May 2006 Archives

Hey, Strong Bad, eat your heart out.

I've been getting cozy with some new music lately, the first of which is Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere. Gnarls Barkley being Brian Burton (aka. DJ Dangermouse) and Thomas Calloway (aka. Cee-Lo Green). Heather alerted me to them with the track "Crazy" and their cover of the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy, Gone", which might be the one track on the album I skip; I mean, it sounds almost exactly like the original. The rest of the tracks are pretty solid. "Crazy", though uber catchy and understandably the first single, is very listenable with a refrain shifting from "Does that make me crazy? . . . Possibly" to "I think you're crazy . . . Just like me". "The Boogie Monster" reminds me very much of Outkast/Andre 3000's "Dracula's Wedding". Almost too much so, but perhaps a bit more imaginative, lyrically. Of my favorite tracks on the album "Just a Thought" is up there, Dangermouse pulling out the same kind of stops used for The Grey Album's "Dirt off Your Shoulder" and, though a bit less polished, Cee-Lo's lyrics are a nice, smooth compliment to the harsh, distorted background beat track. I also love the incredibly simple guitar riff invoking something of a Spaghetti-Western stand-off. I absolutely love "Transformer". This reminds me quite a bit of Deltron 3030, which is a round-a-bout connection to Dangermouse's work with the Gorillaz (Deltron has an immediately recognizable voice, most notably for his Gorillaz contributions. My first introduction to Deltron was with his rapping interlude as the ghost-like character in the "Dirty Harry" video). I could also keep yapping about how I really like the last two tracks "Storm Coming" and "The Last Time". Check out Gnarls Barkley's website and their MySpace page. In the upper right corner of their homepage there is a teeny-tiny music player, which plays "Smiley Faces" and "Crazy" in their entirety. The MySpace page offers up two more with the title track "St. Elsewhere" and "Just a Thought". Another artist who I'm only just discovering is Annie. I guess I shouldn't feel bad for not discovering her first album, Anniemal, until two years after its release, but I am surprised I haven't happened upon her before now, what with Röyksopp producing some of the tracks and being on the same label as The Streets and The Polyphonic Spree. Are we kindred spirits, Annie and me? I mean, people have been known to call me Mannimal, so it's no coincidence that her first album, Anniemal, tugs at my weakness-for-(good)-sugar-pop heart strings. Actually, she's described as "Electro" or "Synth-pop". I'll buy it, but I'd throw her right in there with the best of 'em. In fact, I'll go ahead and say it: Annie is Britney Spears with talent, a Kelly Clarkson for the dance floor, thematically maybe even an Avenue D - lite (very, very "lite") and, well, just plain fun. I only hope her sophomore effort is just as dancey and toe-tappy.

This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands: you either do something silly with the border image on your website (see above) or you have time to post about it. The former was a bout of idleness a few weeks ago, the latter is as per the delay between our class this morning (see next to last post) and the flight I have yet to get on in about an hour and a half. Anyhow, what I'm talking about is how the image banner across the top of this page looks like I let Photoshop vomit all over my website. This "vomit" joke is sort of in reference to a joke I had with Laura some 5 years ago when she would emerge from our dorm room clad in a Virginia t-shirt and Virginia shorts, finished off with a Virginia baseball cap. I would quip that UVa's bookstore had vomited all over her. Sorry, bad joke, but it still gets a chuckle. Though I kind of like the image, I've received negative feedback about it. I sort of threw it together just to have something else up there besides what came with the template. I don't have a digital camera, so it was out of the question to take some quick, artsy closeup of my keyboard or the woodgrain in my bookshelf. The other problem is I'm not really all that good at making images if it's outside of something very modern and geometric. That, and I'm not so great with Photoshop. All that lead to the smattering you see across the top. But like I said, I kinda like it. This is a request for suggestions or submissions if you think the image is hideous. But I will say this in my defense: the image completely rocks in that it gave me a great template for link and header colors.

