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NEW MUSIC – We’re Making Noise

Here’s some new music from yours truly! Okay, not really… This song isn’t that new (in fact, almost two years old), but I hadn’t gotten around to plopping it anywhere. What follows is a really simple Kendrick Lo poppy electronic jam to get your feet moving. It only occurred to me, listening to it now, that the lyrics towards the end get a little criss-crossy and confusing. That being said, I think it’s a fun one. Enjoy!

LISTEN:

Kendrick Lo - We're Making Noise

http://myspace.com/kendricklo

Side notes on the makeshift “album art.” The two-year-old original is pictured on the right here and is butt-ugly. A much needed refresh was created with the beautiful typeface Chunk made available at the League of Moveable Type by its creator Meredith Mandel and an awesome paper texture created by Daniel Bashie Larsen, check him out at Bashcorpo.

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The Generic Man’s Chuckman

I have already expressed deep love for Generic Surplus, which is an offshoot of the Generic Man brand. As per usual, Gilt continues to bring some great deals that I just cannot seem to pass up. I just got a pair of these badass sneaks, the Chuckman, Generic Man’s take on the chukka boot.

I love Generic Man’s manifesto.

The “Newdult” is tiring of streetwear and the high price of luxury. In response, ‘the generic man’ has created thoughtfully priced luxury for this new modern adult.

Who is the generic man?

The generic man doesn’t need branding and logos to make him feel confident or stylish.
He understand the significance of quality construction and clean, simple, refined lines.

The generic man is confident enough in himself to accept simplicity.

These shoes are awesome. Italian wool on the sides and leather tip. Note that they do not feature any actual branding. Where Generic Surplus shoes display a ‘Generic Surplus’ logo, on Generic Man’s chukka boot, that space is left blank. The shoes speak for themselves. Badass.

Also, look inside the shoe for some nice detailing.

The suggested retail on these bad boys comes as a bit of a hefty price tag at $285. This is where deal-hunter’s mentality comes in. Gilt sure knows how to feed an addiction.

http://www.thegenericman.com/

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Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach is Plastic Pop Awesome

Thanks to NPR I have been listening to Gorillaz’ new album, Plastic Beach, non-stop. On my first listen I went the whole thing through and I’m finding myself doing that again and again. Like Gorillaz past two albums, this one is pretty different with a lot of awesome new collaborations but still strung together quite nicely with Damon Albarn.

Collaborations include: Snoop Dogg, Little Dragon, Lou Reed, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Gruff Rhys, Mark E. Smith, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Kano, Bashy, De La Soul, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, sinfonia ViVA, and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music.

I like the album as a whole but if I had to pick some favorites I’d say: “Empire Ants” which features Little Dragon. Yukimi Nagano’s voice is amazing here and sounds really great with Albarn’s. “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach” because Snoop Dogg is awesome. “Superfast Jellyfish” because that chorus is ridiculously infectious. Also have to mention On “Melancholy Hill”, this track is great and features no collaborations, just Albarn’s voice and production.

Best line in Superfast Jellyfish: “Shower my habits while you dine like rabbits with the crunchy, crunchy  carrots (oh, that’s chicken!)”

Although the first Gorillaz album is still probably my favorite, this album is definitely some pop  awesomeness. I love that Gorillaz always manages to pop out sweet albums that feature very different sounds. Looking forward to hearing them bonus tracks. I’m hoping this release will bring some new Kidrobot Gorillaz toys. I am such a nerd.

I assume we can expect the next album in 2015?

LISTEN:

Stream the entire album on NPR

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Generic Surplus Opens Online Store

Generic Surplus just opened their online store. As I have said before, I am madly in love with Generic Surplus’ shoes. Generic Surplus is a brand offshoot of Generic Man featuring very reasonably priced and fashionable kicks.

Shop Generic Surplus online!

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Inevitability

From Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, Bombay bhai Ganesh Gaitonde:

I knew I was going to die, I was going to be killed. There was no escape for me. I had no future, no life, no retirement, no easy old age. To imagine any of that was cowardice. A bullet would find me first. But I would like a king. I would fight this life, this bitch that sentences us to death, and I would eat her up, consume her every minute of every day. So I walked my streets like a lord of mankind, flanked by my boys.

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Wechsler’s Currywurst Goes Great With Köstritzer Schwarzbier

Having watched a some people eating a currywurst in line for Caracas during the Taste of 7th St festival, after we finished our Caracas arepa we walked around the corner to Wechsler’s Currywurst & Bratwurst on 1st avenue to get our own.

