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| Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 12:42 pm |
In which I eat Thanksgiving food and work and tell you of a concert
Today is the Thanksgiving lunch at work, since we won't be working on the actual day. The kitchen staff stays here all night cooking, and they have a bit of a slumber party and play video games during the bits of downtime. I hook them up with a projector and screen to use for this, and get a special dispensation to avoid gravy on my lunch. So, there's turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, candied yams (meh), and green beans (blech), and apple pie. It's pretty starchy, so I'll have to load on on some fruit and such when I get home. But it's tasty. Last night I saw Amanda Palmer in Virginia. I'm sort of conflicted about the show. She did a pre-show Q&A about the music business, mostly with pre-moderated questions, to avoid fannish questions. I caught the tail end of it, and it was all right, but nothing wowing. The opening band, Nervous Cabaret, was pretty good (good enough that I picked up their CDs at the merch table), though the set was just a hair too long for an opening act. The set break was frustratingly long (nearly 40 minutes) for what amounted to moving a keyboard to another location on the stage. Though, since Nervous Cabaret was also the backing band, I can understand wanting to give them a break. There is often an "Ask Amanda" segment, where she chooses audience questions dropped in a plastic pumpkin to answer. She said maybe she wouldn't do one, since it would be "wanky" on top of the pre-show Q&A. People wanted it anyway, and it then went on for 10 minutes. It had a couple funny moments, but was still overlong. Her playing felt a little sloppy last night, for whatever reason. But having a backup band allowed her to do some fuller arrangements of things and also bring out a number of Dresden Dolls songs that had fallen out of rotation (the mistakes were more common/noticeable in the solo piano songs she always plays, so I don't think it was a lack of familiarity). I enjoyed the trombonist's stage presence, notably. Since the show was in Virginia and on a weeknight, I had to leave before the encore so I didn't miss the last train. Apparently she sang a Leonard Cohen song with her dad on guitar. Maybe a recording will surface. There are some photos (not mine) on Flickr, too.Overall, I'm glad I went, but there were enough negatives that I'm not super-thrilled about it. Current Music: Tracers - Trans-Siberian Orchestra | | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | | 10:58 am |
Myriad things
I'm feeling a little fuzzy this morning. I am very gently allergic to fall, and I think I've fallen behind on my breathing just enough to be a problem. Maybe some water will help. So, it's been a while. This is my first full week of work in three weeks. My vacation straddled two weeks, and Columbus Day was the week before that. So, here's some catching up, organized thematically, rather than chronologically. ( Movies )( Concerts )( And the rest )That's more than enough for now, so I'll leave it here. And how are you? Current Music: Molly Lewis - It All Makes Sense at the End | | Monday, October 19th, 2009 | | 8:28 pm |
Your guess is as good as mine
Yesterday, it was finally cool enough that I decided to try my heat, yet not so cold that it would be a problem if it didn't work. Well, it didn't work. I think the pilot light was out. So, I called to get it looked at. They came and fixed it (I guess?) today, and left me a work order about it. Now, I get annoyed at bad grammar by writers, but I don't really mind it if it's not your job to write. I'll laugh at your sign if it advertises "'Hot' 'Polish' 'Sausage'", but if it's tasty, I won't hold it against you. However, there's a certain level you have to achieve in order to be coherent, and make sure I do what you want to keep things in working order. I don't think this reaches that level:  | | Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | | 11:02 am |
Mike Birbiglia, a little late
I saw Mike Birbiglia at the Warner Theater last Saturday. Henry Phillips opened for him, to not much interest. It was amazing how fast and dramatically the feel of the room changed once Birbiglia got rolling. Since he's appeared on This American Life a number of times, I had already encountered about half of his routine. However, in a "play the hits, man!" kind of way, that was satisfying. He's hysterical, and, while he's not a super-physical guy, had a little bit on enactment that was nice to see on stage. The show also had the broadest age bracket of anything I've been to recently. While most people were around my age, a number of parents brought children (which is fine for his show) and there were even quite a few older folks. They also had half-price tickets for next week's David Cross show, so I took a chance on that, too. Though their signs initially said "Davis Cross", and I was going to joke that maybe the tickets were cheap because they booked the wrong act, but they had printed corrected signs before I went back down. | | Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | | 9:57 pm |
Roller coaster roundup
It's been a while since I've done one of these. Yesterday, I went to Six Flags in New Jersey with Kri and Ben. ( Coaster descriptions and reviews behind the cut to spare the sane )All told, the park was a very solid experience. It was clean and pleasant, which Six Flags is not known for. It had a lot of good coasters, and some fun other rides. However, it's not the best park for non-thrill-seekers. It's clearly in competition with Cedar Point, but even Cedar Point caters better to tamer riders than this did. However, it was excellent for me and my riding companions. | | Friday, September 11th, 2009 | | 11:46 am |
Um, hello
It's been a busy couple weeks in Andy-land, and you're going to get the updates all out of order and such. But there's work, and movies, and a concert, and cows. I'll start with the most fun, my trip to Cleveland for Labor Day. The flight in was uneventful, but we got a slightly late start for no particular reason. Jacqui and I had pizza and watched a movie with her dad that day. On Saturday, we went to the Cleveland Oktoberfest. I got to eat a curried bratwurst and have a beer, though, since we went in the early afternoon, not all the beer vendors were set up, and everything was a little quiet. But there were wiener dog races, which were cute, and just lots of wiener dogs in general (admission was free if you had one). In the evening we went to Otani for Hibachi. Yum yum yum. On Sunday, we went to the Geauga County Fair. I hadn't been in a very long time, though this was always my family's default fair, though we didn't live in Geauga County. Hardly anything has changed. Steak-on-a-Stick is still in the same place (which I pretty much made a beeline to), the Democratic and Republican booths are in the same place, and so on. There have been some variations in the rides over the years, and some changes to the vendors that show up, but it's all very familiar and fun. There were also plenty of farm animals to pet. Then we went to the birthday party of one of Jacqui's cousins, and they had a cute puppy. Monday was due to be a cookout with Jacqui's family, but it got washed out by lots of rain, so became a cook-in. Good food and good visiting were had. I was back on Tuesday and had some time to settle in before coming back to work on Wednesday. Last night, I saw Gamer and 9 with Erin. Gamer is far smarter than Crank 2 (it's written and directed by the same guys), and is non-ironically enjoyable. It'll still bludgeon you over the head a bit with its production, but I had a fun time. 9 has a wonderful aesthetic and design, but I ultimately felt it was rather hollow. I didn't really care about the characters, and the plot points felt very designed. Before my trip, I ended up having to work late three nights in a row, while we were doing upgrades to Office 2007 for some of our users at work. It was going to just be two, but things went slower than planned, and we all had to take on some more work, and I couldn't stagger the days because I had plans on Thursday. Which brings us to the Pet Shop Boys concert at DAR. It was a great show, with only a couple minor issues. I wish I had gotten a centered seat, even if it had cost more, as my view was partially blocked by the lighting rig. I also wish Chris's keyboard had been higher in the mix, as it was the only live instrument (other than a couple drum pads he also had). And I wish they had not only teased "Integral". But they put on a very engaging show. Their roadies had on lab coats and white hard hats. They did a cover of Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" where Neil wore a cape and crown. The show was only about 80 minutes long, and there was no opener, but it was high energy and a lot of fun. I also posted some reviews over at Goodreads. The Nick Hornby books were read over my trip, and I added short reviews for Clive Barker and Thomas Pynchon. Current Music: Faith No More - Crack Hitler | | Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | | 11:05 am |
Video game roundup
edited to add PoPI've actually finished quite a few video games lately, so you get to hear about it. (In roughly reverse order) Dead Space (360) - A very solid action horror game. I haven't played Resident Evil 4 to completion, so I can't really say how it compares. I got clobbered pretty well starting on medium, so I backed off to easy. After that, I found it hits the problem a lot of survival horror games do, where if you play the beginning cautiously, you end up having plenty of ammunition for the game. By the end, I had piles of cash and ammo, and probably could have beaten it on medium. For most enemies, the first gun remains the best, which is a little weird, but whatever. The game does mess with you in a fun way. It doesn't meta-mess with you like Eternal Darkness did, but it does have a lot of nice touches like enemies skittering by in ducts, leaving you to wonder if you'll be ambushed. And possibly my favorite, after it's becoming clear the characters are having hallucinations, there's a level where the camera is cocked at a Dutch angle for most of the level. Prince of Persia (360) - You run and jump and climb. That's pretty fun. You also fight, which isn't. This isn't the slightly simple combat of Sands of Time that still looked pretty, even if it was fairly easy, this is "learn the pre-programmed combos and use