Okay, hopefully everyone knows about Pandora by now. As a radio DJ hopeful this site is really fun for finding new music that match your tastes. You can basically create your own radio stations based on the artists you enter in the search box. I’ve got about 5 different stations I listen to depending on my mood. You can only skip something like 5 songs an hour I think- but it’s better than real radio where songs you hate are guaranteed to be played. You can always give a thumbs up or down to a song and they’ll try not to play anything like it again. Pretty swell. Pandora Radio.

Daytrotter is my new favorite music website. They basically have bands come in and play exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks. Lots of pretty well known bands are on the site, and it’s a great place to find new music as well. (Free downloading..) They’ve got a team of writers and illustrators to interview/draw the artists too. Daytrotter.

Maybe flickr only entertains me as a lover of photography, but it’s always cool to browse people’s photographs and see the range of talent. I’m on there too. The other really cool photo website is JPG mag where people submit and vote on each others photos to get published in a real live photo magazine! I should really submit something..

If you’re ever having a bad day it might make you feel better to visit Fmylife, where people submit little 1-2 sentence stories about a really terrible experience they’ve had. You might not want to read some of them while you’re eating though. You can agree/disagree as to whether the person’s life is indeed f-ed, or whether they deserved what they got.

Hulu is a great place to watch really funny SNL clips and catch up on any TV shows you may have missed. Really high quality videos, and limited commercial interruption! If I’m bored I also like to watch movie trailers on apple.

One of the most hilarious websites out there is definitely the best of craigslist. Simply because you realize how many witty/cynical/sardonic/pissed off people there are in the world who are willing to rant their hearts out to cyberspace…and how many idiots there are out there. My favorite has to be the guy who put up photos of a “cat” he found to find the owner. The creature is clearly an opossum. Wow.

Now for the sites I occasionally remember to visit. For awhile I was really into thefatmanwalking.com which documented this dude Steve’s journey across America to lose weight and regain his old life. He’s amazingly insightful and I still check up on how he’s doing every now and then. Postsecret is a website where people send in artistic postcards that reveal one of their secrets anonymously. New secrets are posted every sunday, and there are a few books out. Many of the funniest bumper stickers on facebook actually originate from someecards a site with tons of hilarious ecards for any occasion. 

This is all I could think of for now, but maybe there’ll be a second time-wasting blog up soon..

Sound familiar?

What about this?

Or is this a stretch?

…so did creaky boards copy Joe satriani?

These two guys come up on stage, one of them has long straggly kinda hair, and they both look pretty down to earth. They plop themselves down at the respective keyboard and drumset. The first song is interesting, the synth is set up to sound like a genuine grand piano. The music is okay. As the first song fades out, there is a smattering of applause. The second song begins slowly, but builds up layer upon layer, not in an overpowering way though. The drums are amazing, and the remainder of their set builds up to one epic finale- a song called “death.” This song integrates so many moods and emotions that it’s pretty hard to describe. The calm beginning is overpowered by a neverending, but amazing drum solo, which ends with both guys standing up and pounding on their instruments with seemingly all the energy left in their bodies. A final thud of the drums, and we all begin to applaud. False alarm. The song has a few trick endings, and seems to end on a more monumental scale each time. The guys clearly have fun, they integrate awesome bells, and the drum solo seemed to even impress the keyboardist. He tried to butt in with his synth a few times, before shaking his head ruefully as another cymbal crash interrupted him. I decided that these guys are going to play at my wedding. 

Deerhoof was awesome too of course. I love singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s adorable hand gestures as she sings,

and the music got everyone (even utterly sleep deprived me) to get at least their feet tapping.

One of my favorite parts of their set was a guy directly in front of the stage. For almost the entire show, he clasped his hands above his head and jumped around enthusiastically. During more mellow songs he would revert to clapping his hands really loudly. By the end of the show he was frantically shimmying and jumping and doing all sorts of crazy stuff, but again, the hands remained clasped. It was pretty strange looking, and a few of us imitated his weird behavior. 

Anyways, I’d highly recommend AU, and the third band that played- Experimental Dental School. They are a duo, the drummer is this really awesome asian chick, and high fives with the audience are a part of their family tradition. 

Other cool all ages shows coming up at first ave: (links to tickets and info)

TV ON THE RADIO

&

OF MONTREAL

He was one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or “French New Wave.” According to wikipedia, many of his films challenged the conventions of Hollywood Cinema, and he was often considered the “most extreme New Wave filmmaker.” His films often expressed his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, his films often cited existential and Marxist philosophy.

CONTEMPT- Fri Oct 10 – Sun Oct 12 @ 7 & 915pm w/ Sat and Sun Matinees @ 5p

BAND OF OUTSIDERS- Mon. Oct 13 – Tues Oct 14 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER- Wed Oct 15 – Thurs Oct 16 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

PIERROT LE FOU- Wed Oct 22 – Thurs Oct 23 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

I’m really excited to check out his films, I had fun reading up about french new wave and iconoclasm, so I’m pretty intruiged.

“If you live in Chicago and have a Myspace or Facebook account, you’ve most likely seen the work of Clayton Hauck. The 25-year-old immortalizes Chicago’s youthful nightlife scene, capturing candid moments of ecstatic DJ bliss, awkward drunken posing, superstar DJs and wannabe celebrities for his photo blog everyoneisfamous.com“

Whilst surfing the net a couple years ago he stumbled upon The Cobra Snake, which is considered the original nightlife photo blog. Noticing there wasn’t anything like it around Chicago he began to point and shoot around town.

“I always had a camera on me, so I just decided to start shooting,” says Hauck, who didn’t really get into photography until his freshmen year at Columbia College. “Now there’s dozens of photo blogs but I was the first to have an actual website that was updated regularly.”

His first-ever posting involved images from Continental’s opening party; today, Everyone is Famous has almost 30,000 photos. The blog has led to paying gigs, too. He now works full-time as a freelance photographer, shooting for various publications and websites.

“Everyone is Famous has always been my portal for getting better and pushing myself to become a better photographer,” he says. “I guess on the larger scale, I’d like to see myself go on to bigger and better things–more exposure for my photography and doing interesting and creative work that people recognize and respect.”

The set up of everyoneisfamous.com is what really drew me in. At first I thought I was looking at some sort of art mag site. Photos are organized by event or venue, and each one is uniquely titled. I spent at least an hour just skimming his hundreds of albums. Give this guy a flickr and you’d probably miss out on a lot of photos, but the albums force you to look at each one as an almost seperate entity.

I’m guessing when this guy isn’t out shooting parties he’s glued to his laptop just uploading and editing photos, or writing in his blog, since he’s got so many gosh darn sites. I actually really enjoyed reading the blog though because it gives a bit of an explaination to the photos. He also links up some cool videosClick here to view the embedded video.