So, here I am in Barcelona for the first time, hanging out for a few days before heading to the UK for a wedding. It’s my first year in quite some time where I’m not in Austin at SXSW and I really don’t feel like I’m missing anything compared to this amazing city.

Today started with a walk up La Rambla, the famous boulevard that’s home to a host of “living statue” street performers, flower and bird vendors and the incredible Mercat de la Boqueria. It’s a place I’ll return to every day that I’m here, as I wish that we had such an incredible space in New York. Fishmongers scale, clean and fillet each customer’s choices with surgical precision, while meat and poultry vendors fill rows upon rows of stalls with literally every single piece of the animals that they butcher. Far from upsetting or gross, it makes me feel sad that supermarkets have shielded us from really knowing or being able to visualize where our food comes from. Rather than neatly packaged on styrofoam trays and sealed with cellophane, these fresh cuts are often only a few steps removed from the live animal. Pigskin cut from the head lays in cases, snout intact, slits where the eyes were, as if it were a sort of mask. Poultry is plucked but otherwise left whole, the legs tucked under and the head curved into the breast, as though the bird were simply sleeping naked. The fruit is stunning, egg vendors stock everything from an astonishing variety of everyday brown and white chicken eggs to enormous teal emu eggs. I can’t get enough of this place, feeling like I’d really make an effort to be an adventurous home chef and eater if I had these kinds of ingredients at hand.

Pics after the jump, and another update coming soon… (more…)

In memory of our selfless and unbelievably awesome friend Craig, please consider donating to the cause.

The official word:

New York Cares creates volunteer projects that meet pressing needs in our city all year long–reading to kids, preparing meals for the homeless, visiting lonely nursing home residents, and more. Every dollar I collect will help New York Cares mobilize more volunteers. Last year, 36,000 volunteers helped 350,000 of their neighbors in need.

I have two words on my right arm that remind me to not be a lazy schmuck.

Here’s the donation page. Consider donating or even volunteering.

For years now I’ve been telling my Netflix friends to rent George Washington, the lyrical coming-of-age film from writer/director David Gordon Green (he was also the man behind All the Real Girls), and now that he’s teamed up with the crowd-pleasing Apatow proteges to bring us Pineapple Express, they might start listening. The stoner crime flick is a long way from Green’s usual depressed Southern town prose, but if this trailer is any indication, it’ll be just as charming (and HILARS!).

Also, it’s hard not to get excited about boofer smoking and car chases set to “Paper Planes.”

The Salinger of Indie Rock

I went to Zebulon for the first time last night to see my friend’s jazz band play. It’s a neat bar that’s laid back and romantic–dark lighting, candles, booths. My enjoyment of the music was ruined by this couple sucking face in the grossest possible way for about an hour. I could barely eat my delicious tuna on baguette.

At least I’m not flying anywhere.

Following on the success of their chart-topping blockbuster “St. Elsewhere,” the power duo of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green are finally releasing some information about their forthcoming studio album, “The Odd Couple,” due out April 8. While the first single, “Run,” has already leaked and they’re rushing a video through production, a video for the second single “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” has gone to Chris Milk, director of the band’s Grammy nominated video for “Gone Daddy Gone,” which we hear is going to feature a cameo by Justin Timberlake.

Again sampling heavily from British psych and acid folk of the late 1960s and sweeping Italian film scores, this is a significantly darker release. Here’s an exclusive review of a handful of album tracks:

“Going On” - The frenetic, dancey verses are reminiscent of “Smiley Faces,” complete with handclaps and organ accompaniment, but after lyrics like “I’m going on / And I’m prepared to go it alone / … / And I promise I’ll be waiting for you,” the song soon levels out into a creepy breakdown/fade out that leaves me picturing Cee-Lo traversing a desert wasteland to join the Fremen….

“Run” - What the hell, this one already leaked, so you can listen for yourself. Let us know what you think in the comments - is it going to be another “Crazy”?

“Would Be Killer” - Now granted, I am only reviewing a rough mix, but this song is sparse. It’s got the low-fi vibe of a live set in a dingy, smoky club, with a simple ascending bassline, some jazz guitar noodling and minimal snare. Cee-Lo’s practically growling the lyrics: “Hurt people / This is always how / Oh I’ve been entered by evil / So someone best love me right now / Because I could be a would be killer,” and I want to get as far away from this song as I possibly can cause it’s scaring the shit out of me.

