Best iPod Shuffling

I set my grotesquely overweight and oversized 20 GB iPod (20 gigabytes . . . is that even enough to hold one song?) to shuffle and was impressed by how well the little white device picked songs for a grey and drizzly day.

It played . . .

Screaming Your Name in the Middle of the Night by Thee Headcoats
Baby What's Wrong by the Milkshakes
Wandering Star by Portishead
Fender Bender by Kid Koala
Tchu Thuca from my Furacao 2001 CD
Syeeda's Song Flute by John Coltrane
Liquid Swords by the GZA
Claudette by the Everly Brothers
Satelite by Elliot Smith
Pump Pump by Snoop Doggy Dogg
Jercey Bounce by Django Rheinhardt
Master of Puppets by Metallica
Yeah! New York by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Not a Gang by M. Ward
I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles
Say Aaah by Deee-Lite
Seasons in the Sun by Chester (from the Sifl n Olly show)
Open Book by the Rakes
Argument by Fugazi
Motinho Roubada from my Furacao 2001 CD
Go Let It Out (live) by Oasis
New Star in the Sky by Air
Turn the Page by the Streets
. . . and then it played a third Baile Funk song and I decided its streak of song-selecting brilliance had ended.

And no, I don't mean that all those songs are brilliant, but it made for a clever drizzly day mix.

This is just what happens when I don't have anything to post about.

Best Non-Content

It's hard thinking of stuff to post every day. Right now, for January 31st, I've got nothing. But the Apple IIe looking website for Jack White and Brendan Benson's new band, the Raconteurs, is neat and the Academy Awards nominations are totally boring.

Best Little Weekend

It was a good little weekend full of studies and nice activities. Friday night I went to the Temple and afterwards got caught up in a little Taco Bell excitement. Here my good friend Ryan chomps down on a taco . . .



Kelly (she had a birthday last week, if you forgot) wins most Temple Bag-looking Temple Bag.


Please note in both photos how Tina and Emily are talking in the background, clearly not having anything to do with the fast food Mexican.

And then, after the tacos, at like 1 in the morning, the kids still weren't done and we went to Cosi for S'mores. Can you believe it? So crazy!



I'm convinced my doormen are leaving me secret messages outside the package room.



The Library's clock tour. How I wish I had a tripod.



Saturday night Carol and Justin had an engagement at 2 Gold. Like a genius I didn't get any pictures of them, but I did get a picture of Leslie and Richard . . .



And Trish and a flower . . .



And some just flowers . . .



And Erin and Helen (Holy Cow! Helen! Where had she been all this time?) . . .



And the Party Train on the way to its next stop . . .



Here's an alternate take on that same picture.

And, not that I want to brand myself a one-trick guy, but I took a couple more unreal city pictures . . .




I'm resisting to end this post by saying, "Well, that's life." Oh crap, I guess I did just end this post by saying "Well, that's life." Oh well, that's life.



I know, I thought I took more pictures than that too.

Also . . .

It's Mozart's birthday.
But what if I want to spell that "Motzart"?
What's the difference?

Best Week Ever?

I don't know, but being the man behind Steady Mobbin' was extra rewarding this week. I found the content I provided quite entertaining, so I imagine some of you liked it a good deal too. But, beyond that, lots of liveliness went down in the comments (if you haven't been spying on what other people have been saying then you've been missing out on 1/2 the fun here) and, as a super added bonus for me, various long (and short) lost amigos and conocidos revealed themselves to me to be patrons of this site. So that was great. For me.

Unfortunately, all I've got for you today are some inconsequential links.

Trailers

UltraViolet This movie looks like an irreconcilable combination of cheesey and awesome, cheap and flashy. Probably the movie Aeon Flux was supposed to be, this trailer has me intrigued because I can't tell if the movie is going to be awful or awesome from it.

Brick The impression I get from this trailer: This is a Thomas Pynchon story about teenagers. (But it isn't really) I either have to read this movie's script this weekend, or reread The Crying of Lot 49, I'm doubt the two will be all that different.

Just My Luck The Return of Lindsay Lohan. 3/4 of the way through the trailer you'll see the scene I spied being filmed last March.

Dave Chapelle's Block Party That Dave Chapelle, he's such a loveable rascal.

Not Trailers

Video Game Maps Do these bring back any memories? I'm especially especially fond of the Legend of Zelda overworld map. I never thought Hyrule could seem so small.

Giant Octopus Attacks Robot Sub Just reading this makes my toes curl. If you've ever asked yourself, "Brigham seems so brave, I wonder if he's afraid of anything?" The answer is "Yes, he fears underwater creatures."

Bringing the Mood Down Today's the 20th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster. If you want to feel even worse about it than ever before, don't miss this report at MSNBC.

Ending on a High Note The Arctic Monkeys, literally. Make sure to look at all the pictures or you'll miss the orangutan and you don't want to miss the orangutan. See, I'll never leave you left bummed out and dwelling on astronauts.

Best Last Thing I Did Before Calling it a Night

Seriously, Santa Claus. Thanks.

Best Hipster Clothing Expose

Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this . . .

All right, so there's this great store, Seize sur Vingt, in Nolita that specializes in dress clothes that make me really, really want a real job. It's like a place that's on a mission to single handedly get downtown kids to dress nice, and it's rather popular, so I suppose it's getting the job done. I mean, they must be doing something right because they've got a line of clothing that's co-branded with Vice, the tastemaking magazine/record label/etc. at the forefront of 21st Century hipsterism called "Seize sur Vice." Anyway, last summer Seize sur Vice had a line of polo shirts and the first time I saw them I thought, "Oh, look, a Seize sur Vice polo shirt and it has a little logo on it . . . a logo of squares." Because what's a polo shirt without a litle logo on it, right? A little penguin or tiger or alligator or laurel (or laurel with crossbones!), etc. etc., right? But after seeing the shirt on folks around town few times I realized something. That logo . . . it's not just a design made out of a bunch of squares. Take a look at it (or I don't know, maybe it's obvious to you right away and I took forever to get it):



Dude, the Seize sur Vice logo is a bag of coke! And I bet you that it's quite possible that many of the people that snapped up a Seize sur Vice polo shirt didn't realize the sort of snowy subversiveness they were supporting, sartorially.

I just wanted to say that as I've been waiting to find a picture of this logo for the longest time and finally did and now I can talk about my discovery.

Anyway My first Friday back in New York after my break I (and the rest of New York) tried to get into the final First Friday night at the Guggenheim where Hollertronix DJ Diplo was DJing. Anyway, the night was cold and the line stretched from 5th Avenue to Madison and then down the block . . . so, yeah, I didn't get in. But walking by the museum after giving up I don't think I would have wanted to get in because the museum was bursting with folks. Anyway (I keep saying that word) AOL Music has Diplo's entire set from that night available and, I must say, he played some great songs. Keep your ears peeled for great moments (please indulge my mixtape snobbery here) like Casjmere's "The Percolator", Gwen Stefani's "Luxurious" over "Rock the Casbah", "Blue Monday" leading into "Hung Up", Daft Punk's "Technologic" leading into Busta Rhyme's "Touch It"(duh), "Salt Shaker" going to "Safety Dance" going into M.I.A.'s "M.I.A." and then David Banner's "Run" going into "Tipsy" going into "Love Cats." What magnificent art museum music!

Find it here.

One More Thing Let's end on a positive note. Look who's back in the game!

Best Wednesday Miscellaneousness

First of all. What's this supposed to be?



Disney could not have acquired Pixar at a better time.

Two: Secrets of the universe and evidences of George Lucas really having a master plan, or just coincidence upon coincidence? You decide . . . check out what happens when you watch all 6 Star Wars movies simultaneously (with videos!). If you're only going to pay attention to one video on this site, better make it the one on top of page two where he overlays the openings of all the episodes . . . it's sort of the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and probably pretty close to what it's like to be omniscient. (I'm just guessing)

Three: Seriously, is there anything more delicious than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? Probably only a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a side of dollar menu Chicken McNuggets, and a chocolate shake. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's been too long since you've had a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Do you realize that there's two slices of cheese on that thing? Amazing.

Four: Did some more reading about the Prada fire. Turns out their just-arrived $5 million shipment of that got all burnt up was their 2006 Resort collection . . . well that's just great, what am I going to wear to Disney World now?

Five: Speaking of DisneyWorld, this site has footage of a ride on the the soon-to-open Orlando Matterhorn-killer, Expedition Everest. I'd ride it.

Seven: Yes, even more Disney-related news: Maybe your ear hasn't been to the street, but have you heard about Cam'ron's new Jay-Z diss, "You Got It" where Killer Cam takes Sean to task for, among other things, wearing open-toed sandals with jeans and being 37 years old. MTV reports that Jay-Z is torn between knowing he should ignore this diss and letting Cam have it. Me, I'm torn between siding with the Dipset on this (because it is coool to like Dipset) or the perennially loveable H.O.V. (Yes, I'm aware this item of business will probably spark a major debate in my comments section. I'm willing to take that risk)

Eight: Nike Air Max 360s. That's a lot of bubble to burst. And no, Nike isn't ripping off the X-Box 360, the name's in reference to the once-revolutionary Air Max 180s that only gym teachers bought back in the day.

