Better Living Through Introspection

I’ve already forgotten how I stumbled across them on iTunes, but if you haven’t heard The Be Good Tanyas yet, give them a chance.

Now, everyone knows my tastes are a little on the eclectic side, so try not to freak out too much when I say this trio of women are billed by the label-needy as either bluegrass, folk, or some variation thereof. Regardless of how you want to file them in your collection, TBGT are worth listening to. When I heard the first notes of the first track of their last album, Chinatown, I was drawn in immediately. Reminded me of the first time I ever heard Cowboy Junkies’ The Caution Horses.

It’s easy to use phrases like “hauntingly beautiful” to describe the well-layered, masterful sound of The Be Good Tanyas, but that would be evocative of only one facet of their music. Along with the dark, there is light. So, balancing out the depression-inducing cover of Townes van Zandt’s “Waiting Around To Die” you have the classic bluegrass tune “Reuben” (followed up, interestingly enough by another cover, “House of the Rising Sun” — quite possibly one of the more interesting interpretations of that often-covered track). Equally dark and uplifting in that odd way that roots-based music can be, Chinatown is worth adding to your library.

The Be Good Tanyas, Chinatown

It’s fun to think that a few centuries from now, we’ll be smart enough to realize that cicadas are more than the bumbling idiots we make them out to be. We’ll have the technology, resources, and general awareness that will enable us to discover that their odd cyclical lives actually form part of some encoded message that contains all the answers to all the questions we’ve ever asked or will need to ask. It’s all very Douglas Adams.

In the meantime, though, I think they’re actually just out to get us. Stepping of the elevator on my way to lunch, there was one sitting there in the lobby. He looked as if he were waiting for the elevator…trying to pass himself off as a human, I suppose. Yesterday, one made it all the way to the fourth-floor reception area.

Makes you want to call in an air strike.

Richard Kelly recently completed work on a Donnie Darko re-release, according to SciFi Wire:

“[Newmarket Films] is re-releasing it, and they’re letting me have a director’s cut, which will come out this summer in theaters, that I just finished today,” Kelly said in an interview at the Saturn Awards on May 5. “No one’s seen it yet, but it will definitely be a completely new experience as a film. It will probably surprise and shock even the most hardcore fans.”

Eyebeam. “Eyebeam engages cultural dialogue at the intersection of the arts and sciences. Its goal is to forge an understanding of the relatedness of these practices, which are becoming increasingly significant engines of cultural production.”

I’m not sure what that all means, but Eyebeam has created two intriguing sites, FundRace and GoogleRace. Okay, GoogleRace is less intriguing, but FundRace is definitely worth a click.

Using records filed with the FEC of contributions by all individuals totalling more than $200 to a single campaign between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004, FundRace has plotted donation statistics on a map of the U.S., down to street-level accuracy. So at a glance, you can see where in the US campaign contributions are coming from (and more importantly, who on your block is doing the funding…). Take, for example, this map of Washington, DC…just for fun, follow the lobbyists!