a tank full of guppies

Last night I went with C to see the New Pornographers at the Barrymore. It was supposed to be three of us but unfortunately A was swamped so we had a spare ticket. The show was a make-up from last October when they had to cancel due to one of the band members having his appendix "explode in anticipation" as they described it last night. The fact that it was a make-up, and the fact that they're just cool meant that the show was sold out. C & I arrived after the doors were opened and there were a few people standing around outside but on a short glance I thought they were just smokers (ah, happy current Madison legislation). I walked up to the door and turned around and asked if anyone needed a ticket and it was like opening up a fish tank when the fish are starving.

The show was fabulous. I was prepared to be mostly really impressed by them, but only mostly since Neko Case wasn't with them. I am not a longtime fan of either Neko or the NP but I'm taken with her voice, and liked some of what I've heard of NP. Turns out I was totally impressed. Kathryn Calder was doing (a fabulous job with) the vocal lines Neko usually has, and out of 6 people on stage 4 had vocal mics (most often being used simultaneously). The really impressive thing though was to see how tight they were on stage. So together. So rehearsed. So easy going and powerful. The played strong live versions of most of Twin Cinema (including a great more energetic version of Streets of Fire than the one on CD), a very cool Testament to Youth in Verse & The Laws Have Changed from EV, and a standout The Body Says No (or maybe I just like that song). Yes I looked up all of that songX on albumY bit because even though I recognized lots, no, I couldn't have told you a song name yesterday. I'm fully converted.

The other yay surprise for the evening was the opening music. I didn't go in so much for the first act but the second act (self-labeled "meat in an awesome rock sandwich") was a group I'd heard about a while back and meant to look up but then forgot about. Hate it when that happens. But thanks to A so wanting to see this show (poor fellow) I found them again - Matt Pond PA. Go! Find. Contented mellow-rhythmic-melodic indie with a very engaging voice. Happy. I bought a CD. I can't remember the last time I bought a real CD. I've gone totally digital lately but I love the feeling of selling a CD at a show - it feels like such direct appreciation. So I own it. Of course I ripped it within minutes of arriving home. :-)

mmm, soft curvy silicone

Score one for smart design. My dream is a day when wireless is totally ubiquitous. I mean everything - data transfer, headphones, powercables, audio connections - for every piece of equipment I own. Not there yet, obviously (that wireless power transfer will be the cool one). In the meantime, if you have to have cords: Smartwraps & Syncwraps are my next favorite silicone product - I'd gotten stuck in kitchens for a while. Isn't it nice that we can all talk about silicone now without...

(If any of you local types decide this is a must have and make plans to order one or a few let me know and I'll split shipping with you!)

Tonight for dinner I had one of my most favorite weird foods: purple basil jelly. Mmmm. French bread with honey goat cheese & purple basil jelly. I was totally dubious the first time I saw the stuff.

Winter!

Last night we went sledding with Todd & Erin at the park just over the hill behind the church across the street (whew!). It's a great sledding hill - one big woomp in the middle to go flying over, and then it bottoms out at the very frozen lake. Some people had built a little jump over to the right, but since there's an enormous beautiful tree just at the lake shore beyond the jump we stuck to the open streak on the left. Besides there was another group using the classic cardboard-box-sides-as-snowboards trying to go over the jump (they couldn't get enough momentum going to have the tree be any danger).

After the usual four hour Saturday rehearsal at Kanopy yesterday morning, and the very cold walk to get there after missing my bus, I thought I had really probably worn myself out enough for one day (it takes a lot of energy to descend into total insanity twice). But of course little local sledding hills aren't as well-endowed as Elver Park where I went sledding every winter when we first moved to Madison as a little kid. At Elver we had a tow rope. I remember this especially for one time when I was getting myself dragged up the tow rope and lost my feet and ended up with my chin sliding over said rope. Nasty rope burn! But of course we had no tow rope last night so it was headed toward another full decent into insanity until we abandoned for Jolly Bob's. Nothing like sledding and Caribbean cocktails to make a perfect winter day.

dragons make everything better

My plan here is to rave happily about commercials. This fact alone should confuse you. I detest commercials. Not seeing a lot of ads (read, not watching much TV at all) is part of how I keep my sanity. Most advertising doesn't have any respect for the person seeing the ad, as witnessed by the use of phrases like "big sale," "no payments for X," "special," and "best ever," and the depressing scream-at-people-long-enough-and-they'll-buy-your-stuff attitude.

