2010 zoomed by in a hot Texan blur. Tony's visiting for a few days, which is cool, and my night job is going to be busy as hell. People need their starches before they fill their bellies with alcohol.
Happy New Year to all my loved ones. I hope it brings what you want it to.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Happy Winter Solstice
In the northern hemisphere today we celebrate the Winter Solstice; the day where the sun hits the lowest point in the sky, and stays there for a few days. December 25th is the day when the sun begins it's ascent (here in the northern hemisphere), an ascent that takes exactly six months to reach it's apex, on June 21st. The sun hit's the bottom spot on 12/21, has no movement for three days, and is resurrected--eh, returns--on 12/25, a kind of "birthing" day.
A theme that has repeated itself throughout the millennia of human religious thought is that of the death and the return three days later. In today's epoch the "controlling" narrative has split up the resurrection and the 12/25 significance, but we still get to celebrate the 25th. (Go spend money!) I'm ripping off Strong Bad and calling it Decemberween.
But, in any case, it has been posited that this year, 2010, a solstice has occurred on the same day as a total lunar eclipse (in certain areas), and that this is the first time that's happened since 1638.
After work at the night job some of us went up to the top level of the parking garage to check out the show, but a quick moving low-lying foggy business was obstructing the view most of the time. Sporadically an eclipsing moon would show up and we'd cheer, but it was gone as fast as it arrived.
Lunar eclipses happen twice a year, every year, and are the result of the way the moon rotates around the earth. I've seen a few, and they're pretty cool...the moon looks obfuscated, and then, at near total eclipse, it turns red, and stays that way until moving out of the way. The red is the result of the moon reflecting the sun's corona.
Since the "sol" part of the word solstice means "sun", I'd like to leave you with an image on this Winter Solstice of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun god, a lady who's been spooked into hiding by the behavior of her brother, only to emerge and return the day to all the other creatures:
A theme that has repeated itself throughout the millennia of human religious thought is that of the death and the return three days later. In today's epoch the "controlling" narrative has split up the resurrection and the 12/25 significance, but we still get to celebrate the 25th. (Go spend money!) I'm ripping off Strong Bad and calling it Decemberween.
But, in any case, it has been posited that this year, 2010, a solstice has occurred on the same day as a total lunar eclipse (in certain areas), and that this is the first time that's happened since 1638.
After work at the night job some of us went up to the top level of the parking garage to check out the show, but a quick moving low-lying foggy business was obstructing the view most of the time. Sporadically an eclipsing moon would show up and we'd cheer, but it was gone as fast as it arrived.
Lunar eclipses happen twice a year, every year, and are the result of the way the moon rotates around the earth. I've seen a few, and they're pretty cool...the moon looks obfuscated, and then, at near total eclipse, it turns red, and stays that way until moving out of the way. The red is the result of the moon reflecting the sun's corona.
Since the "sol" part of the word solstice means "sun", I'd like to leave you with an image on this Winter Solstice of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun god, a lady who's been spooked into hiding by the behavior of her brother, only to emerge and return the day to all the other creatures:
Monday, December 20, 2010
Local Free Theater
Our apartment complex in Austin has a movie theater room with exactly 21 seats and a big(ish) screen. There is one catch to using the room: while it is free, you can only use it when the management's office is open.
Because of my love of cinema, it was a big draw for me when we were scoping out apartments. Once we moved in I realized that it would be frustrating--having a "toy" like that so close--since I'm pretty much always busy with two jobs. But...
We finally made it on a day I had off from both jobs (and it wasn't Sunday). Alone, we viewed:
It's been so long since we'd watched it that I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the film, especially viewing it on a big screen. I remember thinking, once it's over, Inception-like, how much of this story is reliable?
Corrie went out of town to have a Decemberween celebration with her family (our 12/25 will be with my fam in California), and I went down to the theater by myself to watch one of my original two suggestions. (My other suggestion was Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira). Alone, I watched:
I have more to say about this movie later. The acting, the makeup, the cinematography, the sets, and the music are all stupidly good, have withstood the test of time, and are almost cliched by their repeated copying in the years since. I saw scenes from The Simpsons that I hadn't realized were from this before this viewing (sure, there are obvious ones, some were less obvious). The poster is correct: it's terrific.
Because of my love of cinema, it was a big draw for me when we were scoping out apartments. Once we moved in I realized that it would be frustrating--having a "toy" like that so close--since I'm pretty much always busy with two jobs. But...
We finally made it on a day I had off from both jobs (and it wasn't Sunday). Alone, we viewed:
It's been so long since we'd watched it that I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the film, especially viewing it on a big screen. I remember thinking, once it's over, Inception-like, how much of this story is reliable?
Corrie went out of town to have a Decemberween celebration with her family (our 12/25 will be with my fam in California), and I went down to the theater by myself to watch one of my original two suggestions. (My other suggestion was Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira). Alone, I watched:
I have more to say about this movie later. The acting, the makeup, the cinematography, the sets, and the music are all stupidly good, have withstood the test of time, and are almost cliched by their repeated copying in the years since. I saw scenes from The Simpsons that I hadn't realized were from this before this viewing (sure, there are obvious ones, some were less obvious). The poster is correct: it's terrific.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Smart White-Guy Mecca
Have you ever wanted to make a pilgrimage to a place that has churned out some of the smartest white guys in white-guy history? ("White-guy history" is, in America, regular history.)
Well, if wanting to pay your respects to a mecca of pale-skinned-yet-great-functioning-gray-matter-guys look no further than Edinburgh, Scotland. Sean Connery is form there, but doesn't make my list of Smarty McSmarts.
Edinburgh gave the world Alexander Graham Bell, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin.
Leipzig, in Deutuschland, can claim Leibniz (co-founder of calculus) and almost Nietzsche, who was from a village called Roecken, which was absorbed by Luetzen, which is about twelve miles from Leipzig (is Davis part of Sacramento?). Even so, it's still just two. (Apologies for the "oe" and "ue"...no umlauts.)
In a similar, yet somehow bizarrely different vein, if you had to choose the best left-handed outfielder born on November 21st from the city of Donora, Pennsylvania, and you picked Ken Griffey Jr, a future Hall of Famer and one of the game's best, you'd be wrong. Forty-eight years to the day prior, Stan Musial was born in Donora.
Well, if wanting to pay your respects to a mecca of pale-skinned-yet-great-functioning-gray-matter-guys look no further than Edinburgh, Scotland. Sean Connery is form there, but doesn't make my list of Smarty McSmarts.
Edinburgh gave the world Alexander Graham Bell, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin.
Leipzig, in Deutuschland, can claim Leibniz (co-founder of calculus) and almost Nietzsche, who was from a village called Roecken, which was absorbed by Luetzen, which is about twelve miles from Leipzig (is Davis part of Sacramento?). Even so, it's still just two. (Apologies for the "oe" and "ue"...no umlauts.)
In a similar, yet somehow bizarrely different vein, if you had to choose the best left-handed outfielder born on November 21st from the city of Donora, Pennsylvania, and you picked Ken Griffey Jr, a future Hall of Famer and one of the game's best, you'd be wrong. Forty-eight years to the day prior, Stan Musial was born in Donora.
Building a Mirror World
Chirality is the phenomena where a molecule can have the same number of atoms, but be aligned in a mirror image of itself. This has effects on how the molecule can be used and turned into amino acids. The easiest example of chirality is seen in human hands, where one is the exact mirror opposite of the other.
Properly constructed amino acids are key to life: DNA is the recipe book or book of blue prints of all the important proteins our cells need and use for life functions; RNA goes to the proper section of DNA and makes the copy of a specific protein, then takes it to the ribosome; the ribosome builds the protein using amino acids.
LUCA, or the Last Universal Common Ancestor, for some reason developed using only one of the dual orientations. Pretty wild stuff. Every specie alive today and every one of the billions of species extinct today had the DNA-RNA to ribosome-built protein using only that same one orientation.
If there were so-called "mirror" cellular life, could it be a bacteria that could harm us? Could it be a virus? The answer to that would be, if those things do exist, they pose us no threats. The way those entities attack other cells would be useless on our opposite-handed structure, like the wrong key for a door.
Some scientists are trying to create mirror protozoa and the like. Into tiny fat droplets that mimic tiny lipid-filled cellular structure, the scientists are placing mirror proteins made from a mirror ribosome. One scientists says that just by placing these things together doesn't make it work. Another says that if it does kick start, you better hope it doesn't get some chlorophyl and escape the petrie dish and make it to the ocean. In that doomsday scenario, after six hundred years we'd be in an ice age and humans wouldn't really be around to mess things up.
Would you be surprised if there turned out to be some colossally huge amount of money in the discovery/harnessing of mirror particles?
Properly constructed amino acids are key to life: DNA is the recipe book or book of blue prints of all the important proteins our cells need and use for life functions; RNA goes to the proper section of DNA and makes the copy of a specific protein, then takes it to the ribosome; the ribosome builds the protein using amino acids.
LUCA, or the Last Universal Common Ancestor, for some reason developed using only one of the dual orientations. Pretty wild stuff. Every specie alive today and every one of the billions of species extinct today had the DNA-RNA to ribosome-built protein using only that same one orientation.
If there were so-called "mirror" cellular life, could it be a bacteria that could harm us? Could it be a virus? The answer to that would be, if those things do exist, they pose us no threats. The way those entities attack other cells would be useless on our opposite-handed structure, like the wrong key for a door.
Some scientists are trying to create mirror protozoa and the like. Into tiny fat droplets that mimic tiny lipid-filled cellular structure, the scientists are placing mirror proteins made from a mirror ribosome. One scientists says that just by placing these things together doesn't make it work. Another says that if it does kick start, you better hope it doesn't get some chlorophyl and escape the petrie dish and make it to the ocean. In that doomsday scenario, after six hundred years we'd be in an ice age and humans wouldn't really be around to mess things up.
Would you be surprised if there turned out to be some colossally huge amount of money in the discovery/harnessing of mirror particles?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
No, Honey, It's a Sequel
The "honey" in the title of this post is not my wife, but her youngest sister, Stephanie, who thought the film Tron: Legacy was some fancy original computer film. I guess you can't blame her, since she was born eight years after the original came out, in 1982.
Disney funded the original because it was trying to harness the new phenomena of the Summer Blockbuster. 1982 was a great year for movie geeks, but what made it such a great year--besides Tron, the world got ET, Blade Runner, and The Wrath of Khan--made the bizarre blueish Disney film suffer at the box office.
I showed Stephanie the original Tron preview on YouTube, and she got excited when they showed a quick scene with the light cycles, adding a perky ,"That's on my phone!" Sure enough, she has a video game on her iPhone that is the exact light-cycle game from Tron. I played for a while, and it was fun.
It's probably not unfair to ask why the cinema event of the holiday season is a $170 million sequel to a twenty-eight year old film that most people agree wasn't that great?
The answer is that Tron did what very few science fiction movies ever do: it successfully predicted the future. The story about trying to find exonerating evidence inside a memory bank was original at the time, but has been obscured by the powder-white-on-blue memories. The metaphor that inside a computer you, or a piece of you, could exist and be active on a certain level has not only endured, but come to pass.
When the honchos got together to make the sequel, they decided to do a test like had been done with the first installment. In the early '80s the test "preview" they produced was for selling their idea--it had a similar look to what they wanted to do for the whole movie. Since they'd decided that any sequel would have to have three things: 1) Jeff Bridges; 2) light cycles; 3) to not look like any other movie before it, they figured they'd need all three things in their test.
They'd been working with their story and universe long enough to know how it would look, and they knew it would have light cycles, but they still hadn't gotten Jeff Bridges aboard. They planned a meeting with him at his property in California, knowing that he if he turned them down the project was finished. They weren't sure how he would feel about basically a B-move from before he was famous. He was, after all, going on to win the Oscar for Crazy Heart.
In Bridges living room they started to pitch, "Okay, so the old you is the good-guy, and the young version of you is the villain, and you have a son who--" and at this point the Dude got up from his spot on the couch, excused himself, and left the room a little tense. He returned with the helmet he wore from the first film. They spent the rest of the time walking around his property taking pictures with everyone wearing the helmet. He was definitely in.
When they first showed the test at the (big, original) Comic Con (in San Diego), they hadn't actually been given the green-light to make the movie. They thought that if the reaction was positive enough, there'd be no going back. The crowd cheered upon seeing Jeff Bridges, both young and old, in that test, and the rest is history.
Possibly only in circles of old-school digital film effect gurus can the specter of Tron be fully remembered. Computer rendering in films, for characters, effects, backgrounds, and sounds, was seen as a threat to actors, to traditional effects people, and to traditional animators. I don't think that's ever been gotten over, that fear. It seems like people have simply embraced the tool that is the computer.
Disney funded the original because it was trying to harness the new phenomena of the Summer Blockbuster. 1982 was a great year for movie geeks, but what made it such a great year--besides Tron, the world got ET, Blade Runner, and The Wrath of Khan--made the bizarre blueish Disney film suffer at the box office.
I showed Stephanie the original Tron preview on YouTube, and she got excited when they showed a quick scene with the light cycles, adding a perky ,"That's on my phone!" Sure enough, she has a video game on her iPhone that is the exact light-cycle game from Tron. I played for a while, and it was fun.
It's probably not unfair to ask why the cinema event of the holiday season is a $170 million sequel to a twenty-eight year old film that most people agree wasn't that great?
The answer is that Tron did what very few science fiction movies ever do: it successfully predicted the future. The story about trying to find exonerating evidence inside a memory bank was original at the time, but has been obscured by the powder-white-on-blue memories. The metaphor that inside a computer you, or a piece of you, could exist and be active on a certain level has not only endured, but come to pass.
When the honchos got together to make the sequel, they decided to do a test like had been done with the first installment. In the early '80s the test "preview" they produced was for selling their idea--it had a similar look to what they wanted to do for the whole movie. Since they'd decided that any sequel would have to have three things: 1) Jeff Bridges; 2) light cycles; 3) to not look like any other movie before it, they figured they'd need all three things in their test.
They'd been working with their story and universe long enough to know how it would look, and they knew it would have light cycles, but they still hadn't gotten Jeff Bridges aboard. They planned a meeting with him at his property in California, knowing that he if he turned them down the project was finished. They weren't sure how he would feel about basically a B-move from before he was famous. He was, after all, going on to win the Oscar for Crazy Heart.
In Bridges living room they started to pitch, "Okay, so the old you is the good-guy, and the young version of you is the villain, and you have a son who--" and at this point the Dude got up from his spot on the couch, excused himself, and left the room a little tense. He returned with the helmet he wore from the first film. They spent the rest of the time walking around his property taking pictures with everyone wearing the helmet. He was definitely in.
When they first showed the test at the (big, original) Comic Con (in San Diego), they hadn't actually been given the green-light to make the movie. They thought that if the reaction was positive enough, there'd be no going back. The crowd cheered upon seeing Jeff Bridges, both young and old, in that test, and the rest is history.
Possibly only in circles of old-school digital film effect gurus can the specter of Tron be fully remembered. Computer rendering in films, for characters, effects, backgrounds, and sounds, was seen as a threat to actors, to traditional effects people, and to traditional animators. I don't think that's ever been gotten over, that fear. It seems like people have simply embraced the tool that is the computer.
Monday, December 13, 2010
My Apologies to Mr. Shockley
Jim Shockley is a good friend of ours who, while we lived in Brooklyn, lived upstate a tiny ways, and at whose house we'd go when we needed a weekend out of town. He taught me to love the Jets, the younger and usually more hapless of New York's two football teams.
There was a shirt that he had purchased, a New York Titans t-shirt, signifying when the Jets were originally called the Titans, that didn't fit him but did fit me, so it became my shirt. (I don't believe I've paid for it yet...)
Well, being a silly superstitious fan (usually only with the Jets), yesterday when our broadcaster switched over from the Patriots blowing out the Bears in the Chicago snow to the Jets and Dolphins, I asked Corrie if I'd worn it the last time the Jets had played, or the last time I watched them win. See, if you wear the shirt and they win, you have to wear it again the next week, but if you wear it and they lose, you can't wear it until after they win again--at least that's my understanding. Corrie rolled her eyes at me and put out another tray of food, since yesterday (Sunday) was our little housewarming/holiday party.
I changed into the shirt. The Jets lost, and I remembered that the last time I wore it while watching Gang Green was when they got shut-out against the Packers. Dammit.
So, my apologies to by buddy Jim, for screwing up the shirt rotation.
There was a shirt that he had purchased, a New York Titans t-shirt, signifying when the Jets were originally called the Titans, that didn't fit him but did fit me, so it became my shirt. (I don't believe I've paid for it yet...)
Well, being a silly superstitious fan (usually only with the Jets), yesterday when our broadcaster switched over from the Patriots blowing out the Bears in the Chicago snow to the Jets and Dolphins, I asked Corrie if I'd worn it the last time the Jets had played, or the last time I watched them win. See, if you wear the shirt and they win, you have to wear it again the next week, but if you wear it and they lose, you can't wear it until after they win again--at least that's my understanding. Corrie rolled her eyes at me and put out another tray of food, since yesterday (Sunday) was our little housewarming/holiday party.
I changed into the shirt. The Jets lost, and I remembered that the last time I wore it while watching Gang Green was when they got shut-out against the Packers. Dammit.
So, my apologies to by buddy Jim, for screwing up the shirt rotation.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Vic, Alex, and Jules
Another post in my (apparent) "First Name Basis" series.
Jules was the youngest of the three. He was off at university, studying law, which he hated, when he quietly left law school and began trying to get published. Once his strict, abusive father found out, he cut him off financially, forcing Jules to support himself as a stockbroker, another profession he loathed. Jules found a couple of older writers, Vic and Alex, who gave him advice and support.
Alex and Jules would become pretty good friends over the long hall. Alex was a witty and erudite older gentleman who, having a mulatto mother and black grandfather, had experienced quite a bit of history's negativity towards people of color. His father had been a general, so his life hadn't been all bad. He'd become rather famous through writing, and his novels, when collected, were quite long for the time, as they'd been serialized.
Vic, also from a militarily aristocratic background, had parents that became radicals--his father was an atheist republican in the time of a divine emperor--and his outlook was shaped as a rebellion to that. Eventually he was exiled, and is known outside his home country for works that are less important inside his country than his poetry, verse that is not usually conversed about away from home. A few months older than Alex, he lived fifteen years longer.
It's safe to say that Jules has proven to be the most famous with the general population of today's age.
Here're some pictures:
Victor Hugo is best known outside of France for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, and less so for his poetry, which is considered pre-eminent in France. He lived from 1802 until 1885.
Alexandre Dumas is remembered for Three Musketeers series of books, as well as The Count of Monte Cristo, among others. Born in 1802, he entertained and helped folks like Jules until his death in 1870.
Jules Verne, along with England's HG Wells, basically created what we call science-fiction, and some of his stories conceive of some of today's technologies; automobiles, space travel, rocketry, telecommunications, submersible technology et al. Known best for From the Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules lived from 1828 until 1905.
I love discovering the interconnectedness of some of history's famous writer's, scientists, and other people of importance in the realms of art and politics. I guess that's the motivation behind this "First Name basis" idea. Expect a few more of these on occasion in the future.
Jules was the youngest of the three. He was off at university, studying law, which he hated, when he quietly left law school and began trying to get published. Once his strict, abusive father found out, he cut him off financially, forcing Jules to support himself as a stockbroker, another profession he loathed. Jules found a couple of older writers, Vic and Alex, who gave him advice and support.
Alex and Jules would become pretty good friends over the long hall. Alex was a witty and erudite older gentleman who, having a mulatto mother and black grandfather, had experienced quite a bit of history's negativity towards people of color. His father had been a general, so his life hadn't been all bad. He'd become rather famous through writing, and his novels, when collected, were quite long for the time, as they'd been serialized.
Vic, also from a militarily aristocratic background, had parents that became radicals--his father was an atheist republican in the time of a divine emperor--and his outlook was shaped as a rebellion to that. Eventually he was exiled, and is known outside his home country for works that are less important inside his country than his poetry, verse that is not usually conversed about away from home. A few months older than Alex, he lived fifteen years longer.
It's safe to say that Jules has proven to be the most famous with the general population of today's age.
Here're some pictures:
Victor Hugo is best known outside of France for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, and less so for his poetry, which is considered pre-eminent in France. He lived from 1802 until 1885.
Alexandre Dumas is remembered for Three Musketeers series of books, as well as The Count of Monte Cristo, among others. Born in 1802, he entertained and helped folks like Jules until his death in 1870.
Jules Verne, along with England's HG Wells, basically created what we call science-fiction, and some of his stories conceive of some of today's technologies; automobiles, space travel, rocketry, telecommunications, submersible technology et al. Known best for From the Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules lived from 1828 until 1905.
I love discovering the interconnectedness of some of history's famous writer's, scientists, and other people of importance in the realms of art and politics. I guess that's the motivation behind this "First Name basis" idea. Expect a few more of these on occasion in the future.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
"Taxi" is Latin
I made a conjecture at the end of my most recent post about certain words, and I have proven that conjecture false. "Taxi" is a shortening of "taxicab", which itself is an English contraction of "taximeter cabriolet", which itself is based on the French "taximetre", taken from an old German word "taxameter". "Taxameter" was coined by the combination of the Latin "taxa", to charge, and the Greek "metron", measure.
