Well, breaking my long-standing tradition of going to bed before midnight, I'm actually going out tonight with a few friends. First, we're hitting an Indian restaurant called New Delhi. That should be good, because I really like Delhi food, especially pastrami on rye. Then, it's off to the Marriott to see Boogie Wonderland where I'll be doing the electric slide and the hustle. Actually, I don't know how to dance to either one, but that never stopped anybody in the 70's from making an ass of themselves.

Anyway, Disco Stu wishes you a Merry New Year's...

Dave Barry brilliantly sums up 2002.

Hey, and internet site that actually produces content. Weird. A complete documentary on the origin of man. If you're reading this page from the Kansas, you might want to go here instead and learn about the science of cloning.

When I get my basset hound (someday), I'm gonna dress him up like this on Christmas... Oops. I mean Halloween.

And someday I'm gonna get my nephew this outfit, so he can wear it at Christmas... Errr, I mean Halloween.

Local Twin Cities musicians give a beautiful rant about the passing of Joe Strummer. I've been listening to a lot of Clash over the past week -- currently to a song called "Rebel Waltz" (complete page of samples) from Sandinista! Harpsichords, trumpets, trombones, xylophones in a 3/4 time. Weird. Beautiful...

As the smoke of our hopes rose high from the field
My eyes played tricks through the moon and the trees
I slept as I dreamed I saw the army rise
A voice began to call, stand till you fall
The tune was an old rebel one.

Stand 'til you fall, Joe.

The City Pages Year in Music. I saw a few of these shows, such as Paul Westerberg's performance at the Guthrie, The Suburbs reunion at First Ave., and Har Mar Superstar's ill-fated show at the state fair [Having toured with the Strokes, written for J.Lo, hung out with the Osbournes, and convinced Rolling Stone that "Har Mar" stands for "Harold Martin," Sean Tillman (a.k.a. Sean Na Na, a.k.a. Har Mar Superstar, a.k.a. the man Conquerors bassist Keith Patterson calls "Apache Plaza Superstar") achieves the impossible. After strutting in his tighty-blackies at the Minnesota State Fair on the same stage where the 4H had hosted their 100th anniversARY party earlier that day, the R&B loverman is paid not to perform the following day. He is arrested for public lewdness in Oklahoma City two months later.]

Ah, State Fair history in the making.

A few short movie reviews:

• The Shipping News. To paraphrase Spinal Tap's Marti DiBergi, this movie deserves a simple 2-word review. The Shitty News. Awful, hideous movie laden with the most pedestrian movie cliches. Like, when he see's a dead body, Kevin Spacey throws up. How many times has that effect been used in movies/TV? Or, the gratuitous overuse of flashback scenes through his dreams. I love the original way that he bolts upright int he middle of the night sweating after he has one of these dreams. Clever. Or, the whole opening sequence where Kevin Spacey (playing the penultimate loser... AGAIN) meets and ends up living with Cate Blanchett. Suspended disbelief, my ass. That stuff just wouldn't happen. Most disappointing was the lackluster effort Lasse Hallstrom, the director who gave us Chocolat and My Life As A Dog. This is a terrible movie. If you liked it, let me suggest one that is very similar in theme and tone, but done correctly -- Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. No pronto pups for The Shipping News.
  
• Spiderman. Yawn. Dopey comic book action. 3 pronto pups.
  
• The Lord of the Rings (the first one). Okay, now here was a good movie. Great screenplay. I was constantly anticipating, "Okay, now how's he going to get out of THIS jam?" Enough has been written about it, so I'll just give my conclusion. 9 pronto pups.
  
• Donnie Darko.Wow! This is what movies are supposed to do! This film is strange and beautiful, and even before I read Salon's review, I was going to describe it as a quirky combination of "American Beauty" and "Back To The Future". The story is intricate and well-told, leaving many possible interpretations of what actually happened. It's set in 1988 (just a year after my own graduation), so I also liked the soundtrack which bubbled with Tears For Fears. They were my favorite band in High School (okay, scoff if you like), but the closing track of Mad World was perfect. 9 pronto pups.

