the musical fruit: movement #11.

the musical fruit: movement #11.
song: "december 4th," danger mouse
fruit: pluot

it's mashup day on the musical fruit! to celebrate, today's song is "december 4th," which mashes up jay-z's "december 4th" with the beatles' "mother nature's son." it's off of danger mouse's the grey album, the 2004 recording that mixed jay-z's the black album with the beatles' the white album (which is totally remastered as of today! 09.09.09! it's like reverse satan day or something!). the jay-z stuff was released a capella for the purpose of mashups & whatnot, but the beatles stuff wasn't authorized, so both EMI (who owns the white album masters) & sony (who owns the beatles' compositions) were totally pissed. they both tried to stop illegal art (the label) from distributing it but eventually, they totally backed down.

...so "december 4th" is my favorite song on the album. it's largely for narcissistic reasons, but isn't that why i do pretty much everything? the song has jay-z's moms speaking over the top of it & she's all "sean this" & "sean that," so although it's spelled incorrectly, it makes me feel like i'm being talked about in a sweet mashup. well...i feel that way most of the time. she's all "sean was a very shy child growing up (so true). he was into sports (also true) & a funny story is at four, he taught himself how to ride a bike (so not true). isn't that special?" i can't ride a bike, ok gloria? why must you rub it in my face? yes! it is special! all tormenting aside, when it comes right down to it, i actually prefer the acousticy danger mouse background over the chi-lites jay-z background from the black album. mashup success!

let's get one thing clear right off the bat. that pluot is sort of shaped like a part of human anatomy. i'm not going to say which one, but that's what goes through my head when i look at that photo. it's a fruit that's a hybrid of a plum & an apricot, the brainchild of floyd zaiger, a biologist who's all famous & shizz worldwide for his work with fruits. on top of creating other hybrid fruits such as the peacotum (a nectarine crossed with a plum & an apricot) & the nectaplum (nectarine & plum), his genetics program has made a ton of tweaks to the fruits we eat. for his work, dude's been declared an "officier" in the "order du merite agricole," which is apparently a pretty important food-related french government honor...all because he loves fruits.

he did a good job with the pluot. it's got that plummy taste but it's not as tart & it has a consistency not unlike that of a peach. i guess that's the apricot part doing its thing. the eating with the skin on test (which will from this day forth be referred to as the "TEWTSOT")? the pluot passed. with a plum, the skin usually tries its best to snake its way between my teeth & hold on for dear life. not so with the pluot. i like that. thanks, pluot. i just like saying it. pluot. PLUOT TEWTSOT! thanks, to you as well, mr zaiger.

...& i'd like to close with a joke:

Q: what do you get when you cross a biologist with an accountant?
A: a zaiger counter

the musical fruit: movement #10.

the musical fruit: movement #10.
song: "funny the way it is," dave matthews band
fruit: forelle pear



i don't mean to turn this column into a constant trip down memory lane, but here goes. i used to really like the dave matthews band. i saw them in concert a couple times around the first album & definitely had the exclusive recently ep you could only get via mail-order. it was during college, which is pretty much the only time i find it acceptable for anyone to listen to dave matthews & it was a time when i was playing a lot more guitar. my buddy tom & i had a band called "secret ninja." we had an album's worth of originals in our repertoire, but we definitely tried to learn a lot of the songs from under the table & dreaming and crash as well. a good portion of the time, my fingers were too small/inexperienced for the funky dave matthews chord structures that gave their songs their texture. anyway, good times but i haven't listened to the dmb in a decade.

now they have a new song--"funny the way it is," the first single off of their upcoming album big whiskey and the groogrux king. stupidest. name. ever. it's ten times worse than return to cookie mountain. i learned of it because tom mentioned a "new dave matthews band song" on his facebook wall. first i learn about michael jackson's death from my facebook wall & now i learn about this. who says facebook is a useless, mindless time suck? not me. the song's typical dmb. by that i mean that the opening lyrics are "lying in the park on a beautiful day, sunshine in the grass and the children play. siren’s passing, fire engine red, someone’s house is burning down on a day like this?" it goes on like that, with such groanworthy lyrics as "funny the way it is, if you think about it. one kid walks 10 miles to school, another’s dropping out." deep, dave. deep. it's like "ironic," but not as funny. the music's inoffensive enough, but i can't get past wanting to punch dave matthew's lyrics in the jeans.

last night whilst taking my trip to the dmb, i had myself a forelle pear, imported from dave matthew's homeland of south africa. this particular one was grown by capespan, a global fruit company that's located just a few miles east of parow, a northern cape town suburb. that's my last name! it's like i'm eating my neighbor! capespan grows a ton (bunch?) of fruits--citrus fruits, apricots, plums, avocados. junk like that. two of their avocado types are the "pinkerton" & the "ryan." that's my high school & roommate! so yeah, i really feel like i can identify with capespan.

