48HR Magazine Wins a Knight Award; And the Top 10 of 2010 (so far)

Blastees, It's been sixty days since the last heater. Sorry. Summer has blurred into one huge L.A., New York, S.F., and Tall Trees trip in a sweaty white t-shirt and a $6 pair of wayfarers.

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48 Hour Magazine, for whom I profiled Shit My Dad Says author Justin Halpern, just won a Knight Award for innovation. Which means me and artist Conor Buckley sort of won a Knight Award. So go us. 48 Hour Magazine is now called Longshot Magazine, so CBS will stop suing us. Please buy a copy. The magazine is very good and I will spend your money on rent and food.

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New York Times affiliate and San Francisco startup publication The Bay Citizen has published a piece of mine on local rapper DaVinci. Make sure to check that out, then come to the 'mo for chicken and waffles and jazz and rock and rap.

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This piece for the East Bay Express on San Francisco's first-ever pot brownie and chronic milkshake regulations is both funny and informative.

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Western Red Dead Redemption has stirred the desert in me. Split open my ribs and the heat melts faces.

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Thee Oh Sees have a great new album. And speaking of which, here's my Ten Favorite LPs, and Singles of 2010, so far (subject to revision/retraction).

Crocodiles - Sleep Forever

Baths - Cerulean

Seu Jorge & Almaz - Self-titled

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

Oh No - Ethiopium

The National - High Violet

The Roots - How I Got Over

Eminem - Recovery

Tristan Perich - 1-Bit Symphony

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Songs

The Dream "Make Up Bag" Love King

Crocodiles "All My Hate And My Hexes Are For You" Sleep Forever

Seu Jorge and Almaz "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" Self-titled

LCD Soundsystem "All I Want" This Is Happening

The National "Sorrow" High Violet

Oh No "P*ssy" Ethiopium

Flying Lotus "Cosmogramma" Cosmogramma

Bill Elm and Woody Jackson "Triggernometry" Red Dead Redemption Soundtrack

Daedelus "Order of the Golden Dawn" Righteous Fists of Harmony

Tristan Perich - "Movement 4" 1-Bit Symphony

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Hit me up if you want any music and I'll send you a mixtape.

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There's probably other stuff I'm forgetting, but I just wanted to say 'Hi, and thanks for reading.' Now go out there and do some tubin'.

Wired: The Mechanics of Hostage Rescue

Coming out for subscribers now and on newstands very soon: a cool look at the mechanics of rescuing hostages. When Wired asked me to do this piece for an entire package on 'how complicated things are done', I thought it had pretty long odds of ever seeing the light of day. I mean, getting special forces operators to talk shop isn't easy. But, you never know until you ask. And the worst response I ever got was "no." (And now I have U.S. Navy Special Warfare Command Public Affairs in my rolodex. Which is nice.)

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In other news, experimental startup 48HR Magazine published an excerpt of my interview with Shit My Dad Says author Justin Halpern. Support bold journalism by buying 48HR Mag Issue Zero online for $10. It's very good, and I get paid according to the mag's overall sales. Plus CBS has threatened to sue us for allegedly infringing on its "48 Hours Mystery" trademark. So the mag won't be available for long. (Lastly, the full Justin Halpern interview is at Gelf Magazine - with expert illustration from Conor Buckley.

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I'm very busy covering the gold rush on legal dope in California for a new East Bay Express column. It's called 'Legalization Nation' and it's a 'Most Popular' read every day, plus it's getting syndicated across California. Make sure to check it out.

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The Onion A.V. Club ran some more of my Flying Lotus reporting. And I reviewed the album for The Dope Report.

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Some new stuff should be out in San Francisco Magazine this week, so buy one of those too.

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Coming up: some killer stories on Synthetic Biology; the Geopolitics of World Cup 2010, Green Day: Rock Band, Slavoj Zizek's new book Living in the End Times and much, much more. I'm going to be in L.A. for E3 in early June, and NYC for my birthday in late June. Hope to see ya'll there. Thanks for listening.

Meet Thom Yorke's opener: Flying Lotus; cool Behavioral Economics & the hot iPad

Today in Rolling Stone, LA's Flying Lotus. Yes.

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Today in Plentii: The neuroscience of buying an iPad.

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Thanks, team.

South By Southwest 2010: 'That's a wrap!'

The hoarseness of my voice and the sniffles in my nose mean I've done it again: four consecutive days and nights of drinking and smoking, while watching 35 or so bands, and shouting while doing said drinking and smoking.

Yes, they call it SXSW.

Let's examine the links, shall we? The overview; the Spit Brothers; The DreadBass Soundsystem; Eprom; more photos; Rogue Wave; The Mother Hips; The Heavenly States; Mistah F.A.B., the Jacka and The Pack; Speedwolf; Serengeti; Tamaryn; plus the unstoppable Smoky Robinson opening for Sharon Jones (pictured, above) and that's just the stuff I've already written about. Not bad, eh?

You'd be amazed how many music writers and editors weren't there, though. Major names for major publications couldn't make it, ostensibly because their publisher has no dough. A mass culling is upon music journalism. Those that made it to Austin this year were the survivors, the scrappers, the independent operators like me: who do it on the cheap, and with the help of Craigslist. Thanks to the East Bay Express for fronting some dough for this project and Hummingbird Ink for the hospitality. More post-SXSW news to come.

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Wired ran a profile this month on Scott Weaver, penned by me. I'm stoked to be able to tell this story for the mag, and the photos and video are simply incredible. I smile every time I see Weaver's work.

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Plentii ran my piece on How Gen Y is the next great Civic Generation. Optimistic stuff.

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The first doctor in California to lose his license for recommending cannabis earned himself a feature by me. Turns out he was a perv to boot.

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And I report on how the UC Berkeley Art Museum planned to spend $200 million demolishing an historic landmark, only to reconsider the plan when funding never showed up. A Great Recession sparing a Depression-era building from the wrecking ball? That's called poetry, people.

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It's the second day of Spring in San Francisco, which is the best time of the year here. The flowers are blooming. The days are long again. And I hope all ya'll are feeling less congested than I am.

USB albums; NASCAR Hippies; y el Inferno

Props to artist Mr. Bingo for the killer art on my Wired piece: Plug and Play: USB Albums We’d Like to See. Lols.

Also, thanks to Mark Bechtel of Sports Illustrated for the Gelf piece: NASCAR in the Rear-View Mirror. Hopefully we sold a few books, it's a good read.

Lastly: Hell, and why we need it.

Ciao.

Klosterman V, and a New Mag - 'Plentii'

It's poetic that the richest nation in the world, is also a nation of financial illiterates.

Among the remedies: Plentii, a new web publication from my colleague Tranq Jones and friends. Among the several dozen launch articles and videos this week, three from me on: The Office and Existentialism; How The Student Loan Industry is Raping the Future; and American Health Care as a Retarded Mutant Child.

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For Gelf Magazine: Chuck Klosterman and I chop it up about performance enhancement, the boring Olympics, and how college sports mutated Universities.

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UK producer Bonobo's new album Black Sands is playing a lot on my desk.

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Cool fog blankets San Francisco this morning. It smells like Winter has broken. No doubt, the snow is melting in Tahoe, dammit. But new publications are starting up. New ideas poke their head out. There is clearly more to come.

'Village Voice' Pazz and Jop 2009 Results [Shocker]

So the Village Voice in New York came out with its annual Music Critics Poll. Yup, I'm up in it, with 696 other fellow critics. We gave points to 1,934 albums from 1,838 artists and here's who rose to the top. I sort of like the balance between AnCo and Jay-Z. This may be because I am the 168th most centric music critic in the country, a little less centric than Rolling Stone's Caryn Ganz, but much less eccentric than former VV editor Robert Christgau. Don't know how to take that. ...

Update: J. Fleuti notes I have moved to #187, which makes me 187 on the muthafu@#in Jop.

From the Music Desk: Snoop, Spoon, Blakroc, New Villager, Ursula Scherrer

Link to download Grand Theft Audio:3.3. (Right click and Save As)
Playlist link. Thanks to guests New Villager, The Lab and audience and Pirate Cat.

From the Music Desk: South Rakkas Crew, Dark Night of the Soul, Vampy Weekend ...

People of Planet Earth:
We've moved to the 8 p.m time slot.
It should be a little smoother next week.

Right click and 'Save As' this link to download the 2-hour radio show.
Click this link to look at the playlist.
Click here to see Usher Vs. Goat. That is all.

From the Music Desk: Giant Robot's Philip Lumbang, LoCura, and Bootie! calls

Right click this link to download 'Grand Theft Audio' episode 1 volume 2. It's an 80 meg, 2-hour .mp3. Put it on your iPhone. Playlist pending. Special thanks to Giant Robot, Philip Lumbang, LoCura, and Bootie!