Versatile musician Beck quietly released a new EP called “Hell Yes” on iTunes Music Store earlier this week featuring songs from his upcoming album “Guero” to be released at the end of March. This was perhaps prompted by a leak of mp3s from an “unmastered demo” onto the net. Beck has also responded by saying that the album release will be laden with goodies such as unreleased tracks and perhaps a DVD with videos. You can already watch the video for “Hell Yes” on iTunes Music Store for free to get a taste of what’s to come.

Not that I think he has much to worry about with the leaked demos. They have enough rough edges that most Beck fans will still be eagerly awaiting the finished product, which will undoubtedly feature the excellent production values Beck is known for. While the EP reportedly is remixed versions of the upcoming album tracks, even the underlying music and vocals seems more polished and finished than the demos. So support this artist by getting the EP and putting aside some cash for the official album release.

That aside, the demo has a retro feel to it, beckoning back to the days of his first two album releases. The EP gets even more retro by featuring a distinctive early-80s-synth 8-bit sampler sound. The four tracks on the EP are all quite interesting listens, and the demos include a few other promising songs that should result in a very strong album. The track “Missing” is one of my personal favorite demo. I’m looking forward to it.

Mmm, these turned out nice. Last night made Oatmeal cookies with dried cranberry bits and a hint of orange oil added to give it a twist.

It’s warmed up quite a bit today. I actually had to get up and take off some clothes during the night because it got too hot.

Maggie requested I make “green tea cookies”. I had no idea what to do but tracked down a Green Tea Shortbread Cookie recipe and made 4 dozen.

I know only a few episodes have been shown in the US so far, but you have GOT TO WATCH THIS. I just finished watching the last episode and man oh man. Don’t want to spoil it for those still watching it, so I’ll just say that it gets better and better.

11C looks like the high for today. Brr.

The other request besides to make it less sweet was to make some with nuts. I’ve already made my position on nuts in cookies abundantly clear, but “the customer is always right”. So tonight I added some pecans and left out some of the sugar. Before I got to explain the changes my wife had already eaten half of one and said, “I don’t know why they are complaining, it’s not that sweet.” So I guess that’s a good sign. 4 dozen made, but they are a bit bigger than yesterday because I’m using a measuring scoop to make the cookies more uniform in size, but it’s a bit more dough than when I did it by hand.

Sold 28 of the cookies I made yesterday, though most of the rest of the batch went as samples. Still comments that they are too sweet, so will try again with less sugar. Still, encouraging.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/02/01/2003221789/print

(If you don’t get the joke, you’re too young or too old or something.)

Made up a batch of 5 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. Maggie wants to try selling them to her customers, so this is a trial run. The feedback I got from the batches last week is that they were too big, and they didn’t like chocolate too much. But everyone liked the sound of oatmeal raisin, so this time made that and made them the smaller 2.5-3 inch diameter size. We’ll see how these ones go over.

Maggie brought home some cookies from another bakery that I thought weren’t nearly as good. They had a bit of an off flavor like they used bad oil or something. And the brownie they had once again was quite disappointing. But in any case, that kind of gave me a baseline idea of what to compete against, and how much handmade cookies go for here (it was more than I expected).

I was able to find American style brown sugar (the soft kind) at Wellman’s in Tianmu, but since I still had a bit left from the open package of the Taiwanese kind, most of the brown sugar in this batch was still the local kind.

God knows I’ve been to enough McDonald’s in a lot of different places. Besides the core menu items being pretty much the same everywhere, the other constant at McDonald’s is that the Number 1 meal is the one with the Big Mac. I honestly can’t remember it being any other way. So color me surprised when I amble on over to the local McD’s today and notice that they’ve renumbered the menu here. They’ve done it in ascending price order, which means that the Big Mac meal now rings in at Number 4. The Number 1 place is now occupied by the McChicken. While this may seem like a little thing, I wonder how much sales of Big Macs will decline with this change?

Besides that they’ve also gone and copied Mos Burger and added two rice burgers to the menu. A rice burger uses patties of rice instead of a bun. The new ones are fried chicken breast and spicy chicken breast rice burgers. Given the complete and utter failure of their curry rice dishes last year (mainly because they tasted awful), I’m gonna stick with Mos Burger when I want a rice burger.