Saturday, February 19, 2005
JennySlash wanted to spend some time out at SouthPoint today, so I stopped in at Champps to catch the second half of the UNC-Clemson game, despite a halftime score of something like 133-16. It's always a bit of a zoo there on a Saturday afternoon regardless of sports season but there's usually room to squeeze in at the bar as a single and sure enough there was one stool left at the corner of the bar with a view of the big TV that wasn't blocked by the beer taps.
The guys on one side of me were speculating about the two young women halfway down the bar splitting a bottle of champagne. Not speculating about the women themselves, mind you - just the mere fact that Champps has champagne (and champagne flutes, no less!). I have to admit to being a bit surprised myself.
One of the young guys on my other side just explained podcasting to a couple of his mates - cool!
Then there's the sound of rhythmic clapping followed by a line of black-clad, dour-faced waitrons heading off to do a birthday chant at some unfortunate's table. Not a smile in the bunch (the waitrons, not the patrons) - I think if I were the recipient I'd be convinced that they were accompanying Death and be looking around frantically for a guy in a hooded cape with a long scythe. I'm not one of those people that thinks that waitstaff should wear that fake smile all the time, but if you're going to work in a place where they make you do the stupid birthday stuff, you at least ought to not look like you're about to barf.
Podcast guy's friend just hung up his cellphone after a call from a friend of his in New York who's billing 100 hours a week at his law firm (these guys look like they're 14 - damn, I'm getting old!). "Yeah, his officemate just got fired for not billing enough hours. He was only billing 70 or 80 a week." Yikes! (I wondered how that was possible until I got home and actually did a search on lawyers and how they bill their hours and found this: "Raleigh bankruptcy attorney Mark Kirby was indicted in federal court on 16 counts of billing fraud. Among other offenses, he billed 90 hours in one day. Between June 1990 and July 1991, Kirby billed a total of 13,000 hours, even though that 13-month period, calculated at 24 hours a day seven days a week, was only 9,500 hours long. Yet Kirby's trial resulted in a hung jury. His defense: everybody does it." So maybe that's not so bad...)
Podcast guy tells me he's a Dookie but extolls the skills of the Carolina team this year. I have to admit to him that if Luol Deng was back this year I think the Devils would be nearly unbeatable. His buds are Wake fans in town for tomorrow's game and we give the Deacs a little love as well - it's a Tobacco Road verbal hugfest!
There's eight minutes to go, I've downed two pints of Bass and Carolina has a 1,327 point lead, so I settle up with Tasha (never Na-tasha) and tell Podcast guy that I'll be pulling for the Devils tomorrow and wander off to meet JennySlash at Eddie Bauer. I really don't intentionally set out to listen in on other people's conversations - I think I just get easily distracted.
I finally brought home some of my books today. I know this will sound sacrilegious to most of you, but the bulk of the books that I own have spent the last few years in bins at the storage unit we rent for stuff that has overflowed from the garage (which of course has never actually seen a car). Okay, we probably have too much stuff. It's gotten to the point that I've checked books out of the library that I know I own copies of but that are buried so deep that it's easier to find them on someone else's shelf. We just don't have enough wallspace for the shelf space needed to release the collection from captivity. But I'm working on it - the bookcase in my office that is currently filled with videotapes of stuff that we'll likely never watch again is being systematically emptied and the tapes replaced with paperbacks.
I brought home some of the classics today - some of Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, Delany's Dahlgren, some of Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series, bunches of Jack Chalker and, best of all, a good bit of my Heinlein. I'd read a little science fiction at an early age, but it was Starship Troopers loaned to me by Mom's friend Kate that really started my lifelong appreciation of SF and fantasy. Soon after that I got one of the greatest Christmas presents ever - a boxed set of 5 Heinlein paperbacks: Stranger in a Strange Land, Glory Road, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (probably the best SF novel I've ever read), Farnham's Freehold and I Will Fear No Evil. I don't remember how old I was - probably 12 or 13 - but I'm sure I was young enough that Mom would have disapproved of some of the content had she known about it (thanks, Kate!), In the long run she'd probably be even more appalled at some of the more extreme libertarian views espoused by Heinlein through his characters. He did tend to take rugged individualism to the nth degree. I suppose he wasn't a great writer in a technical sense, but he was a hell of a storyteller and creator of characters (at least up until his last couple of disappointing efforts) and I'm really looking forward to getting reacquainted with Jubal Harshaw and Professor de la Paz and Johann/Eunice.
Don't bother me - I'm reading... ;-)
Posted by Tony @ 8:00:00 pm |
Friday, February 18, 2005
Brave Combo at the Cradle the same weekend I'm actually talking about going out of town - dang it!
Neko Case at the Cradle tonight following by Tift Merrit tomorrow night. Both sold out - dang it!
