the listenerd

*Riders: The Smoking Gun has uncovered Van Halen’s famous “No Brown M&Ms” rider. [vulture]

*Ideas: The New York Times‘ Year in Ideas includes avian dancing, neo-neo soul, FiveThirtyEight.com and spray-on condoms. Oh, and some other, more important stuff, like having to do with the economy and science and shit like that.

*Movies: An orchestral version of the Star Wars saga – Star Wars: A Musical Journey – that has been condensed down to just two hours will play in London’s O2 arena.

*Economics: Hypebot tracks some of the big layoffs happening in the music business.

*Songs: The Indie Music Alphabet for this year includes Bon Iver, so I was contractually obligated to post it. [shorties]

*Television: The Benny Hillifier will add Yakety Sax to anything. [mefi]

*Video: I probably already should have linked to the Robocop Rap, so I shamefully do it here, buried. Where the readers are fewer. Whew. Feel better already. OOH! Watch this video! [waxy]

*Packaging: This is sort of off-topic for the blog, but packaging that upcycles (as in the case of this wine box that becomes a lamp) – or in the case of this knoend lamp, uncycles – itself is worth thinking about. Look, I try to stay somewhat on topic around here, but it’s hard.

*Local: Oasis on Minneapolis: “the middle of nowhere.” Weeeee.