Another Yerba Mate Fueled All-Nighter

'Tis the season- work alternates between hectic event logistics gigs and all-night endurance tours. I have a two-liter bottle of yerba mate (in a concession to convenience, I brewed it in a coffee-maker, rather than using the traditional bombilla and gourd method of consumption. It's a quiet night, and I've been indulging in a little nostalgia.





The video quality isn't perfect, but the song has a great line which resonates with a d00d who's working an all-nighter- You spoiled my day for the rest of the night. Indeed, work, you spoiled what could have been a great night of binge drinking...

I really didn't know anything about The Bluebells, but have learned that, like a surprising number of bands that made up the 80's U.K. pop invasion, they hailed from Scotland.

For me, the quintessential Scottish band will always be these guys- with the late, great Stuart Adamson having one of popular music's most distinctive voices:





The headband is a bit much, though.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

The New York metro area is experiencing a blizzard that is expected to dump anywhere from ten to twenty-four inches of snow on the ground, accompanied by gusts of wind approaching those of a category one hurricane. I'm a snug as a bug in a rug an ootheca here at work. I came in early so I could relieve a beloved co-worker (and because I'd rather be safe at work than driving through a foot of snow a few hours from now, after digging my car out of a snowbank). I have an overnight bag packed, and enough yerba mate to keep a small army of gauchos buzzing. Yeah, I'm dug in for the duration, and have no desire to hit the roads until the sun is high in the sky, and the plows have done their job. Just to refresh the memories of my readers, this is what I will see tomorrow after the sun comes up:

An Uplifting Subject

This week and next week will probably be the busiest ones on the job this year- my department is understaffed and it's the busy season at work. Therefore, I figured I'd break from the political nonsense and post about a subject that is near and dear to my heart... caffeine. My love affair with, by which I mean addiction to, coffee started when I was in high school, when my first job was working in the local delicatessen- stocking the soda and beer coolers, washing pots and pans, sweeping and mopping up at the end of the day, even waiting on customers (though when I started, I was too young to run the slicers). During the lull after the lunch rush and before the end-of-day mop-up, there'd be a time when all of the counters were wiped down, and there would be a slow trickle of customers coming in- some of the local landscaping crews, mainly Mexican guys whose English was largely limited to 'king-sized Budweiser!', would come in for a couple of post-shift tallboys (I loved these guys, and they were instrumental in my maintaining the Spanish I was learning in school, because they encouraged me to practice it by joking around with them). In these quiet hours, the best way to pass the time was to have a cup of coffee- the aroma from the big coffee percolators was enough to tempt even the most bitterness-shy palate. Like most coffee n00bs, I started drinking the stuff with a lot of milk and a fair amount of sugar, until I rather quickly eliminated the sugar (appropriate for iced coffee, but I don't like it in hot coffee) and cut down on the milk. I was hooked.

Now, I drink the stuff religiously, and I love coffee paraphernalia like French presses, Italian Moka pots, and Vietnamese phin filters... all beside the old reliable 8 cup drip coffee maker so beloved of Americans. While I also drink tea and yerba mate, there's no real substitute for a good old 'cuppa Joe'. It's what makes the graveyard shift possible.

So, why am I waxing rhapsodic about coffee? BBC has a nice documentary about the stuff, delving into coffee's origin as a commodity, exploring the growth and harvesting of coffee in Brazil, the roasting of coffee by an Italian coffee maestro, and the growth of coffee culture in China, the largest expanding market for the stuff. It's an informative twenty-two minutes, and I found it particularly beautiful, being a caffiend. Oddly enough, I'm working at a site which is dominated by tea drinkers, so the coffee culture is pretty lackluster. I have a Lipton teabag steeping overlong in my site-mug, destined to be diluted into iced tea, but the night is long, I have to finish the night at another site, and my beloved java will be waiting for me.

Big Plans... Big Plans

I have to work a graveyard tomorrow, by which I mean tonight... my plan today is to put the finishing touches on my new batch of limoncello (so I can bring some to ***FUTURE POST***), getting bombed as I do repeated "taste testings". I'll get my drunk on in the early afternoon, and sleep it off, then brew a pot of yerba mate to fuel the all-nighter.

I love it when a plan comes together- especially when that plan involves booze.

Imagine Science Film Festival 2011

Somewhat against my better judgment (I am currently working a graveyard shift), I headed down to the beautiful Bell House to attend the Secret Science Club sponsored night of the Imagine Science Film Festival- yeah, I'm going to pay for it later, but I had to show solidarity with the S.S.C. and the I.S.F.F. staff. I limited my imbibing to two beers, and am currently drinking enough yerba mate to keep the entire staff of the Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina buzzing for days.

Imagine Science Film Festival impresario and all-around good-guy Dr. Alexis Gambis was the M.C. for the event, which was a night of shorts. The shorts are available on Vimeo, so I'll embed my favorites:





Fossil Carrion Feeders from The Field Museum of Natural History on Vimeo was particularly enjoyable. The fossil carrion beetles are extraordinarily well-preserved in exquisite detail. To think that these eaters of dead dinos were fossilized so beautifully is mind-boggling. The fact that certain structures found in modern beetles are present in these Jurassic coleopterans is even more of a mind-blower.





E. chromi from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg on Vimeo was another lovely film, with a sometimes hilarious extrapolation of the uses to which genetically engineered pigment-secreting bacteria could be put.

Breast Stem Cells (sorry, Vimeo doesn't seem to have the video), was an interesting computer animation of the changes which occur in the creameries during pregnancy, resulting in the production of milk.

Blank was a starkly beautiful short about genetically engineered mice with Alzheimer's navigating a water maze. The dark eyes of the swimming mouse were set off rather dramatically against the stark background of white fur and white maze. I had a brief conversation with director Boris Hars-Tschachotin before the program- he's one of the good guys. We spoke primarily about therapeutic approaches to delay the onset of Alzheimer's and he indicated that social interaction was a key component in staving off the affliction. In Germany, multigenerational multi-unit dwellings are being built so the elderly can have social interaction with a wide range of neighbors.





CreatureCast - Footage From The Deep from Casey Dunn on Vimeo was a gorgeous film of live siphonophores, diaphanous relatives of jellyfish.





The Chosen from Catherine Chalmers on Vimeo was my favorite short of the night. First of all, I have been a sucker for leaf-cutting ants since writing a term paper on Acromyrmex and Atta for my college "Bugs for Thugs" (just kidding, it wasn't a gut course) class. Secondarily, the film had a great vibe- a "what if Clark Ashton Smith wrote comedies instead of weird horror tales?" vibe. When the "reveal" in the film took place, I couldn't contain my laughter- I'm sure glad I wasn't drinking anything at the time.

All told, it was a fun night, and I'm glad that I trekked down to Brooklyn (as if I'd blow off the Imagine Science Film Festival). I'll be dragging my ass after this graveyard shift, to be sure, but ya gotta pay for your entertainment, even when it's free.

A Break From My Usual Musical Nostalgia

I heard this song by Warren Teagarden on the radi-adi-o, and figured I'd post the video:





There's a quality of Mr Teagarden's voice which reminds me, for some reason, of Lloyd Cole. I can't quite put my finger on it, but here's one of Mr. Cole's best known numbers:





By the time this post hits teh t00bz, I'll be sleeping off one of my trademark yerba mate fueled all-nighters (got savvy about the "post options"... uh... option). Yeah, I wasn't joking when I wrote that October kicks my ass, and starting right off the bat with an overnight "double" sets the tone for the weeks of ass-kickery to come.

Maybe it's the sleep-deprivation which makes me compare Messers Teagarden and Cole, but I'll let the commentariat judge for themselves.

Wanted to Post on the Night of the Full Moon

This time of year, I get my ass kicked by work (living at night isn't helping my complection). The ass-kicking is coming in two varieties- there are the yerba mate fueled all nighters and the eleven-hour (ten spent on my feet, running around) event logistics gigs... two different flavors of "bastard's getting his butt kicked", served up on a regular basis. I wanted to post something on Friday night/Saturday morning, but I was wiped out. When I finally had time to sit down, I spent my time lamenting the disappearance of record stores with one of my awesome co-workers (we also joked about how Nessun Dorma describes our schedules these days), and didn't have time to write.

Yesterday (the word hardly has a meaning for me anymore), I started work at 3PM, and am working straight through to 6AM- this has been a stretch combining the two different types of ass-kickery I am undergoing. Event bleeds into overnight, sore feet are traded in for tired eyes.

Anyway, I did experience an idyllic moment the night of the full moon- I had to kill a couple of floodlight arrays in a parking area, and found myself in a barren parking field, rendered an eldritch otherworld by the luminescent altar of the lupine lords, and I figured that I needed to post a Halloween/full moon themed music video, a charming ditty by the drouthy antipodes' Screaming Tribesmen:





I played the hell out of the Vampyre EP when I was a beardless boy- this is another one to crank up to full volume.

Pythonesque

No, no, it's not what you think! This time of year is the busy season on the job. I am approaching the tail end of another sixteen hour overnighter on the job (and there's no yerba mate involved, oddly enough), and I have to come back at 4PM. I know that, when I'm done at midnight, I'll go home and sleep for at least a day. I've eaten more fast food in the past weekend than I've eaten in the previous month (though I avoid the Arcs d'Or like the plague), just give me a bag of sodium to go please! I will make sure to bump up my vegetable intake considerably over the next few days.

This combination of intense periods of activity followed by a stretch of torpor is reminiscent of the lifestyle of a python or other large snake. It's certainly not an optimal way of life, but I think I can sustain it for a month. If I find myself eyeing the cat hungrily while trying to figure out how to unhinge my jaw, I'll seek psychological help.

First Day, Fight Day

The first Saturday of October is a busy one for me. It is the opening day of the children's athletic program I coach for, and it is invariably a busy day on the job. Today, it meant coming home around 1AM, getting up at 7AM, taking the subway into Manhattan, and teaching, usually until 11:45 if we have a full 'dance card'. Basically, by 9:30, I am fighting with seven year olds. We are lucky to have one seven year old who plays judo in another dojo, so she maintains her skill set throughout the summer. She can breeze through forward rolls while her classmates need a refresher... she is a good partner for her peers, which helps us to no end.

I took the train back to the Bronx with Gently Jimmy G., all-around badass and good guy, then drove him to his building, which is uphill from the Broadway and 238th St Station, up in the Riverdale section of the Boogie-Ooogie-Oogie-Til-You-Just-Can't-Boogie-No-More Bronx, then it was back to Yonkers, a swing by a local pizzeria for a couple of slices, and back home for a brief interlude. That basically means taking the contacts out for a while, downing two aspirin, drinking a big cup of yerba mate, then taking a hot-as-I-can-stand-it shower until I feel limber enough to go to work. Tonight, I will be hopping all night, I have to cover a lot of ground during event nights, and will be the last one around to lock up, probably around midnight. It's a slog, but it's bearable- things get quiet at work after November, so I just need to power through four weeks of long Saturdays. Thankfully, Sensei prepared me for days like this.

Uh... The New Post is a Couple of Posts Back

I finally got around to publishing the post-lecture recap from last week's Secret Science Club lecture. That being said, tonight the Imagine Science Film Festival comes to Gowanus paradise The Bell House. A very tired Bastard (yeah, it's been another yerba mate fueled all-nighter) will drag his ass to Brooklyn for the festival.

Also, I want to take some time to extend my best wishes to Ned and the lovely Mrs. B. I've been playing catch-up lately, so I am late to the game on this one. All the best to the Beaumonts.

The Endurance Tour

So, in a three-day span (Friday to Sunday), I will have worked two double shifts (4PM to 8AM) because of some time juggling with a co-worker. Yeah, I worked sixteen hours from last night to this morning, slept for five hours during the day, and am back on another sixteen hour endurance tour. Needless to say, I have a two-liter bottle of yerba mate- this time, I mixed it with some nettle tea (I have been subsisting largely on stinging nettles for the past two weeks) to make an unholy tonic.

Not having time to hit the bank this afternoon, and having all of two dollars in my wallet, I decided to bring some cooked rice to work, and helped myself to some of the wild grape leaves that grow profusely on the grounds (after all, people, this is Vinland the Good that I inhabit). Blanched for a couple of minutes, they can be used to make half-assed dolmades- or, if you prefer, a grape-leaf "taco", with the leaf in place of a tortilla. Luckily, I have a co-worker who orders from the local Chinese takeout place a couple of times a week, so there's a plethora of soy- and hot-sauce packets laying about. Mmmmm... haute cuisine for the skint. I plan on grabbing a bunch of grape leaves after dawn so I can make proper dolmades when I wake up sometime next week. Of course, there are also some tender young nettles for the taking as well, although many of the plants have matured beyond the peak of palatability.