On the other hand, Pietasters March 20, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead... April 6, Don Dixon April 12, Southern Culture on the Skids April 15 and Rev Horton Heat May 13. Woohoo!! And just for jw, Edwin McCain on April 22. Finally, for anyone with $25 and a ride to the Queen City, Frank Heath's promoting Wilco at Ovens Auditorium this Monday night.
When I was writing my 80's post a couple of days ago, I googled "Fabulous Knobs" and came up with some interesting hits. Most of them were in reference to a company that's actually called Fabulous Knobs. Guess they make knobs. There were also a few newspaper and web references that were actually about the band, primarily Terryknob Anderson but a few on Deb DeMilo. There was also one of my earliest blog posts, which was kind of funny. And then there was Matt Barrett's recollection of the local 80's music scene which I found a lot of fun to read. Everyone that was around then is going to have a different take on it - certainly there are bands that Matt features that didn't make a dent in my consciousness and others that meant the world to me that he doesn't mention, but that's one of the things that makes it fun! Even better is the collection of ephemera that he's posted, including 1982 Cat's Cradle calendars (I didn't need Matt's notes to know that they were produced by P. Hux) and a number of posters and photos from the late 70's on. He's inspired me to pull out some of my own stuff from then that I'll be posting as soon as I can round up enough of it to make it worthwhile, although I'll tell you right now that I have nowhere near the kind of collections that he's put together. Hat's off to Mr. Barrett! There are some other good takes on that period by Angie Carlson and Godfrey Cheshire and others in the Independent Rock and Roll Quarterly archives. Like JennySlash, I'm not big on nostalgia - that was a helluva time in my life, but by golly so is this! But there was so much good stuff going on that you couldn't do it all, so it's not a bad thing to catch up on what other folks saw and, more importantly, heard.
The title of the post, of course, refers to the post-Mondo Montage/More Mondo collection of local tunes that Godfrey Cheshire put together on three cassettes to pimp the local scene to the rekkid companies. I've since seen references to it as a commercially-available LP, but I actually didn't think that it was ever generally available (see what I mean about memory failing?). After a bit of web searching, it seems that I was both right and wrong. There really was apparently a UK-produced LP called Welcome to Comboland that was a direct result of Cheshire's trip to the Isles with the Comboland tapes in tow. So maybe my memory isn't so bad after all...
Finally, I ran across this radio show from The Garage in Winston-Salem - almost an hour of music mostly from More Mondo, Welcome to Comboland and some of the bands' own releases (yeah, I admit I'm listening to Rick Rock's Buddha Buddha as I type). Enjoy!
Posted by Tony @ 3:40:00 pm |
Thursday, February 17, 2005
So it's finally official that there will be no NHL season this year - boo-friggin-hoo. Why anyone living south of Minneapolis or Boston should care is beyond me. Who thought bringing pro hockey to San Jose, Nashville and /*shudder*/ Raleigh was a good idea? My only regret is that they didn't decide this two months ago so we could have watched ESPN for a few more weeks without having to see Barry Melrose's mullet. Only hockey would have an analyst with a mullet. Can you imagine Peter Gammons with a mullet? Okay, yeah, I guess I can too - now I want to stop! Now there'll be an extra 15 minutes on Sportscenter every day that unfortunately will most likely be filled by baseball - an additional 8 minutes of steroid abuse coverage and 7 more minutes of /*yawn*/ spring training. But at least it's America's boring sport!
I know hockey was supposed to appeal to us Southerners - coupling the collisions and fights of NASCAR with the mullets of professional wrestling. But it doesn't work for me - of course neither do NASCAR or the WWE. And before some misplaced Yankee starts squawking that I have to actually see it live before I'll appreciate it, I've done that, okay? It still sucks. And don't try again to explain the rules to me - I'm not an idiot and they're not all that esoteric. I can handle it. I just don't enjoy it.
I really do feel sorry for my friends in Canada though - this is a national tragedy for them and one pretty directly caused by the over-expansion into the southern part of the States. As a couple of them pointed out to me today, without hockey there's nothing else to do! It's winter for another 3 months, they don't care about college basketball or pro basketball (remember the Vancouver Grizzlies?) or baseball (remember the Expos? No, no one else does either.) so they've got nothing. Except maybe curling. And lots of strip clubs (but they can't even talk to the girls anymore because they're all from Romania and none of 'em speak English).
Speaking of NASCAR, I got a kick out of the Sportscenter piece about the reaction within the sport to some teams accepting advertising from liquor companies. King Richard had the gal to talk about stock car racing being about, I swear, "family values" and how he didn't think that accepting sponsorship from Jim Beam sent the right message. OMFG, you're killing me! Did someone manage to erase everything that happened before 1980? To be fair to Richard, I'm assuming that the line was taken out of context - if he meant after spending the last 30 years trying to erase from memory the previous 20 years of racing that this was a step backwards, well, he'd have a point and I'm guessing that's what he was really trying to say. But sorry, when I think of NASCAR I still think of a bunch of sunburned shirtless beer-gutted drunk-as-skunks yayhoos sitting in lounge chairs on top of a Winnebago in the infield at CMS with a growing mountain of empty PBR cans around them. Don't you?