Wechsler’s is an awesome little German spot that has one guy manning the food and the bar. Wechsler’s offers Köstritzer Schwarzbier, a dark German lager that Gao Di happened to discover at another bar just about a week before this. She told me Köstritzer resembles our favorite Czech beer, the glorious Kozel and she was right. This beer rocks. It’s an awesome dark beer that isn’t too heavy and just tastes so good.

We got a currywurst to split between us with fries. This was delicious. Great chopped up pork with tasty curry sauce. Can’t go wrong with something like that. I also love thin cut french fries. Yum! $6 bucks.

Wechsler’s is located at 120 1st avenue between 7th st and St. Marks Place

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Giant Marshmallow in City Bakery’s Hot Chocolate

Went here a few weeks back planning on getting some special flavor of Hot Chocolate, but upon our arrival, The City Bakery had run out! City Bakery is quite large and when we went it was packed with people. There is a seating around the perimeter of the establishment as well as a second level seating area. Tons of marshmallows hang from the ceiling as decoration. Very cool, but what a waste of delicious marshmallows!

With the special flavor out of stock we settled for a large ‘regular’ hot chocolate with a giant marshmallow which, I believe, came out to $6 dollars. That’s a heavy price for hot chocolate, but this hot chocolates is rich. Creamy, thick/heavy/rich chocolate-y amazing. We definitely didn’t need a large… and that was for two people. We barely made it to the end of the cup because it was so heavy, but it’s deliciousness had me choking it down. The marshmallow itself was amazing. Really nicely malleable and almost melts in the mouth. These guys do hot chocolate right. We also ordered a chocolate zucchini cake, and although I didn’t really taste much of the zucchini, it was pretty good.

City Bakery’s regular menu features some tasty looking sandwiches, varieties of chicken, and a very appealing mac & cheese. The prices are a little bit up there, but maybe at some point I’ll give their food a try, although if I stop by here I’ll end up with a hot chocolate and not need anything else. Mmm. Perfect for a cold day!

The City Bakery is located at 3 W 18th St between 5th and 6th ave

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Matt McInerny Gives Away ‘Raleway’ Font – Also Makes Cool Shirts

This is a badass font from Matt McInerny that I came across through some twitter browsing that can be related back to a post I saw by Jeff Sheldon of Ugmonk. Matt has made his font available at The League of Moveable Type. As you can see, the font is being used on the byline under the logo up top.

I also just got two t-shirts from Matt’s apparel company, Turn Nocturnal, which he runs with his friend Jack Strong. These shirts feature some nice typography. Now gotta wash ‘em and shrink ‘em so I can rock ‘em.

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The Taste of 7th Street

This past weekend Scoop St. organized a two-day event called The Taste of 7th Street featuring some eateries on 7th St between 1st ave and Avenue A: a small sandwich from Porchetta, a lobster roll from Luke’s Lobster, an arepa from Caracas, two cupcakes from Butter Lane, and a smoothie from Xoom - all for $18 dollars. So, it only occurred to me, after looking at Scoop St’s twitter page mentioning that this deal had reached “1000 scoops” that this was going to be a bit of a crazy event. 1000 people got in on this deal? For 5 tiny spots? In only two days? Anyway – let’s hop to it.

On arriving on 7th St, Gao Di and I saw that Caracas had the largest line so we headed over to Porchetta for our first meal. Props to Porchetta for managing to not have a line – they are already the type of place that would be easily prepared for this sort of promotion. We walked in and showed our Scoop St. coupons and were handed our small porchetta sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. Now, I expected the sandwich to be pretty small, considering they would obviously not give you a full sandwich (which I reviewed just the other week), but I sort of assumed we might get a half a sandwich.

What we have here is more like a little Porchetta ball in a tiny bit of bread, but I must admit, this place never disappoints and that ball of pork goodness was still my favorite chomp on 7th st, although the others are quite good too. As usual, succulent delicious pork is mastered at Porchetta.

Next up, we went to Luke’s Lobster to get in on their lobster roll. As per the promotion, the lobster roll was a “snack-sized” portion. This thing was awesome, although small, there was a generous portion of deliciously seasoned and mayo’d lobster on a wonderfully grilled bun. A good combo of hot and cold. I salute you, Luke!

