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Blog - September 2004 |
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This page stores my blog entries from September 2004. The entries are dated September 6, September 21, and September 30.
Short Olympics Thoughts / Baseball vs. Football: Attention and Interest / Face-to-Face with the Police / Labor Day Weekend: Going Crazy with Prince; State Fair and Greek Food Festival; No Superstar in The Passion / Price Comparison for New Computer Monday, September 6, 2004 The Olympics in Athens has come and gone. Athletes, who fight their hardest to be the best, come happily representing
their country in the competition of the best. The Greeks worked vigorously to, miraculously, get ready for this
16-day display of human capability. In 2006, the Winter Olympics will come along, and I will be waiting anxiously. ***** Sports tend to be a bit funny with me when it comes to seasons coming and going. I love baseball. I get Baseball
Weekly (now called "Sports Weekly", integrating football coverage), a publication by USA Today and have
had it for over ten years. I love baseball cards and keeping track of how players are doing. When it comes to watching
games, they don't hold my attention all that well unless I attend one at a ballpark. On occasion I'll watch a full
baseball game on TV, but it seems to lose something. Maybe it's that buzz one gets when being in the park itself.
It's kind of like how being at a concert feels more exciting than listening to a live album. Certainly, you're
getting the same basic product, but something gets lost in translation to the medium. ***** Recently, I had a funny occurrence. While shopping at a local store, I pulled out of my parking spot and headed
to the side where I could turn left to get out. I had to make a right-hand turn in the parking lot to get around
to the opening I needed to the street. As I approached this initial turn, I saw a police car start to back up out
of his parking spot. I patiently waited for him to back out and continue forward in the direction I headed. ***** My Labor Day weekend grinds to a halt tonight, and boy did I have fun! Pam and I bounced from the Prince concert on Friday, to the State Fair and Greek Food Festival on Saturday, and to home on Sunday for a viewing of "The Passion of the Christ." Each day's adventures shall appear in sub-entries below. --+-- Prince performed at Arco Arena this past Friday. He didn't play much of his big hits. I didn't recognize 3/4 of the songs he performed. You know what? I enjoyed it very much. Prince and the New Power Generation performed on an all-around stage. The roughly square-shaped stage had a slightly raised plus-sign-shaped area for people to walk on. This left four smaller square-shaped areas that contained the drum set, the keyboards, a lounge-ish area, and something else (that last square was directly opposite to where Pam and I sat). I think it might have just been a spot for the horn players to sit, but I'm not too certain about that. The lounge area had a chaise lounge and several pillows spread about the area. The mic area had a segment of the stage that would drop through the floor, which Prince used once during the concert.
Prince started off the show with the song "Musicology". At least, after they showed the Hall of Fame speech Alicia Keys gave for Prince earlier this year. "When Doves Cry" made a limited appearance, with Prince and the NPG doing an artsy version. He sang a line, and he followed it with an instrumental segment that ended with him singing a different line. I don't think each set of lines actually followed each other in the original song, though. "Cream" came in a solo acoustic set near the end of the performance, and songs like "Let's Go Crazy", "Little Red Corvette", and "Raspberry Beret" were sprinkled among other cool songs. A cover of "Soul Man" and "I Can't Get No (Satisfaction)", along with performances of "Kiss" and "7", all eventually led to the show finale, "Purple Rain." Songs like "Get Off" and "1999" never made an appearance. Given Prince's semi-recent religious/spiritual position, I shouldn't be surprised with the former. Prince let a fan come on stage and dance a bit. That seemed really cool. Near the end of the concert, he had a bunch of dancers populate the whole stage near the end. The bassist and the horn players (a couple of saxophonists and a trombonist) got some air time, and the drummer played a rather nice solo as well. The latter exhibited some great dexterity while spinning the sticks in his fingers while hitting cymbals. A rather fast drummer, he played a fairly quick but concise solo. The true gift of this concert wasn't getting in with cool tickets, getting a free copy of "Musicology" through the graces of Prince, or hearing the hits I became familiar