Here’s to having MLK Day off from work!
Going for my walk/run today in 15 degree (F) temps wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. Until my calf started cramping. That had nothing to do with the cold, though. It was ready to go from the activity earlier in the weekend.
Junk I’ve run across:
- Parkour and free running are - without a doubt - the best thing to happen to action movies since martial arts. This article focuses on one of the American early adopters.
- Last Friday there was news of a car found in bits (along with the three people who were in it) in nearby Louisville. Turns out the car was doing over 100 miles per hour. It also turns out the folks taking the ride were drinking. At least they were “doing what they loved.”
- Leonard Cohen is going on tour after fifteen years off the road. I’m sure he’s past his prime, but I might actually go see him. This live disc is absolutely essential, I don’t care who you are.
- What does it say about me that I think this thing looks like a lot of fun?
- Brozo’s pal and mine, John Croghan, is playing some shows in the near future. I told him he should play “More Than Words” by perennial Boston favorite, Extreme. He said he’d do it if I actually came to the show. I’m gonna do my best, even though it’s way past my bed time.
- Another buddy, Wil Herren, has taken off to Dubai, where the rate of construction is only outstripped by the importing of sex workers (or so I hear). Wil’s off to a great start on his travel blog, even if he might be misusing the “pages” paradigm. The captions on the pics are gold.
- Brozo has the run down of our send-off for Wil, if you’re interested in a bunch of past-their-prime white boys rolling between dive bars in a limo.
- Oh, yeah… Go Pats!
- So, Clinton won Nevada, but Obama got more delegates? WTF? No wonder people don’t bother…
- I’m reading The Golden Compass right now. It’s actually good fun, IMHO. Not sure if I’m all that interested in the movie, though.
- I grabbed Superbad onto my TiVo via Amazon Unbox, though. That’s bound to be just about perfect for one of these nights when the television dial is utterly devoid of worthwhile entertainment.
- Speaking of, anyone have the early word on Breaking Bad? I’ve got it recorded, but haven’t watched it yet.
I suppose if I had to pick one musical artist to call my favorite, Tom Waits would be it. (Last.fm bears me out, too.)
As I remember my childhood, our house was always filled with the music of people like Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Townes Van Zandt. These artists are still at the top of my list, but I always remember the similarly frequent times when the Tom Waits records were out. His voice always gave me pause. It was so different, I’d stop and think “What IS this? Why is it so different from everything else? And why do I like it so much?”
And then there was the cover for the Small Change album with its be-pastied stripper… Now THAT was something for my prepubescent mind to ponder!
And that really is the best part about Tom Waits. He makes you think a bit. He tells wonderful stories in his songs. They may be comical, maudlin, tragic or surreal, but they are all wonderful.
Happy birthday, Tom. May you have many more. Thanks for everything so far.
(And thanks to my favorite homebrewer, David, for pointing out the date this morning.)
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Track o’ the Post: Tango Till They’re Sore from Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, because that album was always the most fascinating/baffling to me when I was young.
Did you know Dickie and the boys are doing a Mighty Mighty Bosstones reunion thing with a series of shows at the Middle East?
The gang is all 40-ish now, but it seems most of them couldn’t find anything else they wanted to do.
This video got me a little misty for my BU days. Like the time I saw the Bosstones tear up the CollegeFest shindig at Hynes Convention Center (probably in 1993…?).
Go get ‘em boys!
I’ve been intrigued by synesthesia since I read The Man Who Tasted Shapes sometime in the second half of the 90s. It seems so bizarrely wonderful: numbers might have colors, musical notes might also have distinct hues - or perhaps shapes… It’s just freaky to imagine, and more significantly, it illustrates how seemingly arbitrary the brain’s powers can be.
Now Kottke points us to this post, which in turn quotes a Scientific American article about a wonderful phenomenon:
We also observed one case in which we believe cross activation enables a colorblind synesthete to see numbers tinged with hues he otherwise cannot perceive; charmingly, he refers to these as “Martian colors.� Although his retinal color receptors cannot process certain wavelengths, we suggest that his brain color area is working just fine and being cross-activated when he sees numbers…
Martian colors! That rules.
Is it wrong to be jealous of an “abnormality”?
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Track o’ the Post: Bright As Yellow from Glow by The Innocence Mission, because I’m a little girl sometimes.
Some tidbits that make me happy:
- Have you found He-Man? I’m not really sure why they’ve labeled this guy He-Man. He’s much more like a Chippendales dancer with his Swayze mullet, velvet choker, and perv ’stache.
- You know who makes me happier than He-Man? German Techno Viking, that’s who! He makes me giggle with the boundless joy of a little girl.
- Then there’s Tiffany Sutton (no known relation, thanks). Brozo pointed her out to me a while ago when her story first broke. Now she’s been to court and “attempted to show her remorse“. (I’m guessing she didn’t do so well, if that’s how they wrote it up in the paper…) I’ve bolded some awesomeness for you:
- In one incident, she and the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, were high on drugs and drunk when he agreed to be tied up during sex, a police report states.
McDaniel told police he became scared and asked Sutton to untie him when she attacked him with a knife. Instead, she sliced his leg, punctured his arm, shoulder and back, and cut his neck and stomach, court records show. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.
- So you’re telling me there were multiple incidents? Did the others involve excavation tools?
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Track o’ the Post: Moaner from Boucoup Fish by my favorite techno wizards, Underworld
(FYI: This is the first time Amazon didn’t have the MP3 download for the track I originally wanted to use: “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” by the Arctic Monkeys, which I still think is the more appropriate/amusing choice.)
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