Ezra on Douthat

Ezra on Twitter says: Ross Douthat's posts on gay marriage are convincing me there really isn't a critique of gay marriage that makes sense.

Could not agree more, Ezra. I tried to write a rebuttal to Douthat's column, but he had made so little sense there wasn't anything to say in response.

Douthat said that the real reason heteroseXual marriage deserved honor was that straight couples had the unique ability to bear biological children. OK. That's true. But so what? It's a tautology, not an argument.

Of all the letters, only X is an X. Does that mean it should be treated differently? Maybe we could always capitalize the X. Of all the ways there are to be parents, only heteroseXual couples can create children biological to both of them.

Fine. But Douthat needs to then make the case that that unique condition matters in order to have said something.

If you want to say that the real meaning and purpose of marriage is about procreation, then what are you going to do with all the marriages of people who can't procreate, don't want to procreate, or are done with their procreating days? What are you going to do with straight couples raising kids that are not biological to one or either of them? There's absolutely no way to construct a sensible rationale for the institution of marriage that honors procreation but not parenting of the non-biologically-procreated. (If we were short on people, then you could; but since we have plenty of people, you can't.) And, if you base your rationale on parenting, rather than procreating, then you have to open the door to same-seX couples who parent.

But the thing about Douthat's blathering about this issue that steams me isn't that it doesn't make any sense; it's that it's dishonest. If Douthat had ever in his life argued that marriage should be reserved for procreating couples and should not be available to straight couples who aren't procreating due to barrenness or age or lack of interest, then I would believe that he actually believes his own rationale for what marriage ought to honor. If he said, "That's right; no getting married for women past child-bearing years. No marriage for men who've had irreversible vasectomies. I really mean it -- marriage is for procreators." But no. He hasn't done any such thing. He's only conjured this position about how the real purpose of marriage is to honor procreators as a way to try to draw a distinction between straight couples and gay couples. He knows that if he focuses on parenting, he can't eXclude gay couples from access to marriage.

It's possible that there is no particularly good rationale for why the government ought to sanction marriage for anyone. Big topic for another day. I think there are some reasons why it makes sense, including but not limited to a structure for parenting, but if you make me pick between a) making marriage only available to straight couples or b) no marriage for anyone, I pick no marriage for anyone.

BTW, how do you pronounce Douthat? I'm calling him DOUGH HAT in my head.

Update: So I guess The American Prospect called out the problem of Douthat failing to explain why the uniqueness of heteroseXual couplings matters, and he's responded by saying that heteroseXual seX has consequences or the potential of consequences that same-seX seX doesn't have.  My charges of dishonesty still stand, since there are no potential consequences for barren/old/vasectomied people having seX and yet Douthat isn't suggesting these folks should be eXcluded from marriage.

Twentieth Century Boy

Adam took on T-Rex tonight for the first time in Erie, PA.


(Sound on this video is painfully distorted. Will substitute something better when it turns up.) Video from mndchngr.

Update 8/15/10 for Michael: By "took on T-Rex", I mean he sang a song originally recorded by the band T-Rex.

Update 8/15/10 pm: Another performance of the same song from 8/14/10 performance (Quebec), recorded by fan Addicted2AdamLambert:

Ezra does an informal survey on the Laffer curve

My boy, Ezra, did an interesting exercise.

The idea behind the Laffer Curve is that there is some percentage at which revenue generated from income tax can be maximized. With tax rates at 0%, obviously no revenue is generated. At 100%, no revenue is generated because there'd be no reason to work. Somewhere between 0 and 100 is a sweet spot where federal tax revenue is maximized.

Ezra surveyed a couple economists and a bunch of politicians about where they think the Laffer curve peaks and presents their answers here.

Answers from Republican politicians and folks who lean to the right politically, tended to be well below 50%; Democratic politicians (looks like only two of them) were up around 70%. The two economists he asked identified top rates of 69% and greater than 60%.

Of course, as Martin Feldstein, Harvard, answered, maximizing federal revenue shouldn't really be a goal of tax policy, so in that sense the question is pointless. Further, half of the pertinent equation is missing when you ponder just the government-revenue-generation portion of the effect of tax rates. You should also be considering the effect on GDP or growth or something reflecting the effect on private sector income or wealth or something. But, still, the question is interesting for revealing how far apart are politicians' views. If you really believe setting income tax rates above 19% causes a drag on the economy, then of course you're going to fret about raising the top bracket from 35 to 39%. If, though, you think that you can raise rates to 70% without being an economic drag, then an increase from 35 to 39% for the top bracket is really not a big deal.

Snakes as art

Gorgeous photos of snakes here. (I promise it's not pictures of Douthat.)

Marriage: "It Wasn't All Bad"

Douthat inspires me to post this.

An American Childhood, Annie Dillard

I have been poking away at this book club selection for a couple months.  It's a memoir and I am just not a good memoir reader.  I have two problems reading memoirs:  a) typically, there's not enough story arc (because real life doesn't necessarily work that way) to sustain my interest; and b) as I've mentioned before, I'm not comfortable with the posing.

Annie Dillard is a writer (and artist) who has written more non-fiction than fiction. AAC is Annie Dillard's story of her growing up years, childhood through high school.  It reminded me a bit of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, though DW is fiction and is set earlier than Annie Dillard's life by a couple decades.  Both AAC and DW paint childhood/adolescent years with a respectful and romantic brush.

Annie Dillard descended from some old money families, so her early life included private school, dancing schools, coming out galas, second summer homes.  Her immediate family lived a more middle-class existence, but her grandparents were well-heeled, so that culture trickled down.  Sunday evenings were spent at the country club.  She of course was aware enough to observe the privileges available to her and she was not particularly invested in that world.  She was much more interested in learning, drawing, reading, writing, science, exploring, baseball,  and so forth than in her place in social hierarchy.

Annie Dillard has mad writing skills; she can turn a phrase.  Describing the light that passed occasionally across her bedroom walls at night, after having figured out that it was a car that generated the moving light, but still enjoying the story she could make up about it:

When the low roar drew nigh and the oblong slid in the door, I threw my own switches for pleasure.  It's coming after me; it's a car outside.  It's after me.  It's a car.  It raced over the wall, lighting it blue wherever it ran; it bumped over [sister] Amy's maple headboard in a rush, paused, slithered elongate over the corner, shrank, flew my way, and vanished into itself with a wail.  It was a car.

And I appreciated how far-ranging her interests were in her childhood and the way she incorporates them into her memoir.  Example:

The awesome story of earth's crust's buckling and shifting unfortunately failed to move me in the slightest.  But here was an interesting find.  Only a quirk of chemistry prevented the ground's being a heap of broken rubble.  I hadn't thought of that.  Why isn't it all a heap of broken rubble? For the bedrock fractures and cleaves, notoriously; it uplifts, crumbles, splits, shears, and folds.  All this action naturally shatters the crust.  But it happens that the abundant element silicon is water soluble at high temperatures.  This element heals the scars.  Dissolved silicon seeps everywhere underground and slips into fissures and veins; it fills in, mends, and cement the rubble, over and over, from age to age.  It heals all the thick wounds on the continents' skin and under the oceans; it solidifies as it cools, uplifting, and forms pale veins of scarry quarts running through everything; it dominates the granite bedrock on which we build our cities, the granite interior of mountains and the beds that underlie the plains.

She grew up in Pittsburgh, so she touches on Pittsburgh's steel history.

Wanted: Secretary

Karma the Dog seeks to hire a full-time secretary to support her agility career. Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining Karma's calendar
• Keeping memberships and dog registrations current for all sanctioning bodies (NADAC, CPE, AKC, etc) by tracking deadlines for renewals, filling out forms, mailing checks
• Investigating upcoming events to identify appropriate competition opportunities
• Docketing due dates for entry registrations and for "move-up" registrations
• Preparing and submitting competition entry forms within deadlines
• Storing and being able to find Karma's permanent height cards for each sanctioning body; scan/print the right one to accompany each competition entry
• Verifying accuracy of and maintaining database of her competition results
• Staying abreast of competition rules for each sanctioning body
• Packing her tools and belongings for competition (DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT forget the water dish)
• Maintaining her website
• Broiling chicken and cutting the chicken, and lowfat hotdogs, into teeny-tiny pieces for training
• Ironing her ribbons and polishing her trophies

The successful candidate will be:

• Crazy
• Well-organized
• Dedicated to Karma's successful career and without any other interests or commitments
• Proficient in Word, Excel, Filemaker Pro, Google Sites, and Adobe Acrobat
• Type 60 wpm

Salary will be commensurate with experience and will be paid in slobbery doggy kisses.

Either this or I have to buy new pants

I think it'd be a really good thing if it was deemed socially acceptable to call in "fat" to work a few days a year. "I can't come in today; I woke up too fat to fit comfortably in my pants." No one gets anything done when their pants hurt, anyway, so you might as well stay home.

In conjunction with this idea, I'd like to see emergency fat-fighting (EFF) centers that would provide acute weight-control assistance. You wake up heavier than you've ever been, make your call to your workplace to say you won't be in, and then go to the EFF where a professional trainer would put you through an intense workout and send you out for a bike ride and then for a run and then for a swim. A professional chef would serve you low-cal meals. At the end of a day or two or three of this, your pants would fit and you'd return to work.

Music theory exercise

I have a suggestion for an exercise for Michael beginning music theory students: transcribe a recording of a piece of music.

Choose something you haven't seen sheet music for. Select music with some meat to it (i.e. not just I, IV, V, V7 chords), but not overly dense (i.e. not full orchestra). Pick something that you like enough to listen to ad nauseum as you deconstruct it. Consider, though, that your relationship to this piece of music will never be the same. You will forever after hear its parts; listening to it will be a thinking, rather than a feeling, enterprise so don't pick music that you love because of its emotional impact.

Of course, you can write your transcription out on paper. You'll need a big eraser, though, for all the mistakes you'll make. There are software programs for transcribing music that are pretty cool. I haven't researched these fully, so I don't know what's best. I came across Finale which has a suite of programs of varying capability, available on a free trial basis for 30 days. These programs all allow you to enter notes into your score through dragging/dropping a note icon onto a staff, or by "playing" notes on your computer keyboard, or by using a midi keyboard. The software plays your score back to you, so you can hear if you've got it right.

Except for the least sophisticated of the suite (Notepad), the software can automatically provide chord symbols. I'd suggest that you use this capability just as a check on your own chord analysis, a useful part of this exercise.

Start with the melody; then select one instrument at a time and figure out its path through the song. For pop/rock/jazz, I'd suggest doing the bass line after the melody.

In the process of transcription, you'll have to figure out the time signature of your piece; its key; its melody; its harmonies; its phrasing; its tempo and tempo changes; its rhythms; its chord progressions; its organization; the way its lyrics fit; its dynamic changes; and on and on. You'll be forced to grapple with pretty much every concept in music theory.

You may not be able to deconstruct everything, but you'll be surprised at what you can do, once you start pulling the song apart. It's very much like doing a jigsaw puzzle; it's a big impenetrable task to begin, but one little puzzle piece at a time you get intimately familiar with the picture and attuned to the smallest changes of hue. When you're done, qualities of the image to which you were oblivious when you started are pronounced and obvious to you.

Joan Armatrading

We saw her last night at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. Holy coyote; she was amazingly great.

K was a fan from ages ago and introduced me to her music in 1996. I didn't love her then. I liked her music, but didn't like what she did with her voice.

As we were waiting for the show to start last night, we admitted to each other that we weren't very excited to see her. K was expecting her to have aged way past her prime and I was expecting to hear that voice-thing that I dislike. (I don't know if there's a word for it; it's that Anita-Baker swallowed-sound, cat-yowling thing.)

The Cedar is simultaneously a miserable and fabulous place to hear music. The sound system is outstanding. Tickets are general admission and it's not the kind of crowd that shows up hours in advance, so you can always count on getting a really close seat if it matters to you. It's a short bike ride from our house.

The physical environment at the Cedar is wanting, though. They pack waaaaay too many tiny folding chairs into a small space with too few exits. It's an effort to keep my claustrophobic panic at bay. Beer is necessary to take the vividness out of my imaginings of dying in a fire under the feet of a crowd futilely trying to get to the exits while tripping over downed folding chairs. You just know the electrical system is not sufficiently updated. Do we have no fire code in this city? To top it off, there's no discernible ventilation and tap beer is $5.50.