with over the past ten-plus years. The true gift came when I heard the songs I didn't recognize. I felt and heard a music that completely tore down how I thought about Prince and the music he did. The music, then, rebuilt that impression into something different and beautiful that I cannot yet describe. Seeing Prince dance around and interact with the fans, playing guitar and bass at different times in the concert, and being a critical part of the band but not the sole focus showed so much of the man with an amazing career. He truly staged a party, and everyone participated on that great night. --+-- Saturday brought two events: the State Fair and the 41st Annual Greek Food Festival. Our trip to the State Fair last year started with a picture-taking venture with some company with digital cameras, and that didn't change. We're fairly happy with the pictures we got this time. As usual, either of us are happy with ourselves in the picture, but we're happy with how the other looks. With no band to watch (as we saw the Go-Go's last year) and no intent on having a meal, we didn't spend nearly as long this year as we did last year. We spent the usual time through the rooms in the Exposition Center, checking out the woodworking skills of today's youth and admiring the artwork and creativity that so many people delved into over the past year. Last year's silverware bull made way for a silverware pegasus, complete with palm tree. That person, again, won Best of Show in their category. One room had some animals in it, including a black bear and some birds of prey. The red-tailed hawk and great horned owl didn't interest me as much, since I have seen both up close many times before. The bald eagle, on the other hand, very much captured my attention. That bird was huge with an enormous beak. Apparently it got caught in some new barbwire and could not fly. One simply cannot appreciate the majestic beauty of such animals without seeing them up close and in person. The Exposition Center also had a whole room dedicated to baseball in America. They filled most of the room with a miniature baseball diamond where kids could swing for the fences, a batting cage, and a speed pitch booth. The rest of the room showed off memorabilia from many players. Locker-esque displays with uniforms and baseball cards for Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Al Kaline, George Brett, and Ken Griffey, Jr. adorned many segments of the remaining space in the room. Another display showed the evolution of catcher's gear. One room showed what may have been a real 1909 T-206 White Border Honus Wagner card. I'd have assumed there would be more security for a card of such rarity, vintage, and popularity and history. If truly real, it marked a nice surprise and treat in that room. One thought we had was to check out the Wine Garden and do a little wine-tasting. Once we saw that the cost was $4 a glass, we skipped that and went straight over to see the award-winners. I'm certain I shall never remember much of any of the labels that won an award at the State Fair, but I do remember that Charles Shaw's Chardonnay won Gold. That's true evidence that one does not have to spend $20 for a bottle of good wine. The huckster's booths in the Exhibit buildings really didn't have much of interest. We both noticed that many companies had multiple booths spread out between buildings. I don't know whether the Fair had a problem getting enough sales companies in for the Fair, or whether certain companies decided to be more aggressive to maximize sales or decrease crowds around their booths. We stopped at the cinnamon roll booth near the county exhibits for a cinnamon roll and lemonade. We rather enjoyed that moment of rest and nourishment. We didn't really look at the county exhibits, feeling embarrassed for Solano County, who apparently suffered from Dan Quayle-ism and spelled "tomato" with an "e" on the end. Our path then took us to the animal barns, where we saw many sheep, cattle, and swine. I don't recall seeing any goats or smaller pigs at all, which seemed unusual. The definite highlights of this area were the Watusi cattle (a link to an example, Rambo). These cattle had enormous horns. I think some of them had horns that easily had a larger diameter than the average human thigh. Similar to that picture of Rambo, the horns could stretch to rather great lengths, too. We found the "Fur & Feathers" segment all the way over in the lobby of the racetrack (or something) and were a little disappointed to not see any of the lop-eared bunnies with huge ears. We saw them last year, and I think they were English lops. The aviary segment was back with no fear of spreading disease, and we enjoyed the various turkeys, geese, and other fowl. Even though we didn't hunt for it at all last time, we decided to find and purchase some deep-fried Oreos for Pam's dad. Once we obtained those, we headed for the photo booth outside the gates, purchased our photos, and took off for home. --+-- Our last event for Saturday was the Greek Food Festival. Like the State Fair, we didn't nearly spend as much time here. Our first treat and surprise came when the ticket booth attendant gave us one free admittance ticket each for Sunday. Thankfully, we found a use for that. With stomachs growling, we headed straight for the "A-La-Carte" cafeteria-like segment of the food court. I grudgingly bypassed the lamb this year, optiong for:
The only things that Pam had that I didn't were:
She did not have the loukaniko that I had. We both avoided the moussaka out of respect for her family's recipe and wonderful skill in procuring such great meat and eggplant loveliness. I tried to relax with some ouzo and Mythos Lager while eating our dinner. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the ouzo tasted terrible this year. I don't know if the novelty of it made it seem good last time or what, but I just couldn't finish it. It has a strong anise taste, and it just tasted nasty to me. Both Pam and I liked the Mythos Lager. The bartender did not know where, locally, one can find this beer. I have failed on numerous occasions to find it, and the company's web site offers no help nor trouble-free contact information to get a note from them. We wandered around the displays, seeing an Olympic torch for this year's Olympics torch relay through the nations. We noted the amount of Russian-made religious and non-religious items for sale, which seemed a bit ironic. Pam and I both bought some feta cheese, with Pam also purchasing a festival cookbook and a loaf of sweet bread. For the second straight food festival, I ran across someone I knew from the Ballroom Dance Company. That seemed a bit fun but short-lived. She had to run off to dance with her mother before retiring for the evening. For dessert, Pam munched on some cookies (koulourakia and ... something else) to go with her Greek coffee. I tried the loukoumathes, which are akin to doughnut holes, sprinkled with nuts and cinnamon. They seemed pretty good, but a bit light and airy. They actually made a nice dessert, given that most attendees would have eaten quite a bit of the yummy possibilities there. We sat around and watched the dancers for a bit before wandering off for home. --+-- Sunday felt a bit more relaxed. I did my shopping at Raley's before getting together with Pam. Pam and I hopped back over to the Greek Food Festival and used our free admittance coupons to buy some quince jelly for my mom. I thought about buying the jar when I was first there, but my mom doesn't always like all the sugar in things. Since this wasn't the case for the jelly, I bought that. We rented The Passion of the Christ and ate some feta cheese and bread with some white merlot (me) and hard apple cider (Pam). Pam had her issues with the theology and occurrences depicted in the movie. My issues? Well, I did not like how they depicted the crucifixion as commonly shown in icons and such. With all the detail and care that Mel Gibson put into this in order to make it sound and feel authentic to the actual date of said alleged occurrence, you think he'd at least get that part right. The Romans would not have put the nails through the palms of the hands, since the weight of the body would certainly lead to the nails tearing right through the hands. They also would not have pushed up the block for the feet, since there would need to be plenty of room to keep the person from trying to use that to stand up on and relieve the pressure. Also, I had issues, as I do with most subtitled movies, of them not translating everything. Those points aside, I liked how they stayed with the "present-time" occurrences and introduced previous events as flash-backs. Both Pam and I teared up when they showed Mary flashing back to when Jesus, as a young boy, fell on the stairs, while Mary thought about running to Jesus and helping him up with the crucifix. To me, that presented a powerful event and message concerning the love between people and, most certainly, the love of a parent for a child. Unfortunately, my mind strayed too many times towards jokes and humming or singing songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar." I totally expected King Herod to sing that "King of the Jews" song, and the "We have no King here/No King but Caesar/Do what we say and Crucify him!" song for when the crowd called for said execution. The story also presents events too silly to be believable. The ridicule from the Roman soldiers seemed overdone, and the whole Barrabas incident always felt too lame. I considered this movie a good watch. Hearing the Aramaic and Latin certainly brought some interest (despite questions as to how they knew what Aramaic sounded like; something for me to investigate), but it was not enough to make this movie something to keep or even watch again. It still needs to go a long way to beat out the aforementioned "Jesus Christ Superstar" for effective storytelling and simply cool songs. On a different note, I can certainly see why the Jewish community would have issues with this movie. Despite the fact that many people have the intelligence and education to understand that the story is nothing but a story with moral notes and did not really happen, some people out there take the story too literally and believe such things really happened. Among those people, a few would certainly be led to believe that the Jews, at that time, were the ones responsible for Jesus' death. Among that small sect, there are bound to be a few wackos who will act out on this against the Jewish community. Those moronic cowards who would act out would be few and far between. Overall, I wouldn't see this movie as a threat. I merely see how one would be greatly concerned. ***** For kicks, I thought I'd compare prices from my last computer parts comparison from nearly a month ago:
Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what parts I selected through Anandtech's RealTime Price Engine. These prices drop my higher and lower costs to $1,503.09 and $1,353.90. That drops the costs by $73.23 and $58.66, respectively.
Cool! A UCD grad ... With a Pipe?!? / Lame Joke / KVIE and PBS are not Commercial-Free / I Am Experienced: My Jimi Hendrix Acquisitions / My Issues with the Current Music Realm: Rough Thoughts / "I Want You to Build An Arc," said God. / Hooray for Party Planning! / Other tidbits Tuesday, September 21, 2004 I drive a fair distance on the freeway every day to work. With my radio dying on me again (probably for good), it leaves me plenty of time to let my mind wander and observe other drivers. Frequently, someone with a UC Davis license plate frame catches my eye and peaks my curiosity. I figure, on rare occasions, I'll end up seeing someone I knew at school. The odds of that, however, are pretty astronomical. I saw one car heading in my direction and thought it'd be cool to see what this person looked like. Well, what this person looked like certainly didn't catch my eye nearly as much as the crook-necked, Sherlock-Holmes-like pipe emanating from his mouth. For some odd reason, I felt rather surprised by this. Not too surprised, but it certainly struck me as being rather odd. One rarely sees someone smoking pipes these days. Hopefully he had tobacco in it and not something greener. ***** Q. What do career protesters use to light their cigarettes? A. Strike-anywhere matches ***** While a kid in the '80s, I remember particularly interesting programming on public television stations like KVIE. I would get irritated during the annual pledge drive due to the delays in getting to the unusually good programming they'd have at that time. It was commercial-free programming at its finest. Today, the label of "commercial-free" certainly doesn't fit, with rather blatant ads placed between and within shows. The annual pledge drive has been replaced with the annual "no pledge drive" period. KVIE easily has a constant, all-year-long pledge drive that really doesn't end except for a select few weeks during the year. Each pledge break within a show tends to take at least 20 minutes, extending shows' lengths and distorting the actual start times. On numerous occasions, shows they say would start at a particular time aren't shown at that time or aren't shown at all. With excessive and irritating pledge breaks and obvious commercials, no reason exists for these stations to stay in this mode of operation or for me to give them money. They should just go to commercials and cut the more-annoying-than-commercials pledge breaks. I don't know what kind of effect this would have, but, to me, a five-minute commercial break is far less annoying than 25-30 minute pledge breaks. ***** A couple of weekends ago, I bought all three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums: Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland. I have wanted these albums for years, but I never had the motivation to buy them until recently. A high school friend of mine allowed me to borrow a couple of Hendrix albums, and I've enjoyed them immensely in the last few days. It also didn't hurt that Tower had them on sale for $9.99 each. Although I enjoyed his songs before, I don't think I've enjoyed them as much as now. Maybe the depressed edge with which I listened no longer exists, seeing, rather, the beauty that Jimi weaved into each song. Using headphones brings a whole different dimension, allowing one to appreciate the band's use of stereophonics to create unusual aural effects. In