Thus concludes our brief etymological lesson for this morning.
Thus concludes our brief etymological lesson for this morning.
Native Place Names
While overlooking the genocide committed upon the aboriginal folks of the Americas, we can notice that in North America the French and Spanish named things after their kings, queens, and princes, while the English, for the most part (New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire notwithstanding), asked a local what they called something.
Earlier this evening I noticed that out of the ten Canadian provinces, exactly four have names that have Aboriginal-American origins: Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Also, of the three Canadian territories, two have native names: Yukon and Nunavut. Pretty cool, I thought.
America? Well, obviously Massachusetts and Connecticut, Manhattan, the Allegheny and the Mississippi, Minnesota, Chicago...
I looked a little deeper. Does anybody remember this song: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas...all native terms. How about a few others: Chesapeake, Illinois (with a French transliteration), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Malibu...
Milwaukee and Wisconsin, Nebraska and Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, even Wyoming is a word meaning "rolling mountains" from the Delaware Indians. Tahoe, from "Lake Tahoe" fame, is Washo for "big water". While the true meaning of Tennessee is unknown, the fact that it's native is.
Even Texas..."texas" is Craddo for "friend" or "ally", a name given by Spaniards to the Craddo and the area they inhabited (guess where it is today).
Tuxedo, while not a place, is also an aboriginal word, leading me to conjecture that any word beginning with a t and having an x involved will come from a native origin. New task: find etymology of "taxi".
Earlier this evening I noticed that out of the ten Canadian provinces, exactly four have names that have Aboriginal-American origins: Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Also, of the three Canadian territories, two have native names: Yukon and Nunavut. Pretty cool, I thought.
America? Well, obviously Massachusetts and Connecticut, Manhattan, the Allegheny and the Mississippi, Minnesota, Chicago...
I looked a little deeper. Does anybody remember this song: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas...all native terms. How about a few others: Chesapeake, Illinois (with a French transliteration), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Malibu...
Milwaukee and Wisconsin, Nebraska and Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, even Wyoming is a word meaning "rolling mountains" from the Delaware Indians. Tahoe, from "Lake Tahoe" fame, is Washo for "big water". While the true meaning of Tennessee is unknown, the fact that it's native is.
Even Texas..."texas" is Craddo for "friend" or "ally", a name given by Spaniards to the Craddo and the area they inhabited (guess where it is today).
Tuxedo, while not a place, is also an aboriginal word, leading me to conjecture that any word beginning with a t and having an x involved will come from a native origin. New task: find etymology of "taxi".
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Sunday Night at the Laser Tag Emporium
This past Sunday Corrie and I spent a small portion of the evening at Blazer Tag, a re-constituted movie theater (that Corrie remembers visiting as a youngster) in southern Austin that has an arena(?) for the activity of laser-tag.
It was my first time, and while I did understand the fundamentals, actually doing it was pretty cool. The theater area, being quite cavernous, had a multi-level structure built with ramps up and down spiraling to a peak of probably four stories. The lights were basically off, save for a disco apparatus with colored strobe effects, and accompanied by loud techno music.
Participants strap on the electronic vest--this will buzz when you're "hit"--and attached to the vest is the laser gun. Inside the arena were "mines" that would get tripped when you came too close, a sound would begin to emit from it while a timer zoomed down, and you either had to shoot it with your gun to stop the mine, or get out of range of the "blast". Being tagged by it was similar to being tagged by an opponent: your gun won't work for ten seconds or so, which is actually quite long when your chasing an opponent or fleeing from one.
Corrie and I lagged, had coupons, and got two matches each. Each match lasts for 20 minutes, which is long enough, but since we lagged, we got the 9 pm game and the 9:40 game. Also, since it was Sunday, we blasted and chased only each other both times. It was one-on-one for both rounds. Silly, but still fun.
The first round I walked around like the Terminator, looking for the red-glowing orbs on Corrie's electronic vest, and was sniped plenty more times than I got her. She won that round handily. The second round I was much more stealth about my actions, and we had plenty of good fire-fights; both popping out of corners or making nice duck-and-cover-and-pop-and-shoot moves. I was leading for majority of the round, but then I got physically wiped out, and instead of hiding in a corner to preserve my win, I started walking around. I was done, and lost my lead before the time was up.
The activity is, even for a solitary married couple, a blast, and it could be that much cooler to play with friends, or even strangers...this place had fifty or so gun-and-vest combos, so it could get crazy with some team battles.
It was my first time, and while I did understand the fundamentals, actually doing it was pretty cool. The theater area, being quite cavernous, had a multi-level structure built with ramps up and down spiraling to a peak of probably four stories. The lights were basically off, save for a disco apparatus with colored strobe effects, and accompanied by loud techno music.
Participants strap on the electronic vest--this will buzz when you're "hit"--and attached to the vest is the laser gun. Inside the arena were "mines" that would get tripped when you came too close, a sound would begin to emit from it while a timer zoomed down, and you either had to shoot it with your gun to stop the mine, or get out of range of the "blast". Being tagged by it was similar to being tagged by an opponent: your gun won't work for ten seconds or so, which is actually quite long when your chasing an opponent or fleeing from one.
Corrie and I lagged, had coupons, and got two matches each. Each match lasts for 20 minutes, which is long enough, but since we lagged, we got the 9 pm game and the 9:40 game. Also, since it was Sunday, we blasted and chased only each other both times. It was one-on-one for both rounds. Silly, but still fun.
The first round I walked around like the Terminator, looking for the red-glowing orbs on Corrie's electronic vest, and was sniped plenty more times than I got her. She won that round handily. The second round I was much more stealth about my actions, and we had plenty of good fire-fights; both popping out of corners or making nice duck-and-cover-and-pop-and-shoot moves. I was leading for majority of the round, but then I got physically wiped out, and instead of hiding in a corner to preserve my win, I started walking around. I was done, and lost my lead before the time was up.
The activity is, even for a solitary married couple, a blast, and it could be that much cooler to play with friends, or even strangers...this place had fifty or so gun-and-vest combos, so it could get crazy with some team battles.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Smirk-Worthy Logos
There are entire corners of the Internet dedicated to bad logos, poorly conceived and/or poorly executed entries, but I have a few I'd like to share.
The first is known as the "One Day Logo", since after they unveiled it it stirred up such loathing in fans that it lasted for just that press conference. I don't need to say anything else:
Here is another one from the football world, one that, according to a website, was actually used for a season in 1975, before switching to the one I remember watching as a kid.
Here is the funniest logo I can remember. It was for some Oriental Society of Brazil (not the exact title of the organization).
The first is known as the "One Day Logo", since after they unveiled it it stirred up such loathing in fans that it lasted for just that press conference. I don't need to say anything else:
Here is another one from the football world, one that, according to a website, was actually used for a season in 1975, before switching to the one I remember watching as a kid.
Here is the funniest logo I can remember. It was for some Oriental Society of Brazil (not the exact title of the organization).
Daniel and Anders
As an American traveling in Europe, a person will hear the temperature given in degrees Celsius, and a member of my family has the best mnemonic for remembering the conversion: double the number you're given, and then add thirty. 25 becomes 80, 19 becomes 68...since the actual conversion is to multiply the Celsius number by 9/5 (which is slightly smaller than doubling) and then adding 32 (slightly larger than 30) this technique is quite accurate for every day use.
The fraction 9/5, out of all fractions, is used since it's the reduced form of 180/100. Worked into this multiplicand is the basic difference between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. If you have a ruler in front of you and one end represents water freezing and the other represents water boiling, if you divide that ruler into 100 marks, you'll get degrees Celsius; divide it into 180 marks, you get degrees Fahrenheit. As Americans who use the Fahrenheit scale, we're used to 32 as the freezing point of water, and 212 as the boiling point of water, a difference of 180 degrees. This wasn't originally on purpose...
Until the seventeenth century cold, or rather "cold", was a scary entity that came about every year and lasted half of it, a life threatening obstacle, part of nature's wrath. Eventually Italian glassblowers got skilled enough to blow rather uniform tubes, and scientists began trying to construct devices that could reliably gauge temperature. One problem was the solution inside the gauge was such that when it expanded it needed lot's of room, so a "thermometer" as we'd call it could be many meters long, coiled up like a spring, quite beautiful and fragile, it would work but not be very practical.
Another problem was that there was no universally agreed upon system for actually gauging the measurements. Most thermometer makers would paint marks on their tubes denoting things people universally understood; ice melting/water freezing; candle wax melting; water boiling.
One man who was busy working with this was Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. His innovation was to use mercury, which was much denser than the other alcohol solutions being used, which shrank his gauge down to writing-instrument size. He made zero the point at which the solution of ammonium chloride melted, and made where the gauge would reach when his wife held it under her tongue, ie body temperature, 100. He noticed that ice melted/water froze around 32, and water boiled around 212. Daniel refined the system to fix those numbers, 32 and 212, which changed the body-temp to what we understand as 98.6.
His system spread all over the world mainly because it had practical sized gauges. In Sweden, using a mercury gauged thermometer, Anders Celsius devised a measuring system that was based on a 100-unit breakdown. He originally had 0 degrees the point at which water boiled, and 100 degrees as the point where water froze, and the scale heading off into cold depths that at the time were unbounded; the idea that an absolute bottom was quite radical (and came later).
After Anders death, which came quickly after his system was developed, Carl Linnaeus, the botanist who developed the still-used-today naming nomenclature for living things on earth--kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, specie--ended the insanity and reversed Anders' scale, making zero the freezing point and 100 the boiling point.
The Celsius scale has been adopted my most countries around the world, while America, Belize and Jamaica still use the Fahrenheit scale. In Canada, they use the Celsius scale for television and books, but thermometers outdoors, mounted on walls, tend to have both written on them.
I think I prefer the Fahrenheit scale, but not because I grew up using it. I like the fact that one degree Fahrenheit is smaller than one degree Celsius, making more accurate whole degree measurements possible.
The fraction 9/5, out of all fractions, is used since it's the reduced form of 180/100. Worked into this multiplicand is the basic difference between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. If you have a ruler in front of you and one end represents water freezing and the other represents water boiling, if you divide that ruler into 100 marks, you'll get degrees Celsius; divide it into 180 marks, you get degrees Fahrenheit. As Americans who use the Fahrenheit scale, we're used to 32 as the freezing point of water, and 212 as the boiling point of water, a difference of 180 degrees. This wasn't originally on purpose...
