OMG LINKME Tastes Like Depeche Mode
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DECEMBER 19, 2009Max Raabe at the Merriam Theater, March 5. Awesome. DECEMBER 18, 2009Interesting things picked up today: Oct 9, 1903:
La Chouffe's Christmas brew is freakin AMAZING. DECEMBER 16, 2009La Roux will be appearing at Voyeur Philadelphia on February 9. I'll so be there. Wouldn't be caught there any other time though - it's one of the gayest places around. Trip planning is hard... stupid schedules! But at least I can plan in some fun stuff. Here's the two music things I think we're going to do. The first is New Year's Eve at the Admiral's Palace with Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, a magnificent rockabilly band - see below. The second is a concert with the Berlin Sinfonietta at the Philharmonie. Or possibly, we might do some Mark Scheibe and his combo DJ-orchestra set. I kinda wanted to go to this, but there's no way I can manage it... Ostfunk Silvester. Especially Tok Tok... for some reason, I love a BUNCH of their stuff. So researching stuff to do in Berlin and happened upon two things probably shouldn't bring the family to: 1) the Kit Kat Club and 2) Artemis. The latter has a pool, three saunas, two cinemas and room for 300 customers. And room for "up to 40 prostitutes" to service those 300 customers. It's apparently the largest brothel in Germany, where prostitution is legal and widespread. My question is, how much of a cut does the master pimp get (here's talking to you, Angela Merkel)? DECEMBER 15, 2009Quizzo last night at Dark Horse with Jess! We got tied for second and then lost it in a tie breaker... who knew Candlestick Park holds 70K people? Met a bunch of La Salle theatre people, including one from Enola, whose fiancee I might have ran against since he was from East Penns. Fun crowd. We actually were the last people at the bar, on a Monday. Awesome. New jazz by Vijay Iyer and Stefon Harris. I'm not even gonna embed this one bc the video's actually not funny... but when I watch that Family Guy skit again about the woman reporter in the men's locker room, I'll be seeing her. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: perhaps I should watch you. I heard some horrible, horrible music from the speakers at Dark Horse and found it was the episode The Nightman Cometh, where one dude on the show writes a shit musical to persuade some chick to love him, puts it on, and then she hates it and leaves. End of episode. I guess it's hilarious if you watch the show on a regular basis? Anyways, it had enough fans that they could take ONLY THE MUSICAL for a spin on the road (including at the Tower) and people paid $50 to see that shitshow. Go team! Here's a clip from the Tower run: Jess told me to watch it and I did. There was my review :) Thanks a bunch. When I did watch it before (and I don't remember DeVito being on it, when did he go on the show?) it was funny but I tend not to watch the sitcoms. I love 30 Rock, yet I'm hard pressed to watch it most of the time! It's just me and comedy... I just don't watch much of it. I prefer drama and action, though if I watch comedy with friends, I'll really really enjoy it - it's just not something I can push myself to see alone. Merry Xmas! What a load of work to get your house done that way. And my question is: can passerby hear the music, or are they liek WTF is this flashing? An allegory no one uses any more: Columbus and the egg. When confronted by Spanish noblemen scoffing at his discovery of the Indies (and claiming some Spanish dude would have done it sooner or later), Columbus challenged them to balance an egg without being helped by anyone or anything. When they could not, Columbus tapped the egg gently on the table, crushing its end and allowing it to balance on the table. Then they understood. Once the process is discovered, anyone can do it. Vasari attibutes this particular story to Brunelleschi, claiming that he had bested other contestants to raising the Duomo cupola by proposing an egg-balancing contest. Coincidentally or not, the Duomo cupola went up with a slightly crushed egg shape. Centuries later, men boil eggs and balance them, or simply find tripod positions among the dimples and ridges on the eggshells to make it stand upright; the dramatic edge of the story has been bested by common knowledge of science, and patience. DECEMBER 13, 2009The Company DVD turned out very well! I got to see it yesterday and it was really good. Of course, sound quality could have been better, cinematography could have been better, etc etc... but I'm glad we have one of decent quality regardless! Fantastic Mr. Fox was fantastic. There was a preview of Nine playing right before the movie, and with all the kids there, it was slightly inappropriate. The preview was sexy. The Lovely Bones was a decent book, I just hope the movie doesn't destroy it... though it does look artistic. Hope it isn't too much of a thriller though, as the book wasn't really setup like that so much. Q is doing Sweeney Todd for the Spring Fling musical. Good choice. My favorite song from the show is still Green Finch and Linnet Bird: DECEMBER 12, 2009Spreading the gospel of Glen Hansard. Also, an even more laid-back version. The wonderful Charlotte Martin: if I had known about it, I would have gone to this concert. I don't pay enough attention to the World Cafe Live shows and thus miss EVERY SINGLE ONE THAT I WOULD HAVE WANTED TO SEE. Her sound is not traditional pop, it's a little experimental, but not so far out there like the Pitchfork anti-pop wall of sound grungy long-haired dudes writing 'music' in log cabings in the Pacific Northwest... she did the beauty pageant route, and then somehow made it as a pianist/singer/composer. With some really good stuff. I'm impressed, and not only because she might have been just another bimbo after dropping the tiara! I love this version of the Hidden Track at the end of Happenstance, by Rachael Yamagata. Only 583 views? Shame. Switchfoot's 24 was my anthem last year. Found it again and am enjoying myself. In other "found" music news, I bought the first A Day in the Life CD a long time ago. Years later, I still regret the purchase. It sucks. Katie Herzig doing Forevermore off of her third album. I want to see her live... she's not coming to town any time soon though. Here's Hologram, her most popular song thus far. Shame though, she only has a couple thousand views on any of her videos. Perhaps she has a large fanbase that doesn't hang out on the Interweb? Hopefully. 
Music Go Music lead. Photo linked. I saw Music Go Music live in Los Angeles with Little Boots and Yes Giantess, and they are FANTASTIC. All their stuff has this real 70s disco vibe. I played it for some people and they were like "why are you listening to 70s music?", and I knew they hit it right on. 1000 Crazy Nights sounds kind of tinny on their album but if you hear their live versions, it's SO good. OMG I gotta link another one: I Walk Alone. She has an amazing voice, and this song was SO hot during the concert. All the hipsters and emo disco freaks and even some old people (at a dance concert? yeah, maybe they were there just for Music Go Music?) loved them so bad. It's funny that they have such a big band and so many backup singers. (Sidenote: I like a lot of the releases from Secretly Canadian.) What's even better is that this show they're on, "Face Time", is a fake show they made up just for the music videos. It all looks so 70s, and I was trying to imagine what channel could be showing such a show these days... the lighting, the presenters, the entire look capturing the feel so well. Kudos to their art directors. Kelis' A Cappella is pretty awesome. Though she's REALLY ugly in the video. What was her stylist thinking DECEMBER 11, 2009The only purpose of food blogs is high quality pictures of food. I don't care about the extravagant vocabulary describing the onslaught of digestive juices upon the sight of some delicious monstrosity, though it can be poetic, dramatic and satisfying at times. I'm more concerned about HUNGRY, and SEEING FOOD = EATING (DREAMING ABOUT) FOOD. 
Visit Smitten Kitchen. Thank goodness for GChat linking! Me want RASPBERRY BUTTERMILK CAKE now! 
Was looking for some good pics of rambutan. I got linked the other day to a horrific recipe of vegetarian pho. It looked good, and all the ingredients sounded good but what's pho without the beef gristle? Then it's just vegetable soup with bean sprouts and lime. Which is fine, but it's no pho. Don't call it pho when it ain't the real thing. Call it "vegetable soup with bean sprouts and lime" and we'll be just fine. Vegetarians and especially vegans have it real hard. They have to be super-nutrionists to get all the nutrients they need (especially those pesky proteins) from their vegetables or meat replacement products (in the case of cheater vegetarians). I would be way too lazy for that, and besides, I like the taste of red meat. I love my vegetables, still. I could probably manage all other aspects of being a vegan but for the crap desserts - since you can't use animal products, the cakes end up tasting like shit because the milk, grease and butter replacements are just not contributing to the taste at all. The worst desserts I have ever had - including kitchin disasters by horrible cooks which have still ended up tasting better - were vegan attempts at chocolate cake. Somebody still has to prove to me that vegans can make a decent sugary dessert concoction that tastes awesome. Hah. I have my DOUBTS. Regrets: Jessica Adams. Jessica from freshman year: sorry! Lizz Fehder. Kristen Erway. Several nameless individuals (in the cases where crimes were rather more sordid). Just thought I'd mention having a moment of silence in memory of past transgressions. I used to have so much fun playing the Ganz' Grand Gallop de Concert. Though when I did it, it was a trio. GREAT memories of the Shadbolt Center in Deer Lake. Too bad I don't have any video recordings of my time in the group. Donna Fishwick's Young Artists Ensemble - geez, what a mouthful - now has all the little kids who were around in my time being the big shots and playing all our old numbers. Can't seem to find a good 2-piano version of the Waltz from Faust by Gounod/Liszt. Huh. Since I have no recordings of OURS either, I have to settle for old solo recordings... which are good, but not quite the same. I used to have a lot of fun playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 8 by Franz Liszt - and again, no recording of me (too bad, I can't play it so well any more!) so that's one by Cziffra (who has a bust at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, so he's thought to be well-qualified by somebody!). Nobody plays that piece any more, just because it's not as super-flashy as some of the others (ahem, no. 2). It takes a lot of passion, and the first part is all about tenderness and the small silences and swells, even though it's super hard to control everything so it sounds dramatic without sounding like some virtuoso just showing off. It's real visible in that number if you love the music, or if you're just trying to seem like a prodigy. The last 2 minutes of the song are super hard, and Cziffra goes real fast. I prefer it to go a little slower, to make best use of the sad melodies in there. But it does make for a more amazing ending faster. OMG, jealous. Amy Tokunoh, Greg Semerdjian and Nicholas Rada are still playing with the group? They were really good in my time. I'd have loved to perform in Prague. 
Sitting at the Shadbolt, before one of the Coffee Concerts. 
At the Cliveden Royal Estates, where I had the best breakfast I've ever had and then a relaxing afternoon on the Thames. Our benefactor was SUPER rich. 
Visiting Eton. (I met Prince William that day, and Simon tried to take a picture. Bad form.) DECEMBER 10, 2009Vanessa, one of the winners of German reality show Popstars is HAWT. Was looking up Culcha Candela (who are aite) and found their collab "remix" Monster by Culcha Candela ft. Leo & Vanessa from Popstars. It's not the greatest song, but it's still catchy. Haha - but listening to some of their other videos from Popstars, WTF?!? She's pretty, but how much production was necessary on the tracks to make her (and him) sound like, er, popstars? I'm scouring the German Top 100s right now. Just getting a good idea of who's big in Germany right now, and I'll save more research until I'm in Germany during Xmas. I would buy music but stupid VAT could make it so expensive... I can always just take notes and try to find them when I get back. It will be pathetic if I have to resort to ripping off of YouTube. That always happens... I find some artist that is totally obscure over here and getting it shipped costs an arm and a leg. 
