August, 2010


28
Aug 10

Shower head for the touchdown

It wasn’t my first thought of the day, but it didn’t take long after waking up to realize that, this time next week, we’ll be watching football. This makes me very happy.

I watched, over the course of three installments, It Might Get Loud, a documentary where producers took three guitarists and put them in a room to see what happens when they stop being polite, and start talking about chord changes:

The Edge describes himself as an architect, which makes perfect sense when you hear his explanation. Jack White has this artistic struggling “I think I’m a little more important than I really am” vibe. Jimmy Page is Jimmy Page. They’re all great in their own ways, though Page of course transcends by virtue of his longevity and the genetic condition known as Being Jimmy Page.

If the producers are looking for a follow up project, I’ve just given them a title.

It is a good documentary. I’m no musician, of course, but I enjoy hearing the discussion of how these works came about. A lot of times you get the sense that there is this Thing and they wanted to Express It and eventually it made it to a recording studio, became a hit or important piece and now they have to Explain It. Trying to verbally explain this Thing which has become Transcendent must be an interesting exercise.

I watched this over Netflix. We signed up for the free trial last night. The Yankee downloaded a few things from the instant viewing feature. She’s watching television episodes on the television. I watched Full Metal Jacket — which has not aged well — on my phone. That was R. Lee Ermey’s third role, but the one that made us all aware of him. He’s done more than you realize, since.

Also, he might be the star in a sentence featuring the best ever use of the word refused.

R. Lee Ermey was involved in a jeep accident during the making of the movie. At 1:00 a.m. one night he skidded off the road, breaking all the ribs on his left side. He refused to pass out, and kept flashing his car lights until a motorist stopped. In some scenes you’ll notice that he does not move his left arm at all.

“I am in a great deal of pain, indeed old boy. But I shan’t to acknowledge it. I will not acquiesce to the sweet morphine that is mental surrender. So be a good chum, ribs, and stand fast while I flag a motorist.”

For some reason, in that story Ermey turns into a very proper Englishman in my mind.

Where was I? Oh, yes. It Might Get Loud. I had to watch it in three installments because I decided to replace the shower head. I made this command decision about 15 seconds after I broke the older shower head.

We have a slight dripping leak and I thought if I turned the plastic shower nozzle a bit tighter … SNAP.

So we visited Bed, Bath and Beyond. The Yankee walked us directly to the shower fixtures, which was a bit disturbing considering we’ve never been in this particular store. She mulled over the options.

Buying a shower head that would match the one in the guest bathroom was out of the question. The store no longer carries them. But you can get one online for 25 bucks. Of course, at the store, your options range from 29 to 99 dollars. I’m tempering my instinct to put my foot down with my guilt about breaking the shower head to start with. She buys a sensibly priced one. I suppose.

It is made by a company that calls itself Oxygenics. If you break it down, that means oxygen-born. More than air should fall from this device. The literature assures me that this might be the last shower head I’ll ever purchase. And it better be, if there’s anything that makes you feel more stupid than reading language on a shower head’s packaging I don’t know what it is.

Consider:

“The storm is coming … prepare to be drenched.”

Do you know what I do when a storm comes? I go inside. Out of the rain. So, already, we’re a little counter-intuitive in the marketing.

“A powerful, pressurized monsoon of water will envelope and sweep you away to a wonderous place.”

Again with the imagery. But doesn’t all of this sound wasteful? Oh no.

“… while saving 23% water and energy compared to industry leading brands.”

I’d like to suggest to the good people at Oxygenics that they add the word “other” to that phrase. Right now they just look like a trailing brand.

It has “1 drenching spray, 54 anti-glog spray nozzles” and is “guaranteed not to clog.” No pressure there, nozzles.

Here’s the best part, the 9 inch adjustable shower arm — mentioned by a sticker-like logo on the package, as if they weren’t sure when they designed the thing how big they could get that little rod — has two joints. From which water will spray. When you add the wall attachment and the shower head attachment itself that means there are four potential places from which water can escape.

