As you no doubt have heard in the press, there have been a rash of robberies in New York City lately for iPods. In fact, one 15-year old boy was killed for his iPod last week. I can just imagine the thugs who stole the iPod thinking "heall yeahz, I'm gonna fill this up with all my dope-ass tracks" only to find that they need a computer to actually put their dope-ass tracks on the stolen mp3 player. Doh!
Well I thought it was only the east-coast riff-raff that were capable of such dirty deeds, but the San Francisco riff-raff proved me wrong. As I rocked out to Slayer's "God Hates Us All", some punk kid in the lower Haight with a Rambo knife charged at me and yelled "Gimme the iPod!" Well, I actually don't know exactly what he said because I had my earphones in and... nevermind. The dead giveaway was wearing my old standard-issue white headphones because I forgot where I put my decidedly better sounding black Shures.
Not really wanting to get sliced in any way, I reached into my pocket and held out my first-generation 5GB iPod from 2001. I removed my earphones and the kid looked at me quizzically. "What the fuck is that?" he asked. "My iPod" I replied. "That ain't no muthafuckin iPod, bitch" he said, shaking his head. "Uh, yeah it is" I replied. He asked me how much storage it had and I told him. He just said "shit" and turned and walked away. I put the unwanted iPod back in my pocket and got back to Slayer. Well, at least it's still wanted by me.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Brain-rot
My apologies to the 3 regular readers of this column, but my brain has still not recovered from last weekend's festivities (my birthday + friend's bachelor party), and LLMB will resort to music review-age.
Shellac is coming to the Great American Music Hall for 2 nights in August. They don't tour much, and this may be your only chance to see them. Minimalist rock that's indie in nature - but now that indie has become synonymous with emo - it's not really indie other than the fact that it's not on a major label. Math rock at it's finest.
Buy TRS-80's "Shake Hands With Danger". It's kind of a hard listen - no vocals - and crazy electronic beats - but I've listened to it 20 times in the last 3 days, and that has to say something good about it.
Rock on.
Shellac is coming to the Great American Music Hall for 2 nights in August. They don't tour much, and this may be your only chance to see them. Minimalist rock that's indie in nature - but now that indie has become synonymous with emo - it's not really indie other than the fact that it's not on a major label. Math rock at it's finest.
Buy TRS-80's "Shake Hands With Danger". It's kind of a hard listen - no vocals - and crazy electronic beats - but I've listened to it 20 times in the last 3 days, and that has to say something good about it.
Rock on.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Dinger
I don't know if many of you have heard of this, but there's a local dude named Barry Bonds who's chasing the home run record. Not currently though. Currently he's sitting on his ass counting his millions and blaming the media for his plight.
But there is another dude I've heard about from a friend of mine living in Chicago. He told me that he's heard from more than one co-worker that there's a serial killer in Pittsburgh who's chasing Barry's record in a different manner. He's mimicking Bonds' home run record in kills. Apparently the Pittsburgh Police Department have given him the nickname "Bury Blondes" because of his penchant for bludgeoning people with blonde hair (both male and female) to death with a baseball bat.
Now I don't have anything to worry about because my hair takes about 10 hours under a sunlamp to turn light brown, but maybe the blondes out here living in San Francisco should take notice. "Bury Blondes" has been operating in Pittsburgh for 6 years now, which is almost as long as Mr. Barry Bonds was hitting home runs in the steel city. Which means this is could be his last year there and next year will be his first year in San Francisco, if the killer is indeed following the career of the slugger.
It's hard to debate the similarities between the home run record and serial killer's record. In 2004, Bury Blondes murdered 25. This year he's on pace for 34, which is exactly what Bonds homered in his final year in Pittsburgh.
Apparently the reason this serial killer isn't featured more heavily in the news is because of pressure from Major League Baseball to keep it quiet. They don't want this thing taking any of the excitement from the home run chase. God forbid something like steroids might do something like that.
