Month: June 2010

The Blue Box

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I’ve been buried in musical nostalgia for the past few days, and it’s been wonderful.

My family is a very musical family — all of my immediate family, and the majority of my closer relatives, have at one time or another in our lives played at least one instrument and sung in choirs — and my parents have a huge vinyl collection. While the majority of my mom’s side of the collection focused on classical and choral music, my dad’s albums, and those that they collected together, skewed more towards the pop music of the time, mostly folk, country, blues, and rock and roll. Understandably, this collection had a huge influence on my and my brother’s musical tastes.

When we got old enough, we had free reign over the music collection and dad’s record player on the family stereo, and we were encouraged to discover which albums grabbed our attention. Music was meant to be appreciated, not just as noise in the background that nobody pays attention to, but as a soundtrack to whatever was going on. I can remember many housecleaning days when mom would head off somewhere, leaving the boys to take care of the house, and dad would tell us to pick something to listen to and put it on, telling us to “turn it up to the threshold of pain” as we worked.

The musical education went both ways, as well, as Kevin and I grew older and started exploring and diversifying our own tastes. Sometimes mom and dad would enjoy what we brought home (a few years ago, I got a kick out of introducing dad to the country-blues-acid house fusion of Alabama 3‘s “Welcome to Coldharbour Lane” album), sometimes our choices fell flat. Even when they didn’t “get it,” though — and this is one of those not-so-little things that I will always be grateful for — they never condemned what we listened to or told us we shouldn’t listen to it, but they’d ask us about it, and we occasionally had some interesting discussions investigating why something worked or didn’t work for us.

One winter day, Mom and I were driving out of Anchorage to Eagle River, and I put Pink Floyd‘s “The Wall” cassette into the car stereo. As we drove along, listening to such lyrically cheerful songs as “The Happiest Days of our Lives” and “Young Lust,” Mom expressed her distaste at the content of the songs, and wondered how in the world I could be interested in such depressing music. The rest of the drive turned into a long discussion of the story and themes present in “The Wall,” what Roger Waters was expressing, how the music and lyrics worked together, the imagery in the film, and why I enjoyed the album. While I don’t think Mom is ever going to be a big fan of “The Wall,” I love that her response was a discussion and examination of why I was listening to such a dark work, rather than simply declaring it “off limits.”

But I digress.

When Kevin and I were younger, and too small to work dad’s record player, we had our own: the classic Fisher-Price phonograph. Not the glorified music box, with brightly colored plastic ‘records’ that tripped music-box teeth in the arm, but a real, working record player. To go with this, Dad gave us a small blue box (well, blue, white, and green, but I’ve always thought of it as blue) with a bunch of old 45s that he and his brother Doug had collected when they were younger.

These 45s were some of the earliest pop music education that we got, and it was an eclectic one indeed. The Beatles, Merv Griffin, The Animals, The Partridge Family, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Four Tops, Fats Domino, and quite a few others. As we grew older, Kevin and I occasionally contributed to the box, adding 45s for AC/DC, Cyndi Lauper, Ozzy Osbourne, and a few other more modern artists. I credit a lot of my current all-over-the-place musical tastes to the eclecticism of this little blue box, and the hours spent playing the treasures inside it on that little old Fisher-Price player (which, as of a few years ago, was still in working order and in Kevin’s possession, though I don’t know its current disposition).

I’d worried for the last few years that the box had disappeared, but I really should have known better (I do, after all, come from a family of pack rats). Earlier this week I got a couple boxes of goodies from my parents, and in one of those boxes was the fabled blue box.

This week’s “when I’m taking a break from schoolwork” project has been reacquainting myself with the blue box and the music of my youth. I’ve scanned the labels for all the discs and added them to my vinyl photoset, I’m almost done recording all the music to my computer, and after a bit longer, will have it all edited, cleaned up, and imported into iTunes. Once I have all the audio archived, I’ll be packing this up and passing the blue box on to Kevin to share his boys, my nephews.

For those who are curious here’s a list of everything that the box contains. To the best of my knowledge, anything pre-1980 comes from mom, dad, and my uncle Doug; anything from 1980 on was added by me or Kevin.

