Playground Tactics

....this seems to happen whenever I try to start blogging again.  I started in Livejournal, went in fits and starts, and then jumped over here.  Things were going well for a while, and then for whatever reason I trailed off.  I'm giving it another go, and I wouldn't make an event of it it were I not switching platforms yet again.  I've enjoyed Vox.  The only reason I'm switching is that I'd like non-Voxers to be able to comment on my posts.  They shouldn't force people to join if they want to contribute in that capacity.  I'm over at WordPress now: http://frightgeist.wordpress.com/

WordPress also seems to have tremendous design potential, if you're willing to commit some time to it.  This should be my last platform jump, but you never know.  Thanks to all my neighbors!  It's been fun, and you're all in my RSS reader (add me to yours please, if you aren't using one you should really consider it!).  I'll keep Vox alive so I can chime in when the spirit moves me to do so.

"Alvin and the Chipmunks" opened this weekend and made 45 million dollars.

And "Juno" is still only playing in New York and Los Angeles.

Why is this happening?

To all of my adoring fans......

Ghostface Doll

.....please consider pooling your resources this holiday season and buying me the Ghostface Killah doll.  This is pretty much the greatest thing ever.  He comes with serious bling and a pretty luxurious looking robe.  AND a chalice (which somehow became the number one accessory for rap artists)!  He even spits rhymes from a talkbox, though I don't think it's triggered by a string in his back.  Wouldn't that be amazing?  If he were still with us I would say that an ODB doll would have been even better.

Guess how much this sucka costs?  FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!  FOR SERIOUS!!!  I'd seriously consider buying it if it were a fraction of the price, much like the Tupac sneakers I saw in the mall a few months ago.

Props to the Onion A.V. Club for bringing this bad boy to my attention.  I wish I could write for those guys.

A happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone in Web Land!

Y'all need to go out and see "Enchanted."  Like right now.  It's such a fun movie!  It was great to see Disney make fun of itself.  Probably the best thing they've done in a while (I'm not counting Pixar productions).  Amy Adams makes the movie.  She's so funny and natural, even though she's playing a pretty silly character.  She also does her own singing, and Alan Menken is still using his black magic to create great music (though he is paying homage to his own stuff, especially with the calypso-enfused "That's How You Know").  James Marsden is great too.  I want his velvet jacket with the ridiculously overstuffed shoulder puffs.  Susan Sarandon was the only stinky part, which doesn't happen too often.  Check it out.

My name is Jesse Van Hoy, and I freely admit that I find lolcats to be both hilarious and endearing.  I make no apologies, other than feeling sorry for you if you disagree.

 Brought to you by the lolsloth.

I iz not a dedly sin

My cousin Erin introduced me to Pandora about a year ago.  It's an amazing Internet radio site that utilizes something called the Music Genome Project to create customized stations for you tailored to a particular artist's style.  You feed it an artist and it then gives you a succession of songs by other artists who are similar.  It's a great way to find new music that you'll probably like.  I never got into LastFM.  I get all the social connectivity I need from Facebook (I'm only on MySpace to read a few friends' blogs).

I was a regular Pandora user for a few months, but like many other things on the Web I stopped using it because I couldn't be bothered to navigate to the site and keep it open in Firefox all the time.  I'd close the browser and forget about it.  Upgrading to Leopard has solved this problem.  The webclip app is pretty remarkable.  I already have Toothpaste for Dinner and Creased Comics widgets going, but I didn't think that it would be able to handle something like Pandora interface.  But it worked, much to my surprised to delight.  Now I can keep it going in the background and access it with a single keystroke. Score!

I really like music festivals, even though I've only been to two (Bumbershoot and ATP).  There's usually loads of awesome music to choose from, great atmosphere, funky vendors, and loads of weird and wonderful characters running about.

I just came across the lineup for the Langerado music festival.  It's in Florida, and I had never heard of it before, but here's a sampling from the lineup: the Roots, the Beastie Boys, REM, 311, Matisyahu, Thievery Corporation, Ben Folds, G. Love & Special Sauce, Les Claypool, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Arrested Development, and a buttload of others.

