It’s also no secret that I’m a fan of their mobile strategy. I’ve written about both the Public Radio Player and NPR iPhone apps (both excellent, btw).

So what surprises me is not so much that mocoNews.net is also a fan of NPR’s mobile strategy, but that there exists a fan site dedicated to the mobile Internet.

(Said surprise completely and consciously ignores the fact that I am one half of the staff of a public radio fan blog.)

They put some thought into what an NPR post-podcasting would look like (and we’re not even fully post-radio yet). More importantly, mocoNews finds hints of that future in present projects. What they say about NPR’s new mobile site and their Android app makes me wish I weren’t so loyal to Apple’s phone.

It’s the promise of a truly expansive and ever-evolving NPR experience (and one that I can plug headphones into while walking around) that really has my head spinning right now, and it makes me quite sad that the iPhone App Store’s approval process puts such a hamper on that kind of development.

Oh, and one more thing, I’m fairly certain that mocoNews stole one of our headlines for a related site, PaidContent.net: “Public Radio Dangerously Close To Making Public Radio Obsolete.”

That’s okay guys, you can keep it.

"Winter Uggs with micro skirt" by Annie Mole on Flickr

So I’ve only seen a few seasons of Project Runway, and I truly enjoyed it. It’s an actually interesting reality show – I like watching people be creative on deadline, with strict constraints.

It’s sort of like the end of my college career, except that I didn’t get to dress hot girls in poetry.

Come to think of it, if I could re-do a couple of my final projects, I think I have a good idea.

Sadly, though, the new season, the first on Lifetime instead of Bravo (neither of which I watch – we don’t have cable), has been missing its stalwart judges, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia.

This leaves them with an interesting dilemma: A show that needs to keep its reputation up after going to a network with a poor reputation missing two of its constants. Producers, this concerns me. It’s time to, as Tim Gunn would say, make it work.

Monkey See blogger Linda Holmes doesn’t think it’s coming together.

She says that the show lacks a suprising gravity without Garcia and Kors.

I’ll grant her Garcia, and yes, Kors lends some gravity, but what I’d notice in a Project Runway without Kors would mostly be a surprising lack of bright orange fake tan.

She found a used vinyl copy of the new Sonic Youth record. I already had a downloaded version, but was aching for the vinyl – it’s a great record, but Sonic Youth has such a distinct sound that all the songs begin to sound kinda the same, so having the album divided into four parts is a great way to digest small chunks at a time.

Seriously, play anything off of “Daydream Nation” and then “Malibu Gas Station” off of “The Eternal.” You could exchange any bit of Sonic Youth’s career with almost any other bit of their career without noticing much of a difference. Or really minding that much. That’s just sort of how they work.

One thing to notice about the article for NPR’s “Song of the Day” is that it includes the stupidest text I’ve ever read on an NPR story:

Singer-guitarist Thurston Moore says that The Eternal, the noise-rock demi-gods’ 16th album, focuses on “avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll.”

Really? That’s like saying “The composer Mozart focused on a type of sound called ‘music.’”

Since when is it even worth mentioning that Sonic Youth makes “avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll,” much less a single dependent clause away from calling them “noise-rock demi-gods?”

Granted, Bob didn’t quite follow the rules – he stopped when he got to 101 bands. I suppose he could have kept going. Also, I kind of get the sense that some of that list was just to make people that don’t live in cities that touring bands regularly visit a little jealous. The Decemberists, Jens Lekman and Lou Reed? I’m totes jealous.

After the jump, my list, in random order.

1. Sufjan Stevens

2. Camera Obscura

3. The Hold Steady

4. Belle and Sebastian

5. New Pornographers

6. Those Darlins

7. The Reigning Sound

8. Elvis Costello

9. Lucero

10. River City Tanlines

11. the Thermals

12. Okkervil River

13. Old 97s

14. They Might Be Giants

15. Ben Folds

16. My Brightest Diamond

17. Al Kapone

18. Arrah and the Ferns

19. Eef Barzelay

20. Everthus the Deadbeats

21. Snowglobe

22. Harlan T. Bobo

23. Chancho en Piedra

24. Two Way Radio

25. Lyle Lovett

26. Harry Conick Jr.

27. Boston Spaceships

28. Mr. Quintron and Miss Pussycat

29. Everything, Now!

30. Glue

31. Totally Michael

32. Rufus Thomas

33. Cory Branan

34. Jack O. and the Tennessee Tearjerkers

35. Stereofidelics

36. Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs

37. Valerie June

38. This Story

And wow. I think that’s it. But that can’t be it – there’s no way. I live in Memphis, I’ve been to the HiTone more times than I care to remember. I can’t think of any other shows worth mentioning.

