oh crap, it knows i like cindy lauper...

What I really want to do right now is sit down and pour out a passion-infused entry detailing how I’ve fallen deeply in love with the city of San Francisco. This love is not new, but I think I’ve unilaterally elevated the seriousness of our relationship to the next level. I’m so exhausted and brain weary, however, from almost 3 weeks of constant movement (which explains the inexcusable lack of entries lately) and stiff hotel sheets that I cannot do it justice. It will have to wait. Maybe for awhile.

But I did run into a little tidbit today that I found really interesting. There’s this company in Oakland, Savage Beast Technologies (I really like the fact that they base their name on one of my favorite quotes, check the webpage), that’s working on a really cool project called the Music Genome Project. This project will result in something that’s in essence nothing revolutionary: it will lend itself to a program where if you decide you like a song or an album, it will refer you to other similar music that you might like as well.

What distinguishes this company is the sophistication of their analysis. Instead of relying on something as simple as genre-matching or market research (where they identify patterns of people’s purchases to make connections between shared musical affinities, and hence, make recommendations to those who might not be aware of the other bands), they are attempting to break the songs down into their fundamental musical elements. To accomplish this, they utilize a team of experts highly educated in music theory, along with pretty wicked technology to categorize the music into particular subsets. These subsets might be something like ‘A minor theme with alternating F/G subtext’ or ‘violin coupled with electric acoustic’. This would result in traditionally unmatched music being matched together. A lot of time, this would probably be for the best. It will allow listeners to find that it’s not so easy to dismiss whole genres of music because there are overlapping elements in each. This program essentially digs deep into our subconscious to identify the basic components we like in our music to recommend other similar stuff we probably never would have looked into.

Like I mentioned, this is fundamentally the same thing you’d encounter when shopping on Amazon or at you local Best Buy (a customer of Savage Beast, apparently waiting to incorporate the Genome technology in the near future), but with a MUCH larger inventory of music and more sophisticated methods of matching potentially attractive tunes for anyone and everyone.

In an industry where 3% of the available products account for 80% of sales (which might be attributable to the surfeit of bad music, but, more likely is attributable to the reigning promotional/record companies holding sway over most consumers’ tastes=buying habits), this tells me that the little guys are going to have an increasingly better chance of getting their names circulating.

So if any of my super-cool, band playing friends are reading this entry, keep your eyes out for this technology that’s starting to be introduced and make sure that you get your stuff into their libraries. For people like me, who have always found it difficult to stay up on the mass of underground releases that often times prove the most innovative and interesting musically, this tool should help us stop buying Britney (impossible!) and look into something more worthwhile. In the same vein as blogging and podcasting, I see this tool as yet another weapon for those with talent (obviously not referring to this blog) but short on lucky breaks to promulgate their creations to a wider audience. Even for those without talent, keep in mind that Nelson made millions. It’s the dissemination of ideas that attracts me here. So keep playing that dulcimer because somebody listening to Nickel Creek might just spot you and give you a shove down the road to fame and fortune.

You will learn atleast two things from this blog entry

so i'm reading the book Freakonomics right now. I love when books teach me weird little factoids that i can throw at people to make them think i'm that super-cool weird fact guy. i thought i'd share the ones i found most interesting, so everyone else can be the super-cool weird fact guy/girl. Lots of people already read this book. Lot's of people know more things than i do. Therefore, you might not learn one thing from the following:

• The famous 1973 Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion in the US that pitted Jane Roe against Henry Wade (the Dallas County District attorney), Roe vs. Wade, actually pitted Norma McCorvey against Henry Wade. Norma's name was disguised as Jane Doe before the case reached the high court
• Americans spend $1 billion per year on chewing gum
• During the 15th century, 73 out of every 100,000 people in Italy were murdered. This number might not mean much until you consider the fact that between 1950 and 1994 only 1.5 people out of every 100,000 people in Italy were murdered...which is one of the highest rates in Europe
• 1987 was the first year when people filing tax returns in the US had to provide social security numbers whenever they claimed a dependent child. Seven million children who had existed on previous 1040 forms vanished!
• The Ku Klux Klan was founded by six young men (four of whom were lawyers) in Pulaski, Tennessee in the wake of the civil war. They saw themselves as a circle of like-minded friends. Therefore, they chose a slight alteration of the Greek word for 'circle', kuklos, as their call name. 'klan' was added to pay homage to their scotch-irish descent.
• prior to DuPont's introduction of nylons in 1941, women wore only silk stockings. that's alot of money and alot of silk that wasn't necessarily readily available

