adrian is rad

I’ve been following the hockey playoffs and I’ve been pretty happy with how the Pens were doing, but I haven’t be particularly engaged by the proceedings. Well, until tonight. Tonight I got a lot of cardiovascular exercise just sitting around and it was an exciting one.

The Pens were ahead two goals only to fall behind one well into the third period. They pulled their goalie and tied it up with 34 seconds left!

Then it’s sudden death overtime. They played pretty poorly but the 23 year old goalie for the Pens was playing immaculately. It was amazing what this guy was stopping. He’s a Jedi.

Second overtime and the pens played better but it still ended tied. Everyone’s exhausted at this point. Players were being knocked over and then having a hard time just standing up again.

The game went into the third overtime and both teams are just playing all out with anything they have left. The game started almost five hours before. Finally there’s a power play for the Pens and the guy who’s injured and hasn’t played since the third period comes back out. A guy who called it–who pointed at himself and said he’d get a goal earlier in overtime–scores the goal to end the game.

Oh benny what an exciting game. Unbelievable.

CEOs for Cities has an interesting presentation (pdf) of the top 50 cities ranked by various metrics. For instance, Pittsburgh is 49th in the category of “ratio of people reporting attending a cultural event to the number of people subscribed to cable”. (The biggest loser in that category: Nashville.)

Boston and San Francisco both rank highly (#3 and #1, respectively) in the “ratio of ethnic restaurants to fast food restaurants” category.

A lot of the page headings are confusing or misleading but the actual ratio that they are measuring is also listed on the page and I find those are much clearer.

(via the best non-blog out there Scott)

It’s a sad day. Every Pittsburgher knows exactly what Myron Cope meant to the city and to the Steelers.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

the Polamalu throwback jersey

or

the Hines Ward throwback jersey?

Polamalu is probably the player I’m most impressed with in terms of playing ability–he plays like a wild man–but I like the longevity and single-teamedness (10 years on the Steelers, stopped a contract stand-still by telling his agent that he wanted to retire with the Steelers) and constant smile of Ward.

life is so hard!

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

Steelers beat the Ravens 38-7.

Roethlisberg had 5 touch downs…in the first half and ended up 13/16 for 209 yards, 5 TDs and no interceptions. That’s gotta do a lot for your quarterback rating…

Harrison seemed perhaps more impressive: 3.5 sacks, 2 force fumbles and 1 interception. Basically the defense was awesome overall–104 net yards was all they allowed. That’s pretty much amazing.

The running game had a hard time, it seems. Willie had a hard time (23 carries for 42 yards–this must be the first time in a long time that the team’s won without Willie getting a 100 yard game, right?), so they put in the bigger Najeh (11 caries for 34 yards) and also big Carey Davis (3 for 14 yards). Almost 100 yards in total.

Also not great was Ben getting injured. I don’t quite know what the deal is other than he came back and then left the game again, but hopefully he’s not injured longer-term.

Go Stillers. Hopefully they can figure out how to run against hard defenses and Ben’s okay.

Wulai. (”ooh-lai”) I spent yesterday in Wulai, which is known for their hot springs and one of the highest water falls in Taiwan. The hot springs were excruciatingly hot. If I hadn’t seen other people in there, I would have doubted that a human could sit in there. I got in and it was nice. But the advice of a fellow bather provied useful: “don’t move”. I think it worked similar to the recommended advice for falling into cold water: if you don’t move the water directly around the body get closer to the temperature of the body and acts as a protective barrier.

I walked to the waterfalls, about 1.5km. There’s a miniature railroad along this route. The cars are about 10 feet long and the tracks are maybe 2 feet apart. It’s really cute and I wanted to ride it but I decided that I’d do so on the way back, only to find I’m misread the hours and I’d missed it! Disaster. I really like riding odd rail and cable transportation[1], especially funiculars (being a son of Pittsburgh [2]) but others as well.

