Sad Christmas: Mitch Hedberg died.

Crap.

If, like many, you don't know him, try this.

--montana--

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in China, no less.

Online Gamer Stabbed for Selling Cyber-Saber

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword, the China Daily said Wednesday, creating a dilemma in China where no law exists for the ownership of virtual weapons.

Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after
he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon saber," used in the popular online game, "Legend of Mir 3," the newspaper said a Shanghai court was told Tuesday.

"Legend of Mir 3" features heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords.

Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan (US$870), the newspaper said.

Qui went to the police to report the "theft" but was told the weapon was not real property protected by law.

"Zhu promised to hand over the cash but an angry Qui lost patience and attacked Zhu at his home, stabbing him in the left chest with great force and killing him," the court was told.

The newspaper did not specify the charge against Qiu but said he had given himself up to police and already pleaded guilty to "intentional injury."

No verdict has been announced.

More and more online gamers were seeking justice through the courts over stolen weapons and credits, the newspaper said.

"The armor and swords in games should be deemed as private property as players have to spend money and time for them," Wang Zongyu, an associate law professor at Beijing's Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying.

But other experts are calling for caution. "The 'assets' of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers," a lawyer for a Shanghai-based Internet game company was quoted as saying.

smart.

i'm sure some churchy buttholes will make some point about playing devil games.

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memorize this guy's face:

and then if you see him on the street, punch him in it.

Boy Scout director charged with having child porn

Organization 'dismayed and shocked ' by news

DALLAS, Texas - The national director of programs for the Boy Scouts of America has been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, the U.S. Attorneys said Tuesday.

In charges filed by federal prosecutors on March 21, Douglas S. Smith Jr. was accused of receiving images over the Internet in February of children engaging in oral sex, intercourse and other sexually explicit conduct.

Sources in the U.S. Attorney's office told NBC that Smith, 61, was expected to plead guilty.

Law enforcement officials indicated the pictures did not show boys who were with the Boy Scouts organization, said Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America, which is based in the Dallas suburb of Irving. He said Smith "was not in a leadership position which involved working directly with youth."

"We are dismayed and shocked to learn of this," Shields said in a statement. “Smith was employed by the Boy Scouts for 39 years and we had no indication of prior criminal activity.”

ugh. i sure hate people.

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check it. miss mcdonald loves the Ronald McDonald character design, and posts pics of herself wearing this costume.

it's a bit unsettling, but you can see that it's not some weird fetish thing. i can identify; i'm a big fan of buckethead, and his own character design is quite good.

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here's the first installment of my NYC trip. i didn't really take many pictures, but i'll put up the ones i did get.

i got up friday morning, and sara picked me up in her car at 7am. we needed to be in dayton by 8am, so that her dad could take her car in to get an estimate on some damage, so to meet him by 8 means we leave early. we arrived at his place and he took us over to her mom's, where we each promptly napped a few hours. i slept particularly well, apparently, because while i was asleep, (a) a new refrigerator was delivered, (b) the furnace guyts banged around and power drilled the crap out of something, (c) some sort of wild animal was scrabbling about in the attic space, and (d) the wild animal wrangler was searching for said wild animal.

no problem for me, though: i slept through it.

the three of us made a lunch stop at Friendly's, where we did not have a reese's sundae. then on to the airport, where we got our boarding passes, emptied our pockets, removed our shoes, and waited for the lady to look through my backpack. she couldn't tell what was in it with xray machine, since i had SO MANY METAL OBJECTS in there: discman, palm pilot, spare batteries, watch, cellphone, etc. sigh.

then began the Time of Long Waiting (tm). our flight, due to the inclement weather, was delayed by an hour, so that by the time we arrived at laguardia, we were behind schedule. we didnt really have a schedule, mind you, it was just the principle of the thing.

the original plan (which was somewhat ingenious) was that eddie (see pic, stolen from a website because i never got to take one of him the whole weekend) left a spare set of keys and a copy of my ID nextdoor at a business, the Polish Gazette, which has someone there 24 hours. theoretically, this would free him (and his roommates) from needing to be at his apartment, where we'd be staying for the bulk of the weekend. this was good, as eddie would be working that night (and, as it turns out, nearly the entire weekend).

however, the flaw in the plan was that the polish gazette actually lost his keys (and, presumably, my id...), so when we landed an hour late, i had a message on my phone from eddie explaining the situation, and that his girlfriend stockton (who is one of his four roommates) would be at home when we arrived.

we took a cab to eddie's apartment in williamsburg, and stockton let us in. we met tobias and anna, two more of eddie's roommates. they're german, and i found out later that anna was high school friends with one of my favorite german rappers, ferris mc. small world.

stockton was quite helpful, despite having worked solidly for a few days with no sleep. she loaned us her keys, gave us maps, and recommended a few vegetarian-friendly restaurants for us. we ventured back out, with another cab, since we weren't ready to tackle the subwayon an empty stomach.

only a few minutes later we were eating at vera cruz, a great mexican restaurant on bedford. as the review says, it was very nicely priced, and quite good. i got vegetarian enchiladas, and sara got a vegetarian burrito. both were great, though sara likes her food to be a bit less spicy.

satisfied, we walked along bedford, just enjoying being in new york city. it being friday night, the hipsters were out in full force, really reminding me that a lot of the rockers in cincinnati just want to live in nyc. then again, so do i, so i guess i shouldn't talk.

we stumbled on a cool coffee shop called The Read, where david and i had sat enjoying the coffee and mocha back in june. sara and i sat, me with my mocha and her with her hot chocolate. i flipped through the village voice, mainly checking for must-see shows that weekend. there weren't any, but i definitely had wanted to check.

the read closed at 11, so we were back out, ready for the subway this time. it was really very simple, just two stops on the L train, but you never know. we did it just fine, buying 7 day passes so that we wouldn't have to worry about it again all weekend.

once back at eddie's, we opted to stay in, as we were quite tired from the trip. we met keith, eddie's 4th and final roommate. he was, as all of the roommates were, quite nice, and we chatted with him for a while before crashing out.

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so, i don't normally even mention work on here, as i'd rather not get dooced. However, i think this is worth a mention, and totally not about work, so i'm safe.

i sit sort of next to the VP over my area. he just got a new cellphone in the last month or so, i think, because suddenly i've been hearing his various ringtones, which i didn't hear before, and i've been sitting close by him since like november.

anyway, his newest ring is this little ding-dong sort of ring that reminds me of the tone and the first couple notes of the Fudgie & Fufu classic "Surrender Your Panties".

apparently, though, it puts the song in my head. not a good thing at work, especially since, on a conscious level, i block it out. now what happens is this: (a) the phone rings, (b) i hear it or not, depending on whether i'm tuning out my surroundings at the time, (c) unbeknownst to me, the song gets stuck in my head, (d) i'm wandering around the office singing "you gave me not one cookie but three" and "all i wanted from you was a roll in the hay".

damn you fudgie & fufu.

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The Best 90 Minutes of My Life



Thurston Moore wrote a nice article about the power of mix tapes, and touches briefly on their relationship to modern mp3/cdr trading.

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this made me laugh like you would not believe just now:

yes, i'm a simple man. making fun of my brother does it for me, i guess. ;)

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i hope that image shows. let me know if it doesn't.

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I saw the Haywards last night, as I mentioned in the last blog entry. I was a bit displeased -- I probably shouldn't have gone. There are a couple reasons.

First, Greg (the drummer) was playing a full drum kit, which David never let me do. Second, they played a cover, which David was always reluctant to do when we played. Third, and most important in my mind: they rocked out. Dammit, every time I got the least bit "rocking", David always chastised me. Grr. Oh well. I'll just start a metal band with Tom Willis and rock out ALL the time.

