Songs of the Week - Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Just War
                                                     - Insane Lullaby
                                                        - The Man Who Played God

Album: Dark Night of the Soul



It's not often that an artist gets multiple songs in the 'Song of the Week' category, but this new CD from the tandem of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse has earned this honour.
Danger Mouse is most famous for his 2004 release of The Grey Album, a musical work combining the acapellas from Jay-Z's The Black Album with the instrumentals from The Beatles' The White Album. Danger Mouse later teamed with Cee-Lo to create Gnarls Barkley, releasing their hit single "Crazy."

This album is also a tribute to Sparklehorse, aka. Marc Linkous, a songwriter who took his own life this past March. A sad ending to a melancholy CD, but too good to pass up.

Agent Zero Must Be Stopped

Gilbert Arenas is one of the most talented basketball players in the world. He also brings the most drama, disappointment, and sheer stupidity into a league that needs to rid itself of its head cases.  The nine year veteran is a 3-time NBA All-Star, has scored over 10,000 career points and is one of only twenty players to ever score 60 points in game, a feat accomplished against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2006. Few can deny that Arenas, number 0 and therefore dubbed “Agent Zero,” is full of ridiculous talent. The problem is the baggage and embarrassment he brings to the league with regularity. The 2 most current issues involving Arenas include pulling an unlicensed gun hidden in his locker on his teammate, and most recently faking an injury to not play in the Wizards’ preseason home opener this year. How is this tolerated, not by the NBA, but within the Washington Wizards organization?

People I Know and Carbon Monoxide

I was shopping at a Williams-Sonoma the other day, inquiring about the cost of a miniature carbon dioxide tank for my new at-home water carbonating machine. Upon asking the young girl working there if they had any tanks to purchase, the employee could only stand there and stare back at me with glazed eyes. Finally she mustered out a response:

".... I'm sorry, what?"

Realizing I sometimes talk too quickly for the average person to understand, I repeated my question for her, being sure to speak clearly this time.

"Do you guys sell CO2 tanks for your Home Water Carbonation machine?"

Again she turned still.

"..... I'm sorry, CEE-OH..."

"Carbon Dioxide."

"Is that the machine that's always beeping in my apartment?"

I politely told her that's not what I was referring to, but didn't extend the conversation any further to mention that what is 'always beeping' in her apartment is likely her carbon monoxide detector, and that it shouldn't be beeping at all. Before getting the opportunity to tell her that she should really get that situation checked out, I was referred to the next employee for an answer to my query. Although it was a shame that I couldn't enlighten the young saleslady about the threats of carbon monoxide, I figured my advice would have just gone over her head. And besides, learning from experience might be the best way to help her out. Later on after arriving at home, still laughing quietly in disbelief from the whole conversation that had just transpired, I reflected upon my own personal experience with my carbon monoxide detector.

Song of the Week - Stars

Stars - Fixed

Album: The Five Ghosts

Stars earn a special nod this week for their free performance today in front of the live studio audience at Glenn Gould Studios for Q, the popular CBC radio program hosted by Jion Ghomeshi. Stars have been a very successful Canadian group, having twice earned Juno nominations for best Alternative Album and releasing their fifth full length album, The Five Ghosts, earlier this year. The members of Stars are also all members of the popular Juno award-winning group Broken Social Scene.

Be sure to listen to the podcast of Q if you missed their performance. Q also features other wonderful musical talent, interviews, and news analysis.

aa.


Credit Where It's Due: Natalie L.A.

A Call To Losing Sports Teams

What do you do if you're a die-hard fan of a losing team?  Six weeks into a 17-week NFL season; the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions have a combined 4 wins. Between the six teams, they have played 33 games and have again, 4 wins. If history teaches us anything, it typically takes 10 wins for any team to make the NFL playoffs. Sure, realistic expectations weren't for any of these teams to compete for the Super Bowl, but fans at least want a competitive product on the field. But 'how competitive?' is the new question.  With no realistic chance at the playoffs, what are fans now to do? Most fans would (and as they should) do the same: come out every week and cheer on their team in hopes of a victory. The reality in modern football, however sad some might feel about it, is that fans some will cheer, albeit quietly or perhaps secretly, for their team to lose in order to secure a better draft pick once the season ends. With some fans, you won't hear it aloud, but if you look at them closely the morning after a meaningless win, you can see a sense of bittersweet disappointment as they look at the updated standings in the newspaper and they realize that that win lowered their team's draft pick by 4 positions. The team could fall even 1 spot lower on the draft ladder with a win, but still fans will realize that the odds now of getting that star quaterback from college next year are still that much lower. It's past the point of no return. These fans can't be pleased and they can't be saved.. until the next year.

So what remains for these diehard fans to get excited about with a losing team?

What To Make of a 3D Future

I was still in Elementary School when my brother came home with Nintendo's new system: the Virtual Boy. As both of us were kids and no amount of dishes we washed could earn us enough to buy a system with a $200 (U.S.) price tag, my brother, genius as he was, was the first kid out of the school doors that day when it was released to at least rent the system. Dubbed as the first "Home 3-D Virtual Reality Experience," players would put their faces into a pair of giant red goggles perched upon a stand, playing games completely coloured in red and black. Besides the obvious problems of having one's face literally directly in the screen forced to see only red lines flying by for however long one decided to play, as an excited naive child, I could look past these problems. What I could not look past, however, was the fact that not only could I not play any game concurrently with my older brother, but more disappointingly for a younger sibling was that I could not see what my big brother was doing while he was playing. The screen was completely blocked from my view, as was the poor design of the system. The Virtual Boy was Nintendo's biggest failure and you'd be hard pressed seeing anyone owning one today, let alone speaking of it, unless they were a collector.