But there is another dude I've heard about from a friend of mine living in Chicago. He told me that he's heard from more than one co-worker that there's a serial killer in Pittsburgh who's chasing Barry's record in a different manner. He's mimicking Bonds' home run record in kills. Apparently the Pittsburgh Police Department have given him the nickname "Bury Blondes" because of his penchant for bludgeoning people with blonde hair (both male and female) to death with a baseball bat.
Now I don't have anything to worry about because my hair takes about 10 hours under a sunlamp to turn light brown, but maybe the blondes out here living in San Francisco should take notice. "Bury Blondes" has been operating in Pittsburgh for 6 years now, which is almost as long as Mr. Barry Bonds was hitting home runs in the steel city. Which means this is could be his last year there and next year will be his first year in San Francisco, if the killer is indeed following the career of the slugger.
It's hard to debate the similarities between the home run record and serial killer's record. In 2004, Bury Blondes murdered 25. This year he's on pace for 34, which is exactly what Bonds homered in his final year in Pittsburgh.
Apparently the reason this serial killer isn't featured more heavily in the news is because of pressure from Major League Baseball to keep it quiet. They don't want this thing taking any of the excitement from the home run chase. God forbid something like steroids might do something like that.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Good Karma
I have no idea what's going on, but I've had a mini-run of good fortune lately. Not that you can call your computer dying on you good fortune, but the resulting free-repair-after-your-laptop-isn't-under-warranty-anymore would be moved to the "good" category.
My bike has been sitting in the garage for a while in the recent past because it's used mainly for transportation to and from work. And because you can't really ride a bike from San Francisco to Seattle very quickly or very easily, the work commute has left the bike next to the rake and the broom and the hoe. Huh huh. Hoe. Anyway, the bike has been called to action lately because I've been working close enough to pedal down 14th street and coast to this week's worksite. That's livin'.
The gears on the bike don't shift like they used to, and I didn't think it was much of a problem until I tried to do the slick biker maneuver of blasting through a red light, pedaling my ass off to avoid being run over by a Toyota Tacoma. Well the gears didn't shift like they used to and the gears kinda snapped into an unintended gear at an unintended moment and I didn't have the cranking speed I wanted. That, and my foot nearly slipped out of the pedal, and that could have been disastrous.
So I tried to do the bike tune-up by myself. I'm no bike mechanic, but how hard can it be? It looked like I fixed the gear shifting when testing the gears out with the bike upside-down in my garage, but the riding was a different matter. The problem was worse than before. I'd shift gears and nothing would happen. I couldn't pass those road rage bikers like I used to.
There's a little bike shop on 14th street and Guerrero called "Box Dog Bikes" that has a pit bull type dog that's old and very sweet and slowly comes out to greet you on the street when you pull up. I brought my bike there and a bike mechanic with worn black nail polish came out and asked me what the problem was. He said the rear derailleur cable was too tight. I said "I wonder how that happened?" and scratched my head. He brought out a wrench and did some quick adjustments and took it for a ride. He rode it back into the shop and said "I think I fixed it. Do you want to put some air in your tires?" I did and then I took it for a spin right out front. Fixed. I rode back in and asked him "how much?" No charge. Wow. That's 2 free repairs in 2 weeks. Since everything comes in 3s, I can't wait to see what's next.
My bike has been sitting in the garage for a while in the recent past because it's used mainly for transportation to and from work. And because you can't really ride a bike from San Francisco to Seattle very quickly or very easily, the work commute has left the bike next to the rake and the broom and the hoe. Huh huh. Hoe. Anyway, the bike has been called to action lately because I've been working close enough to pedal down 14th street and coast to this week's worksite. That's livin'.
The gears on the bike don't shift like they used to, and I didn't think it was much of a problem until I tried to do the slick biker maneuver of blasting through a red light, pedaling my ass off to avoid being run over by a Toyota Tacoma. Well the gears didn't shift like they used to and the gears kinda snapped into an unintended gear at an unintended moment and I didn't have the cranking speed I wanted. That, and my foot nearly slipped out of the pedal, and that could have been disastrous.