Until the seventeenth century cold, or rather "cold", was a scary entity that came about every year and lasted half of it, a life threatening obstacle, part of nature's wrath. Eventually Italian glassblowers got skilled enough to blow rather uniform tubes, and scientists began trying to construct devices that could reliably gauge temperature. One problem was the solution inside the gauge was such that when it expanded it needed lot's of room, so a "thermometer" as we'd call it could be many meters long, coiled up like a spring, quite beautiful and fragile, it would work but not be very practical.
Another problem was that there was no universally agreed upon system for actually gauging the measurements. Most thermometer makers would paint marks on their tubes denoting things people universally understood; ice melting/water freezing; candle wax melting; water boiling.
One man who was busy working with this was Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. His innovation was to use mercury, which was much denser than the other alcohol solutions being used, which shrank his gauge down to writing-instrument size. He made zero the point at which the solution of ammonium chloride melted, and made where the gauge would reach when his wife held it under her tongue, ie body temperature, 100. He noticed that ice melted/water froze around 32, and water boiled around 212. Daniel refined the system to fix those numbers, 32 and 212, which changed the body-temp to what we understand as 98.6.
His system spread all over the world mainly because it had practical sized gauges. In Sweden, using a mercury gauged thermometer, Anders Celsius devised a measuring system that was based on a 100-unit breakdown. He originally had 0 degrees the point at which water boiled, and 100 degrees as the point where water froze, and the scale heading off into cold depths that at the time were unbounded; the idea that an absolute bottom was quite radical (and came later).
After Anders death, which came quickly after his system was developed, Carl Linnaeus, the botanist who developed the still-used-today naming nomenclature for living things on earth--kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, specie--ended the insanity and reversed Anders' scale, making zero the freezing point and 100 the boiling point.
The Celsius scale has been adopted my most countries around the world, while America, Belize and Jamaica still use the Fahrenheit scale. In Canada, they use the Celsius scale for television and books, but thermometers outdoors, mounted on walls, tend to have both written on them.
I think I prefer the Fahrenheit scale, but not because I grew up using it. I like the fact that one degree Fahrenheit is smaller than one degree Celsius, making more accurate whole degree measurements possible.
Friday, December 3, 2010
2 Sports Things: Over It? (and) Qatar?
A) Over It?
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert has stated repeatedly that he is over the defection of LeBron James to the Miami Heat. He's stated that he let it all out in the first twenty-four hours after LeBron's televised address about "taking his talents to South Beach." Within hours after that telecast things got ugly with Gilbert's scathing "Open Letter to Cavalier Fans", for which he was fined $100k by the commissioner.
So now there's a report that Gilbert has hired a midwestern law firm to investigate tampering between the Heat and James. Tampering, as a technical NBA infraction, is something that happens when a team contacts a player before the designated time. True tampering, when proven, usually results in a fine (ooh!) and/or a draft pick awarded to the jilted team. The word on the street is that it's not about the fine or the draft pick, but, for Gilbert, it's about embarrassing the Heat and the commissioner, David Stern.
When asked to comment on the story, Gilbert, in denying comment, replied, "I'm over it."
B) Qatar?
The US Soccer Federation, as well as most of the world, was shocked when the announcement over the host nation for the 2022 World Cup came out as Qatar. The tiny oil and natural gas rich country will be the first Middle East nation to host the world's largest tournament. The prospect of growing the sport and having the showcase event in the Middle East must have been very important.
That same idea, of growing the sport, must have played into the decision to name Russia host of the 2018 World Cup tournament, beating out heavily favored England. This, added with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, should be a boon for Russia. Neither Russia nor any Middle Eastern country had hosted the tournament. This year's tournament in South Africa was the second one outside of Europe or the Americas, the first being 2002's Japan/Korea.
The US had the best presentation for the 2022, and, like England for 2018, were the favorites. England lost in the first round of voting, and the US made it to the last round, but came up short.
Qatar gained independence in 1971, is smaller than Connecticut, and has less people than Brooklyn (by a half-million). In the summer the scorching heat reaches 130 degrees, and, with the projections of global fan travel, the amount of fans coming to the small nation would double the population. They apparently have technology to air condition open air stadiums, which would be interesting and, at worst, an incredible waste of energy.
Extra energy resources won't be hard to come by in Qatar, though.
Congratulations to both Russia and Qatar.
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert has stated repeatedly that he is over the defection of LeBron James to the Miami Heat. He's stated that he let it all out in the first twenty-four hours after LeBron's televised address about "taking his talents to South Beach." Within hours after that telecast things got ugly with Gilbert's scathing "Open Letter to Cavalier Fans", for which he was fined $100k by the commissioner.
So now there's a report that Gilbert has hired a midwestern law firm to investigate tampering between the Heat and James. Tampering, as a technical NBA infraction, is something that happens when a team contacts a player before the designated time. True tampering, when proven, usually results in a fine (ooh!) and/or a draft pick awarded to the jilted team. The word on the street is that it's not about the fine or the draft pick, but, for Gilbert, it's about embarrassing the Heat and the commissioner, David Stern.
When asked to comment on the story, Gilbert, in denying comment, replied, "I'm over it."
B) Qatar?
The US Soccer Federation, as well as most of the world, was shocked when the announcement over the host nation for the 2022 World Cup came out as Qatar. The tiny oil and natural gas rich country will be the first Middle East nation to host the world's largest tournament. The prospect of growing the sport and having the showcase event in the Middle East must have been very important.
That same idea, of growing the sport, must have played into the decision to name Russia host of the 2018 World Cup tournament, beating out heavily favored England. This, added with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, should be a boon for Russia. Neither Russia nor any Middle Eastern country had hosted the tournament. This year's tournament in South Africa was the second one outside of Europe or the Americas, the first being 2002's Japan/Korea.
The US had the best presentation for the 2022, and, like England for 2018, were the favorites. England lost in the first round of voting, and the US made it to the last round, but came up short.
Qatar gained independence in 1971, is smaller than Connecticut, and has less people than Brooklyn (by a half-million). In the summer the scorching heat reaches 130 degrees, and, with the projections of global fan travel, the amount of fans coming to the small nation would double the population. They apparently have technology to air condition open air stadiums, which would be interesting and, at worst, an incredible waste of energy.
Extra energy resources won't be hard to come by in Qatar, though.
Congratulations to both Russia and Qatar.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Rabble-Rouser Ends Up on Interpol's Most Wanted List
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that as of twenty minutes ago has been shut down, has made Interpol's most wanted list in regards to a double-rape accusation. Two Swedish ladies are claiming Julian Assange raped them separately on different days, a charge Assange denies vehemently. He claims the sex had been consensual, and that false charges were made when the ladies found out about each other.
Could this have anything to do with Wikileaks publishing thousands of pages of documents from the US State Department that had been classified as secret? I wonder who unleashed a cyber attack two days ago, hours before those documents were to be posted? I wonder is the yanking of the actual website, wikileaks.org, from Amazon's server could be connected as well? Any bets on who's not getting a free Kindle for Christmas this year?
I went to Wikileaks months ago after reading an article about Julian Assange in the New Yorker. Julian is a skinny Aussie, living on the run in Nordic Europe. Wikileaks gained notoriety for posting a video from Iraq showing civilians and journalists being gunned down. Most everything else on the site was crushingly boring. State Department documents, secret or not, don't make for exciting reading. Neither do the US Army Intelligence documents Wikileaks posted a few years back.
There are no papers saying, "At this address under the fake name this, we believe an evil plotter to be living," or, "Our spy such and such is using this fake name has their sights set on assassinating this person". I'd hope by now we'd all lose this sense of intrigue behind "classified" and "secret" documents, like real life is like James Bonds movies. I imagine, as far as films go, life's probably closer to J.K. Simmons' CIA-boss-man character from Burn After Reading when he says, baffled and disinterested, "Uh, well, report back...when it makes sense...I guess."
Could this have anything to do with Wikileaks publishing thousands of pages of documents from the US State Department that had been classified as secret? I wonder who unleashed a cyber attack two days ago, hours before those documents were to be posted? I wonder is the yanking of the actual website, wikileaks.org, from Amazon's server could be connected as well? Any bets on who's not getting a free Kindle for Christmas this year?
I went to Wikileaks months ago after reading an article about Julian Assange in the New Yorker. Julian is a skinny Aussie, living on the run in Nordic Europe. Wikileaks gained notoriety for posting a video from Iraq showing civilians and journalists being gunned down. Most everything else on the site was crushingly boring. State Department documents, secret or not, don't make for exciting reading. Neither do the US Army Intelligence documents Wikileaks posted a few years back.
There are no papers saying, "At this address under the fake name this, we believe an evil plotter to be living," or, "Our spy such and such is using this fake name has their sights set on assassinating this person". I'd hope by now we'd all lose this sense of intrigue behind "classified" and "secret" documents, like real life is like James Bonds movies. I imagine, as far as films go, life's probably closer to J.K. Simmons' CIA-boss-man character from Burn After Reading when he says, baffled and disinterested, "Uh, well, report back...when it makes sense...I guess."
Monday, November 29, 2010
RIP Leslie Nielsen
Some things I didn't know about an actor I really enjoyed watching, who died last night in his sleep at a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale.
1) Was born in Saskatchewan in 1928
2) Enlisted in the Royal Air Force and trained to be a rear-gunner, but was deemed too young to be sent overseas
3) Worked as a disc jockey in Calgary before winning an acting scholarship
4) Was active into his eighties, even playing Clarence Darrow on the stage in his one-man show Darrow
5) Brother Erik was Deputy Prime Minister of Canada in the 80s
6) He looked pretty young and spiffy as the lead in 1956's Forbidden Planet
Something I did know about Leslie Nielsen:
1) Lt. Frank Drebin and Police Squad! introduced me to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker absurdist style of comedy and altered my reality. I was young and impressionable.
Leslie Nielsen will be remembered fondly by this blogger.
1) Was born in Saskatchewan in 1928
2) Enlisted in the Royal Air Force and trained to be a rear-gunner, but was deemed too young to be sent overseas
3) Worked as a disc jockey in Calgary before winning an acting scholarship
4) Was active into his eighties, even playing Clarence Darrow on the stage in his one-man show Darrow
5) Brother Erik was Deputy Prime Minister of Canada in the 80s
6) He looked pretty young and spiffy as the lead in 1956's Forbidden Planet
Something I did know about Leslie Nielsen:
1) Lt. Frank Drebin and Police Squad! introduced me to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker absurdist style of comedy and altered my reality. I was young and impressionable.
Leslie Nielsen will be remembered fondly by this blogger.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Linda and the Camera
Our good friend Linda realized, while on the plane out to visit us here in Austin, that she'd forgotten her camera. I let her use our camera to take any picture she wanted, and she held it for a while during a walk around downtown on their last day. I've since emailed the pictures to her, but some I like enough to put up here.
