Wikipedia: cheap source of amusement

I can't remember where I saw this. Just found it amusing.

If you go to Wikipedia, you will see on the left side of the page a navigation link titled "Random article." Click the link and write down the name of each article you find. The first article is the name of your band, the second is the name of your first album, and the subsequent articles are the tracks of that album. (Deciding what kind of music your band plays is optional.)

So, without further ado, the musical stylings of Rhuis, ladies and gentlemen!

Album: Embassy of Finland in Ottawa.

Track listing:
1) Koliwada
2) Merlin German
3) Cellar Door
4) Kettering, Maryland
5) Ben Matulino
6) NX-OS
7) WNYF (SUNY Fredonia)
8) Champagne, France
9) Pac-Man
10) The Coral Sea
plus a hidden track: Visayan Spotted Deer

And now for an All Music Guide summary:

Rhuis alarmed and befuddled the critics with the release of its debut album, Embassy of Finland in Ottawa. No genre was safe from this fusion-confusion group hailing from Onwerkelijke University in the Neverlands.

The trance-inspired "Koliwada," punctuated by ritual chanting from three continents, gradually gives way to the epic instrumental rock poem "Merlin German," with its legendary two-minute space accordion solo by Zhaobaogou. "Cellar Door" is strongly reminiscent of early Oingo Boingo albums, with its bouncy and slightly menacing chorus of "Whatever you've been or done before/Just don't you open my cellar door..." "Kettering, Maryland," previously a fan favorite only performed live at concerts, is here recreated in the studio in all its bluegrass-banjo glory. The lo-fi "Ben Matulino," with distorted, repetitive vocals screamed by Jam Forskolin, is kept mercifully short. "NX-OS," by comparison, stretches well past the ten-minute mark, but keeps things interesting with its Art of Noise-inspired clanks and fweets, building in a great farrago of junkyard funk to a powerful and explosive conclusion. The experimental noise track that follows, "WNYF," is little more than the sound of a radio being tuned to random channels of music, talk radio and other random programming, though the juxtaposition of these disparate elements is sometimes inadvertently amusing. (Go to 2:45 on the track and you'll see what I mean.) "Champagne, France" sounds like a lost piece from a Jeunet & Caro film soundtrack, again allowing Zhaobaogou to display his remarkable accordion chops. Rhuis even shows it can rap with its old-school version of "Pac-Man," an updated cover of the early-'80s novelty hit "Pac-Man Fever." The band rounds out the listed tracks with "The Coral Sea," a muted saxophone-and-piano jazz number. Fans of They Might Be Giants should keep listening for the hidden track, which is bizarre yet catchy.

Hee. Fun! Want to play?

So what are you reading these days?

Here's the last two I've finished -- very different books on widely disparate subjects, but both absorbing reading.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: this book kept showing up on everyone's reading list a few years ago, and at Christmastime Julie lent me her copy, so I no longer had an excuse to procrastinate. It's the story of Sammy Clay, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and his cousin Joe Kavalier, spirited out of Prague to escape the Nazis. Together Sammy (the writer) and Joe (the artist) come up with The Escapist, a new comic book hero with Houdini-like powers who fights against Hitler and the Axis. The book also chronicles Sammy's struggle -- which is not one of self-discovery as much as it is an attempt to conceal aspects of his being even from himself -- and Joe's continuing frustration as he fights the grinding machinery of bureaucracy to get the rest of his family out of occupied Prague. It's funny, well-written, symbolically rich, has some occasional squeamish moments and a few places where willing suspension of disbelief wavered for me, but overall is well worth the time.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell: I haven't yet read Gladwell's other books, The Tipping Point and Blink, which have also garnered a great deal of critical praise. At least one chapter of this book might have been an outtake from The Tipping Point, which surmises that little things sometimes make a big difference. In that sense his work sometimes harkens back to James Burke and the Connections television series. But Gladwell has a number of other points to make in Outliers, namely that success is not wholly a question of hard work, pluck, and individual achievement. In fact, he makes a pretty convincing argument that the people who are most successful got there partly because of some arbitrary factors beyond their control, partly because they were willing to practice long hours, because they were prepared to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, and in large part because of their support structure -- the family or community that backed them, quizzed them in matters of social interaction, and otherwise provided them with the foundation they needed to achieve. This may sound horribly pessimistic, but it isn't. It's not always clear what form a successful support structure will take, for instance.

Gladwell writes well and engagingly, and it's clear he was trained as a journalist. He doesn't always lay out his arguments in the most structured way, and sometimes he doesn't follow through by thinking out the full implications of his theories or considering his chosen studies in a larger context. But he has written a book that's guaranteed to get its readers thinking about success, and about ways to improve our society so that it doesn't thwart or hobble potential.

What have you read recently? And what's on your list to read this year?

Best Super Bowl ad this year

Though at the moment it risks being overplayed on local TV (I've seen it three times in the course of a single day), this was without doubt the best ad aired during this year's Super Bowl: