adrian is rad

A thoroughly blog-worthy weekend.

It started out with a pair of movies on Friday.

First, I saw Thank you for Smoking with Andyl. It’s a satire of Big Tobacco and lobbyists. It’s very very funny. I laughed aloud for much of the movie. Some rediculous scenes, but that’s sort of what you’d expect from a satire. I’d recommend it. My one complaint only comes after the fact: satires are supposed to make you think, otherwise it’s just a parody, right? I haven’t been absorbed in thoughts about Big Tobacco or lobbying.

I also saw Out of Africa a classic European-out-of-place-in-Africa story. It’s set in the first half of the century. A Danish barroness moves to Africa with her lover’s brother/ then husband. In the end this is a romance set in Africa, obviously with a lot of other stuff going on as well. I couldn’t help thinking of Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa) while I watched this movie. Nirgendwo owes a lot to Out of Africa, but in the end, I think Nirgendwo is a better movie with more substance and it makes you think more.

Al Jazeera TV says to air bin Laden audio tape

Audio tape? Seriously? Come on, Osama, get with the program, this is the 00’s! You should be using a flash-based audio recorder, burning that shit to a CD and then sending it to Al Jazeera. I mean, do you think they’ll keep a cassette player around just for you? They’re not using it for anything else!

I was walking into the radio station tonight and I walked by who else but George Lucas. How about that? He must have been giving a talk at the business school.

As I have done before, I’m going to try to chronicle my last few days in wikipedia reading. from oldest to
latest.

Foil (literature.

The Price is Right
Peet’s Coffee->grocery store->super market-> shopping cart

Coal mining. Anthracite->bituminous coal

Charles Bukowski-> Post Office -> Ham on Rye

Jonathan Richman. The Marvelettes. Talking Heads. Nina Hagen. Nena -> 99 Luftballons.

Deerhoof and the Decemberists

Eddie Vedder->Jill McCormick and songs Pearl Jam has covered

Game 6->1986 World Series

Big->13 Going on 30

If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a pretty sweet video that a guy made recreating the bottom of the 10th of Game 6 of the World Series using Nintendo’s classic RBI Baseball. He even uses the real play-by-play. Apparently getting certain hits right took him up to 200 tries. My goodness! Also, apparently the maker of this managed to get a job out of it. The resume for the New Era.

Speaking of Game 6, has anyone seen the movie? Apparently it’s good.

the decemberists and deerhoof. The decemberists are the softer, more acoustic and better of the two. I like the decemberists. Deerhoof leaves me wondering why people think they’re great.

I did a night of only music on vinyl (LP’s, 7″s, 10″s, etc) on my radio show tonight. Here’s the playlist. I ended up having way too much stuff, like usual and there was some stuff I wish I had time to play. I think I’ll have to play more vinyl on my show on a regular basis.

My dad’s retiring at the end of May, which is a bit of a shock. Not because he’s not “of retirement age”—I’m sure he doesn’t mind me saying he’s 61, as long as I add that he looks at least 10 years younger. He’s always invested himself in his work, so it seems odd that he’ll be done with that. I’m sure he’ll enjoy relaxing…for a few months. Then he’ll get antsy, I’m sure.

The earlier indicators also seem to say that he’ll be less frugal in his retirement—there’s been talk of a fancy car, which my real dad (before the alien imposter took over his body) would never think of buying. Hard-working and frugal, that’s my dad…for another month or so.

I guess it also seems strange because of the implications, if he’s retiring, if he’s 61, that means, I’m old, at least in my mind. He met my mom when he was about my age; my mom was younger than I am now when they got married. I guess I have no reason to feel or think I’m getting old; afterall, I have plenty of time. But, yes, it is strange; at some point, I became an adult and no one told me. I work and save money (for retirement no less!) and pay bills and pay rent and do my taxes. When’d that happen? It’s all been quite sneaky.

In any case, he’s retiring, and so I ordered him this (don’t click that link, dad, if you’re reading! it’ll ruin the surprise!). It’s pretty appropriate, given that it was his industry for the last 17 years or so. He’ll probably thank me; and then as politely as possible, ask how I thought of getting him such a thing. He won’t like it or put it to much use, I don’t think.

The BBC3 put on the Manchester Passion, a passion play/ musical in which all the music was by Manchester musicians, including New Order and Oasis. Some current local (to Manchester) rockers and actors play key parts in the play. It appears it was performed and broadcast live while roaming through the Manchester streets, ending up at the city hall.

It looks pretty cool. You tube has plenty of video of it, including Jesus singing “Love will tear us apart again” at the Last Supper.

Pretty cool idea, I must say.

Today’s the 100th anniversary of the 1906 SF earthquake. It’s been all over the news here for weeks.

My friend Leo’s been working on a website called Runthere for a while. It’s pretty cool. The function I use most is mapping out a route and finding out how long it is. I’ll also show you the elevation profile for the same route.

He’s recently added a feature where you can save and, optionally, share routes around you. You can also find routes that other people have saved.

It’s a pretty slick site. I’m impressed. He’s a mech e, like me, and didn’t have a whole lot of programming experience before ME218, just like me, but I’m struggling to make a php website for the radio station and he’s made this pretty cool site.

I watched Match Point on Friday. It starts off like any other husband-cheating-on wife indie movie (think Closer) and it’s going along and it’s fairly interesting and then BAM it takes a hard left into more of a thriller territory.

