Music lovers in China have been banned from accessing and using Apple’s iTunes store because 46 Olympic athletes downloaded a Tibet protest album. The government is said to be behind the blocking of the site. Athletes from Beijing, North America and Europe used iTunes to download “Songs For Tibet” which was offered for free from the United States-based International Campaign for Tibet.

The album was produced by a band, The Art of Peace Foundation, and is about the rights of Tibetans. Artists on the album include Sting, Moby, Damien Rice plus others. It launched a few days before the opening ceremonies.

China is known for blocking “politically sensitive content” and Apple won’t explain but did acknowledge the block. Plenty of Chinese are offended by the album and are planning protests. What else could they possibly ban next?

(this is a long post, I know, kiss of death for a blog. But just go with it, alright?)

Ice Cube was sitting in the lobby when James Barone and I returned to the Four Seasons Hotel. We had failed miserably at finding an after-party with booze, and resigned ourselves to just chill in the room. After a delicious $35 pizza, James was getting a bit stir crazy, so we decided to venture on down to the dock on the river behind our hotel for a bit.

There were four people already there, and it being a small dock, they invited us into their conversation. Nice young British folk…well, that is, James from Does It Offend You, Yeah? and Jill were great peeps, their two friends were respectively indifferent and a bit douche-y. Keeping true to James’ band’s name, the order of the evening was saying affably rude things to one another. We chatted politics and race relations, cracking wise and calling each other out for our countries’ respective blemishes. It didn’t hurt that Brit James was ornery and bristlingly charming. And apart from being smart as a whip and wicked funny, Jill was incredibly gorgeous. Quite a pair of legs there.

Synthesis James was quiet for the most part, interjecting comments here and there; myself, I tend to be more talkative, and of course I was witty as all get-up. We chatted it up, their friend called me “pedantic,” I told him he’s “a bit of a cunt,” it’s pretty good-natured ribbing all around. After bumming a few of their cigarettes (I relished using the term ‘fag’ in the British sense of the term), another couple wandered over to the dock and asked if they could join us. They introduced themselves, common ‘merican names that I couldn’t quite hear. The Brits recognized the dude from the night before and our group grew to six music geeks, smoking and drinking wine at 4 in the morning.

I know the recent arrival from somewhere. But there are only about a dozen man archetypes here. You can’t throw a rock without hitting some bald, skinny white dude with glasses at SXSW. He’s cool and low-key, and says a few funny, self-deprecating things (“humor is not my strong suit”) before going into a story about how earlier he was interviewing Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols for a radio show. Jones is apparently a world-class whistler (“with theremin-like vibrato”). During their conversation Jones mentioned off-hand that “Hitler wasn’t really that bad a guy.” Then he played a blues song. Pretty weird/funny story. At this point I start to think to myself, “You know, come to think of it, glasses-bald dude looks incredibly like Moby.”

Yep. It’s totally Moby.

As it turns out, Moby is a really, really nice guy. Smart, too. Some people talk a lot of shit about Moby, about how he’s a wussy, a vegan weakling, or whatever. I say fuck that. Moby is down. Way down. I exchanged few words with him as he sat across from me in the circle, but he was cool, man. Still don’t care for his music much, but cheers to him anyway.

I sensed that James Barone was getting antsy and ready to leave, so we got up, and I wished them a good night: “Alright, I’m turning in. It was really nice to meet all of you…” I paused, looked at the douchy-dude. “Except you. You’re a bit iffy.” We left to the sound of laughter and the smell of wafting smoke.