listening to the guitar fuzz that rotates around from one side to the other on "ESP" (the first track on Axis: Bold As Love), I get such a strange feeling in the back of my head. I have no words to describe this sensation, but it's certainly a good sensation. I think, so far, Axis: Bold As Love is my favorite. It's hard to say, but I've heard much of Are You Experienced? already and really don't find Purple Haze all that interesting anymore. Electric Ladyland has some awesome tracks on it, and it'll grow on me the most out of the three. I don't know where I'll go with Hendrix after these. His Band of Gypsies album interests me very much, and I'd like to get a copy of the complete Woodstock set as well. His box set. Isle of Wight. Blues. I have so many avenues to enjoy the many fascets of Jimi Hendrix that it'll be a life-long journey. ***** Enjoying my Hendrix albums shines a huge light on the differences in the music industry. Popular bands nowadays really don't produce complete albums. Of the rare bands I found interesting, none of them seem to hold a consistent sound throughout the album. It seems like they truly try to find a hit and fill the rest with, well, filler. Sevendust caught my interest with several cool singles. I tried to check out some of their other stuff, only to be greatly disappointed. I loved Helmet's "Unsung", only to shirk back in disgust at the other tracks. I know nobody really forces any band to do so. Plenty of underground bands put out some wonderful albums of music that, unfortunately, don't get the airplay they should. Granted, if most bands want great airplay, significant label support on major tours and such, they have to produce results that rakes in money for the label. Pretty much the only way to do that is to make hits. And, as you see, I probably just contradicted myself within one paragraph. If record companies want to slow down unauthorized online trading, focus on quality bands that will put out whole albums worth of music. Don't try to find "the next big thing" or bands that find one song that does great but never does anything again. That latter occurrence happens entirely too often.
***** This past weekend, we had one of the worst storms in a long time. Initially, the assorted stations reported a chance of showers in the region. When said "showers" came, they came in buckets and numerous bouts of hail. We had a huge amount of rain come down in 1.5 hours. I don't think I have ever seen that much rain come down in such a short amount of time. Many streets flooded, making vehicular transportation immensely difficult. It took me 45 minutes to go from my house to an ATM about four blocks away and back again. Nearly every street I tried to turn down near the ATM had flooded. Eventually, I circled back and entered my neighborhood where I had left it. Our street flooded all the way across, which had not happened before in the six years I've lived here. Our garage flooded again. We drilled some holes in the wall next to it to facilitate drainage, but the holes weren't large enough to handle that kind of flow. I don't think too much got damaged with any severity. Some of my kitchen stuff got wet again. My parents' old table got wet as well, and I think my chairs to my kitchen table got wet as well. A popular local store, Corti Brothers, had its roof cave in on the store. It's such a great gourmet store with such a history. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. ***** Today marked the end of an interesting mental journey. Today marked the day that my planned potluck and wedding surprise came to fruition. It all went very well, and I'm very happy with the results. I have never tried to plan and coordinate anything with any group before. I don't know when or if I'll do this again. I'm encouraged to do it again, but I do not know when. Hooray for me! ***** Some other highlights of my life in the past couple of weeks:
Fragility of Life / Any Tie-Dyed Shirt Places in Santa Cruz? / Chevron Baseball Cards / Health Inspected: Duh! / Dead People Found In Society / Month Epilogue Thursday, September 30, 2004 Within the last week, I experienced something that made me think. It wasn't the political debates, which look more like nobody is thinking. Nothing like that. I guess the reason why I still feel a little funny about it is because of the delicateness that human life possesses. I had no time to think about this as I sat there, checking on him and making sure he was ok. Instinct took over, leaving me to ponder the events at a later time and date. How did that one event lead to this situation? What made him choose this road? Did he know that it would have taken just one different decision to make things go in a different direction? All I could do is sit there and try to console him. Listen to him as he spoke. Offering