adrian is rad

I saw the Headphones last night at Cafe du Nord. Serene Lakes and Crystal Skulls opened for them.

Serene Lakes were enjoyable. Sort of emoish or like the mid-90s band Seam. They had free CD EPs at the concert and I got one. I haven’t listened to it yet.

The Crystal Skulls have a lot of potential in that they have two members, Yuuki Matthews and Casey Foubert, in common with the great Seattle band, Seldom. In the end, though, they were not that good. They would start out a song and it’d sound good but it’d ineviably turn bad. The harmonic ideas were noodling and random; the chords just seemed to go from one random chord to another in an unsatisfying manner.

The Headphones played a short but enjoyable set. David Bazan and TW Walsh have good non-verbal communication and are tight when they play together. John Vanderslice was in the front row and seemed to be enjoying the show.

I should let everyone that doesn’t know already that Ken didn’t win on Jeopardy!. It was over by final jeopardy on the third day of three.

I always sort of like the Engineer’s drinking song that we sung at ye ol MIT. The chorus of it goes like this:

We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the engineers
We can, we can, we can, we can demolish forty beers
Drink rum, drink rum, drink rum all day and come along with us
For we don’t give a damn for any old man who don’t give a damn for us.

I decided to poke around the web a little bit and, what do you know, people sing it elsewhere. Here’s a bunch of verses from schools and engineers all around the world!

Who knew?

There is now a Cape Town Craigslist, the first one in all of Africa. Good work, Craig. Cape Town is where it’s at!

There are currently about 100 posts on the entire site. That’s sort of like the Pittsburgh CL. ha!

After day two of the three day point total final of Jeopardy’s Ultimate Tournament of Champions, we have:

It’s not looking good for Ken. He looked embarrassed at the end of the day yesterday. He slammed down his buzzer after the Double Jeopardy round. He’s never been up against competition like this before.

I have no doubt that he can win still, but he’ll have to go on a tear. Pull yourself together Ken!

Ken Jennings had a strong start, but he’s up against good competitors on the finals of the Jeopardy Ultimate Tournament of Champions.

It’s a three day point-total event the points from yesterday will be added to today and tomorrow’s totals to get the Big Winner.

(I think they’re calling them points instead of money because they aren’t actually playing for the amounts on the board here—the winner gets $2 million, 2nd place gets $500K and third $250K.)

The results from yesterday:
Ken Jennings: $16000
Jerome Verede: $16400
Brad Rutter: $18400

Brad’s won a previous big money tournament and as such is the only person besides Ken to have won over $1 million on Jeopardy. Jerome started out quite slow yesterday, not answering a ton of questions, but getting the ones he answered right. I’d say he’s the dark horse (much like mim, the dark horse!) Jerome’s won four matches against the best of the best to get to this stage and Brad three (he had a bye in round 1).

It’s really incredibly evenly matched. Ken’s still got that twinkle in his eye, though. I can totally see him just snapping and being like “alright Jerome and Brad, I gave you a chance, but now I WIN” and going on a six category sweep of the board in Double Jeopardy.

As much as I want to see Ken win and am confident in his abilities to win, I’m a bit nervous. Go Ken!

I went to Aquarius Records while I was in the city yesterday. I was surprised at how small it was for a well-renowned record store.

The haul and first impressions:

• the Mountain Goats the Sunset Tree I really like this. I think it’s his best studio album (that is, non-boombox album). I’d heard it before, but bought it because I liked it so much. The songs are good as are the production (thanks, John Vanderslice) and the orchestration.
• Death Cab for Cutie John Byrd EP Limited edition EP sent to special independent record stores like Aquarius and Amoeba. Recorded live. Pretty good from first listen.
• 13 & God s/t This is the collaborative album between the Notwist and Themselves [I told this to someone and they wondered how that worked out and I laughed. It’d be really PoMo if the Notwist had made a collaborative album with themselves.] Good. Not what I expected but I didn’t really know what to expect. More experimental, more hip hoppy (vocals), less rocky/ poppy.
• the Album Leaf Seal Beach EP [reissue] Take a very good EP and reissue it with five bonus tracks. Yeah, it’s good.

Yesterday morning I went swimming in Aquatic Park, in San Francisco. Aquatic Park is protected from the nasty tides and choppiness of the Bay, but’s just as cold. Estimates yesterday were in the high 50’s in degrees F.

I went without a wetsuit or even a swim cap. I waded in and it was cold but manageable when I was standing in there waist-deep. When I dove in and started swimming, I immediately came up and treaded water for a couple minutes; I had gone into panic-breathing; I couldn’t control my breathing. I settled down and started swimming and I felt I did alright. I wasn’t swimming all that fast and my natural stroke (without lines on the bottom to guide me) apparently veers a lot to the right. But the cold wasn’t unbearable and I actuallly got used to it after a bit.

I might go up again next weekend.

how’d everyone do? I drove because it was raining and because I had my radio show before hand. Not much of an excuse, I know.

I bike 3-4 times a week to work, on average, though. That counts for something, right?

Adrian is rad.

Andyl and I saw Fever Pitch on Sunday Night. I liked it.

It’s a movie about a fanatical Red Sox fan (Jimmy Fallon) and his priorities with new non-Red Sox fan girlfriend (Drew Barrymore) based on a book about a fanatical soccer fan.

It’s by the Farrelly brothers (Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber), so there is some gratuitous (and funny) bathroom humor, but mostly it’s a love song to the Red Sox and their 2004 season. And something of a love story between Fallon and Barrymore too.

Both Andyl and I came out of the movie, somewhat strangely for a movie about a team and a girl, very nostalgic for Boston. I knew where Drew Barrymore’s character lived (based on the First Baptist Church, at the corner of Comm Ave and Clarendon, you see as Jimmy Fallon leaves her apartment); it’s probably around 93 Marlborough. That was about a five minute walk from tEp; fenway was about a fifteen minute walk. It’s all very familiar.

Caveats to my liking this movie:

• I like the Red Sox.
• I like Boston.
• I like Jimmy Fallon (but even that couldn’t get me to watch Taxi)
• I like Drew Barrymore.

I went to the BoSox vs. Oakland A’s game tonight at the Coliseum. It was a really exciting game!

Sox out to an early lead. Oakland scored a few runs to a 5-3 lead and then the Sox scored 4 in the eighth to take the lead, which they held onto to win. Very exciting.

The Coliseum is an old concrete cookie cutter stadium, but it’s actually sort of charming in that way. Lots of bathrooms, quick to get out at the end of the game without much battling the crowd. The bleacher seats are cheap and the view isn’t bad at all. And the Oakland fans are quite devoted. I like that. Even though in the end they will LOSE to the Sox. HA!