So I tried to do the bike tune-up by myself. I'm no bike mechanic, but how hard can it be? It looked like I fixed the gear shifting when testing the gears out with the bike upside-down in my garage, but the riding was a different matter. The problem was worse than before. I'd shift gears and nothing would happen. I couldn't pass those road rage bikers like I used to.
There's a little bike shop on 14th street and Guerrero called "Box Dog Bikes" that has a pit bull type dog that's old and very sweet and slowly comes out to greet you on the street when you pull up. I brought my bike there and a bike mechanic with worn black nail polish came out and asked me what the problem was. He said the rear derailleur cable was too tight. I said "I wonder how that happened?" and scratched my head. He brought out a wrench and did some quick adjustments and took it for a ride. He rode it back into the shop and said "I think I fixed it. Do you want to put some air in your tires?" I did and then I took it for a spin right out front. Fixed. I rode back in and asked him "how much?" No charge. Wow. That's 2 free repairs in 2 weeks. Since everything comes in 3s, I can't wait to see what's next.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Apple Store Adventures - part 3
My laptop computer died again last weekend. At this point, one would think that I might be giving up on the Macintosh experiment in favor of trying out a PC. Which points out the glaring fact that there aren't many alternatives in the way of computing out there. You can get a PC or a Mac. You can get a PC and put Linux on there, or some other operating system, but it's still a PC. The fact that there are dozens of PC makers out there doesn't count. It's still a PC. And based on the fact that you can't get Final Cut Pro on a PC, I will be buying Apple computers until the next great edit system comes along on a different platform.
Anyway, back to my busted laptop. As was the case last time this happened (about 4 months ago), the computer was doing nothing. It became slower and slower until I decided that it would be a good idea to try to back the thing up, and then the backup took about 2 hours. I tried to erase the drive, and no luck. Ruh roh.
I got online and put my name in line for the Genius Bar at the Apple Store downtown. It was about 10 am (which is when they open), so I was first in line. I rushed down there on Muni (which isn't really rushing at all based on the schedule of trains - future rant coming) and arrived about 10:30. My name was first in line, but on the monitors, it said "next Genius available at 11:55 am". Nice. A pair of Euro glam women were tired of waiting for the next Genius, so one of them raised a stink about how she didn't want to wait and she just wanted to drop off her computer for repairs (which is what I wanted to do), and the Genius who was moderating the line fell for her accent and glam look and let her go to the front of the line. Unfortunately I'm neither a woman or have a Euro accent or glam, so I continued to wait.
(The ironic part is that I finished my Genius session before the Euro ladies did.)
Finally my name came up and a guy named David was assigned my Genius. He immediately asked if the laptop was under warranty. Nope. Apple Care? Nope. He attached his Genius toolkit to the computer and came up with the fact that the drive was fried. I told him my story of how the last Genius I spoke with in February (when my laptop was still under warranty) diagnosed that the drive wasn't in danger of frying (not exactly what the Apple Hardware test CD diagnosed) and that I should just write zeroes to the disk and re-install and it would be just fine and dandy. David said he totally disagreed with the other Genius, and asked for his name, which I couldn't remember. In any case, David said they would repair my laptop FREE OF CHARGE. For all my griping about bad customer service at places like Travelocity - which I continue to advise against ever using, ever - this was a glimmer of hope that some people on the other end of the counter actually remember what it's like to be a customer. Thank God for Geniuses. The good ones anyway.
Anyway, back to my busted laptop. As was the case last time this happened (about 4 months ago), the computer was doing nothing. It became slower and slower until I decided that it would be a good idea to try to back the thing up, and then the backup took about 2 hours. I tried to erase the drive, and no luck. Ruh roh.
