adrian is rad

Yes. The metric system is in use.

12. Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens
11. Funeral by Arcade Fire
1. Sufjan Stevens at 7/31 Great American Music Hall
2. the Mates of State 2/6 at the Los Gatos Outhouse
8. Pedro the Lion with John Vanderslice 6/03 at Bottom of the Hill
3. Iron and Wine at Great American Music Hall
13. Our Endless Numbered Days by Iron and Wine
10. Damien Jurado 11/09 at Great American Music Hall
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. the Cameraman (with Buster Keaton) at Stanford Theater with live organ accompaniment
6. the Polyphonic Spree 7/18 at Slim’s
15. Hero
17. Napoleon Dynamite free screening at Stanford
7. Arcade Fire Live at Museum of Television and Radio (archived by KEXP)
16. From a Basement on a Hill by Elliot Smith
14. Before Sunset
9. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring

Lauren wanted to show her friend some photos of Tanzania, so I had the motivation to finally scan the rest of my photos in. Here they are.

Five kids in Lauren’s village of Dareda Mission, Manyara, Tanzania:

I watched Shark Tale on the plane. In an era with many amazing good-enough-for-adults-too animated movies, it was a bit of a disappointment. An entertaining movie. The voice acting is good, but not as good as, say Shrek or Finding Nemo. It’s funny, but not as funny as many of them. The story is interesting but not as entralling as, say, the Incredibles or Monsters Inc.

Basically, if it had been the first of these sort of movies, it would be good and rememberable, but as it is, it’s pretty forgettable.

Ian’s (Le Mayoure) in town visiting his mom, so we grabbed some food at the Alpine Inn and then went bowling at Mel’s Bowl in Redwood City. I wanted to check it out to compare it with Palo Alto Bowl, hoping that it was more divey. Shad and Dale joined us for the bowling.

It is a little more divey than Palo Alto Bowl (PAB), but I haven’t been to PAB in a while, so I can’t compare too well. It was of course expensive compared to rural American bowling alleys, but I suppose not too bad considering it’s the Peninsula. If I remember correctly the games are cheaper than PAB, the shoe rentals about the same and the beer more expensive.

We played two games. My scores were a respectable 147 and a disappointing followup, 127. The first game, I had a Turkey (three strikes in a row) and the second, I picked up four spares in a row, but failed to get any strikes.

The highlights of the night had to be Ian’s incredible sooper-spin style with the 6 lb. ball, the style of the guy two lanes down (he’d sort of run and then stop and lean backwards while he slid toward the line and then drop the ball), the Turkey and making movies with Ian’s camera. I’ll try to put a couple of those up here if I have a chance.

My life is a movie. A perfectly scripted movie. I have come to an obstacle and fallen, only to persevere and be rewarded in the end.

Pittsburgh-Las Vegas-San Francisco. Easy enough. I can do that. Easy. Nothing to it. The first flight was at 8:45am. I arrived at the airport at seven am. I waited outside in the cold, the twelve degree cold. You do not make up a temperature like twelve degrees; you make up a temperature like nine or sixteen. I saw the line inside. It was long, too long. The line outside was shorter, but still long. Maybe a third the inside. I’ll wait outside. It’ll take forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. An hour tops. You must check in half an hour ahead of time. Relieved! It was eight twelve when I handed my driver’s license to the skycap. SFO via Las Vegas, thanks. Woo. That was close. Twenty minutes and I’ll be through security. It’ll be tight, but I did it.

Expletives! Expletives under my breath! Expletives muttered aloud! They thought it was past eight fifteen! It’s not! Can you not see my watch! Do you see a five or a six or a seven in that time! No, you see a three at the end so it is clearly not quarter past! You are clearly mistaken. My computer has shut that flight down; I can’t do anything about it. First one locked out of the flight.

Seconds! Missed it by mere seconds. Perhaps many seconds, perhaps one hundred or two hundred, but not five hundred. Not one thousand.

Another line. My feet are warming up at least. My feet are freezing. Blocks of ice! Another forty-five minutes in line. I was on the Las Vegas flight, eventually to SFO. Oh, you won’t be able to get there till tomorrow. Tomorrow? I work tomorrow I’m being picked up today! I am being picked up at half past two today! Don’t you see?

