Charlton Heston died today. The first thing that came to my mind was that I guess now we can pry his guns from his hands.

I joined yelp.com yesterday and have been doing my neighborly duty of ranking every restaurant and store in my hood. I find yelp to be an interesting place to practice being witty and attempting to come across as funny and literate. Its all an act though. I'm neither witty nor literate. Evidence to this is that I'm currently reading a Michael Crichton book. Seriously, thats the equivalent to reading a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, only instead of the movie lasting less than 2 hours it lasts 700 pages. Epic fail, indeed.

Not sure what Michael Crichton and Jean-Claude Van Damme have to do with Yelp.com. Tangent much? Here's my personal yelp site.

One thing that's a little weird and disconcerting is that everytime I review something on Yelp my Facebook profile is updated... and I never gave it permission to do that not did I add a "yelp" application on Facebook. Yelp must just employ some sort of open authentication API from Facebook that doesn't require two way communication from the user. A little freaky, but more so in theory than in practice. I couldn't care less if my facebook friends actually discovered that I'm a fan of Full House Seafood Restaurant in Chinatown or that I hate the chilaquiles at the Brite Spot.

I kinda want one of these.

oh sweet jesus, this is awesome:

Why you wanna cross this guy?




Seriously. I really hope that nothing goes too bad for the Obama campaign as we wait out the Pennsylvania primary 7 weeks from now. Hillary keeps insisting that she and McCain have a lifetime of experience while Obama has 1 speech back in 2002. Its the most ridiculous, inflammatory statement that a fellow democrat could make. As much as I respect him for his integrity and refusal to go too negative so far, I really hope he takes some solid swings at Hillary now. Will Hillary go down? Yes She Will!!!

Dude! I've just discovered Yo Gabba Gabba.



So awesome!

Went to Star Trek: The Tour today at the old Spruce Goose dome next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It was really neat to see so many awesome props and sets from the old shows and movies. Check out some of the rad pics I got. More on my Flickr of course.

On the bridge of the Enterprise-D with Brennan and Dorina:


...and of course on the bridge of the original Enterprise:



( ouch, i cut myself... )

I've been saying this for years, but let us consider tonight's evidence (per Wikipedia as I didn't actually watch the show myself). The following are the Best Albums of the Year since 2000:

2008 - River: The Joni Letters performed by Herbie Hancock
2007 - Taking the Long Way performed by Dixie Chicks
2006 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb performed by U2
2005 - Genius Loves Company performed by Ray Charles
2004 - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below performed by OutKast
2003 - Come Away with Me performed by Norah Jones
2002 - O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack performed by Various Artists
2001 - Two Against Nature performed by Steely Dan
2000 - Supernatural performed by Santana

Who in their right mind could look at that list and say that these "Best Albums of the Year" were actually the best albums produced in their given year? Thats not to say that these albums are not good, but THE BEST? Ridiculous. Of this list I'd place only the OutKast record as having been within the top 10 of that year's output. Other than OutKast and Nora Jones, none of these records have been made by recording artists at the top of their game. And that really is the key point.

How about the 90's?

1999 - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill performed by Lauryn Hill
1998 - Time out of Mind performed by Bob Dylan
1997 - Falling into You performed by Celine Dion
1996 - Jagged Little Pill performed by Alanis Morissette
1995 - MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett performed by Tony Bennett
1994 - The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album performed by Whitney Houston
1993 - Unplugged performed by Eric Clapton
1992 - Unforgettable... with Love performed by Natalie Cole
1991 - Back on the Block performed by Quincy Jones
1990 - Nick of Time performed by Bonnie Raitt

Clearly there are more relevant albums in the 1990's winning the award with the Lauryn Hill, Celine Dion (I'm not saying everyone loved it, but you know that record was huge), Alanis Morisette and even the Bonnie Raitt albums being huge hits and leaving an actual impression on people. Natalie Cole's Unforgettable has of course turned out to be basically that...but at least it introduced us to creepy videos of people singing with their dead parents.

Now before the rise of super corporate record labels in the late 80's early 90s, we had a substantial number of "Best Albums" that were actually extremely relevant:

1989 - Faith performed by George Michael
1988 - The Joshua Tree performed by U2
1987 - Graceland performed by Paul Simon
1986 - No Jacket Required performed by Phil Collins
1985 - Can't Slow Down performed by Lionel Richie
1984 - Thriller performed by Michael Jackson
1983 - Toto IV performed by Toto
1982 - Double Fantasy performed by John Lennon & Yoko Ono
1981 - Christopher Cross performed by Christopher Cross
1980 - 52nd Street performed by Billy Joel

Yeh, you read those right. George Michael, U2, Paul Simon, Phil Collins Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, John Lennon and Billy Joel all won for best album of the year in the 80's. The only album that is completely forgotten today is the Christopher Cross album. Even that Toto album produced 3 hits (of which "Africa" is a freaking great song to do at karaoke, btw). Was this a fluke? I won't list them out, but the 70's had best albums from The BeeGees, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life!!!!), Paul Simon, George Harrison, Carole King and Simon and Garfunkel. And EVERY single one of these musicians were at the height of their creative output and popularity at the time.

So, maybe what happened was the Grammy voters decided to downplay popular music, but I suspect what actually has happened is that the average Grammy voter has gotten older. The same old men have been nominating people for these awards for way too long and they end up doing things like giving awards to Herbie Hancock and Santana 'cause they were really cool back in the 60's when these old men were young. Ray Charles won an award a few years ago. He was an amazing performer and recording musician. Did he deserve that award when he won it? No. He got it because he died and and had never won Best Album of the Year before. Simple as that. And who didn't win best album of the year because of that? Alicia Keys, Green Day, Kanye West and Usher. You know...relevant musicians. But don't worry too bad about them, I'm sure if they last 30 years in the business they'll get a pity Grammy. Alica Keys will no doubt release "If I Aint Got You" as a duet with the love chid of Hannah Montana and Zac Efron in 2030 and she'll finally get her Best Album of the Year. And of course the latest laser rock/quad hop star of 2030 that gets denied because of Alica will take solace in knowing that The Grammys have been completely irrelevant longer than anyone can remember.

