No I haven't been blogging much. I've been consumed by other projects and real-life interferences (way to mix a metaphor, you lazyass dilettante). And I could rant about computer/tech support problems, but the entire internet is pretty much one extended barbaric yawp about computer/tech support problems. I'll spare ya the grislies (it's to do with one company's extreme displeasure for making good on its service warranty agreements). Suffice it to say, I'll have more time/ability to be a good blogger next week. In the meantime please read some of the fine writing over at ILMiXor. We're about to start Disc 3.

dream last night:

i was walking around bay ridge, brooklyn in the rain and i fell on my butt in a puddle. a cute thirtysomething couple helped me up -- she looked like jane adams, he had a generically handsome tall/slim/brunette preppy look, like a scruffier, less square-jawed kyle maclachlan. we became quick pals and they invited me back to the workplace of some friends to have lunch and dry off.

the workplace was something called "caesar's palace" (not the casino, and NOT the palace) -- a decrepit, lopsided building that had become notorious a decade back for being the focus of a class-action lawsuit involving the sale of "luxury condos" (gack) in commercials that promoted several mistruths/half-truths and neglected to mention all the restrictions and strings attached. yet still caesar's palace stood, hidden away in the middle of a working-class shopping thoroughfare. i was served greasy chicken from the office kitchen and we sat around talking for a while.

eventually i left, but we agreed to meet up at a party a little later in the day. the party was also in brooklyn, at the four-bedroom apartment of some loser hipsters i didn't know that well. but some of my friends were coming, so i agreed to come.

the party was ok. the thirtysomethings looked like they were having fun for the first couple hours, but they spent the rest of the night slumped down on a couch, looking bored and trying not to show it. my friends and i were being giggly kids, comparing pieces of tacky costume jewelry we'd bought and rifling through the hosts' possessions. i felt neglectful of the thirtysomethings though, so i asked them if they knew of any good gigs happening in town. i dutifully pored through a couple of show listings, came up empty, and went back to my friends.

for some reason (dreams don't make sense, do they?) every book i'd ever owned suddenly appeared in the apartment, scattered around bookshelves and on the floor. it was my responsibility to get them home, although i only had a backpack and a couple of cardboard boxes. i did the best i could; friends helped out too. the books included biographies of erstwhile quasi-celebrities, individual sheet music for long-forgotten chart-country songs, cookbooks and instructional books and photo books and corny religious books, all from the '70s and '80s and all pretty much inessential to any library. even i didn't want 'em. but i had to take them home, and i managed to get several of them into the boxes.

karen o was at the party. she needed to find her shoes, which were apparently under the big pile of books. i fished around and came up with a pair of boots... the wrong ones. we never did find her shoes. she was way pissed at me.

japanese twee goes macabre (or maybe the other way around -- that's the cutest godzilla i've ever seen). via boing boing.

And another thing! On February 22, Petra Haden will FINALLY release her track-by-track cover of The Who Sell Out. In June of 2003, Irwin Chusid previewed a few of the songs on his WFMU show; if you'd like to hear his "Petra-Vaganza," there's a Real Audio stream archived on the FMU site. (Petra's a capella "Armenia, City in the Sky" has been making the mp3-blog rounds for some time now, so I'll refrain from posting it again.)

The new signs put you immediately in mind of those nightmarish car trips in Los Angeles, where you begin somewhere and, forty-five minutes later, you are somewhere else, and all the while you have been looking for a big sign that reads “Pico.” Worse than merely unfamiliar, though, the signs are infuriating—first, because they are there for the convenience of cars, and thus violate the first Law of Civilization, which states that nothing must ever be done for the convenience of cars (the mark of a city worth living in is that there are never enough places to park); and, second, because they eclipse, as décor, the jaunty, jazz-era syncopation of the classic New York street-corner sign pair, each sign gesturing toward its own street, but with the two set at slightly different levels, so that they have a happy, semaphoric panache. (The two smaller signs are still there, but they are now drowned out by the highway signage, two jazz piccolos trying to be heard above an electrified kazoo.)

The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, by way of the Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog.

Yams, the king of crops.

I’m not really fond of any of the music I’ve made and I’ve normally done my best to make sure that as few people get to hear it as possible! It’s always uncomfortable for me to listen to anything I’ve ever done. I mean, you try and make sure that the last time you leave the studio after having prepared the final mix is the last time you ever hear it. You go to extraordinary lengths (or you don’t) to make sure you never hear it again. It’s uncomfortable – let’s put it that way.

Click here for more Green Gartside hilarity!

Well, here it is: the results of the 2004 Pazz & Jop critics poll. I have nothing to say. This is me.

There's a round-robin mix CD/mp3 blog going on via the ILMers. I'm maintaining the blog and informally overseeing things in general, so I got to go first. My entry is LaBelle's "Moonshadow," which I wrote about here on Sunday.