electric relaxation

a few months back, i saw a lamborghini gallardo (not this one) on the street. it was driven by a huge prick and equally rude girlfriend, but that's another story. of course, i asked archana if she'd be buy me one, and in our fanciful world, her objection is that it's not very eco-friendly. point taken ... "how about a tesla?"

if you don't know, the tesla is an electric car being manufactured by a startup in the bay area. tesla motors is one of the first new american car manufacturers in decades. the car is based on the design of the lotus elise and is estimated to go from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds. they car will set you back $109,000 though.

anyway, they recently opened the first showroom in los angeles and another in the bay area. the first few cars have rolled off the production lines and to customers. they say around 8 to 10 of the vehicles have been delivered already.

and already someone has crashed theirs! good job buddy. way to crash one of ten of THE hottest cars out there right now. you can read the article from wired.com here, but people are speculating that the crash was probably caused by aggressive driving and the fact that it's low profile and almost silent engine makes it hard to notice.

once/if they fix the car, they should not let that guy have it back (and give it to me, of course).

when you speak of the dopest MC ...

i thought about writing this post the other day when i was listening to pandora on my iphone and wu-tang's triumph came on. inspectah deck's first verse of that song is one of the best ever. i thought about writing this post again when later main source's live at the bbq came on. nas kicks off that songs (and his career) with a TIGHT verse. it could quite possibly be my favorite single verse of all time.

and then today, i'm listening to bumpy knuckles' new album, crazy like a foxxx (pretty good so far ... but i haven't listened to much yet), and i finally gave in and wrote the post (obviously). listening to bumpy knuckles (aka freddie foxxx) reminds me of his verse on gang starr's militia. his verse on that track is just ... hard ... fierce ... ferocious. it's one of those tracks that just kinda hits you.

all three of those songs (triumph, live at the bbq, and militia) are made by those single verses. without those verses, each of those songs would be nowhere as good as they are.

anyway, what other single verses should be added to this list?

overnight celebrity

came across this the other day when i browsing through wired.com. apparently i'm not that famous.




i scored a 30, compared to ?uestlove's 79 and obama's 9078.

what about you guys?

murs is better than your favorite rapper

some more free music for you guys by murs and 9th wonder. in my opinion, murs is one of the best mc's out there these days, and 9th wonder is one of the best producers. head over to okayplayer to get the free album ... or just click here.




also, as i'm writing, i'm watching nas on the colbert report. COMEDY! check it out if you can. nas is talking about his beef with fox news and o'reilly.

what's ya phone number

after spending waaay too much time in line, i finally got my new iphone. so far i LOVE the thing. it's awesome. i think more than any of the hardware changes, like the added gps and 3g connection, the new app store makes this thing great. i haven't had much chance to play with many of the apps much. here are my thoughts on some of them:

remote: remotely control itunes with your iphone. i've been wanting this for my ipod touch. works great.

loopt: location aware social network. i haven't been able to use it much since i don't know anyone else on it yet, other than terence.

pandora: i'm really excited about this one. listening to the pandora music network will be great on my walk to work. so far though, it's a bit slow to load, and sometimes while on the 3g network, it skips while buffering. i'm looking forward to be able to discover new music. unfortunately, since apple does not allow apps to run in the background, you cannot do anything else on the iphone while pandora is running.

yelp: it's great to be able to search reviews while on the go of restaurants, bar, etc around you.

google maps: the gps functionality is sweet. having maps on the go is even better.

urban spoon: randomly choose restaurants around you. fun gimmick but i wish it would let you filter by ratings too.

city transit nyc: map of the new york city subway system. it will even tell you which station is closest to you and if there are any service advisories.

midomi/shazam: similar apps. they record a snippet of sound and then will tell you what song that snippet is from. i've had better luck with shazam than with midomi but midomi is supposed to be better when there is more background noise. i showed arch, but she was skeptical at first when it picked up a stevie wonder song i had been playing since i just controlling the itunes with the iphone anyway. she put the thing to the test. it successful figured out some of the most obscure songs she could think of ... then she tried it with hindi and tamil songs, which shazam was also successful with! pretty cool. it even gives you youtube links to the songs if there are any.

bomberman: i love the bomberman series. this one is fun too; though, i'm still getting used to the controls.

phone saber: fun but pointless app that makes lightsaber sounds while you swing around your iphone.

cube runner: fun game, in which you navigate through a field of cubes, trying not to catch.

those are the ones i've been using the most so far. obviously push email is cool, as is having the internet constantly at your fingertips. i haven't used the phone part much yet but nothing to complain about at all in that department. some of the apps will crash every once in awhile. most crashes are minor and just take you back to the home screen; though, some force the iphone to restart. so far, the only apps which i've paid for are city transit nyc ($3) and bomberman ($8); there rest were free.

they did have trouble with porting my old 619 number, which means i have a new york 917 number for the next few days ... and have to carry around my old phone too ... sucks.

the show

Archana's mom was around for about a week around the 4th of July. While she was here we decided to go see a show on Broadway. We ended up seeing Spamalot, which is a Broadway adaptation of Month Python and the Holy Grail ... they call it "lovingly ripped off". If you're a fan of the movie, I'd definitely recommend. The show followed the movie pretty closely, at least for the first three quarters. The playbill even had fake info on a fake cast reminiscent of the fake intro credits on the movie (except with no llamas). Arch and her mom were confused with that,but I loved it. Some of the songs were too long and detracted from the overall comedy but oh well. The end of the show was a lot different from the movie. Overall, it was really good, and if you're a fan of the movie, you should go check it out. My biggest gripe: since the end was different, they left out the scene from the end of the movie where the knights have to answer three questions in order to pass. It's the scene were King Arthur asks, "African or European?" Without that scene, the entire first scene in which they're discussing swallows is pretty much pointless.

we gotta make a change

i'm pretty sure this post is unnecessary since all my subscribers probably already saw this post, but who cares ...

my cousin in canada has entered a video contest. all submissions are aimed at social change. she's already won $1000 and moved passed the regional rounds. she's now onto the national level.

she made the video with a friend of hers. the video is based on a poem she wrote herself. i think it's pretty good and far better than anything i could do.

part of the competition is based on an online vote. she is currently in second place, losing only by a few points. i may be a bit biased, but her video is much better than the silly song about landfills, which is currently winning.

anyway, go here and vote for her video "Change," eh.

organize an army that will make the devils nervous

i haven't really played video games, especially PC-based video games, much lately. i played halo 2 often and even played some halo 3, but for the most part, i don't really play that much anymore. i even sold my xbox 360 a few weeks ago since it was just sitting there as a glorified DVD player.

... but ... when i did play PC video games, the ones by blizzard (warcraft, starcraft, diablo) were always my favorites. i loved the diablo series and beat the first two versions. blizzard was also one of the first to do online gameplay well.

that being said, the new diablo game looks pretty damn cool. i probably won't buy it or probably even play, but it's still a bit tempting.

here's the cinematic trailer ...



... and a link to a video showing the gameplay.

along those same lines, i'm excited about the new wii game Star War: The Force Unleashed. i just think it'd be cool to swing a lightsaber around for a video game, though i'd probably break something in my apartment or hurt someone (or myself). i probably would have picked up a wii once i sold my xbox 360 if it could play DVDs. oh well, maybe in the future.

bomb wall street and make the stock market dip down

the stock is market is getting (been?) pretty ugly lately. the dow (DJI) looks like it might dip below 11000. this is starting to get painful. i'm hoping it'll turn around soon. luckily for me, not all my stocks follow the general direction of the market. some (PQ) kinda just keep going up; while, some (SDTH) just bounce all over the place.