But Krackle? I’ve only eaten them in those from those mix bags. Never bought a standalone Krackle bar or a bag of Krackle bars.

I declare Krackle the Red-Headed Step-Child of Candy Bars.

The entire albums is great. The standout track is definitely “Go Tell It On The Mountain”. Each family member takes a verse except the youngest, John Edward, who steals the show with the choruses.

Click the play button below to listen:

Or download it here:

Go Tell It On The Mountain.mp3 (right click and select “Save As …”)

If you want to check out the whole album, download all the MP3s here:

Christmas-Singapura-2009.zip

Merry Christmas!

Anyway, the deep song is about a guy who takes the nine volt batteries out of his smoke detectors to power his guitar pedals and effects. His house burns down. The fire would’ve probably been prevented, had the smoke detectors had batteries in them. But our humble hero does not have a concern over losing his abode, as soon he thinks he’ll be a huge rock star and will be able to buy many many fancy houses to replace his current home.

Here are the profoundly awesome lyrics for those that want to sing along:

Need juice for my pedals and effects.
Took the 9 volt from the smoke detects.
My house burnt down and I couldn’t care less.
’cause soon I’ll be a rock star like T-Rex.

My house burnt down,
and that’s okay.
I guess that’s the price I pay.
’cause I am going to be a rock star,
Someday.

And yes, that I Mary playing the deeply moving gratuitous piano at the end. Rock.

Original Zabada posting is here: Zabada “The Song”
Check out more silly songs here: Rob Lambert’s Virb

Here are the exciting scenes:

Feel free to click into YouTube and watch it big!

Anyway, I stumbled upon two quotes in a notebook that I wrote down a while back and they are striking a chord for me about now …

“In your twenties, you want to learn as much as you can, and in your thirties, you want to take as many risks as you can” – Michael Murdoch, CEO AppRiver

“Don’t apologize for a mistake. Apologize if you don’t play. Knowing that effort is what matters gives people the courage to always try their hardest” – Wynton Marsalis

So if you’re my age, hopefully you learned a ton in your twenties, and now it’s time get out there, take a ton of risks, and play like crazy.

Jeff has played several solo shows at Marytr’s in Chicago over the years, making my fictional purloinment of said fecal matter a little more believable.

Okay, get ready for some human waste … is there anything more universally humorous than poo?

Lyrics

Do you wanna see my most prized possession?
I got it last fall backstage at Marytr’s.
Do you wanna see my most prized possession?
Do you wanna see my chemically preserved, trophy-mounted Jeff Tweedy turd?

Do you want to see my … Jeff Tweedy turd?
I’d eat it if I thought I could get another Jeff Tweedy turd.
Do you want to see my Jeff Tweedy turd?
Do you wanna see my … chemically preserved, trophy-mounted Jeff Tweedy turd?

Song Details

Written on: 22 July 2004
Instruments: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Piano, Organ
+ royalty-free drum loops from some magazine

LISTEN YOU MOTHER F*CKING *SSHOLE. WE DIDN’T CLEAR OUR PARKING SPOT FOR FOUR DAYS FOR YOUR ROYAL ASSES BUT FOR ARES OURS

Lawn chairs and other junk in the snow-filled streets in Chicago – “Mine All Mine” from wax.fm on Vimeo.

In Chicago, folks tend to think that they “own” parking spots in the street if they dig their car out of the snow. This is communicated by blocking the spot with lawn furniture, boxes, saw horses, you name it. I am not sure when the “owning” expires. I guess you own it until the snow melts. Silly people. I recorded/edited this January 2000

Today, the Winter UIUC CEE magazine arrived and I found the cover to be interesting considering the birds that caused the double engine failure that downed the U.S. Airways plane into the Hudson River yesterday:

I haven’t read the article, but the picture of the bird and the plane with the headline “Safer skies” is quite the coincidence. The article is titled “Safer skies – Research by Professor Ed Herricks is accessing technology that promises great protection from bird strikes and foreign objects”. Not the kind of stuff that you normally think about when you think “civil engineering”

That reminds me of another UIUC-related coincidence. The morning of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Daily Illini ran a cartoon that featured a panel relating to blowing up the WTC. I don’t think that one was a coincidence though, as they handed it out for free to everyone in the dorms on campus late morning after the bombings … I think that the folks at the DI were pulling some hijinks … but that’s probably not a smart thing to be joking around about … well at least it seems a little less smart these days. I just looked for my copy of that cartoon but couldn’t find it (but did find lots of interesting college-era junk).

That’s the end of my rambling for tonight.

Around 10 weeks ago I published a new website: http://wax.fm which aims help you “find your favorite albums on vinyl both online and in the real world”. With just a little bit of promotion on a few social media outlets, primarily Twitter (follow @wax_fm), I have been quite happy with the initial coverage and traffic from around the world.

Record guru Robert Benson published an interview with me a few weeks ago. There has been blog coverage in Japan, Italy, Germany, Brazil and many web mentions closer to my neck of the woods.

