March 2008
51 posts
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REM @ Sirius
REM is “hosting” Sirius Channel 18 all day. Playing cuts off of their new album “Accelerate” and lots of old stuff (very little old enough to be from the IRS years, however) as well as other favorite songs and artists. The disappointing thing is that the intros to the songs are clearly pre-taped, and they are obviously not in-studio. This is the band that never lip-synched...
Time for (less) Change @ Freakonomics Blog →
This offends me. A penny costs ¢1.7 (which is $.017 btw) to make, and a nickel costs ¢10.
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The Fountain
Saw The Fountain (2006) by Darren Aronofsky over the weekend. Beautiful film, and I really dug the interplay of storylines and underlying themes. My personal interpretation matches that given at the end of the “Themes” section of the wikipedia article. But I like a lot of what Aronofsky says (about interpretation not being necessarily literal or scientific) as well. Good stuff, I...
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Barack Bowling @ CNN.com →
This does not bode well for him taking Ohio. We take this shit seriously, and wearing a tie while rolling a 37 is thoroughly unacceptable. This might be as bad as Kerry in his Elmer Fudd get-up. B-man, some advice: ditch the noose and get a pitcher of watery beer. If need be, set up some gutter bumpers.
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New show idea
MTv show idea — viewers write in raving about their two most favoritest musical artists. MTv chooses one and gets those two artists to pop into the fan’s house and we see gushing and meeting the fan’s parents and friends, then the first commercial break. Preferably the artists are from different genres, backgrounds, or generations even. We come back and we’re in-studio and...
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WatchThere is probably no artist I’ve seen more live than Mike Doughty, both solo and with Soul Coughing. But I haven’t seen him since he got a band, including this month when he came to Cleveland. Why? Well, I heard some live mp3s when he first started touring… and I hoped the mix was off. I just couldn’t take the Hammond organ noodling on the songs, and there they are on his...
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The Hills Sux →
Sanity… delivered by a cute purveyor of pop culture and one of the coolest chicks of the 90s. I have friends who defend The Hills but I can’t stand an instant of the poorly scripted (but definitely scripted) and abysmally acted (but definitely acted) hunkajunk.
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Light Bistro Happy Hour
We had a friend drop in and decided to hit the Flying Fig happy hour last night. Totally busy, so we walked over to Light Bistro. Totally not busy. Light Bistro also has a great bunch of specials for the cheery hours of 4:30-7:00pm Monday through Friday. They have beer specials, and a $5 glass of wine (a Meritage). Hold on here though — they have a $10 BOTTLE of wine. In a restaurant....
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What's the big idea?!
I haven’t read a single book mentioned in this article about sci-fi novels spanning huge sprawls of time, but they’re going right on my reading list. I did re-read the Dune series a year or so ago (only the Frank Herbert novels, thank you) and its scope of history is fascinating to me. In our current society thinking even 50 years ahead accurately seems impossible, so it is rare to...
Decaying Ohio @ kottke.org →
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CoM a la BSG
Children of Men was one of my favorite movies of 2006. I didn’t know it was based on a book, but it’s exciting that the book is to become a Tv series. And by the writer of Battlestar Galactica, no less.
Subs
Sarah @ Heights Eats has a post about Dave’s Cosmic Subs on Coventry. She alludes to the sub selection on the street, but doesn’t specify the classic Cleveland Grum’s Sub Shoppe, or the chain Jimmy John’s. I’m old school, and actually worked at Grum’s back in college. Their bread used to win the day, but since initial discovery (and probably over-indulgence)...
And God Spake... →
No, thou shall not have the Rock nor the Roll, the devil’s music, on the Near West Side.
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Book club, meet Tap House
Had dinner at the Tremont Tap House last night, where our book club met to discuss Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The Tap House was solid as always. Chose the Crab Fritters to split amongst the crowd, and then had the Chicken Baguette. The sandwich had honey mustard with a kick — it was really unique and I dug it. Came with an overly large pile of fries. I pushed those on the neighbors as...
Pisser @ BuyTheDome →
Peyton Manning goes Duchamp
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The Jacket
Saw the movie The Jacket (2005) over the weekend. Fantastic cast, and it may be the first time I’ve really liked Adrien Brody in a film. Also interesting that this apparently came and went from the theaters without me noticing at all. The performances and pacing were strong and helped support a fairly obvious time-travel plot. The cinematography was interesting — in the beginning...
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Lost and BSG @ ack_attack →
Watched the last episode of Lost last night off the Tivo, and found out we have to wait 4 WEEKS for the next ep! Of course, Battlestar Galactica starts up April 4th… hey wait. Has anyone seen these two in the same place at the same time?
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open-skies @ kottke.org →
Hmm… I was about to pay some cash for honeymoon tickets to Portugal (for an amazing $230 one way at Air Portugal) before they go up, but maybe I should wait for the end of the month.
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Ball Crawl? More like Ball Brawl. →
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Why can't I create a CNAME record for the root... →
I learned recently that you can’t redirect the root of your domain via CNAME. Why would I want to? Imagine you’re pointing your www to some other server — i.e.: www.finitejest.com -> finitejest.tumblr.com If you also want boneheads who skip the www to get to the right place (like me — I don’t use bookmarks generally and type most of my URLs) you might just want to...