Man what a long rant this was :)

ok, so its no big secret that im a fan of justin timberlake. i just think he's a great songwriter and performer. i even paid $70 for a nosebleed ticket to see him at the staples center a few months ago. even though the seat was terrible, the show was super awesome. as big a fan of mr. timerblake as i am, im an even bigger fan of john mayer. im not really into his first couple of albums, but when he started going bluesy i was hooked. the record with the john mayer trio and his last record, continuum, are really fantastic. i actually got a chance to see mr. mayer at the hollywood bowl over the summer and had a blast. and it was no where near $70 a ticket :)

anyway, john mayer recently posted a video of him playing the interlude from JT's Lovestoned. check it out:


i thought it was pretty good, but to be honest, i had figured the interlude out on guitar a while back and my version sounded a lot better than mr. mayer's- he just didn't have the chords totally right. finally tonight, i tried to use my line6 dl4 echo/loop pedal to record a similar video to the one john mayer posted...only for some stupid reason my computer wouldnt record the audio. if y'all wanna see 2 minutes of me playing my guitar without any sound, make sure to hit me up :)

after my crushing defeat, i decided to see if anyone else had tried to correct mr. mayer on his chords. thats when i came across this super awesome cover:


after watching this, i dont think i'll bother recording my version of this song again.

definitive.

im considering buying a barack obama tshirt. i kinda feel like when im going through my closet in 25 years, id be proud of myself to find an old faded obama shirt. so, im on barackobmama.com's store and im really tempted to buy an "Oklahoma for Obama" shirt:

but i'm afraid that irony will not be in favor 25 years from now.

i like that, while regular tshirts cost $20.08 (clever way of squeezing 8 more cents out of me!), the student focused shirts are only $10:


ultimately, i suspect im going to go with this one:


ps. why do mexicans in california love hillary so much? hellooo, her name is hillary clinton, not Morrissey.

You totally made it seem like it was going to be Hollywood week and bam! More crappy auditions! Duuude. Next year, please just skip the audition phase. Please!

or rather, who will count it?

my polling place, elysian elementary here in echo park, utilized the Inkavote system which is basically an ink based scantron system to conduct the election. one big problem: the Inkavote machine didn't work. the poll worker took my voting sheet and simply folded it and put it into a box beneath the machine. then she shouted "viva la hillary" and ran off with a cackle. ok well, that didn't happen...but still. it could've after i turned my back. thats why its important that we have some sort of automated process at play...though i am no fan of the diebold machines either. Inkavote seems like a decent system if it just worked. no hanging chads, no data to alter.

anyway, LAist reported on the Inkavote issue and even had a picture of the nice babushkas that ran the polling place:

I can does your taxes?

I can has corporate takeover?

I just pulled my voter's guide out and sat down to do a little research on the California primary this Tuesday. My conclusion? Yes on proposition Obama, no on proposition everything else. I'm not too fond of proposition system. I think its really abused in California, the propositions are worded to maximize voter confusion and just generally does not help anything.

i wanna go. maybe for the day before that too cause rilo kiley and death cab are playing...which maybe means a postal service reunion??? anyway, i hear it gets unfavourably hot there in april, but i fully intend to invent air conditioned pants by then so itll be cool.

i totally want this. my reasoning is threefold:

1)chess is awesome
2)legos are awesome
3)normal chess boards don't work well around my cats, but boards where the pieces attach to them like legos? genius.

my birthday is 6 months away. plan accordingly. all you have to do is save like 8 dollars a month. lego.com says they cant sell them to the US, but thats totally a lie. i saw this thing in the glendale mall's lego store just a month ago.

i've been making an attempt to be more "connected" with all my rss feeds (even though i havent personally been contributing much to them lately) and as part of that i installed an rss reader on my macbook called NetNewsWire which is a free rss app that does a great job of keeping track of my feeds. it has excellent integration with Growl which ive been using for years (side note: ive basically adopted the stance that if an application supports Growl, ill install it cause its probably awesome). if you're a mac user and enjoy blogs and such, install both of these applications. one major plus for NetNewsWire is that it now integrates with NewsGator so you can have your feeds on newsgator's website as well. theres even a specially formatted iPhone version of NewsGator's site thats kinda nifty.

as part of my installation of NetNewsWire, i noticed a reference to a blogging application called MarsEdit. MarsEdit is a great blog editor that lets me post updates to my Wordpress-based blog and my LiveJournal, so hopefully I'll be updating both more and more now that its as easy as opening up MarsEdit and rambling away. MarsEdit is also integrated with NetNewsWire so i can automatically post any links that popup in my RSS that seem neat straight to my blog. pretty cool idea. its also integrated with Flickr so i can easily browse my photos and post them. i think ill do a flickr post after this.

anyway, hopefully now that i have some new blogging toys ill be blogging more... at least for a few weeks until they get old again.

dearest live journal,
have you missed me? if you haven't noticed, i haven't been posting in a while. thats because the wordpress plugin i used to use to sync over my blog entries on benackerman.com to LJ has been broken. so, until i get it fixed again, if you're interested in knowing what im up to, id advise heading over to www.benackerman.com and catching up. ill still be reading my friends page and stuff though...don't worry LJ, i wont totally abandon you.