Woke up Tuesday morning to news that Sarah had just watched from the upstairs window as one of the neighbors down the block had tried to get up the still unplowed street in a generic mid-size sedan (IOW, pretty much a newer version of my car). And had failed utterly. With the wheels spinning and the snow flying. Flaven.
Not encouraging but we decided to pack up and try anyway. Of course, the instant the back wheels left the asphalt of the driveway and hit the packed snow on the road it was over. With some small struggle (and sacrificing my floor mats), we managed to get back into the driveway. Thought that was it and we were just stuck until a plow showed up. But around noon, the neighbors across the street got their snow blower out and started trying to clear the top of the street (where it intersects w/ the main, and plowed, road). So we went out and started digging a path up (or at least a couple of tire tracks). Really just trying to open up enough asphalt that we'd be able to get traction going up. Took 4 or 5 of us about 90 min. but we finally got dug out. The car was still loaded up so it was quick good-byes all around and we were finally on the road. Tell Bloomberg he can send my check along down here. Time and a half isn't even necessary.
Oh, and we got one last kick in the teeth on the way outta town. Apparently every single person visiting the metro area for the holidays did the same thing we did and beat a retreat as soon as they could get through the snow. NJ Turnpike was a parking lot. Close to five hours later, we'd only made it as far as Sarah's folks in DE. So we parked it there for the night, ate a nice meal (complete w/ more yummy pie from Scratch), watched a documentary about Glenn Gould and then crashed.
The rest of the drive back yesterday was uneventful. And now we're all caught up. Just in time for the end of the year.
Isn't that special?

Just back home from holiday travels. Had a nice Xmas up in Shaolin w/ my Mom and brother. Tree was admired, gifts were exchanged, beast was roasted. Also, the great majority of the Mythbusters marathon was enjoyed. Oh, and there was also a chestnut cream pie (from Scratch).
Our plan for Boxing Day was to go into Manhattan and see some sites and have dinner w/ local friends. As the forecast worsened over the course of Xmas, we revised plans to lunch w/ some local friends. But the snow rolled in earlier than expected and the forecast was blizzard so we ended up having to bag everything and just watch the snow fall. And fall. And fall. Something like this.

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

The storm on SI lasted 20+ hours and by the time we all woke up on Monday there were about 20 inches. Actually, that's the official NYC total from Central Park. I think Shaolin might have gotten more. It was hard to tell because the 40 mph winds had built up crazy big drifts. Sarah and I had been planning to head out for DE to see her family on Monday evening but w/ the snow still blowing like crazy, that didn't seem like such a great idea. Plus, altho the main road running by my Mom's house seemed pretty clear after having been plowed multiple times, the side street that would get us the 50 feet to that main road was very unplowed. And uphill. Also.
While waiting for the plow, we decided to brave the walk over to Net Cost Market (Shaolin's finest Russian grocery store). It's only about a quarter mile each way. But portions of that were through unplowed. unshoveled areas (inc. a couple of drifts that came up to my knees) and some portions involved walking in the road. Where we discovered that the main road we thought was open was actually pretty spotty. Several places where it hadn't been plowed two lanes wide, so cars would have to stop to let traffic go past in the other direction. And lots of snow drifting back onto the road. There's a big cemetary on one side of the road and the wind was just sweeping through it, picking up snow and dumping it back onto the road. What with the snow and the wind and the Russian grocery store (we did make it and pick up some pelmeni and pierogi), the whole trek started to feel like out-takes from Zhivago.
So we gave up on getting out Monday. Chilled for the rest of the evening. Played a board game about the destruction of Pompeii (thanks, Pru!). And planned to head out Tuesday AM. Had seen a mid-day presser from Bloomberg and other city officials about how things were going and the head of Sanitation said they were working on secondary streets and planned to have them plowed "today, tonight or tomorrow." At least that's how I remember it.
Needless to stay, since it's Wednesday PM as I write this and we just made it home tonight, there's obviously more to this story. Tune in tomorrow...

