Jeff James » Music

A Finely Crafted Long-Player

Jeff — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:13:17 +0000

I feel like my music collection is stuck in a bit of a rut lately. Nothing I’ve got on the ‘Pod is really catching my fancy and requiring constant listening and re-listening. The only real exception is Black and White Town by Doves, which is an absolutely fantastic song, but I am very much an album listener. I love nothing more than the ebb and flow of a finely crafted long-player. Don’t get me wrong – some great music has been released this year, but all of the albums I have on hand are feeling a bit stale. Any good recommendations?

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A Belated Best Of

Jeff — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:34:24 +0000

It’s a bit late, but I’ve decided to finally throw together my “best albums of 2008″ list. I spent too long thinking about it, and then spent some time procrastinating after that, and now it’s March of 2009 and I feel a bit silly. To make up for that, I’ve dug up representative videos for each album, some of them offical and some of them fan made (but interesting). All of these albums are still in heavy rotation on my iPod. 2008 was a good year for music.

2008 was also a good year for buying music on Amazon Mp3, which has become my digital music destination of choice simply because of the daily deals they have. For example, the newest Lily Allen album was $3.99 on the day it came out. I’ve also bought several pretty great albums for $1.99 a pop when they were on sale. Everything in the list below is available on the site, and a decent number of the albums are less than $10 to purchase.

My list and a collection of music videos follows after the jump…

Read the rest of A Belated Best Of (71 words)

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Post tags: Acid Tongue, Amazon Mp3, digital, Elbow, Four Tet, Four Tet Ringer, Jenny Lewis, Laura Marling Alas, Lily Allen, list, Music, Q Tip, Videos

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Have I mentioned how much I love Neko Case?

Jeff — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:31:42 +0000

I haven’t even heard the music yet, and already it’s genius.

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Post tags: awesome, Genius, Love, Music, Neko Case, upcoming

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Jenny Lewis vs. Rilo Kiley

Jeff — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:24:21 +0000

A bit of background: although I enjoy Rilo Kiley’s music, I’ve never been a huge fan. They are a nice little indie band that does quirk and usually does it fairly well. I have several of their albums, but I haven’t listened to them much recently.

The first time I heard their most recent album, “Under the Blacklight“, I was turned off pretty quickly and ended up deleting it from my hard drive. From that first impression, it seemed clear that they had decided to jettison everything intimate and quirky about their sound in an effort to make it big in the mainstream, and I found the results lacking.

As for Jenny Lewis, I enjoyed her first album under her own name, thought it was a nice change of pace, but, again, I didn’t think it was anything earth-shattering. It seemed more like Neko Case-lite with a girl group spin. It’s one of those albums that I appreciate but never listened to that much or that often. However, when her second album, “Acid Tongue“, came out, I listened to a few samples and was immediately hooked. I bought it pretty promptly and it’s not only in heavy rotation, it’s easily one of my most favorite albums of the year.

After listening to Acid Tongue a few dozen times, I started wondering if I had written off Under the Blacklight unfairly, so I decided to give it another spin and see if there were any hidden gems I missed the first time around. To make a long story short, there are definitely some pretty amazing songs on the album, but they’re the exception to the rule. Although my first impression was harsh, it wasn’t too far off base.

Read the rest of Jenny Lewis vs. Rilo Kiley (479 words)

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Post tags: Acid Tongue, album, Earth, Girl Group, Jenny Lewis, Music, Rilo Kiley, sound

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Sad Kermit Covers Elliott Smith

Jeff — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:23:29 +0000

The above is a re-enactment of a climactic scene in The Royal Tenenbaums.

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Less Than Human

Jeff — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:03:11 +0000

I am a completely unashamed fan of Kylie Minogue. Deal with it. Or… listen to this mix I just threw together inspired by a song from her new album.

Direct link: Less Than Human

Read the rest of Less Than Human (115 words)

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Post tags: album, Black Milk, Four Tet, Goldfrapp, Imeem, Kylie Minogue

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Marked By Ash

Jeff — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:36:34 +0000

There are a number of cool “mix tape” creator websites out there now. The notable few I’ve run across are muxtape.com, mixwit.com, and imeem.com. They’ve all got their own individual strengths… Muxtape works with iPhones, for example, but it seems like iMeem has the best selection, and Mixwit has the most customizable look and feel.