I’ll see what I can do.

Minutes past. Where is she? I think she’s eating breakfast. Surely she cannot be working on my flights still. She cannot be still seeing what she can do. I look around for commiserating glances from people in line, people at neighboring check-in counters. I only get blank stares ahead. Everyone is tired, exhausted.

My supervisor wants to put you on the ten fifteen Charlotte and the evening flight to SFO. You’ll get there at eight fifty-one. Tonight. I can do tonight. Maybe Dave can still pick me up, maybe not, but I’ll get there tonight.

Standby.

Still on standby. Bischoff, there’s one seat on the flight if you want it, unless you want to give up your ticket for a voucher and another ticket. No no, I’ll go now. I’ll go now. Thanks.

I’m that guy. I’m the last guy on the plane. I’m the guy that everyone stares at. Where were you? they burn at me with their eyes. Sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to be here earlier. They wouldn’t let me on. I was standing out there ready but they were not ready for me. I have a guilty look on my face, but I can’t help it; it’s not actually my fault.

But do you see? But do you see where I am now? (This is where the rewarding for perseverance comes in.) I have been rewarded. I am four hundred miles from San Francisco and seven miles off the ground and I have leg room. I can put my ankle of one leg on the knee of the other right in front of me. Do you want to see me do it? Did you see that?! It was great. I’m done doing it now though because I am typing and that is not comfortable for typing. I did it just to show you I could. I just ate my third snack—cashews, chocolate-covered wafers, pretzels—and I’m on my fourth drink—heiniken, coke, water, coke. Do you know what the people had for dinner in coach? Nothing. I had stuffed chicken with and excellent salad and an impressive, but not untoppable, pecan pie.

You cannot make up a story like this—you can actually and people did and then people stopped because they thought it was too far fetched, too cliché. This is it though. It happens. Persevere. Persevere and be rewarded.

The comment preview should look pretty similar to the comment post at this point to correct the earlier problems.

It’ll say your comment is the first comment (”1. your comment”) and it won’t display the date or the time correctly, but everything else looks pretty much correct.

Thanks to Alex Bischoff’s CSS mastery for help on the correction. Who knew <div> tags could be so much fun.

1. explaining why jokes are funny
2. explaining any slight connnection someone or something has to Pittsburgh
3. self-deprecation

1. reading lips. Over many years I noticed that I read lips in addition to listening to people when they’re talking. I have a markedly worse time on the phone than in person for comprehension
2. recognizing people from afar. When recognizing people from a long way off (say 500 ft.), I use a person’s stature and any tell-tale articles of clothing, but I mostly recognize people’s walk. Ody walks with a lot of angular movement of his shoulders. Amrys has this long, loping sort of stride. Greg, at work, has this very pronounced toes-hit-the-ground-first shuffle.

We were talking about football at the dinner table tonight. I am going to watch the Steelers game tomorrow with my mom and explain how it works (and I suggested she drink beer and smash the can on her forhead as well, but she didn’t like this suggestion) and as to illustrate why, I’m going to excerpt some of our conversation from dinner.

Mom: Why is the quarterback so important?
Dad: Because he directs the play on the field. He throws the ball.
Mom: He always throws the ball? They always give it to him?
Dad: I thought I didn’t know anything about the game. I’m an expert compared to you!

Yeah, that’s how it is in the Bischoff household. I think my mom finally figured out the rules of baseball though.

I hope everyone had a joyful and happy day.

that I’m not above snooping around, poking and prodding presents and trying to find yet-unwrapped presents hidden to see what I’m getting. I hope I’m never too old to do that.

On my flight from SFO to Las Vegas (where I stopped enroute to Pittsburgh), I was seated next to (well, practically underneath) a bulbously obese woman. Her arms overlapped approximately 1/3 into my 18″ wide seat. I was uncomfortable trying to sit all the way to the opposite side of the seat and trying to keep my arms cocked off-axis. More than once I was awakened by her moving her arms or shifting in her seat. I don’t think this is fair to me. I think I pay for the privilege to sit in a seat with my back firmly in the center of the seat and to be able to move my arms unobstructed within the confines of the seat.