Best Books of Winter Break

Every now and then, instead of making something original for you I'll just dump an under-edited article I've written for the school newspaper on you. Right now is one of those now and thens, because I am now dumping this under-edited review of Gideo DeFoe's books, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab on you.

When I read the work of hot young wonder-writers that are tearing up the contemporary literature scene like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer I get really jealous. I’m jealous of their talent and that they’ve written incredibly popular, relatively respected works . . . but it’s not like I could have written “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”, so my jealousy is sort of pointless. However, over winter break I discovered the “The Pirates! In an Adventure with . . .” books by Gideon DeFoe and I’m now also really jealous of Mr. DeFoe, not because he possesses a talent that towers over me and all those around him, but because, dang it, I could have written ridiculous pirate books as stupid as these but he beat me to it.

According to the jacket of DeFoe’s first pirate book, “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists,” Gideon DeFoe is twenty-eight (just like me!), lives in London, and wrote “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists” to “convince a woman to leave her boyfriend for him. She didn’t.” (And, as you need to know this, the jacket of DeFoe’s second Pirates! Book [he’s only written two so far] “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab”, DeFoe, like all the English, lives with his butler in a castle and spends most of his time having jousts). The Pirates! stories are simple tales detailing the adventures of the Pirate Captain and the simple-minded crew of his ship . . . so far, the Pirate Captain and his crew have adventured with a scientists (a young Charles Darwin) and helped Ahab track down Moby Dick.

Oh, wait, before I go on, I need to tell you that these The Pirates! books aren’t childrens’ books, it’s not like I’m reviewing the Series of Unfortunate Events series here, seriously. I have standards.

Anyway, as I was saying, DeFoe’s The Pirates! adventures are simple, stupid tales of simple, stupid pirates adventuring along in a very British, Monty Pythony way, and if you have patience for the bored crew of a pirate ship gathering jellyfish to try to build a “bouncy castle”, you might just enjoy The Pirates! adventures . . . perhaps a little too much, even. Consider this scene from the first book in which the Pirate Captain is engaged in a game of poker with a bunch of pigs at stake (according to DeFoe, pirates love ham, I’ll allow him that embellishment) against his pirate nemesis, Black Bellamy (as we join these two gamblers, the Pirate Captain is doing quite poorly):

. . . The Pirate Captain’s crew was starting to get worried, but then the Pirate Captain had a fantastic idea. He found himself with another useless hand but this time, instead of thumping the table and looking miserable, he gave a big grin, and whispered loudly to the pirate who wore a scarf, ‘We’ll be feasting on that forty head of hog, with this brilliant hand!’

Black Bellamy heard this, and decided to fold. The Pirate Captain shuffled the pile of doubloons into his pockets. Black Bellamy saw his cards and gasped.

‘But . . . you had a terrible hand! Garbage!”

‘Yes. But I knew that if I looked pleased with it, you would think it was a flush or something like that!’

‘You’re confounded clever!’ roared Black Bellamy.

Dumb, right? But also pretty funny, right? DeFoe’s two “novels” are filled with scene after scene of this sort of nonsense, and its enough to make me wonder that if this guy could publish two books of hilarious yet stupid pirate adventures, what am I doing in law school? But, at the same time, there’d be no point to my dropping out of school right now to write ridiculous pirate novels because DeFoe has already done it. So I really haven’t any choice to keep at this lawyer stuff while hoping that DeFoe publishes another book by spring break so that I can read it then and strongly recommend that, if you’re inclined to like dumb and funny things, you get your hands on “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists” and “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab!” and read them the next time you’ve got casual-reading time on your hands.

Trust me, they're good books and would make great subway reading. If you come over to my apartment, I'll probably try to read them to you, but you can just say "No, no, Brigham. You already posted that part about the poker game on your blog, don't you remember? Why don't you tell me about how the pirates sail to Las Vegas instead?"

Best Real Reportering

Between classes (as I have a nine-hour break) I went down to Soho to investigate the big fire I reported on in my second post of the day (I know, I don't usually post three times in a day, but this was a time for real reportering.) This is an establishing shot to say, "Hey, I went down to Soho."



Prada's windows were all papered up. As the store has a strict No Signage policy, there were no handwritten "Sorry, Everything Burnt Up" signs in the windows.