“Open Book” - This is my jam right here, it unfolds like something off of Bjork’s “Homogenic,” looping sped up cuts of the strings from Francoise Hardy’s “Traume” into a sinister, practically tribal backing for the lyrical challenge: “So you mortals keep this in mind / This is the way I’m designed / And I am no coward so I’ll on die one time / Come on feel me / You’ll have to kill me / I am an open book.”

“Whatever” - With music ripped straight from a 1950s teeny bopper 45, Cee-Lo plays a whiny teen trying overly hard to prove his ambivalence about just about everything, from having no friends to never getting anything he wants to the heartbreak of a crush going steady with another guy, all with the common refrain of adolescents worldwide: “It’s cool, whatever.”

I AM OFFICIALLY MADE OF MAGIC.

For your reading enjoyment, here is entry #69–Mos Def (I also like this one because it has “69″ in the title…heh heh):

In the olden days of white culture, people used to look up to Kings and Princes. These were the people that they adored, and every night they wished and hoped that somehow they could wake up and be just like them. But with Royal Families crumbling, that role has been filled by one man: Mos Def.

He is everything that white people dream about: authentic (”he’s from Brooklyn!”), funny (”he was on Chapelle show!”), artistic (have you heard “Black on Both Sides?”), an actor (”he’s in the new Gondry film!”) and not white (”I don’t see race”).

He has done an amazing job of being in big budget movies (The Italian Job) and having one of his songs become a white person wedding staple (Ms. Fat Booty) but still retaining authenticity and credibility.

If you find yourself in a social situation where you are asked to list your favorite actor or artist, you should always say Mos Def. This way you can name someone that everyone has heard of and you don’t look like you are trying to one up anybody. The only possible negative consequence is some white people might think “I wish I had said that first.”

more here

Check out 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments for more.

Not that I was much better.

This is our sweet geodesic dome project from 4th grade. We also made some with gumdrops that were obviously later eaten, regardless of the fact that tens of grubby fourth-grade hands were all over them.

As the managing editor of a “major” pornographic magazine, I get dozens of porno DVDs every single week. Most of them are called something like Ghetto Booty #30 or Asian Ass #69 or Mother’s Milk From Hell or some shit. Once in a blue moon, however, I get tranny porn. Today is one of those days.

I opened a package that, for some reason, I receive in duplicate every week from our main competitor. Sandwiched (one of my favorite girl copy words) between Young Latin Ass #5 and Straight to Anal (a porno where the girls literally ONLY do anal. No foreplay, BJs, RJs, RVs, SUVs or HDTVs AT ALL) was Tranny Love, which I will assume is a foray into the neglected world of, what us insiders like to call “Chicks with Dicks.”

So now I have two copies of Tranny Love, occupying the space on my shelf above my desk that was previously reserved for my two copies of More than a Woman (it took me a second to figure that one out the first time I saw it). I’m scared to watch it, but I’m also intrigued. No Homo.

The joint is opening soon. (April 5th?) Count me in.

My solution: a) laugh  b) watch DVR’d Rock of Love  c) laugh some more

You can get your own on the magical interweb here and here.

*please note: this type of “on the pot” is not the same as not being able to complete tasks after smoking, as in “I can’t take photos on pot!”

Nah, I’m just kidding, but word on the street is that TVT Records filed for bankruptcy on Friday. I guess this means you guys are going to have to get your Crunk Hits compilations some other way. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any similar news about Razor & Tie, so your Kidz Bop and Monster Ballads collections can continue to flourish.

Is anything better than a Beavis and Butthead snowboard?

Maybe a Beavis and Butthead themed track bike.

Too ¢old for that right now, though. February is probably the worst month of the year on the east coast. It’s shorter than the rest, you don’t get any cheaper rent out of it, it’s too goddamn freezing, days are still short. Solution: Brunching. Crafternoon. Get out of the city on the weekends, come back when it’s spring.

P.S. This is my first post. I’ll be posting some Top Super Exclusive photos you can’t see anywhere else on the internets. Anger generally subsides around the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.