House of the rising Moonglum

The brain is a strange and mysterious thing. I just heard a cover of a song and was unable to place it. My brain kept flipping between thinking that it was a Led Zeppelin song that I have listened to for years and a Bob Dylan song that I have listened to for years.

It is a cover of both of them. I had to listen to the Dylan and Zep versions one after the other for my brain to categorize them as the same song, and I still don’t quite believe it. Seriously, I must have listened to the Led Zeppelin version about a thousand times in Jr. High School, and the Dylan version a hundred in High School, and my brain just never connected them before.

Dylan and Zep now are higher up on the iPod playlist. Guess I don’t “know that highway like I know my hand” after all.

In honor of GeoCities shutting down xkcd redesigned their web site. It is like a horrible, bleeding eye, walk down memory lane. Absolutely wonderful. From the broken image links, to the horrible arrow buttons; scrolling text to the blinking (actually not… some things have improved over the years). Ridiculous precision on the page hits. Random bits of CGI sprayed over the page.

So horribly wrongly wonderful.

Just saw this movie and I feel like I need a smoke! It was incredibly hard to watch, but an amazing piece of storytelling. I kept expecting the “other shoe” to drop, but instead we had direct character development, from one step to the next to make a compelling and complete story. Probably the best quote I heard was from the review in the New Yorker: “You don’t feel bamboozled, fooled, or patronized by ‘District 9,’ as you did by most of the summer blockbusters. You feel winded, shaken, and shamed.” It also was filled with references to South African politics and life, from the obvious Apartheid references, to the less obvious ones like naming the gang leader after the president of Nigeria. I’ll have to look around on the net to see what other references I missed because I don’t live in South Africa. In addition to all the allegory though, it had your everyman, who finds redemption (without needing to beat you over the head with it) the aliens who we misunderstand, the evil scientists, and the horrible step dad. I personally could have done without the excessive torture, but it was a really great story.

Review of the show for those who couldn’t make it. Sorry you couldn’t be there, Ron, but thanks for the ticket!!

The show started by heading out to the remote (31st street) lot to get me some $10 parking instead of the $40 parking next to the stadium. (OUCH!) I’ve used that remote lot before though, and it is no problem. Only U2 spent so much on the stage that I guess they couldn’t afford to run the shuttle bus! So we got all warmed up before the show with a nice walk from 31st to Soldier Field. There was a little girl pulling her dad along. Apparently her older brother got to go to the last tour, but she wasn’t old enough. So she is very excited about going to this one.

Snow Patrol was pretty good (you know “Chasing Cars” at least) and gave me some time to check out the swag. The guy sitting next to me just flew in from DC for the show. The stage was amazing. I took a bunch of pictures, but the Trib’s give you a better sense of just how huge it is. There is a massive movie screen in the middle that they project huge Bono on. (Actually the trib has a full review and some up close pics off that review, but my review is better.

The show opened with “Rocket Man” playing and the space ship taking off. Smoke generators out the top and the bottom! Pretty neat. Then they got some very dark side of the moon clocks going and played Breathe. (The U2 one not the Pink Floyd one.) No line was next with lots of clips from the DVD. The video and the music combined to rock out so much that I was starting to hope that they played the whole album, al la LiveCrime. Continuing with a rocking version of get on your boots (see bono in the pic above) and an absolutely amazing Magnificent. They did some kind of video wizardry to make it look like gold flecks were flying everywhere behind the band on the screen, but the screen was so huge it really did give the illusion that there were these gold flecks flying everywhere. (Couldn’t get a good shot of that one.)

Unfortunately (?) my hopes of getting the entire no line album were shot with Beautiful Day coming up. This did not upset the audience. Bono said “we’re going to give the album a rest for a bit here.” which I thought was pretty funny. Made it sound like he wanted to play the whole thing. After rocking out, he changed gears and sang Blackbird. A little incongruous, but that’s Bono for you. After that he did this really long introduction of all the band members. I’ve never seen that before, and I think he made them a little uncomfortable. Especially when he told the audience that Adam Clayton because he is well endowed. I don’t know if he really meant to say that, but we were all dying. It might have just been a lead into Elevation though. Bono also gave a sideways compliment to the audience claiming that he gets to be arrogant, because we are all so cool. (That was odd.)

It was about now that I noticed a helicopter circling the stadium and occasionally flying directly overhead. It was a statement to the speaker system that I never heard it. And on the topic of the speakers, they were amazing. Normally there is tons of distortion and I can barely make out what is being played, let alone what Bono is saying. Here I could hear every word, and it only got distorted when they got really loud.

