olympics update

I have determined that the Air Pistol events might be the worst possible event to televise. In this case, it actually needs commentary. Because all eight contestants shoot at the same time, I can't figure out how they determine which one to keep the camera on.
However, it's so bizarrly bad I'm captivated.


To recap: live video of team archery - good. Live video of individual air pistol - bad.

More to come, I'm sure.

olympic obscurity

My favorite thing about the Olympics is always the really obscure sports, the ones you usually never see, but only read about happening in the previews when some publication picks the medalists in every event.

As the Olympics have gone on, each year there has been more time devoted to televised sports (I remember when it was a big deal that NBC was going to be showing events on more than one channel for the Games) but all that time is still filled with things like gymnastics, swimming and the rest of the sports I'm not particularly interested in (although this morning I did actually get to watch part of a team handball match, which is possibly the most obscure of all the Olympic sports, in this country at least).

But tonight I've discovered the live video feeds on NBCOlympics.com. As I type, I'm watching a qualifying round of team archery. Just a live video feed (thankfully with multiple camera angles, rather than just one camera turned on and left) with out any announcers. Just a little text box of live updated play-by-play. In other words, perfect.

I'm going to have to see how the live video works throughout the games, but for now it appears to be exactly what I've always wanted - the ability to watch whatever sport I want, with no annoying voices except the venue's PA announcer, and some unobtrusive informative commentary in text form.

(And I've been typing long enough that China has now beaten India in the team archery match).

It's this sort of thing that makes me wish I was still in college, when I could have shifted my schedule and devoted large chunks of the calendar to watching the Olympic stuff I've never seen before. (Seriously, have you ever seen archery televised? And it's interesting to watch. It quick-moving, and the scoring is easy to understand.) Now I'm going to have to do with sneaking in some watching here and there, during a week when I'm already going to be sleep-deprived because I'm working a day job and covering tennis every night this week.

What I'm really looking forward to, though, is the next winter Olympics. If I don't make it to Vancouver, you can bet I'll be watching all the curling rounds online.

spanish can be fun!

Sometimes it's nice to have a Spanish translator in the house. Like last night, when I was catching up on the 30 Rock season finale via Hulu

The plot revolved around cheap Mexican cheese curls Liz Lemon found at a grocery. The name: Sabor de Soledad. The translation, which I never would have bothered to find out, but made the whole thing far more funny: Taste of Loneliness.

they finally started to get something right

Lately, I've been watching most of my TV via the computer. The Internet is the poor man's Tivo (I miss having a DVR). Everything's out there, if you know how to look, but it's not always easy.

If the show I'm looking for is up on a network site, I generally head there first. But too often, I've had trouble streaming or got stuck in a loop of advertising, or the player just wasn't very good. I have my display hooked up to my TV, but on at least one network site, for a while it kicked me out of full screen mode every time it pulled up an ad in between segments. No good. So I often headed to BitTorrent, where I could find shows for downloading. That, however, takes time (along with the usual objection from the copyright holder).

But I've been plesantly surprised by Hulu, the new site from NBC and Fox for TV online. It's easy to find full episodes or clips of shows, the player seems to work well and I haven't had any streaming problems (yet). And since most of the US shows I'm looking for are on either NBC or Fox (or a site under their corporate umbrellas) I'm quite happy.

Especially when I figured out they've been putting up old shows as well. How can you beat episodes of the A-Team? I've never even seen Fantasy Island but I might watch one, just so I know what all the references are about. The episode lists are spotty, but I'm working on the (possibly fatal) assumption that content will be added as the site grows and the full-episode lists will grow to fill in the gaps.

And if you're the sort of person that has Gerald McRaney withdrawals, there's even 50-something episodes of Major Dad available.


(and by the way, I can't believe it's been a month since I posted last. That's no way to hang on to either of my readers....)

huh?

This is about a month late, but I figured it was time to archive the simply confusing full-page ad in a free weekly I grabbed a while back as I entered the Metro.

This is the ad, exactly as it ran. If you can make any sense out of it, you're probably in a far worse mental state than I am.

The guy behind the ad got some local blog space on DCist. Sounds like the protest went off exactly as well as his ad did.

oscar

I only picked one Oscar category (well, it was pretty obvious who was going to win Best Actor and Best Picture, so I can say I picked those too) and got it right. Even heard a story about the Peter and the Wolf creators on NPR yesterday.

But nothing made me happier than seeing Once win for best song. And the only really good moment of the awards show was Jon Stewart bringing Marketa Irglova back out to the mic after she was cut off by the orchestra the first time around.

If anyone hasn't seen Once, do so. The low-budget film following a budding not-quite-romance is one of the best I saw in 2007. It's not really a musical, but since the focus is on musicians, there are plenty of songs involved, each of which is weighted with emotion and things-not-quite-said between the lead characters.

