buschap

In which I eat Thanksgiving food and work and tell you of a concert

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:42:34 GMT

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.

Myriad things

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:02:29 GMT

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.

Last night, Erin and I saw an advance screening of The Road. It was excellent, and probably the best adaptation that could be made of the book. It adds a touch of backstory not in the book (though still doesn't explain the cause), which I felt unnecessary, and adds an ending which I found to be a little tonally off, but I understand the reasoning for it, and don't begrudge the movie its ending. I was impressed how well it maintained and conveyed the bleakness and brutality of the book. Jacqui was asking me how depressing it was. I initially said that it wasn't very, but on reconsidering, it is depressing, but I felt a little more detached from the depression than I have with other movies.

Movies such as Where the Wild Things Are, which I saw with Jacqui on my trip. I haven't really said much about this movie to anyone, because I don't exactly know what to say or how to say it. I tossed off my glib comment that I hadn't seen that much depression outside a Philip Seymour Hoffman movie, but it's really that it's a very particular kind of depression. All the characters are flawed in certain ways, and they feel very true and natural, even the quickly sketched ones. It's frustrating in a certain respect, but also resonant. While I don't think it would be too scary for kids, I do think it would be boring if they couldn't identify with the more adult difficulties the characters face. So, add this to my mounting evidence of grudging respect for Dave Eggers.

I saw This is It on Halloween. I can solidly recommend it, as long as you realize that there are certain compromises made as a result of the situation behind the film. It is rehearsal footage, so the sets are spare, and Jackson isn't singing 100% all the time. However, he still had great command of his physicality, and his dancing and the backup dancers were great. There were scenes that didn't paint Jackson in the best light. They were fair, but at the same time a little uncomfortable. And while Orianthi's playing is amazing, she isn't quite Eddie Van Halen. The solo on "Beat It", while still very good, isn't quite as crisp as it could be. Though again, rehearsal. At times, some of the songs appeared to have parts of the master track mixed in, which I'm basing both on how it sounded and the credits which note permission was granted for excerpts of the masters. The movie isn't at all creepy, and doesn't feel like a cash grab. It's something between a documentary and a concert film, and a nice look at what could have been.

Jacqui and I also saw Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant in Cleveland. It was dopey, but fun. The movie pretty much rises and falls on John C. Reilly's ability, and he mostly manages to prop it up. A number of the other big actors in it do a fine job, but aren't featured as much as they should have been. I can't exactly recommend it, but I certainly didn't mind that I saw it.

On Sunday, I saw A Serious Man. It's distinctly a minor thing for the Coen brothers, but it's still enjoyable. There was a plotwise unconnected short before the movie that is definitely worthwhile. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but it's worth watching, at least on DVD.

That's all for movies.

Onto concerts, and the like.

While in Cleveland, Jacqui and I saw the Young Frankenstein musical and Leonard Cohen. Young Frankenstein is fun and does a good job adapting the movie to the musical format. I don't know that I'd seek out the songs outside of the context of the show, but they worked just fine in that environment. A number of the sets had forced perspective angling going on that bothered me a bit, as I found it to be a little too extreme. If they had toned down the angles just a bit, I would have felt the effect would have worked better. I did like their use of a filter on a downspot to look like light coming through a latticed glass dome that was painted on a flat in the background. And of course, the performers were all great. Talented singing and vibrant dancing, often in costumes that would be annoying to dance in.

Leonard Cohen was amazing. He's spry, engaging, and comes off as friendly and genuinely happy to be performing to the audience. It helped, of course, that the audience was right there with him. During "I'm Your Man", when he sang the line, "I'll examine every inch of you," someone in the audience shouted, "Woo!" made funnier by the fact that it was a guy. In addition to performing a lot of songs (while there was a somewhat lengthy intermission, there was nearly three hours of performing), he also read a few poems, and they worked wonderfully in that setting. While "Famous Blue Raincoat" may have been a little overarranged, most of the songs have benefited greatly from his more mature production sensibilities. There was a guy behind us on the walk back to the car going on about the instrumentations and complaining about them, but I think he was just being cranky. Maybe it was past his bedtime. I might have liked to hear "Democracy", but he sang everything else on a quite long list of songs I wanted to hear. And he nerfed a line in "The Future" (it's now "careless sex").

After my trip, I saw the Metropolitan Opera's rebroadcast of their simulcast of Tosca. They beam a live performance from the Met to a number of movie theaters. I missed the live performance, but they also record it for a second showing later. It seems to be to be a particularly good way to see opera. The cameras give you a better view than any seat you could get, much less any seat you could afford. And they do interviews with some of the cast and crew during the intermissions as well (though not the whole time; the two intermissions were a little over half an hour each, and about 20 minutes was just showing the crew setting up the set for the next act). However, I don't think Tosca is the show for me. The plot was thin and the music didn't really do a lot for me. The arias seemed mostly to be about how awesome it was that they could hit those notes rather than a resonant emotion. But it was a good experience, even if I was well under the age bracket for it. (There were two people roughly my age, and one was clearly escorting her grandmother in a wheelchair.)

Before my trip, I saw David Cross at the Warner Theater. I got a $20 balcony ticket when I saw Mike Birbiglia. Honestly, I didn't enjoy the show that much. There were a handful of amusing bits, but out of the two-hour set (20 minutes of Todd Glass, and the rest David Cross, no intermission) ... there wasn't nearly enough laughs for that much time.

As you may have been able to tell, I was in Cleveland for a few days last week. In addition to the things mentioned above, we carved pumpkins. We had a supper with her dad and family, and we took her dog for a walk. I really like taking her dog for walks. She's enthusiastic, but not overwhelming. And we got to play in the leaves another day, too.

Which reminds me, autumn there was particularly pretty. I don't really get to see reds and yellows in the day-to-day autumn around here. There were lots of bright colors in Cleveland, and also lots of contrast, due to different trees being planted close together.

I stopped at two comic shops there. One was the place where I played Magic nearly weekly. They had removed a lot of the counter space and replaced it with tables, and no longer carry issues of comics (except for subscribers) and just had collections. It was kind of depressing. The other one also didn't have what I was seeking, but I did raid the 50-cent bin a bit. I picked up what I was looking for when I got back at Big Planet.

There was also a little bit of looking at house things with Jacqui and helping her get her Internet set up.

And I've mentioned elsewhere that I've been taking swim lessons. They are going well, on the whole. I'm better than some people in the class (especially the roughly half that stopped showing up after the second class), and not as good as some others. I'm still struggling to breathe during the front crawl, but I've made a lot of progress on swimming on my back (I can do an elementary backstroke, or propel myself using just my legs with my arms at my sides). So, it's not ideal yet, but I'm far less concerned about drowning now.

That's more than enough for now, so I'll leave it here.

And how are you?

Your guess is as good as mine

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:31:49 GMT

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:

Mike Birbiglia, a little late

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:07:51 GMT

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.

Roller coaster roundup

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:35:51 GMT

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.

Kingda Ka: Kingda Ka is currently the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It stands 456' high and reaches speeds of 128 mph. It is nearly identical to Cedar Point's Top Thrill Dragster. For a long time, I pooh-poohed this as just trying to outdo them for no good reason. Astonishingly, it's a much more intense, more fun ride. The flat part at the start where you are accelerated to top speed is notably longer than TTD's, and it's amazing what a difference it makes. It still would benefit from having something else after you go up and come down. A-

El Toro: A recent wooden coaster from Intamin. It's quite tall (181'), quite fast (70 mph), and is butter-smooth. It's so smooth I could believe it was a steel coaster. It's got a scary (but fun) drop, some nice hills, and then a lovely bit with heavily banked turns at the end. We got a second ride in at the end of the day. A+

Rolling Thunder: A wooden racing coaster from 1979. The chains for the right train run faster than the left, so it gets a huge head start. It was creaky and dull. It also gets docked for not racing properly. D+

Batman: A Bolliger & Mabillard inverted coaster. It's technically the second ever opened, but is identical to the first, which opened a month earlier in Atlanta. I always like B&M's inverted coasters, but this one is a little too tightly put together. There is too much packed into too small a space and the elements don't have time to breathe. B-

Nitro: A Bolliger & Mabillard hypercoaster. It's 230' tall and reaches 80 mph. B&M's coasters are always smooth and elegant, but I am not as fond of their coasters with no inversions. They just feel kind of tame compared to Intamin's. Nonetheless, a solid B.

