Magic Jewball

You would think that when I say, “I have a new Blackberry!” it would be in that good way but you would be wrong. In fact, it is a replacement for my old Blackberry which decided to stop being able to charge (I think this is something like a person who decides to die by cutting off their feeding tube). And this is actually my third Curve, as the first one had a sound problem after about a month. The problem was that it had no sound. I discovered this when I overslept one morning since the alarm went off sans beeps.*

And because the port was broken, it also couldn’t be connected with my computer so nothing on it could be saved. That is, nothing on the actual unit, as my music, photos, and contacts were on a memory card. Those were safe. But all my preferences, settings, and downloaded programs were gone daddy gone. I spent a bit of time writing all that down and yes, it has been a royal pain in the ass to download everything again, try to remember what my bookmarks were, have to hunt down my WiFi key again, change permissions, etc.

But the worst thing that happened was this: my BrickBreaker high score was reset to zero. Oh, the humanity! I may have to spend the next few weeks working it back up there. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

Queen – Another One Bites the Dust

*This is a lie, my alarm is actually this song. Could there be a gentler way to get up?


[youtube width=”445″ height=”364″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjkHmkCpQJA[/youtube]

Yeah, I have a beeping alarm clock go off ten minutes later.

Ha! I’ve been wanting to make that pun for years! To ruin the joke, Haman is the villain of the Purim story. Yeah, I know, there really wasn’t that much to spoil.

I apologize for not running a bake sale this time, especially because I had a cause I really wanted to support and because charity is such a big part of this holiday, but life has just been kind of strange and wacky lately. Hopefully, later this year. In the meantime, please enjoy this obscenely close look at a batch of this year’s Hamantaschen. It’s like you’re actually in the bowl!

Happy Purim!

Filter – Hey Man Nice Shot

Hey! It’s a special month on the Jewish calendar and that month is called Adar. It’s awesome and special because you’re commanded to be happy the whole month. Yes, indeed, doomed to happiness for four plus weeks. The happiness thing is because Adar is the month with Purim, one of those holidays where the Jews were saved from certain death (well, almost certain, obviously) and that’s a giant excuse for a party. Tomorrow night begins Purim, the holiday where you give gifts of baked goods to your friends and it’s a mitzvah to get bombed off your ass. That might not be the exact language the Talmud uses, but that’s really the rule.

My Mom was a Jewish educator, as I’ve stated many times here, and she liked to wear a giant button on her coat at this time of year that embarrassed me beyond the limits of teenage humiliation. It said, “Be happy! It’s Adar!” in Hebrew and English. Oh Mom! When I was in college, my grandma died during that month and after that, it was terribly hard for my Mom to be happy then but she wore the big green button anyway. Sometimes commandments are hard. After she died, we found that my Mom had like ten of these buttons. Ha! I kept one but, you know, I don’t actually walk down the street with the thing on my coat.

To veer off slightly, there’s this guy who has a Facebook group of which I’m a member where he does this “blast from the 80’s Alternative scene” every day. I found it because the guy who lived across the hall from me in college freshman year joined and I saw it in my feed. I asked him where he’d found this group and he said, “oh, I was remembering how great Depeche Mode were and thought it would be cool to hear some old songs.” Oh yes, cool, I said, they sure were great. I neglected to tell him that I’ve been listening to them every day since we lived there on the fourth floor. Some of us never move on!

Anyway, the song of the day a few days ago was by a group that I really, truly had not thought of in maybe fifteen years. And I have the CD! Like the description by the uploader on YouTube video, I actually wore out the cassette, I played it so much. Thus the CD. I think this actually may have been my favorite album of 1990. Now it’s kind of dated, unlike my favorite album of 1989, Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, which still sounds glorious and modern to this day. And yes, I know Violator came out in 1989. Stiff competition.

But the real reason I chose a song from this album today is that it’s called Happiness. And it really does lift your spirits, as it’s dancey and upbeat. The song chosen by the Facebook guy was the big single from the album, Hello, which is a kind of list of people, only catchy. You can see the video for that here if you’d like to jog your memory. But my favorite song on the album was this one. It was calm, mellow, and jazzy but yet upbeat and uplifting. I just put it on my iPod this week. That should help me be happy! It’s Adar!

