If only I were so lovely in the morning. Or ever.

Beautiful stop-motion video for Oren Lavie’s Her Morning Elegance.

The Return of New Music Mondays.

Portland, OR band Horse Feathers’ newish release, House With No Home. A little light acoustic guitar and violin to ease us all back to the grind.

Like a sponge.

Over the course of this past week in Portland I traded in my yoga pants for jeans and put on a real bra exactly twice, and that was to walk 2 blocks to see movies (Beauty in Trouble, Czech dramedy, eh; Tell No One, French psychological thriller, oh so good!) and drink beer in the daytime dark at the Living Room Theater in the Pearl district (pictured). Between said movies, I… watched more movies on DVD, thanks to a sister with “industry” connections (Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader… something else good I can’t remember), downloaded a bunch of new music (new Killers, Carla Bruni and Horse Feathers, old Magnetic Fields, Miles Davis and Mates of State among others considerably more embarrassing), read a boatload of magazines, finished The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Ilosa and started Seven Types of Ambiguity, a 600 page tome I’d picked up and put back a dozen times since it came out and finally decided to tackle thanks to long lines and the conveniently located Bargain Buys stack (damn you Powell’s and your strategic merchandising)– in short, did little but play tennis, hang with the fam, and soak up a ton great film, music and reading material and it felt good. Makeup didn’t touch my face, my hair went dirtier than usual, even my ears got a break from being ravaged by cheap earrings. Isn’t this what Christmas is all about though? When else can you be a complete slob if not in the comfort of your family over the holidays in a northern, gray city after having your emotions put in a blender on puree?

Where has this album been all my life?

Sublime new release by Sigur Ros. I could write the album name out here in Icelandic but really, what would be the point? It’s the one with a long foreign title and lanky, bare-assed men jumping over a fence. Kinda can’t miss it.

Favorite Things…

1. Jose Gonzalez at the Fillmore. Just magical.

2. $150 cross-coast one-ways. (The other side of that coin: hour and a half taxi rides to JFK, missing your flight, hour and a half taxi rides to Brooklyn, rebooked and subsequently canceled flights on 2 different airlines the next day, getting stopped at security, finally securing a middle seat in row 96 and finding you’re #30 in line for take-off).

3. Call Zingo, a new concept in designated driving. Fully-insured, attractive (Flash intros don’t lie) drivers arrive at bar of your choice on COLLAPSIBLE MOTOR BIKES, stick the bike in your trunk, drive you home, expand the bike, and scoot off to their next client, all for a $20 base charge + mileage. (Awful logo but) neato website to boot.

4. Then We Came to an End by Joshua Ferris. Catch-22 meets Office Space at a bar and runs into American Psycho on their way back to her place. I can’t read a chapter without thinking of the “goddamn fucking shitty paperwork” cartoon that gets me every time (“One hundred forests must be cut down!”) so basically I can’t go a page without laughing my face off. I can’t find it on the internet but will scan asap.

5. A mid-morning weekday walk to Tennessee Cove in Marin with the sage and lovely Nicole Burke.

6. “Ocarina” by Birds and Batteries. Best when consumed while flying through the San Francisco hills in 15-year old stick-shift Saab with sunroof open and windows down.

7. WiFi at Farley’s (but still no free refills).

8. 2 words: Lonni’s Punani.

9. 60 Minutes and Sunday Sushi. The ultimate aphrodisiac tranquilizer.

10. Um, um…!

New music by Thao.

Feist should watch her back, there’s a new cute, young, singing-songwriting thing in town. Thao sounds a little like Edie Brickell, a little like Tegan and Sara, a little like an unhinged Beth Orton. “Swimming Pools” is the song I got from Paste and can’t get out of my head (jarring at first but it grows on you) but the only video I can find that’s not a feedback-heavy bootleg is “Bag of Hammers” below. She’s playing with her band at Botttom of the Hill on April 12 for SF’ers.

You couldn’t TiVo past this gorgeous ad if you tried.

A little late to post this video but I was in New York last week and just having my head above water by the end of the day felt like a major accomplishment.

It’s, of course, reminiscent of that other super slow-motion ad set to heavenly music, the Sony one that broke Jose Gonzalez (who I happen to be seeing tomorrow at the Fillmore!) to an American audience. Worth another viewing.

Favorite Things Friday.

1. Tinderbox in Bernal Heights. Dinner consisted of the following: white shrimp and cheese grits with candied maple bacon in a vanilla-scented balsamic jus; crispy tofu noodle soup; char 2 ways (smoked and slow roasted and tartare on a cornbread blini); a bottle of Assyrtico from Santorini (“full-bodied with background notes of jalapeno and smoke”– definitely unique but a lot lighter and sweeter than it sounds) and the above pictured dark chocolate cake with molten blue cheese center. Oh and popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast, parsley, chives and butter to start. I fully plan to repent these sins another time.

2. School night poker parties!

3. Long, early-spring walks to nowhere listening to Radiolab podcasts. Also- the canopy of flowering trees on outer Folsom.

5 . The only real mail I get these days are Christmas cards and wedding invitations. This whimisical-chic YSL wallet makes me smile.

6. MGMT, “Oracular Spectacular.” Something’s (finally) astir in Brooklyn again.

7. Coffee Bar on Mariposa and Bryant. A cup of Kenyan blend and an almond croissant in the AM and a glass of their amazing South African white in the PM.

8. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Modern classics I finally got around to reading.

9. Coincidentally opposing color exhibits at MoMA (“Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today”) and the Met (“Jasper Johns: Gray”).

10. Pandora’s Zero 7, Guster and Rodrigo y Gabriela radio stations.

More fun with geography and gangsta rappers.

From the ever enlightening Strange Maps blog:

“In this song, Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Ms Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship:

• “Ludacris heavily favors the East Coast to the West, save for Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.”
• “Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.”
• “There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.”
• “Ludacris has hoes in the entire state of Maryland.”
• “Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.”
• “Ludacris’s ideal ‘ho-highway’ would be I-95.”
• “Ludacris has hoes in the Midway and Wake Islands. Only scientists are allowed to inhabit the Midway Islands, and only military personnel may inhabit the Wake Islands. Draw your own conclusion.”

Did they have to make him look like Jesus?

See my earlier post about this issue here.

Seriously, though, what’s with the halo of lightening bolts?