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Top Chef Surprise @ ruhlman.com →
I believe when I ate at Nob Hill back in ‘04 or ‘05 I briefly met Stephen from Top Chef Season 1. Seems like this season they’re heavy on edgy chefs and light on old, hard-headed cooks.
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Taking away the boob... tube
So, yeah, ok, I watched Jericho. With Skeet “Poor Man’s Johnny Depp” Ulrich. Sue me. Well, it was cancelled. I’m expecting to lose the also decent Journeyman as well — of course that will take another Brit pretending to be American off the air, so isn’t all bad.
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Medjool? More like Medrool.
A bit late now but I ate at the local favorite The Flying Fig last week. I had a surprisingly hearty meal that consisted of a salad and three “savory smalls” (as they call their tapas/tasting menu). I started with the Warm Spinach Salad. Buried in the description (that I frankly didn’t read) is the fact that it is topped with a fried egg. Our server helpfully pointed that out...
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Would you know we're riding/On the Marrakech...
Cool article about the hot new trend in expatriotism: Morocco Riads. Figures that when we start talking Moroccan honeymoon, it gets all touristy. But I don’t care — it’s Fés or bust!
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Happiest moment of the week
Since November, when I received a new laptop and moved my Firefox profile over wholesale, anywhere from 0-3 times a day the browser would lock up while I was using Gmail. A recent search revealed the tip that the extension HTML Validator was causing this. I disabled it earlier in the week and haven’t crashed since. Hah-lay-loo-juh.
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Speaking of clever...
I’m feeling all smurly because I got my pad tricked out for March Madness. Got the DirecTv Mega March Madness package so I have every game, and now in HD goodness on the main, living room 37” Tv. Set up the Favorite Channels to only show the 5 stations that will have games. Then I wired the output of my office Tivo to my old 32” SD Tv in the living room, side by side. Two games...
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Progressive Automotive X PRIZE →
Regardless of any politics, I love the Xprize concept as a spur to cleverness. I like cleverness. Way to go, Cleveland’s own Progressive!
Desire Paths
The engineering university I attended was clever enough to put in paving where students had worn paths walking to classes: View Larger Map However nothing that went on there, in my experience, would warrant the romantic and eloquent name these human game trails are given: Desire Paths.
Renting @ eFinanceDirectory.com →
See, my self-serving decision was helpful to the global economy.
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la tortilla feliz @ cleveland foodie →
Ahhh.. you’ve made this tortilla very happy indeed.
Airplane Crashes @ Freakonomics →
From the comments (remind me not to fly with this guy): I have survived 2 plane crashes that both happened on landing. One in Omaha and the other in Rotanakiri, Cambodia. As soon as we crashed in Cambodia, the pilots opened their cockpit window, jumped out, and ran away. The crash was obviously pilot error, but the local paper said that it was bad weather conditions. It was a sunny day with no...
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I'm dyeing [sic] over he-ah...
I just got an email from Vosges Chocolate with some tips on dying eggs naturally — that they apparently ripped off from here. Attribution issues aside, I recommend the flop-eared bunnies cuz they’re damnably cute. PS. I don’t know how to pronounce Vosges.
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Brine @ ruhlman.com →
Brining is one of the first things I learned from Uncle Alton, and I’ve successfully used it for a whole turkey and thick, juicy pork chops (beer brine!). I wasn’t aware it was so easy to corn your own beef, though. Next St. Paddy’s day, c’mon over for my potentially botulistic sandwiches!
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Tumblelog @ Wikipedia →
In college I once had a paper criticized — right there in red pen — as “garrulous”. I think by hosting on Tumblr I might open myself up to the same criticism…
Sad fact
Due to a tragic shortage of 31sts of April since WWII, there is no Pi Day in Europe.
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Sunscreen
Comparing the young, dumb people on MTV’s Gauntlet 3 with the slightly older, slightly smarter people on Survivor: Micronesia, it’s now obvious to me that the Survivor producers supply sunscreen.
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Chef vs. Patron
Mark over at EatingCleveland.com has posted an interesting if leading question. He’s wondering “Who’s Taste is More Important? Yours or the Chef’s?”. First, I think you can never enjoy things more than when you’re fully empowered in your tastes and palate. Before I knew anything about wine I was too worried about being “correct” to enjoy it. I went to a blind...
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Symon Spawns
In a new post Michael Symon points out that he has worked with/trained people running three of my favorite bars/restaurants in town. The thing that stands out is that it’s not just the food being served that attracts me to Reddstone and Bar Cento, the two most recent additions — as soon as I walked in I felt comfortable. These are public houses — spaces made for people to meet....
Barry Manilow Gives... and gives... and gives... →
I could play with this all day. Notable others: Randy Newman, Conor Oberst, Lars Ulrich. Not sure how up-to-date the data is, but it’s FUN. You can also search by zip and spy on your neighbors.
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Light Bistro and the Blizzard of Aught Eight
This past weekend was the one year anniversary of Light Bistro, the restaurant that opened in the space of the Ohio City institution Parker’s. To celebrate they covered the town in a foot or more of snow. Actually, to celebrate they offered a tasting menu of their 7 favorite items of the first year, and we made reservations to visit Saturday night. They stayed open through the crazy blizzard...