Last night at a restaurant Lynn said in all seriousness, "There are a lot of unfortunate hats at that table over there".

Which reminded me of my intense hatred of Crocs. Who thought it would be alright to wear gardening shoes (er, I just found out they are really for boating, whatever), you know, out and about? Are they really that comfy? I don't understand the attachment to wearing giant, neon condoms on your feet. And how did this turn into a trend?

Don't even get me started on Uggs.

I would just like to point out the fact that with Lynn's post about the Apocrypha that the Rabbi talked about last night, we have now come full circle with this blog.

Dum dum dum...

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the first post by Lynn and my second post were both about Andrew Bird. A precocious musical genius/whistling fool whose new record is entitled, wait for it, Armchair Apocrypha.

Like everything in life, this blog has come to its inevitable conclusion. It has run its course. It has lived a glorious life, spent some time in the hospital when it got sick, and now it must be killed off silently and surely like Old Yeller (tangentially, I always thought Old Yeller was named Old Yellow when I was younger -- I was a dumb child).

Oh, who am I kidding, this old dog of a website will still live.

For at least another week or so.

That last post made me sound so pretentious and out of touch with mainstream America.

I admit it, I have a soft spot for My Humps. Well, I have a soft spot for basically anything that Fergie does.

There was a recent link on reddit.com to a list of the top 100 record sales from Amazon.com that are "RIAA-safe". Meaning, I think, that the labels that put out said record is not affiliated with the RIAA, and by that inaction they are somehow opposed to the strong-arm tactics the RIAA proposes as a result of the "terrorist" actions of people trying to use the Fair Use clause in the copyright laws.

Barring whether any of that previous statement was true or factually correct, the comments to the article are what baffled me the most. One in particular, actually, which stated something to the effect of: "I have never heard of anyone on that list. Thank the Lord the RIAA exists, because how else would I find out about music except through the radio and PR?" Assuming that this person is not trolling, apparently the perception is that without A&R folks in the record company, without radio payola, and without the giant PR machine of the record companies no one would ever find any new music.

The irony, at least as I see it, is that the list linked to is a result of a self-selecting group of people who are finding good music that isn't being forced down the throat of consumers. Why isn't this list as beneficial to consumers as the Billboard Top 100? Or what some record company paid to get played on the radio? Why is significance betrothed on the decisions that the A&R folks make and not on the mass collective who shop at Amazon? Or read pitchfork?

It seems like this is a direct consequence to the long tail that Amazon does so well and which is so lacking in mainstream radio/MTV. Embracing the long tail is a perfect solution: because of the virtually unlimited shelf space that Amazon has, the record companies are prevented from bribing Big Box stores to push their artists which forced the niche labels out in the process. Now however, there is an instant leveling of the playing field. Or at least the proverbial mountain just became a really big hill.

I read a really interesting article about the "utilidors" underneath Disney World a couple of days ago. It explains how the tunnels allow the trash to be taken out without anyone seeing a garbage truck, how the characters pop up in certain areas of the park "magically" and how utility men get around the park without anyone seeing them. It sounds awesome and made me reminisce about the summer I spent working at Hershey Park (which was about an hour and a half -- or an hour based on how I drove back then -- away from where I grew up).

That tangentially lead me to think about all of the various jobs I have done during my short time actually working, and now I will present a list in roughly chronological order (with commentary):

• Sunday school aide -- sometimes I helped in classrooms (see above), but mostly I remember counting change. Lots of change. The weird thing is I don't remember why.
• swim/gymnastics instructor -- little kids running and thrashing about. Need I say more?
• ride operator -- having the power to control who enters and who doesn't get on a ride is not something that should be given to most young kids. I relished it. Maybe too much. That is until I broke the Tidal Force and the people next in line stared at me for 30 minutes while the maintenance men fixed it. I spent the rest of the summer shirking my duty and hiding in the bathroom pretending to sweep up cigarette butts from the pathways.
• line cook -- made me realize that what the cooks do on TV and what happens in the back of a restaurant are drastically different...
• merchandiser, customer service, salesman -- the best nights were when we stayed up all night re-arranging the store. What do you mean I get extra pay and I didn't have to deal with any customers?!
• landscaper -- working outside for a summer made me appreciate the rainy days.
• factory line worker -- my job was to stand outside of a furnace (literally) in the dead of summer and take 100 lbs. cabinets off of a conveyor belt and put them onto another conveyor belt. The cabinet was still hot to touch from the furnace, but gloves just got in the way, so after awhile you just got used to the heat. The most mindless, skull-crushingly boring job I have ever had.
• computer tutor - senile, old men are probably not the best people who should be trying to do anything remotely technical
• website designer, photographer - I tried to take pictures of little kids while they ran and thrashed about for their parents who, for some reason, wanted to see their child on the website. Everyday. Listen, if you wanted to see your child everyday, you probably shouldn't have sent them to summer camp.
• software developer -- Lynn says I spend all day in front of a computer and then I come home and spend even more time in front of another computer. That has to say something. Although I am not sure what that something is.

Now, I am not saying that there aren't people who haven't had more jobs, or crazier jobs, but I think that's a pretty impressive list.

A friend of Lynn's friend's sister (I think that's right) apparently just won (what? a wedding! the opportunity to be someone's fiance! a bottle of Cloud Mir!) on the new Bachelor (The Bachelor: Win a Marriage, Be Infamous Because of the Divorce) reality show. I know I should be vaguely happy for her, but I just can't stop wondering what her NDA looked like. That's sad.

Lynn and I went to the Andrew Bird concert last night (for an in-depth and exhaustive report, look to your left). I think Lynn came to the concert with higher expectations than myself, because she came away disappointed and I came away some knowledge. This is a list of what I knew before the concert:

• he whistles
• he plays the violin
• he has had about, oh, 4 catchy songs on the past two cd's
• I think when he was playing at Bonnaroo I was going through heatstroke (although that was most of Bonnaroo)

So, yeah, my expectations were pretty low. When I came out of the concert I knew:

• he is a crazy whistler -- the best I have ever seen (well, the only)
• he is a rad violin player -- and I don't say this lightly because I have no knowledge of classical music, but he was freaking awesome
• he will totally, without a doubt, morph into Phil Spector in about 10 years

That last point is what I really want to touch upon. I say this with absolute certainty, I feel all Nostradamus about it. Let me break down the reasons why:

• he already has a sad attempt at the Phil Spector doo, without the pomp, nor circumstance; it is a like a stringy version without the 'fro-ness. I call it 'fro-esque.
• he is crazy -- I refer, of course, to the homemade sock puppets that he insisted on calling everyone's attention to in the middle of the concert. I think he named it Lightening Jack or something. Whatever. He also had a spinning double-headed gramophone thing, which, as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the music. He just turned it on when the mood struck him. And it struck him pretty regularly.
• he, as Lynn mentioned, is apparently a big fan of the "wall o' sound" concert-going experience. Of which, of course, I refer to the numerous times he looped about 47 different sounds, played them all at the same volume, sang, whistled, drummed, and played a children's zoo sounds toy. At the same time. At the same volume. It makes your head hurt. Once or twice in a concert leads to a neat effect -- all of the building and layering is interesting from a technical point of view. But too many times and it makes me regret the dinner at Ben's Chili Bowl. And that, my friends, would just be a waste.

So, Andrew Bird, I give you 10 years, 15 max. I will be counting down the days. Good luck!

If it looks like someone vomited an array of colors on to this page, then there is exactly one person you can blame. One.

And it is not the squirrel that winked at me on my walk to work today.

It is certainly a humbling experience looking through old code. I have been working on my "big website idea" for, oh, probably 2 years or so (off and on -- more off than on, actually). And I never actually pushed anything out live. Fear of actually completing anything was probably the main reason. (And the likelihood that the RIAA would sue me out of existence if it ever gained traction is a highly demotivating factor, as well). But in the process of trying to actually put this website to good use, I started looking through all of that old, smelly code. It probably didn't help that I started the website in the throes of .NET 1.1, and I had the terribly foolish idea of rolling basically everything myself. From a membership provider to a data access layer, I began the quest to write everything from scratch. After being updated numerous times on the road to .NET 2.0 (what a difference MasterPages make...), many tweaks to the DAL to support multiple connections at the same time (which it, ugh, originally did not), and the actual, physical, pushing of Lynn to make a blog, it is finally here. Ta-daa!
I will probably split any real tech-heavy posts to a separate blog (I don't think most people here care). This blog will be for more general posts. Starting now.