Belated 24 Update

I think the score is now 17-5-5, but I was a little out of it during the show.

There’s this one scene where Jack switched back and forth between “we don’t have time” “you’re going to have to trust me” and “we don’t have a choice” like twice.

It was really great.

These Hamsters Welcome You to Princeton, NJ

Not really, but had the store been open I might have been tempted to purchase them.

It turns out my flu-like bug was strep throat and the fever was my body fighting the bacteria. Or at least that’s what it had turned in to by the time I went to the CSLC. As usual, that trip was quick and successful and cheap compared with its American counterpart. Within two hours I’d been dianosed, gotten the prescriptions and purchased the relevant drugs for a fraction of what they would have cost in the U.S. Apart from a slightly runny nose, I am now pretty much 100% and digging out of the hole I fell into while ill.

All this was made more complicated by the fact that I was supposed to get on a plane Wednesday afternoon to go give a talk. I’m not sure what the standard thing to do is when a guest speaker gets ill. Do you bail on the talk even though the institution has paid for your trip already and everything is already scheduled? I mean, I know of tons of cases where people have bailed, but always thought of it as horribly rude. Anyway, for my part the doctor cleared me to get on a plane and I had some high-octane decongestant to go with my penicillin so it was relatively painless.

Princeton, at least the part I was in, strikes me as a sleepy little college town. The place feels more high-end liberal arts college than “university” in terms of its architecture and layout and emphasis on undergraduates. The undergraduates seem to rule the place and one even told me that there is a whole series of jokes about the graduate students there because they are so marginalized. Anyway, the people I met were very nice and my trip was lovely and everything was very posh. I stayed in a converted mansion that was donated to the university by “a rich professor.” (The phrase “rich professor” is not one I can say I’ve really ever heard before, but it was used a couple times on my stay.) The room was great, and directly downstairs was a library where they put out drinks for the guests each night (pardon the poor camera phone picture). Fancy fancy.

Among the highlights of my trip was a trip to the Princeton Record Exchange, which is supposedly the model for the store in High Fidelity — complete with incredibly socially awkward clerks, as this conversation illustrates (imagine their voices as slightly shaky, or a less assured version of the uptalking one finds among the average anglo Canadian male under a certain age):

“So, I was like ‘there’s only one copy of this disc left’ and these two girls were like ‘we’ll just have to fight over it’ and I was like ‘I’d like to see that.'”

“Dude, you said that? You really said that?”

“Huhhuh. Yeah. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

Anyway, I did pick up some recordings, and somehow a few capsule reviews seems like the way to end this entry:

Sufjan Stephens, Illinois — I know, I’m late, but it’s a very nice album. Now will someone please tell me why this isn’t the same thing as progressive rock?

Goldfrapp Supernature — Extremely catchy. Carrie really likes it too.

Prefuse 73 Reads the books — two great tastes in one. How did I not hear about this when it came out?

For Squirrels, Example — it was in the bargain bin, and it was a rock band with “squirrel” in their name. How could I resist. Unfortunately, it’s not that awesome. They’re not terrible or anything, just not terribly interesting.

Still Sick, Still Sucks

I’ve been in this awful streak of can’t-miss meetings and bureaucratic deadlines combined with, well, being ill. (There was a deceptive moment of recovery this weekend, but it was all LIES!). Tomorrow, I travel. We will return to normal blogging shortly. Our apologies for the interruption.

Sick Sucks

Sorry to be relatively silent in this space of late. It’s been a doozer of a couple weeks since my return and today, when I finally could let up and start to catch up, I woke up with a sore throat. Everyone around me seems to have gotten sick lately, so I can’t blame a particular person. But there is a Canadian angle to this story.

You see, we’ve been hearing about this ColdFX stuff, how great it is, and how you can’t get it in the U.S. Which immediately got me interested since I very much enjoy consuming things in Canada that aren’t legal in the United States. The bottle even says “proudly Canadian.” Carrie volunteered to run out and get some while I took a nap this afternoon and I have now begun dosing. At this point, I’ll even take a placebo effect, please.

That said, a quick websearch suggests the stuff may in fact be legal in the U.S. Here’s a review of it on amazon.com.

This is a wonderful product, I used it last time I had a cold and I fell much better the next day, when I have a cold I am useally sick for 6 to 7 days when I took cold-fx I was fine in 3 days, now I take it everyday and I havent have a cold in more than a year and I live in Canada.
It is a natural product and it boosts the immune sytem.

I love the “I haven’t had a cold in more than a year and I live in Canada.” That’s beautiful.

Advice: Name the Podcast

Well, the time has come to give the podcast a name so that we can finish with the revisions of the blog. The problem, naturally, is that I’m not yet sure about the concept. Or rather, I was sure at first but now it’s evolved.

The original concept (and still the core) was a monthly podcast that would consist of interviews with people I encountered in my travels. I’d focus on material recently out or work in progress. The original title I had in mind was “Cultural Studies Radio” but the problem is that a) I don’t want to be limited to inteviewing people who “do cultural studies” and b) Carrie hates the title. Says it sound “too professional.” She’s probably right.

But lately I’ve been thinking that there is no reason to limit the content in this way. The interviews are still the core concept, but perhaps I will want to stretch out a bit into other areas. It could be a venue for quick one-off musical experiments (and perhaps inspire me to take recording and mixing less seriously) and it could also follow the more eclectic interests like this blog does. So what to call it? Should I care that it be identifiable by subject matter to third parties? I guess the episode titles will take care of that.

Below is a brainstorm of titles, including some lame ones, but I’m at a loss. I’m not bad at academic titles but at a loss in more creative realms. Suggestions welcome. Mike, my old bandmate, came up with the idea for “sterneworks,” which has served me well. I like the idea of the word “radio” appearing in the title but I’m not wedded to it. If you’re shy, email me some names. I could use all the help in the world.

Radio Super Bon (pronounced with my bad fake Quebecois accept “Rahdio Su-pair Bohn”)
Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples
Thumpasorus Radio (I like the word “thumpasorus, what’s it to you?)
Imagine This Is Radio
Mental Radio
The Consensus Medium
Craniosonography
Wireless Imagination, Rewired
Rewired Radio (or Radio Rewired?)
In Your Auditory Headspace
A Pure Organism of Radio Sensations (from Marinetti — has a great opening tag line “Hi, I’m Jonathan Sterne and you’re a pure organism of radio senssations”)

Okay, I’m cooked for the night but there is my start.