the year 2015

strictly business
epmd
1988

1. Strictly Business
2. I'm Housin'
3. Let The Funk Flow
4. You Gots To Chill
5. It's My Thing
6. You're A Customer
7. The Steve Martin
8. Get Off The Bandwagon
9. D.J. K La Boss
10. Jane

EPMD is an American hip hop music group from Brentwood, New York; one of the prominent acts in East coast hip hop. The group's name is an acronym for "Erick and Parrish Making Dollars", referencing its members: rappers Erick Sermon ("E Double") and Parrish Smith ("PMD"). Diamond J, DJ K La Boss, and later DJ Scratch were DJs for the group.

Their first album, Strictly Business, appeared in 1988, spawning the massive underground hit "Strictly Business", sampling Eric Clapton's version of "I Shot the Sheriff". Many critics see their first album as their most influential. However, the group's brand of funk-fueled sample-heavy hip hop proved to be a major force in hip-hop. Unlike old school hip hop, which was first based on disco hits but eventually became more electronic, EPMD based its music mainly on lifting funk & rock breaks for samples, and helped to popularize their usage, along with Marley Marl and Public Enemy. “You’re a Customer” combined snippets of Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle”, Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie”, and the bassline from ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses”. “Jane”, about a romantic rendezvous turned bad, would be revisited on no less than five sequels; a first for rap, and perhaps rock and roll. “You Gots to Chill” used 80’s funk band Zapp’s “More Bounce to the Ounce” , which has become one of the most enduring sample sources for rap. “I’m Housin’” was covered some 12 years later by Rage Against the Machine. Managed early on by Russell Simmons RUSH Management, the group toured with such hip-hop luminaries as Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.

a milestone of sorts has come and passed, and i didn't even notice....so I shall take this opportunity to congratulate myself for one solid year of 2015 blogging. a warm greeting by mr. kofe annan welcomed you all to the year 2015 back on january 14, 2005, and i hope you have been somewhat entertained, or at least stimulated since.

so a few of my friends and loyal readers got together last night at the local elk's club for some fine barbecue and good cake. we all hope to continue to see you here in 2006 and ultimately in 2015........

a thank you to mr. danomyte, for turning me on to an article in the new yorker regarding an interesting society which i shall now endeavour (as a lover of corduroy myself) to become better acquainted......

the corduroy appreciation club

Corduroy is a fabric comprised of twisted fibers that when woven lay parallel (similar to twill) to one another to form the cloth's distinct pattern, a "cord." Modern corduroy is most commonly composed of tufted cords, sometimes exhibiting a channel (bare to the base fabric) between the tufts.

As a fabric, corduroy is considered a durable cloth. Socially, the clothes made from corduroy are considered casual, and are usually favored in colder climates during seasonal periods. Corduroy is most commonly found in the construction of trousers. The material is also used in the construction of (sport) jackets and shirts. The width of the cord is commonly referred to as "wale"; the size of the wale. The width of the wale makes some uses more common than others. Wide wale is more commonly found on trousers; medium, narrow and fine wale fabrics are usually found in garments used above the waist.

i have been quite enjoying drawn....i believe you should too.....

thanks to janet for pointing out the fantasticness of straws, and the important place they hold in our daily lives...

In 1888, Marvin Stone patented the spiral winding process to manufacture the first paper drinking straws. Stone was already a manufacturer of paper cigarette holders. His idea was to make paper drinking straws. Before his straws, beverage drinkers were using the natural rye grass straws.

Stone made his prototype straw by winding strips of paper around a pencil and gluing it together. He then experimented with paraffin-coated manila paper, so the straws would not become soggy while someone was drinking. Marvin Stone decided the ideal straw was 8 1/2-inches long with a diameter just wide enough to prevent things like lemon seeds from being lodged in the tube.

The product was patented on January the 3rd, 1888. By 1890, his factory was producing more straws than cigarette holders. In 1906, the first machine was invented by the Stone's "Stone Straw Corporation" to machine-wind straws, ending the hand-winding process. Later other kinds of spiral-wound paper and non-paper products were made.

