Feeling the Love

Whew! What an evening! I was feted by my friends at Pezella's in Sunnyvale. I had a delicious meal of Cannelloni al Forno, followed by La Bomba (two kinds of sorbet wrapped in a sphere of white chocolate - yum!).

The conversation (at my end of the table anyway) revolved around esoteric topics like whether or not space ninjas exist (clearly nonsense) and whether or not Superman could triumph over a ninja. Colonel Decker came up for some reason. And how to recast Mr. T. as an Imperious Leader in Battlestar Galactica. Or something. I had a couple glasses of wine.

After dinner I watched Battlestar Galactica until 1am. A most excellent evening.

To all my friends who turned out and those who couldn't turn out but wanted to come, I felt the love! To those who didn't turn out and didn't want to come, do your own thing! :-)

Chuck Williams Turns 90

Chuck Williams, the man who started Williams-Sonoma where they have all those wonderful toys, turns 90 this weekend. Happy Birthday Chuck! Mercury News article is here (subscription or bugmenot required).

Randy Milholland Speaks

Randy Milholland, author of the webcomic Something Positive, is featured on a podcast at OtakuGeneration.

Unicorns LA

I saw this on Kristi's blog and felt compelled to repeat the meme. Mostly because I never want anyone who thinks I am spend my time poorly to STFU. This is a fairly odd video. (Requires QuickTime) [hi-res] [low-res]

Set Your Goals

Since i have this habit of being overly introspective and it is one of those times, I thought I would set some goals for myself. These are only goals. It's not a sign of weakness if I don't achieve all of them. I have enough to keep me busy for a while, I think. But if I don't identify my goals I shan't be able to effectively achieve those goals. And I think that will make me happier.

1. Go camping at least four times.
2. Visit two new national parks I've never been to before.
3. Read more books. Let's say, six.
4. Improve my photography skillz. What does this mean? More workshops? Try to get to at least one workshop or class.
5. Get my passport renewed and travel abroad somewhere.
6. Improve guitar playing ability to the point where I don't hate the sound of my own playing.
7. Develop and frame more prints.
8. Lose 10 pounds by New Year's. Lose 30 pounds by next year.
9. Take a Spanish class.
10. Volunteer. I miss doing that.
11. See if there are any women compatible with me out there.
12. Write one Mac OS X program on my own time for my own edjumacation.
13. Fix up my damn yard.

How did they know???

I was a little freaked out when I went to google.com today. How did they know???????

Audioslave Rocked!

Wowwwwwwwwwwwwww, man. There were a lot of wicked happy Audioslave fans at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco today. I am unbelievably pleased I saw this show. They started off with a rockin' version of "Your Time Has Come" from the Out of Exile album. They played a few songs and then turned on the wayback machine... they ripped into "Rusty Cage" from the first (?) Soundgarden album. This was followed by the high point of my evening: Spoonman. I never got to see Soundgarden live, so this is the closest I'll ever get to seeing them. Even more surprising, they followed that with "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog. Since they did Soundgarden covers, it was only fair that a little later they did several Rage Against the Machine songs. They did an instrumental version of "Bulls On Parade", as well as "Testify", and "Sleep Now In the Fire." Later during the very long encore they also did a smoking "Killing In the Name"and Chris Cornell did a wonderful acoustic "Black Hole Sun." With a complement of their original songs, this was a killer, killer show, probably the best I've seen all year.

Chris Cornell's voice was awesome as usual. He does a very decent likeness of Zak de la Rocha for the Rage songs. The rhythm section was on as always too. The real treat for me was seeing Tom Morello play again. He is a superlative guitarist. A few times he did this thing I've never seen before where he was fretting the the e and B strings and then suddenly flipped his hand around the neck of the guitar to somehow fret the E and A strings. That was completely out of control!! Most of the time he was playing his "Soul Power" strat. The rest of the time he alternated between his telecaster and a Les Paul. For a few songs he played what looked like a Kramer or Ibanez with a silver finish.

