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Happy birthday to Oscar Niemeyer, whose work is the Viggo Mortensen of modern architecture.

When asked what he thought of the series of celebratory ceremonies and state medals he is being given on his 100th birthday, Niemeyer gave an answer worthy of his utilitarian sketches:

Uma babaquice.

Some things are better left untranslated.

Here is AgustaWestland’s newest entry into the helicopter market, the AW139. The 139 is medium utility helicopter, carrying up to 15 oil workers or 5 oil magnates (4 if one of them is Jowls). Its twin 1600 shp turbines will have you zipping along up to 165 knots (some 300 KPH). And to be sure, it’s quite the looker:

It all sounds neat, right? Well, for pilots who have been used to “steam gauges” and countless analog dials, the AW139 has a million-dollar cockpit system for the discerning pilot:

Is that– no… Surely you jest!

That’s right–a built-in iPod dock. Now you can listen to your tunes in-flight while the helicopter recharges your electronic best friend. What a consumer-friendly optional in a $10.5 million dollar aircraft! If we adopt the price ratio of OEM car adapters, where an integrated dock for a BMW Mini goes for about $250 and about $2000 for a Mercedes S600, the AW139 can easily claim the title of having the world’s most expensive iPod adapter at over $50,000. And as far as I know, the answer’s no–that kind of cash will not get you Cover Flow on a heads-up-display.

But hey, you never know: the dealer just might throw it in as a customer incentive.

For those who sold their most recent startups, this particular bird is for sale at Controller.

When casting sinister characters, no actor tops the insidiousness of Udo Kier.

Those piercing blue eyes and the unmistakable German accent hide a plethora of roles since he landed in Hollywood in the early 90s. Much like Jürgen Prochnow, his non-type cast roles are typically restricted to German-language movies. His abundance of  villain roles in the US, however, have made him one of the most memorable actors whose name you’d never know. Typecasting aside, Kier has had serious roles in practically all of Lars Von Trier’s English-language movies. And while we may personally feel more comfortable seeing Kier alternating between military uniform with boots or a trench-coat with a fedora, his German-language work is typical of many other character actors: above and beyond what anyone else would expect of someone playing characters with names like “Vampire Elder Dragonetti” or “Nazi Fashion Shooter”.

Watch him in: Johnny Mnemonic, Dogville, Shadow of the Vampire

Don’t bother with: Barb Wire, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, any movie on IMDb with (TV) next to the title.

Special mention goes to Grindhouse, which includes a small trailer by Rob Zombie for a faux movie dubbed “Werewolf Women of the SS”, where Udo Kier plays the ultimate incarnation of of his character-actor persona, Franz Hess, the commandant of Death Camp 13.

When people who engage in swinging, the practice of exchanging sexual partners for a night, are asked about the reasons why they would do something considered so taboo, the answer is often along the lines of “having rice and beans every day, day in and day out, makes you sick of it eventually“. So when I decided to “experiment” with new sounds and bands, it was only apropos that another famous sexual axiom came to my mind: in the beginning it hurts, but then you’ll love it.

I caught myself committing a cardinal sin when it came to shopping for music: I became too reliant on the 30-second preview on iTunes, or the first few seconds you really listen to when you go to a record shop (remember those?). It’s a very common behavior, and in fact I once had a Berklee student trying to convince me that this phenomenon simultaneously gave birth to pop and heralded the death of “real music”. Even though he didn’t convince me to toss my Aqua CD into the bin, I take his point in that the absence of second-takes will undoubtedly cause you to miss out on music which may initially sound overly aggressive or have a steep ramp-up, but can have a really nice plateau once you get over the first impression.

Let he who hath not bought a CD for the first track and enjoyed the second track more cast the first stone, I say.

One of my favorite more recent examples of this phenomenon is my newfound love of The Flaming Lips, an Oklahoma City band formed in 1983 which specializes in “psychedelic” or “space” rock. While not having found wide commercial appeal in the US, they’ve remained a favorite of European audiences who generally favor the alternative US bands more so than their compatriots.

With song titles such as “Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber)”, their psychedelic credentials could’ve been established at the liner notes. But listening to them is, in fact, a much more complex process than listening to The Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd. I was immediately turned off the first time I came across them on iTunes. It took a performance on London Live and the accompanying visuals (which included a stage filled with people dressed as aliens and Santa Clauses) to sell me on making an effort to listen to their full album. I picked the newer At War With The Mystics, which included two songs which blew me away: the aforementioned Free Radicals and The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat). Their arrangements are far more complex than I first gave them credit for, and the old audiophile trick of sitting in as quiet a room as possible and listening to the song at a low volume really made me appreciate their songs beyond the screaming distorted guitars–which were what initially put me off listening to them.

One can argue it’s some form of musical ADHD, but I found that after I went through this process with a few songs, I could really enjoy them as the all-precious white noise I’ve come to treasure when trying to concentrate on other things. Songs for which I didn’t do this, I found myself not only “actively” listening (and distracting me from the task at hand), but being actually aggrieved by it.

While it isn’t a sure bet that you’ll find your favorite band this way, being aware of this plateau of appreciation while shopping for new music is, I think, the solution to a lot the issues some of us have with finding new music we like. The last three albums that I’ve added to my collection, The Cinematic Orchestra’s Ma Fleur, Reverend and the Makers‘ The State of Things and Feist’s The Reminder, only remained in my collection because of a conscious effort to go through the songs. It’s not a sure bet, of course: The 22-20s were not so lucky, and only Devil in Me, remains in the library (you can listen to it in the video in the post below).

Would I have listened to The Flaming Lips had I not gone out and sat through the entire album? Sure–two of their songs are playing in famous commercials in the US, and that usually does the trick for me. Unfortunately for most other songs and 99.91% of pop music, my brain doesn’t handle brute force attacks well.