March 2009 Archives
[Moozik: Blutengel - Cry Little Sister]
A couple of weeks ago a friend asked if I would mind participating in his son's Flat Stanley Project. I really love this kind of thing (you may remember my ill fated seemed like a good idea at the time Doc Adventures from earlier in the year) so we jumped at the chance of taking photos of Mr Stanley in different locations.
The Street Before Me
City Ahead
Hitting The Sauce
Cardinal
[Moozik: Low Line Caller - Built Over Gasoline]
It seems that every neighborhood you go through has the scars of today's craptacular economy. Foreclosed & abandoned homes are par for the course these days. My soon-to-be old neighborhood is no exception. The weeds in the front garden are an obvious giveaway.
In the past 6 months there has been a marked increase in the number of homes that have been left empty, in fact all the homes on this side of the street have been abandoned. It's a shame.
School buses in America are so much nicer than their British counterparts. They're big yellow urban assault vehicles that you can spot a mile off. Interesting side note for those non-American readers, when a school bus is parked picking up kids, you are not allowed to drive past it - cars on both sides of the road have to stop at a distance and wait.
Compared with some American cities, Phoenix doesn't have that many tall buildings. What we don't have in vertical height, we make up for with impressive urban sprawl.
Still, some of the tall buildings we do have...
...need their windows washed. Nerves of steel these blokes, nerves of steel.
[Moozik: Cancer Bats - Hail Destroyer]
I only have a couple of things on my fridge. Some of my friends have so many things stuck to their fridges that you can't even see what colour it actually is. Some like nothing to touch the sacred keeper of coldness at all.
What kind of fridge person are you? Cluttered, minimal, sterile?
[Moozik: M83 - Dark Moves Of Love]
Fast food restaurants since time immemorial have had a fantastic system of letting their customers know when their order was ready. It worked fine for years, no one was confused, no one got hurt, everyone was happy. They call the order number, you look at your receipt to see if the order is yours. Rinse, repeat until they call your number. Even I could follow that. Easy.
Apparently not easy enough. In fact that system was deemed a little bit crap and a total overhaul became necessary. Instead of using a horribly complicated sequential numbering system, the powers that be of a nearby McDonald's have decided that announcing the contents of your order is a far superior system. Oh yes. What could possibly go wrong? I mean it's not like any of the 20+ people waiting for their orders could have possibly ordered the same thing as someone else.
[Moozik: The Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock]
Meh.
Slightly longer Duplicity movie review: it was, er, ok I guess.
I've been a fan of Tony Gilroy for a while and liked Michael Clayton so I was really looking forward to watching this movie. Unfortunately it just felt a little underwhelming and I was a little disappointed as we walked out at the end.
Both Clive Owen and Julia Roberts gave good performances, as did Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson and it was certainly funny in places. Sure there were plot twists left right and center and usually I'm a total sucker for the clever plot twist. Unfortunately it seemed as if there were so many of them that I actually ended up not caring about the plot. Which was a shame.
6/10 mainly for the good performances. Likely to watch again? Probably not.
On a related note. Dear parents, taking your 18 month old to a 10:15pm showing of a movie, probably not the best idea you've ever had. Mind you the parents were just kids themselves. We did have a little grumble and there was some shaking of heads. You know, because we're old and good like that ;-)
[Moozik: Jane's Addiction - Jane Says]
I really really miss Walkers crisps. Crisps here in the US are ok, but they really don't hold a candle to the absolute goodness that is Walkers Salt & Vinegar. Yum.
It's been a while since I had a look at the different flavours and currently those lucky buggers in the UK can just pop down to the shop and get:
• Ready Salted
• Cheese & Onion
• Salt & Vinegar
• Steak & Onion
• Smoky Bacon
• Chilli & Lemon
• Roast Chicken
• Prawn Cocktail
• Pickled Onion
• Marmite
• Tomato Ketchup
• BBQ Rib
• Worcester Sauce
Marmite? Tomato Ketchup? When did they add those? I must have overlooked those last year. Bugger. Not being in the UK also means I won't get to try out the new flavours they're introducing.
There are six new ones and the public can vote for the flavour that Walkers will end up permanently adding to their selection.
• Fish & Chips
• Crispy Duck & Hoisin
• Cajun Squirrel
• Builder's Breakfast
• Onion Bhaji
• Chilli & Chocolate
I'm particularly interested in the Cajun Squirrel and Builder's Breakfast flavours. So, for anyone reading this in the UK, please go out and try as many of these flavours as you can and let me know what they're like. I'll live vicariously through you.
[Moozik: The Beloved - Hello]
The South By Southwest festival is one of the largest music festivals in the US, with more than 1,400 performers playing in venues in Austin over four days every March. What's particularly cool about the event is that they always release "sampler" MP3s of the bands playing at the festival. It's an amazing way of finding new bands & artists you've never heard of before.
