Paul McCartney rides the subway, and this is how he responds when he is recognized by a fan. https://t.co/No5zPkmlcY https://t.co/V2UgcmpqHv

I almost just ate a street hot dog. Not from a vendor, just a man in the street. I stood in line for a second.

Really taking stock of my friendships as none of my friends seem to want to talk urgently about King Tut's alien space knife.

Sometimes I worry Musk is becoming Ray Kurzweil: https://t.co/eAlqdE9lpp

Big week! As promised, plenty of great things afoot this week. Enjoy the new Makeup and Vanity Set record and the debut Nightblonde record while you're at it.

• Hot Dog Etiquette - it's almost summer time, don't embarrass yourself by not following proper hot dog etiquette. Brought to you by the fine folks at the Hot Dog Council (seriously). Thank you Paul.
• Why You Vaping? - this is just the right amount of weird for me. Perfect.
• Bittersweet Gervais - this too! Just the right amount of clever and absolutely stupid.
• Call the Police - I mean... unbelievable.
• The Avalanches - Frankie Sinatra - regardless of your feelings on The Avalanches as a band, you must respect that they took 16 years between albums. Why have a sophomore slump when you can just wait long enough to basically make a whole new first album?
• Jonathan Wolff on E! News - the man behind the Seinfeld theme gives some into his creations. This guy is delightful.

If you need a little more, I suggest watching this reverse Radiohead video that is oddly pleasant or this little story about videogame easter eggs which is equally enjoyable in different ways.

tldr: I'm helping this band put out this record today and I think the vinyl version is beautiful and I think the songs are just the right amount of 80's nostalgia, pop harmonies and goth drama. You really should listen to it.

If you've been reading along, you likely remember me telling you about Nightblonde for awhile now. They are a retro-future inspired shoegaze pop band that is releasing their debut Numbers via yk records - and today is the official day of the albums release. You can hear it in Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp or any other streaming service you enjoy. More importantly, you can finally get your hands on the vinyl version of the album. If you can't tell, the cover is a die-cut configuration that reveals the inner record sleeve and the milky white record within.

I love that the band works hard to have a cohesion in their look and sound - dressing in all white or all black at each performance and making sure the songs, while personal, still touch on Aldous Huxley like dystopian future vibes. They manage to do all that and not be pretentious, not always an easy balance to achieve.

Please enjoy.

Have you seen the story making the rounds lately that King Tut had a space dagger? The Egyptian King was buried with a ceremonial dagger that was recently confirmed to be made of iron from a meteor... from space! The study investigates the makeup of the dagger with 11 other metal meteorites and found the same impurities. I'm no space scientist but the evidence seems a little loose to fully confirm that it's definitely from a space meteor but what do I know? I'm happy to embrace the study, because King Tut Space Dagger is a fantastic string of words.

1986, the first known virus

lulu via @plainhuman

Hillary is giving the best speech of the campaign so far. She's going to beat him. https://t.co/c1vXXh9nNc

pretty silly on the whole but some excellent tracks selected

Makeup and Vanity Set joined forces with independent game developer Stellar Jockeys to score their independent game release, Brigador. It's available on Steam and is the first video game MAVS has scored.

Volume I of the music from the game is being released on limited edition through my very own yk records. It's available digitally right now and the vinyl can be pre-ordered right here. If you've been paying attention, you know that Makeup and Vanity Set has been extremely busy lately. In the past two months he's released two records - Wavehymnal and HIT TV - that manage to be engaging but very different sonically. This newest album continues that trend. The music is the perfect backdrop for a videogame set in a dystopian future filled with frenzied fighting.

Pre-Order the Vinyl, it will go fast.

I have been a fan of San Francisco artist Ferris Plock for a long time. Over the years his style has grown and expanded from weird skater characters to weird samurai characters to weird house monsters and beyond. His latest project is a collaboration with Day Dreamers Unlimited in the form of a book, appropriately entitled Food Faces. What began as a creative undertaking to convince his kids to have fun eating has blossomed into a ridiculously fun collection of images. Oh, and a Coloring Book and a placemat version. Because it's for Kids!

To describe it doesn't do it justice. The faces are surprisingly intricate and uproariously fun. Yea, that's right, uproariously. You can order it from the Day Dreamers Unlimited Shop right now.

electrical engineer astounded by tesla coil. love his befuddlement.

Really enjoying this Nightblonde interview with frontman Ryan Breegle in which he explains a bit of background about the band and their intentional influences. This bit covers just about everything in perfect summation:

Lyrically, we are fascinated with 20th century authors who wrote about the future as they saw it, usually a warning for society to change its ways before the world destroys itself. And I don't know if anyone really listened. Writers like Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, many others - they foresaw things that have become reality for us today. Surveillance, genetic testing, reliance on technology, basic human rights being threatened, the list goes on. Looking at the future through the lens of the past is a big theme for us.

Musically, the songwriting of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine; you could strip away the effects and you still have very well crafted songs. We love the hypnotic repetition of Neu!, which went on to be furthered by Stereolab. We are very moved by the harmonies of lots of 1960's groups, The Free Design, Mamas and The Papas, The Byrds, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young. I also love incorporating strange sounds into the songs, very Radiophonic Workshop or like the French band Air would always do. And we adore reverb and delay.

But design and image are also such an important part of what we do. It is important for us to have a uniform look on stage. Megan works very hard to have all our publicity threaded with a specific Orwellian voice. And Jill came up with the cover art for our debut record Numbers using dots and dashes from Morse code which ended up having a very striking Factory Records / Peter Saville look to it.

The debut album Numbers will be available for streaming on June 3rd and their beautiful limited edition vinyl will start shipping the same day.

There's an unfortunate hurdle to the portfolio of Ryan Converse, aka Cloaking, as he deals in large scale projections and installations, an undertaking that can't be fully appreciated unless you're actually in it. Check his Instagram or this Autolux Colbert performance to get a better of idea of what he's bringing to the table but, on the whole, go find a way to actually see it.

To be perfectly honest, much of Javier Martin's work embodies what I don't like about contemporary art; an overly heavy handed message masked as something clever in which the medium (high end art) makes the message completely impotent.

But that's only to say that he does have quite a bit of work that I am enjoying. The Blindness Light series of neon portraits, this mixed collage series and this oil collage series are great,. Lots of simple compositions, great textures and, best of all, no heavy handed message.

For the last few years, Pirates Press has been my Go-To manufacturer for my vinyl needs. They have competitive pricing, relatively quick turnaround times and, on the whole, excellent results with their creations. Like most vinyl plants in the country, they deal with a very large volume of orders and have likely seen every combination of craziness you can throw at packaging for an album.

So, with that in mind, it's an honor to be featured on their Record of the Week Blog for the forthcoming Nightblonde record. They were impressed enough with the die-cut packaging and overall look that they posted about it. I'm not saying said post is going to move 1,000 units but it feels good to be involved with something that gets some proper recognition.*

* please note, the band designed the packaging. this is not me tooting my own horn. they did a phenomenal job.

This collection of battle sites a century later shows the literal impact of war on the planet; remnants of trenches dug, bombs dropped and lives lost. Seeing as how Memorial Day was yesterday, sometimes it's good to take a moment to reflect on the insanity we put ourselves through and how long that sticks around.