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I haven’t the slightest idea who Thad Povey is, but he’s a cool dad. He:
(a) turned his six-year-old daughter Isabel on to the Decemberists;
(b) took her to their show in San Francisco last night; and
(c) made a music video, starring Isabel, for the carnival-themed Part IV of The Tain, their recent Celtic epic.
Someday, I’m going to turn my kids into little indie rockers, too.
Update: Actually, a quick Googling lets you know that Thad Povey is an experimental filmmaker. Among his techniques: Finding random snippets of film and handpainting or otherwise doctoring each frame individually. Here’s an example. Here’s an interview.

Have you been keeping yourself up nights wondering: “I wish I knew what music Josh has been listening to recently”? Caught yourself thinking: “Man, I love that crabwalk.com, but I just wish Josh could make it a bit more self-involved”? Is a window into my recent musical forays the only thing standing between you and true self-actualization?
I present to you this page, which reports the last 20 songs I’ve listened to on iTunes. Since I typically keep iTunes on random, it should be a pretty good sampling of my collection. The page is courtesy of iTunes Watcher, an app by Michael Simmons. If all goes well, I may soon be able to flow all that song info onto this page.
Speaking of my MP3 collection, it’s approaching the 19,000-song mark. I’ve been ripping old CDs like mad these last few days, and I should hit 20,000 shortly. I’ve finally reached the “M”s in my collection, working backward — halfway home!
Speaking of shortly, a redesign — the first in this site’s nearly-three-year history — should be popping up on your screens in the very near future.

Kelly points out this interview at Gothamist with “Liz Penn,” a.k.a. Dana Stevens.
Liz/Dana is the proprietor of The High Sign, this site’s preferred independent movie-crit site. She was also the subject of a massive two-part investigation (here and here) by yours truly into her real name. She finally explains the name switcheroo in the Gothamist piece, even advancing an argument that makes a degree of sense. (She confirms this site’s findings that she’s a Dana in “Liz” clothing, not the other way around.)
Anyway, that winning Liz personality shines through in the interview. She reveals herself as a shy, cheap, geeky homebody — in other words, my perfect match! Plus, we get more visual confirmation that she’s cute cute cute. Dana, call me!

The new location of Dallas’ best restaurant, the La Duni Baking Studio, opens today. Should you ever, you know, ever need to eat or something.

You know, with all the hubbub about the Olsen twins of late (their crappy movie, their turning 18), a few business pubs have written about the marketing challenge the twins face as they try to shift their fan base from 8-year-olds to adults. One of the biggest problems: Getting people to differentiate between them, since people have thought of them as a unified MaryKateandAshley unit for so long. Much was made of the fact that, in their movie, one of them was supposed to be the “wild,” irreponsible one and the other was supposed to be practical and collected. (Which was which? Hell if I know.)
So then it comes out that Mary Kate is anorexic and canceling some public events to seek treatment. And the first thing I think of is: I wonder if this is part of her people’s attempts to differentiate the two of them. Instead of MaryKateandAshley, people will now think of “Mary Kate, the anorexic one” and “Ashley, the…other one.”
And hell, maybe they’ve got some new identity baking for Ashley. “Ashley, the one who only dates Latino men.” “Ashley, the one with an interest in Moroccan food.” “Ashley, the one with psoriasis.”
The fact that my mind went immediately to such cynical thoughts means I am a very bad person.
In related news, bad person and Friend of Crabwalk.com Jane is selling these eminently tasteful t-shirts.

An interesting piece on how the newest team in the NBA, the Charlotte Bobcats, selected their team name and built their brand.
The most disturbing part of the article comes when writer Darren Rovell discusses why focus groups liked one of the other naming options the team considered, the Charlotte Flight:
Another favorite on the list was the Charlotte Flight. When asked about the sources of local pride, interview participants often mentioned the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
So let me get this straight: One of the biggest sources of local pride in Charlotte is the airport? If you ask residents what’s so great about Charlotte, they actually respond: “We’ve got a nice airport — it makes it so easy to leave”?
How pathetic must a city be if the highlight of a trip there is picking up your bags at the luggage carousel?

The lineup for the Austin City Limits Festival looks downright insane. Among the many bands of interest: Broken Social Scene, Calexico, My Morning Jacket, the Pixies, the Roots, Sloan, Spoon, and Wilco.

Another early end for ChandaWatch: Chanda loses in the first round, 7-6, 6-3. She started out up 5-0 in the first, but (I presume) those knee problems kicked in. At least the writeup is a very nice pro-Chanda piece:
Rubin is one of those players who seems to have been around for decades, and indeed it is 14 years since she made her Grand Slam debut at the US Open, at the age of 14. Much of her career seems to have been a tussle with injury, and her ranking has see-sawed correspondingly. Yet she managed to finish 2003 on a career-high year-end ranking of number nine at the grand age of 28, which makes her, Martina Navratilova aside, of course quite an old lady around the lawns of SW19. Today she was giving away the best part of nine years to her French opponent.
Moreover, Rubin is certainly one of the most lauded players in the game, having won no end of gongs and prizes for being a jolly worthy person. She has been named the Player Who Makes A Difference, won an Arthur Ashe Leadership Award and an Outstanding Celebrity Award, been pronounced one of America’s Most Caring Athletes, and even had her face on a stamp issued by the US Postal Service in 1996, which makes her something akin to royalty. Certainly tennis royalty, in any case.

Texas to set up WiFi at rest stops. It’s sad that I’m as much of a geek as I am, but this will probably mean I’ll stop once or twice on the drive to Austin or Houston or Shreveport.
Those interested in Cajun issues may want to check the comments of this post, where Reese Fuller and I are having a discussion on the future of Cajun identity. This crabwalk.com post will no doubt some day form the backbone of an anthropology dissertation.
Saw The Decemberists and The Long Winters last night. Much rock joy was had, particularly when Crutchy McGee strapped on a big marching-band-style bass drum and started wandering the audience in a black Rasputin beard.

God hates soccer.