June 2008 Archives

[Moozik: Interpol - Hands Away]

The flights have been booked and I'm off to visit the ol' homeland once again. It's long overdue and I can't wait to see my family and friends again as It's been almost two years since I was on British soil. Which, let's be honest, is far too long.

So, four weeks and counting then...

[Moozik; The Cure - Give Me It]

• I'm hopelessly addicted to Wimbledon again just as I am every year. I'm on my sofa, watching Nadal vs Kiefer. A very good game thus far. I so want Nadal to win the tournament this year.

• Blink and you'll miss it but Dick's Hideaway is a lovely little pub/restaurant. Tiny, barely lit, but very atmospheric. Music served up with a laptop running iTunes. Played some decent Beck last night and the Guinness was lovely.

• As I look outside my patio window I see yet another wildfire has started. There's been smoke rising from similar areas behind my house every day since Wednesday.

• Doomed alert. North pole ice may disappear completely by September. Good thing the Bush administration has taken the whole global warming thing so seriously. Ahem.

• A decent question I feel. How the hell does Twitter make money?. Their investors say The question everyone asks is "What is the business model?" To be completely and totally honest, we don't yet know.. I see ads or pay per use in Twitter's future.

[Moozik: Keane - Leaving So Soon]

So because I had the day off today, I decided that it would be a great idea to drive towards the wildfire to see how it looked closer up. You know, like you do.

I was one of about 15 cars that stopped by the side of the road taking photos and video.

Camera bloke from ABC news just setting up to do their news story.

The obligatory, ultra safe, take the photo while driving maneuver.

The fire was getting awfully close to Phoenix International Raceway. Nascar fans would not be happy if it burned.

[Moozik: Underworld - Moaner]

As I was driving home last night it became quite obvious that there was a fire somewhere in the southwest valley and it was easily visible from the freeway.

As I got closer to home I noticed that it appeared to be a tad closer closer to my house then I would have liked. As I got off the freeway and drove south on 91st Ave I started thinking hang on, that looks like it's right behind my house.

The huge plume of smoke was deceiving as the fire was further away than it looked from the road. 2 miles in fact. Still, the amount of smoke in the air was something to see and I was pissed that the batteries in my camera were dead so I had to pull these photos off a couple of other sites.

To be honest, I didn't really think anything more of it until I was at the PLUG meeting later on in the evening and found out that the fire was spreading north and they were evacuating people from their homes. So I was a little apprehensive as I drove home but needn't have worried as my neighborhood wasn't effected at all.

Still, any wildfire near your house is closer then you'd like, just lucky it turned out not to be a big deal. This morning there's barely any smoke in the air.

[Moozik: Skinny Puppy - Politikil]

So I'm wondering if it's possible to make a ship too big? I mean, what constitutes too big anyway? Ok, how about Oasis of the Seas?

A floating city shopping mall thingy with 7 neighborhoods for the 5400 guests to enjoy. Er, thanks but no thanks. I understand that cruises are extremely popular, I know quite a few people who've been and just rave about them. They just don't exactly blow my skirt up that's all.

Don't get me wrong, I'd go on a cruise knowing that I could wake up in a new place every day and leave the ship to explore whatever country I found myself in. It's just the thought of being cooped up on a floating shopping mall for days on end that doesn't necessarily appeal to me.

I mean, on that Oasis of the Seas ship, you could spend a couple of days wandering around and not even realize you were on the ocean. Couldn't you just go to a local mall and wander around for a few days and save yourself thousands in the process?

Just sayin'.

[Moozik: Autechre - Dael]

Growing up in England it was quite common to catch the train somewhere. I did it all the time even when I had a car. Sometimes it was just so much more convenient when traveling across country. Now, compare that to here in the US, or should I say, compare that to my small corner of the US here in Phoenix. Catching the train anywhere is almost unheard of.

We were talking about traveling to other cities and trains today and I think I was the only one who had caught a train anywhere in the last 5 years. Some people said they had never caught the train anywhere ever in their lives. To be honest I'm not surprised as I couldn't even begin to tell you where my nearest train station is here in town. Or more to the point, if there even is one.

