DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking: January 2008

Thursday, January 31, 2008

New Music Thursday

I'm absorbing Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut right now, and it's a pretty good one.

Vampire Weekend is an indie-pop outfit that stands out from the crowd by incorporating afro-pop influences into their songs. My knowledge of afro-pop is limited to what I pick up when I'm dancing badly while heavily inebriated at Ghana Cafe, so I can't tell you how authentic (if that sort of thing is important to you) their interpretation of the genre is, but it's something I haven't heard before. Different is good, as long as you know your way around your instruments, and these guys seem to.

Vampire Weekend has been getting a fair amount of buzz around the internets and from media like the Village Voice, and the reviews have been pretty positive. I've seen an occasional gripe about the background of the band, being white guys from Columbia University playing afro-pop influenced music, but I'm not sure what that those kind of class and race distinctions have to do with whether the band is any good or not. If you're the kind of person who couldn't respect the Strokes because their lead singer was filthy rich, you might not like Vampire Weekend. You might also be an ass.

Vampire Weekend write a lot of songs about the east coast elite. 'One (Blake's got a new face)', seems to be about a face lift. I haven't decided if the intent is to be tongue in cheek, if the songs are an indictment of the upper crust, or if Vampire Weekend is just being goofy. Really, I don't care. The songs are fun, accessible, and will sound even better when it starts to get warm outside. I can tell already that this album will be in heavy rotation at my backyard cookouts this summer.

You can listen to a few of their songs on their website, but the in my opinion the best of the album isn't available for streaming on the site. If those appeal to you at all, you should know that the rest are even better.

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posted by DC Viking at 11:27 AM 1 people of discerning taste are saying

Friday, January 25, 2008

F.U.F.F.



















Bald guys named Curly, flight attendants afraid of flying, and rain on your wedding day. These are all examples of irony. To this list I add one more. I am the manager of an IT development project and I have a “Fucked Up Force Field.” My job is to build software. My hobby is to break technology.

My office- mate coined the acronym F.U.F.F. to describe my uncanny ability to destroy, through the sheer force of my physical proximity, numerous and varied types of electronic devices. In the past two years I have wrought the following damage upon computers entrusted to my care by my company and our clients:

- crashed operating system requiring a day of down time for re-installation by IT guy (2)

- corrupted hard drive, requiring replacement and data recovery (2)

- faulty power supply requiring replacement (1)

That’s just the stuff at work. In the same timeframe my home computer has had a power supply die and a primary heat sink fail. I didn’t know that a heat sink could break. It’s a big piece of copper alloy that conducts heat away from the more delicate parts of the computer. There shouldn’t be any moving part to stop working. But it did. It stopped. And as a result I was without home internet access for a whole week.

It’s not like I spend my days surfing virus laden porn sites. Well, not from my work computer anyway. I don’t have any strange modifications to my home computer. I don’t over-clock the processors. I don’t usually perform percussive maintenance if something small goes wrong. I just use my computer as any normal, moderately tech savvy person would and my aura kills it.

I’ve recorded this effect on non-computer devices as well. This week my iPod battery stopped holding a charge for more than 30 seconds, the display on my cell phone went black, and the fan in my home computer began to rattle ominously. Taken separately these events don’t indicate a mystical power emanating from my person, but I think that most people would agree that 10 confirmed F.U.F.F related events in less than 24 months constitutes a pattern.

Some people in my situation would renounce technology, move to a cabin in Wyoming, and live a life of seclusion where their powers would not devastate the technology our culture relies on. But not me. I’m a bad person. I’ve concluded that I’m a kind of technopath with the ability to obliterate electrical devices. So far, I’ve been unable to successfully control this ability, to make it bend to my will, but I’m convinced that with time and practice I can harness this ability to be a force for evil.

So, if you’d like to go ahead and place an early request for my services, please comment on this post. I’m sure that after I’ve had a successful test, my abilities will be in high demand. I’m available to destroy your boss’s hard drive, nuke the iPod of the annoying co-worker that doesn’t understand the concept of volume control, or to fry your big screen TV one week before your warranty expires, forcing Best Buy to provide you a shiny new one.

I’m also available for birthday parties.

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posted by DC Viking at 12:15 PM 3 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, January 21, 2008

One of the dull posts I promised

Georgetown. You know it. You loathe it. Or you do if you live in DC and you're anything like me.

