High fidelity

Long lost loves: High fidelity. Brilliant. I love Nick Hornby for writing it. And John Cusack for playing the part. It's surprisingly great how for me everything just revolves around music. Me and this film, we are in love.

Muzichie

Din una in alta, pe net, la Guerrilla, pe bloguri, dai peste muzica foarte frumoasa. Frumoasa, frumoasa. Deci 10 melodii frumoase

Regina Spektor - Laughing with

Emiliana Torrini - Beggar's prayer

Cashier no 9 - Boom boom ha ha

Glasvegas - Geraldine

The Alexandria Quartet - Tonight

Lili Ster - Ame sensible

Lenka - Trouble is a friend

Nouvelle Vague & Julie delpy - Lalala

Oren Lavie - Her morning elegance

Os Tribalistas - Velha infancia

Run

Why can't I see Run live this year? Just this teeny tiny thing, this perfect little song live... please

In cheap we trust

One of the best things I have read on the internet in a very long time. This interview with Lauren Weber presents a point of view with which I agree completely: why it's better to live and travel cheaply.

“Cheap” doesn’t have entirely positive connotations. Why do you prefer it to, say, “frugal”?

I like the word “cheap” — I embrace it — because it captures some of the very conflicted emotions we bring to spending and saving. It provokes a lot of strong reaction. But call it cheap, call it frugal, call it thrifty — to me, it really means self-determination and freedom. Because I know how to live well below my means, for the most part, I have never had to stay in a job I didn’t love, I was able to take two years off to write this book, I’ve never been in debt, and I’ve also been able to finance one of my main hobbies, which is travel. I’ve been all over the world, and I don’t have to think twice if somebody says, “I’m going to Asia for six months. Why don’t you come and meet me for part of it?”

This is the Ben Franklin version of thrift. He wrote about debt as the first step to enslavement — being enslaved to your creditors, to him, was a form of tyranny. I agree with that. Being frugal has bought me a lot of freedom in my life.

Have you always embraced frugality?

My father is compulsively cheap. He once tried to ration toilet paper; he doesn’t like to use the brakes on his car. He does a lot of things that most people would consider eccentric and probably highly irrational. He kept our house at 50 degrees — and I grew up in Connecticut. It was very cold. So I complained about that a lot, but as I got older I realized that I had internalized a lot of his attitudes about money. I also inherited a very basic set of skills for living within my means, and a respect for the ability to do that. And I’m grateful that’s the lesson my father passed down to me rather than some other lesson about gratification or spending freely. I don’t think I deprive myself of anything.

You grew up with frugality. But how do other people come to it?

People don’t respond when you lecture them about being frugal. It has to come from some other impetus. Look at people like the Transcendentalists and Thoreau, who came to frugality not out of some sense of “spending money is a sin” but looking for deeper meaning in their lives. That tends to be a much more effective pathway to thrift than having somebody wag their finger at you.

Thoreau was also a great traveler (in Concord, at least). Were there other great cheapskate travelers in American history?

If you go to the hippies in the ’60s, there were elements in the movement that were very antimaterialistic but very pro-travel. You think of the Beatles going to India. A sense of spiritual quest is not uncommon among frugal people — finding meaning through experience and through exposure to many ways of life rather than surrounding yourself with status objects and the accouterments of wealth.

Isn’t it odd that to get to far-flung places to begin a spiritual quest, you often have to spend a lot?

Yes, definitely! I was thinking that the whole idea of vacation and travel for pleasure is the result of two trends. One is the innovation in transportation, whether it was the paving of roads or the assembly line that made cars more affordable to people. And also a rising standard of living. This kind of travel wouldn’t be accessible to people if not for having had a rising standard of living in this country.

Can I tell you a rambling story?

My father and I went to Morocco in March. We took flights that were $750 each. He found the cheapest flight — otherwise we might have flown direct. Instead we had a 14-hour layover in Madrid. So we get to Casablanca at about 10 o’clock at night, and it turned out that the trains to the center of town had stopped running. We go outside to look into the taxi situation. The cost is, I think, 300 dirhams, which was about $35 or $40. And I could tell my father really didn’t want to do it. I mean, here we had just spent $1,500 and traveled 30 hours, but suddenly the idea of spending $35 was agonizing.

So we decided not to do it. We go back in. We’re sitting there for 10 minutes, my dad says, “Well, maybe we should take the cab.” This time we get our bags actually into the cab and the driver says, “It’s late, so it’s another 50 dirhams” — maybe another $6. And my father starts pounding on the trunk to get our bags out, which is a little embarrassing. And then we sit in the airport for two hours until the train leaves. Part of me was tempted to laugh about it or roll my eyes, but if I were by myself or with friends, it’s exactly what I would have done anyway.

So you waited two extra hours. Was it worth it?

In some ways, it was a great introduction to the country. We saw people in all kinds of different outfits: Berbers, Muslims, Western types. I think we really saw quite a slice of Morocco in that airport, rather than getting to our hotel faster and getting one or two extra hours of sleep. It was worth it.

