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Was cruising the www.metal-rules.com best of 2006 list when I noticed two reviewers citing the same winner for “Best New Band”:

Best New Band: Van Canto
This is WILD! A band of 5 singers and one drummer…no guitars, no bass, no keyboards. I thought the idea sounded questionable, but after several listens to their debut album A STORM TO COME, I was hooked to the bands original vocal driven melodic power metal.

Best New Band: Van Canto
Picture a metal band with only drums and 5 vocalists. You say “How can that be metal?” Just take one listen to VAN CANTO and you won’t have to ask that question. Acapella Metal is what this band does on their debut A STORM TO COME and till I heard this CD I wouldn’t believe that it could have been done. With only drums to accompany the vocalists this 9 track CD also includes a cover of Battery by Metallica. I was having trouble with the best new band but after hearing VAN CANTO the questions resolved itself easily.

Sound interesting? Actually, it’s better than that: it’s… good. Check them out at their website. One track is available as a free download, and free videoplay. Other tracks—including the cover of “Battery”—may be listened to via sample. If you want it, the whole album is $8.91 on iTunes, or $7.92 with a little more effort. Or contact me.

Hey, did you forget about the travel blog I know I sure did. Anyhow, it’s been updated with plenty of fun things; okay, only one trip to London, but it’s a start.

Stupid Customer Questions, Part II

It takes a lot for Bush to surprise me. The press spends a good deal of time overstating the importance of his stumbled speaches. It’s made me pretty jaded about Bush slip ups. I blew off headlines declaring a huge gaffe in Bush’s State of the Union address. But it turns out that choosing to acknowledge the creator of “Baby Einstein” products was really a shitty choice. This article details why it was such a bad call. What follows is my quick summary.

“Baby Einstein” is a set of videos for infants. The videos show educational-ish things and assert that the infants are learning. The videos claim to work according to the same principle as the urban legend, “Listening to mozart while studying for a test will improve your performance”. The “classical music aids learning” study responsible for the urban legend could not be duplicated by other researchers. The principle of learning is questionable at best. At worst, a group of pediatricians found that watching too much TV before age 2 can lead to epillepsy. The article accuses the “Baby Einstein” videos of exploiting the anxieties of nervous new parents. I guess I’d call it selling snake oil to babies. Whichever it is, it’s a shame to acknowledge this person in the same breath as a guy who jumped in front of an NYC subway to save a stranger.

Everyone loves internet quizzes!

Last weekend I played “Drinking Jenga”, sipped some Natural Light from a bottle, and had a generally great time hanging out with some friends in Columbus. The Natty Light and drinking jenga reminded me of the old days at Union. There’s no punch line to this post – I’m just reminiscing.

From CNNMoney. Very, very stupid moments in business. Walmart appears 6 times.

Here.

I meant to post this a while ago. Here’s a Penny Arcade comic that I found funny on many levels.

[Embedded video replaced by link to googlevids.]

I will first note that the video is only being posted ironically, for the benefit of people just happening by.

Apparently something of a controversy is arising over whether the video is real or not. I’m leaning toward real. The evidence? The arguments?

Dan Savage blogging about it… with bonus South Park vid.
The onionavclub on the subject of the video.
The Official Site of Donnie Davies and C.H.O.P.S….Changing Homosexuals (into) Ordinary People. Apparently Davies is a reformed fellow.

Thoughts?

Yay! I’ve been reading lately. Here goes:

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart comes highly recommended. It roused my interest based on the previously-linked review, and later regained it upon being placed in the NYTimes list of the 10 best books of 2006. Essentially, the author walks alone across Afghanistan during the winter of 2001, within weeks of the fall of the Taliban. A major repeated theme in the book is that of natives trying to convince him to stop so he doesn’t die. As the title implies, much of the time is spent in the ridiculously poor villages where 90% of Afghanis live, among people who are not particularly sure why they’re being bombed (many are unfamiliar with the WTC, some even with “airplanes”). While many hate the US and do wish its destruction, few of these have any interest in being more than a few days’ walk from their places of birth. The book is very, very largely a chronicling of personal habits, histories, and attitudes, yet makes a strangely political point via the near absence of politicism; few of the people in the book care at all about who is president of their nation, since it will simply never affect them. Overall: good stuff.

Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason and Lee Gruenfeld. The title is, once again, quite accurate. As the review notes, though, the confessions are frequently “jaw-dropping.” Mason admits that much of the thrill was in the puzzle of overcoming locks, guards, security systems, police, and 15-story drops, and finding out precisely how he managed these things is really quite unbelievable, for lack of a better word. At one point, for instance, he manages to get the master keys to every lock in a ritzy hotel by writing Masterlock and politely requesting them. Really. I was particularly suprised at the insights into the legal system as well; usually I dislike the courtroom aspect of reading true-crime, but found this fascinating. Having tricked the police into giving him immunity for the majority of his crimes, he is jailed only on completely bogus charges. The only really bad part about the book was the moral dilemma inherent in rooting for someone who someone who broke the law and hurt his family. He does make up for it a bit, though, through frequent apologies and recognitions of inappropriate actions. As an added bonus, one picks up such useful safety tips as: a jewelry box is the worst place for jewelry, and an 8 foot square safe is much easier to crack when you don’t lock it. Overall, a very good read.