Posted by Tony @ 8:15:00 pm |
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
So I understand that the UNC-UVa game tonight is supposed to be "Retro 80's Night" with old-style unis (short-shorts I guess?) and 80's ESPN graphics (more likely some 25-year-old assistant producer's idea of what they should have looked like in the 80's) and the crowd is encouraged to "dress 80's". What the hell does that mean? I'm pretty sure that I wasn't wearing the same gear in 1989 (married, working for a high-tech company in RTP) as I did in 1980 (student at UNC).
What did I wear in the 80's? I suppose I could wear a pair of polyester dress pants, a light
blue button-down Oxford shirt and a tie like I wore to work, but I'd likely look more like an unsuccessful lawyer than an 80's throwback. Or I could go for a sleeveless black t-shirt with a band logo, faded jeans and a pair of bovver boots, but I pretty much still wear that any time I go to a club. Okay, I suppose there were things I could wear that would scream "80's!!!!" and
no other decade but I just don't think I'm that brave tasteless
anymore...
Cut-offs - so the Virginia legislature or House of Commons or whatever the hell it is that they have tried to establish a fine for wearing one's trou so low that one's undies show. Well, kiddies, back in the day the problem was the other way around - we were way too inclined to chop off those jeans so short that our tidy-whitie-encased "package" tended to show to one side or the other - not a pleasant sight. Don't think I'll be trying that again.
Leg Warmers - leg warmers were an abomination on anyone, male or female, but I admit to being guilty, after witnessing Jack Cornell of the Fabulous Knobs wearing them over his jeans and drooping over his shoes, of doing the same. People, you could have stopped me! It's a wonder I ever got laid.
On the other hand, I would not be embarrassed to mousse up my still-full head of hair a bit, pull out the Italian leather racing jacket and the brown scarf I picked up in Freiburg and do the Euro look (think the Nena video for 99 Luftballons). Or I could pull out the sport coat I got at the vintage clothing place in Georgetown and the skinny black leather tie, push my jacket sleeves up, replace my ear stud with something dangly and be all set. I think I looked pretty danged cool!
In reality, I'll be at Caffe Driade wearing something timeless like jeans and a white shirt and talking about blogging at the first weekly post-Triangle Bloggercon meet-up, before running home to watch the second half of the game.
Update: So, no short-shorts - how disappointing! The game was certainly not reminiscent of 1981 either - another blowout against UVa (they could really use Ralph Sampson right now). Blogger meet-up was good - nice to see Ruby and Anton and Justin and all again. Lot of interesting tech talk - gave me some things to go look up. Jane Peppler managed to leave early again before I could mention how much we enjoyed seeing her and Bob (Pratie Heads) play in Winston-Salem last fall - next time I suppose.
Posted by Tony @ 1:15:00 pm |
Monday, February 14, 2005
As some of you guys know, I've had an ongoing project for the last couple of years to rip my vinyl collection and cut CDs of everything. I'm not one of those guys that had thousands and thousands of LPs - we're talking only about 325 or so, and of course some of those I've already replaced with purchased CDs and some just suck and I probably won't ever get around to even playing them again (how did I end up with the Rossington-Collins Band album?). I've made a fair start (around 50 of my own and probably a dozen for friends and family) and the conversation over the last couple of weeks about prog rock, stadium rock and the like got me to dust off Boston and Fragile and the Doors' double-disc greatest hits Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine. As I was working with the Doors songs, I realized yet again that I not only run hot-and-cold when it comes to the Doors, I'll flip-flop every five minutes. In one second I'll be thinking what a talentless, drug-addled wanker Jim Morrison was then I'll hear something that makes me think they were the only band that mattered. I suppose it was a little of both.
For the most part, I took pretty good care of my vinyl so they sound pretty decent. I've not done much to try to clean them up before writing to CD as I find that I lose too much that I want to keep with the algorithms I've tried so far. The slight pops don't really bother me - heck, I almost miss them when I don't hear them on CDs. The only disc so far that I've found to be just too noisy to listen to was, oddly, Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell. Not odd like I didn't like the album (I did quite a lot), but odd 'cause I don't remember playing it any more or less than other discs that sound much much better. I can only think that I loaned it out to someone or that one of my roommates used it for a frisbee at some point.