To me, it’s all part of the adventure. If money is no object, it’s really easy to travel: You can take cabs everywhere, you can hire a guide, you can hire a translator. It feels like to travel that way would almost be as if you didn’t leave home. To me, so much of travel is the adventure of trying to get around someplace new, running into those cultural limitations of not speaking the language, having to pantomime conversations, getting lost in a new neighborhood. I thought travel was meant to be challenging. Otherwise, what’s the point?

You write that “cheapskates love rules.” What are yours?

Take public transportation as much as possible. Even when you’re in a place like India or Cuba, where taking cabs is relatively inexpensive, it’s guaranteed that taking a bus will probably be 50 to 90 percent cheaper than taking a cab. And also it’s a lot of fun! You get an accidental sightseeing tour.

How do you figure out the schedules and such?

I always go to the Web site of the airport where I’m flying in. Apart from that, there’s always an information desk. And I just steel myself for the potential of misunderstanding or different accents. You have to be prepped for things not being too easy.

What about food?

I love to eat well, but I generally find that I eat as well or better if I rely on street food. That’s as true in developing countries as in first-world countries. In Brussels, I went to one of those flea markets in the center of town, and there was a man in the corner who had a big vat filled with snails in this delicious, very salty, oceanlike liquor, and he would just sort of scoop out a batch of snails into a plastic cup and hand you a toothpick to get the snails out. That was 3 euros. That was such a more delicious and memorable meal than the midrange restaurant where I went that night and had moules frites.

Is there such a thing as being too cheap?

I’m sure there were times when I regretted having done things the cheap way. On the other hand, I was in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam in ’98 with one of my best friends. We were trying to get to My Tho, and there might’ve been an easier, more direct way to do it, but we ended up taking one of those vans that you hail on the side of the road, then we had to take a rickshaw part way, then we had to take a bus part way, then we ended up on this Vinh Long ferry. One of my favorite novels is “The Lover,” by Marguerite Duras, and there I was at dusk, hanging over the side of the ferry and thinking to myself, This is the world that Marguerite Duras wrote about! And had we planned that in advance, we’d probably have paid a higher premium and gone on a tour, but we wouldn’t have had that moment at dusk on the Mekong River.

From The New York Times

Because England swings

I love British music. Just so you know, the Brits seem to be the best at everything. Sorry De Niro and RHCP, but UK's got Gary Oldman and Led Zeppelin.
And just coz I'm at it, there is also Kasabian, Snow Patrol, Muse, Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Oasis, Travis, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Verve, Rolling Stones and of course Beatles. In no particular order. Not exactly everybody's cup of tea, not exactly the best bands out there, but hey, they're all here to prove my point: there are plenty of reasons to save the Queen (and her lovely country too).

PS: I'm not proud, nor ashamed either, but this revelation just hit me while I was listening to Snow Patrol. And one last question: why aren't Kings of Leon British? They should be.

Fata galbena care rade

Am gasit la statusul unei fete scurtmetrajul asta. Genial. Frumos si comic. Chiar merita vazut de toti si dat mai departe



Sau aici

Big Sur Jack Kerouac

"It's time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that's it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters only, in fact, in Milan, Paris, just talk to waiters, walk around, no more self-imposed agony... it's time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time.. . Yay, for this, more aloneness" -- "Go back to childhood, just eat apples and read your Cathechism -- sit on curbstones, the hell with the hot lights of Hollywood""

Some people just have a way with words...

It's time that we began to laugh and cry about it all again

De ce il iubesc acum pe Cohen? Mai usor mi-ar fi sa zic de ce inainte nu voiam nici in ruptul capului sa-l ascult. Acum stiu cu cateva melodii mai mult decat Dance me to the end of love (care tot nu mi se pare cea mai frumoasa) si imi pare rau ca inainte am fost asa incapatanata si n-am vrut nici sa aud de el. Si imi mai pare rau ca nu mi-am dat seama mai devreme si n-am luat bilet la concert. Si mai tre sa zic doar ca I'm your man e perfecta. Perfecta.

The boat that rocked

In cautarea unui film decent care sa ma si binedispuna, ceva mai putin serios sau sangeros decat Inglorious Basterds (care e recomandat peste tot), am dat peste cel mai tare film despre muzica de la Almost Famous incoace. Se cheama The Boat That Rocked, este o comedie despre un post de radio pirat din Marea Nordului si are destula muzica si destui actori carismatici cat sa-mi placa la nebunie. Nu-i cine stie ce filozofic sau profund, si tocmai asta e cea mai tare parte. E un film despre niste oameni care nu se iau prea in serios si care transmit on air muzica faina. Foarte faina. De la Rolling Stones la Cohen si Hendrix, trecand prin The Who si Kinks faina.

Nu pot sa nu zic ca e un film britanic. Si asta se vede nu numai prin actori, ci prin tot ce face filmul asta per total unul reusit. Bonus: Philip Seymour Hoffman, care numai britanic sau frumos nu e, dar care dupa mine are un lipici extraordinar. Adica e un actor foarte tare. Bonus si mai bonus: Tom Sturridge is pretty cute :P