This is probably my favorite picture she took. You get the Frost Bank tower in the background behind Buffalo Billiards, a poolhall and bar that dates back to the late nineteenth century and, according to a local newscast, is haunted. I've been a big fan of asymmetrical juxtaposition photographs for a long time, and this one, capturing the "old Texas" saloon image with the "new Texas" post-modern glass tower, definitely counts.
Linda was very excited when we came across a restaurant named Spaghetti Warehouse; she professed her love for the string pasta. She tried, and succeeded, to frame-out the entrance and fill the upper half of the picture with downtown's towers.
Here'a another nice downtown frame with the Frost Bank tower captured wholly.
There were a plethora of these types of advertising banners for ACL, and Linda said she felt obliged to take a picture of it.
Here's one she took of us at Mt. Bonnell.
Linda and I are the amatuer photographers. Corrie could be a professional. The eye it takes to come up with homeruns in photography is present in folks like Linda and I, but in Corrie and Marc it's more of a characteristic than a presence.
This is probably my favorite picture she took. You get the Frost Bank tower in the background behind Buffalo Billiards, a poolhall and bar that dates back to the late nineteenth century and, according to a local newscast, is haunted. I've been a big fan of asymmetrical juxtaposition photographs for a long time, and this one, capturing the "old Texas" saloon image with the "new Texas" post-modern glass tower, definitely counts.
Linda was very excited when we came across a restaurant named Spaghetti Warehouse; she professed her love for the string pasta. She tried, and succeeded, to frame-out the entrance and fill the upper half of the picture with downtown's towers.
Here'a another nice downtown frame with the Frost Bank tower captured wholly.
There were a plethora of these types of advertising banners for ACL, and Linda said she felt obliged to take a picture of it.
Here's one she took of us at Mt. Bonnell.
Linda and I are the amatuer photographers. Corrie could be a professional. The eye it takes to come up with homeruns in photography is present in folks like Linda and I, but in Corrie and Marc it's more of a characteristic than a presence.
Austin City Limits Music Festival
A television program began airing on PBS in Austin in 1976 that aimed to highlight the music in the area. The self-professed World's Live Music Capital, Austin had many different genres and off genre music being supported by fans. In 2002, the city of Austin decided to financially back a music festival put together by the producers of the Austin City Limits show, naming it, not surprisingly, Austin City Limits Music Festival. Like South-By, or SXSW, in March, the acronym ACL is acceptable in normal speech to reference the show, though ACL fest is used plenty as well.
The ACL fest is, like SXSW, an international event, but ACL is only a music festival (hence the name?) and doesn't screen films or try to get distributors for said films, it's music only. It appears to be one of the biggest annual events in the industry for musicians, as Austin is one of the music capitals in America. Other music cities (besides LA and NY) would be Athens, Georgia (New Austin), Atlanta (for hip-hop), and Nashville (for country and bluegrass).
In any case, Corrie and I finally were able to get our good friends from New York, Marc and Linda, a suitable wedding present. They flew out to visit us on their own dime, but we got their ACL tickets and I cooked for them for most of their visit.
I knew a few of the bands, but only from hearing them on the radio at work at my morning job. A few out of sixty over three days amounts to an open mind, maybe? We went to only one day, Saturday.
The fest is held at Zilker Park, just across the river from downtown Austin, in quite a beautiful setting. There were three major stages, and four other less major stages, and at high points, music was being played on all three majors, without interruption, which is neat. Major acts generally don't play simultaneously, usually starting a half hour later and on another stage, giving fans enough time to walk.
I've got some pictures...here are Corrie, Linda, and Marc at the south entrance.
Here's a shot of the Austin skyline, taken early in our day, right after we got there.
Not that you can really tell, but the band on the stage here is Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. The music they played wasn't the same as the music that Corrie has of them, and what they played was pretty great. It was rockin', high energy, and fun. They were described, unfairly I thought at first before I heard them, as Tina Turner singing with the Rolling Stones, a throwback to a rocking band and rocking girlie singer. Turned out that was pretty accurate, and it was a good show.
Later in the day, since we spent all day there, we found the Tent--a tent with a sandy bottom where kids could play and adults could nap, and nap we did.
Another act we saw was Gogol Bordello, a cool gypsy-punk act that puts on a great stage show, and one I mentioned in an earlier post about mustaches.
And, I guess, one last picture of the Austin skyline, around dusk.
The ACL fest is, like SXSW, an international event, but ACL is only a music festival (hence the name?) and doesn't screen films or try to get distributors for said films, it's music only. It appears to be one of the biggest annual events in the industry for musicians, as Austin is one of the music capitals in America. Other music cities (besides LA and NY) would be Athens, Georgia (New Austin), Atlanta (for hip-hop), and Nashville (for country and bluegrass).
In any case, Corrie and I finally were able to get our good friends from New York, Marc and Linda, a suitable wedding present. They flew out to visit us on their own dime, but we got their ACL tickets and I cooked for them for most of their visit.
I knew a few of the bands, but only from hearing them on the radio at work at my morning job. A few out of sixty over three days amounts to an open mind, maybe? We went to only one day, Saturday.
The fest is held at Zilker Park, just across the river from downtown Austin, in quite a beautiful setting. There were three major stages, and four other less major stages, and at high points, music was being played on all three majors, without interruption, which is neat. Major acts generally don't play simultaneously, usually starting a half hour later and on another stage, giving fans enough time to walk.
I've got some pictures...here are Corrie, Linda, and Marc at the south entrance.
Here's a shot of the Austin skyline, taken early in our day, right after we got there.
Not that you can really tell, but the band on the stage here is Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. The music they played wasn't the same as the music that Corrie has of them, and what they played was pretty great. It was rockin', high energy, and fun. They were described, unfairly I thought at first before I heard them, as Tina Turner singing with the Rolling Stones, a throwback to a rocking band and rocking girlie singer. Turned out that was pretty accurate, and it was a good show.
Later in the day, since we spent all day there, we found the Tent--a tent with a sandy bottom where kids could play and adults could nap, and nap we did.
Another act we saw was Gogol Bordello, a cool gypsy-punk act that puts on a great stage show, and one I mentioned in an earlier post about mustaches.
And, I guess, one last picture of the Austin skyline, around dusk.
A Note on Foxes
And no, I'm not talking about Alison Doody.
I heard about a Russian fox sanctuary trying to beef up the numbers of the Siberian fox; a captive breeding and re-introduction kind of thing. They discovered two things; one early, and one later.
The first thing they discovered, when they were possibly not acting in the best interests of any sense of re-introduction, was to bring in kits, little fox puppies, into their "home" and treat them like a family dogs. Do you know what happens when you bring a fox kit into your house and treat it like a puppy? Pretty much exactly the same thing as happens with dogs; they're lovable, loyal, and playful.
Not every single one was easily domesticated--some were still ornery. So they started to breed the nicer, more mellow foxes with other nicer, more mellow foxes. They realized while they were doing it that they were selecting for behavior. This led to their second discovery.
By selecting for behavior they got kits that were well behaved, of course, but they were surprised by the other changes, physical changes. Among the changes were bigger ears, curly tails, whiter fur, longer legs...the foxes were becoming even cuter.
Selecting for behavior led to physical changes in Siberian fox appearances that were pleasing to humans.
Then the researchers realized that this makes sense, since the DNA of a Great Dane, a Chihuahua, and a wild wolf from Yellowstone Park is the same. The domestication of the wolf has been a long process--a fifteen-thousand-year-long process--but it started with, most likely as this Russian study has shown, selecting wolf pups for behavior. If physical appearance changes can be seen in only a few breeding cycles in foxes, then given the fifteen-thousand year period for the wolf/dog, the dimorphism (Great Danes vs Chihuahuas; Mastiffs vs Shi-tzus) doesn't seem so shocking.
And, by the way, Alison Doody, whose name cracks me up, is an Irish actress who was offered the lead role in Basic Instinct, the role that eventually went to Sharon Stone. Miss Doody turned it down for being too sexually explicit. Lovers of cinema would remember her as Ilsa, the blond Nazi who seduces both Sean Connery (albeit off-screen) and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I heard about a Russian fox sanctuary trying to beef up the numbers of the Siberian fox; a captive breeding and re-introduction kind of thing. They discovered two things; one early, and one later.
The first thing they discovered, when they were possibly not acting in the best interests of any sense of re-introduction, was to bring in kits, little fox puppies, into their "home" and treat them like a family dogs. Do you know what happens when you bring a fox kit into your house and treat it like a puppy? Pretty much exactly the same thing as happens with dogs; they're lovable, loyal, and playful.
Not every single one was easily domesticated--some were still ornery. So they started to breed the nicer, more mellow foxes with other nicer, more mellow foxes. They realized while they were doing it that they were selecting for behavior. This led to their second discovery.
By selecting for behavior they got kits that were well behaved, of course, but they were surprised by the other changes, physical changes. Among the changes were bigger ears, curly tails, whiter fur, longer legs...the foxes were becoming even cuter.
Selecting for behavior led to physical changes in Siberian fox appearances that were pleasing to humans.
Then the researchers realized that this makes sense, since the DNA of a Great Dane, a Chihuahua, and a wild wolf from Yellowstone Park is the same. The domestication of the wolf has been a long process--a fifteen-thousand-year-long process--but it started with, most likely as this Russian study has shown, selecting wolf pups for behavior. If physical appearance changes can be seen in only a few breeding cycles in foxes, then given the fifteen-thousand year period for the wolf/dog, the dimorphism (Great Danes vs Chihuahuas; Mastiffs vs Shi-tzus) doesn't seem so shocking.
And, by the way, Alison Doody, whose name cracks me up, is an Irish actress who was offered the lead role in Basic Instinct, the role that eventually went to Sharon Stone. Miss Doody turned it down for being too sexually explicit. Lovers of cinema would remember her as Ilsa, the blond Nazi who seduces both Sean Connery (albeit off-screen) and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving
Now that I'm off work and have finished spoiling my cat (not that he gets that much, but oh how he loves stuffing with a touch of gravy), I wanted to ruminate on Thanksgiving a little. During the slow points at work this afternoon, when I was at the height of motivation to complete a true rumination on this day, the computers wouldn't let me log into this blog site--part of the banned content, gmail and the like. That thwarted me and sapped my desire.
So now I don't feel like giving such an effort to solidly ruminate, so I'll give just a few thoughts.