what thoughts and support I had for the moment, even though I wasn't sure if it'd make any difference at the time. Whether I made a difference or not didn't matter; I did what I knew I needed to do. The impact of a singular important event always hits hard when it's especially important for that individual. That such an instance can impact someone and affect them so deeply certainly shows how fragile one's existence is on this planet. ***** In about 1.5 weeks, Pam and I will be off to Santa Cruz for a wedding. This will give me plenty of free time down in Santa Cruz itself. Anyone know any good shops there that have a good selection of tie-dyed t-shirts? ***** Recently, I've been collecting these baseball cards that Chevron stations have been giving out. These cards, made by Upper Deck, were part of the Chevron "Clean Outta Here" promotion, whatever that was. Each pack contains one card of twelve in the set. The cards I have are:
From further searching, #5 appears to be Shawn Green. Mike Lowell appears to be #6. Vladimir Guerrero apepars to be #4. #2 is Hank Blalock. I may have to hit the local baseball card stores to see if any of them might have these. I'm tired of hitting every Chevron store, only to find that they have only the ones I already have. I do have plenty for trade if anyone out there has the ones I need. ***** Pam and I love Buca di Beppo. We started going there not too long after they first started advertising their special meal deal -- a choice of a main dish and a salad for $25.95 for two people -- and got hooked ever since. The second time we went, they changed things up a bit and introduced smaller portions. Those worked perfectly for us. On occasion I'll drive by one on the way home. Before making a right-hand turn, I noticed that it had a neon sign in the side of the building that said: Health Huh?!? Does an establishment really need to advertise that they're health inspected? Certainly every person in the U.S. knows that restaurants are required by law to maintain standard health and cleanliness guidelines. For some reason, this sign made me think and ponder why they felt inclined to comment on this. I know that many establishments don't try to keep things up health-wise for their customers. Given the spread of fear waving across the U.S. in the last few years over terrorism and whatnot, maybe they included this sign to help people's sense of safety for their eatery. Certainly, nobody wants to eat somewhere that failed health inspections or is afraid to express such a thing. As a result, such advertisement can certainly boost one's confidence in the establishment for being forward and up-front about such things. Buca di Beppo, from my experience, definitely shows a certain care for cleanliness and health concerns. But one cannot trust just any establishment when advertising that they're health inspected. Just because an official performed a health inspection of the restaurant doesn't mean that the restaurant actually passed and satisfied all requirements. Again, I'm certain that Buca follows all regulations pretty well, so I have no concern with them. ***** Earlier this week, sheriffs and other officials found a 21-year-old driver dead after an accident along I-80. The singlar thing about this came when Cal Trans found the car and body right alongside the road. Most people would wonder how a car and body would be lying around along side a major and busy freeway, but bushes, shrubs, and trees covered and hid the car from plain sight. I drive by the site of the accident every day and never saw or suspected anything amiss during that time. Said occurrence left an eerie shadow over things for a bit. That a vehicle and body can hide like that in the middle of a busy urban area shocks the mind. How many other people like this are there or will there be who might be right in the middle of society and completely obscured. It reminds me of a Ripley's Believe it or Not episode (or something like it). Some years ago, some people set up a haunted house for people to go through. It contained many cool elements and attracted many visitors. These visitors admired the props, including a fake body hanging from the wall ... or was it fake? After careful study and research, some doctors and historians found the body to be the corpse of a real person from the late 1800s. Somehow, the body got preserved in a coat of some thick resin or wax that left the skin visible and nearly perfectly preserved. ***** Hopefully, by this time next week, I'll have another entry. A week from this Saturday, I'll be heading down to the Santa Cruz area for a wedding at the St. Lawrence Orthodox Church in Felton. Though I probably won't have pictures, apparently a friend of mine has a picture of the same church on his site. |
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