OF A GOLDEN AGE

• I can’t tell a lie, I got a little misty during Conan O’Brien’s final New York show.

• Diana asked how my vegan whoopie pies turned out. Answer: Awesome. I filled half with peanut butter frosting and half with pink raspberry cream cheese frosting.

• And speaking of clocks, this one is real cool.

• Chicago News Bench published a really interesting perspective on the Nigerian Kitchen disaster I posted yesterday, because its author actually ran into and talked to a guy who seems to own the place.

• Hilarious incongruous item for the day: A restaurant called Yia Yia’s Euro Bistro located in . . . Wichita, Kansas. Their website’s front page has this startling revelation: “Across the ocean, there is a continent called Europe.” Close thine treacherous mouth, round-earther!

In Chicago, citizens are instructed to call 311 if they see a food hazard in a restaurant. Thankfully, people do call:

When a customer claimed to see workers at an Uptown restaurant using cooking utensils to kill mice, city health inspectors killed the eatery’s license to operate. The North Side restaurant was closed down Monday afternoon after inspectors found evidence of a mouse and cockroach infestation.

Nigerian Kitchen, at 1363 W. Wilson, was ordered closed when inspectors found mouse feces throughout the restaurant, cockroaches crawling on a wall and wastewater backing up from three clogged sinks in the kitchen, according to a release from the City Dept. of Public Health.

My friend Nick remarked on my 15 Albums meme that I “adamantly refuse to give in to indierock hype.”

Hype is large-scale unqualified word of mouth, the same as when a friend whose taste you don’t trust tells you how much you’ll love something. My taste is too erratic to trust anyone else’s. Don’t confuse this with snobbiness or hipsterdom, because I don’t have any delusions that I’m too cool or have better taste — I just know that it doesn’t mesh well with other people’s, because it’s too personal and anecdotal. If I hadn’t heard some song in the car driving home late one night, would I like that band as much? If someone I cared about hadn’t burned me a copy? These are unanswerable questions.

Maybe the real culprit is that people have misperceptions now about whether their own taste should be broadcast. I very rarely recommend anything, mostly because it feels terrible to listen to something, dislike it, and know you’ll have talk about it with a friend later. For me, the most satisfying way to find new music is by, really, finding it inadvertently, though not through any hip avenue — hearing a song on the radio (admittedly a different game in a major radio market like Chicago), asking a friend what music they’re playing at a party or whatever, coming across random things on Seeqpod or YouTube.

Is there inherent value in newness? I don’t value newness in itself, which is why I usually end up listening to my favorite old stuff. And, admittedly, I have bad feelings toward new music a lot of the time, so it’s always a great, unexpected thing when I hear a great song from a new band. The first brand new album I remember getting really excited about is White Blood Cells by the White Stripes. But looking back, there are decades of popular music to hear, and looking forward at the same time is overwhelming.

Some people follow music the same way they read the newspaper, so they can stay abreast of everything that happens. I see the value in that but it isn’t for me. Hype may help me learn of an artist, but it also sets the expectations much higher, sometimes unreachably so.

Ruth Ades-Laurent’s father Joe Ades, a New York legend for his street pitch of his $5 vegetable peelers, recently died and had a gracious obituary in the New York Times:

The Greenmarket was not his only open-air stage; he had places near Radio City Music Hall and in Brooklyn that he liked, Ms. Laurent said.

She said that he had learned the tricks of salesmanship as a teenager in Manchester, England. “He’d sold all kinds of things from when he was 15 and saw the old-time English grafters, I guess here you’d call them pitchmen,” Ms. Laurent said.

He sold linens, textiles, jewelry and toys, and broadened his inventory when he went to Australia in the 1970s. “We had a huge truck that we sold off the back of,” recalled Ms. Laurent, who worked with him, selling clock radios, cassette players and electrical appliances along with other household goods.

Now Ades-Laurent has taken over the family business:

Reached by phone, she told us she had “a fabulous reception; people seemed really comforted to see me instead of a gap where my father used to be. And it was helpful for me as well to deal with the loss of my dad.”

Miller sent me this delightful tidbit on custom fortune cookies:

“A big whale falls from the sky and squashed you until you’re pretty much dead. Not completely dead, but pretty much.”

I hate it when that happens, but it’s nothing compared to this debacle:

“In five minutes, you will be attacked by a pear. It will eat you because you were going to eat it.”

In the immortal words of Shakespeare: Exit, pursued by a pear.

* From his Winter’s Tale.

Something Awful’s Fashion SWAT takes the stuffing out of Finnish street fashion website Hel Looks. I have not laughed this loud and hard in a long time. Here is an example remark about the first photo they show:

The name of every designer he mentions sounds like a boss from a videogame. King Stampede is pretty easy, you just throw the the boomerang at his head when it flashes and jump over his charges.

• After last week’s successful cupcakes, this week I’m making chocolate whoopie pies with cream cheese filling. The first round is in the oven now, results TBA.

• Relatedly, Online Alarm Clock is a great egg timer for those who have none (me).

• Since Nathan’s new roommate has a microwave, Nathan agreed to let me borrow his microwave on a long-term loan, which means — yes, it’s true — I’ve finally caught up with the 1970s.

• After downloading the files a number of months ago, I finally upgraded my copy of WordPress, and the new interface is super foxy. Highly recommended.

Since we already discussed my favorite tiny island nation, it’s time to get the latest on my favorite element. Tungsten (née wolfram) is an important component of lightbulb filaments and also of certain masculine wedding bands.

Tungsten may cause leukemia, according to a study inspired by cancer clusters in Arizona. Oh, yikes:

“This is the first time it’s been shown that an element in nature, in this case tungsten, can possibly cause cancer,” he said. “It intrigues me as a scientist that we may be close to identifying the culprit in Fallon, Sierra Vista and other places that have cancer clusters and high levels of tungsten in their environments.”

Dirty pool, tungsten. This popular heavy metal also features in a recent debate over mining subsidies in Nevada:

Crowley cited tungsten, a mineral heavily mined in the past. He said although the state has significant tungsten reserves, they’re no longer economical to mine.

“Tungsten didn’t go away,” he said. “The economics dried up, and the mining stopped.”

Last year my best ladyfriend lived in the Chinese province of Henan, which, together with Guangxi, accounts for almost 80% of China’s tungsten. Chinese production was up more than 5% year over year but down more than 10% month over month for December. I wonder why that is, besides that December sucked for every business in the whole world.

Nauru, my favorite tiny island nation, is long plagued by insane international corruption and has a terrible economy.

First in today’s Nauru update, a “freedom of information conference”:

Nauru is trying to eradicate the corruption that has long plagued the country.

[Nauru's president] Mr Stephen says if Nauru introduces freedom of information legislation, the island will have an additional tool in its quest to wipe out corruption.

Nauru also has a new National Olympic Committee chair, the very same President Stephen:

Mr Stephen is the president of the Republic of Nauru, having taken office in December 2007, he is also a former top-class weightlifter, winner of seven gold medals and five silver at the Commonwealth Games.

Nauru’s president is both a proponent of government transparency AND a world-class weightlifter? Um, awesome. On the other hand, here is a legitimately interesting piece of political information involving fellow tiny island nation Kiribati:

Kiribati is one of the few nations that recognizes Taipei as the true capital of China. [Economic problems] lead Nauru to switch its allegiance with Taipei to Beijing in exchange for millions of dollars in aid in 2002. In 2005, Nauru reversed its decision and has since received additional aid for this renewed recognition of Taipei.

Nauru, shrewdly playing both sides. I expect no less from my favorite tiny island nation.

These changed me.

1. Jimmy Buffett, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973) — If you haven’t heard it, give it an open-minded chance, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. At the very least, it won’t be what you expect. This album takes me straight to the Florida Keys: it sounds like a calm summer day fishing off a dock, or peeling shrimp on the patio.

2. Soul Asylum, Grave Dancers Union (1992) — Oh man, when we moved to Oregon and I got to about junior high, I found this cassette somewhere and played it until it quit working. This, I think, was the officially beginning of how I never fit into the music my generation actually liked, because it was already five or six years behind.

3. Grand Funk Railroad, Closer to Home (1970) — Really great storytelling rock music, played by awesome longhairs, including the startlingly attractive young Mark Farner. I liked this album forever and then, one summer when I commuted from Oregon to Beloit every day for work, I wore it out.