After Luke’s, we thought we’d head over to Caracas right next door. Caracas was swamped. After waiting on line you actually had to give them your name and pick up your order an hour later. We put our name in and headed over to Xoom and Butter Lane to see the situation there. Xoom’s smoothies are amazing and also super filling, we decided to skip that line and grab our smoothies on Sunday. We queued up instead at Butter Lane to get in on these cupcakes. By the time we got our cupcakes it was time to go grab our arepas.

De Pabellón from Caracas is an arepa featuring shredded beef with black beans, ‘white salty cheese,’ and sweet plantains. This was the most substantial of the offerings (and also the most messy!). This thing was really tasty and Caracas’ own yellow/whatever the hell is in there sauce. I was too busy eating this on the side of the street getting my hands dirty to take a better photo. All you need to know is that it’s some saucy goodness and it was yummy.

After stuffing our face full of the arepas we went around the corner to Wechsler’s (having nothing to do with the taste of 7th st) to enjoy a cold Kostritzer, a currywurst and then crack open our cupcakes. I’ll leave Wechsler’s to a separate review. But… the cupcakes.

I have been curious about Butter Lane Cupcakes… this place has cupcakes for three bucks a pop and the price was a bit of a deterrent, so finding that two were included in Scoop St’s deal was an awesome chance to check them out. Honestly, these cupcakes are unreal. These cupcakes are made with some true love and great ingredients. If my memory serves me correctly we got: Vanilla cake with cream cheese icing, chocolate cake with maple pecan icing, banana cake with cinnamon-honey icing, and a chocolate/chocolate cupcake. These are maybe the best cupcakes I’ve had in the city and the icings are sooo good. I think my favorites were the cinammon honey and maple pecan cupcakes. You need to check this place out.

Well that about wraps up The Taste of 7th St. The lines were a bit hectic, but when all is said and done, I left quite satisfied, belly filled with some great foods. What I like about similar deals that I’ve found at Groupon, is that you can use your coupon at any time within a pretty long window. This was organized as a two-day food festival, so I “get it” that you get small helpings and there is a bit of chaos, but while you’re waiting in line your brain starts to dissolve a little bit in anticipation. Anyway – I was pleased and would most definitely do it again. I loved the occasional passersby that had no idea this thing was going on. I heard things like, “All for cupcakes?” and “Oh my god, Caracas’ line is ridiculous let’s get currywurst.”

Below is a photo taken by Cenzo Jester of the line outside Caracas. Peep Gao Di and myself hanging out in the left corner. At the back of the line.

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Peter’s Since 1969 – Slow Cooked Pork n’ Grits

I had passed Peter’s Since 1969 in Williamsburg several times and never really knew what kind of food they had or what to expect from them until it was recommended for a large brunch with friends. This place rules! Peter’s has a whole lot of awesome rotisserie chicken and amazing lunch and brunch specials.

I scanned the menu and my eyes immediately honed in on the Slow Cooked Pork & Old Fashioned Grits from the brunch menu. At $9.95, this brunch meal is served with coffee, orange juice, and salad. That is a deal. The slow cooked pork is ridiculously tender and tasty and goes perfect with the grits. The grits are both chunky and creamy and delicious. A wonderfully simple meal served in a generous portion. Go here on a weekend and get this. Mmm savory pork and lots of it.

Peter’s lunch menu also offers a 1/4 rotisserie chicken that is served with your choice of soup, two sides and focaccia bread. Mac & Cheese and sauteed spinach complement the chicken well. Get the dark meat, yessss. At $7.95, that is a pretty heavy deal.

Peter’s Since 1969 is located at 168 Bedford Ave between N7th and N8th st

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Broken Social Scene’s World Sick

So awesome pop/indie rock band Broken Social Scene is releasing a new album in the near future, Forgiveness Rock Record, 5 years after their amazing self-titled album dropped. To stir up the buzz, Broken Social Scene gave away a track on their website recently, “World Sick.”

Now I know everyone has already blogged the shit out of this song, so you most likely have already heard it, but… whatever. This track is catchy and it definitely sounds very Broken Social Scene with super clean guitar lines, epic drums and of course, these guys are great at group/mob vocals.

Their sound is slightly updated but it still sounds good ol’ Broken Social Scene. The bass line is very electronic and sounds very ‘watery.’ That being said, I think the song is good but doesn’t evoke the inspiration to get up and start screaming like when I hear songs like “Fire-Eyed Boy,” “Almost Crimes,” and “Major Label Debut!” I’m excited to hear what the rest of the album has in store… will try my best not to hype it up in my mind just because they’re Broken Social Scene…

LISTEN:

Download the track at Broken Social Scene’s website (e-mail required)

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Sade – Soldier of Love

After a ten-year hiatus, psuedo R&B /soft rock outfit Sade has released Soldier of Love. The album features 10 new tracks as well as a lot of hype for the re-emergence of the award winning band. So, does it live up to the hype? With only a brief listen, the album on the whole has great songs and the overall sound is pretty slick.

My only beef is that the band sounds a little dry on a few tracks, while Sade’s voice sounds really, really full. This album suffers from a lack of real drums. I get that there are amazing things that can be done with drum machines, but that doesn’t seem to be capitalized here, the drums are very stiff and boring. A little behind the beat might’ve solved this problem for me. That being said, this music would sound amazing live. Michael Olatuja’s Speak achieves that live-thumping sound that is missing here. I like the songs on Soldier of Love, but they don’t make me feel like I need to start moving.

Regardless, it’s a good album and has been killing on the charts.

LISTEN:

p.s. If that turns out not to be a drum machine, then. Wow, weird production.

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Codeweavers’ Crossover Games Rules (and so does Team Fortress 2)

After being a computer game fiend for almost all of my childhood up until early college, since moving exclusively to using a Macbook, I have been absent from the gaming world for quite some time. A combination of not having enough time (not that I have enough time now…) and just lack of interest had me disregarding computer gaming in favor of console games when I lived with a roommate who decked our apartment out with a huge flatscreen TV and an XBOX 360 and.. Call of Duty 4 and Soul Calibur 4.

Anyway, recently I stumbled across the wonder that is Wine, an open source software application that allows Windows applications to run on your Unix-based operating system (such as Mac OS X and Linux) by implementing the Windows API and running the applications natively.

Being the lazy nerd that I am, I got frustrated while attempting to get some games running through Wine binaries and eventually stumbled on the wonder that is Crossover from the talented crew at Codeweavers. Crossover is a third-party application that strives to make your Mac-Windows experience super easy.

As you can see, the Crossover UI is very easy to use. The software comes with a pre-filled list of software that installs automatically and also gives you the option to install unsupported Windows applications manually. Steam is running without problem in the background. Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 ran flawlessly, but those games are on the older side.

My new favorite game (aside from Machinarium, of course) is Team Fortress 2. I used to love Team Fortress Classic, which is fun but also happens to be one of the ugliest games I have ever played. TF2 on the other hand is attractive in its awesome cartoon style. The character modeling reminds me heavily of The Incredibles. TF2 offers a few different gameplay modes: capture the flag, arena (team deathmatch), control point maps (along with a King of the Hill variation like Halo), and payload maps (where on the offensive, you and your team must push a cart full of bombs across the map through different waypoints, eventually into the enemy base. defensive is you attempt to prevent this from happening). There are also nine character classes, all with different weapons and strengths and weaknesses: the scout, soldier, pyro, demoman, medic, heavy, engineer, sniper, and spy.

TF2 doesn’t run perfect on Crossover, I find the game crashing every so often, but when it’s not crashing the game itself actually runs quite well. I had the game running with all settings on high, and while the game ran fine (with quite a good frame-rate), it would always run into a hiccup and simply crash. Toning down the high-dynamic range lighting and water reflections seemed to solve this problem mostly. Settings jacked up to their highest on Counter-Strike: Source and HL2 led to no similar crashes, however.

It’s a charming experience to have a PC game running on my Mac without having to actually run Windows via Boot Camp or Parallels. A license for Crossover (or its games-specific version Crossover Games) is fairly priced at $39.95, and includes a year of support and updates. Codeweavers’ tool is sweet and I applaud their programmers’ efforts at making these games playable! I recommend buying Team Fortress 2 on Amazon as it comes in at just under 10 bucks, while digital download through Steam is, for whatever reason, $19.99.

Here’s two more screenshots… none too exciting, was too busy playing to take any intense action shots, but this gives you a rough idea of how the game looks on Mac. Very nice! The guys over at Codeweavers have gone great lengths to make games playable and I look forward to more updates to get this game up and running at higher visual settings.

