Penny power

Once I loved pennies and would sift for hours after the elusive wheat penny.

Now I hate pennies.

Do you keep pennies? Or do you throw them into the street?

When will the mint finally stop minting them?

A reason to strip mine resources is only a reason. Nothing more.

Zinc and copper mongers force us to pocket zinc and copper.

Two-thousand-oh-Obama. Change. Pennies will be changing again soon.

Bet on it!

A Story of Revenge

I'm bored by most movies and am a fairly stern critic. There is a common thread to the ones I like though. They usually portray characters in a state of intense anguish. Movies like The Fisher King or Dancer in the Dark combine psychology and despair in a way that makes the characters' actions believable.

I just saw Red and am adding it to the list. It's a modern-day revenge drama by a Scandinavian director with an all-star cast. Above all, the performance by Brian Cox is shattering. You have to pick yourself up off the floor when he's done. His range of emotions, from tenderness and despair to duty and controlled rage are something to see.

Red, highly recommended. Here's a well-considered review to read AFTER seeing it. I liked it better than the reviewer btw.

Have you heard Viva Radio? It's great!

If you like your music tiger fang sharp and cotton candy sweet, let me introduce you to a playlist-based web radio station called Viva Radio.

In case you're not acquainted, Viva radio is one of perhaps a googol streaming web stations dotting the net. What's different about it - and this comes from a true partisan of improbable, euphoric and uncommon sounds - is the mix. The mix is tight, holmes.

For the sake of comparison, take everything that radio leftofthedial-ism has to offer, all your WFMUs, your AM golds, the cream of college radio, meager as it is, all of Austin's KOOP, where I DJed for 5 years, take all of these sources and consider their finest moments. Viva's diverse and focused offerings, as they currently stand, approximate such a metric.

Also, disregard the collective lump of the predictive music engine movement, your Pandoras, Last FMs and Rhapsodys withstanding. Opinions of these services shed no light on what Viva does. Months of wringing the most out of Last FM in particular has led me to a waning appreciation of on-demand radio in favor of simple tune and turn up radio.

Essentially, the station is a NYC-based webstreaming server. The highest caliber of DJs, music nerds, recluses and hipsters offer the casual listener their carefully-crafted playlists. Rather than programming their sets live, DJs submit in some form or another their chosen tracks culled from an unstoried assemblage of vinyl, CD, Napster and iPod resources, providing an ever-unguessable cascade of music.

The DJs I speak of are people like this hunching guy:

And this french cyborg with the shades:



And the selections are terrific due not to the DJs party throwing skills, which must be formidable, but to the incredible breadth and unique je ne sais quois of the music presented on Viva Radio.

Listening to this station, you will hear not only song after song - mind you, there are very few prerecorded spoken ads or statements to punctuate the shuffle - you will hear ideas in this music. You will experience the selected cartography of a scarcely-known or fringe revered genre or subcultural style of music articulated so methodically that it can stun.

Hearing an hour of the most obscure and delightful Cahiers du Cinema soundtrack next to an Asha Bohsle Bollywood theme continuing with a France Gall B-side will transport you. Keep in mind, the playlists change regularly, so let it play a while. It's great, and if you're like me, you'll get a kick out of it.