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The Who Got a Raw Deal    Feb 08, 2010
Now I'm not going to sit here and pretend it was a great show. It wasn't a good performance and judging by the general reaction most of you probably liked it much less than I. 30 seconds into Pinball Wizard it was pretty obvious they couldn't hit the high notes they once achieved. There was a muffing of the words at one point and apparently (I did not see this myself) Pete Townshend messed up the guitar playing at one point but the sound continued flawlessly, indicating there may have been some prerecording or a backup band tucked away somewhere. Oh, and then there were the multiple stomach shots...unnecessary.

However...

At some point in the planning of the Super Bowl there was this guy, we'll call him Ted. Ted's job is to plan the halftime show. Ted calls a meeting (he works for a big corporation after all) blah blah blah committee finds a variety of acts blah blah Janet Jackson blah blah blah consensus blah blah blah he calls up Pete or Roger (or their manager, really) and says we want The Who to be the act at the Super Bowl halftime show. The Who, 3 years removed from their last tour, take the opportunity because they love being in the limelight and (who are we kidding) 12 minutes of work has never paid so well. (Yes, they prep, I know, but it's simpler that way.)

My point is, somebody picked them to perform. My question is, was the steps taken to ensure they could still perform at a level the Super Bowl audience would expect? My belief is that they did not and that person, or group of people, is more responsible than The Who for a Super Bowl performance that did not meet expectations. I believe a case could be made that The Who bears a fair amount of responsibility as they should have realized they were not in peak form but it's hard to find them culpable because which aging rock group would say no to that opportunity?

On another note, I think if we slightly separate ourselves from memories of an artist at their prime and the reality of a performance past their peak we can be very pleased with the show we see. This is easier to when physically in their presence, I believe, a fortune The Who did not have with a nationally televised event. When I saw Bob Dylan a few years back he was nowhere near the Dylan of old. However, it was clear he was a different singer, it was as if he was a new artist covering Bob Dylan in a unique way. But maybe that's part of where The Who went wrong. Rather than embrace that they are no longer The Who of old and reinvent their old songs they played the part of a cover band trying to be "THE WHO" and falling short.

So yes, the show could have been better but there was someone who decided they were the right fit. Maybe The Who sold out or genuinely thought they could pull it off like the days of old but all blame should not be pinned on them.

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Awareness    Jan 13, 2010
This was initially one post in two parts but the first went so long I broke it up. Since I don't post that often right now I don't want you to miss the first post of the day on Haiti. Also, donate.

I've had some misgivings lately about "awareness", especially as it relates to social media. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people being more aware of life outside their apartment. I'm actually quite for it. However, I have concerns that people confuse raising awareness for action.

I have seen this twice recently. Initially I thought of this with the Facebook day of posting your bra color for breast cancer awareness and today it was the quake in Haiti.

One day last week all these cryptic status messages which only stated a color started popping up. Being the curious person I googled and found it was to raise awareness for breast cancer. One result I found stated that the purpose was that while the women looked under their shirt to identify the color of their bra they were encouraged to give themselves a little self-exam. (I cannot find that link now)

That's all well and good in theory but how does it work in practice? Did women actually checked themselves or did this simply become a fun Facebook game? Did anyone see the posts and learn anything about breast cancer?

The easy answer is that if even one woman checked herself or was prompted to schedule an overdue mammogram the gimmick was a success. And I completely agree with that. However, couldn't it have been much more effective if the status said "blue. Get checked." or anything of that nature to prompt action? I think this post, chosen because it was the first Google returned and NOT because it supports my point says it wonderfully. "When someone has found the cause of the bra color updates, they have been made aware. Mission accomplished. Some people may stumble upon a blog or article that spreads breast cancer awareness further. There is then possibility that people will be educated on breast cancer risks, self exams, early detection and more." (my emphasis) Why leave it to possibility that someone will stumble across the reason for the posts when it is so easy to include a link that would ensure they understand as well as provide solid information on how to take action? It's much less fun than posting just the color but a much more effective means of raising awareness (if that's your goal).

I saw this again today with "awareness" for the Haitian earthquake. First off, if it was noon and by reading facebook was how you learned of the earthquake you need to get out of the fucking hole you live in. So what purpose does it serve to say your thoughts are with those in Haiti when there is no action behind it, other than posting some generic blog post? How much more effective would it be to say "my thoughts are with those in Haiti, you can donate $10 by texting HAITI to 90999 if you are an AT&T customer or go to (choose the website of your choice)"? I was particularly bothered by twibbon, a twitter app that allows you to add a Haitian flag overlay to your twitter picture. Today they drove over 10,000 people to their site to add the Haitian flag to their twitter image yet on that page they don't provide any information on how to make a donation to those whom they are allegedly trying to support. Yes, they made people aware, I took note. But what did they DO? What tangible step was taken by their site? How hard would it have been to post a site to any one charity or a list of available charities to encourage people take real action?

Thanks for listening to my rant, I hope it moves you to act, even if that is just posting here to tell me I'm full of crap (but I would prefer if you chose to donate money to Haitian relief).

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Haiti    Jan 13, 2010
I'll say straight away the Haiti earthquake struck me more than expected and may have flavored this post more than even I would anticipate.

First off, an explanation of why I think it hit me. In the spring of 1998 or 1999 (it bleeds together by now) I spent my spring break in the Dominican Republic. Far from the all-included resort experience most people have when they visit the tropical country I spent a good amount of my trip among those much less fortunate than I. It's an experience I have struggled with since; to the point that for many years it paralyzed aspects of my life because I felt as though I could never do enough to help or live a life with some sense of solidarity with the conditions I saw.

Most directly affecting my mind last night and today was a trip to a Haitian refugee camp in the DR. Haitians are treated like shit in the DR. Think back to the days where a white would not sit next to a black on a bus in the United States and that was exactly where it was (is?) in the DR with Haitians. I sat on a bus where the only person that would set next to a Haitian was an American. Please don't get me wrong, none of this gives me any authority on the situation and that isn't my intent, it's simply to relate my very personal feelings.

The Haitian refugee camp was the worst living conditions I had ever seen. No running water or electricity and the only 'fresh' water they had access to was in a ravine behind the camp that was so heavily polluted and littered that in my upbringing I wouldn't set foot in it, much less drink from it. I absolutely cannot do the experience justice and can only say that if that life was better than the life they had in Haiti I can't fathom what life in Haiti held.

All those thoughts which had fallen largely to my subconscious came rushing back last night and moreso today. I woke up a bit crabby. On the way to work I felt unduly frustrated at those who wasted an extra styrofoam cup to insulate their iced coffee in sub-freezing weather. At work I felt unreasonable anger towards the woman next to me for griping for 10 minutes about the extensive streak of cold weather. After work I felt an escalated amount of frustration for a coworker who searched for and downloaded music on his iPhone while in my exclusive company. I searched for ways to aid those in Haiti and felt strong disapproval at those who were raising awareness without any clear sign of how they would provide assistance...more on that to come.

So the earthquake evoked a lot of emotion from me. That was most apparent to me when I opened this photo gallery at work and found myself tearing up at some points. (Most notably #31, a relatively tame picture by the standards of this gallery which simply showed a father carrying his dusty daughter by the light of car headlamps.) This is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and they have been struck by a tragedy that by some accounts may wipe out 6% of their population.

For what it's worth I've decided to donate to Partners in Health. It's a nice coincidence that they are local to Boston but beyond that I have known of their work in Haiti prior to my time in Boston and they were listed as a preferred recipient of funds by the group I initially decided to donate to, charity: water (whom I initially chose because 100% of public donations go to those they serve.

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Playing Tourist    Dec 15, 2009
Jen left for London on Friday evening, leaving me in Boston but kind of feeling like I am on vacation as well. That could read as if I am looking for a break, which is not what I mean at all. It's just that a large part of my routine in Boston will thrown off for 10 days.

I awoke to go to the bathroom at 6:40 Sunday but before returning to bed as planned I checked my phone and saw Jen had written in the very early hours of the morning. I groggily read of her plans to tour some castles on Sunday and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to do something touristy for myself and visit East Boston.

East Boston isn't exactly a tourist trap. It's generally a working class part of the city. In my 8+ years in Boston I had never spent any time there but what drove me there Sunday morning was the presence of The Madonna Shrine perched atop a large hill. I had been told it was a peaceful place with a great vantage point of the city.

It was a chilly (25F) morning with crisp blue skies that were expected to cloud over by around noon and start pouring a cold rain by around 4 so I decided to not crawl back in bed until a more reasonable hour and instead layered a winter jacket over a hooded sweatshirt and long sleeved tee and hopped on the train. After a quick stop at Dunkin I was up to the shrine by 8:30. I noticed that Pope John Paul II dedicated the plaza some 20 years ago. They were celebrating Christmas with a nativity scene and I learned something new...top hats were all the rage at the time of Jesus' birth. I saw a new view of the skyline and the harbor (I like the colors in the foreground). There are some cool mosaics of the Stations of the Cross and just beyond some row homes which caught my eye. The actual shrine is quite weathered. On the way down the hill I noticed an etching in the stairs and wondered how bored someone must be to write just that.

