Grab bag

Miscellany time again:

I'm trying a new downloading service: eMusic.com. To start, you get 50 free downloads, and after that, you pay a monthly fee for a certain number of downloads (for instance, $9.99 for 40 downloads per month). I've had no trouble finding things to download. So far, I've gotten a Johnny Cash track, Coldplay's first EP they ever released, the latest New Pornographers disc, and several tracks from a Daniel Johnston tribute disc by artists like Beck, Death Cab, and Bright Eyes. So far, not a bad deal, but I'm curious to see if it will be worth continuing. So far, the searching I've done turns up a lot of current music and popular albums, but not much in the way of back catalog for more established artists.

My dad turned me on to Pandora.com, a site that creates a radio station for you based on music you already like. You type in the name of an artist or song and Pandora creates a playlist of similar music and explains each selection, going so far as to break it down by tonality, beat, instrumentation, and overall feeling of the lyrics. It requires a free registration after the first 7 songs, but it seems like a pretty good system. I tried Andrew Bird, a fairly obscure violinist influenced by Radiohead that my brother Jeff got me into, and Pandora did a decent job of coming up with a playlist I really enjoyed:

"Action/Adventure," Andrew Bird
"For the Moments I Feel Faint," Relient K
"Cayman Islands," Kings of Convenience
"Road Trippin'," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"The Happy Birthday Song," Andrew Bird
"Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You," The Black Swans

I own music by all of these bands except The Black Swans, so Pandora read my tastes pretty well. But I'm curious as to why I got two Andrew Bird songs when I already told Pandora I like him. Also, this seems a little similar to the way the streaming radio on my Last.fm account works (it chooses music based on what I listen to), and I'm already pretty invested in that. But Pandora might be good if I'm traveling somewhere without my music collection or in the mood for a specific type of music.

I just finished reading Carter Beats the Devil, by Glen David Gold. It was on everybody's best-of lists back in 2001, so I'm a little behind, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book immensely. The story follows Charles Carter (a real magician in turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco) through a series of fictional adventures, during which he encounters many other real-life people including Harry Houdini, the Marx Brothers, and President Warren G. Harding. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

And finally, I think this was on the Today Show this morning, but this has got to be the pinnacle of garish Christmas decorations. Can you imagine living next door to this? Honestly, I don't think any jury in the world would convict a neighbor who burned this house down. (And of course it's in a suburb of Cincinnati.)