July 2006 Archives
ROSE: I just had my last Native American music class. The professor played the graduating seniors a journey song on his flute.I was thinking of that story when I saw this. It's the video for "Separate Ways".DAN: Which one? Was it "Open Arms"? "Any Way You Want It"?
ROSE: No, not a song by the band Journey. I mean a journey song. To prepare them for the phase of their life.
It's from 1983, which was kind of that watershed moment, when they were starting to figure out what they wanted to do with this "music video" thing, but there was still an element of "Let's try this and see how it works".
Whatever else could be said about it (like "Jesus, this is awful!"), I think we can all agree that Steve Perry's hair is really the star.
Another cheer for YouTube!
As you may or may not know, this website is hosted on an old Pentium III in a closet at work. Unrelated to the storms, the IT folks decided to do some much-needed upgrades.
Here's an exchange:
GUY #1: Does anyone use this thing? [Points to J's web server]So they unplugged the machine and that was that. And then I had to ask about reconnecting the machine, and would that be too much of a problem, etc.GUY #2: Dunno. Don't think so
So, sorry about that.
Free hosting. You get what you paid for.
Neither had I. But apparently they could. And if you're curious as to how they pulled that trick off, check it out.
Or don't. Seriously, I'd suggest you don't.
Instead, you could read this article about YouTube.
It's my favorite kind of article: you read it and it seems obvious and you wonder why you didn't think about it all yourself, but for some reason, you didn't. And, as an added bonus, it mentions Lancelot Link.
Rather than quote anything from it, I'll just tell you to read the whole thing.
I think the more suprising thing is that there were straight members of that band.
But first a story I wasn't able to tell yesterday, for reasons I'll get into shortly.
So, I was talking to a friend of mine, name Jeff. Works at the coffee shop around the corner. He had had a show at Brandt's right around the corner from the old apartment this last Sunday.
I had to be at the folks' place in Chesterfield that day, so I missed it. And when I dropped by the coffee place a couple days ago to see him, I asked him how the show went.
He said, "The show was awesome. Actually made money off just the tips."
I had never actually heard the band, and had no idea what kind of music it was. For some reason, I just assumed it was some kind of hippie jam music. So I asked if they led off with "Bathtub Gin", the Phish fan favorite.
He thought that was funny and went into a bunch of generic bar rock numbers, which I added "Can't forget 'Whipping Post'. It's like the thinking man's 'Free Bird'".
Good times were had, until he mentioned that that wouldn't really work too well with his genre of music. "Wait, what genre is that?"
He said, "Klezmer".
Yes, Klezmer. Yiddish folk music. Although he said his group tends to do more of the 20's jazz-infused Klezmer.
So, no, I guess they didn't do "David Bowie".
I'd be more embarrassed if I had any self respect. Which I don't.
All right, so as you may or may not have heard, storms blew through the city yesterday.
I've never seen anything like it. The wind was gusting at 80 miles per hour, knocking out power. And that was before the rain even came through.
The weirdest was the sky. It was this eerie yellowish color. It was like the color of glowing ear wax. Or the color ear wax would be if it glowed. To be honest, I've never seen glowing ear wax, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't do that.
When the rain did come through, it was like the end of the world. I had the windows cracked about an inch and that was plenty enough to send a mist through the room.
It was all over in about an hour. Then it was time to survey the damage. For starters, half the branches blew off the tree out back. And part of the gutter blew off.
But we were the lucky ones. My aunt and uncle about three miles away had a 10 foot retaining wall collapse and my uncle almost had a tree fall on him. And on my way to the gym this morning, I saw a house that had not one, but two trees that had been snapped in half, the top halves resting in the living room.
Okay, we didn't skate completely. The power never came back on. (Hence my not telling you the story above until now.) Me and the Ladyfriend went out to get some coffee at the dessert place around the corner, hoping somehow the power would come back on once we got home. No dice.
Which meant sleeping in 90 degree heat with 97% humidity. Not pleasant at all.
I could have been dreaming, but I think around 1 in the morning, the lights all came on. I said, "Woo hoo!" and rolled over and went to sleep. But when I woke up in the morning, the power was kaputz.
Maybe it all wa a dream.
Getting to work today was a massive a pain in the ass. I took the long way, so it wasn't so bad, but several of the all the lights were out, which meant it was very slow going until I made it onto the highway.
Anyway, everything is fine, except all the stuff in the fridge. That's a total loss. Which I'm very depressed about. I was going to have leftover Manwich for lunch today. Man, I love Manwich. You know, since I'm all man. And the dirty dishes in the sink have taken a turn for the worse.
Okay, that last part didn't work very well.