30 Years of Airplane

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Possibly one of the funniest films ever made, Airplane!, just turned 30.

“A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be ‘Airplane!,’ ” said Patton Oswalt, a comedian and actor and the voice of the hero in “Ratatouille.” “But most of those movies took the wrong message from ‘Airplane!’ They were gag, gag, gag, gag, where ‘Airplane!’ is really structured, driving the story along all the time. In a weird way it’s like a Beatles movie. It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of sweat and blood that went into it.”

“There is one line in ‘Zero Hour!’ where a stewardess says, completely seriously, ‘The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’ ” Mr. Abrahams said. “That was the essence of the movie. We just repeated the line. We didn’t have to change a thing.”

While I’d read that Airplane! was based on Zero Hour!, I’d never realized just how closely the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team had hewed to the original. Here’s a great comparison between the two for reference.

And finally, a short behind-the-scenes look at the “jive” scene.

Links for June 24th through June 25th

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Sometime between June 24th and June 25th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Female Characters in Toy Story Don’t Get Much Play: "Toy Story 3 opens on a woman-empowerment high, with Mrs. Potato-Head displaying mad train-robbing skills and cowgirl Jessie skillfully steering her faithful horse Bullseye in the ensuing chase. And that's the end of that. From there on, the film displays the same careless sexism as its predecessors. (Note: some spoilers ahead.)"
  • Not Safe for Work: "Moral arguments aside, the most common argument for the prohibition of sex work is that such work is a danger to the individuals involved, but research on sex work confirms what anecdotal evidence has long-time suggested, that neither traffickers nor pimps nor drugs nor disease but the stigmatized and criminalized nature of sex work is the greatest contributing factor making the industry dangerous."
  • Doom, Duke3D and More: A Guide to Some Early FPS and Source Ports: "Are you an aging gamer, like me, and do you find yourself pining for the days of gaming yore occasionally, when the sound and fury of the latest warporn deathsim Medal of Duty and Honour: America's Bullet Pride game, fun as it might be, has left your head ringing? Yearn for some simple sprites and some chiptuney soundtracks? Is your computer a bit crap and does 11,000 frames per second† sound like something you might enjoy?<br />
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    Well, read on, friends."
  • About 100 Words: "THE IDEA IS SIMPLE: WRITE 100 WORDS A DAY, EVERY DAY, FOR ONE MONTH You can write about anything you want. Anything. Some people open tiny windows into their lives; others write surrealist poetry. Some writers post finely tuned, perfectly crafted vignettes; others show up at the end of the night and spew drunken nonsense onto the screen. You bring the content. We set the format. This is an exercise in disciplined creativity. Writing exactly 100 words at a time — not a single word more, not a single word less — isn't as easy as it sounds. The word count may be arbitrary, but the motive is not. To borrow from Proust, the tyranny of rhyme often brings out the poet's best work."
  • "To the Straight Guy at the Party Last Night": "A mutual friend of ours threw a big party for her 30th birthday, tons of people were there and it was a lot of fun. Somewhere along the line you and I ended up on the balcony for some fresh air at the same time. We started chatting…. We talked about hanging out sometime, and you wanted to meet my girlfriend. I understand how upsetting it was for you when I blinked mildly in surprise and said I was here with my husband. I know it was a shock to your system, if your face had turned any paler I might have called 911. […] I can't blame you — I forgot how delicate you straight boys are. So I wanted to give you a few helpful hints about where you went wrong last night."

