style dancing but full of individual footwork and expression. Footwork and expression that looks remarkably like contemporary clown walks.

Between the new Christina Aguilera single and the upcoming Outkast movie, it's swinging.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

You know how it is sometimes when you go for a while without saying anything, it gets even harder to say something when you do finally speak?

Maybe it's just me.

I'm eating a vietnamese sub after buying a new bike helmet. I'm riding bike with said helmet to the movies. I feel like every publication I read is obsessed with the long tail.

That's all for now.