MNF

I thought it was pretty great that the starting Steeler defense had 2 CSU players and a guy from UNC. Heck, where's the Air Force guy?

That was a good football game. Pittsburgh - as always - is gritty and tough.

Madden had not less than 4 really good football insights tonight. A few years back he seemed like a bumbling fool to me, but lately, he seems as good as ever. Not that he doesn't still occasionally call things the way he thinks he saw them compared to the way that the replay is showing them, but, when he does see it right, he sees all twenty-two parts and how they all turn off of each other.

Jonathan 10/31/2005 10:40:00 PM

 
One

Headed to ABasin this AM. 1.5 of fresh and the possibility of a 2nd run owning. This is my second year in a row skiing before Halloween. Weather's great, wish you were here.

Pics to follow?

Jonathan 10/30/2005 07:36:00 AM

 
Help Teach Stu about Bandwidth Costs

Stu's got a side gig going on - or at least maybe going on - or sort of going on right now and he almost surely will work on it some more once he gets back from the beach.

Anyway, if you haven't yet seen me as Special J in the video footage from our sailing trip a few seasons past, you can get it there again. He also put up the link on some travel review site.

Stu tells me the first two days got 'im like a thousand hits - at 30+ megs a hit. Let's help out his bandwidth bill. It features Jonathan naked, partially. Go check it out.

The travel site comments seem to indicate that it's hit or miss whether it will play or not. I got picture, but no sound, but I have a signed, original - well the email was signed - and a full-screen one at that, so I didn't care. I'm still not getting the control buttons for the playback either.

Jonathan 10/29/2005 04:35:00 PM

 
Darwin's Helping Hands

I spend a lot of time walking up and down the 16th Street Mall. It's on my way to and from work, and I often walk there at lunch too. Occassionally, people get hit by the mall buses, but it's pretty rare. However, there're near misses all the time.

You'll hear the driver franctically dinging his electric bells or blasting the mighty horn. Parents screaming at their kids to move it. Teens schreeching into their phones as they jump out of the way. They all have to move at the last second because the driver doesn't warn 'til the last second because if he rang or honked any earlier the whole mall would be a ringing, honking mess all the live-long day, and it's bad enough down there with all those damned drywallers who think they're too good to work so who, instead, spend their days marching along chanting socialist slogans incorrectly.

Anyway, my point is that no one ever warns anybody that the bus is coming because the bus is always coming. But yesterday I saw a pretty lady step in front of an oncoming bus. Three different guys warned her to watch out. One guy half stepped in front of the bus himself as if, at first, he might provide some sort of shield. He thought better of it and stepped back immediately but continued to beckon to the lady. If that had been a fat guy, a stinky guy, that guy who yells (have you noticed he wears a helmet when he's on his bike? I think that's hilarious.), or me we'd be dead. The work of Darwin's helping hands was my immediate conclusion.

Jonathan 10/29/2005 04:00:00 PM

 
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

I mentioned the name and style of this band(?) to Graeme and he immediately thought of Stu. "Stu doing Joy Division," was my reply.

Graeme gets that; Stu, I suspect, doesn't.

Anyway, since we're all talkin' about it, here's some.

He's in Chicago eleven sixteen and then out here three days later playing at the Hi-Dive, where this week I missed a chance to see d.biddle.

His label (more downloads there) says:

Using only battery operated keyboards and electronics as instruments, Ashworth has created a hybrid strain of raw, emotional, and very homemade synth pop that is as influenced as much by film and literature as by its more obvious musical counterparts. CFTPA's claustrophobic two-minute character studies shudder with reverbed beats, blown-out chords, simple-but-infectous melodies, layered beneath the sometimes funny but always heartbreaking lyrics of Ashworth's sighing baritone.

I'd bet money he wrote that himself. Anyway, this one is clever and annoyingly catchy. I've had it set on repeat during this entire composition. Be careful.

Jonathan 10/29/2005 03:39:00 PM

 
More Song and Dance

I've had some good luck lately on the 'seek. I'm now to the point where I have more music than I could fit even on the big iPod. Thank goodness for this. I want it; I want it; I want it.

Jonathan 10/29/2005 03:21:00 PM

 
Song and a Story

Song.

I don't recall if it was high school or college (I'm thinkin' college, early) when I saw these guys play and gotted knocked down myself.

I had seen Naked Raygun play before, and I would see them play again later. This show was in Chicago at the Riv. It may have been the first time I ever went to a show alone - a trend that followed me all through college and follows me still.

This was the early 90's and, frankly, downtown Chicago was pretty tough. Lots of skinheads in boots and bombers were at the show. I was a boots and leather guy, myself.

The pit was a go from the opening band. I was a slighter lad in those days, but I was always game for banging in the pit. This was a tough one - lots of flying forearms. Keep your head down and your feet flailing and kicking ahead of you though, and you'll be fine. If you fell down the sea didn't open up around you. Sure, it was generally considered bad form to actually stomp somebody, but that didn't mean you might not get trampled or kicked.

I found myself standing over some guy unlucky enough to go down and to get trapped as the sea surged over him. I found myself kicking along to the music. Over and over. Never with any real intent to harm or maim but rather in some sort of macho display of dominance, I suppose.

Suddenly the sea surged again and I went far to left of the guy still unable to get his feet under him. I never really saw whom I had been kicking: just boots and a bomber. I stayed in the pit through the next song and then drifted to the back to take a break and catch my breath. At the back edge I turned around and took one step toward the bar.

BAM! I was on the floor. I - flash - caught just a glimpse: bald head and bare knuckles. I walked straight into a right hook that caught me square in the left eye and dropped me before I even knew what hit me.

I was up quickly. I looked around, but whoever it was was gone. There was just a sea of bomber jackets and the rocking of the pit.

Jonathan 10/25/2005 06:07:00 PM

 
Continued

Sitting here, listening to some of this old stuff, I'm struck by how good it is. I'm not sure I could have vocalized it at the time, but, retrospectively, it may very well have been Pornography that made me get the alternative in alternative music - at the least, on the mellow-side.

Embarrassing Blog Confession (EBC)*: I was such a big fan in high school, I once wept at a Cure concert. I had tenth row tix at the Rosemont with my high school sweetheart for the Disintegration tour. It was flat-out amazing. To this day, I consider it the best show I have ever seen. They closed (or, perhaps, ended the initial set?) with, "Pictures of You." I was months away from leaving my girl and heading off to college. The music seemed somehow deeper - more amazing as the spectrum of sound flowed from the stage right before us - and purer, live and close-up.

And the conviction and passion...So much more real, more intense in person.

I was months away from college. I knew that the love was real for now, but doomed for real...

When the song ends, you know it's over...

* Now and after trademarked and registered to me. As in, "Do you have an EBC?" "Ohhh myyyy gaawwwd, I have soo many EBCs from just this weekend that I won't be able to post them all for, like - you know - a month."

Tried to post this last night during my stupor, but couldn't get blogger to go.

Jonathan 10/24/2005 10:25:00 PM

 
I Win, You Win

Fortunately for me and my siblings, that has long been my trackman-father's motto. Locally, I scored a bunch of high quality Cure d/l's on da 'seek. Stuff I didn't know about, plus stuff I didn't have or had forgotten about.

Remember how great and new some of that stuff was?

Here's some.

I win, you win. Limited time only.

Jonathan 10/24/2005 10:13:00 PM