award tour

Bryan over at herohill has several “top ten” lists for 2007. This includes top ten EPs, LPs, Canadian LPs, etc, etc. Bryan has lots of lists cause he listens to a horrible about of music and seems to enjoy writing about it. I, on the other hand, rarely found the urge to write about music in 2007. I think this occured because of three reasons. One, my music snobbery has caught up with me and I don’t enjoy listening to random stuff or going to concerts nearly as much as I used to. Two, oink got shut down. And three, since I have no musical talent nor training I have a good bit of trouble describing the music I like short of saying “This album/song/etc is stupidly good. You’d be a fool to not love it”.

So in the coming days I’m just going to point out stuff that I loved this year and for which you’d be a fucking fool to disagree.

As of today, December 3rd 2007, postage for a standard envelope to Canada from the United States via the US Postal Service is 69 cents. Non standard envelope shapes (such as a square envelope) is 86 cents. I am writing this on a blog as a reminder to myself. Why? Well, I can never remember the price and figuring it out from the USPS website is horribly confusing. This always leads to me waiting in line at the post office to get the correct postage instead of buying stamps at a machine or a store. Now, in the future, I’ll just go to a machine.

But why is waiting in line at the post office such a big problem (especially since I only really have to do it around 4 times a year)? Well, it’s because US Post Offices are probably the most soul-sucking work (or retail) environment I’ve ever been in. It does not surprise me in the least that Postal workers are synonymous with killing in the work place. If my office had the air quality of a damp locker room, the dim and oddly off-green glow of crappy fluorescent lights, gave you the same eerie feel of an indian burial ground, and faintly played some terrible easy listening radio station all day long I would (A) work at the post office and (B) easily be on my way to going postal.

Kyle just mentioned on his blog that there was a fatal shooting at a nightclub right beside his apartment building in Wollongong, Australia.

Police are searching for a man wearing a balaclava and armed with a handgun who was last seen running towards North Beach

But after reading that excerpt from the news report I couldn’t help but think “a balaclava? …really?”. Forget a gun registry, I think a balaclava registry might be useful. Really, who buys balaclavas except for thieves, gunmen, and members of the Hidden Camera’s dance troupe?

Mad Men is a new drama which about the fictional employees of the Sterling Cooper ad agency on Madison Avenue in 1960. Created by Sopranos writer and executive producer Matthew Weiner, the series is broadcast on AMC. Sean recommended I check this show out after it premiered. I just caught the first 4 episodes and, I must say, I’m pretty impressed.

The show has a great visual style and top shelf writing. The pacing of the show is quite different from “standard” television. It seems to move slower than even an HBO program but doesn’t leave you bored. Watching this, you’d absolutely think it was produced by HBO. First, it has the same “whole character” approach of Six Feet Under. I always thought that Six Feet Under had the most realistic characters I’ve ever seen on film. They had quirks and flaws and were inconsistent. The main character in Mad Men, Don Draper, is a likable creative director who seems to want to do right but unabashedly fails half the time.

The show also puts the era’s social mores front and center. Office life filled with booze, chain smoking, and utterly ridiculous levels of sexual harassment. Talking about Jews, African Americans, and Asians in the harshest of terms. From Don’s stereotypical housewife, to Don’s mistress who runs her own business, and to Don’s secretary who’s adjusting to life in the big city, the show sports a great ensemble cast which contrasts the changing roles of women.

The cast is also quite large with lots of great supportive roles. My favorites have been John Slattery as the incredibly dry and blunt partner in the agency and Christina Hendricks as his flirty yet professional secretary.

The show is well worth checking out. It shows on Thursday night on AMC and is available on iTunes.

I think there’s a couple really cool features in iLife 08 which Apple just released today. Most of the features in iPhoto didn’t impress me much but the seamless integration with .Mac Web Gallery is really well done. The demo gallery that apple put up shows off the slick UI that they cooked up. I think that mouse-over image scroll is awesome. It looks nice and is crazy functional. The other slick feature they added was sharing. You can let other users upload photos to your web gallery and then iPhoto automatically syncs those photos on to your machine. The fact that you can upload an image from your iPhone to the web gallery and it would be automatically synced to the owners machine is genius. I really thought someone would have cracked this technology prior to 2000-and-fuckin-7.

I thought the most impressive thing in the upgrade was some of the UI features added to iMovie. The demo video really shows off how quickly you can build movies with the new video-skimming navigation. I’ve only used applications like iMovie/Premiere/FinalCut a few times and it always seems overwhelming and tedious cut video. I think Apple’s new solution is a perfect mix of simplicity and power. Hell, it makes me want to get an HD video camera.

As for the iWork update: Bor-ing. I really don’t need flashy animations in Keynote. One of the reasons I like Keynote is that it’s simple. I really don’t need another spreadsheet app in Numbers. And I never use Pages but the revision tracking feature they added looks pretty nice.

