Halloween

As Monnie has mentioned, we've been to some great Halloween parties this year. I'll leave you to check out her commentary (and additional pics) but here are our outfits...

Music!

After reading Mr. Barlament's article tonight, I was inspired to do some fishing of my own for music on YouTube tonight. Here are the successes...

Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (live)

Nine Black Alps - Not Everyone (live)

The Apples In Stereo - Same Old Drag (listening to themselves in the van)

The Subways - I Wanna Hear What You've Got To Say (live)

Fever Marlene - Red Fire (live in Madison)

Josh Ritter - Monster Ballads (live)

The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour (live)

Jens Lekman - Your Arms Around Me (live)

Magnetic Fields - Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side (cartoon/video)

Wilco - Jesus, etc. (live)

Wolfmother - Woman (live)

Baseball!

Finally, two of the world's greatest things come together. If there is even one stolen base in the World Series this year: we all get a free taco.


And if you haven't yet seen the Red Sox post-series celebration (for the ALCS which ended last week), check out these ridiculously funny videos. It's not everyday you get to see a major league all star do an irish jig in his underwear at Fenway Park. or the whole team doing sort of advanced version of the running man.

Pay What It's Worth

The initial results are in and it looks like Radiohead's "pay what it's worth to you" sales strategy has been an incredible success.

1.2 million albums sold in the first week, at an average cost of $8. For those of you scoring at home: that's almost $10M in one week... not a bad week.

It'll be interesting to see when the first store opens online facilitating this type of distribution. Seems like a site like that could take an incredibly small percentage of the sale to make it. Having multiple large artists on one site like that could really open the door for small/medium bands to make similar jumps. "We see you're here to buy the new 'My Morning Jacket' album. If you like them why not try the new 'Band of Horses' disc for a couple bucks?"

TNP@Pabst

JNo and I headed over to Milwaukee's Pabst Theater last night to see The New Pornographers. I've had nothing but good experiences at the Pabst and this one was no exception - The show may have been the best that I've seen there.

picture borrowed from the always great Muzzle of Bees

After a couple of openers who at times I loved and times I wanted off stage ASAP, the NPs took the stage. At first I thought we might be in trouble. Aside from cornerstone Carl Newman and (the quite impressive) Kathryn Calder, the rest of the band may have gotten into the liquor cabinet beforehand. A lot of bands can pull that off but having not seen these guys live + knowing that with their style of music things have to stay really tight... I was worried.

Never was I more worried when Dan Bejar took the stage and seemed to not really comprehend how his mic worked... and then he started singing and all was right with the world. The whole group pulled it off (mostly) flawlessly and put on a show that had everyone wanting more and more.

I'll definitely try to catch them again next time they're coming around - especially if they can get the whole cast of characters together for it.

Sunday Night Football

Monica and I were up in Green Bay for the Bears v. Packers last night (her comments here). After a really great looking start the game went south in a big hurry. Obviously the outcome was far from desirable but the way it was reached was much worse. The Bears really didn't look good, but the Packers looked much worse - turning the ball over repeatedly and always finding a way to be penalized at the absolute wrong time.

Anyway, despite our poor play: this one falls squarely on my shoulders. I have to accept responsibility for the loss.... A few years ago I drafted Ahman Green and Javon Walker in the first two rounds of my fantasy football league. Both of them promptly were injured and missed the majority/all of the season. I then decided never again to have a Packer on my fantasy football team... until last week when I picked up rookie James Jones. While Jones hasn't been injured (yet), he fumbled twice early in the Packers game - mistakes that had a very large impact on the outcome of the game.

So... my bad. I'll be releasing him shortly so we can get back to normal next week against the Redskins.