Vanessa on the right. WTF is Rihanna doing wearing that thing at an awards show? And her mancut is... manly. I remember looking for the Leslie CD when I came back from France and was totally turned off by the buy price of $40 plus shipping/taxes. I'm not paying $50 for one CD. She's still one of my guilty pleasures. Cute French-Viet hiphop/pop star who's done crossovers with American R&B, Arabic pop (Alik Maina and one of my favorites, Sobri) and Middle African dance music (On Ne Sait Jamias). 
Love this cover. It's such a cheeseball cover, like something they'd do to a re-release of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn.. Speaking of Magic System, I totally love their stuff. 
4 dudes from the Ivory Coast who make some kickass songs. I'm finally catching up on a bunch of the French new stuff. I used to listen to a lot of Amel Bent, and so was pleased to find she's released a bunch of good stuff this year. 
Amel Bent lookin' all fly and shit. K-Maro hasn't moved much, his best song is still Histoires de Luv. Likewise with Zaho: La Roue Tourne before and now C'est Chelou. Ma Meilleure Amie by possible two-hit wonder Koxie? I remember this song being on my continuous replay for a while! More Asians... well, French music is more crossculture than over here as far as I've seen. More Arabic crossover by Zaho and Cheb Mami. Heh, French gangsta R&B'er M Pokora. Looks like with his newer stuff he's trying to do the North American crossover. A new pickup: Lady Sweety, who I hear on a lot of the Afro-French dancehall tracks. Ah, cette chanson est beaucoup de plaisir - en realite, j'aime beacoup le dancehall. Pretty awesome. Oh my God. New Content Unlocker stuff so inane... gotta pick offers for every country and just doubled the size of the offerlist. Egads! Whistler season 2, which I've been watching while working, is totally a soap opera but a pretty enjoyable one. Hot chicks, snowboarding, actual shots of Whistler... makes me wanna get way better at snowboarding. I'm way better at skiing (not that I'm actually good at it, mind you) but snowboarding seems so much more fun. I have BIG issues with the stopping, but it's probably like the mind-thing I had to go through learning how to ski properly. Once you lost that tense-ness (nervousness at possibly falling), it's easy as pie. And you need strong abs. Zuke likes chewing at my feet. It hurts and then I have to kick him away. He thinks it's friendly playing and then mauls my toes some more. He particularly loves pouncing, claws out, into the meat of my thighs and then hanging while I flail. My cat is an ASS. It's likely revenge for getting him neutered. OK, time for the obligatory parade of cat pictures - I haven't done it yet, so now is the time. 
Baby Zuke. The extremely social but attack-loving one. 
Baby Sukie. The antisocial but less mean one. She looks stuffed here. 
Six's a crowd. Zuke in the middle. These were dumpster cats. DECEMBER 9, 2009
Amy Regan at a New York venue. Photo by Stephen Bailey. Just listened to an amazing singer/songwriter named Amy Regan, free live concert at Fergie's. She does this adult contemporary/jazz/folk thing that's pretty nice, though you definitely have to like that style. Here's one of her nice slow tracks: So In Love. I did like one of her new singles, Keep You Warm, but it's not on YouTube atm. She's really nice, and still one of those struggling artists - I think I was the only person that came solely to see her! Everyone else was kinda already drinking at Fergie's and was like, oh. She seemed a little surprised that I randomly found her, and I told her it was on AmieStreet. I was looking for someone else and randomly found her - funny story, they screwed up and charged me $0 for her songs, which were supposed to cost me $1. First of all, that's a hard way to make money if your whole published song set goes for $1. Second, it's even harder when the money doesn't actually get paid over. I bought her new 2-track release for $2 tonight. So cheap. STILL a hard way to make money, since I was possibly the only person buying. Geez, how does she make any money? She's really good and should have a lot more fans... hopefully she does in her home city! I feel like I should drop her a few extra bucks next time to make up for somebody getting cheated, possibly her, on that broken technology on AmieStreet deal. She was followed by Jo Henley, whose name sounded like a girl but was actually a guy and his bluegrass-ish band. They were also very good. Didn't stick around for all of it though. Gonna say it: I wanna see Hipsters. I have low expectations for it being dramatically coherent, but the art and musical direction look and sound, well, fabulous. All the reviews point out that it's extremely fun, the only drawback being that it's a tad too long. Where can I get the Hipsters soundtrack? I've been listening overtime to "You Didn't Need To Get An American Wife", video below. The Andrews Sisters routine is pretty awesome. And of course, they replace those homey looking sisters with some model hotties - who actually sang the song and look good as. They're a girl group called Via-Gra (in Russian, clever pun) or Nu Virgos (in English, also clever) and they have some good stuff (What Hurts The Most with Cascada). Tatiana Kotova is a year younger than me apparently. Hmm. The historical basis is pretty interesting, and the film version kind of tells the truth in this regard: there were Russian hipsters called "stilyagi" that copied rockabilly and loved hot jazz, but they were late. By 1954, their vanguard year, that style was going out. In the movie, the lead character visits New York and realizes the movement doesn't exist - hipsters can't be found! While these kids weren't going to jail for their "beliefs" (and only the rich kids could afford the fashions and clubs anyway), they were barred from joining the Communist Party and thus barred from any sort of higher career in the Soviet Union and their families harassed. High price to pay. I believe this song is from the ending of the movie? Though I can't understand a word, it looks as if they're all walking, happily or not, into the glowing future. Such a mass expression of joy on the Moscow streets PROBABLY has not happened ever. The movie is apparently up for Golden Globes, so hold on to your hats come December 15. 
Still from Hipsters. Go art direction... and hairdressers. I saw Harold Prince speak today. He's a very interesting man, having started, worked with, and got famous alongside Lenny Bernstein, Bock and Harnick and Sondheim. He's won 21 Tony awards, and no one else is likely to break that record any time soon. Tons of famous openings, including Cabaret, Company, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Parade, Phantom, etc etc. Geez. Really nice guy, though when asked about revivals of "his" shows, he said that he didn't need to see them and why should he have to? Ha, he's earned the right to be a grumpy old man, but artistically there's always something TO learn. I learned he gave Bob Fosse his big break choreographing Pajama Game - didn't know that before. He admitted he slept through Penn. Later, I heard one woman in the audience say that paying her daughter's tuition to Penn was the best money she ever spent - and all because Harold Prince slept through his classes? Ha. The dean of SAS boasted that Penn Players, his theatre alma mater, had just finished a run of Company... apparently Harold had come to the first revival of Company at Penn and loved it. Too bad he didn't come to the second and love our version just as much. Fascinating talk, even though nothing in it would actually help you build a career in theatre (unless you pestered him to death afterwards to read your play or listen to your musical or whatnot... but that's just bad form!). DECEMBER 7, 2009Mike's birthday this past weekend, and Alex's Xmas party. Did a lot of karaoke, drank a lot of cran vodka (who drank all the Wassail?), commiserated with Meagan and Chris, caught up in the usual way with Elise and Steve, got a really rude reception from Julie something-or-other (I'm still fuming), wondered why I don't see Thuy around so much. I also got back in touch with Kristen Erway this week... wow. Did I drop the ball on that one or what? It's a shame she's now engaged. Same with Krista Velez. If I had made the time back in colleg... oh well. I'm still a little aggro'd that I haven't been able to see Rachel Hynes yet. We just keep missing each other - stupid opposite ends of the country. Took a break from playing Dragon Age to research foreign musicals. I knew of a few vaguely, but never really made the effort to find any. The few times I've brought it up with drama people (who are ALL into musicals, they say), they've tended to get the big blank stare on, and the "why should I care" shrug... which is fine, I guess. If you're trying for an acting career here, what's the use of musicals in another language that nobody (here) knows? I know that it's hard as hell to catch any foreign musical imports here. They're rare, usually some place to far from here and they usually bomb and close early. A shame. I'd have to go to London to catch a longer-running English-version foreign show, which is kind of weird. So without further ado, here's a few. 1) The first Taiwanese language musical, done in "Taiwanese" and Hakka. Called April Rain, and about some Taiwanese songwriter in the early 20th century. Has that traditional but 50s feel... I'd love to hear more from it. 2) Hipsters, a Russian movie musical coming out right now at the Anchorage Film Festival. 1950s style, nice color scheme, almost Swing Kids-y in the look though it's clearly getting the Jerry Lewis on. The trailer is a bit NSFW. Review here. I'm catching that if it rolls into town. 3) Elisabeth, the most successful German musical. Very 90s style, in the way of Les Miz and Phantom, but with more dangerous material. Covers the Empress Consort of Austria. Elisabeth was married to Franz Josef I, who was a cold-hearted bastard, and her mother-in-law was a demon from Hell who stole her children to raise without her influence. Her son Rudolf committed an apparent love suicide with his mistress at one of their secluded estates. She eventually died by a stabbing from some anarchist. The beginning of the end for the Habsburgs. Had a big run, and went on forever in Japan by the Takarazuka troupe (an all-female troupe that's one of the most well-known - and oldest - in Japan... the company is made of 5-6 troupes with a total 400 single female members). Japan is where all musicals go eventually, they just love them over there. MOre on that later. 4) Notre Dame de Paris, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Not the Disney Hunchback, thank God. Supposely had the best first year of any musical, eventually garnering 8 recordings in 9 years. It's a Canadian musical that opened in France and had a huge run there. Music is fine, but seems to appeal to middle aged women. How do I know (besides knowing the kind of music, usually dreck, middle aged women go for)? Celine Dion recorded her own version of one of the tracks and it was a hit. Hmm. 
Showtime on the Faubourg. 5) Viva la France! Paris 36, 8 Femmes, and Les Chansons d'Amour. All movie musicals. The first is a Paris-jazz (accordion and all) movie with some amazing numbers. Especially the Going to the Sea number in the middle! 8 Femmes had a bunch of famous French stars: Emmanuele Beart, Virgine Ledoyen, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Ludivine Sagnie, Fanny Ardant. The last one is very light French pop. Loved the soundtrack but the movie? Very sexual, per usual for the French drama, and disturbed me that the guy (who gets to have a THREESOME with Ludivine Sagnier) went gay at the end. Really. How can you go gay when you've got Ludivine Sagnier? Come ON! 
Ludivine Sagnier. 6) Romeo et Juliette. Not the Leo DiCaprio movie. This one is another French one, but a stage musical this time. I like the music. I do feel they cast a really feminine looking Romeo though. 7) Takashi Miike directs a movie musical? What? The Happiness of the Katakuris: it's a crazy campy horror flick, IMDB for a synopsis. The trailer is really like WTF. Rocky Horror-ish feel. Love it. There's a few others, but no idea of quality. Swing Girls sounds interesting (students start an all-female big band and rock out... not porn). 
The headline says it all. 
This... looks good. And now for some retarded ones, all from Japan. What a weird country. You get some of the most disturbing dreck out of there, I swear. And the stuff I'm listing isn't the weird tentacle sex all those office workers read in their manga and watch in their hentai on the way to work. 1) Japan has seen a lot of anime-based musicals. Sailor Moon, Bleach, Hunter vs. Hunter. I dunno about the latter two, but the Sailor Moon musical music is complete garbage, and I assume it was embarrassing as hell to be in it. I'm sure the anime and SM fans were all over that like a fat kid on cake (to paraphrase 50 Cent). Takarazuka did Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, a musical based on a video game by Capcom with a successful graphic novel release following. That one doesn't look so terrible (I'm biased already because their other work is pretty good). 2) Raccoon Palace, Raccoon Princess. The former was a set of movie musicals that were huge in Japan before WWII. It somehow stayed popular enough for another sequel to be released in 2005, starring Zhang Ziyi (following Memoirs of a Geisha, where people were like WOW, she's so Japanese?). The music sucks. I think that's some really shit hiphop at the end of the trailer? Haven't seen it, but gotta assume it's bad (reviews panned it, etc). DECEMBER 3, 2009Uh oh. Gotta start planning for the Christmas trip. Going to the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, but haven't started thinking about what I want to see. I know I'm going to try and visit Caroline in Brussels, and hopefully Maliha in Berlin. All sorts of family to see, museums to hang out in, all the touristy stuff... and how to squeeze in some gourmet dining with the family around? I don't really know. All I know is... I'm going to get white chocolate in Belgium at that place... I don't remember where it is... and go to that square with all the live bands and the good beer... which I also don't remember where... but that's what friends are for! DECEMBER 1, 2009Picked up new show that's pretty amazing: Whistler. A Canadian show that looks like it'll never go on DVD. Thank God for Megavideo. How many shows disappear into the aether like that? Get aired, dropped after 2 seasons for low ratings (like how many good shows) and then no future on DVD. A few years later, nobody remembers and it's only due to a few fans that post some episodes, and some random linking on IMDB. Yeah. And Amanda Crew (one of the best things to come out of Langley)! It's a murder mystery set in the snowboarding/skiing Whistler world, so lots of references that I totally get... I miss living in BC sometimes. 
Jody Pollock and I at Allegro's. NOVEMBER 30, 2009Mininova died, following the court order to take copyrighted material down. This actually covered 20% of the torrents on there, but I guess rather than continue the fight, they just upped and died. Oh well. Another behemoth gone, and tons of tiny guys to take up the slack. As long as the scene is still around to get the stuff I wouldn't otherwise buy... I love Pixie Lott's new single Cry Me Out. The video is nice - black and white - but man, can't get that song outta my head. Wonder if she's as good live? Who knows. She kinda looks like Miranda Raison from Spooks with her hair up and the excessive mascara. Jodie Sweetin got a boob job... haha. Good to see my favorite Tanner still around! Even though she's still on and off booze, meth, and clearly high on something in that video. She married then divorced some dude that looked so much older than her. What was she thinking? Canadian, please. I dunno what these two do as a career, but they clearly have a lotta fun doing it. Their other songs show they're a) having fun, b) have some music and video skills and c) are really good friends. Plus, from some of the other videos he has up, Andrew clearly has some other really hot friends. Though looks like Julia is the most talented otherwise. They could work a little on the writing on some of their other songs - the lyrics are kinda vapid, and they could use some more work on the music production side. They have all the equipment they need (sound quality and mixing turned out pretty well) so it's really just a matter of getting a producer to clean it up and maybe add a little more bounce. STILL being a Canadian (blame the US government for making it excessively hard for me to become a citizen), I have pride in all the other Canadians that get out there and do some quality work. Give these guys a little more money and time, and they could do some good stuff! Note to self: find these two and get them to make content for us. And get her phone number. Just watched Pandorum. Different from what I thought it would be, and actually not bad. Even if somewhat archetypal and stereotypical with some of the setup, it still was a thinking movie. Though I hate the rule of thumb that the minority always dies, no matter how much they do to prop up the safety of the other characters. Noble sacrifice indeed... the Vietnamese dude was killed by a mutant kid. Who says you shouldn't kill murderous freak children? If their parents have eaten all your compatriots, then you probably should have a heart of stone if you don't wanna be food. Ever watch Degrassi? Another Canadian production. Its offspring show airs on MTV in the States. To make fun of it, this clip pretty much covered the crazy shit that is Degrassi. Pretty high production values, and Kristin Findley, yeah. Cutty Emma and Mandy! The dudes have really styled hair. That's sort of hmm... gay. Both productions are funner shows than My So-Called Life, which kinda tries the same thing in a much different way. 
The real Degrassi. NOVEMBER 29, 2009Exhausted. Just returned from Toronto... pigout time for realz! Real Cantonese dimsum and all you can eat hotpot, plus 4 Harvey's burgers... and lots and lots of Sour Cherry Blasters, and bags of Ketchup, Dill Pickle and All Dressed chips! I really hate how ketchup and dill pickle are only limited edition releases and then they disappear from the shelves basically forever around here. I sometimes have huge cravings and can't get them - and nothing tastes the same as my Hostess Ketchup, or my Ruffles All Dressed... these companies sell down here but can't be bothered to sell in the US, where there's a huge customer base that can get used to the new flavors? Sigh. NOVEMBER 25, 2009Goin thru the current top 40 from the UK... Pixie Lott, ladies and gentlemen. Her voice is fine, but the songs that she does are so cookie cutter. She's writing songs for all the talent show winners, and I'm sure it's exactly the same vibe - here's the new Pussycat Dolls, Esmee Denters, blah blah... good enough singers but made so, SO bland. If I want my girlpop, I'll always have my All Saints. (Well, this song isn't too bad.) Ke$ha is pretty good, I guess. Club act, whatever... though I hate when the producers use Autotune unnecessarily. Her voice doesn't suck such that they have to put so much of it in. Damn man. X Factor is such a bad influence... Alex Burke and JLS, bleh. We need more US artists like N-Dubz... they got the right MC voices plus catchy hip-hop beats, a hottie for the more melodic vocals, and of course the weird weird style. Dappy wears those ridiculous hats in like every video I've seen him in, and really what's it doin in a ghetto fab video? Should hear them live though, they're awesome. You don't know how many US hiphops acts I've seen live, who have like no skillz... can't sing, their rapping is subpar, their rhymes tired and the "fun" entirely dependent on turning up the bass every time the crowd gets bored. Kidz in the Hall might have been the worst one (besides, their name is stolen from an awesome Canadian comedy show... which has no connection to them in any degree). And their Uncle B is another "Byron". Holla. NOVEMBER 23, 2009Post-mortem today for Company. A lot of good comments from people, and a few more or less naive ones. Especially the too many runs thing... I am a fan of doing less runs and replacing it with "finding more spontaneous moments" practice, but not giving days off. I am lazy and would probably rather be sitting around, but in an artistic sense, I know it's not a good idea - especially in a production schedule of 2 months or less. It's tough to keep doing the same thing every day and to continue to make it interesting... but that's the nature of the beast. If these students move to professional theater, the tedium of a 2-3 month show run (instead of 3 days) will be a major issue. If you can't handle a week's worth of runs, you'll be miserable becoming an actor. Student theater is where you try to approximate as much as you can a professional setting, and finding out what it's like so you can decide whether or not a career in theatre is for you. After Thanksgiving, lots of stuff planned. A beer tour of the Philly suburban breweries, seeing Hal Prince speak, hearing Amy Regan play at Fergie's, MT's bday, Tria with the artistes, chill-out with the of-agers at Dock Street, and hopefully a concert or two before heading off to the Netherlands. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I'll be leaving in 2 days for Toronto, where I can enjoy some great Chinese food. I've been jonesing for some good yam-cha for a while now... Speaking of Amy Regan, I just randomly found her music on AmieSt (which I also just found). Pretty cheap to get newcomer tracks... $1 for 6 songs? Nice. A crapload of free stuff which I'll listen to later, hopefully they're good. Anyway, just thought I'd mention that Everybody Needs Somewhere to Go is pretty freakin amazing, as is Some Kind of Blues. That's probably because I do like my folksy bluesy pop. It's a weird category with lots of strange quasi-suicidal sad-eyed female singer-songwriters... Tori Amos, Chantal Kreviazuk, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Priscilla Ahn, etc. Regan's just starting her career, and to me, it's kinda cool watching somebody devote their twenties to building a career as a musician. Such a hard road, and so few make it. And of course, they're a dime a dozen in New York, where it looks like she lives. Random sidenote: man, the prevalence of awesome musicians and live gigs around NY is for me the only good reason to move down there. I keep listening to Alexandra Burke's cover of Hallelujah... it's kind of a sellout version since they add all this over-production stuff and of course, it's a talent show winner doing it. It's more like an Amy Grant Christmas special for the middle third... I just like her voice doing it, but I could do without the dramatic Muzak super inspirational re-arrangement. I don't like Rufus Wainright's version of it, but I do like John Cale's cover, Leonard Cohen's original (which sounds way different from all the subsequent covers) and the definitive Jeff Buckley version (who died, rather tragically, in a drowning... he always looked the sort to go out early, and he did). After trolling through YouTube, I found a crapload more covers, some of which are not too bad: Chris Cole, Stan Walker (though it did start really weird), Kate Voegele, Allison Burke. Paramore's special intro to their own Hallelujah is pretty nice, though the concert I heard it at first was better sounding (that concert hadn't been uploaded by anybody) - though of course, that's reliant on an audience that can sing and better recording quality at an outdoor concert from a handheld camera, which is kind of impossible. It's also kind of cool introducing such an old classic to a new generation without it being an exact cover. I've also been listening to a lot of Vitamin String Quartet: Wonderwall, Mr. Brightside, Stairway to Heaven and Paramore's Hallelujah again. They do string quartet covers of popular songs, and though I think they're kinda tool-y for doing what they're doing, I like listening to it anyway. I feel like they're doing it because it's easy and there's no competition in the niche, and sometimes the numbers could just be run through a computer... they don't really have to be live recorded versions! Reading some more Lindsey Davis. Love her books... she wisecracks with a continually developing set of characters through a HUGE number of books. Amazed she can keep going with the same set this long without getting bone tired of them. Oh well, I'm fine with reading everything she puts out as long as she keeps doing so. It's a convergence of my two favorite book fields, historical fiction and mysteries. I especially like Roman Empire historical fiction, though I'm no stranger to Victorian gothics, Medieval capers and Eastern Bloc/WWII political dramas (which easily blend into spy fiction). Crazy for you. NOVEMBER 22, 2009Law enforcement goin for a shakeup: DNA evidence can be faked. So youc an fake DNA evidence and can get somebody wrongfully convicted. However, the company says that their new tests can tell the diff between real and faked DNA... if every single criminal locked up on DNA evidence alone files for appeal or wrongful conviction based on this material, the company could make tons of money from having to run their test on all those cases. That's a lot of dough. Sucks for the DA's office. I love the BBC. Later with Jools Holland, and then Live Lounge. If we had a nationally respected and syndicated shows in the US that serves the exact same function... and sucks that scandal that got Jo Whiley off the air! Now there's somebody new taking over the slot. It could also be the fact that she's 44 and the new host is 27... well, there's a reason to not like the BBC, but I can get over that. Paramore, "Ignorance". How to be a fan when all the other fans are Twilight preteens... hmm.