I’m not bringing up this because I’m annoyed (though I am) or I have something against obese people (people can be fat or thin or whatever as long as it doesn’t affect me). It got me thinking though, what’s fair or permissible in regards to charging or seating obese people differently. I’ve made a list of ways that airlines differentiate people:

• children are charged less for seats
• unaccompanied minors are charged an extra fee
• infants may ride for free as an infant-in-arms
• people in wheel chairs are helped on an off the plane and are given priority storage space, but I didn’t find anything about priority seating, except in exit rows (Here is a set of rules for carriers with regard to disabled passengers)
• smokers are told to go shove themselves, even on the longest flights
• first and business class passengers pay more for the service and added space

Now, is there any way to differentiate people who are, say, over 24″ wide in their widest dimension? I see nothing in the disability literature about priority seating (if you are going to consider obesity a disease). I’m sure if you were seated next to a person without the use of his legs, you’d be incovenienced, because it’d be difficult to get passed him to the aisle. But then again, you probably wouldn’t be constantly uncomfortable.

I don’t think charging obese people more for a wider seat would go over well because the airlines would be sued under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) for sure.

On the other hand, effecting does allow differentiation, at least in the case of smokers. There is the added fact that second-hand smoke can be a health risk to those around the smokers, but I don’t know if the law requiring flights to be smoke-free was enacted after the second-hand smoking research was done or not. I’m betting it was enacted because a lot of people complained and it is socially acceptable to make laws against public smoking.

(A thought provoking thing I once heard: A guy was in a bar with some friends/ colleagues and started smoking (apparently not Boston or San Francisco or many other places, or it was a while ago) and they started to tell him that smoking was bad for him, etc etc. And he hypothesized that if he turned to a portly colleagues and started berating him in a similar manner because being fat is a health risk, it wouldn’t be as socially acceptable.)

Children are charged less for seat and they use less of a seat, but I believe that these two facts are not effect and cause (respectively).

Any thoughts on this? I haven’t come up with anything thing that I’m satisfied is fair to all parties involved.

I opened up one of the Wurlitzer’s last night and re-wired the power (the 206A was a student model so they were all powered from the Teacher model). It was pretty painless. I powered it up and it worked first try. This particular one sounds really good. The bass is heavy. I’ll try to record some stuff so you can hear how it sounds, but I won’t be able to get that online until after Christmas.

I’m flying to Pittsburgh tonight. I’ll arrive early tomorrow morning and I’m leaving on the 28th fairly early. I’ll probably blog some at home. We have wireless so it’s so easy!

As I will be home, I won’t be doing a radio show tomorrow night. I’ll be back on the air December 31st from 0000 to 0300.

I got some sandals made out of tires from Lauren Owens (a friend of mine that’s doing Peace Corps in Tanzania). She’s back in America for the holidays. I tried to get a pair of these sandals in South Africa but they wanted R150 for them. That’s about $25. In Tanzania they apparently go for 150 shillings, which is about 15 cents. These ones are pretty skillfully made and fit pretty well.

• Bought boerewors for my parents and other sausages for a bbq at Dittmer’s Wursthaus
• Bought beers (including a fine Schwarzbier) at Bev Mo
• Had a last-minute bbq with a few of them teppers (as my dad would call them*) namely Dylan, andyl, Raag and Leo.
• Open up one of those Wurly’s and check out how the new power wiring will work with andyl. A common ground is already established. Yay.
• Slept for 6 hours.
• Watched Shad install a new starter in my car. (”Install a new starter in my card with Shad” would be a blatant lie and “Help Shad install a new starter in my car” would be a fib; I did hand him a wrench a couple times.)
• Work.

*Which got me thinking: there are these things like this where originally people do things that annoy me and then it becomes part of my picture of them. I’d correct him to say “teps” but now if he called them “teps” I’d be disappointed. His “error” has become endearing.

I spent all day yesterday moving the twice aforementioned Wurly electric pianos.

They are 140 lb each. My back hurts and I’m tired.

But they will be undeniably sweet. Just as soon as I stop hurting.

