Sweetney

This is my brain on radio

I've recently rekindled my decade-long mad, passionate love affair with the weekly radio (and now TV!) program This American Life (and if you aren't similarly swoony over Ira Glass and the show, what the hell is wrong with you exactly?). Yeah, I've been sending TAL roses again, leaving it little love notes, staging candlelight dinners... you know how it goes. Anyway, in the process of becoming more deeply embroiled in radioland again I came across this show called Radiolab out of WYNC, which I think can be best described as something akin to TAL's little science-geek brother. Or maybe a younger cousin. Or perhaps even a genetically engineered bastard love child (if that's, umm, even possible). In any case, if you like TAL, you'll definitely dig on some Radiolab... just trust me on this one, mkay? You can subscribe to the Radiolab podcast here.

Radio: it does a brain good. Four out of five neuroscientists agree.

. . . . .

The Mommyblogging anthology I'm featured in -- Sleep Is For The Weak -- is now available for your pre-ordering pleasure! The contributor list is pretty stellar, and I'm beyond geeked to have been included.  Thanks to the magnificent Rita Arens for all her hard work in making this happen!

Music to scrape your car's windshield by

It's been a long time since I've posted a new mix here for your listening enjoyment, mostly because the voices in my head have been demanding showtunes, NOTHING BUT SHOWTUNES, which turns out to be something of an impediment to mix-creation. But after many long hours of negotiation, and the application of a sturdy tinfoil hat, I've managed to quell my internal demons just long enough to bring you the Sweetney Winter 2007-2008 Mixtacular, a collection of some of my favorite tunes from the past year.

Some of these songs are also M's favorites, which she's bludgeoned me with over many a month -- see if you can guess which ones (coughtrack10cough).

Please to enjoy with a warm beverage of your choice (spiking with alcoholic liqueur optional, but recommended).

Toby Take A Bow

Past experience tells me there are some Smiths fans in the hiz-ouse. This one's for all y'all.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, “Toby Take A Bow”

Anthems For A Four-Year-Old Girl

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in my PMS:

Today M_ and I spent most of the day down in the Strip Mall No Mans Land of Northern Virginia hanging out with my folks, with a roundtrip in the car clocking in at around two and a half hours. During that dead zone of car time, M_ demanded that we play her current favorite tune by Broken Social Scene “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” on the car stereo no less than FIFTEEN TIMES IN A ROW, enthusiastically singing along word-for-word with each replay. I can't tell you how heartbreaking this was for me, or how many times I found myself barely able to choke back tears at the bittersweet, Loss Of Innocence/Coming Of Age lyrics she was singing, lyrics that so clearly will mirror some of my own feelings come M_'s rise into girlhood in the too-near future:

Now you're all gone
Got yer makeup on
And you're not comin' back
(Can't you come back?)

Ah me, parenting is such sweet sorrow. Listen.

[weeps]

Talk Me Down

Umm, guys? Does Jon Stewart here profess himself to be a “downtown libertarian” (within the first 20 seconds of the video)?

Just, you know, checkin'.

EDIT: From wikipedia: “when asked about his own political affiliations, Stewart typically responds that he is a Whig.” Har. Doing some digging, I've found that libertarians like him. Oh, and he does live in downtown NYC. gulp.

Motormouthism

Sorry, sorry.

But I just wanted to point you to this song by Beirut, “Postcards From Italy”, that is currently haunting me.

Listen. Enjoy.

Bye.

Melt me down / Into big black armour

I made a Fall Mix CD a few weeks back, and put this song on it as the closing tune. But I don't think it meant half as much to me then as it does now, after the events in PA on Monday... I've been listening to it on and off all day today, tearing up.

Yankee. Hotel. Foxtrot.

Despite my love of the Wilco, I hadn't heard anything in-depth about this matter of numbers stations/The Conet Project until yesterday, catching up on some old NPR podcasts.

Weird. Creepy. Intriguing. I think the writers of Lost need to weave this into the plot of next season somehow.

Does This Mean I Have To Like Adam Carolla Now?

Because honestly, I don't really care for him. But oh boy howdy, do I LOOOOOVE THIS.

RE: Your Need To Know.

