I'm sad that this came out after I put out the Christmas Podcast because, well, because it is so awesome. The Hives & Cyndi Lauper? I mean The Hives will forever be everyone's "new favourite band" and in the words of the great Drew Salisbury "Cyndi Lauper.......fuck yeah." Put the two together and what do you get? One awesome christmas song. So although the stars did not align properly enough to get the song on that podcast, those of you who actually read this blog can enjoy the song on it's very own via the magic of youtube. So sit back with some Nog, put your feet up by the fire, and enjoy. (listener beware: explicit lyrics. earmuffs, children).
Friday, December 12, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
It's the holiday robot of funk
Merry Holidays to all, and to all see you latro.
-B
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
I have two great friends
Their names are Sarah Pumroy and Nichole Graf. Pictured above are the contents of the package I recieved from these two lovely ladies yesterday. As you can see, the box contained home made pumpkin bars, dead leaves from New York City (only about a quarter of the leaves are pictured), and a sick-ass drawing of a coulpe of 'pilgrimz' declaring deliciousness. Not pictured are the letters I recieved from each of them (because they're private mfers). This post will be short, the main point of it was to point out these two fantastic people and their thoughtful act (not to mention the chedder they spent on said package (shiz was expensive)). It's also to make the rest of you think "what have you done for me (ben) lately?" Nichole and Sarah sent me cookies. In China. This has catapaulted them to the top of my pile of friends, making them the collective queen of the mountain. Do you have what it takes to unseat them?
Second reason was to let y'all know that I have indeed finished another podcast. You can download it here:
Made in China Vol. 3
I've decided that the format for this and most podcasts is/will be music that I've been listening to. It's usually pretty eclectic (I like to change it up). This volume includes some Brazilian jams, Prince, Joy Division, Jake One, some funk/r&b revival, as well as nostalgiac and current indie rock. So check it out if you haven't already clicked on that link up yonder.
The third reason was to post this video from last nights episode of the Daily Show. I really didn't think that anything funny could come from the Mumbai attacks (which were really shitty to say the least). But I'll let John Oliver properly put it into perspective for the rest of us.
-B
Sunday, November 30, 2008
¡Fotografias!
I have finally loaded up all the pictures I've taken over the last 3 months. Don't get too excited, there aren't that many, but in case you forgot what I look like, here's a taste:
(I'm the one on the left)
(I'm the one on the left)
To view the rest of em, go here:
Happy late Thanksgiving to Y'all. I hope it was good'n. I was pretty bummed to miss it for the second year in a row. Last year I was (coincidentally) at two of the locations that got terrorized this week in Bombay on Thanksgiving. So I guess, given the choice between here and there, I'd rather be here. But even more so, I would've rather been at home. Thanksgiving has evolved into perhaps my favorite holiday since it represents being happy and eating food until you want to vomit. Even though I like receiving things, Thanksgiving represents (in my mind at least) every other holiday without all the bullspit. No presents, no religion, just family, friends and food (and booze if you're over 21, or have a cool family). So even though I got to spend it with new friends eating roast duck at a Chinese restaurant and topped it off with a few drinks after, I missed my fam. So I hope each and everyone of you who could took advantage of being closer to home.
Other than thanksgiving, there isn't much to speak of from last week. It was really nice to have a couple days off. I started my health students on a project to come up with their own anti-smoking advertisement and I'm anticipating some pretty awesome results. I spent most of the weekend reading No Country for Old Men (which is a fantastic book as well as a great movie), and bumming around town. My front wheel crapped out on me last weekend after the long ride and I ended up having to buy a new one, so I was bikeless for a week and I hope that never happens again.
Once I got my bike back, bumming around was much easier and I made to Sanlitun (the tourist shopping area). Notable notes from this:
I got stopped by a photographer who took my picture because he liked my street fashion and wanted to put it in a fashion webzine. I gave him my email address so you can expect a good chuckle coming at you soon when you check my fashion stance.
I went to the Beijing American Apparel store. This was and may remain perhaps the most bizarre experience of my whole stay here. It was completely empty and staffed by two female Chinese hipsters in training. Their english was quite good, but the retro-new wave-sparkly spandex-lack of hipsters/people vibe of the store was almost haunting. Plus a plain t shirt cost around 30 dollars. F that.
I had a Rogue Dead Guy Ale. It was so delicious. It cost 5 dollars. But it was so delicious.
I rode my bike somewhere around 40 miles yesterday. The middle 7-10 miles of that was a cyclocross race. I did much better this week than last week. Last week the race started while I was still pinning my number to my jersey. This meant that I had about 30 seconds to make up on the very last person so I spent most of my time passing people. This time around I started around the middle of the pack, but didn't start aggressively enough and lost a lot of time on the leaders. I was also riding in my clip in road shoes, and since you have to unclip-carry your bike-and clip back in at least 6 times on every lap I was not happy about that decision. I failed to unclip completely a number of times and almost fell, I had trouble clipping back in and lost a lot of time a number of times. That plus a couple of spills and a really loose stem (my handlebars could move freely without turning the wheel) gave me some trouble but in the end I think I made it into the top 10 in a field of around 40 or 50. Next week is the last race I hear and I want to shoot for top 5.
On a musical note, we're up into the double digits (11) for people who downloaded my last podcast! That's up almost 900 percent from the last podcast. Since we're seeing such a spike in podcast interest I'm working on a another one, as well as that victory themed podcast I talked about back around election time. Expect one or both in a couple days. I'm also going to look into figuring out how to set up an RSS feed so that you can put my podcast into iTunes and have it just download whenever I post a new one (thanks for the suggestion Tits).
I'm thankful for everyone who reads this blog. Unless your name is Brian Kehoe.
- Ben
*gabe herrick shout out*
Friday, November 21, 2008
What it DO do?
What it do do indeed. Hello sports fans and friends of your friend in China (that's me). I suppose I'm long overdue for an update. I'll let you know that I've THOUGHT about providing you all (y'all) with an update almost daily for the last few weeks, but lets face it, I'm one lazy hunk of awesome. I've also been slightly busy since last week marked the end of the first quarter so we had midterms and grades to submit. As you can imagine, I left plenty of my grading until the last second and, with my procrastination skillz, managed to put all that grading off until the very last second. So here's an update of some of the things I've done over the last month or so:
1. I participated in our schools' Sports Day, a day in which I played 2 soccer matches, 3 basketball games, played some tug of war, many-legged raced, and 100meter dashed. My basketball team won the Bball tournament, my soccer team got second in the Fball tournament, and I sprinted to a second place finish in the 100m dash. And to think, we only sent 2 kids to the hospital that whole day! Jacob only needed 23 stitches on his face! Take that concrete flag-pole-display! All in all, I'd say the day was a huge success for everyone (except Jacob).
2. I started Chinese lessons with an individual tutor. The Chinese is going much better now AND I have more free time. My feelings on this are: yay.
3. I stayed out way too late on halloween, but it was because I now have friends to hang out with. Also, I was dressed as Abe Lincoln, wearing a stove-pipe hat I crafted from a trashcan, a toilet seat cover, and a magic marker. Move over McGyver, there's a new mastercraftsman in town (McGyver lives in Beijing, right?)
4. Last weekend I rode my bike to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. It's about 50km (about 30 miles) away, and while the first 45km only took me about an hour and a half, the last 15 or so took roughly 2 hours with breaks because it climbs about 1,500ft in the last 15km. That's a lot more feet up than I've ever ridden on my bike before, and that shiz hurt. The plus side though was that the Great Wall was pretty neat and the ride back down the mountain was fun as heeeeyyyaaaall. To give you an idea, I CAUGHT UP to a bus, and then couldn't get around it because it was too windey. But (if you're too dense to pick up on it) that means I was going faster than the bus. Go me. In retrospect, tailing a bus in a bicycle seems fairly dangerous, but it was fun and I'm alive. So back off mom.
5. I saw DJ Shadow a couple weekends ago. Shit was dope. I really shouldn't have to say anything else. If you don't understand how cool it probably was, then i don't want to explain to you why it was (unless you're my mom, which only one of you is).
So those are the highlights. Here are a few things I'm doing this weekend:
1.I found a group of amateur cyclists here in Beijing and I'm going for about a 100km ride with them tomorrow. This will be my first ride with them, but they ride every saturday all winter and I plan on joining them every weekend.
2. I'm going to a birthday party tonight, in which I hope not to stay out too late so that I can make it to that ride tomorrow morning.
3. Tomorrow night I'm going to a tour of the Tsingtao Beer brewery with my roomate and another of our co-workers. Tsingtao is one of the 2 most popular beers in China. I'd say it's about on par with any mid level light beer in the states, but it should be fun. it's 50 Yuan (about 7 bucks) for all you can drink beer. So this saturday night in order to to understand my life here, buy a 6-pack of Tsingdao at your local liquor store and try speaking Chinese. I promise it'll be more fun than you expect.
4. The amateur riders have been putting on cyclocross races in conjunction with the Trek store here in Beijing and they invited me to come race this Sunday in their fourth cross race. I'm pretty excited since I've never done a cross race before.
That's about all I got planned for now. I've got more to say, but it isn't pertinent info, so I'll save it for a future post. For now, here's a new podcast (I'm not sure why I keep making these, since none of you seem to download them, but I guess they're a fun timewaster occasionally).
download it here:
Made in China Vol.2
Lastly, I found this video the other day. The song rocks pretty f-ing hard. Plus, the whole Adult-Freaks-&-Geeks theme makes for a very enjoyable video. Not for the faint of heart. Let the face melting commence.
Hugs & Kisses
1. I participated in our schools' Sports Day, a day in which I played 2 soccer matches, 3 basketball games, played some tug of war, many-legged raced, and 100meter dashed. My basketball team won the Bball tournament, my soccer team got second in the Fball tournament, and I sprinted to a second place finish in the 100m dash. And to think, we only sent 2 kids to the hospital that whole day! Jacob only needed 23 stitches on his face! Take that concrete flag-pole-display! All in all, I'd say the day was a huge success for everyone (except Jacob).
2. I started Chinese lessons with an individual tutor. The Chinese is going much better now AND I have more free time. My feelings on this are: yay.
3. I stayed out way too late on halloween, but it was because I now have friends to hang out with. Also, I was dressed as Abe Lincoln, wearing a stove-pipe hat I crafted from a trashcan, a toilet seat cover, and a magic marker. Move over McGyver, there's a new mastercraftsman in town (McGyver lives in Beijing, right?)
4. Last weekend I rode my bike to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. It's about 50km (about 30 miles) away, and while the first 45km only took me about an hour and a half, the last 15 or so took roughly 2 hours with breaks because it climbs about 1,500ft in the last 15km. That's a lot more feet up than I've ever ridden on my bike before, and that shiz hurt. The plus side though was that the Great Wall was pretty neat and the ride back down the mountain was fun as heeeeyyyaaaall. To give you an idea, I CAUGHT UP to a bus, and then couldn't get around it because it was too windey. But (if you're too dense to pick up on it) that means I was going faster than the bus. Go me. In retrospect, tailing a bus in a bicycle seems fairly dangerous, but it was fun and I'm alive. So back off mom.
5. I saw DJ Shadow a couple weekends ago. Shit was dope. I really shouldn't have to say anything else. If you don't understand how cool it probably was, then i don't want to explain to you why it was (unless you're my mom, which only one of you is).
So those are the highlights. Here are a few things I'm doing this weekend:
1.I found a group of amateur cyclists here in Beijing and I'm going for about a 100km ride with them tomorrow. This will be my first ride with them, but they ride every saturday all winter and I plan on joining them every weekend.
2. I'm going to a birthday party tonight, in which I hope not to stay out too late so that I can make it to that ride tomorrow morning.
3. Tomorrow night I'm going to a tour of the Tsingtao Beer brewery with my roomate and another of our co-workers. Tsingtao is one of the 2 most popular beers in China. I'd say it's about on par with any mid level light beer in the states, but it should be fun. it's 50 Yuan (about 7 bucks) for all you can drink beer. So this saturday night in order to to understand my life here, buy a 6-pack of Tsingdao at your local liquor store and try speaking Chinese. I promise it'll be more fun than you expect.
4. The amateur riders have been putting on cyclocross races in conjunction with the Trek store here in Beijing and they invited me to come race this Sunday in their fourth cross race. I'm pretty excited since I've never done a cross race before.
That's about all I got planned for now. I've got more to say, but it isn't pertinent info, so I'll save it for a future post. For now, here's a new podcast (I'm not sure why I keep making these, since none of you seem to download them, but I guess they're a fun timewaster occasionally).
download it here:
Made in China Vol.2
Lastly, I found this video the other day. The song rocks pretty f-ing hard. Plus, the whole Adult-Freaks-&-Geeks theme makes for a very enjoyable video. Not for the faint of heart. Let the face melting commence.
Hugs & Kisses
Monday, November 10, 2008
Dig and ye shall receive
Wow. P-Funk called it decades previous, but Dr. Funkenstein upped the ante in 93 with this video featuring Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and more. ONly 15 years ago this seemed like such a ridiculous premise. Looks like Obama got his hands on one of those Bop Guns. Watch out.
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