1/27/2004 12:11:43 PM

Philadelphia is in the eye of a winter storm today; the snow and ice already coating the ground will soon be joined by reinforcements. During this temporary absence of airborn aggravation, my inbox is relentlessly pounded by dozens of MyDoom/Novarg messages. I delete them to the tune of Talkie Walkie, Air’s triumphant return to the magical realm of Very Good Music (after vacationing in Mediocre Music with 10,000 Hz Legend).

Meanwhile, Jason Santa Maria has unveiled Version 3 of his web site, showcasing not only his aesthetic expertise, but also his impressive command of XHTML, CSS, and ActionScript. It has already established itself as an important source of motivation and inspiration in my own redesign initiative. Pay it respect.

1/22/2004 12:00:04 AM

Over the last couple of months, this site has offered its visitors little respite from boredom. I’ll make no apologies for this, since the lack of updates results directly from my own boredom, which is itself respite from my heated, ongoing battle with the coding of the site’s long-overdue web standards-compliant redesign. There have, however, been a few recent occasions that my attention has been occupied by something other than a spot on the wall or that mean-spirited CSS:

The web site for Princeton’s radio station, 103.3 FM WPRB, recently incorporated a feature that keeps track of what is currently playing on the station, as well as archiving the playlists of all of its shows.

Last month, Dark Matter Magazine published a great interview with Martin Atkins, which manages to cover nearly his entire musical career, including some interesting anecdotes involving John Lydon, Genesis P-Orridge, and more.

And finally, tonight, I was formally introduced to “The Office,” British television’s mockumentary answer to Mike Judge’s Office Space. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen television done this well, and with the first season available on DVD, I was able to see it in the comfort of my own cable-free home.

1/6/2004 12:30:24 AM

You know, neither my physique nor my personality suggests a similarity to any hibernating animal that I can think of, and yet, this site routinely falls silent at the beginning of winter, as if I had found a comfortable cave in which to reduce my vital signs and nap for a few months. If South Philadelphia hides any such caves, it hides them well, so unless business as usual is a mundane hallucination, it’s safe to say that I’ve been awake and active since this site last monitored my continuing existence some six weeks ago.

Somewhere in those six weeks, the National Film Challenge announced its awards, two of which were given to Dial-A-Spy, for “Best of Genre (Spy)” and “Best Graphics.” We have yet to find out if we are among the top ten films, which are destined for the National Film Challenge DVD.

I witnessed the holiday season in relatively orthodox fashion, tempering the uptime of frenzied consumerism, family gatherings, and culinary gluttony with equal portions of sloth-ridden downtime spent absorbing the contents of some freshly-gifted additions to my music, movie, and book collections.

My roommates and I hosted a party that rang in 2004 in whatever the opposite of style is, demanding that our guests don garish sweaters to comply with the “Pugnacious Pullovers” theme.

The winter has otherwise mostly kept me at home, though I’ve snuck out now and then to get a laugh from Brendon Small, H. Jon Benjamin, and Eugene Mirman at the Khyber, have my faith in Tim Burton put back on the road to restoration with Big Fish, and be thoroughly mesmerized by a too-short Kayo Dot performance at the Rotunda.

Since I only delivered on half of the expectations set forth in my first post of 2003, I’m going to use this first post of 2004 to acknowledge that I really can’t say with certainty what this year has in store. I definitely have plenty of ideas, but it’s probably easier to learn to enjoy suspense than to enjoy disappointment, so, for the sake of my few faithful readers, I’ll keep talk of goals to myself for now. Happy New Year!