Arcade Fire tickets for the 3rd Great American Music Hall date sold out in under 6 hours. Probably a lot less.

I saw Das Boot for the first time yesterday and today (I saw it once, split over two days). It’s a long movie, as it turns out. 293 minutes worth of long. And very deliberately paced. (Perhaps the cut of the movie that wasn’t completely and totally uncut would’ve been a little been less slow).

But it was good. It’s a pretty depressing ending, despite the successful resolution to the main conflict.

Today was a day of errands. Among them:

• Bought 10 IEC sockets and 10 IEC cables (3 prong computer power-style), and 10 1/4″ jackets for aforementioned Wurlitzer keyboards, which I’m picking up tomorrow, at HSC.
• Bought tarps and rope, also for the keyboard, at Home Depot
• Watched the Steelers win, again.
• Pick up the new starter for my car. It will be installed Tuesday morning.
• Confirmed that the Uhaul will be there tomorrow.
• Found my notebook. I’d left it at the station! oops!

alright.

I took a large sum of money out of my bank today in cash. I gave them my member number and they proceeded to give me what I wanted, without ever asking for ID.

Anyone could have my member number.

My playlist for this week.

I am feeling a bit under the weather so I asked for a sub. No one wanted my prime slot, so I decided that if I was going to do it, I wasn’t going to do my normal show. I’d pick a bunch of oldies beforehand and then just basically sit back while my show happens.

As it turns out it’s been grueling. A bunch of 2 minute songs means I always have to be on the ball and ready with the next song. As to illustrate: I normally do about 41 to 43 songs in my 3 hour show (sometimes as few as 35, from further investigation). I did 44 oldies songs in the last 2.25 hours alone.

It’s been good, though.

I’ve scanned some of my slides with my Dimage Scan Dual III. They’re here.

Here’s one I like:

It has some feeling of documenting of suburban malaise, like the movie Hundstage or some of the photography of Thomas Struth. More than that, and also similar to those two photographic work, is the way the colors and the distance make it seem like one is a voyeur—and almost a voyeur not of life but of a carefully constructed diorama of life.

I also scanned some of Stanford and my trip to South Africa and Tanzania. More are to come.

All slides are taken with Velvia 50 film and a Nikon N70 film camera. B&W are taken with a Nikon N8008s and a variety of films, mostly Neopan 400 and Tri-X 400. My lenses are a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4 and a Nikkor 20mm f/2.8. I use both lenses on both bodies. It’s fairly obvious in which pictures I use which lens. The super wide-angles are the 20mm.

That’s right. I’m the big winner. Andy, you should have jumped on it while you could. Instead, it will be hung above our toilet at the Purple Zone.

More broad generalizations from a small sample size.

• have a random assortment of friends, with associated back story
• after a number of seasons have two of the least related characters start dating
• have two characters that are “meant” to be together. they must break up and have a problems but everyone knows they will always end up together but for much of the show they are not together.
• have one “dumb” character. he says fantastically stupid things.

Bonus points if you can name the shows I was thinking of.

I’ve installed this hack for Wordpress to do comment preview.

Let’s see if it works.

[Update] It seems like it’s working. It’d be cool if it said Preview and Say It! (or Post) on the initial page, for people who don’t have the patience to preview. Anyone with some php knowledge want to check out my wp-comments.php to see if it’s an easy fix? I’ve commented the old code. It starts withform action=” etc. It’s not as simple as just copying the input name=”submit” from the old code. I tried that. It seems non-trivial because the two codes has separate form sections referencing the two php scripts for commenting [new and old].

[Double Update] I now have it working with both Preview and Post, thanks to Jesse.

• Buy a new starter for my car. The current one doesn’t like me.*
• Buy surplus electronic parts to fix Wurlitzer 206A Electronic Pianos (21+ of them!!!!!!!!!) at HSC
• Call Uhaul to make sure they have my reservation for a truck to move aformentioned keyboards.
• Write and send christmas cards
• Write liner notes for lauren owens’ Lauren6 mix CD and send CD
• Add comment preview to blog for Andy
• Open up my receiver and find the loose connection (the speakers go between soft and loud as I move the receiver around)

*so Shad’s going to help me replace my starter and I was thinking it’d be funny if he comes over and is like “are you all ready to replace it?” and I said “almost” and I go inside and then come out in grease monkey jumpsuit, grease smeared all over my face and a big old monkey wrench hanging off my belt. “Alright, now I’m ready.”

She’ll appreciate it. Everyone appreciates Bob Villa.

I have coined a term for something that is retro-stylish, yet it hasn’t ever gone out—Like converse all stars—nowtro.

Feel free to use it, as long you give me proper credit.

Proper use in a sentence: “Those Vans are so nowtro, as coined by Adrian Bischoff. “

On Friday, I went to Live 105’s Not So Silent Night on Friday. The line up was Taking Back Sunday, Muse, Interpol, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse. Tickets were expensive ($35) and it was in a large venue (Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) and, correspondingly, there were a lot of stupid people there. The sound sucked for many of the bands; the bass was far too heavy. It probably didn’t help that we were standing pretty much directly in front of the subs.

But let’s get to the music: we got there during Muse. Muse was bad. Killers were unimpressive. Interpol was above average, as was Franz Ferdinand. Modest Mouse was good, better than I expected. I liked their albums, but I’d heard that their live show wasn’t good.

I heard a little too much “oh I hope they don’t play their new stuff. their new stuff sucks. they were much better at the Fillmore. blah blah blah I’m dumb.”

I said I’m give you some pocket reviews (so concise you can fit them in your pocket) for some of the CDs I am reviewing for kzsu. Well, here they are:

Adem Homesongs: a surprisingly good album of indie-folk. it’s probably most comparable to Devandra Banhart, but without the annoying. home recorded by Brit Adem (pronounced AH-dem) Illah, this uses normal sounds and sort of strange sounds together to make a nice blend of listenable but not always expected music.

the Mendoza Line Fortune: this sounds a lot like Wilco at times. At other times it sounds like country pop (aka mainstream country). By no means a bad album. This is listenable and there are even some pretty decent songs on it.

Jens Lekman When I Said I Wanted to be Your Dog: I was really surprised by this album as well and I’ve been liking it more since I turned in my review for KZSU. He’s a swedish crooner of sorts. He’s got some great instrumentation/ orchestration on this album, from piano-voice ballads to songs with clips of afro-latin bands or 70s theme music complete with crazy brass parts. It’s also got a miss of a track in “Do you remember the riots” which reminds me a lot of “How fucking romantic” from the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs and is just as annoying. In the end, it’s probably most comparable to the Magnetic Fields or Belle and Sebastian.

American Music Club Love Songs for Patriots: Mark Eitzel’s band comes back after 10 years. Honestly it sounds pretty much like his solo stuff. It’s got a lot of varied types of songs on it and it’s pretty consistently pretty good. No great tracks from first listen.

Elizabeth Cotten Shake Sugaree: North Carolina African-American traditional/ folk guitar and banjo, some instrumental, some with vocals. Elizabeth Cotton is of a similar class to Leadbelly or Woody Guthrie—like them she started in the folk tradition but also wrote her own songs in that style; she also was “discovered” and did many concerts around the country during her lifetime. self-taught, she played right handed guitars (and banjos) lefty, just flipped around upside down so her thumb hit the high strings and her fingers plucked out the bass line. Thorough liner notes and the recording quality throughout is good. This is worth checking out if you like this sort of music.

Guided by Voices Half Smiles of the Decomposed: The one trillionth and last album by indie rock legends Guided by Voices. Robert Pollard has been quoted as saying “We are the kings of indie rock. When we quit, indie rock will die.” Might be a slight hyperbole. A listenable album, but not great. I’m not the biggest Guided by Voices fan. I always thought they were alright. If you are a big fan or used to be, this is probably worth checking out. They have been important, no doubt, in the last twenty years of indie rock; time will tell whether this album will be important as well.

So, in summary, I’d recommend checking out the Jens Lekman and Adem discs. The other discs are worth checking out if you’re into those bands or that sort of music.

I saw the Incredibles at the Capitol Drive-In in San Jose with Andy.

The drive in seems a good one. There are 6 outdoor screens—I thought there were perhaps 3—in this multi-plex of drive-ins. It’s got a good location, right in the path of planes landing at SJC and right by the train tracks. I’m not being facetious; this is exactly where I’d want a drive-in to be. If I wanted a clean, sterile movie-viewing, isolated environment, I could find that many places. It’s about 40 minutes from Menlo Park, so it’s a drive but it’s not totally unreasonable to go to occasionally, especially since they appear to be open 7 days a week all year long. (Many of the New England ones were open weekends for much of the spring and fall and 7 days a week in the summer peak.)

The Incredibles was good, great even perhaps. I’m sure everyone else has told you this as well. I thought it was a very entertaining movie and that stuff that people say about it being the best Pixar movie might be true. Someone told me it was one of the best movies of the past few years. I don’t subscribe to that, but it’s worth seeing if you haven’t. The plot is interesting, the animation is good (duh), the characters are, given that they’re super heroes and animated, believable and human and it’s all done with a good dose of humor.

[update] The Incredibles, much like another very good movie, Sideways, is not very good necessarily because it’s great!—brilliant!—genius!—but rather because there is nothing wrong with it. I came out of both movies not overwhelmed by the film, like I did with Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or To be and to Have, but at the same time I had no criticisms then and I don’t have any now.

I’m currently doing my radio show on KZSU. This week has some serious rock at the top of the show, then I’ll slow and soften it down before doing some post rock and maybe some electro-indie.

I’m completely rockin’ out to the Arcade Fire ‘No Cars Go’ right now. This is serious stuff, people.

So, if you’re up and reading this, check out the show. Otherwise, check out the playlist.

oh man, this is going to be great. you can quote me on this, people.

I’ve been leafing through the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs list and I might post another time about how the list is dumb and how it could be better, what I’d put on it, etc, but it’s also got me listening to some songs I haven’t heard for a while.

Particularly some Sam Cooke stuff (”Dream Lover” and “Chain Gang” are just classic), Marvin Gaye (”Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” is a great song), Ronettes (”Be my Baby,” classic Phil Spector), Chuck Berry (”Maybellene,” the recording is crap and the verses are throwaway but the chorus makes it worth the listen), and Ray Charles (”What I’d Say,” I can’t get over the sounds from the keyboard and the band (and that crazy breakdown) in this recording).

But the most astounding track that I’m listening-to-again-for-the-first-time is “Tracks of my Tears” by Smokey Robinson. Dylan may have written world-changing protest songs and the Beatles sold a trillion records, including some that had meaningful songs, but I don’t think I’ve heard another song from that era with as much tortured-soul emotion in it. What gets me is that it’s more than just the song. Songs that really get me now (for example, “You will miss me when I burn” by Palace Brothers and “Sodom, South Georgia” by Iron & Wine) are delivered pretty flatly; the singer’s voice may crack or be whispered or whatever, but Smokey’s voice is a wail, a cry. Other people could sing this song but in part it’s his voice that makes this song great.

We had our work Christmas dinner at Kuleto’s in Burlingame. It’s a pretty fancy Italian place with good food and the service was, well, unnoticable (in a good way–unobtrusive and my food just sort of appeared). We did a gift exchange. It was one of these things where you can pick a present or take someone else’s present and people kept taking my presents, except I ended up being able to take anyone’s present at the end. I got something pretty sweet.

When I found out about the company party last week I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go to Iron and Wine scheduled for the same night, the tickets for which I bought in September. Then I figured if the party ended by 10pm in Burlingame, I could be at the concert by 10:25 or so and if the concert started at 9 and there was an opening band or two, I would be alright. Turns out I missed about 15 or 20 minutes. I gave Judit a call as I was on my way up and she made her way over from where she was in the Haight to go to the show. She was ‘on call’ for the show.

It was just Sam Beam and the acoustics in Great American were great. He did some great versions of his own songs, not necessarily sticking to how he recorded them. He did a few of his songs that are unreleased (one of which I liked a lot, but I can’t remember for the life of me enough about it to look it up on the internet). He also did a few covers, one of which was of course “Such Great Heights” (Postal Service), which he closed the encore with and Judit just about died, and the other, more surprising one was “Love Vigilantes” (New Order). A really solid concert overall. I wish I’d seen all of it.

