WANTED: Amateur female jello wrestler(s) for non-nude, PG-13 rated, co-ed bachelor party event. We're sending our friend off to a life of domestic bliss with one last afternoon of rolling around in a baby pool filled with jello! We'll provide the pool, the jello and the scrawny, 130 lb bachelor; you just show up and cause him physical and emotional trauma. In fact, if you prefer, we'd be more than happy to tie his hands and/or feet, blindfold him, or force him to fight 7 or 8 people at once. The event is being held in Seattle this Thursday afternoon/evening, 7/22/2010. If this doesn't sound like pro bono work to you, pay is negotiable.Anyone want to guess how many responses we got?
8/3/10
J-E-L-L-O
We posted this ad 4 days before Sasha's bachelor party:
7/23/10
Sashaism
"My mind is a village, and my body is a city"
- Municipal planner Sasha (8:00 pm, 7/23/2010)
- Municipal planner Sasha (8:00 pm, 7/23/2010)
7/18/10
Inception - 8.5
Christopher Nolan's new movie is a pretty good approximation of what Memento would look like if a $100 million special effects budget and some of the best actors in the world. This, of course, is a very good thing. Inception isn't flawless --- there are stretches, especially towards the end, that are a bit too talk-y --- but it's damn good, and a whole lot of fun. A relatable sci-fi storyline is paired with solid performances, a good-enough script, breath-taking special effects and some of the best editing/cinematography I've ever seen (it's a lock to win that Oscar), and the result is Nolan's best movie to date.
Along with Memento, Inception is Nolan's 2nd great movie. Add to that 4 very good films (the two Batman movies, the under-rated Insomnia and the over-rated, but still good, Prestige) and it becomes pretty clear that he belongs right up there with the Mexican trio of Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro and Inarritu in the discussion of the the best young directors working today.
Along with Memento, Inception is Nolan's 2nd great movie. Add to that 4 very good films (the two Batman movies, the under-rated Insomnia and the over-rated, but still good, Prestige) and it becomes pretty clear that he belongs right up there with the Mexican trio of Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro and Inarritu in the discussion of the the best young directors working today.
7/8/10
Top Albums of 2010 (So Far)
- The National - High Violet
- Local Natives - Gorrilla Manor
- Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
- Future Islands - In Evening Air
- The Morning Benders - Big Echo
- LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
- Vampire Weekend - Contra
- Sleigh Bells - Treats
- Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
- Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
- Menomena - Mines
- The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
- Hot Chip - One Life Stand
- Hold Steady - Heaven is Wherever
- Spoon - Transference
6/28/10
Top TV Shows From The Past Year
- Breaking Bad
- Party Down
- Community
- Lost
- Treme
- Chuck
- Modern Family
- Better Off Ted
- 30 Rock
- How I Met Your Mother
- Glee
- The Office
5/7/10
Post
I was thinking about posting a post that said there would be no more posts here, but instead, I am posting this post just to say I was thinking about writing that post.
In other words, there may be more stuff here eventually, but for now, I am feeling swamped and un-bloggy, so I'm not going to worry about thinking of stuff to (not) put up here for a while.
In other words, there may be more stuff here eventually, but for now, I am feeling swamped and un-bloggy, so I'm not going to worry about thinking of stuff to (not) put up here for a while.
4/8/10
Jane's Birthday Mix
A somewhat motley mix for my Aunt Jane's Birthday. She turned... uh ... 29 last week!
- Vampire Weekend - Horchata
- The XX - VCR (Matthew Dear Remix)
- Jamie Lidell - Multiply
- Florence and the Machine - Dog Days Are Over
- Carla Bruni - Quelqu'un ma dit
- Bon Iver - Skinny Love
- Hot Chip - Thieves in the Night
- Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land
- Local Natives - Shape Shifter
- The Morning Benders - All Day Daylight
- The National - Apartment Story
- Allo Darlin' - Polaroid Song
- Passion Pit - Moth's Wings
- Postal Service - Such Great Heights
- Regina Spektor - On The Radio
- Yeasayer - Tightrope
- The Shins - Young Pilgrims
- Notwist - Consequence
4/5/10
Top Albums of 2010 (So far)
After a lackluster 2009, it has been a downright outstanding few months for new music IMHO. Here are 5 albums that have already been released that I really like.
1) Morning Benders - Big Echo
2) Vampire Weekend - Contra
3) Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
4) Frightened Rabbit - Winter of Mixed Drinks
5) Hot Chip - One Life Stand
6) Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
And that is before the good stuff (The National, Hold Steady, LCD Soundsystem) comes out! Tomorrow, a mix for my aunt's bday that contains lots of stuff from the list above.
1) Morning Benders - Big Echo
2) Vampire Weekend - Contra
3) Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
4) Frightened Rabbit - Winter of Mixed Drinks
5) Hot Chip - One Life Stand
6) Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
And that is before the good stuff (The National, Hold Steady, LCD Soundsystem) comes out! Tomorrow, a mix for my aunt's bday that contains lots of stuff from the list above.
4/1/10
April Fools?
New month, new commitment to blogging. Going to take another run at the post a day thing, but failing that, I'll at least try to get back to semi-regular posting. (And if I fail, we can always call this post an April fools joke).
3/4/10
Installing
I've spent most of my day re-setting up my XP virtual machine that I use for work (The old one died along with my new computer's hard drive). It surprised me that I only really needed 10 things to have a fully functional work computer running on my macbook. Here they are, in order of installation:
- VMWare Fusion
- Windows XP
- Firefox
- AdBlock Plus (Firefox plug-in)
- XMarks (Firefox plug-in)
- Dropbox
- Symantec Antivirus
- Microsoft Office (unfortunately, this is still a necessity)
- F5 Client (To connect to the server at work)
- VNC client (To control my machine at work. I'll run SAS, but not much else from there).
3/3/10
More rambling
More rambling today. Maybe some music tomorrow.
Bullets:
Bullets:
- Power is back on! We've got internet and phone and running water and everything. Still waiting for gas (and thus hot water) and the elevator, but at this point I'll take it. Plus, not having gas gives us an excuse to put off grocery shopping and eat out one more time, so that is always good.
- Big aftershock today. It was a 5.6 or so, and the building shook and creaked, but that's about it. A week ago it would've freaked me out, now it is just an annoying reminder of last weekend.
- The hard drive on my 6-month old officially macbook died yesterday. The most annoying thing is that I recently formatted my old macbook, so I didn't have much backed up. In the end, I lost all my music and a bunch of work I'd done on a save the date I was putting together for the wedding. Pretty annoying, but thanks to dropbox (which I highly recommend), I didn't lose anything for work. Anyway, I talked to mac and I'm going to have to send the computer back to the states with my parents for repairs which means I'll be working on the old computer for a month or more. Annoying.
3/2/10
Quick Update
After yesterday's opus, this will be quick since, really, there is nothing much to report. I'm writing this from Starbucks since we still don't have power (or water or gas or internet) at the apartment. We did get to shower for the first time since the earthquake at a friend's house yesterday, so that was pretty sweet. Alexa is back to work today. My new Macbook decided to die of non-earthquake related causes, so I'm here checking email and researching how one brings a macbook back to life. It has a bunch of stuff I'd rather not lose on it, so I don't really want to format and reinstall, but nothing else has worked so far. Anyway, I'm sitting here downloading some stuff for work that can be done on the netbook without internet. We emptied the fridge yesterday, so I'll probably pick up some lunch and head home in a bit and see if I can bring the mac back to life.Fingers crossed. OK, that's all for now, more tomorrow probably.
3/1/10
The Quake
Hi folks,
First and foremost, we're doing well here. Nothing to worry about.
Second, Thanks for all of your calls and messages over the weekend. We really appreciate it.
So, here's the story. We were in bed when the earthquake hit Friday night. I was just getting to sleep, when the building started rocking gently. We thought it was just another tremor at first, but after 10 seconds or so the shaking got pretty violent, and we decided to get out of our building. We live on the 7th floor of a 30 year old building which is a bit of a mixed blessing since the building survived the previous earthquake in 1985 intact, but it's also, well, old. Anyway, I grabbed the cat and we ran down the stairs barefoot in our pajamas as the building shook. The only sign of damage on the way down was pieces of plaster on the floor, cracks up and down the walls and the sound of breaking glass in people’s apartments. The cat, by the way, provided the worst injuries of this whole affair by creating a nice grid of scratches on my chest and stomach. By the time we got downstairs the shaking had pretty much stopped. The quake itself was scary, but neither of us freaked out too much … Well, Alexa did a little, but not nearly as much as I would’ve predicted beforehand. All told, it was more unpleasant than traumatizing and neither of us seems to be dwelling too much on the quake itself.
We waited downstairs with most of our neighbors for 10 minutes or so (the scientifically proven time to determine if a building is safe) and then went back upstairs to grab our flashlight, shoes, cash and passports. There was some broken stuff that had fallen off the walls and broken glass in the kitchen, but in general our apartment seemed ok. With just the light of the flashlight it was hard to tell. After 10 minutes of packing, we set out to Alexa's grandmother's (Nana) apartment to make sure she was ok.
Nana lives about a mile away, and there were lots of people out both walking and driving way too fast through dead stoplights as we walked. People were freaked out, but there was really no looting or anything scary like that in our area. We heard that the earthquake was an 8.5 or so, so we knew it was big, but other than that we didn’t know much about the details until the next morning. We got to Nana's and went up to her apartment (9th floor – my calves are incredibly sore from all the stairs) to check on her. She was fine if a little freaked out. She told us she had waited out the earthquake in bed with a pillow over her head. There was more broken stuff at Nana's place (due to the fact that there is more breakable stuff). A few vases and light fixtures broke, so there was lots of glass lying around and some bookshelves had fallen over. Her building was in better shape than ours though, with almost no cracks in the walls and only a few of plaster on the floor. We spent the next few hours cleaning up, then I slept for a bit (only to be woken up by the biggest of the constant aftershocks at 6 am). Nana's phone was still working (thank goodness) so we managed to call the states and let our parents know we were ok. Then we cleaned some more (professional carpenter Jeremy rebuilt the bookshelf) and headed back to our place to check out the damage. Back at out apartment, there was still no electricity, water, or gas and we saw that there were pretty significant cracks in the walls, but it looks to me (professional engineer that I am) like it's just the drywall and not anything that would affect structural integrity. We're going to get a real engineer to take a look soon, but I'm not too worried. Clean up at our place took all of 20 minutes and then we slept for a few hours.
The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. I'd say 75% of the buildings in our area have power at this point, but us and Nana are in that unlucky powerless 25% (I'm writing this from a coffee shop filled with people on their way to work). Nana has gas for cooking and water, but our apartment doesn't have either. So we mostly just slept and ate and cleaned and read and cursed the aftershocks and checked up on friends her in Chile and talked on the phone. Alexa and I wandered around a bit while out to buy bottled water and saw lots of broken glass and cracked plaster, but nothing overly dramatic in our neighborhood. In general, things are ok.
One of the weird things about this experience has been the fact that we've gotten most of our news over the phone from people in the US. The pictures painted in the news ("The Earthquake in Chile was 1000 times larger than the one that killed 200,000 people last month in Haiti") are considerably more grim than what we're experiencing here. In Santiago at least, most of the damage seems to have been to buildings and infrastructure and not to people. Six hours to the south, in Concepcion, things seem considerably worse with over 700 deaths reported, but we're experiencing that in the same way you are all, through the news.
So, that is the story from here. Thank you all again for the messages over the weekend. Alexa and I both really do appreciate it. I'll be checking email sporadically until our power returns, at which point, I should be able to return to life more or less as usual. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything changes. Until then, take care and enjoy your stable ground :)
Sincerely,
Jeremy and Alexa
First and foremost, we're doing well here. Nothing to worry about.
Second, Thanks for all of your calls and messages over the weekend. We really appreciate it.
So, here's the story. We were in bed when the earthquake hit Friday night. I was just getting to sleep, when the building started rocking gently. We thought it was just another tremor at first, but after 10 seconds or so the shaking got pretty violent, and we decided to get out of our building. We live on the 7th floor of a 30 year old building which is a bit of a mixed blessing since the building survived the previous earthquake in 1985 intact, but it's also, well, old. Anyway, I grabbed the cat and we ran down the stairs barefoot in our pajamas as the building shook. The only sign of damage on the way down was pieces of plaster on the floor, cracks up and down the walls and the sound of breaking glass in people’s apartments. The cat, by the way, provided the worst injuries of this whole affair by creating a nice grid of scratches on my chest and stomach. By the time we got downstairs the shaking had pretty much stopped. The quake itself was scary, but neither of us freaked out too much … Well, Alexa did a little, but not nearly as much as I would’ve predicted beforehand. All told, it was more unpleasant than traumatizing and neither of us seems to be dwelling too much on the quake itself.
We waited downstairs with most of our neighbors for 10 minutes or so (the scientifically proven time to determine if a building is safe) and then went back upstairs to grab our flashlight, shoes, cash and passports. There was some broken stuff that had fallen off the walls and broken glass in the kitchen, but in general our apartment seemed ok. With just the light of the flashlight it was hard to tell. After 10 minutes of packing, we set out to Alexa's grandmother's (Nana) apartment to make sure she was ok.
Nana lives about a mile away, and there were lots of people out both walking and driving way too fast through dead stoplights as we walked. People were freaked out, but there was really no looting or anything scary like that in our area. We heard that the earthquake was an 8.5 or so, so we knew it was big, but other than that we didn’t know much about the details until the next morning. We got to Nana's and went up to her apartment (9th floor – my calves are incredibly sore from all the stairs) to check on her. She was fine if a little freaked out. She told us she had waited out the earthquake in bed with a pillow over her head. There was more broken stuff at Nana's place (due to the fact that there is more breakable stuff). A few vases and light fixtures broke, so there was lots of glass lying around and some bookshelves had fallen over. Her building was in better shape than ours though, with almost no cracks in the walls and only a few of plaster on the floor. We spent the next few hours cleaning up, then I slept for a bit (only to be woken up by the biggest of the constant aftershocks at 6 am). Nana's phone was still working (thank goodness) so we managed to call the states and let our parents know we were ok. Then we cleaned some more (professional carpenter Jeremy rebuilt the bookshelf) and headed back to our place to check out the damage. Back at out apartment, there was still no electricity, water, or gas and we saw that there were pretty significant cracks in the walls, but it looks to me (professional engineer that I am) like it's just the drywall and not anything that would affect structural integrity. We're going to get a real engineer to take a look soon, but I'm not too worried. Clean up at our place took all of 20 minutes and then we slept for a few hours.
The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. I'd say 75% of the buildings in our area have power at this point, but us and Nana are in that unlucky powerless 25% (I'm writing this from a coffee shop filled with people on their way to work). Nana has gas for cooking and water, but our apartment doesn't have either. So we mostly just slept and ate and cleaned and read and cursed the aftershocks and checked up on friends her in Chile and talked on the phone. Alexa and I wandered around a bit while out to buy bottled water and saw lots of broken glass and cracked plaster, but nothing overly dramatic in our neighborhood. In general, things are ok.
One of the weird things about this experience has been the fact that we've gotten most of our news over the phone from people in the US. The pictures painted in the news ("The Earthquake in Chile was 1000 times larger than the one that killed 200,000 people last month in Haiti") are considerably more grim than what we're experiencing here. In Santiago at least, most of the damage seems to have been to buildings and infrastructure and not to people. Six hours to the south, in Concepcion, things seem considerably worse with over 700 deaths reported, but we're experiencing that in the same way you are all, through the news.
So, that is the story from here. Thank you all again for the messages over the weekend. Alexa and I both really do appreciate it. I'll be checking email sporadically until our power returns, at which point, I should be able to return to life more or less as usual. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything changes. Until then, take care and enjoy your stable ground :)
Sincerely,
Jeremy and Alexa
2/25/10
Crazy Heart - 7.0
I liked Crazy Heart and would watch it again (mainly because I am a sucker for this formula), but honestly the movie is all Jeff Bridges. As such, in lieu of a real review, here are 5 Reasons this movie wins The Dude an Oscar.
- First and foremost, he made a relationship between an old drunk and a Maggie Gyllenhaal seem believable. Hell, that alone gets him a nomination. This is the rough equivalent of me picking up Halle Berry at a bar, and he pulled it off. I am impressed.
- He can sing! Who knew?
- Biographies (Fictional or non) win Oscars these days (2004 - Ray, 2005 - Capote, 2006 - Last King of Scotland, 2007 - There will Be Blood, 2008 - Milk), and this is most definitely a biography.
- Just like last year, it's a mediocre crop of Best Actor nominees and Bridges has to be the sentimental favorite. He did give us The Dude after all.
- Bridges carried this movie in a way the other nominee's didn't have to. I thought Clooney was excellent, but the actresses and script in Up In The Air were top notch as well. Renner was great too, but Hurt Locker was the best movie of the year. Invictus sucked (and I didn't think Freeman was that great in it). Haven't seen Single Man, but then again, neither has anyone else, so that knocks that one out. Without Bridges, Crazy Heart would've been a complete disaster - with him it was pretty damn good. That puts him over the top.
2/24/10
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