Julian Sanchez takes a shot at the always vexing question: why do restaurant website suck? No definitive answers are provided (hell, I'm not even sure there are any definitive answers) but he (and his commenters) offer some interesting takes and perspectives. I'm not even trying to look at websites on a phone and I think half of them suck.

Hope all of y'all that do the holiday thing had a cracking one. Highlights of ours included roast beast, chestnut cream pie, TV yule log, several Sinatra-themed gifts and the Mythbusters marathon. And now, depending on one's geographic locale, it might be time to move on to a wintry weather event. Enjoy and/or be safe out there.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Festivus. I had the airing of grievances part covered (I know.... how surprising...) For one thing, I'm pissed that I didn't think to start checking the schedule for the Futurama Xmas episodes in time. The holiday season is just not the same w/o a visit from homicidal Santabot
Of course there are more grievances but I don't want this post to run on all the way to Christmas. Traditionally, we'd move on to feats of strength but I have no stores relating to stength and feat thereof that I wish to relate.
I did see a vanity plate that was written in binary (011001 etc) the other day. Didn't have a chance to write it down (on account of I was driving at the time) so I'm not sure what (if anything) it said. Still, I think that merits a spot in the Nerdtastic Vanity Plate Hall o' Fame.

Happy belated solstice y'all. I think in keeping w/ Norse traditions I was supposed to drag an entire fir tree into the house and set it ablaze. Maybe next year.
And maybe (since we're about to get a short break from the below-normal temps we've been having), I can stop having to hear people complain about how cold it is. News flash: we live in the same place therefore I am aware of how frikkin' cold it is. And I get that you don't like the cold. I got that the first 50 times you said it. Also. (Pro-tip: if you are reading this, it's not about you).
Missed the lunar eclipse last night. Dang. Sucks cos I still didn't get any sleep. The non-drowsy Dayquil woke me up early but not early enough to see the eclipse.
So is Xmas the Cookie Holiday or the Fruitcake Holiday? I'm pretty sure my cousins (who came up w/ this nomenclature) would say it's the Cookie Holiday. And in that spirit, we baked some shortbread last night. Turned out great. Not quite the same as the auld family recipe (from my Scottish grandmother). (Note to self: get brother to send me another copy of the auld family recipe).
Oh and speaking of dessert-y things, I highly recommend this new Ben & Jerry's flavor - Snickerdoodle Cookie. So good. It really does taste un-nervingly like a snickerdoodle.

We actually got a bit more snow today. Didn't really stick much more than a dusting. But, still, that's three observable snowfalls since the start of the month. That's pretty odd for NC. Oh well. I'm sure that just proves that global warming is a myth somehow. Oh, and Al Gore is fat. Also.
But, hey, the Senate repealed DADT this afternoon. So that's a good thing. Altho I was kinda hoping that Mean Old Man McCain would lose his shit completely and slap Droopy Dog or start wailing and rending his garments like Lear. I figured that was the best I could expect. I mean, a full-on Scanners style head explosion would just be asking too much. I know, I know... the world hasn't suddenly become a wonderful, magical fuckin' wonderland. But it's now on its way to being a less unfair place.
And let's wrap up with some seasonal fun. Here (via Making Light) here's a fine bit o' debunking as Snopes breaks down the origins of the candy cane. Fun stuff.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 12 dec 10)

Pesebre :: Axel Krygier
Anda Jaleo :: Josephine Foster & the Victor Herrero Band
Je Suis Vivant Mais J'aipeur de Gilbert Deflez :: Jacky Chalard
Radioclit presents: the Sound of Club Secousse, vol. 1 :: various
the Woody Nightshade :: Sharron Krause
Viva la Tradicion :: Spanish Harlem Orchestra
Analog Drift :: Chico Mann
Just Three :: Negroni's Trio
Roots of Chicha 2 :: various
Pop Negro :: el Guincho