In 1928, electrical engineers began to use spiral-wound tubes in the first mass produced radios. All made by the same process invented by Stone. Spiral-wound tubing is now found everywhere -- in electric motors, electrical apparatus, electronic devices, electronic components, aerospace, textile, automotive, fuses, batteries, transformers, pyrotechnics, medical packaging, product protection, and packaging applications.

Little Barrie are a three-piece band from Beeston, Nottinghamshire in the United Kingdom, since relocated to London.

The band consists of Barrie Cadogan (guitar and vocals), Wayne Fulwood (drums and backing vocals) and Lewis Wharton (bass). Music could be described as stripped-down soul-infused blues rock 'n' roll.

we are little barrie
little barrie
2005

1. Free Salute
2. Burned Out
3. Greener Pastures
4. Be the One
5. Please Tell Me
6. Well and Truly Done
7. Stone Reprise
8. Stones Throw
9. Long Hair
10. Thinking On the Mind
11. Move On So Easy
12. Living in and Out of Place
13. Freeprise

damn you ny wind! you are destroying my general cavorting upon your streets.

thank you to mr. orangeguru for turning me on to this weeks genius:

Alfons Maria Mucha (1860-1939) was a Czech painter and decorative artist. His first name is also sometimes rendered in English as Alphonse. Mucha was perhaps the most defining artist of the Art Nouveau style.

Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia. His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high-school in the Moravian capital of Brno, although drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrušovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Académie Julian and Academie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations.

In 1894, he produced the artwork for a lithographed poster advertising Sarah Bernhardt at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha's lush stylized poster art won him fame and numerous commissions.

Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what came to be known as the Art Nouveau style. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. His art nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within.

so i ventured out into the cold blast of air yesterday, and fancied myself a trip to the picture show. the selection was woody allen's newest movie: match point. although the cinematography and music were fantastic, i thought the acting was a bit contrived, especially from ms. johansen. i did enjoy all of the over-the-top references to stereotypical upper crust living. anyway i thought i would add my two cents to all of the publicity this picture seems to be getting. view on.....

i read this story in the ny times magazine this past weekend....very intersesting, and disturbing:

"One morning when he was 15, Takeshi shut the door to his bedroom, and for the next four years he did not come out. He didn't go to school. He didn't have a job. He didn't have friends. Month after month, he spent 23 hours a day in a room no bigger than a king-size mattress, where he ate dumplings, rice and other leftovers that his mother had cooked, watched TV game shows and listened to Radiohead and Nirvana. "Anything," he said, "that was dark and sounded desperate.""

thank you mr. hollywood, for sending me this snapshot, which perfectly sums up the week

we have been hard at work here at 2015 in the new year. a new template.....the addition of links...a few changes....perhaps they shall stay. how do you say...my few but vehement readers.....a success..or shall i return to simpler times?

everybody should have a lightweight suit....right?

at the tender age of four or five, i was at some sort of convention with my parents, enjoying that nights entertainment....lou rawls. apparantly i was playing along with the back-beat, the drums, with two small cocktail straws. lou caught this out of the corner of his eye, stopped singing, and brought me up on stage. i don't think i will ever forget this baptism into the world of soul music.......

louis allen rawls
12.1.33-1.6.06

Louis Allen Rawls was a Chicago-born American soul music, jazz, and blues singer. Known for his smooth vocal style, Frank Sinatra once said that Rawls had "the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game."

Rawls had released more than 70 albums, been in movies, television shows and voiced-over many cartoons. A high school classmate of soul giant Sam Cooke, Rawls sang with Cooke in the Teenage Kings of Harmony, a 50's gospel group. Rawls enlisted in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division in 1955. He left the "All-Americans" three years later as a Sergeant and hooked up with a group with whom he had sung before enlisting, the Pilgrim Travelers. In 1958, while touring the South with the Travelers and Sam Cooke, Rawls was in a serious car crash that claimed the life of one person. Rawls was actually pronounced dead before getting to the hospital where he stayed in a coma for 5-1/2 days. It took him months to regain his memory and a year to fully recuperate. Rawls considered the event life-changing.