Today, the pursuit of 3-D has enjoyed a sudden resurgence, this time in film and television.

Song of the Week - Obadiah Parker

Obadiah Parker - Hey Ya

(Written by André Benjamin, aka. André 3000. Originally peformed by Outkast)

Album: Obadiah Parker Live

Obadiah Parker is a little known folk group from Arizona, most well known for their acoustic cover of the famous hip-hop song Hey Ya, written by Andre 3000 from the group Outkast. The group currently has only 2 self-produced albums, with a third CD soon to arrive in early 2011.
For those who enjoy cover songs or wonderful relatively unknown folk talent, be sure to check them out.

(And if you're one of those who always prefers the original: Outkast - Hey Ya).

Expanding on the Ryder Cup Tradition

To start off October this year, golf fans were treated to their closest version of a World Cup, the Ryder Cup, an event allowing the best golfers of the United States to fare against Europe's best. While golf is typically seen as a sport for individual accolades, with stars such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson owning most of the headlines, this tournament is a pleasant change of pace where players team up with each other, providing more than one sole winner at the end of the weekend. The Ryder Cup features 12 men from each team, in which golfers match up against one another over 3 days in both foursome and singles matches, while trying to earn points for either USA or Europe with every individual/team victory. This year, fans were treated to Team Europe regaining the Ryder Cup in a 1-point victory over Team USA and bringing the trophy home for the 9th time over the past 13 competitions. 

There is much vested interest in this tournament for both the Americans and Europeans (mostly British), and for good reason.  It seems golf fans love nothing more than history, and this tournament has a rich history since its inception in 1927 where it started as U.S.A. versus Great Britain. As the fans and players alike look forward to the next Ryder Cup to be held on U.S. soil in two years time, perhaps it's time fully expand on this tournament idea and let golf greats like Ernie Els, the 10th best golfer in the world according to World Golf Rankings, join this illustrious tournament. You see, the unfortunate Mr. Els is not permitted to partake in this tournament simply because his nation of South Africa, a nation with a rich golfing history in its own right, is not part of this highly exclusive tournament.  Other continents, such as Asia and Australia, are also producing plenty of competitive talent on the PGA Tour (Professional Golfers' Association), but still find their nations absent from a highly publicized world tournament. It is time for the PGA to look past the exclusionary nature the tournament provides and instead flourish into a highly competitive worldwide tournament, where all nations and continents finally get to compete against one another as teams.  Let's finally have a tournament where the main focus isn't "U.S.A. versus Golfing Conglomerate X".

Answering the Difficult Questions: Salt

I always love a movie poster that really challenges its audience.

Angelina Jolie is... SALT.    Who is Salt?

.... are you serious? You just told us:
Angelina Jolie.

Mystery solved.

Song of the Week - Ryan Bingham

Ryan Bingham - The Weary Kind

Album: Crazy Heart (Soundtrack)

This is the Academy Award winning title track from the movie "Crazy Heart": the story of Bad Black (in an Academy Award winning performance from Jeff Bridges); an old and fading, dysfunctional country legend. As country music has changed its style too much for himself to make a comeback, Bad Blake eventually writes this song for his one-time protege, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), one of the few in the scene who's still "real" country. The same can be said of Ryan Bingham and this song. Enjoy it folks: real country.

The End of the Jays(' Season)

Once upon a time, 1992-1993 to be exact, the sky was the limit for Toronto baseball fans. Sitting within the appropriately named SkyDome, Blue Jays fans could bask in the sunshine and look up at their next door neighbour the CN Tower, the World's tallest building, before watching their baseball team spoil them with back-to-back World Series Championships. Today, the CN Tower has conceded defeat to another building half way across the planet, while the Blue Jays team has had its fans quietly move them into a modest retirement home, the Rogers Centre, where the team can always recite old stories of the glory days. This past Sunday, the Toronto Blue Jays ended their 2010 season with a goodbye to a legend, a fair bit of disappointment on the field, some promise for future talent, but, ultimately, not a lot of hope of there being any meaningful interest from fans in Canada's last remaining Major League team.

Brandon Morrow pitches for the dwindling Blue Jays faithful

"SUPER"? Or A Story Heard Several Times Before

Although the stories of Spider-Man and Batman remain as popular as ever, there has been a new movement towards the 'everyday superhero': the man without any special powers, no special gadgetry, fighting evil with primitive weapons and a plethora of courage. The newest installment of this Superhero genre is James Gunn's SUPER, which recently made its debut at this year Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Midnight Madness program. SUPER follows the story of Frank, played by Rainn Wilson of 'The Office' fame, a middle aged burger flipper, who decides to take up being a superhero to fight all forms of wrong no matter how big or small. Some days his actions are as noble as attacking small time drug dealers in the street and other days the battle is as insignificant as beating up those who butt in line at the movies. While these small time heroics help "The Crimson Bolt," his Superhero alter ego (pictured above), create local fame, Frank's ultimate goal remains the same: defeating the town's main druglord (Kevin Bacon), a man who stole Frank's wife (Liv Tyler) away from him by subjecting her to drugs after years of her attempts at a recovery. Along the way Frank meets Lilly (Ellen Page), a comic book shop clerk, who Frank uses as a resource tool in creating his costumed hero, which helps her grow into eventual role of The Crimson Bolt's sidekick, Bolty. The movie offers many moments of pleasure, from the the silliness of the homemade outfits being worn, to the pure excitement in Lilly's eyes (and the audiences) when she finally beats up the bully who keyed her friend's car. But one cannot help but feel that the story of 'The Crimson Bolt' is one that we've all heard before.

Song of the Week - Fatboy Slim & David Byrne

David Byrne & Fatboy Slim - Here Lies Love (Feat. Florence Welch)

Album: Here Lies Love