so I keep noticing indie rock being played in places I wouldn't expect it. For example, I went to Burger King the other day and they were playing Spoon. Then at Giant, the grocery store, they were playing "Last Nite" by The Strokes. I like this phenomenon, but it's weird.

And speaking of indie rock, the house where I used to live is in this video, it's the DC band Five Four practicing in the practice room. The bassist lives there, and I used to live in the basement and it was cool to hear the music every now and then. Folks in the hood liked it too, wafting into the street. They never played late at night though.

so going back to my Scrabble rant, my friends/consciousless opponents just played "lex" and "zoa" in their respective games. Fuck that and fuck Scrabulous. Those are not real words!

UPDATE: and yet "ok" is not an accepted word!??! Zoa, Ut, Al, Lex, Zee, Donna, and Hoy are ok words, but "ok" is not. What the hell!

so it's almost Christmas. Here's a Christmas jam, "Seasons Greetings" by Robbers on High Street, one of my favorite bands. This song is a cover of a song-poem, this thing that was popular back in the 50s to 70s - you'd write a poem, send it to this company, and they'd make a song out of it.

I like how some record labels are sending stuff out like this. Here's the band's site.

so this is a pretty cool video. It's a Keepon robot dancing to Spoon's "Don't You Evah."



There was one before where it danced to "I Turn My Camera On."

So I went to Knoxville for Thanksgiving. This was my favorite photo from there. I also have some of the Sunsphere (aka the Wigsphere from the Simpsons). They are here.

so Vladimir Putin is Time's Man of the Year. Are you kidding me?

But you know what, I think they just did it to get press. I'm not going to link to it. It's such a stupid pick, a dictator who squelches dissent, has journalists and political opponents killed, puts a lackey in power, etc etc, there's no way it could be a serious pick. But if they chose Al Gore or Ban Ki-Moon or somebody, would they get as much reaction? No.

Then again, check out their 1938 pick. (Apparently the covers floating around with him on them are fake, as he wasn't on the cover that year.)

so this is, I believe, the greatest Christmas song of all time: "Christmas in Hollis" by Run DMC.

so I've been playing Scrabble (or Scrabulous technically) on Facebook, and I am really getting sick of it. I know it uses a list of words, but there are so many bullshit words in there. One of my friends used "zee" twice. Zee isn't a word! It's the letter Z. Letters do not have words, that's stupid. But since it had a Z in it, he got tons of points.

There are other ones too, like "hoy," an archaic word for a flat bottomed boat. Of course no one uses that word, but if you google it you'll find it, and of course it got used against me. But while "zee" and "hoy" are ok, "zen" is not, which is bullshit. People use zen not as a proper noun all the time. "That is very zen." Then another time somebody used "donna." How the hell is donna a word? I got pissed off at my buddy who used "zee" twice and "donna" and he quit.

There ought to be some kind of Real Words Dictionary for Scrabble. I'm sick of these bullshit words.

UPDATE: my friend just played "ut". UT is not a word!!!

so I like basketball. I watch a lot of it, write about it, and so on. And I also like to play online games. I found this free game called Bazzer which is pretty cool. You manage a pro basketball team, train your players, trade guys, and play against other people from all over the world. It's pretty cool and is the only good and free basketball manager game I found on Google.

It doesn't require a big time commitment, as your team only plays one or two games a week - you basically set the lineup and say how the players should train, and that's it - you don't have to do the actual playing. You can also do stuff like sign sponsors, build an arena, and pretty much everything you can do with a real team. Check it out.

so I observed some Britney Spears driving today by a diplomat.

I was walking east on Indiana Ave/D Street NW outside the courthouse and saw an SUV with diplomatic plates. The guy backed up without looking so my coworker had to jump out of the way, then we noticed the guy had a little kid in his lap while driving. I should have gotten a photo with my cameraphone but unfortunately didn't. I don't remember his full plate, it was DA 0401 or something like that, which isn't a full plate anyway. I did tell a MPD officer parked two cars down, but he didn't seem too concerned and didn't immediately go after the guy. That sucks.

Of course, diplomats have immunity anyway (unless you are Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2)

so if I started a women's beer pong team, I'd call it Two Girls One Cup.

In unrelated news, my roommate and I were on Brooklyn Vegan the other day, that was pretty cool. We're the top picture in the post about Daft Punk on Halloween. Some of the other costumes are better, but we had musical accompaniment.

so the previous experiment is over. It didn't work out like I thought.

My fellow DCist writer Graham also writes for a music blog, The Rockist Society. They write about power pop and indie mostly - The Hold Steady, The Thermals, The Bigger Lovers, erc. The other day one of the writers saw Josh Groban at a random bar and got a picture with him. He posted the photo on the blog and said "Nice guy, bad music." Somehow, Groban fans (who call themslves "Grobanites") found this and tons of them commented on their blog about how mean they were, how they were jealous of Groban, how Groban is an angel, etc. It's a pretty hilarious comment thread.

The experiment here was to see if I get a ton more hits and angry 16 year old girls commenting by dissing Mr. Groban, but alas, it was not to happen. Worth a shot, and the comment thread is well worth reading.

so this is an experiment:

Josh Groban's music sucks. It's really bad. He is a bad singer. I bet he is a bad dude in real life too.

I'll say what the experiment is about once it's complete.

so this is a rapper named Drama. He's been on the front page of Myspace and stuff, and the picture always makes me laugh - he looks like Jamie Kennedy pretending to be a rapper.

And what's up with the beard? It looks ridiculous. Plus the guy is named Drama, which is a terrible rap name. Why not name yourself MC Desperate Housewives or something. And his music is pretty boring and generic.