Alias Bee Logic

Has it really been that long since I posted on here? Wow. Well, I'm back at school, enjoying myself and getting back to being insanely busy. I'd post a link to the latest newscast from KJHK, but for some reason we aren't putting podcasts up yet on the site. Boo.

In other news, I've started a videoblog with my fellow movie reviewer from the radio station, Elliot. It's been pretty good so far, and we're getting a fair amount of views. We talk about movies. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TwoAwesomeMovieNerds

In an unrelated activity, I'm going to see "Brideshead Revisited" with some friends this afternoon. I'm expecting it to be Brittacular.

So, I realize I haven't posted in...well...forever. Apologies for this. I got somewhat swept up towards the end of the year with radio work, school stuff and family emergencies. It was a crazy few months. But now, I'm back with some highlights of recent happenings.

Highlight one: Swell Season concert
I got to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of "Once" (also known as The Swell Season) perform to a sold out crowd at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City with two equally excited (if not more excited) friends of mine. It was a brilliant evening of lovely music.


Highlight two: This American Life--The Movie
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to check out the live simulcast of This American Life's "movie event" in May. It, too, was brilliant, as was the review I recorded with my cohort, Elliot:
http://www.kansan.com/podcasts/as_heard_from_the_hill/2008/may/06/american_life/

Highlight three: Washington, DC
I went on a trip with the fam to DC at the beginning of June and had a load of fun. I got to tour the Spy Museum which, by the way, I highly recommend checking out, although it isn't free. I also got to tour NPR headquarters which, by a strange and awesome coincidence, happened to be located a couple of blocks from our hotel. I met a guy working there who was a KU grad and, like me, worked on the station's news program. I also got to record a promo about why it's important to give money to NPR. All in all, it made for a pretty sweet day.




Highlight Four: Wakarusa music festival
I got to go to Lawrence's awesome Wakarusa Music Festival for the whole weekend this year, because I was volunteering and, thus, did not have to pay. It was awesome. The lineup was the best it's ever been, with acts like the Flaming Lips, Cake, Ben Folds and Alejandro Escovedo just to name a few. I got a wicked sunburn, and had to pick up loads of really nasty garbage and recycling (including several pairs of boxer shorts) but I figure it was totally worth it for the music and the experience...And because I got to meet Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips, who was ridiculously nice.



So, that's been my summer so far. Right now I'm back in Pittsburg, hanging out at home and working at a day care center until August, at which point I will get to return to that wonderful place up on Mt. Oread that I call home for nine months out of the year. I'm also working with some awesome folks from across the pond on a videoblog, which you can find here:http://youtube.com/user/cryptproject. My last post was on Friday, and my next one will be Wednesday.

Obviously, it's the fourth this Friday, so happy Independence Day! Also, it's my birthday the following Friday (July 11). I will be 20.

Okay, so I found these pictures posted online of "crazy ocean foam" in Australia (thanks, Stumble!) and it really kind of bothered me.

http://thegamefish.com/images/ocean1.jpg

http://thegamefish.com/images/ocean3.jpg

I'm not sure about you folks, but if I were a parent, I wouldn't want my kid jumping around in something created from "chemicals, salt, and excretions of seaweed." Does this seem a little freaky to anyone else?

I found this blog post via stumble, the world's greatest time-wasting invention this side of YouTube. About half of this stuff is pretty sophomoric, but one or two panels caught my interest.

http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2007/03/top_15_unintent.html

This is what a normal Sunday morning looks like for me these days...

So, I saw the Sklar Brothers perform at KU a week ago, and I went to cover the event for "As Heard From the Hill," the college radio news show I report for. By a weird stroke of luck, a friend of mine was there with his cousin, who happens to be a good friend of the comedians, and because my friend is awesome, he scored me an interview with them.

So here, in its great glory, is the piece I recorded for the show. It aired on Tuesday night.

http://media.kansan.com/podcasts/as_heard_from_the_hill/five/brothers.mp3

Hey, all! Any of you Lawrence residents out there, take note: Black Lips are playing at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, February 26th at the Love Garden on Mass street. There will be free brown bag lunches, and you know what they say about college students and free food. Anyhoo, I think this will be an awesome event, and people should come. Free food! Free music! BLACK FREAKING LIPS!

