Jazz in the Park 2010

Milwaukee's Jazz in the Park kicked off with one of my favorite Jazz Trios: The Bad Plus. They put on an amazing show playing some of my favorites like "1972 Bronze Medalist" and their cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Here are a few photos:

listed in: jazz, milwaukee, music, the bad plus | Comments (1)

Favorites - 2010 Edition

This is an update to my previous favorites post. And this time I'm not limiting myself to 15 items!

Music

I have around 500 artists with songs I've flagged 5 stars in iTunes, but these are the artists/groups that show up several times in my playlist:

Aceyalone, AIR, The Bad Plus, Beastie Boys, Beck, Benny Benassi, the bird and the bee, BitterSweet, Black Eyed Peas, Blue Man Group, Bonobo, Bright Eyes, Britney Spears, Broken Bells, Cake, Chumbawamba, Cinematic Orchestra, Claude Debussy, Coldplay, Daft Punk, Danger Mouse, DANGERDOOM, Dj Paul V, Eminem, EVE 6, Everclear, Eyedea & Abilities, Faithless, Fatboy Slim, Franz Ferdinand, Geto Boys, Girl Talk, Goldfrapp, Groove Armada, Gustav Holst, I Voted for Kodos, Incubus, Iron & Wine, Jamiroquai, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Kasabian, Korn, Layo & Bushwacka!, Ldm101, Limp Bizkit, Lobsterdust, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Massive Attack, Matchbox Twenty, Michael Jackson, Missy Elliott, Moby, Mr. Scruff, Nine Inch Nails, Party Ben, Peace Orchestra, The Pharcyde, Pogo, Propellerheads, Quantic Soul Orchestra, Radiohead, Rafael Casal, Rage Against Machine, Richard Cheese, The Roots, Royksopp, Semisonic, The Shins, Smash Mouth, SoNos, St Germaine, Staind, Sufjan Stevens, Supreme Beings of Leisure, Tenacious D, Third Eye Blind, Underworld, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Zero 7

Authors

I unfortunately don't have as much time to read as I'd like, but these are some authors I've read a few books from that I've really enjoyed:

Bill Bryson, Anne Fadiman, Brian Greene, Dan Savage, Tom Clancy, Lewis Carroll, Dan Brown, Michael Crichton

Magazines

These always have interesting, unique articles:

Newsweek, The Economist, Gq Magazine, Details Magazine, Wired Magazine, Esquire Magazine

Movies

Rated 5 stars in my Netflix profile. Out of about 400 movies I can remember seeing.

300, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Airplane!, American Beauty, The Animatrix, Apocalypto, Babel, Bang Bang You're Dead, Battle Royale, A Beautiful Mind, Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, Bourne Trilogy, Boy A, Burn After Reading, Suicide Club, Catch Me If You Can, Chicago, Cell 211, City of God, Crash, The curious case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, District 9, The District!, Donnie Darko, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Elf, Everything Is Illuminated, Fight Club, Finding Nemo, Forrest Gump, The Game, The Garden, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Good Will Hunting, Hero, The History Boys, Hot Fuzz, The Incredibles, Innocence, Jurassic Park, Kill Bill, The Linguists, Little Miss Sunshine, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, Manufactured Landscapes, The Matrix, Memento, Minority Report, Mission Impossible Three, Mr and Ms Smith, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ocean's Trilogy, Office Space, Oldboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Paris, je t'aime, The Prestige, The Rage in Placid Lake, Saved!, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Shawshank Redemption, Shortbus, Silence Of The Lambs, Sin City, Smokin' Aces, Stranger than Fiction, Sunshine, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Thank You for Smoking, There Will Be Blood, Titanic, Tokyo Sonata, V for Vendetta, Were the World Mine, Zombieland

TV Shows

30 Rock, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Chelsea Lately, The Colbert Report, Community, The Daily Show, Dexter, Doug, Fairly Odd Parents, Glee, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (BBC), Hell's Kitchen, House, Junkyard wars, Lost, Man vs. Wild, Mercy, Modern Family, Muppets Tonight, MythBusters, Nip/Tuck, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Party Down, Planet Earth, Queer as Folk, Rick and Steve, Rugrats, Skins, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, This American Life, Trauma, Weeds, The West Wing

Comedians

Lewis Black, Jeremy Hotz, Demetri Martin, Hal Sparks, Ellen Degeneres, Daniel Tosh, Jeff Dunham, Maria Bamford, Stephen Lynch, Mike Birbiglia, Ron White

Comic Strips

Bizarro, Dilbert, FoxTrot, Non Sequitur, User Friendly, Everybody Drunk But Me, Yourmometer

People I'd Like to Meet

Bill Gates, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Madonna, Ira Glass, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Shigeru Miyamoto, J.J. Abrams

listed in: books, life, music, television | ∞

Sufjan Stevens at The Majestic in Madison, WI

Last night I had the privilege of seeing Sufjan Stevens at a sold out concert of 600 people at The Majestic in Madison, WI. I knew it was going to be a great show the moment he stepped on stage in a blue "WISCONSIN" t-shirt, camouflage hat, and said: "Sup 'yall, I'm Suff-jan Stevens", making fun of a common mispronunciation of his name, and went right into playing my favorite song, Seven Swans.

listed in: madison, music, sufjan stevens | ∞

New on my blogroll: Music

Added two new blogs to my blogroll. Two local music blogs by people that have similar tastes as me (anything that's not top 40): 88.9 Radio Milwaukee Soundboard and UW-Madison's Wisconsin Union Directorate Music Committee.

If you're looking for other ways to discover music, try podcasts: IndieFeed and All Songs Considered are two really good ones.

Not entirely sure why I'm adding more blogs, because as it is I can't keep up with the 72 ones I already read, but I get to discover cool new music like this:

Wiley - Wearing My Rolex (What Would We do)

I hope to post a more in-depth entry on some new music I discovered, but you'll have to do with random YouTube embeds for now.

listed in: blogroll, music, website, youtube | Comments (1)