Oh, this is great. "nile_red" left a post on MetaFilter about the movie, The Wizard, and another fellow posted a link to this Quicktime movie that pretty much encapsulates The Wizard's awesomeness.

I’m sitting in the Borders on East Camelback Road in Scottsdale, AZ at about 4:30pm in the afternoon. Calin and I are killing time here until our flight out of Phoenix International Airport at about 11:00pm tonight. Arizona is such an interesting place: the climate, the infrastructure -- I've definitely got to check out more of the Southwest. This morning’s (roughly) five-hour workshop concluded a two-day “beginners school” for “young insurance professionals”; take young to mean age or experience, though the majority of the folks in this class were certainly in their early-to-mid-to-late twenties. About seventy five people attended, which honestly surprised me. In particular because a lot of the kids seemed stamped from a similar cloth -- a cloth I remember thinking I wouldn’t be a part of after I had left college. Not that I’m all that removed, nor am I a “hipster”, really. I got the impression, for example, that if I had broken out my laptop and started playing some, oh, I dunno, New Order or maybe Mount Eerie or The Go! Team, I’m not sure I would have struck a chord of familiarity with anyone. Overall, I’d say the event was a nice supplement to some of the work I’ve been doing so far. I had already gone over a lot of the subject matter while I was studying for the exam that got me a fancy schmancy insurance license, but it was nice to think of everything in terms of the bigger picture. It seemed, however, that some of the people attending the conference were mostly thinking of insurance as a lucrative venture as opposed to really considering the significance of exchanging peace of mind for a monetary supplement. A presenter joked that insurance was basically “peace of mind subject to certain terms and conditions”. I’m thinking a lot about the other side of the biz that I don’t know much of anything about: what the underwriters and claims folks are doing on the company side, but also about how insurance agents are relating to their clients. It really is pretty interesting when you think of all the real-life cases, it’s just so muddled by and buried under legal jargon that even my eyes glaze over when I hear the word “insurance”.

A few weeks ago I purchased a Seagate 400 GB external hard drive. Excessive? Probably, but it was super-reasonably priced and I couldn’t resist. (Here’s the Macworld Store link, but the lowest price has already gone up by about $50. I highly recommend Newegg.com for compy-related purchases, though.) Before the Seagate, my PowerBook had a total storage capacity of 80 GB, split almost equally between two partitions, “ebi” and “zig”. I already have one external hard drive, a 20-gigger, “bubs”, but I don’t use it often as it is loud and somewhat slow to respond. I also have a 60 GB iPod, "felix". I got the larger HD in large part to back felix up. In addition to the back-up, I had heard rumors about how, if you first format an iPod on a PC, you can use it with both a Mac and PC, seamlessly. Here was my chance!! I had formatted felix on my PowerBook, but I use a PC at work, so the only way I can really listen to felix there is by plugging my computer speakers into the iPod directly, but who wants to do that?! With fingers crossed, I took everything off of felix and put it on the new HD, “goomba”. Formatting felix on my work-Dell was a bit buggy—the iPod Updater's restore and update weren't as smooth as I had hoped—but after a restart, the compy recognized felix and started up iTunes. Weird thing is that, of the HD configuration options available on the PC, opening iTunes is not offered. "Take No Action" or "Manage Music with RealPlayer" are available options, however. ::shrugs:: I don’t get it, either. One little peeve I have is that, though I have configured felix on the PC in lower-case letters, gizmo (that’s the name of my PowerBook) refuses to recognize felix as anything other than “FELIX”. Grrr. Bottom line is that over the past few days, I have been able to add music from both my work PC and my PowerBook, and use felix back and forth without any difficulties. I’m super excited about this. I’m a little worried that one day felix might crap-out what with this weird kind of OS-HD ménage à toi I’ve got going on, but thanks to goomba, I can sleep a little easier knowing everything’s got a copy.

I tend to barely glance at the messages in my spam (Gmail)/junk (Mail) folders, scanning for important words or something immediately recognizable. Usually all the Viagra, “enlarge your penis” and get “prescriptions at super low prices” subject lines don’t do anything but annoy me. I laughed-out-loud at this one, though, and thought I’d share:

“With our Soft Cialis Tabs you will be able to chop the wood with your dick.(Warning: don’t try it).”

