On Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo

Danger Mouse is the handle for Brian Burton, who is a 28 year-old music producer that until recently wasn't too well-known amongst the general public, but who has recently been breaking hardcore into the mainstream with some great albums. He's originally a purveyor of hip-hop etc. but his music is actually more difficult than that to classify. It crosses over into a few funk and hip-hop-related genres, and all of it is very good. At the moment, he's probably most notorious for his illegal underground mashup of an acapella version of Jay-Z's The Black Album (amazon.com | amazon.ca) and samples from The Beatles' White Album (amazon.com | amazon.ca) known as The Grey Album which is unavailable in any store but which has proliferated widely throughout the net. I have a copy if anyone wants it -- let me know by commenting on this post.

At any rate, Danger Mouse is a sort of reclusive dude who's not widely photographed and whose given name, Brian Burton, was not even very well known until recently except by aficionados. And writer Chuck Klosterman wrote a great in-depth piece recently about Burton and his collaborator and soul singer extraordinaire Cee-Lo (formerly of rap group Goodie Mob), which I wanted to shout out to anyone here who is interested.

Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) as The Pink Panther	Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (Thomas Calloway) as The Pink Panther and Inspector Clouseau

Read The New York Times Article The D.J. Auteur, or download the fantastic pop track "Crazy" from the Gnarls Barkley album St. Elsewhere (amazon.com | amazon.ca).

Americans With No Abilities Act

Just saw this funny article through the Snopes.com LJ feed and it cracked me up. Can you imagine if Congress actually passed a law to provide financial benefits to people with no skills or ambition? Apparently the true source of the hoax was this 1998 article in The Onion. Brilliant. (Additionally, the LJ comments to this Snopes article are pretty funny, too.)

Actually, that might be more productive than the war in Iraq. Maybe I shouldn't laugh so hard.

on the eating of meat, via moby

This recent post on moby's blog inspired a huge debate on the LJ feed for it that made me think about my choices around eating meat.

(Incidentally, I've been really digging his blog and it's totally worth subscribing to. It's not super deep or anything, but occasionally it contains neat posts about the underground NY music scene and often it contains funny and relatively insightful rants about the U.S. government. Plus the guy's a great music producer. Remember Play?)

Here in Halifax, we're lucky to have a great farmer's market each week where we buy local produce of all types. There are also organic meat producers whom we try to patronize as much as possible, notwithstanding the fact that their prices are like twice or three times more than what we'd pay in the supermarket. But I like to think that we're paying the real cost of meat when we buy from those guys instead of the artificially lowered price of meat at the grocery stores. Plus we pay far less in fuel costs for each pound of locally-grown meat we eat as compared to the grocery store version, which is trucked in from God knows what agri-farm in Ontario or the US or something.

And that's kind of my point. When I buy local meat, I feel great about it because it tastes better (honest, it does -- noticeably) and I'm supporting a responsible local farmer. But I'd actually rather not buy meat at all, which would be even cheaper and better for you healthwise over the long term. No doubt that you can eat a healthy diet that includes meat, but a meatless diet is even healthier. Or can be, if you're mindful about it.

Something to consider, anyway. Along with these tidbits from the creator of the excellent Bizarro cartoon, Dan Piraro:

-- Animal Stuff (Vegan Index Page)
-- Why I'm Vegan
-- Are Humans Carnivores?