that was probably awkward

Volvo: The New VW?

I thought I'd never say this about Volvo -- their cars or their ads or really, anything relating to them -- but my goodness, whomever it is that they've hired to do their TV marketing is either (a) someone I probably competed with for a choice time slot at my college radio station, (b) a genius who oddly did not go to my alma mater, and/or (c) someone who wanted a job selecting the music for Volkswagen ads but who was deemed too earnest and sweet for his/her own good.   Well, too bad for VW, if that was the case, because Volvo's been charming me into actually watching their adverts, thanks to this Stephin Merritt-penned and performed ditty, and now the one for their new C70 (I don't shill for Volvo, honest), which I'll admit is incredibly dorky and dumb and blindingly heteronormative, and yet the song is just so damn cute and sweet -- AND (of course) is by a nice Swedish boy who goes by the name Melpo Mene.  The Swedes, seriously: when are they going to take over the world already?

The full track, "I Adore You," can be found on Melpo Mene's myspace page here.  Also, when did Volvo's actual cars become not-ugly?  Also, when did VW ads become less interesting and relevant?

We're Not A Political Blog But: Philosophy Attack Ads

As most of you are probably quite aware, it's been a heated time in American politics, what with the road to the November elections fraught with smear campaigns, exagerrations of the truth, outright lies, and so on.  It's nice, then, when Northern European philosophers from the last two centuries can give us a bit of perspective on how ridiculous this process can sometimes be.

There's also a Nietzsche one, but I think it's a bit weak in comparison to the Kant ad above and the Kierkegaard one below:

Thanks to MRP for the links.

Guest Aficionado: Young Runaway, Upstanding Man: Xiu Xiu's Women as Lovers

Irregular PA music correspondent MRP joins us again for another foray into Music We May or May Not Know About But Ought To, Even If It Means Making Normative Claims That We're Normally Too Polite To Enforce.   Up now:  Oakland-based experimental indie-ers Xiu Xiu, who we'd like to point out are not, collectively, the Taiwanese balladeering sensation of the same name.   

Dear Xiu Xiu,

Sunday night, I saw you play live for, let's say, the fourth time. Maybe it was the fifth.

I got there early and waited for a friend. The show was in an hour or so. Anyway, that third time I saw you play, I got unexpectedly drunk. I feel sorry for that friend. It was a different friend than the one who accompanied me Sunday night - I keep exposing different people to your live performances, hoping that they'll "get it" (do people still use scare quotes like that?) more easily than if I just give them a few songs from an album - for a first-time listener, that one about cum on lips and a workout bench can be a doozy.

Fabulous Muscles

From outside, the gathered crowd (18+) appeared older than I'd expected, and I was happy about that. I was happy not just because I wouldn't have to entertain 19-year-olds asking me to buy them drinks. I was happy because it meant that, some members' of the crowd's hipster posturing aside, we don't forget certain things as we get older.

I tend to describe your music to others as 'the screamed diaries of a 16-year-old street hustler, suffering from gender dysmorphia,' or something to that effect. And I describe it that way with nothing but fandom and admiration and excitement in my heart. I am about twice as old as the hypothetical author of said hypothetical diaries, and live a life arguably outside your songs' primary frames of reference, and so sometimes veer toward self-consciousness when asserting my fandom to others. But standing outside the venue and seeing the crowd gathered with their cigarettes, I was comforted to know that my quiet suspicion is correct: in the end, who gives a damn how old I am.

MD Makes His Big-Screen Debut

Dear readers -- a most exciting day!  We've got a link to a wee clip from the upcoming doc Nerdcore Rising -- which got its big premiere at SXSW a few weeks ago -- featuring our very own MD!   We'll leave it up to you guys to figure out which talking head he is (though we will say now that he is not Weird Al Yankovic).  Without further ado:  Nerdcore Rising !

[official website here.]

The World According to ...

