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Financial, Political Drama / Murder Mystery Detective Story

I finished reading the late Stieg Larrson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I have to say, it was pretty awesome and impossible to put down. The original Swedish title was Män som hatar kvinnor, “Men That Hate Women,” a far better and more appropriate title. Also, let’s be honest, the name  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty lame. I think the name Men That Hate Women is also much better in setting the general tone for this book. Regardless..

This is a really complex novel that seems to be part finance, business, political, crime thriller, and does pretty well on all parts. I will try to give a brief overview of the book. The book opens with our hero, Michael Blomkvist, losing a libel case to an accused industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, putting his magazine at serious risk of collapsing. The disgraced journalist is hired by a wealthy old former industrialist, Henrik Vanger, who offers Blomkvist a huge sum to spend a year writing the Vanger family chronicle and attempting to solve the murder mystery of Vanger’s niece, Harriett of which there have been no developments in 40 years. The ensuing tale goes crazy.

That’s basically it. At times the language is a little clunky, I can’t tell if that’s the translator, Reg Keeland, to blame, or how Larrson intended it, and there are some almost masturbatory extended descriptions of Apple computers that seem a little bit unnecessary. Regardless, this is a super fun read and I’m sure you’ll tackle it within a week. There’s some messed up stuff in this book! Recommended reading. I will be reading the second one in the series after I get through some other books I have lined up.

By the way, their making a movie (actually made in Sweden, not a bastardized US version just yet), and I’m not sure what to make of it. As a movie, it looks a little bit corny… I feel like you can get away with more things in a novel, but once you start seeing them it’s a little meh…. but either way it looks interesting and I’m sure I’ll watch it at some point.

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Soho Sandwich Delight at Alidoro

I have been meaning to come to this place since moving to the ‘hood. My co-worker told me that Alidoro has delicious sandwiches…and they do. Alidoro is a small Italian sandwich shop in Soho right on Sullivan and has some tasty offerings. I’ve read from some reviews that the service here was lackluster, but who needs service when you get an amazingly fresh sandwich. We got our sandwiches to-go, but from looking around there were just a few places to sit and it seemed pleasant enough.

We tried the Michelangelo and the Zampano, their components were perfect. The Michelangelo has an awesome helping of prosciutto along with provolone cheese, arugula, hot peppers and amazing dressing. This sandwich was so good. I watched him slice the prosciutto right in front of me and it tasted so, so fresh. This simple sandwich was a blast of flavor…. mm hot peppers and the dressing was so good. $10.50

The Zampano consists of smoked mozzarella, caponata of eggplant, arugula and dressing. Another sandwich of few ingredients and still, so delicious. The smoked mozzarella was perfect. $9.50 Apologies for the blurry photo.

Alidoro has some of the best sandwiches I’ve had in the city and the pricing’s not too bad for a premium sandwich. Now that I’ve experienced the glory I am eager to go back and try some of the other sandwiches, but I must say, the Michelangelo, with such amazing prosciutto, has already captured my heart and it will be hard not to order the same thing again.

Alidoro is located at 105 Sullivan St. btwn Prince & Spring

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The iPad and The Digital Magazine Experience

So Apple unveiled their iPad this week and while I desperately want one, they don’t seem that practical at the moment. Instead of running a stripped down OS X, it runs on a suped up iPhone OS. After watching the keynote, the possibilities for this in the future seem pretty big. As a portable gaming device, the demonstration of the first person shooter was awesome. On the other hand, I still can’t see this replacing my urge to flip through the real pages of a book. Can they turn this into a mass market product?  The biggest question is: Would I use it and what for? Either way, it is beautiful. Half-an-inch thick? Super slick and I want it. Curious about version 2 already.

With the coming release of Apple’s iPad, this amazing concept for digital magazine reading, The Mag+ from Bonnier, can be realized. This video shows a beautiful (and amazingly intuitive) UI for the e-magazine experience.  Looking at this, I am wondering what amazing things can also be done in the digital comics realm.

Read more about the concept at Bonnier

iPad overview at Gizmodo

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Where are the LK hiding out?

Sweden really does always pop out some of the most fun musicians to listen to (Little Dragon, anybody??) The LK (formerly the Lovekevins) is band I came across in 2007 and got (like Lone) for some seriously badass album art. Anyone who has ever been to a party at my former apartments in the past few years has undoubtedly heard me pumping LK jams all over the place. I’m showing these guys some love because in three years I still have not stopped listening to their album entitled VS. The Snow. I don’t seem to know many people that have heard of these guys, either. The album was released originally in Sweden in April of 2007 and then in March of 2008 in the US with an extra track. Album art for both versions: sweet.