When Joan came on stage, she first thanked us for leaving our television sets behind for the evening. That seemed unnecessarily condescending and obnoxious. We're sweating, we're squashed in here like sardines, and now we're being insulted.

But then she started playing and blew us away. Her voice has aged like fine wine. Powerful, clear, soulful, interesting, expressive, perfectly on pitch, with zero Anita-Baker yowling. Her vocal prime is now. Her guitar-playing was even more impressive. And with a catalog of three decades to pick from, she had no trouble filling a solid two hours with nothing but great songs.

If you get a chance to see her during her current tour, you just have to do it. (Doesn't look like she's got any Texas stops on her schedule yet, but maybe they're yet to come.)

Update (moments later): One of Joan's old songs is Weakness in Me (1982), with lyrics that describe the pull of an affair. If you listen to her singing it as a much younger woman, it's fine. But her delivery of this today -- standing still on stage, no guitar, no microphone in her hand or stand in front of her, with enough years of maturity to sell the sentiments of the song -- was stunning. It's sort of like Ralph Stanley singing O Death or Johnny Cash singing Hurt; advancing age is a trememdous asset to the song.

Updated again (one more moment later): Video is worth a thousand words:

Using the power of the internet for good. This time: learning languages

Here's yet another way that social networking via the web can be harnessed for good. A person trying to learn a language can, through world-wide social networks, get access to native speakers. And, perhaps more importantly, one can get a motivational boost to learn:

Still, he finds it ultimately worthwhile to work with others on the Web and search for the better partners because that provides a real connection that cannot be found from a book or a simple computer program.

“When I have to do an exercise and submit it to the world, when I know that real people are going to look at it and comment on it, it really jacks up my brain,” he said.

And another stunning vocal display from Adam

Starting at 3:30 is his acoustic Whole Lotta Love encore, performed tonight in San Francisco. I recommend watching all the way to the end.



I love the progression starting at 6:06. And 7:54 to the end is really something.

(Video by Suz526. H/t to Hooplamagnet.)

Update: Another video of the same performance with audio that is better in some respects.

Update 8/9/10:  Another video of the same performance.  This is cut together from several fan-taken videos.

Rachel does bacon

Looks like Rachel is stealing my bacon schtick shtick.

LibraryThing

As I've been working on our book club web site, I've been exploring online book-related tools and resources. LibraryThing is one of my favorites.

At its core, LibraryThing is a digital card catalog for your library. You establish an account and then add your books to your virtual "bookshelves". It's easy to add books; you just start typing a title, and it'll bring up matching books that you select. These are really data files that include the book's ISBN number and other meta data. You can also pick from the cover images available. You can rate your books and write notes or reviews of them. LT analyzes your library and returns statistics about your books, such as the breakdown between male/female authors or living/dead authors, settings for your books, and awards won by your books.

LibraryThing also generates html code for widgets that display your books on websites or blogs. Here's an example:

But LibraryThing isn't simply a personal book database. It also aggregates book information across all its member accounts and facilitates online community. Here are a few examples of what you can do with LibraryThing:

• See community-wide ratings
• View other people's libraries
• Get suggestions from LT about other users with libraries similar to yours and then view their libraries
• Read others' reviews
• "Follow" or "friend" other members
• Get personalized reading recommendations generated by analyzing your taste
• Swap books with other members
• Get free copies of books from other members or from being an early reviewer
• Participate in online chats with authors
• Buy LT merchandise, such as the LibraryThong
• Public, shared “Work” pages, allow users to fill in info about book, like quotes, setting, characters, awards, descriptions
• See community-wide statistics for all the books on all member shelves, like word clouds showing where authors went to college and where they live
• See a feed of upcoming book-related events (e.g. signings, readings) in your geographic area

And that's not even a complete listing of its features and capabilities. I recommend spending some time poking around.

Amazon Associates Program

Blogger is offering a new feature in conjunction with Amazon. You can register your blog/site with Amazon to be an "Amazon Associate", whereby if your blog/site drives a customer to Amazon (via clickable cover images that are linked to Amazon) and results in a book sale, you get a little kickback.

Seemed completely harmless, so I signed my book club web site up to be an Amazon Associate. I figured that at worst, I'd have a license to the cover images (for absolute sure) and a super-easy way to add the images. Also, Amazon provides code for a nifty widget that shows 10 book covers in a rotatable carousel GUI, and I have been hunting for just that sort of thing for both our book club site and for SSJ but haven't been able to find one that I can make work. At best, our book club might make 30-40 cents a year in kickbacks; our book club tends more toward borrowing books from our libraries.

I got an email from Amazon yesterday (emphasis added):

Hello Associate,

We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer a sale.

Oh, Amazon, you crack me up.

Exactly

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fox is not delicious

Frankly, my side of the political spectrum is not really doing my bidding or satisfying my wishes, so I have little appetite for criticizing the right. But this ridiculous cable situation we have in our house, where we've got Fox News but not MSNBC, and the knowledge that countless others out there have this "family" cable package offered by Comcast and so are fed the Fox News diet (perhaps without realizing they're being deprived of another viewpoint), is enough for me to spare a smidgeon of emotional outrage on the nonsense that is Fox "News".

From the American Prospect:

We didn't need a lesson in how good the right is in kicking up these dust storms, because they've done it so many times before. It's a very simple formula: take some incident or person who can embody something you want people to believe about the left (elitists, scary black people, etc.); put it into heavy rotation on Fox and conservative radio; immediately begin screaming that the liberal mainstream media are ignoring this vital story; watch while the mainstream media pick up the story to prove they really aren't liberal. Rinse, repeat. It works pretty much every time.

Karma is amazing (in case I hadn't already mentioned that)

She "qualified" in the "Tunnelers" event yesterday. "Qualified" just means she passed, by completing the course within the requisite time and without faults (like me touching her or her running an obstacle out of order). She ran 144 yards -- almost 1.5 football fields -- in 33 seconds, through 12 tunnels.

Pretty much just want to spend the day telling people about her success. Now who can I tell? And thanks in advance to everyone who pretends to be interested.

Update 7/13/10: Here's a video of someone else's dog competing in the same Tunnelers event as Karma ran on Sunday.

