Watch Working Stiff

My friend Greg Joyce made a movie a few years ago when we were working together. It's a little indie romantic comedy called Working Stiff.

It's quite funny.

However, being that Greg is neither a Hollywood bigwig, nor related to one, he busted his ass to get as many people to see it as he could. Local film festivals, showings at theaters in Belmont, Arlington, and Newton, and DVDs. The movie was well received and pretty much enjoyed by everyone, but still, if you didn't know someone, or stumble into the theater on one of the nights it was showing, you never got a chance to see it.

Now you have that chance.

Greg has just opened up Project: Working Stiff, his website/blog devoted to getting the word out .... and letting you watch the movie. The movie is going to be released in bite size chunks via an RSS feed--a video podcast, in other words. Even better, it's all nicely formatted for the iPod Video. You can also watch it right there on the web page. Brilliant. Flat out brilliant.

Go check it out. Check out the trailer. Go post comments on the blog. Mostly, just go check it out because the movie is worth seeing.

Concert Review: FNX Best Music Poll '06

Thanks to my friend Liz, who's made it a yearly ritual to get us tickets to the FNX Best Music Poll for my birthday, I got to head down to Lansdowne St. and listen to a bunch of bands I like.

We got there just in time to catch OK Go, a cool rocky/power pop band I've liked a lot. They've gotten a good bit of noteriety as of late from their video for "A Million Ways" which is clever and in the same vein as the Spike Jonze/Fatboy Slim videos. OK Go was one of the bands playing outdoors, so we watched from a little ways back, but the band sounded pretty great, playing a bunch of their bigger songs, including the criminally underrated "Do What You Want." They finished the set with a full on reproduction of the aforementioned "A Million Ways" video which sounds sort of stupid and pretentious ("oh, watch us imitate the video that made us moderately famous"), but came off as a bunch of guys enjoying doing goofy stuff.

Buffalo Tom and The Charlatans played the last two outdoors slots, and I didn't really pay attention to either. Buffalo Tom sounded pretty good from afar, but I've just never been that into them. The Charlatans sounded pretty good from afar, and I wanted to check them out, but by now, the sun had gone down and the wind had picked up and we decided to head into Avalon so as not to get screwed and miss out on the bands starting at 10.

We grabbed a table at Avalon, which gave us a good view of the stage and meant we could sort of avoid the mob on the floor and get in/out when we chose. I tend to not enjoy the back of a show (I'd rather be down in the middle losing my hearing), but it turned out to be a wise choice as Dear Leader came on and blew the fucking place away. Mostly it was because they came on and just balls out rocked, but it was also because they were mixed incredibly loud.

Dear Leader is one of my favorite bands, and I've written about them a good bit. This performance may have been the best I've ever seen. They were completely on their game, and when you're playing a shorter set in front of an audience who might not be there to see you, I think you tend to pick a setlist that lets you go all out. And that's what they did. Starting with my current fave song "Nightmare Alleys" they just blew through a bunch of insanely great songs, Aaron Perrino belting out each one in top form. They slowed it down for the sing along of "My Life as a Wrestler" and then finished up the set with their big hit "Raging Red" adeptly mixing in Snoop's "Gin and Juice" and completely winning over the crowd.

Nada Surf followed up right behind Dear Leader and were similarly fantastic. I've got two Nada Surf albums: the debut High/Low (which I own on cassette from college) and the most recent The Weight is a Gift. If Nada Surf sounds familiar, it's because they were the pseudo-Weezer band who had the hit "Popular" in about '96. Their recent stuff (that I've heard) sounds similar, but it's been modernized--they're more like what I think people thought Weezer would sound like today.

Anyway, they shocked the hell out of my by leading right off with "Popular" and completely rocking it out. Honestly, it didn't sound dated at all ... but that's probably because I haven't heard it in years. Nada Surf played a great set, complete with harmonies, a thoroughly entertaining drummer, and a bassist breaking and changing a string midsong. They played a couple of my favorites ("The Blankest Year" and "Concrete Bed") and obviously hit on what is their recent big hit, and one of the better songs of 2005, "Always Love." It was pretty fantastic to see the rest of the bands playing that night come down to the side of the stage and completely enamored with Nada Surf's performance.

