Owlspotting

Owl Spotting, in collaboration with the Internet, is proud to launch a new feature available online every Wednesday afternoon starting today. “8 with 8” is an eight-point Q&A session with a Brooklyn-based 8 ball notorious for providing correct answers. The ball has a tendency to avoid “no” answers, which is why the more positive the […]

Remember when the whole red state-blue state thing was fun, insidery jargon used by political junkies? Yeah, those were the good ole days. Much the same as we have to tolerate the thousands of permutations of Evangelicals Doing Stuff, now we have to put up with endless stories on the red-and-blue theme. One of the […]

A Romanian journalism student in Illinois posted a long comment in response to my rants on accents. I decided to upload some of it in case readers don’t click the “comments” link on past posts. You can read a story Luiza wrote about an Illinois Catholic worker here. Her comments on foreign students with accents […]

A post on the music-dominated blog BrooklynVegan inspired me to compile a top five of albums released so far in 2005. I can safely rank the first two: 1. The Decemberists – Picaresque 2. Bright Eyes – I’m wide awake… it’s morning And unranked, here are the other three: System of a Down – Mesmerize […]

I saw the World Trade Center site today. It was raining sugar crystal sized drops at machine gun pace, but New York seemed at a standstill. Lower Manhattan, with its towering steel and glass casting shadows on old high-rises, was like a time warp — a frame between a past when everything looked possible and […]

Am I a misanthrope? After having taken a quick break and run into my roommates and their guest, I’d have to say the answer is a resounding… maybe. Becoming a misanthrope is quite a commitment for someone my age. I haven’t seen them in a week, so I expect all their little quirks to be […]

Have you taken a course — or a discussion session — with someone whose English was incomprehensible? Say Kenny of South Park? If you have and the experience was traumatic, the New York Times is there for you. An article on Saturday (Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said) says the education of […]

Acesta este un test pentru toate intrarile ce vor fi facute in limba romana. O mare revolutie grafica a fost realizata cu acest stegulet. Nu pot decat sa va indemn sa cititi dbrom.

Rock Adio, originally uploaded by owlspotting. This sticker was on a trash can at the corner of Nassau and Manhattan. Maybe it should have said: “Rock, Adio!” Adio = a potential permanent goodbye in Romanian. See more of Brooklyn here

Let me return to my comments about musical condescension and musicitas. A friend who read my post directed me to Pitchfork’s official review of Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. It was a predictable read that says less about the music than about the indie-rock climate the record is being reviewed in. “There’s something really […]