Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Let's learn a new word: macroblocking
Joe and I got our first TiVo several years ago, and I was immediately hooked. I've never been one of those people who just sits down to watch TV -- I'm only interested in watching specific shows, and with TiVo, all I had to do was set a season pass and every single episode of "The Daily Show," "Monk" and "The Simpsons" would be captured for me by the magic box. Plus I could fast forward through the commercials, something that has made it well nigh impossible for me to watch anything that hasn't been TiVo'd. Unlike with a VCR, you can start watching a show that TiVo is recording while it is still recording, so you can turn on "The Daily Show" at 11:10 PM and finish watching it at 11:30. What a time-saver!

Last year, when the monolith came into our lives, we upgraded to a high-def TiVo recorder. Everything was perfect for several months. Then we moved and switched to a new cable TV provider. I'm not sure if it's the cable card, or the TiVo, or the signal strength, but lately we've been experiencing macroblocking, which you can see here and read about here. Macroblocking means the picture gets distorted and the audio drops out for a couple seconds. When it happens again and again and again, it renders a TiVo'd show pretty much unwatchable. We've been having the problem both on high def and regular TV shows.

Joe called TiVo, which claimed no knowledge of this problem, which is obviously b.s. considering how many web sites you find when you do a Google search for "tivo macroblocking." Most of the posts seem to be from last summer. I also found some recent posts on TiVo's own forums, though they don't use the term "macroblocking" (more like "jerky picture & sound").

There seems to be some speculation that the issue stems from using certain manufacturers' cable cards in the HD TiVo, so right now we're trying to get someone from the cable company to come over and swap out the cards. It's pretty maddening not to know whether or not a TiVo'd show will be watchable or not.

It's possible that we may need to rethink our TV options because our cable company, which is municipally owned, may be getting out of the telecom biz. If that happens, I'd give serious consideration to subscribing to Dish Network or DirecTV instead of cable; that was never something we could do in the past when we lived in a condo, but it's viable now that we have a house with plenty of room for a south-facing dish on the roof. And unlike Rog we wouldn't have to worry about snow on the dish! Still, it would suck to be out the money we paid for the new TiVo just one year ago, since it wouldn't be compatible with satellite service. We'd presumably have to get whichever DVR the provider offers, and it probably wouldn't be as nifty and user-friendly as TiVo, but at least the dreaded macroblocking presumably wouldn't be a factor.

Yesterday, we TiVo'd "Oprah" (luckily, there was only a wee bit of macroblocking) because Valerie Bertinelli was going to be on to discuss her new book, and we wanted to hear the promised dirt about her cocaine use and her marriage to Eddie Van Halen. I grew up watching Valerie on "One Day At A Time" and never missed her TV movies, which always had sensational names like "The Seduction of Gina" and "Shattered Vows." Lately, she has been back in the public eye as a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig. Valerie is so sweet, enthusiastic and bubbly, she seems like the kind of person you'd love to have as a friend.

Of course, "Oprah" being what it is, there was a lot of talk about Valerie's weight loss; she even provided a tour of her fridge and freezer. She used to be addicted to frozen jalapeno poppers, and she keeps a box in her freezer to prove to herself that she doesn't need them anymore. Now she eats 10-calorie Jell-O with fat-free whipped topping instead. People who talk about losing weight on TV always carry on about how delicious their new lo-cal snacks are. C'mon, you can't convince me that Jell-O is as delicious as jalapeno poppers (and I say that as someone who has never eaten a jalapeno popper). Will Valerie be able to sustain her weight loss and stay away from the poppers? Based on photos, former Jenny spokesgal Kirstie Alley seems to have regained some of the weight she lost. Losing is hard, but keeping it off is harder. Just ask Oprah.
posted by 125records @ 1:05 PM   3 comments
Monday, February 25, 2008
Oscar! '08: Attack of the Montages
Every time the Oscars are on, I find myself wishing that the ceremony will start with that song Billy Crystal always used to do: "It's a wonderful night for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar! Who will win?" Much as I adore Jon Stewart, Billy really was the best Oscar host, wasn't he?