So as i conceded earlier, you might not have learned anything from that list. Anybody who picks up the book will read that stuff practically verbatim. But here's a couple things you didn't know:

• i wore a tie today
• i ate 'wild boar' tonight

These are the days of our lives

Disclaimer: Guess what, kids? Today Uncle Phil is going to transform into one of those really annoying bloggers that recounts what he did over the course of the previous weekend. So if you hate those guys, or you hate me, or you hate America, I wouldn’t recommend reading this entry. That being said, you shouldn’t hate America, so read on or Kansas won’t be happy.

It’s not easy hanging out with a bunch of rock stars in New York for a weekend, but that’s the punishment I had to endure the last couple days. What follows is an incomplete account of the weekend’s events.

The first such manifestation of downright absurdity came during our bus pit-stop in Delaware (a state whose size was roughly equal to the chip on our bus driver’s shoulder). Aside from the unique opportunity to punish my digestive tract with copious helpings of Roy Rogers’ burgers, those rest stops totally screw with me. It’s like you step into this warped reality where time loses its meaning, and people lose their minds. People wander around shielding their eyes from the assault of neon, stammering into each other, throwing their hard earned money at anything they can shovel down their throats. It’s like riding around on a carrousel that never returns to the same spot. Sinking deeper into oblivion, one of the more resilient members of our battalion managed to alert us to the imminent departure of our bus. Still dazed by the Wonka world, we stumbled outside and ran. The problem was that we ran in the wrong direction. The other problem was that none of use really knew that. So there we were, victims of the Pit-stop-mob-mentality plague, searching frantically for a bus that no longer existed. Meanwhile John, the aforementioned trooper who had developed an impressive immunity to the pernicious pit stop virus, screamed at each of our malfunctioning phones and the bus driver. The impervious bus driver stormed around the circular drive, intent on roaring onward to the Big Apple minus three poor souls. As he rounded the final curve, flames blazing from the back of the angry bus, we performed athletic feats beyond our wildest dreams in an attempt to flag down our only hope of ever leaving Delaware (much love, Lis), meanwhile inventing atleast five epic dance moves! Emotions ran high as anguish turned to hope, hope back to despair, and despair into the elation of resurrection. We made our bus.

That was before New York. Then New York happened. Oh, did it happen.

What’s the first thing that any sane person does as soon as they get to New York?…that’s right, they leave New York and jam over to Jersey City. Being the hipsters that we are, that’s exactly what we did. Not that it’s possible for Jersey City to ever be a let down, but if it was possible, it still wouldn’t have happened. Our buddy Josh, who graciously accommodated a swarm of rabblerousers (quick vote, is that a word?), lives in an apartment right on the edge of the Hudson River overlooking Manhattan. Positioned across from the village, in between the reigning giants of downtown and midtown, we had a commanding view of the best skyline in the world (in my admittedly meager experience). Plus we got to revert back to colle…high sch….juni….um….grade school, and play with suspiciously fun-looking shopping carts. First the shopping carts were empty. Then the shopping carts held gallons of Pabst. Then the shopping carts were empty again. Then the shopping carts held people who held gallons of Pabst in their stomachs. Then they were empty again. Later they held more people with more gallons of more things in their stomachs. Then they were empty again because those people careened head first out of the carts towards certain death. What does it all mean?

At some point we realized that New York City was really close and we should probably go check it out. So we did, apparently. The story goes that we paid due homage to the sacred artists of eighties rock at this ho-down house (according to this review, we only reverted back to college for our entertainment at this point….and it should be noted that the dancing did not suck!) where they beam the decadent eighties video with the correspondingly decadent eighties song all over the walls. So we’re all pretty sure that happened, and we did wake up in Jersey City the next day (some members running on slightly less than the recommended 8 hours).

