Bloody Hell

There are thirteen state initiatives on the ballot this year. Thirteen. Plus all the local measures. That's a lot of junk for me to digest. I think the legislature can't be doing a very good job if people are that up in arms about so many different issues that they need to do an end run around the state house. Assuming these aren't cynically crafted measures funded by corporate interest groups. Right. That would never happen.

Ya Know, For the Kids...

(Click to see link)

Fred sent me a link to this the other day. Love it.

Nightmare 3D

I went out to see Nightmare Before Christmas 3D and it was fantastic! I liked it so much, I think might just go again. I noticed a lot more details than I did when I originally saw it. Like Zero's nose is a little glowing pumpkin! Too cool. Oh, and it comes with a brief Pixar short, also.
[Nightmare 3D site]

More Pictures From the Lick Observatory

(click to go to my shutterfly page)

Some more pictures from my recent trip to Mt Hamilton.

Bridge School Concert

I went to see the Bridge School Concert with Noelle this weekend. To my surprise, it's an all acoustic show. Trent Reznor's acoustic set with a string quartet was really, really cool. I anticipate his next album which will be all acoustic of course. ;-) Other standouts for me were the Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam (who did Masters of War the second night, which was super cool). The first night went quite late. Neil Young's set didn't finish up until one in the morning. We left a bit earlier than that last night, but the show was awesome nonetheless. Oh, Bridge School Concert tracks from the past twenty years will be available on iTunes next month.

Lick Observatory

I went to the Lick Observatory with Noelle last weekend after camping in Joseph Grant Park, which was cool, btw. While there we got to see the massive 36" refracting telescope (the largest operational refracting telescope in the world). It's pretty impressive.

The Science of Sleep

I went to see this movie last night with Noelle. What a bizarre film! This is the strangest thing I've seen since Being John Malkovich. It's about this guy who has a hard time distinguishing his dream life and his real life, which causes a number of difficulties. He becomes increasingly obsessed with his next door neighbor and incorporates her into his dreams. The dreams themselves are pretty crazy things. I liked it, but I would think it's not for everybody.

Watch Out For Them Cats!

They're tricksy, they are. And now we have photographic evidence! [the proof]

("Get outta my head Charles!" caused hysterical giggling here.)

Memo to John Madden

So this dude, is rated as the worst player in John Madden NFL 2007, so what does he do about it? He writes the funniest damn letter I've seen all month to, uh, dispute his ratings and rip John (and EA) a new one. I don't particularly care about football, but this had me in tears.

From the letter:

It’s also pretty wonderful that my awareness rating was 59. You make it sound like I wake up in the morning, helplessly shit and piss myself, then lose three of my teeth before I discover that I am trying to eat a rock for breakfast. Fuck, John, I understand you saying that I am slow and lacking athleticism, but a rating like this pretty much labels me as retarded. Rod “He Hate Me” Smart has a 52 in this category. Electronic Arts is saying that seven rating points separate me and the breathing embodiment of the perfect oxymoron. Rod Smart struggled to arrange words in sentence form. Cave men had better hold of the English language. The only actions that separate point values of ignorance at this embarrassing level are things like using your own toothbrush to wipe your ass. I basically edged out Rod by my lack of shit teeth. If I take a night school class, could you bump me up to a 60?

Aki At JJ's Last Week

(click for larger image)

I took some pix of Aki's new band, The Turnaround Blues Band. The better ones can be found at my shutterfly site.
[click for album]

Screwing With Telemarketers Revisited

This is perhaps the best prank I've ever heard played on a telemarketer. Check out this audio clip.

I Have to Admire His Cajones

So, I saw a link the other day on Yahoo video about the video resume of Aleksey Vayner who is looking for work on Wall Street. He lists such accomplishments as: can bench press 495 lbs, has been employed by the German mafia, has killed 24 men in the caves of Tibet, was one of four people in the state of Connecticut licensed to handle nuclear waste. Wow. Why is he wasting his time looking for an investment banking job?

Musical Goodness

So, last Friday I went to see Paul Simon with Wendy and Noelle at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. It was a great show under the stars (well, I'm sure they were up there somewhere, through the clouds). I've never seen Simon live, so this was pretty cool. Plus it was the first time Noelle (and I think Wendy) had been to the Greek, so that was also cool.

Tuesday night a bunch of us made our way to Shoreline to see Roger Waters do Dark Side of the Moon. Waters and his band were a very reasonable Pink Floyd facsimile. He started the evening out with "In the Flesh" which was pretty appropriate since I'd been humming that since before we got through the gate. :-) He followed with "Mother" and much to my excitement, "Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun", which was really rockin'. He did a few songs from Wish You Were Here and the Final Cut and a couple songs from his solo albums, before bringing out the Inflatable Pig for "Sheep", with which he closed out the first set. The second set was Dark Side of the Moon from start to finish. I haven't been moved by that album in that way in quite a while. The sound was truly phenomenal! For the encore he brought out the big hits from The Wall. His band was really good, especially his primary Dave Gilmour replacement, a guy named Dave Kilminster. This was an awesome show that I would recommend to anyone who likes Pink Floyd and has an opportunity to see.

Last night a bunch of us turned out at JJ's, where Aki's new band, The Turnaround Blues Band played a couple of hot sets (actually, I think they played a third set after we left because the main act hadn't arrived yet). I took some pictures of him. Hopefully I will have some up shortly.

Tonight is Porcupine Tree in the City! Woo hoo!

New Toy

So I was going to the Gelb annual fall sale and I discovered that Fender no longer appears to make the Telecaster in chrome blue. So I was pretty sad (because I loved that finish) and didn't end up getting anything at their sale. By chance, I dropped in to Guitar Showcase and what should they have on the showroom floor, but a 2005 HS-1 in chrome blue. Happy happy, joy joy!. So I tried it out and the electronics seem solid and now it is sitting peacefully on my living room floor. Guess I need to get back to practicing. :-D

Devil's Postpile Pic

Just a quick one for the road.

Geek Wallets

The tinfoil hat wearer in me likes the RFID blocking wallet, but I also kinda like the nano wallet. [article]

Alcohol Warning

Finally, an alcohol warning that really spells out the dangers.

Fast Times At Hero High

An amusing video parody of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, cheerfully stolen from Kristi's blog. [video]

Woot! Rain!

That is all.

Download Festival 2006

Saturday I went to Shoreline with Carl and David to see The Download Festival 2006. I went mostly to see Muse, although Beck and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a significant draw also. TV On the Radio turned out to be an interesting surprise. I don't think I could possibly categorize their music. The Shins were pretty cool too. Nice harmonies. Muse was phenomenal as always. Matt Bellamy is one of the most interesting musicians around, IMO. Fantastic set. I went off to the restroom between Muse and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and afterwards I was getting a polish sausage when a small concert broke out behind where I was standing. I turned around and there were these dudes doing fire dancing and a crazy drum laden sound was going on onstage. The fire dancers were followed by a belly dancer, followed by two chicks in drag doing a strip tease/burlesque sort of thing, followed by more fire dancers, etc. I counted and there were seven or eight percussionists on stage, plus a bass player, one guy doing double duty at the keyboards, and eventually some horn players. It turned out that the entertaining set I was watching was a group called The Mutaytor ("Because Evolution Takes Too Long"). You can see some of their performance in this video clip. Very cool stuff. They are supposedly playing The Fillmore on Nov. 11, but I can't find anyplace that acknowledges that statement. Anyway, I made my way back and caught the last half of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' set, which was kind of ho hum. Beck closed out the show. His set was made most entertaining by virtue of the fact that he had a puppet stage on stage and all the puppets were of the band and whatever the band was doing, the puppets were doing. Carl pointed out that the puppet stage had a puppet puppet stage on it. During the encore they played a short film called "Snake On A Bus" which featured a largish rubber snake invading the puppet tour bus and humorously killing the puppet band members. I was especially impressed by the puppet refrigerator they showed one of the puppets getting attacked at, because it had puppet sized cans of diet Pepsi and Fuze energy drink. All in all, the show was well worth attending.

Where's Chris Been?

So i went on vacation this past week. Escaped from work a week ago last Friday and went out with Noelle, Wendy, and Esther to see Delirium, the new Cirque du Soleil project at HP Pavilion in SJ. I've never seen anything from Cirque and it was really hard to take in, like having someone else's acid trip poured into your brain. There was so much happening on stage it was quite difficult to keep track of it all. Incredible acrobatics and a great sound track too! I'd definitely see this show again.

The next morning, Noelle and I piled into the convertible and drove down highway 101 to Laguna Beach (with a pit stop at a really good italian restaurant in San Luis Obispo). Hwy 101 is clearly the way to go if you're not in a huge hurry and more importantly, if you're driving in a convertible to get to SoCal. The drive is much prettier than the central valley (duh). We got in around 8 or so and had dinner with Coalee and Sean in Laguna Beach. The next morning there was more socializing and seeing Noelle's old haunts, including a trip to a scenic Orange County mall! ;-) After that we headed north to Universal City (where we located a largish Death Star Pez for Jon) and then on to Hollywood, where after a certain amount of adventure (Damn you, Yahoo Maps!) we located the Hollywood Bowl where we met Kyle to see Massive Attack. I've never been to that venue before. It's pretty cool. We were in these little corral style boxes and relatively close to the stage. Sound was excellent and MA put on a fabulous show, well worth driving south for. The set was about the same as at Coachella, but the sound was better.

The next morning we scrambled out of Hollywood and drove through Palmdale/Hwy 14 to get to 395 to do the Eastern Sierra portion of the trip. We got out kinda late, so we made it to the Bristlecone Pine Grove around sunset. We were completely alone there and the silence was eerie, but also very cool. It's inspiring to me to be able to walk up and touch these trees that are hundreds if not thousands of years old. We made it to our hotel, late after being screwed over by Yahoo Maps again. Fortunately Noelle's self-aware cell phone can get on teh Internets and we got directions from it.

The next day we went down to Mountain Light Gallery and some of the fabulous work of Galen Rowell. I was a little disappointed that Macduff Everton was no longer in the featured artist part of the gallery, but it was still a trip well worth taking. We drove back up to Devil's Postpile around sunset and saw the cool basaltic columns there. I also got what look to be some great long exposures at the river there.

The next day was my birthday! I got a bunch of really cool presents from Noelle right off the bat! We checked out of Austria Hof and drove north around the June Lake Loop on 395. The colors are starting to come out on the aspens and the lakes on the loop (there are three) were really pretty as well. We stopped at Mono Cone in Lee Vining and then drove out to the south short of Mono Lake to see the tufa at sunset. I was surprised because the water level was a bit higher than last fall. Could be part of the restoration project the LA Water and Power Company was ordered to do a few years ago. Some day it will be impossible to take the pictures Nancy and I took last fall at the lake. I have mixed feelings about that.

After a bit of dinner in Lee Vining, we took a drive under the stars up 395 to Nevada and crashed at David and Nancy's family's Tahoe place for the night. Had a very late breakfast at Syd's Bagelry (yay!) and rushed back to the valley just in time to make it to the birthday party Noelle was sweet enough to organize for me in Sunnyvale. OMG! There were about 20 people who showed up! That was super cool. Got some nifty gifts and had a great dinner with friends. It was the perfect way to finish up a great vacation.