Category: Uncategorized

I’ve kinda been enjoying the time without satellite television and with the Trio network going off of DirecTV again, I see no real reason to go back to it.

The Apple Store: what was initially a questionable retail move is now totally hot. If “the Apple store staff all look like they just wandered in from practice with a local indie rock band” then that probably explains why people keep asking me if I work there.

Satellite television viewers who have been bemoaning the lack of local public access channels rejoice, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network streams all four of its channels on the net.

Anyone want to fund a satellite television network that carries the “best” of public access channels from around the country? Heck, I’d watch it.

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.

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.

Typography symbols are constantly recontextualized, but punctuation marks are eternal. At least until 1962 when the interrobang “‽” was created.

American Martin K. Speckter concocted the interrobang itself in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that ads would look better if advertising copywriters conveyed surprised queries using a single mark.

All about the interrobang. Countdown to when “interrobang” (“exclarotive’ and “exclamaquest” were potential alternate names) is used as a band name begins in 5, 4, 3, 2…

Went to see Hero this evening (short review: state of the art hack and slash, worth seeing) and got a dollar bill back in the change that had been stamped with a message saying “Track My Journey Across The U.S.A! Please Enter My Serial Number At www.wheresgeorge.com”

Went to Where’s George and discovered that the bill had initially been marked in Barstow, travelled to Hawaii, and then worked it’s way back to Irvine. Kind of a cool site for triviaspotter types like myself. I’ll let loose a bunch of these on the trip east.