New Photoset

(click go to pictures)

Had a crazy idea that I should drive to the coast and photograph the sunset yesterday. Didn't quite make it to get much sunset pictures, but I got some nice shots at a barn on the way.

Some pictures look better in b/w if the color information is not so good.

Bizarre Boston Globe TV SF Ranking

The Boston Globe has taken unto themselves to create a Top 50 SciFi TV Shows of All Time list. Some of their picks are a little strange. Sliders is #10. DS9 and Farscape don't even make the list. As one slashdotter remarked, Farscape may not have been the best Sci Fi show ever, but there aren't 50 shows ahead of it. Brits will probably lament that Blake's 7 and The Prisoner didn't make the cut, either. The whole bizarre list can be found here.

Corpse Bride

Went out last night and caught this little gem. If HP Lovecraft would have made a stop motion, romantic musical comedy, I fully believe that this is the movie he would have made. The city of the dead is especially evocative of Lovecraftian motifs. I also think that Victoria's parents could have crawled out of some eldritch story ("Shadow Over Innsmouth" comes to mind).

Anyway, it's the story of Victor whose noveau riche parents have selected him to marry Victoria, whose parents are gentry of the penniless variety. Victor makes a mess of the dress rehearsal and retreats to the woods to practice, where he inadvertently marries Emily who is even more scandalously, deceased. The rest of the movie revolves around the bizarre love triangle formed between the three.

The movie uses an improved form of stop motion animation as seen in Nightmare Before Christmas. They do some pretty impressive things, like animating moths in flight. Overally I found the movie visually very appealing. It doesn't have many songs (unlike Nightmare) which will be pleasing to some and displeasing to others, I guess. The voice work is good, particularly Richard E. Grant who plays the dastardly Lord Barkis and Christopher Lee as the minister. If you liked Nightmare, you'll probably like this one.

Gyms Are Good

I went to the company gym for the first time since I was rehired. Nice place. They've done a lot with it. Feeling a little sore right now, but not too bad. Having a gym is good. Having people to call your office and say: "Let's go to the gym." is better. And I need it. I've hit an all time low (or high, if you prefer): 202 lbs. That's 92kg for those of you keeping track in the metric system. Bleh.

Fucking Blog Spammers

<garrison>You go to hell! You go to hell and you die! </garrison>

Lightning Flash! Thunder Crash!

Yesterday while I was up in Cupertino for lunch, the bay area had one of its occasional thunderstorms. While I was outside having lunch I got to hear lots of rolling thunder off in the distance interspersed with lightning bolts arcing across the sky. A little while later rain followed in big, fat drops. I love the smell of rain on hot asphalt. Reminds me childhood for some reason. And last night the air was heavy with moisture and smelled really good also. I guess fall really is here.

Band Tells Users How to Defeat Copy Protection

I guess hippie commie music thieves aren't the only ones annoyed by various random ass attempts by the record industry to copy protect "CDs" (I use the quotes since I am pretty sure these things don't meet Red Book standards.). The band Switchfoot has posted instructions on their web site on how their fans can defeat the copy protection on their own album. I am not sure why they let they let Sony do it, but it is kind of funny.
[link to Switchfoot fan forum]

And to those stealing music: I keed! I keed! :-)

And the Gauntlet Is Thrown Down

Old news I know, but I haven't been keeping up with how the other half lives...

The Sound of the Other Shoe Dropping

Ah, the Delicious Irony

So Dick Cheney, the guy who once told Senator Patrick Leahy to "go fuck himself" on the Senate floor was in New Orleans the other week. And while discussing something or other, some heckler came up to him and told the VP to "Go fuck himself". Evidently there was some dissatisfaction there with the hurricane response from the government or something. I had heard about this event, but i didn't realize that until I saw it on the Daily Show tonight that the video was available. I shall treasure this clip forever.