In any case, I’ve thrown together a playlist. The Jim O’Rourke and Pernice Brothers songs were the main inspiration for this mix – I built the rest around that general sound and lyrical tone. Enjoy!

EDIT: A downside of iMeem, apparently, is that some of the songs are shortened to 30 seconds when the playlist is embedded. If you click on the “standalone player” option, or go directly to the page on iMeem… you get the full version. How on earth does that make any sense? Suddenly less impressed with this toy.

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Goodbye, Weekend / Have Some Music Videos

Jeff — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:41:46 +0000

I spent most of this weekend a) trying to keep theleetworld.com from melting after the site made it to the front page of digg (and a bunch of other huge sites) and b) looking at places to live.

For right now, the site seems to have stopped melting, and as for places to live, Tim and I came up with a good top 5 list. Roommate #3, Trey, hasn’t had a chance to look at the places yet, but if he doesn’t manage to do it tomorrow, he’s just going to have to trust us, because we need to get our applications in pronto.

Other than that, I’d like to share the following two music videos I just came across:

Goldfrapp – A&E

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!

© Jeff for Jeff James, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Digg, Goldfrapp, list, live, music videos, The Leet World

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Other Great Albums of 2007 (A Few Late Additions)

Jeff — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:04:17 +0000

After reading through the various year-end lists, I tracked down a few of the interesting-sounding albums I hadn’t had a chance to listen to yet, and I discovered a few gems that I’d like to recommend as a sort of coda to my top 10 list:

1) Iron and Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog

The Iron and Wine cover of “Dark Eyes” from the I’m Not There soundtrack is one of the standout songs on that album, so I decided to give Iron and Wine another listen-to, despite the fact that their Postal Service cover from the Garden State soundtrack was a bit mopey. This album is uniformly great, and if I had started listening to it earlier in the year, it would easily have been in my top 10 list. Rootsy, organic, full of beautiful harmonies and melodies, and highly recommended.

2) Battles – Mirrored

My first exposure to this album was the video for Atlas, which I saw on Subterranean, i.e. the one hour a week (including 20 minutes of commercials) when M2 plays interesting music videos. The video is fairly minimal – just a shot of the band playing in the odd glass cube pictured on their album cover – but it fits the music, which is (mostly) instrumental rock, most of which is also very minimal, and generally composed of repeated percussion and industrial sounds. I’ve been drawn to more and more instrumental music in the past year or so, just because I find it hard to listen to vocal music when I’m reading (even though this was not an issue in my younger years when I had more brain cells…) Anyways, this one has really grown on me, much like similar music by Liquid Liquid did a few years back. “Atlas” and “Race: In” are the standout tracks here, although the band’s sound is a bit abrasive and may not be to everyone’s tastes.

3) LCD Soundsystem – 45:33

This is actually a re-issue of an iTunes exclusive in a CD form. The new version splits up the formerly 45 minute first track into six parts (essentially the “movements” of the song) and adds on three bonus tracks (two b-sides and a remix). As you might imagine from my top 10 list, I’ve become a huge fan of LCD Soundsystem thanks to their second album. Much like the Battles album, this is primarily instrumental music (kind of a departure for the band), and I actually prefer it for reading because it’s a bit more soothing whereas the Battles album is more up-beat and rock-and-roll. Maybe I’ll use it for walking music when it isn’t so cold outside…

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Post tags: album, best of, list, Music, reading, review, rock, video, year-end

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My Favorite Albums of 2007

Jeff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:46:27 +0000

Alright, in order for an album to end up on this list, it had to be an album that I find myself listening to regularly, even though time may have passed since it was released. I have several pretty great albums on my iPod that will end up on other end-of-the-year lists that haven’t quite grabbed me like the ten below.

This list isn’t perfect, of course, especially because I also limited myself to albums released in 2007. I guess including The Beatles album is kind of fudging things a bit, but it was a pretty amazing compilation that totally redefines what you can do instead of a vanilla “greatest hits” album.

1. Radiohead – In Rainbows
2. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
3. Various Artists – I’m Not There (Soundtrack)
4. The Beatles – LOVE
5. Queens of the Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Is Is
7. Field Music – Tones of Town
8. Idlewild – Make Another World
9. Caribou – Andorra
10. Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger

To see what some of the professionals think, I recommend the AV Club Best Music of 2007 list. Much better than Pitchfork (even though I’ll read that one, too).

© Jeff for Jeff James, 2007. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: album, best of, Caribou Andorra, list, Music, read, review, year-end

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Morissette vs. Humps

Jeff — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:11:16 +0000

Now… let it be said that listening to the original version of this song is like having a hole drilled through your head with a rusty can opener… this cover, on the other hand, is so melodramatic and purely Alanis, that it’s absolutely hilarious. Also, she cleans up nice, doesn’t she?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRmYfVCH2UA

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Tones of Town

Jeff — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:52:42 +0000

I know we’re only a few short weeks into 2007, but I think I may have already found my most favorite album of the year:

Field Music – Tones of Town (iTunes Link)

I discovered Field Music thanks to a little show on MTV2 called Subterranean. Believe it or not, MTV’s second channel still devotes about an hour a week to cool new music very late at night when noone is watching! According to the WikiPedia, Subterranean plays an average of nine videos in every hour-long show!

But… I digress! Field Music’s self-titled debut was easily my #1 album of 2006 (edging out The Obliterati by Mission of Burma by only a small margin, mind you!) According to iTunes, I’ve listened to their first album an average of about 50 times, and I still love listening to it! Few albums have achieved that kind of staying power with me… I admittedly have a verrry short attention span for music nowadays, and it’s an achievement if an album stays in heavy rotation for about 3-4 weeks.

The ultimate example of an album completely dominating my time was during the summer of 1997, when our friend OK Computer was pretty much the only thing I listened to for several long months. (This was, of course, back in the days of Discman, so the singular musical focus of that summer is perhaps a relic of the pre-iPod years.)

There have been few albums since 1997 that have captivated my attention span to such a level, but Field Music has definitely proven their staying power to me… and I think they’ve hit it out of the park again with album #2 – I bought this album last night, and I’ve already listened to it five seven times…

So, the moral of this story is… in general, ignore Pitchfork. In specific terms, go buy yourself some Field Music. You can also check out some of their songs at their MySpace page.

…And you should definitely check out this awesome video for “In Context”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBqx9Tpmj-U

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Five Years

Jeff — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:34:33 +0000

Sorry to be a little pretentious, but I think this is fitting for what is an inauspicious anniversary:

“Five Years” by David Bowie

Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept when he told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
All the nobody people and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people
A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn’t a-pulled her off I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour drinking milkshakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don’t think you knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you’re beautiful, I want you to walk

We got five years, stuck on my eyes
We got five years, what a suprise
We got five years, my brain hurts alot
We got five years, that’s all we’ve got

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I Heart Hot Chip

Jeff — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:58:06 +0000

I love this song:

this one’s pretty awesome, too:

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i need it

Jeff — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:40:15 +0000

favorite song/video of the moment:

!/images/goldfrapp.jpg!:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVYySVz3MGA

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well, there goes that weekend

Jeff — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 09:22:32 +0000

man, weekends seem to go faster and faster these days… and it’s not like i’m using my time to anything particularly exciting…

on friday, i watched some dvds and shows, and then i spent some time figuring out how to make an animated gif of myself. now, i cannot honestly explain what made me decide to do this. mostly i think i was bored. anyways, here’s the final result:

!/images/eyebrows.gif!

on saturday night, i watched another handful of scrubs episodes and found out yet again that if i’m in a crappy mood (like i was saturday afternoon), all i have to do is sit down and watch a batch of scrubs episodes and my day is instantly lifted. it’s kind of amazing, actually. i also finished watching cowboy bebop, which was pretty good overall, although i felt like the series ending didn’t wrap things up as well as it could have.

i also figured out how to make my own ringtones for my phone. right now whenever anyone calls me, my phone plays “why do fools fall in love?”. other than however many minutes i used to access the internet, the whole thing was free, thanks to “this site”:http://rumkin.com/tools/sprint/index.php. personally, i think it was totally worth it.

in other news… something needs to be done about my ipod. the battery just doesn’t quite have the kick it used to. some days it’s good for 2 hours, and on others it dies after 20 minutes of use. to make matters worse, i think whatever claim form i sent off three months ago has disappeared into a legal black hole somewhere. oh well.

it’s starting to look like it’s time to pony up the $70 for a battery replacement. the more irresponsible choice, of course, would be to just buy a whole new ipod… one with more storage, of course. it’s gotten to the point where my ipod is constantly bursting at the seams. so far, however, i’ve resisted either possibility.