For the man, who has almost everything. Everything except maybe a subtle hint of the fate that awaits him. Some day very soon...
So last week, Tom -- the guy in the office who usually makes the coffee -- was on a cruise. It's one of those tragedies that before I've had that first cup of coffee in the morning I'm so worthless, I can't even make coffee. Well, I guess I could make coffee, but it just doesn't seem worth the effort.
So, I looked in the well-stocked fridge, and I saw some Diet Mountain Dew. I thought maybe if I had some of that, it might prime the pump and give me the strength to actually make some coffee and get me going in earnest.
I was going to get the regular Mountain Dew, but I figured I'd get the diet. You know, since I'm trying to watch my figure.
Anyway, I tried it, and I thought it was delicious! Perhaps the closest-to-the-original tasting diet I've ever had. Not that I have too many diet soft drinks, really, there's no comparison. This is obviously the least disgustingly diet tasting diet drink.
I should point out that they changed the formula for Diet Mountain Dew recently. I never had the original, and it would seem that some people think it was a change for the worse.
If that's true, ignorance is bliss for me.
Now fortunately for me, Tom is back from the cruise, so I never have to subject myself to that. But still. It was very good. Worth a try.
And finally, this is, hands down, the most disturbing thing you'll see all week.
It's a cartoon tiger being potty trained. In Japanese.
You will go insane if you watch it.
Review:
Strangers with Candy: the Movie
The first thing that needs to be said about "Strangers with Candy" is that it's a comedy. It's not a drama. So don't make that mistake.
The next is that it's from the long running TV show by the same name.
The movie is a prequel to the TV show, and plays basically like an extended episode of the show. Roughly speaking, if you liked the show, you'll like the movie. If you didn't -- if you're one of those sad people who didn't "get it" -- you probably won't. And may God have mercy on your soul.
The only differences being that this being a movie, they could say bad words like s*#$ and I think someone said the F word. And no, that word isn't "forensics". And there were some guest stars, like Phillips Seymore Hoffman and Ferris Beuller, but their roles were pretty minimal. Glad they were there, they did their part, but the best scenes (like one involving a thong) all had the mainstays: Amy Sedaris, Principal Blackman, the, um, art teacher guy, and my comedic idol, Stephen Colbert.
I judge comedies by the facial muscle test. If, walking out of a comedy, my facial muscles are sore, I spent most of the movie smiling. If my abs are sore, I laughed quite a bit. Well, my face was sore and so were my abs. That's good enough for me to award it four puppy heads*.
*Some day I'll get a new dog and have another head I can put there. Gut for now, you'll just have to understand it got four. Okay?
Now by "awesome", I don't mean that I'm a supporter of academic cheating. Seriously. Despite numerous opportunities, I never once cheated in college. Sometimes I think I was the only guy in the computer science department who didn't. Every test I took there were at least five pairs of guys muttering back and forth to each other in Marathi.
No, the reason I say it's awesome is because I'm a Sooner, and anyone whose sports teams have been in trouble gets a serious case of Schadenfreude. "Woo hoo! Someone else is getting in trouble! Eat it, suckas!"
Is there nothing that radioactive scorpion venom can't do?
I don't think so.
She says, "What's that?"
I said, "It's about, um, it's about a 40-something heroin addict prostitute who is released from prison and decides to go back to high school."
She said, "Sounds interesting."
So, we go see the movie, wade through the previews, then the movie starts up. It's scenes from a prison, and the narrator (i.e. Jerri) discussing drug use and prostitution. And the audience starts laughing.
Granted, some of it was kind of that overlaughing, like, "All right, people, it's not that funny." But it was nothing I couldn't fight through. About three minutes into it, she elbows me, and says, "Jesus, why is everyone laughing?"
Turns out, the Ladyfriend had not only never heard of 'Strangers with Candy', she had assumed it was a drama.
So there was a faint smell of some kind of burning rubber in the air for the next few minutes as her brain made a very sudden gear change. And that's my story.
I'll actually review the movie tomorrow. For now, it's bedtime.
Similarly, if you ask someone in American to picture an English person, he'll probably think of someone with bad teeth, complicated facial hair, possibly a monocle, impeccable diction and grammar, and flawless manners. But also the stoicism. The English are supposed to be hopelessly stiff and have an uneasy relationship with emotions in general.
However, the English haven't really been stoic since about the time Okies stopped riding horses. Although that reputation should have taken a serious beating with the disgraceful display with the death of Princess Diana.
But it's good to know there's at least one of the original recipe, flinty Englishman left. One man willing to stand up to the weepy, mawkish lot the English have turned into. Here's Read the whole thing. He later gets into why a bit of misery is good for you.