I just got back from the premiere showing of The King Of Kong at Seattle’s Film Festival. The documentary is about the world of competitive classic arcade gaming and focuses on an ongoing battle between the worlds two best Donkey Kong players. You could not have dreamed up a more ridiculous group of people.

The movie starts up by profiling members of Twin Galaxies, the official group which tracks and verifies high scores for video games. This includes their slightly creepy (and super crazy) founder, their head referee who watches endless piles of vhs tapes to review high scores, and Billy Mitchell: the man who has held the Donkey Kong high score for over 20 years and is a surefire egomaniac alpha geek. The protagonist of the film, Steve Wiebe, is a much loved middle school teacher who beats the score but gets sucked into this crazy world of unabashed nerds after the credibility of his score gets called into question.

The movie was picked up by NewLine cinema is supposed to get nationwide release in August. NewLine is also looking to make feature film release about the entire ordeal. Check out the trailer on youtube and definitely go see this movie if it’s showing in your town. It was so enjoyable.

I’m now officially a hardcore user of Amazon Prime. I just purchased socks and shampoo off Amazon. It was actually cheaper and I get the stuff on Friday. Realy, there’s no chance I was making it to a downtown mall before Friday anyways.

The other day I pointed out Zunior.com, a toronto based digital music retailer. They have some reasonably popular stuff on their site like Bloc Party, the New Pornographers, and Final Fantasy. A large majority of the stuff is Canadian (not that that’s a bad thing). The site offers streaming samples of all the music on its site and only sells music as full albums (so no singles). What’s awesome is that the site sells DRM-free high-quality, 192kbps, MP3s for a mere $8.88CDN per album. And if you’re a huge music nerd you can even get the album in lossless FLAC format for $2 more.

So I took a peruse of the site and came across Jason Collett’s 2003 release Motor Motel Love Songs. I had recently been thinking that Collett really needs to hurry up a release a follow-up to his fantastic 2006 LP Idols of Exile (and if he can put out another song like Fire I’d be so grateful). So when I spotted Motor Motel, I gave the samples a quick listen, and said “why not?”. I created your standard web account and dropped my credit card number. Two seconds and $7.72USD later I was downloading a zip file containing 13 tracks and a PDF copy of the full CD artwork insert. The purchase lets you download the zip file for the next 14 days up to 1000 times. That means you’re responsible for backing up the music you download. None the less, I’m really impressed with the service and very happy with having more music by Jason Collett.

“One player on a stretcher shouldn’t trigger a debate on fighting in the NHL”. This is the bi-line from an article on TSN about fighting in pro hockey. I don’t regularly read sports news but this made the front page of Google News and I thought “that must be a typo”. It isn’t.

The article came about because the other day Todd Fedoruk of the Flyers had to be wheeled off the ice on a stretcher because he got knocked out in a fight. The article quotes several NHL GMs, players, and goons saying that fighting is an intricate part of the sport. The article then seems to make light of the situation with a quote from Fedoruk: “Obviously I was knocked out, but the day after I was fine. I’ve got minor concussion symptoms”. I wonder how reputable of a journalist you can be if you completely forget to mention the long term and lasting effects of having multiple concussions. Luckily, the article does make a point of mentioning how college, European, and Olympic hockey have no fighting and also includes a quote from an International Hockey Federation official who basically calls NHL owners Neanderthals.

So if this is the reaction to someone get knocked out then I’m guessing that someone would actually have to die (or nearly die) for the NHL to do something. And this isn’t a far fetched idea. All you have to do is look at the NBA and the single punch Kermit Washington threw at Rudy Tomjanovich in 1978…

Washington was currently engaged in a brawl when he saw Tomjanovich running to help, so Washington swung around to meet him. The punch, which took Tomjanovich by surprise, fractured his face away from his skull about 1/4 of an inch and left Tomjanovich unconscious in a pool of blood in the middle of the arena. Players involved often say that right after Tomjanovich collapsed, the silence at the arena, filled with shocked fans, was “the loudest silence ever heard”. Upon later inspection by the doctors at the scene, it was discovered that Rudy was actually leaking spinal fluid into his mouth, and that not only his basketball career, but his life, was in danger at that point.

- from Wikipedia, emphasis mine

The incident is actually retold in a book by John Feinstein called The Punch. The book recounts a very similar environment. A league which carried “enforcers” on their team, where fighting was “part of the game”, and the NBA had 41 fights in it’s previous season. Unfortunately, someone almost had to die before NBA owners made it clear that “You couldn’t allow men that big and that strong to go around throwing punches at each other”.

My point? I don’t think saying “Neanderthal” was very far off.

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies, and fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or a subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys, and nose-plugs, and uneaten danish, and soft spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.”

I just finished watching Stranger Than Fiction. What a wonderful fucking movie. It just nails a perfect mix of sweet, funny, and serious. It’s brilliantly acted and is technically gorgeous (and whoever did all the infographic overlays and closing credits deserves an Oscar or something). The film also features a couple songs from Spoon including a new song which is a real slaphappy pop rock tune called The Book I Write [MP3]. An interview over at IGN explains the odd connection that got Britt Daniel, Spoon’s frontman, involved with the project.