Now, for local mass transit here in Phoenix, they are actually putting the finishing touches on a section of the new much hyped valley light rail system right near my office. Which is great, and also completely useless to me because I don't live near the one and only track. Yes there are expansion plans which will help out other areas of the valley. Just don't hold your breath. 2017 for some areas, 2019 for others, and 2025 for the northeast valley.

Something that is slightly more promising for me would be the bus. The last time I checked, it would involve some driving to the nearest park and ride and then some walking on the other end as the nearest stops would be just shy of a mile away from my office. Which in the summer, is further than it sounds. I really don't want to walk 100ft when it's 114° outside, let alone a mile. Still, might be worthwhile in the winter months.

[Moozik: Rammstein - Sonne]

Tonight's Cure concert at Madison Square Garden is going to be shown live on TV in about 5 minutes in fact. Bless you Fuse.tv. So, guess what I'm watching? Still, would have been nice to have seen the show live. Like someone I know. That lucky bugger knows who she is ;-)

[Moozik: Rammstein - Reise, Reise (Live)]

I swear my dog Foster is the sickest dog in history. Four visits to the Vet in as many weeks. Twice a day he has the pleasure of taking these...

Good thing he's ok with taking pills. Two allergy pills, an antibiotic pill, and a pill for his low thyroid condition. His latest round of antibiotics cost me close to $100. It is really time I looked into pet health insurance.

[Moozik: Psyche - Misery]

Finally after over a month of farting around, I finally have my passport and can actually leave the country now if I wanted to. Of course, worst passport photo ever in the history of mankind. Lipstick much? Good lord.

And of course, what passport would be complete without the creepy big brother RFID chip.

[Moozik: Danielle Dax - Timber Tongue]

• I've noticed a number of times that I've added comments to my own site and to those of others running Movable Type that don't show up until you refresh the page. Some kind of browser caching I would imagine. Anyway, adding this to my individual archive template fixed the problem for me. A bit wanky but it works.

<meta http-equiv="CACHE-CONTROL" content="NO-CACHE">

• I wholeheartedly recommend Tim Appnel's Temper plugin. It's a template profiler that logs page building information to help identify performance bottlenecks when rebuilding areas of your site. Very handy indeed. I had some convoluted archive templates that were taking a long time to rebuild. Turns out I wasn't even using them on the site so eliminated them immediately. My rebuilds now take a fraction of the time. Nice.

[Moozik: Skinny Puppy - Haze]

Because I live in a cave, I only got around to watching Cloverfield last night. Possible spoilers ahead so if you're that other person on the planet who hasn't seen it and wants to, avert your eyes.

Two second review: I loved it. One of the better monster movies I've seen in fact. I absolutely loved how it was shot from the perspective of someone's handheld camera which worked so well in a scary Blair Witch Project kind of way.

I only had a couple of minor gripes. It was a little on the short side and I felt a little too much emphasis was placed on the going away party at the beginning. I totally understand those were important scenes as they introduced who everyone was and the relationships between them but In hindsight though they probably could have shortened them just a tad.

The movie purposely leaves so many questions unanswered. What was that thing? Where did it come from? Are there more of them? Why is it leaking parasites? Is it dead?

The production company Bad Robot were involved with this movie and just as they did with Lost, they have created quite a few viral tie-in and teaser sites that help piece together some of the back story and fill in the answers to some of my questions.

cloverfieldclues.com is a great place to start and that's where I found out about all those other tie-in sites. So if you're as curious as I was about the back story, have a peek at the following:

• character myspace pages
• 1-18-08.com
• slusho.jp
• tagruato.jp
• tidowave.com
• jamieandteddy.com
• missingteddyhanssen.blogspot.com

Wow, how sad was this blog post? I put way too much thought into this crap ;-)

[Moozik: Fixmer/McCarthy - Tonight I Sleep]

When I first got to the US 10 years ago, there were no roundabouts whatsoever in the Phoenix area. None. The entire concept of a roundabout was completely foreign and whenever I tried to tell someone about them, I got the deer in the headlights look. Just lately I've noticed that roundabouts appear to have been stealthily introduced. I have two near my house in fact. See? We're bloody tripping over them now.

