Don’t egg me on

I’m starting to go off eggs. Perhaps it’s just a phase, but after a while of having my fried eggs sunny-side-up, I’m becoming more and more conscious of the fact that they’re, like, totally zygote-y. I’ve been creeping myself out about the fact I’m eating the unborn.

It’s okay if they’re scrambled though.

Some interesting egg facts:

• A fresh egg will sink in water, but a stale one won’t
• White shelled eggs are produced by hens with white feathers and white ear lobes. Brown shelled eggs are produced by hens with red feathers and red ear lobes
• Egg yolks are one of few foods that naturally contain Vitamin D
• An egg shell has as many as 17,000 pores over its surface
• There was once nine yolks found in one chicken egg
• The laying hen lays an average of 257 eggs a year

Sources: here, here, and here.

McCained

“Rove is not a genius, or even very clever: He’s totally and completely immoral. It doesn’t take genius to claim, as Rove ludicrously did last fall, that it was the Democrats in Congress and not George W. Bush who pushed the Iraq War resolution in 2002. It doesn’t take brains to compare a triple-amputee war veteran to Osama bin Laden; you just have to be a mean, rotten cocksucker.” – Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

There are a lot of ifs — if the voters turn out, if last-minute racist fear doesn’t suddenly kick in, if the Republicans don’t rig the polls beyond even their last world-ruining efforts (read that, by the way, and you can only draw one conclusion: the presidency was stolen) — but it’s starting to look like Barack Obama might just be the next president. He’s even halvsies with McCain in red Indiana and he’s convinced people his tax plan isn’t a money-grab. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign fuckwits are showing their true, self-serving, cynical colours and turning on each other, racing to be the first to scream “Not my fault!” (country first, my left testicle). By the latest count, Obama is almost 150 electoral college votes ahead.

Excuse me for a moment while I say: thank fucking fuck.

Okay, so the chief reason Obama has a shot at the White House is that the economy is shitting all over its own face. But that aside, it is so satisfying to see the Rovian tactics of smearing, fear-mongering, hyper-partisanship, caricaturing, race-baiting, sound-biting, lowest-common-denominatoring, and anally-raping the truth, failing.

Just one of the things I hate about those tactics — and this is a point Taibbi makes in that story — is that they’ve transformed what was once widely considered a reasonable human being into a detestable, hollow, win-at-all-costs political monster. They’ve also brought us the dangerous cartoon characters that are George W and Sarah Palin — ridiculous cardboard cut-outs that give nasty, genocidal policies a homey, apple-pie face.

But while the story of the moment is the McCain campaign meltdown, when will attention turn to just how brilliant and unfaltering the Obama campaign has been? Yeah, I’m sounding like a fan-boy, but can you think of a time or a moment when Obama has truly fucked up? He’s deflected the blows, laughed off the smears, kept his cool, and kept smiling. When Obama smiles, it looks like it’s his default position. When there’s a smile on McCain’s face, it looks as if someone’s pasted it on hours before and it’s starting to peel away at the corners. (And yes, I know he had cancerous mole removed from the side of his face — but it’s the seeming lack of emotionality behind it that makes it forced).

The reason it’s so hard to dislike Obama is that he does very little to give you the chance to. The best his detractors can come up with is that he’s smug and professorial. I don’t agree with the former accusation and I kind of like the latter. I like the fact that a potential president is intellectual and can explain things to people.

Strange that it should seem so novel.

Links and likeable stuff

Things I like all over the Asian internets.

I enjoy this funny man with a nice suit and good hairs. Always he does make me laugh.

At Sidereel.com, you can naughtily watch all your favourite TV shows for free. My favourite one is this rip-off a mockumentary that follows a bunch of normal people through the most mundane moments of their everyday existence. It’s not the British version. It’s not better or worse. It just is. And it’s brilliant. So, fuck you Hulu for being so pretty but so not available to people outside the US. And thank you Sidereel for not getting busted yet.

Slate, you weren’t giving me enough minute-by-minute updates of the US election campaign, so I had to add Politico to my magazine bookmarks. That’s okay, Slate, you’re still cool. Just that I’m seeing this new news bitch on the side.

Stereogum, I don’t know how I’d fake being a competent music editor without you.

Back home, the New Zealand election is shaping up to be far more interesting than I could ever have hoped for. Just as well my buddy is over-seeing a kick-ass site that covers it all. That shout out was brought to you by a couple of CDs furnished to me by said buddy. On the CDs: So So Modern (“DIY till we suck”!), Luke Buda, Rhian Sheehan, Coco Solid, and more. I like. Classic new New Zealand music.

Label bashing

In the spirit of promoting stories we’ve run in Time Out Hong Kong recently, may I introduce to you a serious look at the fast-dying big label-led music industry in Hong Kong.

To me, it’s astonishing how reticent the industry has been about the ever-increasing influence of digital. Like elsewhere in the world, for too long the major labels have seen digital as a threat and have spent resources trying to fight it. If they had instead embraced it, invested in it, learned about it, understood it, then perhaps they could have joined in on the fun and taken some bold, necessary steps to saving their business. At least, they could have prolonged their stay in a well-appointed hospice.

Or perhaps they just prefer to die sick and lonely deaths while a new generation sweeps over their heads.

Music issue’d!

My blog has been quiet of late because of the work I’ve been doing on putting together the just-released music issue of Time Out Hong Kong.

We ranked the top 20 musicians in Hong Kong. Check them out, and argue over them, here. Before you vent, consider that we selected our top 20 according to the following criteria:

1. Sheer talent

2. Individuality

3. Promise for the future

4. Career achievements

5. X factor

Also, we chose five for each category: Cantopop; jazz; classical; and indie.

The ones who we were pained to omit are listed here. Go ahead and argue over them as well.

In the meantime, we’re hosting a special showcase of four of the top 20 acts, which you can read about here (assuming you’re on Facebook). It’s on Wednesday, October 22, at Backstage, and it’s free goddammit. So show up.

Soon after, Time Out is involved in a wicked gig at Grappa’s featuring the indie pop deliciousness of Hedgehog and the iconic gloom of veteran punks Re-Tros.

Do them both with me and I will be your friend.

Efterklang: I bought the T-shirt

Hong Kong was luckier than it knew on Wednesday night. On the National Day holiday, the Danish band Efterklang played to a seated audience of about 150 people in an auditorium in HITEC as part of the mini NOTCH festival.

It is not often that Hong Kong is treated to outstanding indie bands. But it is an absolute rarity that we should be visited by such an inventive, energetic, and wonderfully talented group of musicians as Efterklang. Sounding like an amalgamation of Arcade Fire, Au, Bodies of Water, and Animal Collective, Efterklang brought us multi-layered harmonies, melodically-textured samples, double-kit drumming, strings and trumpet in a six-piece orgy of fantastica.

The audience, 47 percent of which had literally been asleep during the excellent but quite frankly slumberly minimalist set by Sweden’s Tape, burst into life for the Klang, clapping in time above their heads, hollering at break-downs, whooping in between songs, and singing aloud for call-back vocal parts.

Efterklang were alive and full of playful, brilliant spirit. My hands were tingling with excitement after their 60-minute set, which seemed to pass only too quickly.

“We’ve changed our set to play a few more songs,” said the lead singer, “because you’ve been a very generous audience”.

If only more people were there to see them.

Watch these videos, Mirador and Caravan. Then buy the T-shirt.