NADAC Novice Regular

This is not Karma, but this is a comparable event to her second run today:  It is the same complexity level (Novice), the same event  ("Regular") at the same facility (Soccerblast, Burnseville, MN), at a NADAC-sanctioned event. The dog in this video makes it look easy:



This dog, Mira, makes it look more difficult:

Happy day at our house

Karma competed in her first agility trial today.  The world of agility competition is a complex thing, with many different sponsoring organizations (AKC, North American Dog Agility Council (NADAC), U.S. Dog Agility Association, Canine Performance Events), and with many different varieties of events at each competition at many different levels (i.e. courses vary in complexity/trickiness).  Not all of the organizations allow mixed breeds to compete.  Karma competed in a NADAC event at the least complex level (Novice).  She competed in two events today (regular and "touch-and-go") and will compete in another event tomorrow morning.  This event was indoors.

The whole experience was intensely stimulating for her:  dogs everywhere, her first exposure to Astroturf, strangers in the ring doing the judging, her fear of the unknown, the inexplicable (to her) schedule of sitting in a crate, then competing, then going back in the crate, then competing again.  Her doggy brain had a lot to process.

It's not at all uncommon for dogs new to competition to completely wig out and just zoom around the course paying no attention to the obstacles or their handler.  I had very low expectations going in, but Karma did amazingly well in her first run.  She ran fast and clean through the first 14 of the 16 obstacles (A-frame, tunnels, wickets that she's never seen before), but then she came upon the dog walk and froze.  The dogwalk is an elevated level plank with inclined planks on either end.  She's never had any issue with the dogwalk in practice.  I suspect that from her vantage point as she was getting on, it looked like a teeter-totter, something she hasn't completely conquered yet.  In class, she gets a chance to see all the equipment as we get warmed up before class, so she can tell where the teeter is and where the dogwalk is.

So she took two steps onto the dogwalk, got scared and jumped off.  That's a disqualification.  Also, at some point when I was trying to coax her back onto the dogwalk, I reached out to her and ruffled her neck, not to physically maneuver her onto the walk, but just to give her some encouragement.  That too, though, is a disqualification; there is no touching your dog during a run.  It's a habit I'll have to break.

I was very pleased with her performance for the first time out.  Lots of more experienced dogs ran around completely out of control.

We sat around for a couple hours before the next event, and by that time Karma was pretty much mentally exhausted.  She ran her second run poorly, running around the jumps and getting distracted by smells on the ground.

We'll compete in one more event tomorrow if I can get her out of bed in the morning.  She is one tired pup now.

Sad week at our house

When I joined this blog, Michael promised that I'd offer cat stories.  Now is the time.

In January 1997, K decided he'd like to have a cat. [Update:  He was living alone at the time.] He'd never had a pet before, but he had observed my two cats and concluded that cats added a little life to the house without demanding huge amounts of attention.  They were more fun than plants and less work than a dog. Cats were independent and didn't need much to be content, K thought.

At the time he said he didn't understand why people talk to animals. "What do you SAY to them?  Why talk to them when they can't understand you?" he'd asked me, incredulously, when I said I talked to my cats all the time.

We went to the Minneapolis pound and he inspected the available kittens.  One black and white tuxedo kitten clung spread-eagle to the bars of her cage and meowed with all her might at us.  When K held her, she immediately purred; she put up a huge fuss when he tried to return her to the cage, shouting more than meowing at him.  K was smitten with her feisty attitude.  She had to be held at the pound for three more days before she could be adopted.  That fourth day fell on a day when K couldn't leave his office at midday when the pound opened, but he wanted that particular kitten so I took time off of work to be at the pound the second it opened to nab her for him before someone else got her.

"Diggity" has been passionately devoted to K ever since.  The second he sits down at home, she is on him.  She gazes at him and purrs.  (I've made up a little voice for her that says, "I love you, I love you, I love you" in rapid succession, matching the passion in her gaze.) When he pets her, she drools.  When he tries to get away from her she shouts at him.  When he leaves the house, she sits by the door and yowls.  When he's been away for awhile she yowls more.  When she hears his keys outside the door, she races to the door and yowls some more.

He's expressed annoyance about this over the years:  "Why does she have to be ON me all the time?  Why can't she just be by herself sometimes like your cats?  I got a cat because I thought they were independent."  I remind him that in their initial meeting at the pound, Diggity showed him exactly who she was.  She's so much needier than any of the four cats I've owned but she's a one-person cat so K bears the burden of giving her the attention she demands.

She's smart.  K trained her not to jump on tables and counters EVER and to sit up on command.  Diggity has trained K to talk to animals -- a lot.

She's fierce.  Michael's mother bears scars from wounds inflicted by Diggity.  A couple years ago, my mother and Michael's mother, D, stayed at our house.  D had her cat, Missy, there.  We kept Missy closed up in one bedroom for most of their stay, but D tried to introduce Missy to the rest of our animals in hopes they'd get along so Missy wouldn't have to be sequestered.  Carrying Missy, D walked into the living room where Diggity, Petrik (my cat) and Karma (dog) were lounging.  Diggity decided this was a highly threatening situation and went into attack mode.  She leaped onto D's back, embedded her claws and hung there while yowling ferociously.  It was just like watching a lion leap onto the back of its prey in a hunt.  I was able to save D before Diggity made a meal of her or Missy.

She doesn't like when people yelp or scream.  K and I were watching the X Games one evening when some amazing feat made me hoop and holler.  Diggity jumped onto my head and embedded her front claws in my forehead and her back claws in my neck.  I shrieked and leaped about the room begging K to "get her off of me!" while she clung stubbornly to my head.  K was laughing too hard to help, which got me laughing and then Diggity was willing to let go.

A couple days ago, K noticed that Diggity was peeing outside her litter box.  He took her to the vet, suspecting a urinary tract infection.  We discovered that she did indeed have such an infection; but we also learned that she has Stage III kidney disease.  It's incurable and the vet expects she'll die within the next couple years.  She's 13.5 years old right now, so that'll be an average life span for a cat.  The house will be quieter and more peaceful without her and that will stink.

Marilynne Robinson defends religion

One of my favorite authors, Marilynne Robinson (author of novels Gilead, Home, and Housekeeping), will be on The Daily Show tonight.  She'll be talking about her new non-fiction book, "Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of Self."  I haven't read this, but I see from its WaPo review that it is, at least in part, a defense of religion and that she takes on Dawkins and his ilk.  She's an extremely careful, thorough thinker, so I imagine that she does a good job.