Streaming music:

Napster:
The Beloved – The Sun Rising

I know, you heard it here first. But seriously, you know how much I am a champion of the actual physical CD. The better sound quality, the artwork, the way your friends can see your cool taste all on the shelf, the way you can’t lose them even when your iPod falls into the subway tracks (no, actually, I back up, thank you, Jebus). And yet, I’ve had several indicators recently that I will soon stop buying most CD’s. Ladies and gents, my evidence:

1. I moved offices this week and realized I never listen to any CD’s at all. Most were actually unreachable and I never noticed. My computer is hooked up to my stereo at work, and I just listen to stuff on my PC or hook up my iPod. I told the facilities people not to bother installing CD racks in my new office. I may regret this as I still get most of our new music on CD. But whatever.

1a. I shipped the CD’s I wanted home. They arrived today…. there are over 300 and I have no idea where I will put them. Since my shelves at home are full as it is, I will probably rip them onto a hard drive and throw them away.

2. Today, there was a special deal at Amazon where U2’s new album was available for $3.99. I used to be a huge U2 fan and had posters all over my walls at about War and Unforgettable Fire time. Achtung Baby is still one of my favorite albums. I even liked Pop. I wasn’t so hot on the last two CD’s but I still own them. The only thing that made me hesitate in buying this one was that it might blow. I didn’t worry at all about not having the physical specimen. So strange for this Gen-X’er.

3. Tower closed. Circuit City is closing. Borders is vastly reducing their music inventory. Now, both NY Virgin Megastores are closing. Soon, Best Buy will be the only place anywhere near me to actually buy a CD. I’ve already bought one download album because of it, Animal Collective. I wanted it the day it came out and knew Amazon would take two days (I have Prime) for free shipping. Where the hell else would I be able to get it? At 11:59pm the night before release, I refreshed and refreshed, until the mp3’s became available, and then I had my own midnight sale. Remember those? Remember record stores? It honestly makes me cry, but y’know, I’m glad to have the Internet. I don’t think I’d trade.

In conclusion, the new U2 album is worth four dollars.

U2 – Get On Your Boots

If you have liked a band for any length of time, never mind your favorite band of all time, there is always a moment of nervousness when you hear the new song. What if I hate it? What if it’s nothing like the old stuff? I don’t worry about that so much with Depeche Mode, because let’s face it, they’re not ever going to sound like, say, Nickelback. But I’m lucky in that I have never really been disappointed. Even the records that some people feel are stinkers, like Exciter, I liked. And it’s not like artists I adore can do no wrong… witness the last Interpol record.

But I’m going to digress a moment before talking about the song and mention the reason I own it. You see, I bought the “iTunes pass” for the new album, Sounds of the Universe, which comes out in April. (As a digression from my digression, I produce a schedule at work for competitive titles being released and every week that I check off DM, I salivate just a little). This pass is good for 15 weeks through and beyond the release of the album and little by little it gets released to you along with various other tracks. It cost $18.99 which is even pricier when you consider that I really want the physical CD and will inevitably buy that. But I’m a sucker and so I did this. I feel like even more of a chump working at a record label where we do this sort of thing all the time, that is, try some new method of eking $$ out of the truly committed and/or teasing them while simultaneously gathering information on them and observing their behavior.

We have a band which you may or may not have heard of, but they have a truly devoted fan base and over the course of the last couple of months, the marketing department put together a teaser website with all kinds of mysteries and slowly, slowly, leaked info and music. Out of curiosity, I went to this band’s extremely active forum and read the many “did you check out mystery website yet?” and “the website won’t work for me – omg my life is over” and “well what do you think this means?” and “is that the new track because it sounds AMAZING!” messages.

I couldn’t decide if these fans liked this sort of tease or not. They did lap it up and maybe for some it was a fun game, but to me, it seemed a sort of necessary evil to get to the band and new record which doesn’t come out till March. Which brings me back to DM. Of course I would want the whole thing at once sans excruciating trickle of little bits of new stuff. But if the choice is waiting till April with nothing beforehand or the new single and a remix now and then little pieces dribbled down to me week by week, well, please take my $18.99. The fool and his money may soon be parted but no one mentions what great music the fool is listening to. The worst part, though, is being aware my strings are being pulled. Dance, puppet, dance!

Anyway, I think this song is very DM in that it both sounds like everything else they’ve done and nothing they’ve ever done before. It has a dark menacing tone, is catchy, and has all the trademark DM notes you’d expect, but has the repetitious title word which somehow is just right, despite the title. The video is another thing in itself and, as I post it, I think of my Intro Psych professor’s words as he turned off the lights to show us the film of the Milgram experiments: “I’ve already seen this and it’s really too disturbing to watch repeatedly, so, see you later!”

You’ve been warned. Enjoy!

Depeche Mode – Wrong