After that they took it down a notch with bono talking about how long they’ve been doing this for but … he still can’t find what he’s looking for. For old time sake I guess, he segued into stand by me. During the next set of four songs (Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, Unknown Caller, The Unforgettable Fire, City Of Blinding Lights) the screen exploded! Well expanded anyway. I didn’t actually mean to take a picture of it, but when I was looking at them later I noticed that I got it! So above for your viewing pleasure, you can see the screen getting bigger. It was actually really really cool. Made it be less of a movie screen (though you could still see the pictures) and more of a curtain of lights, like from the tour before last. Really neat stuff.

The pulled it back together and had crazy spinning video of them playing for Vertigo. Then one of my favorite moments in the whole show, they had army of U2 heads bobbing to the beat all next to each other in 360 for I know I’ll go crazy. It was pretty amazing actually, and I couldn’t get a picture of it, and am not sure if I can even describe it. Basically they took each band member’s head shot video and lined them up next to each other on the screen. And they were doing the “walking chicken head” dancing thing to the beat of the music. I think I may have gone crazy, if I didn’t go crazy last night watching that. They also had this disco ball at the top and bottom of the space ship which had me mesmerized for quite a while. The rays of light that came off of it were moving independently from each other! The origin for the rays weren’t moving either, so the incoming light couldn’t have been moving, there must have been some sort of moving lasers on the “disco ball” instead of a normal rotating ball. Pretty cool, and yes I am easily distracted, and yes this is the sort of thing I think about in the middle of a concert.

They closed out the set with a bunch of old stuff and a lot of political activism. They had some really moving video of Iranian protesters for Sunday Bloody Sunday, and some nice arabic radio in the background. It worked really well, for Pride and MLK as well. Then they did this huge and pretty creepy thing on Aung San Suu Kyi for walk on. They took a bunch of people from the audience and had them all walk out on stage with masks of her face. That was pretty darn creepy. Not sure I got it.

Finally they closed the set out with where the streets have no name. For the first encore they had Desmond Tutu come out and tell us how cool we all are for joining the one campaign because we bought 3.5 million africans anti viral medication. He is a funny dude, and that was really great of him to agree to do that. After he finished the band came back out and played One, and Bad with 40. Of course they couldn’t get away with only one encore so they came back out … and Bono was in a FREAKING LASER SUIT!! This is another thing that didn’t photograph well, but his suit was covered in red laser beams that made him look like a spider in the middle of a web because of all the smoke that that space ship was pumping out. (I have to say that thing did pump out a lot of smoke over the course of the show. From the top and bottom they basically had the stadium filled!) But they played Light my way and with or without you. Then they ended on moment of surrender from the new album which I absolutely loved. That’s by far my favorite song on the new album and it was really great to end with it. They did that goofy cell phone light thing, but it looked neat on the screen. That’s that last picture above.

Coming home was actually another adventure in itself. Nobody knew where to go, and there were a ton of people waking down to 31st street who actually wanted to take the bridge over the tracks. Some drummer boys were under McCormick in the tunnel to the remote lot pulling in some good coin, but the coppers came and ran them out. Those guys don’t have anywhere they can play any more. But I was walking with an old couple that was trying to get to 25th and State, and was asking me how to get through. (They wanted to take the bridge too, but it was too late for that.) They thought they were going to go to 31st, but that was pretty far, so I offered to drive them. They were so thankful it was crazy. I tried to get them to not pay, but the guy insisted on covering my parking. Apparently it was their first concert ever! I’m glad I was able to help the end of the evening be a little nicer. The rest of the drive through the south loop was pretty intense. There were U2 fans everywhere! A couple more people hit me up for rides, but no one who was going the right direction.

All in all an excellent evening.

We’re not on the Gold Standard any more. We’re on the Columbian Gold standard!

Lifted shamelessly from Daily Show.

The trib did a cool story on how Netflix gets your movies to your mailbox so fast. I love how top secret their base of operations are.

I think I may have to start trying NetFlix out. We have a blockbuster one block from us, which we use regularly, but I’m thinking the advantage of the queue is too good to pass up. Anyone have thoughts? Cost/benefit? Do you watch more than the three movies per month that it takes to beat Blockbuster on cost? Or is that missing the point?

It makes sense. What with the saxophone and all. You can’t really get any more 80s than Shooting Shark. But I noticed that Revölution by Night briefly was the #1 selling album (very briefly I imagine) and wondered why. So I started looking around, and wiki claimed that Shooting Shark was one of the most requested videos (again, probably only briefly). So of course I had to look for it. I would also like to mention that I am sitting at home, totally drugged up, trying to get over this cold as quickly as possible. Suffice it to say, when presented with this video, it all became clear.