Update:  Wow.  That was a bad interview.  I didn't understand anything she said.  Still, I would expect that the book is good.

Someone spends too much time with her gerbils

Good news!  We did not win an award for writing any of the worst sentences of the year.

This year's winner is Molly Ringle for this counterproductive simile:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

I'm betting Molly has also won an award for worst kisser on the planet.

You're a King, BUT

This is brilliant.  The idea.  The execution.  Perfect.  (And a great marketing ploy for the ad agency itself, Leo Burnett.)

Word count in novels

A blog post by "Blue" lists the word counts of a few dozen novels, including a bunch of classics and some PEN/Faulkner winners.  Blue doesn't exactly identify a source for the info; in the Comments, Blue says they're taken partly from teacher materials and partly from Amazon that used to provide word counts but does not do so anymore.

Median word count in the "classic" novels listed is 99,341; average is 136,604.  War and Peace (version unspecified) is 587,287 and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is only about 25,000 short of that.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay has 216,020.

Anyone have a source for word counts?  I tried the Library of Congress, but I don't see this info there.

Update 1/14/11: Here is a source for word counts. In fact, that's probably the source used by "Blue" above. H/t to Lars Knudsen who commented on Blue's post.

Labels

I am slowly but surely adding tags or "Labels" to our posts.  I've made it through about 500 posts.  Just 2300+ more to go.  (Yeah, I'm not sure I'm that motivated.) The labels serve as an index; they're an additional tool to help find things.  Feel free to add or edit tags.

Update:  Two things:

1)  I've been inconsistent -- whimsical, really -- in choosing whether to tag a post liberally or sparsely and whether to include the topics that appear in the Comments.  Do not try to infer rhyme or reason; there is none.

2) I believe we can "hide" the Labels on the posts, so if you don't like the way they alter the look of the blog, we can fix that.

Comcast's role in delivering audience to Fox News

I've just discovered something unsettling.

We intended to downgrade our Comcast cable TV service for the summer, from the ridiculously priced $80/month package (with gazillions of channels, but no HBO etc)  to their $10/mo plan that would give us decent reception, but no cable channels.  I called to make the service change and the customer service person explained that if we made that change, our internet service would increase by $10 and oh-by-the-way we offer a $20/month "family" cable package that would include lots of channels, though not all that we have been getting.  In other words, for the same amount we were willing to pay for zero cable channels, we could have a bunch of cable channels.  She rattled off the list of channels that I didn't pay much attention to since we were prepared to not have any.

Here's the strangest thing:  the "family" cable package includes Fox News Channel, but does not include MSNBC.  This gives me a new perspective on audience numbers for cable news shows.

Happy Birthday, LJ!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LJ



A present for you. Pretend your name is Terrance.



Update: The birthday boy, Terrance, is the first dancer appearing in the video posted immediately below.

Is it rock or is it opera?

Here's a video from a recent one of Adam's tour shows.  Vocals are amazing. This is Sleepwalker, a song on his album.

I'm thinking maybe he was taking it easy while recovering from a cold the night we saw him, because he didn't sing like this that night.

NYT on Adam's concerts at the Nokia

Jon Pareles, writing for NYT, seems to have felt the same way I did, but he does a better job expressing it:

[W]hile Mr. Lambert has worked in musical theater since the early 1990s, his performance was by turns rushed and sluggish: groups of set pieces punctuated by his band playing in the dark, while Mr. Lambert changed to a different black costume.

His greatest asset is his voice, which is made for melodramatic crescendos and heroic upward leaps. But for many songs, it was all but buried in overeager band arrangements and phantom backing voices — tricks that lesser singers hide behind. Eventually, he calmed the band for a drumless segment, though the singing was more showy than intimate.
[Jump]
There’s a big-voiced showman in Mr. Lambert, ready to surface when he worries less about pleasing everyone or hitting his marks.

Adam's Glam Nation Tour at Mystic Lake Casino, Prior Lake, MN

You know how I love him, so you know that it pains me to say this: the show was disappointing.  Part of the problem is a mismatch between the show's budget and Adam's aspirations.  He wants to create a spectacle, an extravaganza, but the show is apparently on too tight a budget to pull that off.  Yet, Adam doesn't want (and the albums songs don't call for) an intimate, organic, non-staged kind of show.  The result is an awkward in-between sort of presentation.  There are costumes, but no set except a short set of aluminum stairs; dancers, but only four of them; a small screen showing static images instead of showing a live feed of a camera showing Adam close up; recorded backing vocals instead of backup singers. There are cool lasers shooting out over the audience, but I assume that's kind of standard for concerts these days.

His vocal performance was, of course, excellent.  Generally, he avoided the super high notes.  I understand this completely.  He's going to do 70 shows in three months and needs to take care of his voice.  Yet his ability to hit those notes is part of what makes his singing thrilling so I was disappointed to not hear that live.

All in all, I would say that the production values are not equal to his talent.

Soaked, performed with just piano accompaniment, was gorgeous.

The set list was:
1. Voodoo
2. Down the Rabbit Hole
3. Ring of Fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4. Fever
5. Sleepwalker
6. Whataya Want From Me
7. Soaked
8. Aftermath
9. Surefire Winners
10. Strut
11. Music Again
12. Broken Open
13. If I Had You
14. Encore:  uptempo, acoustic Mad World

My favorites songs of his are Voodoo, Down the Rabbit Hole, Fever, Sleepwalker and Broken Open, so the song order was sort of upside down for me, with the best stuff near the beginning.  Ring of Fire live was fabulous and will be a special moment on tour when he sings it at the Ryman in Nashville, after Randy Travis (or was it Simon Cowell?) declared during Idol that Adam's Ring of Fire wouldn't go over very well at the Grand Ole Opry.

Adam has said the set list will change and evolve as the tour goes on.  He's been doing acoustic, jazzy, improved improvised Whole Lotta Love for an encore at most venues.  He sang Madonna's Ray of Light during a sound check recently, and it often seems to be the case that sound check songs turn up in sets later.  He sounded great on it; it's a really good song for him.  (As you may recall, if you actually read my Adam posts, Monte Pittman, Adam's guitar player and musical director, was Madonna's guitar player.)

The venue had horrific sound problems for Allison Iraheta's and Orianthi's sets.  The instruments were so so so loud that the singers' voices were amplified to distortion, so it was as if you couldn't hear them singing at all.  We had to leave the auditorium during Orianthi's set because of this.  The sound was good for Adam's set, though.

The financial aspect of the music business must be so frustrating for artists.  Gaga was reportedly in the red with her tour until a couple months ago, in spite of being the most expensive, most sought-after ticket around the world and in spite of having a slew of hit songs and huge record sales.

Unaccustomed Earth

This is a collection of short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Namesake (novel; made into a movie) and Interpreter of Maladies (short stories).  Unaccustomed Earth explores the experiences of immigrants from India, their children and grandchildren.  Beautifully written.

Nathan Coulter, Remembering, A World Lost - Three Short Novels, Wendell Berry

I love Wendell Berry's fiction.  I love his concept to tell the intertwined stories of many families, across generations, in a non-linear way in many works each of which can stand on its own.  I love the understated, quiet, calm tone of his writing. I love his appreciation of beauty in the simple.  I love his portrayal of the black sheeps in families.  I love his romantic portrayal of land and family farming and physical labor.  I love that his lawyer character is honest and good.  I love that there's a map and genealogy tree that is a useful supplement to his works. I love his portrayal of drama-free, steadfast marriage.  I love his portrayal of small community life in which there is no anonymity and, except in rare circumstances, everyone must just make do with everyone else in the community. I love his portrayal of a time and place in which parents knew more than their kids about that which the kids were going to do for a living (farm), with parents educating their kids by working side by side while the kids are respectful sponges. I love reading about kids growing-up where they had land and time to explore.

Dreamers of the Day

Mary Doria Russell wrote two novels (The Sparrow (sci-fi) and Thread of Grace (historical fiction)) that we've read for book club that I liked a lot.  She's a fan of Walter Miller and wrote a forward for a recent publication of Canticle for Leibowitz.

The premise is absurd.  In 1921, a middle-aged school teacher from Ohio retires and takes a trip to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference at which was born Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.  On her first day in Cairo, by happenstance, Agnes meets Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Stein and their friends.  She hangs out with them and has a fling (her first ever) with some guy who may or may not be a spy.  I knew this much about it before I began reading and recognized the ridiculousness of the premise, but I thought that Mary Doria Russell was so supremely skilled that she could make a believable story out of this.  Alas, no.

Update:  One more thing.  Agnes meets Lawrence because her dog causes a stir at the hotel.  She meets the maybe-spy when he comments on her dog.  Obvious plot device is obvious.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

This was a book club pick. I had pitched it, in part on LJ's suggestion.

The story is a re-imagining of Hamlet (or of The Lion King, if you prefer), set in rural Wisconsin in the mid-to-late 1900s.  The Sawtelle family is in the business of breeding and training dogs, as it has been for a couple generations.  They do not breed according to customary breeding practices, but instead find dogs with remarkable qualities (temperament, intelligence, etc.) and introduce them into the breeding population.  Before their dogs are sold into homes, they spend a year and half training them and recording the results of training, and use that data to better the lineage of the Sawtelle dogs.

The main character is Edgar who is not deaf but cannot speak.  This makes him similar to the dogs in the sense that he has a communication barrier; Edgar and his family develop a custom sign language to be able to communicate.  I appreciated this focus on communication because I find that 70% of successful dog training is about learning to communicate with your dog.  (The other 30% is operant conditioning; good training has virtually nothing to do with dominance or getting your dog to "obey".)

Some of the chapters are narrated by Almondine, an old dog with whom Edgar has grown up.  I think Wroblewski does a beautiful job of presenting dog thought in a unique way.  He makes Almondine something of a poet, and I preferred this to the usual approach in which authors turn the dogs into not-very-intelligent people.

I was hooked from the beginning and didn't want to put it down.  It wasn't slow for me at all.  I do have a couple quibbles with the ending.  Since they're spoilers, I'll slip behind the cut.

If I Had You

I'm working on a (not entirely positive) review of Adam's show. In the meantime, enjoy the music video for his next single, If I Had You. It's a straight-up disco tune, if you ask me. The video features oodles of Adam's real-life friends, many of whom are famous to Adam's fans. Watch for Allison Iraheta (the redhead on Season 8 of Idol).

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Flaws in Dartmouth Atlas' health care cost analysis

Have to cite this because Bismarck, ND and Houston are mentioned in the same sentence and how often does that happen?

But the real difference in costs between, say, Houston and Bismarck, N.D., may result less from how doctors work than from how patients live. Houstonians may simply be sicker and poorer than their Bismarck counterparts. Also, nurses in Houston tend to be paid more than those in North Dakota because the cost of living is higher in Houston. Neither patients’ health nor differences in prices are fully considered by the Dartmouth Atlas.

I've always wanted to be a drummer in a band..

this guy makes me jealous....ah, not really.

Twitter as social commentary

Speaks for itself (here).

Oil subsidies

This is a topic we covered ages ago. Kate Sheppard, writing at Ezra's WaPo blog, discusses the subsidies that flow to the exploiters of fossil fuels.

Even that [$39 billion over 10 years that would result from Obama-proposed cuts to subsidies] would only be a fraction of what we hand over to fossil fuels every year. The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks.

Testing the embedding of an audio player and audio file

Testing how to embed audio clips with an audio player. Here; have a bit of Slash talking about Adam:

Update: Cannot get this to work. Ought to be easier than embedding video, but it's not.

Update II:  As an unintended consequence of my efforts here, I may have turned the blog into a podcast.  Oy.  Why is this difficult when video is easy?  Back to the drawing board.

Go To FileFactory.com

Update III: OK. That's a huge and ugly player, but it works!!! I'll see if I can find a better looking one.

Update IV: Because it's so much easier to embed video, some user forums describe turning your audio file into a video by adding a picture, then uploading to youtube.



GRRRRR - doesn't work Test

Apparently, being a guitar tech for a band has its frustrations

Cute challenge

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find something cuter than this:

Winnie Cooper fantasy

She's in Maxim this month. Her clothing is not.

New music from Trent Reznor

Here. For LJ.

Did I mention...

I'm going to see Adam in concert on June 12?!!!!!!!!!!!

Glam Nation Tour

We have tickets to Adam's tour show June 12 at the Mystic Lake Casino, just a hop and a skip from Minneapolis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The shows that have been announced are at pretty small venues (2000-3000 people) which means demand exceeds supply.  (Scalper/reseller tickets are going for 2-4 times face value and they're not really even on sale yet to the general public.)  Small venues also mean that there's nothing but great seats and an amazing chance to hear his voice in a room with decent acoustics.

