Booyor's BLOGgh!

Today you should definitely follow my tweets/twitterstream/insane/inane ramblings. Click here for that link. Tonight I’ll be going to the Third Day concert. They’ve been one of my favorite bands since college, even more so after getting hooked on rockabilly and just plain ‘billy music from Firefly.

My date is super hot. I hear she’s in her 20s, but that may change today. I need someone that can handle distinguished sideburns.

Also, J has posted a video from Easter. Very cool on all accounts. See if you can find:

1. A bass player encouraging groove.
2. A trumpet that could hang with Wynton.
3. My mom with a videocamera.
4. The Church doing what it was born to do.

Here’s the video:

but you should leave a comment on J’s site.

1. Mr. Roboto – I would like to say that I always knew that this song would be involved in a wedding shootout, but that would just be ridiculous. We knew Jeffster would be back, but we didn’t know that they would make such a…bang. I would love to #savechuck, but if they’re done, what a way to go.
   
   
2. The Rocky Road to Dublin – Imagine all peaceful on a nice path and then highwaymen show up – swords/dueling daggers are drawn and whiskey jugs are tossed as people go madly spinning.

   Also of note – best use of the word shillelagh in a song.
   

3. In the Hall of the Mountain King – This one has always beat out “O, Fortuna” and “Night on Bald Mountain” for me, especially when performed by a German hair band string ensemble:
   
4. Duel of the Fates/Battle of the Heroes – Every time I hear “Duel of the Fates” I have to scream “No!!!” at the killing of Rob Roy and every time I hear “Battle of the Heroes”, I tear up a little. (I do that when Obi-Wan dies and tells Luke to run, but that’s more of a death scene than a fight scene.)
   
5. Into the Trap – Every time I think of space combat, this enters my brain. To be honest, every time I pull the Scion out of the driveway, this enters my brain. And when I merge in traffic, and when I…
6. That Lobby Fight Song from the Matrix – as much as the Matrix has been over-hyped (we’ll forget that there were any sequels) I have to admit that when we saw this in college, we immediately jumped around the theater while leaving like we were in bullet time.
   
   Although in Bollywood, the hero doesn’t need anyone else’s help:
   
   Were my wife and I the only ones to watch Kung Pow!: The Movie?

I know that I’ve left some off – with all of the big summer blockbusters in May and beyond, I’m sure you can think of some more.

Worthy of mention is Chief Wiggum’s Sunshine and Lollipops, but I classify that as more of a chase scene.

This news is from Jeremy:

South Korea, on the other hand, is cornering the market on glowing beagles.

I get frustrated when I go to a bookstore and they say they have the book at every location except for the one I’m standing at.

I don’t like paying for shipping (or paying a subscription to not pay for shipping).

But have you seen the Espresso Book Machine? It launched on Friday at a Blackwell’s bookstore. You type in which book you want, it binds a new copy while you drink a cup of coffee.

Insane.

Now you don’t have to worry about books being in stock, especially rare/old books.

What will really be interesting is to see how the employees of the 60 branches scheduled to get the machines adapt. Will people look for more recommendations now? Less? There will be less time walking the shelves, straightening titles and all that. What if the employees now had a set-up like an Apple Store Genius Bar?

Did you like Skeleton Creek? (Creepy, right?) In October Ghost in the Machine is coming out. I’m very excited.

Yes. How does that book have a sequel? Perhaps it’s a companion book.

But would you like to be one of the video stars in the book? Patrick Carman’s studio will be holding auditions on May 1. Click on the link for more information.

Choose whether you want to read for the guy script or the girl script and it will open the audition PDF file. Videotape your audition and put it on YouTube following their directions.

Even if you don’t want to audition, it’s still pretty fun to read parts of the script ahead of time.

I can’t find where to audition as the bearded librarian…

It’s interesting when the bloggh runs better than I know it is. For starters, I’m very thankful for all of the readers. It’s fun to check in and see people from way-back reading (as well as people from afar…welcome to my faithful readers from Bucharest and Melbourne. I must admit that I don’t know who you are, or why you daily come back to this hive of villainy, but welcome!).

Commenters – thank you for adding to the discussion. I was commenting to my wife that sometimes my comments feed reads like a script of Statler and Waldorf.

And then there are times where links that I set up are updated. Woohoo! Thanks, Devin. I just noticed that you’re offering sports commentary on a different site.

Everyone, check out Line Drive in the High Desert. Bookmark it. RSS it. Digg it. RT @ # it.

And perhaps even read it.

If ever the world needed the Battle-Unit Ready National Squad, that time is now. The results from the survey are in:
Nick Fury 64%
Martin Van Buren 27%
J. Jonah Jameson 9%

A definite contender is Asimov if we take the definition of distinguished to be “incredibly noticeable”.

Or as I like to call it – “What the..?!”

May 1 you’ll see a new option (in Japan) on the Wii. Much like what Sony wanted with Home, you’ll have your own personal space for your Mii to hang out and manage media. Your TV in the Sims-ish set-up will play actual videos downloaded from Nintendo.

My prediction? Anime. I do realize that I may be going out on a limb with such a gutsy prediction.

It seems there are also places in your virtual hangout that when you click on them take you to ads. How…exciting?

My guess is that you won’t be able to interact real-time with other people, but you’ll probably send messages to other Wiis. What would be interesting would be VC game demos on a virtual system.

It’s nice to see that the current console to popularize avatars (understanding that there was previously Second Life and Alpha World) is getting in on the virtual world idea.

Also, will the NSA approve the new First Blackberry (Blackberry One?) for Obama? It’s interesting that this article comes out alongside an article about triangulating locations for prison-smuggled phones.

One billion apps downloaded from iTunes. Craziness.

Japan’s paying immigrants from Latin America to go home and never seek work in Japan again. Spain did this, but didn’t make too many headlines. It’s interesting the types of jobs that the immigrants took:

“kitsui, kitanai, kiken” — meaning “hard, dirty, dangerous”

I can’t remember which comedian it was (or demotivational poster) that said that if your job could be replaced by a guy who doesn’t understand English, your job stinks and will probably be replaced by robots.

There’s an interesting social experiment going on with Facebook and voting. The ghost of Benjamin Franklin approves.

I see this photo and I think The Office.

Update: I Twittered (Tweeted?) this yesterday but forgot to link to it for other people. Have you seen the new G. I. Joe? It has the same intensity as a Bourne movie. (So no little ones clicking on this, you hear?)

There’s talk of this Lyman-alpha blob changing how we view galaxy formation, possibly changing how we think about the origin of our own galaxy. Or it could be a fluke.

Or it could be a giant blob in space waiting to absorb us all? Am I the only one who noticed that this is huge – from 12.9 light years away?

I think we should focus our global efforts on the world’s largest spoon.

Mike, I humbly request your forgiveness for mocking your plan for the two of us to enroll in Space Camp. We need it now more than ever.

This is not an Earth Day Prank (unlike this).

There will be a LEGO Rock Band coming out, complete with customizing your minifigures for the rockers and the roadies. It’s even up for pre-ordering already.

Not joking – check out the playlist:

1. Blur: “Song 2″
2. Carl Douglas: “Kung Fu Fighting”
3. Europe: “The Final Countdown”

Might I suggest a peripheral?

My wife has been untaciturnally mocking my gray hair, feeling liberty that she is a young woman and I am an old man.

But I prefer to think of myself as distinguished. A distinguished gentleman, if you will.

So the big question is: Who best rocks the distinguished sideburns?


Nick Fury (under the captain’s armpit)

J. Jonah Jameson

Martin Van Buren