Pandora Radio

The past few weeks I've really been finding myself loving Pandora radio (pandora.com). I'm sure most, if not all, of you have heard about it and/or tried it out. It's more or less the perfect radio station, at least within the realm of what you can expect without the nebulous Hand of God playing any sort of role in this dream. First of all it's free Internet radio. Second, you get music that you know you like. Third, it plays music based on the songs you rate. If you like a song, thumbs up. If you don't, thumbs down.

I'm sure most people are familiar with it so there's little need for me to talk more about it is. Here's what I'm finding though. All of my Pandora roads lead to 2 bands. Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. No matter what band I start with, both of those bands seem to be on the playlist eventually. I guess it's not surprising that my musical tastes were heavily influenced in the early 90s when grunge/alternative were really coming into their own. The thing is that I don't have either of these bands as a Pandora station.

Two of my favorite bands of all-time are Jane's Addiction and Phish. Neither of these bands have made it into the rotation of any other station I've created. I have Wilco, Radiohead, Beck, Pearl Jam, Primus, and RHCP off the top of my head. All of these leads to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. None lead to Jane's Addiction.

So as much as this is perfect Internet radio, it's still not exactly perfect. I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm just pointing out that the mainstream artists are still going to hold sway over the contraption, no matter how smart you think you've made it. And one other thing. How the Eagles' Hotel California comes in as the 6th song of a RHCP station is incomprehensible. Again, not complaining because it's a simple matter of giving the thumbs down and moving on. But still, the Eagles?

I've been looking into one of the Pandora receivers over the past week. I just got my work bonus so I'm thinking, "How can I enrich my life with something that's totally and completely not needed and at the same time a cash sink that will likely be obsolete and/or unused in a matter of months?" After a few minutes I decided, "A portable Pandora radio!"

Actually, I've looked a little at the mini-box versions that I could presumably drop on the counter or in the basement. When I work from home I work in the basement and I sometimes use another laptop as my Pandora receiver. But I don't have headphones which leaves the sound quality lacking. My work laptop isn't powerful enough to run Pandora and the RDP into work.

The problem that Pandora solves is this. With an IPod, you can have all your artists and all the songs at your disposal. After a while, you say to yourself, "How the hell do I choose between the 800 CDs I've loaded on here? And how do I organize this mess?" Pandora allows you to listen to what you want, sorta. It also potentially exposes you to new music unless, like me, most of your music was popular 15-25 years ago. Actually, Radiohead and Beck are still current but alas, those roads apparently run back to Nirvana as well. I'm tempted to start with Diana Ross to see how long it takes me to get to Nirvana. I would guess at least 100 songs but I would also guess that I would get there eventually.

I haven't looked everywhere, but if I could find an IPod-like receiver that I could take anywhere and still use to give thumbs up/down on the train or at home, I might very well pull that trigger today. I know they offer Pandora to your "mobile device" but that's not a viable long-term solution, especially considering you have to pay for the $15 data plan to make it worthwhile. Currently it seems that this is exclusive to the iPhone, at least in terms of a legitimate portable Pandora.

That leaves something you can buy and use in the house, which there are a few options. The options are sleek, to be sure, with Sonos possibly being the coolest of the bunch. Of course cool comes with a price tag, $999 at the minimum. I got a nice bonus but not that nice, you know?

At the lower end you have Chumby coming in at around $199 for a functional unit. But then what you're really buying is a controller for your Pandora that needs to have a wireless connection. Ok, our house is wireless but then I need to either have headphones or plug it into a stereo. We're tipping back to the point that the second laptop, which we already have, is a perfectly fine Pandora controller since it's already here.

It's an awesome idea that also happens to be very cool, sleek, and sexy. But without being able to do exactly what you want with it - ie, walk out your door and down the street while listening to your music - it's hard to spend that kind of scratch on something like this. I have an iPod that does me just fine to "get me by" so to speak. And I'm in the office 3 days a week where the point is moot. So it's really for those days I'm working in the basement which is 2 days normally and full weeks when I'm on-call. Given that Pandora on the web is free, and the add-ons at those prices aren't sounding terribly cost-effective for me right now.

So it looks like I won't be spending any disposable cash on a product I would love to have. To be sure there's a market for this. Really it's a total slam dunk, no brainer. I'm still surprised that you can't get something like this relatively easily. But it's generally new. And while it can still rake in the mad cash selling the items as-is, it won't change much. But I imagine something will come along to challenge the Pandora Paradigm, then it will be easier to get my personalized radio stations wherever I want them. For now though, being limited to my work PC or the floating laptop at home will have to suffice.

So if you have a product and/or service I can spend my money on, give me a ring.

Media

Nat picked up the movie Babel from the library for me, which I watched on the train today. Well some of it. Going in it was ok, but coming home I was getting pretty into it and was afraid I was going to miss my stop. That has to be some level of positive endorsement.

Some old guy was watching today. I guess people can't keep their eyes off a TV screen, even if they can't hear the words.

I also started the 5th book in the Evanovich series on Stephanie Plum the bounty hunter. Good stuff, very entertaining. I got the tip from a girl I sat next to on the train last year who was reading Tom Robbins.

I watched ESPN while I was on the trainer this morning. Watching pro sports is really useless. Today the lead story was exhibition NBA. Why not fork bending? It's about as pertinent.

I listened to My Morning Jacket and Sufjan Stephens today.

I've been forced to find new Chinese Podcasts as chinesepod.com no longer allows free downloads and I'm not paying them.

Last week I gave up on Creation by Gore Vidal and Another Roadside Attraction by Robbins. The former just wasn't my cup of tea and the later doesn't stand the test of time. I also watched Python's Grail last week.

That concludes the media report for today.

Music By Terren

Terren

"I've been getting into the new Weezer album. You might have seen their new Pork and Beans video on youtube, since it's a sort of celebration of the last 5 years of youtube celebrity. Which is a brilliant idea for a video, if you think about it. Weezer is kind of like Queen, in that it's as much about theater as it is about rock. And like Queen, it's no substitute - they really do rock. Can't go wrong with Ween. Guess I like bands that start with Wee.

"I liked Sigur Ros's breakout album, but thought subsequent ones were too pretentious.. haven't given them much of a shot since. I think Beck peaked with Midnight Vultures but I don't think my opinion there is a common one. I like The Information though, which I think is the most recent one before the new one. Love Clinic. Portishead is interesting but have to be in the right mood for them. Both bands definitely occupy their own little corner of the music universe.

"You should overbake a chocolate cake so you can't tell right away it's burnt. Dress it up real nice with a doily and powdered sugar on top... don't let them off with icing. Slice it beforehand so nobody gets a clue by cutting it."

I'm glad you mentioned Weezer because I had fused Ween and Weezer into one band. It wouldn't really be funny if I took the WEE from Ween and the ZER from Weezer and made WEEZER. So let's call it WEEZEREEN. That's not funny either. I had lost the distinction between the bands, kinda like how Iron Maiden and Judas Priest will always occupy the same small corner of my mind because I listened to them at the same stage of life, back when people were spinning Ozzy records backwards and jumping out of buildings or eating rat poison or whatever they were doing after listening to Mister Crowley the wrong way.

I also started listening to Rush and Van Halen at the same time, a few years after Billy Joel and Air Supply, which was a few years after Captain Kangaroo and Big Bird. I think Dokken and Ratt occupy a shared corner as well. You know what blows my mind is that every time AMG releases the weekly letter of new releases one of those bands is on it, as if the world was eagerly awaiting Dokken's Greatest Japanese Hits. Another pair is Deep Purple and Bad Company.

I was thinking of Weezer and the Pork and Beans. That's what I wanted to buy. Did you buy that or steal it? Have you noticed that you can no longer get free music with the Google search I sent you a while ago? Seems like that Internet wormhole closed really fast. If you bought it, or stole it, can I have a copy?

The dessert idea loses steam rapidly. First of all it takes effort, which sucks. I really wish I could get an overbaked cake by blogging about hot Asian chicks on the train. But I'd actually have to make the stupid thing and then stand there while nobody pays me any mind as I giggle thinking how funny my blog is going to be the Monday after the town picnic.

Secondly, Nat probably won't let me live down the fact our house will smell like burnt cake for the next 6 months. Even though I love cake, that admittedly could be a bit much. I'm sure I'd also ruin a pan in the process. I know we sometimes errantly look back to times past and think things were better, but wasn't life a little easier when it didn't matter if you ruined a baking sheet or dropped mushrooms and took the magic markers to the kitchen?

Maybe I could just take a pound of nails and cover it with sugar water and dole it out like punch.

Music, Signage, Bake Sales, and Cycle 42

Music

I come and go with music. I'll get really hot and heavy with new music then tune out for long periods of time. This week I picked up again which will probably be of interest to Terren and Chris and few other people who read this. Well, Walter for sure since I'm generally not listening to anything that makes you want to pull out a weapon and destroy another human being, with the possible exception of a little Dr. Dre here and there.

Currently listening to Beck's Guero this morning on the way to work. I really liked this album at the time and as it blares in my iPod I find I'm still enjoying it. That's good considering I just ordered the new one. I jumped on half.com last night and ordered the following CDs:

* PJ Harvey's latest, White Chalk. I so loved Stories... that I basically buy up anything she produces in the hopes that it hits the same level of excellence.

* Thom Yorke's The Eraser. Of course the 2 interested parties know that Yorke is the frontman for Radiohead. It happened to pop up in a search I did so I added it on there. No real expectations either way but just a flier.

* Sufjan Stevens' Illinoise. This has been on my radar for 2 years so I just finally said fuck it and bought it. The used price is finally less than $10.

* Beck, Modern Guilt. Read it was worth it so there ya go.

* Satelite Party, Ultra Payloaded. I'm always interested in what Perry Farrell is doing these days. I read AllMusic's review of the album and it wasn't exactly glowing so much as it suggested that Farrell is talented but confused on this one. We'll see.

Also have a list of potential future purchases including new stuff from Sigur Ros, Ween, Black Keys, Eric Avery (who is incidentally considering a reunion with JA), Clinic, and Portishead. If you have any opinions on that stuff comment away.

Signage and Bake Sales

Can someone explain to me when the words sign and its plural form signs morphed into the word signage? What was wrong with sign? I read this last night:

"...as he hit a monster shot 502 feet off the right field signage..."

No he hit the ball off a fucking sign, an advetisement, very possibly for a product which gives you a 4 hour boner. Not signage. I'll even accept that the word signage can be used instead of signs, as in, "That empty storefront didn't have any signage indicating it was for rent." It's still pretty pedantic, but a little easier on the soul. But a sign is a sign. You don't stop at a stop signage.

The word sign has now started to not make any sense to me because I've said it too much. Sign. Sine. Cosine. Cosignage. He hit a mammoth shot 502 feet off the arctangent of right field bleachers in Yankee Stadium. I'm all for word evolution but adding "-age" to an existing word is as intelligent as Homer's business suggestion of taking an existing product and adding a clock to it.

OK, 180 turn because it doesn't deserve it's own section. The Moms Club my wife is in is having a bake sale/competition during the town picnic this year and I asked if I could enter and started giggling. Naturally Nat said no. So here's my idea, it's brilliant. I'm going to bake some cookies, or a cake. Whatever, it can be a pie, let's not get caught up in the actual item, it doesn't matter. But I'm going to quadruple the baking time so it turns into a blob of charcoal and enter it into the competition.

So maybe it's not brilliant at all. But you ever have one of those moments when you say something slightly silly in an ordinary situation and it just kicks off this avalanche of silliness and you can't stop laughing? That happened to me last night when I said this to Nat. The idea just struck me as so preposterous and silly that I couldn't stop laughing about it. I remember one time Lou was over and the 3 of us were talking about Nat's coworker's wife and who knows what the situation was but I said something to the effect of, "What does she have big feet or something?" And this made Lou and I laugh for what had to be half an hour, just an avalanche laugh party. Good stuff, love when that happens.

So maybe it did deserve its own section.

Cycle 42

I may have the cycle wrong but whatever.

Victim: Murray Hill, woman, Asian, 30-39, not fat, not married, not regular though the conductor seemed to know her and I've seen her before. Not sure this "regular" metric makes any sense at all. Anyway, I'd put her as Chinese-Vietnamese. Looks a little of both and has the darker skin to match. She's actually pretty hot, though I'm not sure the white pants and white purse do her any justice. And the purse that literally looks like a big white bowling bag is a bit over the top. And her makeup is thick enough I can actually *smell* it. But then her tight, low-cut top helps the cause. That, and the fact she's hot. I'd venture a camera phone pic but she's all sorts of aware, not dozing off at all. Maybe I'll just take a picture of some random hot girl in the subway. Or just google "hot asian" and use your imagination. Ok, this has gotten off track because she's not hot, she's just kinda attractive in comparison to the average chubby 45 year old NYC commuter this train is full of.

Assessment: Good.

Day 88: Back to Work

I wake up at 4:00 am and feel fairly refreshed, having slept 6.5 hours. Nat, Julia, Calvin, Grace, Lydia, and my in-laws are in Taiwan so I don't know what they're doing at the moment. I think it's fair to say my jet lag won't last long. I'm going to try and keep up the early bed/rise thing because I'm looking to be healthy, wealthy, and wise someday. I may eat an apple today in lieu of going to the doctor. I may also try to take a bird in the hand at some point.

I brew coffee and make an open-faced sandwich: whole grain bread, avocado, cheese, and egg. My parents came by yesterday and dropped off some eggs and fruits/veggies as well as some prepared food which is awesome, as it means I don't have to cook for a week. Before they showed up I was dipping stale Fig Newmans in almond butter for an early lunch. I never lived alone as a bachelor but I think it's a natural way for men to live, where the word "way" in this instance means basically "what-the-hell-ever". The house is a total mess right now.

I currently have 3 projects to spend my time on, not counting work and bike riding. The first is the vacation picture posts, second is the baseball cards my parents dropped off yesterday, and third is cleaning up and organizing upstairs which is our natural Slob Area. We tend to put stuff up there and forget about it, so we effectively have an upstairs that isn't very useful. We complain our house is too small then waste half of it. I got time in on all 3 projects this morning, adding to and editing yesterday's picture post, bringing more books to the basement, and finishing another album of baseball cards.

I figure now is a good time to sort all the old baseball cards since I can spread them all over the living room floor. Some got wet and moldy over time so I need to do all this dirty work as fast as I can while I have the time and space. By the end of the week that should be done, if not sooner. I don't want that to linger because I don't want the mold to be around too long in our living area. Mold is nasty Most of the stuff is clean/dry so I'm just taking care of a few albums and throwing the bad stuff out. Anything of value seems to be perfectly safe upon initial inspection. I'm not sure it has a whole hell of a lot of value though. I seem to have collected cards in a time when cards were being overproduced. I guess that explains how I was able to get my hands on hundreds of rookie cards of this or that player at the time. Maybe I just sit on these and see if they appreciate in value over the coming years. It also turns out that all the players I "invested" in turned to steroids and basically rendered an entire generation of cards much less valuable than they might have been at one time. I should pick up a guide book to see what this stuff is worth. Also, if I'm going to get back into it as an investment idea, now is probably a good time since a lot of this stuff is probably at all-time low prices right now. The reality though is that I'd just as soon sell it all and turn it into bike parts.

Before I know it, I have burned almost 2.5 hours and it's time to shower and head to work, something I'm not looking forward to but I'm also not dreading. Work it what it is. If I had 2 more weeks off I would think about my empty house too much. The train pulls up among the swamps of north central New Jersey. If this were Taiwan, the parking spaces would be tighter and the fields would be used to grow rice since they're so naturally wet. There would also be scooters lined up along the parking lots. But we have plenty of room to spare here so no need to be terribly resourceful. We might be considered wasteful but if you have a couch, why stand? I get on the train, and my old reality starts again, and I am putting up faux travel narrative posts to entertain my faithful readers.

Not very exciting. Now I go to work and after work I'm going to ride my bike. I'll be damned if I'm going to wake up at 4:00 and ride in the dark and cold. It's cold here, colder than I had hoped, something like 26 today. This pattern will repeat for the next 1-2 weeks. Today is day 88 of un-vacation, where this counting system starts at 88. I'm tired on the train. By the time this day is over I may be astonishingly tired, as I feel gravity settling in on me as I sit here. I need to keep myself moving, and the commute plus the work day is a series of sitting, then sitting some more.

Don't worry, I won't keep up this articulation of my daily life. This is just a one-off, a day in the life. They say you come away from vacation with a new perspective. Maybe in a few days I will but right now I'm suddenly sleepy and still fighting jet lag. So I'll save the perspective for another day. Maybe Wednesday. Is there a band named Maybe Wednesday? It sounds very "current" to name a band that. In 10 years we're going to look back at all these bands and say the names all suck. Not for nothing but classic rock bands really split the difference with names. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were winners, but boy the Doors and the Who sound retarded if you think about it now. And the Guess Who, just not even trying there are you?

Wilco and My Morning Jacket are in my CD player, along with Feist. All 3 are good solid music in 2008. With the exception of Walter, I suggest you all go out and try some. MMJ sounds a bit like the new Flaming Lips. And the Blue Sky Blue album by Wilco is just goddamn good.

Chakras or Some Shit

Biking comments will be limited to 1 paragraph today so if you want you can skip ahead. Today was 4th in a row and my legs fucking hate me. I had to split today's ride into 6 sets of 10 minutes with 2 in between. The overall effect was the same but I needed to break it up a bit because my legs and my brain weren't happy about the situation this morning. This short-but-intense block structure works out better for me because frankly I'm not sure I could have finished today if I knew I had to do it again tomorrow. I expect to be a zombie tonight.

I watch TV while I ride in the early morning and let me tell you, mummy shows at 5:00 am are fucking boring. This does nothing to get the blood flowing. Since we got FIOS I now have a tuner-box in the basement as well which gives me the ability to watch any of a few hundred shows, none of which turn out to be anything excitement worthy. Mummies, tornadoes, and dolphins today. Whoop de doo Basil! What does it all mean?

At some point I need to start watching movies again because all my arcane references come from Austin Powers, Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles, or the Simpsons. I'm getting old.

Broke out the IPod Shuffle this morning after having recharged it a few weeks ago. The thing about the Shuffle is that you have no display, so it is what it is. So you push play and hope something comes on. We'll I hit the button and the first set of music was some '60s hippy shit, almost Fairport Convention but not quite. Maybe Sandy Denny but I really can't place what it is. Then I got to a series of podcasts from some new age guy talking about chakras or some shit. I'm thinking at this point, "What in the hell was I going through when I put this stuff on?" I skipped through them and got to Pearl Jam. Even after all these years I still dig Pearl Jam. Their music hasn't expanded much but it also hasn't degraded either. They're like the Red Hot Chili Peppers in that regard, extremely consistent, if predictable, bands.

The days are getting noticeably longer at this point. The sun starts rising before I leave for work and it still up when the train comes out of the tunnel. Mentally this makes winter a whole hell of a lot more tolerable for me. It represents that we're slowly on our way out, even if we really aren't. The brain is a powerful tool, so best learn to delude yourself into thinking the world is great then it is, in effect, great. I need a coffee.

Hopefully tomorrow I can post some more comments. Currently reading Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which sucks, and the second book of the fantasy series. Yes I'm a dork.