An unrelated cover: Katy Perry, "Black and Gold" by Sam Sparro. She hawt. NOVEMBER 20, 2009Off The Beat's Lollipop is such cheating. It's entertaining, yes, but somehow it's no longer a cappella. Because of their popularity and subsequent fundraising ability, they have too much money to spend on high production values, drum machines, voice filtering and autotune for their recordings. Drum machines are somehow a betrayal of a cappella, as is AutoTune. Of course, AutoTuns is doing the Lil Wayne song like Lil Wayne does it... but that begs the question, are you covering the song, or doing an exact remake? As far as I can tell, the track is a remake in all ways except for not having Lil Wayne perform it. If they use AutoTune on any other track, shame on them. Nuff said. Saw a screening of Ninja Assassin yesterday. Movie execs want you to see advance screenings and then post positive, glowing reviews that drive people to see the movie when it finally comes out. So are they going to get that from me? Hell yes. I can actually see how downloading it and watching it at home would have subtracted from the movie experience. Simple enough story, but the exposition was done well enough that it wasn't painful. Most ninja movies come out bad. This one had some top-notch backing so they had lots of money to pay for nicely choreographed and CGId fight scenes, including one on a highway. A little ludicrous that ninjas would get that desperate, but I guess if they're losing their cover... Tonight (well, actually writing the day after), saw a pretty good production of Curtains. Pretty good Singers' productions... I've seen some terrible shows over the years. This one was supposedly a gigantic "hot" mess but cleaned itself up Wednesday. If that's true, then kudos.... Whoever lost his/her temper and gave the "clean this shit up already" speech should be given a pat on the back and a pay raise. Cassidy was wonderful (always in those fancy gowns... typecast as the ingenue a lot?), as was the lieutenant and his approaching-Boston accent. Veronica Decker was great, and I think I'd like to see more of her. Everybody else did solidly competent jobs and the singing and pit was quality. Nice job, Anastasia. She had bitched about it for weeks and she pointedly told me to go drunk, which I did, and fortunately for them, I didn't actually need to be. It was fine. Rivera was the straightest I've ever seen him (and I've seen him far too many times in just underwear), and HALF my cast was in this show. Stupid Singers, stealing my cast (or lucky us, from another perspective). Singers will be in trouble if Anastasia leaves, or if there are any more morale issues... hopefully putting on a good production will solve some of those so they can hold on till next year, when they can clear away the old and in with the new? NOVEMBER 19, 2009
Dudes attempt to pose on a beach in the Caribbean. Fail. 
Cruise crew, minus Norvia. Lok-ka from Glee Club asked me to consult on a project he was doing on Bing. I wrote him a reply, pasted below. While we are not an advertiser, we utilize search marketing on behalf of advertisers. It is unlikely that Bing will overtake Google, even though Microsoft has deep pockets. Noting last quarter profits, Microsoft made more than double than Google. That money making ability has not bought it any traction in the search market... they weren't able to merge or purchase (ie, failed bid at Yahoo) their way into the market, so they finaly sat down and built some new technology to compete with Google. Without looking at the technology, we can see from numbers that its reach is impressive thus far. It has almost 10% of the market, according to a Comscore report from yesterday. Its next highest competitor, Yahoo, is only 8 points higher and is losing traffic to Microsoft. As a contender, Microsoft can possibly overtake Yahoo. What does this mean for advertisers? All advertisers care about is that their sales go up after investing in advertising. As a marketer for these advertisers, I care about being able to place the ads in front of as many people as possible in order for the probability and overall volume of sales driven by me to go as high as possible. Thus, we pay Google and Yahoo to place our ads/search results on their engines, and rely on the bid system to get as fair a market price as possible. While we shouldn't compare to Google, we can compare to Yahoo which, again, is closest to Microsoft. We, and other search engine marketers, do a lot of business with Yahoo and make a lot of money from it. If an up and coming contender like Bing has volume approaching that of Yahoo, we can use that as a parallel for our possible earnings - probability dictates that we can earn a converse amount from Bing. Now, online advertising is only possible if Bing continues to allow search advertisers to bid on advertising placement. If that part is ever removed or changed in certain ways, it can make Bing an unprofitable place to market. For example, look at Facebook. They recently disallowed certain kinds of mobile and certain kinds of health and financial offers from being advertised on Facebook. They have to cater to their own particular set of members, so it may have been in Facebook's best interest to remove offers that would make Facebook seem like a low quality environment - but for those advertisers, Facebook suddenly became a pretty crap place to try and advertise. Policy changes like that on Bing would affect profitability. Bing is unlikely to limit in the same way that Facebook does, but you can compare to what Google already does. In China and in other countries that request such cooperation, Google doesn't show certain search results that are politically sensitive or illegal, etc. Yahoo cooperates to an even higher degree. This, of course, limits profits, but it is a more practical alternative than being banned by the government of those countries. Bing should work on building their search technologies further, and spend as much money on advertising as they can. They have tons of useful tools that Google doesn't have. For example, stock quotes are not a Google property and so search results do not reflect what a stock investor wants to look for. Embarrassingly, Google has to go and display Yahoo's Finance page as a search result for one to go delve into the right material. Instead, Bing immediately shows you the current quote plus other indices that an investor might look for after typing in the stock symbol into the search box. There are other things they can fight Google on, including stuff like celebrity indices (that's a top search category), current headlines, translating services (into even tiny, odd languages), social network updates (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), references, etc. Bing HAS to build all these up and persuade users to try these services at least once, even if they have to incentivize people to do so. I use Google's new language translator a lot, as it's the only tool out there that works in all the languages I need it to. If there was something even minutely better, I'd switch. What else can they do? As Microsoft has a lot of money, they can work on ad campaigns to chip away at Google's "do no evil" mantra, much like they've done with Apple and their Too Cool for You image problems. They have to keep buying out smaller search engines, and most importantly, they have to make a concerted effort to buy up search marketing companies so they have a power base on the other side of the table as well. By leveraging their volume to other search engines like Yahoo and Google, they can start bending things their way. AOL has a lot of online leverage not because of their old ISP capabilities, but because they bought into online advertising early on, and they've rebuilt some of their presence by utilizing the volume of traffic towards better deals with the search engines and increased access to premium advertisers. The added advantage of learning the gameplay from the marketing side is that the parent company will then know how to compete... they can change their rates and methods to apply to what the marketers need most, and the advertisers may be more likely to work with Bing if they're comfy with Microsoft's marketing agencies having done well for them with other search engines. In other news, my first 30-something last week. HOLLA. NOVEMBER 18, 2009
Nancy and I at HOTPOT! DROOL! 
Overseeing Company rehearsal! This article has me peeved: Class-action lawsuit against Facebook and Zynga. Essentially, the setup is this. To get in-game cash on one of the Facebook apps (which can be used to buy in-game content, like costumes for your character, or particular items), these game app designers utilize offers from outside advertisers. If User A does offer X, then advertiser A pays $Y for that lead... and a portion of $Y goes to pay for the in-game content, the rest being profit. This is how the Facebook apps monetize. The "problem" is that the offers the user is given the choice of doing tend to be mobile offers, in this case an IQ quiz. The IQ quiz makes you answer a few questions, and then register your mobile number to get your IQ results. This costs $9.99 and is auto-recurring monthly, two particular terms that are laid out on the IQ quiz landing page if you choose to read it. Which most people don't. The issue with this lawsuit is that the Facebook app provider (Zynga in this case) and Facebook did not WARN people it would cost $9.99 on the Facebook end. EVEN THOUGH you have to leave Facebook and the app in order to do the offer (click on the link, and you go to a third-party site), and then the offer itself has the terms laid out there. So essentially, not only does Facebook and Zynga have to treat users like idiots and explain every single thing, but they also have to take responsibility for items on a third-party site (which happen to be within the bounds of the law and pretty clear). It's like that McDonalds coffee lawsuit... now all the cups have to say WARNING: This Coffee is HOT. As if the coffee would be cold otherwise. Since I am involved in affiliate marketing, I am a little biased on this issue. I deal with these offers all the time, and yes, sometimes thes advertiser fails to make the terms clear, or makes it impossible to find, or does something tricky like white text on a white background so that the user won't notice it's there. However, when the terms are clear as can be and only require you actually take the time to read it, that becomes the user's fault. On the Internet, we have to have several assumptions about our users. First, we assume they're not idiots and can read. (A side issue is whether all sites should have audio-enabled or Braille-enabled on certain computers, for blind people. But setting aside that issue...) Second, we assume that the users are of age. There's only so far marketers can go to ensure that visitng users are over 13... are you 13 or older? Check this box to agree. Are you 18 or older? Click this link to proceed. Therefore, if you get to the mobile number entry page, we assume a) you can read and b) you're old enough. Additionally, you need to submit a PIN to agree, so that ensures that the user owns the cellphone in question and therefore has agreed to all the terms. This is the process, and this is the area where users actually sign up for the recurring charge they supposedly may not have agreed to. So who is responsible if the person gets random charges? Of course the IQ Quiz provider. But who's getting sued in this case? NOT the IQ Quiz provider. Did the class-action lawsuit allege they were in any way responsible? Hmm, no. If this was a fair lawsuit, then the IQ Quiz provider should be named as a co-defendant since they're the ones that are actually directly responsible for the charge. Some people would mention that the Facebook app provides in-game cash so they're responsible for something... well, the Facebook app gets informed by the advertiser's systems that user A completed the offer, and thus they can go ahead and provide Reward Z to user A - so here too, it's the advertiser (IQ Quiz provider) that is directly responsible for informing of lead completion. So why aren't the advertisers being named? It's a perilous issue since there are many items in play. First of all, the FTC and attorney-generals of several states have proceeded against ringtone and other mobile content providers for the last decade for false or misleading advertising. That's why all the current ringtone and mobile content pages in the US all have the disclaimers with warnings of cost and recurring, and why the word "free" is no longer banded around in relation to ringtones. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So the lawsuit can't actually hold the IQ Quiz provider responsible if they're in line with current FTC statutes. Second, the mobile phone companies would prefer that these outside providers not exist so they could be directly responsible for all ringtone purchases and such. They can limit customer complaints, and not have to deal with reversing charges for stuff the content providers did that they'd have to keep tabs on. They haven't been able to do that yet, but the day is coming - many mobile content providers have ahd to slowly limit their US operations to deal with enormous fees the mobile phone companies are leveraging on them or the regulatory issues forced on them by certain mobile phone companies. The point is, it wouldn't do to muddy the waters by having mobile content providers held liable for stuff that the mobile phone companies would want to do for themselves later! Third, it comes down to personal responsibility, something that the class-action lawsuits have a hard time at managing. Mostly, I think these class-action lawsuits are just taking advantage of the law for easy bucks. It is a given fact that a common trend in current US society is for people to have their hands held all the time, and sue at every opportunity to ensure somebody is always at fault except for me (the general me, not ME). This is a mindset that I generally do not like, as the original American ethic contains elements of individuality and personal responsibility. As a culture, we lose a lot if everyone is responsible but me (well, guess where we are!). Let's blame credit card debt on the credit cards and advertisers...those sneaky enablers. What is advertising doing making me want those sneakers I can't afford or that plasma TV that will bankrupt me?). Let's blame our foreclosures and loan default on the mortgage salesmen who forced me to get a house I can't afford. Let's blame my getting cancer on those cigarette companies who made it seem so cool. Let's blame McDonald's for serving coffee so hot that I burned myself while driving with it in my lap. Yes, these people fooled you with their slick words and their mass appeal, but as a consumer, are you an idiot? Don't you have a sense of personal judgment, and a lick of common sense? Shouldn't you review your finances before making dumb purchases? Shouldn't you know that hot food and drink is hot, so therefore, be careful? Why does somebody else have to be responsible if you're an idiot? So this comes back to why do people need to be told explicitly that a mobile offer will cost them $9.99 on Facebook's and the social application's side, when all they need to do is click to the offer landing page and read it for themselves? Well, if you did notice - there are certain other trial offers listed as part of the "scams". Granted, these can be greasy as stated... the issue is usually not that they didn't inform of the costs, but that it's almost impossible to cancel. That, however, is also a matter for the advertiser of that particular product. FOr example, if I click on a Blockbuster ad on the New York Times website, and I get cheated by Blockbuster, do I sue or file customer complainst with the BBB against the New York Times for running the Blockbuster ad? No. I would sue Blockbuster, as they are DIRECTLY responsible (this is just an example, Blockbuster is not guilty of anything by my knowledge). You can't sue every person in the chain as an enabler... if you could, you'd tangle up the system with all sorts of frivolous lawsuits and make the marketplace very unfriendly to any innovation whatsoever. God help us if that was ever the case. In this case, the New York Times profited because I clicked on the ad from their site - but was it that to me? Can they do anything about my being cheated (other than pulling the ad)? No. I'd be a profiteering ass. This runs parallel to Facebook and Zynga being sued because they profited off of running the advertising. They SHOULDNT run scammy advertisers, if the advertiser is indeed pulling a scam, as their reputation would rightfully suffer... but they can't be legally responsible for it. In any case, the $5 million would probably mostly go to the lawyers, and then cheated users, if they could get to enough of them, would get like a $2 return. WOOHOO. One last thing: I mentioned cigarettes and cancer earlier. While most people would think, oh, well they certinaly led to the cancerous deaths of millions of people and added to health costs in our underwater nation... that's beside the point. In the first half of the 20th century, every major media organization AND the American Medical Association (plus other still highly regarded medical journals or owners of medical journals) ran advertising that said that cigarettes were cool, cigarettes were HEALTHY for you, that DOCTORS smoked cigarettes so you should to, that cigarettes were PURE as the water you drink (if it were as pure as the Hudson.... blecch.). So as another parallel, if Facebook and Zynga should be held responsible for trials and mobile offers shortchanging people because they profited off the advertising... then perhaps we should sue every major media organization and the American Medical Association for profiting off of cigarette companies who sold cancer-causing products? Balls, you would say. You can't win that one. And even if you did, what would you achieve? Nothing. Except the lawyers would get a lot of dime. NOVEMBER 17, 2009Media consumption this week: Almost done Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Not bad video game actually, though story-wise a bit skimpy. Not sure about replay value either... if it were longer, had more choices within the player arc and perhaps some melee rounds available, this might have been a solid title. Just finished John Dickson Carr's The Emperor's Snuff Box. I read a lot of classic titles that can be pretty hard to find - and thank god for Amazon's sellers. Without some of these people with extensive old paperback collections that they're trying to unload, I wouldn't be able to read some of this stuff. Edmund Crispin, John Dickson Carr, Cyril Hare, Christianna Brand... all these AMAZING mystery writers (better than a good majority of the current "big" mystery writers) are OUT of print and have been for at least 15 years. Some titles have been out of print for 40-50 years or more, and these are US editions I'm talking about. I have no idea about the rest of the world. That kind of annoys me that some media content should be SO hard to get. I can find polka recordings from the 1930s much more easily than I can some of these old books... though of course there are priceless recordings that I'll never be able to get either. I read this article a few months ago about the difficulties of audio file transference - cultural historians were attempting to preserve old wax recordings of opera that were in the basement of the Paris Opera House, and the problem was that one attempt to read the wax would also destroy it. Talk about your limited use license. I felt a little pang of loss after reading that article. Amazing performances of operas as conducted by their composers, and some LOST operas as well, and I will probably never get to hear them. But imagine being the people in the room when they play it for the first (and possibly only) time in a century! Back to the book. Very simple case, but extremely tight plotting and every single clue is out in plain sight if you pay attention. THe ending is genius and a surprise, and it actually benefits one to go back and re-read the evidence. Everything is there... and doesn't rely on any tricks or gigantic leaps of faith. It also has the benefit of being in a 1940s setting, a well-defined location and a very insightful psychological and sociological analysis of sexual and emotional double standards. Relationships in most detective novels are very thin, stereotypical affairs - more of a device than a character of the story. But here, we actually have a realistic treatment of a woman's affair with two solidly different type of men, and this accuracy and relatability have a very direct effect on how the plot develops and why-dunit. Very good, and not very long either... a nice and quick one-day read. Re-listened to the soundtrack of Paris 36. That movie is still pretty unknown - even though it did have enough cred to come out at the Ritz here in Philly, where almost no one went to see it - and it does deserve some recognition. It won awards, yadda yadda, but even more than that, it's a GOOD musical movie. THere are few of those, and the ones that are out there spend so much on celebrities that the music and the direction suffer for it. The story has some rote elements, but that's to be expected in a feel-good musical (movie). What's most interesting to me is how the movie transitions in and out of the musical bits, and if it's very obviously a different part. In some musical movies, it really seems like two separate parts edited together (read: Chicago, not that Chicago wasn't enjoyable). It's also very audibly the actors voices doing the songs, very well, without any autotune, standins or over-production. Ahem, Glee (for such an awesomely talented cast, why do they HAVE to use so much Autotune on the numbers? It's just a little ridiculous... and the fact that they only introduced Broadway numbers starting episode 8. And a tangent on Lea Michele: here's her doing Life of the Party from one of the best musicals of the last 20 years, The Wild Party.). In my spare moments, I imagine staging songs I like, and the one impossibility of doing Paris 36 as a stage show (even if we could get any rights) or even as one-off solo numbers in not-for-profit concerts, is that WHERE can you find as talented an accordionist as you do in the movie? I mean, they don't grow on trees. It also helps that "Douce" is hot. One of the most joyous big cheesy musical numbers is in this movie. Of course, its done tongue in cheek (they're doing a big cheesy stage number in the movie, so there's the "awareness" factor). 
Sarah Polley from Avonlea and Nora Arnezeder from Paris 36. Still watching TV on my desktop. Why do I bother having a TV? For Rock Band only, at this point. I finished watching the last episode of Glee and that inspired me to look for some numbers regarding commercials. It's already pretty common news that each episode is around $3 million. Apparently, each 30 second spot costs advertisers somewhere around $127k given the number of viewers (7-8 mill), so advertising revenue for that slot is $4.3 mill... pretty sweet profit on that. Comparatively, most shows are $2 mill or less, and take 7 days to shoot an ep rather than Glee's 10 days... which obviously goes to choreography and recording the numbers in the studio (which they then lipsync to on set, I hear). Still, they're getting less viewers than old standbys CSI and The Mentalist who each have 15 mill a week. CBS is doing a lot of traffic with those great old shows, and their Survivor Samoa has the top viewership in the 8 PM slot. Which just boggles me. Celeb buzz shows like Gossip Girl get 2 mill, which is pretty peanuts. But then again, they have much more social impact than the crime shows, which usually benefits older people or working people who like something comfy to watch that doesn't make them feel out of their league or angry at those hippies on their lawn. What did bug me was that Fringe gets less than 2 mill per ep and Greys Anatomy, which was a good show until it turned soap opera, gets 13 mill. Rewarding crap. Bah! Flash Forward is a reasonably decent show which gets a nice viewership every week. I like these mildly scifi shows... though as a rule, I don't tend towards geeking out the more scifi it gets. In that spirit, I like V - not because there are aliens, but it's aliens in a human setting. It's human drama with identity, loyalty, honor as the main issues. The aliens and future tech are sidelines, not the focus. 
Why do I watch The Mentalist? I've also picked up foreign shows because some are really good... I like cop shows, so Rush from Australia and The Fixer were two new quality entries for me. I also like a little drama (bc they usually have hot chicks of course) so Being Erica from Canada is on the list (oh man, Erin Karpluk in all her various forms, bam bam BAM), Trinity from the UK (which has some Skins actors and is BASICALLY Skins for private school nobs), Being Human from the UK (loves the vampires... and ghosts... and werewolves... in anonymous British suburbs!) and still one of my fave shoes, Spooks UK... they do the spy thriller justice, even though I hate that their seasons are short. There's also Regenesis from Canada, which is the only successful drama (in my mind) to seriously take into account high science developments, current events and politics. You'll actually come out better informed about the state of science today, and it had really interesting storylines, like the one about smallpox exposure due to digging up a frozen corpse (which... actually did happen). Of course, the show is gone now but it was exactly as described during its run. That's something Canadian shows have tended to do better: blend political and social conflict into serious TV dramas... so if you haven't, watch Flashpoint, The Border and Intelligence. There's also other gems, like Road to Avonlea (mmm, Sarah Polley, had a crush on her when I was 6 or 7 and I guess I still do... watch Siblings if you haven't, or Go. Drool. I have both.), Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas (pretty hilarious... sitcom about a bumpkin town), Robson Arms (bc I used to live in Vancouver and like seeing shows that USE the place... re: Intelligence again), Degrassi. Even The Listener, which was kind of like The Mentalist but the hero could actually hear your thoughts... that one was pretty amusing during its run. It was also obviously Toronto. I like that, when cities are not standins for other cities. Though honestly, most TV shows and movies these days are being filmed in Vancouver or Toronto so it's pretty hard to get away from that tendency. I wanna catch more Australian stuff but it's just hard to find, even for someone that downloads a lot of stuff (all legal, of course). 
Intelligence and Hustle. I might have monologued about some of these shows before, but it's always worth ranting :) And there's so many more! Hotel Babylon from the UK: such a well-acted and visually very interesting show about the doings of a boutique hotel in London catering to the rich and famous. Helps that it's hilarious and classy (the extremely elegant thing is just not done in US shows, or perhaps not liked by US audiences... the storylines always end up getting too tawdry, ahem Dirty Sexy Money, and elegant usually implies cold douchebag whenever a character of the sort appears). Hustle from the UK was great for the first 4 seasons. I love crime shows, and one with clever criminals that do classy crimes of wit... well, you got me. Oh, and Later... with Jools Holland is always a must-see. Great live shows, and ALL for music, so not little interludes like on the Morning Show or late night talk shows. Oh man, their lineups are awesome. Take one lineup from a few weeks ago: Maxwell / Stereophonics / Diana Krall / Wild Beasts / The Unthanks / Ellie Goulding & Starsmith. Or Priscilla Ahn / Lily Allen / Depeche Mode / Raphael Saadiq / Sonic Youth / Taj Mahal. Or Fleet Foxes / Al Green / The Killers / Little Boots / Monkey: Journey to the West / Pendulum. Man... thank god for the BBC, I say. One day, I want to attend Hootenanny. Sigh. Live music... some days I wish I was in a band again. NOVEMBER 16, 2009Other shows I've worked on at Penn that are on YouTube (unfortunately, not that many): Independent, October 2009: "Four Jews in a Room Bitching" from Falsettos.
I also have DVDs and CDs of many other productions... unfortunately scattered around. I have a particularly good entire rehearsal runthru of Elegies, though it's a 300 MB file and requires some editing before I can distribute it. After reading a few poignant articles and factchecking some of the crazy details: So experts estimate that GE discharged 10 million plus pounds of PCBs into the hudson between 1947 and 1977. Today, they're finding PCB levels of 44000 PPM at towns downriver. The EPA negotiated with GE to clean up the shit after 1992. GE didn't, and still seems like it doesn't, wanna pay the $1-2 billion to clean it up though its posted $130 billion in profits since 1992. As one of the EPA concessions to GE, they are allowed to and will be dumping all the dredged PCB-infiltrated rock onto "Hill 78", a site 50 ft from an elementary school. PCB levels at the site are 120,000 ppm and will obv rise after more dumping. "High" levels of PCBs in people are 6 ppm. Interestingly, 1996 gold standard study found kids of people who had exposure to low levels of PCBs for 6 years before giving birth ended up dumber and with severe mental issues compared to kids from parents who weren't exposed. It's likely that kids at this elementary school will be... for lack of a better word... retarded. President of GE is on President Obama's Economic Recovery advisory board. Yay GE! The US uses certain tribes as Afghan security because they're extremely efficient... and why? Because its good business - they're controlling their drug smuggling operations that net each of the warlords $50 million a year or more. They have their own private prisons and armies financed entirely on drug money, and they routinely kill people who get in the way aka the other tribes and Taliban. what's even more crap is that these same tribes are also the ones that were put in place to keep order right after the soviets occupied afghanistan (apparently called the Mujahideen Nights), and who were responsible for thousands of murders and kidnappings and the "worst" fallout of foreign occupancy in the last 60 years. it took how long to get those guys out of power, and they're back thanks to this war. So because of all this, foreign intervention is hated even more: the US and other interventionary forces allow drugs to run rampant, the people are ruled by the same criminals who tortured and killed before, there is no equality since certain tribes have all the power and massacre all the other tribes... As such, the Taliban tends to be the group people turn to since they're least corrupt. (Its also rumored that the CIAs operations in these countries are financed by heroin, which tends to strengthen the argument that the US is purposely turning a blind eye and why the poppy trade is STILL growing from afghanistan). Interestingly, in 1986 there were 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. If McChrystal had got his way, we've had 108,000 there. Numbers don't explicitly state a parallel, but it's still a little telling... especially when stats also show that older Americans favor sending more troops to Afghanistan than do younger people, suggesting that old people don't learn from the mistakes of history (ahem, ahem, let's include Vietnam). Just as a note, I am not arguing that the current war in either Iraq or Afghanistan is a bad idea. My stance is that we are there, and if it was a mistake to begin with, we cannot unravel it simply and easily. We will have to fight it out and accomplish something before we leave the country to rule itself... though if I were to rewind time, I'd say please save us the tax dollars and the short attention span and NOT go to war, so we could have focused on what really is going to sink us more than any terrorist: health care reform and financial reform. McKinsey reports state that the US spends 3 times on health insurance what a comparably wealthy country SHOULD be paying for health insurance, suggesting that we're getting shafted... since so many people are not getting any care at all, and are unable to get covered because of pre-existing conditions (47 million people strong and growing!). And there are supposedly 8 states in these great United States where insurance companies are allowed to consider SPOUSAL ABUSE a pre-existing condition. God help the veterans if the Armed Forces start considering "going through the punches" during training as non-coverable pre-existing conditions. NOVEMBER 15, 2009
Penn Players Presents: Company
Book by George Furth
Thursday 11/12 at 8:00 pm
Yes, I'm posting this AFTER I finished another show. I'm real pleased with the show this semester. I had an extremely talented cast, a great pit band, and luckily - enough time to rehearse the pit and cast together before the show! By the time we got to our first performance, we'd run the show 5 or 6 times with the pit. Liz and Nick Thomas were able to make it, as did a bunch of my family and friends. Unfortunately, the show times meant I ended up missing all of Glee's shows! Oh well - the GCGC was great. I met up with Neha for 30 minutes (still something, eh), Chris, Alex, Mike, Rob (at the afterparty and at my house), Steve, Elise and a bunch of others. I actually kinda wanted to see some of old Glee contingent that I don't see any more: Miranda (well, we'll always have Jean-Georges), Liederbach (married), David (married), Abe (married)... hmm I sense a pattern here. Guess the wives are keeping em busy. Or whipped :) The director came from LaSalle... pretty interesting how different the theatre arts program is there. At Penn, we have the Annenberg, which begrudges students the space it uses up and the blow their professional reputation takes by having students in the building. Sigh. Apparently, this institutional haughtiness came about after being forced into the Penn family by a reduction of Annenberg fund money back a few decades; taking Penn money meant taking Penn directions, which included making room for student activities. Because we rely on Annenberg staff and hours, we have to operate by a rigid set of rules and limited hours. At LaSalle and Villanova, they can apparently spend all night in the theatre and do all sorts of dangerous things like hang lights without supports... since their universities wholly own the buildings and also turn more or less a blind eye to any shit going on in the theatre. There are also much less student theatre groups on their campuses, so each single group gets way more funding. Thus, they can afford to pay higher salaries (possibly justified by the distance it would take Center City professionals to make it out there). They also have fully professional directors and music directors, which is like Penn Players, but unlike the rest of the groups on campus. There are other differences I kinda remember from conversations, but I abstain from putting them down by way of mentioning I may be fuzzy on the details... Oh, Company. Personally, I found the script very uneven in tone and depth. There's one real character and all the rest are caricatures. Some of the difficulty is playing each one so that they're a well-defined character but NOT a caricature, as the script would have the actor do. So it's easy for a Joanne to become too much of a sarcastic drunk stiff-neck, instead of finding that good and evil balance. Is the show a comedy or a drama? Or a dramedy? Well, it's pretty uneven. 3/4 of the show is hilarious, and 1/4 is very serious... now while this should be the way the character arc follow for somebody who goes from the shallow view to the dangerous dark waters of loneliness vs. relationship restraint... it's still confusing to an audience. They have enought rouble figuring out that Bobby is having ONE birthday, not four. The similar lines are supposed to hint at that, but the comedy and cancan numbers and such draw attention to the glitz and take concentration off the real themes. You'd have to watch the show a few times in order to soak it all in. Wonderful songs though - even if the pit band doesn't get very much chance to jam. Our little jam number (Night Club) was 30 seconds, and then cut to 20 seconds... and the whole pit begged for a chance to do more on the number. I said no. It would distract. And what a waste! Great band. We had a violinist who did state orchestra type things in high school and Harrisburg Youth Orchestra (both of which I know are musically valuable since I was active in that realm). We had a dedicated drummer, though pretty cavalier about showing up on time. Anastasia took up the slack on the reeds. And I better mention Max, Barton, Theresa, Annassa, Becky, Steve and Robbie... all talented, and good at following me and keeping track of cues and where they are without over-direction from me. We cast the show well. our couples were really couply (though one tended to divorce) and the girlfriends were, personality-wise, exactly the same in person as they were in the show. Well, Missy isn't dumb... but they all played their parts really naturally. A lot of little things I would say needed fixing up, but seeing as we only had a very short weekend run, it's water under the bridge. Will is a great actor and singer BUT he likes to do the quiet and intense rather than push it out, and rush key scenes... a leading man needs to know how to project at all times, and learn stage timing. Nice outing, however, for a freshman, and he has plenty of chances to keep growing (especially in confidence) in the next 3 years. Jody gets lost in the character and can overplay the character in her songs. Musicals are different from plays in that you cannot approach the same level of seriousness, since the songs are not just character pieces but an art object in itself - so they must have some element of pretty! The sarcastic old bat should never completely vanquish the musical theatre vibrato. Cassidy needs to enunciate - not an easy job as Amy, but has to be done nevertheless since without understanding the words, the whole song is futile. Corey needs to sound less nervous when doing his lines, and he possibly should have tried to add more bass into his character voice. Other people had less important issues. While these issues would have to be resolved with a longer run show, I was extremely happy with what we had for a short run show. Each person hit the character, understood their part and their interaction with others, played the part maturely (hard when you're half the character age) and sang the songs like they meant it. If they read this, so much the better for them. Here's the cast list: Robert --- Will Connell
If you're in the mood, here's a clip of the opener from Act II. It's a bootleg from Will's parents. He also posted other songs from Company: Marry Me A Little, Being Alive, and Ladies Who Lunch. Hopefully I can post more links as we get other sections of the show uploaded! I was glad to get even just these videos as I'm playing Keyboard 1 on stage the entire time, so I never get to watch the show with all the production elements included UNTIL the video(s) is/are released. APRIL 16, 2009First things first: Quadramics Presents: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Book by Bert Shelove and Larry Gelbart
Thursday 4/16 at 8:00 pm
