Where I’m @

20010531

More progress on listening to the huge pile of records in our apartment. Last night? Side 1 of Pat Benatar’s Crimes of Passion. I’m not sure what the best part of the package is: songs like “Hell Is for Children”, a drummer named Myron Grombacher, the back cover photo of a geeky New Wave-ish group, or the fact that Pat gives special thanks to “Flexatard for the leotards”. Seriously, though, the album is not that great, but brings back memories that I don’t have of cruising around in my Camaro listening to some sort of mix of Pat Benatar, Van Halen, and, oh, I don’t know, Meat Loaf. There is some sort of harder-edged yet in retrospect tame rock and/or roll that is very much a part of that time. It was the gentle stepchild of Black Sabbath and the less show-offy cousin of arena rock, the dumber but more fun friend of prog rock, and the parent of Bon Jovi and related hair-metal. Makes me think of baseball-style shirts with Budweiser logos and feathered hair parted in the middle.

posted by Tk at 10:22 • • sealed in amber

Hey! My friend Mike finally has Ishbadiddle up and running! I suggested Blogger to him a while ago, but he's a busy guy and all, but now it's there. Three quarks for Master Mark (or Mike, as the case may be)!

posted by Tk at 09:16 • • sealed in amber

20010530

Cooler than Stortroopers? Could be. It's MyVirtualModel.com, and it's a computer-generated version of you, baby! Here I am. What a catch! Thanks to LYD.

posted by Tk at 10:45 • • sealed in amber

20010529

How come it took me so long to find a scientific map of the United States' aches and pains?

posted by Tk at 16:07 • • sealed in amber

20010525

Ah, found the link I've been looking for since several days (a couple weeks?) ago, to wit, a link to a story about the suit against video game manufacturers, in tenuous connection with the Columbine massacree. Dig it.

posted by Tk at 13:42 • • sealed in amber

20010524

From Davezilla's new venture, F***edBlogs, notification came that Glish was down. “But I just looked at it!” you cry. Go see it now, and you'll be creeped out enough to not go back any time soon. Or, if you're like me, to tell all your friends about it and go back several times.

posted by Tk at 13:31 • • sealed in amber

After using the UXN Spam Combat site scores of times, I just noticed this at the bottom of the main page:

REMEMBER TO FORWARD YOUR SPAMS:
The US Federal Trade Comission monitors the spam situation on behalf of the US government and has asked that you please forward every spam you get to: uce@ftc.gov

posted by Tk at 10:36 • • sealed in amber

20010523

Fun on a grey New York birthday kind of day: JavaScript LiteBrite! Thanks to friend Andrea.

posted by Tk at 13:45 • • sealed in amber

20010518

Freaky, weird, eerie sight of the week: The 50th Birthday party for Joey Ramone at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

posted by Tk at 10:44 • • sealed in amber

20010516

Rumors of Clippy’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated

The Evil Empire was suggesting it was going to become just a little bit less evil, with the teaser headline of “Celebrate Clippy’s Demise and Save” (though not properly capitalized). But no, true believers, the next iteration of the seemingly ubiquitous M$ Office (eXtra Padded) will continue to have the annoying ‘feature’ called Clippy. Read all about it.

posted by Tk at 09:21 • • sealed in amber

20010509

Last Sunday, I cried about my Mom for the first time in a long time. I was listening to the Moonshine Show on WKCR (the penultimate Moonshine Show for Matt Winters, American music department head) and he played a live number by a group called Y’all. It was all about being on the other side of the River Jordan (as are so many great bluegrass tunes) and being excited to see one’s loved ones coming to be joined again as a family. See, I’m getting a little teary just thinking of it.
I’d like to consider myself a hardened New Yorker, but I feel a special attachment to bluegrass, and perhaps in particular to stained glass bluegrass, and I don’t suppose anyone needs to explain being attached to Mom.

posted by Tk at 22:10 • • sealed in amber

20010503

Thinking about yesterday’s post, I realized that it must look a little out there. The backstory: a few years ago, I acquired a turntable and the S.O. and I got my parents’ and her mom’s records; then, a couple years ago, I got a whole hunk of records from a friend who was my boss at the time; I've spend the interim slowly (yes, very slowly) listening to the ones I have never heard before; last night and the night before was The Doors’ Soft Parade and side 1 of Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine. Tonight so far is side 4 of Weird Scenes, and I imagine I’ll finish it tonight. The boss-friend was born in 1960 and had older sisters and a brother, and is a (how best to put this) completist of a certain sort, hence the mix of things like Jethro Tull’s Minstrel in the Gallery (but not Aqualung) and almost all of Elton John’s studio oeuvre up to 1976's Blue Moves.

posted by Tk at 20:40 • • sealed in amber

20010502

I’ve never been a big fan of The Doors, and I'm not sure why. See, I really and genuinely dig some of the more hackneyed music of The Sixties, but Jim Morrison & Co. don’t do it for me. In point of fact, I’m not sure why that bothers me even slightly. There are plenty of artists I dislike, but there seems to be something going on with The Doors that I should get. Bruce Harris’s liner notes to Wierd Scenes Inside the Gold Mine imply that I and the rest of bourgeois America are scared by the dark call to quiet revolution lurking behind (and sometimes not lurking behind) the lyrics and tone. Perhaps. It very well could be that more riotous bands (such as the MC5, whose live CD Kick Out the Jams I own and really like) can be dismissed as self-important products of their time, Jeremiahs whose prophecies never came to fruition, but The Doors speak to a constant fear (now a knowledge, then a fear) that Hell is just around the corner. And there does seem to be an uncomfortable synchronicity between the arguably avoidable flood damage of recent years and the unfortunately-not-so-baffling violence in every corner of our world. Images of Wisconsin residents furiously building bulwarks against the Mississippi while Attorney General Ashcroft encourages the broadcast of Timothy McVeigh’s execution.

posted by Tk at 21:30 • • sealed in amber

20010501

I’ve been doing work on setting up navigation on a client access site recently and not reading as much about usability as I should. Thanks muchly, therefore, to head of Pyra, Evan, for a link to a chapter from Steve Krug's book on same.

posted by Tk at 13:59 • • sealed in amber