Via BoingBoing, here are some pretty fascinating  (sort-of interactive) heat maps of the world, colored by the degree of media outlet attention.  Directly below: the world as reported by L'Humanite, a Paris-based Communist daily. In the middle: the UK's Daily Mail.  At bottom: The New York Times.    The link to the maps is here (click on the list of media sources to see more).

I mean, I get that any particular country's newspaper is going to focus heavily on the brouhahas occurring within its own borders, but I'm confused about what goes on in the American Midwest that fascinates the European Communists, and what troubles in Greenland are piquing the interests of the Times staffers sitting across the street from my office here in Times Square. Also, I love that the UK's Daily Mail just can't be bothered with China.

Other "Blog's" That Literally Do My Job For Me

There are three profoundly annoying grammatical/semantic errors in the title of this post.  I've wanted, at various points, to write lengthy, rant-filled diatribes here about them, and how I think these abuses of the English language really speak to the downfall of Western society.  You, dear readers, are forever spared these moments (from me, anyway), since there are apparently entire blogs devoted to pointing out

the misuse of literally
the use of apostrophes in plural words (seriously, when did this horror begin?)
and my favorite, unnecessary quotation marks

All three blogs have links to other majestically stupid grammatical wrongs, and I urge you to prolong your procrastination by checking them out. 

Even Poets Have Needs

Um.  Uh.  Good god. 

MD and I were rendered speechless by the poem contained in the following link.  We had no idea Auden was so .... uh.... dirty.  Very, very dirty.  Oh my. 

What We've Been Up To: Too Much, and Not Nearly Enough

No, the blog hasn't died.  It hasn't really even been on hiatus.  It's just been kicking back, watching a little bit of TV, getting acclimated to new neighborhoods, and still managing to severely undersleep.  A roundup:

I learned about the oddball universe of the Live Action Role-Playing game, aka LARP.  It doesn't surprise me that it's big in Northern Europe.   Thanks to MS for this link.    MS would probably also want me to point out that he is not actually in the clip, nor would he ever be caught dead participating in such ... wonder and delight.

We continue to be confused (in a loving, gentle, slightly obsessive way) about what the hell is going on in Lost.

I had no idea you could watch the opening monologue of the Daily Show online!

RZS and I had less-than-fresh shrimp here, and it was not pleasant.

I can't stop listening to this song.  (NB: Despite youtube-ness, this is only an audio clip.)

This past weekend, I moved here.  MD recently moved here.  We are both pretty pleased with ourselves: I've got pressed tin ceilings, and MD's got lovely high ceilings that reach up to the sky.  We're both more centrally located to Our Culture.  We are so bourgeois it's mildly ... awkward.

Friday Afternoon OMG: The Latvian Symphony Orchestra

I know a couple of fellows who trace their roots back to Latvia.  They're nice fellows: amiable, smart, witty.  Extrapolating from my experiences with them, I couldn't imagine a world in which the Latvian people might produce gentlemen who, say, oh I don't know ...  headbanged whilst playing a masterfully ... inspired version of Europe's  The Final Countdown.   And yet -- well, the Latvian Symphony Orchestra has proven my extrapolations wrong.   Amazing doesn't begin to describe this awesomeness.  The expressions on the cellists' faces ... I'm still trying to pick my jaw up from off the ground.

[Link via Best Week Ever.]

Friday Morning Rhapsodic: Moonshot

Not sure how this week ended up being YouTube week on PA, but there you have it.  This one's a gem of a fan-produced video: a gorgeous clip of an amusement park ride, the Wave Swinger, filmed using manual shutter adjustments, set to my current favourite song -- Moonshot, by Dean & Britta.  It's a cover, originally written/performed by Buffy Sainte-Marie back in the early 70s; there's also a version done by Galaxie 500 back in the day, available on their Peel Sessions album.  Anyhow, enjoy.  I can't get enough of it, seriously. 

[Thanks to KS for the tix to the great D&B show last week, and for finding this clip.]