Amazon’s MP3 Store’s Best of 2009 list is a really neat, diverse mix of albums from 2009. Pleasantly surprised. I bought a bunch of albums last night from the list. Among them was the latest Midival Punditz album, Hello, Hello. I checked YouTube for this track, which was on the 2009 Best Song list and found this really need live performance with the Punditz & Karsh Kale. I also have Karsh Kale’s Broken English album. Some great tracks on there.

There are also several other videos on YouTube from their set at the Paleo festival, where this video was shot. You’ll see them in the related videos section if you click through to YouTube.

I know, two songs from the same album back-to-back, but I like the album. It’s different than most of the stuff I listen to, for sure. It is, however, really good. This is a cheesy song (Lerche describes it as show tune-y in the video), but it’s fun and light. I like it.

I love the strings in this song. It reminds me of a lot of Bollywood songs when I was a kid.

I first heard Sondre Lerche on the Dan in Real Life soundtrack. It was a great soundtrack. This is off his new album, also titled Heartbeat Radio. Haven’t listened to the whole album yet.

You may recognize this from just about every iPhone app commercial. (actual song starts about 20 seconds into the video)

The rest of the album, Unfamiliar Faces, is pretty good. Check it out.

There’s something just “right” about this remix. I started looking for this because of a tight mashup by DJ Earworm that features Whatever Lola Wants and Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado. Check that out. It’s actually a really good mix. In fact, most of DJ Earworm’s stuff is really good, with good production. He has a lot of his stuff available for free on his web site. Check out the United States of Pop if you do nothing else. I also blipped his Beyoncé/Tom Petty mashup. Some good stuff.

And, of course, if you don’t know Sarah Vaughan’s stuff, you’re missing out. One of the great jazz singers, her stuff is timeless. Amazon has a “best of” album of Vaughan’s stuff called Golden Hits – Sarah Vaughan. Recommended.

This made the Brea List in May, and I’ve been hooked on Metric since. I actually owned Combat Baby for a while, but I forgot about it (one of the pitfalls of my rather involved smart playlist system in iTunes). Anyway, Gimme Sympathy is a great song.

I had this in the Feb/March Mix, from some free (or maybe not) compilation for this year’s SXSW. Good song, and the disco clothes really just work.

I rarely do this, but I’m basically copying the post from Ritholtz’s blog:

“American Casino is a powerful and shocking look at the subprime lending scandal. If you want to understand how the US financial system failed and how mortgage companies ripped off the poor, see this film.”
–Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist and writer

How many songs do you recognize? You can download the track for free from DJ Earworm’s site.

Sometimes a simple whim can become art. Kudos to the young woman who did this. It’s a neat little video.

(via Commanda.net)

The video above is the “making of” video, but I really recommend you watch the actual video BEFORE you watch the video above. I don’t want to embed that clip because you really need to see the full ad execution to appreciate the cleverness of the whole ad campaign.

Here’s the actual ad, with the unique execution they did on vimeo.com: http://vimeo.com/4281939.

I can’t think of a funnier and more perfect takedown of Glenn Beck’s idiocy. He’s so far gone from reality at this point that it’s amazing he still has viewers. Anyway, this is one of the best Colbert segments in a long while.

Where’s the beef, indeed.

When I see/hear/discover things like this video, there’s no doubt in my mind that remix culture has a lot to offer society. Watch this thing, listen to albums from artists like Girl Talk, and tell me there isn’t something of value here for society. We’re too far into a copyright driven culture these days. Wish we could pull back a bit to somewhere in the middle. Things like this video really ought to be permissible in a broadly legal way.

This is also a reminder for me to finally read Free Culture, which puts some legal brainpower behind these ideas.

The clip is explained a bit on its YouTube Page, or you can go to the creator’s site for this project, thru-you.com. It’s a great idea. He includes credits for all the clips used. Good stuff.

(found via @jasoncalacanis)

Daring Fireball pointed to a wonderful video and site explaining the credit crisis in nice visual terms. The Crisis of Credit Visualized offers a very clear, simple explanation of the origins of the current credit crisis. The explanation focuses on the investment side of the mortgage debacle, so no HELOC/MEW side of the cycle.

The one thing it explains clearly, though, is explaining why bankers would encourage subprime and Alt-A mortgages. While Republicans and others would have us all believe that Fannie/Freddie were to blame, or that things like the CRA are to blame, the reality is that bankers, investors, and mortgage brokers all were incentivized to make riskier bets.

(click on image to see the full size version)

It’s becoming clearer that the banks have borrowed themselves into bankruptcy. Nationalization is going to be the only way out, I think.

The video is worth watching all the way through. It’s the first one that really points out the problems with low interest rates, easy credit (for bankers as well as mortgage borrowers), and the assumption that “house prices always go up.”

Now, why isn’t a video like this coming out of a traditional news outlet? That says something as well, doesn’t it?

I’m tired of this story, but at this point I don’t know how the sports media can stop talking about this. The revelations keep coming out in little dribs and drabs, which is unfortunate. Listen to some of the things that Gammons says might be coming out soon. As he said, it’s not going to stop.

I wish there was a way to get all 103 names out for the players that failed tests alongside Alex Rodriguez in that first, “anonymous” test. Right now, this story is turning into a morality play about Rodriguez even though he’s not the only guy that did this stuff.

It’s also unfortunate if it turns out that ARod lied about substantial things in his confession. Some of the issues, like whether the drug in question is legal in the DR, don’t seem that significant (if it’s in a pharmacy, it’s “legal” even if it isn’t legal). However, if he was using longer, or was involved with the trainer that was banned from the sport, that seems like a substantial omission to me.

The skit felt a little flat to me, but the topic seems to be crossing into the mainstream, finally. The Republicans in Congress don’t care about the country. They care about their power. Their supporters, like Rush Limbaugh, are openly rooting for economic doom so that Obama will get criticized. For a bill that was weakened by including items the Republicans wanted, they refused to provide a single vote in the House. They then lied to the press and the public by claiming that the Democrats didn’t work with them. It’s shameful.

I understand the role of the minority party, but rooting for economic pain for millions of Americans isn’t the way to fulfill it.

In case you missed it, Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, American Psycho) flipped out at the director of photography while filming Terminator 4 Salvation. Audio leaked out and has been rounding the Internet for a few days. Well, The Mae Shi decided to create a song around it. The video above has the song.

Be warned: it contains a very angry Christian Bale using very strong language… very loudly.

But, boy is it funny.

(via Brea Grant’s Twitter stream)

Rick Warren gave the predictable and exclusively Christian invocation at the start of the inauguration. Rev. Joseph Lowery, on the other hand, gave an inclusive benediction, one that included many faiths and a bit of humor. I especially loved the way he finished.

I also think this was the first time I’ve heard a major politician in a speech as important as this acknowledge atheists.

Update: I realize some were offended by the ending. I thought it was humor to show how far we’ve come rather than an admonishment. It was funny and that it was included as a bit of throwback humor to complete the other 60’s bookend he began with.

The snark is… palpable in this response from CNN’s Rick Sanchez to Samuel Wurzelbacher’s (a.k.a. Joe the Plumber) idiotic comments about journalists. I’m not a fan of Sanchez, and he’s a bit too snarky for my taste, but I felt like I should pass this on. Real journalists don’t get the respect for what they do, and war correspondents, especially the non-embedded ones who actually go out into battle zones, really are one of the few examples of journalism left.

(via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly)

The video shows how $25 makes it from a lender to the borrower in Cambodia. I found this via a Facebook friend’s feed. Glad I saw it, as it’s a fun way of looking at how the money makes it from one end to another.

I think it’s telling, at the end, about how the woman answers the “would you lend” question. Pity is part of the motivation for some, I think. Ultimately, I think this is about good policy. Something tells me that while the major credit markets seized up, these microfinance shops were probably affected. Hopefully, though, they were able to keep their wheels going because the money is coming from smaller donors. (it would be interesting to see how much money comes from individuals like Kiva rather than major foundations, donors, and institutions).

I also feel like I should point to some of the concerns about Kiva. The burden here falls on Kiva to help screen the MFIs (see the video) to make sure they encourage the right kind of help and training to make sure that the loans are made in a responsible way. You can find more info on this through the “concerns” link above. Be sure to read into the comments at the various sites.

Love the bass line, and really love that the gunshots were taken out of the track. Really never liked the gunshots in the album version anyway.

(be sure to click the title to see the full widget)

I did the original December mix early because I thought I wouldn’t have time to do one later, but I’ve gotten enough new music during the month that I figure it was worth updating the mix with a few items. So, here’s the new list. As in the original, here are the missing songs:

1. Soko’s The Dandy Cowboys (played after Wine, Women, and Song) (not available in the U.S. iTunes store, either… weird).
2. Ethan Stoller’s BKAB (speechless mix), which you can listen to at his MySpace page and buy at his website. (after Goody Two Shoes)
3. Encore from Danger Mouse’s brilliant (unauthorized) Jay-Z/Beatles mashup, The Grey Album which you can get (for free!) at Illegal Art (last song)

Additions are a couple of tracks used in commercials, including an iPod commercial or two. I actually created ringtones for my iPhone from Around the Bend and Calabria, just looping sections without vocals.

Sort of furthering the idea that we can disagree and get along, I get to link to this piece where I agree with Hilary Rosen, who used to run the RIAA at the time when they began advocating crazy policies over file sharing.

The key point here is not the disagreement but the spreading of fear using faith as the weapon. It’s a man who understands the issue using pedophilia and “they’re censoring my religion” lies to make people afraid of a policy change that would harm no one. That’s what makes Rick Warren a poor choice to give the invocation.

If it were simple disagreement, I wouldn’t have voted for Barack Obama. He doesn’t support marriage equality, either. We can disagree but have to come together on basic facts. The contrast, to me, is how Mike Huckabee talked about the issue on the Daily Show. He didn’t stoop to fear mongering to make his point.

I can have a conversation with Huckabee and can hope to correct the wrong here. Warren is willing to lie and engage in hyperbole to keep a policy that I believe is as wrong as segregation or anti-miscegenation laws. That crosses the line for me.

(video via Pandagon)

This video shows an automated bicycle parking system in Japan. You can read more about this phenomenal idea at the blog that created the video, including seeing higher res versions of the stills at the end of the video. You can also check out another blog that has video of the inside of the storage facility (though, it’s in Japanese).

Very cool idea, though.

(via Boing Boing)

Newsweek’s Daniel Gross explains the Consumer Price Index (here’s the official BLS site) in a very simple video. I could do without the goofy sound effects, but it’s a good, 2 minute explanation of how the government tracks inflation.

Per David Simon’s Berkeley talk, though, the video doesn’t go into why this matters. Perhaps they’ll cover that in the next installment of the Economics 101 series.

(via @newsweek, Newsweek’s Twitter feed)

Finally, after way too freaking long, Buraka Som Sistema has released their latest album, Black Diamond. The song above, Sound of Kuduro is by far the best on the album, but there are some other nice gems on here. MIA is featured on several tracks, and the rhythm is just addicting. I cannot sit still when this is on.

Click on the image to download the album (as DRM free MP3s) from Amazon.

For the record, I’m usually not in my pajamas and I don’t blog from my parent’s basement (they don’t have one). And Sarah Palin is still an idiot. Just sayin’

MSNBC widget will have election results live right here. Hopefully that map is mostly blue on November 5th.

Remember to vote, and vote early if that’s available to you in your state.