Michael Jackson

A name so trite it’s never really on our radar until recently. Writing something about him almost seem as superfluous and irrelevant as playing Billie Jean on repeat. Everybody’s done it, and enough really is enough! But here you go, his moves will take out any ABDC with a bang any day, and probably will remain so for the rest of the millenium.

RIP

I still browse the cassette tape racks when I hit the Goodwill or Salvation Army. Yeah, the odds aren’t great that I’ll get one that’s not corroded past the point of playability — not to mention, I don’t exactly cart a Walkman around with me, taped to the iPod. But what can I say? It’s a curious love affair.

First, because it’s still the most meaningful way to make/receive a true mixtape. Something about the inevitable hisses & pops, the way you’re forced to edit to fit on Side A/Side B, the difficulty of skipping tracks that forces us to quash our musical ADD. I could go on, but why waste words? We’ve made our love clear here at the shop with the USB Mixtape, which at least keeps the look if not the true (un)functionality of a cassette.

Can’t get enough? Check out Cassette Tape Culture for more unbridled tapey-tapes love. And go ahead — make that tape for the pretty girl in your creative writing workshop, you lovesick buffoon. She’ll love it.

“If Dahl could dream it, if Wonka could do it, Heston at least wants to try.”

Heston Blumenthal, chef and proprietor of The Fat Duck in London, and apparently a crazy lunatic of the most enterprising stripe, thinks in his crazy-ass mind that he can create a spoonful of food that changes flavors as you eat it, Veruca Salt style. Funny thing is, as far back as 2004, he had already brought it into the realm of possibility.

I stumbled on this dusty old article online the other day and thought it too good not to share. I haven’t heard any further developments, but think of the possibilities. From Seed Magazine:

Heston is no longer content merely to challenge our aesthetic assumptions: He wants to expose the very machinery behind the tongue. He wants to make a mouthful that is as alive as the sense of taste itself. After all, in Roald Dahl’s surreal children’s classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wonka does it, remember? His factory invents a gum that holds within it the narrative of an entire meal, beginning with mashed potatoes and roast beef and ending with a satisfying blueberry pie. Wonka shows the gum to a character named Violet, with the caveat that she shouldn’t try it because the gum has yet to be fully tested. Violet, of course, tries it anyway. Afterward, she becomes a blueberry. It’s true she was obnoxious. Nevertheless, you would think that such adverse side effects would discourage imitators: Not Heston. If Dahl could dream it, if Wonka could do it, Heston at least wants to try.

Heston makes a stable mousse out of only chocolate and water because he’s a nut

So he got together with Harold McGee to see if they could “create a spoonful that would change in your mouth as you were eating it.” Heston knew this magic trick of taste would require a dazzling display of chemistry. Everything from evaporation volatility rates to the timing of the distinct flavor peaks would have to be exactly calculated and meticulously tested for the spoonful to work. But slowly, Heston and Harold came up with the spoonful’s dramatic arc: It would begin with a delicate whiff of basil, continue onto salty olive with a little bouquet of thyme, and end with a crescendo of cooked onion. “The whole thing is still a work in progress,” Heston admits, and, like Wonka’s recipe, “not quite ready for the customers yet. It will be hard, but we did get some results. The lab, however, has never been so messy.”

One of those pitch-perfect match-ups: White Lies, whose virtues I’ve extolled here before, and Crystal Castles, a dark and rowdy mix of feedback, punk spirit, clubby-beats and 8-bit samples do dual duty on this Crystal Castles remix of the White Lies single ‘Death.’ And there’s a video!

I’ve seen the video and jaw-dropped at the amount of work that must have gone into it, but seeing in-progress pictures really brings it home. Spotted on It’s Nice That — a photo of BLU working away on this.

Thanks to our friend Yosoh pointing out a link, here’s a Japanese website dedicated for both vintage and new vinyl fingures: Kabushikigaisha-Link. Featuring 3 different shops of Monster, Anime/Cartoon, and Commercial vinyl fingures, this website is a most visit for all the collectors. The server is a bit slow, but it’s going to take a good chunk of your time browse all the out-of-production figure toys, like this 1976 McDonaldland Big Mac, bringing back memories, yes?

We humbly submit Exhibit A, in which street-biker-of-the-moment Danny Macaskill embraces a starring turn in the new video for Doves’ gorgeous ‘Winter Hill’…

…and Exhibit B, in which Dinosaur Jr. is BACK, thank the God of the ’90s, and rocking and, for some reason, skating and biking in their new video (which is, I suppose, a sort of ’90s thing to do). Their stunt doubles do some cool tricks. The actual members take a few falls. The whole thing, song included, is just good for the soul.

I’m not exactly Mister Furniture Guy here, but this is so much more — a simple, well-executed idea is just…nice. From the studio of Stephen Mann, a London stylist who works with (the brilliant) Aitor Throup. Mann saw a similar set-up at C.P. Company and decided ‘why not me?’

750 cardboard tubes later, this was the result. DIY indeed.

From their last full-length Crimes (there’s a new one on the way), These United States perform two tracks in NYC’s Washington Square Park, street busker-style. Folksy and spirited, please enjoy ‘Pleasure and Pain and Pride and Me’ and ‘Honor Amongst Thieves’. You might as well. I know you’re not actually setting foot outside today.

It’s a sci-fi movie that, from all accounts so far, hearkens back to the chilly, exploration-of-the-human-condition, in-depth character-study-type classics of the golden olden days. Oh yeah — and it’s directed by David Bowie’s son. Oh, and it stars Sam Rockwell. And also, Sam Rockwell. What?

Either way, there’s some real messed-up capital-S going down. It opens today in NY and LA. So, if you’re there, you know…go.