This sort of thing is the only thing that makes me tire watching the Olympics. If it was just sports coverage I'd be sunk, happily settled into my couch. But with all the ad breaks I start to get a feeling of not having nearly enough silence around me. Too much input. But I promised happy raving and haven't gotten there yet so here goes:

There is a beautiful commercial from United Airlines playing during the Olympic coverage. I've had some travel issues with United. Lots of them actually. So an add that makes me feel contented about that company is impressive. It's a stop-animation piece of a little kid dreaming about what his dad is doing while he's gone on a business trip. United has both the commercial and a making-of short movie available on their site. The 'making of' bit is worth all of its 6 or 7 minutes. Jamie Caliri, who directed it, is the kind of person I love working with (not that I get to work with him) - totally in love with what he does. It also turns out he's the same person who did the fabulous closing sequences for "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

There's still too much in the way of life-sucking commercials, but things like this are a big dose of clear air and sunshine.

more keyboard (heaven?)

This one is 180 degrees off of the last keyboard I posted about - your grandmother's keyboard so to speak.

The description from the designer:

"This retro decorative tablecloth contains a textile keyboard. The electronic is woven into a fabric, which finds itself between layers of water resistant felt as sandwich material. The TIDY TIPIST NO.2 is washable."

Such a great concept. (Ergonomics? Who knows...) I think it's something related to the way it looks funny to see things like fabric or crumpled sheets of notebook paper on a computer monitor. My next design reminder:

"Things don't need to look modern to be new and innovative."

I suppose this is officially DesignReminder #2. For the unlabelled DesignReminder #1 see Image Interpretations.

This snowstorm is beautiful. I've enjoyed the warm but I miss the big beautiful snows too. Of course the last time we had a big snow my bus home took more than an hour (usually about 20 minutes). Today at work they sent out all the administrative emails about what you're supposed to do if you decide it's not safe for you to travel to work. But I'll stick with the beauty thoughts for now.

snif

It's official - I have the current "thing" ...stomach, throat, sniffles, sleepy. I didn't realize it was a thing until today when I found someone else who has the same "thing." Time to take a cue from Fionn who is currently snoozing on the back of the couch.

A bit of beauty:



This is a small bit out of a beautiful collection of pictures

(found thanks to BLDGBLOG)

high resolution Torino

If you haven't developed an addiction to Google Earth yet, this should pull you in. A few days ago Google added high resolution imagery around Torino along with a detailed road network. The Official Google Blog has the link to the Google Earth file with all of the venues marked. I spent a while last night panning around and tilting to see the mountains.

Today is International Fest and Navan has a set there mid-afternoon. Until then I'm planning to hang out with a lot of tea and see if I can start into this very small knitting project I found last weekend when Adam and I went for a drive in the country and found ourselves at the Sow's Ear. Considering I haven't done this in a while it may end up more of an entertainment for Fionn.

Side rant:

I can't believe that NBC is showing the Nascar qualifying race for 2 hours today when it would normally be doing Olympic coverage. That should be part of the deal for winning the Olympic contract: any non-Olympic sporting events normally broadcast by the network should be redistributed to other networks during the two week span of the Olympics. Gr!

Jim = Fred?

I'm fascinated by Jim Lampley. Apparently he's done Olympic coverage in quite a few previous Olympics but he didn't stick with me, and I just don't watch enough boxing to know. If I only listen to his voice I totally understand why he's in broadcasting. And I suppose he's the perfect picture of a talking head, but there's just something odd. He most reminds me of Mike LaFontaine (Fred Willard) from A Mighty Wind (Not there yet? If you've seen it, "Wha' Happened?" should do it for you.) It's something in the cut of his face and the over zealous jaw work.