For those of you that don't live in Our Nation's Capital, Georgetown is a self-important, extremely affluent, suburb-like neighborhood within the borders of DC proper. For my Minneapolis readers: Imagine that you took the least diverse and most snobbish sections of Minnetonka and Edina, smashed them together, kicked out the black people (both of them), and then installed picturesque row-houses and high end East Coast retail boutiques. You would be well on your way to having a reasonable facsimile of Georgetown. You'd need to find yourself a few self-important young republicans to populate the bars on the weekends and maybe a 'famous for D.C.' politician and/or pundit to spice up your trendy eateries, but those are minor details.

I don't spend much time in Georgetown. You can't get there via the Metro, so I rarely frequent the pubs. The shops are too expensive for a man of my modest income, and the parking is downright terrifying on the weekends. Georgetown is Washington, D.C. for people that don't actually like cities. Put another way, Times Square is to New York City as Georgetown is to Washington. You should probably see both the first time you make a trip to their respective cities, but nobody with any knowledge of either place goes there without a really good excuse.

There are two acceptable reasons for entering the homogeneous confines of G-Town.

1) There are a couple of really exceptional bars that have some of the best views of any beer garden in the city. The view of the rowing shells on the Potomac and the Kennedy center combine, along with your proximity to the infamous Watergate hotel, to help you almost forget about the colossal douche bags jabbering away at the table next to you.

2) Georgetown is one of the best neighborhoods in DC when it comes to good restaurants. Not much you can do about that. Gourmet cooking tends to stay as close as it can to wealthy neighborhoods.

From time to time Miss Viking and I like to pretend that we're respectable adults. This only occurs a few times a year, but one of the recurring triggers for these bouts of respectability is the bi-annual DC Restaurant Week. Twice a year the best chefs in the city open their doors to the unwashed masses. For $30 bucks a head, you are treated to a three course dinner in some of the nicer settings in American dining.

It's not unlike allowing the caddies their 15 minutes a summer in the country club pool, and Miss Viking and I never miss it. So this Saturday I ventured to Georgetown for dinner. We had 7:30 reservations at Agraria which, according to the website, is "owned by and sources the highest quality products from family farmers across the country." I have no idea what that means, but they had a picture of a combine and a barn near the hostess station. I didn't know you could be trendy and still call on the symbolism of the dying family farm, but they give it a shot at Agraria. I kept expecting to hear LCD Sound System do a cover of 'Our Country'.

Since this post is ostensibly about dinner I should probably say something about the food. It was acceptable for what we paid, which was more than we should have for a Restaurant Week meal (more on that in the next paragraph). The mussels were very good and so was the pumpkin pie cheesecake. Everything else was only acceptable for the price, assuming that we had paid full price. Miss Viking's rockfish was pretty tasty, but the portion was very small. My desert was uninspiring. If you're going to price out your chocolate cake at more than it costs for me to see a movie, it should be better than average.

My main problem is that when I'm eating at these upper crust places during Restaurant Week, I always forget that while the meal may be coming to me at a reduced price, the booze is not. Miss Viking and I have before dinner cocktails, several glasses of wine with dinner, and some port or Irish coffee with dessert, and somehow I'm still mystified by my $180 check. Mental note; just because I'm only spending $60 on food that should cost well over $100 doesn't mean that I have to buy the 20 year old Port. No matter how good it tastes.

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posted by DC Viking at 1:50 PM 2 people of discerning taste are saying

Friday, January 18, 2008

Huck Off Mike

If someone of the disposition to read this blog is following the Republican primaries, I suspect they are doing so in much the same way I do. You sit transfixed in front of you laptop or television and absorb reports of ongoing Republican campaigns with a combination of glee, terror, and stark disbelief.

Glee for the continuing implosion of the Republican party, terror at the prospect that one of these half-wit demagogues might have a chance at the presidency, and disbelief that the country at large has not shouted candidates like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee off of the national stage.

I’m not going to get started on Giuliani other than to ask a simple question. If I happen to be standing next to my house when it goes up in flames, does that qualify me to be a fire-chief?

Today I want to focus on Mike Huckabee, who is apparently in favor of turning the United States into a theocracy. Huck is against same-sex marriage and legal abortions. No surprise there. He’s a Republican and that’s their bread and butter. The surprise is how he justifies amending the Constitution to outlaw these acts. Huckabee said at a recent campaign event in Michigan:

"What we need to do," he said, "is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family…it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God."