I love that it says “the wood” and I’m still trying to decide how glorious it would be had it read “ . . . you will be able to chop the wood with your wood.” Hee, hee.

I have a weakness for [song] covers. Some of you already know that. But in this Age of the Remake (“Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term!”), where everything you can think of – from Smurfs to Lite-Brite – is being resurrected in some form or another, I don’t choose my favorite covers casually. We’re talking weird, new, and creative takes on the original. Devo has nailed it in an almost canonistic way heard in their versions of “Satisfaction (I Can’t Get No)”, “Working in a Coalmine” and “Experienced”. With similar sensibilities, Ben Folds Five give a Tito-Puente-esque nod to the Flaming Lips with their version of “She Don’t Use Jelly”, the Pet Shop Boys proved the Village People’s “Go West” wasn’t just a dance anthem for 1977 and even the Postal Service cover of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” is certainly worth honorable mention.

And I could go on forever about remixes. I have yet to meet any of the !K7 Records DJ-Kicks efforts that I haven’t liked. Same goes for Hippocamp, particularly when they “ruined” the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. (I have to say I’m surprised to see this back up.) People tend to have mixed feelings about artists remixing their own work, condemning it with what seems to be increasing disdain the further away the remix is from the original release date. But what about The Cure’s Mixed Up? Isn’t it arguably one of their best albums? And much of the DJ-Kicks stuff is mixed by the original artist(s) and frankly, it's wonderful. What’s that adage about the writer who is never satisfied with his own work??

Anyway, Music for Robots posted one of the most beautifully recorded covers I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a practical rebirth of Elliott Smith’s “Happiness”, from a West Coast hip-hop duo, Lifesavas. Maybe I’m jazzed about this cover because “Happiness” is already one of my favorite Elliott Smith tunes. Maybe it’s because it sounds an awful lot like Diggable Planets with a hint of Boyz II Men (circa 1991) in the chorus. Or maybe it’s that sweet, jazzy, almost-the-makings-of-muzak piano. All that said it gets me the way all great artistic works do, be they original or not.

I’ve pretty much spanned the emotional spectrum this weekend.

Friday found me in great spirits, intoxicated with the relief of the week’s end, and also literally intoxicated with one too many jumbo margaritas.  After all, it was Cinco de Mayo, and what do white people love more than eating Mexican and getting hammered on the 5th of May?  The Guadalajara near the Downtown Mall was overflowing with these predictable Caucasians, our co-worker crew adding to it at about 6pm.  We were later joined by some of my friends, and I honestly can’t remember what happened after about 8:30pm; I am slowly being filled in on the details.  Sounds like I was only a little boisterous and eventually self-conscious in that way only induced by inebriation.  Or maybe they’re just being generous.  Maybe the evening went a little more like this.

Saturday was, in a word, fantastic.  One of those days where everything just fell into place without much effort.  No wait at Bluegrass Grill (that’s unheard of on a Saturday morning) and we got on the road with the perfect amount of time to get to the trail head at St. Mary’s Wilderness Area.  Ok, I lied -- I got a little lost on the way out, but that just meant going the back way in via 13 miles of gravel road.  No biggie, and certainly the only snag.  Greg, Heather and I hiked out to St. Mary’s Falls, something I haven’t done since the summer of 2003.  It is my absolute favorite hike and it felt just as good yesterday as it did almost three years ago.  We even had to do some crazy ninja-like maneuvering in spots where the Tye River’s cut-bank had eroded away some of the trail.  We got back to Charlottesville right about dinner time and headed over to Lime Leaf to see what all the hoopla’s about.  Though they did have a seafood dish that was quite delicious, Downtown Thai’s tom yum kung and green curry have ‘em beat.