I'll be done that show in about three days. In the news section, I post a castlist but it's changed since February. (Proteans: Reni Ellis, Rebecca Levine, Saraleah Cogan. Courtesans: Andrea Kohn, Christina Mancheno, Cass Ichniowski, EJ Baker and Allison Karic.) Everything's come together well... I have a good cast, a good pit, all technical issues fixed up before day of show... I'm happy. The show's pretty funny too, and the technical aspects (set, lights, sound, costumes) are all pretty well managed this time. I've gotta say I was not impressed with Reefer Madness, but I think this show is a lot more disciplined and well-cast. Somebody said today that Eileen even emotes Kristen Bell better. Mwahahaha. Though I've really enjoyed this show and will miss working with the people on it, I'll be glad to be past it. When it's done, I'll have finished up a month and a half of solid stress - working through a tax audit, redoing all our books and accounting mechanisms, rehearsing a show, dealing with lawyers, lawyers, lawyers. And of course the usual "wtf happened to the server" issues, which is my next stress point. Though fortunately, I only worry about outcomes since I won't be doing any of the server management and configuration. We're getting new servers that will better handle the ramped up traffic we've been receiving the last few weeks (!) than the laggy service we're getting now. In other news: Rebecca is moving back into Philadelphia, as is Alex. Olivia's going home next week. I'm co-purchasing another house in Philadelphia. Rachel lives even closer to me (though I have yet to say boo) and Dave is pretty close to me as well. With Dave, that's 3 people I've talked to in the last month who want to get into the film industry real badly. Dave's working on some M. Night Shyamalan movie right now; Saraleah wants some production assistant job in LA; and Andrea's graduating and becoming a film editor in LA or somewhere else that needs her skills. She worked for a company that made her watch movies and shows and code their content. I was like, I'd want that job... but then I'd probably actually watch the stuff and forget about the coding. A bunch of people I know got married this past year... man, how time flies. I'm going to Miami and another cruise in August. Assad gets married in August in Lahore and I want to attend the ceremony and pig party in Islamabad, but I don't have the time to spend. And frankly, I'm just a tad nervous about going to Pakistan right now... I'm also going to Hartford some time this summer so I can chill with Lisa, whose company just got re-funded by USAID and so she'll be staying around. I can't wait to outdoors it. Neha seems to hate Boston, so I told her we'd hang when I went to CT and Maine; she could come hang in the wilderness for a while. Though fitting a peacock into a backpack might be a stretch. I'm also planning on attending an Adwords seminar next month, and hitting up AdTech NY and/or Chicago, as well as Affiliate Summit NY and Las Vegas whenever those are. Once we change out the servers, we can really start ramping up more traffic for the Unlocker! I love the theme from Dollhouse, even if I think the show kind of sucks. It has a great premise but I think they could have done it better. Anyway, the theme is by Jonatha Brooke and entitled "What You Don't Know". Her last album, The Works, takes the lyrics of Woody Guthrie (this land is our land) and sets music to it. Pretty nice actually, it's real relaxing. Adult contemporary, stuff that plays on NPR and hits up World Cafe. That song, All You Gotta Do is Touch Me, is pretty hot. Been listening to lots of music lately, and I hit up this Somalian artist named K'naan. He's pretty good... he has this one duet with Nelly Furtado (on YouTube somewhere) that's pretty chill. He gets in a harder groove with If Rap Gets Jealous with the guitarist from Metallica. And there's that Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent. I gotta say, the emotional design of that one episode is going to be hard to match. Take one really ugly person ("never been kissed"), make tons of fun of her, show people laughing at her, show her self-confidence despite everything - and then show her singing an amazing solo. Yes, there's other good singers out there, but the emotional artifacts of this ugly duckling story make for a greater narrative. One more great song: New in Town (Fred Falke Vocal Remix) - Little Boots. I wanna take you out tonight, I wanna make you feel alright, I don't have a lot of money but we'll be fine, no I don't have a penny but I'll show you a good time... oh man, so jealous of Lexie, who went to see MSTRKRFT and Sebastien Tellier at TLA and the Starlight this month already, and JV who went to see Death Cab for Cutie while the rest of us were rehearsing. Bah, missing some great, great concerts. Oh, planning on seeing Star Trek, Terminator, Harry Potter, Transformers all at KoP IMAX next couple weeks. Just thought I'd put it out there if anyone wanted to go too. FEBRUARY 23, 2009I finished transcribing a zillion playlists and revamping the playlist section of the site. I've worked long and hard on so many playlists over the years and most of them are gone - deleted when I reformatted or my drive crashed or when my desktop was stolen, or altered by my nefarious capacity for editing old playlists and then realizing the changes weren't half as good as the original, or mis- or not labeled such that I have no idea who or what did the song. Instead, I'm putting my playlists up and leaving them there so I can look back 5 years from now and say, that was dope once upon a time and now it's only for neo-emopunk (whatever that is... I'm sure someone some day will do it) tools. Some of the music is amazingly free to get on the Web if you only look, some are on mixtapes you can't even buy at most stores even if you wanted to, and some are just from foreign countries and a hell of an annoyance to get in the US without raping your piggy bank every time you want a $40 import. Let's start with the "indie" playlists. It's hard to really pin down what indie is. For me, I just use the term to refer to all the dreampop/folk/newwave/neo-disco/bubblegumpop/acoustic/surfmuzik and various downtempo things. Includes lots of lower-energy pieces though sometimes it's just weird music. There are some true indie artists on there that haven't "sold out" or went "Idol"... Ellie Goulding, Feist, Stars, Fiona Apple, Ben Sollee... also a bunch of foreign artists and whatnot. If you can get the songs for yourselves, please do - they're really awesome and are great for getting calmed down. I play them while I'm stressed and need some relaxation while I work. Linkme: INDIE PLAYLIST 4 Linkme: INDIE PLAYLIST 5 Linkme: INDIE PLAYLIST 6 Linkme: INDIE PLAYLIST 7 The jazz playlists I use a little less often. It's hard to find really good jazz that I don't fall asleep too. I usually listen when I'm reading at home and relaxing. This is very, very rare... the latest playlist is mostly samba type stuff, but there's a lot of straight jazz vocalists, big bands and soloists too. Two notable findings from the last month: Lily Frost from Canada and Melody Gardot from Philly. Lily does the theme song to Being Erica, and it's a great song - I found a spliced version of the theme on a Yahoo Answers board and damn, it hits the spot. But it's not jazz. Lily's latest solo album is, and it's freakin amazing. Same with Melody, her voice is perfect for jazz and it really does remind me of smoky rooms, cigarette smoke drifting, dames in fishnets and lots of brazen red lipstick, guys in fedoras. Ah. Linkme: JAZZ PLAYLIST 1 Linkme: JAZZ PLAYLIST 2 Linkme: JAZZ PLAYLIST 3 Thank god for the pre-roll playlists put out for Canadian stations. I get a lot of the rock selections off of those releases, and man it's good stuff. I also pull some stuff from the Warped tour, indie rock bands and random albums here and there. I like looking for good female rockers - it's hard to find. Flyleaf needs to put out more material, Paramore needs to get some more adult-oriented rock songs (though their songs right now are great... it's just attracting the teenyboppers in droves) and foreign countries need to put out better rock songs. I can find great foreign hiphop, pop, club music, etc. but rock... omg, you can't count stuff like Rammstein. Linkme: ROCK PLAYLIST 2 Linkme: ROCK PLAYLIST 3 Linkme: ROCK PLAYLIST 4 Linkme: ROCK PLAYLIST 5 Linkme: ROCK PLAYLIST 6 Pop playlists are real easy to put together. There's tons of great indie pop around, and of course there's lots of stuff that subs as pop that I lovingly include. I don't mind sellouts, as long as it sounds great. There's some great bands that don't get enough play here... stuff like Everybody Else, the Script, Jupter One, Two Door Cinema Club, The River, Tegan and Sara (Canadian!) and that KT Tunstall. She's great live... if you haven't seen her, you should. She's great. Her songs are really geared for acoustic performance and they're foot-stompin when done well. My fave "pop" song right now is HYPNTZ... I can't stop listening to it! It's the Umbrella riff with the lyrics of Biggie's Hypnotize but with a new beat and a new melody that plays off of Hypnotize. It's friggin awesome. Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 2 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 3 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 4 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 5 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 6 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 7 Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 8 OK, well that's enough for now. I still gotta worry about packing for Thursday, getting all my shit done so I can leave, getting in touch with a bunch of old friends (the Kristens, Rachel, Jessica, Assad, Rich), meeting some new possible business partners (thru Lexie, some guys from LAAS and Lime Projects), compiling taxes soon, dealing with my singers and instrumentalists, awaiting Olivia's arrival here... I'm also trying to be more sociable with my curren cast so that I leave my imprint on them. It's nice working with them to put on a great show, and it's great making new friends and acquaintances (even though they get progressively younger or that I'm getting progressively older), but it's the greatest to have somebody go on and remember your contribution to their lives. I guess it's like those old people who really want to be remembered for something. I do too - it's of no use being some sort of prodigy (which I've been considered to be several times, unfounded as it may be... since I gave up on the things I was supposed to be a prodigy at...) if you can't make some sort of real impact. I want to have a real impact. Not that it matters to anything, but I've grown a little more aggressive over the last few years. Maybe it's increased confidence, but whatever it is, I really notice the difference. I'm much more forceful and willing to express my opinions, I'm more aggressive than I used to be and I push myself harder in social situations. I'm finding myself to be more "cool" than I used to be, even though I was always damn cool :) It's not boasting - it's just pointing out how I've changed and wondering what caused the change. Success at work (making great money even in an economic downturn, mastering the art of the sell, maintaining steady growth and innovation, lasting this long against competitors who've fallen by the wayside)? Extended successes in performance (continuously called back to do more shows, in demand by lots of groups, valued highly in turn by musicians that I valued aka Monty)? More value in the eyes of people because of my material successes? Ugh, being armchair psychologist to oneself is a study in egotism. Let's just stop with the positives. The negatives are kinda bad - I've stopped working out, I actually go out a lot less than I used to, I am REALLY bad about staying in touch with friends and I've always needed work on the followthru. What is a strength is also a weakness. For example, I do a real strong sell at marketing conferences but then it's hard to follow through because of the amount of work. Yet, I promised a lot. The same with individual relationships. I promise a lot and then get lazy... in fact, that's pretty much the arc of my past gf's. I do amazing things the first couple dates and then I get lazy and become a no-call no-show NOT because I'm some player but because I don't motivate myself to follow through. It's how I've "lost" girls that I've really valued and really regret not doing more to keep. In my heart of hearts, I did want to keep them. A lot of this is the creativity thing. I love creating stuff, I love doing stuff that's new - keeping stuff going is a drag, as it's not entirely new and requires lots of repetition. But you need to be able to deal with repetition and routine! I mean, I do force myself to deal with it since that's what my work involves 90% of the time... I just have yet to apply that to my personal life. I'm getting together a mailing list, a Xmas card list, a birthday list and other things that I've been pretty shit about doing which normal people do all the time... I have to do a better job at retaining the people that are and were important in my life. The last word? I need to follow Elliot's advice (SCRUBS!!!). She's hot. FEBRUARY 21, 2009Linkme: POP PLAYLIST 1 A little hangover in the morning, then did a gig on campus for Harrison College House. They needed some jazz music for their Casino Night. Fairly standard college house event.. free food, some house-related prizes but more attractive RA/GA's than usual! There was this one chick... omg. Hah. Anyway, it went all right, got my money and left. Due to crap phone texting connections or whatnot, missed out on getting drinks with Rich and instead did a long walk back home. Guess I could have called up some of my peeps and went drinking or something... instead, I was infinitely more lame and went home and did work. The work was amazing, the fun not so. Tomorrow, I'll make up for it by getting some soondobu with Real Life, and then hopefully this coming week I'll get a few numbers. And then off to London! And apparently Caro is in Cali for 3 weeks, which I only happened to realize when I saw an entry on FB. Bah, I did tell her I was basically not getting out there any time soon. Great. FEBRUARY 20, 2009Linkme: INDIE PLAYLIST 3 I do a lot of looking around for new music. I was into the nouveau disco scene for a little while, and then trip-hop (after I found some modern alternatives to Portishead et al), and then dreampop and the new-acid jazz. There's nothing like listening to awesome songs and realizing that so few people out there actually know these songs... they should be out there! Not just on some mixtape or some weird hipster's blog or languishing on the bottom of the AmazonMP3 refuse pile and then dropped because nobody knew enough about it to buy it (note the no-review songs...). I'm still in love with the Ladyhawke album, but some of the songs off the '07 Moonbabies album is doing me right like a cheap hooker. The playlists I post on here are things I've lovingly crafted from my hard work. I could write a blurb on each song but then again I'm not a music blogger, I'm just a connoisseur and preferably, you'd think my word was law and just go out and find the songs yourself and listen to them regardless. Not all are easily available. First check came from our suit against that guy in Cali. Accounting errors in our favor as well... it's almost like we got all the good Chance cards in Monopoly! Content Unlocker doing super well, our competitors having a huge streak of bad luck and poor planning (and outright defamation, always a sign of desperation). They also have a lot of technical issues with their software, they need a good graphics designer really badly (I do aite work and mine's a thousand times better!) and their rates and conversion... well, it's a good thing we don't advertise that much or they'd be screwed! It helps that they advertise themselves really obviously on their software by posting a big ol' "Powered by..." notice on every instance of their software, while we don't put any pitches on our product. That way, users that access think the unlocker may be a natural part of the site - if the publisher customizes the unlocker with their graphics and text, it seems even more natural. That way, users are comforted and conversion rates go up. A lot of common sense and psychology goes into design, and it's great seeing it all work out :) A lot of interest from some new contacts interested in working with us. Got a couple new survey sites on board and building up some good traffic in alternative niches so that we're not putting all our eggs in one basket. It's good to be doing well - I'm looking forward to the summer, when we can work on a few more big projects and get even more diversity in our portfolio! Was deciding whether or not to go to the Metropolis party at the Barbary last night. Sounded super fun (also free open bar), except for it being all the way up in Fishtown. That's like so far away, and it was cold. Lexie was streetteam for the party... hope she's getting paid for all these party-promoting gigs she's got. I really want to see that Drunken Spelling Bee but can't make myself go to Bob and Barbara's. Some day. Instead, went to a party on campus with my cast and didn't feel at all bad about being the oldest person at the party. It was at the Fun Dumpster... where do they get these names? Met some good people (Megan), depended on the kindness of others for my half-costume (thanks Amanda, even tho epic fail on my part at trying to put on a toga), and shepherded around the terrible twins who aren't actually the same person (Annie and Jess). I brought some Skyy Melon I desperately wanted to get rid of and got brownie points with girls who thought it was great. I also brought some good Jamesons so I wasn't doing it all for cheap kicks :) I punched the ceiling and got ceiling dust in my eye. That wasn't particularly cool. Got kinda drunk but the cold air held it in abeyance till I got home and was like, oh. Oops, shouldnt have finished all the whisky. I actually drank a half liter of whisky yesterday MINIMUM... I'm trying to find pics that people took but I have no idea who did and if they uploaded, and scouring Facebook is not a solution. So not. And I don't even know the rules now... as someone a little older, can I FBFriend chicks I meet at college parties? Is this the point where it gets to be "that guy" even if there was no point where age was awkward and the girls in question may be just 2 years younger (which is totally nothing)? BAH, wish there was a handbook. Mike's company Unreal Marketing giving away all its CRT monitors. Wonder if people will take them up on those monsters... are people too spoiled or will they settle for a thick cube that takes up all their desk space? Heh. Privacy issues: 1) Facebook retracting its TOS changes... one thing that intrigued me was the ramifications of a TOS that doesn't require opt-in approval (as opposed to "if you keep using the service, you've agreed" so passive non-logging in means you agreed). So if Facebook snapshotted all the stuff on their database in those two days and said we can make a quick sell of everything we're allowed to sell at this exact moment (aka all people that didn't set their privacy settings to high), is it acceptable on the basis that the user didn't set their privacy beforehand and then never actually agreed to the new terms because they never logged in? Thus, even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to view the term changes. 2) New Zealand adopts 3 strikes law: if users get 3 complaints about infringing copyrighted works ("repeat infringers"), then ISP is obligated under law to remove service. However, the law is vague - these complaints need only be complaints, they don't need to be court convictions to prove they actually are repeat infringers. As a side note, all major music and movie companies have had complaints of copyright infringement, so they shouldn't have Internet service either. I logged into my old SN after AGES. Got back in touch with Rachel and Gracie, after a LONG time of not speaking. I mailed off a letter to Caroline not long ago, and I'm supposed to go to drinks with Rich soon. Got a FBchat msg from Jeff who's now in New Zealand - random. Assad is getting married in Pakistan, Sourabh's in the Netherlands learning stuff... yikes, there's too many people that I've lost track of. It's bad. And yet, every few months I post about how I'm losing track of people... I never change!!! FEBRUARY 11, 2009Linkme: HIPHOP PLAYLIST 7 The last time I wrote was in October, a long time ago. Wow. I'm bad about keeping up with the site... been drowned in work. Our latest tool is the Content Unlocker (info sheet). Well, long story short - I've been spending a lot of time developing and maintaining the tool and overseeing its growth. We're on a lot of entertainment sites and our placements are increasing. Good news for the company, bad news for me... WAY MORE WORK! As a side effect, we're attracting some attention from our partners and from our competitors. The good attention results in lots of unique, exclusive and high-converting offers for use that wouldn't normally be available to placements that offer any type of incentive. The bad attention is in defamation and negative publicity from, er, haters... heh. One of our competitors, in particular, keeps focusing a steady stream of libel and slander against us at the same time that they copy all our breakthroughs. It's fairly annoying trying to protect our product against defamation and possible copyright infringements from a competitor who is not happy about losing ground. I've also been hangin out a lot with New Life/Real Life people recently, a little less so with my other Philly peeps. I gotta balance it out more! Been pretty fun. Dave Ta's been teaching some new game called Spades and it's pretty fun. Also really complicated. Cheap and free movie tickets for the Bridge from John and Rankee, so got to see Notorious, My Bloody Valentine and He's Just Not Into You the last few weeks. The latter being a compromise for having seen My Bloody Valentine. Oh well, Scarlett was hot in it. Next trip is with Christine and Norman to see Berenstain Bears at the Walnut St. Theatre. Yes, it's for kids, but we're doing it anyway. I can't wait for the Where the Wild Things Are movie to come out. A live-action of Maurice Sendak would be great. Next, I gotta get some ppl to go see Coraline. Too bad it's at Riverview and so too much of a pain in the ass for most people to get out there. And I thought the International would be shit but it's gotten some great reviews... weird! Didn't realize it was by that Run Lola Run director, so maybe has potential. Anyway, the fellowship is interesting though I think the devotion a little weird. I'm Christian, yes, but am not so into the inner contemplation stuff... I do wish I took a few more biblical history courses because that's what I find interesting, and not the hours of prayer. Nothing really against it though. All the others do it a lot more than I do, and even Norman is getting real into it - going to Sunday school, being very serious during the REALLY long studies, etc. Maybe it's just a product of me spending more time among Christian Asian folk, but this uber-Christianness is something I see a lot more in Asians. For all intents and purposes, I'm a secular guy. I don't go out of my way to sin and am generally "good", but I'm a lot less spiritual. This past week, John was being a little disrespectful but got a handle on it, but I was surprised to see Ta be very serious about it and serious about being concentrated during devotions. Same with Vince. I think it's good for them, sure. Bah, my thoughts are getting a little disjointed on that part. I feel like beers every night but then I can't drink at Platt, where I'm conducting rehearsal for a few hours and where I'm supposed to be a responsible adult working with some underage kids. I also don't feel like any beers by the time I get home at 12, 1230... I tend to just get a cup of hot soup, do some work and then watch a few eps. It doesn't help that it's freezing ass in the kitchen so it's even less appealing to hang out and drink for a while. The stone tile looks great and feels great in summer, but in the winter it's a freakin ice rink (not that it's slippery, just that it's like ice). I've really got to get out more... the itch for boozin and hangin' out has been super strong the last couple weeks but I've been holding back since a) I've got work and b) I'm trying to save a bit of dough so I'm not wasteful and so I feel better about splurging in London. So, two things to work on in the next few weeks. Spend a little more time with my drinking buddies, and get carpets and wallhangings and other things to help make my downstairs warmer (and also stop up the front door so we can block one source of draft). So I've been watching lots of TV shows... I've been keeping up with CSI, CSI NY, Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Eleventh Hour, The Beast, Life on Mars, Trust Me, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, Leverage, Medium, Chuck, Fringe, The Closer, heroes, Big Love, even crap shows like Burn Notice. I've picked up Canadian show Being Erica (GIRLIEST show I've ever watched but somehow fascinating), and UK shows Hustle (again), Demons, Being Human (great show btw). I'm finishing up Angel, hopefully gonna start on Dark Angel soon, and looking forward to watching all of Lost, Crossing Jordan and Wonderfalls. Haven't got around to watching Dr. Horrible yet, I hear it's great, and I'm getting excited for Dollhouse. Hope it's huge. Listing them all out... that's a lot of shows! Lots of new music for me too, I've been doing tons of compilations. Picked up a couple great electro and hiphop mixtapes... feel like I should get some music editing software so i can make my own mixtape. But too lazy... really, it's just too much work for shit I'm not intending on distributing, just listening to myself. Linkme: CLUB PLAYLIST 5 
The more athletic cousins on a day at Cypress! 
My Xmas present from Priss includes a flattering picture of me. 
The cousins chillin at the Richmond Oval, home of speed skating for the Winter Olympics 2010. 
The family in our yearly group portrait. |
