Thoroughly enjoyed Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.  It was hilarious, sweet, and just plain old fun to watch.  We watched a late showing on Thursday night with a really fun crowd that laughed as hard as we did.  I downloaded the soundtrack Friday morning and have been listening to it ever since.  The iTunes reviews were pretty annoying to read.  There are a lot of the snobby indie music listeners who are disturbed that the general masses are discovering their precious little bands.  They call the movie soundtrack a big sellout from the bands.  I think these people are more concerned about being an indie music guru than they are about the success of the band or enjoyment of the music.  I don’t keep up with the indie music scene (anymore?) and I welcome a soundtrack like this to show me the highlights — regardless of how old they are!

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The Cat Power concert was good last night.  Warehouse Live is a really cool venue.  People weren’t kidding about how clean they keep the place.  I was unsure whether they were going to let me bring in my D200 but after consulting the Yelp forums I decided it was worth a try.  As we approached the door I saw a girl with a dSLR camera slung over her shoulder.  The door guy let her in without a hitch so I breathed a sigh a relief.  When the door guy saw my camera bag, he asked to see what was inside and called over another guy to ask if my camera was okay.  The head security guy said that I had to put it back into my car and that I could take pictures with my cellphone if I wanted to.  So we walked back to the car.  I’ll admit that I was a little upset that the other girl got away with it.  Fortunately, as we were walking back to the door guys, we saw that the head security guy was escorting the girl with the camera out and telling her that she had to put her camera in her car.  Not that I wish misfortune on others — I just appreciate consistency in rules.  I’m not sure if that’s Warehouse Live’s policy or Cat Power’s policy.  She had her own camera guys taking photos of her during the show so I’m guessing it’s a Cat Power policy.

I had the same gripes last night that I always have about concerts.  Body odor, lack of personal space, obnoxious drunk girls (or just plain obnoxious underage girls as was the case last night), and all of the waiting!

I know everyone keeps talking about how our generation is all about instant gratification and people don’t know the value of waiting anymore.  I think the concert-going subculture is one of the remaining groups of patient people in the world.  With really long attention spans!  We waited in the studio for thirty minutes before they opened up the doors to let us into the ballroom.  (I’d really like to see someone in the studio in the future, the place is so intimate and cozy.)  Then we waited standing up near the stage for quite some time until the first act came on stage.  The opener was Appaloosa who played music from her Macbook (which was covered in stickers) and sang along to it.  Truth be told, it was actually pretty good music — but there was nothing to look at.  She did not have the star power or stage presence to really draw in the crowd.  She wore a strapless glittery red dress over blue jeans and cowboy boots which I guess was interesting.  Besides doing an awkward dance now and then and her constant readjusting of her dress so that her boobs wouldn’t fall out — there was nothing to see.  Then there was a LONG wait between the opener and Cat Power.  Stagehands came onstage to check the mics and the cords, tape setlists on the floor, place water bottles and towels around the stage, place a huge fan, etc… is this on purpose?  To create so much suspense and buildup that by the time the band comes on stage you’re delirious with happiness that it’s finally starting and you cheer so loud — slightly unsure if you’re cheering for the band or if you’re cheering that it’s finally starting.

Haha, I know I sound like I didn’t like the concert but I really did.  Chan Marshall is incredibly talented.  Her songs and her voice are both so emotional.  She was really in the zone for some of the songs.  I didn’t feel like she connected very well with the audience even though she did turn the fan towards us to cool us off, hand a girl in the audience her onstage cocktail, throw flowers out to the audience at the end of the concert.  Why is it that when musicians smile, it makes everyone watching want to smile back?  Musicians are mesmerizing.  I did feel that she was in her own world for a lot of the concert and she didn’t really say anything to us.  I have a suspicion that she was instructed not to talk during the concert to avoid a repeat of this.

Anyway.  This is a really disjointed post but it’s Saturday morning and I’m not used to being up on Saturday mornings.

Go horns!

The older I get, the harder it is for me to stomach the media-created “Christian Right.”

So many misrepresentations, so many embarrassments.

As a Christian, I was appalled to watch this video and accept the fact that this man preaches each week to a congregation.  This is really just tasteless:

It starts slow but it picks up quite a bit.  Link from Metafilter.

I could never run for President.  Besides the fact that I was born in Brazil, I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing things like this about my family.

Something strange that I have observed about men and women (this is, of course, an overgeneralization) is that women love to shop for their unmentionables and men hate to shop for their unmentionables.  I’m not sure if it’s some sort of male challenge to see how long their underwear and undershirts will last but I pretty much am always the one that suggests that the husband needs new underwear.

I have a bone to pick with the person who is in charge of ordering underwear at all Wal*Marts and Targets.  There is ALWAYS a ton of XXL, XXXL, M and S sized underwear and usually a drastic lack of L sized underwear.  This is an inventory control issue.  Why haven’t they figured it out yet?

Also, I have noticed that there is an alarming lack of briefs.  There’s always a lot of boxers, boxer briefs, trunks, and even bikini briefs (yikes), but very few packages of briefs.  I have no theory about why this is.  But the husband is extremely loyal to briefs and I’ve cautioned him to maybe start transitioning to something else because it seems like they are phasing briefs out.

I have also observed that the husband generates three times as much laundry as I do.  He wears business casual clothes to work (dry cleaning), gym-clothes during lunch, sometimes gym-clothes at night, and something comfortable to walk around the house in.  That’s a lot of laundry.

Thus concludes this trivial post.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but in intermediate school I took an architectural graphics course as one of my electives.  We learned the basics about how to build a house.  I was surprised to learn that not only were there standard sizes for everything (doors, windows, etc), there are also standard space requirements.  For example, there needs to be a certain amount of clearance around a door to in order for there to be good design.  There also needs to be a certain amount of space between a toilet and the door and the sink.  Our teacher would criticize us for trying to squeeze things too closely together because he said someone actually living in the house we were designing would find it uncomfortable.  (Sidenote: I had the great idea to design a medieval castle for my final project so I didn’t have to follow any of the architectural standards for it.)

I know a lot of homes break these standards.  Especially in dense metropolitan cities like NY, condos and apartments completely ignore these standards.  I’m okay with that because I know real estate is expensive.

What really irks me is when I visit a large public restroom in a restaurant and whoever measured the stall space didn’t follow the standards.  I really hate it when the stall doors open inwards and I have to risk pressing my knee pits against the rim of the bowl in order to close the door.  Gross.  And yeah, maybe smaller bathroom stalls are cheaper but it sure is a lousy way to skimp.

I love good freeware. I had to convert some .jpeg files to .pdf files this morning and stumbled across a really good freeware called Magic PDF.  After you install it, the software acts as a virtual printer.  Anytime you need to convert something to PDF, simply print it and choose Magic PDF as your printer.  It’ll prompt you to save the file and voila!  PDFed.  Simple, easy to use, and FREE!  No watermark or popup ads like some other freeware/shareware.

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Went to the Optometrist today.  Pretty ridiculous as usual.  Puffs of air shooting into my eyes, looking at the red barn at the end of the road and watching it slowly get blurry, following the tips of pens, staring into bright lights, trying to see how many fingers the assistant was holding up using only my peripheral vision, reading numbers in the “make sure you’re not colorblind” book, wearing the 3D glasses to choose which dot pops out, choosing number 1 or number 2, etc.  Why is Optometry school so hard to get into?

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Also, I updated my links and recategorized them.  The new wordpress makes it really easy.  “What links?” you might ask.  The links on the right side of the page– so far down the page that you’ve probably never even seen them before.  Take a look if you’re bored.