Lazy Sunday Music: Delays

Delays, “Long Time Coming”

Delays’ Faded Seaside Glamour is four years old now, but I’ve only recently come to be infatuated with “Long Time Coming.” I’m posting the cover art because it seems to capture the slightly throwback, laid back, happy sunny pop vibe I get from the single (Rolling Stone seems to agree). It’s almost enough to make me throw cautionary cliches to the wind and suggest judging the album by its cover (though the NME reviews are a bit less with glowy and a bit more with the “faded”). Time will tell, I guess; I’ll pick up a copy of FSG when I’m in the UK, and there’s also a new album out in April. But for now, here’s a live-in-studio version of “Long Time Coming” that I’m partial to (Andy, the stripey sweaters therein are for you).

 

Pigeons, u say?

This one’s for the sociologists…

Lazy Sunday Music (Local Band Edition): Cardiff Giant

I had the pleasure of seeing Cardiff Giant play last night, so it seems appropriate that they be this week’s musical selection.  My favorite is “Waste of Space;” you can should listen on Cardiff Giant’s website/MySpace page.

I findz ur results

Next time you find yourself reviewing a particularly bad paper, you can save yourself some time and use this cat macro to do the talking for you.

Lazy Sunday Music (SXSW edition): Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend, “Oxford Comma”

References to grammar*, Dharamsala, and Lil Jon all in the same song.

Video Not Safe for Work if:

1. Your workplace is not a fan of the f-word;
2. Your workplace is not a fan of preppy indie pop-rock from Columbia University grads

We can call this Reverberated’s SXSW edition of Lazy Sunday Music.* Vampire Weekend may be a bit too much the domain of the cool hipster kids for me, first showing up (to me) on Stereogum and now apparently on MTV sessions (see above video). They’ve been called “post-punk,” “prep rock,” and (my personal favorite) described as “imagine if Paul Simon had a World Studies-majoring love child with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.”

There’s also this version from Jools Holland, which is a little louder and fuzzier at points, but also less cramped and more lively than the MTV sessions version above. Whichever floats your boat.

* For the record, I am quite partial to the Oxford comma. One could even say, in the parlance of our times, that I do indeed give a f%$& about them. Unless one is my mother. Hi, mom! I censored that just for you. It kind of freaks me out that you’re reading my blog now.

** I was, of course, not hip enough to actually be at SXSW, but I was nerdy enough to choose an artist that played there for this week’s Lazy Sunday Music.

Introducing: Caturday for Nerds

After Fabio posted an orgtheory take on Chuck Norris facts, I wondered why no one has come up with a sociological version of my other favorite internet phenomenon: lolcats (or cat macros, if you prefer).

Reverberated.com is here to fill that void. At least on Caturdays, and at least until I get bored with it. Since my sociologically-minded version of icanhascheezburger seems to speak more broadly to social research and academia in general, I’m going to call it “Caturday for Nerds” until I think up something better.

Sometimes I love big business…

…because mergers (SBC and Yahoo, Yahoo and AT&T) have resulted in me being able to access the internet for free everywhere that has AT&T wireless because they’re now my home ISP.  Today, that means the Philadelphia airport.

I know I should probably be more concerned with the monopolization of phone and DSL service, but I guess I’m placated by my ability to waste time reading I Can Has Cheezburger at airports and coffee shops. The new opiate of the masses, perhaps?

Slumming it

I read this article from the New York Times a couple of days ago on poverty tours, our “slum tours,” that are popping up to take tourists around the most impoverished neighborhoods from Rio de Janeiro to India, Mexico to South Africa. The article presents views from both sides of the ethical debate: eye-opening or exploitative? Helpful or harmful?

So-called “slum tours” obviously bring these debates into stark relief; just by the way they’re marketed, they conjure up images of tourists on safari, gawking at all the poor folks living in surprisingly bad conditions, taking some pictures, and then heading on back to their four-star hotels.

But does this debate go beyond such self-conscious “slum tours” and raise implications for a broader range of travel? Are travelers from the so-called “first world” doing the same kind of thing any time they travel to a “second-” or “third-world” country, regardless of whether they actually sign up for a “slum tour”? And even if tourists aren’t walking amongst the poorest of the poor, are they engaging in the same sorts of ethically debatable practices any time they gawk at the natives?

These exact debates carry over into other walks of life, too–for example, in relation to academia and the media.

Lazy Sunday Music: Utah Saints ‘08

Utah Saints: Something Good ‘08
I haven’t decided what I like about this the most: the VanShe Tech remix? The group dance number in the video? You be the judge.

(I know I’m behind the blogosphere on this one, but the video & single release are at least semi-current…)

Update: The track is available for download via iTunes in the UK, but not in the US. But, since this post is getting a lot of traffic, I’ll just add that Repeat One likes the track as much as I do…

All up in my gorilla

We’ve just finished watching a documentary on Dzanga Gorillas* that reminded me how taken I was with the gorillas in Disney’s Animal Kingdom whilst tagging along on the Great Family Vacation of 2007.  I have a lot of awe and respect for primates, generally, and find them both beautiful and fascinating.  In lieu of a “real” post for today**, I’ve uploaded some of my (only minimally touched up as of yet) gorilla photos:

You can see the set here (on flickr).

 * This documentary is running on Discovery’s HD Theater.  I believe this channel is the one that TV salespeople should use, at least on nerds, because everything it broadcasts renders everyone I know immobile and transfixed in front of the (in this case, very large, very new) television.

** It’s been a very long day.