17 posts tagged “arular”
A friend of mine and I went out last night for dinner for my birthday and for election night. We were excited that Barack Obama would actually win the presidency. I was still very cautious. I am glad he won. I am glad the Democrats have the majority in the House and Senate. However, they may not get their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but they still did well. I am glad a lot of red states went to Obama.
Austin, TX and Travis County always go to Democrats, and it definitely went easily to Obama this time around. However, it kills me that Texas, as a state, has to be so backwards and go for McCain. If you look at an electoral map, you will see that the large urban areas (where most of the people live) all went to Obama.
Prop 8, which bans homosexual marriages, will probably get passed in California if the current results are correct. That is disappointing, but I guess that will just take time for people to get over their hangups about same-sex couples. I still believe that time heals all wounds, but that's not true if you run out of time.
The positive perspectives from around the world about Obama as the new president are very nice. I like the idea that the rest of the world may like America again. I always think globally. If I had enough money, I would live in a different country every month.
In other news, there is a lot of good music out there right now. Here is a mixtape that became available on the M.I.A. Fans message board today (http://miafans.co.uk) ...
http://fairtilizer.com/radioclit/the_very_best.zip
The music definitely has a "world music" sound to it. Esau Mwamwaya is featured heavily on the mixtape. He has done his own versions of "Paper Planes" and "Get It Up". I have posted his songs on here before. M.I.A. also put some vocals on a demo of his song, "Rain Dance". I think I have all of that right. The mixtape is also available on MySpace here ...
I think Radioclit is the main force behind the mixtape.
M.I.A. has a new song (download it) and video with Blaqstarr that is very good. It is called S.U.S. (Way Down The Hole) ...
As you can see the song has appeared under many different names. "Save Ur Soul" is probably the correct name.
One of the clubs/bars my friend and I went to last night was RAIN on 4th, and I was very happy that they played the song and video of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Everyone seemed to really like the song, and they all seemed to know the lyrics to it already, which they should since it has been out forever now. I just wish they would play songs like "Bamboo Banga". That would be more fun for a club.
The restaurant we went to was a great Italian restaurant called Primizie Osteria. It is located on East 11th St. in Austin, and it is probably one of those restaurants that is not getting as much business as it should because people do not know about it. I am probably going to do a Yelp review for it, but it already has a ton of positive Yelp reviews. Here is the website for it ...
http://www.primizieaustin.com
I got this Rigatoni with Italian Sausage dish that was really good, but I think the best part of the meal was the torta di limon dessert ...
My favorite mixtape to listen to right now is "Top Ranking" from Diplo and Santogold. I have posted some of the songs from the mixtape here already. You can download the entire mixtape by doing a Google search for it. Here are two of my favorite songs from the mixtape ...
These are not new songs, but they are new versions of songs.
Here is a better quality version of "Sound of Kuduro" by Buraka Som Sistema ...
Here is a remix of Bucky Done Gun that is new to me ...
Here is a song that pops into my head (just to be random) ...
Also, I wanted to post this song since it was in my head yesterday I think ...
OK, that's all I got for now. This is what happens when you can't sleep.
MUXTAPE.com is fun site where you can upload songs to make a "mixtape". I decided to make a Kylie Minogue mixtape since I have been listening to her a lot lately. Here is the link ...
Humyo.com is a place where you can upload 30 GB of media and share it with others. I decided to upload the majority of my M.I.A. songs to it ...
http://www.humyo.com/3451015-151695021 (there is a media player that lets you listen to the songs in each folder)
I stumbled upon an article about an architect named Norman Foster who has designed the "Green Tower", a building to be built in Siberia. It looks really cool. Here is the link to what it is supposed to look like ...
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/07/18/norman-fosters-green-tower-in-siberia
Annie has a new song out called "I Know Ur Girlfried Hates Me". It's not as catchy as "Chewing Gum" and "Heartbeat", but it's not bad. I really love how Annie isn't afraid to put out a very electronic sound with her music.
If you are wanting to watch a movie with the Netflix movie viewer, and you are using the Firefox 3 browser, the movie viewer will not work in the browser since it only works with Internet Explorer. However, you can install the IE tab add-on into Firefox 3, right-click on the movie's link, and choose the option, "open with IE tab", or something like that. Then, it will work perfectly and you will still be using Firefox 3 instead of Internet Explorer (the worst browser ever!).
Here is a link to the IE tab add-on for Firefox 3 ...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Here are two funny YouTube videos that feature Joan Rivers . . .
Cliff Richard is also in the above video.
Here is a video of Joan Rivers on the British version of "The View". She talks some smack about Russell Crowe, and she doesn't realize that they don't have a 5-second delay for the purpose of censorship on the show ...
I hate censorship and love the Freedom of Speech so I think it is great that Joan Rivers did this. Russell Crowe probably is an asshole. I hate his movies.
