I just put up a ton of photos on Flickr. It’s less bandwidth-heavy than hosting all of my photos on this site, certainly easier to upload, and probably easier to navigate. If the tools are there, why not use them?
I’m posting this at 5 am. Haven’t gone to sleep yet. But I have a big day today—I am going to Oakland Fan Fest at the Coliseum from 10 am to 4 pm and then going to see Of Montreal at Bottom of the Hill later tonight.
Elena’s Motorcyle Ride through Chernobyl: “a story about town where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog.” (via Bob the Angry Flower.)
How awful. One of my absolute favorite musicians, Elliott Smith, died yesterday. He was only 34. Rest in peace, Elliott. Thanks for the amazing music. I’m sad that I missed several opportunities to see him perform, and now I never will.
everybody knows
everybody knows
everybody knows
you only live a day
but it’s brilliant anyway—”Independence Day,” Elliott Smith
Opus returns. Excellent.
Also, did you know that Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives? Weird shit.
Do you ever export Word files into HTML? Tired of all the proprietary Microsoft crap that junks up your code? Use the Textism Word HTML Cleaner. It seems to work quite nicely. (Kudos to Dean of Textism.)
Finally: Jason’s first earthquake. I was at work when it happened—I definitely felt it and was pretty disoriented for a few seconds. Afterwards, the adrenaline kicked in. Pretty exciting stuff, I guess. No need to worry, people back home. Tornadoes and winter are at least as hazardous to one’s health as earthquakes.
I’m doing well, thanks.
I’m getting over a cold, actually, but after the slight downturn in April I’m feeling well otherwise.
In fact, right now my life is abundant with opportunities to have fun—more so than on average throughout my life so far. I have very little to complain about. Recently I have played baseball, and gone to a baseball game, and played some fantasy baseball (okay, perhaps I’m a bit baseball obsessed right now); I have also done my fair share of consuming food and libations while socializing, which is definitely enjoyable. Time management is something I may start focusing on fairly soon, with more demands on my time certain to arise. It’s been easier to establish a social life here than it ever was in Minneapolis; I have some theories as to why, but I’m not entirely sure.
Let me just interrupt this monologue to say that these crudely produced Peanuts parodies are quite exquisite.
I’m getting more and more work at CLCV. This development is good. This means more pay, which means a more sustainable lifestyle. I am seriously, seriously considering selling my car (I know, I haven’t followed through on this threat yet, despite it being a constant refrain for the last 2 years or so), which would stretch out my ability to live without a permanent full-time job quite considerably. If (or when?) necessity becomes a factor, that car is as good as gone. Even now, the expense of insurance is almost entirely unnecessary, being that I use my car about once a week (if that).
It is ridiculously easy to get along without a car in the Bay Area, since the weather is amazing and public transportation is practically omnipresent. Not to mention that my roommate Nick owns two cars and likes to drive them.
I have basically stopped applying for outside jobs at this point, what with the supply of workers with my qualifications in my field far outpacing demand. It seems pointless to expend a lot of time sending out resumes that result in emails saying, “Thanks for being one of 400 highly qualified applicants for this position two months ago; it has been filled.”
I am now officially old.
I just turned on the radio and heard R.E.M.’s “The One I Love”. At age 12, when that song was on the charts, I purchased a copy of it as a 45 RPM vinyl single. (I still have it.) That admission dates me somewhat, but here’s the real cause of my irrational angst: I heard “The One I Love” on Minneapolis’ classic rock station. Classic rock.
Wait—am I old, or does WLOL just have a screwed-up definition of “classic rock”? I always thought it was stuff like Foreigner, Heart, Fleetwood Mac, and Bob Seger. (The music of my parents’ generation.)
Oh… a station ID just informed me that they call their format “classic hits.” I guess that gives them license to play old alterna-indie-college rock alongside Grand Funk Railroad and Queen. It’s not bad; it’s just weird. And, undoubtedly, angst-inducing for twenty-somethings all over the Twin Cities metro area.
I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet.
My absolute favorite show on the radio is This American Life, hosted and produced by Ira Glass since 1995. It is what it says it is—people talking about life in this country—and defies further description, as their website acknowledges:
One of the problems with our show from the start has been that whenever we try to describe it in a sentence or two, it sounds awful. It’s a bunch of stories—some are documentaries, some are fiction, some are something else. Each week we choose a theme and invite different writers and performers to contribute items on the theme. This doesn’t sound like something we’d want to listen to on the radio—and it’s our show. . . . It’s a weekly show. It’s an hour. Its mission is to document everyday life in this country. We sometimes think of it as a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries.