Thanksgiving as a holiday feast has many various beginnings, one of the oldest being something that predates America, the colonies here, or natives sharing food with them. One of the most basic things our Thanksgiving Day festivities mimic is a harvest feast. The workers during a harvest season work very hard, and mostly can't consume what they're harvesting. Once the work is done, there would be a large feast with plenty of overeating and over drinking of whatever grog or beer was available. It wasn't a celebration where you gave a gift to someone else, like those pagan holidays that "Christmas" has copied, but rather a celebration where you receive gifts from the earth. Earth gives you the gifts.
Another thing that I think is cool, and noticed before, I guess, is that the food, the feast, tends towards the same colors as autumn; golds, oranges, warm creams, and soft reds.
So now I don't feel like giving such an effort to solidly ruminate, so I'll give just a few thoughts.
Thanksgiving as a holiday feast has many various beginnings, one of the oldest being something that predates America, the colonies here, or natives sharing food with them. One of the most basic things our Thanksgiving Day festivities mimic is a harvest feast. The workers during a harvest season work very hard, and mostly can't consume what they're harvesting. Once the work is done, there would be a large feast with plenty of overeating and over drinking of whatever grog or beer was available. It wasn't a celebration where you gave a gift to someone else, like those pagan holidays that "Christmas" has copied, but rather a celebration where you receive gifts from the earth. Earth gives you the gifts.
Another thing that I think is cool, and noticed before, I guess, is that the food, the feast, tends towards the same colors as autumn; golds, oranges, warm creams, and soft reds.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Longhorn Caverns
In the '30s, FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) gave work to many young men who'd been on the skids because of the Depression. The young men worked all over the country in regional CCC camps doing all sorts of public works, and many of our state and national parks were created from the work done at that time. The CCC is generally hailed as a triumph by historians.
One project here in central Texas that was a CCC deal was to make an old Sam Bass hideout, and an even older living space and meeting grounds for the various aboriginal Americans living in the area--an extremely long set of underground caverns--into a viable visitor destination.
The clubhouse was built first. The structure was to seem as if it was growing out of the land. Inside, there are pictures of the mostly 18-25 year old guys working in the summer--shirts torn off long ago and long pants pulled up to the knees.
They next plugged up most of the entrances that had been used variously through time by natives, by Sam Bass, by Confederate gunpowder makers, and by speakeasy operators, and installed a Grand Entance. From the steps of the Clubhouse, the view looks strange:
And heading towards that spot, you see a kind of Grand Central-like stairway down to a metal gate.
Nowadays a tour guide will escort paying customers through artificially lit beautiful areas.
We were told that this cavern system, the Longhorn Caverns, along with a system in Kentucky, are the only two types of a special type of cavern system in the States. They were formed by flowing river water--running sideways--instead of the more common vertical water flow created caverns.
A mineral that is very common in this system is calcite. It is a soft crystal, like quartz, but less valuable and less useful. When the CCC boys were cleaning debris from the caves, they found areas like this and thought they'd struck diamonds and were filthy rich.
Then we moved into a different stretch of the system, where both the amount of water and the speed of it's flow were greater than before. This made the walls much smoother, with less stalactites and stalagmites.
It reminds me of the smooth table-like "beach" at Montana de Oro, solid stone smoothed over by rushing water, as opposed to a slow drip from above or slow gurgle from below.
Then we reached the largest concentration of calcite in the whole US, a room lit with multi-colored lights that glowed in a juxtaposition to the wildly beautiful natural sights we'd been walking around for an hour already.
If planning a trip to Austin, think about a day excursion to the north-west, close to the small town of Burnet, out in the Hill Country. You won't be disappointed.
One project here in central Texas that was a CCC deal was to make an old Sam Bass hideout, and an even older living space and meeting grounds for the various aboriginal Americans living in the area--an extremely long set of underground caverns--into a viable visitor destination.
The clubhouse was built first. The structure was to seem as if it was growing out of the land. Inside, there are pictures of the mostly 18-25 year old guys working in the summer--shirts torn off long ago and long pants pulled up to the knees.
They next plugged up most of the entrances that had been used variously through time by natives, by Sam Bass, by Confederate gunpowder makers, and by speakeasy operators, and installed a Grand Entance. From the steps of the Clubhouse, the view looks strange:
And heading towards that spot, you see a kind of Grand Central-like stairway down to a metal gate.
Nowadays a tour guide will escort paying customers through artificially lit beautiful areas.
We were told that this cavern system, the Longhorn Caverns, along with a system in Kentucky, are the only two types of a special type of cavern system in the States. They were formed by flowing river water--running sideways--instead of the more common vertical water flow created caverns.
A mineral that is very common in this system is calcite. It is a soft crystal, like quartz, but less valuable and less useful. When the CCC boys were cleaning debris from the caves, they found areas like this and thought they'd struck diamonds and were filthy rich.
Then we moved into a different stretch of the system, where both the amount of water and the speed of it's flow were greater than before. This made the walls much smoother, with less stalactites and stalagmites.
It reminds me of the smooth table-like "beach" at Montana de Oro, solid stone smoothed over by rushing water, as opposed to a slow drip from above or slow gurgle from below.
Then we reached the largest concentration of calcite in the whole US, a room lit with multi-colored lights that glowed in a juxtaposition to the wildly beautiful natural sights we'd been walking around for an hour already.
If planning a trip to Austin, think about a day excursion to the north-west, close to the small town of Burnet, out in the Hill Country. You won't be disappointed.
Monday, November 8, 2010
One Beater and One Adult-Style
We've had the '93 Saturn fixed, and she's running again. I've learned a few things from the gentleman who replaced the ignition module (ouch): the Saturn engines were built for performance, like racing engines, and can be pushed and pushed. Many other things under the hood, not so much, but the engine will last for a while.
After the perceived (and prematurely concluded) death of our Bandito Rojo, we decided that we're too old to rely on a seventeen-year-old beater (I don't really consider our Saturn a "beater"). We went looking for a car to purchase, one that would be reliable for some years to come. We wanted something with a standard transmission, good mileage, and the ability to transport larger items for moving, travelling, or camping purposes. Sounded almost too difficult to find that in our price range but:
It's the nicest car of which I've ever been in the ownership group, that Passat Wagon. A 2004 with only 100k miles--all freeway, tinted windows, heated seats, defrosting mirrors, enough room to fold down the seats and sleep, five strong speeds, single owner with records, and an iPod attachment already installed.
All for less than bluebook. We caught a break.
The seller said he liked us and wanted us to buy it, that it was time for his family to upgrade (his first non VW purchase: a diesel BMW wagon), and, when it came time for him to hand over the keys, he stalled and was reluctant to the end.
We feel really lucky.
After the perceived (and prematurely concluded) death of our Bandito Rojo, we decided that we're too old to rely on a seventeen-year-old beater (I don't really consider our Saturn a "beater"). We went looking for a car to purchase, one that would be reliable for some years to come. We wanted something with a standard transmission, good mileage, and the ability to transport larger items for moving, travelling, or camping purposes. Sounded almost too difficult to find that in our price range but:
It's the nicest car of which I've ever been in the ownership group, that Passat Wagon. A 2004 with only 100k miles--all freeway, tinted windows, heated seats, defrosting mirrors, enough room to fold down the seats and sleep, five strong speeds, single owner with records, and an iPod attachment already installed.
All for less than bluebook. We caught a break.
The seller said he liked us and wanted us to buy it, that it was time for his family to upgrade (his first non VW purchase: a diesel BMW wagon), and, when it came time for him to hand over the keys, he stalled and was reluctant to the end.
We feel really lucky.
Unhappy Customer
As a customer of eSurance for our two automobiles, I can't say that I've had any experience like the customer who made this sign. Also, with as little as we pay for auto insurance, I half expect that in the event of an accident I might be making a similar sign.
The Slow Lifecycle of a Statlactite
Here is a moment in the growth cycle of a stalactite, brought to you by the Longhorn Caverns, a cool geographic formation about which I will discuss more in depth in the future.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Something Familiar
The media presence in New York surrounding the Yankees (and Knicks in good years) is pervasive in the least and is matched mostly in major European and South American soccer cities, and probably the Tokyo baseball market.
As I've said before, Texas, while not really a baseball place, is absolutely mad about its football. That similar media scrutiny is felt here, two-hundred miles south of the source. Observe:
"The Dallas Cowboys have finally hit rock bottom. The dream season has crumbled into the abyss. Not only is there no hope for recovery, the Cowboys don't even know where to turn."
Those are the opening three sentences from the analysis providided by Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His column ran yesterday, the day after the Cowboys quit against the Jacksonville Jaguars and were stampeded. They "played" so poorly that they made a rather mediocre Jacksonville team look like the '85 Bears on defense with a young Dan Marino on offense.
That melodramatic tone in Clarence Hill's column is the kind of drivel that I read everyday in New York about my team, and while it's annoying and a waste writer's talent and reader's time, there's only so much actual news about a given team that can be printed in a newspaper, and that doesn't sell papers. (It's usually found in two spots: the "Notebook" section that details how an injured player's practive went; and the "Transactions" section, where you can see who's been sent down and who's been called up, or worse, been cut)
When I read it as a Yankee fan, I knew it was ludicrous crap, but I like reading and I like the Yankees, so it was the combo I got into. You just make jokes about it, like the writers fretting about the Yankee's Wild Card position in mid-May (true story, that year was 2007).
When I read it about the Cowboys, a team I pretty much loathe, at first I chuckle about their plight, then I kind of grow nostalgic for the time when as a reader you feel like trying to calm the writer down about the team you both love. Then I just smile, because the Cowboys suck this year.
What do you call sixty millionaires watching the Super Bowl?
The Dallas Cowboys.
As I've said before, Texas, while not really a baseball place, is absolutely mad about its football. That similar media scrutiny is felt here, two-hundred miles south of the source. Observe:
"The Dallas Cowboys have finally hit rock bottom. The dream season has crumbled into the abyss. Not only is there no hope for recovery, the Cowboys don't even know where to turn."
Those are the opening three sentences from the analysis providided by Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His column ran yesterday, the day after the Cowboys quit against the Jacksonville Jaguars and were stampeded. They "played" so poorly that they made a rather mediocre Jacksonville team look like the '85 Bears on defense with a young Dan Marino on offense.
That melodramatic tone in Clarence Hill's column is the kind of drivel that I read everyday in New York about my team, and while it's annoying and a waste writer's talent and reader's time, there's only so much actual news about a given team that can be printed in a newspaper, and that doesn't sell papers. (It's usually found in two spots: the "Notebook" section that details how an injured player's practive went; and the "Transactions" section, where you can see who's been sent down and who's been called up, or worse, been cut)
When I read it as a Yankee fan, I knew it was ludicrous crap, but I like reading and I like the Yankees, so it was the combo I got into. You just make jokes about it, like the writers fretting about the Yankee's Wild Card position in mid-May (true story, that year was 2007).