Last weekend I had an opportunity to see all of the Academy Award-nominated short animated features (I missed out on the screening of the live shorts, and also didn't get to the Archives to see all the documentary nominees, despite my best intentions a week ago).

A quick review on each of the contenders, for those of you desperately seeking an edge in your Oscar pool:

Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
The only 3D computer animated short in the bunch, a comedic look at a priest trying to sell an old man a way into heaven. A light tone, which was a significant contrast with the rest. The animation was good, a few laughs to be had, including a punch-line of an ending. Probably the best at doing what it aimed to, and the most fun of them all, but it also didn't have the extra emotional weight of some of the other shorts.

Moya lyubov (My Love)
The most unique animation style - done in the style of an impressionist painting. This was actually distracting, because every time a character moved, the brush strokes of the background around them moved as well, giving it the feel of a badly-compressed, pixelated digital file. A Russian entry, this may have lost something in translation. However, the dual love stories around a 16-year-old boy, both of which end badly, weren't particularly compelling and the climatic feverish dream came out of nowhere.

Madame Tutli-Putli
A Canadian entry following a woman's eventful train journey. The promo notes call it a "exhilarating existential journey." The stop-motion animation was amazing, but the story may have been too existential for just one viewing.

I met the Walrus
A five-minute clip of audio of a 14-year-old boy interviewing John Lennon. The animation is, as one review put it, just something interesting to look at while listening to Lennon. It is interesting, though.

Peter and the Wolf
My pick for the Oscar. The animation was impressive, the story was well done (although also done often) and unlike the others it didn't leave me thinking about the flaws. Just an overall strong contender.

kiwi humour

I thought I'd posted this a long time ago, but they came up in conversation recently and I realized they hadn't made it onto my corner of the internet:

One of our favorite aspects of New Zealand culture was the willingness to poke fun at themselves, and just about anything else. It even manifested itself in a government advertising campaign for home safety. The ACC - Accident Compensation Commission - pays for all medical bills resulting in any accidents, for anyone in New Zealand. (This takes the place of personal injury lawsuits, which are generally not allowed in the New Zealand court system). The ACC put out a series of TV ads to try to lower accident rates around the home, but the ads have a serious black humor to them.

For example, every time this ad came on TV, Kirsten started laughing uncontrollably:

More of the ads can be seen here. And here's one more that wasn't on-air while we were in NZ.

kiwi humour, part II

One more for you-

This is an official Australian tourism commercial that got a ton of play in NZ our last few months there. Apparently it created some controversy in the UK, since "bloody hell" was seen to be a bit dirty:

This is a NZ take on the ad, apparently put together by a consumer advocate program:

shampoo, used on my hair or other body parts

I was reading my shampoo bottle in the shower the other day (doesn't everyone?) and noticed a totally useless sentence fragment.

My shampoo informed me it was "Made in the USA." All fine and good. Then it added, "... from US and/or imported ingredients."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same thing as saying, "Made from ingredients"? Which is the same as saying "Made"? Essentially this is as useful as putting "This shampoo exists" on the side of the bottle. Although if I come across a product which needs to assert its existence on its packaging, I'll find that far more interesting than this shampoo bottle.

profane stats nerds. I like.

I thought I'd posted this before, but I don't see it in the archives. One of my favorite sites for sports commentary is the Fire Joe Morgan blog, where a deep regard for baseball statistics and an equally deep disdain for lazy baseball commentary come together in sarcastic, profanity-ridden, vitriolic rebuttals to those journalists the authors feel have neglected common sense or reason.

Even though it's the off-season, the recent Hall of Fame voting has given the FJM folks ample fodder recently. My favorite is probably this post. Check it out.

running

My friend Dave blogged about running, how he enjoys the point where his mind is trying to justify quitting and he has to push through. He threw an insult at us amatuers, who find the use of an iPod to block out the pain helpful.

I was thinking about this as I tried to job around my neighborhood tonight and found my mind's justifications far stronger than my lungs and legs. I did use my iPod as a motivational tool, telling myself I at least had to run until the end of the track I was listening to. This is slightly more impressive than it sounds, as the track I was listening to was a 20-minute BBC podcast of a weekly show where comedians talk about current events. Then I realized I was using my iPod for motivation and to block out my brain with a BBC podcast of a weekly show where comedians talk about current events.

Not exactly "Eye of the Tiger," I suppose. But since I'm in DC instead of Philadelphia, perhaps appropriate. (Hard to set a montage to, though).

in praise of the things I've liked lately

For no good reason, but perhaps it'll send some traffic their way:

I became a podcast addict while in New Zealand (every time I hear the theme music for a Slate or NPR podcast, my mind flashes back to the streets of Wellington. When I started listening to them, I'd listen to my iPod on the streets as I walked to work.) I attempt to try out new ones every few weeks, although not in a regimented way.