How would I describe this duo? For lack of a better word: cute. Their songs are amazing electro-pop morsels. These guys have really mastered their sound and the songs are so catchy it’s ridiculous.

So what the hell happened to these guys? Supposedly they were working on a new album, but their website (formerly located at http://thelkhideout.com) seems to have vanished and activity on their myspace ceased after April of last year. I want more LK! Listening to them now they’re still just as awesome as when I first came across them. Listen below. Album covers from both versions pictured.

Picking appropriate songs to display here was no easy task… honestly – get the whole album. It is infectious. “Tamagochi Freestyle” and “Private Life of a Cat” should give you a pretty good idea of how sweet The LK is. They will have you dancing in no time.

LISTEN:

1. The LK - Tamagochi Freestyle

2. The LK - Private Life of a Cat

WATCH:

And after a quick youtube search I found the music video for their track ‘Stop Being Perfect.’ This is another great song and a fun video.

Somebody please find out what happened to these guys and report back to me. Keeping my fingers crossed that we see their supposed follow-up album, Periodika, sometime in the near future.

The LK on Myspace

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Fette Sau = MEAT, MEAT, MEAT

Fette Sau is a German BBQ spot in Williamsburg and is an awesome place to get two things. Shit tons of meat (READ: LOTS OF PORK) and shit tons of beer. There is a lot of hype about this place but honestly, if you are a meat-lover, how can you not love this place?

(beautiful picture via roboppy)

Fette Sau is located in what seems to be a converted garage that functions somewhat like a beer garden with long picnic tables. The handles for the beer taps are butchers’ knives. Here you can get a nice assortment of pig and cow parts, sides and beers. There is one cutter so the line can get fairly long but the wait is well worth it.

Things to get: The berkshire pork belly is amazing here, super fatty! Both the beef short ribs and berkshire ribs are also very delicious. The sausage links are tasty and fun to eat with a bun and hot sauce. The burnt-end baked beans are by far my favorite side. They are amazingly flavorful and if you stick a whole lot of meat together with the beans, a bun and your choice of sauce it’s fantastic.

MMMM meat barrage!!! Fette Sau also offers a bunch of sauces, and their “spiciest” sauce, while not being mind boggling spicy, tastes REALLY GOOD and is a good addition to an already flavorful meal.

This is a fucking awesome place to come with friends for a serious meat and beer fest. Securing a table spot when this place is busy will prove quite a burden and you may have to stand around looking supremely awkward. Fette Sau usually has some sort of special meat every time I’ve been there, my co-worker says he once had duck here. Also, Fette Sau has a late night menu which I have unfortunately not yet tried. Their night menu consists of $3 dollar pulled pork sandwiches or sausage with a roll.

I haven’t been here in a while and looking back at these pictures is making me salivate… I also have yet to try Dinosaur BBQ which I’ve heard, from what I’ve heard, is better… I will have to find out for myself and hopefully sometime soon. In the meantime, I can vouch for the meaty glory that is Fette Sau.

Fette Sau is located at 354 Metropolitan Ave btwn Roebling and Havemeyer

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Chicken House – Stick To Fried Chicken!!

So, a while ago my co-worker and I walked by Chicken House (we affectionately refer to it as Chicken Hole) on 36th street and 8th avenue and for a minute I thought they closed down because as I recall, the place was grimy as hell. As it turns out, the place was going through a ‘massive’ remodeling.

This place used to be a dumpy hole in the wall, and now it’s remodeled into a… nicer hole in the wall. It’s basically a place where you go to get yourself 3 pieces of Fried Chicken for four bucks with fries. It’s not that the chicken is great or bad, it’s simply fried chicken and it’s hard to go wrong. You get a wealth of food and if you throw some tabasco and tartar sauce on the whole thing you get an awesome unhealthy meal.

Here’s a before and after of the facade stolen right from Midtown Lunch

Beautiful.

Anyway, I had no idea that this place was owned by Vietnamese people, and with their remodeling, they also expanded into Vietnamese cuisine. DON’T DO IT.

As an avid lover of bánh mìs, I couldn’t resist trying. I set my expectations pretty low because.. let’s face it: Most of the restaurants in this area suck. My co-worker had the right idea, he just got the usual 3-piece fried chicken deal. His four dollars well spent.