I didn't do much interesting today at all. I made a quick store run to pick up a few food items (mostly cereal), and came back and ate those food items. I started again on the apartment organization, which will take a while but will be necessary for when the Toast moves in.
I started to watch THX 1138, but after about 10 minutes I realized I wasn't in the mood, so I watched a two hour live standup show of Billy Connely's in Ireland from a couple years back. That guy kills me; I was laughing out loud a LOT. I wish I knew more about vcd/dvd/mpg editing, so I could have saved it, but the file was much too large and long.

I also went to the esquire to see Steamboy, the latest anime film from the guy who directed Akira. It was good, with loads of action and though the physics were a bit off, it was at least enjoyable. The concept of steam engines powering huge machinery was pretty cool. It did make me want to watch Akira again, though.

I went home, and while purchasing gas I realized I'd left my debit card at Crush last night from when I'd opened a tab. After a quick jaunt downtown to retrieve it, I spent a couple hours chatting with the Toast, watching weird videos on the interntet, and just generally relaxing.

I'm heading to NYC this coming weekend, so this may be my last chance to relax.

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Pet store owner: Satan's image on turtle's shell

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jf had driven me home last night, as i'd had quite a few very tall shots of vodka at wooley's, and so we'd made lunch plans for today, so i could get a ride back to my car.

we had lunch at jimmie john's, where i pretty much get one thing: #13, which i believe is called the vegetarian gourmet sandwich, or something like that. (a quick glance at their big Flash website reveals that it is the "gourmet veggie club".) of course, the cucumbers were left off, as i'm of the opinion that if adding vinegar to something makes it better (i.e., cucumbers » pickles), then i dont like it.

the sprouts on the sandwich smelled very "sprouty", reminding me of our practice space, a warehouse-type building where sprouts are grown on the first floor. the smell is intense, so strong that it doesn't smell like food.

i had their salt & vinegar chips, which i couldn't finish, as they were more salt & vinegar than chip. i held one up for jf to look at, and the smell from it made her eyes water. they were good, though.

she dropped me off at my car, and i went over the river to barnes & noble to pick up an italian phrase book, to suplement the italian audio lessons i'm listening to in the car. additionally, i picked up velvet goldmine and thx 1138 on dvd. i think i'll like velvet goldmine even more now that i'm a huge jobriath fan; apparently the film is heavily based on him, though the director, tood haynes, denies it. if it's not true, then explain this:


see any similarity? of course not. todd haynes didn't even know who jobriath was. (yeah right).

(pictures borrowed from a nice article on glam-ou-rama.co.uk.)

i'm going to see the haywards tonight. i used to play drums/keys in that band for a year, so i'm curious what they sound like now.

i also need to talk to tom willis about starting up that metal band....

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on thursday and friday night both, we did some karaoke. thursday at the golden lions i did "hey you" and another song, but i can't remember which. not a bad time at all.

on friday, karaoke was at wooley's. my friend laura's birthday had been on wednesday, but she wanted to celebrate by doing the wooley's karaoke on friday.

it's the same karaoke lady, bonnie, from our thursdays at golden lions, but it's a different clientele, and a totally different atmos. fewer people, too, meaning i got to sing more times than i wuld have at the lions. i did "never tear us apart", which is in the new director's cut of donnie darko, so it was on my brain.

januaryfairy and i did two heart tunes: "alone" and "what about love", both of which were a real good time. this was really like shirley's used to be, back in the day. i'm excited for the toast's return.

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sometime last week, baby kitty asked whether i'd like to go see Berlin on their upcoming stop in (of all places) dayton, ohio. i said sure, and got the tickets on monday.

after leaving work early, i picked her up, and we headed to dayton. we were running a bit behind (the website said show at 6pm), but there were two openers, and we were hungry. the solution was a quick dinner at Friendly's.

[ah, shit -- time to karaoke. i got distracted by watching the donnie darko director's cut with commentary. i'll finish later, and put up a couple pics.]

---

ok i'm back. a few days later, but i'm back. :)

Where was I? oh yes, Berlin.

After Friedly's (where i did NOT have a reese's sundae), we went over to the Dublin Pub. it was odd -- the show was in an outdoor tent, which was conected to the actual building. we went into the building first, as our tickets were on will call. no problems there, luckily; i'm always leery of will call tickets, but it was fine this time around.

we had missed the first opening band, who was apparently a traditional Celtic band. ugh. it was the day before st. patrick's day, though, and we were at an irish pub, so i supose it was to be expected. the second openers were cinci locals Shesus. i hadnt heard them before, which was odd, since they play in cinci all the fucking time. but yeah. they were ok, not really my style, though. very similar to Wire and Elastica, especially in the basslines. the crowd for the most part seemed somewhat unimpressed, with a few exceptions up near the stage. i think folks were there for Berlin and no one else.

after a while, they finished, and we waited what seemed like forever, although it was still fairly early in the evening. eventually some radio dork came up and did the stupid intro and the band tok the stage, initially withouth terri. the band was all young -- late 20s-ish, i'd say -- and all had spiky, LA-stlye haircuts, black with colors (purple/blue/red, i think) on the tips. they played some instrumental stuff for a few moments, then terri nunn came out.


first thought: wow, she still looks great! and as soon as she started singing, it was apparent that she still sounded great, too.

they of course played most of the well-known songs: "no more words" came early in the set, while "the metro" came a bit later. they ended up playing most of the first record, in fact.

the band was good, and the sound was as well. they played at times with a backing track, which had sequenced synth parts (especially the moroder-style fast parts)., but it didn't come off as lame, as bands sometimes can who play along with pre-recorded stuff.

a great moment for me was when terri announced that they were going to play a cover. at first, it sounded like duran duran's "rio", but as soon as the vocals started i realized that it was "big time", one of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs. awesome. it was at this point that was sure i hadn't wasted the $25 ticket price.

eventually, of course, it came time for them to play "take my breath away". as an intro, terri brought up a piece of paper with a seal (the gold foil kind, not the animal) on it. she said that the mayor of dayton had sent her this certificate of recognition for berlin's award winning song "take my breath away", which (i'm paraphrasing here) "would always remind listeners of military flight."

ugh.

i looked at baby kitty, and she was looking at me with the same disgusted look on her face that i was sure i had on mine.

it was time to go.

as we left, we heard the song's synth bassline fading behind us. too bad she had to sour things by reading the stupid letter she'd gotten.

the only song i hadn't heard that i'd wanted to hear was "sex (i'm a)", which i'm sure they saved for the end of the set, or even for an encore. it was no problem, though, as i'd definitely gotten my money's worth.

we drove home, and i called gabe, who'd said he was going to come over and watch the third season of oz with me. he said he was playing video games over at our friend steve's, and he'd come over in a couple minutes. a half hour went by, and i called to check on him. "sorry man. let me beat this level." i was tired, but i'd been looking forward to oz, so i said ok. forty-five minutes after that, still no gabe. it was now nearly 1am, and i was far too tired to watch anything. i called gabe to let him know this, but before i could tell him that, he told me he'd changed his mind and wasnt coming over after all.

grr. that's an hour and a half that i could have been sleeping. oh well. naturally, i crashed after that.

here are some more pics from the show:

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hey, looks like dooce will be in Moab. not that it's important at all, or even likely that she'll run into someone i know there, but still -- mcdeviltoast used to live there, and ambassador bc still does, so i thought i'd mention it. you know, kind of like a celebrity visiting your hometown, except it's not my hometown, and dooce is only sort of a quasi-celebrity.