This has to be one of the best 80s videos ever. On par with Total Eclipse of the Heart. The 80s were amazing. ly bad.

Just got back from Alaska, where it was pretty hard to find any Palin merchandise. There were actually some pretty good pro-Palin news stories on why it is a good idea for her to step down, even if you believe in her (for local Alaska political reasons, not personal or national political reasons). And this is a good thing, because her actual resignation speech was incomprehensible. I present for your enjoyment, two attempts to fix up her speech a little bit. First, the editors over at Vanity Fair give it a go. Pretty useful comments in there, which actually turn it into a pretty good speech.

Second, and by far my favorite, is a “reading” of the beat poem that is Palin’s speech, as read by William Shatner. Oh yeah.

John Hodgman did an excellent sendup of Obama’s geek credentials at the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner. I wonder if this is the first time a sitting president has done the vulcan salute?

Second book read on the train. During February, I am behind on posting my book reviews. Three more coming up.

This is a hilarious book. It is a “travel diary” describing Sarah Vowells efforts to go and see the sites that relate to the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. In the process you get a good deal of the history surrounding the time of death of the three presidents. Lincoln is by far the most famous and thus has the most assassination memorabilia scattered around the country and thus the most of the book devoted to him. Garfield, being completely unknown (having served for so short a time) gets the shortest chapter, though a lot of introspection on what it means to be remembered. In addition to educating us on the history surrounding the deaths of these three presidents, we also learn the personal histories of the presidents and their assassins.

All of this comes to us, however, in the rambling style of Sarah Vowell. Which is to say distracted storytelling that jumps from one thought to the next without a care or concern in the world. This leads from hilarious notes about the friends and family that she drags with here on these expeditions (she doesn’t drive) to more somber reflections on the people who care for the museums and sites of such macabre topics. Mostly the book ends up being good old fashioned storytelling rather than a history lesson. But there is plenty of history to pick up along the way.

All in all this is an excellent and rather quick read, all the better for me because my knowledge of Lincoln and Garfield was so limited. (Strangely, since I was really interested in the history of Hawaii at one point, I actually knew a bit about McKinley.)

Probably the most interesting bit of history you get out of the book though are the tidbits of Robert Todd Lincoln’s life. What a strange and tragic character.

New CD: $12. Wow. I haven’t payed that little for a U2 album since the 80s. Nice. And apparently it is $4 on Amazon for download. I bet they double their sales for a price that low.

I have been reading a lot more lately thanks mostly to an hour commute each way each day. The first book I finally got around to reading on the train was Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier. First a bit of background. I religiously read Schneier’s newsletter. (Pre-blog, though I believe that he has converted it into blog form.) It is a really entertaining and education monthly email. While I touch on computer security issues regularly, I am by no means a security expert, so seeing how an expert thinks can really help. Because I found the blog so useful, and because he has converted me over to many of his ways of thinking about things, I had high hopes for the book. It is billed as security for the common man, post 9/11. The idea being that you don’t have to be an expert to think about security, and in fact, you shouldn’t just take things at face value.

Unfortunately I found the book to be much more of a disjointed collection of his posts than a good, hand holding explanation of the real security tradeoffs that are currently going on around us. In fact, it I weren’t already a true believer, I might come away from this not “Beyond Fear” but “Quaking in Fear”. Don’t get me wrong, the book is well written, and clearly explains the different points about security that he is trying to make, it simply fails to pull it together into a coherent story. Which is too bad, because all the pieces are there that you need. And since I am a regular follower of his, I was easily able to piece together the “Beyond Fear” story. I just wonder if my mother would be able to.

But if you are already into the security scene, or if you just think that a lot of what passes for security in this country doesn’t make sense, this book is the book for you. On the other hand, if you don’t really have much of an opinion on security this is an interesting breakdown of the basic precepts of security and how it works and fails. Just remember: the job of a good security analyst is to find the weaknesses. He believes in security or he wouldn’t be doing in this field. Good security is achievable and does work, it is just harder to make happen than you probably think.

Just saw this movie with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman on video. Apparently it’s based on a comic book, though I have never seen it. It starts out pretty amazing as a cross between the Matrix, the Fast and the Furious and the Office. Yes, the Office. It is so insane and almost entirely filmed around my current client’s office. Tons of awesome Chicago case scenes. Unfortunately it quickly devolves into Fight Club, with excessive violence and your standard male pop-psych. (Dude has to lose himself to find himself et al.) I’m always interested to find out what makes violence a rollicking good time or queazy cringe worthy material. This one definitely fell into the latter category.

The thing that disturbs me the most though, is that throughout the entire movie I was able to predict every next thing that was going to happen. With the exception of the final plot twist. (Which, now that I think about it, comes from Star Wars) In fact the entire second to final fight scene is straight out of Star Wars III.

Still… people using cars to fly and shoot bullets around corners. How cool is that?

Have you ever seen David Letterman like this? Wow, he is pissed at being dissed by McCain. The saddest part is that he clearly loves the guy. Watch to the end, when they cut to the interview. (from Chicagoist)

I’m not wasting time, I’m just practicing science. Wired’s article is interesting in that it points out some neat facts about what science is and isn’t. In particular, it brings up the problem I have a lot with biblical literalists. It isn’t about knowing the rules that govern the world, it is about the process of finding out those rules. It is about evolving and refining an idea to more closely match observations in the world, and throwing away ideas when they are shown to be incorrect. It isn’t about rote memorization of facts, much though your fifth grade teacher may have told you that.

Oh yeah, and T-2 days until the end of the world. For those who are actually concerned, the chances that the trinity test back in WWII would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world were much higher. Nothing like that chain reaction had ever happened before on earth, whereas here much higher energy astronomical particles blast through the earth all the time. The only difference is that those happen in places where the scientists aren’t looking.

My wife and I have been laughing our behinds off at the Phelps “perfect human specimen” spots that NBC has been airing this past week. They talk about his (completely mutant) physique as if his mother decided that that is what he was going to look like. So when my wife ran across a similar account in Gawker this morning, she had to point it out to me. I took a quick look, and while the article itself isn’t particularly interesting, the comments are hilarious. A few of them are simply old Chuck Norris jokes rehashed, but there are a bunch of new ones in a similar vein. Including: “Michael Phelps is the new Chuck Norris… and Chuck Norris is OK with that.”

IANAL, IJLS: “Once again probability proves itself willing to sneak into the back alley and service Drama as would a copper piece harlot.”

I have GOT to remember that for the next time something breaks the odds in real life. Something with a 10% chance of happening is really unlikely something with a one in a million chance is a sure thing. Just awesome.

Apparently the Society for Creative Rock Anachronism is a real band. !! Who knew?

Just…. wow.

(Spoilers for Iron Man and The Dark Knight.)

Comparing Iron Man to Batman, two of the most testosterone induced movies ever, which is more feminist? Ha, ok, neither. Comic books have a well known problem, women in refrigerators. For those who don’t know it basically means that it sucks to be a woman in a comic book. You don’t get agency (true in much of pop culture anyway) and you end up motivating the hero or villain with your death. This translates regularly into the movies as well. Given that we have two of the more … womanizing? … heros this summer I have amused myself doing a compare and contrast.

In my opinion Iron Man from the comics is historically the more of the womanizing testosterone fest. I mean they have always both been playboy millionaires, but Tony Stark always seemed to get around more than Bruce Wayne. In the movie rendition or Iron Man he certainly still gets around, however the women are (mostly) all self motivated, not just scenery. The one who sleeps with him does it for her own purposes and gets what she wants out of it (modulo a catty back and forth with Pepper). And Pepper not only manages to NOT end up in bed with her boss (I TOTALLY thought they were going twist her around to have her end up with Stark in the end) but she is excellent at her job and even saves the day. Mind you, she is still the side kick, but she is the one who gets the SHIELD good squad, and who operates the Deus Ex Machina. Also, stark is driven by his own past crimes, not a dead woman.

In The Dark Knight on the other hand, all the women do is motivate the men by being held captive or killed. (Or going out with another man and having their own plans thwarted by “well meaning” men.) In my (probably incorrect) memory Batman always had a bit more gender equality than Iron Man, but here the only thing they do is get dangled off of buildings or have knives held to their throats. Or lain out on a boat in almost no clothing to be ogled by dirty old men. No, really. But back to the main characters, a quote from Gyllenhaal herself sort of describes it[1], “Of course, if you’re the girl in Batman, you’re going to be a damsel in distress to some extent but she’s a really great character.” Sad thing is, in the comics, it was just the acid burns that drove Dent insane in the comics as IIRC Rachel didn’t even exist.

Having said all of that, Batman was the much better movie, while Iron Man was a rollicking good time. The acting was amazing, and the tropes didn’t get in the way for me, but these particular issues are not my issues, so YMMV. (Aaaaaand… they appear to have made the Watchmen into a movie!!!)

[1] Totally stolen from Wikipedia, I so do not read that website.