A trip to the record store.

I earn my living as a corporate lawyer. It's therefore a modest satisfaction that my musical selections can still garner verbal props from the black T-shirted indie-rock folks who ring you up at any record store worthy of the name. The appreciative comment, the anecdote about a show, the comparison to some other band that (with luck) you also know. I don't buy records to impress people, but screw it, we're social creatures.

So that was fun today. Bought two CDs, one of which was the Soul Coughing greatest hits album.[FN *] (I wanted the CD: I have two of their albums on crappy cassettes only.)

It's very listenable, but at the same time it's sort of disturbing that there is a Soul Coughing greatest hits album. I mean, this is a band that I saw live on their album tour in law school, thinking it was a big "contempo music doesn't suck!" experience.

The liner notes are smart. Some rock critic opines that SC wrote quintessential 90s music, and you can see what he means. Dazed, articulate, slangy, kind of paranoid, genre-slopping, cosmopolitan yet introverted. With samples and a backbeat.

And "The Idiot Kings" is simply a great song.

[FN *]: Also got the previous Rainer Maria LP. I'll decide what I think of it in a couple of days.

hey, the scooper bowl starts on tuesday. all you summer associates downtown should go eat ice cream and give part of your inflated salaries to charity. plus, you get ice cream in return, which is cool.

still looking for good links for the blogroll. i am too lazy to find them myself.

i just discovered my blogroll's link to mr. poon was actually to kausfiles. funny.

mr. poon has thrown down the gauntlet.

i don't think his blogger is as sexxxy as my blogger.

oh, they're so sexxxy. hi boys! they're so cute! and that bald head! i could go on, but, well, you know.

i can't believe i just posted that! can you believe i just posted that? they're going to freakin' kill me.

{Listening to: Flash Light [The Groovemasters' Mix] - Busta Rhymes - Greatest Funkin' Hits}

drink me
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more like this > > Bill
and the other half was
unbelievably funny. maybe
you feel as the flanged elec
keyboard in a brightly lit apartment at cheesy keg parties. It is only romantic
song
Best thing on Tsingtao China , sorry to yield
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off a good stuff.
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the window open c, , =window.

courtesy the amazing poem generator.

{Listening to: Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison - }

where to find nekkid people in boston. (besides next door)

{Listening to: Bored Out of My Mind - Praga Khan - Twentyfirstcenturyskin}

How to make sure your status bar in internet explorer stays put:

Start with one instance of IE. Select View | Status Bar. Now press Ctrl while clicking the X in the upper-right-hand corner of the window to close the application. Next, open My Computer and select View | Status Bar. Finally, go to Tools | Folder Options and select the View tab. Click Apply to all folders, confirm the dialog, and then close Windows Explorer.

copied from who knows where.

so, at least once a week, my friends and i get together to watch a movie. this week, monsters' ball was on tap. i hate to say it (embarrassed to say it, even), but it was hilarious. of course, not the totally unfunny, really depressing death row subject matter, but the other half was unbelievably funny. maybe it was the atmosphere -- with friends and beer, generally silliness abounds -- or maybe it was the whole art film vibe, but we laughed. we laughed so hard that we cried (i think that was around the part with the popeye's chicken). some snorting definitely occurred (although not from me).

maybe you had to be there.

It's an easy scenario to imagine. You're in Warsaw, Gdansk, or Lodz, and sadly, you need to tell someone (quoting Snoop Dogg): "Them rhymes you were kickin' were quite bootylicious."

According to this Polish-translated hip-hop dictionary the phrase that pays is: "te rymy, które zapodwałeś były z deka wybrakowane".

Now you know.

tonight i used up two leftovers. really, it was thrilling. i now feel as if my life is validated somehow. and this is without any beer!

I am about to go eat a meal and drink beer.

Such an index of civilization, beer. Goes back thousands of years, yada yada. There are lots of places in the world where you'll never get decent wine grapes to grow and it's nobody's fault. But virtually every people should be able to toss the local cereal plant in with some hops, yeast and H2O to yield a decent beer.

And in this respect, as is so rarely the case in matters of international understanding, our expectations are not disappointed.

I mean, set aside the Anglosphere of quality beer. That all goes without saying.

My mental map of central Europe marks off a separate "beer belt" of top notch beer countries. Smack in the middle is Germany, of course. Grouped with it, in my mind are:

Denmark, whose land bridge to the Continent, I hypothesize, keeps them from adopting the eccentric anti-beer regulations and attitudes of other Scandinavians. Tuborg is good stuff. Danes are one of the top 3 beer-drinking peoples in the world.

And the Czech Republic, home of the unimpeachable Pilsner Urquell. I've never set foot there. I just read travel guides, you understand. But sausages and pilsner in a Czech beer garden on a cool, bright day seems to me a modest version of pastoral. Consonants and dumplings.

In the Baltics, Latvia is said to be the standout brew country, but I don't know much beyond that.

One cannot forget Belgium's posh and polished beers.

The Japanese produce all sorts of great beer in their often cold, mountainous country. I used to be a big fan of Asahi Extra Dry. It's so crisp you feel like drinking it should freshen your breath or something.

From Thailand, Singha epitomizes smoothness. (But you have to stay on your toes: it's sneakily alcoholic enough that they have to label it "malt liquor.")

And on and on. Tsingtao (China), I'm sorry to say, is way better than any communist product has any right to be, kind of like those old East German Zeiss microscopes. And there's lots of good Indian beer.

Good show, everyone. As I said, it's a pity that international relations at large -- heck, even travel, mostly -- cannot (can never) be as pleasant as this little tour. I'm off for a pint.

UPDATE: I forgot Mexico. What's up with that? And let me stand up for a slightly unfashionable choice -- Corona. No, it won't provide you with material for your dissertation like drinking a glass of Chimay Reserve. But Corona is a well engineered solution to the problems of spicy peppers and 100 degree heat. As such, respect it. (The cute little 7 oz. Corona bottles, maybe respect not so much, at least if you're a guy of the male persuasion.)

freshman girls: get them while they're skinny

(snicker)

No, the title does not refer to the Rehnquist/O'Connor gossip below.

I mean the virulently catchy Kylie Minogue single of that name. The one with the flanged elec keyboard in the rhythm guitar role, and the spiff retro-futurist disco arrangement.

Seriously, how classic is this song? Best thing on a good but uneven album. I hope you readers still in law school are discerning enough to play "Love at First Sight" at cheesy keg parties. It is magnificently adapted to that purpose.

Yeah, yeah, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" was a good single; I like indelible synth-bass drones as much as the next man. But it was overplayed. CGYOOMH totally eclipsed LAFS on the radio and it's not fair.

Is it relevant to LAFS's goodness that it is, like, the only romantic song on the album? I'm not saying it's Dante and Beatrice, but the artist comes off as less of a hussy than usual. She's in a funk, then she hears this guy playing cool music in a club and falls for him.

Most of the other songs on Fever are what we Papists like to call blatant carnal proposition.

Aye. The Chief and Sandra were both class of '52; they graduated #1 and #3 respectively.

It'd be a cute tale, except they both give off these heavy WASP-authority-figure vibes that make it difficult to imagine them as goofy law students without black robes. (No innuendo intended. Move along.)