The bánh mì took an excruciatingly long time to make, it may have been their first time getting an order for once since reopening. I got their $5 pork role & pate bánh mì. When we finally got back to eat at the office, I pulled the sandwich out of it’s ’sleeve’ to reveal a whole lotta bread and not a whole lotta pork anything.

In Chinatown you can get a bánh mì that has it all, but here you only get just a taste of what could have been. Chicken House’s vietnamese sandwich was pretty boring and ridiculously dry. Not much love was put in this sandwich! Too much bread. The fact that it didn’t have a variety of pork product was also upsetting. A disappointing affair. Was the remodel worth it??

Stick to fried chicken if you come here!

Chicken House is located at 270 W. 36th St.

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How come I never heard of Max Tundra??

Here is an album from 2008 that I somehow missed. English electronic musician Max Tundra is supremely awesome and I never heard of him until last weekend at a friend’s apartment. His music is corny, ridiculous, and actually pretty sweet. Reminds me a little bit of Calvin Harris. Get your hands on Parallax Error Beheads You.

My favorite track is “Which Song.” This super fun jam is a good wakeup call. This dance-y track features some amazing electronic sounds and actually has some pretty hip chord changes, too. Listen below:

LISTEN:

Max Tundra Official Website

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Congee Village’s Peking Style Pork Chops

I love Congee Village. This Chinese restaurant in the Lower East Side is awesome: good prices and great food, and I enjoy the random atmosphere. Last week I was here I heard people singing karaoke ridiculously loud from the lower level rooms and watched the hostess running around to turn the volume down while screaming to herself, “So loud!!!”

Anyway, my favorite thing to get here is the Peking Style Pork Chops. These pork chops are so savory and delicious. As you can tell from the picture, Congee Village gives you an awesome abundance of pork… up until you finish it all. Some parts crunchy, some kinda chewy- pork chops are simply fun to eat. Man, I love pork.

You also obviously need to get the congee (also known as porridge). My favorite kind to get is the Sliced Pork and Thousand-Year Egg Congee, I believe the price is around 3 dollars… an amazing deal. The Beef Chow Mein and Jumbo Shrimp are also excellent. Not that I was expecting them to be amazing here, the xiao long baos at Congee Village are pretty mediocre, as I recall they were dry and only offered in pork. While I do love pork, I much prefer the pork and crabmeat mixture. For much better soup dumplings I recommend going to Joe’s Shanghai or Nan Xiang Dumpling House which I wrote about a little while ago.

This is a good place to eat and drink. The price seems perfect with four or more people… maybe it’s simply because Gao Di and I can’t help ourselves when we’re on our own and just happen to order the same amount of food as we would with a larger group of people.

Congee Village is located on 100 Allen St between Delancey and Broome.

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Detective Stories

From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson (translated by Reg Keeland):

Somehow she had always had this gift.

Her reports could be a catastrophe for the individual who landed in her radar. Armansky would never forget the time he assigned her to do a routine check on a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry before a corporate buyout. The job was scheduled to take a week, but it dragged on for a while. After four weeks’ silence and several reminders, which she ignored, Salander came back with a report documenting that the subject in question was a paedophile. On two occasions he had bought sex from a thirteen-year-old child prostitute in Tallinn, and there were indications that he had an unhealthy interest in the daughter of the woman with whom he was currently living.

After finishing the awesome novel that is The Alienist I am on to yet another detective-story-thriller (this new one adds a financial drama element). I’m only about 60 pages in but it’s quite interesting so far save for having to deal with all these Swedish names! I ran into two people in the subway reading the book and nodded in approval as they saw me on the task of starting it… a good sign! Intriguing – and even though it’s a translation, it feels pretty honest (unlike when I read Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, which had a very meh translation) and I’m definitely about to get engulfed in this one…

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Efterklang – Modern Drift

I have liked Danish band Efterklang since hearing Tripper released in 2004. That album reminds me a lot of the IDM/glitch sound found in the music of Apparat while leaning on the side of being super cult-y. Efterklang’s 2007 release, Parades, I found to be a pretty dramatic departure, moving towards more real instruments and becoming just a bit more epic. Last year, Efterklang released a live performance of Parades called, Performing Parades, where they enlisted the support of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra.

Their new album, Magic Chairs, appears to be another departure. Slated for release on February 22nd, this upcoming release seems to be more minimal and moving to more of a pop sound. They released this track, “Modern Drift,” from the new album back in November, but I somehow missed it and it is catchy as hell.