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I like the rows of lights because they keep me calm

Jeff — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:28:57 +0000

!{float: left; margin: 0 1em 1em 0;}/images/nada.jpg! tonight was the “nada surf”:http://nadasurf.com/ show at “emo’s”:http://www.emosaustin.com/. it was actually the third time i’ve seen them play. the first was well before they made a comeback, and they were opening for the impossibles, a local texas band. the second time was at emo’s about two or three years ago, just after they had started edging their way back into respectability – that show was inside on the tiny stage emo’s has in their front room. it was an exciting show because i was so into their last album, let go, and you could tell that they were confident and ready to face the world again.

this third show was on the big outside stage at emo’s. at this point, nada surf is back and well established in indie circles, and the outside area was packed even though it was pretty cold outside. they did have heaters running, but i was definitely still glad i brought my warm hat with me. it was a good show, but i was slightly less excited this time. it’s not that i’m less into their music – i think i was just in a weird mood or something. i suppose the fact that i couldn’t round up anyone to go with me did also put a little bit of a damper on things. anyways, it was a good show, they were definitely _on_ despite some sound problems, and they played all of the songs i wanted to hear.

one thing that was kind of annoying, though, was that about 30-45 minutes into the show a girl who had been standing next to me for a while started trying to talk to me, except she was plastered and i couldn’t hear a thing she was saying. despite this fact, she kept trying to talk to me, and kept trying to lean against me or put her arm around mine. she was either hitting on me or looking for someone to help her stand up straight. probably both. i tried to let her know that i really just wanted to be left alone so that i could watch the show, but this wasn’t really getting across, so finally i just had to give up my spot and walk around to the other side of the venue. this kind of sucked because i was further away, but i was really getting the impression that this girl was not going to leave me alone, and i was never going to figure out what the hell she was saying.

at the end of the show, i bought a nice little poster. i think i’m going to go get some frames tomorrow for that and my mission of burma poster. i’ve basically figured out that those little sticky tabs just aren’t going to work in this apartment – the walls aren’t the kind of smooth surfaces necessary to make things stick. i’ll just put up some nails and worry about fixing the holes whenever i move out.

on the way home, the roads were icy all over – i saw a bunch of fire trucks, cop cars and ambulances headed to or from accidents. i got stuck behind an accident on 35 for a little while, and then when i got to the 183 exit, it was blocked off by a cop car, most likely because the exit, a curving overpass, would be treacherous in tonight’s weather. i decided to go further north and take the Yager exit, since I know how to get to my place from there. this is the kind of driver i am, especially when i don’t have other people in the car to judge me – i’ll miss an exit and just casually find my way home some other way.

anyways, i was driving down the feeder road verrrry slowly because there was a long bridge coming up and i know from experience that car tires and icy bridges do not mix. i was driving about 25 miles an hour, and when i finally got over the bridge i looked off to my right and realized that there was a flipped car on the side of the road. the front bumper was in a ditch and the car had landed at a 45 degree angle with the tail end straight out in the air. for a second i couldn’t believe my eyes, and then i pulled over up ahead of it to check on the driver. (noting, as i did this, that several cars in front of me had just driven right past the accident.)

the car looked pretty bad. those few seconds while i walked up to the wreck were pretty scary, because i didn’t see any movement at first, but as i got a little closer i saw a face in the window, so i called out to the guy, who told me that he was okay. when i got up close, i reached down and helped him climb out through the window – he had just finished cutting off his seat belt. the whole thing had probably happened minutes before i got there, although i didn’t see it. the guy was, amazingly, fine, although he was pretty freaked out (understandably). once i got him out, i called 911 and waited with him for them to come. i felt pretty sorry for the guy – apparently his weekend had been bad already, and this was just icing on the cake.

after about 20 or 30 minutes, a cop and a wrecker came, and pretty soon after a fire truck pulled up as well. because the guy wasn’t hurt, he turned down EMS service, and once the tow truck turned his car over and towed it off, i gave him a ride home. perhaps the worst part for the poor guy was that he was literally minutes from his house. (isn’t there some statistic that says that most accidents happen when you’re a few miles from where you live?)

after that, i drove extra slow the whole way home, only stopping for a bit of whataburger because my stomach was rumbling. and now it’s 5am and i’m only a little sleepy. that’s what i get for taking a nap before the show. oh well. i’ll try and go to sleep here in a little while.

tomorrow night, “supergrass”:http://www.roadtorouen.co.uk at “the parish”:http://www.theparishroom.com/!