Why doesn't New York have anything like this?  Is it because so many concerts happen in the city already?  Sure, they have a horrendously over-commercialized "revival" of Woodstock every now and then, but didn't the last one turn into mud-caked anarchy?  With five-dollar bottles of water and overflowing portable toilets?  Maybe the original Woodstock brought a curse upon the state, dooming us never to have a great music festival ever again.

It's quite possible that I'm just ill-informed.  I was never a Warped Tour or Family Values guy.  There is the CMJ Music Marathon, but that's down in the city.  You can't camp out or find cheap lodging.  And from what I've heard, it's more like a trade show.  Loads of unknown bands looking to get signed.  And at $295 for students (five hundy for everyone else, which now includes me unfortunately unless I milk my Cambridge ID), it seems hardly worth it since it's spread out over something like fifty different venues.  The beauty of music festivals is that there are only three or four venues that are quite close together.  So you can drift around comfortably, check out unfamiliar acts, and drift on if you don't dig what you hear.  Not so easy to do if you have to trek the city streets.

There are a bunch of great-sounding annual festivals that I'd love to check out, but they're scattered throughout the country and beyond: Langerado (Florida), Coachella (California), Bonnaroo (Tennessee), Sasquatch (Washington, along with Bumbershoot), Burning Man (not really a music festival, but I want to go because it looks like a total mindfuck out in the desert), Glastonbury, ATP......and who knows how many others.  I suppose it's inevitable that these things all become horribly expensive corporate affairs.

I just wanna rock.

I periodically search YouTube for this video, and somebody finally posted it.  It's Takeru Kobayashi (the former Nathan's hot dog eating champion) facing off against a Kodiak bear in an eating contest.  This was a segment from the quality Fox program "Man vs. Beast."  I find it quite hilarious.  Kobayashi gets smoked by the bear, who eats fifty hot dogs in like two and a half minutes.  And Fox provides some pretty great color commentary (they point out things such as the fact that the bear is unaware that he is in a competition).

I must say, however, that it does sort of bother me that the bear is being made a spectacle.  I hope that they didn't starve it or anything in preparation for the competition.  Probably not though, I could definitely see a bear going at a pile of hot dogs like that just for a snack.

Anyway, here's the video.

I wish I could write fantasy fiction.  Perhaps of the young adult variety.  I think a lot of great stuff comes out of the genre.  The best of it is full of meaning and enjoyment for adults too.

This is probably why so much of it is being optioned by movie studios.  So far we've had Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings (doesn't necessarily fit the YAF designation, but it definitely helped jumpstart the fantasy trend in Hollywood), the Chronicles of Narnia, Bridge to Terabithia, the Dark is Rising, and His Dark Materials.  Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head; there may be others.  And Terabithia is the only one of those titles that has not or will not spawn at least two sequels.  There is a buttload of money tied up in these movies.  It seems as though anyone with a half-decent fantasy story stands a chance of getting their work adapted into a blockbuster.

I chose to post on this because I just finished "The Golden Compass" (AKA "The Northern Lights"), the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.  I wanted to read it before the film came out, and I really enjoyed it.  I'm about ready to tear through the next two, which may also be produced by New Line if "The Golden Compass" fares well at the box office.  I'm not happy about the news that the last three chapters of the first book will be tacked onto the beginning of the second movie, however.  That'll be pretty unsatisfying for anyone who is a fan of the story.

And as a total non sequitur (because Bridgid requested it), here's a photo of the tastiest luggage I've ever seen:

Bacon briefcase

ENGLISH BREAKFAST....YUCKERS!

So get this: I move out of Cambridge about two months ago and then a waffle joint opens up across the corner from my building!  What's up with that?!  I avoided the English breakfast as often as possible.  Though I must admit that these waffles aren't necessarily the breakfast type.  "Savory" waffles could include anything from tuna melts to bolognaise (not unlike the amazing street crepes in France).  Check this menu out!  It is absolutely ridonk!*  In a clever marketing scheme, the proprietors have named the waffles after different colleges.  Of course King's receives the most liberal waffle: you can choose your own combinations!  How fitting!  AND they have free wifi!  It's probably just as well that this place popped up after I left.  I would've been eating waffles all the time (especially since they're only four quid a pop).  I WILL have some waffles when I visit.

I do love me some waffles though.

*As in "ridonkulous," "ridonkadonk," and any number of other variants.