I got online and put my name in line for the Genius Bar at the Apple Store downtown. It was about 10 am (which is when they open), so I was first in line. I rushed down there on Muni (which isn't really rushing at all based on the schedule of trains - future rant coming) and arrived about 10:30. My name was first in line, but on the monitors, it said "next Genius available at 11:55 am". Nice. A pair of Euro glam women were tired of waiting for the next Genius, so one of them raised a stink about how she didn't want to wait and she just wanted to drop off her computer for repairs (which is what I wanted to do), and the Genius who was moderating the line fell for her accent and glam look and let her go to the front of the line. Unfortunately I'm neither a woman or have a Euro accent or glam, so I continued to wait.
(The ironic part is that I finished my Genius session before the Euro ladies did.)
Finally my name came up and a guy named David was assigned my Genius. He immediately asked if the laptop was under warranty. Nope. Apple Care? Nope. He attached his Genius toolkit to the computer and came up with the fact that the drive was fried. I told him my story of how the last Genius I spoke with in February (when my laptop was still under warranty) diagnosed that the drive wasn't in danger of frying (not exactly what the Apple Hardware test CD diagnosed) and that I should just write zeroes to the disk and re-install and it would be just fine and dandy. David said he totally disagreed with the other Genius, and asked for his name, which I couldn't remember. In any case, David said they would repair my laptop FREE OF CHARGE. For all my griping about bad customer service at places like Travelocity - which I continue to advise against ever using, ever - this was a glimmer of hope that some people on the other end of the counter actually remember what it's like to be a customer. Thank God for Geniuses. The good ones anyway.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
XXX
Mr. Steve Magg suggested this YEARS ago, but finally this Wednesday the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the suffix "xxx" for pornographic website use. The hope is that it will protect children from online smut by allowing family filtering software to block access to sites ending in xxx. The major flaw in this plan is that registering domains under the new suffix will cost about 10 times as much as a dot-com name. And registering under the new suffix is optional. Hmm. So if I'm a porn website owner and I can keep my site and all the traffic associated with it as is at the same cost OR buy a new xxx site and redirect traffic there at 10 times the cost, what should I do? Nothing. God bless America.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Blah blah blog
I have no fucking idea why this is, but Blogger has put the "Blogs of Note" spotlight on a blog called Romseyredhead. I clicked on it hoping to see pictures of freckled fuckers but to no avail. What I found was possibly the most boring and incoherent pieces of shite on the web. It's a blog by a woman named Sandra Gidley in the UK, who is the Liberal Democrat MP for Romsey. I have no idea what that is, but just by reading the first couple of entries, I can see that she has nothing better to do than blather on about nothing worth reading. Which is probably what I'm doing as well.
Without copying too much text from her blog (you never know what the copyright police will come down on these days), here's a tasty tidbit:
My eye was caught by a new Labour female MP who was dozing off..... Dozing off during the budget is understandable (almost acceptable) but to see a newly elected MP dozing during what is supposedly the highlight of the parliamentary week... I am lost for words
What the fuck is that about? Why the hell does anybody want to read that? And more importantly, why in the hell does Blogger put the spotlight on shit like that? Okay, I may not be adding much more to the web than a chuckle for a few TNSCers over their morning coffee, but that Romseyreadhead blog is a total waste of time. At least she's not wasting paper.
Without copying too much text from her blog (you never know what the copyright police will come down on these days), here's a tasty tidbit:
My eye was caught by a new Labour female MP who was dozing off..... Dozing off during the budget is understandable (almost acceptable) but to see a newly elected MP dozing during what is supposedly the highlight of the parliamentary week... I am lost for words
What the fuck is that about? Why the hell does anybody want to read that? And more importantly, why in the hell does Blogger put the spotlight on shit like that? Okay, I may not be adding much more to the web than a chuckle for a few TNSCers over their morning coffee, but that Romseyreadhead blog is a total waste of time. At least she's not wasting paper.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Great expectations
I saw two movies in the last two days. Sin City on Tuesday, Revenge of the Sith on Wednesday night. Sin City I couldn't be more disappointed with, Star Wars III I couldn't be less disappointed with. One was filled with cliché after cliché, and the other had dumb line after dumb line. Oh wait, the other one had dumb line after dumb line too.
Sin City has been out for months now but it seemed like one of those "gotta see it on the big screen" flicks due to the neato-comic-book-style painting treatment visually. High expectations abounded. So I went to the AMC Van Ness 14 or 1000 or whatever it's called and checked out a matinee. About 6 people were in the theater and maybe that had something to do with it, but it felt as vapid and empty as the theater. How many times can you show the hero getting pounded and never dying? I can just hear Robert Rodriguez in his casting sessions: "Hey, we need a guy who can get beat up a lot and keeps living. Brad Pitt? Too expensive. I saw Bruce Willis do that in Die Hards 1, 2, 3, and 4. Get him, and cheap!" Dumb. Gratuitous violence and nudity, and thankfully none of Bruce Willis. Actually yes, there was too much of Bruce's naked flesh on the screen. Next.
Revenge of the Sith just opened to throngs of geeky viewers frothing at the mouth. Yes, I stood in line outside the AMC Van Ness 14 or 1000 or whatever it's called for about an hour (that's not super geeky, right?) in the drizzle to see it on opening night. We got flashed and mooned by a bunch of women in a hotel shuttle while we waited in line. After getting inside the theater, we were able to see the true geeky-ness of San Francisco Star Wars fans, which wasn't much. Yawn. Not a lot of people dressed up as Chewbacca or a Stormtrooper, but there were lots and lots of light sabers. A couple of guys went up to the front of the theater and staged a light saber battle in front of the screen. One guy was way too good with that thing for me not to believe he practices with it on a daily basis. The other guy got skewered and then some other kid came up and bum rushed his ass. The "bum-rusher" kid was way too agitated and we started to wonder when security would escort him out of there kicking and screaming. And crying for missing opening night of Star Wars.
The movie started and everybody cheered and you know the rest. I mean, how suspenseful can it be when you already know what's happening in the next three movies? Still, It was enjoyable to the point of not feeling like 2 1/2 hours had passed. And because my expectations were much lower than that of Sin City's, the movie was pretty great. After all the futuristic gadgets and flying machines on the screen, the crowd moped out to broken escalators all the way down. Use the force next time.
Sin City has been out for months now but it seemed like one of those "gotta see it on the big screen" flicks due to the neato-comic-book-style painting treatment visually. High expectations abounded. So I went to the AMC Van Ness 14 or 1000 or whatever it's called and checked out a matinee. About 6 people were in the theater and maybe that had something to do with it, but it felt as vapid and empty as the theater. How many times can you show the hero getting pounded and never dying? I can just hear Robert Rodriguez in his casting sessions: "Hey, we need a guy who can get beat up a lot and keeps living. Brad Pitt? Too expensive. I saw Bruce Willis do that in Die Hards 1, 2, 3, and 4. Get him, and cheap!" Dumb. Gratuitous violence and nudity, and thankfully none of Bruce Willis. Actually yes, there was too much of Bruce's naked flesh on the screen. Next.
Revenge of the Sith just opened to throngs of geeky viewers frothing at the mouth. Yes, I stood in line outside the AMC Van Ness 14 or 1000 or whatever it's called for about an hour (that's not super geeky, right?) in the drizzle to see it on opening night. We got flashed and mooned by a bunch of women in a hotel shuttle while we waited in line. After getting inside the theater, we were able to see the true geeky-ness of San Francisco Star Wars fans, which wasn't much. Yawn. Not a lot of people dressed up as Chewbacca or a Stormtrooper, but there were lots and lots of light sabers. A couple of guys went up to the front of the theater and staged a light saber battle in front of the screen. One guy was way too good with that thing for me not to believe he practices with it on a daily basis. The other guy got skewered and then some other kid came up and bum rushed his ass. The "bum-rusher" kid was way too agitated and we started to wonder when security would escort him out of there kicking and screaming. And crying for missing opening night of Star Wars.
The movie started and everybody cheered and you know the rest. I mean, how suspenseful can it be when you already know what's happening in the next three movies? Still, It was enjoyable to the point of not feeling like 2 1/2 hours had passed. And because my expectations were much lower than that of Sin City's, the movie was pretty great. After all the futuristic gadgets and flying machines on the screen, the crowd moped out to broken escalators all the way down. Use the force next time.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
This is the end, beautiful friend
Well, this is the final installment of "Lee Lee the Musical Bee". I want to thank the TNSC robots for giving me a forum to blather on about anything I wanted to. And personal thanks to the probably three people who read "Lee Lee the Musical Bee" on a somewhat regular basis. I especially enjoyed it whenever somebody would e-mail or IM me and tell me that they almost peed their pants. Nothing is as magical as the ability to make somebody laugh so hard as to pee their pants. If that were a superpower, I think that's the one I would choose. And then the ability to magically make their pants clean again. Because people would get mad at me and not want to hang out with me as much. Anyways, I hope y'all have enjoyed at least one of my rants/blogs/whatevers.
One final quote from Henry Adams:
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
One final quote from Henry Adams:
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
The show to end all shows, or at least part of the show...
Last weekend I went down south to Indio for the annual Coachella music festival. Me and a bunch of high school pals just kickin' it in the desert. I probably mentioned the festival in my previous rant about how nobody should ever use Travelocity, ever. I'm not gonna let that one rest until I have that "reimbursement" they promised.
Some of the headliners were Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, New Order and Chemical Brothers. The overriding theme seemed to be: "Yes, yes we know. The 80's are back and now we're going to have a festival show about it. Blah blah blah." Except they left the hair metal bands out of the lineup.
It seems that the decades off have reminded a few of the bands where they ventured off their courses and started to blow in a major way. Example: New Order stuck completely to either their early stuff or their brand new album. Their set list screamed "I know our disco period was shit!" They even played a couple of Joy Division songs to make up for their disco misdeeds. Example #2: Gang of Four stayed away from material on their last couple of albums. I guess they couldn't afford to bring along the backup singer ladies.
But the one band from the late 70's / early 80's that played material from their whole catalog was Bauhaus. They stole the show. It proved they were right in breaking up and leaving their legacy intact. Peter Murphy made his entrance hanging from a rope upside down. They began with "Bela Lugosi's Dead" then moved throughout their catalog without staying too heavily into one album or another. "Stigmata Martyr", "In the Flat Field", "God in an Alcove", "She's in Parties" to name a few more.
They blew me away so intensely that I'm swearing off concerts for the time being. I mean, who's gonna top Bauhaus? I think I've now seen every band I've ever wanted to see, except for Iron Maiden of course - but that would have only been for the Powerslave tour.
Some of the headliners were Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, New Order and Chemical Brothers. The overriding theme seemed to be: "Yes, yes we know. The 80's are back and now we're going to have a festival show about it. Blah blah blah." Except they left the hair metal bands out of the lineup.
It seems that the decades off have reminded a few of the bands where they ventured off their courses and started to blow in a major way. Example: New Order stuck completely to either their early stuff or their brand new album. Their set list screamed "I know our disco period was shit!" They even played a couple of Joy Division songs to make up for their disco misdeeds. Example #2: Gang of Four stayed away from material on their last couple of albums. I guess they couldn't afford to bring along the backup singer ladies.
But the one band from the late 70's / early 80's that played material from their whole catalog was Bauhaus. They stole the show. It proved they were right in breaking up and leaving their legacy intact. Peter Murphy made his entrance hanging from a rope upside down. They began with "Bela Lugosi's Dead" then moved throughout their catalog without staying too heavily into one album or another. "Stigmata Martyr", "In the Flat Field", "God in an Alcove", "She's in Parties" to name a few more.
They blew me away so intensely that I'm swearing off concerts for the time being. I mean, who's gonna top Bauhaus? I think I've now seen every band I've ever wanted to see, except for Iron Maiden of course - but that would have only been for the Powerslave tour.
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