Around back, workers in "Disaster Response Team" shirts were hard at work responding to this Disaster.



Uh oh, looks like this guy is trying to help himself to the latest hot Italian fashions!



Pray for Prada.

Best Burning News

So there was a big fire last night in Soho and the Prada store burned up? Gawker reports on it here.

For those who don't know me or don't know the Soho Prada store, I'm not posting about this because I'm some sort of fashion person bemoaning the loss of a favorite shopping outlet but because the Soho Prada store is/was one of the most interesting places to visit from time to time here in the city and an excellent place to take tourists to say "Hey, look how crazy we are in New York."

But the little reportage by Gawker on the fire does give us some important facts.

1) For all those visitors that ask "Does anyone buy this stuff?" consider that the store had just received $5 million worth of clothes . . . so, yeah, someone is buying.

2) They put a price on the space: $40 million. I wonder what exactly that amount means, as I imagine Prada is either renting or leasing the space . . . does that mean that the tubular glass elevator, mannequin cages, halfpipe, hidden dressing rooms and tunnels, murals, etc. etc. add up to $40 million? Or what? Or whatever? Or maybe that $40 million is the price on the whole building, which also contains the Lure Fishbar and an American Eagle. (Yes, if you haven't been there, you read correctly: American Eagle and Prada are neighbors down in super-fashionable Soho)

Slightly more respectable coverage here at the Daily News (they value the store at $30 million, by the way).

Best Blah Blah Blah, This Was Saturday

First of all, Saturday was a clear and pretty day and not at all cold.



Saturday night there was this birthday party for Kelly. I didn't take many pictures because I wound up playing ipod dj in the corner for most of the night. I took these pictures during the last 5 minutes of the party before we had to come down from the clubhouse. But you know who did take a lot of pictures that night? Jeff and Jenna, and I'm sure their respective blogs are full of photos . . . perhaps even maybe photos of myself? I'll update with links if that turns out to be true. (Oh, and FYI, that laughing girl in the white is the birthday girl) Update!! Jeff has posted his pictures over at NYC Bros. Go there to see me making my in-the-cut DJ face and let me just say that I did not play "Crazy", I played "Toxic" and there's an enormous difference there (also, it's tricky picking songs off of someone else's iPod because it isn't your own iPod and you don't know what songs you will or won't find).



Adam and Amber were there but obviously oblivious to the heated discussion going on behind them.



Jeff played cupholder.



Jenna: "And that's how I found my new couch! "



Emily: "Jenna, you tell the best stories!" Jenna: "It's true, I do."



Adam: "Hey look, I've got a Red Vine."



Joe: "Hey look, I've got the potato chips."



Genevieve: "Hey look, I've got the cake."

Best Look at Me, I'm Soooo Popular

I got some mysterious emails this week, they turned out to be from the BYU 100 Hour Board.

Check this Out

Fittingly, as this week I was reminded that maybe the Firearm was (and continues to be?) more popular than I ever knew, I've been hearing stories about friends being places where people I don't know were talking about briggie dot blogspot and wondering what it'd be like to meet me. (Well, for starters, I'm not that hard to meet.) So this leads me to suspect that maybe not all of my hits (which are really piling up this month) are from my Mom.

PS George Wasthington is on TV right now! I've wanted to see this movie since before it came out, and here it is, finally. Sometimes basic cable really comes through for me.

Best Bit of Totally Post-Modern Meta-Humor of the Month

Yes, this bit from Letterman is the Best Bit of Totally Post-Modern Meta-Humor of the Month, I'm ready to give out the award right now.

Go here and click on 1/13/06 "Surprise Celebrtiy Walk-On." Totally clever and really sticks it to many talk show guests I've seen . . . particularly on Leno, but if you check out 1/2/06 "Heather Graham's Bad Date", you'll see that real Letterman guests really do it too.

And if you're going to get caught up in the archive, might I also recommend 12/23/05, "Darlene Angel's 'Baby, Please Come Home'." Remember when I posted that Christmas album?

Best Chicken and Egg Question

Which came first . . .
Rappers wanting to be Sports Stars or Sports Stars wanting to be Rappers?
You might say Rappers wanting to be Sports Stars, but don't forget the Super Bowl Shuffle.
Either way, watch an episode of MTV Cribs like I just did and you won't be able to tell the two professions apart.

Unrelated. I just saw this commercial on TV and it turns out Chili's has a salad called the "Quesadilla Explosion." A salad . . . topped with quesadilla pieces?! I've got to tell Mexico about this.