this week's video feature: el Guincho

I'm sure you were under no illusions that (as bad as things have gotten in our national political "conversation" lately) the early 21st century invented angry rhetoric or negativity-based politics. Here's a gem of a speech denouncing Martin Van Buren. Green finger cups!
But if you prefer your political criticism a bit more on the contemporary side, here's one of my favorite Daily Show segments with puppet Michael Steele. A ponzi scheme of stupid!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Steele Crazy After All These Years
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Tonight's entertainment was "A John Waters Christmas." A one man show by Waters and it was outstanding. (And it seemed like everyone was there -- I think I saw 20+ people that I know in the crowd). It's the third time I've seen Waters and one of the best. I mean, obviously, you have to be a fan because it's just him onstage talking for about 90 minutes (looking, I might add, very styling in a red velvet suit). But I am and it was great. He spent most of the time working variations on the Xmas theme. Gifts to buy him, gifts he'd like to give (my personal fave: the John Waters USO tour), William Caste style Xmas tree stunts, etc. When I saw him at Duke back in 2007 he spent more time talking about his life and his early years and Divine. Tonight was much more of a performance and a bit less personal but it was more focused and more fun. He mentioned tonight that it didn't look like he'd be able to make Fruitcake, his heartwarming Xmas movie about meat thieves and runaway children. I remember he mentioned that last time but I think at that point it was something he wanted to do as his next project. Sounded tonight like he didn't think it was gonna happen. But I hope it does. He also mentioned that he thought the next one of his projects that should get turned into a Broadway musical was Serial Mom. And I can totally see that. Again, no idea if it'll ever happen. But it should.

While I am personally not very craftsy, I'm aware that there's a connection to the holiday gifting season. Which explains the increased presence of craftsy type stuff on the internets these days, I'm sure. Such as this wonderful site, dedicated to repurposing leftover vuvuzelas you might have gathering dust around your house now that the World Cup is long over. I'm particularly fond of the lamp.
Only marginally related to all things craftsy, here's a fun post about Pantone's spring colors. Never having worked in graphic design or related fields, I had no idea that Pantone named seasonal colors. I guess they are spring-y. Not my fave colors ever. But the names are fun.
And speaking of colors, here's some terrifying seasonal hockey uniforms (link courtesy of Doctor Bob). Words fail me. Altho I think they did manage to work several of the Pantone spring colors into those unis. Aiya!

Fine examples of craftiness and creativity found on the internets. First off: science cookies!! (Colbertian tip o' the hat to Eat at Joe's for the find). That's full of win, as the kids say. My absolute favorite thing, tho, would be the conjoined twins gingerbread cookies. Which are made with a cookie cutter bought at the Mütter Museum gift shop. Holy WTF?!? Yes, there's not only a gift shop but an online one as well. How have I lived so much of my life w/o knowing that? At some point, I really need to get to the Museum in Philly. I saw a touring exhibit from the Mütter in NYC back in the 90s and it was just mind crunchingly amazing.

Y'know what burns my ass? And, no, it's not a candle this high. It's people who gotta whinge on about the abbreviation Xmas. Hello? Are you just being annoying or do you actually not know what the X in Xmas stands for? Protip: I should not know more about your religion than you do.

