Crossposted from my blog: 67 minutes of DANCE TIME. Thanks to Alex for inspiration!
Tracklist
- College - Teenage Color
- Buddy Akai - I’ll Know
- Holy Ghost! - Hold On
- The Whitest Boy Alive - Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)
- Mystery Jets - Young Love (The Shoes Mix)
- Autokratz - Last Show - Original Mix
- The Gossip - Yr Mangled Heart (Guns’N’Bombs Trashbags Remix)
- Belle & Sebastian - Piazza, New York Catcher
- Frank Turner - This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The One Of ME
- The Helio Sequence - Hallelujah
- Earlimart - Answers & Questions
- AmpLive - All I Need
- Breakbot - Happy Rabbit
- Purple Crush - Shopping on the Dancefloor
- Teenagersintokyo - Very Vampyr
- Steve Aoki - Justice, Waters of Nazereth (Erol Alkan’s Durrr Durrr Durrrrrr Re-Edit) (with Pase Rock guest drop)
- Justice - Phantom II (Boys Noize Unreleased Turbine)
- Sébastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (Mr. Dan’s Mix)
My poor diary that I've neglected since the summer! I've done a ton of stuff since then, what with clubbing, rock climbing, and other stuff.
But this week was one of the craziest ever, since I got started on a Wednesday. Wednesday was John K's birthday, so a group of fellow condo residents went to Pravda, a lounge at Wellington east of Yonge. It was a USSR themed bar, with lots of commie stars and Lenin portraits. We got bottle service and split 2 bottles of vodka between about a dozen people. Luckily the alcohol was accompanied by lots of authentic Russian food. To go with the vodka, there was black bread and pickles. There was smoked salmon, smoked mackerel, and herring with this weird white dill sauce. I didn't have a lot of the fish, because I don't think it goes well with alcohol. There were also these awesome pirogies, the likes of which I had never tried before. They weren't the normal supermarket pirogies, but the meat stuffed one tasted a lot like wonton.
The next day we went out to another bar for Mira's birthday. This was just down the street where the Singing Oyster used to be. It was called Cucina, and was a nice little place to hang out. Quiet and brightly lit, a contrast to the dim, barely able to see environment from the night before.
Tonight (Friday), we went bar hopping. Starting off at the Bier Market, where we spent the most time. There were a large variety of people, from young hot girls, to oldish cougars. However, the music was way too loud, as usual - though it was a live cover band that had some pretty amazing talent and range. We later checked out Fionn MacCool's but didn't like it too much even though there was also live music. We then checked out a small place called the Foundation Room, which had this Middle Eastern/Indian theme. We stayed there for about 10 songs before we finally ended up at the Reservoir Lounge.
I had been having pizza a lot in the last few days too. There was pizza on Thursday, then Domino's pizza at Andy's party at 7pm on Friday before we went out. Then we had more pizza at Reservoir Lounge. At least it was all really good quality pizza!
I have a thing for purposeful monochromatic constructions, devices that simultaneously tickle my parietal and occipital lobes, Venn diagrams of precious little intersection of the trickster, beauty and math. Childhood ingredients included parts Escher, Pinball Construction Set and the Basel School. This week I was ecstatic to be exposed to not one, but two examples of this meter—one physical, the other virtual, both Japanese, rendered in white, challenges to be experimented with.
29 days ago, in a flash of brilliance with a bread knife and a slightly-stale bagel, I almost took off the end of my thumb. Well-drugged and stitched a few hours later, the immediate crisis was over. But what began was a few weeks of operating with half my opposable digits. I fumbled to pick up things and learned to press modifier keys with another finger, inadvertently writing whole sentences in a gimp substitution cipher. Other limbs substituted for missing abilities, and complex two-hand maneuvers such as opening spring-loaded door latches became new challenges.
Two weeks ago I took the stitches out. This was simultaneously fun and gross, the satisfaction of removing the black nylon thread from my thumbprint not unlike popping a big zit. I’d graduated to “normal” band-aids, the daily application of Neosporin being largely symbolic at this point—a huge scar is inevitable.
29 days later, I’m celebrating by trekking across Stockholm to the biggest climbing gym in Scandinavia. It’s been almost 2 months since I last climbed, and I’m really excited. Going to boulder a bit, and maybe find a climbing partner—hoping that “on belay” translates.
I’ve been blogging over here lately.
Distilling a batch of ten from a rough cut three times that size is a craft. Despite feelings of being unsuited for said craft, I humbly present my list of the ten best songs of 2007.
When initially making this list, Krissy asked if I was making a personal list or a critical list. Despite aforementioned ability to compile a reasonable cut of the latter, I made two lists. It turns out the intersection was actually pretty significant, even discounting remixes or covers. In the end I decided on the following rules: Song or source album must have been first released in 2007. For remixes and covers, the date of the derived song’s release is counted. It must have 4+ stars in my iTunes library and a pretty high listen count.
Surprises: The Streets, Bloc Party didn’t make the cut this year, despite heavy presence in last year’s top 10. No hip hop. No Air, M83, or Ratatat. No drum & bass. Hot Chip and Peter Bjorn and John barely got sliced out. Four songs are remixes, and every song has lyrics. Huge thanks to Xis, .tiff and the Toof for introducing me to most (if not all) of the songs on this list.
I’ll repurpose a tweet of a quote from Erika: each is a simple verse in a complex love story. For a lazy monday afternoon, sitting on the rug in the living room of my friend’s upper east side apartment, it seems framed correct. I have two goals today: write this post, and party. And I’m almost out of post.
- Klaxons - Golden Skans
- Cloud Cult - Take Your Medicine
- Hellogoodbye - Here (In Your Arms) (CLASSIXX Remix)
- The Bird And The Bee - Fucking Boyfriend
- LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
- Digitalism - Pogo
- LCD Soundsystem - New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
- Thom Yorke - The Eraser (XXXChange_mix)
- Klaxons - As Above, So Below (Justice Remix)
- Midnight Juggernauts - Road To Recovery (Miami Horror remix)
Young Folks violates the “released in 2007” rule, but it makes the list as the bonus secret track 11 because of one night in October with my friend Elise in the middle of an epic flurry of rock shows around San Francisco. We were standing in line at Popscene to see Tokyo Police, the sounds of Peter Bjorn and John were tumbling out of the door of 330 Ritch when a dozen-odd hipsters around us started nodding their heads and whistling along.
- Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
Sometime before Flickr and Twitter scratched my lazy itch, I used to blog. Whole paragraphs! Structured sentences, posts with conclusions and enclosures! Double entendre! Exclamation points!