Today has contrasted a good deal with the beginning of my weekend.  Since moving everything from my mom’s house to my apartment in November, I have done little to sort through it.  A pile of boxes, furniture and miscellaneous items is currently consuming about a quarter of my living room, stretching up and almost touching my ten-foot ceiling.  An elephant in the room if there ever was one.  And though part of me thinks I should have dealt with it by now, I have been avoiding it in every possible way I can.

When I was trying to decide what kind of blog this should be, I had played around with the idea of a “grief” blog of sorts.  In the months right after my mom’s death, I did a lot of searching for support groups/forums/chat rooms for loved ones surviving suicide victims.  I was frustrated because one of the only things I found was a chat room where everyone talked about a lot of stuff unrelated to what it is to have a loved one take their own life. I thought that maybe I could set up some sort of forum where people could have that kind of space to do what it was I had desperately needed then.

I’m glad I didn’t set up such a blog, though I have no intention of refraining from that kind of writing here, nor will I discourage it from readers who might want to comment.  My need for that immediate source of support has lessened dramatically and I have also found other means of dealing with it.  At any rate, today was the first time in quite a while that the intensity of my loss has been overwhelming.  In theory, the task of sorting through that pile should only take a few hours.  Instead, the idea that this shouldn’t be happening -- these things should all be tucked away in special places in the house where my mom had put them -- absolutely knocks the breath right out of me.

I didn’t get very far today.  But I will do it in little pieces.  I wouldn’t have been able to even start without Greg’s help, I think.  Not today.  He helped me keep it together enough to focus on it as purely a task, but was also comforting when I couldn’t do it any more.  (Thank you, Greg.)  And as Sunday is rounding off into Monday, I am feeling better.  I am able to be optimistic about the idea of finally getting my life back together, but I am making the concerted effort from here on to not be frustrated with how slowly the process is taking, but rather to adjust my progress according to how I happen to be feeling about it.

A fellow I work with let me borrow the Flaming Lips' most recent album, At War with the Mystics. I'm slowly getting to know it, and am enjoying it thus far, though I admit nothing has really jumped out at me as amazing just yet. But, on a similar note to my last entry, the tune of the track "It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big . . . I Am So Small . . . Do I Stand A Chance?" stood out at me before I realized the song title and some of the lyrics are somewhat apropos to my ramblings about the cosmos. Head to the Lips' website to listen to the track, it's 07., though the sound quality leaves much to be desired. And while you're there, give the others a chance. Yeah, this album is actually growing on my as I type; this is the closest listen I've given it yet, and there are some interesting things going on. The sixth track, "The Wizard Turns On … The Giant Silver Flashlight And Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins", is pretty great. As are the catchier first and second tracks, "The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song" (a tad reminiscent of Neil Young's most recent effort*) and "Free Radicals", respectively. And yes, I, uh, read Wayne Coyne's synopsis of his, umm, inspiration for the track, but it turns out we're on a similar page in some respects. Gwen Stefani and cosmic bliss? Fantastic. (Scroll down to read comments for all tracks.) * What I mean to say here is that I don't think I'm going out on a limb to think the Lips are getting political; the "Yeah" song seems rather conspicuously directed towards governmental talking heads. Tom Moon had an interesting and slightly funny review on NPR of Young's Living With War. He gives it to us straight about the musical quality of the album stating that "these are not the best songs Neil Young has ever written" but that the effort is "purposeful, indignant and alive with spirit". His most interesting comment? "How come it took a sixty-year-old Canadian to deliver Rock'n'Roll's most passionate commentary on [the war in Iraq]?" Maybe Neil should think about rocking-out with forty-five-year-old Wayne.