Last year I made the mistake of attending an Oscar viewing party which obligated me to sit through the entire thing. This year, I looked forward to TiVo'ing it and fast forwarding through the commercials and dull parts, but we're having issues with our TiVo (more on that later, perhaps) and were obligated to -- yes -- sit through the entire thing. At least we could mute the commercials and read the Chronicle Pink Section during the musical numbers that weren't from "Once."

Favorite moment: Every year, it seems like I bitch about those endless Chuck Workman montages, so I have to say the Salute to Binoculars & Periscopes made me guffaw. That was one of the few things that really bore the stamp of the "Daily Show" writing team that went west with Jon (along with the "Gaydolf Titler" joke, which I believe he'd previously used on "TDS," and a little riff suggesting Cate Blanchett is such a versatile actress that she had even played the pit bull in "No Country For Old Men").

Second favorite: Marketa Irglova gets called back on stage to finish her acceptance speech! Since I was an early adopter of "Once," I was really excited to see "Falling Slowly" win. I kind of figured it would, since the three "Enchanted" songs must have split the Disney vote and no one saw "August Rush." It almost makes up for the year Phil Collins beat Elliot Smith and Aimee Mann.

Best dressed: Katherine Heigl. There were so many red dresses at the Oscars, but she stood out. That's what glamour's all about.

Worst dressed: I've seen it on a couple best-dressed lists, but Cameron Diaz's dress looked like a bunch of randomly folded pink fabric to me. I'm sure everyone else will say Diablo Cody and Tilda Swinton, but I'm grateful whenever someone wears an outfit that looks like they picked it out themselves, as opposed to a high-priced stylist's cautious choice.

Worst shoes: Joe is always asking me which color shoes go with whatever pants he's wearing, but now that Daniel Day-Lewis has worn brown shoes with a black tux, all bets are off, and from now on I'm just going say "Eh... whatever."

Biggest disappointment: I'll admit it, I was hoping "Juno" would pull off an upset. I know, I know.

All in all, a pretty meh year. I doubt many moments from Oscar '08 will show up in future "Greatest Oscar Moments" montages.
posted by 125records @ 1:13 PM   4 comments
Monday, February 18, 2008
Very Carrie
It seems like it's commitment enough to have season ticket packages to two theaters (ACT and Shotgun), but Joe & I made a mini-commitment to Berkeley Rep last year by purchasing a three-ticket subscription. For our final play, I'd picked Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking," since it's a one-person show, and y'all know how much I love those. Plus, who doesn't like Carrie Fisher? She's funny and self-deprecating and has been remarkably open about her own substance abuse and mental health issues.

Berkeley Rep has been promoting the show for months now with "CARRIE FISHER IS COMING TO BERKELEY REP!" ads, posters, mailings, etc. It's obviously paying off, since our Sunday matinee was sold out. However -- and I swear this is true -- before the show started, I overheard a woman a couple seats down from me say, after looking at her program (which has a head shot of Carrie on the cover), "Oh, Carrie Fisher's in this?" I suppose some people just file their season tickets by date and set off with no idea what they're going to see. Still, I found it a bit odd.

"Wishful Drinking" is by no means a polished piece of theater; as solo shows go, no one's going to anoint her as the new Spalding Gray. Basically, "Wishful Drinking" is two hours of Carrie talking to the audience -- about her crazy celebrity upbringing, "Star Wars," marriage to Paul Simon, etc. The main problem with the show is that I can't imagine that anyone is as interested in the life of Carrie Fisher as Carrie herself. For instance, she begins the show by talking about the incident in which a friend of hers was found dead in her home, and raises the house lights so audience members can ask her questions about it. Now, I consider myself a connoisseur of celebrity gossip, but I didn't recall this episode at all. It's not even mentioned in her Wikipedia entry. Are there really people out there who are dying to find out every detail?

Luckily, the show really gets going when Carrie dissects the love lives of her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, with the helpful visual aid of an easel filled with photos. Since a lot of her "Star Wars"-era fans had not been born during the tabloid frenzy that ensued when Eddie dumped America's sweetheart for Elizabeth Taylor, Carrie suggests we think of Debbie as Jennifer Aniston, Eddie as Brad Pitt, and La Liz as Angelina Jolie. Another highlight of the show comes when Carrie discusses her experience working on "Star Wars," with lots of pokes at George Lucas (wonder if he'll come down from Marin to see the show?) -- for instance, he refused to let her wear a bra under her costume because "there's no underwear in space." She then brings a life-size "Princess Leia sex doll" onstage, and picks an audience member to come up to examine it to see if he can figure out how, uh, it "works."

The show is often very funny, and a must-see for anyone obsessed with celebrity gossip and/or Princess Leia, and as for whether or not it counts as "theater," who really cares? Berkeley Rep presents a lot of classic and challenging work, and if they want to make a buck or two by bringing a real-life celebrity to town, I have no problem with that. Tomorrow is the official opening night, and it'll be interesting to see what our local critics have to say.

One distraction: Even though the set has a chair and a chaise longue on it, Carrie doesn't sit still for long, and when she paces back and forth across the stage, it's a bit alarming to see how graceless she is. She is only 51, but moves haltingly, like someone much older. She hasn't recently had a hip or knee replacement, has she? If she had, I'd think she'd have worked it into the show.
posted by 125records @ 4:34 PM   0 comments
Sunday, February 17, 2008
iTunes Meme
Everybody's doing it! I don't have as many songs in my iTunes playlist as Rog & Steve do, but it would apparently take over 3 whole days to listen to everything, which is a pretty good chunk o'time.

Total length: 3:02:01:12 (1093 songs)

First and last songs (by title):
A.M. 180 - Grandaddy
1020 AM - Spoon
Odd bit of convergence there...

Sort by time - shortest and longest:
Droplet, Apples in Stereo (13 seconds)
Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in D Major: I. Andante comodo, the San Francisco Symphony (30:31)
Non-classical: The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton, Beck (10:36)

Sort by Album - first and last:
A-Z, Colin Newman
Yours, Mine & Ours, the Pernice Brothers

Sort by Artist - first and last:
Aimee Mann
The 88

Top five played songs:
All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth, New Pornographers
Direct Hit, Art Brut
Sugar Baby, Kristin Hersh
Car Radio, Spoon
Metal Detektor, Spoon

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 1 (Museum of Sex, Robyn Hitchcock)
Death: 12 (all but one of them from Death Cab for Cutie)
Love: 52
You: 118
Home: 4
Boy: 14
Girl: 20 (most of them because of Spoon's Girls Can Tell)

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle:
I Don't Wanna Waste Your Time, Over the Rhine
Not So Fast, The Lodger
All The Old Showstoppers, New Pornographers
You Got Me, Tris McCall & The New Jack Trippers
Kim Wilde, Charlotte Hatherley
posted by 125records @ 9:33 PM   0 comments
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Thrillpeddling
I like to think that one of the running themes of this blog is a touch of civic pride for the sorts of experiences one can have here in the City by the Bay. Last night, Joe & I went to see one of our label's performers, Jill Tracy, in her special Valentine's Day show "Lovers & Other Monsters." It was being held at the Hypnodrome, home of the theatrical troupe Thrillpeddlers, which specializes in bringing back the macabre entertainment of the Grand Guignol. Besides a wonderful set of music from Ms. Tracy and her two-man ensemble, the show featured:

1. A play ("The Torture of Cavaradossi"), based on a famous scene in the opera "Tosca," in which a man is tortured by two escaped female prisoners, who slice off his genitalia (warning: Thrillpeddlers is not for those who can't stomach the sight of lots of fake blood).
2. A musical adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story about an otherworldly violinist.
3. A PowerPoint presentation about the history of Parisian whorehouses in the 20s and 30s by scholar Mel Gordon.
4. The serving of desserts at intermission adapted from real recipes served at those very same Parisian whorehouses -- yum!

For the locals among you, the show runs (with slight variations) through Sunday, Feb. 17. Punk legend Jello Biafra will appear at the Saturday performance.
posted by 125records @ 3:02 PM   1 comments
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Keeping it together
Anyone who's been married for more than a few years should check out this article from the New York Times' "Well" blog. "Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale," writes Tara Parker-Pope. "Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night."

In other words, if you spend every Saturday night going to dinner & a movie, your marriage is likely to slide slowly into dullness. You need to shake things up and do something new and exciting! "For couples who have a reasonably good but slightly dull relationship, novelty may help reignite old sparks."

This makes a lot of sense to me, and I suppose it could help explain why Joe and I have been happily married for the better part of a decade. We've climbed pyramids in Mexico and ridden a ferry through Norwegian fjords; we've attended silent film festivals and hard rock concerts; we've been to the circus and Cirque du Soleil. We've volunteered together; we've enjoyed meals at high-end restaurants and humble burger joints; we've taken road trips over mountains and through deserts. We've gone to see everything from Shakespeare plays to "The Simpsons Movie."

So the question is, what does the modern couple-on-the-go do when it's done everything? Here are a few things we've never done; we may never want to do them, but hey, the option's there!
  • NASCAR
  • Anything "singalong"/"sing-it-yourself"
  • Applied to be on "The Amazing Race"
  • Scrapbooking
  • Zorbing
  • Attended a costume party or masquerade
  • Gone on a cruise
If you've been with your partner for a long time, what interesting activities have you pursued together?
posted by 125records @ 3:11 PM   3 comments
Monday, February 11, 2008
Get F#$%@
I was super excited to see this morning's Get Fuzzy:

photo
The Vasa was a Swedish ship which was built for King Gustav II Adolf. It spent over 300 years in Stockholm Harbor before being salvaged in the early 1960s. The restored ship, remarkably intact due to the harbor's cold water, can be viewed at the Vasa Museum, one of Stockholm's most popular tourist attractions.

However, even more so than the Vasa reference was the fact that Satchel is cursing in Swedish! Jävlar (pronounced something like yeah-vlar) literally means "devils," but you wouldn't want to use it in polite company. It's the kind of thing your dad would say if he accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer. How educational comic strips can be!
posted by 125records @ 5:10 PM   0 comments
Sunday, February 10, 2008
If it's Sunday, it must be Belgium
My pal Rog writes: "I find I'm less interested in reading (music, movie, theater) reviews and things like that than in reading about the blogger's personal life and their experiences/observations (including humorous observations about daily life)." Unfortunately, my day-to-day life is, quite frankly, dull, and I don't have a lifetime's worth of hilarious David Sedaris-like anecdotes to fall back on (though I've often wondered how much of what Sedaris writes is actually true, or at the very least greatly embellished). So... reviews!

Despite constantly saying that I'm going to cut down on outside entertainment so I can spend more time over the weekends working around the house & yard, there's always something going on that's hard to resist. This weekend, Joe and I finally caught up with "Charlie Wilson's War" (mediocre) and visited the Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery, which is the kind of place I wish had existed when I was a teenager. You pay a $10 admission fee and then you have access to three rooms full of vintage pinball machines, all set for free play. I hadn't played pinball in a long time and wasn't particularly good at it, but if you lose all your balls in the first two minutes, who cares? Hit replay! I played so much pinball that my shoulders started aching. Kids can get in for a mere $5, and I was pleased to see that one dad had brought a few small boys to introduce them to the noble pastime.

Today, we headed over to San Francisco, and it was practically a storybook experience: no aggressive panhandlers, and we only witnessed one act of public urination! Yes, Mayor Newsom really is cleaning up the city! Last summer, I was disappointed to have missed (due to our Jamaica trip) the debut run of Richard Louis James' one-man show "Tea 'n Crisp," in which the extremely gifted Bay Area actor portrays the late gay icon Quentin Crisp. Luckily, the show is now running at the SF Playhouse in honor of the centennial of Crisp's birth, and it's well worth checking out, even if you're not a Crisp devotee (as many in the audience obviously were -- the woman next to me was carrying a hardcover copy of Crisp's autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant.) I first heard about Crisp when I was a teenager, and the British pop label Cherry Red Records released An Evening with Quentin Crisp. He was very funny, and a true English eccentric, but for many gays & straights alike, his message of taking pride in being yourself continues to resonate a decade after his passing. To create the show, James has obviously internalized Crisp's writings & performances to the point where he can, in the second act, take questions from the audience -- even on contemporary issues like cell phones, global warming and gay marriage -- and answer them in a way that seems perfectly Crisp-like.

After "Tea 'n Crisp," we saw the new film "In Bruges." Hearing the initial description of "In Bruges" -- dark comedy about hit men -- I was completely uninterested, since that topic has been done to death ("Grosse Pointe Blank," "Prizzi's Honor," "The Matador," etc.). But then I heard that it was directed and written by Martin McDonagh, the Irish playwright who wrote "The Pillowman." After multiple theatrical successes, McDonagh renounced writing for the stage and declared his intention to focus on film. Surely someone as gifted as McDonagh would bring something new to the subject, right? And indeed he does; "In Bruges" isn't a masterpiece on the level of "The Pillowman," but it is quirky, surreal, profane, offensive, and often uproariously funny. McDonagh's two Irish hit men, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, have been sent to the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium, for some unknown reason by their boss (Ralph Fiennes), and told to await further instructions. Gleeson's Ken delights in the scenery, visiting museums and historic churches, while Farrell's Ray takes an instant dislike to the town until he meets a beautiful young woman on a film set. My first thought was that obviously one of the two hit men would be assigned to kill the other -- isn't that always the case in any film involving a pair of hit men? -- but the script goes off in a lot of weird and random directions and is far from predictable. I particularly enjoyed the setting of Bruges, the kind of place most viewers aren't likely to have visited but will probably be intrigued by after seeing this film. Just watch out for flying bullets.
posted by 125records @ 8:44 PM   1 comments
Friday, February 08, 2008
Flying slowly
The longest week of my life was spent in Calgary, Alb., Canada. Joe was being sent to Calgary on a business trip and since I'd never been there, but had enjoyed visiting other cities in Canada, I decided to tag along, I should mention that it was February. Calgary is no doubt a lovely town but in February, it was incredibly cold, gray and gloomy. What's more, every indoor space was heated to the max. My sinus cavities dried out so thoroughly that I had a nosebleed the entire week.

I've never been back to Calgary, though I wouldn't mind going there again at a more temperate time of year. Whenever I visit Florida, however, time passes entirely too quickly. I try to extend it every year -- last year, we were there for six full days, which seemed too short, so we stretched it out to seven this time. It still went by fast. Of course, my parents are down there for two and a half months and they say it still goes by fast. Things would probably be different if they were back home in Michigan, which has been hit by one snowstorm after another this year. (Not surprisingly, images of the snowy North often appear in the local paper and newscasts down there.)

As I write this, we're on the plane flying from Tampa to Las Vegas, where we change planes (there are no nonstop flights between the two Bay Areas). I wish the amazing time compression we experience in Florida was in effect during the plane trips, but alas, flying for me is like being on Calgary time. I set my watch back to Pacific Time and I haven't calculated how long we've been up here, but the hours drag by. The worse the turbulence, the slower it seems to take, and the Fasten Seat Belt sign has been on throughout all but a short period of this trip. Tampa to Las Vegas takes 4 hours and 40 minutes. That time passes rather quickly when I'm sitting at my desk at home -- my dad bought me one of those super-fancy ergonomic office chairs that allow you to sit in comfort for hours on end, and I frequently have to remind myself to get up and stretch every so often -- but it drags on an airplane, no matter how many books, podcasts, albums, crossword and Sudoku puzzles and DVDs I have at my disposal.

The woman across the aisle from me is painting her nails a glossy magenta, something that seems rather risky when the Fasten Seat Belt sign is on. Looking around, I see several people who are sleeping peacefully, even through the turbulence. I hate them, mainly because I would love to slip into a deep slumber as soon as we taxi away from the gate and awaken just as we're landing. Like most nervous flyers, though, I can't sleep on planes. I sometimes wonder if I could if I had one of those first class berths on an international flight, the kind that reclines into a bed, and has a little screen around it for privacy. They probably feed you so much rich food and give you so many complimentary cocktails and glasses of wine that you just pass out.

Right now, we're on Southwest, where you get a bag of peanuts, some of that bright orange cheese spread and tiny breadsticks, and a stick of salami. That's actually more than you get on most flights these days -- the last time I flew a non-Southwest airline, we didn't even get any peanuts, although of course you have the option of buying some little bags of snacks for five bucks. Southwest is about as far from international first class as you can get, but I kind of enjoy its egalitarian one-class system and the flight attendants seem less surly than the ones on United. Their in-flight magazine is usually pretty entertaining, and even though they don't show a movie, when was the last time you actually saw a good movie on an airplane, anyway? It's usually something that you would never have paid a dime to see in a theater -- once, I found myself watching something starring the Olsen Twins.

I still maintain that the best way to pass the time on an airplane would be if they provided in-air wi-fi. I would finally have time to catch up on the latest YouTube videos, not to mention the latest news 'n gossip on Defamer and Go Fug Yourself, I could read all the "Amazing Race" recaps on Television Without Pity. All of my email would be read and answered when I walk through the door after my trip, and if absolutely nothing else worked, I could Google "fear of flying." Can somebody get to work on that, please?
posted by 125records @ 5:47 PM   0 comments
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Not blogging is the new blogging
My dad: "You should have put a notice up on your blog on Jan. 15, saying that you wouldn't be writing your blog for a while."

Me: "I didn't know that I wouldn't be posting anything. I just wasn't inspired."

Yes, one person complained that I haven't been writing lately. I suspect the rest of the world either (a) didn't notice or (b) may have noticed, but figured I must have at least been alive & well since I've been commenting on other people's blogs.

The truth is that unlike my pals Steve and Rog, I don't feel the need to post daily entries, and sometimes time just passes. Unfortunately, I haven't spent all my not-blogging time reading, although I did finish a couple novels during NaJuReMoNoMo, Peter Lovesey's The False Inspector Dew and Ellen Hart's The Mortal Groove. I also read two nonfiction books, Peter Sagal's The Book of Vice and Jennifer Niesslein's Practically Perfect in Every Way. All four books were very entertaining; NPR/"Wait Wait" fans may be interested to learn that Sagal's book includes chapters on swinging (what used to be known as wife-swapping back in the 70s), strippers and pornography. The things some people do in the name of research!

Perhaps the problem is that I just grew tired of writing about myself and my activities; I wish the blog had a purpose, like, say, The "Blog" of "Unnecessary Quotation Marks or Brand New. Blogs that are useful and interesting to people other than the friends and relatives of the blogger!

I'm not prepared to shut down entirely -- I'm sure there will be things I feel the need to get off my chest -- but perhaps these posts will become rarer as I try to find new and enlightening things to say.
posted by 125records @ 8:03 PM   3 comments
About Me
Name: Sue
Home: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
About Me: Email me: talk at interbridge dot com
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