Allison Iraheta is one of his opening acts. 

So far, no tour dates announced in the South, but more dates and venues will be announced later.

I'm shocked...SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here

Roger Lowenstein's op-ed for NYT yesterday advocates for: 1) trading derivatives on exchanges and in standard contracts; and 2) banning or at least regulating credit default swaps. These seem like eminently reasonable suggestions.

Adam at River Rock

This is Adam singing Mad World at a concert Friday at River Rock Casino and Resort in Vancouver:
It's all great, but I'm particularly fond of the improv starting midway through. Lyrics are unnecessary.

"None of us is as smart as all of us"

I find this fascinating:

In one study, groups and individuals were given a complicated card game called the Wason selection task. Seventy-five percent of the groups solved it, but only 14 percent of individuals did.

From David Brooks' column yesterday.

I guess Winnie and I won't be getting married after all...

Wonder Years star expecting.

I've finally reached my breaking point

Not sure if anyone else has taken the time to delete spam comments we've been getting over the past several months. Doing so has been part of my morning internet routine and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm getting VERY tired from doing so. I also hate waking up to see 10+ comment emails in my in-box, knowing that more than likely they are all spam comments.

I've made some changes to the blog settings to see if that will stop them - the changes shouldn't affect anyone, other than a certain named ex-blogger. Sorry....

Adam on Nightline

Adam was on Nightline's Playlist last night (video here) talking about musical influences. I share since he mentioned Bowie.

In the past, Adam has identified the Hunky Dory cover as a reference for the cover art for his album.

Springtime behind the Pine Curtain

Haven't seen any dogwoods yet so these will have to do. First, my weekly hawk visit (a day late this week):

Then, the random pear trees at the baseball park:

Finally, something my mom calls a Tulip Tree:

Thomas Friedman gets it right

While I’ve obviously become fatigued with political postings, I still fear that “they are trying to kill us.” Thomas Friedman got it right, I think, in yesterday’s NYT (the first paragraph resonating with the right and the second, I hope, with everybody):

Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out. Personally, at this stage, I only care about one thing: that the outcome in Iraq be positive enough and forward-looking enough that those who have actually paid the price — in lost loved ones or injured bodies, in broken homes or broken lives, be they Iraqis or Americans or Brits — see Iraq evolve into something that will enable them to say that whatever the cost, it has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.

Poll archive: Adam Lambert for President

I'm wishing we'd archived all the polls.  Here's the latest one:

What kind of hawk visits me often?

This hawk (acually a pair of them) visits weekly:

He's there on the top of the swing. I have to take the pic from inside so I can't get a better shot.

The pair come in and scope the yard looking for insects and worms. My best guess is that they are Coopers Hawks. These are shots of Coopers that I snatched from the web:

The other possibility is Red Shouldered Hawk:

I think I have to go with Coopers.

House of Blues

C and I finally went to the House of Blues here in DFW on Saturday night. We've been wanting to go ever since it opened, but always had scheduling problems when there was someone we wanted to see performing. A few months ago, I was listening to one of the 3 FM stations I regularly frequent on-line (one from Austin, one from Seattle and one in Fayetteville, AR) when they played a 30 minute block from a band I had never heard of - Sound Tribe System 9 (or STS9 as most of their fans call them). I knew nothing about them and when I saw they were going to be at the HOB on a weekend night, I talked C into going. Only after I bought the tickets did I find out from C's college-aged niece that STS9 were a "stoner band". But, since we already had tickets, C and decided what the hell - if it were awful, we'd just check out the rest of HOB.

HOB was a very cool place and we will definitely go back. The performance space was intimate but has great sight-lines (we were in the balcony) and the sound quality was great. Next time we'll go a bit early and eat there and try to get the entire HOB experience.

As for the concert itself, I liked it, though after a bit the songs all sounded sorta similar. And I wouldn't label them as a "stoner" band - I'd call them a "rave" band. I've never been to a rave, but from what I know about them, this was like a mini-rave (lots of glow-sticks). Their light show was incredible and I was a bit nervous about that given my current medical state. Thankfully, nothing happened and other than my ears ringing from the sound, no other ill-effects. They played a little over an hour, then were taking a break and C had had enough.

One last thing - I was afraid I'd be the oldest person there and for awhile (at least in the balcony section), it seemed liked I would be. But as it filled up, there were a few folks that at least appeared older (some there with their kids).

Here is a video of STS9 playing the song that was our favorite:

Train snow plow

There are oodles of videos like these on youtube. I might watch them all.

Culture clash

Adam Lambert, Shaun White, and Sarah Palin appear tonight on the second night of Leno's return to the Tonight Show. Here's a little video of the guests backstage.

Update: Whisper1111 on Twitter names Shaun/Sarah/Adam "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe".

Update II: Adam's performance here (illegitimate) and here (legit Leno video, but takes forever to load).

Update III: Embedding from Hulu:

Acoustic Whole Lotta Love

At a concert on Saturday at the Fantasy Springs resort, Adam performed this acoustic, bluesy, jazzy rendition of Whole Lotta Love (video courtesy of anthrogeekPF):



Update: I can't stop listening to this. Have always suspected that he could sing the bejeepers out of the blues with one vocal chord wrapped around his uvula, but this exceeds my expectations.

Update II: The keyboard player deserves a mention. It's Zac Baird (of Korn).

Update III: You can download a very high-quality audio recording (better than in the video above) of this here. The file is a .wav file. It'll play in iTunes. (You can convert it to mp3 in iTunes too.) All of the songs from that concert are available at that link. The middle section of the concert (#5 Soaked through #9 Whole Lotta Love) was acoustic and stunning.

Update IV: And here's a link to the open post at Hoopla Magnet, prepared by drcat83, in which all fan videos, photos, etc. from the Feb. 27 Fantasy Springs concert are collected and organized.