When I read it about the Cowboys, a team I pretty much loathe, at first I chuckle about their plight, then I kind of grow nostalgic for the time when as a reader you feel like trying to calm the writer down about the team you both love. Then I just smile, because the Cowboys suck this year.
What do you call sixty millionaires watching the Super Bowl?
The Dallas Cowboys.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Congratulations Corrie! (Part 2)
Corrie is currently one-seventh an architect, having whooped her first licensing test's ass. That test she came away from with a less than uber-confident, "I think there may have been a chance that I actually passed that test." The second test she took before she'd gotten the results from the first test, and came back feeling much better about that one. The results from the second test aren't in yet, and she's scheduled for a third test tomorrow, and the fourth soon after.
Then there are only three (yikes) left!
In other notes...
So...I got to just five posts last month, and none had any pictures of Marc and Linda or any discussion about their visit to Central Texas or the Austin City Limits Music Festival...I'll be rectifying that soon, since I'm sure all my readers are breathlessly waiting to hear how a couple of New Yawkers felt about Texas hospitality...well, I'm breathlessly waiting to write it up, before I stop caring. Not really, but the exact day after they left, our '93 Saturn kinda crapped out, and life suddenly got very interesting and much more difficult.
The Saturn is working again, we have a new (to us) automobile, which I'll be discussing in detail very soon (it's the nicest car of which I've been in the ownership group to date).
For my mom: I really appreciate what you had to say about the freeways in southern California on the comment screen a while back, and despite your apology about not having any real information, I felt like you gave exactly the insight for which I was fishing.
For my dad: I have, in fact, heard that particular style of mustache/soul-patch called the "Zappa", and used it a few times myself on that day when I wore it, and even had believed that I'd called it a "Zappa" on my mustache post, only to read that I hadn't after reading your comment about it. I believe that Frank's partial gypsy background could account for the thickness and darkness of the combo-'stache-soul-patch, which ultimately would lead to it's success, if you will, of that rather porn-star-like facial hair arrangement. For a comparison of some kind, check out on YouTube "Start Wearing Purple" by Gogol Bordello...the lead singer of the band Gogol Bordello is part gypsy and resembles FZ...maybe he just reminds me of Frank. It's a funky little song, though.
Also: my apologies to my mother's sense of baseball tradition in our household, but I've been rooting for the Giants to win it all. I realized: while she won't/can't root for them (something I understand having rooted hard for St. Louis and Colorado in '04 and '07 respectively), I enjoy the city of San Francisco, and think that funky zone should get to celebrate...I also find myself not hating the 'niners as much anymore--how blasphemous is that?
Then there are only three (yikes) left!
In other notes...
So...I got to just five posts last month, and none had any pictures of Marc and Linda or any discussion about their visit to Central Texas or the Austin City Limits Music Festival...I'll be rectifying that soon, since I'm sure all my readers are breathlessly waiting to hear how a couple of New Yawkers felt about Texas hospitality...well, I'm breathlessly waiting to write it up, before I stop caring. Not really, but the exact day after they left, our '93 Saturn kinda crapped out, and life suddenly got very interesting and much more difficult.
The Saturn is working again, we have a new (to us) automobile, which I'll be discussing in detail very soon (it's the nicest car of which I've been in the ownership group to date).
For my mom: I really appreciate what you had to say about the freeways in southern California on the comment screen a while back, and despite your apology about not having any real information, I felt like you gave exactly the insight for which I was fishing.
For my dad: I have, in fact, heard that particular style of mustache/soul-patch called the "Zappa", and used it a few times myself on that day when I wore it, and even had believed that I'd called it a "Zappa" on my mustache post, only to read that I hadn't after reading your comment about it. I believe that Frank's partial gypsy background could account for the thickness and darkness of the combo-'stache-soul-patch, which ultimately would lead to it's success, if you will, of that rather porn-star-like facial hair arrangement. For a comparison of some kind, check out on YouTube "Start Wearing Purple" by Gogol Bordello...the lead singer of the band Gogol Bordello is part gypsy and resembles FZ...maybe he just reminds me of Frank. It's a funky little song, though.
Also: my apologies to my mother's sense of baseball tradition in our household, but I've been rooting for the Giants to win it all. I realized: while she won't/can't root for them (something I understand having rooted hard for St. Louis and Colorado in '04 and '07 respectively), I enjoy the city of San Francisco, and think that funky zone should get to celebrate...I also find myself not hating the 'niners as much anymore--how blasphemous is that?
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sports Notes, 10/10
Both "party crashers" have advanced to the World Series, with my Yankees having been ousted in six games by the Texas Rangers of Dallas, and the Yankees' opponent from last year's Series, the Phillies, having been ousted by the San Francisco Giants, also in six games. It's the first time since 2002 that my mother's sports nemesis, the Giants, have made it to the World Series (Barry Bonds and the rest got beat by the Angels that year), and it's the first time ever that the Rangers have made it. In fact, when they won game two against the Yankees in this years ALCS, evening that series at 1-1, they recorded the first home playoff victory in franchise history.
There are advertisements around town here in Austin for the Rangers, which I think is neat...I've said all along that any team with Cliff Lee and CJ Wilson on the mound, Josh Hamilton and Vladdy in the lineup, and flamethrower Neftali Perez in the 'pen will have a shot...but this town, and this state in general, is not a baseball place. High school football gets more attention here than major league baseball. But the catch-phrase on the ads make me say wtf? It reads: "Bring the Championship Home".
The Rangers? Bring the Championship home? Which championship would that be? Texas has never had any professional baseball championships. The Houston Astros finally made the World Series for the first time in 2005, when they got swept by Corrie's White Sox. This is, like I mentioned earlier, the Rangers first opportunity. The Longhorn League, a minor league from the 40s, was pretty exciting when you look at the stats (kinda like the late 90s steroid era), but, c'mon...UT, though, has won a few championships.
Maybe they meant football...college (UT in 2005) or professional (Dallas, 1995)...or maybe basketball (Houston, 1995)?
Speaking of the NFL, last week there were some brutal helmet-to-helmet hits--you know, the kinds macho idiots love--and the league clarified the rules and levied stiff fines on those players. There has been recent discussions about the violence wreaked by a career playing the game of American football, about the concussions, about the league at first ignoring the brain damaging play and now almost confronting it, about the players union letting the old "warriors" from the 60s, 70s, and 80s basically dying in the street penniless and demented, and it's caused some unwanted press for everyone involved. So this week, there weren't any extremely vicious hits, and defensemen were complaining that the way they were trained was no longer "okay", that they might retire now, and that the game would be changed forever.
This leads me to the inevitable conclusion: Will the eradication of "American football" happen in our lifetime?
Of course my assumption here is that tackle football, as we know it, has a limited shelf life. It won't be too long before the face-mask is removed, the tackling becomes less violent, the hits become less jarring...next thing you know we'll be at two-hand-touch or flag-football status, and then what? You can't sell machismo and "battling on the grid-iron" and "warrior status" with touch football. Maybe you can, and maybe we'll see.
American football, I think I'm trying to get to as a point, with it's violence and machismo, might be viewed differently in subsequent epochs, like how we view Roman gladiatorial games now. Football, in how it's sold, marketed, and presented, is pure bloodsport, just without the blood. But, I myself did spend most of the day watching it.
Another thing sport related that will be viewed as a major mistake in the future, at least by everyone then and not just a few now, is the crime of publicly funding sporting venues. I'll have more to say about that later, thanks to a book that organizes the information by the columnist Dave Zirin.
There are advertisements around town here in Austin for the Rangers, which I think is neat...I've said all along that any team with Cliff Lee and CJ Wilson on the mound, Josh Hamilton and Vladdy in the lineup, and flamethrower Neftali Perez in the 'pen will have a shot...but this town, and this state in general, is not a baseball place. High school football gets more attention here than major league baseball. But the catch-phrase on the ads make me say wtf? It reads: "Bring the Championship Home".
The Rangers? Bring the Championship home? Which championship would that be? Texas has never had any professional baseball championships. The Houston Astros finally made the World Series for the first time in 2005, when they got swept by Corrie's White Sox. This is, like I mentioned earlier, the Rangers first opportunity. The Longhorn League, a minor league from the 40s, was pretty exciting when you look at the stats (kinda like the late 90s steroid era), but, c'mon...UT, though, has won a few championships.
Maybe they meant football...college (UT in 2005) or professional (Dallas, 1995)...or maybe basketball (Houston, 1995)?
Speaking of the NFL, last week there were some brutal helmet-to-helmet hits--you know, the kinds macho idiots love--and the league clarified the rules and levied stiff fines on those players. There has been recent discussions about the violence wreaked by a career playing the game of American football, about the concussions, about the league at first ignoring the brain damaging play and now almost confronting it, about the players union letting the old "warriors" from the 60s, 70s, and 80s basically dying in the street penniless and demented, and it's caused some unwanted press for everyone involved. So this week, there weren't any extremely vicious hits, and defensemen were complaining that the way they were trained was no longer "okay", that they might retire now, and that the game would be changed forever.
This leads me to the inevitable conclusion: Will the eradication of "American football" happen in our lifetime?
Of course my assumption here is that tackle football, as we know it, has a limited shelf life. It won't be too long before the face-mask is removed, the tackling becomes less violent, the hits become less jarring...next thing you know we'll be at two-hand-touch or flag-football status, and then what? You can't sell machismo and "battling on the grid-iron" and "warrior status" with touch football. Maybe you can, and maybe we'll see.
American football, I think I'm trying to get to as a point, with it's violence and machismo, might be viewed differently in subsequent epochs, like how we view Roman gladiatorial games now. Football, in how it's sold, marketed, and presented, is pure bloodsport, just without the blood. But, I myself did spend most of the day watching it.
Another thing sport related that will be viewed as a major mistake in the future, at least by everyone then and not just a few now, is the crime of publicly funding sporting venues. I'll have more to say about that later, thanks to a book that organizes the information by the columnist Dave Zirin.
Mustache Studies
I had been growing a beard for the sole purpose of shaving it into a mustache for halloween; I'd wanted to dress up as Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein. After I realized that I wasn't going to do anything for halloween, like parties or trick-or-treating, I decided to shave it all off...for me it's kind of an itchy annoyance.
But, I didn't shave it all off at once, and tried a series of mustaches, much to my wife, Corrie's, chagrin. She was a good sport taking pictures...
The first I tried was part-Frank Zappa-part-dirty porn star. My soul patch wasn't large enough, evidenced here with a pair of pictures using a similar pose with Frank and myself.