…and on the second day, God did not rest…

Have you ever had a waiter/waitress do everything possible to talk you out of a dish? This happened to us at this stylin' noodle house we made our way to for breakfast/lunch/happy hour in the city. It just so happened to be the dish I was ready devour. I didn’t mind that she told us it was the most returned dish on the menu. I didn’t mind that she said, “I’m one of only four or five people that like it.” I didn’t mind that she spoke with such graven seriousness, as though there would be legal ramifications if she failed to enlighten us to the pending devastation that this dish might wreak upon our prostrate constitutions. All was well and good until she dropped the S-bomb on us. She actually had the gall to tell us this dish was ‘slimy’. Slimy! Of all the heinous-anus words anyone could ever use to describe an edible dish, I think she mined deepest and found the worst of the worst. It conjured up images of a toad’s slippery skin resting in an algae infested swamp. I had no intention of paying nine dollars to see that transported onto my plate. I politely passed, ordered another dish, and vomited out the window (the vomiting was a bit of a fabrication, although vomiting was never far from anybody’s mind over the course of this meal…for slightly different reasons). Luckily my second choice turned out to be amazing and cheap. Besides the excellent grub for a more-than-reasonable Manhattan price, I’d recommend this place for the funky pictures of noodle art on the wall. I never would have imagined that noodles could decorate a human body in such ways.

Everyone, in varying states of party or ‘slime’ induced nausea, made their way outside and relished a breath of fresh air. Maybe it was that way because Union Square, a nice little mecca of trees and grass lay across the street. Wait, maybe not. Although it is still a mecca of trees and grass, there’s other things to be found. Namely, an outdoor bar in the middle of a public park in the middle of Manhattan. Somebody explain this to me. Everyone felt compelled to research this anomaly and somehow ended up with coronas (one of which was roughly equivalent in cost to my lunch) or bloody mary’s in their hands. Ah, the beauty of nature.

The Fellowship of the Weekend, which was in peril of dissolving, rematerialized at this point stronger than ever. Back to Jersey City, back to bed for some, then the onslaught continued.

Brevity is the soul of wit. I’m a half wit. But I’m trying. So let me summarize the rest as follows… Feeling like we had short changed the Joshua Tree the night before, we mustered up all our energies and laid siege on that bastion of all that is cool once again. We did it right. Oh, did we do it right. And it really happened that night, according to all sources. Realizing that it was only 5 in the morning when we got back to Jersey City, the dance of the deranged continued on couches and in front of windows back in Jersey City. A final stroll along the water’s edge sometime deep in the six o’clock hour, where a small cadre of lunatics toasted mother NYC and all her demons, brought to a close a day to remember. A saffron orange sun, cloaked in the fumes of simmering city haze, rose above the pillars of man’s ingenuity and kissed us goodnight with her first rays of warmth.

Not so early the next day, the morose realization that our time in New Jersey was coming to a premature end began to loom large; therefore, we celebrated that fine state by dining in the finest eating establishment available: the local mall. The end was too painful, and I cannot recount it here. Perhaps with time I will muster up the courage to speak of our parting with New Jersey and all that it encapsulates.

For now, I offer my praise to those who sucked the marrow out of a weekend’s bones and lived to tell the tale.

These aren't poses folks, this is the real thing.

Soul sisters in swing

Mr. Hyde is alive and well

I’ve been pretending to be a big, important businessman the last week, hence, my reticence. So in order to get things fired up again, I’m dedicating this entry to the Sun. I’ve made the command decision that the Sun is one of the sweetest things I know about (aside from the other 200 billion stars in our galaxy, which is one of an estimated 500 billion galaxies). I really am starting to think that an enormous, glowing ball of chaotic, fiery wrath tearing through the fabric of space is an unusual thing. The little research I’ve done has freaked me out even more. Here’s what I found:

• The sun contains 98 percent of all the mass in the solar system
• 109 earths could be lined up from one side of the sun to the other side
• If earths were packed inside the sun like marbles, you could fit 1 million in that shell; if, however, you ground earth up into a pile of pourable dirt with the same original volume as our round earth, you could stuff the equivalent of 1.3 million earths into the fishbowl sun.
  Mind blowing side note: Some stars are 500 times bigger than the sun
• The ‘corona’ is the funky halo surrounding the sun and reaching out into the solar system, cheers!
• The pressure at the sun’s core is 340 billion times earth’s air pressure at sea level…you and I and a 1000 cubic foot block of steel would basically disappear
• The sun has roughly reached it’s half-life…having lived for 4.6 billion years, with enough fuel left to roast for another 5 billion….and that’s when the creepy thing happens: near the end of it’s modest lifetime, the sun will start to swell, ultimately expanding enough to swallow the earth….after this billion year period of portliness, it will go on a crack-diet and shrivel up into a tiny little white dwarf. Don’t worry though, it’s still gonna be warming our extinct toes for another trillion years or so before it completely cools off.
• To put into perspective how far away the sun is from earth, consider this: light travels around the earth roughly seven times in one second, but it takes light over eight minutes to reach the earth… so if the sun explodes or implodes, we’ll live happily for another eight minutes, not realizing that certain death is reaching its gnarled fingers out across space towards our unsuspecting masses. Another freakoid-factoid: once i decided i had no idea how to grasp that kind of distance, i punished myself by finding out how far the next closest star is to the earth. I found that Proxima CentauriAlpha Cen C star is 4.3 light years away from the earth, whereas the sun is a meager 0.00001 light years away from the earth.

The nerdy scientist can only stay hidden for so long (although i'm starting to think he's much cooler, anyways)…stay tuned for more uncontrollable outbreaks in the near future.

Gesundheit!

what happened to sleeping in until 8 pm?

Every once-in-a-great-while the stars sync up their cosmic whirling-dervish and align for a brief moment in the black heavens. Under an auspicious sky of void expanses dotted by burning jewels, I find myself lucky enough to do a bunch of really cool things over the course of a weekend for really cheap. This was the case last weekend.

Now although the dollar beers and epic Boggle clashes on Friday surely contributed to a memorable couple days, I’m alluding more to what started on Saturday night. Actually, it all started a couple weeks ago at work, of all places. There I was, staring at my computer screen in my cubicle world listening to the symphony of fax machines, click-clack typing, and ringing phones. I overheard a conversation in the copy room (side note: the only interesting conversations at work happen in the copy room under the false assumption of privacy) wherein this guy revealed he was a drummer for a bellydancing troupe. After much clandestine investigation that involved periscopes and tracking dogs, I managed to find this guy and introduce myself. He gave me the hook up on an upcoming show.

Saturday. So the upcoming show upcame. On Saturday, my accomplice in crime and I wandered into the underworld of tribal dancers. Tucked away behind this little artsy café down by China town (for all DC hipsters reading here, check out the Warehouse Theatre…it’s a cool spot that’s bringing in interesting shows but struggling to really get going) was a little theatre that couldn’t have sat more than 100 people gasping for oxygen and unsuccessfully looking around for the fire escape. It didn’t take long to realize that we were viewing an esoteric art with people who understood and probably followed it religiously. When one of the dancers performed an abnormally difficult pose (aka, balancing a plate of burning candles on her belly as she twisted her body into a contorted ball of aching muscles or gracefully pranced around the stage with two scimitars resting unsupported on her head) the audience would erupt with animalistic whoops that sounded like some kind of hungry whooping crane. But everyone sounded like the same crane…like they’d gone to a belly dancing cheer class.

Aside from any inconsequential feeling of alienation we experienced from the cliquey whoopers, it was an amazing show. Exotic music rattled the creaky wooden posts that supported plain black sheets…a simple backdrop that directed your attention to where it was deserved: the dancers. The first part consisted of a local troupe (DC Tribal) exhibiting their funkadelic freshness, followed by a visiting cadre of more prominent dancers. For all my readers in San Francisco…and when I say readers, I mean reader, thank you Blogmyers-can I get a Hayward in the house…check out Ultra Gypsy perform for a memorable night. For those anywhere near San Diego, Urban Tribal Dancers is the show to hit. Besides the elaborate costumes, absurdly athletic moves, and hypnotic theatrics, I loved how they seamlessly blended in modern elements (especially in the music) with the more traditional. It made me feel like I was watching something being created instead of looking at a 3-D, moving exhibit in a museum.

Sunday. Anyone who’s seen Good Will Hunting or has an inkling of appreciation for conscientious social criticism knows they should read Howard Zinn (i.e. A People’s History of the United States, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train). I know this, yet still never have. I did get a chance to watch his film biography and listen to him speak, however, on Sunday at the American Film Institute in Maryland. I liked Howard’s story because he didn’t follow the traditional academic path. Instead, he spent a good deal of his youth scavenging around the streets of New York, working at the shipyards, and dropping bombs in World War II. I’m guessing this all contributed to what I liked best about him: he’s an idealist who’s realistic about the possibilities and means of change. It was cool to see someone who was integrally involved in social demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam speaking about Iraq in 2005. Perhaps my historical imagination is weak, but I oftentimes feel completely removed from the accounts I read in books or see in movies of those tumultuous times, regardless of how recently they occurred. Zinn helped to bridge the gap. The dude is old, but spry and healthy. He has a glimmer in his eye that bespeaks a life lived well. He’s a seasoned speaker with a patient mien who didn’t hesitate to let questioners talk longer than they should have. He made me want to read his books and get fired up about what’s going on in the world.

Monday (we’ll pretend that’s part of the weekend). I watched the Washington Wizards kick the Chicago Bulls’ ass to tie up the series 2-2 in the first round of the NBA playoffs Although they tried as hard as they could to give up their commanding lead in the 4th quarter, the Bulls managed to shoot so horrifically that the Wizards simply had to leave with a win. (Series now 3-2 Wizards, thanks to a last second shot by Gilbert Arenas after they tried their same strategy of giving up a 20 something point lead, but not quite being able to lose). It wasn’t all poor play, however. As a matter of fact, four minutes into the game the Wizards had scored enough points to be en route to racking up 180. That did not happen. That’s good, because I can’t count that high. I got to see miniature blimps, a magician help his counterpart change outfits really fast…over and over, and entertaining basketball. Plus, I had the option to drink my beer with a straw. Gotta love it.

Moral of the Story: I want more weekends where a twenty dollar bill reminds me that the world isn’t a staid complex of mindless masses shuffling to and from lego buildings…and still gets me change.

stupid people doing stupid things

Maybe you've been sitting around wondering, "why on earth would i ever need a video phone...in fact, I can't think of any other uses for this camera phone other than taking pictures of the oryx at the zoo." Well, let these nimrods convince you that a) you do have a use for that video or camera phone and, b) human beings have not evolved beyond gorillas.

Sleazy businessman alter-ego materializes...

I love you guys, so I desperately want to make you 25 bucks. Furthermore, I know you love me atleast 2/5 as much as I love you…so I’m sure you want to make me 10 bucks. Here’s the deal:

ING Direct, a branch of ING (a Dutch global financial institution with over 60 million customers in 50 countries…aka, they’re legit), offers an “Orange” savings account that pretty much kicks ass. ING Direct does their banking online, over the phone and by snail mail. This means they cut out all the money they’d be pouring into operating bank branches churning through electricity and leasing fees that also would require little bank people running around in snazzy blazers that would probably want a paycheck. So they’ve got a bunch of extra money to throw around. Being the altruistic souls that they are at ING Direct bank, they’ve decided to give a whole bunch of that money to you and me.

They now offer a savings account with 3% interest. Anybody whose banking experience meets or exceeds cashing one work check a month understands that 3% is a ridiculously high interest rate…

This is great option if you don’t have enough money to invest, haven’t performed ample stock market research, or simply don’t have the balls to throw your money into the stock market yet. I, to some degree, can check each of the previous three boxes. This savings account allows you to rack up an impressive amount of interest while keeping your money completely liquid. If you need money for rent, you electronically transfer (either on the internet or over the phone) from your ING Direct savings account to your established checking account elsewhere. I’ve tried it and it’s incredibly simple…just like transferring from my Bank of America Savings account to my BofA checking…but making a whole bunch more money in interest.

The more traditional mid-level option would be purchasing a CD, wherein you give some money to your bank for a certain amount of time and they give you a guaranteed return percentage if you don’t withdraw previous to your agreement ending. Most 1 year CD’s (meaning you can’t touch your money for atleast a year) don’t go much higher than 3%. If you run into an emergency and have to withdraw before that year, you lose your 3+ % interest rate. The ING Direct option, like I said before, lets you do whatever you want with your money whenever you want.

So the deal is that if you sign up through me, you get $25. Seriously. They just give you $25. They also give me $10 when you sign up. It’s a pretty sweet deal for everyone involved. Check out their website and do some research yourself if you want to become a little more familiar/comfortable with the idea. If you think it’s a go, shoot me an email (younglong80@yahoo.com) and I’ll send you the special link for this deal (you have to use the link that I send you or you don’t get the $25)…or leave a comment below.

Here’s to taking over the world.