Hi all.

Sometimes you get so busy you forget you submitted album reviews to Performer magazine. Then suddenly, there they are. At least, you do if that you is me.

The latest review is of a band called Stuntditch out of Philly. Check it out in the October issue of Performer or right here on the Review page.

Dear Hipsters,

I’m too fat to be a hipster. Huge fan of black. Black shirts. Black jeans. Maybe a skinny black tie here and there, you know, if the mood strikes me and I can offset it with the right striped shirt. I can’t fit into American Apparel Clothing. My vintage graphic tees are kitschy instead of edgy. They definitely aren’t one of kind.

Square-framed glasses and a round face just don’t jive. Besides, I have perfect vision and filling frames with clear glass is something Klosterman would do.

Speaking of Chuck, I read his oeuvre cover to cover. When I finished I told anyone in ear shot that I completely disagree with any stance he’s ever taken. Well, except for his essay on Billy Joel – Glass Houses is a fucking masterpiece.

I’m losing a lot of my hair, so I can’t get a unique hair cut to match the undiscovered gems on my iPod that – though you’re all hipsters – even you’ve never heard.

And though my awkward, chubby and Old Navy clad appearance may might not the fit the bill, I’m willing to have a Hipster-off any time you want. I always win because I cheat. You’ve heard of the Republic Tigers? Yeah, I saw them on Conan, too. They did the late night circuit after I bought them all a beer one night. Name your bands. I’ve got more. Ever heard of ‘Internet Browser Tool Bar’ or ‘Orange Water Bottle’ or ‘Black Moth Super Rainbow’? You know why? I just made all of those band names up. Except for Black Moth. I saw them play after the Republic Tigers, natch.

Natch, incidentally, is a phrase I coined a while ago back stage at a rock show. I said it to the lead singer of a band you’ve played for someone to show them how deep you are. He took it as his own and used it on stage that night. It spread. Later, we drank Colt .45s and smoked a pack of American Spirits.

Even though I’m busy hanging out at all the same shows you’re at — and a bunch of shows you’ve never even heard of — I’m always the odd man out. Girl jeans always give me wedgies and skinny ties look ridiculous on a big body.

Have you even seen me in American Apparel? No, obviously you haven’t, because if you did, I’d be sixty pounds skinnier and you’d be propping me up as your totally independent minded, wildly well coiffed and blessed-with-the-ability-to-herd-hipsters-like-retarded-cats leader. But such dreams infrequently come true, and that makes me long for things in life that are far out of my reach. Like red headed Punk Rock Girls.

That longing, paired with my solidly white, middle class upbringing make us a perfect match, even though the jeans will never fit quite right.

But, come on, I’ve got the semi underground Chuck Taylors that you all still wear. They always look good with my Polo shirt.

Ironic, isn’t it?

There’s one other potential problem that I’ve been loath to mention until now, but it’s got to be said: Death Cab For Cutie still sucks.

See you at the next secret underground show. I’ll be the guy with my hands in my pockets who outwardly appears to be even less into the music than you.

Brian

The Telegraph is finally reporting that the Manchester, UK band The Get Out Clause couldn’t afford to put together a music video, but it didn’t stop them.

No director, cameras, lighting, make-up or production? No problem.

These rockers decided to record themselves for free on local CCTV cameras. Then, in a stroke of brilliance, requested the video from operators using the Freedom of Information act. They weaved it all together and, ta-da, they had a music video.

I remember seeing this video a while back and thinking it was a really cool gimmick. I never got the full story of how the band brought this all together, but it does add something to the video. Say what you will about the music or the lead singers mustache, the video they created is pretty cool.

Check it out:

I wrote an album review for the local magazine that I freelance for, Performer Magazine, and was trying to find a different word for “showcase.” I asked a few other editors if they had any ideas, but nothing captured exactly what I was trying to express.

That’s OK, I thought, there’s still the world of online thesauri. First I tried the old standby, Thesaurus.com. I typed in ‘showcase’ then ‘show case’ and didn’t get a single result for either version. Well, actually, Thesaurus.com asked if I meant ‘show case’ instead of ‘showcase.’ Looks promising. Sure, I clicked, why not? No results came up.

After a couple of minutes of questioning Thesaurus.com’s ability to function as an actual thesaurus, I moved on to Merriam-Webster – that paragon of Word of the Day. Again I tried both ‘showcase’ and ‘show case.’ Again, I got no results. Well, almost no results. Merriam-Webster didn’t exactly say: ‘We ain’t found shit!’ But it was close.

Instead, it asked if I could’ve been searching for either of these two words:

Jocose
Sausage

Really. Sausage. Showcase. Jocose. Showcase. Sausage. Oh yeah, I can see how those might be related.

Fail.

Found a few interesting Websites this morning that I thought would be worth point out.

The first is ChaCha. It’s sort of like Twitter — but completely different at the same time. Instead of using ChaCha to microblog about yourself, ChaCha is there to answer questions. The similarity? Well, I guess it’s that you use your phone to send an SMS message and then something magical and mysterious happens somewhere in the vast expanses of the Interwebs.

ChaCha, incidentally, is the number you text in order to ask a question: 242242. It could be a bot, but when one user asked the question, ‘What’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?’ The answer perceived was a direct quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

My initial question was: ‘Who are the Knights who say Ni!’? Not too original, I know, but I was in a Pythonesque state of mind. The response I received was:

“Welcome to ChaCha. Your phone just got smarter. Ask away. Your first answer will come shortly. Std txt charges may apply.”

A few minutes later, as promised, I got my answer: “Knights Who Say Ni! Are a band of knights from the comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Not too witty, but to the point nonetheless.

The other website I found this morning is called The Jargon Database. It looks like a site designed to compete with Urban Dictionary. The latest copywrite on Jargon Database is 2004, so maybe they didn’t compete too well. But, on the upside, I found out what a ‘Groove Digger‘ was this morning. Did you know?

All the basics are there — F.A.Q., contact, and submission. The purpose of the site, as Steve points out, is to provide an alternative for strictly technical or business related jargon sites. And, he hopes, it’ll provide a resource to the blog community looking for a place to link to strange and witty words.

As you might imagine, Jargon Database has nowhere near the number of entries and submissions that UD has, but, if nothing else, it’s an alternative. After all, when I get a daily update from Urban Dictionary defining the word ‘Irregardless,’ I think it might be time to move to a new, different, less mind numbing and soul crushing social dictionary.

I know, I know. Irregardless isn’t a word and neither is a lot of stuff that gets posted on UD. But, honestly, doesn’t that site have editors with brains? Isn’t irregardless quite possibly the stupidest word in existence? If you say “Irregardless of the fact that…” what you are saying is that you are basing an argument on things that are simply made up or don’t exist.

Oh, a quick check proves that the Urban Dictionary community has spoken out on irregardless. Maybe there is still hope for this crazy, online world in which my brain lives.

Still, I’m a little angsty about it.

]]> http://tinfoiltriangles.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/chacha-for-jargon/feed/ 0 Brian http://tinfoiltriangles.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder-cutter/ http://tinfoiltriangles.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder-cutter/#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:14:54 +0000 Brian http://tinfoiltriangles.wordpress.com/?p=70 ]]>

I love reading Wired. They’ve got interesting stories. There’s some wit. The writing is usually pretty good. And occasionally they offer up some random, random gadgets.

My most recent favorite was passed along to me this morning:

“Need to Slice Through a Boulder? Try a 10,000-Degree Tactical Cutter“

My favorite part of the story is where they list the uses as: Melting through doors or concrete bunkers.

Come on, dude. That’s what I’ve got a lightsaber for!

My Dearest Google Reader,

I’m sorry I haven’t been using you much lately. You know that you’re still my source for news, blogs and music updates from around the world.

I realize I’ve been neglecting you, but my boss is riding me hard. I’ve got a big project at work that needs to get finished this week.

I swear I haven’t been using Digg or Bloglines or even the RSS functionality in Firefox. Baby, you’re my one and only. Your XML feed aggregation is still just as sexy to me as it was the day I first subscribed to Google news. Your filters and – ahem – easy functionality keep me coming back for more.

How else am I going to read the BBC news? Or get snarky comments about technology from Gizmodo? You introduced me to Gizmodo. I couldn’t read it anywhere else without thinking about the good times we had.

You remember the day you brought me a video of a man having his head swallowed up by the butt of an elephant. We laughed for hours about it. I couldn’t do that with just any old RSS feed – you make it special.

So just let me finish this project – it should be done soon. Then it’ll just be you and I basking in the soft glow of the computer screen, smoking cigarettes and reading about archeologists with funny names again.

It won’t be long now. So just enjoy your downtime and I’ll be back before you know it.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr died two days ago at his home in NYC. I haven’t written about it because, well, what can I say that hasn’t been said already by the author himself?

I first started reading Vonnegut nearly 10 years ago. My introduction to his work, as it probably was for you too, was Slaughterhouse Five. Reading that book was one of my favorite experiences of all time. People always talk about the moments that stick out for them — looking through time, the two humans in a cage on a distant planet, the drawings of boobs — but for me, for some strange reason, it’s a particular part of the fire bombing of Dresden. The whole scene is one of the more memorable moments in my literary history. But there is a throw away line that always sticks with me. The narrator is talking about how the men are stuck in the meat locker underground. The bombing is going on above and the men all have to huddle together for warmth. They had to “make like spoons.” And then later, the narrator injects himself as one of the people spooning next to Billy and simply says, “That was me.”

Completely random part of a great book. But it always stuck with me for some reason. After House I moved on to Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus — on down the line. My friends and I constantly started asking each other if we were a member of the turtle club.

I became a Bokonist for a while and probably thought Ice-9 would be the greatest invention in the history of the world.

I saw Vonnegut read at the University of Iowa 4 or 5 years ago. I’d been to the Prairie Lights reading events dozens of times, but until then each reading was in the bookstore or some other small place. Not for Vonnegut. There were no tickets, the reading was free and he was booked in Iowa’s main hall. I got there just in time to slip into the auditorium near and had the privilege of standing near the door. The rest of the people weren’t so lucky. Staff had to begin herding the throngs of people into satellite halls and pipe sound in for the reading.

I want to reiterate that. There were so many people who wanted to see this one man stand on a stage and speak for an hour that they were willing to be shepherded into another room and made to stare at a wall while listening to his disembodied voice speak to them from a building away.

I think Kurt Vonnegut Jr the author would find something very ironic about that.

Vonnegut seemed to be getting old at the reading at U of I. He was cranky and churlish — but I would be too at that age. After reading a few passages from the book he was working on and some passages from books he had written, he talked about how to teach writing. I remember a chalk board got wheeled out on stage and Vonnegut began to diagram plot arcs and narrative lines and character development. By the end, the board was covered in chalk, and I’m pretty sure he had lit a cigarette. After his mini lecture, he invited questions.

About 100 people lined up to ask him the question they’d been thinking of all day. He took exactly three. The first two were completely asinine and the last, which I remember was, “What’s your favorite book?” Without pausing too long, Vonnegut answered, “Candide.” He explained why and then threw one hand into the air, turned to the side and walked off the stage. No signing, no thank you. He was just gone.

Since I was standing at the exit, I slipped out before the ushers, made a quick right through a double set of doors and took off down the hallway that seemed to run along the side of the auditorium. I smelled cigarette smoke and saw a wave of gray hair. He turned and looked at me.

“Mr. Vonnegut. I just wanted to thank you for the reading. I thought you were great and it was a pleasure to see you.” He said thanks, I shook his hand then slipped out a side door because U of I security was making its way toward me.

With his death, people have been calling me and asking me what I thought about him. Did I read him? Which was your favorite book?

I can only think of one response that is correct for all of these questions:

You bet your ass I am.

Dear Pontiac,

I’ve owned one of your vehicles since July of 2003 when I purchased a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am. In that time I’ve had to replace a water pump, a window regulator and my rear brake rotors.

Today I’m spending $300 replacing a brake caliper and my radiator cap.

I’d just like to let you know:

You suck.

Sincerely,

Brian

Haven’t written in a while. Mostly because I haven’t been to a show since Upstairs at the Middle East. Mostly because I’ve been hesitant to write about what has been going on. There’s something to be said about having the onion sack to write about your thoughts and the current events of your life. It’s a lot of exposure. (Well, it could be a lot of exposure if anyone ever read this thing.)

Plus, do I really want to write about myself? Is that really interesting to anyone?

Went to the store today because I needed some shaving cream. Bought some rutabagas. Later I think I’ll pull my pants down and slide on the ice. 

Come on. With the exception of that last part (if I do that, there will be pictures), that isn’t interesting to me — and I’m the one doing it.  This makes me wonder if I need some direction for this blog. One friend has a Red Sox blog. Another has a fishing and outdoors blog. Lately I’ve been writing — with various degrees of success depending on who you ask — about music. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of music blogs in the world. Does that deter me? Not really. Writing about shows and albums is something I want to do, so I’ll keep it up. 

But what about the rest of the time? Do you want to know about what is or isn’t going on with Melody? Most of you reading this have never met her. Would I feel bad writing about it? No, because I like to think I’d try to be objective about it, but, really, who of you cares?

But, man. That personal writing… it always makes for the most compelling and interesting stuff to read. Beth keeps telling me I’ve got the chops to blog on a daily basis if I wasn’t so lazy. She’s probably right and I appreciate the support, but I’ve got to have something to put on paper. Or screen. I’ll keep working on it. And hopefully I’ll keep you interested.

Until then, Melody, I am going to pull my pants down and slide on the ice.