Best This Was Monday

First off, big announcement. I've changed how I host my photos and now I've got the kind of pictures that you click on and then they get bigger! (Unnecesarily so, in fact)

Anyway . . .

Monday Mom and Emily were to leave around noon, so we went up to the Upper East Side to see the final few things on Mom's list of things to see, like the new LDS church that's being built on 87th Street. It's going to be big.



Emily and her shoe store (I can't believe they came all the way to New York just to see this!)



A nice looking church.



One of these is the home of Lyle the Crocodile. I know where all the celebrities live, Mom knows where all the fictional characters live (we also saw Harriet the Spy's house and Jackie O's apartment building).



This is Gracie Mansion? You've got to be kidding me. Not what I expected.



Who's that?



Oh, it's Mom!



And then Mom and Emily left, and I was all alone . . .

That night I went down to downtown downtown to Doug Peterson's house, but first I got distracted by the NYSE electric flag.



So distracting!



At Doug's I wound up engaged in another game of Scrabble (the slow kind this time).



So mind-wracking!

Best Unexpected Spider-Man Bestness

Spider-Man 3 to feature Gwen Stacy?
It's beyond official.
Quite the surprise. Now . . . who is Topher Grace playing, really? (I don't care what imdb says, Venom isn't official)

Best Videos of Last Week: The Deathmatch

Many blogs are full of nothing but links to zany things found on the internet. I don't usually do that sort of thing. BUT last week there were two videos that I came across that were too great to not share. But which one is better? I just can't decide.

Live Re-Enactment of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
.wmv or .mov

If you've put in any time with the classic NES game (and could at least get to the second circuit) you ought to dig this clip plenty . . . kind of long.

vs.

Bloc Party Lipsynch
Google Video

Much better than any of Bloc Party's actual videos, too bad it isn't a bit of viral marketing from their label . . . or maybe it is?
Oh, and why is it that I forget that Bloc Party isn't as popular as Coldplay or U2? They're like that big in cool-land, I suppose.

So, which is better?

Best Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday Photos

Mother Mom and Sister Emily came to New York for the weekend. They did lots of stuff (mostly walking) and I came along for plenty of it. Thursday night we had dinner at 24 Prince and then desserted at Rice to Riches (Mom's fourth visit and she finally made it to the infamous Nolita Rice Pudding establishment, a New York Dream of her's.)



Then we walked way downtown and snuck up to the famous roof of 2 Gold to admire the view (pictured) and lawn (not pictured).


Another theme of this post is "I am beginning to get my new camera to take the pictures that match the ideas in my head."





If this is what happens when I rest my camera on a ledge then maybe I'm about to dork it up and get a tripod that I carry around at all times and whip out whenever I'm going to snap your shot.



Friday night we dinnered on the Citrus (Did this spread of raw fish fill me up for the evening? Of course not)



Like I said . . . starting to get the pictures I want.



Then we saw "Light on the Piazza" which was pretty much a musical version of "Mr. F" set in Italy. But it was good. Then we waited for the train.



Ha! It was noisy!



Saturday, among other things, we walked around SoHo (maybe you remember Saturday, it was the really, really rainy day?). This is a picture from the Broken Kilometer on West Broadway. Why is Emily smiling like that? Because pictures are not allowed at the Broken Kilometer, so I am totally breaking the rules!



Oh, babies. What are you up to now?



Dinner Saturay night? Five Points!! Activity Saturday night? Good Night and Good Luck at the Sunshine.

Sunday. Sunday lunch: Wholefoods at Columbus Circle! Then Sunday night we watched Mean Girls!

I'm all about subway icicles that come down to the roof of the train. (that's a great way to test icicles, too.)



I slipped away from Mom and Emily later that night to visit Karisa's. On my way over to her apartment, I saw the number 50.



I got in on a little Speed-Scrabble action. I couldn't believe the rush that I got from spelling "bedevil" or "quote" in teeny tiny little 30 second windows for action.



Then Joe helped me learn more about making my camera do what I want it to as Karisa and Di fell deeper in love and discussed buying a Forester.



One thing I haven't written about are my New Year's Resolutions. I have a few, they may come up from time to time. Here's one: This New Year I resolve to try using the full-leg cross. And here's a photo of me trying it out . . . I don't know, I think it went pretty well. I could probably get it tighter. But who says you have to be perfect at your resolutions right away, right?



Still Life with Favorite Things.



And then the night was done and I waited and waited in the subway station.



Waiting . . .



Waiting . . .



Finally.



Coming Soon: MONDAY! More walking! And More Scrabble! (If you can believe it.)