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Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire Is Badass Historical Fiction

From Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield:

For myself, I confess the horror of it  nearly overcame me. Though I had loaded up double with two packed quivers, twenty-four ironheads, the demands of fire had come so fierce and furious that I was down to nothing before I could spit. I was firing between the helmets of warriors, point-blank into the faces and throats of the foe. This was not archery, it was slaughter. I was pulling ironheads from the bowels of still-living men to reload and replenish my spent stock. The ash of a shaft drawn across my bow hand slipped from its notch, slimy with gore and tissue; warheads dripped blood before they were even fired. Overwhelmed by horror, my eyes clamped shut of their own will; I had to tear at my face with both hands to drive them open. Had I gone mad?

Wow, Gates of Fire rules. This is an awesome piece of historical fiction that retells the Battle of Thermopylae in 280 B.C. through the voice of the captive Xeones, a Spartan Helot, and recorded by the Persian historian, Gobartes, to King Xerxes. Pressfield does an amazing job of portraying the Spartans military valor and really gets deep into the warriors’ mindset. This is a really powerful book and I love the way the story is told. In between the ‘recorded words’ of Xeones are brief interludes from the Persian historian, who comes to care for their captured foe in the course of hearing his story. It’s interesting to me that Pressfield is also the man who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. Anyway, if you are interested at all in the Spartans, I suggest you toss your 300 DVD into the garbage and go read this. Not that I don’t love 300, actually it’s pretty sweet, but this book gets so deep it tugs at the heartstrings. Oh, and the battles are pretty nuts too. It rocks. Go get it now.

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Kafana | кафана – Amazing Serbian Food! Meat fest!

Gao Di and I went to celebrate Valentine’s Day at the same place we went last year, the amazing Serbian restaurant Kafana (кафана) in Alphabet City. I owe the discovery of this place to Eileen, thanks homie! Anyway, Valentine’s Day also happened to be the first day of the Chinese New Year and we rejoiced in the most un-Chinese of ways, having stuffed our faces at Joe’s Shanghai in Chinatown the day before. What I mean by that, is that Chinese people traditionally do not eat meat on the first day of the new year, only eating some Chicken at dinner. They say that brings good luck.

Either way, Kafana happens to offer a most meaty of meals and this place RULES.

Before I get to my comments on the food, I’d like to share a quick story that prefaced our actual meal. Our table was right by the door, and while Gao Di was in the bathroom, a duo of very strange guy plus very old guy appeared hovering by our table. The man asked that the old man, who I assume was his father, take a seat for just a moment. Not knowing what to do, I told him it’d be fine just that my girlfriend would be returning shortly. Sure enough, she was on her way back, and these guys didn’t budge. The owner and service people were stunned. Not knowing what to do we just sort of stood around while this strange business proceeded. All I can say is these people were ridiculously weird and no one knew what to do. The restaurant was super busy but within a moment, the owner opened up another table for us. All I can say is that the workers were champs and handled the situation as best they could. They were super nice and we still had an amazing time! We wound up with dessert on the house… now! To the food…

As I’ve troubled you to read through that story I will keep my notes on the food from being too long winded and make it more of a photo essay… who reads this anyway? Pictures pictures pictures…

We started off with the spinach pie which was quite delicious, dense and flaky!

You are also always treated to some bread with delicious red pepper spread when you come here. Don’t eat too much of this just because it’s free.. there’s much more to be had.

Behold. Kafana’s Mixed Grill for Two (Mesano Meso) is the perfect meat fest. This feast comes with: Seljacka Kobasica (peasant sausage), Dimljena Vesalica (thinly sliced smoked pork loin), Rolovane Suve Sljive i Dzigerica (prunes stuffed with walnuts & cheese rolled in bacon and chicken liver rolled in bacon), and a Krmenadla (pork chop). That’s a lot of pork products, and that’s a lot of “can’t go wrong” food right there. All of this is delicious. The bacon-rolled prunes and chicken liver are particularly delicious as is the pork chop. All that meat is also a deal at $29.95. MMMMMMM.

Sufficiently stuffed but always game for more food we were treated to one last treasure: a flourless chocolate walnut cake. This thing is ridiculously dense and is amazing for any chocolate lover. I recommend it.

Anyway, that about sums up all that needs to be said about Kafana. The restaurant has an awesome ambiance, the food is amazing and the wait staff is super friendly. My experiences at this restaurant have all been awesome and I encourage you to go there!

Kafana is located at 116 Avenue C between E 7th St. and E 8th St.