Luscious Jackson – Magic Hour

Posted By Mark on Nov 9, 2013

On CD. Which is what we called MP3s back in the old days. And signed. By the band too. You try downloading a signature! You can’t! Here’s the press release: LUSCIOUS JACKSON: MAGIC HOUR OUT TODAY NPR MORNING EDITION INTERVIEW LIVE here APPEARING ON THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN NOVEMBER 18 SHOWS ON SALE NOW: DECEMBER 7 AT WEBSTER HALL IN NEW YORK CITY NOVEMBER 23 AT UNION TRANSFER IN PHILADELPHIA “… like a night out hitting the clubs in New York City: a rock riff here, reggae grooves there, some sugary pop, and plenty of low end. All in all, a good time, and plenty eclectic… the hook-heavy Magic Hour reminds us, at the core they are a dance-pop band not afraid to get sophisticated.” – ASSOCIATED PRESS “Luscious Jackson were to New York freestyle dance pop what their cohorts the Beastie Boys were to hip-hop… Welcome back, ladies.” – ROLLING STONE “Jill Cunniff, Gabby Glaser and Kate Schellenbach were the coolest girls in the East Village when they emerged as the eclectic alt-rock group Luscious Jackson… They’re still the coolest.” – PAPER Magazine Luscious Jackson’s long awaited Magic Hour is finally here, released today, November 5, on the band’s own City Song label. The record can be purchased at iTunes or here. Early response to Magic Hour has been uniformly excellent, with ROLLING STONE, BILLBOARD, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, and more singing the new record’s praises, and NPR heralding its release with a FIRST LISTEN preview and a MORNING EDITION profile – the latter can be heard here. Luscious Jackson will make its first network TV appearance in nearly a decade on November 18, when the band returns to The Late Show with David Letterman. The first live show in the wake of Magic Hour’s release will take place a week later, November 23 at Philadelphia’s Union Transfer, followed by a December 7 homecoming spectacular at Webster Hall in New York City. Tickets are on sale now at: Philadelphia New York...

Classic Software

Posted By Mark on Oct 30, 2013

I’ve used archive.org for years as a great source for looking up old films. Just recently the site’s taken it to the next level by adding old software to the freely-available collection: the historical software collection. All the games can be played without installing anything thanks to an emulator that runs in modern browsers. As you can probably tell, The Hobbit is one of the games on the site. Look! Proof I’ve been playing it too. Got past the trolls and everything. Other software includes Elite, Chuckie Egg, Visicalc, Pacman, Chess, and Pitfall. There are many more and the collection is continually being added...

Norway Cruise – Crown Princess

Posted By Mark on Oct 29, 2013

I've finally finished going through the photos I took on our cruise through the Norwegian fjords on board the Crown Princess. Nothing too arty, nothing heavily processed, just a little bit of cleaning up, and a very, very small selection of the pictures taken. You don't want to see them all; trust me. Pictures in this album are in no particular order and feature various fjords, Geiranger, Olden, Stavanger, Bergen, and Flåm. The cruise itself was great (second time for us with +Princess Cruises) and Norway's got some stunning scenery. And all this means I might soon return to taking pictures and posting regularly again! Oh happy day! Google+: View post on...

Review: The NFL At Wembley In 2013

Posted By Mark on Oct 28, 2013

And so we come to the end of another International Series of games of American Football at Wembley which means we can write a quick review of the state of play of the sport in England pleasing both people who might one day search just to see what some guy in Portsmouth thought of the whole thing. NFL: No Fun League For reasons best known only to themselves the NFL have decided that going to a game of football should progressively become more and more like an automated chore rather than any kind of enjoyable experience. The plan to turn attendees into an army of Roger Goodell’s Patented Money-Parting Zombies continues at a fair pace. This year’s new ruling included a vast list of what could and could not be taken into the game which ultimately boiled down to: yourself, one small, clear carrier bag with, a small “non-professional” (sigh) camera around your neck. Let’s take these in order: Yourself: I get this one. This one’s quite important. But to be fair, this one’s one that sports fans are going to want to follow so it’s a bit of a no-brainer. One clear bag: I appreciate that you don’t want people turning up with a week’s worth of shopping as that can be a bit of a nightmare when walking up stairs but it’s a bit draconian and it’s based on an American understanding of who will want to attend the game. In America fans will go and watch their team because they happen to live near the place (near in American terms, at least). This isn’t the case for London. A lot of people go to watch the game as part of a day out because we don’t all live in London. There are people there from all over the UK and wide areas of Europe too. And it’s really quite an expensive day out. In previous years we’ve made the NFL games a great experience by taking the train up to London, seeing some of the sights, doing the whole tourist thing, bumping into other American Football fans doing the same thing, then making our way to the game. These new rules ruin most of that as we can now no longer risk buying a small souvenir at some historic place because the bag isn’t clear or some other stupid rule. This rule doesn’t work for a large section of fans at all. Why one clear bag, anyway? Oh, it’s to stop people bringing in bombs and knives and sniper rifles and by limiting the number of bags it prevents clutter disrupting people’s enjoyment in the stadium....

Picnic Protection

Posted By Mark on Oct 24, 2013