Month: January 2013

An online acquaintance of mine stumbled across this gem left for waitstaff by a patron:

Some suggested interpretations of this message include:

• “You may have already suspected that I was an asshole, but I have left you some documentation just in case.”
• “I’m incredibly angry and not entirely sure who to blame so i lash out at everyone around me.”
• “I’m mad about having to pay to keep the country running, and I’ve decided the most effective way to make my displeasure with this governmental policy known to the people responsible is to take it out my impotent rage on waitresses.”

And just to put things in perspective:

They may look like Tea Partiers and fire-and-brimstone preachers, but these are actually swingers from the 1960s and their personal ads. Is it me, or do they look at least 10 years older than their posted ages?

Thanks to spoon for the pic!

If you’re of a certain generation, you’ll remember this:
Fisher Price’s clever music box made up to look like a record player.

It’s a whole new year, which means that it’s time for the music blog Said the Gramophone to compile its list of the best songs of the previous year. As I’ve written before, I generally find “best of the previous year” lists to be of little value, but Said the Gramophone’s list is one of the exceptions. As always, their tastes lean towards the indie, but they’re not too hipster to pick a pop gem (in fact, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe made the #1 slot of the list this year). Music, like life, is too large and important to look at through just one window, so any selection that’s not afraid to throw Nicki Minaj in with Rufus Wainwright, mix some Usher with Django Django, or combine Bonnie “Prince” Billy with PSY deserves some attention.

In their explanation of the list, they write:

Said the Gramophone is one of the oldest musicblogs. We try to do just two things, well:finding good songs, and writing about them. We don’t mess about with tour-dates, videos or advertising. We post new songs and old songs, write clumsy dreams of what we hear. If this is your first time here, I hope you’ll bookmark us or subscribe via RSS. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Of these 100 songs, approximately 71 are fronted by men, 29 by women. 53 acts are American, 24 are Canadian, 10 are British, 2 are Swedish, 2 are Ghanaian, 2 are French, and there is one Kiwi, one Australian, one Dane, one Korean, one Nigerian, one Chinese and one Finn. This is the way it worked out; it certainly ain’t perfect.

My favourite songs of the year do not necessarily speak to my favourite albums of the year. But if you want full-length records that are the best, the best, these were my ten in 2012: Micachu & the Shapes’ Never, Taylor Swift’s Red, Eric Chenaux’s Guitar & Voice, the Chromatics’ Kill For Love, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, James Irwin’s Western Transport, Damien Jurado’s Maraqopa, Avec pas d’casque’sAstronomie, PS I Love You’s Death Dreams and Eternal Summers’ Correct Behavior.

Some songs that you heard in 2012 may have been omitted from this tally because I heard them before this year, and included them in my Best of 2011. For example works by Gotye, TEEN, Bry Webb, Grimes and Azealia Banks.

The list isn’t just one you can read; it’s one you can listen to as well. Every song in the list has a link to someplace where you can hear it online and another link to where you can buy it. You can also download all the songs from the following locations:

• songs 1-33 (161mb)
• songs 34-67 (162mb)
• songs 67-100 (146mb)

You can also download the entire set from this mirror or this mirror.

These won’t be available forever, so the sooner you get these downloads, the better!

Found via Andrew “Mental Floss” McCallum.

And in case you were thinking that I was talking about Scorpions, the ’80s hair metal band, here’s something so you won’t go away empty-handed:

Getting There

I’ve been away from Toronto since December 29th, when I flew to Tampa by way of Montreal. Montreal had just gone through some record snow and its consequences:

While the post-Christmas snowstorm didn’t cancel my flight. It greatly delayed it. Pictured below is the green de-icing fluid being applied to my flight. It’s the stronger stuff with a longer usable life: 80 minutes as opposed to the 20 minutes that the orange stuff is good for:

The First Part

I still made it to Tampa in time to catch Bobcat Goldthwait’s stand-up routine at the Improv in Ybor City. He doesn’t use the screaming, spastic voice that we remember from Police Academy, Scrooged and a few other ’80s films anymore, and he’s quite funny. He told some jokes, as well as some funny stories, including one about the time when he did stand-up at the 2012 edition of the Gathering of the Juggalos:

…and the day after, it was a full afternoon and evening of boardgames with friends. Here’s the better of the two editions of the The Walking Dead boardgame — it’s the one based on the Robert Kirkman comic book that inspired the TV series:

I’m on a Boat!

From December 31st until the morning of January 4th, the Lady Friend and I spent our time on the ship Monarch of the Seas, which is currently owned by Royal Caribbean:

It was the first time on a cruise ship for the both of us, and we had a great time. We rang in the new year there; I also licked in the new year…

…and we had fun at the two stops the ship made. The first was to Royal Caribbean’s private island, Coco Cay (known formally as Little Stirrup Cay if you want to look it up on a map). It’s got some great beaches that they’ve populated with some gorgeous tropical fish, which makes for some good snorkeling.

Our second stop was in Nassau, where we spent some time at the Atlantis resort’s “Aquaventure” water park as well as the port area of the city.

From Nassau to NASA

Since our ship both left and returned to Port Canaveral, we decided to take advantage of our proximity and an annual pass offer and spend Friday and Saturday at the nearby Kennedy Space Center. Among other things, I got to see the Saturn V rocket up close and personal:

…pose for some amusing pictures (“Look at me! I’m texting and driving…on the moon!“)…

…and meet some real-life rocket scientists. Standing with me in the photo below is David Henson, who was an engineer at Rockwell and worked on the second-stage booster for Apollo 8, the first Apollo mission to orbit the moon (and the one that carried Jim Lovell, who’d later be the commander of Apollo 13). We’re posing with an original Saturn V flight manual, which he’d saved from those days. He went on to do engineering work on the Shuttle flights. I’m sure he gets told this all the time, but I had to shake his hand and tell him what an honour it was to meet an Apollo engineer.

I’m in Florida a little while longer, but I return to Accordion City late on Monday the 7th, after which I’m back to “the real world”. I hope you had a good time on your holidays as well!

While on the street that Vanilla Ice immortalized as “A1A Beachfront Avenue” yesterday, I picked up a couple of new stickers at the original Ron Jon’s and decided to give mt trusty laptop its new look for 2013:

I’m rather fond of the “Old Guys Rule” sticker:

Have a great new year! Regular posting will resume on Monday, January 7th.