I don’t really like thrillers. I tend to want to leave the room.

I still thought this one ended up being pretty good and it had some nice moments of everything coming full circle.

Not really a must-see, but more of a don’t-mind-if-you-see.

A collective photoblog!

Initially, it’ll be Andy, Dave, Randy and I posting pictures.

Some tweaks to be done to the site, but I’m liking how it’s looking.

so I’m trying out a new host over here. It should look the same, but hopefully it’ll be faster.

Again:
new
old

Tonight’s playlist.

I played all of In the Aeroplane over the Sea after my recent reading of the book of the same title.

Man, what an absolutely amazing album. I restrained myself from listening to any NMH while reading it or since: I wanted the first time I listened to it to be all the way through, undistracted.

Yeah, I’m just a little obsessed with that album. Thank you, Colin Ashe.

I’ve update my list of upcoming shows.

How about this for a date in live music!
May 12:

• Jason Molina (supporting The Court & Spark) at the Great American
• John Vanderslice w/ Laura Veirs and Nedelle at the Independent
• Elf Power at Cafe du Nord

How do I choose! I think the best bill is the JV one, but I haven’t seen Jason Molina in a long time. I think the shows all start at the same time, so it’ll be pretty tough to do a venue-skip, multi-show night.

The SF International Film Festival is coming up in a couple weeks. I thought I’d make a list of films that I might want to see. Anyone else have any interest in any of these?

• The Bridge-documentary- about the Golden Gate Bridge and how its a hotspot for suicides
• Clouds of Yesterday-feature film- a boy in the 1930’s buries a reel of silent film. Now an old man, he tries to find it.
• Favela Rising-documentary- a drug trafficer turned socially conscious musician tries to change a tough area of Rio De Janeiro
• Half Nelson-feature film-a drug addicted public school teacher becomes chummy with one of his students
• Into Great Silence-documentary-a German documentary about a French monastery
• Lili and the Baobab-feature film-A french photographer goes to Senegal
• Strangers in a Neighborhood-documentary- pigeon racing and Dutch-Turkish tension
• Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela-documentary-self-describing title

In the last week I finished Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon and In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper.

Michael Chabon has become famous for books since Mysteries of Pittsburgh, most notably Wonder Boys and the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. It’s a story about a kid’s post-college summer, his gangster father, his gay friend and his retro-loving girlfriend. It also takes place, in part, in Junction Hollow, the “Lost Neighborhood”, an odd place in a ravine beneath CMU that one can end up accidentally, but rarely on purpose.

It’s a well-written book, interesting and engaging. It’s bittersweet; not too bitter, not too sweet. It’s like an indie movie.

Then I read In the Aeroplane over the Sea about about the best album of the last decade. It’s a small book, barely hand-sized and only a little over a hundred pages long, so you can really gun through this. But then again, it’s sort of like extensive liner notes and how many liner notes do you know that are a hundred pages long? The book goes through the history of the band and the Elephant 6 collective, and the events leading up to the recording of the album. If you are obsessed with this album, I’d recommend this book.

Next up: Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane.

I want to protect my hearing but I hate standard ear plugs at concerts. Anyone have any experience with flat-frequency-response ear plugs? I’ve seen these a bunch of places.

There are also the custom ones which cost about $180. I don’t want to buy those.

This may be nothing new to you or you may not care.

Diets are a myth, a figment of your imagination. Diet is a reduction in calories and/ or increase in physical activity to lose weight. But you “go on a diet,” the implication being that you “go off” it at some point; that it’s temporary in some way. And people wonder why the gain the weight back.

We’ll assume a constant amount of physical activity here. See the thing is, given that, a certain number of calories prescribes a certain weight. If you eat x calories a day, you will weigh a fixed value of y (where y depends on your metabolism and a lot of other stuff). To lose a pound a week, you need to eat approximately 500 calories/day fewer or burn those off with excercise. Say you start at 200 lb, you may need 3238 calories a day to maintain that weight exactly. To lose a pound a week, you need to consumer 2738 a day. You lose x pounds and then go back to eating 3238 calories a day, and bingo, you’re back at 200 lb.

This also points out to why it’s easy to lose the first few pounds and harder to lose the last few pounds. At 180 lb. you now require only 2914 calories a day, so if you’re still eating 2738 calories a day, you’re suddenly a running a deficit of only 174 calories a day, leading to a loss of pound every 3 weeks instead of every week, and if you’ve let up a bit, say 150 calories a day worth, you’re going to plateau.

Mysteries of weight loss revealed!

So basically, the key is life style change, finding excercise that you can continue forever and lighter calorie foods that you like eating.

I’d almost forgotten about this. I remember the font being more readable than that.

There were three more of them. I’m trying to see if archive.org has any of them.

a month and a half after I dropped my glasses into the Caribbean, I finally bought a pair. they should be ready in a few days.

thank goodness it’s the original english formula…

gorilla vs bear links us to a nice storyboard music video by a band called Midlake for “Young Bride”. I like the song (most for the rumbling drums under the music) and I like the video.

also, you can head over to gorilla vs. bear to get a cool track from Oh No! Oh My! I have no sister. I like this one a lot.

Also, not from gorilla vs. bear, but doesn’t Kanye’s “Touch the Sky” just get your booty movin’?