the picture above is actually of a forelle pear i got earlier this month. by the time i finally got around to eating it, it was mealy & disgusting, but i liked the photo, so it stuck. last night's pear was significantly less orange & less mealy...tinier than your average pear but more enjoyable. i enjoy eating fruit with the skin on it if at all possible & the forelle passed the "skin on" challenge. the inside had a somewhat crisp feel & a taste that i can only describe as "peary but better." it wasn't the del monte's fruit cocktail pear of my childhood but a real, sweet but unsyruped pear. funny the way it is...it went down better than the new dave matthews band song did.

the musical fruit: movement #9.

the musical fruit: movement #9.
song: "the grapes song," demetri martin
fruit: red grapes



...gotta be honest with you. i started off trying to give demetri martin's comedy central show important things with demetri martin a fair shake. by the end of the seven-episode first season, i was over it. it was funny & all, but the funniest parts were the more ridiculous ones & those only happened about 40% of the time. most of the time, i felt like i was watching my dad tell jokes. i know that dry, smart humor is his shtick & all, but i'd prefer to laugh more...anyway, it's coming back for another season beginning in 2010, so i guess i got my wish for them to shtick with it. here's to it getting up to 50% ridiculous funny by next season.

"the grapes song," off of his album these are jokes is a perfect example of his more ridiculous moments. you should at least check out the whole song on the youtube. it sounds sort of like a song by cake or beck, but with demetri's grandma talking over the music. "i like peaches. i like pineapple. almost everything. fruit is the best thing you can eat," she says. fuck yeah, grandma! anyway, grandma must be proud because demetri's got his first lead role in an ang lee film that came out here in nyc on wednesday & nationwide yesterday, taking woodstock. it's the story of elliot tobin, the guy who offered up his family hotel to the organizers of woodstock. demetri is elliot. the star! you should probably eat some grapes in his honor. raisins are good too. don't eat the brown acid or something.

i really hope demetri is talking about red grapes, because those are the only good kind. f green grapes. those dudes are boring & aren't even good for making wine. they should just give up now. red grapes win & with that in mind, on the way into work yesterday, i picked up a bag of red grapes for breakfast & when i got into work, i fixed myself a big ol bowl of grapes whilst waiting for forever for my wack computer to boot up. since i was feeling suspiciously friendly & generous for that early in the morn, i dispensed grapes to the good people of my office. that's one of the sweet things about grapes. since they come in a bunch, you can share them with the world & really bring people together. grapes for everyone! bring me my concubines so they can feed me grapes whilst i recline!

this bunch of grapes was good & firm, pretty damn fresh. even when fresh & clean, red grapes always seem to have that spotty whitish appearance on the skin. without fail, every time i have red grapes, i try to wash it off, hoping it'd just go away. it doesn't. c'est la vie. regardless, it worked out just fine & i ended up finishing the whole bunch (with a lot of help from one particular co-worker) over the course of my first few hours at work. i have to say it was a nice way to ease into the day, chillin' at my desk snacking on grapes...& spreadsheets & reports & comps. i'm with demetri. i like grapes. they're so delicious. i like grapes. they're so nutritious. i like grapes.

the musical fruit: movement #8.

the musical fruit: movement #8.
song: "cafeteria bananas," hella
fruit: banana
guest blogger: chris



if you could imagine the sound that computers and robots make when they do really quick number crunching, that’d be kinda like listening to north cali's hella. their music (& more specifically their 2002 debut album hold your horse is), features only two members playing what seems to be completely unrelated solos...at the same time. with a sound like theirs, it only made sense that the album was released on 5RC, a basically now-defunct spinoff label from kill rock stars. you know? the label that has all kinds of music for people with A.D.D.? bands like deerhoof, xiu xiu (who blogged about growing cherries yesterday) and erase errata? yeah. that label.

believe you me, when i was searching for a topic for this here blog entry & noticed that one of hella's songs off of hold your horse is was titled "cafeteria bananas," i got excited. it was a surprise to me, since i stopped looking at song titles a long time ago...about the same time i stopped reading a lot. i found that i am way more of a visual thinker than i could even explain. let’s go out to dinner...wait, what was that? i was too busy trying to figure out how that lighting fixture was made. the plastic part was probably injection molded and the decorative metal part was probably stamped out of a larger sheet at like 1000 pieces a minute. so yeah, hella. noise. computers. bee boo ba boo...A.D.D.

i f’n love bananas. i do a lot of physical work on a daily basis and eat at least two a day to keep me going. also, i'm diabetic, so when my blood sugar's low & i'm all over the place, bananas help bring me back to reality. one day i rode my bike for about four hours straight with barely any water or food. then i got off my bike and my leg muscles froze up and made me all forrest gump style. two emergency bananas from a gas station later...crisis averted. potassium rules. so, in an effort to make everyone reading this know what my head is like all the time, the whole next paragraph will be thoughts as they come to me.

bananaman was a sweet ass cartoon that i used to watch before going to school in like 4th grade. bananas can be used as a telephone, to make your enemy slip and die, or to make inappropriate jokes. "nope, that’s a banana in my pocket, sorry to disappoint you." gorillas, monkeys, the shittiest runt flavor, not bad dried, velvet underground, brown already? you’ve gotta be kidding me! seriously, i attempted to remove one banana from the bunch and the stem detached from all the other five? lame. bananas are grown in at least 107 countries. thanks wikipedia. ring ring ring ring, banana phone. peanut butter jelly time? what the hell does a banana have to do with peanut butter & jelly? bananas in pyjamas? c'mon. they don't even have legs. besides, they don't need vertical stripes, they are already tall as shit...bananas!

chris is the older younger brother of the mastermind behind eat!drink!snack! he's a custom woodworker, holds degrees in both funeral services & industrial design & holds the distinction of being the member of the family who's made the most appearances on mtv & espn.

the musical fruit: movement #7.

the musical fruit: movement #7.
song: "bowl of oranges," bright eyes
fruit: mineola orange



i used to really like bright eyes. like a lot. during the first few years after i first moved to nyc back in 2001, i must have gone to at least a half dozen bright eyes shows. i even drove over an hour to cat's cradle in carrboro, nc to see bright eyes whilst on a business trip. i've always been super intrigued by artists who, while still in their teens, have accomplished more artistically than i have in my entire lifetime & conor oberst, the mastermind behind bright eyes, definitely fit that description. by the time he was 21, he'd already put out three albums & an EP under the name bright eyes, two of which (letting off the happiness & fevers & mirrors) i had in heavy rotation for a good two years after discovering him. they were organic sounding albums clearly written by a teenager but filled with oberst's quivering voice spouting forth detailed stories of angst & heartbreak & self-reflection.

then in 2002, when i was at the height of my obsession, the fourth full length, lifted or the story is in the soil, keep your ear to the ground came out & became the first bright eyes album to get serious national attention, with late night tv appearances & whatnot...their "breakthrough" album if you will. it features some of my favorite all time lyrics, lines like "abc, nbc, cbs, bullshit. they give us fact or fiction? i guess an even split" that tiptoe between profound & pretentious. still today, i can put the album on, get sucked in & not realize it until i find myself coming out the other end seventy-three minutes later. about a third of the way in, there's "bowl of oranges," a piano-tinged song that acts as a short, slightly happy buffer between the beginning of the album & the epic "don't know when but a day is gonna come." it delves in familiar territory for a bright eyes song, telling a vague story about being alone through lyrics like "and we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve of love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole." totally deep, man.

in honor of the song, i'm having myself a lil bit of citrus today with a mineola orange i picked up at the produce market a couple blocks from my apartment. it's a tiny place (with tiny aisles) that's run by an old korean couple. the dude seems to be perpetually sitting outside arranging the produce. the lady loves me & every time i go in, as she's ringing up my haul, she makes sure to comment on how little i'm paying for the amount of produce i'm getting. she's all "red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper, snow peas, onions, portobello, shitake...you're eating good tonight, huh?" then i tell her that i have marinated tofu at home to go with all of it & i totally blow her mind. she points out my total on the register & we smile at each other. it's our semiweekly bonding moment. yay neighborhood businesses.

as for the mineola, it's a cross between a grapefruit & a tangerine, similar to a tangelo. according to the wikipedia, the mineola was released in 1931 by the USDA horticultural research station. my fruit was created in a lab! go frankenfruit! as is characteristic of the mineola, it didn't have any seeds in it, but it did have a couple unidentifiable, random lil nubbins hiding out inside of it. as the picture above shows, it also has that characteristic nipple on the top of it. as far as nipples go, it's one of the least exciting nipples i've come across in recent times. on the upside, it's definitely juicier than your typical orange. when i was cutting it up into slices, i ended up with juice flowing off of the cutting board like blood from a freshly shivved prisoner out in the yard. don't worry. i didn't lose any of that juice. since there was nobody around, i lapped & slurped that juice up like some sort of vitamin-c loving dog. mmm...saved citrus cutting board juice.