It’s happened again.
I’ve missed a Frightened Rabbit performance.
Sorta.
But it still counts.
Tonight, Josh Ritter is playing The Loft. Josh Ritter’s opening act for most of this tour has been Scott Hutchison, singer of Frightened Rabbit. But he’s not opening tonight, because he’s not an American.
So for those keeping score, this is the 1st time of 2011, and 5th time overall.
If only there was an easy way to get the answer to that question, “Did the Mavs win last night?” My life would improve like a billion times.
If only some genius would maybe create a website that would tell me in easy to understand “yes!” or “no.” terms.
Oh well, back to espn.com and trying to figure out all of these complex box scores and flash ads.
…some time later…
I can’t believe it! There is a web site out there that would tell me the answer to the ever important question, “Did the Mavs win last night?”
THANK YOU JESUS, ALLAH, BUDDHA!
I just got my hands on a copy of (Come On, Join) The High Society by These Animal Men. It’s a pretty good album. A fine representation of the Britpop genre.
The album came out in 1994. And it has a terrible cover.
(Come On, Join) The High Society
But it’s still kinda appealing. Like, it’s a memorable terrible. Terrible with style. Maybe sexy?
These Animal Men also managed to release a 2nd album, Accident and Emergency, in 1997. It also has a terrible cover.
Accident and Emergency
A terribly generic cover. Their second album cover is instantly forgettable. And the actual album isn’t too great either.
Big thanks to Jason Heller from the AV Club for writing about these guys and bringing them to my attention.
As you may or may not know, I’m learning to play the guitar. I have a Fender Jaguar
The downside of playing the guitar is that I notice a lot of boring guitar things. Like….
Today, Johnny Marr, of The Smiths, posted a picture to his twitter feed of him playing his Fender Jaguar wearing 7″s for headphones. You can tell it’s a Jaguar and not a Jazzmaster because of the switches to select the pickups.
On Monday, Wavves played a concert in Washington, D.C. and NPR made it available for streaming on their excellent “Live In Concert” website, along with some pictures. One of the pictures is of Nathan Williams playing the exact same Fender Jaguar Blacktop that I have.
Nathan Williams of Wavves playing a Fender Jaguar
That’s kind of unexpected because the Blacktop series are a entry level brand. You can tell this because 1) it’s way cheaper than the regular Jaguars and 2) it lacks the cool switches.
BlogalongaBond sprung from the brilliant mind of The Incredible Suit. It’s 1 Bond a movie a month for 22 months. Amazing coincidence, this will end just in time for the next Bond movie due in November 2012.
January’s movie is Dr. No.
Hard to believe, but I’ve never actually seen Dr. No. See, I’ve seen all the modern James Bond movies since Goldeneye, but I’ve never been compelled to revisit the back catalogue. So I’d be viewing Dr. No with fresh eyes and with a 2011 mindset. Does it hold up?
I’d say so.
The beginning of Dr. No., the gun barrel opening, the 2(!) credit sequences, and the amazing “Bond, James Bond” reveal, is amazing and should be seen by everyone. Watching it, knowing that this movie would go on to start such an amazingly successful, influential franchise, it’s mind boggling.
But what about the rest of the movie? Well, aside from the tedious investigation, it’s pretty good. Everything that is synonymous with a “Bond movie” is present, with the exception of zany gadgets and swish cars. You have a baddie with metal hands and a hidden lair. A smoking hot Bond Girl, Honey Rider. A smoking hot non-Bond Girl, Sylvia Trench. Sean Connery being handsome. Suits. And Vodka Martinis, shaken, not stirred.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the Bond movies. Mainly to see how we ended up with The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. I couldn’t imagine there being anything worse, but I’m looking forward to finding out 1 Bond movie/month at a time.
Hooray for Word 2011 for getting something right!
There is finally a menu option for “Paste and Match Formatting”
But what’s with that horrible shortcut? I need to shift my hand to hit all those keys. Let’s reassign it to something more manageable in the Keyboard Pane in System Preferences
Brilliant!
(Why did I have to go to the Keyboard Pane to add that shortcut? For some reason that option wasn’t available in Word’s “Customize Keyboard” option window
)
You know how I know it’s the start of a new year?
I taped a new copy of Compact Calendar to my desk.
What’s the strange marking around October of 2011. Let’s zoom in
Oh, I’m getting older
That’s right, my Christmas gift to you, reader (notice the singular), is a playlist I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks.
Long recently got a new car, and in honor of it having a cd player, I decided to made a mix cd of awesome songs. I think it came out pretty well. It’s probably my best playlist since the one I made for Chris 3 years ago.
Does anyone at the MacBU use a Mac?
I just upgraded to Office 2011, and in some ways it is really nice. But in other ways, it’s annoying the pants off of me.
Find and Replace
The new Find and Replace is nice. I like how it’s in the toolbar, and the search pane is great. But what’s with not being able to tab between the find and replace fields?
Messing with my Dock
After the install, it added a mess of icons to my dock. The dock is not a start menu where your installer can just dump icons. It’s annoying, but easily solved.
Not using standard shortcuts
This one is unforgivable. In MacOS, Command+` is used to switch between Application Windows. That is the case in every program besides Word (Powerpoint honors this convention). Why does Word behave differently?
To fix this shit, you have to redefine keyboard shortcuts in Tools > Customize Keyboard
The 2nd Elliptical Records is The Manhattan Love Suicides – Self Titled debut album.
Again, this isn’t like Andrew W.K. shouting and telling you to party hard, making you run faster.
This album is only 38 minutes long. So I pretty much heard it twice. On the first listen I really enjoyed it. Surprised the whole JAMC/noise pop worked in this context. There were some slower songs, but they were okay. They didn’t destroy the momentum.
But on the 2nd listen, even though it started strong with a great cover of Indian Summer, it just synced up wrong. The slow songs that didn’t destroy momentum on the first listen, were brutal. There were moments I felt like giving up. Not good for an Elliptical Record.
So I’m gonna give this 181º. The strength of the first listen saves this from dipping below 180º.