Considering Americans are not entirely used to navigating the round beast, I'm wondering how people are going to know what to do. There were no public service announcements, no leaflets in the post, no classes offered. Roundabouts just sort of showed up all unannounced.

Odd. In a that's an accident waiting to happen kind of way.

[Moozik: Joy Division - Ceremony]

From the mid 80s to early 90s, Depeche Mode released three albums in a row that really marked what I feel were their best years: Black Celebration, Music For The Masses, and Violator. 1987's Music For The Masses was their sixth studio album and turned out to be an important one in many respects not least of which was the fact that they were finally able to crack the all important American market.

The album opens with Never Let Me Down Again which is one of my all time favorite Depeche songs. Even today that song makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up as Martin sings See the stars they're shining bright, everything's alright tonight to close the song. The Things You Said has some haunting Alan Wilder synth work with Martin taking lead vocal duty. Martin also sings lead on I Want You Now. Alan's synth work also features prominently on Little 15 and Nothing. Nothing is my favorite song on the album and I sing it at full volume whenever I hear it.

The album was followed by the hugely successful For The Masses tour which saw them play to 100,000 fans at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. A feat that was captured on both the live 101 album and the movie of the same name. I must admit I've lost count of how many times I watched my old VHS copy of that when I was younger.

Hard to believe the album is 21 years old now. I still remember buying the 7" single of Strangelove when I was 13. The album has really stood the test of time well though and is still just as enjoyable today as it was when I first bought it. My vinyl copy has seen better days and is now very worn of course;-)

Standout tracks:

Little 15
Nothing
The Things You Said
Never Let Me Down Again

Part of my fave albums.

[Moozik: Fixmer/McCarthy - Trans European]

Back in 2003 I lamented that the Hulk didn't really feel like the Hulk to me because of growing up with the Ferrigno/Bixby TV show. With the new Hulk movie coming out I can't really say I have any real desire to see this interpretation either. Just can't get over the dodgy CGI.

Oh and yes, looking back on it now, the 70's TV show is an absolute trainwreck but hey I was young and at the time it was really good. It was. Stop laughing.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Two Minute Warning]

It's just after 11:00pm and I've just finished up a nice 14 hour workday. I'm sitting here on my sofa with my dogs curled up at my feet, Depeche Mode blaring out of the speakers, and a glass of Pinot Grigio in hand.

[Moozik: Simple Minds - Scar]

The Tennis

Watched Rafael Nadal just destroy Roger Federer in the final of the French Open this morning. I didn't think Nadal could get any better playing on clay but he sure surprised me. Fourth straight French Open title. Last man to do that was Bjorn Bork way back in the day. And it's Wimbledon soon. I luurve me some tennis and this is my favorite part of the tennis year.

The Neighbours

My back garden overlooks a large piece of community desert landscaping and on the other side are another row of houses with their back gardens facing mine. Now, one of them had a party last night. Which was totally cool and all except that the music was still blaring at close to 2:00am. My bedroom is at the back of the house so I could hear every beat. While initially rather annoying, they switched to playing some really cool music so I found myself humming along. This is not very conducive to falling asleep so I got up and listened to the new albums from Fixmer/McCarthy and Ladytron. Both awesome, even at 3:00am.

States

I'm going to be in North Carolina in August for two days for work. Never been before so I can add that to my list of states visited. Which I must admit isn't very large at all especially seeing as airport layovers don't count. Let's see: Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York. Wow, that's terrible and must be fixed forthwith. So yeah, North Carolina, don't know where exactly yet so hopefully it's near something worth seeing/doing.

Homeland

As soon as my bloody passport is returned back to me from the British Embassy I'll be going back to England for a long overdue visit. My initial renewal application was rejected after all because of the lack of photos. Nice. So we're on round two of the application process and I now have to give them another 10 days to process it. With everything that's happened over the past couple of months it will be nice to go back there for a couple of weeks. Can't wait.

