Looks Like I Chose A Bad Time To Leave Town

It's a big music weekend in Minneapolis. Three awesome shows that I'll be missing.

Of Montreal plays First Ave. on Friday. It's an early show, starting at 6PM. Afterwards every college kid in town will be at the same venue to see Girl Talk, Dan Deacon and Tay Zonday.

The show I'll really be mourning is Boris, playing the Triple Rock on Sunday. I've already seen these cats twice -- once at The Walker and another time in San Francisco. I'm bummed because this time they're touring with Michio Kurihara, playing music from their collaboration Rainbow. Pitchfork has some pictures from the tour.

No psych for Gus this weekend. :(

Listen Up:

Just Watch

http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/view/rhojIAED55g.html

or here

http://kotaku.com/gaming/clip/the-best-damn-halo-3-plasma-grenade-video-yet-306797.php

Video embedded for your viewing pleasure. -g

On a Similar Note

Poster Eleven at the Nobodysmiling message boards cooked up a thorough list of "The 75 Greatest Hip Hop Tracks." Each selection is accompanied by a Zshare of the song (streamable with the Windows Media Player plug-in), lyrics and YouTubed videos.

The list is very New York centric, dwelling in a justified nostalgia for tracks from the '90s. Check out Nas' "The World is Yours," "C.R.E.A.M." by the Wu-Tang Clan and "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me" by the Geto Boys for some list highlights you may not have heard before.

Wu Tang + The Beatles

There's been a bit of buzz about The Wu Tang Clan securing the first ever fully approved Beatles sample for their new album. Turns out that they're interpolating the song (basically covering the track with permission) rather than chopping the master recording. Still cool in my book. Hip hop blog Oh Word linked the new track, "The Heart Gently Weeps."

Tim, if you can make it past the language listen to the way Ghostface flows. He's a great story teller and epitomizes the heartfelt and urgent MCing style that typifies many of the Wu's rappers. Like the RZA it feels like the guy is about to crack when he rhymes. Very immediate. Anyway, enough bloggifying. Listen to the song.

Boing Boing TV

Boing Boing is easily my favorite, most read site on the web. It's a blog full of ephemera and the occasional bit of net-flavored news. Regular posters include Xeni Jardin, Mark Frauenfelder and Cory Doctorow. Here's their new show, it's pretty much a two-minute montage of random weirdness.

Kick, Punch It's All In The Mind

Chris Kohler from Wired's excellent game blog has a preview of Exclamation Warriors! a Club Nintendo exclusive that depends solely on voice commands. Japanese gamers get all the cool stuff. :(

Watch this awesome promotional video of the game in action. First person to make a joke about Japanese accents brings great dishonor to their family.

Mr. Wonderful Part Three

Here's the next chapter in Dan Clowes' serialized story "Mr. Wonderful." Find earlier chapters in the New York Times' Funny Pages.