last week's jams:

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Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

there's a slightly hilarious essay in this week's New York Times Magazine's Funny Pages called "Preschool of Rock" about a hipster coming to grips with being a parent on his own terms.
here's a link to the article on nytimes.com
i actually have that same version of "Mahna Mahna" as performed by Cake on my iTunes, and it is mighty entertaining.

speaking of iTunes, i spent a sickening portion of yesterday morning listening to Ninja High School, and while the band's self-description as positive hardcore dance-rap may sound completely absurd, it makes perfect sense after listening to half of any one song of theirs. the best part is that their choruses are hooky on par with standard drug addiction. when i woke up today, i could help murmuring inside my head "It's Alright To Fight"'s anthemic chant "You're going home in a fucking ambulance!"
again, it sounds stupid when you read it but is absolutely charming in its innocence when you hear the song.

also, the cover story in this week's fashion & style section is about the alternative comedy clubs in manhattan. (link to article on nytimes.com) on the one hand, i want to take note of the clubs i haven't yet been to on here so i can go this summer, but on the other hand, now that they've been mentioned in the new york times, they're going to be more packed than usual. damn. and if i'd been home for the past year, i would have gotten so sick of shows at UCB (thanks to Steph, i'm imagining) that i would have found these clubs on my own. curse this floridian existance!!!

speaking of cool things in NYC, check out Wook Kim's awesome wallpapers, custom printed in Brooklyn. i totally love these right now.

so i'm making up this fictional store for my advanced web class specifically for the purpose of designing and constructing its webstore. my store is called Boxes & Bags and sells cardboard boxes and plastic bags to hipster kids who want to be stylish and seem like they're not really trying that hard.
here's a rough of the logo i sketched out this afternoon. its my first sketch, so it will most likely go through a lot of revisions in the coming weeks, but then again, maybe not:


FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT:
link! - James Lipton reads lyrics to Kevin Federline's newest song, "PopoZao," which is apparently Portugese for "thick booty"

link! - trailer for the new documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party in which the comedian brings a whole bunch of people from the american heartland up to Brooklyn for a party with performances by Kanye West, the Roots, the Fugees and a ton of others. and to confuse you even more, the whole thing is directed by Michel Gondry! WHAT?! but its a documentary! he can't have any talking chairs or light bulbs made out of mud in this, can he?

link! - Electroplankton is the newest thing from Nintendo, more of an interactive art project than a game. ten kinds of fish that all make different sounds and lights depending on how you play with them using the stylus on the touch screen, the buttons on the handheld, or even the microphone. wacky and addictive!

link! - Lifemeter, the new comic art collaborative where people draw scenes and characters from their favorite video games. just started this week, but there's already some fantastic entries from some of my favorite cartoonists online, like Dave, Raina and Elio!

So far, the first half of January had the mildly disapointing self-titled album from Morningwood, the mediocre First Impressions of the Earth from The Strokes, and the simple powerpop fun of We Are Scientists' With Love and Squalor.
this week sees the release of the previously mentioned (and totally awesome) new His Name is Alive album, Detrola, and the engaging but slightly disorienting bigger-budget sounds or the Plastic Constellations' Crusades.
While very few release dates are available yet for the album's I'm interested in this year, here's what I'm aware of right now:

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness's Fear Is On Our Side - March 7th, 2006
Islands' Return to the Sea - March 21st, 2006
Liars' Drum's Not Dead - March 21st, 2006
Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones - March 28th, 2006
The Lovely Feathers' Hind, Hind Legs - May 2nd, 2006
The Raconteurs' Broken Boy Soldiers - May 2006
Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds - Spring 2006
MSTRKRFT's The Looks - Spring 2006
Asobi Seksu's Citrus - Spring 2006
The Lovely Feathers' ambitious second professional album - late 2006
Thunderbirds Are Now!'s Make History - sometime
Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? - sometime
Bloc Party's second album - sometime
Ratatat's second album - sometime
TV On The Radio's as yet untitled new album - whenever
The Futurehead's second album - sometime

to celebrate the beginning of the second thousand posts on the Speed of Boredom (as this is post 1001), here is some information regarding the long-awaited, long-rumored They Might Be Giants cover album, courtesy of Chris' Music Snobbery (shouldn't that have another "s" after the apostrophe? "Chris" isn't a plural):

- "Ana Ng" by Self
- "Pet Name" by The Long Winters
- "Narrow Your Eyes" by David Miller
- "She's An Angel" by Charles Douglas
- "Road Movie to Berlin" by Frank Black
- "They'll Need a Crane" by The Wrens
- "Dead" by Steve Burns
- "Boat of Car" by Recepter
- "Don't Let's Start" by This Radiant Boy
- "Doctor Worm" by Jason Trachtenburg
- "It's Not My Birthday" by Fluid Ounces
- "Another First Kiss" by Brett Kull
- "End of the Tour" by Hotel Lights

you can hear a sample of the beauty at the album's official MySpace page. one streaming/downloadable mp3 with about fifteen seconds from each track in the order listed above. loverly!

BATGIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRL!!!
it all started when Andi Watson (Love Fights, Breakfast After Noon) posted these sketches from a proposed Elseworlds comic from nine years ago. it inspired a couple of people to draw their own version of Batgirl, and then they each inspired a few more people to draw their own, and before you can say "Holy LiveJournal Meme, Batman!," hundreds—literally hundreds—of cartoonists had cranked out their own versions of Batgirl. It was the weirdest Friday the Thirteenth ever!
anyway, here's mine:

some of my favorite's were Ryan's, Dave's, Raina's, Zack's, Mal's, and Rey's