[Moozik: Bauhaus - Kingdom's Coming]

Last night's Cure gig was amazing. One of the best concerts I've seen in a long time. They played for well over 2 hours and sounded perfect. I really thought the fact that they no longer used synths would spoil their sound somewhat but it didn't at all. Porl played most of the synth parts on the guitar which worked surprisingly well. I mean, if you can pull off The Walk without synths then you're doing something right.

I loved the venue as well. Certainly more intimate than an Arena show and the cool thing was that even though you had "assigned seating", you could wander around to your hearts content. Very handy for walking up to the stage and taking photos I must say. The security guys were very cool about it too. As long as you didn't hang around in one place for too long they didn't bother you. A couple of times they tapped me on the shoulder to get me to move but that's it.

Highlight of the night had to be The Big Hand. I was so happy they played it as it's an amazing b-side and one of my all time fave Cure songs. The crowd went nuts when they played Primary and Push. Robert and Simon were grinning as they walked off stage and seemed to enjoy the gig as much as the crowd did.

Update: from mrssarav, the setlist:

Underneath The Stars
Want
Fascination Street
A Night Like This
The Walk
The End of the World
Lovesong
The Big Hand
Pictures of You
Lullaby
The Perfect Boy
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
The Figurehead
A Strange Day
Sleep When I'm Dead
Push
Inbetween Days
Just Like Heaven
Primary
The Only One
Hot Hot Hot
Wrong Number
Signal To Noise
One Hundred Years
Baby Rag Dog Book

1st encore:
At Night
M
Play For Today
A Forest

2nd encore:
Boys Don't Cry
Jumping Someone Else's Train
Grinding Halt
10:15 Saturday Night
Killing An Arab

[Moozik: Bauhaus - Muscle In Plastic]

Remember when you had to go find a photo booth whenever you needed passport photos? I miss those. Now of course you go into Walgreens and you have the teenager trying to stifle a giggle as they take your photo with a cheap looking digital camera. In front of everyone in the store for extra bonus embarrassment obviously.

[Moozik: She Wants Revenge - ...And A Song For Los Angeles]

Oh those crazy kids in London Taaan for the win. Makes you proud to be British.

Six London Underground stations were closed as trouble flared when thousands of people marked the banning of alcohol on London transport with a party.

Four tube drivers, three other staff members, and two police officers were assaulted, and there were 17 arrests.

Several trains were damaged and withdrawn from service, which led to suspended services.

Drinkers gathered on Tube trains and station concourses for a last drink before the ban came in at midnight.

Police said what should have been a fun event came to an "unfortunate" end.

[Moozik: She Wants Revenge - This Is The End]

The Dog

Foster has to go in for surgery this week for a potential tumor removal. Although I really don't think tumors are supposed to get smaller so the fact that his lump has almost halved in size since last week's visit to the Vet is rather encouraging. A blood test also revealed he also has very low thyroid levels so will be on pills for the rest of his life. That boy, I dread to think how much money I've spent on him over the years. Most expensive dog ever.

The Beer

Friday night at P.F. Chang's with the odd one or two Newky Browns before adjourning to Yard House (warning worst website ever) for more of that lurvely brown ale until 2:00am. I'm seriously considering switching my favorite tipple now. Who knew Newky Brown was so popular over here? Found it at another little pub on Saturday while waiting to go see Iron Man.

The Man

Speaking of Iron Man, finally saw it last night. Very good indeed. A little slow to start but ultimately worthwhile. Robert Downey Jr absolutely makes the movie. Good job indeed. For some reason I absolutely hated Jeff Bridges in the movie though. I consider myself a fan of his but did not like him in this movie at all.

The Cure

Wednesday night I finally get to see The Cure. They're playing a smaller than usual venue, Dodge Theatre, but I couldn't care less. If they're in town, I'd see them anywhere. One of my all time fave bands of, er, all time so I'm so excited about going. Why oh why have I never seen The Cure before?