[ i'm quite a fan of dooce's blog, though were my friends to read about it, they might assume i wouldn't be. ]

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Of course! 'm backlogged (backblogged?), so a few quick things:

• Last monday (03/07), Prantershifter with special guest DJ Empirical opened up for the Trevor Dunn / Shelley Burgon duo. How was their (Prantershifter/Empirical) set? It was a good time; loads of noise, and I thing people were amazed at the sounds coming out of the turntable.
• I actually missed the Dunn/Burgon set, which I had wanted to see. I missed it because I was downstairs at the show in the ballroom: Large Number, the nom de sonique of Ann Shenton, who was in Add N to X, a great electronic band. Her set was great: analog synth backing tracks with homemade noisemakers / theremin / sequencer nonsense. Good times. Plus, she was charming as all hell, and Marc (her company on the tour, the guy who owns the record label she's on, and I suspect her bf as well) was super-cool, too. We exchanged info; I think he'll be a good contact.

more to come later; i have to excape work. ;)

---

ok, i'm back. too much to go into...

• i just interviewed Roesing Ape for (hopefully) citybeat, who published my interview with spencer back in december.
• pink floyd: the wall is a great film that i've owned for over a year on dvd but not watched since the early nineties, at a time when i didnt really care about film or pink floyd. this weekend i've watched everything on the dvd, including videos and documentaries. you should watch it again sometime; with me, if you need motivation. :)
  
• i bought & watched the director's cut of donnie darko; i liked it. it's more of a "remix" (the director's word, not mine), but it is different enough that people are debating online whether it's better or not. i dont know about better, but i did decide to keep both versions.
  
• three cheers for Baby Kitty; she got accepted to pratt! of course, that solidifies her moving to nyc in september, which will be sad christmas for me & others here in cincinnati, but good news for her. she really is a great artist -- wait till she gets pratt under her belt!
• i'm going to see Berlin tomorrow. it should be fun, even if they end up not being too great. :)
  

ok, that has to be all for today -- time to straighten up the apartment.

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so, in designing the fancy new layout for this blog, stAllio! used some fancy new bullets for the list items to the right. these show up fine in Firefox (the browser you would be using if you weren't using Internet Explorer by default), but don't seem to work in IE.

In Firefox, the sidebar to the right of this blog looks like this:


See those fancy bullets? If not, let me or stAllio! know. He talks a bit more about it on his blog, too.

I'm keeping them, by the way. They look great to me.

[p.s., check out his mp3 of the week page for a new stAllio! tune every... well... week.
while we're at it, you should buy his true data 12", not because he redesigned our blog, but because it kicks major ass.]

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Yes, here is is: the trailer.

I don't know. I'll probably see it, and it'll look really god, but I guess I just can't get excited for Lucas' stuff any more. I think the last thing he did that I still really like were the Indiana Jones films. Maybe Williow, too, but I haven't seen that one in quite a while.

Oh well.

I still need to pick up THX 1138... that thing was awesome.

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stAllio!, of animals within animals, was kind enough to take a few minutes and design this sweet-ass new blogger template for me.

head over to his blog and tell him what a good job he did.

thanks man.

--montana--

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The best thing i've seen today: Six Perfect Sideburns in Five Minutes, which seems to me like some guy's get-rich-quick scheme. Sweet. Let's see whether one of the images will work here:



nice. maybe mcdeviltoast could use that when he decides to spurn the beard.

oh snap! there's video!



hot.

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i had made plans with gabe to have brunch, but he called me at 4:30pm to say he'd overslept and that he had to go to work. suck. oh well, at least i'd gotten that long circus blog entry out of the way while i'd waited.

i cooked some ramen and was about to watch jacob's ladder when lyndsey called. i ate while i chatted with her for a few minutes, catching her up on things in the last couple weeks since we'd spoken. i got a call waiting beep, and when i flashed over i heard a familiar "mr. boyd!", which was my friend andy action, formerly of the band 2 skinnee j's, and currently of the fantastic band cardia. i'd called him earlier in the weekend looking for possible places to crash in nyc for the then-possible-now-definite trip there in a few weeks. he said that he lives in staten island now, a long trek on public transit to do anything at all, so it was probably out of the question. oh well; at least he said he'd probably make some time to hang out. sweet.

