Album Cover Art for MP3s

For the anal retentive who need to see their album covers in iTunes, Albumart.org is your new savior. Search by album, track title, or artist--much easier than sifting through amazon.com pages.

A Quaint Cabbie

This quick little piece about Ray Kottner, a long-time NYC cabbie who drives a vintage 1982 Checker cab around Manhattan for tips only, tugged at our pretentious nostalgia for things we never knew and the good ol' days that never were.

Salon back from the grave?

Abu Ghraib, that is. We had given up on them, but here they are with pics of the army's investigation of Abu Ghraib. Impressive.

Slot Loading Record Player

This turntable uses some fancy tech to read vinyl with a laser beam, which supposedly renders a smoother sound without the surface noise and presumably doesn't wear down the ridges on the vinyl like a needle can. Or it melts the vinyl, ruining it forever. The laser also allows scanning forward and backward, just like CDs. And, as promised, the turn table features tray loading design like a CD player.

Missed Friday Happy Hour... So Get Drunk on Saturday

Ivanabitch vodka. Over at the Ivanabitch web site, they need to cut the crap about how clear the shit is. We've never drank or even seen vodka that wasn't clear. Nor would we. It is vodka. It is called Ivanabitch. So we're having some.

BTW, Clear Channel won't run the Ivanabitch ads because they feature an "overly suggestive" murkin. Ass hats.

Europe Set to Rule the US Book Industry

A French company just bought up Little, Brown and the rest of Time Warner's book publishing operation. Slate has the big picture, ranging from Bertelsmann's ownership of Random House and Georg von Holtbrinck's (we have no idea who that guy is, but his name is awesome) ownership of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Picador. And Penguin, the British publisher for the masses, owns just about every other print house out there. Why are the Europeans interested in American books? The book market in Europe sucks so bad that it the few publishers left in Europe drool at the prospect of making a few hundred million by cornering the NYTimes best seller list.

Bush's NASA Crony On The Run

George Deutsch, the 24-year old p.r. guy installed by President Bush to make sure that the word "theory" follows every instance of the words "Big Bang" and to keep anyone at NASA from talking about Global Warming, resigned today when it was "leaked" that he had not in fact graduated from Texas A & M, as his resume stated.

Possible Administration responses: 1. The journalists who leaked the non-existence of this man's degree have done this country a great disservice. 2. Anyone who spent 5 years at Texas A & M is more than qualified to run NASA or any other job in this nation's government and his resignation was a personal career decision. 3. If certain liberal elements hadn't hijacked Texas A & M, this hardworking boy, who is a good person, dagnabbit, would have graduated, so his resume simply reflected what he had earned, irrespective of what had been given him. (If Scott McClellan utters any of these statements, he owes us royalties and all our loyal readers get a free ice cream.)

Pennsylvanian Photobloggin

One of the Bloggie Award nominees for Best Photoblog has totally, utterly blown us away: A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania. The title is a mouthful, yes, but the pictures are absolutely beautiful. Great compositions with just the right amount of Photoshop. We spent a few hours clicking through the archives one pic at a time and couldn't pick just one favorite to show you. You can start with the portfolio.

Friday Happy Hour

Meet the Pisco Sour. Pisco is a South American brandy made primarily in Peru and Chile, with both claiming theirs is the "real" pisco. According to Wikipedia, the Spanish explorers brought grapes to Peru as early as the 1530s, but the King of Spain outlawed wine in his colonies a hundred years later, forcing the Peruvians to get creative with their grapes. So they started making brandy instead of dealing with the legal hassles of wine. Unlike most European brandies, though, pisco is generally not barrelled, so it is clear, and the sweetness of the South American grapes makes it almost syrupy, masking its alcohol content nicely.

Pisco is classically combined with lemons or limes, something sweet (usually simple syrup), and egg white froth to make the refreshing Pisco Sour. Our local bartender likes grenadine instead of simple syrup, which makes the drink pink.

The Satanic Comics

The Danish cartoons behind the uproar in the Middle East are available here, including the one featuring the Prophet wearing a bomb for a turban. The European comedians have been mocking Christian symbols like the Cruxifix for centuries, so we suggest that Muslims think of this as equal opportunity mockery.

Also, when we heard several talking heads on the radio today explaining that Christian Europe needs to be more sensitive to Muslim's religion and values, etc, we thought, "Most of Europe and certainly everyone drawing cartoons for the newspaper would be pissed if they heard you accusing them of being Christians."

UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens points out in a matter-of-fact piece at Slate that 1) Arab and Muslims newspapers are replete with anti-Jewish slurs of every kind and 2) Demanding that non-Muslims obey the same rules about not representing the Prophet as Muslims is not a demand for respect, it is a demand for conversion.