On the walk back down the hill and my subsequent 5 miles I noticed two things. First, there must be more statues of the Virgin Mary per capita in this area of town than any other. They also seemed to be leaders in those inflatable Christmas lawn thingy's, of course they were all lifeless lumps at 9 AM.

I was walking down a little street towards the harbor and looked up and was shocked to see a 757 staring me in the eyes. It was a couple football fields away but it took me by surprise. I turned the corner and walked along the harbor until I was directly behind flights taking off (this one was just about to make his final turn). I couldn't capture it well but there was noticeable change in the water behind the larger planes as they take off.

I then headed out onto the peninsula of Winthrop where there was a beaten down shack on land the government has since claimed because it is directly below the descent of southerly approaching flights. Just beyond the shack was a cop directing traffic at a Dunkin Donuts...it struck me on a few levels. A few more miles down I found stairs to access a small beach and stood at water level and looked back at Logan and the city. At this point my stomach was angry that I had walked so far on an empty stomach so I turned around. On the way back I tried to take a shot of a driveway between two homes that opens upon the harbor. It wasn't quite the shot I was hoping for but you can only do so much with a point and shoot.

Anyhow, that is me being a tourist in the city I have lived in for almost 9 years. I think this retelling was a bit dry, bear with me as I regain my ability to write here.

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The Switch    Dec 13, 2009
This is my first post...no, not in two months, though I guess that is true. This is my first post from my Mac. Huzzah.

I made the switch after much contemplation on Black Friday. Apple had a deal and my hope was to parlay their special with my corporate discount. It didn't work as such but I made the switch regardless.

It wasn't an easy decision for two primary reasons. Most notably, the price. Macs are still more expensive than their Windows-running counterparts. It really left me conflicted, I am kind of a cheap-ass. A second and lesser reason was the comfort I had with the freeware/old software I had for my PC. I could swiftly install all the software I was used to, with the exception of Office, for which I lost the install disk some time ago.

As my circa-2005 laptop slowly ground to a halt I knew I had to find a replacement. The comfort choice would be a faster PC laptop (than my existing) running Windows 7 and moving/installing my existing software over. However, the ones I looked at left me wanting something more. That something was UNIX.

I wanted integrated UNIX support for one primary reason, to develop this site and other applications locally. When developing on my PC I was forced to write, save, and upload the file, then refresh in a web browser. It wasn't the worst scenario in the world but it was cumbersome, especially when my 'office' at the back of the house gets a pretty lousy internet connection. Sure, I could have installed apache, php, and mysql on a PC but it wasn't running natively as it does on a UNIX box. I also heavily considered an OS-free machine which would allow me to install the Linux version of my liking and the server software mentioned previously. However, I frankly didn't want the responsibility of having no support staff to fall back on should I need it.

Finally, I have been using my Mac at work much more than I had been and I just really like the OS. The trackpad has some fun new features (drag 3 fingers to the left and it takes you back a page while browsing the web, 3 right take you forward), Expose is brilliant for clearing or organizing the desktop, and searching for files and applications is so easy.

I'm not an Apple fanboy, I openly admit their shortcomings (Hello iPhone, welcome to the 21st century with cut and paste in 2009!) and have seen them on this machine (you can't turn off the startup sound without installing a 3rd party app) but all in all, it's slick. So after about 6 weeks of hemming and hawing I took the plunge and am very happy I did.

Anyhow, Merry Christmas. My gift to you is writing again!

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And...Action!    Sep 20, 2009
I was able to take part in a video shoot this morning. A co-worker was shooting a 7 minute film for a film production class and when she needed to cast the role of a bad date she thought of me...how kind. The plot was that Veronica's father makes her go out on some dates rather than follow her dream (helping pandas with developmental disabilities). She goes through a series of bad dates and then meets the right guy only to for an unexpected circumstance to ruin that date and send her father back to provide her the money from her trust so she can pursue her dream.

I've been through the process of video shoots but never in front of the camera. My job has provided the opportunity to be a bona fide video producer...of math videos. It was great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff again--the audio and lighting tests, the long delay of the first take as small details are fixed, how gaffers tape can fix nearly any problem that arises, and the struggle to keep it cool through blazing hot lights and the inability to run the AC (noise).

When I arrived at the nutrition store which would serve as our set the crew was putting the finishing touches on blacking out the street-facing windows. If you've ever seen Zack and Miri you will know what I mean, it was the first thing I thought of. I actually almost mentioned that to the assembled group but in a rare moment of self-filtering I decided that comparing our shoot of three men and a woman to a movie in which they make a porno was less than favorable greeting.

