I was going to add a thought to Eric’s previous post about the new Lee “Scratch” Perry cd, vis-a-vis Andrew WK of course, so I went to check out Andrew’s fan site for an update, and what should I see under ‘The McLaughlin Groove’ but a link to the Providence Daily Dose (in a list with Rolling Stone, Wonkette and Pitchfork). Yay me.

Someone is counting down his list of the Top 100 Pop Songs of All Time. I’m not sure who, but I think it’s a teenaged Dutch boy. A teenaged boy because, I don’t know, I think that’s the demographic that usually makes top 100 lists like that, and I’m guessing Dutch because so far he’s listed two tracks by Shocking Blue and one by Teach-In (the Dutch group whose Eurovision-winning song I linked to just two days ago; btw check out this silly but delightful Edwyn Collins version I just found.)

His (or her) blog has only been around for about a week, but he’s already about two-thirds of the way through the list. Each song is presented with minimal commentary, mostly in the form of Youtube videos and not mp3s, but the song choices are kooky enough that I keep refreshing my page to see if he’s posted any more. (Which he hasn’t today, the rotten son of a gun.)

“Georgy Girl” is in the Top 40, with “Hair”, “Bang-A-Boomerang”, “Disco 2000″, and “Midnight Confessions” also on the list, not to mention lots of cheesy seventies pop-rock I never heard before yesterday. And while I don’t particularly care for “Dancing In The Street” or CCR’s version of “Proud Mary,” it’s an awesome list nonetheless.

I was in DC for the weekend and caught the beginning of the annual Take Back America conference.  Pat Crowley from RIFuture is still down there, live-blogging the whole thing.

Another friendly plea to vote for us in the Phoenix poll — Don’t let those political hacks over at RIFuture rule the day once more!

First the good news: you know “Kristen”, aka Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the instantly famous call girl who got jiggy with Client #9 on Valentine’s Eve? Turns out she’s a recording artist. And while her myspace page, after being discovered, got a million hits in like an hour and was promptly shut down, Ms. Dupre’s jams are for sale at Amie Street, a content sharing site started by some recent Brown grads and named after a residential block in Fox Point!

Check it:

Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a struggling singer, uploaded a new track to Amie Street, an online music-seller, hours after she was exposed as the prostitute Kristen talking on tape about the disgraced Eliot Spitzer.

Ms Dupré apparently hopes to cash in on her notoriety with sales of her CD Unspoken Words. At about midnight local time on Wednesday she logged on to the website to upload Move Ya Body, a second track from the album. Move Ya Body and the first track, Can You Handle Me, Boy?, quickly surged to the site’s maximum price of 98 cents, based on popular demand. Before the news broke, Can You Handle Me, Boy? had been selling at 9 cents. “This is definitely the most traffic we have had,” Joshua Boltuch, a spokesman, told The Times. He said that the demand- driven prices of her songs had risen just as fast as or faster than major artists selling through the site.

In other news, Wonkette recently discovered that prostitution is legal in Rhode Island. It’s true! (more…)

The anthropologists of 5,000 years from now are going to have a hell of a time piecing it all together:

Q: What is Rick Roll, Rick Rolling, Rick Rolled?

A: An internet prank or joke. Rick Roll, Rick Roll’d or Rick Rolling is an internet spam trick in which people post a link to a Rick Astley video on Youtube, but say the viewers of the video are being led to another video, usually proof of unconfirmed gaming news or trailers. (courtesy of Yahoo! Answers)

Rick Rollings tend to dump you hereabouts — one of the several “Never Gonna Give You Up” videos with far more viewings than they deserve:

And why does it seem to have linked to us 12 times in the last 48 hours?

They’re much more adept at this sort of thing, what with their Blackberrys and political hackery and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Jerzyk’s providing pretty regular updates from the ground in South Providence.

I might get to check in later this evening. But remember to make it down to Lupo’s tonight, for the free post-party.

A front page story in today’s New York Times examines the weird legal jousting between the creators of Scrabulous, the Agarwalla brothers (may I suggest they shorten it to Agarbro?) and the owners of Hasbro, the Hassenfeld Brothers. It’s a squirrely sort of problem given the tension between protecting the property rights and some significant profits on the one hand and finessing the public relations issue on the other. (Why did I just picture Mr. Burns rubbing his fingers together?) I’ll bet it’s driving them crazy over there.

I am not an online Scrabble player because I want to know where your hands are at all times. It turns out there exists an “online ‘helper’ program, which generates a list of possible words based on the letters a user has.” Oh great, I was already picturing some creepy naked guy rubbing himself… now he’s cheating at Scrabble.

It doesn’t seem quite possible, but this week marks the third anniversary of Tiny Showcase, the nifty  online gallery/store run by the frequently-bearded Pawtucket native Jon Buonaccorsi and not-bearded not-Pawtucket native Shea’la Finch.

Over the course of three years, the two have released limited-edition prints through the website–usually no bigger than 4X6 or so–and sold them every Tuesday evening to the first hundred people to get there.  The prints are usually a totally affordable $20, and a portion of the sales from each run go to a charity of the artist’s choice.