The best I've found lately is from the Australian radio station Triple J. Their New Music Podcast is exactly what I was hoping to find when I stumbled across it. It's a sampling of brand-new music, most from Australian acts and all from bands you've likely never heard of. It beats the hell out of Indiefeed's alt-rock podcast, which is what I used to use to listen to Indie bands I'd never heard of, for two reasons. One, and most importantly, the Triple J podcast is simply an mp3 of the song. Straight up. None of the talking before and after that Indiefeed has - introducing the track, reading the liner notes for a bio of the band - and which is often laid over the opening bars of the track. Triple J just gives you a song to listen to. Perfect. Two, personally I have liked a far higher proportion the songs played on Triple J than on Indiefeed. Oz has some good music, and it's stuff I'll never hear otherwise.

One I've been listening to for a while, but need to list here, is Radio Lab from NPR station WYNC. It's closely related to This American Life, in that they use various sorts of radio storytelling to explore a theme. Unlike This American Life, Radio Lab is less about personal experience and more about abstract scientific concepts talked about in innovative ways. It feels like the hosts are telling you a story about Time, or Sleep, or the possibility of Life in the Universe. There are interviews, there are stories, it all feels very casual - but if you listen very much, you can tell just how much work they put into it to make sure everything sounds just so. They play with noise to create some cool effects, many of which you don't notice on a first listen. I also make sure to get everything Radio Lab co-host Robert Krulwich does for NPR - he's their science correspondent, and his segments are always a little bit off-kilter but in an excellently informative way.


On the Netflix queue, the most interesting thing I've seen lately is a short film, also from Australia, called Harvie Krumpet. The 22-minute film (which you can watch online through the link) follows a man throughout a life of hard luck and a few bright spots. There are a few great dead-pan black humor moments in the writing and the visuals. But what really makes this film great is the tone of it. It follows Harvie through his life, a life which is mostly filled with pain but which Harvie generally gets through by tolerating his situation and occasionally finding joy, such as through his wife an daughter. That's the simplistic summary. The tone, however, doesn't move too far into the tragic senselessness of his pain or the utter hopelessness of a life filled with problems. Neither does it veer the other way, pointing out the bright side and bringing a message of hope. Like life itself, it's filled with bits of both extremes, but mostly it just is. Harvie doesn't always look on the bright side, he doesn't always accept what's happened to him with grace. Neither does he always dwell on his problems. He reacts to both, then generally, sometimes reluctantly, just gets on with life. Very rarely does any work of art balance grimness and light so deftly, without going overboard on either one. Just watch it.

why me betting on sports would be a bad idea

This year I've been participating in a Yahoo! contest to pick college football games against the spread. Each week you pick every game with a top-25 team, with the Vegas point spread factored in. Until I was away from my computer and didn't get my picks in two weeks ago, I was doing pretty well - I'd been consistently in the top 5 percent of everyone participating (I believe there's a few hundred thousand picking).

Not counting the week I missed, I've been able to pick the correct winner 50.1 percent of the time. And that puts me in the top 5 percent in the country. That would be a money-losing rate if I was betting these games, especially since the number is slightly inflated - Yahoo! has you pick games between I-A and I-AA schools that Vegas doesn't set lines for, so it's just a straight-up pick (and outside Michigan, a guaranteed correct one). According to an article in the Wall Street Journal a while back, you need to win 53.5 percent of the time to make money in Vegas, because they take a cut of each bet.

Of course, if I was betting, I wouldn't be betting on every game. I'd only bet the ones I felt confident about. And I'd probably end up worse off than if I'd bet every game.

I do miss the New Zealand sports books in every bar. You could even bet on American sports. There, it wasn't even against a spread - instead, you won more money for betting on an underdog than a favorite. I didn't bet a lot, but I did every so often. It was kind of like a lottery with a smaller payout and a few more payouts.

No one is more surprised than I am that this weekend's Kansas-Missouri game is actually meaningful. If my years at Missouri taught me one thing about Tiger athletics, it's that Missouri always found a way to underachieve.
Missouri in my experience is not a team contending for a national title. Missouri is a team that brings out the weirdness in other eventual National Champions - this is the team that brought you Colorado's fifth down, Nebraska's kick, UCLA's 4.8 second drive by Tyus Edney.
This is not a team that brought you any meaningful wins. In 1996, Missouri fans celebrated a season-ending win against Kansas by tearing down the goal posts. Missouri finished the year 5-6, Kansas 4-7.
The next year, Missouri fans tore down the goal posts when they beat Baylor to become bowl-eligible.
Nothing since then has made Missouri fans any more accustomed to success.