them over and over when you get an opening". But, you run and jump and climb. You have to collect light seeds to advance, and there are 1001 in the game. I didn't get all of them, but I got more than I needed, because sometimes that was the only real reason to go certain places. I also played the DLC epilogue, which was more satisfying than the main game in some ways. It was more linear, but felt distinctly like I had a reason to be going in a certain direction, which I didn't always feel in the main game. I don't know how long the game was. I got the achievement for beating it in under 12 hours, but I also got the one for dying less than 100 times, which I'm very skeptical I did, and there are reports that both of those are glitched and you get them without earning them. It wasn't super long, but it also wasn't really short. Since it's really cheap now, it might be worth picking up, but it also might be more worth just playing Sands of Time again. The Conduit (Wii) - A Wii FPS. Using the pointer to aim is wonderful, and the times they used motion controls mostly worked well, but I often threw grenades by accident when I had to scratch my nose, as "lobbing" the nunchuck was a little sensitive at times. They did a great job making a more or less realistic Washington, DC, which is the primary reason I played it. It was great to blast aliens in Metro cars. The story was kind of dopey (and they don't know the difference between "cache" and "cachet"), and the difficulty was all over the place, but it was fun enough. But if you're actually an FPS fan, you can do better many other places. The best part of it was using the All-Seeing Eye to point you to your next checkpoint, which was shamelessly ripped off from Dead Space. Ghostbusters (Wii) - Fun action stuff, with some puzzles, though the mostly didn't take much thinking. It controlled well on the Wii, and I was able to play through on normal (some reviews made a note of the challenge, but I think that was only on the 360/PS3). I did have one instance where I got trapped in a hall of mirrors and had to reload a save, and another part where I respawned in the wrong place and the scripted events were a little mixed up for a bit, but it didn't really break my enjoyment of it. It was weird that they didn't record separate dialog lines for if you were playing as a girl, though. Mass Effect (360) - This is actually the first Bioware game I've played to completion. Holy crap did it sink its claws into me. I didn't do every single side quest, but I did everything that was presented to me (some quests required certain conversations that I didn't always trigger). Despite being a long game, I really tore through it. Right now, I'm in the middle of Majora's Mask, which I'm running hot and cold on. Current Music: Faith No More - Ricochet | | Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | | 12:03 am |
Quick anecdote
At the end of Cold Souls, the credit comes up "Written and directed by Sophie Barthes". The guy next to us (not the guy who fell asleep for the last 20 minutes, but his boyfriend) says, "I wonder if he's related to Roland Barthes?" I say to Erin, "I was wondering that, too, but didn't want to say ..." Erin concurs. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what an English degree gets you. The movie was very good, though the last half hour could have been trimmed by about ten minutes here and there to make it tighter. | | Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | | 11:44 pm |
Concert and computers
Last night I went to the Tori Amos concert at DAR. First off, the sound was much better than the other things I've seen there. I don't know how much of that was having better seats (15th row on the floor), and how much was a better sound system, but there it was. The show was high-energy and excellent. She didn't bust out quite as many odd tracks as she did in 2007 (though she did play "Hotel" at both the 2007 show and last night's, wtf?), so I slightly preferred the setlist at the previous show, but this was still a great show, and the crowd seemed quite jazzed, too. She didn't have a dedicated guitarist this time around, but Jon Evans has learned some new tricks, and played acoustic guitar and upright bass (both plucked and bowed) in addition to the electric bass. And the second last song was "Raspberry Swirl", which was impressive to hear live. And it was the second-to-last song, so at least Matt Chamberlain got to go take a shower shortly afterward. ( Last night's setlist and videos and the 2007 one for comparison) Also, I've been having an increasingly complicated computer problem. The other day, I came home to my computer seeming to be on, but not displaying anything. I reset it and got a bootloader error, so I think it had reset, locked on that error, and then the monitor went into powersave and wouldn't take keyboard input to come out. But it looks like the hard drive at least partially failed. Only the OS partition seemed messed up, and my data was OK, but I haven't tried to do much digging on that count yet, in case the drive is wholly failing. So, I ordered a new hard drive, expecting to install to it and then move my data over and then see if the drive is all right or not. Newegg had a 1 TB drive for $90, and since I was also outgrowing my 500 GB music drive (hush!), this seemed sensible. However, I get it, and it isn't being recognized by my computer or the Ubuntu installer. So, after a bit of freaking out, I try putting it in my MythTV computer, and it works fine in there, so I determine my SATA controller much be old enough that it can't see drives over 520 GB (or whatever the limit is). So, I decide I'll keep it in my MythTV, migrate my music to that, and handle my music using it as a network drive. But my MythTV power supply doesn't have a SATA power connector, and I only have one adapter in my main computer (the power supply has one native SATA power connector). So I can't do a drive-to-drive copy of my music to the 1 TB drive, and have to copy it all over the network. Needless to say, that's a significantly slower process than an internal copy. And I'm also finding a number of my files have question marks and colons in their title. I have a script that cleans up the file names after I rip my CDs, but I keep forgetting to add those characters to it, so sometimes they slip through. I hope there aren't too many more so it can either finish the copy overnight or while I'm at work tomorrow. Once that's done, it should be a pretty simple task to reinstall onto the new drive and copy my user profile/etc over to the new drive. But it's a minor ordeal in the meantime. And my iPod seriously needs a podcast refresh. I think I'm going to be stuck listening to Garrison Keillor in the gym tomorrow. | | Saturday, August 1st, 2009 | | 12:36 am |
And another thing
Jacqui brought me some dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups on our trip (she had had a coupon). I'm sorry to say that those are two great tastes that do not go great together. I think it's a matter of both flavors being quite strong and it causes them to fight for space on your palate. In any case, a noble experiment, but it doesn't do the trick, at least for me. | | Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | | 11:25 am |
Back from New York
Last weekend, Jacqui and I went to upstate New York to visit my grandparents. Friday was pretty much just spent traveling, flying into Buffalo and then driving down to the hotel in Hornell. Saturday was spent lounging around and going for a couple boat rides. My grandpa got a little electric pontoon boat a couple years ago, so we took a loop around the lake in that, and Jacqui and I went for a canoe ride. Sadly, the paddleboat bit the dust a while back. Some water inside it froze one winter and crumbled the foam in it. We also took a trip to a cemetery the next town over where some of my relatives are buried. There was a very pretty golden retriever that came up to us with a ball in his mouth wanting to play fetch. We pet him a bit, but didn't play. He followed us to the car, but eventually ran home. We also went to the ice cream social at the nearby chapel. There was some rain, which made finding a table a little tricky, but it eased up and we didn't get too wet. On Sunday, we took another canoe ride, and bummed around some more. My grandparents took us to dinner in Naples, and we got to see a very nice view of Canandaigua Lake. There was more rain after we headed back to the hotel in the evening, but nothing that affected our day. On Monday, Jacqui and I went up to Stony Brook state park and hiked the gorge trail, where we got to see a number of waterfalls and a couple dogs. We then got supplies to grill for my grandparents and made burgers and chicken. We also all took a trip up to another cemetery where more of my family is buried, so I managed to get the refresher course on that side of the family. We also got to have fresh raspberries from their raspberry bushes each day. The trip back was uneventful, though the so-called "suicide" hot wings at the bar in the airport were pretty tame. Assorted photos from the trip can be found here. | | Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | | 11:56 am |
Oof
It's been a rough morning at work. I think things are smoothed out now, and I'm looking forward to a fruit smoothie at lunch and seeing a play after work. | | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 9:32 pm |
Smurfity Smurf
When I was young, I had an album called Smurfing Sing Song. There's a song on it called "Come to the Party". The chorus is:
Come to the party, come to the show
Join in the Smurfland fair
We'll have Smurfburgers and chips
Smurfing sodas, lucky dips
And all of the Smurfs will be there
But I wonder what a Smurfburger is made of. Smurfs are larger than you imagine (they are three apples tall, which I'd peg as about 10 inches tall, which makes them really creepy). I can imagine them raising small tubers for the chips, but what small animal gets to be the burger? Do they farm mice? Also, this song gets stuck in my head with some frequency, despite the fact that I hadn't heard it in about 15 years until a minute or two ago. I didn't recall how vaguely reggae it was. | | 9:41 am |
#50
Oh, Newsweek.If you're writing a sentence about someone's eloquence, that seems like a perfect place to make sure your subject and verb agree. I saw this in the print edition, and thought they'd surely fix it for the Web. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 11:03 am |
Concerts and plays and movies, oh my!
