Your Name On Toast is a lovely piece of toasty altruism to warm you to your toes. It's a little like the Million Dollar Homepage, but with toast; in return for shunting some cash towards Oxfam, these kind gents and gentesses will mark out a message on toast, just for you, and pin it to their website for all the world to see.
Toast: saving the world one slice at a time. And a double hurrah, with melted butter on top, to that!
You know what you need? You need some operatic silverfish. And Shaenon Garrity is here to support you in your hour of need.
Enter Skin Horse, the fantabulous new comic by the Garrity lady and Jeffery Channing Wells. It has renegade centipedes! And zombie heads! And the zen of a giant rat!
It has also made me giggle, almost every day, for months now. Skin Horse is wry, stupidly well written, and funny as hell. The present storyline has gone on for, oh, forever, and is a good place to start. It reminds me of something Steve Martin once said: 'What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension?'. As the conceit is stretched beyond all reasonable expectations, it gets better. It's brilliant in a forehead-slapping, sharply written, never-ending kind of way.
Plus, they have operatic silverfish! You can't go wrong with operatic silverfish, no siree.
Yeehaw cowboys! I heartily approve of the expertlassoing that's been a-going on in these here parts - everything roped together in a few handy parcels. Round 'em up, Olga!
That said, I couldn't let slide one wee nugget that got buried in the bunch. Did you spot it? Did you see? Go, quick, have a look. There was something special hiding in the undergrowth. Our very own Olga-lady sings, and the awfully lovely people at TeamGenius put moving pictures to it. It's something special, so if you haven't already, go check it out in the handy YouTube magic box above.
Writing about Olga's music is brilliant and wonderful and quite impossible, because I like it far too much. We were walking down the street in London one day, and a friend asked me to describe it. I was bereft of words. 'It's got music in,' I said, desperately. I looked at Olga. She was grinning at me. 'And - and melodies?' I was hopeless.
Olga's music renders me wordless, because I walk through her words instead. There was a week when I wore 'Feeling Fine' like a cloak, holding it close to my skin, a covering I couldn't give to myself and so borrowed in her song instead. I sang it like a mantra, over and over and over. It belonged to me, in a way my heart understood but my head was blind to. I sang to wear it through, to wear it thin enough to see through again. I sang it to release it.
A Dream of Gardens was the very first song Olga ever sent me, and its video deserves its own post. It's a three-way collaboration, really - Olga's vocals, lyrics by Neil Gaiman, and another layer of visual narrative by TeamGenius. The three intertwine, and a creature of aching, desolate beauty comes forth. Watch it, and if it lodges in your chest like it did mine, just remember it can be summoned forth again. You just might need to sing it to release it.
In what we hope will become a regular feature, we offer up to you Link Love Roundup, a place to put all those little bits of magic and fluff we really want you to see, in yummy bite size form. Here's all the art, music, fashionista and culture candy goodness you can shake a pretty stick at. (And if you're lucky, there might be some toast links thrown in for good measure!)
Our friends at Team Genius, makers of so much amazing, fantastic stuff too numerable to list here (well, we'll list one: a secret video) have put up another installment in their long legacy of awesomeness. This is an episode of online comedy series Boyfriends, featuring one of the members of Another Robot Sunset singing an ode to the extreme difficulty of Donkey Kong. And it is unbelievably cool. (Plus, they got linked on Waxy! Go them! )
In what we hope will become a regular feature, we offer up to you Link Love Roundup, a place to put all those little bits of magic and fluff we really want you to see, in yummy bite size form. Here's all the art, music, fashionista and culture candy goodness you can shake a pretty stick at. (And if you're lucky, there might be some toast links thrown in for good measure!)
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Craig Thompson has a blog (The writer of Blankets has just posted some panels from his upcoming graphic novel, Habibi)
We stay up too late at night trading music like tiny jewels. "Have you seen this one?" I say. "How about this-- wait until two minutes in, isn't that astounding? Where does that come from?" Elaine asks.
We discuss how the song Hallelujah now hangs from the window of every film, in the rafters of every television show. "Did you know it's because of John Cale?" "I had no idea!"
We keep excavating this strange and interesting beauty, culled from various corners of internet repositories. We do it at such a rapid-fire pace, we forget to share it with the world, as we've already gone to the next miraculous thing of wonder. So here's my offering of a recap, a list of the gems we find along the way.
Around the time corporate America got a hold of Rock n' Roll music it was decreed that all pop songs were to be between 3 and 4 minutes-- because honestly, who has time for a 12 minute overture. Not me. I've
recently found that I don't even have time for 3 minute songs anymore.
The following are 5 songs by 5 very different artist that get their
point across in under 2 minutes.
First we have Wayne (not lil') whose
song has become my personal mantra. Followed by El-P who sends a
letter to the government to let them know just how he feels about the
war in Iraq. While El-P crams as much as he can into a minute and a
half, Brand New does just the opposite but is no less passionate. Next
is a song by the French producer (and personal friend) Onra. It's from
his album Chinoiseries which was birthed on his trip to Vietnam where
he went digging for rare vinyl and came home with some real treasures.
Finally there's Sleeping In The Aviary with the longest song of them
all. Although it must be said that almost all their songs are under 2
minutes and rock equally as hard. Enjoy!
I have such the crush on Rachael Yamagata-- and I'm obviously not alone. This darling chanteuse has released an EP in anticipation of her latest album, and the EP dropped today. Her voice is husky and sweet and full and gentle, and though I haven't gotten a chance to hit the play button yet to hear her latest efforts, I figured I would share, and then we could sit and listen to it together. Because Rachael's music is really the sort you ought to listen to while holding someone's hand.
Another great concept from Jason Bitner, one of the fine folks behind Found Magazine.Cassette From My Ex gathers stories behind those mix tapes that were given to you by old flames and lets you stream the tapes themselves. The site is funny and touching and full of great music. Submit your own story today!
washthis on 
