Lookin' Sharp

I don't know what the musicians known as N.A.S.A. were thinking when they chose the same name as the space guys, but I do know that they hired someone cool to design their logo. This thing is all angles and it causes your eye to bounce around the letters feverishly. The matching slots in the 'a' and the 's' are quite clever. I love the near-symmetry of the composition and the bold, sharp shape of the outline.

As for the tunes, the track with ODB and Karen O ('Strange Enough') is funkier than toe jam and I recognize the sounds from Spike Jonze's skate video 'Yeah Right' (I assume this is a reworking of the same song; one of the musicians in N.A.S.A. is related to Jonze). ODB posthumously rhymes, "Mo money mo problems my ass." True indeed.

Another N.A.S.A. track features a mind-boggling collaboration between Tom Waits and my man Kool Keith. Waits' chorus is a lot of fun, but otherwise the pairing inspires about as much indifference as Keith's collaboration with Mike Patton on the latter's Peeping Tom project.

Regardless, I am impressed with this extraordinarily stylish logo. The space guys (aka the real NASA) must be jealous; their logo is at least a couple decades past its expiration date.