Nowadays Tiny Showcase has a reputation among crafty types, and prints routinely sell out in less than an hour.  Over the years, highlights have included nifty prints by Kean Soo, Camilla Engman, Johnny Yanok, Doug Boehm, this Kelley McCarthy one that I bought a year-and-a-half ago and totally haven’t framed yet, Kim Beury, Marci Washington (who also did the cover of The Rosebuds’ Night of the Furies, which I only mention because that album is amazing), Jennifer Davis, Aesthetic Apparatus, and a comparatively huge 8X10 Jen Corace print, all of which are long gone (except Jen Corace’s, which is an unlimited print available through the end of winter.)

Tonight’s print comes via 1911 and will be for sale starting at 7:30 Eastern time.

Sometimes I like to start my mornings off with a cup of hot joe and a fresh batch of Craigslist Missed Connections (and/or Italian Greyhound listings on  Petfinder), but the ones this morning are something of a downer.  While I’m glad that some girl had a lot of  fun at the Mahi Mahi show the other night and people are still trying to pick up moms at Catholic middle-school basketball games, check out this alarming and strange post: 

To the young 30ish, Brown MD-You put something in our drinks. Obviously out numbered. This straight male was just happy to get out with 3 messed up girls and blurred myself. I new it was time to go when you tried to force yourself on me, then forcefully trying sodomizing my gf’s gf. We exit the bedroom to find her other gf, naked on the floor, passed out. Later to realize she was r*ped by your buddies that came over while she was passed out on your couch. Watch out. Kiss your profession GOODBYE! You probably will like getting it in every hole in Prison. In the mean time, keep looking over your shoulder.  

That’s, um, something.  Right?  I kind of assumed that this person posted this when she got home from the party, angry and inclined to forget certain grammatical details.  It would also explain why this poster would consider this a missed connection and not, you know, something that would look better in the form of a police report, if it’s true.  But then I noticed it was composed at 6 PM and not in the middle of the night.  So, make of that what you will.  Also, I wonder why the poster apparently thinks that homophobic threats and warnings are the way to get justice for whatever happened to her friends.  Anyway.  The publicly-posted replies are completely tasteless and make one wish that the world would just hurry up and end already.  Replies after the jump, if you’re the type that longs for the glory days of The Jerry Springer Show:  (more…)

My itunes randomizer at work has a tendency of playing weird,  NSFW, and mildly embarrassing songs at least three or four times an hour, so it was very nice of the folks over at Warped Reality to post some new tracks today, so I could have something new to listen to that I wouldn’t have to skip out of shame.

Although it’s been around since late 2005, I didn’t know about Warped Reality until Idolator posted about it recently.  Started by Providence-based Andrea Feldman (not the dead one), the blog posts consistently good stuff.  Although I might just be saying that because she likes the Valerie and Her Week of Wonders soundtrack, Lubos Fiser’s creepy score that surely makes my coworkers hate me.

Check out the not-super-frequently updated site for tracks by some bands that are hitting the area this weekend, like Calvin Johnson (Saturday at Brown), These Are Powers and Neptune (both at Great Scott, also on Saturday.)

Holy shit! Facebook just went bilingual:

Ahora hispanohablantes en todo el mundo pueden unirse a Facebook. Conéctate con todos tus amigos, en cualquier idioma.

Puedes cambiar tu preferencia de idioma aqui.

Usa el buscador de amigos para ver si mas de tus amigos se [h]an unido y invita a todos tus amigos hispanohablantes a que se registren.

I should totally get class credit for stalking people in Spanish.

p.s. — This is where that asshole Thomas Friedman would say, “The world is flat.”

Are you, or do you have friends or loved ones who are currently living abroad? Are you, or said loved ones absentee ballot-less and in need of democratic sustenance, specifically the type derived from a vote in the presidential primary election?

Drink your fill online, and rejoice:

This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States.

Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries.

The online option is new, so, in addition to casting a ballot in the race for the Democratic nomination, Americans abroad can help successfully pilot this technology. Hackaphobes beware, though - seems like there’s no paper trail.

Specifics, deadlines and vote-value crunching after the jizzump. (more…)

Online sympathizers of al Qaida from across the internet have submitted hundreds of questions for deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri over the past two months for an “on-line interview” on a militant Islamic website, and many supporters seem to be as in the dark about their activities and future plans as the rest of the world.

“Knight of Islam,” asks, “We are awaiting a strike against American soil. Why has that not been done? Why are the Jews in the world not struck?”

“We hear a lot about the non-centralization of al-Qaida,” one supporter writes. “Is the loss of direct control by al-Qaida’s leadership over the jihadi cells harmful to al-Qaida? … Does al-Qaida intend to try to reassert its control?”

( HuffPo)

Ian ponders the various demolitions, and the rackets of which they’re surely a part. And wonders if we can’t make things a bit better:

Cicilline’s proposals are intended to prevent developers from forcing “demolition by neglect,” the practice of allowing a property to deteriorate so that emergency demolition is necessary. Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Jerome F. Williams accused Carpionato Properties Inc. of attempting exactly that at the Fruit and Produce Warehouse building.

Cicilline announced two ordinances that he said could prevent situations like that at the produce warehouse from happening again.

One would empower the city to go onto a deteriorating, neglected property, do necessary repairs and pay for it by putting a lien on the property.