This past Friday evening, some friends and I headed up to UVa’s observatory at Fan Mountain. The Astronomy Department does most of its research here, having abandoned the Leander McCormick Observatory on O’Hill in favor of a more remote location (yes, the “O” in “O’Hill” does indeed stand for Observatory). Fan Mountain hosts public nights just twice a year: once in the Fall, and once in the Spring, in this case, Friday, April 28^th. In order to curtail the amount of people coming to the event, or maybe just to keep out the riffraff, all interested parties are required to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope before the event to request tickets. It’s a free event, but you must have tickets!! This proved not exactly true, but I appreciate the point. They also don’t encourage small children to come, but no one really paid attention to that suggestion, either. At about 6:30pm, Laura, Adam, Greg and I grabbed some pizza from Christian’s. I mean, let’s be honest: we’re already off to a great start! We head down 29 South towards Covesville for about 14 miles, scanning for the turn-off onto the gravel road that would take us to the top of the mountain. It’s about 3 miles up this road, and also a bit scary. I was worried my super-charged Daewoo wouldn’t make it, but she was tried and true. We arrived just at dusk, the sky slowly darkening, the stars coming out one by one. Dr. Murphy was there in his characteristic khakis and a tan coat that seems hardly fitting for the cold evening ahead. I learned from our earlier trip up to McCormick that being outside all night can get chilly, and is not, as one “Friend of the Leander McCormick Observatory” put it while she served us coffee and donuts (two cups and a donut = $3!), for the faint of heart. The swarm of people was divided up as best as possible, grad students leading separate groups around to the different telescopes while Dr. Murphy gave a slide show on the side of the old foreman’s house for the people waiting. I have to say, one of my favorite parts of the evening was when Dr. Murphy pointed out constellations with his green laser pointer, circling tiny parts of the sky as if on a projector screen only a few feet away. I definitely want one of those. Fan Mountain’s largest scope boasts a 40” (or 1.0 meter, if you’d like) astrometric reflector (i.e., mirror), capable of obtaining fairly crisp images from extremely distant objects when recorded with a digital camera over long exposures. An interesting thing about the procedure for recording images is that they keep the camera in a chamber cooled by liquid nitrogen in order to reduce “noise”. Why liquid N₂? Because it is cheap. The basic premise behind telescope accuracy is that the more light it can gather, the better the image. For this public night, the scope was pointed at Saturn. Now, Saturn is pretty bright, so it honestly looks kind of fake. Or rather, it looks like a planetary model in a sixth-grade science fair project. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still amazing. Upon stepping up to the tiny eyepiece mounted at the back of the enormous telescope, Laura let out what I thought was giddy laughter. She had mentioned earlier being really excited to see Saturn, but she was laughing because she thought Saturn looked like a glow-in-the-dark sticker you’d put on the wall. To put this in perspective, one Charlottesville Astronomical Society member commented that using something as powerful as the 40” scope to view Saturn was like “using a sledge hammer to kill a fly”. A handful of CAS members were there with maybe eight (or more?) of their own telescopes trained on different objects for anyone to look at. These “amateur astronomers” were looking at all kinds of awesome things, including the “Beehive” open star cluster close to Saturn (aka: “Praesepe”, which you can actually see incredibly well through binoculars), Jupiter (and its four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede & Calisto), several globular star clusters, a comet and two fuzzy spiral galaxies whose names I have forgotten. Before leaving, we went back up to the 40” scope which was now pointed at the Sombrero Galaxy. Oh, man, I was ecstatic. This galaxy is perhaps one of my favorites because it looks much different than my other ideas of how a spiral galaxy generally looks. Unfortunately, our eyes are not sensitive enough to capture the crisp images we have come to associate with the objects in our universe. So the Sombrero Galaxy we saw on Friday looked a bit more like this. Part of my fascination with space has been exacerbated by Simon Singh’s Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe. Though focused on the Big Bang and the chain of events that led astronomers, cosmologists, physicists, scientists and philosophers alike to develop this theory, this book is practically a quick history of astronomy itself. Looking through the telescopes Friday night and knowing what little I already do about the cosmos, I can only imagine how astounded those guys must have been as they discovered more and more about space. Seeing those images with my own eyes, essentially looking not just at something incredibly far away, but also back in time, absolutely floors me. That, and the excitement of the impossibility of knowing all that is out there besides Earth, and also because this emphasizes how completely insignificant we are. It’s absolutely beautiful.