... giving you silence

So next week I'm going to be going on a trip to the UK (London and Manchester). I might check in from time to time, but mostly it's going to be silence.

So, to mark that, here is UK band Gomez performing "Silence"

...unboxing the Deluxe re-issue of Ten

So my wife and I....BIG Pearl Jam fans. Have been that way since "and slowly the earth cooled". If you go around our house it's hard to find a wall that does not have a framed poster from one of their gigs. Big time fans. Willingly-traveled-to-Cleveland types of fans. Bootlegs-of-every-show-we've-been-to fans. Have-seen-Eddie-Sing-Rockin'-in-the-Free-World-with-Bono-and-been-angry-he-was-on-stage types of fans.

So in December we ordered the Super Deluxe Re-Issue of Ten. It's got a few holy grails for Pearl Jam fans, including

• Vinyl and CD editions of Ten, and a recording of one of their early shows.
• The Mamasan tape, which was a tape of music by Stone Gossard that landed in Eddie Vedder's hands. He redubbed his voice over some of the songs and sent the tape back to Stone...thus was born Pearl Jam
• a DVD of their MTV Unplugged performance. Yes, they DID Unplugged early in their career, and it was one of the defining moments of the band. The performance climaxed with Eddie, standing on a chair, writing Pro-Choice on his arm with a marker during Porch. It was an intense moment, and while everyone was releasing Unplugged albums in the 90s, this one stayed underground.
• Swag
  

Now, when most nerds get computers, the do an unboxing where they show the packaging and open it up for everyone. We thought it would be fun to do the same here.

The Front of the box


The back of the box


The spine


Inside the box


The Live LP- Front (yes...vinyl. Sweet sweet vinyl. Best. Medium. Ever)


The Gatefold of the Live LP


The back of the Live LP


The Ten reissue LP


The back of the LP



The CDs and DVD


All the swag (ten points for whoever can tell me the significance of the Mookie Blaylock rookie card)


The CDs, a composition book picture book, and the Mamasan tape (an actual casette!)


Now if I have to explain gatefold and Pearl Jam song and album titles to anyone, I'm-a gonna have to start a music college here on the site as well, and no one wants that!

... not finding it to be as important to be a twit anymore

Last week I talked about Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and how that was normally the first podcast of my week, the one that made the Monday commute to work that much better.

Well, it wasn't always that way. There's one podcast that used to be my Monday morning...and then it was Monday evening podcast. Until this week it was my Tuesday morning podcast, but it's becoming a "when I get to it...maybe at the gym, I dunno..." podcast.

That podcast is This Week in Tech, or TWiT. I've been listening to it for over a year now, and
maybe I just need a break, but I find I'm getting less and less out of it each week.

First of all, it's too long. For me, an hour is a good length for a podcast. At that length I can either get all the way into work, or all the way home from work, or a good workout. The shortest TWiT I can remember in the past year was about 45 minutes long. They tend to clock in regularly at 1:30 to 1:45, and some have come close to two hours. Two hours of pure information would be a lot to take, but it's rarely two hours of information.

TWiT does not present itself as a news show. Host Leo Laporte likes to present it more as a roundtable discussion or a bull session. The problem is that more often than not, any topic quickly descends into either sophomoric jokes, people doing poor accents, unsubstantiated opinions and retractions of those a few minutes later, and reminiscing about the times they used to work together. At its worst, it becomes a platform for one of the hosts to complain about some way that they are getting to short shift on something (like Twitter, or invitations to an event). Occasionally they stray into the territory of condemning an entire industry (like record labels or newspapers or even branches of government) for doing something that they don't agree with. Spread over 1:45, with three commercial breaks that often also descend into irrelevant tangents, the lack of focus, poor humour and attitude towards anyone not on their side of the technological equation gets very frustrating. Often I don't feel as much like a listener but someone on the outside looking in, hoping to learn a little something from a conversation at the next table.

These things only bothered me a little bit, but recently they've become worse in the light of another podcast that I listen to. Slate magazine has a couple of weekly podcasts under their Gabfest banner. One is political and the other is cultural. They both feature a panel that discuss the week's events in a half hour (approximately). The difference is that the Slate podcasts are prepared, have a list of topics, and are focused. TWiT, on the other hand, meanders all over the place before touching on a topic until someone gets tired with it and asks to move on to the next one.

The main difference between the two is not just subject matter, but attitude. The Slate podcasts features intelligent people having a conversation about the week's events, disagreeing at times, but very confident. TWiT features intelligent people having a conversation about the week's events, but also focused on promoting themselves and being very defensive about their opinions and what they do.

TWiT is one of a series of podcasts put together by Leo Laporte, some of which are quite good (MacBreak Weekly will be discussed here very soon). Their flagship show, however, has become more and more frustrating to listen to. I won't drop the podcast, and would never tell anyone else to do do, but it won't be as important me for to listen to it on Tuesday morning as it used to be.

...is taking a train to Brazil (no, not really)

Friday the 13th only gets you down if you let it.

This song won't let you.

And for those of you who mourn your lives from one day to the next/

Well let them take you next!

... gonna get a cattle catcher and wear it when he walks around town.

Life here in Bippity Town in always quite interesting. I've lived in Bippity proper since 2001, and in the GBA (Greater Bippity Area) since 1996. I've also lived a few other places (Minto, Barbados, Halifax...okay three other places) and I've seen a lot of people from different places that move in different ways with their different faces.

There's one thing I've only ever seen in here, or at least I've never seen it on the same scale anywhere else. What I've seen can be postulated as the following:

Gvalentino's theorem on how Bippitonians move
In Bippity Town, people move as if they are the only people in the street or the area. They conduct themselves in such a way that not only assumes that your life is moving at the same rate as theirs, but is probably moving a tick or two slower. This also means that if two or more meet each other and decide to have a conversation, the most logical place for them to have it is in the middle of a high traffic area.

I first noticed this when I moved here and went to the legendary Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street. There were many entry ways to other sections of the store, and if two people were going to have a conversation, that is where they would go, causing a bottleneck for people who were actually moving around and trying to do things. The more I looked the more I noticed this behavior elsewhere: if people needed to talk, they just stopped where they were and started talking be it at the grocery store, in the middle of a parking lot, or on the sidewalk.

The most galling place where this happens all the time, though, is on the TTC. Hardly a day goes by that a narrow part of the platform in rush hour is not blocked by two people just deciding to chat. Sometimes, what appears to be a heavily laden car is actually just packed at one end because a couple of people have stopped to talk and other people can't move from the packed part of the car to the part with oxygen and light.

The worst, however, is reserved for stairs and escalators. The greatest fear I have when I get on an escalator is not getting stuck halfway up if it breaks and no one coming to rescue us. No, it is "what if those people getting towards the top/bottom know each other?" I have lost count (and I used to keep count) of how many times I've watched people getting off an escalator have to make a bit of a running dodge and dash to avoid two people who have decided to have a little chat at the top/bottom of the escalator. Not only is this rude, but it's dangerous with a capital STUPID.

We're going on a little trip soon, and we'll be looking at this, but I'd love if people could do the same. If you live in Bippity Town, keep a count of times people just stop in a doorway or high traffic area to have a little chat and how often this has caused an unsightly human pileup. If you live in another city, let me know if you see the same behavior there. I have to say that my observations have led me to believe that this is localized to here, but like Seymore Skinner would say "Prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong!"

...telling U2 how they can make him care...which he won't.

Oh did you hear U2 released a new album. It's supposedly their best since Achtung Baby

Quick...which album am I talking about? Because it could be either All That You Can't Leave Behind or How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb or No Line on the Horizon, all of which were called the best since Achtung Baby. None of them, you note, have been called the best since the previous one that was the best.

And there's the rub: All three of those albums came out with big singles and were hailed as a band rediscovering its step and in the end...they really didn't. They are fine albums, I'm sure, and if they were done by any other group than U2 they could be classics (I'm going to go off on a limb here, though, and just say you should all listen to more British Sea Power. That is all I'll say on that for now).

U2, though, is more known for their activism than their music. There's nothing wrong with that. You've been given the biggest pulpit in the world, why not use it? And it's not like they just came to God: Bono's been like this his entire life.

Musically, however, they are a spent force. Their albums sell well and sound okay, but there's none of the innovation that used to be there. There are tricks, little fakes that make it sound like they are innovating, but really aren't doing anything. The music for U2 is an afterthought.

So what does U2 do? Do they admit that they're not so much about the music, and that the music is just an excuse to get publicity for their activism? That's opposite from the way music and activism are supposed to work. And it's EXACTLY how to get me to pretend to care about U2 again. To wit:

• Chances are it's safe to assume that they have LOTS of money. They have the back catalogue, they have the tours, they have their hotel. They've sold songs to Apple. I think all the members of the band are rich.
• In alternate world, Bono comes out when they start recording the album and says EVERYTHING in the bullet point above. Maybe he tosses in "I'm richer than Jesus" or something like that.
• THEN he says this: Since I'm richer than Jesus, from here on in every cent that U2 makes off of every album, every concert ticket, every t-shirt is going to charity. Every single one. We're not paying ourselves a salary. We're in this to make the world a better place. You don't have to get a cross-branded iPod, or a shirt from the Gap. Every time you listen to U2, every time you buy an album, you're helping us make the world a better place.

