August 29, 2008

uborka szezon

My affection for gustatory exotica is, well, a byword. Among the food-oriented (or even -orientated) blogs I follow is Dumneazu: Ethnomusicological Eating East of Everywhere, and today's posting, on half-sour pickles, would be wonderful even if it didn't include this bit of lore:

Readers of this blog already know my attachment to Katz's, the only place in the world where I would not think of complaining about paying $15 for a pastrami sandwich. The sandwich is really only a vehicle for the mustard and pickle. And the New York half-sour garlic pickle is the perfect food for the summer, hardly defined someplace between a raw veg and a salad. At Katz's you should tip the counterman a dollar - he'll cut your meat more generously, but more important, he'll dump a half kilo of mixed pickles on a plate for you. It pays to tip your man at Katz's.
Almost enough to entice me to New York. Not quite...

Posted by oook at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2008

Ethnocalumny

Man, I just LOOOOVE it:

(via Dial "M" for Musicology)

Posted by oook at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2008

links for 2008-08-26

Posted by oook at 11:32 AM

August 25, 2008

Just back from Monhegan

We've lived just down the road from the ferry to Monhegan Island for the last 3 years, but hadn't ventured out there until today. Unfortunately, the digital camera chose this morning to announce its retirement (thus creating an Opportunity for the impending Birthday Month), so I was unable to record anything of Monhegan's fabled visual wonders. It occurred to me that Flickr might stand in for me, and sure enough a quick search discloses more than 6000 images tagged 'Monhegan' and quite a few of the first hundred-odd will give an idea of why people rave about the island. We walked about half of the cliffy Atlantic side, mostly in hazy/foggy obscurity, and clearly it's worth many return trips.

Posted by oook at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2008

links for 2008-08-23

  • "The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy", 1984... and worth a gratitudinous look back.
Posted by oook at 08:07 AM

August 20, 2008

links for 2008-08-20

Posted by oook at 08:00 AM

August 19, 2008

Been a while

...what with summer visitors, a weekend at an extreme yoga workshop, more summer visitors. But here's one that summarizes a lot of what I learned about The South in 13 years of living on its fringes, courtesy of Michelle Shocked:

Posted by oook at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2008

A nice sunny day

Several things this morning:

(1) The feed from my Delicious bookmarks is still out of commission, but here are three, eclectic as ever, from the last couple of days:

Magic From Space: Traffic from Space Videos Blow Our Minds, Pants, and Socks (yup. UK traffic visualizations, the sort of thing I've been imagining for years, and here it is)


Geeks, nerds, or dorks? (Joho the Blog points to an explanation of the frontiers of physics)

Dumneazu: Polish Truck Stops: We Like Them. Very Much. (more food and music)

(2) Today's BoingBoing tells us of Cliff Bolling, an enthusiast for 78 RPM records, who has digitized a whole lot of them (all this via a Wired blog posting). Since I've been playing around with the same general sort of effort to extract music from obsolete formats and organize the resulting mountain of mp3 files, it's useful to see how somebody else approaches the enterprise.

(3) via Keep Swinging: Chinatown My Chinatown as a banjo duel. The banjo player on the left is Spats Langham; on the right Johan Lammers:


Chinatown - Johan Lammers/Spats Langham
by lordlister

Posted by oook at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2008

How'd I miss this one?

Posted by oook at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)

Again belated but still delicious

(Not sure why the auto function isn't working again)

There IS hope for Western Civilization, or at least there was in 1967 (via Dr. Frank's What's-it)
a whole education, right here for the grabbing...
(tags: musics)

Posted by oook at 09:04 AM

Another duel

via Echidne:

Posted by oook at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2008

links for 2008-08-09 [delicious.com]

Posted by oook at 03:31 AM

August 06, 2008

Delicious links, belatedly

(Not sure why the auto function isn't working)

Posted by oook at 07:21 AM

August 01, 2008

Lamellophones

I happened upon this bit of organological serendipitude via Make's blog, featuring a Pitch Bending Thumb Piano:

As an instrument, I think it's not totally successful, but certainly heuristic for those who think about musical experimentation. Lately I've been deeply immersed in a wide spectrum of African musics, and the clip sent me off on a search for some interesting variants of approach to "thumb piano" (so many other names... sanza, mbira, kalimba...). Here are some of the results:

Mbira at the Lake

Kariga Mombe Improv Lesson

Konono No 1 Congotronics

Jazz improvisation on a 5 octave Array mbira

Close up of the Array Mbira

Garland - Suite for Bass Sanza

Don MacLane's musical instruments

Ken Kolodner Plays the Dulcimer-Mbira in West Virginia (and more via his Web site)

Posted by oook at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

Xinjiang jazz

The always-enlightening Benn Loxo du Taccu posts from Beijing with a link to an ASTONISHING 9-minute piece by the Uyghur jazz group Panjir:
Nazirkom

Other tracks are accessible via the band's Web site.

Posted by oook at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)