Anyway, it’s really good—in my opinion, the most enjoyable hour of radio produced anywhere today. I thought to mention it tonight because I was looking for this past weekend’s show online (it’s not there yet, but each show is archived in streaming RealAudio. Give it a listen).
Incredibly, I found out in my search for archived installments that Ira Glass is going to be here in Minneapolis, two weeks from tonight. Not only that, but he will be having a conversation with Chris Ware of Acme Novelty Library fame (also brilliant) about alternative forms of media! So if you’re anywhere near Minneapolis on February 18, 2002, at 7:30 pm, don’t miss this. It’s sure to be extremely entertaining and edifying.
Unfortunately, not having done any writing of note in the last week-plus, I now have two weekends to summarize instead of one.
As promised, Cops and Breeders: On January 26th I went home to Hartford to hang out with my mom and see the new addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. On the way out of town Saturday morning I realized, “Hmm, it might be a good idea to get tickets to the Breeders concert at the 400 Bar on February 20th that Amber and I plan to go to (the first really good 21+ concert after her 21st birthday), since I noticed they weren’t on sale online anymore.” Though I haven’t checked with the 400 Bar box office, I may have gotten the last two tickets available to that show. How do I figure that? Well, the Electric Fetus (record shop) was sold out. Ticketweb was sold out. Global Village, a store next door to the club, was my second-to-last hope. The woman at the counter, after I asked about the show, checked the outside of the ticket envelope to no avail. “We must not have gotten them in yet,” she speculated, not seeing the name of the concert written on the envelope. My heart sank, assuming that since Electric Fetus had gotten them and sold out of them, Global Village had as well. Then she searched through the envelope. “Wait,” she said, as she pulled out exactly two tickets to the Breeders show, with a rubberband doubled around them. She remarked that it was strange that the name of the show wasn’t on the envelope. My first thought was that someone who worked at the store was saving the last two for themselves, but I kept quiet about that. After I ran to my car to get my checkbook, the tickets were mine.
With that triumph, I left town on Interstate 94, heading east. Much like many other drivers on that route, I tend to drive at a high rate of speed. Some, such as those who nobly assume the awesome responsibility of enforcing the laws of the land, might consider that rate of speed excessive. However, I’ve been extremely lucky that, most times that I drive in excess of the posted limit, I don’t get caught.
A little over a third of the way through my trip, about a half-mile from a rest stop, I was preceded and followed by drivers of similar hasty inclination. I noticed, as I often do, a police cruiser on the side of the road after pulling over some unlucky offender. Seconds later, I saw another one. After that, I saw a third cop. This was all within a quarter of a mile. I decided to stop at the rest stop. I hung out for about 10 minutes or so, doing the usual rest stop things. When I left, after I pulled back onto the freeway, I saw another cop with another (probable) speeder. Unbelievable! Four speeders caught by four different cops within a half-mile, and I was none of them. I lead a charmed life.
Anyway, the museum was great, and I had a good time hanging out with my mom and stepdad, as I always do.
This past weekend, February 1-3, I went to Madison to spend time with some friends from college (Pete, Todd, Gief, and Jess). We went to see Lord of the Rings (me for the 3rd time, Pete for the 6th!), had reasonably good Chinese food, and played lots of Simpsons Road Rage (almost reason enough to buy a Playstation 2. It was for Pete, anyway). Also saw the incredible new office that HBG moved into after I left and played a little Quake (a very infrequent indulgence, which explains why I sucked so much). Good times.
As this very strange year comes to an end, I believe it’s entirely appropriate for me to compose my year-end Top Ten List. I’ve decided to end the year focusing on the positive. Maybe I should break it out into categories, but I’m just too lazy.
Barely missed the top 10: my summer road trip to Chicago and Columbus; the end of the state employee strike; finishing the design, though not the production, of the new Minnesota DNR web site. Fairly far off the top 10: shaving off my six-month-experiment full beard (but that was a good thing—believe me).
Happy new year, everyone. See you in 2002.
In two days, it will have been one year since I wrote my first anti-blog entry. I think it’s been good for me. And I’ve already got the bug to redesign (this design is only 9 months old).
Turns out I’ve written 71 entries in a year. That’s once every 5 days, on average… not too shabby, but not too great either. I can do better.
Sloan-fest: It did rock. Here’s some stuff (slightly edited) I originally wrote on the Official Sloan Message Board:
Overall I had a great time at both shows. The Sloan lads were really impressed, I think, with the Cleveland audience, even though they complimented the Detroit crowd more. Murphy seemed at least somewhat affected that the crowd was audibly singing along to everything including the new stuff. The band was definitely in a great mood and played excellently. The Detroit show wasn’t quite as good, but it was still… good.