This year they've released a whopping 6.15GB of music. That's 1267 music files. The files themselves are broken up into 3 torrents to download individually. I downloaded them all at the weekend and now begins the major project of listening to them all.
With 1267 songs, there's going to be an awful lot of utter poo to wade through. I'm focusing on the first torrent of files for the next couple of weeks, 519 songs in total. In the first pass I get rid of stuff I absolutely hate. It's quite easy as some songs are immediately recognizable as utter bollocks within the first 20-30 seconds of listening. Then with whatever I have left over after that first pass, I listen to again to see if there's anything really worth keeping.
I really don't know how long this whole listening project is going to take but if I come away with at least a handful of new bands that seem interesting it will be worth it. Or not. I'll know in a few weeks.
[Moozik: Jane's Addiction - Pigs In Zen]
After feeling better at the start of the weekend, the suck came back again on Sunday with full force. Ended up totally kicking my arse for the past few days. What happened to the good ol' days where I had the immune system of a superhero? Where did that go? Anyway, today things are good, all better, miraculous recovery, feel like a new man. etc etc.
So, to the actual point of this post. Gigs. This year might turn out to be a little bit better than last as far as concerts go. Last year because of work trips and vacations I only ended up going to three (The Birthday Massacre, The Cure, and ohGr) and missed some good shows. Last month I was thinking 2009 wasn't really shaping up to be anything special either as Combichrist was the only gig I'd been to. Then slowly but surely, there were some signs of concert life.
The next few months seem to be pretty good actually.
The Killers - Dodge Theatre, April 15th.
Franz Ferdinand - Marquee Theatire, April 18th
Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction - Cricket Pavillion, May 15th
Depeche Mode - US Airways Center, August 23rd
I haven't seen Nine Inch Nails since 1991 so I can't wait for that. The Killers and Jane's Addiction will be good and then my old pals DM should be amazing.
Do you have any upcoming gigs you're looking forward to?
[Moozik: Meg Lee Chin - Heavy Scene]
• Good lord Battlestar Galactica writers, you're really in no hurry to get where you're going are you? Wait. You are going somewhere right? The end is almost nigh, and you've got that whole loose-ends thing still dangling there.
• It really is the future. For I've now seen actual real life vending machines, once those last bastions of cash obligation, that accept debit cards. Rejoice.
• A friend lent me a book a couple of years ago. And now they've gone and made a movie out of it. Good by all accounts. So I'm thinking I should probably read it now.
[Moozik: Thomas Dolby - Weightless]
A while ago we returned our cable DVR because we were recording so much TV we didn't have time to watch it all. Plus all the decent TV networks have their programmes online now so you can watch things "on demand" whenever you want to.
A friend asked why I'd want to "watch TV" on my laptop vs a big screen HDTV? The answer is I don't. I use the best of both worlds, I stream the TV over the internet to my HDTV. Using a Macbook Pro, it really couldn't be easier.
What You'll Need
• Apple MiniDisplayPort to DVI adaptor.
• DVI to HDMI adaptor.
• RCA stereo cables.
Connect As Follows
On the Macbook Pro, connect the Apple adaptor to the DVI/HDMI adaptor. Plug that into the MiniDisplayPort. Connect the RCA stereo cable to the audio out jack.
On the TV, connect the HDMI cable to the HDMI input jack, connect the RCA stereo cable.
Finishing Up
On your TV, select the appropriate HDMI input. Mac OSX then just "does the right thing" and you have a mirrored display & sound coming from your TV.
And before you know it, you'll be watching the HD stream of Lost on your TV.
I've also been playing with Boxee and Hulu and while it's all still a tiny bit rough around the edges, I could honestly see canceling our cable TV service completely at some point.
Very geeky and a tad exciting. Well, it's amused me while I've been at death's door this week anyway.
[Moozik: Miss Kittin - Grace]
For the past few days I've been curled up in bed with a case of the suck. High fever and feels like I'm swallowing razor blades. It appears my powers of self healing are temporarily broken so will be enlisting the help of my Doctor today.
[Moozik: The Horrorist - Born This Way]
• A few years back, my sister introduced me to the goodness that is Röyksopp. They have a new song and the video is teh awesome. Go ahead watch it, I'll wait.
• We had an excellent time at the Phoenix Zoo yesterday afternoon. Smaller than I remember, and all the animals were hiding in the shade, it was 87° after all. But we had a blast nonetheless. Did I mention it was 87°? There's something special about taking kids to a zoo. Watching them observe animals they've never seen for the first time was worth the price of admission alone.
• I played competitive indoor football (soccer for you 'merkins) for the first time in, well, a bloody long time today. I'll write more about that tomorrow. Mind you I don't think I'll be able to get out of bed tomorrow. I'm old. And VERY out of shape.
• Dear Battlestar Galactica writers, you do realize you've only got 3 more episodes right? In any other season, creating new plots and having a character-centric story line might have been a good idea. But this close to the end? You've got an awful lot of loose end tying up to do this month. I hope I'm not disappointed. Just sayin'.