Rawls was signed to Capitol Records in 1962, the same year he sang the soulful background vocals on the Sam Cooke recording of "Bring it on Home to Me". His first Capitol release was "Stormy Monday" (a.k.a. "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water"), a jazz album. Though his 1966 album "Live!" went gold, Rawls wouldn't have a star-making hit until he made a proper soul album, appropriately named "Soulin'" later that same year. The album contained his first R&B #1 single, "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing". 1967 saw Rawls win his first Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance for "Dead End Street". After leaving Capitol in 1971, Rawls joined MGM and released the Grammy-winning single "Natural Man". In 1976, Rawls had his greatest album success with the platinum-selling "All Things in Time". The album produced his most successful single, "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine", which topped the R&B charts and went to number two on the pop side and also went platinum. Subsequent albums, such as 1977's When You've Heard Lou, You've Heard It All yielded such Top 25 singles as "Lady Love".

the worlds greatest aqueduct
alfred douglas flinn
harper's monthly 1909

The Catskill mountain water system being constructed for New York City is one of the most notable engineering enterprises ever undertaken. Ranking with the inter-oceanic canals at Suez and Panama, the Assuan irrigation works in Egypt, and the projects which are converting western America's and wastes into fruitful fields, the Catskill aqueduct, with its tributary reservoirs, probably surpasses any one of them in the variety of problems to be solved. Although undertaken by a municipality, these works in magnitude and cost compare with national enterprises.

Imperial Rome's longest aqueduct was fifty-seven miles in length; the Catskill aqueduct will be ninety-two miles long. Rome, with hordes of laborers from conquered domains, carried its aqueducts at the hydraulic gradient across valleys on imposing masonry arches. Modern explosives and rock-drills enable New York to tunnel in solid rock beneath valleys and rivers, avoiding masonry, which is now expensive, and which is likely to suffer in New York's severer climate.

i enjoyed a couple of movies over the long two week holiday bacchanal, but one seemed to stand out above the rest. with a wes anderson-esque feel (he did produce the movie), noah baumbach wrote a winner in the squid and the whale

review by: andrew wright
the stranger

"Kicking and Screaming, 1995's post-collegiate passion play, marked writer/director Noah Baumbach as a natural-born filmmaker, mixing comedy and drama in winningly erratic proportions. More's the pity, then, that after avoiding the sophomore slump (mostly) with 1997's Mr. Jealousy, the director disappeared from the scene, before reemerging last year as cowriter on pal Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. The pairing was inspired, even if the film wasn't: Baumbach's hyperliterate dialogue style is similar to Anderson's, but he lacks the latter's increasingly twee, just-so affectations. In Baumbach's universe, the more high-minded the character, the more spectacularly messy his eventual implosion.

The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach's semi-autobiographical tale of a disintegrating Park Slope family unit in the '80s, is one of those rare films in which everything feels right, from period detail, to sympathetic yet unsentimental characterizations, to the way that family conversations can shift from funny to sad to terrifying. He's fully backed by his cast, including Laura Linney's free-spirited mom, Jesse Eisenberg's endearingly tight-assed poseur of an eldest son, and, especially, Jeff Daniels's defanged literary lion, one of the most complex—and pitiably self-aware—monsters in memory.

Throughout, Baumbach's unfussy, free-floating style echoes the personality-driven films of the '70s, yet with a uniquely personal bite. Although not without moments of wise-ass comedy (the youngest son's confused, increasingly pervy antics are underscored, hilariously, by snippets of Tangerine Dream's ultra-smooth Risky Business theme) there's an underlying witty melancholy that suggests a filmmaker fully locked into his groove. Whatever the rationale for his vanishing act, he's returned with something that feels suspiciously close to a masterpiece."