This morning we awoke late because we got in late last night.
We got home at 1:30am or so, after having come home from a record release party in Hermosa Beach. The club was Club Boogaloo, a funky restaurant slash bar slash live music venue. We dug it.
Astute readers of ArtLung Blog and Leah Peah will note that we’re not wont to attend record release parties willy-nilly. We attended this one because the brother of a friend of ours is the drummer. That’s so cool. Oh, you’re wondering what the name of the band is, ain’t you? Eric Lindell, who is described on the Boogaloo site as a New Orleans Soul & R&B man, which is accurate enough. They played roadhouse rocking blues in a sort of Stevie Ray Vaughn mode. Very guitar driven, but not overbearing with the solos. They got a pretty sweet sound out of a three-piece. On one song Eric’s son played the trombone. This boy was no older than about eight or nine. Kinda fun.
In other news, I will head to Moorpark College this week to see about a summer class or two. Wish me luck navigating whatever paperwork I need to. It seems simple enough.
I used Freecycle the other day and got a cookie jar. I drove to Fillmore to do it. The drive was scenic, lots of orange groves back here. Sadly, the ceramic teddy bear did not make it all the way home. I managed to drop the thing and so now I have a teddy head. Dang. I really wanted a cookie jar.
Have you been to 20q.net. It’s a quasi-AI/expert system designed to guess what you’re thinking of. It asks you questions and spits back an answer.
It’s mildly addicting, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it is apt.
So let’s think of a “newspaper” and see if it can guess it in 20 questions or less — shall we? (what follows is the output:)
1. It is classified as Mineral.
2. Is it heavy? No.
3. Would you give it as a gift? No.
4. Does it go in your mouth? No.
5. Was it invented? Probably.
6. Is it made of metal? No.
7. Does it fold up easily? Yes.
8. Is it colorful? Sometimes.
9. Does it have writing on it? Yes.
10. Is it used to record an event? Yes.
11. Does it come in a pack? No.
12. Could it be found in a classroom? Probably.
13. Does it open? Yes.
14. Can it cheer you up? Sometimes.
15. Does it have cash value? Yes.
16. Is it used for communications? Yes.
17. Is it pleasurable? Yes.
Q18. I am guessing that it is a newspaper?
So it guessed right in under 20 questions, and so it wins. Clever clever.
It’s Sunday evening now, and Leah is doing a little gardening. I think she’s planting some cherry tomatoes and some jalapeños. I dig her green thumb.
This week Revenge of the Sith aka Episode III comes out. It’s the culmination of 30 or so years of my enthusiasm for Star Wars. I’m not sure what quite to think. I hope it will be good, though Episode’s I and II were disappointing.
I did very much enjoy the Clone Wars animated DVD, which I think I mentioned before.
Leah and I did laundry today. Not as un-fun as you might think.
Yesterday we saw (soft and base)-ball games deaturing Tony, Ty, and Alex. They did pretty well. Tony got two sweet line drives in his game.
Friday night Leah and I went and saw the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – which we both enjoyed. I still enjoy the TV series best of all. Well, and the novels of course.
I remember seeing a piece of the TV show when I was in maybe 8th grade, just seeing the title in the TV listings, the reception was fuzzy. I heard somewhere it was also a book, and I remember purchasing a copy of Restaurant at the End of the Universe — or perhaps it was my parents who purchased it for me — when we took a trip up to Stanford from San Diego. My Dad was doing a fellowship I think, and was away. We went and visited him and on the way back I got that book in some bookstore in the Stanford area. Or maybe it was further south, on the way home? I could be imagining this memory, but it seems like I had seen the fuzzy Restaurant sequence on the TV show, went as I always did to the Science Fiction section of the bookstore, and it caught my eye.
I’ve been watching a lot of music videos on our cable. I have no stomach for long-form (like, 1 hour) shows, but I can get behind some music video. Leah is a bit in awe of my ability to spout trivia about various artists we see. Like I see a Raphael Saadiq video and I instantly recognize him as the lead singer of Tony! Tone! Toni!. Or maybe it’s The Tubes, or Todd Rundren or De La Soul and where in their career they were when that song came out, and which version of the song it is, or even who directed the video or produced the record.
The dispassionate side of me has no problem thinking about going into a record store, even a large one, and thumbing every single CD in the place. For Leah this would be information overload, but it sounds like quite a bit of fun to me.
But my emotional intelligence looks at this thought with a bit of revulsion. Like — this is not a “normal” kind of desire to have. Both things are true. I think the ability to take in vast sums of information, shallowly and come up with something like knowledge is something I must be using in my work. I used to get called “Google on Legs” at work — which is sort of a scary thing to imagine, really.
I’m getting tired. I think I’ll have a fresh cherry and or strawberry we bought at the roadside in our travels today. That could be quite tasty.
one comment...
i kind of like the disembodied bear head sitting on the counter. he has such a friendly face and it gives me someone to talk to when i’m pitting acres of cherries for our smoothies. let’s keep it there always and think of the how far we’ve come from the old days when we didn’t even have a bear head….