::: Propagandhi, "This Might be Satire" :::

::: Propagandhi, "Ska Sucks" ::: this bonus song is for regular commenter "milkman dan," who said that "the kittens on cute overload are more punk" than my last punk song of the week. milkman dan, as we all know, needs to shut up. but this song is for him anyway.

the team love label has eleven of the 12 songs on jenny lewis's awesome solo debut available for download. amazing! everyone should listen to this album.

but what you really want is video, isn't it? here's a youtube joint showing the hold steady playing a new song, "stuck between stations," in louisiana. and here's local band man in gray's new totally rockstar video. not to be outdone, here is vcr's VCR's new video. (you can also see a picture of tamar's mom and dad on a cruise on the news page.) and finally, i think this video is old, but it's a classic well worth rewatching: cat up for adoption goes buck wild. you're welcome.

rivers is getting married! i bet the special lady can't wait for the wedding night.

::: Culture Shock, "Civilization Street" ::: and this song in particular makes me walk way faster (and bouncier) down the street -- it has a nice kicky ska sound. hope you like it....

have you ever seen post secret? people mail this guy homemade collage-y postcards with secrets on them, and he puts them up for all to read. the valentine's ones are heartbreaking, of course.

but the kitten category on cute overload has made me very, very happy.

also, these project runway recaps, complete with mp3s, are genius. genius!

an old colleague from my college newspaper days is writing a blog for the washington post about olympic curling and cheese. maybe i need to read from the beginning, but i still don't get what the hell is up with curling.

some chinese democracy demos leaked. i dunno, it seems like there's a lot going on there. like too much. no one is going to care about these faux-epic songs if they ever even come out. axl should stick to the rock. same goes for the yeah yeah yeahs...wtf are they doing? "show the bones" is gonna suck, i'm pretty sure. i mean, they're covering nursery rhymes for fuck's sake. get the grit back, karen. stupid L.A.

if you've ever been curious about this "gbv" of which i'm always talking/mourning, check out pimps of gore's top 100 gbv songs, with downloads. i started reading his list months ago and then lost track somewhere. dfactor reminded me. he's got the final 50 easily accessible up there now, including some rare versions that i had forgotten about and even not had. (even i do not own the bee thousand director's cut -- shocking, i know.) i am going to go listen to gbv now. later kids!

see, the camera is on its very last legs, refusing to focus when it doesn't feel like it, only going into review mode when i squeeze it just so, etc. so any of the party pics i take these days could be my last. post 'em if you got 'em, i always say. these are pics of last night's highly enjoyable evening at paladar and local. next time you see cormi, ask him about his cougar story. it's a doozy.

dudes. wtf is this bloggers in amsterdam shit? i want to go to amsterdam! i call bullshit on me not going to amsterdam for free!

andy milonakis's blog is dead! also not cool!

dudes, i had a date on valentine's day! i'm not sure that has ever happened, or if it has, it was more like a date with a six-pack of bud and my teevee. this was better. red wine. crispy raisin bread and stinky cheese. pan-seared tuna, mashed potatoes, bok choy. white wine. lemon tart. truffles (accidentally turned to mush by moi). musical selections: ac/dc (romantic), the new belle and sebastian (really good), unidentified dub (hot). so, he made me a lovely home-cooked dinner, and i gave him a chocolate bear i won in the company cafeteria. note: this was not a ghetto gift. okay, it was. but! i saw the table with the drawing and the chocolatey shit, almost passed by it, and then said to myself, no, i will win that for carl. and win it i did! i'm a winner, folks.

i am still doing the music picks of the week for gothamist, until i can stands it no more (possibly very soon). this week i mortsed inxs, now led by reality-show winner j.d. fortune, i.e. obviously, inherently lame, and people got upset. gothamist readers are so odd.

thomas beller jumped on the tracks to get his ipod. the only thing about doing this is, you have no idea how high you'd actually have to hoist yourself, right? is it five feet high? four? is it doable? does adrenaline help enough? questions worth pondering.

::: The Saints, "Know Your Product" ::: this is way more horn-y than anything else on the album. i've read that they morphed into something way different and pop-like in their later years once all but one of the original members left the band. this album is way fun in a classic punk way (with occasional horns adding some soul). word is the saints predated the sex pistols and are as revered in their home country of australia as them and the ramones. i like 'em.

good weekend, once again. i seem to be making the pilgrimage to brooklyn more and more these days, braving the four-stop train ride on saturday to go investigate the shopping in the cobble hill/carroll gardens area (not to be called "bococa," people). after that it was some delicious sushi followed by a demonstration of carl's amazing yo-yo skills. (shortly after that video was taken a wine glass came to a spectacular end.) and then it was off to magnetic field, where the lilys were playing. unfortunately it was sold out. undeterred, we stopped off at excellent dive montero's, where someone came up with the brilliant idea of using a ballpoint pen to give ourselves hand stamps. yes, we snuck in like 15-year-olds. genius! the lilys were all right; i really have nothing else to say about them at all. sunday was delicious brunch at les enfants terribles (i can still taste that turkey burger) followed by the chinese new year parade (aka "dog parade") in chinatown. i was expecting more dogs, but what can you do? it was pretty cool. and then there were drinks at iggy's, a spontaneous miniskirt purchase (on sale!), and a superbowl party way the hell uptown. end fascinating weekend report.

PUNK SONG OF THE WEEK! to recap, i am making an effort to listen to a bunch of hardcore and punk albums i harvested off of carl's computer. and i will share them every friday with the pita readership, approximately 2 percent of whom will download them (hi jesse!). no matter. so this week we are talking about BAD BRAINS, a group of Rastafarians who were really influential in the early 80s and were, unlike many in the hardcore scene, really good at playing their instruments. their album "rock for light" is the one i investigated, though carl tells me i should also check out "i against i." carl also tells me the singer once duct-taped himself to a school desk chair with the microphone duct-taped to an area convenient for singing, and spent the entire show in this position, until the end, when he broke out and smashed the desk. awesome. was he the tim harrington of his day?

::: Bad Brains, "Right Brigade" ::: this song is my pick for punk song of the week because it has about a million cool parts to it -- you've got the opening riff (later borrowed in loving homage by lifter puller in "rock for lite brite"), you've got the crazy fast guitars, you've got the insane vocals, you've got the midsong breakdown. carl swears the dance floor would explode and "actual white people would DANCE at a rock show." this seems hard to believe what with the lightning fast speed they play at (i mean, i can't even tap my toe to this shit) but i'll take his word for it.

::: Bad Brains, "I and I Survive" ::: and then they drop a reggae jam like this, sort of a palate cleanser. how considerate of them.

and now back to your regularly scheduled indie rock: new york times talks to goddess jenny lewis, while the minus 5 will write a song about you if you win a contest.

and here is a fascinating, scary story about a guy who found a roommate on craigslist who turned out to be a jewel thief who was among america's most wanted. my older brother was friends with this guy in high school (not the jewel thief)...how crazy is that?

on a completely random note, i have been meaning to enlighten you all on the magic of coke zero for a while now. why do people still drink diet coke? coke zero is the shit! it tastes exactly like regular coke! and zero calories! it's the same shit they had in china, apparently, called "coke light." i really wish people would recognize, because coke zero is kind of hard to find around these parts, and holly norton's fiance (fiance! congrats dudes, publicly!), who works for coke, says it sits on store shelves and will probably be discontinued at some point. booo that. providing some slight hope for my diet soda drinking future (and it's worth noting that coke zero is what caused me to take up part-time soda drinking after years of almost complete abstention) is the recent introduction of black cherry vanilla diet coke, which rivals chock full o nuts coffee with hazelnut creamer plus sweetener as BEST DRINK EVER. i would not lie.

finally dudes, bob pollard's first post-gbv solo record (a double album, of course) is getting rave reviews. the onion compares it to "double nickels on the dime" and the white album; pitchfork calls it "the most fascinating bob project in years." it's been growing on me for months now. hard to listen to in one fell swoop, but it definitely has its moments.