Links for June 18th through June 24th

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Sometime between June 18th and June 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • SCOTUSblog » Today’s Decision in Doe v. Reed: "By a broad eight-to-one majority in an opinion by the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court today held in Doe v. Reed that signatories of referendum petitions generally do not have a constitutional right — i.e., a right that would trump state open government laws — to keep their identities private. But the Court held — again, by the same broad majority — that courts should consider in any given case whether a particular referendum presents sufficiently unique circumstances that anonymity is required. It therefore permitted the claim to anonymity in this case, which involves a referendum on gay rights, to proceed in the lower courts. But their chances of prevailing appear very slim, as five members of the Court either expressed significant doubts about their claim or expressly rejected it."
  • Supreme Court on R-71: Names on Anti-Gay Rights Petition Public: "The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the names of people who signed petitions in an attempt to overturn a new gay rights law in Washington must be made public, a victory for state officials who said the case was a test of open government laws."
  • My Four-Year-Old Son Plays Grand Theft Auto: "At this point my son was familiar with the game's mechanics and hopped into the ambulance. As he put the crime fighting behind him, he wondered aloud if it was possible to take people to the hospital. I instruct him to press R3, and then he was off to save a few lives. He was having a blast racing from point to point, picking up people in need, and then speeding off to Las Venturas Hospital. During one of his life saving adventures, he passed a fire house with a big, red, shiny fire truck parked out front. He didn't want to let his passengers down, so he took them to the hospital and then asked if I could guide him back to the fire truck."
  • "Login" Is Not a Verb: "Despite what many people –mostly in the computer field– think, 'login' is not a verb. It's simply not. Whether or not 'login' is a word at all may spark a debate in some circles, but assuming it is then it may act as many parts of speech, but not as a verb. I will repeat the important part for clarity: 'login' is not a verb. It's simply not."
  • The iPad: A Near-Miracle for My Son With Autism: "My son Leo's life was transformed when a five-dollar raffle ticket turned into a brand-new iPad. I'm not exaggerating. Before the iPad, Leo's autism made him dependent on others for entertainment, play, learning, and communication. With the iPad, Leo electrifies the air around him with independence and daily new skills. People who know Leo are amazed when they see this new boy rocking that iPad. I'm impressed, too, especially when our aggressively food-obsessed boy chooses to play with his iPad rather than eat. I don't usually dabble in miracle-speak, but I may erect a tiny altar to Steve Jobs in the corner of our living room."

My Famous Awkward Family

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(Apologies to Facebook friends who are seeing this multiple times. I think this should be the last time this pops up in my feed.)

Last year, I stumbled across a new humor site called Awkward Family Photos, which was posting funny old family photos. It gave me a laugh, and I started going through what they’d posted…only to suddenly find one of my own family’s old photos on the site!

Amused by this, I commented, telling them that if they really wanted an awkward photo, they should see this other one we had, which has always been one of my favorites. Not long after that, that photo was posted as well, and we became the first family to voluntary submit a photo to their site.

As the site gained popularity, they decided to release a book, got our permission to use our photos…and today, at long last, I got my copy of the AFP book, which uses both photos we submitted! One is on the back cover, and one is given the place of honor as the first featured photo in the book, opening Chapter One. We’re also given thanks in the Acknowledgements section as the first family to send in a shot.

Awkward Family Photos Cover

Awkward Family Photos Back Cover

Awkward Family Photos Chapter One

This is great! Many thanks to Mike and Doug at AFP, and to my family for sharing my amusement at all of this!

Links for June 9th through June 18th

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Sometime between June 9th and June 18th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Lunch Shop for Ironworkers Rises With Skyscraper: "The restaurant, a Subway franchise, opened its door on Wednesday at the top of the steel honeycomb that forms 1 World Trade Center, the skyscraper rising at ground zero. The building will be the city's tallest when finished in 2013, and the sandwich shop, currently sitting on the 27th floor, will rise along with it."
  • Who Is the Best Soccer Player at the World Cup? Science Has the Answer.: "The key was identifying the real objective in a soccer game isn't so much scoring goals as it is moving the ball away from your own goal and towards the opposing team's, thereby maximizing your team's scoring opportunities. As such, players that are successful in maintaining possession of the ball for their team maximize their team's chances of success."
  • Modify the Look of the Safari 5 Reader Function: "Safari 5 introduces the Safari Reader feature, for selecting article bodies to make reading and printing easier. I started looking around for where this new Reader functionality lives to see if it was customizable and I found that it is."
  • Leviticans: "I would like to make the suggestion that there is an entire class of self-identified 'Christians' who are not Christian at all, in the sense that they don't follow the actual teachings of Christ in any meaningful way. Rather these people nod toward Christ in a cursory fashion on their way to spend time in the bloodier books of the Bible (which tend to be found in the Old Testament), using the text selectively as a support for their own hates and prejudices, using the Bible as a cudgel rather than a door. That being the case, I suggest we stop calling these people Christians and start calling them something that befits their faith, inclinations and enthusiasms. I say we call them Leviticans, after Leviticus, the third book of the Old Testament, famous for its rules, and also the home of the passages most likely to be thrown out by Leviticans to justify their intolerance."
  • Gallery: Digitizing the Past and Present at the Library of Congress: "The Library of Congress has nearly 150 million items in its collection, including at least 21 million books, 5 million maps, 12.5 million photos and 100,000 posters. The largest library in the world, it pioneers both preservation of the oldest artifacts and digitization of the most recent–so that all of it remains available to future generations. I recently took a tour of two LoC departments that exemplify this mission: the Preservation Research and Testing Division in Washington, D.C., and the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. The library's preservation specialists use the latest technology to study and scan ancient books, maps and other historical artifacts."