I saw Pedro the Lion with Half-Life Souvenir and Viva Voce last night at Slim’s. Chris Atwell went with me.

We got there during the last couple songs of Viva Voce. The first of which was a sort of Low-like steady-rhythm, slow-build song and the second of which was ‘Tonight you belong to me’ (which I know because Steve Martin plays it on ukulele in the beach scene of The Jerk (and Bernedette Peters’ character pulls out a trumpet out of no where and does the solo)). I ended up buying their album, Heat Can Melt Your Brain, which is odd and goes from one idea to another quickly, but is pretty good from first listen.

Half-life Souvenir is promising. Rosie Thomas (who’s recorded with Damien Jurado) sings in this. The guy and her sing an octave apart, which I’ve heard in other bands before but can’t think of specific examples. The drummer was solid; he ended up playing keyboards and aux percussion with Pedro. Anyway, they have some of Low slow-changing-chord stuff, some Album Leaf or Ms. John Soda electronic-indie stuff and some of their own sort of sound. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll be keeping an ear out for their future stuff.

Pedro was good. He had a four-piece: (Pedro is not a guy, but David Bazan, who is basically the band, is, so I refer to Pedro the Lion as he.) he and TW Walsh (drums), of course. A bass player that I recognized but don’t know the name of and a keyboard/ aux percussion guy named James. He played a lot of early stuff and a few songs each from Control and Achille’s Heel. He did solid versions of ‘Magazine’, ‘Indian Summer’ and ‘Criticism as Inspiration.’

They were out of my size of the Pedro Lion’s tail shirt, but I ended up getting a Pedro scarf, which is pretty rad and good conversation starter with the cute girl standing next to me.

I’m trying to figure out how many times I’ve seen Pedro, so here’s my list:

• February 14, 2001 w/ Low at Sommerville Theater
• September 16, 2001 w/ Seldom and TW Walsh at the Middle East Downstairs
• May 4, 2002 w/ Damien Jurado(?) at the Middle East Downstairs*
• November 3, 2002 w/ Seldom at the TT the Bear’s
• May 5, 2003 w/ Stratford 4, Alan Sparhawk (solo) and Ester Drang at the Middle East Downstairs**
• February 27, 2004 w/ John Vanderslice and the Advantage at Great American Music Hall
• June 2, 2004 w/ John Vanderslice at Bottom of the Hill
• December 7, 2004 w/ Half-Life Souvenir and Viva Voce at Slim’s

*one of my few two-show nights. I went to Belle and Sebastian at the Orpheum (early show) and then went across town for Pedro. I’m not convinced that Damien Jurado was at this date, or maybe I just missed him while I was at the other show.
**this show was probably the best, I think. He was working out some new songs so he did a chunk of great songs with the band and then the new ones solo acoustic, including the ‘Poison Makes’ and ‘Backwoods Nation’, which he’s basically refused to play live since.

So, I guess that’s eight. That has to be a record for bands that I’ve seen. I’ve seen a bunch of bands three or probably even four times. I think I counted six times for the Mates of State. Eight is just ridiculous. I started liking him early, he tours often and I just kept going to shows. I’m looking forward to the Low/ Pedro date at Great American in March. Should be good.

I’m trying to draw a pattern from various indie rock/ hipster fads, which include trucker hats (foam domes, as I call them), work shirts or work jackets, old thrift store shirts (especially solid color shirts with simple black or white silk screens), hoodies, old sweaters and pabst blue ribbon.

A lot of these are tied to each other, but each criterium adds something. Not all of them will be true for each fad. These are more tendencies than strict rules.

1. cheap (probably able to be obtained used). thrift stores, surplus shops are usually good places to find things.

2. unpretentious. pabst blue ribbon (still) doesn’t advertize. no one used to advertize foam domes.

3. obscure enough that people in the “mainstream” probably don’t wear it/ drink it/ do it, but not obscure enough that people don’t previously know about it.

4. previously relegated to the working class. trucker hats, work shirts, and PBR all fall into this category.

5. ironic, usually because people in the ’scene’ wouldn’t previous think of using such a product. haha! sweet hat! my grandfather wore one of those!