Obviously ya'll needed to be hepped to the following:

Music: Clea Hantman is such a busy little bee it makes my head all spiny just thinking about it. She runs two MP3 blogs chock full o' goodness: (sm)all ages (awesome music for kids and parents alike), and yer little sister (indie/alt/punk mp3 blog). She's also a writer, and clearly doesn't sleep much. Or at all.

Couture: My friend Debbie now has a site, 60 Bugs, devoted to selling her very cool hand-embroidered clothes for babies and toddlers (plus some awesome stitched pillowcases). Buy, buy, buy!

Sweetneydom: I'm having some difficulties with comment spam filters I recently implemented, which sometimes leads to valid comments getting snagged and shuffled off to comment purgatory (which I can retrieve them from, but its a manual process and I'm not checking it hourly or anything), thus leading to a delay in some comments getting published. SO: if a comment of yours doesn't appear to be showing up, please don't wig out. I'll (eventually) see it and push it through, and in time these kinks will straighten themselves out. Werd up.

none more black.

dudes, its swedish curling metal!

“In preparation for the Olympic Games in February, we joined forces with one of Sweden's brightest hopes for a gold medal,” said HAMMERFALL guitarist Oscar Dronjak in a statement posted on the band's web site. “With heavy metal as a source of strength, the girls can now focus on bringing home the gold.”

...for styro and patrick, who i know feel this.

ps; is anyone else out there sitting at home, as i am, all clench-fisted and unable to contain intermittent guttural outbursts of “SHUT UP!”, “I HATE YOU!” and “ASSHOLE!” while watching the State of the Union?

YOU. YOU ARE MY PEOPLE.

EDIT: this post should be subtitled The State Of Our Union Is Enraged And Irritated, if its comments section is any indication...

There's a story of a girl so sleepy, she could not be roused.

inspired by marrit's Very Important Announcement, i hereby proclaim this song My Official Theme Song until further notice.

and when you play it, please play it LOUD.

thank you for your attention.

yow! i feel christmas!

though nothing can match the pure, distilled xmasyness of johnny mathis's album of 1958, here's a couple tunes to get by on:

el vez - feliz navidad
james brown - go power at christmas time

because i love.

christmas freud.

for your downloading and listening pleasure.

(the very funny david rakoff, in an old piece from this american life.)

consider it an early holiday gift from me to you.

autumn mix.

sounds like some of you have already received it! leave all mix-related thoughts, questions and opinions in the comments here, por favor.

i've been listening to said mix pretty much non-stop since this weekend, so i'll be interested to hear whatchu all make of it.

continue to rock on, fair readers.

mixy bits.

sooo... i mailed out 25 autumnal cds yesterday, with the remaining 35 or so to go out before the week's end. whoever gets their cd first (see: if you get it today or tomorrow) give me a heads-up via comments or email and i'll post an open thread for mix comments/feedback/banter. woot!

now please get thee to a-viewing the new teen girl squad. thank yous.

autumnal.

i'm putting together a musical cd mix type dealy in honor of the new season. tunes old and new, a soundtrack for us to share.

if you'd like a copy, send your mailing address to: sweetney AT sweetney.com

no children.

I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it's already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die

I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises
We're pretty sure they're all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over
And I hope you blink before I do
Yeah I hope I never get sober
And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can't find one good thing to say
And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You'd stay the hell out of my way
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die

--The Mountain Goats

speaking all our minds.

keith olbermann's extraordinary editorial on MSNBC (transcript available beneath the video link for those with dial-up) really just about covers it. somebody send this to shrub and tell him he's fired. and that he's lucky we don't call for his head.

“...most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.”

hollaback boy.

following up on my recent refusal to consider gwen stefani's single as summer jam material, i bring you the sublime hollaback boy, and accompanying analysis of the original track.

because the interweb told me to.

patrick, this one's for you, dude.

Total size of music files on my computer: 6.58 GB. jesus christ, i need to get an external HD, stat!

The last CD I bought was: i bought the white stripes get behind me satan (which is a totally rad album title, by the way) for jamie a couple days back for our anniversary, but the last album i bought for myself was the new sleater kinney, the woods.

Song playing right now in iTunes: put on shuffle, it picks up superchunk 100,000 fireflies (magnetic fields cover).

