señor taco’s travels

The music industry is in a free fall. The big labels are scrambling to keep up with technology and they’re doing everything from trying to provide their own online services to compete with Apple’s iTunes Store to suing the same people that would be their customers if prices were more resonable. I still believe in buying music, but when I look and see that CDs still cost the same or more than when I was in university more than ten years ago it pisses me off. My favorite artists albums cost a lot because ‘big name stars’ have ridiculous and expensive contracts. As a result I buy online and used CDs and very little new.

Thankfully most of the bands I like are on independent labels¹ and generally have lower prices and more money can go to the artists². One benefit of this is that I can often times buy the albums directly from the artist, thus ensuring that the maximum amount of money makes it into their pocket.

Where is all this leading? Well, recently Radiohead did an online album sale by themselves. Following closely behind them is Saul Williams. I come to know of Saul Williams via his connection with Trent Reznor and his remixes of Nine Inch Nails tracks³. Saul has put out an album, The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust! that is online for free if you want. If you pony up five measly dollars you’ll get a higher bit-rate or uncompressed version, your choice. Needless to say it wasn’t hard for me to decide to drop $5 directly to the artist to get an album.

Quite a few people I talked to about Niggy Tardust were reluctant to try it because they thought it might be too much rap or hip-hop. I ended up loving the album. It’s produced by Trent Reznor and Trent ends up singing on a few tracks. From start to end the album flows and is lyrical in the way I love. If you like NIN and you aren’t abject to trying the online music thing you should give it a spin and then if you like it I suggest you buy it.

1. not in the big RIAA piss-pot↩
2. I’m not saying it always does, but it can.↩
3. By the way, NIN now has an official remix site up and running with a lot of cool tracks on it.↩

No Country For Old Men

Last week I got a chance to see No Country For Old Men at work. I didn’t know much about it going into it and I had no expectations other than it was a Coen Brothers film.

There is little I can say that many reviewers before me haven’t already said. This movie is an excellent execution of cinema. I was blown away by Roger Deakins’ cinematography. It was so beautiful and felt like real life, never taking you out of the story.

The acting was superb. Josh Brolin was great as a person living in West Texas. His depiction of a person living a life where he is getting by and surprised by little. His character, a Vietnam vet, behaved exactly as one would expect. Javier Bardem executed a fantastic role as the bad guy. He’s carried the perfect persona of evil but also with a sense of morals, twisted as they may be.

Overall I can’t recommend this movie enough.

Rating: 5/5

The Lookout

I saw The Lookout on video and I’m a bit sad I didn’t get to see it in the theater. Both Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Chris) and Jeff Daniels (Lewis) ran perfectly believable roles. The movie really sucked me in and made me care for Chris and Lewis and have sympathy for how they were flawed by exaggerating the flaws we have in ourselves.

As with Brick this is a quirky kind of film that really gives an actor like Gordon-Levitt a chance to show that beyond 3rd Rock from the Sun’s comedy he can be very serious and versatile. I look forward to seeing more movies with him.

The story was very engaging and real. These kinds of stories feel very simple but has so much emotional depth that it sucks you in. See it if you can, I recommend it on an HD format if possible.

Rating: 4.75/5

The Devil And Daniel Johnston

I love well done documentaries. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is one of those. Daniel Johnston is a singer, songwriter, and artist. He gained a bit of notoriety in the 80s and fortunately he documented a lot of his life with audio and film.

Seeing the story of Daniel move from creative genius to nervous breakdown to his current life in Waller, Texas gives a great insite into how the world sees Daniel.

Sadly we can never know exactly what was going and how Daniel was seeing the world, but we can get a very good look through the hard work of the film makers. They poured over a lot of audio and footage and interviewed many people that knew and worked with Daniel to paint a very vibrant picture.

Daniel has been covered by many artists. For anyone that’s even a little bit creative I highly recommend viewing The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Rating: 5/5

Helvetica

If ever there was an obsession for designers it’s typefaces. The movie Helvetica catalogs the history, usage, and current philosophies on the use of the sans-serif typeface Helvetica. Helvetica is every where you look. You probably see it and don’t realize it. It’s a clean typeface designed by the Swiss type designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann. The simplicity and neutrality of Helvetica allowed it to become a staple of 20th century modern design.

There are people that love the type face and there are people that hate the type face. Both sides are presented well but there is a bit of a bias towards the love and positive aspects of Helvetica. I doubt this movie would be interesting to people not interested in design but it’s short enough that it won’t bore you if you try it. The extras are really cool, more of the interviews from the movie that expand on design that might not be related to Helvetica.

In the movie there is only a small mention of the typeface Arial. Arial is a cheap nock-off of Helvetica that stems from Microsofts desire to not pay licensing fees to Linotype for Helvetica. If you use Arial please stop now. Just switch to Helvetica and produce better looking documents. If you want more on Helvetica vs. Arial then you can just do a Google search but here’s the easy way to spot Arial. Comic Sans too, just don’t use it.

Overall, Helvetica is a great documentary that shows passion in normalcy. Design-type people should see it for sure. For non-design types it does provide hints about how designers work and think.

Rating: 4.75/5

There is something strangely beautiful in this and utterly saddening photo set of the Canopus thermonuclear test in French Polynesia.

I’ve known for a long time – since say elementary school when I took an allergy pill that was white with little blue dots – that I’ve got allergies. Today I finally had a visit with an allergist to find out a course of action to try and get it under control. I wasn’t terrible in New York, but since moving to California I’ve been pretty miserable on a yearly basis.

This morning I had a scratch test and it came out that I was allergic to pretty much every tree and grass out there. For now I’m going going to use nasal sprays and see how that goes. I’ve got the option to go with allergen immunotherapy shots and I’ll be considering that over the next couple of weeks. I’d be either one shot a week for eight months or two shots a week for four months and then one shot a month for three to five years. After that 90% of people no longer suffer from allergies. That seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Irony: They’re filming a Microsoft ad at Zoka¹ today. Double irony: The entire crew is using Macs. Only PC is in front of the model.

(via Twitter)

1. For a little background, Wil’s company — Delicious Monster — doesn’t have an office, they just work on laptops out of University Zoka coffe shop. I’m going to make sure to visit Zoka when I make my way up to Seattle.↩

There is a company called Moo. Their motto is “We Love To Print” and boy do they. I got the mini cards as personal contact cards a while back and I love them. Today I just received a set of postcards and the quality is fantastic. I can say for certain I’ll be using Moo for more printing in the future.