Interesting. A project to digitally map the California coastline. Here's a shot of the Santa Monica pier, one of the few places I can tolerate in LA... Also, just for fun, I went and found a picture (warning: huge picture) of Gladstone's restaurant in Malibu, where I had dinner on my last trip out there. I had dinner with Eve, our sales guy Adrian, and his friend from high school Tom. Tom founded a company called Tomzilla that supplies lighting and gaffing equipment to the TV and movie industry (for example, HBO's new show Curb Your Enthusiasm uses them). Anyway, it was a very LA scene...

For a nice flashback effect, here were some pictures that I took of Santa Monica and Hollyweird during that trip.

Minnesota cooking. Hmmm. Here's a recipe for Tater Tot Hotdish that I think even I could make.

And this picture of Prince Charles just made chuckle. I could just see him using the Segway down the long hallowed halls of Buckingham Palace.

What else? Oh, I'm giving the RIAA a chance and testing out Listen.com's new Rhapsody "pay for play" music service. It's actually not bad, and it's priced ALMOST right. For $9.99/month you can get complete access to their music catalog (which is fairly extensive) and listen to songs, radio stations, or complete albums -- all from home or from work. But, in order to Burn a CD, you have to pay $0.99/song. I still think that's too high. But, I was impressed that I found a song that I've been trying to get from Kazaa for a weeks now. Rocket from the Crypt's Can You Hear It. This song is so good it should be getting massive airplay, but alas you can only hear it on Radio-K.

10 Reasons why American culture didn't suck in 2002. And then again, 10 reasons why it did...

Make peace this holiday season.

The Darwin Awards are coming.

Help the homeless. Let the homeless help you.

Well, I need some more coffee. Look at a bunch of people looking at themselves... Picture yourself.

Merry Christmas Everyone...

A special greeting from HomeStarRunner...

I'm taking the next week over (Christmas Day through New Year's Day), so I'll get back into a routine... Stay tuned...

And another Christmas greeting card...

I'm listening to my hip and swingin' new collection -- Dizzy Gillespie's Odyssey. This music is fantastic. Love the Diz...

Getting ready for the holidays? Well, there's a web site where NORAD tracks Santa. It will be sad in a couple of years when Bush's missile defense shield "intercepts" Santa. Sigh.

... today's entry cut short due to this terrible news I just read. Joe Strummer, the leader of the only band that matters, is dead at 50... Heart attack. Very sad.

Who is Joe Strummer?

Also, as an aside for those that are familiar with this band or the impact of his death, Rolling Stone magazine picked The Clash's London Calling as the best album of the 80's -- beating U2, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Prince. Also, barely a month ago, The Clash were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

FINALLY, an airline gets it right... I just got back from my Seattle trip, and I have to give kudos to the flight attendants on Frontier Airlines. I had a 2-segment trip (through Denver) on both flights, and the crew on Frontier was just exceptional. Unlike the bitter Northwest flight attendants, Frontier hired some really quirky folks to make banter and joy on every segment. Here, Gwen brought up a crew of kids to sing Christmas carols... And then, after she was done, the pilots broke into a verse of "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." Remember, this kind of light-hearted play is taking place 35,000 feet above the ground...



And speaking of light-hearted play... I had one funny/horrifying experience on this trip. I was traveling with our CEO doing the traditional 'dog and pony' shows for various audiences. We had one meeting with the CFO and senior VP of a company called Captaris. It's not a huge company, but still, it's significantly bigger than "us" and it's certainly not the type of place that you want to do anything stupid...

Which leads me to...

Okay, so we finished the meeting and everything's going REALLY well. So well, in fact, that they wanted to take us to lunch at this awesome Japanese restaurant, and then meet with a "team" in the afternoon. Swell. That sounds just great. So, the honcho's leave the board room to make the arrangements leaving me and our CEO with about 10 minutes of idle time...

Idle hands are the devil's playmate.

After about 5 minutes, I'm getting kind of antsy, so I start exploring. The first thing I find is a whole box of "scented" white board marker pens. Blueberry, Strawberry, Lime, etc. I'm intriqued. So, against my better judgement, I walk over and uncap one of the blue markers. "Hey, Andrew? Check this out? Blueberry markers... Mmmmm..." As I do so, I bring the pen up to sniff and, depth perception not being what it once, I somehow managed to jam the marker against my nose, leaving (you guessed it) a big blue smudge on my face. I quickly look to Andrew... "Did it leave a mark?!!!"

The ensuing laughter was ample evidence. So, I spend the next 2 minutes or so spitting into my hand and trying to rub the blue marker off my face. I was expecting Andrew to be kind of mad, but he was just shaking his head, as he knows (by now) what kind of idiot I can be...

Eventually, I did "correct" my "mistake" before the Captaris guys got back, but it was yet another harsh lesson in corporate ettiquette. Don't sniff markers. Ever.

Sleepless in Seattle.



The picture on the left is one I took just outside of the Cisco building, which is across the street from the space needle. The picture on the right is what the view would look like in Terry Redlin's world.

The weather is characteristically rainy. One interesting site we say yesterday (at the Cisco offices) was a guy wearing a full yellow slicker rainsuit, standing in the rain, and WATERING plants with a hose. I guess they just can't get enough water here...

More later in the week...

Well, bear with me this week. It turns out I have to do a trip out to Seattle to visit Microsoft and Cisco. I should be back by Friday, weather and stormtroopers permitting. If I have any problems, I'll load the blog text into this droid unit here...

Yesterday I had a wonderful day, first having a birthday lunch with the family (my birthday was the 12th). The highpoint was when my 5-year-old nephew proved that the family humor gene (all too frequently recessive) proved once and for all that it had found a new carrier. Here's what happened. M'kay.

We're all sitting at a very posh euro-bistro, and Evan is goofing around like most 5-year-olds and male members of my family are prone to do. Here's what he comes up with, as he crawls underneath the table and juts his hand up like a sock puppet, only without the sock, as 5-year-olds and male members of my family are prone to do.

"I'm gonna go under here an... an... and then I'm going to stick my hand up and talk an... an... then I'll talk and you'll see my hand and it'll be like my hand talking..."

At this point my dad chime in. "And do you know what it's called when you do that?"

With a cherubic face, Evan looks up and says with all earnestness...

"Irritating?"

Of course, the word that Grandpa had taught him was Ventriloquism, which, cognitively if not linquistically, is equivalent to Irritating, so the connection made perfect sense. Anyway, we all had a good laugh and Grandpa snorted Coca-cola out his nose, as male members of my family are prone to do.

After lunch, I went to visit my Goddaughter and her family. Jeff and Barb and I go way back, so the annual Christmas gift-giving always has a unique flavor. The humor would be largely lost on those less familiar with our long history, but needless to say I gave them a widescreen DVD edition of Kevin Costner's masterpiece, Waterworld, and they gave me a commemorative tin filled with Schwan's ice cream and a lovely print of Terry Redlin's Highlight of the Neighborhood on the cover.

A little back story on the Redlin thing (the suckiness of the Waterworld DVD should be self-evident). Back when Jeff and I were roommates fresh out of college and we were decorating our fabulous bachelor pad, the topic of Art came up (somehow, probably during a commercial). At that time we both realized our shared disdain for Terry Redlin, an artist who utilizes surrealistic Orange colors in a way not seen since the Psychadelic artists doing concert posters for The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. Every landscape this man paints is orange for some ghastly reason. To look at one of his "cozy" pictures conjures up images of nuclear armaggedon and the fiery pits of hell and houses that are enraged in flames. For example, on my "cozy" tin, I like the way he portrays a fleet of alien spacecraft, emitting an unearthly "white" light, dropping down into the backyard of a house on fire, with children screaming as they rush out to the salmonella-laced ice cream truck and Cerberus watching eagerly. It's very twisted.

And, back to the topic of funny children stories, Jeff & Barb's other child -- Matt -- not yet 3-years-old, made this insightful (and accurate) comment. When "Uncle Brian" when out to the car to get some things that the "Elves" left, Barb asked Matt, "What do Elves do?" Matt's reply (I'm not kidding)...

"Viva Las Vegas..."

Kids. Anyway, that was my fun for the day. Find something else to do for the rest of the week until I return from evil Vader's grip.

Doh! Why can't they just leave it alone? In yet another stunning demonstration, Hollywood proves itself once again to be entirely out of ideas. Mel Gibson is starring in a new Mad Max movie. I loved the original, with the goofy outfits and low-production values. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think Sid & Marty Krofft were the executive producers. Why tamper with a good thing? And then, not to be outdone, Sylvester Stallone is starring in Rocky VI. Maybe he'll get Parkinson's in this one?

Another interesting site. Dubya, Dubya, Dubya...

Yesterday, a co-worker of mine turned me on to some cool new music. Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits. The Ramones singing Spiderman? The Butthole Surfers singing the theme to Underdog? This is pretty good stuff (seriously)... I also was "recommended" a few other interesting items. Before You Were Punk -- a weird collection of sappy 80's tunes "punked up" by today's up-and-coming punk bands. Sounds pretty corny, but seriously, it's quite interesting. And then this odd group -- Me First and the Gimme Gimme's -- with punk covers of showtunes (Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Don't Cry For Me Argentina, etc.). The group also has albums that cover the 70's ( punk versions of John Denver, Neil Diamond, James Taylor)... Wacky stuff. Love it...

Schadenfreude. Maybe Lott's comments were taken "somewhat" out of context, but when you go around touting what a great man Strom Thurmond is, well, you're kind of asking for it. Sleep with dogs and you're gonna get fleas...

In other news, I was just tickled to find this on Amazon. Land of the Lost and Sigmund & The Sea Monsters ... on DVD. Man does that take me back. Sleestacks. Chaka. This might be shocking to some of you, but I was addicted to Saturday morning TV, and the Sid & Marty Krofft shows were a staple in this heavy fixation.

All of this is made possible by Rhino Records, and their site is just a cornucopia of offbeat (but wonderful) music and videos. Like, here's a DVD of the 1973 movie Superchick. And here's Chris Elliot's wonderful but short-lived sit-com Get a Life. And, Like, Omigod! The ’80s Pop Culture Box (Totally). 13 shopping days 'til Christmas, folks...

A bandwidth hog, but worth it... Some pretty amazing panoramas. In fact, it's like panorama-a-rama... er, something...

And here's what my brother thinks I should do as a theme for next year's fair photos -- fair feet... Fair Feet? Actually, that sounds like a good name for a band...

Feeling artistic? Try the Keith Haring coloring book...

Ah, some good news story for a Monday morning. Como Park's conservatory will be green long into the future, thanks to a $7 million donation.

Here's a nice photo gallery of pictures of the conservatory and Japanese Gardens -- Art @ Como. My neighborhood is so cool...

More on the goofy world of Amazon's recommendation engine. Normally, I wouldn't mind, but since the Bush administration has authorized a convicted 5-time felon to collect this sort of information, well... Not so funny anymore...

But, enough of that... A little stressed out? Can't make it over to those relaxing gardens at Como? Well, go make yourself some Chai tea and let Earth Pilgrim whisk you away...

A list of 9 things that are older than Strom Thurmond. And this guy's still legislating?

Here's an oxymoron for you. Proud Lutherans. And similarly, check out the Guy Noir Bobblehead doll and other folksy gifts from A Prairie Home Companion.

Still looking for gifts? Well, support MY favorite cause. The Minnesota State Fair Foundation has a few interesting things. I got a button, a mug, and the 2002 Collectible Ornament (I got the 2001 Ornament last year)...

Or then there's this -- Pepe Le Pew's Top 10 Pickup Lines Poster. It's perfect for the... er... Jesus, who would get this thing anyway?

And finally, my favorite link of the day. A true story of two Minnesota brothers-in-law who exchanged the same pair of pants for 25 years.

Well, this should be interesting. Tim Pawlenty, our goobernatorial elect, pledged not to raise any taxes. Also, during the debates, he downplayed the estimated $3 billion budget deficit, saying he really didn't believe it would be that much. Well guess what? The latest official estimate now puts the number at $4.56 billion, and even if all of Pawlenty's recommendations were approved, it STILL wouldn't be enough.

But, for all the whining this guy did when Jesse was governor, I'm going to be ruthless when he calls for the first tax hike. Which WILL happen...

In other stupid news, Amazon.com is still making me mad, but I feel somewhwat vindicated. They now admit that they use semi-humorous faux recommendations for clothing. I knew IT! You might recall that what I was searching for men's shirts, it recommended some nice lacy panties for me. Knuckleheads! Here's an example of what the article is talking about. Look at the section marked "Customers who wears clothes also shop for"...

Of course, that still doesn't entirely explain why THIS was my recommendation today.



C'mon! How can I be into a 10-year-old girl's magazine AND Linux administration AND Star Wars at the same time.

Sadly, upon further reflection, there's probably quite a few nuts like that out there. And they probably have their own web sites, too. But I don't like ANY of these things. Honestly. Nuts to your recommendation engine, Amazon! Nuts!

Bah!

Weird singing cows.

New movie reviews:
Mr. Deeds. Adam Sandler being more sweet than gross. It's not a great film, but relatively harmless and fun.

Panic Room. I found the movie fairly contrived and not terribly engaging. Very little character development. Most of the movie is about "the panic room". Here's a hint. Rooms, in and of themselves, are terribly interesting. If you visit the web site, however, they do have a fascinating little feature called "Script to Screen", where you see the development of storyboards -- from rough draft to final cut. I'd check that out, as it's a little more interesting than the actual movie.

-- -.-- .--. .-. --- -. - --- .--. ..- .--. .-.-.- -.-. --- -- Morse code generator.

Read the funny reviews of David Hasselhoff's "Best Of" album. My favorite: "Hindus believe that life travels in circles, and this CD just may prove them right. For this writer believes that David Hasselcrofft is the rebirth of the great 19th century composer Franz Liszt. Not only are both great concert artists, but they both have legendary reputations as musical virtuosos and romantic abstractionists. Moreover, the two main characteristics of the works of Lizst- experimentation with large-scale structures (extending traditional sonata form, unifying multi-movement works), and thematic transformation are evident in Hasselshark's works; "Do the Limbo Dance" is hauntingly similar to the three-movement "Faust Symphonie" in this respect. But where Liszt failed in his aim to revolutionize liturgical music, Hasselhoff triumphs in changing pop music forever with his anthem-like choruses and his remarkable voice, a voice that sort of sounds like a furious gnu partly run over by a Sherman tank. Both the songs "Annees de pèlerinage" and "Hot Shot City" are particularly good."

Weird little flash brain teaser. Pearls before Swine.

Great new Apple Switch parody...

Bill Maher's got an interesting (looking) new book out, and it's typically controversial and politically incorrect. When you ride alone, you ride with bin Laden.

Bin Laden nudes are fake, Swiss lab says.

New Strong Bad e-mail.

Trippy.

Another interesting piece from Salman Rushdie in the NY Times.

Dave Barry's holiday gift guide.

Still looking for ideas? Try the MyProntoPup Gift Store. What special lady in your life wouldn't want a MyProntoPup thong and a retro silver lunchbox?