I’m no expert, but I’m not sure that basing public policy on the living word of God is the best way to go. First of all, who gets to be the arbiter of what the living word of God is? Second, God’s views on the flat tax and free markets have been shown to be highly suspect by a number of reputable economists.

Huckabee's a southern preacher, and he’s got a distinct set of policy ideas, which is fine. The problem is that he has no sound and rational argument for why outlawing same-sex marriage and abortion is sound public policy. He can’t tell people why this will make America a better place. ‘God says so’ stopped being a solid basis for democratic decision making a long time ago. If he can’t summon something more than an arbitrary moral compass to justify his platform, then he needs to go away.

And I think he will. The U.S. is still predominantly a Christian country, but no Christians I know embrace the kind of evangelical governance that Huck supports. While I may not be a Christian, the Christians I know (and who are probably reading this now) have too much decency and too much respect for their God to use him as a political lever and a thinly veiled excuse for bigotry. Outside of a few misguided folk that vote heavily in Republican primaries and are badly in need of a dentist and some diversity training, people of faith don’t go in for this kind of crap.

I for one would love to see Huckabee get the nomination. He might learn something about mainstream Christianity while he was getting beat like a gong.

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posted by DC Viking at 3:16 PM 1 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, January 14, 2008

Belated Favorite Albums of 2007

Because everyone likes top ten lists.

10) Field Music: ‘Tones of Town’ – Unlike most of the music I have in heavy rotation. This album feels like it was made during a different era.

9) The Shins: ‘Wincing the Night Away' – Sounds very different than their previous stuff.

8) Les Savy Fav: ‘Let’s Stay Friends’ – This is the first time I’ve listened to one of their albums from start to finish. I’m still not sure how to pronounce their name, but I can’t stop listening to ‘Rage in the Plague Age’. Any RenFest geeks out there reading this will appreciate it. You know who you are.

7) White Rabbits: ‘Fort Nightly’ – A little bleak, but the unusual hooks…uh…hook me.

6) Arctic Monkeys: ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ – I never got caught up in the buzz of their first album, but this record is really catchy. Best line: ‘You used to get it in your fishnets/now you only get it in your night dress’.

5) Radiohead: ‘In Rainbows’ – Me and everyone else on the planet that likes music.

4) The Arcade Fire: ‘Neon Bible’ – Many people thought this was a letdown after their debut album. I actually enjoyed it more. Shows what I know.

3) Okkervil River: ‘The Stage Names’ – Their ballads don’t lose me nearly as much as they did on ‘Black Sheep Boy’ and the rockers display a level of emotion that many indie bands are too cool for.

2) Spoon: ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’ – Did I like this more than The National? It’s close, but I’m not serious enough to spend a lot of time nitpicking two albums I loved. ‘The Underdog’ was the best pop song I heard this year.

1) The National: ‘Boxer’ – This is one of those soundtrack records. Whenever I’m listening to it when I get off the metro, I feel like I’m in the middle of a city montage scene. Gets a ridiculous amount of play for a record that doesn’t have an upbeat or really rocking track on it. Does this mean I'm becoming melancholy?

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posted by DC Viking at 12:53 PM 4 people of discerning taste are saying

Friday, January 11, 2008

Every time I think I'm out...

I was all set for this little project to die a slow death, not having posted anything in about 4 months. But I had a conversation with a friend from Minneapolis last week and he informed me that there are a few people back home that are wondering if I was ever going to post something here.

I’ve come to the realization that I was only writing when I could say something I thought was going to be interesting to people that didn’t know me in real life. I found that the subjects I was writing about were getting a little deeper than I’d intended. That was never the intent of writing this blog.

I started posting here as a way to keep in touch with my close friends spread out all over the country. After I’d been doing this for a while and realized that the people reading this were not limited to buddies from college, I changed the way I approached writing.

I’m going to start writing here again, but I’m going to approach it with the mindset of letting people I already know what I’m up to. I’ll still comment on politics and music, because that’s what I’m into, but expect to see more than a few posts dedicated to more mundane life events; like where I went for restaurant week or which video games I’m playing when I’m avoiding the freezing rain we get in DC instead of a good healthy snowfall.

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posted by DC Viking at 9:07 AM 5 people of discerning taste are saying