Update V: Rockstar Weekly reviewed the Fantasy Springs concert and said this about WLL:

In the most stunning moment of the night, Lambert abandoned himself to passion’s fire with an acoustic blues-rock interpretation of Whole Lotta Love; lithely unraveling the driving beat and frenetic energy of the song into a seven-minute sensual burn. Kneeling, surrounded by a turquoise bliss of chunky bass lines, sitar-like twangs and languid drumbeats, Lambert reached into his inner depths, drawing out a primal query of desire from his soul; a powerful, spiritual offering of love and sex. Electrically-charged emotions flowing, man and music melded seamlessly as he arose, licking heated cries up to the stars, torso rippling fluidly. Stretching out the pace of the song to render breathing space to the band’s sultry vibe, he warbled with lingering intensity, vocal echoes reverberating in the air as if he stood beneath the Palm Canyon walls. Lambert then bore down with fevered thrust into a cascade of lilting moans, while the absorbed crowd’s screams of pleasure swelled and receded around him. Throating desire to the darkened sand, he slipped back to his knees, fervent wails surging forth in waves. Then, spent and satiated, he caressed the sonic dream to its end with a naked whisper tenderly laid to rest beside a final wistful guitar twang. As the elated crowd roused themselves from the spell, Adam confided the mesmeric compilation had been sparsely conceptualized and virtually unrehearsed. The thunderous response to this conveyed to the gifted chameleon that he and his band had successfully coaxed a funky, impromptu enchantment of raw love as oral art out of the iconic Zeppelin tune. Lambert’s unique artistic integrity from that performance ought to educate critics who dismiss him as merely a “reality star” devoid of lasting substance.

Update VI (March 8): Replaced the embedded video with one that has been edited together by lambosessed from the best audio (cos2mwiz, mwilson3235, tinafea) and video (anthrogeekPF, cos2mwiz, lekispop, Merrycello1, mwilson3235, myspencer50, suz526, TALCvids) sources.  Here is anthrogeekPF's video.

New fav commercial

Love the sock puppet and the robot doing the robot!

East TX Church Arsonist Suspects Arrested

From the Tyler paper. Having seen Shutter Island yesterday, I think that Leo should play
McAllister.

RE: Tiger

Of course it was scripted. Bazillionaires' speeches are ever so. And of course we can never know what goes on in another's heart. What I meant was there was very little in the way of weasel words for the actual apology part:

Now every one of you has good reason to be critical of me. I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in.

I know people want to find out how I could be so selfish and so foolish. People want to know how I could have done these things to my wife Elin and to my children. And while I have always tried to be a private person, there are some things I want to say.

Elin and I have started the process of discussing the damage caused by my behavior. As Elin pointed out to me, my real apology to her will not come in the form of words; it will come from my behavior over time.

"...I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in [emph. mine; dangling preposition his]" and "my real apology to her will not come in the form of words; it will come from my behavior over time [emph. mine]."

While I haven't gone back amd listened or viewed or read again, in the meat here there is none of that "if I offended" type of bologna that puts the fault on the victim or the fan.

Tiger

A few weeks late but an apology even Michael could agree was a real one.

Bad-ass Hebrews and Texans

While there are still far too many Confederate flags flying in my beloved state (including one about 2 miles down the road from my old college and law school roommate's former ranchette just outside of Austin in the Hill Country, I do appreciate the solidarity many Texans show with Israel (for whom I fear more than ever given Iran's grumblings of late).


Driving between Athens and Austin many, many times over the last two years I was always amused by the US, Texas, and Israeli flags flying at a small establishment just east of Buffalo, Texas off of I-35 and Hwy 79.


Had to smile this morning at this blurb from a note to Nordlinger:


Wanted to publish a fun letter for you! It responded to something I wrote about conservative Christians and Israel.
Hey Jay,

My parents live in the Texas Hill Country, about ten miles outside of Fredericksburg specifically, and on the road to their place is a house that has three flagpoles out front: flying Old Glory, the Texas flag, and the Israeli flag. Every time I’m in the Hill Country and we drive by that house, I think of a Texan I heard who admiringly described the Israelis as “bad-ass Hebrews.” God bless Israel and God bless Texas.

NYT, NYMag, WaPo, TIME Agree: Joe Stack Was One Crazy Teabagger! - Stephen Spruiell

I should have known it wouldn''t take that long to blame me for Joe Stack. Ok, so I'm not really a tea party guy but sheesh.

[Btw, first time I've used the "share" function. Click on "re:" line for link.]

My diagnosis (finally...sort of)

Had my follow-up with the Otolaryngology specialists earlier today. The general consensus is that I am having vestibular migraines without headaches. Not a 100% certain diagnosis, but somewhere in the 90% certain category.

Now the fun part really starts - trying to find the trigger(s). I may never find it, which means taking some type of medication from now on. I also get to try out different types of medications (if needed). For the time being, I'm sticking with my current medication. I've gotten the OK to up my dosage another 10mg if needed. I go back in 8 weeks or if my meds don't seem to be working (i.e. blocking or stopping the episodes). In that 8 week span, C and I will be making a trip, so they are very interested to see how I do on on the planes and immediately afterward. They are also interested to see how I do in the environment I'll be in (in keeping with my tradition of not disclosing info about trips I take until I return, the destination will remain a mystery until I get back to post about it).

The real bummer is that starting tomorrow, they want me to cut out (as much as possible):

• chocolate
• caffeine
• wine, especially red
  
• cheese
• MSG

On a positive note, they told me that the vast majority of people who have this rarely, if ever, have headaches. I've been trying to remember when I last had a headache and discounting an after several glasses of wine one back in September, I can't recall one. So I have that going for me....

Austin Plane Crash

was apparently in about the 9400 block of Research/183. Looks like it was intentional per the Statesman.

About 5 miles north of my old place and about 6 1/2 miles north of my old office.

Adam performing a Stripped concert for Z100 Radio yesterday

Yesterday in New York, Adam gave a small five-song concert for Z100's "Stripped" series.  It's a pleasure to have high quality audio/video of a live performance.  Eventually, all of the songs will be available, but for now, there's just Fever and an incident with a rude audience member:

Can navigate to the phone incident in this one:

Adam at the Highline Ballroom Feb. 12

Friday night, Adam and a couple other Idols performed a concert together at the Highline Ballroom in NYC.  For anyone disappointed in the highly-produced, electro-pop qualities of his album, you should still consider seeing him perform live.  Here is Sure Fire Winners.  The note he hits at 2:42 is unreal:



And here's Fever:



You can see his whole set via fan videos collected in an unlocked post at Hoopla Magnet.