That's when we left. There were a couple of bands left to go, but it was midnight, I was going to catch the T home, and it was a good place to cap it off. Leaving at this point also lead to my creation of the Theory of Parabolic Hotness, which I'll discuss in the near future.

Glutton for Punishment

Like 1 week after iTunes eats my ratings, I take some poker winnings and go grab myself a 30GB video iPod.

It's nice.

The battery lasts much longer than my old iPod, which means I can get through an entire day at work on one charge, which is nice. Obviously, it plays video, which means I got to finally watch the Stephen Colbert/White House Correspondents Dinner speech from a couple of weeks back. And it's about half the size of my old iPod.

Now, I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with the old guy. I think I'm going to figure out some way to permanently wire it into my car. I've already got a car charger (not as easy to find, given that this is a 2G iPod with a straight-up FireWire connector), so I think I'll find some place, wire it in, and then use the inline remote to control it. Another project to add to the list.

Oh, and the sun is out. I'd forgotten what it looked like.

Recovering Ratings from My Stupid iTunes/iPod

Yesterday when I get to work, I flip on the iPod and I notice I've only got 3 playlists--my non-smart-playlists (i.e. the ones that don't do any auto-updating based on last date played or ratings). I make the stupid assumption that the sync just didn't work that morning, and go about my business.

When I get home, I notice that, hmm, those playlists are empty on my computer as well. Why are they empty?

BECAUSE MOTHERFUCKING ITUNES DECIDED ALL OF THE SONGS ON MY IPOD WERE RATED 1 STAR.

I'm not sure how that happens. Yes, my iPod is now about, 3 or 4 years old. And yes, it's gotten pretty flakey. It sometimes reboots randomly losing track of whatever I've played that day (annoying for me, since I use that to help keep the music on my iPod fresh). But why would everything be rated 1 star all of a sudden? Your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes the smart features of iTunes aren't so smart.

I poke around in my iTunes folder for the iTunes library XML file, and luckily, I find that it still has all of the ratings goodness in it. I back it up, empty out the iTunes itl file (the binary file for the library data), and then restart iTunes. Thankfully, now all of my songs have the proper rating, albeit with a loss of data for the past week. I then reconnect my iPod (which I'd previously set to sync manually), clear everything off it, and start resyncing from scratch.

That's where I'm at now. In this process, I've lost all of the podcasts I subscribe to, but that might be a blessing. I'll resubscribe to the stuff that I remember being most interesting, and won't be bogged down with crap.

And, after all this, I'll still probably be buying a video iPod in the next few weeks. But damn, I really do hate Apple today.

Happy Birthday to me

Today is my 28th birthday. It's almost over.

I'm planning on getting myself a video iPod in a couple of weeks as a gift, but I was at Target today and they had an awesome DVD deal, so I pulled the trigger and got myself something.

It was like $23!! Less than my age!! So happy birthday to me.

Recent Music Purchases

Here's the every couple of months update of what music I've bought lately.

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (or Come on Feel the Illinoise!)

This is a really good album, with only 1 or 2 songs that I'll probably listen do with any regularity. It's all poppy and orchestral and quiet. Honestly, it requires to be listened to in one sitting, so you can hear it play like a classical piece, with arrangements that happen early in the album echoing in later songs. There's a significant lack of hooks, but it doesn't really hurt the album, just makes it tough to pick up and listen to randomly.

Sondre Lerche - Two Way Monologue

I've dug the main single off this album, the title track, for a while. It's a fantastic pop song. However, I've only given this album one listen so far. The big takeaway for me at this point is that for some reason the drive in my computer won't read this CD, so I can't rip it and throw it on my iPod. I need to listen again, but from what I recall, it's a jazzy pop album with lots of strings and some horns and some slightly unintelligible Euro-lyrics.

The Subways - Young For Eternity

I had a couple of people recommend this album. I really dug "Rock and Roll Queen" when they played it on FNX, and it's still an awesome 3 minute rock song. This is pretty much a straight out UK rock album. You can hear some Oasis and some Kaiser Chiefs and pretty much any other British rock act you can name. That said, it still kicks ass. "Oh Yeah" is right up there on the list of great, danceable rock songs.

