Dan Savage

My absolute favorite public figure / pundit person, the very sane Dan Savage, who has long advocated that "It Gets Better" in his columns and podcasts. I think he also started the current YouTube meme, "It Gets Better." I could have used a little It Gets Better when I was in high school. Honest to god, I was so miserable I left with a year and a half still to go.

This video is just DS being his usual charming and funny. Watch to the end.

Crooked Still - You Were Gone

Live version of an original song from the recent album, "Some Strange Country."

Red Baraat

Shot by the spouse (you can see my arm encroach into the frame from the left). Yes, I was dancing. The breakout act of the Lotus Festival. And the NYC-based group, doing Dap-Kings styled Bhangra, has an amazingly diverse and accomplished pedigree.

The XX - Infinity

The latest melancholy brit pop.

"U-S-A, U-S-A"

"America's the greatest country in the history of ever anything."

The View from "Business"

Daily Dish has been running some readers' letters on the work they do (one is from a junior college professor). To me, though, the one from a "businessman" is the most interesting and the kind of opposite-of-marketing work of business I could imagine doing.

3. Business is fascinating at the organizational and logistical level. I'm more interested in books and music than I am in business. But that is just my personal preference. People who act as if their interest in, say, indie rock is intrinsically more deep than an interest in org charts are simply misinformed. Referencing point 1, the world of abstract ideas in business is often arid, silly, and pretentious while at the same time overly cutesy. But the world of how things get done in business - the world of factory floors, imports/exports, incentives, distributors and retailers etc. is mind-blowing, and only becoming more so as more and more markets are knit together. If you go to Dubai you can see Nigerians selling generators made in China to a mix of Urdu and Persian speakers who captain wooden boats down the Dubai Creek to Al Ain. That is interesting, no matter what your leaning.

DJ Shadow- Broken Levee Blues

ediT - "Crunk de Gaulle"

Glitch-hop from Los Angeles.

Cee Lo - Fuck You

In a new single Cee Lo, half of Gnarls Barkley, channels what was certainly my experience of being a teenager ("I guess he's an xbox and I'm more atari"). I'd say this funky, filthy video counts as viral (3 million views and counting).

California Dreaming

Part of a whole series of Fiona and Emily doing classic rock. I also like their stoic version of Simple Man.