4. The Who, Who’s Next (1971) — The first album I really loved that contained a lot of dissonance and really raw but expertly played songs. The Who manage to both be virtuosic in songcraft and totally surprising with the visceral gutpunch. Listen to Baba O’Riley from beginning to end and it’s like a preview of the whole album, starting out almost mechanically musical and ending with balls-out bellows.

5. Counting Crows, This Desert Life (1999) — When this came out I bought it promptly and listened to it two hundred times and learned every song by heart. I loved Counting Crows anyway but this album has something more, something complex and repeatable, and yes, it’s quieter than their previous albums, but offers a totally different experience because of that. (After this they suck, unexceptionally.)

6. The Beatles, Revolver (1966) — My bad friend in high school loved the Beatles, LOVED them almost scarily, and we listened to them nonstop. I’d heard Hard Day’s Night and other early albums and just not felt the love that much, but Revolver changed the Beatles for me. Later, one of my most epic, traumatic, meaningful friendships was with someone who loved the Beatles too, and I remember riding with the windows open listening to Revolver.

7. Beck, Sea Change (2002) — I never even liked Beck until this album came out, and my eyes opened to slow, thoughtful country music, and this album arrived at a very good point in my life, when I needed something slow I could sink my teeth into. Thanks to Sea Change I had a suitable temperament for Bonnie Prince Billy, Julie Doiron, Songs:Ohia, and other elegiac folk-country.

8. Dredg, El Cielo (2002) — Sometime in high school I developed some avenue to find music no one I knew or read about was listening to, and I honestly have no idea how that happened. Somehow I heard Dredg’s single “Same Ol’ Road” and bought this album sight unseen, and it blew my fucking mind and still does. This is mathy, noisy, beautiful music. None of their other albums comes close at all, but my love spills over onto them too.

9. Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed (1969) — What can you say about Let It Bleed? It fucking rules and holds up like it came out yesterday. At some point, this album stopped being my dad’s music and started connecting with me. He is still smug about that.

10. Johnny Cash, at Folsom Prison (1968) — Once, I broke up with someone and he compared the feeling to one of my favorite Johnny Cash lines: “I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.” Johnny Cash is a spiritual and flawed genius with a lot on his mind. I consider that high praise and can think of few people to whom I’d apply the same label.

11. Saves the Day, Through Being Cool (1998) — Saves the Day is music I never thought I’d like, and it made inroads with sharp, smart, brutal lyrics about love and the way love can sour into hate so quickly. When I finally had the love and then the hate, I was grateful to have something to blare in my car. You really don’t even need total fluency on your instrument to make great music, because that isn’t always the point.

12. Pink Floyd, Meddle (1971) — This album barely has lyrics, contains my favorite song of all time (“Fearless”), and also has a lot less of the wonderful-but-showy musical showmanship of other Pink Floyd albums. Don’t get me wrong. These guys know what they’re fucking doing, and these are excellent songs, they just aren’t part of a classic Pink Floyd Cohesive Whole. And I like that.

13. Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow (2002) — Succinctly, this is the first hip hop album I loved. Much like Saves the Day, I never expected to like hip hop and had never heard any really good stuff anyway. It helped that I started listening to a lot of Motown, soul, and jazz, and started recognizing some of the samples from their original sources. Listening closely to a really good hip hop record is almost studious, with layers and layers to work through. It’s the crossword puzzle of the musical world, and you should know how I feel about crossword puzzles.

14. Neil Young, Unplugged (1993) — On the one hand you have rocking Neil Young (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere), eclectic Neil Young (After the Gold Rush), and thoughtful/sometimes asinine Neil Young (Harvest). Then you have Unplugged, where he trots out a bunch of stuff people don’t really listen to anymore and slows it way down. In the early 90s he released these two enormous albums: Harvest Moon, which directly addressed Harvest, and Unplugged, where, as Anne Lamott would say, his butt showed.

15. Crosby Stills Nash and Young, 4 Way Street (1971) — I know, I just went on and on about Neil Young. This, though, is my favorite live album of all time. About half a dozen times I’ve played “Find the Cost of Freedom” as loud as I can handle, shut everything else off, and listened to it with my eyes closed. I am not religious even a little bit, but I do feel the great magnanimity of it all under the right circumstances.