J Larsen

That's a pretty damn good price for a Cuban Cohiba if you're in the states...

Do you have a Whole Foods near you? The one by my apartment stocks Adam and Fred, two of their flagships brews (and two of the best I've had from the states). They are NOT beers for the faint of heart - they are very, very bold. I slighlty prefer Adam, a darkish, bock-like beer, to Fred, which is a very strong amber-ish Belgian style beer.

Better than The Sidewinder. Guy Yes, that really is a disappointing record for me. I was really bummed when I got that one home.

Wild... I love Cornbread and am always baffled when people inclined to like that type of jazz at all aren't into it (though that is what makes us human...), but I've always found Dippin' to be a little weak. Taste is a funny thing.

The lady made a damn fine Morrocan coucous with lamb tonight.

I saw Cat Power last night... with her new band there is a certain "professionalism" to her sound that I'm not so into. I know this is kind of a messed up thing to say, but as an audience member I truthfully prefered her more eratic/raw phase.

I had Atwater once and thought it was total crap. The Brown ale is the best thing Brooklyn Brewery sells in a bottle. If you ever want to try something REALLY gross, grab a bottle of their chocolate stout if you ever see it in a store. You know where they make really good beer in the US? Portland, OR. No lie. You are hard pressed to find most of the best Portland beers outside of the NW, though - in fact many of the best breweries out there only sell their beers on site.

I was drinking that last night, out of neccesity. I'm not a big fan of their beers (they all tend to have this sour note to them), but the brewery in Williamsburg is worth a visit if you're ever in town. They actually have a couple varities there that they don't bottle or distribute that are muh better than the varities they make commercially available, which I've always found to be quite odd. I'm currently finishing off a bottle of Domaine des 2 Anes Corbieres. Pretty good for an organically produced, no-sulfite wine. A little musty, but I guess that is unavoidable (or so it seems).

My neighborhood delivery place, Lombardi's, is pretty good. Grimaldi's in Brooklyn (right over the bridge) is also very good. John's on Bleecker is often very good. This is somewhat controversial, but I also really like the Patsy's on the UES. I haven't had pizza outside the city that compared to the best pizzas in NYC. I'm not saying it doesn't exist (in fact I bet it does), but I haven't had it.

Lost Sessions was a Conn and has not been readily available in quite a long time.

I used to know more about this from a project I was working on, but I'm fuzzy on it now. As I recall their purpose is to reconcile the fact that various category-specific coding schemes use different formats (e.g. ISBNs are X digits long, the analogous codes for cds are Y digits long, etc.) This would clearly be important for mega-retailers with huge inventories who sell many types of products. I'm sure Kevin can clear this up.

Do teams generally own their stadiums in England? Here the norm is for the hosting city to pay for the stadium and lease it to the team, typically at a rate far below market. Yes, I think so. Many of the football clubs have been around since the late 19th C. MG Right, I knew that, but I thought that they were playing in modern stadiums.

They are unique identifiers for products like books, cds, etc.

Do teams generally own their stadiums in England? Here the norm is for the hosting city to pay for the stadium and lease it to the team, typically at a rate far below market.

Happy birthday!

Friggin' AWESOME Vietnamese coffee. This stuff is one of the greatest secrets in the Western world.

Tonight it's Built to Spill with Cat Power - two of my favorite contemporary "indie" acts. This will be about my 900th time seeing BTS, and I think my fourth time seeing CP.

Great, I'll pick them up this weekend. Thanks for the help.

Interesting... in my experience Get Back records usually don't sound that great in the first place, so I wonder how much of that is really ESP low-fi and how much is the Get Back low fi.

Yes, and a very good guitarist in his own right, from what I've been told.

One of the UK members can doubtlessly add more color, but Leeds is sort of like a minor league team. I wouldn't be too surprised if you could buy a AA baseball team for a few million, and I think that is about the right analogy. No way in hell you could buy a team like Manchester United or Real Madrid without spending at least 100 times that, and probably much more.

Original vinyl or CD pressings? I once saw a few old Mexican (yes, Mexican!!) Ayler records. Would have bought them, but the guy standing next to me at the shop's counter beat me to them by about a nanosecond. The text was all in Spanish, and they said either printed or made in Mexico on them, and they were on a label I had never heard of nor recall the name of. No idea when they dated to, but they had clearly been around.

In a somewhat similar vein, in the proposed new startup American football league, the season ticket holders would also be shareholders. Getting slightly further afield but still on topic, there is a silicon valley investment firm that is planning to securitize 20% of the future earnings of young athletes. In a way I'm only surprised that this kind of thing has taken so long.

This one has been talked about for a couple of years now; it was supposed to come out in 2005, I believe. It's actually not a box, it's just one DVD, with no video content. They are putting it out on DVD because the format can hold more music than a CD, so instead of a box of 6 or 7 CDs, it's all on one DVD. Thanks for the clarification. Putting this on a DVD is a pretty cool idea (even though my cd player has higher quality audio output).

Happy birthday!