That part of downtown Detroit, though… sheesh. I hope there are better areas of Detroit than that. It’s worse than most parts of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, New York, Columbus, Cleveland, Sarasota, San Francisco, or Santa Cruz that I’ve ever walked around in. It compares unfavorably with Tampa and Oakland as well, though I have little experience with those two cities (like a day or two). I define “worse” as
- looking more economically depressed and
- looking less aesthetically pleasing.
I must admit there was some promising development in that area (Comerica Park, a couple theaters and restaurants), but it sure has a long way to go.
I was really impressed with Cleveland, in contrast, and we walked from the venue to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (a little over a mile). I would HIGHLY recommend a trip to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to anyone who can get to Cleveland. Try to go before the end of 2001, because that’s when they’re taking down the incredibly moving John Lennon exhibit.
Okay, from here on it’s fairly Sloan-oriented, but still a good read. Skip to the rest of today’s entry if you really don’t care.
In Cleveland, Sloan came out planning to play the same setlist as the night before (a slight disappointment) but changed a couple things after polling the crowd (“who’s here from the Detroit show last night?” got a roar from at least half the crowd, conservatively).
The best thing about the club (Peabody’s Downunder, whatever) was the superior sound quality. The mix was perfect, I thought. (For example, It’s In Your Eyes sounded really good as a loud rocker there, and it just sounded messed up in Detroit.)
Otherwise, Peabody’s was a joke. The tickets and the sign posted in the window said that showtime was at 7pm. They didn’t even let us in until 8 or 8:30 because they had to put up 100,000 Guinness signs. They definitely could have sold more beverages had they let us in, the morons. I purposely didn’t buy anything there because they left us out in the cold (okay, it wasn’t that cold, but there was a lake effect). Plus between the bands, twice, some tool producer of a radio show in Cleveland came out and plugged Guinness annoyingly.
The club makes a laughable attempt to “categorize” the bands that perform there on the oversized calendar hanging in their window. Listed for Saturday: “Sloan / Emo Rock”. Since Sloan is obviously not “emo”, we diehards outside speculated that some band or person named Emo Rock might be opening. Then we saw the poster: “Ultimate Fakebook WITH Sloan November 17th.” with the fakes’ web address at the bottom. Uh, yeah, whatever. The club also has such useful and distinct categories as “Hard Rockin’ Rock” and “Extreme Hard Rock.” Credible as hell.
Unbeknownst to us, three bands were playing. The first band, “Sad Davie,” was actually pretty good, I thought. [Were they emo? Someone who knows, tell me.] Amusingly, the members of that band were the people we annoyed (?) through the window by holding up notes asking what was on one of their shirts that was partially obscured by a jacket (disappointingly, “Life is too short to drink cheap wine”) and offering the lead guitarist (we didn’t know) a piece of gum to let us in. He then pantomimed some other things he’d rather have (I swear that one of them was shampoo).
Okay, then Ultimate Flakebook played the exact same stuff as the night before the exact same way, with plenty of flashing of monotonous devil signs. They’re okay but fairly bland. They did sound better than the night before, which was encouraging.
Chris and Patrick [two members of Sloan] attempted to make a joke (that fell flat) about the guy who was wearing the shirt that said “at least I’m still cool to one girl” [a Sloan lyric]. It’s not really worth explaining. I pleaded, “just play the song!” Chris saw me and echoed my gesture, saying “for the love of god, just play!” It was funny at the time.
Anyway, it was a great show. I asked Chris after the show if they were coming to Minneapolis, and he said, “not this time, but in the new year.” Hope that’s January-March, not November-December….
Apparently Will’s friend Penny had an even better experience at the New York City Sloan show. He says she was the one that got picked to go up on stage and play Chris’ bass during their song Underwhelmed (a Sloan tradition). And, unlike anyone I’ve seen up there, she actually PLAYED it. Apparently the band wants to keep in touch with her. Wow. [Photos below courtesy of a friend of a friend of a friend.]
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This site blows me away: The All Music Guide. It makes connections between… well, between pretty much every band that’s put out any music in the last, oh, century. It’s part of the All Media Guide, which apparently tracks games and movies as well. It’s completely amazing. Just put in a band you like and get more information and more leads for more good music than you can even imagine listening to.
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I should find out by the end of tomorrow whether we MAPErs approved our contract or not….
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