Working for the Weekend

by Daniel Rubin

Published Jun. 10, 2005, 11:27 a.m. ET

What is the ugliest album cover of all time? Blogcritics.org has some candidates.

We're taking suggestions, too.

Or, as the weekend approaches and our tail lights fade:

Groove to Darth Vadar DJ. (via Pencopal's Project)

Root for Darth Vadar on Wheel of Fortune (via MSNBC's Clicked)

Stump Darth Vadar (rec by Jason Connell) He's very good. Guessed neutron star, yak and bottle of wine. Missed blood. But he learns!

From the U.S. Social Realism Department, this plea for compassionate vigilism is posted on Maryland trains headed to D.C.

What's that song? Ask no more. When you're driving and hear a song you'd like to have, forget about jotting down the name of that tune. Just call this toll-free number, punch in the radio station's call letters, and a message awaits you with a link to buying the song online.

Download Daily Show bits -- well, only the "progressive ones," at CommonBits.com. Downside: must use BitTorrent, which requires its own software.

On Wednesday news spread that a Bach aria, missing for 300 years, was found in a box of birthday cards in a Leipzig, Germany building. Late that evening, after NPR "music detectives" pieced together seven lines of the score from media photos, the aria was heard once again. Listen to a soprano and harpsichordist's performance of a piece silenced for three centuries.

And finally, an image so provocative, so disturbing, that discretion counsels that we post it below the fold ...

Famous people playing table tennis. Ping pong, Si, Castro No!

Jason

Posted 06/10/2005 04:05:03 PM

I've become so dependent on my iPod and not listening to the radio that my top 3 "favorite activities having to do with listening to music that is not written, recorded, or performed by me while traveling" are as follows:

#3.  Sit on the El and listen to my iPod.
#2.  Walk back from the trolley to my car listening to my iPod.

Ready for #1?!  You'll never believe it...

#1.  Plug my iPod into my car stereo and drive back to my house listening to it.

Shocker.

Apple has me.

I need to get a mac before they introduce the Intel era.  I am pro-AMD; time is running out.

Those album covers cracked me up.  I can't remember any that I have that may qualify, maybe Jeff Buckley (r.i.p.)...  I got one of those binders for CDs so I have no idea where the cases are.

This is a good Darth Vader site (BK)  http://sithsense.com/flash.htm

Jason

Posted 06/10/2005 04:42:42 PM

The most intriguing part of that album cover post is the second comment which is about "Jandek".  It reminds me of "Kopi Luwak" coffee

http://www.ravensbrew.com/NewFiles/kopiluwak.html

Rare, mysterious, and probably a lot better than you'd expect from just reading about it :)

Daniel Rubin

Posted 06/10/2005 05:04:19 PM

Really disgusting. Thanks. Perhaps the beverage sponsor for the first Blinq jai lai competition and ice cream social.

Tulin

Posted 06/10/2005 05:16:17 PM

If you thought those posters were bad, check out the ones in the thread below. MetaFilter discussed similar ones from London, New York and Boston yesterday.

The thread:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/19713

Jason

Posted 06/10/2005 06:07:15 PM

Really disgusting (seemingly) yet even more expensive.  I'm quite a coffee drinker and purchase coffee from the world over (including 5 pounds from the Galapagos Islands)... expensive stuff goes for $50-150/lb (Jamaica Blue Mountain and Kona Hawaii), but Kopi Luwak is right around $600/lb!  If you eat Scrapple I'm sure you can stomach a cup of Kopi Luwak :)  I'd imagine it being nothing short of amazing.

johnny goodtimes

Posted 06/12/2005 10:19:22 AM

Heres' some mroe amazingly bad album covers.  Some of them are repetitive, but there are some amazing new ones.  My favorite is the three chubby men called "The Playmates" riding on a scooter.
http://porktornado.diaryland.com/covers2.html

Daniel Rubin

Posted 06/12/2005 10:41:47 AM

Good work, Johnny. I bet their harmonies are real close, too.