I’ve got a lot more features and improvements that I plan to add to the site … just need to balance it with lots of other things on my plate! People seem to really like the feature that allows them to find record stores “in the real world” in their city. This feature is something that I intend to continue to improve by making the data richer and adding features to let users rate, review and comment on stores.

Oh, and check out my silly video blogs at http://blog.wax.fm. I plan on doing more of those … so subscribe and stay tuned.

For the technically inclined, the site is built with Ruby on Rails, hosted on Amazon EC2 and uses Amazon S3 liberally. The logo was “crowd-sourced” using Chicago’s crowdSPRING.

Thanks to all who have kindly supported, linked to and written about the site!

Here’s one of the many YouTube videos featured on the site showing folks playing records:

Rock! Now, go buy yourself a copy of Radiohead’s OK Computer on vinyl, you know you want to!

Good stuff. I then recalled Ali G’s “Ice Cream Glove”. I love his market research and his “Zen” diagram.

Just remember that he put a “C” on all this stuff so you can’t nick it.

May all of your business ideas prove to be useful and ultimately profitable!

“I like how the email automatically says ’sent from MacBook Wheel’, that way people know you have one“

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I am always impressed by the production value of these Onion videos.

Main Characters:

• LMSGGwHoG – Leading Man, Somewhat Geeky Guy with Heart of Gold (he’s a Musician/Artist/Athlete)
• BHEGWIRHSTtM – Blonde Hottie Ex-Girlfriend Who Increasingly Reveals Her Shallowness Throughout the Movie
• FoLWWLtQWALoB – Friend of LMSGGwHoG Who Wants LMSGGwHoG to Quit Wallowing About Loss of BHEGWIRHSTtM
• PDWiNwHaARHSTtF – Popular Dude Who is Now with BHEGWIRHSTtM and Also Reveals His Shallowness Throughout the Film
• NPABWLGM – New Pretty Attractive Brunette Who Lead Guy Meets; Likes LMSGGwHoG for Who He Is and Really Supports His Big Project or Band; Also Has Heart of Gold

Synopsis:
Recently dumped LMSGGwHoG wallows about loss of BHEGWIRHSTtM for over first half of film. Eventually LMSGGwHoG gets over BHEGWIRHSTtM and eventually falls for NPABWLGM. A turn of events makes BHEGWIRHSTtM to come back to LMSGGwHoG, but in the end, LMSGGwHoG chooses NPABWLGM.

What? You say you’ve already seen this movie?

Nevermind.

Here are some of my favorites (all photos by David Katz/Obama for America). Click on any image for a bigger version at Flickr:

I remember seeing the funny name “Barack Obama” on a bumper sticker in my neighborhood in January 2004 when he was running for Senate. That was the first time I’d heard of him. Forward three years he announced his run for the presidency in February 2007. I made a small donation on the day of the announcement and purchased the shirt that Mary is wearing in this photo (this is the first time this original campaign shirt has been worn!). Due to our support status with the campaign, we were granted tickets to the big celebration rally and speech in Grant Park in Chicago.

I don’t do mornings, nevertheless, Mary and I walked to the polls at 6AM. I went to work (my first day as a contractor doing work as Zabada, Inc., the country and my work is changing ). I rushed home from work and was on the Metra at 5:15PM.

We made the 2 mile walk to Hutchison Field in Grant Park. The energy was super high all over downtown Chicago. It felt like … I don’t know … just good. As we got nearer, it was great to see the buildings lit up with red and blue lights and the various floors lit up to spell USA, etc.

We got into the event by 7:30 or 8 and it was really fun to watch the results come in on CNN on the big screens and cheer when another state dropped for Barack. The place went crazy when the news called it for Obama at 10PM. I was glad to be there.

It was weird to watch McCain’s speech at 10:20. For the most part, he gave a great concession speech (although it was disappointing to hear all of the booing from his supporters) … I really think that if McCain would have been himself, as he was in this speech, for his entire campaign and if he would have picked a reasonable running mate, then the election would have been at least competitive.

Anyway, we were maybe 50 yards back from the podium … being tall, I could see Barack in person as he gave the speech. I really liked how he reached out to other countries of the world in his victory speech.

We made the slow walk with the celebrating crowds back to the trains. Michigan Avenue was just packed with people. We took the Blue Line back home. John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of Wilco were standing right next to me on the train (don’t forget about my related tune Jeff Tweedy Turd ). I knew who they were but didn’t bug them … it seems like they can pretty much get around town without being recognized. I also bumped into them outside the Aragon Ballroom last month before the Beck show.

We got to our stop and the buses were no longer running, so we walked another 2 miles home.

It was a long day and I was tired … but I was happy to have witnessed history … and I was happy to live in a great city like Chicago.

That’s it … check out the rest of my photos election day 2008 and enjoy this video with one half of Wilco and Obama …

Here’s the native French speakers translation describing this creative project:

Here is a remake of the “Thriller” song that I’ve entirely recorded with my own voice, using 64 acappella tracks. There is therefore no instrument, synthétizer, beatbox, or even to sampler, but only the sound of my voice livened up with Reverb and slight Chorus on certain tracks. Regarding looping parts, Ive simply used the « looping » technique. Moreover, in the whole piece (which contains several thousand notes), I transposed 8 notes, which were impossible for me to sing in high-pitched . Because of my tessiture, I also must have resigned myself to sing certain parts in head voice, more particularly on the track corresponding to Michael Jacksons solo vocal.

Ive accomplished this non-commercial project at home only with a mobile PC, microphone, headphones and webcam – in nearly 350 hours. Its just an artistic challenge, accomplished during my hours of free time, whose purpose is to make smile my close circle and the internauts.

Well a sure-winner on that show is newcomer to the 2008 race for the White House: Joad Cressbecker. He’s got my vote! Check it:

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

I’ve always felt like starting a post like the awesome Jim Anchower, and now I just did.

Stuff is a little crazy and changing in my world, more about that later, but in the meantime, I really enjoyed this little ditty by Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They’ve got some other interesting ones like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Life on Mars”, but this one’s my fave. RIP Mr. Shaft / Chef / Isaac Hayes. Enjoy:

One interesting thing that I noticed was that the Gotham license plates looked exactly like Illinois license plates. At first, when the bus backed into the bank at the beginning, I thought that they screwed up and left Illinois plates on the bus. But upon further inspection, they’d replaced the script “Illinois” with a similar script “Gotham”. And the picture of Lincoln from the Illinois plate was replaced with something else. Here’s an Illinois plate:

And here’s the bus plate:

It’s pretty obvious why they designed the Gotham plate to look just like Illinois plates … since it was mostly filmed in Chicago, the license plates on any non-prop cars that sneak into the film will, from a distance, match with the Gotham plates.

I watched them film a few of the big chase scenes in Chicago last summer. Seeing all of the equipment, personnel, security, props, etc. made me just overwhelmed when thinking about planning and project managing a project of this magnitude. Yowsa!

Here’s a handy dandy table:

Even Google tries to set you straight. Here’s what Google gives you if you if you search for “half a dozen”:

So save your breath or 11 characters of typing and just go with “6″!

Here’s Mary offering free “dragon tears” to anyone who can help us out:

Here’s a shot of Jermaine and Brett that I took once inside:

Mary got a hot tip from a security dude that the Conchords were playing a post-show gig at Schubas after the show… We went there and ate dinner, and sure enough, they showed up … but they were quickly brisked off to a private party; no special bonus show for us.

It was a fun night … kind of felt like a stalker like their #1 fan Mel … when we went to Schubas to look for them.

I was thinking that it must kind of weird being a celebrity of medium-level stature … Jermaine and Brett probably would not be recognized by 98% of Americans, but for stalkers like Mel, they’re the #1 rock stars in the world.
Oh, and speaking of medium-level celebrities, I walked out of the theatre next to Jim DeRogatis, rock critic of the Sun-Times, co-host of the excellent Sound Opinions, and soon-to-be R. Kelly trial witness. Being the rock nerd that I am, I recognized him and told him that I loved his show … he gave a curt nervous “thanks” and hustled out the door (I’ll cut him a break for not being more friendly, he probably had a deadline to issue his review for the morning paper).

This post brought to you by Flight of the Conchords Season 1 DVD and the Flight of the Conchords Studio Record!

If the mayor gets to put his name on fancy dancy things that he is proud of, he should also have to put his name on non-fancy-dancy things like the worst CHA buildings.

The end.

Once in a while, you run into a FANTASTIC piece of work. Grade “A” stuff. And that is great.

Most of the time, local and independent work is tolerable to okay, you know, like if you had to give it a grade, you’d give it a “C”. You take SOMETHING from it, but overall, it’s not so memorable or inspiring.

And then the rest of the time, you run in to stuff that is SO BAD that you are embarrassed for the artist. I’m talking about stuff that you’d give a grade of “F”, or maybe “D-” if you are feeling generous.

I’ve experienced my fair share of HORRIBLE musicals, independent movies, sketch comedy, rock bands, paintings, photography, etc. But what always happens to me when I experience this stuff is that I say to myself, “I could do 10 times better than that guy without even trying”. Even if it is an art form that I have zero experience in, I feel as if I could crank out something better than the drivel that I have just experienced. It makes me want to go home and write a movie. Or write a book. Or record a song. Or paint a picture. And sometimes I do.

Don’t get me wrong, I have all the respect in the world for EVERYONE who is willing to put themselves out there and show the world their work. It often takes balls. Lots of folks who want to publish a song or write a novel or make a movie never even TRY. Usually fear stops them cold … fear of inadequacy, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, whatever. They never even try. So my hat is off to everyone who even tries.

But sometimes it is SO sad when an ambitious project that someone has sunk hours and hours and hours into is SO BAD. The good thing about experiencing this embarrassingly horrible art: it often inspires me.

So next time you’re stuck, go seek out a horrible play or indie movie or rock band. It may just give you the inspiration to produce something that is at least a “C” and who knows, you may produce an “A”!

this is a cross-post from acidfreeink.com