HTML5 disturbingly close to bringing a tear to my eye

2 September 2010 in kansas city, music | No comments

Aw, man. It just got a little dusty in my office at Cooper. Seeing my old childhood home in Leawood, Kansas will do that, especially when the Arcade Fire provides the soundtrack and when Google engineers work with a music video director to create the experience.

8710 Lee Blvd - Wilderness downtown

The photo above is from an “interactive video” called “The Wilderness Downtown,” and it’s actually as technologically interesting as it is emotionally-provocative. (It’s especially emo if the Google Maps satellite imagery from your home looks appropriately old and nostalgic; see image above). Anyway, it’s referred to as an “experiment” with Google’s Chrome browser, which is probably why, at times, it started to feel like a showcase of whizzy HTML5 elements — windows get launched and shuffled around; you’re asked to scribble on the screen; graphics are animated and layered. I don’t know, maybe I’m just the right mix of cheeseball and geek, but it kind of worked for me.

Something which can last

25 August 2010 in lit | No comments

A great three-minute account of a meeting with Borges.

About the life of an artist, he says: “The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory ... as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.”

The best heckle ever?

25 August 2010 in cinema, comedy | No comments

Via The Times:

Kirk Douglas had a son, the little-remembered Eric Douglas, who was an actor and stand-up comedian. He once came over to the UK to do some gigs and inadvertently created one of British comedy’s finest legends. Eric wasn’t having a great gig at a London club; he was going down the pan. His opening line, I seem to remember, focused on the fact that he lacked the cleft in his chin possessed by both his father and brother. The audience was not in the least interested. Their indifference eventually overwhelmed him and he finally shouted: “Do you know who I am? I’m Kirk Douglas’s son!” The room looked on in silence, then someone in the audience stood up and said: “No, I’m Kirk Douglas’s son.” He was swiftly followed by several more. Within seconds, the entire audience was on their feet, all claiming to be Kirk Douglas’s son, in a pitch-perfect parody of the scene in Spartacus. That, by anyone’s standards, is a tough gig.

Read on: A nice discussion of the dark side of heckling going on at The Guardian.

I read too much into this kind of stuff.

10 August 2010 in basketball, flickr, politics | No comments

P080810PS-0483

There’s an intimacy in this that so resonates with me. I mean, it’s impossible to imagine that I wouldn’t be charmed by the subject matter alone — a President I greatly admire, plus two NBA players. But this moment is especially great, because I love Derrick Rose’s game and I will always appreciate that he OD’d on candy before the 2008 NCAA Final with Kansas. And I admire Joakim Noah’s gritty post play and his serious media game. And I love that there’s genuine emotion in this shot. It has got a little bit of stagey-ness, but it also feels, like I said, intimate, like the photographer took this photo and emailed it to me, and said: “You’d appreciate this.”

They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.

21 July 2010 in baseball | No comments

Oscar Gamble - Glorious afro

All this time, I thought the best thing about Oscar Gamble was his epic afro. But now I’ve learned that the title of this post is said to have originated from Gamble during a discussion of the 1975 Yankees; those were the early days of George Steinbrenner’s tenure, and the first of Billy Martin’s five managerial stints. And yeah, Gamble’s assessment sounds about right to me. (I first saw it in the comments section of an excellent post by Joe Posnanski, which is worth reading for the wealth of sports quotes).

This year’s best beer-themed sweater collection

16 July 2010 in flickr, visual | No comments

Beer sweaters

Dang, that Grain Belt sweater in the upper right corner is HOT. via AJ Fosik

Modern ancient handiwork at YBCA

1 July 2010 in california, inside art, san francisco, visual | No comments

Michael's handiwork (and hand)

My old friend Michael Ramage has a hand in this installation in the Yerba Buena Center for Art’s Sculpture Garden. He’s designing and building a pair of domes, made from layers of bricks and mortar and styled on ancient techniques. The artist behind it is Jewlia Eisenberg & Charming Hostess, and the vision is that the domes will be an outdoor venue for music, contemplation, and mind-expanding activities throughout the summer. I visited on Tuesday, and I was struck by the ways that each dome’s oculus (fancy word for the open, circular window at the top of the dome) framed the surrounding sky and buildings. That perspective actually kind of made the generic buildings at 3rd and Howard appear to be somewhat cool. Didn’t think that would be possible.

Business travel is not so bad sometimes

29 June 2010 in the ancient past, travel | No comments

Business travel is not so bad sometimes

At this point, I have an intimacy with the Marriott Courtyard that is likely registered in my DNA. I could be blindfolded and tossed into the lobby of a Courtyard, and I’d be in my room, ironing my shirts, and drinking a Coors Light from the mini-bar within 5 minutes. Every once in a while the business travel stars align, and we get to stay in a place like the Ames Hotel in Boston. Not only are the rooms deeluxe (pictured above), but the building itself is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the doorman told me that it was Boston’s “first skyscraper.” And Wikipedia agrees. Not pictured here is the nicest component of my room: A huge arched window that looked south over the Old City Hall, the Old South Meeting House, and no doubt lots of other old things. No Coors Light, of course, but pretty killer otherwise.

Hang dai!

22 June 2010 in the ancient past, tv | No comments

Hang dai!

I’m one episode from the finale of Deadwood, and I’m feeling prematurely nostalgic for the pantomime conversations between the Cantonese-speaking Wu and English-speaking Al Swearengen. These “conversations” generally involve frantic sketching with charcoal, oaths unprintable in a family blog, and very little English. They tend to conclude with the declaration “hang dai!” (literally: 兄弟) which means “brothers,” and reciprocal gestures of intertwined index and middle fingers, as shown above. Hang dai, Mr. Wu. I will miss you.

Vintage bike camping

2 June 2010 in bikes, outdoors | No comments

A tiny company called Stephenson’s Warmlite makes some of the world’s best gear for camping. I’ve long admired their bomb-proof tents and burly sleeping bags, not to mention the unabashed, straight-from-the-70s nudism in their vintage paper catalogs [a PDF is available here, for now]. Which is why I couldn’t help but be deeply charmed by the mention of Stephenson’s in this old Popular Science article about bike camping.

Popular Science - Bike campingFrom the April 1972 edition of Popular Science — available in Google Books!

I wonder how many earnest, science-minded readers sent away for a Stephenson’s catalog? Total Internet awesomeness, anyway.

« Older entries