Links for June 7th through June 9th

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Sometime between June 7th and June 9th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The Story Behind the Recycled Newspaper Prop: "Brow Beat has learned that the prop comes from a small newspaper prop company called the Earl Hays Press in Sun Valley, Calif. Started in 1915, Earl Hays is one of the oldest newspaper prop companies, and the paper in question was first printed in the 1960s (note the top-hat ad on the lower left), then offered as a 'period paper,' better suited for Mad Men (where it has not appeared) than Scrubs (where it has)."
  • Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club: "The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox's Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it's surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines."
  • Study: Secondhand Smoke May Affect Mental Health: "researchers at University College of London have quantified another health risk for those exposed to secondhand smoke: mental-health ills. In a study of 8,155 men and women in the Scottish Health survey, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers led by Mark Hamer at University College of London documented a 50% greater risk of psychological distress in nonsmokers with the highest levels of nicotine residue in their blood, compared with those with the lowest levels."
  • How to Send Your Face to Space: "NASA wants to put your face in space. No, really: Just in time for the last two space shuttle flights, NASA is offering to fly pictures of anyone who uploads a head shot on their Face in Space website to the International Space Station."
  • Kids of Lesbians Have Fewer Behavioral Problems, Study Suggests: "A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers. The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed 78 lesbian couples who conceived through sperm donations and assessed their children's well-being through a series of questionnaires and interviews. Children from lesbian families rated higher in social, academic and total competence. They also showed lower rates in social, rule-breaking, aggressive problem behavior."

Links for May 29th through June 6th

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Sometime between May 29th and June 6th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • After 10 Years, Experience Music Project Is Still Perplexing: "After 10 years on the Seattle cityscape, billionaire Paul Allen's Experience Music Project still generates controversy. Everyone agrees that the rock museum's design is unique and its construction was a technical marvel, but there's little agreement about whether it's beautiful or ugly. World-famous architect Frank Gehry said the building was meant to celebrate the sometimes chaotic process of creating the kind of music it's devoted to, but critics still say it's just too odd."
  • How You Can Live Like a Vulcan Without Bleeding Green: "…let's face it – Vulcans are way cooler than Jedi or Na'vi anyway. (At least if you ignore Star Trek: Enterprise, which you really, really should.) Vulcans are quite possibly the most fully realized alien race television or movies have ever created, and not just because they have a complex culture and history. Vulcans have something most made-up races can only dream of: a central contradiction that's ultra-compelling. They're overflowing cauldrons of passion, who have mastered their emotions to such a high degree they appear almost robotic. No matter how pissed off or freaked out you might ever get, you can't be as hot-blooded as a Vulcan. And you'll have to work pretty hard to be half as cool."
  • Google Ditches Windows on Security Concerns: "'We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,' said one Google employee. 'Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,' said another. New hires are now given the option of using Apple's Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system."
  • Facebook: Privacy Problems and PR Nightmare: "One gets the impression that Facebook doesn't take any of this stuff very seriously. It just views the complaints as little fires that need to be put out. The statements Facebook issues aren't meant to convey any real information – they're just blasts from a verbal fire extinguisher, a cloud of words intended not to inform, but to smother. Just keep talking, the idea seems to be, and it doesn't matter what you say. In fact the more vapid and insincere you can be, the better. Eventually the world will get sick of the sound of your voice, and the whiners will give up and go away."
  • Presidential Proclamation–Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2010 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists."