Listening can be bad.

      Poison is, by definition, toxic, right? Therefore, "toxic poisoning" is redundant, right? I'm not the crazy one here, am I? ??? I hope not.

Old business

      Due to the fact that I have a slightly narrow world view, two blogs I regularly read both posted a link to this Stephin Merritt interview. I thought I'd keep the trend alive.

      Also, I've corrected the link for my Balboa Island photos, so you can click over there to see more than one page of images now.

      I only just finished watching the Smallville and Angel episodes from last week. Okay, so Clark is held against his will and tortured by a research scientist. Clark's superness and the love of Lex save him. The scientist goes into a coma. You'd have to wait to prosecute the scientist, due to the coma. Why don't they bring charges against the company the scientist works for? Clark was kidnapped and tortured and nobody even mentions calling the police or involving the justice system? They are damn lucky I'm still crushing on Michael Rosenbaum, 'cause otherwise I'd have to stop watching the most poorly written drama on TV today (and don't forget that The O.C. is currently on the air).
      Another thing about this past SV that bothered me was Baby Clark. When his parents stick him in the Ugliest Bassinette Ever Clark is an infant. When he arrives on Earth he's about three or four years old. I'm down with the time it would take for Clark to travel from Krypton to Earth. How did he survive for so long, though? He wasn't in some cryo-stasis or anything and there didn't seem to be any food or fresh diapers in that fugly egg pod. The complete lack of social interaction for two or three of Clark's formative years does make sense of his character. He's such a dope. Stupid man.
      Angel was pretty cool. I like Illyria getting unstuck from time. Reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut would write about.
      Illyria's generally loads of fun anyway. Wesley acts kind of Renfield about her, too. He said something like, "When she speaks it's like 'Vertigo'." I can't decide whether he was making a reference to Hitchcock's film or just the medical problem. 'Cause, y'know, Illyria killed Wesley's last girlfriend and now lives in said girlfriend's body. The context didn't help at all. Usually when they make cultural references they'll be more explicit about it, but I still can't decide about that word. I could buy that Illyria's voice causes a negative physical reaction in humans, or that Wesley hearing Dead Fred's voice makes him feel wonky, but ever since the relationship between Wesley and Illyria was established I've thought of them as a potential 'Vertigo' homage. Why can't they explain these things to me? Didn't Ben Edlund write this episode? It wasn't nearly as fun as "Smile Time". When he does 'wacky' it's awesome. When he does 'standard' it's stock sci-fi garbage.
      The ending made absolutely no sense, either, unless they reveal in the next episode that Angel actually killed those demons. Or the baby. Either one works for me. And the pregnant mother so reminded me of Sharon from My So-Called Life. Let me look her up a moment. Oh, she's David Boreanaz' wife. What a non-surprise. (Is there a proper word for that? Meriam-Webster online doesn't list an antonym for 'surprise'. Anti-climactic? Naw. Oh well. Based on a Google search for the term, 'non-surprise' does get used pretty often. We need a proper word for this! Negating a boring old word just isn't enough! Revolution!)

Coachella, already!       Ani and I made it through security pretty quickly (although I was forced to toss a nice new pen, sadly), and made it onto the grounds in time to hear the Section Quartet. Someone in the group said that they were the loudest string quartet. I agree. We didn't get anywhere near the Main Stage and they were still too loud for me. The KROQ tent was predictably noisome.
      We loaded up on bottled water and made our way to the Mojave tent for Q and not U. We knew it was the Mojave tent cuz we asked the security guard which tent we were in. They should really think about labeling those. QanU was good, but I wanted to see Howie Day. He's got the kind of schtick that's great to watch live. Ani had to stay behind at the Mojave tent for a little while to wait for her friends (who never showed).
      Howie Day is a young white guy with an acoustic guitar, and masses of pedals. He samples, loops, mixes and who know's whats live on stage while he's performing. He's like a digital one-man-band. I've even seen him do a 'dance mix' of one of his songs on the fly. Seems he has a whole backing band now, though. That made me sad. But they were experiencing technical difficulties. While others worked to resolve the problems with the band's equipment, Howie played two songs by himself. This made me happy. I wasn't close enough to see his schtick very well, but I could hear it and that's all that matters. Plus, churro and iced lemonade!
      We listened to Kinky off in the distance while waiting for Ani's friends to meet us near some food stalls. They were Lexy and Drew. Good people. I highly recommend them. We got lunch (my personal mini-pizza was doughy! It was so gross! I'm lucky I didn't get sick! !!! Ani's vegi combo from the Chinese food stall smelled yummy.) and then headed over towards Beck. I don't enjoy listening to Beck (and was glad that nobody lynched me for stating that aloud near the Gobi tent), so I went off on my own. I told Ani I'd meet her at the film tent.
      The film tent sucked. It was tiny and crowded and the documentary I came in on was boring. I did not stay in the film tent. I wandered about, bought a strawberry snow-cone (that looked like a bright red breast), and began looking for shade. Oh, I bought a parasol just after arriving. It's made of 'natural'-colored paper and has pretty flowers painted on it in black and gold. But I needed real shade.
      I found the Playstation 2 tent and sat around watching some guy try to figure out some track meet game. Kind of boring, but relaxing and cool. Eventually, I met up with Ani near the Outdoor Stage, where we'd seen Howie Day. She said Junior Senior was very good. She hadn't watched much of Beck. We dozed under some random low-lying tent thing. It was quite refreshing.
      We got some more food. This time Ani went for the doughy pizza and I got a vegi combo from the Chinese food stall. The woman serving the food starting putting a meat kabob on my plate until I reminded her that I'd ordered the vegi combo. We took our food over towards the Main stage to watch The Pixies. They were a lot of fun. They have v. devoted fans, as well. Radiohead was scheduled to play the Main stage after The Pixies, so Ani wanted to get as close to the stage as possible. She's small and swift and made it through the crowd easily, but I did not and completely lost track of her after a couple of minutes. I managed to get even closer to the stage after The Pixies left the stage. I couldn't bear the idea of standing crushed between all those people for another two hours, though, and left (which was not an easy feat in itself).
      I didn't really care to see any of the bands playing between The Pixies and Radiohead, so wandered around the Virgin Megastore tent for a while. As one of my fellow browsers remarked, "I don't need to pay $25 to get this CD right now. It's cheaper everywhere else."
      I bought some fruit and cranberry juice and made it back just in time for Radiohead. They're so cool. They're my favorite big, world famous rock band. Thom said he played 'Creep' for The Pixies. The crowd I was in was sparse enough to allow me to shake my booty to the music. Shaking my booty kept me from having anyone standing directly behind me for very long.
      Once I was certain that Radiohead was done performing for the night, I rushed over to the Sahara tent to see Kraftwerk live! I missed their first song, but the whole thing was very very cool. I was hoping for 'Pocket Calculator,' cuz that's my favorite, but they did play 'Computer World,' which is from the same album. There was a video presentation on the screen running the width of the stage. The 'band' stood in front, silhouetted against images of bicyclists and radioactivity symbols. A few minutes after they left the stage, the shadows of robot mannequins began to appear on the screen. Then the robots replaced the band for the first song of the encore: The Robots. It was so great to be there as thousands of people applauded the arrival of four robot mannequins on the stage. The actual people behind Kraftwerk eventually returned to the stage to finish their encore. I love live Kraftwerk! I had to miss Phantom Planet, but I can see them any time. And the very idea of seeing them perform live isn't nearly as fun as Kraftwerk live!
      It took Ani and me a while to find each other after Kraftwerk (live!). First, we made the mistake of setting our walkie talkies to channel one, which is the same channel that about a hundred other people were trying to use. Then, someone left their mic open from Phantom Planet to Kraftwerk so that all anyone could hear on channel one was music. We did get back together in time to meet up with Drew again. Lexy was waiting in the car. They'd been trying to get out of the parking lot since the middle of Radiohead's set. Due to the complete lack of parking staff, traffic was moving at about six feet per half hour. It was the worst traffic I have ever been in. Ever. I've been in some really shitty traffic. Never before has it taken four hours to leave a parking lot with only a few hundred people trying to exit. I could probably have walked back to our hotel by then. All of the road closures by the police just made everything worse. It really doesn't help traffic throughout Indio by forcing about 40,000 people to use only one street to get to the freeway. That actually causes more traffic problems. Indio is mostly on a grid-plan. There are about a dozen different ways to leave the Empire Polo Field when all of the streets are open. The traffic control at Coachella completely sucked. I have no intention of ever attending Coachella again. Not even shutting down the port-a-potties early because the scant few available were full well before midnight was enough to make me swear-off Coachella. That traffic was.
      Anyways, we got back to the hotel very late. I'll post about Sunday tomorrow. Maybe I'll have that Danger Mouse photo uploaded by then. You'll wanna see it; he's hot.

Home again, home again. Jiggity-jig!

      Not much time for blogging today. I'm still recovering from Coachella. I'll try to find time to type about that tomorrow. I was just so unhappy Monday morning driving back from the desert and not being able to hear new exciting music that I'd never heard before. I'd already heard everything in Mr. Car, and knew that turning on the radio would not help. Coachella spoiled me.

      My very favorite virus/worm/spam/whatever subject line: crispin sprite baleen snowfall contralateral breadboard ...
Freeform computer poetry can be so beautiful!

Oh my! Radiohead tomorrow!!! and !!!, too!

      I can't think of anything other than Coachella right now. That's where I'll be this weekend, so don't expect anything new up here until some time next week. I will be beeping lots of digital photos to share, so look forward to waiting for those to load.
      I would like to post that I am unhappy about the concert's scheduling. It is very rude to schedule Phantom Planet and Kraftwerk at the same time. I love Phantom Planet, but when am I ever gonna get another chance to see Kraftwerk live? I was really looking forward to seeing the guys with their new drummer, too. Oh well. I can live with the memories of past PP shows.

      I posted the photos from my Tuesday visit to Balboa Island to my Arrested Development fansite, cuza the banana stand and all. I'm not sure whether you'll be able to see all of the photos if you click over there today, as they take up a lot of bandwidth and I don't have much bandwidth to begin with. If you have loading problems, just come back later. This'll probably be the top post around here for a few days.

      Anyways, have a great weekend! I hope I do!

Doorway loitering

      Below are a few photos I took at last Wednesday's staff meeting. I'm having server problems with my Balboa pictures from Tuesday, so that may have to wait until tomorrow.

These are Ani's friends. I forget their names. They're in KUCI training this quarter.

This is Jill. She works at the station and hosted our winter holiday gift exchange party last year.

Steve Sherlock and one of Ani's friends. Steve's a lifer at KUCI, and super-dooper cool. You could tell that just by looking at him, though, couldn't you? (Even his t-shirt is hip & indie; it's for a local film festival.)

Idiot Box Politics

Please change so many times that I'll forget
I need to hope I haven't found you yet
Stay nobody for no one else but me

      Over the weekend, Mom and I went to Fashion Island. She wanted a smoothie, but none of the restaurants under the Bloomingdale's home store make smoothies, so I got a shake from the gelato shop. It was just berry sorbet flavor gelato blended with water and it was very yummy. We made some at home, and I highly recommend it. Just mix a pint of sorbet and a 16oz. bottle of water together in a blender for a yummy drink. It's best for hot weather, which we've been having lately. Mmm, sorbet.

      I finally figured out how to make the tape deck adapter work with Comrade Pod (for whom I bought a cute pink brocade bag while I was in Balboa yesterday. It even has little sleeves and a mandarin collar and everything! It's for when he's feeling girly.). I just had to hit the 'flip' button on the stereo, since it's one of those machines that can change the side of the tape you're listening to without removing the tape from the deck. I wish I'd figured that out several months ago.
      The sound isn't the best, though. It sounds too...hot, I guess. I tried turning down the volume on Comrade Pod and turning up the volume on the car stereo to compensate, but it's still too hot. I'm not sure if that's even the correct word for it, as I'm not incredibly skilled at audio engineering. It sounds like the same kind of problem that I get when my mic's levels are up to high, though, and I just don't know what to do to correct that other than bringing the levels down. I know there's an equalizer on my iPod, but I don't think that'd make any difference.
      I still get to hear fun music in the car, so that makes me happy. But whenever it spikes and distorts a bit, that makes me a little less happy. Oh well. At least I have my health!

      Yesterday, I sent letters to a few executives at Fox TV, because I'm a little worried about whether or not Arrested Development will be renewed for a second season. I told the people at Fox that it's my favorite show and my whole family enjoys watching it and we'd be very happy should it be renewed. That's all true, but I feel like a bit of a heel for sending those letters. When politicians do evil things, I might sign an online petition. When my favorite TV show might be cancelled, I write letters; by hand, even! A few weeks ago, some Angel fans actually staged a protest about the series' cancellation, with picket signs and everything. My first reaction was, "People, there are more important causes to protest over!", which is true. The problem isn't so much TV viewers. The problem is our political system.
      If a TV show is unpopular, the TV network will lose money and the people responsible for the under-performing show will probably lose their jobs. TV executives are held directly accountable by their viewers (as well as by their advertisers). When viewers don't like a TV show, TV executives listen and try to get something on the air that will please as many viewers as possible. A drop in one million Nielson viewers can mean the death of a TV show.
      If a political action is unpopular, politicians can just go about their business. The average citizen does not hold any sway over politicians. Sure, some of their income is derived from taxes, but it's not as though citizens can realistically boycott paying taxes because they don't like a bill that's going through Congress. Most politicians get a majority of their income from great big corporations for whom the politicians legislate. If one million people join together to voice their opinion on an issue, it may get on the news, but there's no guarantee that it'll change any policies. You can write that letter to your representative, but most US citizens have no way of backing up any of their opinions with actions that truly effect politics.
      I know people joke that politics and Hollywood are very similar, but that only works in theory. In practice, Hollywood pays far more attention to individuals than our government does. Hollywood knows it. Tom Hanks was spot-on when he said that the most important awards show was the Mtv awards. Mtv viewers are the ones with disposable incomes and malleable minds. Celebrities know what they're doing when they thank their fans. Without fans, there would be no celebrities. Without voters, the political system still chugs along of its own volition.
      So, well, I guess we need Nielson boxes for politics. We need to take money away from the least popular politicians or public policies. Or something. I dunno. I guess I should have paid more attention in that 8th grade US government class.
      Ooo! Neil Gaiman just mentioned that the Halloween movie hosting gig he has is with Fox Movie Channel. Now I have until October to pester my cable company into carrying it so I won't miss Neil's TV appearances. I had assumed that he'd been hired by AMC, because they get guest hosts for Halloween. Neil, due to his large fandom, is a good bit of marketing for the Fox Movie Channel.

      As I briefly mentioned earlier, I visited Balboa after work yesterday. I just had to get photos of the banana shops on Marina for my Arrested Development fansite. I had a frozen banana, met a nice black and white kitty, saw some ducks and a heron. I'm pretty sure it was a heron. Something like that. Maybe a crane. Anyways, the photos are on Little Miss Hot Bottom's hard drive, all zipped and ready to upload, but I ran out of time for that last night. Tonight, though, there are new episodes of Smallville and Angel, so I'll have lots of time to go online.

      I'm happy because I noticed that I get paid this Friday, for my birthday and for Coachella. Yay! Water is $2/bottle at Coachella, and they won't let you bring any of your own in, so I'll need the cash. Bastards!

      I only just now noticed that Barry started up a second blog. More to read online! Yay!

      I think I wanna buy a guitar. Dad's guitar is too big for me to play comfortably. Hmm.
Must pay for car registration first.

Ritual Computing

      iTunes played "Danger! High Voltage!" by Electric Six for me this morning. I like the song, and it makes me shake my booty. I was reminded of the fact that E.S. is performing at Coachella this weekend. That doesn't make me as happy now as when I first saw the show's lineup. Since then, I've had a chance to listen to E.S.'s whole "Fire" CD, and I don't like most of it. The rest of the disc isn't far from "Danger! High Voltage!", but I still don't enjoy it much. Oh well. At least they don't completely suck.

      Last night: Best Buy for a memory card for my Flashy camera (and impulse buy of walkie talkies for our trip to the desert this weekend. I forgot to buy batteries for them, though.), dinner (hamburgers with avocado), Sunday's Arrested Development (so not the season finale. It was the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day episode. Still funny, but not the finale as promo'ed.), started Secondhand Lions, played a few hands on Uno (I won once, or was it twice? At least once! Yay!), more of Secondhand Lions, and to bed for an odd dream involving a dance class with Shanna and someone randomly shooting at me with a revolver while I was walking down a residential sidewalk.

      I'm one hour in to Secondhand Lions right now. I hadn't known that the guy who played Lindsey on Angel was in it! He plays the young Robert Duvall. I was surprised at how violent it is. The film is even recommended by some parent group (their logo's on the cover). I guess it's a violent, shotgun lovin' parent group; perhaps an off-shoot of the NRA or something. It's good so far. And watching Lindsey (he'll always be Lindsey to me) fight is fun. He's good at it.
      Michael Caine's Texan accent took a little getting used to. He's does it well (it's not like Kenneth Branaugh in Dead Again or anything), but I'm really not used to hearing his voice in that context. Overall, a good film, aside from the violence. It isn't particularly gory violence or anything, there are just a lot of 'action' sequences, similar to what you'd find in a super hero cartoon (the Saturday morning kiddie kind, not the Aeon Flux/The Maxx Mtv kind).
      And that Osment kid still gets me. Every time. Whenever he's happy, I smile. Whenever he's sad, I cry. I still can't tell what he's gonna look like all grown-up, but even if he turns out more like Frankie Muniz (who's always looked odd) than Elijah Wood (who's always looked cute), he'll still have his acting skills.

      I've noticed that all of the little cords and plugs that I have to deal with to make my iBook and iPod work don't bother me. It's the type of thing that I would expect myself to get sick of: plugging the AC adapter in, opening Comrade Pod's case to get at the FireWire port, et cetera. I enjoy the repetition of it, though. It's like a set of e-rituals that I perform whenever I need to use my computer. Not much else in my life is that ritualized. The other tasks that I repeat aren't absolutely necessary.
      Sure, I go to the same office every day and visit the same websites and all that, but those actions do not necessitate the precision of repetition that packing up my laptop requires. With electronics, everything has to be exactly where it belongs, or the desired functions don't work. During my commute, I can change lanes, exit the freeway early and take surface streets, choose any available parking space, or do a variety of other actions. As far as Little Miss Hot Bottom is concerned, you either plug the USB cord into the USB port, or she's going to ignore the scanner altogether.
      Course, it's a bit disconcerting to associate ritual with electronics. Traditionally, ritual has more of a spiritual association. Using an iPod now feels a bit blasphemous.

Predictable Title Backlash

      I rented Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World yesterday. That title! Really! Is that necessary?
      Anyways, I only got it for Billy Boyd, of course, who plays 'Coxswain'. Those character names tell you from the get-go how much HoYay! is all over this film. The Captain and the Doctor have one lovers' quarrel after another.
      I didn't actually watch the entire film. There are many, many long sweeping shots of water, the ship, the horizon, underwater, islands, Russell Crowe, and other random junk. I was bored and fast-forwarded through most of the long sweeping shots, and had to click right past the violent action scenes. I guess that may have something to do with how HoYay-licious my viewing of the film felt.
      If you're a fan of the History Channel, it's the movie for you. I did enjoy the ending. There was enough left open that it's exciting and you wonder what happens next, but you know damn well what's gonna happen next so it's cool that they don't actually show you another round of heroics. Almost made me interested in the books the film's based on.

      I'm finalizing my preparations for Coachella for my birthday this weekend. I just hope that I didn't pay all that money just to pass out in the desert heat. Ani's coming. She finally got her tickets today from Kevin. I'm so excited! Yay!

      I am a Grammar God, according to this quiz. I did have to put some thought into it, though, so I'm a deep-thought grammar god. And that's why you read my blog, right? For the good grammar.

A Playlist for Today
Listen online kuci.org

Artist . Song . Album . New Release?
1. The Magnetic Fields . I Have the Moon . Charm of the Highway Strip
2. xiu xiu . clowne towne . Tracks and Fields . NR
3. Le D . Piano Mass #6: Kyrie [Schubert] . Masterworks Reworked . NR
4. Technova . Watching . Music for Heroes Three . NR
5. Erlend Oye/Phonique Rmx . The Black Keys Work . DJ Kicks . NR

6. Mochipet . Aphex Twin vs. Thompson Twins . Combat . NR
7. James Lavelle . Don't Funk [Photek] . Romania . NR
8. 60 Channels . Beyond the Chemical Domain . Covert Movements . NR
9. Greyboy . Omega & To Know You is to Love You . Soul Mosaic . NR
9b. La Funkmob . Oriental Folk Song [Wayne Shorter] . Blue Note Revisited . NR

10. Momus . The Age of Information . Ping Pong
11. Schlammpeitziger . Frag Night Nach Nord-Sud-Fahrt . Everything without All Inclusive
12. Zipperspy . Epilepsy . My Malady . NR
13. Keith Fullerton Whitman . Rhodes Viola Multiple . Anithesis . NR
14. Guapo . Five Suns: 3 . Five Suns . NR

15. Kinky . The Headphonist . Atlas
16. Kid 606 . Maybe . The Illness EP
17. Kings of Convenience . Little Kids [Ladytron] . versus

18. Kraftwerk . Long Distance Version 2 . Tour de France 03
19. Lights of Euphoria . Wings of Time . Krieg Gegen die Maschinen . NR
20. 000 . Sexy Stickshifter . Upon Cycles . NR

21. Secret Mommy . If You Miss Me and You Know It, Stomp Around . Mammal Class . NR
22. Process . Popbeat . 9-16 Split Series . NR

23. Department of Eagles . Noam Chomsky Spring Break 2002 . The Whitey on the Moon UK LP . NR

Various Funnies

      I finally got to watch most of Chris Rock's most recent HBO comedy special thingy that was filmed in D.C. I especially enjoyed his comparison of Michael Jackson's continued naughtiness to Groundhog Day. That's one of my all time favorite movies. He did use an abortion joke that was in Dogma. It's still funny, but was funnier the first time I heard it; in Dogma.
      Along with enjoying the whole show, I was amazed that he could keep up that growly voice for so long. It's part of his act, so I've heard it before. I've always figured that he doesn't talk like that much when he's not performing, though, as it sounds a bit painful. The fact that he spent most of those 90 minutes growling and didn't lose his voice right there on stage is a bit surprising. Highly recommended.

      Here's a web comic that you might enjoy.

      This old Joy of Tech made me laugh.