Here are two new (to me) M.I.A. remixes by Instinct (MySpace for Instinct) ...
The two photos of M.I.A. were taken by Mike Schreiber (and altered by me, of course).
You can vote for M.I.A. to be one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people, and I definitely think she deserves it.
You can go to this link, change M.I.A.'s rating to 100, and click on SUBMIT. Do it now!
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1725112_1723512_1724687,00.html
Here are some related images ...
Also, this "4 Minutes To Save The World" song has invaded my mind, and I am liking it. The video is pretty cool, too.
or you can just listen here ...
Well, I have posted these pictures and videos in various ways on the internet already, but I might as well organize it all here. I went to Borders in Austin, TX on my 30th birthday (11/3/2007) to see M.I.A. signing CDs. I actually got there way before she did. She was supposed to be there at 4pm, but she got there closer to 4:40pm. Here are the pictures from that event ...
Here are some pictures of the concert ...
Here is a link to the YouTube Playlist I made of all of my M.I.A. concert videos ...
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6B05B2A2FB6447CF
I can also embed it ...
There are 23 videos of the concert on YouTube that I uploaded. The coolest one is the Sunshowers video, I think.
M.I.A.'s opening act was The Cool Kids who did not impress me that much, but maybe they sound better on their album. Rye Rye also performed with M.I.A. She is a young girl from Baltimore who raps very quickly.
OK, that's all I got for now.
I am guilty of singing every song in a commercial. Mattress Firm commercials will come on, and I will sing along with "Mattress Firm ... where it's easy to get a great night sleep." Anyway, there are two commercials that have been coming on in the last couple of months or more that feature songs that are good on their own. The first one is a commercial, titled "Sweater", from Old Navy that features the catchy song, "The Way I Am", by Ingrid Michaelson.
Here is the Old Navy Commercial ("Sweater") ...
Here is the full song from the commercial ...
Ingrid Michaelson - "The Way I Am"
Here is a woman named Chrissy Sandman singing "The Way I Am" on YouTube. I actually thought it was Ingrid Michaelson when I first saw the video because they look a lot alike, and Sandman's cover sounds really good.
Chan Marshall or Cat Power (whatever you want to call her) is actually getting some flack for letting a commercial for diamonds use one of her songs (well, her cover of a Cat Stevens song) because the diamond industry is so controversial. However, I really don't mind when artists let companies pay them to use their songs in commercials or movies or whatever. I mean, the artists need to get exposure and money so they can continue putting out albums. I remember when M.I.A.'s fans got mad at her for letting Honda use her song, "Galang", in a Honda Civic commercial. That is just stupid. I love Hondas! They are way more environment-friendly than other cars, and they are fun to drive. The commercial was kind of fun, too.
Honda Civic Si commercial with M.I.A.'s song, "Galang"
In other news, John Carpenter's "The Fog" (the 1980 version ... not the lame remake, which I refuse to watch ... unless it comes on TV) was on AMC today as part of their Monster Fest. I watched "The Fog" when I was very young, and I always liked it. It features Psycho's Janet Leigh with her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis (who did the Halloween movies with John Carpenter, of course). The guy who plays Jamie Lee Curtis' boyfriend in the movie, Tom Atkins, was the star of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (one of the many Halloween movies Jamie Lee Curtis is not in). The woman that rides around with Janet Leigh is played by Nancy Kyes, who played "Annie" in the original Halloween. John Carpenter also did the soundtrack for "The Fog" like he did for many of his movies.
Theme from "The Fog"
The Fog - The Fog Rolls In
The quality of this video is very bad because I used my digital camera (Canon PowerShot SD750) to record the segment this morning off of TV. I know some people know how to hook their TV up to the computer to capture flawless video quality, but I have no idea how to do that. Anyway, here is the video on YouTube and I also uploaded it to VOX ...
Well, really those two things have nothing in common, except for the fact that they are both released in America on August 21, 2007! Woohoo! Actually, I don't have an XBOX 360 so I don't think I will be able to play BioShock(a game that is supposedly based on an Ayn Rand Utopia gone horribly wrong) when it is released.
However, a trailer for BioShock was one of the first videos I uploaded to YouTube. It wasn't my video. I think I got it off of a site like IGN. I had to divide it up and upload it as two videos because it was so long. It's gotten several views so maybe by talking about BioShock here, I will be able to get some exposure for M.I.A.'s new album, Kala.
Here are the BioShock videos ...
You can download it here.
Here are some M.I.A. remixes I just found recently on Missing Toof ...
M.I.A. - URAQT (Luvtek Remix) ...
M.I.A. - Boyz (Kimono Kops Mix)
M.I.A. - Bucky Done Gun (Risk One B'Fix)
When I am not listening to M.I.A., I listen to a whole lot of Tori Amos(my obsession way before M.I.A.). Here is "Space Dog" from the album, Under The Pink ...