A good friend and co-worker of mine once told me, "You're not happy unless you're getting your ass kicked!" As you can imagine, I am euphoric right about now. Thankfully, the radi-adi-o is providing some good inspirational music for a reluctant insomniac.

The Major and the Mrs. and the Mourners

Today, I had a full dance card. I was out of the house shortly after 9AM, and took the number 4 train from Woodlawn to Brooklyn's Borough Hall. The plan was to meet up with Major Kong, the good Major's wife, and N__B, Mrs_B, and Mini_B, who is not so mini anymore. We rendezvoused at Brooklyn Bridge Park, right outside the Brooklyn Smorgasburg (sic). Our rendezvous point provided spectacular views of downtown Manhattan, just across the East River, and the Smorg provided an eclectic variety of food vendors. I made a beeline for the Bolivian Llama Party and got their delicious triple pork sandwich (festooned with picked onions, pickled carrots, and both brined jalapeño rings and a thinly sliced hot red pepper, then drizzled with crema and sprinkled with a grated cheese reminiscent of cotija). I got a lemonade/rosewater soda to wash it down. We dined at a table riverside, a most felicitous location for brunch. I work on Sunday afternoons, but I think I may make the "Smorg" an occasional stop on Sunday mornings.

After brunch, we parted ways with Mrs_B and Mini_B, who stayed at the park for some outdoor recreation, and took a leisurely stroll through the beautiful Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, where Ned pointed out the interesting architectural highlights, including the Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, which features bronze doors salvaged from the ill-fated SS Normandie.

We parted ways at Borough Hall, with Ned and the Kongs taking the 2 train back to Manhattan and myself taking the 4 train back to Woodlawn.

I then drove to my place of employment and walked to a nearby establishment where a dear co-worker of mine was holding a fundraiser to cover medical expenses for her sister-in-law, who had succumbed to cancer at the all-too-young age of forty. Yeah, it's that bad. The family is holding together well, but there is an undercurrent of melancholy that will be lingering for a while. On a happier note, I got to know a couple of bartenders and one of the owners of the place, a place I don't visit nearly enough (I usually get out of work too late to bend an elbow, and I typically limit my drinking to establishments I can walk to, or need to take the train to).

After a couple of hours, I had to head to work, having bowed out of the fundraiser early. It's been a long day, but I made sure I brewed a pot of yerba mate to keep me from flagging. It's not often that I have friends from out of town coming on the same day as friends from the area are having an event, but I'm the sort of person who'll jump through hoops to see everybody.

Papa's Got a Brand New Gourd

A very groovy friend of mine got her hands on a big gourd, and (knowing that I am a yerba mate drinker) fashioned a cup for me. I am still soaking it in hot water, and scraping out the white pithy lining of the gourd, but I love the thing, and can't wait to use it. You can just see the mouthpiece of the bombilla sticking out from inside the gourd:





Christmas came early!

Moon Musings

Fueled by yerba maté, I'm working the graveyard tonight (it makes juggling jobs easier these days), and the moon is full. The moonlight has been so bright, one could read a newspaper without artificial illumination. Maybe my mention of the Black Rabbit of Inlé in my previous post was subconsciously inspired by the fact that the moon would be full tonight. Without giving away any secrets, (in connection with another post earlier this week) another silly scrap of doggerel comes to mind on this, the night of the full moon:

Overhead, the moon is screaming
White as turnips, on the Rhine

That's a takeoff on the Serenade from The Student Prince, a musical I know mainly from a Benny Hill spoof of the song Drink! Drink! Drink! (I can't find the Benny Hill video on teh t00bz).

Another poem, a riddle, comes to mind- I don't know if it's a traditional one, or one written by a guy named Lawrence Schick, but here it is:

Round she is, yet flat as a board
Altar of the Lupine Lords.
Jewel on black velvet, pearl in the sea
Unchanged but e'er changing, eternally

Enough of my lunacy, here's a little lunatic ditty from my favorite evangelists, St Joey, St Johnny, St Dee Dee and St (at this point in their career) Richie:




Oddly enough, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics produced the song.

Postscript: I'll have to read this post tomorrow, after I've had some decent sleep- it looks pretty grammatical at 4:25 AM, but that's not reassuring.

I'd Like to Take This Opportunity to Thank the Academy

And by "The Academy" I mean Laura, the Canadian Domestic Goddess who nominated me for an award:





Now I have to post seven random things about myself...

I like that award picture. I actually love roses, they're delicious. That being said, I prefer squash blossoms- stuffed with mozzarella, dipped in batter, and fried in olive oil and butter.

I’ve only gotten one speeding ticket in my life, and I beat it. I think I was doing forty in a thirty zone, but the road had multiple speed limits, and I was coasting down to the speed limit after leaving a fifty-five MPH zone. I showed up in court (it was an hour drive north), but the issuing officer did not. The judge dismissed the ticket. I made it a point not to thank him, because he wasn’t doing me a favor, he was upholding the law. I merely said, “Goodnight, your honor” after he dismissed my case.

I drink a lot of coffee, and I love coffee paraphernalia. Besides a drip-style coffee maker, I have a French press and a stovetop espresso pot. I have a big coffee urn in storage, in case I have to brew coffee for twenty or so people. While I can drink black coffee with no problem, I usually drink hot coffee with a little milk, no sugar. I really don’t like hot, sweet coffee. I drink iced coffee a little on the light side and kinda sweet- if I’m really ambitious, I drink iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk (a habit I picked up while dining in a Vietnamese restaurant). I drink almost as much yerba mate as coffee. I don’t drink much tea, and typically prefer it iced, with a little lemon and sugar.

I have a couple of verbal tics. Whenever anyone says "Take it easy" my response is always "Take it nonetheless". This confused the hell out of one of my co-workers. For months, he could never quite remember what my response was. There are a couple of friends that I never greet with a simple "hello"- whenever we see each other, we strike a "heavy metal" pose and bellow a long, drawn-out "YEEEEAAAAHHHH!!!" My friend J-Co picked it up from a co-worker who was in a metal band called Killerwatts. My brother Sweetums also does it, and it was a triumph when we got his demure, soft-spoken wife to humor a bunch of us with a hearty "YEEEEAAAHHHH!"

A few years back, a bunch of us traveled from New York to Washington D.C. for a friend’s wedding. It was a summer day, so we all wore shorts and t-shirts in the car, and then changed into our suits in a men’s room at the venue. One of my friends joked, "Heh, you clean up good." I responded, "No, I just dirty down real bad."

Speaking of "dirtying down", I’m pretty outdoorsy, so I often come home covered in mud, blood, bugs, scratches and what-not (no Santorum jokes! Yes, it's that link!). If I were to design a dream house, it would have an outdoor shower stall, so I could avoid tracking gack into the house.

While I enjoy doing these kind of posts, I always feel funny about sending out the prompts. Part of it is that I’m sure I’d send it to people who have already received it, what with all of our shared blogrolls. So, rather than sending the award out to other bloggers, I'm going to invite people to post random speculations about me in the comments.

Get Outta Town!

My eldest nephew will be going to Washington D.C. as a finalist in a national scholarship program- he's a great kid, as level-headed and good-natured as he is smart, and I mean that as a compliment. He's currently at my mom's house in Prince William County, Virginia, so I'll be driving down to spend some quality time with family as soon as I leave work at 1AM.

It's been a while since I've been to mom's place- my last vacation was spent traveling to Europe to see two of my brothers and their respective families. I call mom a couple of times a week, but it's been all too long since I've seen her.

Needless to say, I'll be taking a bit of a breather- I'll be traveling straight back to work on Wednesday, when I don't have to be in until 9PM.

In the meantime, I'll be driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel...





Shoulda used a sippy cup to avoid spilling my yerba mate.

Schedule's Been Topsy-Turvy

One of my co-workers asked to do a switcheroo with our hours this weekend, so I found myself doing graveyard shifts. The good thing about graveyard shifts is that the workplace is quiet and peaceful, the bad thing is that they really throw a monkey wrench into one's "internal clock". Yesterday was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny, so I didn't want to sleep the whole day away. I made a point of waking up in the early afternoon and spent a couple of hours sitting on the front stoop chatting with neighbors, re-reading Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim , while drinking homemade limoncello from an old mustard jar (insert "approach to al-Mustardsim" joke...). I figured that I could get snockered, and sleep it off for a few hours before getting up for work (that's how I roll, baby). Sheesh, this sounds like the song Friday, if it were sung by a drunken pseudo/quasi-intellectual.

It's been a quiet night, and the local college radio station I listen to has been playing some fantastic stuff (check out the archives, people). I'd never heard of the band Return to Mono, but the song Framebreaker made an impression on my befuddled "it's 2:45 AM and you haven't got yerba mate" brain:





I've got just an hour and a half to go before I can hit the sack. This evening, I'm planning on hitting Tagine on 9th Ave. to see Secret Science Club goddess Dorian Devins (one of a pantheon of two!) perform some standards. I think I'll need a pot of strong Moroccan coffee to keep me awake.

The Ghost Who Haunts the Downstairs Apartment

This time of year, I tend to be scarce- on a typical Saturday, I leave the house by 8AM and don't get home until 1AM Sunday (potential burglars, I don't have anything in the apartment worth stealing- the only thing I have worth stealing is on my person, being typed on). I am pretty much the ghost who haunts the first floor.

Today, I left the house around eight and drove down to the vicinity of Gaelic Park, where I usually park to catch the 1 train to midtown Manhattan for my volunteer gig. There was construction on the elevated tracks, so I had to take a shuttle bus to 207th St in Manhattan to catch the A Train. It took me an hour to get to midtown, and I arrived just in time for the first class.

Once I got to my destination, all inconvenience disappeared- I was among close friends, doing productive work. Since the kids were kinda rusty (and not Rusty in a groundbreaking way), we had them practice ukemi for a while, then went over the basic grip, having the kids practice kuzushi- unbalancing techniques. We had two classes, then I had to shower up, power up, and start to wend my way back to the Bronx, so I could drive to work. I'm writing this in a library close to my place of employment, and plan on grabbing a couple of slices of pizza before punching the clock.

It's a gorgeous day- sunny, with temperatures in the 70s- motivating myself to leave the house was easy, and I walked inside with a bit of a pang (of course, this is just a five minute stop). Thankfully, I'll be working outside today- I have to run around performing those last minute tasks which are crucial on nights when we'll have a few thousand visitors, then go on standby during the course of the event. After the event, I have to run around shutting things down and locking things up... I'm the i-dotter and t-crosser on nights like these. The one thing I really dislike about this time of year is the extreme fluctuation of temperature- I have to dress for seventy and I have to dress for forty... what a pain in the tuchis! I'll be dragging my ass when I get home, the yerba mate only takes one so far.

Yeah, that's my typical Saturday in the fall- I should look into doing one-day subletting of apartment to pick up some extra moolah.

All Saints' Day

The dawn of All Saints' Day finds me on the tail end of one of my trademark yerba mate fueled all nighters. What better way to celebrate this solemn Catholic feast day than to post a video of some great pagan music by Scandinavian heathen supergroup Hedningarna? Here is Hedningarna performing "thunder raising spell" Ukkonen and, a personal favorite, the "seduction spell" Pornopolka (you read that right):





C'mon, everybody sing along: Raastan rauhan rinnastansa Jag skall riva frid ur bringan.

All-Nighter Aftermath, D00ds Singing Pretty

By the time this post hits the t00bz, I'll be sleeping off a sixteen-hour overnight stint (fueled, as always, by consumption of copious amounts of yerba mate), as my co-worker attended a black-tie fundraiser for a charity. With gasoline prices hovering around $4.15/gallon, it's nice to be able to combine two days' commuting into one round trip. It's also nice to have some quiet time to catch up on the news after a busy week of attending lectures and drinking beer. The one downside is not being able to participate in the back-and-forth jocularity in the comments section in real time. Oh, well, can't win 'em all.

In a comment in an epic 200+ comment thread at Jennifer's place, which is not to be confused with Jennifer's place, I described the Shins' song she posted as "unabashedly pretty, which is something I don't often say about a song featuring a male vocal." Last night, I heard the latest song by English band Keane, and it's another unabashedly pretty song sung by a d00d:





I think I see a trend here... I think it may be part of the New Sincerity, but not an insincere New Sincerity (I was pretty sure that Vacuumslayer had a post up about bronies but I could not find it in the t00bz- a little link-help, and I'll link to the post). Anyway, there's a trend of guys singing pretty songs lately. I remember when such prettiness wasn't en vogue:





Now get off my lawn, I'm sleeping!


UPDATE: Found Vacuumslayer's "brony" link...