Category: Consumption

10.0 Jack Johnson “To The Sea” concert, one total pearl jam

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This was such a kickin’ good time in so many ways.

An entire green village was available pre-show for us to explore. We got a nice little booklet explaining all the green steps taken by Jack on the tour. He donates 100% of profits to charities – YES 100%!! and he did the same on the last tour!!  Think about that for a minute.  Beautiful.

The booklet had a section of stamps to collect for doing green things:

  • visiting a non-profit booth in the village, groups included:
    • reduce plastic usage
    • beaver preserve – Found out about an excellent beaver preserve right in downtown Durham.  Chatted with the people running the four related preserves.  Turns out Jack had found and contacted them personally and asked them to set up an exhibit.  They are working on an interconnected set of preserves to make an entire greenway belt, awesome.  Got two stamps from them, for visiting and donating, and they gave me a nice refillable water bottle which i used to earn another stamp! wahoo!  I wore my “Bummer” shirt (w pic of Hummer), the lady at the booth got mad cause she thought it said Hummer, and we had a good laugh.
    • CO2 offset purchasing
  • donating
  • buying a CO2 offset right at the concert
  • getting a picture in the picture booth signifying “i commit to reduce plastic usage”
  • refillable water stations – They proactively encouraged water refill usage, you got a stamp for filling up!  Sponsored by brita filters, this was unbelievable that they got permission for this, as the pavillion charges $4.50 for disposable bottles.


During the pre-show, they played back time-lapse photos of the stage as it filled up.  They also showed all the pictures from the photo booth, awesome, the girls right in front of us popped up on the big screen and laughed at themselves.

The show itself was a total pearl jam.  They got the party started on a high with “you and your heart” – the BEST.  Jack is truly a great guy, and he brought out LOTS of friends he’s made along the way:

  • Paula Fuga, a Hawaiian woman playing ukelele to a couple of her excellent songs (country road,…)
  • the awesome slide guitarist from Animal Liberation Orchestra
  • G Love jamming on harmonica (I heard he helped Jack get started by playing some of Jack’s songs)
  • the band’s keyboard player (Zack Gill, also from ALO) jammed on an ACCORDIAN for a while oh yeah – this guy was just so much fun, riffed on the piano like it was part of his body.
  • the bassist kicked out a wicked rap

LOTS of jammmmmming ensued!  Jack also worked in some cars lyrics into “sitting waiting wishing”, perfect mashup… once he remembered the lyrics, haha, he made fun of himself… “i dont mind you comin here, and wasting all my time…”  They also played a full version of steve miller’s the joker, perfect.  And just about every great song he’s written… which is to say, A LOT OF UNBELIEVABLY GOOD MUSIC!!  :P

Thank you Jack!


FIFA’s reward for overworked refs? “Go Home.”

~ m ~ 1 Comment

FIFA refuses to come out of the stone age, instead preferring futbol to be refereed by one human being guaranteed to make mistakes – mistakes that the world can watch in gorgeous hi-def slow motion, over and over, seconds after they occur. Players perpetually dive and shove and take cheap shots behind the ref’s back, unashamed of the camera catching their every move, simply because it pays off – the fans may boo, but the play goes on in their favor, and the only one clueless to the truth is the poor overworked referee.
Poorly distributed cards aside, the number of bad calls at this year’s World Cup has been staggering, with the most well-known errors leading to an incorrect score. Even before the World Cup began, complaints regarding the famous French handball that knocked Ireland out of qualifying were at a din. During, the US were mysteriously stripped of a winning goal against Slovania without explanation, England was denied a critical goal that was a yard inside the net, and Argentina was given a goal against Mexico when it was clear to everyone that their man was offside. These kind of errors not only change the actual score, but provide a mental blow that certainly further affects the outcome. And don’t even get me started on the red cards, apparently distributed randomly as the lone referee grapples with maintaining control.
The most shameful thing that FIFA has done is scapegoat the referees. All three refs that made the goal errors have been sent home, as well as another that sent off Kaka after some ridiculous Ivory Coast acting. Talk about not fixing the problem. Until FIFA adds more referees, implements goal-line technology, and generally decides that truth is better than drama, they will be ON MY LIST. :P

9.5 Massive Attack – Paradise Circus (Breakage’s Tight Rope remix)

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I didn’t pick up on this song until TapTapRevenge gave it away for free, and I realized I already had it on my iPhone. 10 years ago, my friend Zac didn’t appreciate the subtleties of Massive Attack, instead preferring more-direct bands like slipknot and Powerman 5000 that got right to the point. I could understand this – 15 years before I was Ministry’s single biggest fan. But Massive Attack is to ultraviolent music as thrillers are to action movies – it’s a matter of suspense and minimalism. Minimalism is hard to do right. Anyone can create music in moments (and it seems like everyone has) by cutting and pasting measures repeatedly, resulting in mind-numbing banality. Simple is beautiful, but it’s so easy to slide into simplicity. Bands like Massive Attack and Depeche Mode realized that you can easily lay down 50 tracks of sonic wall but when the user slips on the headphones they only hear one sound. That one sound is essential.