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New is Good

Jeff — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 12:20:26 +0000

I’ve found some excellent new music lately… in particular, i’ve been getting into My Morning Jacket.

Other recent additions include Death Cab For Cutie, Eagles of Death Metal, Kanye West, Kinski, Laura Veirs, Roxy Music, Sufjan Stevens (maaaan… _so_ good!), The Velvet Underground, and The Zombies.

I also just updated “Movable Type”:http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ to 3.2. It’s got some sexy new features, including this new default template that I’ve temporarily installed. My site needs a redesign (the “Iota Chapter”:http://www.iotachapter.org site needs it more…) and this is a stopgap for now.

After I got into the swing of “my new mouse”:http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/, I’ve started using “Dashboard”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/dashboard/ after all. It’s still a little persnickity, but seems to at least work better than it did before, and it’s cool to squeeze my mouse and have the Dashboard pop up.

Another nifty tool I’ve installed is “Growl”:http://growl.info, which is a system-wide notifications plugin. I mainly like it because it announces what song i’m listening to along with track art and other fun stuff.

Finally, in a bit of random coolness, as far as I can tell, Mr. Reed himself of “Reed’s Ginger Brew”:http://www.reedsgingerbrew.com found that “entry I made a few months back”:http://unsquare.com/dance/archives/2005/06/reeds_extra_gin.html when I tried their soda… and he left a comment thanking me for my mention. I feel so special!

© Jeff for Jeff James, 2005. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Iota Chapter, Laura Veirs, Roxy Music, Sufjan Stevens

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make sure that you are sure of everything i do

Jeff — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 11:28:04 +0000

!/images/burma.jpg!

last night i went to the first concert i’ve been to in a long while. i can’t remember for sure when i last went out to a show – it was probably badly drawn boy, though, and that was last october. i went and saw “mission of burma”:http://www.missionofburma.com, and i have to say that i’m damn glad that i happened to be listening to “KEXP”:http://kexp.org when, randomly enough, the DJ mentioned that they would be playing here in Austin. (This is random because KEXP is based out of Seattle.)

the show was quite a barn-burner… ear-blistering, paint peeling, wall-to-wall rock and roll… it was incredible how ferocious they were, and they played two full sets. this is a practice that more band should take up… the best shows i’ve been to have been two-setters. it was particularly cool that they were so rocking because, honestly, the guitarist looks like he should be planning a fishing trip somewhere, and they’re all in their mid-to-late forties, if not early fifties.

i also broke down and used the ATM outside the club to get some cash so that i could buy a poster. the damn ATM charged a $3.75 fee. highway robbery! …the poster, however, was worth it… not only was it made specially for the show, it’s signed and numbered – and it was only $10. it seemed like a better idea to spring for a poster than a shirt, because the shirts were the same ones i could get from their website, but the posters looked very one-time-only.

after the show, as i was walking down sixth street on the way back to my car, i was amazed yet again at how crazy downtown austin gets. i don’t usually hang out on sixth street when i go out, and it was easy to remember why.

especially surprising were the two girls i saw walking around topless. when i saw the first i thought she was just some drunk girl without inhibitions, but when i saw the second one, i knew it was some kind of trend. a bar must have been having a contest or something, who knows.

still, though, i only imagine such things happening in new orleans, or california, or wherever those crazy party towns are. whenever i go to the ginger man or places like mugshots and texas showdown, things always seem so sedate. ‘course, none of those bars are on sixth street, so that may be part of the reason why.

when i woke up this morning my ears were definitely still ringing, and i felt generally awful. i puttered around for a few hours, watched the “battlestar galactica”:http://scifi.com/battlestar/ season premiere (it was awesome), as well as the Stargate SG-1 premiere, which, honestly, i was only watching because Ben Browder is the new lead and i really miss Farscape, but which was also pretty entertaining, even though i definitely felt a good bit lost. (Claudia Black is a guest star, as well. It’s a pretty blatant grab at the attentions of Farscape fans… and it clearly worked on me. sigh.)

after a several-hour nap and some further puttering, i decided to finally sit down and start reading the new harry potter book, which i’m sure everyone else has finished by now. i’m a little over halfway in at this point, and only took a break to get some food and write a bit.

…and, well, actually, i might be tired now, so it looks like i may go to bed here in a bit.

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check this out

Jeff — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 08:01:03 +0000

listen to “radio david byrne”:http://davidbyrne.com/radio/index.php

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