I pulled another comparison shot (that wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped) with Doc Sportello, of whom only Norm probably knows.
Once I shaved off the offending downspouts, the lip-corner-framing hairs, what I had was a normal and respectable gentleman's mustache.
I tried to clean it up and messed it up, and then tried the "Chaplin", a 'stache that Hitler ruined for everyone except my old Chef at Vong, Pierre Schutz, who, as a Swiss-Frenchman, wore the "Chaplin" proudly as long as I knew him.
Then I went back to my clean-shaven self...
But, I didn't shave it all off at once, and tried a series of mustaches, much to my wife, Corrie's, chagrin. She was a good sport taking pictures...
The first I tried was part-Frank Zappa-part-dirty porn star. My soul patch wasn't large enough, evidenced here with a pair of pictures using a similar pose with Frank and myself.
I pulled another comparison shot (that wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped) with Doc Sportello, of whom only Norm probably knows.
Once I shaved off the offending downspouts, the lip-corner-framing hairs, what I had was a normal and respectable gentleman's mustache.
I tried to clean it up and messed it up, and then tried the "Chaplin", a 'stache that Hitler ruined for everyone except my old Chef at Vong, Pierre Schutz, who, as a Swiss-Frenchman, wore the "Chaplin" proudly as long as I knew him.
Then I went back to my clean-shaven self...
Saturday, October 16, 2010
California Trip-3: Places
Visiting California, if you're from there like me, there are certain places that you'd like to see that may not make it to tour guide books for visitors. We didn't really make it to those places, but we made it to some...time was too tight.
But we did get to the Winchester Mansion, which is a touristy place, but something Corrie hadn't done but had wanted too for more than a decade. It was just as wacky as I remember form my first trip in 1993, when my cousin Jake was out visiting. The grounds are still pretty well manicured:
And the "13" bush is still cool and bizarre:
We did go to a speakeasy-style bar in downtown San Jose, a downtown that I realized either had changed drastically from my last visit, or that I'd never gotten that close to. The downtown area was cute and quaint, like a non-threatening Berkeley with artsy stuff and coffee shops, but not too many hipsters or panhandlers. The bar was unmarked as far a name goes. Apparently it goes by the title singlebarrel, lower case and one word like that, and above a black unmarked door on a side street is a barrel. Behind the door is a dark staircase down a flight a stairs to a basement bar. The tenders talk to you for a while and figure out what flavors you like to drink in a mixed drink, then create something for you that's similar but different. It was all very cool, but I have no pictures...
We didn't get to too many of our San Luis vistas and hot-spots of nature like (one of our favorites on Earth) Montana de Oro, Pirate's Cove, Dinosaur Caves, the beaches of Avila or Pismo or Shell, but we did get to Morro Bay, and the Rock. We decided to hit that one up since a novel I'm writing has Morro Rock as a character (I call it Chumash Rock), and we had so little time...
I like how it looms in the back of the city...
...how it looks off in the distance...
...and how it looks as a backdrop for me and my Forlan jersey.
But we did get to the Winchester Mansion, which is a touristy place, but something Corrie hadn't done but had wanted too for more than a decade. It was just as wacky as I remember form my first trip in 1993, when my cousin Jake was out visiting. The grounds are still pretty well manicured:
And the "13" bush is still cool and bizarre:
We did go to a speakeasy-style bar in downtown San Jose, a downtown that I realized either had changed drastically from my last visit, or that I'd never gotten that close to. The downtown area was cute and quaint, like a non-threatening Berkeley with artsy stuff and coffee shops, but not too many hipsters or panhandlers. The bar was unmarked as far a name goes. Apparently it goes by the title singlebarrel, lower case and one word like that, and above a black unmarked door on a side street is a barrel. Behind the door is a dark staircase down a flight a stairs to a basement bar. The tenders talk to you for a while and figure out what flavors you like to drink in a mixed drink, then create something for you that's similar but different. It was all very cool, but I have no pictures...
We didn't get to too many of our San Luis vistas and hot-spots of nature like (one of our favorites on Earth) Montana de Oro, Pirate's Cove, Dinosaur Caves, the beaches of Avila or Pismo or Shell, but we did get to Morro Bay, and the Rock. We decided to hit that one up since a novel I'm writing has Morro Rock as a character (I call it Chumash Rock), and we had so little time...
I like how it looms in the back of the city...
...how it looks off in the distance...
...and how it looks as a backdrop for me and my Forlan jersey.
California Trip-2: People
Many apologies to my few readers about the lagging taking place on here. Since returning from California, my schedule was kinda screwed up at my night job, and the only full days off I've had (off from both jobs) were a Saturday and Sunday when our friends Marc and Linda were visiting from New York. Throw in the near total crap-out of our little Saturn and our purchasing of a new (to us) car, a transaction that should be complete early next week, and time slips away like sands through the hour glass.
One of the wonderful things about the trip that this post concerns was the visiting of our friends and family. People were the reason we traveled west, and being with our people was the highlight.
The first day we arrived we got to hang out with Donny, a friend from Corrie's architectural school days, and a guest at our Mexican wedding. He took us to a cool speakeasy-style bar in downtown San Jose, and we talked about his work and caught up. It was a great evening that ended when we left for Citrus Heights and my brother's house.
We made it in reasonable time and spent the next two days playing in Sac with Dan and 'Pita and Norm and Holly, two pairs of people I love living less than a mile apart from each other. As a person who feels pretty mature, I can say that it's really when you're apart from your loved ones that you appreciate all those moments together, never wanting nights to end, staying up until 3 and 4 in the morning, laughing and telling stories...
The same thing happened for the one night we stayed in Fresno with Corrie's brother, Rob. It was great seeing him and talking and cooking and watching him play daddy to his girlfriend's two sons. His girlfriend is great, by the way.
The next day was Saturday, and we rolled into San Luis in the early afternoon to my boy Ryan's house, showered, and went off to the reception, the main event around which our trip was based. Ryan is one of my closest friends, a member of my wedding party, and seeing him is always a blast. On that first day we got to see him and Julie, his girl and one of Corrie's bridesmaids; other good friends Joe and Kelly, themselves set to get hitched next year; Jimmy B and his very cool girl Christine; Ken and a very pregnant Christine, friends that couldn't make it to our Mexican party; and the couple of honor, Sam and Aurie.
I first met Sam when Corrie was overseas, and after our first conversation, I knew that anytime he was around, we would get along famously. He was a SLO transplant from Seattle, a child of a white mom and Black Panther, raised Jehovah's Witness, better read than I, just as left, and just as pissed off about the far right contingent ruling San Luis Obispo.
He got his first passport to come to Yelapa. Once we got the dates of Sam and Aurie's day, we put in for time off, no questions.
After the reception, we spent Sunday at Jimmy B's house watching football, then had breakfast on Monday with Tami Love, a friend of ours that I met while tutoring at Cuesta ten years ago. We stayed connected when we both got back to Ca Poly, we visited her in Munich when she was living there and we were trekking, and she visited us when we lived in Brooklyn and she was working some freelance math/computer gig in Yonkers. It was good seeing her...she might come out here for a week or so, trying to find a place to settle for a few years.
After that breakfast on Monday, we left for San Mateo and my high school friends Rich and Lara, and their kiddies, Lily and Abby. We had a great time visiting, hanging out, and then going out to eat in Half Moon Bay, another evening that seemed to end too soon.
Now some pictures:
Mama Kate's boys and their ladies...
Dan and Norm and I hamming it up...
Ryan, Jimmy B, me, and Sam up in Paso Robles, the site of their reception...
Sam and Auriana...
Kelly, Aurie and Corrie...
Tami Love and Corrie...
Rich and Lara, my high school friends whom I hadn't seen in a dozen years, with their two daughters, Lily (almost 3), and Abby (six months)...
One of the wonderful things about the trip that this post concerns was the visiting of our friends and family. People were the reason we traveled west, and being with our people was the highlight.
The first day we arrived we got to hang out with Donny, a friend from Corrie's architectural school days, and a guest at our Mexican wedding. He took us to a cool speakeasy-style bar in downtown San Jose, and we talked about his work and caught up. It was a great evening that ended when we left for Citrus Heights and my brother's house.
We made it in reasonable time and spent the next two days playing in Sac with Dan and 'Pita and Norm and Holly, two pairs of people I love living less than a mile apart from each other. As a person who feels pretty mature, I can say that it's really when you're apart from your loved ones that you appreciate all those moments together, never wanting nights to end, staying up until 3 and 4 in the morning, laughing and telling stories...
The same thing happened for the one night we stayed in Fresno with Corrie's brother, Rob. It was great seeing him and talking and cooking and watching him play daddy to his girlfriend's two sons. His girlfriend is great, by the way.
The next day was Saturday, and we rolled into San Luis in the early afternoon to my boy Ryan's house, showered, and went off to the reception, the main event around which our trip was based. Ryan is one of my closest friends, a member of my wedding party, and seeing him is always a blast. On that first day we got to see him and Julie, his girl and one of Corrie's bridesmaids; other good friends Joe and Kelly, themselves set to get hitched next year; Jimmy B and his very cool girl Christine; Ken and a very pregnant Christine, friends that couldn't make it to our Mexican party; and the couple of honor, Sam and Aurie.
I first met Sam when Corrie was overseas, and after our first conversation, I knew that anytime he was around, we would get along famously. He was a SLO transplant from Seattle, a child of a white mom and Black Panther, raised Jehovah's Witness, better read than I, just as left, and just as pissed off about the far right contingent ruling San Luis Obispo.
He got his first passport to come to Yelapa. Once we got the dates of Sam and Aurie's day, we put in for time off, no questions.
After the reception, we spent Sunday at Jimmy B's house watching football, then had breakfast on Monday with Tami Love, a friend of ours that I met while tutoring at Cuesta ten years ago. We stayed connected when we both got back to Ca Poly, we visited her in Munich when she was living there and we were trekking, and she visited us when we lived in Brooklyn and she was working some freelance math/computer gig in Yonkers. It was good seeing her...she might come out here for a week or so, trying to find a place to settle for a few years.
After that breakfast on Monday, we left for San Mateo and my high school friends Rich and Lara, and their kiddies, Lily and Abby. We had a great time visiting, hanging out, and then going out to eat in Half Moon Bay, another evening that seemed to end too soon.
Now some pictures:
Mama Kate's boys and their ladies...
Dan and Norm and I hamming it up...
Ryan, Jimmy B, me, and Sam up in Paso Robles, the site of their reception...
Sam and Auriana...
Kelly, Aurie and Corrie...
Tami Love and Corrie...
Rich and Lara, my high school friends whom I hadn't seen in a dozen years, with their two daughters, Lily (almost 3), and Abby (six months)...
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