What is it with Kansas?

Not only is it illegal for teenagers to have sex--even if it is consensual--in Kansas, it is apparently a misdemeanor to fail to report any knowledge you may have of teenage sex. So if your buddy is bragging about how he got to third base, report him. Even better, if you are a nurse and find out that the Good Doctor gave Little Susie some birth control pills, report 'em both.

For Those of You Who Didn't Make it To Burning Man

Last year, or the year before... Neil Guy has photographed the good parts for you. Via Boingboing.

A Literature Wiki, Maybe

A new little site, DebbiesIdea.com, promises to be a wiki-style guide to literature. So far, there is almost nothing on the site, but the notion is that the site will recommend where to start with an unfamiliar author--say you want to get started with Rushdie, for example. The site will tell you Midnight's Children fkn rocks and The Moor's Last Sigh is almost as good, but Shalimar The Clown is a butt-muncher.

The human element of these recommendations will, we think, easily beat Amazon's suggestions. However, LibraryThing, where people enter their libraries and tag their books, del.icio.us-style, generates recommendations that blow Amazon out of the water, based on what people have in their libraries alongside the book in question as well as what tags two books share. For example, on the page of any Harry Potter book, Amazon wants you to buy all the other Harry Potters. LibraryThing branches out to suggest Philip Pullman, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeline L'Engle. So Debbie may not be that novel after all and will obviously require lots of work to become useful. Keep an eye on her for us and let us know how she's doing, though, okay?

Friday Happy Hour

In Nebraska, it is illegal to mix beer and hard liquor. Drinks such as the Irish Car Bomb (take a pint of Guinness, drink an Irish-sized swallow, then fill the space in the glass with Baileys and whiskey and enjoy at your leisure) are therefore the order of the day.

In a nod to the Midwest, may we suggest a Boilermaker: Whiskey, in a glass, plus beer, in a glass. Drink one, then the other. Or, depth-charge the shot of whiskey into the pint, which gives the drink a sloppy frat party feel as the shotglass in your pint falls into your face as you gulp down your extra-strong beer. That is actually the part of the drink that makes it illegal in Nebraska, so do it at least once for liberty's sake. As far as specific ingredients, nobody really cares, although we believe the whiskey and the beer should be the same color. That is to say, cheap on both counts.

We did a little research for you, dear reader, to see if we could figure out how the name Boilermaker got associated with such a simple drink. According to David Wondrich at Esquire's Drinking Database, "boilermaker" is slang for any industrial metal worker and may have been linked to the drink from the phrase, "a boilermaker and his helper." The drink does represent a crude-but-does-the-job mentality: You can't screw it up, and it gets you drunk. Fast. Another name for the drink is "Block and Fall," referring to the fact that after two of them, you'll walk about a block and fall.

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Today Mozart would have turned 250, if he hadn't died of debauchery in his 30s. NPR has been making a big deal out of this anniversary, so die-hard Mozart fans should just go there. We think a lot of Mozart's music is pretty without substance, like a stale wedding cake decked out in a ton of frosting. His dark, brooding Requiem, featured in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, is good stuff, though. So we are going to make the macabre suggestion that to celebrate Mozart's birth, skip the cake and listen to his death mass.

Strong Work.

AP Photo/Dharapak

When AG Gonzales spoke Tuesday at Georgetown University's Law School, a dozen or so students stood up and turned their backs to him when he tried to tell them that spying on American citizens without a warrant is Constitutional. A few others held up this beautiful banner. Take that, Michael Kinsley!

The Holy Sacrament of Marriage

If a soldier is married, he or she can live off-base, get an extra $1000 a month for living expenses, and extend healthcare benefits to his or her spouse. Which is to say, if you marry a soldier, you get to split an extra $1000 bucks a month of spending money and you get free healthcare. And why would a soldier marry you? To live off-base and get a piece of that $1000 bucks a month. Every body wins. Youth Radio has the story of one such couple who married for the money--the soldier is the wife's roommate's little brother and the closest they have come to actually consummating the union was a tongue kiss at the Las Vegas wedding chapel--who have been easily collecting their benefits for a couple years now, just like everyone else in the soldier's platoon. Although the wife does get a quizzical look from her doctor when requesting birth control refills, given that her husband is in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Epicure's Paradise

Heidi over at 101 Cookbooks went to the Winter Fancy Food convention/show in San Francisco and brought back pictures of all the goodies we'll be able to overpay for at Whole Foods in the coming year. Wildly overpriced wild honey in test tubes, hibiscus flower sorbet from Mexico that sounds AWESOME, and gratuitous flavored organic peanut butter.