Today is my oh-so-wonderful girlfriend’s 25th birthday. Happy Birthday babe!

So it seems the last time I updated the look of awardtour was 13 months ago when I put forth the first “green” theme. Yesterday I finally put up an update that I’ve been tinkering with for months. I realize it doesn’t look that different but for me it looks plenty different. I had the majority of this theme done a month or two ago but just couldn’t get the text to look the way I wanted on the dark green sidebar and so I put it aside.

Then, last week, I saw some blog that used Helvetica Neue as it’s main font and I thought it looked so damn nice. Large bold Helvetica Neue looks so damn nice on the Mac and looks pretty nice on Windows. I was done the changes on sunday but was informed Auriol that it didn’t look right in IE6 (though Boris informed me it everything lined up in IE7). It took me an hour or two of going through of going through a diff of my old css file against the new one until I found the culprit (the modified search bar). I still had to do a stupid css hack to make the sidebar line up properly in both browsers.

I also removed the upcoming section from the sidebar because (a) I don’t go to a lot of concerts anymore and (b) the sidebar is kinda long. I’m also hoping to clean up the archives and, after unsuccesfully trying to search for something on my blog, I’m pretty much convinced that I’m going to redirect search to google.

So, what do you think?

I realize this is like 2 years after the fact but I bought an AirPort Express today. I contemplated spending $100 for a 802.11g router for the last 2 weeks (slash 2 years) since I’ve had no need for a new router and I could get a perfectly good linksys G router for $40 off amazon. Anyways, I decided that the speakers on my macbook were just too lo-fi and buying this thing actually adds value to my underused stereo. I totally would have held out if I could upgrade to a 802.11n router but I, unfortunately, have a Core Duo and not a Core 2 Duo. Doh! I’ll post any feedback once I actually get the thing shipped to me.

I either walk to work or take the bus. When I take the bus it’s usually a choice between two different routes. The first needs a connection and the second bus I take is always a suburb commuter bus which goes through downtown. This bus is always clean, has nice seats, and there’s no crazy people. The other route is a city bus and doesn’t require a transfer but it’s usually an old bus and usually has at least a couple shady people on it every time. Why? Because it has a stop on at 3rd & Prefontaine where there’s a homeless shelter and a park which is only visited by the homeless, drug dealers, and social workers. I’ve rode this bus probably a couple hundred times and have never seen anyone go crazy, etc. Once, there was a guy who stank so bad that a bunch of people got off (myself included).

Today was a little different. We got to the stop at 3rd & Prefontaine and one of the shady guys on the bus got off. As he got off he started talking to these two 16 year old girls. I figured he was asking for change. Then the two girls got on the bus along with two more shady people plus the original shady character who just got off. I don’t really think about it until I realize that the 3 shady characters who all just got on the bus are staring down the 16 year old girls. I thought “oh, they gave change to the last guy so maybe they’re also looking for change”. This thought lasted for about 2 seconds before one of the 16 year old girls sells one of the shady characters some crack cocaine. Only one of the shady characters had any money and the other guys were just looking for handouts. One of the girls, who was on a cell phone, told the junkies that they needed to go to school. The junkie told them that getting an education was the thing to do.

So, in summary, I saw a 16 year old girl selling crack on the bus I took to work this morning.

I just finished reading my fourth book by Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. His latest book, The Blind Side, is another sports title. The book is split into two parts which intertwine. The first story is about how the left tackle has come to be the second highest paid position in football. The short answer to “why?” is that the left tackle is usually the player who protects the blind side of the quaterback (usually the highest paid player). Lewis chronicles this evolution from Bill Walsh popularizing the West Coast offense, to Lawrence Taylor literally breaking quaterbacks in two, to coaches searching for a specific genetic monster who can stop the Lawrence Taylor’s of the world. But this isn’t the real story of the book.

The other story in The Blind Side focuses on the incredibly random story of Michael Oher, who currently plays left tackle for the University of Mississippi’s football program. His story is incredibly bizarre. He didn’t know his father and was raised by his crack-addict mother and social services until he was 15. Then, as luck would have it, he basically stumbled into the family of rich white folks. Though Michael had little experience playing organized sports he quickly became of the most coveted college recruits in his graduating year. This isn’t that surprising once you find out that age the age of 16 Michael was 6″5, 350 pounds, with a 50 inch waist and a 55 inch chest, and could run a 40 meter dash in under 5 seconds. An excerpt of this story, Michael’s story, was actually included in a New York Times Magazine article a couple months back and is well worth reading.

As some of you might know, I’m not a big sports fan. I don’t watch sports on tv and I probably only attend 2 or 3 major league sporting events in a year. I keep reasonably up to date on who’s leading in each sport but that’s only because newspapers print sports sections. That said, this book is phenomenal. Michael Lewis is an incredibly gifted storyteller and, luckily for us, he stumbled upon a truly amazing story to tell.