The Dark Knight: It's an enclosed wild mouse roller coaster. It's sort of a dark ride, but is really just a "dim ride". Some of the theming elements aren't timed right to the cars. It's also a somewhat dull track layout. C

Skull Mountain: Another enclosed coaster. Again mostly a dark ride, with a skeleton and a large jack-o-lantern man for theming. Nice track layout, but would be served better by better theming or total darkness. C+

Runaway Mine Train: An older steel coaster. It isn't too aggressive, with no major hills, and more getting up speed with descending curves. Nothing special, but fun enough. B-

Bizarro: A repaint and re-theme of Medusa. It's a B&M floorless coaster. It has seven inversions, a loop, a cobra roll, a pair of interlocking corkscrews, and a dive loop. A dive loop is a reverse Immelman, and I'd never been on a coaster with one before. It was particularly awesome. Dominator, which is now at Kings Dominion, but used to be at Geauga Lake, is also a floorless coaster and has interlocking corkscrews, but I didn't enjoy them as much on that ride as I did here. A-

Great American Scream Machine: A sit-down steel coaster with seven inversions. Three loops, a batwing, and a double corkscrew. It's nothing exciting, and the restraint banged up my shoulder. C-

Twister: Not a roller coaster, but a ride. It's a basic top spin ride. They are always fun. We got a cycle and a half because they had to unload two passengers. I don't know if the kid had a freakout, or if they took something out of their pockets or what. Two kids behind us were not happy about going for another cycle, and when it stopped for good, asked, "Do we have to go again?" The operator and host were also having a fight over who got to run the ride. That made me a little nervous. In general, a top spin warrants a B+, but this experience was a B-.

Superman: An Intamin flying coaster. Closed all day for repairs. F

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.

Um, hello

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:12:08 GMT

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.

Video game roundup

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:23:58 GMT

edited to add PoP

I'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.

Quick anecdote

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:06:33 GMT

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.

Concert and computers

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:04:28 GMT

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.

And another thing

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:41:41 GMT

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.

Back from New York

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:41:11 GMT

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.

Oof

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:57:31 GMT

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.

Smurfity Smurf

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:38:41 GMT

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.

#50

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:43:20 GMT

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.

Concerts and plays and movies, oh my!

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:23:41 GMT

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.

Another note on Drag Me to Hell

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:52:49 GMT

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.

How've you been?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:22:34 GMT

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. 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 :)

That was odd

Sat, 16 May 2009 23:54:14 GMT

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.

A matter of utmost importance

Thu, 07 May 2009 20:44:28 GMT

Nathan Fillion in a leather kilt:

Time for a schedule roundup

Mon, 04 May 2009 16:25:22 GMT

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

Uh oh, I'm in a music mood

Sat, 02 May 2009 04:04:47 GMT

I'm having one of those evenings where I want to listen to everything. Right now, all at once.

As I was putting away my dishes and finishing the last few pages of my book, I was listening to my iPod's smart playlist that plays a random batch of four- and five-star songs that haven't been played in at least a few days.

I got:
The Minibosses - Metroid/Kraid
Jonathan Coulton - First of May (even my iPod knows what day it is)
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Panic at the Disco - Do You Know What I'm Seeing?
They Might Be Giants - Don't Let's Start
Tori Amos - Jackie's Strength
Michael Jackson - Bad
The Cure - If Only Tonight We Could Sleep

And I suppose on that one, I should hit the hay.

Hi again

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:05:28 GMT

I'm back to work (well, I was yesterday, too) after Jacqui visited for the weekend. It was a nice visit, though entirely too short. But we got to have delicious Italian ice at Rita's. And I had to keep stopping to stave off a headache.

I'm at a new desk at work. They moved the help desk and the hardware guys down to the third floor, into newly built-out space. On the whole, it's good, but it's still taking some time to settle into the new places for things.

Other than that, things have been quiet around here, though they are about to get a little crazy in May and June (in fun ways).

A quick one

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:12:04 GMT

Saw Watchmen on Monday. I pretty much loved it, though I'm wondering how it plays for someone who hasn't read the book. I'm not an uber-fan; I've read it once, about five years ago. There was only one thing (regarding Dr. Manhattan's forehead logo) that really struck me as missing (because it's such a short thing but packs a lot of character development in the show, don't tell way). And honestly, the changed ending probably makes more sense. I wasn't struck by Malin Akerman's acting as being notably bad, but I can't really argue with any of the complaints. Matthew Goode was pretty bland, though. Salon's review is pretty spot-on, and I think I've found a critic I need to pay attention to.