Compared to Bob Boilen, I’m an underachiever.

The awesome Laura Conaway notes, in this “Planet Money” blog post, that “In its letter, Goldman acknowledges using high-frequency trading but writes that its systems don’t see ‘client order flow.’”

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I’m thinking Goldman is admitting guilt, even as they try to assuage it. I would know.

That’s my usual tactic when I decide that yes, I’m guilty of something, anything, but that I still deserve to defend myself.

Bad news for Goldman-Sachs: it doesn’t work.

Starting next Monday, July 27, NPR.org will have a brand new look – a very familiar, blog-like look with some classy, but Web-friendly typography (as referenced in this post’s title).

With the use of so much Georgia for headlines and body text, the new site looks like the love child of the New York Times and the WFMU-sponsored Free Music Archive.

For lack of having anything better to say about it, it’s making me want to seriously switch up Radio-Sweethearts’ appearance. We’ve been around almost a year and a half now, and we’ve been talking about a redesign since day one.

I don’t think we’ll get around to it just yet, but it’s awesome to see what NPR is doing with their site. It’s a great way to bring their official blogs (which they’re using to pretty great effect) to the forefront, while improving readability and navigation. I’m envious, really.

And also – serious kudos to Scott Simon, whose video preview of the new site is knowledgeable, quietly funny, and proof that with this Web thing, NPR is doing it right.

If we could embed that video here, rest assured, we would.

But this begs an important question. Does “Sexy bow wow wow” music refer to Marvin Gaye or to, y’know, Bow Wow Wow?

“I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow

“I Want Candy” is pretty sexy I guess – it’s a girl singing about what she wants from a man – but I think he meant “sexy bow chicka bow wow music,” as in the following example, which, though safe for work, will garner you the same looks as if it were not:

“Laying Pipe.” Sounds like it’s NSFW, but it’s totally SFW.

This whole episode of “Planet Money” is full of weird moments like that, and Caitlin Kenney purring, “I would looove to regulate your holding company.”  I never thought I’d say this about Kenney, but, ick.

I should have seen that coming; after all, the episode is called “Regulate Me, Baby.”

David Kestenbaum’s hilarious crying jag. The outrageous gain on the mics as he throws paper around and slams his head into the desk. Laura Conaway squeaking squealing and drawling. Chana Joffe-Walt owning all. Even if my phone thinks her name is Ghana.

All this and more could be yours, today, on the Planet Money podcast. Now, away with you.

Though we’d love to, we don’t have time to go to the Sufjan Stevens listening party mentioned on PRI’s “Studio 360.”

In Boston, however – and this is the reason for our timing – we’ll be spending the weekend at Megapolis, an audio art festival put together in large part by “Love and Radio’s” Nick Van Der Kolk.

In the meantime, we’re leaving the blog in the capable hands of Zach Whitten, sole proprietor of Brain Release Valve.

The regular content of our two blogs are quite different – but Zach has promised us he would keep our blog’s MPAA rating to an Independent Film R, rather than a Horror Movie R.

But I make no guarantees.

What makes it relevant has nothing to do with timing. This is our blog. What’s relevant to this blog is what Kerry and I want to be relevant. So… there.

Anyway, one of the songs Bonnie “Oldham” Palace shared has immediately become one of my favorites. It’s his own, and normally, that’s something that drives me crazy, unless it’s part of an answer to one of Bob Boilen’s questions, which, in this case, it is.

More to the point, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “The Girl in Me” lays on the faux sincerity so thick that it totally bests my previous favorite song on the same subject:

The Replacements – “Anadrogynous”

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a good downloadable copy of the song, so you’ll have to deal with the link.