…And I’m Not Old!

I’m 37!

Another year has passed for me.  I don’t feel much different than last year.  I’m still a realist.  I still want to do something great.  I’m eternally angry at ‘the man’ and want to fight the system.  I can still sleep all night without rushing to the bathroom — sometimes.  I still feel the pull of the local concerts.

But I’m also at the point where I can *almost* yell at kids to get off my lawn in a very cliché sense.  I twisted my ankle three weeks ago and it still hurts.  My goatee is now half grey.  (Really, the right side is white-ish.  Looks creepy.)  I measure my energy as a function of my ability to yell at/play with my kids.

To steal a line from the great Stephen Wright:  How old do you have to be before you can die of old age?

My computer is placed in my office at home so that I can see out the window into the front yard.  I have lots of trees around, in particular several black walnut trees.  I’m not really fond of black walnuts, but my father is.  So, I’m going to redirect some of my kid-yelling energy toward cracking a bunch of these iron-clad walnuts over the next couple of months.  Right now I can see my three older boys walking around one of the larger tress, throwing the softball-sized nuts into a 7-gallon bucket.  They don’t have to pick those up, but they’re doing it because it’s something they can all do together, even though their ages are so different.  Their energy seems endless.

Miles played his best game of soccer ever last night.  Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.  I missed it because I had a thing at school.  I hate missing things like that.  More now than I used to.  I guess that’s something that’s changed in the last year.  I feel the urge to spend time with my boys more.  I think about how things will change the moment they turn 13.  And how much it’ll really change when they hit 16.

They’re gonna have a tough time moving that bucket when it gets full.  Think I’ll go outside and help…

Something you’ve never seen

I love, and I mean LOVE, all the coolness coming from MESSENGER.  I was alive when the Voyagers first visited Jupiter, but I was only 8.  I have a strong memory of seeing the images in National Geographic and hearing about the missions from Carl Sagan on Cosmos, yet I didn’t grasp the uniqueness of the moment.  We’ve explored a couple of those outer bodies in great detail since that time, but you can only first explore an area once.  And now those places can only be re-visited.

I love the flybys of Mercury.  Up until MESSENGER this was the best picture we had:

I’ve been looking hard at that picture ever since I can remember.  It was taken by the Mariner 10 way back in 1974.  When I entered the planetarium field and started producing public shows, there were several processed mosaic images available for me to use.  The best recognized one even shows quite a bit of one side of the planet.  But I always liked this one best.  It shows well the technological limits of the time and the sparse detail we knew of that distant orb.

MESSENGER passed by Mercury a couple of weeks ago.  This is what it saw:

click for original link

We have now mapped 95% of the surface of Mercury, and the views the probe got from this latest flyby have been spectacular!  You should cruise around the official website for a while and feel the awe of seeing something few people have ever seen.  I promise it’ll give you a taste of exploring an alien world, where imagination is as important as collecting data.  Plus, those images will just knock your socks off!

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Quizzes o’ fun

A quiz for know-it-alls – 6 out of 10

Before the CW – 10 out of 17

The SNL Political Quiz – 6 out of 11 (this one makes me the saddest)

State License Plates – 10 out of 15

Eyeball – 2.96  (woot!)

It’s Death Defying

This made me chuckle.

…

And… are you a stylin’ college student who thinks the best clothes come from Goodwill?  All geeked out with your l33t speak and eco-friendly ways (i.e. no car but a pocket rocket of much envy)?  Does your significant other agree that when you run out of milk, Cheerios and Kool-Aid make a pretty good combination? Well, my friend, you aren’t nearly geek enough.  If you were truly a hard-core geek you’d have one of these permanently etched on your body!

Poser!

Well, this one goes to 11

So this post is all about old recordings of live concerts — for free!

You all know Midnight Oil is my all-time favorite band.  Hands down.  Their separation is 2003 killed me.  I got to see one of their final concerts.  With the demise of the band we get a bit of a win-fall.  Bootlegs!  Not illegal copies of studio releases; recordings of concerts.  They are usually considered illegal for trading, but last week one of the members of the Powderworks group (the unofficial fan base for the band) contacted the old MO office and got permission from their manager, Gary Morris, for us to trade concert recordings.  Yay!!!  He said that as long as it stayed within our group it was okay.  And no money is to ever change hands.  That’s what’s so cool about them.  They know that our little group stood by them through every endeavor, and that our love for their music and philosophies goes beyond simple collecting.  I personally own about 15-20 concerts on cassette tape and digital formats, but there are some who have way over 100.  Already the trading has begun on the list.  We’ll see if any of the gems I’m interested in gets offered.  :o)

Also this week, I’ve discovered a website called Wolfgang’s Vault.  They have a ton of recorded concerts from last month all the way back to the 60s — all for your free listening pleasure!  You do have to sign up, but I haven’t received any spam from them yet.  They’re adding new shows every week, so hopefully some of the other obscure bands I listen to will get a bump.  If you go over there, make sure you check out this concert by U2 at Boston’s Orpheum in 1983.  The performance of October is haunting.  [wow.  I just realized how bad of a pun that was.  REALLY not intentional!]

Lastly, since I can’t seem to find any concert footage of the late, great FSF, I’m embedding this video from youtube.  So here it is, The Sound by Further Seems Forever.

This isn’t exactly a live show, but I remember the call for audience members when the video for The Sound was shot.  Back then Jason Gleason was the vocalist.  He took the place of Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional fame.   But where Jason went, nobody knows.  Not even the band.  Seriously.  One day he didn’t show up for practice.  The band tried calling to make sure he was okay.  Then they went to his apartment — nobody there.  After a couple of weeks MIA his manager calls up and tells them to stop looking for him and to sever all ties.  So odd.  IMO he had the best voice of any rock artist at the time.  I know I would drive a 1000 miles just to hear him belt out Pagan Poetry again!  Of course, I’d also drive a 1000 miles to watch a reunion show of original members Chad, Steve, Nick, and Josh.  I played this great game with them over pizza one night called “Kill Yourself”.  Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday…