Originally an out-take, this song makes the cut on the reissue of ‘Exile On Main Street’ that hits on May 17. Not sure it’s worth re-buying for the new material, but it’s neat to hear the stuff that didn’t make the album, right? For sure. Because sometimes you forget how good the Stones really were. Ha. Just kidding. No you don’t.
Some dude put together this gmaps mashup that let’s you overlay the oil spill right into your neighborhood. It uses the new Google Earth plugin for maps. Looks like we’d be pretty much wrecked by it. You think they’d let us buy beer on Sunday if this happened? I’ve gotta believe that’s a yes.
The Times ran a piece about the workers today. It had some great graphics and stories and background and whatnot. The technology involved here is nuts. I did some sediment coring/drilling work from boats back in my Geology days and even in shallow midwestern lakes it was crazy complicated. To think they can do it a mile down is one of those “airplanes can’t fly, they’re too heavy” type brainteasers to me.
Crazy stuff all around.
The thing about having a kick ass daughter is that I’ll get to buy her stuff like this to hang in her room. Though maybe not this year. Maybe for now I’ll go for this one?
Well done, Patricia Canney. Fun stuff. See you next week at the whirl.
We went to Mexico and stayed in one of those all-inclusive resorts where you get up and start eating ice cream and/or nachos first thing in the morning just because you can. Maldo likes to say “you just put your wallet and your phone in the room safe and forget about everything else”. It was my first time at a beach resort, and was the longest vacation I’d taken in probably a decade. I sat and watched my kids play on the beach. Then we splashed in the waves. Then we built castles. Then we went and got ice cream and ate tacos. Then Libby shot a bow and arrow (!!). Then we did it all again the next day. Because that’s how we rolled. And it pretty much ruled.
I wasn’t saving this for Easter, but when you spend a few days in a house full of bunny ears it maybe takes you back to the memories of a kickass February pilgrimage to Duluth with Mel and Juettner, where we donned our bunny ears and stood front row stage right with chests smashed flat to the stage, hands in the air, dancing, jumping, and generally just worshiping at the alter of Wilco. It was great.
Here’s the Chad himself.
At one point Tweedy stopped the show and turned to us and said “ok, I have to ask what’s up with the bunny ears” and it was one of those moments you’re maybe not sure what to do when it happens. Kinda like when I got a pair of A’s playing blackjack at Big Bear on the way up – which, btw, is neither big nor has bears – only then I’ve got a whole table full of other players yelling YOU SPLIT THEM, DUMBASS and in this case I’m wearing bunny ears and JEFF TWEEDY is asking me why and maybe my only reason is “why not”? Like you’ve never wanted to put on bunny ears and hop up and down during a Sonny? Uh huh. Now can we talk about how TWEEDY WAS TALKING TO US DURING THE SHOW and I was caught off guard and ill prepared and tongue tied lightening and I yelled something like “Happy Spring!” and Chad yelled something unintelligible about a comic book surfing dude he had on his t-shirt and I think Mel fainted or something. And Tweedy kinda shrugged. And maybe I should have just yelled “why not”? Like maybe he would have understood? Seen it for what it was? Ha. Who cares, it was quite a moment. And Wilco delivers.
Some more pictures are below.
Wilco remains my favorite band. That is all. Wilco – 2010-02-19 – DECC – Duluth, MN [wilcobase]
Oh man awesome. Childhood hero to the max. I still have a poster/painting of Feynmann hanging in my garage. I just tried to google for a picture of it and I couldn’t find anything and now I’m worried it’s rare and that I shouldn’t have hung it on the ceiling by pounding nails thru the corners. Whoops!
What’s with the run of exclusive community events? I know what you’re thinking – “what’s an exclusive community event?” Yeah. I just made that up. The term, not the exclusivity. Though it’s really less of a term than it is just traditional string of adjectives. This stands in contrast to the time I tried to coin the term ‘metata’ – which you longtime readers may remember and which I still think rules and is totally workable. Case in point: NBC shows Olympics time shifted to the evenings, people flip out about it and immediately take the conversation away from the games and make it about the coverage of the games. Two years ago the NYT would have written a story about how people were using twitter to bitch about the time shifted coverage – a full frontal metata: talking about how people are talking about how the networks are covering the games. Though now that twitter isn’t “omg look!” news anymore maybe metata stories are dead? Hmm. Did anyone write a story about someone tweeting about how innovative it was for DeRusha to use a webcam to host a debate about the coverage of the games? Hope not.
But to get back to my exclusive community event, here are two examples. Ha. I gotta look up how to do numbered lists in HTML, it’s been awhile. Standby.
Nice!
The Current Birthday Party – Was I the only one kinda shrugging my shoulders about the Current’s birthday party bash thing at First Ave? The one that sold out in 2 minutes, crashing servers and breaking ticketless hearts along the way? And how you had to hear on-air reminders like 4000 times a day about how amazing it was going to be and how tickets were impossible to get? Because why? Because after spending 5 years building a community and engaging with their listeners and pledge driving for distance and for speed all alone in their time of need they go and book their birthday party at a historically cool but unquestionably undersized rock club. Which just seemed weird. And for the record, I’m not bitter. I didn’t even try and get tickets. I’m sure it was a great time, but that’s not the point. The point is WHAT A GOLDEN opportunity it would have been to really get a bunch of that Membership and/or omg Sustaining Membership and/or just a bunch local 89.3 fans who feel like they’re part of something because they follow rss feeds and tweets and post comments on websites and send emails to DJ’s and MOST IMPORTANTLY LISTEN TO THE STATION together for a party and TOTALLY they’re part of something duh and to inflict that type of exclusivity (size constraints) on a community so carefully crafted and ACTUALLY SINCERE seems boneheaded and unfortunate and phony and sad. Learning opportunity, I guess. (Full disclosure: my mancrush on Bill DeVille grows stronger by the day. It’s like a force of nature at this point. The Sunday morning show? I mean come on.)
The local Ignite thing over at the Bedlam. Last time it was at Solera and it was packed and rowdy and fun and communal it got a lot of buzz and people -again – start to feel like they’re a part of something and it’s getting awesome word of mouth and hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s book it at the frickin’ tiny Bedlam and watch tickets sell out instantly and then make people write poems and answer silly trivia to try and win tickets DANCE MONKEYS DANCE!!! Seriously, one of you social networking genius kids out there should take this one down as a ‘what not to do’ case study and/or explain to me why you book your big buzzworthy event in a venue that holds less than 10% of your rabid fan twitter following* Because doing that doesn’t make people feel like they’re part of something, it makes them feel like outsiders or – worse yet – duped. Or maybe it doesn’t? Like maybe it brings more credibility to the event – and the community?? – because people are getting shut out? That notion really feels old fashioned. This isn’t a Zeppelin show, right? I didn’t get up and sleep in a lawn chair on the sidewalk outside of Dayton’s to get tickets or anything. That’s a different kind of community for sure. I think this is just a fun local community event with bad planning and then a splash of insultingly bad/weird community interaction after the fact see also: dancing monkeys. See also: learning opportunity. (Also fd: didn’t try and get tickets, would have, but have conflicts.)
That’s probably enough. Mainly because I kinda forget where I was going with this. I think I had other thoughts about ‘deliberate’ and ‘virtual’ and all kinds of other stuff, and I’m sure I could go on and on over beers and tator tots if I had to. And not just because beers and tator tots go with everything even though they totally do. Book it.