I mentioned over at Facebook that I had the week o' concerts a couple weeks ago. That was all delightful, though hell on my sleep schedule. First up was David Byrne at Wolf Trap. The opener was DeVotchKa, and they were just right for an opener. They were enjoyable, but a half hour was about all they would have held my interest for. There was a couple a few rows in front of me who were way too into them, swaying and dancing in their seats, and standing up to clap after every song. And then they left the pavilion before David Byrne took the stage. I'd never seen David Byrne perform before, but, based on vintage interviews and such, he seems to have mellowed quite a bit since the Talking Heads days. He put on a heck of a show, and still has major chops on the guitar. Next was The Decemberists at Merriweather. Another killer show, though your appreciation would be heavily weighted on whether you like the new album, as the first act of their show is the new album straight through. And then some of the other hits in the second half, and a bit where some of the band went into the audience and they reenacted something vaguely based on Hamlet. Colin Meloy is as personable as ever, even in the bigger venue. Andrew Bird provided a nice opening set, but I think I prefer him on albums to live. The next night I braved the awful weather for the NIN/JA concert. I didn't take any camera other than my cell phone, and the photos from that are just washes of white light. Honestly, I wasn't wowed by this show. The crowd was pretty subdued until the last 20 minutes of NIN's set and there wasn't a whole lot to see. They did bust out some rarities and interesting arrangements of things, but it all felt a little perfunctory. Though I'll admit part of that may be the result of the comparison to the stellar show in Cleveland last year. I only stayed for about half of Jane's Addiction's set. They put on a great show, and really engaged the audience, but the music isn't all that interesting to me. Then after a night where I stayed hidden indoors, it was back to Wolf Trap for Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes. This was a country-inspired show to support the new album. It didn't rock, obviously, but was very enjoyable. The audience kept getting up and coming back, though, which was a little distracting. Then it was on to the plays. I got an e-mail from Woolly Mammoth Theater saying that another company was offering free tickets to Clive Barker's Crazyface for Woolly customers. Not one to turn away an opportunity like that, I went. It was great. It was an episodic adventure tale. Not particularly deep, but very engaging and well-acted. Last weekend, I saw Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll. It's a recent play of his, about the clampdown on artistic expression in Czechoslovakia in 1968. I was left a little cold by it, and I'm not entirely sure why. It may be as simple as a lack of a way to relate to it. As for movies, I saw Food Inc., which is exactly how they should have adapted Fast Food Nation to the big screen. So good job on the do-over there. And I saw Away We Go, which was a delight. I was unaware Sam Mendes could make a movie that is, first and foremost, funny. Tuesday I'll see Stacy Keach play King Lear. Current Music: The Cure - The Walk | | Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | | 9:52 pm |
Another note on Drag Me to Hell
Someone should punch Justin Long in his smarmy, stupid face. He was a bad case of miscasting, because he can't be anyone other than Justin Long, which pulled me out of the film in many of his scenes. | | 4:00 pm |
How've you been?