Edit: Evidently I can't directly link to the video clip. The URL works though:

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Connected--Cheney-F-himself.mov (requires QuickTime)

Merry Wives of Windsor

Saw The Merry Wives of Windsor tonight with Noelle and Kevin up in the hills. It was set during the 50s. There was one character who spoke the Elizabethan dialog with an Edith Bunker voice that made me laugh every time I heard it. A quite decent Falstaff (dressed in a gold lame shirt with the World's Worst Combover). Overall I thought it was a pretty good production, although some of the actors could have projected a bit more. The one thing that did bother me was the guy behind us who was, um, overenthusiastic and laughed at every other word they were saying. And he had this high volume braying laugh that made people want to do physical violence. Except at the end of the night when he started cheering, but his cheer collapsed into a hideous rattle (reminiscent of Mr. Ken Shabby from the Monty Python sketch of the same name) which had both Kevin and me struggling to keep from bursting out laughing.

Oh, and speaking of Monty Python there's one part during the play where someone says "She's a witch!" And I cannot help but reflexively crying out "Burn her!" I am such a nerd.

Something That's Been Bothering Me...

In The Village the inhabitants of said village have moved themselves apart from the rest of the world. Yet, in every single nighttime shot in the movie, lanterns are prominently featured. Where did they get oil from??? They have an oil well or a whale carcass tucked away somewhere? That's been bothering me.

The Bravery

Saw The Bravery last night with MikeE at The Fillmore in SF. Pretty good show. Sound could have been a little better. The band had a lot of energy and the lead singer has a good stage presence. I liked the lighting a lot. The crowd was into it, which is always good. It was kind of a short set (around 50 minutes), but they only have one album out. I think they hit most of the songs on the album, plus a new song, an old song, and they caught by surprise with a second encore where they played a sweet cover of Don't Change by INXS. Very appropriate, I think for a band with such a retro 80s sound.

And My Momma Said...

... You must push with much force.

But I'm always on the run.

Garbage Revisited

So the highlight of the weekend, other than cleaning the house (woo hoo, sanitation!) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Which was entertaining enough, given my spectacularly low expectations. Had a few shocks. I got a lot of laughs out of the trial scenes.) was seeing Garbage in concert again. Good show. Shirley was entrancing as usual. I think I probably spent most of the time watching Duke Erikson and Steve Marker playing guitar. Erikson alternates between a telecaster and what looked like a Gretsch country club, while occasionally bringing out a strat. Marker seemed to use a Gibson double cutaway all night. I am such a nerd. Annnnnnd... I got to hear #1 Crush, which is probably my favorite Garbage song ever which was super sweet. There were some other differences in the set list from last spring, so it was definitely a worthwhile show in my opinion.

Concert Tickets Available

I seem to have acquired some extra tickets for concerts coming up:

The Bravery at The Fillmore (9/15) - 1 ticket

Audioslave at BGC (9/25) - 4 tickets

Porcupine Tree (10/21) - 2 tickets

Let me know if you are interested in any of these.

Something Completely Different

So, with the hurricane news dominating the headlines lately, there's been a lot of negative energy afoot. So it was really refreshing to me last night when I caught the tail end of the PBS show POV, where they were doing a story on the Hobart Shakespeareans. It focusses on Rafe Esquith who teaches fifth grade to mostly poor immigrant children. He is the most dedicated teacher I've ever seen. He's not easy (There's a big banner at the front of the classroom that reads "There are no shortcuts!".) on the kids, he has high expectations of them. He knows a lot of them are dealing with really serious problems in their homes and he wants to show them what a good education to do for them. So he takes them on a lot of trips including trips to various colleges. Somehow, I didn't catch how, he got Ian McKellen to read Shakespeare in class to these kids(!). He also is trying to make them be decent human beings, so he's a disciplinarian as well. Anyway, their class project is put on Hamlet at the end of the year. Did I mention they're in fifth grade?? I found the program really moving (especially on the last day of the class where every child appears to be in tears at the prospect of moving on to another teacher) and highly, highly recommend it if you have a chance to see this show. America needs more teachers like this guy. Check out the website if you have a chance.

Now We Know Where He Gets It From

While making a tour of the Astrodome where so many hurricane victims are being housed, former first lady Barbara Bush was heard to say:

"So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

"This" being the ability to stay in Texas now that, you know, their homes and loved ones have washed away. Wow.