I've got some vinyl that has never come out on CD and other stuff that I like, but not enough to actually spend $15 on, so I'll eventually get through a couple hundred LPs I would guess. Of course at this rate it'll be the end of the decade before I get that far, but I'm enjoying listening to music that I haven't heard in some cases for 15 or 20 years. If anybody's interested in the hows and the tech, I'll be happy to share. I actually wrote up some notes at one point for Lex's dad (btw, did he ever try it?) that I'd be happy to post or e-mail you. Take a look at your vinyl collection - I'll bet you'll decide it's worth it!
I honestly have no idea how I really feel about this. Quite frankly I've never really paid a damn bit of attention to who the party chair was, but given the close scrutiny on the selection this year, I suppose it must make a difference. I have no problem with Dean in this role - I didn't think he was the right guy to be President of the US, but he might very well be the right guy for the DNC chair (hard to say since I'm still frankly not sure what the hell the duties are). And, yeah, no doubt this'll provide lots of fodder for the yammering yutzes on talk radio and Faux Newz and the winger blogosphere but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them pick our leaders for us, so more power to Dr. Dean. Certainly the kind of campaign of inclusion and grassroots organizing that he and his team proved capable of in the primaries is something that will stand the party in good stead and whatever the fuck we tried the last couple of cycles didn't work worth a damn, so let's give him a shot, help all we can and kick the rascals out!
Posted by Tony @ 5:15:00 pm |
Sunday, February 13, 2005
It was pointed out in the Bloggercon yesterday that many blogs don't have any real information on who the blogger is and I realized that I am guilty of that to some extent. I've now added a whoami page linked from my front page that you can read here.
Posted by Tony @ 9:45:00 pm |
I'm not sure how many people actually were on hand, but the large lecture hall in Murphy was almost full, so maybe 80? 90? I'm sure the wiki will have a count but regardless, I thought it was a huge turnout. Great job, first of all, by Anton and Paul and all the rest of the folks that were involved in pulling this together. I'm sure that like Ed and Dave before them with the Triad Bloggercon last fall, they will modestly say that it pulled itself together to which I will reply "phooey"! It may have been a labor of love and it may not have seemed like work but the organization showed so I thank you anyway. I still like the format (which I call "low-key moderation"), even with the larger group of people than we had in Greensboro. Obviously you reach a number of participants where it's no longer effective, but I thought it worked fine yesterday. I did like the suggestion that we follow up with smaller weekly or monthly gatherings (they seem to still be getting good turnout in G'boro for their monthly meet-up) - I would certainly participate. Finally in terms of format, any fears that anyone may have had that the conversation was going to be dominated by folks like Dan Gillmor and Dave Winer and Bob Young were I thought quickly put to bed - they all made valuable contributions but there were plenty of opportunities for everyone to participate, which I honestly chose to do by listening and absorbing more than speaking.
In particular the first session on building community I thought was full of excellent ideas and examples - certainly gave me a lot of reading and thinking to do. There was a lot of discussion on comments and commenters - I think Will R is a great example of someone that doesn't blog on his own but who nevertheless adds to and enlivens the blogscape by commenting on others' blogs. The question of why to drive up your readership was a valid one and the answer will vary greatly for each blogger - for myself, I quite simply like the feedback. I'm not a professional writer but I do want to improve and one of the ways I do that is to pay attention to what gets comments and what doesn't and what those comments are. Certainly some posts are just not the type that are conversational in nature so while I always throw a comment field in, I don't expect it to be used for those posts. But other more verbose posts are of the type that, if there are no comments, I'll want to think about why.
I found the second half of the morning when the discussion turned more to grassroots journalism and blogging and mainstream media and such to be very interesting, just less personally so. I'm very sorry Lex wasn't feeling up to coming over, but he was definitely there in spirit as the work he's doing at the Greensboro News and Record was mentioned a number of times. I thoroughly enjoyed the after session conversation at Top of the Hill with Dave and Jack and BigWig and Will R and Dee and many more folks - definitely makes me think that a monthly meetup is a great idea! Talking about blogs over a couple of pints of Davie Poplar India Pale Ale does not suck in the least. And I promise that I'll stop griping about these things all starting at 9am since Dave's made the trip up from Charlotte both to Greensboro and to Chapel Hill now.
I always hope to come out of these things energized and with ideas for how to make improvements and that's definitely where my head is today. So thanks not just to the organizers but to every single person that made the effort to come and participate! My work schedule will likely not permit me to make changes as fast as I'd like, but that's one of the reasons that I need these kinds of energy boosts to keep doing it.
Oh, there are pictures as well as podcasts, streams, etc. (see the wiki for the rest). JennySlash and I were down front so there're lots of wonderful shots of the backs of our heads. Oh, and finally (for now, at least), will whoever it was that was standing next to me in the restroom that made the comment about bathroom graffiti being the "first blog" please remind me who you were? It was a great line and I'd like to use it again but with proper attribution!
Posted by Tony @ 3:20:00 pm |