Here's a schmancy video promo for ya:

Anyone interested in hearing my opinion of the movie "27 Dresses" (or just hearing me in in general), check out 90.7 FM round about 7 p.m. central time tonight if you live in the Lawrence/Topeka/Kansas City area. If you don't live there, you can listen online. Just go to kjhk.org and click on the "listen online" button in the top left corner of the page. Or, you can subscribe to the "As Heard From the Hill" podcast, although I can't guarantee when that will be uploaded. The show re-broadcasts Saturday morning at 9 a.m.

On its list of 2008 albums to be on the lookout for, Stereogum announced the rumor (note: RUMOR) that a certain starlet (her last name rhymes with bobansson) will be releasing an album of songs by one Mr. Tom Waits. Struth. I know not what to say about this, other than to respond to it with disbelief and fits of laughter.

Check it out:
http://stereogum.com/archives/stereogums-2008-album-forecast_007552.html

Merry Christmas everyone!

Well, it's the end of the year, and people are making lists left and right. What movies were good? What albums were worth all the hype? Well, I say screw that. I like lists, but I'm a little tired of seeing the same ten to twenty films, albums and bands praised in magazines and blogs. I'm gonna post something a little more personal. Here are my top moments of 2007, in no particular order.

-Meeting Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello twice in the same day, and getting my picture taken with him. It's going to be hard to top this one as the best Halloween ever.

-Meeting Dino and Jackie from the 1990s, and subsequently being told by Jackie that he liked my dress, and that it was very sweet of me to say that I loved his band (I was one of probably three or four people in the audience that knew who they were). This was the same evening I told Art Brut's Jasper Future that he reminded me of Ian Curtis. It was a magical exchange of wit.

-Standing in the front row of the Arcade Fire concert in September. It was the first of many exciting concert-related experiences this year.

-Meeting David Sedaris (one of my heroes) at a reading in March. He was freaking hilarious, and very nice.

-Seeing four guys dressed like interlocking tetris pieces on Halloween.

-Seeing a woman dressed as an organ grinder playing an accordion on the street while her toddler daughter (dressed like a monkey) danced around her.

So, that's it. That was my year. There were more things (Seeing Colin Meloy while crossing 39th Street is a runner up), but these were the things that are going into the book of "awesome things that happened to Abby" for this year. I'm hoping I get to share even more of these fascinating little anecdotes in the year to come. Happy holidays, all!

Hey, all! Happy December! Now that National Novel Writing Month is finished (I barely broke 10,000 words. For shame!) British Television Show of the Week has returned!

This week: Never Mind the Buzzcocks
Host: Simon Amstell

"Never Mind the Buzzcocks" is a celebrity quiz show that asks its ever-changing panel of famous guests questions about modern pop culture (mostly British) while simultaneously skewering it (and some of the panel members themselves). Some of the references are a little hard to get for those of us not living in England, but the witty, edgy repartee between host Simon Amstell and the contestants, and the behavior of some of the panel members, is pretty awesome.

In lieu of any decent short clips, here's part one of a recent episode featuring Jessica (Stevenson) Hynes (Spaced), Bill Bailey (Black Books) and Kim Stewart (Rod Stewart's socialite daughter).

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!



Also, a bit of news for those of you keeping up with "British Television Show of the Week": adultswim.com now has "Darkplace" posted online, most recently the episode "Hell Hath Fury." Now mainstream American audiences can see episodes the legal way. Hooray for importing!

Hey, all! In honor of National Novel Writing Month, "British Television Show of the Week" will be taking a break while the ever-vigilant blogger takes time to write her 50,000 word novel over a 30-day period. I'm currently several thousand words behind schedule, but I'm at 3,000 right now, which is a good deal further than I got last year.

This year, October for me went out with a bang. There were halloween parties and concerts galore, and while the parties varied in quality from really fun to "why the hell am I here?" the concerts were excellent. The 27th brought Architecture in Helsinki to our fair city, and Halloween saw Gypsy punk-rockers Gogol Bordello performing at Liberty Hall. It was good times indeed, although the Gogol Bordello crowd experience is probably not something I want to experience again for at least another year. I need time to build my strength back up after what turned into an exciting but harrowing (and exhausting!) concert. Architecture was a good deal more tame although some stupid drunk girl in the front row started harrassing the band, and then jumped on stage and messed around with Kellie Sutherland's microphone, about which Sutherland and the people who'd actually come to enjoy the show were none too happy.

Some pictures of my latest escapades:


(some guys on campus dressed as tetris pieces)


(An excited blogger and Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz at an after party for the band's Halloween concert)

Look Around You
Created by: Peter Serafinowicz, Robert Popper
Starring: Peter Serafinowicz, Robert Popper

"Look Around You" is a parody of old school science movies, you know, the ones where world-renowned scientists talk about the importance of a particular chemical reaction, or aspect of the field. "Look Around You" is often very dry and sometimes you have to pay close attention to catch the jokes, but they're worth waiting for. Such topics discussed in the series include maths, music, the brain, ghosts, sulfur and water. The show often has guest stars that appear for only a few moments, like Julian Barratt, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright.

While series one of "Look Around You" is just a bunch of nine or ten-minute shorts, series two is a half-hour long "Scientific American"-style program. Series two has its moments, but I really think the shorts are much funnier.

In honor of Halloween, here is the short "Ghosts."

If I've gotten anything out of my time here at KU so far, it's this: I have never been prouder to be a Kansan than now, living in Lawrence. This place is bloody amazing. First I get concerts both in town and in Kansas City, one hour away, then $5 indie-movie screenings, and now this.

The Wild West Film Fest is a locally-run film festival which anyone can enter. Filmmaking teams have 48 hours to shoot, edit and score a five-minute short film. I believe this contest is held a couple of times a year. The Halloween contest is horror-themed, and each year the guidelines for films are different. This year, the stipulations were: no guns, no knives, no blood, and the first line of dialogue had to be "Did you hear something?"

I'd been kind of disappointed with the turnout at previous Liberty Hall screening events, but I was excited to see that the Wild West Film Fest had a great crowd. The quality of the films varied from artistic and clever to goofball jobs done by highschoolers armed with their dad's handycam. In any case, it was good fun, and something I'll be looking forward to checking out in years to come.

Here are a couple of the contest entries:

"The Amygdala Effect" (my personal favorite, shot on campus in super-creepy Watson library)


"Sweet Dreams":


I think these are pretty indicative of the stuff we got to watch Friday night. Like I said, some were good, some not so much. Enjoy!

Little Britain
Created by: David Walliams and Matt Lucas
Starring: David Walliams, Matt Lucas, Tom Baker, Anthony Head, Paul Putner, Steve Furst, Charu Bala Chokshi, Joann Condon, Ruth Jones

"Little Britain" is, basically, the classiest, most consistently funny sketch show I've yet listed on this blog. It is nothing short of absolutely brilliant. The show started as a radio show, which can be found in its entirety (plus some outtakes) on CD. Watch the show, and definitely listen to the radio program. One might argue that Tom Baker's off-the-wall narration is a big part of what makes the show so enjoyable, however I maintain that it is one aspect of a well-written, well-acted show. Every character created by Walliams and Lucas, be it Daffyd the homophobic gay, Emily the unconvincing transvestite, or Marjorie, the ineffective and authoritarian leader of the Fat Fighters support group, is vividly portrayed down to the last detail. It's obvious that the show's two creators bring their A game to every single episode. If I had to pick one show that best represented British comedy and everything I love about it, "Little Britain" would be at the very top of the heap.

Nathan Barley
Created by: Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker (I know, I know, I swear I'm gonna lay off Chris Morris next week. I had no idea he was connected with the show)
Starring: Julian Barratt, Nicholas Burns, Claire Keelan

"Nathan Barley" is a commentary on the modern media-savvy youth and the basic, vapid shallowness of the lives they lead. The title character, Nathan (Burns), is a DJ, screenwriter and webmaster of a blog/stupid video clips site called trashbat.cock ("registered in the cook islands!"). He is, basically, the epitome of urban hipness, which (as any hipster can attest) means he's always a bit worried that he might not be as cool as he pretends.

Dan Ashcroft (Barratt, of "The Mighty Boosh") is a writer for the urban hipster magazine Sugar Ape. A "serious writer" who's sick of the culture-addicted idiots he works with, Dan yearns to work for a better magazine. Unfortunately, Dan's also a bit of a slacker, and has spent so much time around the dummies at the office that he's beginning to turn into the very thing he despises. The show starts with him getting attention for an article he writes in Sugar Ape entitled "Rise of the Idiots" in which he rips apart every aspect of the 'media-type' culture, and those people caught up in it.

Dan's sister Claire (Keelan) is a film student who wants to document the plight of London's homeless and drug-addicted. Dan owes her a lot of money. In an attempt to further her career and get some exposure, she helps make films for Nathan's site.

The show, while silly, can be dark and a bit snarky. From what I can gather, it's considered pretty important. In fact "Nathan Barley" has itself become a term that refers to anyone fitting the description of the vacant hipsters in the show. The satire is dead on, and the supporting characters are great. It'd be hard for them not to be, with folks like Richard Ayoade and Noel Fielding (the other half of "Boosh") playing them. The only thing I take issue with is Dan's constant hard luck. After two or three episodes, it gets harder and harder to watch Dan put his foot in his mouth, or dig himself deeper and deeper into a predicament, while the exploits of the possibly retarded Nathan Barley meet with attention and success.

Here's a clip:


Also, a "British Television Show of the Week" update for fans of the I.T. Crowd: you can now find entire episodes of series two posted online. I watched the first episode, and it's just as brilliant as the shows from first season. I've also noticed that some of the later episodes feature Matt Berry, of "Boosh," "Darkplace" and "Snuff Box," though I'm not sure yet what his role is.

I'm not a big fan of the double-post thing, so I'm going to try and tackle both of these subjects in one post. Here goes:

Thing one: Radiohead's "In Rainbows" album
I just downloaded this from the web site, and I gotta say, it's pretty good. Of course, it is Radiohead, though, so this should come as no big surprise. I went the cheapskate route and got the album for free. I really hope these guys end up making a profit from this, though. They are good musicians and really deserve it. Not to sound hypocritical or anything...

Thing two: Weird YouTube discovery

I've seen this video floating around a couple of times, but I never really checked it out until tonight. It's wonderfully random. I particularly enjoy the choreography at the beginning.

Let me first say (in the event that someone actually reads this) that I enjoy the education I've been recieving at KU. My experience so far with the school of journalism has been one of enlightenment and encouragement. The fellow J-schoolers I've come into contact with seem outspoken and informed. In general, the folks at KU are generally a good bunch of folks.

However, one has to wonder why the school has turned out several graduates who should not have been hired by any newspaper worth its salt, let alone been allowed to graduate in the first place.

my hometown newspaper is one example. To my knowledge, at least two, possibly three of the writers on its staff are KU J-School graduates, and none of these guys seem to have much of a grasp of the English language. In fact, the college paper I worked on last semester put out a consistently better body of work than the people at the professional paper.

Now, we have Jenni Carlson, that shining paragon of sports journalism who's recently been called into controversy over a column she wrote on OSU quarterback Bobby Reid. I've read the column, and I've (of course) heard the now-infamous Mike Gundy rant (I'm posting links to both of these on the blog).

Basically, it comes down to this: not only was the column sloppy journalism (relying on rumors and scuttlebutt as much as actual quotes from previous articles) but sloppy editing. That piece would never have gone through at the Collegio, but yet it gets the O.K. for the Oklahoman. I just don't get it.

Now, I will admit that Gundy didn't go about his challenging of Carlson in a proper manner, and he probably should have let himself cool down a bit before confronting anybody about it, let alone the press. But his heart was in the right place, and a lot of what he said was right. Had Carlson done better research and her opinions been better founded, then perhaps I would be defending her rather than taking Gundy's side on this. But the fact remains that Carlson's column was poorly done, and Gundy's rant (though a bit frantic) was well-founded. This reporter deserves every bit of flack she catches for this one.

Here's a link to the column:
http://newsok.com/article/3131543/1190520501?pg=1

And here is Gundy's response to the press: