Buffalo Blog

Dr. Feelgood: How I learned to stop sleeping and see some live music

As some of you may be aware, it was recently my birthday. I'm assuming it's scant few of you, as I received very few Birthday Cards. No worries however, as Meghan was kind enough to pick up the slack for you lot. She got me tickets to go see the Secret Machines on October 17 and Citizen Cope on October 22. Both shows were at The Showbox and both shows were amazing. If you are not familiar with either of the above mentioned music-makers, you should totally go check them out at their sites. They both stream music so you can listen and get totally hooked.

The only problem with these concerts was that they were on weeknights. And getting home at midnight during the week puts the hurt on you at six the next morning when you are trying to shower, but you can't open your eyes. So needless to say, I've been a zombie, a totally happy, live-music watching, zombie.

These are really the first shows I've been to since moving out here. There was an incident involving Bruce Hornsby, but I've been trying to pretend that never happened. Also, I just got tickets for me and Meghan to go see Death Cab for Cutie when they come through town in December. If they come to your neck of the woods, you should totally check them out as well.

I really loved the Secret Machines. They played "in the round" which meant they set up a stage in the middle of the venue and had the crowd fill in around them on all sides. It was a novel concept, and they rocked it well. Here's a photo from my crappy camera phone of them wailing to one of my favorites, "First Wave Down."

 

They played almost all of my favorites and really put on a fantastic show. I was disappointed that I didn't get to hear "Nowhere Again." It's awesome. But at least it gives us a reason to go see them again, not that we really needed one. But, that's it for me. I'm pooped.

I'm a (culture) genius!

I know that you always thought I was smart, but now it's official. Mr. T has certified me as a genius with a culture IQ of 151. I was over at Culture Fool the other day and I decided to match my wits with the formidable BA Baracus (who, by the way, makes a mean cookie jar). Who thinks they can beat my score?

RSS all up in my steez

So I woke up this morning and dashed to my TiVo to see what was in store, but not finding anything I felt like watching before my coffee, I went to go pick out some music from my PC to stream through my TV to help me face the day. Well, what to my wandering eyes should appear? But 4 games for my TiVo and a ton of yahoo! features. Scanning quickly down the screen I came to the most amazing feature: The TiVo Podcaster. Now, this might not seem amazing to you, but in the last few weeks I've noticed that RSS has been blowing up all over the place. IE 7.0 has integrated RSS support. Microsoft's new operating system Vista will have an integrated RSS engine to help all of your desktop applications parse feeds and automatically update the photos in your MyPhotos directory, or copy mp3s directly to your myMusic folder, all via RSS. It's really exploding all over the place. And, just this past weekend, when I got my PSP I noticed that it had RSS support. Take a look:

When Podcasting becomes a standard feature on gaming devices and my television, you know it's hit the mainstream. But what's even more impressive, is I love having podcast support on my devices, is the most amesomest thing ever... It's like having all of your favorite radio stations with you all the time without having to deal with commercials... and getting to skip all the songs that you don't want to listen to. I've been a huge fan of podcasting since I got my iPod a little over a year ago, but these new features mean that I don't even have to download the music before I start listening to it, it just automatically streams so I get instant gratification. Now all I need is a WiFi cloud to cover Seattle so that I can stream these podcasts to my PSP all over town. Wait for WiFi support on your iPod soon and pretty soon it'll be on your refrigerator and toaster. What I really want though is Flickr support for my TiVo so I can surf Flickr on my TV. But that's it from me. It's like Christmas morning up in my apartment right now.

Happy New Year!

It's 2006 and I'm happy to report that Meghan and I rang in the new year until 1:30am Seattle time, which is quite impressive considering how exhausted we've been with all of the moving across country and what-not. But we had a great time. We went out to dinner at Wild Ginger, stuffed ourselves about as full as possible, enjoyed a nice bottle of Roessler Pinot Noir and were home by 7:15pm ready to call it a night. However, we mustered the energy to meet up with Abby at Marjorie for several rounds of drinks and some catching up and before we knew it, it was midnight! Way to go us.

And, to help you ring in the new year, here's a little something I found via Boing Boing: It's one of my favorite musicians singing a song about Flickr photos with an accompanying sideshow. Jonathan Coulton became on of my favorite musicians after I heard him sing the Ikea song (mp3), but he has a ton of other great music as well. So recover from the partying you did last night and enjoy the soothing melodies of Mr. Coulton, on this the first day of 2006!

Also, don't forget to start listening to CC365, which kicks off today with Day 1: Trash80 - Social Silence.