Oh, but it has a monsoon, you see.

We visited the grocery store for a few staples. At the cash register two young men were there to help us. One was the bar code digital transfer engineer, the other the product package and dispersal supervisor. Whenever we make it to check out I try to find ways to entertain them. Who knows how long they’ve been working. It is new and clean and so happy with itself, and  most of the customers are in the pleasure-zone known as Publix shopping, but you never know if the guy just had to deal with the guy that really ruined his Saturday.

So the patter today was about how we forgot our ecological shopping bags. Not to worry! I just bought a new shower head which will save 30 percent on energy. I am, as the cool kids say, offset. We hate the earth. The hemp woven, hand stitched, biodegradable hues of those items were left safely in the laundry room, where they are doing us a great service by hanging from something, so that we won’t forget them should we venture to the grocery store.

We live a mile-and-a-half away. One day the person will ask paper or plastic, I’ll remember I left the bags and ask him to hold everything for three minutes while I fetch my own.

He suggests we leave them in the passenger seat. But where would the passenger sit, my good man?

I point out that we usually keep them in the trunk, where they are also often forgotten. And then the conversation turned into one of those “A-ha! You’re my witnesses moments” that you just live for.

If we ever see those two guys up front at the grocery store again I’m going to have the world’s best follow up joke, brought to you by items on the condiment aisle, just to see if they remember.

We grilled steak. We baked potatoes and enjoyed okra. That’s a win. And next week we’ll be watching football.


27
Aug 10

YouTube Cover Theater, now playing on Fridays

YouTube Cover Theater on a new day. This has been an irregular Sunday feature which will now become a regular Friday feature. This is simply people taking the opportunity to use another outlet, and just more proof that there’s more talent out there than you realize.

First, since we’re covering BNL this week, we’ll offer up this tune, which was the first introduction for most American fans. These two guys jabber on for a minute or so, but then they really play:

If you watch Tyler Perrin here for a minute or two you get the sense that he’s got something. This video was recorded three years ago. He released his debut album earlier this year. But you knew him when:

Straw Hat & Dirty Hank is underrated. But this guy does it justice, and Ed from BNL gave him a nice compliment in the comments:

Here’s Ed, himself, in one of his famous Bathroom Session installments. These lo-fi recordings inspired the videos above.


27
Aug 10

Friday is Pie Day

If you need the ultimate time wasting device for your iPhone — and if there is one thing iPhone users need, it is something on which to waste their time — I suggest Draw. Hey, it is an app that let’s you draw with your fingers. There are at least three dozen of these and they might all have the same nice Email or Twitter feature. I picked this one, though, because of that. And, also Kelly is using it.

“(A) picture is worth a thousand words, but you only get 140 characters if you type. I’m clearly coming out ahead!”

You can’t argue with logic like that. Of course, Kelly is an artist. Also, she is drawing on an iPad. I am not artistically inclined and my digital canvas is a bit smaller.

You need one other thing for this time wasting activity: someone to whom you can send your brilliant masterpieces. (It isn’t spam if they laugh out loud.) By brilliant masterpieces I mean stick figures. And by stick figures I mean drawing a poorly envisioned thing and then labeling it with an error and chicken scratch so the viewer can understand that is a car, or a dinosaur, or a comb.

For example:

sliced bread

So pick your person carefully. They need patience and laughter and they have to have the personality to download the app themselves and send you some of their own artwork.

All evening I’ve been sending pictures to Brian, And then I’ll send a picture to The Yankee. I am emailing this to her, having composed a piece of art on my phone, emailed it through my wireless network — so into the other room, through the router, down the cable line, out to the Internet Email Headquarters (conveniently located only three-quarters of a mile from my home) where it is then beamed to a cell phone tower, possibly outer space, back to another tower, and ultimately down the cable line, over the wireless network and into her phone.

She is sitting next to me on the sofa.

These are truly amazing times in which we live.

Anyway. Draw. It is wonderful. And silly, but that’s what Friday evenings are for.

Friday is also Pie Day, of course. We’re on week three of the new Pie Day experiment. We’ve tried Mike and Ed’s, which is owned by neither Mike nor Ed. They had pie, but the barbecue wasn’t of the style we prefer. We’ve tried Chuck’s, which is housed in an old and infamous Dairy Queen. They had good barbecue, but no pie.

So tonight, we visited MaMa Q’s:

Mama Q's

Someone will correct me, but I believe this is the former home of Chuck’s, or a former barbecue place of the same name. Either way, the place is nearly empty, but it had turned into a messy evening. The reviews were very promising. Today was rib day — we’ll have to set them straight on that — and you could have a Southern style dry rub or the house special, the Chamorro style.

We got one of each, just to sample them both. And both were very good. The Chamorro is probably more of an acquired taste, as it features a soy, sugar, ginger, vinegar combination of things. The dry rub isn’t the best I’ve ever had, but I’ve had the best dry rubbed ribs in the world. MaMa Q’s can can fall on the short list with no problem.

We actually met MaMa Q. Mrs. Quitugua was working the counter. Her husband, who said he was not a big fan of sweets, recommended the pie. We tried the dutch apple:

Pie

They buy their veggies fresh from the farmer’s market. So they run out of some things, but fresher is always better. And while they do not have a romantic Punt Bama Punt corner we camped out under an old Butter Bread ad, near the television. We felt good about our ribs while watching some guy pound down wings on a show called Man versus Food.

And the pie was delicious. So MaMa Q’s made the cut into the second round, I think. Meanwhile, the Pie Day adventure will continue next week.

Happy weekend!


26
Aug 10

A loooongish Thursday

Occasionally, when you wake up before the sun, you want to spend all day in sunglasses.

When you spend the early morning hours trying to figure out a particularly tricky issue that involves mathematics and then still wake up before the sun … well, it is best to reach for the welder’s eye guard.

Spent the morning discussing experimental designs to research media effects in class. The guy next to me brought strawberries. And because I had forsaken breakfast they smelled even 16 percent better than normal. He then returned to his coffee mug. And then he produced a bottle of water. Who knows what else was in his bag.

The class is a good one though. Our professor is internationally renowned, a very kind and engaging man. He has a deep stash of jokes and a very personable way about his seminar class. I suspect it will become an incredibly useful class by the time it is finished.

He’s also on my dissertation committee, so I’m doubly lucky.

After class I found my dissertation chair, another prolific and well respected researcher. We have nice conversations and he always has a handful of good ideas. We’re getting close to answering all the biggest questions and solving the largest fundamental problems with my dissertation idea. Ultimately it is making the whole thing a little bit easier, I think.

Had a meeting with my boss at Samford. We’re co-teaching a class together this semester. Should be a good class, now that the prep has been formalized. I will teach a bit about Strunk & White. Just doing my part to pass along the idea of omitting needless words.

I also met with the editor of the paper, who will hopefully omit many needless words, and the ad manager, who will hopefully add many paid words. It is the circle of news.

That’s about it for the day. Oh, and one other video. Did you know that Calera is, apparently, the fastest growing city in the state? The Oracle at Wikipedia says their population has tripled since the 2000 census. Here is a little snippet of town:

This time next week we’ll be visiting a new section on the site. I’m very excited for it. This time tomorrow we’ll be celebrating Pie Day. I’m always very excited about that as well.


25
Aug 10

1939 World’s Fair

Sure, we look back with nostalgia at the past, but that’s only because we’re accustomed to the things that would mystify our great-grandparents. And, also, air conditioning.

Not to worry, even today we can go back in time. Here are three more pictures from the 1939 World’s Fair guide book. We’re just getting started, if you’re behind. The series begins here.