Yes?

This is an older picture of Jim, but for this Olympics he has a very coiffed thing going on in a salt and pepper that is so perfect it looks like they dyed in both the dark and the grey bits. When he had on a pinstripe suit for the opening ceremonies commentary last night it was a bit too much - sort of a stripey zoo animal from top to waist! He was wisely in plain dark grey this afternoon.

Found a few great mapping bits this afternoon but I'll get around to those another time. For now it's back to watching the end of Il Postino :-)

Tags:

• olympics

non-meme-ing

I feel after two meme-ish posts some real content is in order. In a little over an hour the NBC coverage of the Olympics starts and I've caved completely. I can go for months without seeing something on broadcast TV (excluding the games we have people over for now and again, a happy social symptom of having a projector) but I can easily predict that the next two weeks will be total abandonment of that lifestyle. I like all the sappy human interest stories. I like the pop music transitions as the broadcast skips between events. I like the glory. I love the athleticism. It's just rare to get to watch so many people all at the top of their game - focused on this one point in their life for years.

In local life, Kanopy has the entire next show choreographed and just in need of cleaning and lots of runs - and the shows are three weeks away. This feels like a fabulous gift - a very comfortable position. I really like how this show is coming together, and it feels good to dance. It's interesting to see how much it all hangs together considering there are 6 choreographers for various songs in the evening-length work.

Last night Navan tested out a new studio. Apparently this is a comfortable week for arts - we had a good test. It was easy to sing there and the rough mix down sounded good. It's a bit pricier than we were hoping for, but we'll see what we decide. In the unexpected break from recording we've sorted out a few more arrangements for things we were planning for the album.

A short correction: When I chatted a good few posts back about Olympic design I used Turin instead of Torino. This is a personal pet peeve of mine (is 'personal' redundant there?) - Places get renamed in other languages for no good reason. I know it's sometimes for ease of pronunciation, or because the original language uses a different alphabet. But it happens too often for no good reason. Classic example: Hannover in Germany, Hanover (when referring to the German city) in the US. Oy. So, up Torino!

Fionn has taken up his usual "your fingers are paying too much attention to that keyboard" position across my forearms so I think I'll quit for now, give him a bit of attention, and take a shower before the opening ceremonies start!

I'm a bit slow...

I'm not always so quick to cop on, as witnessed by my ignorance of having been tagged by Candy for the 4things meme.

Back to the OED: meme - A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene. Word made up by Richard Dawkins in 1976. You're in good company, Candy.

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. CD store (how to define... in a small music shop you do it all... sell, restock, clean)
2. waitress at a Pizzeria Uno
3. database designer on a statewide radon monitoring project
4. web & graphic designer

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. LOTR (how's that for the obvious answer?)
2. Harry Potter - these are like comfort food... perfect if sick or snoozy
3. The Never-Ending Story (first movie I ever saw in a theatre - the Al Ringling Theatre!)
4. Braveheart
(I'm sure I'll think of the other one's I meant to list later...)

Four places you have lived:
1. Madison, WI
2. Dublin, Ireland
3. Hannover, Germany
4. Boston, MA

Four TV shows you watch:
Not so much with the TV watching, but we definitely get shows from NetFlix... but then they sort of feel more like short movies, so here are the ones we've gotten this year
1. Deadwood
2. Firefly
3. Millennium
4. Six Feet Under

(And as much of the Olympics as I can catch, but that hardly counts as a show - more like a portal in the TV. I should probably also admit to my 1st season addiction to Project Runway.)

Four places you have been on vacation
1. Donegal
2. northern corner of France
3. Italy
4. Sanibel Island

Four websites you visit daily:
1. NYTimes
2. BLDG BLOG
3. Delicious Days
4. Jumping at the Ground and Missing

Four favourite foods:
1. chocolate chip cookies (but only the ones from the recipe I grew up on)
2. fresh summer garden tomatoes
3. poached salmon
4. basted eggs on toast

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Donegal
2. Sienna
3. a warm island (what can I say, it's winter in Wisconsin)
4. anywhere outside of a city (forest, meadow, river, mountain, grass, canoe, trail)

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Wee Beasties (maybe 2 tags will get her, huh Candy?)
2. Grand Marnier (but I think she got swallowed by school)
3. the secret blogger (you know who you are!)
4. oy - anyone else out there I know have a blog going?

Elizabeth looks like...

What better post to do while doing laundry with a free wireless connection. I had thought of continuing with the redesign of the Navan site into CSS (seriously old school web site we have there at the moment) but this was too tempting once I started seeing the list form. Thanks to Candy (backlink coming once I can find it again) for this diversion: Google "so-and-so looks like" to discover things you never knew but always suspected about yourself.

Elizabeth looks like:

...she could be a poker babe. (oy, what a start)
...she's about to pass out from a combination of the heat and being unable to breathe because of her corset. (2 pts for anyone who can name that reference (not in my life) without the aid of a search engine - honor system only, and 3 for anyone who can relate it directly to my life)
..who wants to fall through any opening in the floor she can find, even if it sends her to the circle of Hell where... (yikes!)
..an etching of Geronimo.
...a stunned rabbit.
...a cadavre (sic), more dead than alive. (I think I liked the rabbit better.)
...she knows she's being difficult.
...a donut (excellent on its own or with the rest of the quote: because she has been around for so long and is coated in sugar as a means of self-preservation. HA!)
..she will be smiling a lot. :-)
...she is performing.
...she may pee standing up on a bad day. (I wonder what it is about the bad day that makes that a necessity.)
...she could conquer most nineties guys before breakfast. (HA!)

So there you are, a small bit of mindless (google-brained?) amusement for you. I'll have to work on pulling the attitude to go with that last one, but I'm afraid I'll end up looking more like the one after Geronimo.

But then again, color has its advantages...

I shot this a few years back now and it's been far too long since I've seen the sight

Edit at 5:04pm: Picture & homonym troubles fixed.
-E

wallowing in black and white

For a few issues now I've been wallowing in a free subscription to Paste Magazine. One of my favorite things in it so far was a half a page devoted to an image of a crunched-flattened-scribbled piece of notebook paper where the columnist wrote lists in 4 sections - things I like that I'm not supposed to like, things I don't like that I'm supposed to like, things I don't like that I'm not supposed to like, and things I like that I'm supposed to like. It was a nice nod to that recognized social consciousness. We probably all have things that are things we adore that we know we can't go on at length about around other people because we don't want to have to explain, and likewise times where we listen to people talk about something with great praise when we're basically unimpressed. I've been in conversations like that about black and white film - still or video, take your pick. It gets tagged as being an artists way of making something seem arty. I can't help it - I adore it. I like the simplification of removing color. (Easier on the viewer, harder on the designer though.)

Last night we watched Pi. The film is done in black and white and definitely could get tagged for pretension (if you haven't seen it, it focuses on a high-level math possible genius/nutter and his quest for making sense of patterns in the world). The filming is gritty with jerky camera work and people/freight trains appearing and disappearing as the mental state of the lead swings about. But I can't imagine it being as enticing in color.

keyboard heaven

For anyone who has ever forgotten a keyboard shortcut help is on the way - at least eventually. Thanks Paul for reminding me of this, the coolest keyboard advance I have seen since testing the laser keyboard at CEBIT a few years back when it was just a prototype.

The laser keyboard was weird - typing on a table is a very strange feeling, and if you don't keep your eyes on the keys aeahgila; gfhsls fhel, sga Flah!




The basic concept of the Optimus keyboard is that you can have the actual functions of the keys on the keys (look closely at the image to the left here). This would be excellent for a design junkie (hello & thank you very much) who has probably only ever regularly used MAYBE 1/3 of the keyboard shortcuts while in the various Adobe lands. You can switch keyboard layouts between Multiple programs (that's what the first image top left is showing). Not bad for speech transcriptionists either, I'd think.

[via Engadget]