adrian is rad

Somehow I started a tradition a couple years ago of donating some money to charities around my birthday. Here’s how it worked out this year:

• 20% Catholic Charities, CYO, Archdiocese of San Francisco—local—I feel like they’re one of the better organizations serving the poor et al in San Francisco
• 20% American Red Cross (National Disaster Relief Fund)—national
• 20% South African Development Fund—international/ South Africa
• 20% African Medical and Research Fund (AMREF)—international/ Africa—they do research and have medical aid for AIDS and malaria, among other things.
• 20% Freedom from Hunger—international

Criteria: I like Africa and South Africa in particular. I like efficient organizations. (I only donate to four star charities.) I think international charities can help more people per dollar than American charities. My primary concern is saving lives now and in the future. At the same time, I think one should strive to help out locally and nationally as well.

Okay, that’s it, I think. I’m a little reluctant to post about this as always.

I had to wait till after Christmas to post this (it was present-related), but the Phil Sector Back to Mono 4 CD box set is only $16.99 at amazon, brand new.

I have it (and paid a lot more it than that, used) and it’s fantastic. 3 great CDs with songs like “Be My Baby”, “He’s a Rebel”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Spanish Harlem” and “Unchained Melody.” The fourth CD is the Spector Christmas CD, which is enjoyable during that season.

In any case, this is a great price for a great and worthwhile box set.

I will let you know: Bam Stain and Drain Cleaner works. I don’t know if my respiratory system will ever be the same but it works.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last night at the Aquarius.

Let’s see, it’s a movie about a disfunctional family with parents that argue, a profanity-loving grandpa, a son that has taken a vow of silence, a suicide-attempting uncle and most importantly a beauty-pagent entering but somewhat plain daughter who all have to pile in a van together so that the daughter can enter the Little Miss Sunshine contest. It’s a roadtrip movie; it’s a family movie.

It’s also one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I laughed out loud so much and so loud. It also manages to have it’s heartfelt and touching moments. The writing, directing and acting are all very good.

(And any movie that accompanies a road trip in a van with a Sufjan song about a road trip in a van gets my vote.)

I highly recommend this movie.

[Update:: I had a few more thoughts on this movie. It’s pretty amazing in its realness. Let me state this right: this movie has a contrived plot and is a farce, but within that the emotions and even many of the choices the characters make are real and true to those characters. Believablity within a farcicle shell.]

I saw Dave Chapelle’’s Block Party last night with the roomies, Raag and Jesse. Good times!

Quick summary: Dave Chapelle gets signed to a $50 million contract, decides to blow some of it. He throws a block party in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn and invites a bunch of people from his current hometown in south west Ohio. (NOTE ANDY: he grew up in Silver Spring for part of his time!) He also found some decent hip-hop acts to come and preform (the Roots, Kanye, Mos Def, the Fugees, etc)

And also! he invited a marching band, once again proving that marching bands are cool.

It happens that Michel Gondry directs, but that doesn’t have much bearing on the situation. Dave Chapelle’s funny as it turns out. The music is pretty fantastic. I loved a lot of the performances. I’m not the most familiar with either mainstream or underground hip hop and I imagine most of you are more familiar so you might enjoy the music even more than I do.

I loved the scene of Kanye watching the marching band play his “Jesus Walks” with a huge smile on his face.

There are also little stories of people through out. The old woman from Ohio. The two kids from Ohio that are out of their mind that they get to go. The very very strange couple that lives in the most-abandoned house right where the block party is going to be held. The marching band director and members. The neighborhood pre-school director.

In the end I sort of wish I could have seen more of all of it: the humor, the music and the people stories.

It’s good and surprisingly uplifting. I vote yes.

I’ve been thinking that reviews of products that people have used for a while are better than ones where people just got the product and aren’t that familiar with it. This may be the first in a series of “products I use” reviews.

Some of you have probably seen me wearing my shoulder bag around. It’s a Street Scene “Small” bag by Pac Designs.

Background and overview: They’re a Canadian company started by a former Toronto bike messenger. I got the Street Scene Small last August (August 2004) and have been using it extensively since. The most use comes biking 2 miles each way too and from work. Other common uses are as a carry-on bag while traveling and walking to work. My usually load is a Powerbook 12″ laptop (with an InCase Sleeve, though now, I see, they have laptop inserts), a camera, a paperback book or two, two to five CDs in jewel cases, my lunch for the day and various miscellaneous items. I have the left swing blue bag with grey inset diamond and the radio holder option.

I heard about Pac bags from Indy, who has (and can maybe comment on) the Deluxe with a Custom Xiohazard flap.

Pros:

• Rock solid. I’ve had mine for over a year and I don’t see a single thread out of place. It looks basically brand new. I’ve taken this things all around the world (Mexico, London, South Africa, Tanzania, Boston, Pittsburgh) and it really seems like it has just been shipped to me. I have had two clips come off and got a prompt replacement on one; the other one I didn’t use much so I didn’t try to get a replacement.
• Waterproof. A wave hit my bag on a beach while I had two cameras in there. No sign of moisture inside the bag. I’ve walked home in the rain. Similarly, no problems. I haven’t put my bag in the bathtub or anything, but it’s pretty good in my experience.
• Good weight distrubution while cycling. Even with a fairly full load, I hardly feel it while I’m biking to work. This is what these bags were made for (these are messenger bags first and foremost), so it’s good they do this well. It sits nicely on the small of the back/ pelvis.
• Anti-sway strap. I think a lot of shoulder bags have this now, but anti-sway straps are absolutely key if you want to bike with a bag.
• Good for third world traveling. Backpacks are very easily to get pick-pocketed. This bag has two clips and some heavy velcro to open the flap, so it’s too noisy/ difficult to open for pick pockets. I felt a hand on my bag in Tanzania but they didn’t get past the clips even.
• IPod fits in radio holder. I don’t use this as much as I thought I would, but my iPod fits nicely in the radio holder when the holder is fully tightened down. I can even get to the buttons to change volume or skip a track when I’m on the move.