Mittens - Mittens

A bit older, Mittens are a local act who I've seen live and thought they were pretty good. Sort of an Elvis Costello/Jonathan Richman meets The Shins. The album is kind of uneven, but it's got some gems and you can see how they'd be a fun act to see live (which they are). Mittens has a new album out, so I'll probably pick that up at some point soon.

Nada Surf - The Weight is a Gift

The Weight is a Gift is an album I've had my eye on for a while, but simply never broke down and bought. I love the version of "Your Legs Grow" on the Future Soundtrack for America, and completely love the big single "Always Love", which may be one of the best pop/rock songs of the last couple of years. So I ponied up the money to Newbury Comics, and goddamn if this isn't a great album. There's probably 3 or 4 awesome songs, and a bunch of really good ones. Hooks, and some crunchy guitars, and some harmonies, and the occasional "fuck" --- what else could you possibly want?

It's Official and Inarguable

Scrubs is hands down the best show on television. Tonight's episode was just absolutely pitch-perfect. From the ridiculous humor ("We should have sex sometime") to the absolute gut-wrenching low that ended the show, every note was played perfectly.

I'm not kidding. I'll fight you if you disagree. Punch you right in your stupid face.

Old Timey TV and Some Newfangled Technology

I just finished watching Season One of The Adventures of Pete and Pete which arrived from Netflix a week or so ago. If you've never seen Pete and Pete, it's a show that aired on Nickelodeon in the early-to-mid 90s about two brothers named ... Pete. The show started out as some 60 second shorts, which were popular, so Nick said "here's more money, make some 30 minute specials," which were more popular, which lead to Nick saying "just make us lots of shows." And they did, and it rocked.

It rocked because it was this surrealist, absurdist kid's show, teaching a moral in each episode, but doing it in a style that was edgy for the time (and holds up surprisingly well 10 years later). Topping it off, the creators/writers (who've gone onto stuff like Newsradio, Shrek, King of the Hill, and Buffy) worked in as many pop culture references and jokes as they could. What other show would have Juliana Hatfield as a cafeteria worker, Steve Buscemi as a nerdy dad, and Iggy Pop with a recurring role as a dad who acts remarkably like Iggy Pop. It's the type of show where the family finds a car buried at the sand in the beach, uncovers it, and drives it home ... like it's completely normal.

Watching it now it reminds me a lot of Scrubs. So much so that I don't think it's possible to say that Scrubs wasn't at least partially influenced by Pete and Pete. Both shows about a nerdy character who narrates the show, with a dizzying array of transitions into fantasy/surreal situations, that play as if they're completely common place. Both shows featuring a soundtrack of the "indie" rock sound of the time, and playing basically with the single camera format.
All of this made me think about how cool it is that a show like this can survive and live on in DVD format. Poking around this weekend, I found that there's two really cool video podcasts on iTunes that send out an old cartoon that has entered the public domain a few times a week. The coolest one is ReFrederator. A few times a week you download a 5-10 minute cartoon of Bugs or Daffy or Mighty Mouse. It's insanely cool and a wonderful way to keep those old cartoons fresh. The same idea is done by Vintage Tooncast, though they seem to be focused more on showing things that you wouldn't see today (because of the racial and cultural sterotypes that were so pervasive). It's an ingenious use of syndication technology.
It also made me think about how cool it would be if networks did this with more content. Sure, the big networks are putting there shows on iTunes for 99 cents a pop. And Fox has talked about putting shows online with ads for free. All fantastic stuff. However, wouldn't it be great if networks (especially networks that own most of their own content) put up old shows on iTunes? NBC has done this with some stuff, but I'd love if Nickelodeon let me grab an episode of Welcome Freshmen or Disney let me grab an episode of Duck Tales at my leisure. Pay them $30 and get a weekly podcast of shows automagically downloaded to your computer until they ran out of shows. Or pay the 99 cents to get the ones you want.

Outside of content clearances and figuring out how royalties and whatnot are paid out, there's not a legitimate reason not to do this. Well, other than fracturing an already fragile television landscape. The first network to really embrace this is going to make lots of money (assuming they do it right).

Another Wedding, Another Wolfman

Off to the wedding of my friend Kurt, one of the guys I've pretty much known forever. Should be a good time. However, weddings make me feel old. It wasn't too long ago that we were building forts in his attic and eating 3 for a $1 hot dogs at Four Corners.

Four Corners is sort of gone, moved around the corner into a bigger, slightly more upscale version of the snack shack we grew up with. Obviously the forts are gone, replaced by stereo equipment and HDTVs (something Kurt and I share an affinity for).

Somethings, however, don't change. Our home town's resident nutjob, "The Wolfman", made the news again today, this time for exposing himself. Since the Worcester Telegram and Gazette sucks and takes their articles off-line after a day (or, at least they used to), I'll quote the fun parts.

Donald T. Bornholz, 53, known by his neighbors as “The Wolfman” because they say he howls at the moon, has been unnerving Ms. Nunnari and other residents in his neighborhood for as long as many of them can remember. He was arrested Wednesday, for the second time this week, after police received reports that he was exposing himself to neighbors. ... The two empty lots are now littered with “keep out” and “no trespassing” signs, as well as Mr. Bornholz’s eclectic mix of personal belongings. They include a beach umbrella, rat traps, sneakers, an embroidered pillow that reads “kind words conquer,” boxer shorts decorated with the text “uniformity is boring,” collections of pennies and two suit coats hung from a tree.

“He’s been sleeping outside,” said Ms. Nunnari, who lives next door to Mr. Bornholz. “He went to jail last winter, but I think he did it on purpose because he couldn’t live outside.”

Maybe I don't feel so old after all.

P.S. Congrats Kurt and Trish

P.P.S. Seriously, I grew up in a town with a guy they call The Wolfman.

Some Thoughts on TV

It's been a while since I rambled on about TV. Given that this season is almost over, seems like a good time to ramble anew ...

Lost has been good. But, as much as the writers said "no no, we won't be the X-Files, we won't drag things out", this has been a season of lots of reveals amounting to nothing. The structure of the show is still fun, with the backstories mixed with the island, but they've gone to the well a few too many times with some of these characters. Topping it off, the rhythm of the show has become utterly predictable. Outside of the map on the blast door, I don't think I've had a real "OMG! LOST ROOOLZ" moment in a long while.

On the other hand, Veronica Mars has been fantastic, and I think has moved into #1 on the "best hour-long on tv" list. Each twist of the bus crash mystery, each reveal of a hidden character motivation fills in some gaps and sheds a new light on the mystery. No, we don't really know much more about who caused the crash than we did at the beginning of the season. But it feels like we do. And that's something that Lost hasn't been able to replicate. Plus, the show has continually brought the funny.

It's very possible that The West Wing has also surpassed Lost this year. The final season is certainly the best season since Aaron Sorkin left, and might even be better than Sorkin's final season. It's the whole "Luke becoming a Jedi" arc with Josh Lyman's character as Luke, and it really has offered a nice closure to the whole series.

Want to talk about two hour-longs that haven't been great? How about The O.C. and Gilmore Girls? The two shows that have fallen further in one season than anything I can remember. The O.C. has reached the point where I can't even really watch it. I TiVo it and then do 30 second skip through the whole show (stopping at Seth/Summer stuff, skipping past anything with Marissa). Seriously, this show spent the season on Johnny and Marissa's sister and Seth the pothead and Marissa being a giant bowl of douche? Ugh. I'm pretty sure I won't be watching this show next season unless they kill off Marissa. She sucks, and sucks, and sucks some more. The Girls haven't been nearly as bad as the Marissa-suck-fest, but I don't think there's been a less fun season. It feels like an entirely new writing staff took over and decided that the characters should act completely different. There was a moment when it looked like the season was turning around (Rory ditching Logan and Luke/Lorelai on a happy path) but they've decided to revert to the prior stories of super-intelligent Rory being the dumbest girl on earth, and the L&L tandem being the dumbest couple on earth. Blah.

Five shows. One going out on top. One being so good that it inevitably will get cancelled. One desperately needing to get on with it. One sucking bad enough that I probably won't watch it next season. One needing to wrap some storylines up so they can get back on with doing things that people like to watch.

And this is just the hour-longs. Haven't even talked about the greatness of The Office and Scrubs and the utter shite that is Family Guy.

It's possible I watch too much TV.

← Older Newer →