Sunday, August 31, 2003

Flashback

Did anybody else have a nasty flashback while watching the Browns-Falcons Game Thursday? I thought we had time-warped back to 1987 or something when I heard the voice of Bob Trumpy doing the game w/ Don Criqui.

*shudder*

What is it with ex-Bengals becoming annoying sportscasters? (see Cris Collinsworth)

Sunday, August 24, 2003

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Just watched the Warren Zevon special on VH1 and I'm swimming w/ emotions -- happy at just how good he sounds on the record (it's not a fluke, and yes, I have them all) -- pissed that it took him dying of cancer to get the recognition that he has long deserved -- and truly amazed at his attitude through it all.

Having been through a similar situation w/ my friend and bandmate Clay Vause, the sessions w/ Warren in the studio were a painful reminder that I never finished the last sessions that IRB did together. After Clay died (about six months after the recording) it was entirely too much to even think about listening to his voice again. Even after six years, it's only been recently that I can even listen to the music again. I'm not even sure what happened to the tapes, let alone where to find a machine to play them (16 track / 1" I believe).

There are three unreleased IRB songs, provisionally titled "nowhere fast", "sandman" and "angels" -- I say provisionally because Clay always had the gift of taking what would have been the easy route of naming the song after the chorus, and turning it into something far more interesting -- for example on "Big-Bang Payoff" there's a song we had always called "Shine" during the demo recording, live shows, etc -- but when it came time to put it on the record, it magically became "Drive A Stake Through My Heart, Kitty!" The other classic was "Claustrophobia" which became "Which Oswald Acted Alone?" -- one that still makes my head hurt today.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Funk #48 1/2

Normally, I don't troll eBay looking for my old stuff (sure, sure), but here's a link to something I'm not sure even I have prints of anymore, an 8x10 of IRB from 1991. Is it worth the $5? uh, no.

And one for the trainspotters, the picture was shot in downtown Kent and the building in the background is the same one that was on the James Gang's first record. It was just refurbished this year and now houses a financial office...



Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Another Day, Another virus/worm

So, of course after snickering about the inability of my Win95 machine being infected with the msblast worm, comes the Sobig.f variant which has dumped an impressive amount of attachments in my spam folder (thank you old version of Eudora that doesn't open attachments).

The really irritating thing are all of the bounces coming from other accounts that think I'm sending the spam (a common technique, forging e-mail addresses as the sender). Read the headers folks -- it ain't coming from my box...


Sunday, August 17, 2003

All I Want For Christmas...

..Is this book "Blue Wizard Is About To Die! Prose, Poems, and Emoto-Versatronic Expressionist Pieces About Video Games (1980-2003)" Copyright © 2003 by Seth Barkan. Here's a short excerpt from a longer piece about Dragon's Lair...

DRAGON’S LAIR:

I remember when Marble Madness first came out,
Preceded by Gauntlet, with "Blue Wizard is about to Die!"
And, "Use potions to Kill Death!" Helpful instructions
Meant to simplify a deadly maze of stone and skeletons,
Where four friends would gather together to search for a
Black square tile, representing a hole that took you
Out of whatever deathtrap hell you were in and into
The maw of one even deeper and more dangerous than the last.
I remember the syncopated early FM synthesis strains of
The Ikari Warriors bassline, boom chickaboom chickaboom
Chicka didlydumdedum, with 8bit drums kicking in
Relentlessly behind it on the beach, in red or blue
Bandana, or even at the steel encased end of the game: there was no other music.


Friday, August 15, 2003

Blackout

Everything is pretty normal here, we missed the blackout by about two cities -- although I'm not sure why, as it surrounded us on all sides. *shrug*

The biggest impact of the blackout was the lack of e-mail (quel horror!) -- my ISP is in downtown Cleveland -- which is why I've kept AOL all these years, since version 1.0, which was what... 1991-92? I still have the floppies from then (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, etc). This explains why I have so many boxes of stuff crap in the back room(s).

Anyway, as things are creeping back to normal, I may not be able to repond to e-mail right away. Enjoy your unscheduled summer vacation day...

Thursday, August 14, 2003

No Free Lunch

So, as many of you on Yahoo Groups have noticed, they're getting rid of all the attachments in the message archives. Fine you say -- it's just old virii, pr0n and winmail.dat files anyway.

Well, not quite -- I've been contributing to an ongoing list called "Sound Injury/Recovery" over the last 8 months or so, and what we do is take an audio source file at the beginning of each month and then mangle it, posting the results to the list, but using the attachment size limitation (<1Mb, minus yahoo compression or around 750kB) as a condition of the remake/re-model.

It has opened up a whole new area to explore and develop, and I've ended up with some really good ideas for future work based on the other uploaded pieces. Now that resource will be gone as of August 21.

Crap.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

SpamRadio

Music + Spam = Spamradio

it's like having Stephen Hawking reading classic Nigerian, prOn, HGH, and MLM spam backed by instrumental music.

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

Summer Vacation, Part 27

Today's vacation day was spent at the Waterpark, or more accurately, watching my kids at the Waterpark. The wife and I spent most of the day watching the kids float in innertubes, go down the big spiral water slides, swim in the giant pool and get alternately sunburned and rained upon.

Daddy did sneak off and play some hoops and get in some time at the batting cage. The good news is I can still hit the ball from both sides of the plate, the bad news I received a nice big blister (now raw spot) on my left hand for the effort. I did crush more than a few, but I'll feel it tomorrow. Didn't hit the putt-putt course because we did that last week in town.

Yes, I know, you want to party with me. ;)

I'll agree it's not quite the same party level as some of the backstage antics from ye olde band era, but more importantly, my kids loved it, and I'll remember that more fondly (and with more clarity).

Sunday, August 03, 2003

Man, the things kids will do to get out going on a family vacation.

Of course, had it been my Hawaii vacation that was screwed, I might not think it was all that funny...

Jeff thinks one way, Cory another way

I think, between the recent CAPPS II announcement and the way TSA has handled other incidents (paging David Nelson), while it's obvious that we need increased security in airports, they have veered a little past acceptable.

For example, read how Alton Brown's Omlette Pan was confiscated in Allentown, PA.

NP: William Basinski "Despair" (from the Antiopic Allegorical Power Series)