So basically what I'm saying is: make the sacrifice that you are expecting your fans to make. Admit that you have more than your fair share, and are going to keep making more, and take that and turn it around.

I might not care then that they keep making music that is less and less interesting and that while Bono wasn't the worst thing in Across the Universe he was far from the best thing (the best thing: credits running at the end so I knew it was over), but I might actually buy an album knowing that even if I don't care about it, I care about what it can do.

... telling the story of Shelia, who went out with her mate Stella

It's Friday, it's 8 A.M, it's time to party!

I'm G Valentino and with me as always is Oscar nominee Bob Hoskins.

CRAP! They disabled the embedding on this. Go to here to see "Sheila" by Jamie T.

Here's a bonus video for FRIDAY ROCKS!

...recomending "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me"

One thing I have become addicted to is podcasts. As much as I love listening to music on my iPod and iPhone, there are times I like to listen to actual human voices, especially on the way into and back from work. Sure I could just take off my headphones and listen to the cacophony of human interaction around me, but I don't really like real people.

Every now and then I'm going to toss a podcast up here that I like, and if you want to download it, fine, and if not that's cool also.

The first one I'm going to recommend is the podcast of the NPR news quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. News quizzes/panel shows are really more of a British thing (more on that in a week or so), but the format is normally always the same: a couple of teams of journalists and entertainers are asked questions about the week's news and then go into little comedic riffs on them as they explain what happened. Think of it like a tag team late night monologue. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me also adds a listener participation element, where people win a prize (Carl Kassel's voice on their home answering machine).

The centrepiece is "Not My Job" where celebrities (writers, entertainers, other journalists) do a small interview and then are asked three questions about something that is normally in the opposite realm from what they would know. For example Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) was asked three questions about the history of Barbie; Kim Cattrall was asked about the history of prohibition, Michael Moore was asked about etiquette from an early Miss Manners book.

I found out about Wait Wait... from, of all people, my mom! She listened to it on NPR in Florida, and once I found out about the podcast I decided to start listening to it just to understand what she was talking about. This is also one of the two (TWO?!) computer things my mother has ever told me about...more on that in a coming couple of weeks.

Wait Wait... is fun, always informative, and provides a good few chuckles even if you don't follow the new closely. It comes out Saturday night/Sunday morning and so is there for me on my Monday commute into work. This really helps get the week off to a good start.

You can download Wait Wait... here [link opens iTunes]

(And remember, you don't need an iPod, iPhone, or any MP3 player to enjoy podcasts. You can just download iTunes for free and listen to it there).

... a little tipsy

So tonight was a class with Jamie Drummond, the sommelier at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar here in Bippity Town and...

Oh wait, you don't know what Bippity Town it. Come on, I'll tell you.

So a few years ago, and I blame Sean Desman for this, it became cool and hip and so amazingly wonderful to call Toronto T-Dot. I guess this comes from the old way of calling Toronto T.O, which is pronounced T Dot O. I guess this stood for Toronto, Ontario.

But that's Toronto COMMA Ontario and unlike Vampire Weekend, I do care about the oxford comma.

And here's the other thing...I LIKE Vampire Weekend. I know I shouldn't, because they appropriate African music while they themselves are painfully white, but I LIKE it. Whenever I listen to it, I feel like the sun is shinning down on my arms on an early summer day. The same way I feel when I listen to baseball on the radio.

I don't really think there are many things in this world better than baseball on the radio. It's one of the reasons I love my XM radio, because I get all the ball games and can take it up to the cottage, and I quite like listening on a quiet day and then yelling "DAMN YOUR EYES, DEREK JETER" at some point and hearing it echo.

It mean, it beats listening to whatever geriatric rock music that people at the other side of the lake are listening to. Come on people, it's not hard to find out about new music: just listen to it and talk about it right before Pitchfork gives it a good review, and then as soon as they do move onto another group and repeat, or build your case for why you still like the band, like I did with Vampire Weekend.

So yeah...it should be Toronto COMMA Ontario, so it should be T-Com.

Also, are there a LOT of other Torontos that people get confused with? "Quick, put an O at the end of it so people don't think we're talking about Toronto, New South Wales! Oh wait, that will take too long. Just call it T-Dot. We'll call Toronto, New South Wales...ummm...T Dash!"

Either way, T-Dot makes no sense to me. It's making a short version of a short version of a name that didn't need to be shortened in the first place. So I call Toronto Bippity Town, because that makes as much sense as T-Dot.

I was a at wine class here in Bippity Town, and we were trying different, unusual varietals of grapes. I'd write about it but I'm a little tipsy and tend to ramble when I'm tipsy, so I won't do that tonight.