6. not intrinsically ugly or baggy. I think big sweatshirts with big bubble letters would not become an indie fad even though they are cheap, ironic, and obscure because they are both ugly and baggy. hoodies (at least those worn by indie kids) tend to be tighter.

7. like much retro-influenced fashion, the two decade rule applies. you can wear 70s and you can start to wear 80s fashions as retro-ironic, but you can’t really wear 90s stuff. If you’re wearing multiple flannel shirts, you’re stuck in the past, you’re not starting a new trend.

I’m often complaining about how squeeky clean and character-less Palo Alto/ Menlo Park are, so I decided to make a list of all the things I like about this area of the Peninsula.

• Classic one (or two) screen theaters: the Guild and the Aquarius. Normal (expsensive) priced tickets, but good movies in classic theaters.
• Silent movies at Stanford Theater over the summer. Complete with live accompaniment on the Might Wurlitzer organ.
• Old people, cheap snacks, and artsy movies at Spangenberg Theatre
• Crazy people and punk kids at the Pit. I’m glad some people aren’t middle-aged silicon valley professionals.
• Beer gardens: the Oasis and Alpine Inn (aka Zott’s). You got your locals and your Stanford students. You got your bicyclists, motorcyclists and BMW drivers.
• Peninsula Creamery Dairy Store (on High St.). Not to be confused with the Peninsula Fountain and Grill (on Hamilton and in the Stanford Shopping Center), this is vintage and not retro, cheap and not pretentious.
• Sandwhiches: Pluto’s and the Prolific Oven. Fancy sandwhiches, but still reasonable value.
• Rose and Crown. You’re paying pub prices, but at least they have Hoegaarden and Franzikaner on tap.
• Ridiculous safetey. Just yesterday I parked my car on the street unlocked for the entire day, with CDs and other things sitting on the seats and nothing was gone.

I now have a panther on my computator. Previously I had a jaguar. F9 and F10 and F11 do fun stuff now.

Quick question:

On a scale from 0, completely worthless, to 9, mostly worthless, where does my blog rank?

Oh, this is awesome, according to Pitchfork some indie rock bands have recorded a soundtrack for a zombie game that is completely covers of 50’s and earlier oldies tunes.

The tracklist:

01 Ben Kweller: “Lollipop”
02 The Raveonettes: “My Boyfriend’s Back”
03 Death Cab for Cutie: “Earth Angel”
04 Rogue Wave: “Every Day”
05 Cake: “Strangers in the Night”
06 The Walkmen: “There Goes My Baby”
07 Dandy Warhols: “All I Have to Do Is Dream”
08 Oranger: “Mr. Sandman”
09 The Flaming Lips: “If I Only Had a Brain”
10 Clem Snide: “Tears On My Pillow”
11 Rose Hill Drive: “Shakin’ All Over”
12 Milton Mapes: “Lonesome Town”
13 Phantom Planet: “The Living Dead” (non-cover, but zombie-themed song)

Sounds pretty good to me. It won’t come out until Summer 2005 though.

[incidentally, this is talking about my bicycle commute] I don’t think I can get from home to work in much less than 8 minutes. I didn’t stop from door to door (usually I stop at 2 or 3 traffic lights) and I had a pretty good pace going, though my tires are currently a little low on pressure (I’m probably riding at around 70 psi instead of 110) so who know what it would have been on full tires.

I’m currently doing my show this week. It’s album week on KZSU so I’m playing large parts of Our Endless Numbered Days by Iron & Wine, Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens and the Grey Album by Danger Mouse as they are some of the best/ most-significant albums of 2004. I’ll probably compile a best of 2004 show for the early morning of Dec. 31.

In other news, I’ve decided I like the Arcade Fire. A trillion other bands do the same thing and I don’t like them, but I like the Arcade Fire.

Ken Jennings lost on Jeopardy! yesterday. (Which reminds me of a song, incidentally.) Ken was the all-time winner on not only Jeopardy! but all game shows, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. His final stats include 74 wins, $2,522,700, and a .918 correct answer percentage.

I knew he was losing yesterday because the internet told me, but it was still sad and painful to watch.