Pandora is the coolest music app I’ve played with in a while. It’s already served up some pretty good stuff on my Mogwai and Matt Pond PA stations.

It turns out I’ve seen the site before…just bookmarked it and forgot about it. Thanks to Modern Mod for the reminder.

The What’s Next Blog lets us know that the internets aren’t as highbrow as some of us like to think. These are top ten keyword searches in the past 48 hours:

1. games cheat
2. top 100 baby names
3. playstation game cheats
4. yahoo
5. google
6. ebay
7. paris hilton
8. dogs
9. poetry [editor’s note: hurrah! hope for humanity! — lt. dan]
10. jessica simpson

You have to wonder how many people searched for google on yahoo and vice versa…

[via]

The new New Pornographers disc Twin Cinema (pitchfork | metacritic) is killer. Not that I had any doubt, really. I’m three songs in and I already love.

I’ll also be picking up the new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club disc as soon as possible. It has an 80 on Metacritic and my brother seems to like it.

Mmmmmmm…T-Bone and I just visited The Dessert Lady on Cumberland (right next door to The Pilot). I’ve seen the people standing outside giving out free cookie samples, but hadn’t tried it until today. I’m glad we did. Actually, Stanzi & PackMan and I went after lunch; I tried to bring a cookie sample back to the office for T-Bone but…well, it didn’t make it. So instead I took her back with me and she bought some treats. I had two truffles — 1 peanut butter, 1 bourbon — that were pretty good. Maybe not quite as good as JS Bonbons, but good enough; add the proximity and it’s a primo option. The cookies look pretty sweet too.

The film festival announced it’s full lineup yesterday, and today the newspapers are trumpeting the imminent arrival of Hollywood A-listers (Christ, I can’t believe I just used that term). The list of movies I want to keep an eye on is up to about 30, and I haven’t even gotten my bible yet. Dang…how are we going to keep it to just 5 films this year!!?!?

Despite last night’s anti-Scorsese rant, the film I think I want to see the most is No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. Whatever issue I have with most of his films, The Last Waltz is brilliant work so I’m anxious to see if he can replicate it. Plus, on the off chance that Dylan shows up, it could be pretty cool to see those two up on stage answering questions…I don’t think anyone would understand a word they said.

Stupid corporate firewall. I can’t get Google Talk to work (even though I’m giving it the correct proxy info), and Google Desktop doesn’t let me set a proxy connection so I can only use half of it.

But at home? It’s pretty sweet.

Toronto has the 10th best skyline in the world, apparently.

I’m not sure exactly what the criteria are, but I’d wager that in a few years our condo building should bump up that score considerably.

[via BlogTO]

I’ve never been a particularly big fan of Martin Scorsese, nor am I normally a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio’s work, so The Aviator (imdb | rotten tomatoes) wasn’t really at the top of my must-see list. But given all the hype it garnered around Oscar time (which, to me, felt like a shameless pandering to the academy by Scorsese) I thought it was worth a look.

It was about what I’d expected: an overlong, pretty, historical epic. DiCaprio was good, but still looks and sounds like a little kid no matter who or what he plays. The rest of the talent, except maybe for Cate Blanchett, were pretty much wasted.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just biased against these guys, but I just didn’t like it that much. I was interested in learning about Howard Hughes, but I just get a bad taste in my mouth when I think directors and actors are saying, “Hey, lookit what I can do!”

This was one of those times.

Pat Robertson has completely lost his nut.

My brother just forwarded me this review of last night’s Mogwai concert in Glasgow.

Other than Radiohead, who arguably draw on a broader palette, Mogwai are the only British band of any size to push at the limits of what is possible with guitars. Three guitars, in fact – churning deliriously as the monstrous riff of We Are No’ Here, one of two new songs making its debut, rolls inexorably forward, conjuring the kind of grandeur only done justice by the word “byzantine”.