i watched about an hour of jacob's ladder, but at 8pm i went to meet with jim from chalk about the collaboration tomorrow night between jim's prantershifter and the QEG's dj empirical. the two of them played for a couple hours, and worked out some material for tomorrow night's set. i have to say that i'm quite excited, and the fact that they're opening for trevor dunn and shelley burgon is incredible as well.

after that, i picked up baby kitty from work so she wouldn't have to walk home in the dark, then hung out with her and listened to the bubbles in the think tank show on WAIF. donald spivak called in, but didn't know shit about 70s music trivia. that's cool for him, but sucks for his entertainment value calling in.

back home at 2am, blogged while listening to a live patton/d.e.p. show, and then watched the rest of jacob's ladder. i forgot how hot elizabeth peña is!

time for sleep.

[ p.s., i slightly altered the blog layout. did you notice? now the "posted by" is much more prominent, which i like, and the text at the bottom of each post is a little different. ]

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despite having gone to bed at almost 7am (note the time on my prior blog entry), i woke up at my usual saturday noon-ish. after showering (note: shower music was Mushroomhead's Superbuick), i remembered that i needed to get, among other things, a new black printer cartridge, as mine had run out earlier in the week.

i made a quick jaunt to target (which i'm not fond of, but at least it's not wal-mart, and it looks better/less trashy), where i quickly found the cartridge i needed. this is quite different from my experiences with previous printers i've owned, where often i've struggled to figure out (a) which cartridge i need, and (b) where i could find it.

additionally, i picked up a particular spongebob dvd for baby kitty because it contained our favorite episode, "Sailor Mouth" (which we've incorrectly been referring to as "Sailor Talk" all this time). in it, spongebob learns a "dirty word" which, since it's a kids' show, was "bleeped" out with a dolphin sound, making for a particularly funny sequence where half the dialog is dolphin sounds. in much the same way that full nudity can be less sexy than clothing, censored dialog can often be funnier than if the words were really there. (for reference, compare the censored/uncensored versions of the dvds of The Osbournes).

i watched it while she got ready for our evening. a couple days ago, she'd asked me whether i wouldn't mind going with her to the circus, and, being the good friend that i am, i said yes. i'd purchased our tickets online friday afternoon (yay modern technology!), and so we were good to go.

traffic downtown was atrocious; it reminded me why i don't do concerts larger than bogart's size (about 1200 people capacity). after loads of driving, and even more not-driving, we finally found a parking lot only a block from the big huge place where the circus was. it only cost $6 (which, for you brits, is probably about 12p right now), which i thought was not bad, considering.

we made our way inside, past kiosk after kiosk of merchandise for sale (not to mention the food counters as well). it was nearly all the same stuff at each counter, too, which was weird and quite disorienting -- we were walking through a crowd along the outside of a great circle, passing the same kiosk many times, like some crappily-animated 50's cartoon or something.

i noticed from the merchandise that this was something like the 134th ringling bros and barnum & bailey circus. my quick math made it clear, then, that this had been going on since the civil war. pretty crazy stuff.

a testament to how small a town cincinnati actually is came in the form of noah sweeny, aka 'nati kid from the animal crackers, a cincinnati hip-hop dj crew. we'd been there only a short while and i ran into someone i knew.

we found our seats, naturally flanked on either side by families. in fact, as you'd expect, we were the odd ones out, as a survey of the crowed showed families everywhere. i made a mental note to try to contain my own "sailor mouth".

our view wasn't bad -- we were on the corner of the rounded-rectangle of the floor, at about row "t", meaning we were 20-odd rows up. when the lights when down, it was a sea of twirly lights, one of the many overpriced items at the ubiquitous kiosks. here's what i mean:


yes. those things were $16 to $18, depending on the variety, so that pic shows about $1000 in the pocket of the circus and the big huge venue we were at. amazing.

a couple quick notes:

• my digital camera is not the best. these pics are going to be somewhat grainy and all that, and blurry, too, where there's motion. i know most of you won't mind, but if you don't like it, buy me a new camera. (please.)
• i am almost certainly violating copyrights by posting pics. i don't care. they can eat me. i figure, for $25 per ticket, i get to post pics on my website.

the first bit of action was right in front of us: a man and a woman, each on their own tall pole, which had a ring at the top. the poles swayed back and forth, and the crowd ooh-ed and aah-ed appropriately.


the woman was hot, by the way, except for the ugly yellow sequined costume.

what i found more interesting, though, was the shadow of the pole climbers cast by the spotlight onto the crowd.

baby kitty got a phone call around this time:


she was actually able to say someone, "no, i'm at the circus, i'll have to call you back." i'm jealous. incidentally, later on that evening i heard the little boy in the family next to me say the same thing into what i'm assuming was his parents' cellphone. seeing an 8-year old say that into a phone was funny as hell.

after that, there was the requisite trapeze act, which pretty much did what every trapeze act does.


oh yeah, there was a magician guy too, but the pics of his didn't come out all that well, and it was really only funny if you were a kid, i guess. speaking of kids, i stole a pic of the kid behind us playing with his $18 light thing.


i'll bet it broke later that night at home.

next were the horses, which baby kitty of course loved. i personally am not so into horses, but here's a pic anyway:


pretty much that pretty girl just led them around and made them switch directions and that sort of thing. i was more marvelled by the training that the feats themselves.

another quick note here: i personally am fascinated by "process". by this i mean, how something, a piece of art, perhaps, gets to where it is. thus, the above comment on the training. in fact, much of the time i was watching the rings where the action was not, becuase to me, the action there was also fascinating: setting up the next act, tearing down the previous act to make room.... that stuff is great.

so, the next act, which i watched them set up, was this huge spinny thing with a dude in it, kind of like a hamster wheel on a rotating mechanism. ah, screw the description; here's what it looked like:


it's blurry, of course, so just in case you can't tell, the yellow blur in the fat end is a guy. he basically made the thing spin about the center by crawling forward in the hamster-wheel part. after a while, during the descent of the rotation, he would jump or do flips. all this was pretty impressive, but then he got out of it and got back on it on the outside of it:


wow. he did somersaults and stuff on the outside, too.

time for another quick note: the last time i saw the circus i think i was maybe 10-ish. it was in the 80s, definitely, and before 6th grade. one of the things that has happened since then to change my view of circus acts is that i earned a bachelor's degree in physics. so, i'm watching this guy run around on the outside of the thing (wtf is it called?!), and while everyone else is thinking "ooh, i hope he doesn't fall!", i'm figuring out where he has to stand so that it's perfectly balanced. (it's right about where the big hamster wheel part meets the frame.)

next were the elephants, which pretty much did a variation on the horse act.


it was cool though.

oh, and there were also some musical acts, which i felt neither the need to take pictures of nor the need to remember, so (obviously) this isn't a full recap of the show. i hate musicals, for the most part.

here are some more elephants, though, to make up for it:


in addition to the musical numbers, there was also a high wire act, a clown act, and a little comedy-music thing which wer only mildly entertaining. the one remaining cool thing, though was the motorcycles in the ball-shaped cage:


you can't tell all that much from the picture, but that sphere has three motorcycles driving around inside it. this never ceases to amaze me, though now that i'm older i understand better how they keep from running into each other.

oh, and there were some chinese acrobats, too, but i figured i had pics of chinese acrobats on my hard drive that actually came from china, so i was not bothered to take pics.

so yeah. there's the circus. i actually enjoyed it, and baby kitty had a great time, so that was cool.

afterward, we went to york street to try to catch my friend todd's band black magic rhythm, but after being there for a while, we realized we hadn't eaten all day (except for the cotton candy) and so we took off. sorry todd! we went to shanghai mama's, a great chinese restaurant downtown. the orange faux ribs (vegetarian!) there kick major ass.