Attending Missouri games from 1996-2001 did not teach me what to think about a team two wins away from the national championship game. It taught me to be a little nervous whenever the team was on the field, and especially if they seemed to be about to pull out a win against a highly-ranked opponent.

In celebration of this weekend's border clash, a few other things being a Missouri fan taught me:

* You should not bring beer into the stadium in one of those old sport bottles with a giant plastic straw. It does not lead to a pleasant drinking experience.

* The crowd should not throw empty glass liquor bottles at the opposing band. Even if it is Kansas.

* Goal posts are hard to tear down at first, then suddenly very easy.

* Schools get annoyed when three goal posts are torn down in a season, especially when the wins are over schools like Baylor.

* When a school gets annoyed at having to repeatedly replace the same piece of property, it is likely to defend its property with tear gas.

* Campus rules like no alcohol never apply to alumni who have paid money to the school for a ticket and parking spot.

* When a team goes 30 years without a bowl game, crowds will double when they finally have a winning season.

* It's easy to hate Nebraska and its fans, even though it might have the least hostile visiting fans in the conference. I don't know why. Even now that Nebraska is horrible on the field, this hasn't changed.

* Watching your team get beat badly in a sleet storm is not the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

* I fully expect both Missouri and Kansas to lose, leaving both out of the top bowls. That's just the way it always works.

Charlie The Unicorn

I've been showing this to anyone within reach of YouTube, so I probably should have thrown this up here sooner. Among those who had seen it, the quotes were thrown around fast and loose around the chocolate fountain at our wedding.

It's a land of joy, and joyness...

Kirsten always complains she wouldn't watch TV if it wasn't for me, that she doesn't really like having a TV.

Yet when I told her I'd finally wired the cable into our basement bedroom, her face lit up.

ear plugs

Kirsten played a gig with her new band last night at the Red and Black in D.C.

The show could have used better sound and it was abbreviated - the club fit four bands on the bill from 9:45 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. (and is it a D.C. licensing issue which forced the band to quit at 12:30? Bizzarre, when closing time is 2 a.m.). The set was cut to about five songs, which didn't inconvenience many; the crowd at midnight on a Thursday in the out-of-the-way club was pretty sparse.

But what caught my attention was a sign behind the bar - "Ear Plugs, $1." I don't remember seeing a music venue selling ear plugs. At first I thought it was a nice touch for the bar to offer a product geared toward preserving it's clientele's health.

Then I thought it might just be a statement on the quality of bands the club tends to book.

OD on FotC

I've been gorging myself on Flight of the Conchords lately.
Partly, it's just because I miss Kiwi accents and want to hold onto the New Zealand connection anywhere I can. Partly, it's because they're damn funny.

Since I returned to this country I've been preaching the Conchord message through You Tube clips. Then I found out they'd have an HBO series starting up in June.

I prepared by going to an advance screening (I need to find more of these, I like seeing movies for free) of Eagle vs Shark. The movie has one of theConchords as the lead and one of my New Zealand comedian acquaintances in a role as well.

The HBO show started last week, it's two episodes in (still haven't met anyone here with HBO, so BitTorrent has been my savior).

Also this week I ended up downloading the six episodes from the BBC2 radio series.

This all may be a bit much. I'm just waiting for some of the other New Zealanders to make their way over here.

a thought

the Decemberists have had the top spot on my iPod since I was first introduced to a couple of their albums about a year ago.
I've realized since almost all of my friends also have the Decemberists in their music collection, or at least know who they are. I've also realized I've never heard any of their songs outside of a personal music collection context.

This led to another thought: what is driving dissemination of music these days? In my experience, music has always been spread by word of mouth (at least the stuff that isn't forced onto you by big-label marketing). But growing up in a rural area, I had very little idea there was a whole universe of recorded music existing outside the radio or carried by a national CD retail chain.

When I was in high school, the Internet was in its nationwide infancy. It wasn't until my junior year of college I heard the term mp3. It wasn't until I arrived at college I realized people had music collections full of bands I'd never heard of.
Kids today (I love using that term - it pushes me so far into the "old" category it feels like a joke, and I can pretend its ironic and I'm still young instead of the truth) must have a slightly easier time finding the currents of the musical underground. But I think you still have to have a reason for searching it out.

Whether it's online or off, you still discover new music through word of mouth. I think the one difference is now the kids who are outsiders and are in an area without an outsider scene (the goth kids, the punk kids, the fill-in-the-blank kids) can now find the scene online.

It seems like more people are going around or leaving behind the market campaigns. It's what all the "new-media" theorist say. But certainly not more people, I don't think. I'm not sure even the Internet is going to push even close to a tipping point where the big-money marketing becomes just one more voice in the crowd.