Butts Sitting On Cedars
Posted on | July 26, 2008 at 3:25 pm | 4 Comments
Sorry, I missed this one when it was timely, but the original seats at Red Rocks Amphitheater were recently auctioned off. Those redwood bench seats have seen a lot of action in 60 years. Really, I’m surprised they lasted that long. Last time I saw them was back in September, and they didn’t look that bad to me. But when they showed them up close in the TV news report I saw, they did look pretty beat up. Still, they must have had some secret for keeping them in as good as shape as they were in for that long.
I saw a lot of shows there back in my concert-going heyday: the middle 80s. I saw U2 in the rain when they filmed what eventually became Under A Blood Red Sky. I was wearing a garbage bag for most of the show. It was woefully under-attended because of the downpour, so U2 ended up playing another show the next night inside an auditorium in Boulder, which I also went to, for everyone who had tickets to the Red Rocks show. I bet all those people who skipped out on the first show were kicking themselves for not seeing it through. I don’t know if even the band realized at the time how iconic that first show was going to be.
I saw scads of my favorite bands of the time there: Talking Heads (barely remember that one due to… something), The Cure, New Order, Bruce Springsteen (actually ‘78 for that one, the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour), The Moody Blues, and so many more.
It would be great to own a slice of history, but each one of those benches is huge and I don’t know where I’d put it. Makes me wonder what the people who bought one are doing with it. Hopefully starting their own little amphitheaters…
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 68°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Bel-Air” (The Church)
- “Cinco De Mayo” (Liz Phair)
- “If You Say Please” (Radio Birdman)
- “Koka Kola” (The Clash)
- “Red” (XTC)
- “Maybe Not” (Barenaked Ladies)
- “Alec Eiffel” (Pixies)
- “Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom” (Robyn Hitchcock)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “neighbor problems trampoline”.
Great Googly Moogly
Posted on | July 25, 2008 at 11:48 pm | 5 Comments
I’m finally acquiescing and allowing Google to take over my life. I recently became the last person I know to get a gmail account. (That address is the first three letters of my real first name, followed by my full last name, at gmail.com. If you send me e-mail, please use that instead of my old address.) It’s got some problems, but I like it a lot. The colored labels are cool. The label system itself is pretty neat, though it took some adjustment time to get used to. It’s a lot like folders, except that you can put a message into more than one “folder”. The only thing I really don’t like is that the filter creation is fairly primitive. I’m sure there are easier ways to do the filtering I’m doing, but I haven’t delved too deeply into all the secret language stuff yet. Combining criteria is tough. And the filter UI is not very well done. But I assume that will all get better as the system changes. And where’s the “trusted sender” list? The user interface in general is better than the one for my ISP’s web client, so it’s nice to have a consistent mail interface I can use from anywhere. I can even see using it as my main e-mail client on my home computer, instead of Eudora, which I was using for my ISP mail. I like having all my old e-mail archives accessible from everywhere (mail server space was limited with my ISP), even though part of me worries about that. The iPhone gmail client is pretty keen and clean, which makes me want to do more e-mail from the phone.
I’ve also switched my RSS feed reading from the Sage extension in Firefox to Google Reader. Sage was okay, but you had to set it up independently and re-add every subscription on every machine where you were accessing Firefox, and of course you couldn’t use it if the machine didn’t have Firefox. And if you read an item on one machine, it didn’t get marked as read on another. No problems like that with Google Reader – once you’ve read something, it’s read all over. And it constantly updates, so you don’t have to tell it to go search the feeds like Sage. Sage also ends up taking up a lot of screen real estate, as it is there for every tab in Firefox. Google Reader only takes up sidebar space on the tab where you’re viewing it. The iPhone client for Google Reader is pretty swell too. With the iPhone taking over my world (and my life), that’s pretty important.
I’m sure at some point Google will have a replacement for practically everything. It will even start writing my blog entries for me, and they’ll make more sense. Jieuoi Hoiudhk yiuyeo.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Road vomit. I was driving to work today and was stopped behind a car at a red light. The driver of that car suddenly opened his door and vomited long and hard onto the road. I’m talking huge pink chunks of something, maybe his lungs. It was quite the sight. The light turned green and he was still a bit involved with that, but managed to make it through the green light anyway. Very impressive. I had a fun time dodging the mess in the road. Then when he got across the intersection, he stopped at the first available space on the side of the road, opened the door, and let loose with some more. I got a real closeup view of that one. The guy was a vomiting machine. He was dressed in workout clothes – looks like he had just come from the gym. Probably got some bad wheat grass at the juice bar or something. That’s why I don’t go to gyms.
One of my fears is having to throw up while driving. I guess it’s good for me to see that it can be done and survived, without messing up the interior of the car too much.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “piss off my neighbor with porn”.
Stream Of Art
Posted on | July 24, 2008 at 8:35 pm | Comments Off
There’s a really nice garden in the yard of a corner house that I pass by whenever I walk from work to the local 7-11. In this garden is the statue of a dog. And the statue is part of a fountain. I love what the owner did with it – see photo on the left. Note that the appendage on the upper left is the tail and the one on the right is a (lifted) leg. Click on the pic to go to the Flickr page to see a bigger image, as well as more views of this exquisite piece of art.
That’s all I got for today. I need a rest.
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: Nothing today – mostly about Taco Bell coupons.
Fade To Black
Posted on | July 23, 2008 at 10:49 pm | 2 Comments
I’m still trying to fully take in The Dark Knight. Here’s a few more (non-spoiler) points.
- I forgot to mention in my original review that I saw the IMAX Presentation. Usually when a mainstream movie shows at IMAX, it’s not really in true IMAX format – there are “black bars” at the top of the screen to preserve the original aspect ratio. Real IMAX movies are in a 1.36:1 aspect ratio (similar to non-widescreen TVs) and are filmed on special cameras with larger film. However, some of the scenes in The Dark Knight were filmed with IMAX cameras and those scenes fill up the entire screen. It is breathtaking. The scene with Batman on top of the building in Hong Kong at night gave me vertigo. The transitions between those scenes and the “normal” scenes was pretty seamless. You got used to it after awhile, and they used some scene transition techniques that worked to hide the switch as much as possible. Every once in awhile, there would be a quick establishing shot in IMAX sandwiched between traditional scenes. That was pretty cool.
- I appreciated that the color pallet of the movie is opened up a bit from the mostly-brown Batman Begins. Any movie that features such a colorful character as The Joker can’t avoid it, I suppose. There’s a lot of blues and blacks, and of course some well-placed red. I don’t know why I’m so tuned-in to colors in movies, but it’s one of my primary evaluation criteria.
- I liked that The Joker is not given an origin in the movie. He doesn’t need one. He’s just an agent of chaos, sprung fully formed from the pits of hell. If he had some sort of life before becoming this demon, it’s irrelevant. No, the origin story belongs to Harvey Dent, and that’s really what the movie’s about. They are two sides of the same coin, so to speak (groan).
- In a lot of ways, this is the movie Batman and the movie Joker I’ve always wanted to see. Deathly serious. It finally erased all memories of the campy 60s TV show (which I loved at the time) and the Joel Schumacher debacles. It’s like those were from another life. Jack Nicholson’s Joker was appropriate for its time, but that time has passed. Ledger’s Joker is definitive. Makes me really wonder what Nolan would do the Penguin, though I’m not really sure I’d want to see that in this Batman universe. I know I don’t want to see Robin, though I think Nolan might be able to pull off something interesting there. Catwoman would be cool. Kate Beckinsale?
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 67°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “She Goes to Bed” (Jason Falkner)
- “Shaken” (Trotsky Icepick)
- “Attention” (The Information)
- “Julian H. Cope” (Julian Cope)
- “The Ambassador” (Pidgin)
- “Imitation Jewelery” (The Records)
- “All Of Our Love” (The Coral)
- “Black Shuck” (The Darkness)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “safeway hemorrhoidal ointment”.