Cons:

• Less than ideal weight distribution while walking. If I have a heavy bag and I’m walking around for hours (like sometimes is the case if I’m sight-seeing), it hurts. One thing I would like to note is that I find I walk with better posture than my normal slouch when I’m walking around wearing the bag.
• X strap and suspension strapping not options for Street Scene. Pac has some neat features for better weight distribution but they are not options for their lower-cost street scene bags.

Overall, I’ve very happy with it. It was about $150 with all the options and whatnot. It’s well worth the price; it’ll last me a lifetime. The price/ use ratio is something to consider if you’re not going to use it for a while or if you aren’t going to use it very often.

Over the last two nights I watched part of The Gods Must be Crazy and The Gods Must be Crazy II. Man, what a set of fantastic movies!

The basic plots are Xixo, a bushman from the Kalahari, interacting with “heavy people,” e.g. South Africans and westerners. Both movies have a bumbling South African and a woman who interact in a love story.

There is something very charming about these movies. Movies just aren’t made like this any more! Slapstick humor, slightly spead up film for effect, a goofy “narrator” part that makes it seem like an anthropology movie. The first movie even has this problem with the audio where it’s out of sync with the mouths moving on the screen.

I remember in 1989 or so, we’d just moved to Pittsburgh and the whole family went to see 2 at the Galleria (in the right most theater, if you’re counting). It was just at the time when my brother and I didn’t want to sit with our parents at the movies so we sat up near the front (probably the 3rd row—we’d often sit in the 3rd row) and my parents sat near the back. During the entire movie I could hear my dad’s laughter over everyone else’s.

Yesterday, while out running errands, Andyl and I were at BevMo just across from El Mercadito Latino in Redwood City. I decided to go in to see if they stock Coke in glass bottles made with sugar (instead of corn syrup). They do. I bought 6 @$1.19. I now have 3 left.

It’s so good. I like the glass bottle. I like the way it feels in my hand— the cold glass with condensation. I like the way it feels on my lips. I like the way it tastes; it’s crisper and less syrupy. I like how it reminds me of cokes I had in bottles in South Africa (and, to a lesser extent, Germany and Tanzania among other places).

An article about Mexican Coke vs. American Coke.

Other things that I like in glass bottles or with sugar instead of corn syrup:

• Straus Family Creamery Milk (for my cereal at work)
• heinz organic ketchup (from Pittsburgh, no less!)
• Dublin Dr. Pepper. The holy grail of sugar sodas. I bought a bunch at the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas on my last road trip across the country.

yes, to answer your questions, I am apparently a total hippie.

I saw a Afri Cola bottle while shopping at Bev Mo the other day:

[picture taken with the crappy camera on my sidekick]

and it reminded me of my time in Stuttgart. They had afri cola at the commisary at my company which was open daily from 8:30-10am and 10:30-11am. I’d quite often get a bottle for the afternoon.

I bought the bottle at Bev Mo and drank it. It’s actually not incredible soda, but I don’t care.

I was always struck by the incredible graphic design they had. The white palm tree and “afri cola” on black. So simple, but so catchy. I have a shirt that has that design on it. And that bottle!

I was also reminded about this sweet commercial they had of a bunch of people in a line in a train station or something dancing away the time. I was please to find that afri cola has a bunch of their commericials online, including the the one I remember. It’s still fun to watch.

For the non-german speakers Kein Vergnuegen ohne Gefahr (on the bottle) roughly means “no pleasure without danger” and und alles wird afri roughly means “and everything becomes afri.”

I saw Million Dollar Baby last night. It’d been getting good reviews so I thought I’d check it out.

It’s good enough to warrant the praise. I remember after I saw Steamboat Bill, Jr. at LSC (with Marty Marks on the piano) with Wally, afterwards he wanted to leap and bound up the side of the student center, like something Buster Keaton would do. A good movie will make you do that. Today I want to jump rope and get some gloves and a bag.

Another sign of a good film is that it sticks with you. This one is so far. I’m still mulling it over.

The acting is top-notch. Hilllary Swank gives a fantastic performace. The sort of performance were she’d been living the life of the character all her life and someone asked her to do it in front of camera and she said “It’s all the same to me, boss.” Clint Eastwood. He acts almost by not acting. His performance is straight and without frills, yet that’s what it makes it so great; and that’s what keeps this movie real when it threatens to degrade into sentimental mush. Morgan Freeman’s performance as friend-cum-narrator is good, but not as nuanced as Eastwood or Swank.

The story could have stopped at other points or moved in different directions, but the success of the movie is in large part because it doesn’t take the easy ending. Not all the questions are answered. Much like Nowhere in Africa this movie benefits greatly from not telling the audience what is right or wrong, but to lay out a complicated story and leave it to the audience how to feel.

The screen play needs to be applauded as well. It’s told as one story line—no flashbacks, no starting the movie in 1958 and then jumping to present or whatever. Those sort of tricks would have hurt this movie.

Eastwood directs as well and he does a masterful job of minimalist film making. The movie, as well as his performance, are stripped down and presented without Hollywood tricks. It’s all there for you to see and that’s alright because it’s all good.

The film’s not perfect, but the reasons why are pretty nitpicky and I think many of you wouldn’t notice them unless I point them out, so I won’t.

I need to check out Eastwood’s other movies as a director.

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 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.