Sunday, December 31, 2006

interesting find

did you know that stephen hawking is british? i had no idea. i guess they don't make electronic boxes that speak in accents.

i found this out by killing time today on wikipedia. still engaged with my recent re-ignation of my personal beatlemania, i was looking at the beatles listing, then reading about each person and saw that lennon was voted 8th of the 100 Greatest Britons as of a 2002 vote.

anyway, it was here that i found out that hawking, ranked 25th, is indeed a brit. it is kind of bullshit that he's ranked higher than beckham. i guess becks would have gotten higher had he not left the premiere league for real madrid. silly limey.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

double shot thursday

1) i'm in love with love

not the sappy, i'm married and have a kid love (that's nice and true and all too, but not exactly the point of this).

i got the Love CD last night from the Beatles and it is absolutely amazing. granted, i'm a big fan of the Fab 4, so there's no surprise there. but this album rocks. if you don't know about it, its more than a greatest hits collection, its the soundtrack from the Cirque show out in vegas and basically is a new take on many songs from the catalog. their long-time producer, george martin, and his son went into the studio and created the soundtrack for the show from all of the original recordings from the 60's. in doing so, they basically created a mash up of their catalog. they took pieces of songs and put them with others to create a new experience.

being 32 and in no way possible to see the Beatles live, i imagine this record presenting how they'd play a live show with great sequeways into songs and subtle differences to them as well. its fantastic and really makes me want to see the vegas show (even though it is people jumping around in tights).

2) my mom-in-law rocks

she really is amazing. she knows that i like comic books and yet doesn't cringe like her husband and daughter do. instead, she embraces it and gives me gifts that feed the inner geek in me. every so often, she'll buy me a book that she's heard about or sees. they're not comics in the true form, but more like literary reviews or history books or such. stuff that i love reading, but honestly would never buy myself. here's a quick breakdown, in case you're interested.

the amazing adventures of cavalier and clay by michael chabon. A great novel that i think won a pulitzer or some other award.

the r. crumb handbook a great autobiography of the cartoon satirist.

the men of tomorrow by gerard jones. a fantastic history of the beginning of comic books.

ultimate spiderman collection ok, so this one is a comic book but it collects three years of ultimate spiderman (an updated take on the classic character created by stan lee in the 60's. it takes the basic truths of the character and sets it in modern times.) its a blockbuster of a comic.

and this year's gift, amazing marvel universe by roy thomas with audio commentaries by stan lee. this gives the history of 50 great moments in marvel history (mostly in the beginning) and has an audio component that lets you hear stan the man's take on things. its a fun read and of all the ones listed here, truly a great find. seeing the audio thing attached to it would have made me steer clear of it thinking that its a beginner's book since it looks like a few books on my daughter's shelf.

Friday, December 01, 2006

who's at fault?

so on my way back from battle with the county over a tax assessment issue today, i saw an interesting scenario....

- two joggers running in downtown traffic cross a street corner. they are running with traffic, yet the pedestrian signal is clearly red...they're crossing out of turn so to speak.

- one car heading in their direction, starts turning onto the the street in which the runners are crossing

- one of the runners acts all beligerantly - arms flailing, high-pitch screams, etc.

- said runner did have some dandy-fine running shorts. you know, the ones that have a nice slit up the side so you see a little extra leg. however, it was a dude.

- i roll down my window to hear the exchange....hyper running dude says to his running partner, "i would have SO beaten that guys ass if he'd hit me."

so, if a runner would have been hit....would the driver really be at fault since the runners were crossing at a time when the big red hand said not to?