Not sure if y'all are watching Top Chef All-Stars but if you are, Anthony Bourdain's blog is essential reading. Essential, I say. Of course, the posts are written after the episodes so it's completely spoilerific. So don't go if you've DVR'ed an episode or are waiting for the whole series to come out on DVD. Bourdain is supposed to be a regular judge for All-Stars (altho he's only done 1 of the 2 episodes so far -- hopefully he'll be more present than "regular" judge Hubert Keller was for Just Desserts). Anyway, I won't mention anything spoilerish here. I'll just note that Bourdain has a lot to say about how the losing judges have gone out so far. Shorter version: it hasn't been pretty. That's actually not surprising. I crunched the numbers before the season started and I think at least half of the All-Stars finished in the top 4 of their seasons or better and the lowest finisher came in 8th. It's pretty much guaranteed that most of them will do significantly worse than they did in their first attempts. I think it's also pretty much guaranteed that all of them came back expecting to do better. So I'm actually expecting the reactions to continue to be bad for a few more weeks. I don't know that everyone is gonna go out like a punk but I'll be surprised if anyone can actually pull it together and stay classy while they're getting the axe in the first third of the show. Having learned from being contestants on Top Chef that it's the chefs who suck that go home early, it's no shocker that they're not dealing well with finding out that they're the ones who suck this time. Sure the level of competition is way higher. Of course they'll realize that after they're off the set and out of the pressure cooker. But in the moment, it's gotta feel like Glengarry Glenn Ross: second prize is a set of steak knives; third prize is: "you're fired."
And speaking of the pressure cooker, it seems especially amped up this time out. If we, as viewers, can believe the time stamps seen in episode two, they had at most 90 min. sleep before beginning the elimination challenge. And there's no telling how long the day before was. Or how late they day ran after elimination and judging. I could easily believe that episode two's meltdown came at the end of the second twelve hour day in a row separated only by 1 hour of sleep.

We decided to take a different approach to getting the holiday decor set up this year. Instead of the marathon, work-in-the-cold-until-your-fingers-bleed style of years past, we've spread out the work over the last few days. Cleaned up and organized the screen porch and got the lights around the windows sorted over the weekend. Hauled the big white tinsel tree out of the shed and put it together one night. Sadly discovered that it's now more of an off-white tinsel tree. Well, it is something like 12 years old so that's not much of a surprise. And since it's really only seen from a distance, the discoloring isn't a serious problem. Got the lights strung up on the tinsel tree last night. This weekend when it's supposed to be a fit temperature for working outside, we'll get the LED stars and snowflakes set up outside the fence down by the road.

To further help you in getting your holiday on, here's a link to this year's installment of Santastic, the dj BC compilation of Xmas mashups.

One last recap from the weekend o' culture and fun: last Friday I went to see Vijay Iyer and his trio. The show was part of Duke Performances. It was nice just to get to actually see one of the shows I'd bought tix for. That's the one downside of planning ahead. If things change at the last minute, you can end up missing shows. So I missed one back in Sept. when we ended up going to the Bulls playoffs. Then I was outta town at the start of last month due to unforeseen family medical issues and hadda miss Allen Toussaint (just as an aside, can I mention that it kind of annoys me that Carpe Durham is still showing the ad for that Toussaint concert which took place a month ago). I'm not sure what bit of code is messed up where but I wish it'd get fixed). But, as usual, I digress...
Vijay Iyer was great. The man can flat play the hell out of some piano. That's the correct technical description, I believe. We've had a couple of his CDs on the playlist at XDU -- awesome stuff, even if I don't know enough of the lingo of jazz to be able to describe it. They did "Human Nature" and "Black & Tan Fantasy" (I think -- Iyer didn't name every song they played) as well as plenty of originals. The drummer (Marcus Gilmore) played this amazing solo. At one point I swear he working in two different tempos at the same time (one on the kicks and one with the sticks). It seemed like it could turn into a total trainwreck at any moment and yet I could tell that it wouldn't, that he was in complete control of the beat. Breathtaking. My fave moment was the first encore which began with Iyer's solo take on "Darn That Dream" and then the trio ripped into their version of M.I.A's "Galang." Wow! After that it seemed like the show was over so I left. But when I ran into fellow XDU DJ Andy at Casbah the next night I found out there had been a second encore. Which he said was brilliant so I'm sorry I missed it. On the other hand, it had been a long week and I was tired and given the same set of circumstances I'd probably make the same choice again.

Now here's a fun thing: blogger running down his list of the top 100 film noir posters (found via the always interesting Scrubbles, which I've surely mentioned before but if I haven't well now I have). This is an example of one of the things that I love so much about the internets. It gives people a chance to explore their interests and put it out there for an audience. I mean, back in the olden days of the 20th century I guess this guy could've published a zine. But how many people would ever have seen it? Anyway, it's an interesting perspective, since it's all about the quality of the posters without any consideration as to whether the movie was any good or not. I'm looking forward to the rest of the list (as of today, he's only done 100-81). It's hard to imagine what's gonna top crazed Mickey Rooney w/ machine gun, tho...

Well, that was unexpected. We actually got about an inch of snow this afternoon. I cannot remember there ever being measurable snow in Durham in December. Hell, it's rare enough to get observable snowfall in December. So much for global warming. And Al Gore is fat. Also.
But a mere inch of snow was not enough to keep us from Day 3 of the Too Much Culture and Fun Extravaganza. Well, Day 3 for me. Day 2 for Sarah. And, yes, I realize that I've skipped over my Day 2. Will try to get to that tomorrow. But tonite we went to see Hot Club of Cowtown. At Casbah, one of Durham's newer clubs. Nice space. Good sound. Beer selection was impressive. I look forward to seeing more shows there. And Hot Club were great. We hadn't seen them in over nine years. In fact, they broke up and got back together in the intervening years. So glad they did and are as awesome as before. Glad they played some stuff from the early CDs as well as a couple of tracks from their upcoming Bob Wills disc. Good times, indeed.

Went over to Raleigh last night to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm. Wow. Seriously fun night out. Our friend Charles tipped us off to it and organized getting tix for everyone. I'm not very familiar with Coulton but I loved the stuff he did for the first John Hodgman audiobook. And we'd seen him as part of the first Rifftrax live simulcast event. Paul & Storm I mostly only knew from reading about them on Wil Wheaton's blog. Altho I learned later that they were part of Da Vinci's Notebook, who I'd heard a few things by via my former co-worker Mikey. Anyway. Paul & Storm were hilarious. By the time their set was finished my face hurt from laughing so much. They got a lot of mileage out of this running "which is the name of my [insert artist name here] tribute band joke. Which they deployed skillfully in the best MST3K/Rifftrax repetition-is-the-key-to-humor style. Some of the funniest moments were during the long run-up to their pirate song when they asked the crowd to practice saying "arrgh" in various styles and modes and whatnot. Devo pirates! Arrgh we not men? After the crowd laughs, Paul responds "thank you, old people." They asked the crowd for 1 arrgh, then 2 arrghs, then pi arrghs. People actually did a pretty good approximation of 3.14 arrghs. At which point they asked for fibonacci arrghs. Which one guy tried to do. Sort of.
Anyway, part two. Paul & Storm, I'd say, are better performers but Jonathan Coulton has better material. I enjoyed Paul & Storm a bit more. But day after, it's mostly Coulton's songs I remember. It's not that Coulton is a bad performer by any means. He put on a good show. I'd say he's right up there with John Wesley Harding for putting on a killer show as just one guy up on stage with a guitar. Mostly. Paul & Storm joined him for a few numbers and there was an audience volunteer for the robot overlord Xmas song.
One other thing I wanted to say about Jonathan Coulton as a songwriter is how impressed I was by his lyric writing. My fave is from the Ikea song (okay, yes... I lose hip geek points for not knowing the titles to most of his songs) where he rhymes Norsemen with divorced men. I'd say that's up there with Johnny Mercer's chalice/palace/aurora borealis lines from "Midnight Sun." My test for a good lyric (esp. a rhyme) is if when I hear it I can imagine Mickey Rooney (as Lorenz Hart) running into a room and announcing it as a great new line he's come up with. Note: that will make more (or any) sense if you've ever seen the movie Words and Music

Important information from the internets: top 10 worthless wizards. Lots of good fun that is funny, indeed. Personally, I'd have put Orko and Filch higher on the list. It almost seems unfair to Radagast to have him on the list, since his worthlessness is solely a function of Tolkein not, y'know, bothering to write him into the trilogy. And where the hell is Tim from Holy Grail?!? He's pretty fuckin' worthless, doncha think?