After some introductions to the crew and rest of the cast I changed into my khakis and a polo, the dress of a "young kid" which I will be credited as. I guess it's my boyishly good looks that sealed the deal. I emerged and after some debate they had me deep-six the khaki's in favor of the (khaki) shorts I biked over in.

"The stoner" date was shot before my scene. The basic plot was that the man had the munchies and was cramming spaghetti down his throat as fast as he could, to Veronica's disgust. I mentioned to the crew a story of watching a certain former college quarterback roommate hold a fork laden with a fist-sized mound of spaghetti over his head as he ate at it from the bottom. How I wish I could say he was doing it as a parody of himself. They loved the idea and incorporated it.

When it was my turn they made a game-time decision that I should be texting (in addition to just being young). I will save the details for when I get a copy of the finished video and hopefully get permission to post it to YouTube. It was shot a few different times from different angles, the final of which proved to be most difficult for me. It was shot from over my shoulder so the camera was catching the screen of the phone. It no longer looked realistic when I just moved my thumbs around aimlessly, I had to hit some real letters, add spaces, etc. By no means difficult but if you've ever text messaged while driving...admit it, you have...you know one suffers (texting, I hope). Since it was important to keep a flow to the texting my lines took a turn downward. The final scene took four takes, though one was screwed up both by me and the fire truck that came racing by outside.

I'm not going to say I have a career in acting but I would love to do this again. We had a great cast and crew and had a ton of fun between takes. I offered my services for future films and really hope I was decent enough to get a call-back.

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Omaha Flight    Sep 16, 2009
I'm going to try something new here. Instead of recapping an entire trip (to IA, for a wedding), which can be taxing to me and (I think) the reader, I am going to write about one aspect of it. It's a shame in some ways as there were a lot of great points on this trip. However, I think it is hard to capture all (or even most) of it without it transforming from prose to a series of declarative sentences beginning with 'nex' or 'then'.

Nick saw me off at the security gate in Omaha. It should be noted that Eppley Airfield is the cleanest airport in the world, or at least it says so on the little plastic mats that prevent larger objects from being flushed down the urinal. You know I was tempted to snap a picture but there was just no way in hell I could do so. After grabbing some pizza I sat near the gate and saw a man doing push-ups. Only in Omaha. Or perhaps only in people flying to Jersey...I just don't know.

I was walking down the aisle towards my seat on the Continental flight from Omaha to Newark and noticed a tall blond woman from the terminal sitting in the vicinity of where I would be. I was sure she was a row ahead of me but for the brief moment I had that prospective uplifting that comes with being seated next to an attractive woman on a long flight. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% in a relationship and very contentedly so. There's no desire to stray but maybe it's bred into the Y chromosome...whenever I take my seat I offer a little hope it will be an attractive and funny woman to make conversation with.

As I got closer I realized the woman wasn't near my seat, she was in fact directly next to me. Shazam! (Who says that any more...or ever did?) I was about 4 rows away and saw a man tap her shoulder and they switched seats. There were three rows of seats, two to my left and one to the right of the aisle. I had the seat on the far left and she was just to the left of the aisle. However, a guy one row behind us and on the right didn't have room for his carry-on below his seat so they switched. So not only did I not get to sit next to the blond but I was stuck with a guy with over-sized luggage under the seat. I sent Toby an IM alerting him to my extreme dismay in the whole situation.

Once we reached cruising altitude I started to put on my headphones and the guy next to me leaned over slightly and barely turned his head to say "Sorry about the blonde." "I'm not going to lie," I said with a smile, "I traded down." He replied something to the effect of 'Somewhere there is a man happy to see her go and have some time to himself'. True enough.

Robin and I talked at length about a broad spectrum of topics including health care, the Middle East, and music. I guess the last was an easy topic as he is the tour manager for the rock band that brought us Hot Blooded and Juke Box Hero, among other songs. He and the lead singer were on their way back to NY from a series of shows in the west, ending in a smaller NE town. At one point he got up and I checked my iPod to confirm that of my 11000+ songs not a one was from the band he managed. He also nodded to his left and indicated that the lead singer was on board as well (there was no first class on this relatively small aircraft) and when they were leaving I saw he the singer was wearing a leather shirt, jeans, and some lace-free low-top shoes that, with his gray-ish and spiky hair would fit the mold for an older rock star.

So I had my second semi-celebrity sighting in under a week. Not too shabby.

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