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shower music: KMFDM "Split/Piggybank" single. So good.

i stopped by Sitwell's for a mocha, and by the Esquire to say hello to Baby Kitty. she said she'd call after she got off work.

i went home, but i felt a bit like crap, so i took some aleve and crashed for an hour. when i woke up, i called my friend Elizabeth and had a long conversation: nearly three hours, i think. i've got some shit going on, and so does she, so it worked out for both of us. she's a great friend, and i've known her for years -- since college, so upwards of ten years (yikes! i hadnt thought about that before). she lives outside of chicago, and i miss her. i need to get up there some time.

feeling much better, i realized that i hadn't received a call from Baby Kitty, so i gave her a call, but to no avail. she must have just gone home & crashed herself. i don't blame her, as she got up at 7am this morning.

what to do now, though, as i'd been stood up? the answer: finish watching The Big Lebowski, which i'd begun the night before. it's an amazing film, quite well written, and well acted, too. plus, i have big hearts for julianne moore, so it's even all the better.

after that, i figured i'd put up some of the Toast's many vacation pics. for background, i put on High Fidelity, a film that's great, but that I knew inside and out, so it wouldn't distract me too much. there was a time when i watched that film every night; on top of being a great film, it really helped me through some tough things that were going on back then. (some of those things were topics of the three hour conversation with elizabeth from earlier.)

High Fidelity ended, but i was in the groove uploading the pics, so i glanced through my discs trying to find another film thati enjoy, but that wouldn't distract too much. i found one that i hadn't seen in a while: Hackers.

ok, here's the deal: i know this isn't a great film or anything; i just enjoy it. there are, however, some things about it that just suck ASS.

• First, and in my mind the hardest thing to overlook: Lorraine Bracco. I knew her originally as Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, though this came a few years earlier. She is, and i'll stand by this, a horrible actress. she was my least favorite character on The Sopranos for a long time, and not because of the character, but because she just sucks. Yes, in Hackers she's saddled with some crap dialog, but seriously: watch the scene where the hackers are doing their thing in grand central station, and watch her in action. actually, just wacth any scene with her in it. whoof. does being married to harvey keitel just get you gigs or something?
• Next, the script. Again, whoof. A quick glance at Rafael Moreu's filmography will probably give you some insight as to his skill level. This film is written by someone who knows nothing about computers for people who know nothing by computers. Seriously. "Set your laptop to receive a file." What is that? Come on. They couldn't hire someone to fact check? That's probably good, though, as that would have spawned a rework of the ENTIRE script, since nearly everything is factually incorrect or at least dissimilar to reality.
  
• Plus, in addition to the factual errors, there's the AWESOME dialog... that is NOT present in the film. "You're floating... and I'm going to FLUSH you!" Awesomely bad, and unfortunately representative of the film.
• Let's not forget the CG representations of the hacking -- the little symbols that fly around while the hacking is going on are really fucking lame. seriously.

I think those are my major beefs (beeves?) with the film.

Johnny Lee Miller is ok, but is way better in Trainspotting. Angelina Jolie is, of course, way hot, and i think hotter here than anywhere else i've seen her. And Matt Lillard is real goddam good, too. It's fine, i got it for $5 -- leave me alone. :)

--montana--

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here we are in 30-40 years:

Oldtana


OldDevilToast
creepy, huh? make your own here.

oh, and cincinnati bell decided to let me have internet access today after all.

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So, Cincinnati Bell is dumb and screwed up my phone service, including the internet service.

Bastards!

So, Montana has been even more absent than usual. sorry. more monday, when the outside world will come into the QEG compound again.

speaking of monday night:

DJ Empirical will be a special guest during Prantershifter's set on Monday night at the Southgate House, opening for the Trevor Dunn / Shelley Burgon Duo. Exciting! Check the SGH site for details.

--montana--

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due to the loquacious nature of both aaron and myself, i've limited this front page to fourteen posts.

you can still access the archives via the links on the right, but this page will (hopefully) load faster.

--montana--

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This has the Toast written all over it.



This link goes to a generator of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. Eno developed a set of cards that, when you're stuck with something (e.g., writer's block), may help you think in a different manner and get around the obstacle.

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