Bob, before the Travoltathon
Bartow, shooting Grand Champeen during covers night at the Parish
Don’t forget to listen to Record Jumble tonight at 10, and to hit up Headhunters for the Karaoke Underground on Tuesday.
Monthly Archive for April, 2005
One of my professors sent our class a link to this cool image today, with a few words about "PC Bangs", which have apparently popped up all over Asia in order to introduce people to the Internet. The particular bang pictured is an example of the next-level superhuge ones being assembled in China.
It reminds me of the cascading typewriter desks from "The Apartment," or at least my remembered-version of the cascading typewriter desks from "The Apartment," now that I see them again. 
Anyway, with all of those machines, it must be so loud/hot/dry in there, that I think I’d prefer NOT being online to spending a second in one of those rooms (certainly some of you would prefer me not to be online as well).
Clearly, some people find it comfortable enough for sleeping, if those are indeed sleeping bags in the lower-left corner of the shot.
Now, I don’t want to turn this into another fruitless search for the Single-of-the-Summer-type quest, but I think it’s time to start looking for candidates for the 2005 Drink of the Summer.
Sandy introduced me to micheladas yesterday, and I think I’m hooked. It was kind of like a spicy, tangy fake iced tea with hint of beer flavor.
There doesn’t seem to be a real consistent recipe (the ones we were drinking were beer + an ounce or two of lemon juice + a vigorous dash of cayenne pepper, all over ice), and I look forward to spending the summer finding the right mix. Other recipes include ingredients like black pepper, Worcestershire, soy sauce, Tabasco, and tomato juice. I’m not sure about the tomato juice, but I can see the others contributing to a nice, savory summer drink.
I’ve always been a little nervous about mixing beer and wine with anything else (except for about 6 hours in 1997 when I thought vodka and red wine *ruled*), but the micheladas have me ready to try almost anything. I’ve seen Michael and Amy mix red wine and coca-cola; Tim said something about beer and sprite. Any other recommendations/reformulations?
Also, if anyone has any early candidates for Single of the Summer, please let me know. I never find out what it is until summer’s over. I’d suggest "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani, but that officially came out last winter.
Catching up on some things:
- Horrifying Bedbug Story from a recent New Yorker
- People that should be notified to speak on my behalf should I ever have trouble getting back into the country (thanks Libby!)
- My photo gallery from the Austin Art Car Parade
- Jokeoke
- Another picture of Little Kelly and Little Rob
Today, when Quinn was testing stuff our for our i312 webcast tomorrow, he pointed me to Nicecast and promptly blew my mind. He was interested in its talk-show type features, but the fact that you can use it to broadcast any kind of sound from your computer is what got me excited. I could barely make it through my class tonight because all I could think about was rocking some vinyl on the internet.
So, after setting it all up (which was pretty easy, once I realized I needed to set up a static IP address for my laptop), I was playing "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Home Computers" and Morrissey’s Viva Hate for Trei and Sam to enjoy however they wanted to in the privacy of their own respective homes. Just put my computer in the counter (see pic), plugged in the cable and bam. (By the way, I’d have to put "Alsatian Cousin" up there with best album openers, though it certanly doesn’t reflect the rest of the album)
The moral of the story is, The Phonograph Disaster can now play records for a remote crowd that only half-wants to hear them. This is exactly the impetus I needed to get back into my record collection since the big shuffle it underwent when we moved. I just need to figure out a good time to spend a couple of hours online when someone wants to listen. Some of you with real jobs– I will play custom sets for you!! Just let me know when and what. No more NPR mornings for y’all.
Nicecast also broadcasts your iTunes if you want (including tracknames, which comes with some baggage), or any other audio source on your machine, and you can apply all sorts of effects to the broadcast channel. I’m still not sure how exactly to execute it, but methinks this could lead to remote freakout jams with some mindmelting feedback. More on that as things develop.
I’m also excited about using it as an excuse to interrogate everyone I know via Skype, and to explore it as a remote karaoke option, modelled after what Jeremy used to do over paltalk (?) (there’s a karaoke preset in the Nicecast effects bundle!).
Very Metal’s post on the Shaggs today got me looking for the 2000 New Yorker story about them (which I’m guessing came out around the time Daniel put out the tribute album [even though AMG says 2002]). I wonder how many copies of that sold. It’s great.
Anyway, so the AssistiveMedia.org Reading Room Archive has an audio version of it, which is well worth a listen. Interestingly, I’ve been working on part of a grant proposal lately related to auditory navigation, and have been spending lots of time on assitive technology resource webpages lately, but this is the first one to feature the Shaggs.
So, listen to the Shaggs story. It’s a half-hour long and might make your morning. Also, there’s a lot of other potentially great audio stories on the page for those of you who have already gone through the Soundportraits, Transom, This American Life, and Blunt Radio archives.
Incidentally, Very Metal thinks he stole the line "If it doesn’t, then something inside you is dead" from my old post about the Six Flags Guy, which is dead wrong, as you can see here. But thanks for reminding me how mean I am.
I worked for the Dallas Observer while I was in hi school, which is funny, because their current editor just happens to also be named Patrick Williams (just like the composer, the caribbean chef, nigerian spammer and the lonely inmate). So, I’m always wondering if folks I knew in Dallas are always thinking it’s me when they see his byline.
Anyway, it seems like they’ve recently expanded their online archive to include stuff from 1994, featuring a piece I wrote about local Dallas band the Voyeurs. I remember being a little embarrassed that the story got the headline "Vibrator Dependent," especially when my mom sent clippings to my grandparents, extended family, and neighbors. But I’m guessing that that’s nowhere near the embarrassment the real Patrick Williams, Editor-in-Chief, feels when my story is attributed to him (it’s the earliest piece attributed to someone with our name on the site).
I loved working at the paper, but it was the place where my dreams of being a journalist when I grew up died. I couldn’t handle all the phone calls. Unfortunately, in the past 10 years, I’ve published nothing else about vibrators.
Here’s a scan of some other stuff I wrote for the Observer, in what is probably a total violation of copyright law. If you want to know how "The Best of [Your City]" gets chosen, let me know.