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me: *click to download all 5 in a zip file*
1. elliott smith -- independence day: if i had to pick only one song, i would choose this track as my own personal theme song any day. it is the song that invariably makes me somehow happy when i listen to it, that reminds me somehow that the “now” is transitory (for better or worse), and that life's beauty lies in potentialities... it is also from the disk (XO) that M_ was born to.

2. palace brothers -- werner's last blues to blokbuster: one of those songs that i inexplicably feel is somehow connected to me; that it expresses or exemplifies something about my self that i could never articulate in words. i'm really not trying to be vague, i just don't have the language to explain why i feel tied to this song, why it moves me. just listen, i guess.

3. neutral milk hotel -- holland, 1945: from one of my all-time-favorite albums, a song that somehow manages to rock *and* -- to my mind at least -- articulate something about humanity's sad penchant for destruction (and self-destruction) without being hopeless (the album it is from was written loosely based on the diary of anne frank, and WWII generally). when the song soars to its conclusion, i literally get chills (“and its so sad to see the world agree / that they'd rather see their faces filled with flies / oh when i want to keep white roses in their eyes”). wow.

4. pavement -- father to a sister of thought: by one of my favorite bands of all time, a song from their most ambitious and interesting album. like the palace bros. song above, i feel inexplicably connected to this song... by my request, a friend sent me this disk while i was living in cairo, egypt in 95, and so even when i hear the mournful, western-style slide guitar on this track in my mind i'm brought back to the sights/sounds/smells of cairo. the song both embodies an age of my life, and something in me that longs for escape and wide-open self-immolating nothingness (“i'm too much / i'm too much comforted here”).

5. the geraldine fibbers -- dragon lady: existed as my own private “theme song” for some time several years back. for me it collects the complexity of some of the conflicting emotional parts of myself and manages to epically combine them in one song... does that make sense? anger, disgust, sadness, resentment, hope, self-loathing and love -- the will to fight *and* flee existing simultaneously -- all of it balled up into one powerful, kick-your-ass song.

and, because i'm all about sharing the love, i'm tagging joel, claire, and brian. SO THERE.

come over to the dark side.

you know you want to.

[insert echoplexed peels of fiendish laughter]

warning.

i say this in advance, just so we're clear and upfront and everything: i like that new green day album.

its the p-rock tommy, kids. don't run away from the love.

thanks. i feel much better now.

another musical tidbit (or: shameless plug, ahoy!).

my dear pal mr. bob massey, aka gena rowlands band, has a cd coming out in february featuring a number of fine tunes available here for your listening pleasure. bob's one of the brainiest, most talented, and interesting dudes i've ever had the pleasure of knowing -- the guy wrote a fucking opera, fer crissakes. you may also know him from tsunami, telegraph melts, and The Out_Circuit. or not.  anyway, i've long called him the mark eitzel of DC, and he's deserving of that. fans of smart post-punk, take heed.

please pass on linkyness to the GRB mp3s as you see fit. danke.

plug plug plug. ahem.

bah.

i just realized that link in my last post to the song "government administrator" was to a crappy clip. so pssst! i'm gonna post the mp3 (well, m4a, actually) to my site for, like, the next 24 hrs. let me know if this is problematic in anyway (i mean let me know if you have problems, not if you find it morally questionable, because fuck that shit).

go here.*

don't burn me on bandwidth, doggs.

*sorry, no pocky for kitty.

fire up the vcr/tivo/whatever.

tonight on frontline (9pm EST): the persuaders.

A PBS documentary makes the case that Americans have tuned out marketers
pitching everything from cars to candidates. The result: even more crass
attempts to get through, and a fragmentation of American society.

read more about it here.

spongebob sdtk.

wow. the sdtk to the upcoming spongebob squarepants movie is pretty rad. here's a couple toons from it, linky-linked for your listening pleasure:

the shins - they'll discover soon
the flaming lips - spongebob & patrick confront the psychic wall of energy (could that title be any more lipsesque?)

apparently there's a song from wilco on it, too.

and yes, i'm still sick.

bows to stereogum

john vanderslice cellar door remixes.

free to download here, for those of you hep to the slice.

[bows to stereogum]

365 days project.

a new mp3 a day, free to download, from a collection of "outsider" musicians.

some really amazing stuff to check out.