Man, two sets of my friends got married since my last post, which wasn't all that long ago. Congratulations to Jess & Nino and Sarah & Than. I saw a couple movies last night. First, I saw Drag Me to Hell. I thought it took about 20-25 minutes to figure out its tone. It starts out a little too fast, honestly, jumping right into jump-scares and goofy gore. Once it slows down a bit and starts the plot rolling, it works a lot better, and the ends up being a lot of fun. It's PG-13, so there's not a lot of bloody violence, but there is plenty of gore and things-what-say-boo. A lot of the scares are punched by sound, so it is probably worth seeing in a theater if you're interested in it. Also, why did someone bring an infant to this movie? Then I dashed over to the other auditorium to see Up. I don't have a lot to add that that others haven't said, but it should be noted that Nathan Fillion suggests it as a robot test. One guy across the theater audibly hitched up at a late point in the movie, even. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aynatonal justly calls Pixar out for lacking female leads in most of their movies. The 3D was nice, especially since the theater I frequent often has problems with their film projectors that they don't with their digital projector, but not mandatory, like it was in Coraline. Before that, I took some much-needed time off work and went up to visit Jacqui in Cleveland for Memorial Day. We did some things. On Sunday, we went to see Evil Dead: the Musical at the Beck Center. They did a great job with it, and we were in one of very very few seats that did not get soaked with fake blood. I also appreciated the late-middle-aged woman who, at intermission, proclaimed her favorite song of the first act to be "What the Fuck was That?" On Monday, we went to the Wickliffe Memorial Day parade. It was fun. I haven't seen a parade in a long time, and haven't seen a small one in even longer. When I was a kid, our parade featured the dads in the area doing precision push-mower maneuvers. On Tuesday, we went to Cedar Point for an overnight stay. It was kind of rainy on Tuesday, so we had to kill some time at the hotel until they reopened the rides. But it cleared the crowds out. Then it rained a bit again later, and most rides reopened after that, but were running limited trains. The operator on Mantis said, after everybody was strapped in, "You should be comfortable now; if you're not, that's to be expected, as this is the most uncomfortable ride; if you care, we're going to take you up really high, and then drop you really low, at speeds of, like, really fast." In the evening, we went to the hibachi place in the hotel. First time I'd ever had it. It was delicious and fun. On Wednesday, we were able to go into the park early, so we got in some early rides on Maverick. Two for Jacqui, and three for me (she skipped the first-car one). Three in a row with no lines kind of rattled me for the rest of the day, and I had to take things slower than I usually do. A useful lesson. We also went on the Ferris wheel before leaving, which makes me very skittish. Which amuses people, since I'll go on tall, fast, shaky roller coasters with no nervousness, but Ferris wheels? Boy howdy! There was also assorted tasty food, but no photos of that :) | | Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | | 7:51 pm |
That was odd
I got a call just a minute ago that said (roughly, as I wasn't prepared to transcribe): "Hey, Bambino! Congratulations! You've helped us complete our mission by [doing something or other]. I'll bet you've got something to shout about. You and an adult can do online to [somewhere] and write about it!" Maybe there's some kind of Go Diego Go ARG that someone put my telephone number into by mistake. | | Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 4:44 pm |
| | Monday, May 4th, 2009 | | 12:20 pm |
Time for a schedule roundup
May 4: Art Spiegelman lecture at the Corcoran May 7: Encore of This American Life Live at the Mazza Gallerie theater (the first showing sold out weeks in advance) May 13: Spinal Tap Unwigged at the Warner May 19: Arcadia at the Folger May 22 - May 28: Vacation and visiting Jacqui in Cleveland. This will also include Cedar Point and Evil Dead: the Musical at the Beck Center June 6: David Byrne at Wolf Trap June 8: The Decemberists and Andrew Bird at Merriweather June 9: Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction at Merriweather June 11: Elvis Costello at Wolf Trap July 6: Sonic Youth at the 9:30 Club |
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