Awesome melody, drums, general production – looking forward to the rest of the album!

LISTEN:

Download from Efterklang’s blog!

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Adult film superstar Sasha Grey for PETA

Watch porn star Sasha Grey talk some sense into you about spaying and neutering your pets.. it keeps them out of shelters! Gotta love the PETA for finding a way to reach the average man with such relevant people. Sasha Grey saving animals…. Much better than acting in the miserable movie that is Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience.

Sasha Grey Promotes Animal Birth Control
Read More at PETA’s Website.

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Supra Footwear – The Skytop Sneak

I have been rocking Supra since I played guitar for rapper Mickey Factz in 2008. Interestingly enough, recently I’ve been getting more and more compliments on my Skytops so I figured I’d give Supra a shout. Generally I’ve been noticing more Supras on the streets, even a co-worker of mine has a pair.

I love my Supra TUF Muska Skytops. I particularly love the shape. These bring a whole definition to hi-tops, hence the SKYtop title, I presume. I especially love my TUF Skytops because the material is durable as hell. Weather resistant and supremely comfortable, these things feel like tanks.

I also have these bad boys in Silver. The silver ones got to share the stage with the Cool Kids.

Supra Footwear

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The Alienist

From The Alienist by Caleb Carr:

And then all hell broke loose. With the speed and precision that only years of professional training can breed, an ape of a man leapt up and over the inner promenade fence and crushed Connor’s gun-wielding hand with a stout section of lead pipe. Before the other two things could react several lightning combinations of blows from two enormous fists laid them both out on the promenade. The howling Connor soon shared the same fate. Then, just for good measure, the newcomer- his face hidden under a miner’s cap- leaned over each man’s head in succession and delivered a series of resounding blows with the lead pipe. It was a clinic in violence that was awesome to behold- but my joy at the attack faded considerably when the performer stood up and finally revealed himself.

I feel bad for any book I read after having recently read Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram, but Caleb Carr’s The Alienist is a worthy read. This book is a historical-fiction crime novel that takes place in 1896 New York City and follows then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the controversial Dr. Laszlo Kreizler along with their investigative team in their attempt to catch a killer of boy prostitutes using new and unorthodox methods dealing with psychology and fingerprinting (when it was not yet a proven standard of evidence).

This book is painstakingly researched to be true to the time period and is a fun and thrilling read. In The Alienist’s afterword, Carr states that his intention with the novel was to create a story that revolved around two men, a murderer and a man who catches such murderers, both from abusive backgrounds, and “illustrate critical personal moments in a life (or lives) that steadily build and reinforce character and thus become the building blocks of action…”

It’s a thrilling adventure as the investigative team “reverse-engineers” an understanding of their killer by using his murderous rituals to establish his context.

Interesting fact, Caleb Carr’s father, Lucien Carr, stabbed and killed his scoutmaster when he made a move on him in the summer of 1944. Lucien Carr disposed of the evidence with the help of Jack Kerouac.

Anyway: Great story, characters, and the believable use of historical figures make this something you should definitely read.

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Tacks, the Boy Disaster

I stumbled on this one back in 2007 but it’s an addictive and all-too-short of an album and have been listening to it ever since. Tacks, the Boy Disaster’s Oh, Beatrice is well-produced and features some really amazing pop songs. I love bands that utilize corny synth sounds appropriately. Tacks, the Boy Disaster’s pop sensibility reminds me of Jon Brion’s.

I’ve been clinging to the hope that I would hear some whisper that these guys would be dropping another album sometime soon. After doing some googling I found Tacks’ blog, which after a radio silence of 7 months has a note from January 5th stating, “We’re beginning 2010 with a bang: studio time booked next week and we’re planning on doing a residency every Sunday in Februrary.”

Listen to two of my favorite tracks below.

LISTEN:

1. Tacks, the Boy Disaster - Frozen Feet

2. Tacks, the Boy Disaster - Forget-Me-Not

Tacks, the Boy Disaster on MySpace

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Matchstick Memory

This is a pretty cool concept from Emir Rifat ISIK. The Phillu storage device is shaped like a matchbox with 9 “matches” of 5 gigs a piece totaling a 45 gig capacity. You even have to “light” the match to transfer data. A very interesting take on mobile storage, although I imagine you might start to forget which ‘match’ has the right file on it…

Check out the article on YankoDesign for more pics demonstrating how the thing actually works!