A couple other recent selections that get the minimalist thing pretty well are Bassnectar’s CozzaFrenzy, GetDarker presents “This is Dubstep” and The Crystal Method’s Legion of Boom.

This post brought to you by Dragon Naturally Speaking on the iPhone – sure beats typing on that stupid “auto-correcting” (sic) thing!

9.5 Caprica

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Although I must endure perpetual geek jokes from Andrea and Wren, I have enjoyed my obsession with the “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica. Most of the jokes involve some form of chanting “So Say We All”, the nationalistic and quasi-religious mantra of this brand of homo sapien, and it doesn’t look like the jokes will end soon. The reimagined fun continues with Caprica, a rewind to the beginning of humanity’s romance with robots, and there are robots aplenty – along with mad scientists, religious fanatics, obsessed government agents, and anime-inspired uniformed schoolgirls with big round eyes. Reiley and I watched the pilot (skipping some inappropriate sections) and the first 9 episodes in one fell swoop, and had a blast. Make sure you catch up before the next half-season starts up!

Owl City live at the DAR Convention Hall, Washington, DC

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Wren and I have been looking forward to this for months, and last Thursday it happened. It was absolutely perfect. We were far up and above the left side of the stage for the first half, then moved down to a few rows back from the stage on the right. Sounded great, the stage lights were great, and Adam kept us jumping and singing and shouting all night, playing keyboard solos, flinging a guitar around, and generally dancing about. Woohoo! Wrenny and I had to wait outside for Ma and Rei to get out of the emergency room (!) after, and we spent the time outside the tour bus, waiting to spot Adam, but we were denied a third sighting. :>

9.5 Cashback

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“Every minute counts.”  This film is “stop and smell the roses” taken to a literal level.  The characters are great – like in Extract, normal folks blown up just a little bit, each one given enough depth so you can warm up to them.  You’ll have to be able to tolerate a fairly pervasive nudity theme – at one point I was wondering “Am I watching Choke”? – but the protagonist, as well as the film, has a heart of gold.  And a beautiful unique style.  I won’t say any more, check it out.

CASHBACK

Another (non-)romantic comedy worth mentioning is “(500) Days of Summer” and of course you should see it, it’s mostly the camera fawning over Zooey Daschanel, what is not to love?  What a guilty pleasure.  But don’t bother with the Coen Brothers’ latest, A Serious Man – seriously, guys?  Cut the art house b.s. and get on with excelling again.

Amazing Race 16 scorecard

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Ready for the next Amazing Race contest?! Sadly, after the first couple episodes, this looks like the season with the theme of “Low IQ”… nonetheless, here we go!

  • Pick the team you think will win, and pick the team you think will be eliminated next.
  • If your winning team is eliminated, you have to pick another. Least picks wins!
  • If your losing team is eliminated, you score, and get to pick another. Most scores wins!
Team Symbol
Jet/Cord – Cowboys C
Monique/Shawne – Moms/Attorneys A
Dan/Jordan – Effeminate Brothers E
Louie/Michael – Detectives D
Joe/Heidi – Married J
Steve/Allie – Dad/Daughter S
Jody/Shannon – Grandmother/Granddaughter G
Jordan/Jeff – Newly Dating from Big Brother
 N
Brent/Caite – Dating Models M
Dana/Adrian – High School Sweethearts H
Carol/Brandy – Dating Lesbians L

PICKS

Viewer Ep01 N/H
 Ep02 C/G
 Ep03 C/A
 Ep04 D/(N)
 Ep05 D/J
 Ep06 D/N
 Ep07 S/(C)
 Ep08 C/S
 Ep09
 Ep10
 Ep11
 Ep12
Larry N/L N/L C/L
Jane C/E C/E
Andrea A/M D/M
Mike C/E C/M
Shelley N/ D/M
Legend
Winning choice won this leg of the race (used for tiebreaker)
-1 Winning choice lost this leg of the race (pick again)
+1 Losing choice lost this leg of the race
+1 Winning choice won, and losing choice lost – PERFECT!

9.0 Extract

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Jason Bateman stars, so I love it. But beyond that, Mike Judge has this great ability to create characters similar to people you know, at the edges, and blow them up, but just a little, maybe 10 or 20 percent. So they flavor the movie without sidetracking it. There are about a dozen good ones in this sleeper.

Extract