How Do You Get To Yankee Stadium?
Posted on | July 22, 2008 at 9:45 pm | 6 Comments
A few months ago, I commented on how the character of Schroeder in Peanuts doesn’t make sense to me. He can’t be both a baseball player and a music geek. Lo and behold, the two sides of Schroeder definitely are at war, and one side has finally won (click to embiggen):
(Note these strips originally appeared in 1961, when I was just a-toddlin’!)
You go, Schroeder! Embrace your true self and your destiny. You will always be a music nerd, destined to hide away from the cruel rays of the sun and forced to endure the company of a groupie you can’t stand. You don’t belong out there with the other boys, laughing and running. They will end up as insurance salesman, while you will someday play Carnegie Hall, assuming you ever get to grow up. Or maybe you’ll work at a pizza joint while amassing a vast CD collection of bands no one’s ever heard of, and dreaming dreams of fame unfulfilled. Whatever. The point is that you know your place. At least you won’t be making weekly visits to a therapist like your friend Linus, who as an adult keeps trying to understand why the Eternal Blanket he lost and keeps searching for is a substitute for the love he never got from his family (well, the Blanket and the sex addiction). And you won’t be hanging out at the methadone clinic with Pigpen, trying to “get clean”. Nor will you be selling yourself on the streets like Frieda, desperately trying to fish for compliments on her hair. And Charlie…. poor old Charlie Brown. Good thing you escaped his terrible fate!
No, you will be content plunking out tunes on your MIDI-enabled toy piano, while the world passes you by outside. Baseball is for losers!
Wow, that went to an unexpectedly dark place. I think The Dark Knight is still affecting me…
Latre.
(”Practice, man, practice!”)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “how do i get fiberglass out of my shirt”.
The Long Dark Soul Of The Night
Posted on | July 21, 2008 at 11:49 pm | 6 Comments
I just saw a fun little comic book flick called The Dark Knight. It had this guy who dresses up like a bat and beats the snot out of people, and this other guy who dresses like a clown and kills people and spreads chaos. And another guy who… but that would be giving too much away.
I knew the movie was going to be unrelentingly grim, but I also knew I’d like it a lot no matter what. So what didn’t I like? Strangely, whenever the camera lingers on Batman (which it does moreso than in Batman Begins), it kind of takes you out of this film noir/crime masterpiece and blunts the “realism” the director is going for (compared to other superhero movies). I did like the fact that it was a Batman movie that actually had a lot of focus on Batman, and used The Joker more sparingly than I thought it would. But there was still something too jarring about seeing that cowled head and hearing that gravely voice that just took me a bit too much out of the pic. And some of the storytelling was not clear. I think it was because things just moved so fast and I didn’t have time to absorb everything. On reflection, and from talking with others, I figured most of it out. But there were still some things that were lazy – like never explaining what happened with The Joker after he crashes the party and Batman dives out the window. They could’ve at least showed a scene of him leaving, or terrorizing the guests more or something. There were other things I didn’t quite get as well, but I don’t want to go into them now.
Despite its problems, I still enjoyed it immensely, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. It’s a very draining movie, in more ways than one. Despite the grimness, there was some (black) humor. The acting was stellar, as it was in Batman Begins. Sure, Ledger was good, but everyone knew that going into it. You can’t escape that hype. But what surprised me is how completely Gary Oldman disappeared into the role of James Gordon. If I had not known it was Oldman beforehand, and hadn’t seen him in the first movie, I would not have recognized him here. Great work. I liked the general lack of CGI and the amazing stuntwork. The movie felt old-fashioned that way.
Enough for now. It’s past my bedtime.
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 63°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Face” (Feckless Beast)
- “Around The Eyes” (Shalini)
- “Bleed American” (Jimmy Eat World)
- “Look Around” (Something For Rockets)
- “Isaac’s Law” (Loud Family)
- “Strange” (R.E.M.)
- “Brilliant Mind” (Furniture)
Creepy Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “sister naked bathroom”.