The falls were nice. Nothing like Victoria Falls or Niagara, but something nice to look at for a few minutes. From there I started walking toward Doll Valley, which the guidebook listed as about an hour away. As I walked away from Wulai, the scenery became lusher in the valley I was walking in and the cars and whatnot became sparser. Eventually I turned onto a foot path and saw a few people and a number of smaller waterfalls. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get back by sunset if I went to Doll Valley which I deemed a Bad Thing (TM) so I turned back but the hike was nice.

Sometimes it’s good for the head as well as the body, you know?

Wedding. Today I went to a wedding. Correction, I didn’t go to the wedding, which was held in the family’s home and wasn’t attended by many; I went to the wedding “party” (as they called it) or “reception” (as the Americans might call it). It was pretty interesting. For instance, the couple entered along with lasers and fog machines. The bride changed dresses twice (three dresses total) and the couple would reenter to much fanfare each time. As I understand is the case with many Asian cultures, the wedding presents were actually envelopes of cash. The food was largely really good: about 20 dishes (in 7 or so courses). It was way too much food, but I gave it my best effort.

This is a wedding, not a night club?

No one was drinking the bottle of scotch set aside for my table so I was given it to take home. Now it’s just time to see if I still don’t like scotch and if so see if I can change that.

Lugo’s catch (available here). Perfect. Perfectly timed in both execution and in shutting down a rally by the Rockies.

The Red Sox are highly paid but I’d like to note that they’re getting a lot out of players that aren’t very highly paid at all: Papelbon, Pedroia, Ellsbury, and Youkilis are all low paid players.

It made me really happy that Dice-K that got a two run single.

Couch. After two months, I may have found the only marginally comfortable position on my couch. That is a remarkably uncomfortable couch for sitting, lounging or anything else. Despite being aware of the recommendations I am using my bed to sit and lounge with my laptop or book when I get tired of the chair.

Arnold. They seriously show my governor’s movies all the time here. All…the…time. By the way, TV programmers: they’re mostly not very good, those movies.

[1] The best yet is Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn. If you’re anywhere near Wuppertal, it’s worth a trip just to ride that.

[2] at one point I dated a daugther of the American Revolution. she was really into that.

Snow cancelled plenty of days when I was young (though 2 hour delays were the best because you didn’t have to make those yo) but natural conditions haven’t canceled much more feel in the last 8 years. MIT just wouldn’t cancel classes…except for that one record-breaking snow fall. Otherwise, you’re already in hell, what’s walking a mile in 8 inches of freezing slush?

Well that’s all changing for me because tomorrow’s TYPHOON DAY. No school, no work across the region.

My mom was telling me this weekend that my parents’ new house is quiet. This astounds me because this is compared to Candlewood[1]. I can’t imagine a quieter place. I remember going into the basement during a break from college and my ears and head hurt it was so quiet. I was so used to four or six or eight computers humming in any room, people yelling, laughing, chatting, arguing, snoring in deep sleep, the belabored breathing of a cold that just won’t go away, the music playing, someone drumming or singing or playing guitar, the street cleaners slowly making their way up the street, the shovels of the snowplows scraping along the street in winter, the garbage trucks coming to empty the dumpster, the cars whizzing past or honking if they weren’t, the drunken college kids yelling or laughing on their walk home from whatever bar or pub, the planes making their way out of Logan. I was so used to a constant din, a background of noise that this silence was shocking.

If Double Eagle[2] is quieter than that, I may have a hard time. I’ll be sure to bring my laptop and music to play.

[1],[2] Through lots of moving, business relationships, and a spread out set of relations, my family has need to refer to a number of different houses. We invariably choose the street name. “Which house was that?” “Smits Road”. “Where was it that Wolfgang visited?” “General Allen Lane”. An odd case of synecdoche. The Candlewood house was always just the “house” but now that my parents have moved away, it’s taking on ‘Candlewood”.

Our cars also had an odd nomenclature: their color. “We’ll take the green car.” “Which car can I take to Andy’s house?” “Take the red car. Mom needs the blue car.” Somehow every car we’ve purchased since the late 80s has been a mutually exclusive color to all that came before. My family is rife with synecdoche.

I just deleted the “Bischoff” phone number on my phone as my parents moved out of my childhood home yesterday. Goodbye, Pittsburgh. It’s been good.

Mister Rogers was pretty incredible.

In high school, I remembering visiting a friend, Waller, who was doing a week-long camp/ program at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where Mister Rogers did his theological studies. Mister Rogers had stopped by the previous night. Waller was so excited about that; it had made her week. At the time I thought it was a sort of nostalgia-based, ironic excitement but now I realize it was probably authentic.

Dave and Tina were in town yesterday, so I headed up to SF to hang out with them in the afternoon and evening.

We walked from Ghirardelli Sq, down Columbus to Giordano Brothers, a restaurant that serves “Pittsburgh-style” (aka Primanti’s) sandwiches. I love this place. They do this style of sandwiches well and it always helps/ calms my nostalgia needs. There’s also some good people watching in the area.

We then walked down Columbus (past the transamerica building) and then down to the Embarcadero. From there we made our way down past all the piers (picking up a much needed Slurpee near the end) before going to Musee Mechanique. It’s on Pier 45, right at the end of all those piers by Fishermen’s Wharf.

Musee Mechanique is a collection of coin-operated devices: penny arcade games, photo booths, flip-card movie machines (“Mutoscopes”), fortune tellers, moving dioramas and music boxes and other music machines. The collection has items from the late 1800s up until probably the 1990s, but most of them probably come from the first half of the 20th century.

It’s an amazing collection. More importantly, it’s a lot of a fun. I’m a big mechanical geek so the intricate mechanical ones are really cool to me. It’s pretty cheap: free admission and the games are 25 or 50 cents each for the most part, so for $5 or $10 you can play a lot of them.

An ancient and gorgeous sounding disc-based music box

After that we headed over the Mission to eat at Walzwerk, the always-delicious East German restaurant. Good food, good beer, not too pretentious. Winners!

Mel’s Bowl rounded out the night. It was really quiet, save a bunch of Warriors fans in the bar. We were one of two groups bowling. There was this really cute old couple next to us. The wife was asleep while he bowled. He was slower but was obviously good in his day. He had a lot of finesse still and was pretty good (he could easily beat me). I was cheering him on the whole time.

I bowled pretty badly with a 113 and 115, but I still beat out Dave to be the absolute champion.

more photos after the jump (way below)

(more…)

To some people, “Pittsburgh sound” might conjure up Don Caballero and other math rock groups. Other might think of Girl Talk. Now people might think of Wiz Khalifa. He’s a young Pittsburgh MC (a senior at Allderdice, in fact) with a song out by that name.

Rolling Stone has a write-up about him. Ed Masley at the Post Gazette talks much more about Pittsburgh.

I like the video because it shows a number of familiar sites. As for the music, it’s competent and listenable, but not great. I’ll give it time.

You can find out/ hear more at his his myspace page.

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

nor can it be. NYC is out of luck as well.

At least according to this essay about what it takes to be Silicon Valley.

Apparently the Steelers will name Mike Tomlin their new head coach. Who’s this Tomlin guy?

Is this a good or bad choice over Grimm? (The Whiz is going to Arizona).

Also, go Bears?

Everyone knows that Cowher retired (or stepped down or whatever), but no one seems to have noticed that Dick Hoak retired a few days earlier.

Dick Hoak was the Steelers’ running backs coach for 45 35 years, going back to 1972. Pittsburgh has been a running team all of those years and Dick Hoak was the reason that usually worked. Franco Harris was coached by Hoak. Barry Foster had 12 100 yard games in a season under Hoak. Jerome Bettis was transformed from a good, but faltering running back to a Hall-of-Fame runner under Hoak. Willie Parker had two 200 yard games this season (the record for a career is six) under Hoak. I wonder how Parker will continue to develop without him.

Here’s a bio and nice article about him from 2004.

I took a number of photos in Pittsburgh (including this one) and put them online.

I managed to see the three Pittsburgh sports teams a total of five times this year.

Due to some fortuitous scheduling, I saw all of them in the Bay Area (in three different cities):

• June 11 Pirates @ Giants. 7-5 Pirates
• October 29 Steelers @ Raiders 20-13 Raiders
• November 4 Penguins @ Sharks 3-2 Sharks

I saw two of the three in Pittsburgh:

• August 5 Braves @ Pirates 3-2 Pirates
• December 27 Thrashers @ Penguins 4-2 Thrashers

Today when I was sorting through my desk drawers, I found this receipt from Beluga Records:

[they said to save the receipt and I did]

Colin had told me that this band, the Coctails, had musical saw because he knew I was interested in it, so I decided to order The Coctails’ Peel. I’d also heard him talking about bands like Superchunk and Sebadoh, many of whom appeared on the Lounge Ax Relocation and Defense Fund CD.

I ordered those CDs and I believe they were my first indie rock CDs. I possibly bought Sebadoh’s Free Weed before that, but I’m not completely sure. July 1997 would place me at the end of my sophomore year of high school, about to enter my junior year.

Andy said that yesterday: “I had embarrassing teen years.” He was going through some boxes of stuff that his parents wanted to get rid of to make space. I laughed at him. I’m not embarrassed by my teen years, I thought. I did alright with them.

Here’s one gem Andy found yesterday:

[yeah, I should crop this and make it a smaller file.]

It’s the original lyric sheet to the Where’s Luke theme song. This was when we were preparing for the coffee house that they hosted at Westminster Presbyterian. I think we might have just been asking Colin if he’d be our drummer.

Tonight I went through my drawers in my desk tonight. I was laughing again, this time at myself. Despite myself I did have an embarrassing adolescence. I found all sorts of ridiculous things that I saved. The pot of gold at the end of the embarrassment rainbow was the half-drawer full of love notes, poems and drawings from a high school girlfriend. I was smiling so much at the ridicilousness of it that I almost cried.

I was delayed there a bit, but here’s the December mix tape. Hopefully there’s enough time for you to download it and get it on to your favorite digital audio player for your holiday travels. Play it while sitting around the Christmas tree with your family.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006december playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It’s a mix of normal indie fare along with indie and oldies/ Motown Christmas songs.

Adrian’s December 2006 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Enjoy and have a happy Christmas or other winter solstice-timed religious, ethnic or other holiday.

In the middle of a stream of bittersweet nostalgia, I took a bunch of photos this weekend.

They’re here.

I did a bunch of fun stuff, today, some of which I may write about later, but, for now, it’s all about Paul’s Compact Discs in Bloomfield. Dave and I made the trek over to Bloomfield after a Primanti’s sandwhich this afternoon.

It’s a smallish record store, not giant by any means, but also not shoebox and very navigable. The way it’s laid out and the way things are organized made it easy to look through things. They had a good selection among indie music, including the classic stuff (they had 3 of the 4 Seam albums in stock). They also have a good vinyl (7″ and LPs) selection. Their used CD selection is small and flat-priced (all $8) so that’s not the greatest. The people behind seemed knowledgable (one geeky clerk informed me of a Girl Talk show tonight after I bought the album).

I’d say it’s perhaps on par with Aquarius or slightly lower on my list for small record stores, but that’s saying a lot: Aquarius is pretty amazing and I like Paul’s a lot too.

I got:

• Girl Talk Night Ripper
• Ida Will You Find Me [used]
• Sigur Ros Saeglopur

I was familiar with the Ida and the Sigur Ros sounds good from first listen. I had heard little snippets of the Girl Talk and had read the rave reviews and I figured I should buy it in Pittsburgh if I was going to buy it, given that he’s a Pittsburgh local. I listened to it in the car a few times while driving around today and, I must say, I’m impressed. He takes tiny samples of pop songs, often dozens for each song of his and mashes them together (quite different from a “mash up” in most ways) to make another song. The samples he mixes and the smothness with which he does it, for the most part, are pretty amazing. It’s good music and it’s fun to try to pick out the samples he’s using. Today I definitely heard, among others, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Pixies, Verve (itself a sample), Kanye West, Gwen Stefani, and Elton John. No one’s sacred.

I also found out today that Unwed Sailor has cancelled their tour, including tomorrow night’s stop at the Brillobox, so that’s sad. I was looking forward to that. If I’d know that it was cancelled (I just found out), I would probably have made more of an effort to catch Girl Talk tonight at Belvedere’s. Oh well.

I’m back in Pittsburgh for the Thanksgiving holiday. Today I went up to New Brighton in Beaver County to grab lunch with my friend Chris Atwell. He’s been working at his uncle’s business, Ceramic Color and Chemical Manufacturing Co. They take metals (inorganic chemicals), grind them and combine them in various ways to make pigments, which are largely used in tiles and other ceramics. He gave me a tour of the plant, which is mostly within a very cool 200 year old building and it was a bunch of industrial equipment. Man, I love factory tours. Giant mechanical equipment is my thing.

(Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos of the giant mechanical equipment inside.)

I also think it’s cool that they’re doing what they’re doing: growing slowly, competing on the global market with a family business using local labor. That seems increasingly rare these days.

We ended up grabbing lunch at the Backdoor Tavern up there. (I must admit, I winced after I hit enter in google with the search terms ‘backdoor’ and ‘beaver’ (it’s in Beaver county) thinking I’d get a bunch of dirty results but I was actually able to find the place I wanted.) I got a really solid meatball sandwhich and a Penn Pilsner. The total for the two? $7. In Palo Alto, I might get a mediocre sandwhich for seven bucks…

After lunch, the following sign caught my eye and I had to check out the Rosalind Candy Castle:

That 3ft tall chocolate Santa was like a little person but jolly and made of chocolate. mmmmmm three foot tall chocolate Santa…. (give me a minute here.) I ended up getting a Santa chocolate lollipop and some dark chocolate covered pretzels which my family agreed were excellent when we had them for dessert tonight.

Then I walked through downtown Beaver before coming home.

I put more photos from today online

(How is something so simple like going to the same place and getting a pizza so awesome? Wish you were there, Andy.)

There are a couple entertaining videos that I found or ran across in the recent times:

Aries Spears impressions while freestyling. This is a guy doing impressions of LL Cool J, Snoop Dog, DMX and Jay Z while freestyling. It’s pretty dang impressive, though I’m not familiar with DMX at all and only somewhat familiar with the other three. I’m still very impressed. (A couple things of note: a) that’s Live 105, in SF and that’s the same studio where I did the college dj of the week thing and 2) it appears Woody, one of the hosts, is a Steelers fan as he’s sporting a hat and a Willy Parker jersey). (via stereogum)

Peyton Manning Mastercard Priceless Ad. I can see how you might not like Peyton Manning, but man, I love this commercial which started running last year. They have a second, similar one this season but it’s not as good. I laugh every time I see this one.

[Update:] Oh man, I found another Peyton priceless commercial and it’s hilarious too. Also, there’s a blooper commercial from the first Peyton video and the making of (including the actual commercial at the end) a third in the series.

Amazingly the Steelers pulled off another win. Roethlisberger threw for 224 yards in the fourth quarter (out of 272 yards total); he was intercepted 3 times in the first half. I have an idea, Ben: throw well the whole game! I know it’s crazy; just crazy enough that it might work.

You can check out the video highlights (check out the end to see the crappy-but-somehow-it-worked go-ahead shovel pass), the post game quotes, or the rather pathetic game stats.

Last night I saw the Penguins play the Sharks last night. They lost in a close and well-played game. It was a fun game to watch. The new young players (by which I mean Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal, and Marc-Andre Fleury) are really good, by the way. And if you haven’t seen, the Penguins are actually doing well so far this season.

The Steelers lost again today. They actually seemed to make a game of it until the end there. But in the end, the result is the same: disappointment. The culprit was turnovers again. Blah. Also: post game quotes.

wow. that was just embarrassing. 4 interceptions! Two for TDs? Come on, Ben~

good thing I paid way too much for tickets to be there!

(Out of ~63K people there, I’d say 5-10K were baseball fans though.)

After a few weeks of disappointments, I’m happy the Steelers can still beat a crappy team. Their domination of the game encourages me that this might not just be a one-week-against-a-crappy-team spurt. As always, the post game quotes are somewhat interesting.

The steelers alternated being dominant and sucking badly in today’s 28-20 loss against the Bengals. When dug came over at the end of the first quarter, I told him the Steelers were dominating, at which point they started sucking. In the 3rd quarter they were dominating again, and then sucking in the 4th until it was do or die and they almost did.

The AP write up and the post-game quotes.

There was some stat that all x points were scored with the wind. Heinz Field is basically a nasty wind funnel on some days. I don’t know if the stat held all the way through the game, but at least the first 34 points were scored with the wind.

Willie Parker and the offensive line played really well all day and that made me pretty happy because they didn’t play great in either previous game.

I finally scanned in some photos of Jeff and Debi’s Wedding.

I also added a few of Colin to the Pgh 2006 directory. They’re from Colin’s first of two (or three?) trips to Eat N Park that day.

Yeah, I’m a few days late on this, but on Thursday I watched the Steelers win at Zack’s in Millbrae with Mike and Dug.

Charlie Batch did pretty well. Willie Parker looked great on a few runs and the handful of screen play passes he caught.

Polamalu continues to look better and better each game he plays. This guy is incredible. His interception was really skillful, as was Porter’s. Porter kissed Cowher after that and Cowher was fine with it.

Heath Miller’s 87 yard TD reception interception was sort of funny. There was this guy at the bar that had high-fived everyone before Heath had passed the 50. Cowher thought he was fast, but it took pretty long for him to get anywhere. I mean, he had time check the jumbotron to see if the defense was gaining on him.

If I were a Dolphins fan, I might be pissed about the missed challenge on the Heath Miller touchdown, but it’s sort of laughable that the coach waited that long (~1 minute) when he was obviously out and then did a dainty underhand toss right before the snap and then just sort of pointed to it when no one saw it.

Here’s a slide show from the Post Gazette and their write up.

With my dad working for a coal company, I grew up around talk of mining coal veins and the like, but I was a little surprised to see this in an article about Centro-matic:

Centro-matic’s dynamic is intelligent, emotional American rock that mines some of the same veins as My Morning Jacket, Son Volt and the Drive-By Truckers.

How about that? Is that a common expression? Does your average San Jose (or other major city resident) know that coal (and other fossil remnants) is located in veins?

I always have moments like these because the linguistic hodge-podge that’s in my head: South African English, Pittsburghese, south-eastern PA dialect, geek slang. I know that 98% of what I say is understandable by the listener; it’s that last 2% that I’m never sure if it’s some specific or specialized term, phrase or way of talking that I’m not sure is in the common lexicon.

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

Part of Jeff’s bachelor party was going to the Pirates game on Thursday. It was a close game and a good one, with the Pirates winning in the end.

Here’s a a good recap of the game.

Also PNC Park is awesome. They even have Primanti’s and a pierogi race. It’d be a truly sad moment if the team moved.

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autohar