I think I heard part of this on Marketplace on NPR last night, but didn't realize who had said it or really pay much attention to it. Then I caught it again on the Daily Show here. The show Marketplace has the raw audio here (Real player required) if you want to get things in context.

Mostly it's Mrs. Bush talking about how great Texas is. Good thing there was a hurricane to send these poor people to Texas.

I had always wondered how Shrub managed to be so callous about other human beings. I guess values are learned at home.

Of the Body

Well, effective today, I have rejoined The Big Red A as a regular employee. In a fitting metaphor, I spent six hours in an orientation meeting learning about stuff I already knew. Didn't get much sleep last night. Very tired. Hopefully Landru will guide me.

New Orleans Revisited

So I heard last week about the devastation, but seeing the pictures is really another thing altogether. I have alternated between intense sorrow watching those poor bastards wandering aimlessly in the Superdome amidst the bodies sitting there like so much trash, like the rest of the detritus there. And the people huddled on top of their homes hoping for rescue because they didn't fit into an evacuation plan that required you to have a car. And I'm wondering WTF the chuckleheads shooting at relief workers could possibly be thinking. And I'm wondering where are the troops are to keep order, since the police don't appear to be able to cope. They can't all be in Iraq, right? I have heard that 40% of the Louisiana National Guard are in Iraq, but where are the rest of them?? No, it seems like it's been a complete Keystone Cops affair. I thought the country was better than this and I am disappointed. Anyway one thing is certain, no one can say "Well, no one could have predicted this." Because, um, these guys did. And so did these folks. The latter article is especially interesting, since it implies that a lot of New Orleans' problems have been exacerbated by the Army Corp of Engineers who have a history of fixing problems and creating worse long term problems. Of course politicians who remain uninterested in funding infrastructure projects aren't really helping either. Bah. Going to bed now.

Roller Coaster Week

What a crazy frickin' week I've had. I had an important milestone to meet at the end of the week and ran into... challenging technical difficulties not once, but twice. I was sweating bullets, but managed to get something decent out the door. So it was quite busy at work all week, but made it through ok. The weekend was the exact opposite, very laid back. Played video games, went hiking (actually tonight was more of a jog - I blame the iPod) twice, watched a lot of 80s movies, and even got some chores done around the house. Ahhhh, now for the new week with uncharted challenges ahead.

Kudos to the Government of California

I just wanted to thank Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature for underfunding the state park system, so I could pay $6 to park at Big Basin this weekend. I'll be thinking of you warmly the next time I'm at the polling station. Well, the next time I'm filling out my ballot, since I've been making an effort to not go to the polls, but still vote. Anyway. I'll be thinking of you.

They Live

They Live. We Sleep.

Filled my belly with some awesome Greek food and watched They Live again. I love this movie. If there's a better sci-fi allegory for the class warfare taking place in this country I've yet to see it. And it's got Rowdy Roddy Piper kicking ass.

Big Basin Pix

(click to view album)

Decided to take a hike in Big Basin today, in order to combat my increasingly ovoid shape. I'm the worst shape I've been in for at least ten years, possibly the worst shape ever. Took the Buzzard's Roost trail and after a lot of sweating and huffing and puffing, I got to the top near sunset. It's interesting how I can a mediocre color picture and make it more interesting by desaturating them in Photoshop.

New Orleans

I knew they were having troubles in New Orleans, but this morning on the news I heard that they won't be done fixing the flooding for thirty days and residents were being told they should expect to stay away from their homes for three to four months! Holy crap! That's half a million people in New Orleans alone! Where are they going to stay? The Astrodome? Don't think so. And to add insult to injury, I heard an economist say that within a couple of days, we can expect gas prices in the Bay Area to rise to $3.50 a gallon for at least a month, due to reduced supply from shuttered refineries in the Gulf Coast.

Bloody Hell

I was looking forward to seeing Neil Gaiman at Kepler's Books next month, but they appear to have gone out of business after more than 50 years. I always liked that store. What a shame. More info here.