Chris Barrus – Page 22

Star Trek

Whenever we finally get around to setting foot on an extrasolar planet, I’ll be severely disappointed if it doesn’t look like Vasquez Rocks.

100% roxor. Star Trek 2009 accomplishes the impossible feat of making a aged pop culture reference relevant again. Only Casino Royale and maybeDoctor Who have managed to pull this off as successfully.

I have to admit to a bias though… I’m a forty-three year old orthodox original series Trek fan (no Reformist Next Generations please) so the old-style sound effects, designs, implied “We come in peace… shoot to kill” attitude, and the not-too-effecty effects, hit all the right spots. The cast felt like they had been working together for awhile without just imitating the roles (Karl Urban’s McCoy isn’t imitation, but an amazingly eerie invocation/inhabitation). Finally, for once in the entire history of the franchise, Engineering looks like actual engineering takes place there.

A modest suggestion to Star Fleet operations: you may want to consider sending in a reconnaissance shuttle first before sending in your entire fleet… in case it’s an ambush. Just saying.

Revisiting Miss Belvedere

Hemmings Motor News visits “Miss Belvedere,” the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was buried in a Tulsa time capsule for fifty years and unearthed in 2007 to a Internet-full of snark who joked about the pile of toxic rust and the bomb shelter that could withstand nuclear attack but apparently not oxygen and water.

Two years and lots of specialized rust removal later, there’s actually a car now…

This Is The City… part II

Smoke from Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara approaching Los Angeles.

Friday March 15th at The Redwood

Just as a heads up, we’re playing The Redwood downtown on Friday, May 15th. We’re opening for our friends The Lovetones who are wrapping up their US tour that night.

This Is The City…

Burning truck near the intersection of Riverside and Fletcher. No one injured, but I was kinda worried about it being next to the gas station.

I only have one iTunes complaint

Unlike some people I know, I actually have a pretty good track record with iTunes. No missing files, no ambient weirdness, handles the big music library I have with little to no indigestion. However there’s one particular behavior that sends me into player rage.

1. In the podcast section, hit the circle-i button to bring up the podcast information button.

2. Now attempt to close this window with command-W.

The main iTunes window closes and not the podcast window. One question… WHY?

Pontiac

Some families were Oldsmobile families. Others were Ford. For us it was the three-headed triumvirate of Chrysler, Jaguar, and Ford Truck. There were a couple of exceptions to this rule: my sister’s first car was a 1960 Pontiac Catalina.

And then there was this… My first car: a 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix – the last gasp of a model that none other than John DeLorean was responsible for.

I still maintain that if the current G8 was called the Grand Prix or the Bonneville, Pontiac would have sold a lot more. Since the G8 was rebadged Holden, GM ignored it with the worst case of Not Invented Here Syndrome ever even if Holden had a better conception of what consititutes a traditional American car than GM did. Maybe it’s the cultural memory of Mad Max movies…

Coachella

Until someone uploads some video of Brian Jonestown Massacre’s tremendously gritty it’s-Medway-1982-or-1965 set (especially the “When Jokers Attack” blow out) if I had to pick a favorite moment from yesterday it would be this (unsurprisingly)

For the full effect, imagine that a truck-sized Tesla coil is shooting off to your right and a sixty foot flaming tiki torch spire is outgassing behind you.

Two other things worth taking a picture of…

Other favorites: Yeah Yeah Yeahs (especially their cover of “Human Fly”), Peter Bjorn and John (who I knew nothing about until yesterday), Public Enemy (of course), the east side Lemonade stand, and the lentil curry stand next to it.

My Bloody Valentine again

It sounded about how it looked and vice versa…

I wasn’t sure if the room acoustics of the El Rey would be completely overwhelmed by the sound, but it was actually easier to hear what was going on now than at the Total World Anhiliation of the Santa Monica show last year. The band was looser, false starting a couple times, occasionally smiling, and utterly killing it with all the power of an asteroid strike. Deb and Colm don’t nearly as enough credit as they should.

More photos on Flickr.

And to repost: Here are the details of Kevin’s guitar set-up and the band’s sound design.

Tesla In The Wild

Driving northbound up the Glendale freeway for lunch today and caught a glimpse of a dark shape silently WHOOSHING past me. Caught up with it just in time to take a picture.

Last year I saw a black Tesla parked in the Century City mall parking lot, but this is the first I’ve seen on the road.