Also, what's up with March being video game month? I haven't finished House of the Dead: Overkill, Madworld is in transit, Marble Saga: Kororinpa comes out next week, Gradius Rebirth finally hit WiiWare ... At least I finished Braid, and am mid-Penny Arcade: Episode 1. And there's Left 4 Dead, too. And Guitar Hero: Metallica is out at the end of the month. Jeez.

I suppose I should come out of hiding

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:08:16 GMT

Life has been pretty good lately. Maybe I can give an overview of February and the first couple days of March.

Last night, in a fit of being mundane, I got a new remote control, as the buttons on my old one were wearing out after five years. I don't like the layout as much, but it'll get the job done. I also managed to make the video directory from my MythTV viewable to my Xbox. I tried to do the same with my main computer, but I guess I have it a little more locked down, and while it shows up on the Xbox, I can't connect to it.

Monday I was one of the brave few who came to work (I was only ten minutes late). We got hit with a modest snowstorm, which had about four inches in my neighborhood. My bus got stuck on a hill for a couple minutes, but it wasn't too bad all told. Of course, it was a slow day because of how few people were in.

Over the weekend, I went to Karen's place (read: she picked me up) and visited with her, Jess, Nino, Courtney, and Anna. There was good visiting, a decent dinner, a good breakfast, and playing of Arkham Horror.

I also saw The Winter's Tale at the Folger Theater. I wasn't really familiar with the play before seeing it, and it sure takes a weird turn in its tone in the middle. Before that, I had tasty, but overly oily, pesto pizza at Matchbox.

Mid-February I went up to Cleveland to see Jacqui for Valentine's day and my birthday. We got to visit with Erik & Amy and have a nice dinner at Pickle Bill's and see Sweeney Todd on stage at Lakeland. It was a very good performance, though the set wasn't anything special. I got to take Katie for a walk, and we saw the reboot of Friday the 13th. It was quite watchable. Salon has a good review of it up that does a good job of explaining the appeal of horror franchises that have long since ceased to be scary. Plus, they note the quality of New Nightmare.

I got to see Jonathan Coulton at the Birchmere the Friday after I got back to Maryland. He put on a great show, digging out a few things he hadn't played the last couple times I saw him. Also, the Birchmere has new, much better, chicken tenders.

I'm still reading 2666. I'm enjoying it a lot, but the segment I'm in is not as brisk a read as the prior ones.

There's been more, of course, but that hits the highlights.

P.S. This site is pretty hilarious. The couple most recent images aren't as good as the rest, though. Also, check the URL before loading at work. The name of the site shows up in giant letters when you click on it.

Also, when did Final Fantasy VII get so damn expensive? You can get all the other Playstation ones new from Amazon for under $20 each, but VII, man. I'm glad I paid $5 for my copy.

Hi

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:47:50 GMT

I'm still around, and things at work have finally settled back to normal. We had off both Monday and Tuesday of last week, for MLK day and the inauguration. I've said before that during four-day weeks it feels like they still try to cram five days of work into them. And it was worse with a three-day week, especially when the rest of the world didn't stop on Tuesday.

I didn't go down to the inauguration, and after collecting both positive and negative stories, I think I'm glad I stayed in. I got to sleep in, make some breakfast, and watch on TV under a blanket. It worked well for me.

Before that, I got free tickets through work to see Metallica. They put on a pretty great live show. The stage was in the center of the floor of the arena, so there was a good line of sight from our suite. Most concerts have the stage at the side our suite is on, so you see the side of the concert. They had Lars on a rotating platform that they turned four times during the show, so everybody got a forward view of him for a while, and the rest of the band kept running around to various places. For their last song, they brought up the house lights, and dropped a bunch of black Metallica beach balls on the crowd to toss around. I didn't take my camera, because they said they weren't allowed, though the security check was very lax, and I regret not taking it along.

Last weekend, I went to a monster truck rally at the Verizon center. I considered asking work for tickets to that as well, but decided that would say something about me I didn't want to be said. And anyway, the tickets I got, even though they were row O, they turned out to be the fourth row sold, since the first several rows were blocked off, so people didn't get hit by thrown dirt.

Otherwise, life proceeds apace. I go to work, I eat things, I read things. You know how it is.