I've given up hope for America to ever be anything but a touchy-feely, therapeutic culture, but frankly, I expect better of the English. Here's hoping there's anyone left to turn back the tide.
While we're talkinga boutt his Jeffries character, he's written another article about everything you ever wanted to know about Birmingham. That would be the one in England, not the one in sweet home Alabama, where they love their guvnor.
For instance:
5. Birmingham has more miles of canals than Venice and more trees than Paris. But, unfortunately for the canals and trees, they are in Birmingham and not Venice or Paris. This makes them all quite sad.
Have you ever known someone who got a rusty trombone*?
I do. Someone I know got the rusty trombone.
I have no idea how I feel about this.
As someone pointed out, this sounds a bit like Oscar Wilde's suit against the Marquis of Queensbury. It will probably not end like she'd like it to. Although I don't think she'll end up in gaol.
Probably.
* I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What the rusty trombone? Usually when J mentions something somewhat obscure, he provides a link to it. But he didn't this time. What gives?"
Well, the answer to that is that you don't want to know what the rusty trombone is. And if, somehow, you discovered what the rusty trombone is on your own, you probably wish you didn't know that. So, I'm not telling you.
You're welcome.
My dad turned 31 two days after I was born. Which means that pretty soon, I'll be able to remember a time in my life when my dad was younger than I'll be. I remember growing up, um... I was going to say that I never thought I'd ever be as old as he is, but that's not true. The idea of being as old as my dad just never entered my mind. It was totally out of the realm of my imagination. It was like me thinking about turning into a plaid-patterned ostrich who was a world-champion checkers player. Just never entered my head.
And now here it is. It's going to happen. It's just days away.
Ave Atque Vale
It is with a heavy heart that I report that Syd Barrett has passed onto the next plane.
If you don't know, Syd Barrett was the original lead singer for Pink Floyd, who, to use the technical term, went poo-flinging nuts. Between the drugs, the pressure of stardom, or just something poorly wired in his head, and ended up destroying the poor guy. Check out this link and tell me if this looks like a man with a firm grasp on his sanity.
After being booted out of the band, he tried a solo career, with, um, mixed results. Personally, I still like the song "Terrapin", and "Here I Go" is one of my all-time favorites. But I also have terrible taste in music. And apparently his last show was something of a, um, catastrophe.
So he disappeared from site, rarely leaving the house, and never talking to anyone. And now he's passed away.
And, as the Cub is wont to point out, you're all going to die as well, some day. So, mourn for him, and mourn for yourself as well.
The blog's back, and please, let's never discuss this again.
It’s been fun.
But still. If you find the way to get out of the bed in time, the gym in the morning is very cool. First of all, there's about 10% as many people as there might be otherwise. So unless you're using the elliptical machine, whatever you want is probably going to be available. I was doing deadlifts. I assure you, nobody was fighting me over the big long bar and that rack thing with the pegs to hang to bar on if I get wobbly. You know, the station you do deadlifts and power cleans on.
On the negative, the crowd at 7 a.m. is about 30 years older than the crowd at 7 p.m. Although, as I've mentioned, I have a girlfriend these days, so I'm not allowed to look at women or men who are prettier than most women. Which means I've also had to burn my Elvis movie collection*.
Anyway, what the hell was I talking about?
scrolling back...
reading...
Aha! Yes, it's all come back to me.
Gwen Stefani. Now, as I might have mentioned, I almost never listen to the radio. So, this morning, there was some song playing that I'd never heard, but I'd heard about. I believe it was called "Hollaback Girl".
I think I should lump Ms. Stefani in with Sting and Paul McCartney under the category of "People who were better off in their bands".
Not that I'm putting No Doubt in the same lofty category as The Police or Wings. Heavens, no. That Neo-Ska, or whatever the hell genre those people were disciples of, was a beating. (Though "Just a Girl" had its charm the first 700 times I heard to it.)
But still. However many hundred thousand times we were subjected to "Don't Speak", it wasn't the musical catastrophe that this "Hollaback Girl" song was.
Good Lord.
Unfortunately, I heard rumors it did quite well in the charts. So apparently we're stuck with the solo Stefani. Alas.
And that's about all I have to say about that.
Watched the show World Series of Pop Culture on VH1 with the Ladyfriend tonight. It was awesome. And I did quite well answering at home.
So, I decided I need to get together me, Catfish (who has forgotten more about pop culture than I ever knew in the first place) and some other guy, and put together a team. Call us "Smell the Glove" or something.
So, that's the plan for now.
* If you didn't catch the reference, either I get out too little, or you get out too much. Or both.
Probably both. Because I know for sure I get out too little, and you probably ought to get that reference. It's not like I quoted the second most famous line from Das Boot. Jeez.
