I have now forgotten just enough of both “American Pie” and “The Saga Begins” that whenever the tune runs through my head, the lyrics alternate between the original and the filk.
Author: kelson
Random crap you didn’t need to know
One of our neighbors has a phone that, due to the way the building is constructed, always sounds like it’s ringing in our apartment.
This has been another… Useless Fact.
The Dread Pirate Katie
We went out to the Spectrum on Friday to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. alenxa dressed up for the occasion, in the latest variation of her pirate costume.
As you can see, she was far from the only pirate in line. Two groups ahead of us there were about 5 or six people in full pirate regalia, who swelled to around a dozen, some quite elaborate, by the time the line let in. Once their whole group was there, they got someone to take a group photo.
Oh, on the subject of those cosplay photos from Comic-Con… the 2004 set has gotten a lot of hits from people searching for Elizabeth Swann costume. PageRank can do funny things…
Yo ho ho! (hold the rum)
I stopped at the Spectrum for lunch. People were already in line for the midnight showing of Pirates.
Moulin Rouge
Went to see a screening of Moulin Rouge last night. It was a strange experience — stranger than watching it with a small group of friends — though that was largely due to the problem with the theater sound system.
The picture was perfect throughout the whole movie, but the sound would occasionally cut out or become distorted. If you’ve ever tried renaming a non-sound file as a .wav and trying to play it, that’s kind of what it sounded like. “Fortunately,” the largely late-teen-early-20s female audience knew all the words and sang Nicole Kidman’s part while a smaller group ran back to tell the manager that yes, the sound was out again.
Then there was “Spectacular, Spectacular,” which unfolded with a mental overlay of the AMV…
The Long Weekend
Friday: Goo Goo Dolls/ Counting Crows concert at it’s-still-Irvine-Meadows-’cause-“Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheater”-just-sounds-dumb. Nifty view of the central Orange County valley before the sun set.
Saturday. Spent the day lying on the couch with a fan running, catching up on the Babylon 5 script book commentaries. So far I’ve only read about 1/4 of one script, but the introductions are a fascinating insight into the process of making the show. Given how much was out in the open (since JMS spent several hours a night online during production), some of the stuff that wasn’t revealed back then is mighty interesting. (Example: we all thought season 4 was compressed because they weren’t sure they’d get a season 5, and wanted to get as much done as they could. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, they were told in no uncertain terms that there would not be a season 5. So getting that fifth season on TNT was a real surprise.)
Dinner at CPK, then Superman Returns Enjoyed it, but no interest in seeing it again. It already felt like deja vu since there were so many references to the first two movies with Christopher Reeve. There were some great moments, but overall it was just kind of okay.
Sunday: Finished Bad Twin. Decent book, but not exactly a major insight into the secrets of Lost. Waited several hours until checking my email, at which point I discovered I really should’ve checked earlier… so I could bring a server back online. Went down to the office, brought the server up. alenxa tagged along and we had lunch at the crepe place at the Spectrum. Happened to glance over at one of the wall alcoves, which held a vinegar bottle… labeled Temeraire. After some shopping for food for upcoming family get-togethers, went home and played Heroes V for a few hours. Fortunately I was still awake when the same server went down again at 1AM. So I drove back, brought it online, figured out a way to make sure that it would automatically start up again next time, then came home. Still trying to diagnose the cause, but whatever it is does seem to like holiday weekends…
Monday: Traditionally, the 4th of July consists of hanging around at home followed by looking for fireworks. This year, both our families wanted to get together. So on Monday we went to visit my grandparents, carpooling with my parents and my brother. My aunt and her husband brought their dogs, which meant I spent most of the afternoon in a Benadryl-induced funk, despite drinking way too much Dr. Pepper to offset it.
Tuesday: I squeezed in an hour or two of Heroes in the morning, then it was off to visit Katie’s family, with more BBQ. Dinner was relatively early, so we cleared out around 7:00 so we could make it back to Laguna Beach for the fireworks display there. They launch the fireworks off one of the bluffs, out over the ocean, and the viewing is pretty good from the beach. We caught the tail end of it a couple of years ago, while driving around looking for displays. Two years ago we got there too late and missed the entire show while we walked from the car out to the beach. (Hey, have you ever tried finding parking in Laguna Beach?) Last year I was sick, so we just walked out to where we could see the local display. This year we made it with plenty of time to spare, parking up on Forest (roughly in line with the Laguna Playhouse, and maybe a few hundred feet from the entrance to Tivoli Terrace, where we had our wedding), and snagged a spot on the beach. The wind blew the smoke in our direction, so a lot of the fireworks were half-obscured, but they lit up the smoke a lot more than I can remember seeing anywhere else. After the show, we did our semi-traditional stop at Diedrich across the street.
Today: Back to work. I’ve been stress-testing the server, trying to get it to crash under controlled circumstances so I can get some information about what’s causing the problem… and it just won’t crash!
What a Wicked Thing to Do
Last week, the Orange County Performing Arts Center sent out a notice that tickets for Wicked would go on sale Monday at 10:00 AM. It noted that seating was limited due to “unexpected demand” and recommended using the website for orders:
The quickest way to acquire tickets will be ordering online at the link provided below, choosing your date, and then selecting the “Best Available” seating option, which allows the computer system to select the best seats.
So yesterday morning, I checked the website around 9:30… and the website was already down. I tried calling at 10:00 and couldn’t get through. By 11:00, the website was still down, the phones appeared to have been disconnected, and I decided to take an early lunch and drive up to the box office.
My first clue that something was wrong was that I had to park on the roof of the parking structure. There was no sign of a line from above, but as I approached the stairway leading down to the box office from the main entrance, I started to hear the commotion of lots and lots of voices.
I followed what looked like a loose line back toward the parking structure. As I reached what appeared to be the end of the line, I realized it was actually two lines — or, more accurately, one line making a U-turn at the entrance to the structure. I followed it back toward the box office, and got almost all the way up to the front before finding the end of the line.
There was no way I could get through that in an hour, or even two. I figured I didn’t need to see the show that badly, went to grab lunch and returned to work.
I kept trying both the phone and the website over the course of the day, occasionally able to get a list of showtimes and ticket prices, but not much else. And by the time I could get into the phones or website today, they had completely sold out.
OK, shows sell out. I can deal with that. But there are two things that particularly annoy me about this:
First, some genius planning the tour decided it would be perfectly OK to have a two-week run in Orange County and no stop in Los Angeles. That meant that in addition to everyone locally who wanted to see the show, everyone in LA who missed it last year or wanted to see it again was competing for the same tickets.
Second, OCPAC specifically suggested using the website, which turned out to be incapable of handling the demand even before tickets even went on sale. (This is one case where it would have been better if they’d used Ticketmaster, who would’ve been able to handle the traffic.)
Snew
I ruined someone’s joke today.
I was walking back from the Spectrum, waiting for a walk signal while munching on one of those muffins they have at Jamba Juice, when a car pulled up in the turn lane. A girl, probably in her late teens, rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Sir? Do you have any updog?”
Updog? I thought. What the hell is that, some kind of code word for something? Since my mouth was full, I just kind of shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.
“Are you sure? You don’t have any updog?”
Same thing. The light changed, and the car turned into the parking lot.
And then I realized: she had been expecting me to ask what it was. As in, “What’s updog?”
Duck!
Spotted a pair of ducks standing next to the swimming pool this morning. Classic mallards, one male, one female. They were standing with their feet just on the edge, as if they were trying to work up their nerve to jump in.
A Brooksfilms production
After attending a screening of Young Frankenstein this week, alenxa and I started talking about her theory that everyone has a particular Mel Brooks film among their favorites. (Obviously, this wouldn’t apply to people who don’t like his movies in the first place.) In order to test this theory, I’m collecting data:
Which Mel Brooks film is your favorite?
- The Producers (remake)
- Dracula: Dead and Loving It
- Robin Hood: Men in Tights – 2
- Life Stinks
- Spaceballs – 1
- History of the World: Part I
- High Anxiety
- Silent Movie
- Young Frankenstein – 2
- Blazing Saddles – 2
- The Twelve Chairs
- The Producers (original)