Posts tagged “tangentbot”

The hits, they just keep on a-comin’! My übertalented pal tangentbot has released his second album in the span of scant months:

I’ve been looking forward to this album. This is the album comprised of his “One Song a Week” project, which entailed him writing one song every week for 40 weeks. That’s right — there are 40 songs on this album. Most of them are between one and two minutes long, so each one is like a beautiful little haiku of electronic IDM goodness. I urge you to buy it from Amazon MP3. My favorite songs are “a Quiet Room” and “Video Gabe.”

Plus, that cover art is really, really cool. I dig it.

Link of the Month:
Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty
An absolutely charming blog. Here’s the premise: Illustrator/Cartoonist Aaron Zenz has several children, and he encourages them to draw. A lot. They even participate in Illustration Friday and all that. For the past three years Aaron has posted over 400 drawings that his children have made. It’s fantastic to see the progression of skills and imagination. He recently had an open invitation wherein other illustrators could re-create some of his kids’ drawings, and the results are fantastic.

Album of the Month:
tangentbot: Cyclops’ Lament
Hey, I know this guy! This is actually a re-mastered re-release of his album of several years ago, but with a couple of changes. These newly-mixed versions are delightfully more crisp and deep, and there’s a very good remix of “8-bit Misfit.” Hey guys: listen up. This is good IDM. Good. Okay? Okay. Take a wissen with this handy MP3 player here:

DVD of the Month:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
I never watched this show when it was on because the commercials made it look like a lame rip-off of Dragon Ball Z and/or One Piece. But I was mistaken. Unlike those shows, this one is actually good. One thing I greatly appreciated was its sense of deadline: pretty early on in the series the characters learn that they have to accomplish the series goal by a set date that is rather disturbingly soon. It really gives the series a sense of urgency as well as the feeling that it is actually building towards a real ending. And, indeed, the show lasted for three seasons (or “books” as the show calls them) and told one full story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending that happened when it was supposed to happen, not because they ran out of stories or the show got canceled. Also, the characters grow and change slowly but surely, and there is never a single mention of “power levels” or “powering up.”
Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 1 Collection
Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 2 Collection
Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 3 Collection

Yesterday (Thursday) we woke up to snow on the ground. This was no big surprise considering that it was snowing Wednesday evening. It was kind of a surprise that it was snowing at all this close to April, though. This never happens ’round these parts. I got Carrie off to work nonetheless, and from there she left for Portland for the weekend (boo).

After work I came home, had a sammitch, fed Suki, took care of a couple of sundries around the house, then I headed up to Seattle. It started to snow again while I was on my way up there!

I hung out with Sandy a bit and then we went and got Mathias and proceeded to have dinner at Taki’s Mad Greek. This has got to be one of my favorite Greek restaurants evar. Especially the Oven Baked Feta appetizer. And their pork is cooked just right: not too much, but not too little. And everything just tastes really, really tasty.

I also took a photo of the decorations in the men’s room:

On the left there we have a completely nude Poseidon, but on the right we have Theseus covering his privates with a leaf! I wonder why. Does he not measure up to Poseidon? I just thought it was funny.

After dinner we parked near their apartment and then walked through the bitter cold (though it wasn’t snowing at that time) to Neumos, where we met up with Jason and his wife Jennifer, as well as Geoff and Lisa!

Why were we there? Why, to see Busdriver, of course! Look:

The man moves as fast as he raps; it’s difficult to get a good picture of him. Just look at the blur lines on his left hand in those pictures!

When we got to Neumos we were basically the only people there. Everybody else was in the attached bar. When Busdriver took the stage we were still practically the only people there, but Busdriver plunged ahead anyway. A handful of other people trickled in after he started (30 to 40). Last time I saw him the place was packed so we all thought it was weird, until we figured out that this was a 21-up show, and he usually plays to all-ages at Neumos. I guess only the kids like the Busdriver.

Anyhoo, it was a great set, and he did that cover of Man, It’s So Loud in Here by They Might Be Giants that I really like. He played for just under an hour. We all met him over at his merch table, where Sandy bought the last copy of his rarities CD. He told me he’d go to his car and see if he could find another, but I wasn’t able to catch him again before we left. I talked to him a bit about that TMBG song he does, and he said it was pretty old and he was thinking of retiring it. He’s very shy and awkward off the stage. Hopefully he’ll have another copy next time he comes into town.

Sandy kinda creeped him out by showing him a picture of the Busdriver Bot magnet that she made.

An hour after he left the stage the “main attraction,” the Gray Boy All-Stars took the stage, and suddenly the theater was swarmed with frat boys, bros, and similar early-to-mid 30s types (and the kind of women who hang out with them). They were a jazzy kind of quintet, with drums, bass, guitar, sax, and keyboards. They were all very skilled musicians, but it was just not what we were in the mood for, and also didn’t really sound like what they offer on their MySpace page. They sounded like they were straight out of 1985. Seriously! They even looked it.

At one point Sandy turned to me and said something to the effect that she felt like they were a band that the Huxtables would go and watch on the Cosby show. Mathias summed it up best by saying they were “Sportscoat and Bluejeans” jazz. They didn’t go with Busdriver at all, so it wasn’t a big surprise that none of their fans came out to see Busdriver go crazy.

We left after four or so songs. Jason gave us a ride back to S&M’s apartment, and from there I drove on home.

You can read Mathias’s “version” of events over at his website. He’s got some really crazy pictures up, too.

This story kinda starts a while back, quite a ways before Christmas.

I was up in Seattle hanging out with Tangetnbot‘s wife, waiting for him to get off work. She was prepping a dinner of pork katsu with panko bread crumbs and tonkatsu sauce. It ended up being delicious.

Then in her Christmas stocking(s), Carrie received both a bottle of tonkatsu sauce and a package of panko.

So a while after Christmas Carrie & I made chicken katsu for dinner with equally delicious results. The sauce and the crumbs were both from the inimitable Uwajimaya up in Seattle. I love Uwajimaya, but Seattle is just a bit too far away for a casual jaunt out to get some Japanese foodstuffs. So I started wondering if there were any Asian markets closer by.

A quick search told me that there was a place called East Asia Super Market (note “Super Market,” not “Supermarket”) just a stone’s throw across I-5 from us. Tacoma Mama gives it a sterling review (Tacoma Mama is, by the way, a great resource for things in Tacoma), so I’m curious to go check it out sometime soon. I doubt it can be anywhere near as cool as Uwajimaya, but at least it’s something, eh?

By the way, Tangentbot is posting some tasty recipes on his site if you wanna make some good food. He hasn’t posted a katsu recipe yet, though, so here’s what Carrie & I did!

Chicken Katsu 

INGREDIENTS

Chicken cutlets (or chicken breast halves, pounded until they’re as thin as cutlets)

All-purpouse flour

1 egg, beaten

Panko bread crumbs

Salt & Pepa to taste

Tonkatsu sauce

DIRECTIONS 

1. Set up three shallow dishes: 1 with flour in it, 1 with a beaten egg in it, and 1 with the panko in it.
2. Season the chicken to taste.
3. Dredge the chicken through the flower to coat, then through the egg, and then through the panko until it is thoroughly coated with bread crumbs
4. Heat about ¼” of oil in a pan over medium to medium-high heat. Fry the chicken in the oil 3-4 minutes per side (until golden brown and cooked through)
5. Let the chicken rest for several minutes, then slice on a diagonal (like you’re julienning a carrot).
6. Serve on a bed of steamed white rice and drizzle with tonkatsu sauce (you can add purple cabbage to the rice for even more authenticity)