Quartz City

“A Second View of the Mite Approaching the Gear Chain”

One of the many photographs from the “Bugs On Devices” category in Sandia Labs’ MEMS image gallery.

The cephalopod plans for taking over the world have already been detected, but will no one take heed? Alaska has already fallen. More to the point, “jumbo flying squid” is the coolest name for any animal.

From somewhere in Long Beach

Greg was the guy that gave this bourgeois suburban Spacemen 3 freak from Orange County a chance to work in rock-n-roll and, well, my life hasn’t been the same. I hadn’t really communicated with him recently outside of the odd “hello” at a gig or something but he casted a long shadow over everyone. Still processing. LA Times obituary.

So I’m planning on taking a couple of weeks for the drive from Los Angeles to New York. Michael Gondry’s video for “Behind” makes the drive in 4 minutes and 1 second.

One last playlist before I pack up all the mp3s for the trip east. Awhile back one of the music magazines (Mojo perhaps?) ran a top 40 list of Los Angeles/California-themed songs. Most of the usual suspects were included (X, NWA, The Eagles, The Doors, etc.) but there were some omissions that stood out. Therefore a CD70!

The track listing (and this time in order):

1. Cheap Trick - “California Man”
2. The Runaways - “California Paradise”
3. Concrete Blonde - “Still In Hollywood”
4. The Motels - “So L.A.”
5. Norman Greenbaum - “California Earthquake”
6. OP8 - “The Devil Loves L.A.”
7. Drywall - “Back Towards Diamond Bar”
8. Roy Rogers & Dale Evans - “Out California Way”
9. Merle Haggard - “California Cottonfields”
10. Dwight Yoakam - “Streets Of Bakersfield”
11. The Jazz Butcher - “Bakersfield”
12. Ronny & The Daytonas - “California Bound”
13. Eddie Floyd - “California Girl”
14. Sweet - “California Nights”
15. Susan Raye - “L.A. International Airport”
16. Saint Etienne - “Downey, CA”
17. The Mountain Goats - “Home Again Garden Grove”
18. Aberdeen - “Sunny In California”
19. Warren Zevon - “Desperados Under The Eaves”
20. Neil Young - “California Sunset”
21. Tom Waits - “Jack & Neal / California, Here I Come”

Come to think of it, the Zevon track might have been in the original list but what the hey, it’s a great song.

With the deaths of Christopher Reeve and Jacques Derrida in the news, the death of legendary spacecraft designer Max Faget’s got buried back a couple pages. His obituary is pretty amazing - designing just about everything that NASA flew from the X-15 and Mercury capsules to the Space Shuttle. Though maybe not known outside of NASA history buffs, a couple of Soviet-era cosmonauts were glad that he was around.

Congrats all around to everyone. The only way it could be better was if a b-list celebrity ran up to SpaceShipOne with a giant cartoon check for $10 million.