Dude! Have you heard about mashed-ups? They're the latest trend! You take two songs that are vaguely similar and blend them together to make a whole new song! It's brand-new!
Pah.
Me and my band-geek friends in high school were doing this back when people still called hip-hop "breakdance music" and Dangermouse was just a cartoon. Slick Rick mixed with Madonna mixed with Public Enemy mixed with the theme from Sesame Street. Looping and sampling through the fine art of pausing and rewinding your cassette deck. Busting out break-beats on a Casio keyboard. Oh Hells yes. I still have a tape somewhere of Paul Hardcastle's 19 mixed with 1940s radio ads for a series of marriage counseling books and samples played off a (then state-of-the-art) SK-1 Sampler.
So don't tell me about your mash-ups, kid. I've already been there.
Now, having said all of that. A lot of the stuff coming out lately is pretty good. Most recently, I took advantage of Dean Gray Tuesday to snag a copy of American Edit. Mr. Gray has re-mixed the entirety of Green Day's "Rock Opera" American Idiot throwing in lyrics and beats from sources as divergent as Queen, Ashanti, and the theme from the BBC series Dr. Who. That last, featured in Dr. Who on Holiday is actually a mash-up within a mash-up, as he seems to be using the Timelords' 1988 hit Doctorin' the Tardis, which blended the OOOeeeOOOs of the Dr. Who theme with the Na-NaNa-Na-NA-AH(HEY!) of Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll Pt. 2. Post- modern-y!
If you missed out on Dean Gray Tuesday, I'm sure you can find it with your Hampster or your Ka-zam! or what have you. And I suspect that lots of hipster kids will be giving and getting CDs of American Edit over the holidays. I know I plan to wrap up a few copies.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Hovercat
[Church has ended, and I'm waiting for someone from the Music Department to arrive for a recital that was supposed to start loading in a half-hour ago. Hrmm.]
Before I started at my current job, I worked as a customer service rep for a company that sold pyrotechnics, confetti cannons, fog machines and other special effects products for the entertainment industry. For reasons I'll detail in a later post (maybe) business at "the fireworks stand" was slow. Really slow. By the time I finally left the company it was like 2-3 sales a day slow.
Lack of business left me with a lot of free time on my hands during the work day, time I filled by playing games with the Internet. (Not on, with; there's a subtle yet important difference there.) I started with the old standards: vanity surfing, looking up old classmates and girlfriends, and posting nonsense to Unsenet.
During the course of my surfing, stalking and posting, I became a big fan of Google's ability to return a result for just about anything I could think to type into its search box. So, on one particulary slow day, I played my first game of what I now call Hovercat.
The rules are simple: Pick a word or a phrase that, as far as you know, is completely meaningless. Feed it to Google. Hit "I'm feeling lucky," and see what comes up. Of course, the first time I played I used "Hovercat," because, as far as I knew, there was no such thing. The result I got back wasn't the one I've linked to here, but it was similar and I like the animated version a lot better.
From that first result I was hooked. I played Hovercat obsessively for a week at least, and posted some of my more interesting finds to a.r.k. I went from searching regular English words to making up words to just pounding on the keyboard at random. I got a lot of junk results, domain names bought up by web speculators and seeded with pages of random search terms, but I also found a lot of interesting, unique and unintentionally funny content that I would have never even thought to look for on purpose. In a way, it was like dumpster diving the internet, finding little forgotten treasures buried in online catalogs, weblogs and discussion groups.
I still play Hovercat, though not nearly as much now that I have a job that actually involves my doing some work during the day. The FCC gigs are good Hovercatting time, though, especially a day like today when I find myself just waiting around for a group to arrive and load in. Try it yourself, and remember: keep your buttered side up!
Before I started at my current job, I worked as a customer service rep for a company that sold pyrotechnics, confetti cannons, fog machines and other special effects products for the entertainment industry. For reasons I'll detail in a later post (maybe) business at "the fireworks stand" was slow. Really slow. By the time I finally left the company it was like 2-3 sales a day slow.
Lack of business left me with a lot of free time on my hands during the work day, time I filled by playing games with the Internet. (Not on, with; there's a subtle yet important difference there.) I started with the old standards: vanity surfing, looking up old classmates and girlfriends, and posting nonsense to Unsenet.
During the course of my surfing, stalking and posting, I became a big fan of Google's ability to return a result for just about anything I could think to type into its search box. So, on one particulary slow day, I played my first game of what I now call Hovercat.
The rules are simple: Pick a word or a phrase that, as far as you know, is completely meaningless. Feed it to Google. Hit "I'm feeling lucky," and see what comes up. Of course, the first time I played I used "Hovercat," because, as far as I knew, there was no such thing. The result I got back wasn't the one I've linked to here, but it was similar and I like the animated version a lot better.
From that first result I was hooked. I played Hovercat obsessively for a week at least, and posted some of my more interesting finds to a.r.k. I went from searching regular English words to making up words to just pounding on the keyboard at random. I got a lot of junk results, domain names bought up by web speculators and seeded with pages of random search terms, but I also found a lot of interesting, unique and unintentionally funny content that I would have never even thought to look for on purpose. In a way, it was like dumpster diving the internet, finding little forgotten treasures buried in online catalogs, weblogs and discussion groups.
I still play Hovercat, though not nearly as much now that I have a job that actually involves my doing some work during the day. The FCC gigs are good Hovercatting time, though, especially a day like today when I find myself just waiting around for a group to arrive and load in. Try it yourself, and remember: keep your buttered side up!
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Wizards of Winter Real Says Snopes
Updating my previous entry about the "Wizards of Winter" video. Tha Snopes-dogg has determined that the lighting display shown in the video is real; it just looks animated because of compression issues.
For those of you who, like me, are now being pestered by their wives to create an animated Christmas light display (complete with a low-power FM transmitter to broadcast musical accompaniment) here's a link to Light-O-Rama, manufacturer of lighting controllers and sequencers: http://www.lightorama.com/
Of course, if you really want to do it up right, you could rent a 96 channel rolling rack, a few hundred Ks of PARs, some VLs and MACs, and a GrandMA to keep it all under control. Then call the boys in the TSO and see if they're available to perform "Wizards of Winter" twelve times a night on your front lawn. That'll show Flanders! (stupid Flanders...)
For those of you who, like me, are now being pestered by their wives to create an animated Christmas light display (complete with a low-power FM transmitter to broadcast musical accompaniment) here's a link to Light-O-Rama, manufacturer of lighting controllers and sequencers: http://www.lightorama.com/
Of course, if you really want to do it up right, you could rent a 96 channel rolling rack, a few hundred Ks of PARs, some VLs and MACs, and a GrandMA to keep it all under control. Then call the boys in the TSO and see if they're available to perform "Wizards of Winter" twelve times a night on your front lawn. That'll show Flanders! (stupid Flanders...)
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Google Video to Internet: "No Porn for You!"
[Jazz Ensemble rehearsing tonight at FCC. Spent most of the first two hours riding levels to keep the vocalist audible, and now I'm up and down between sets as the band rehearses.]
A day or two after I posted about the "Wizards of Winter" video, I discovered Google Video. Finally! A search engine that makes it quick and simple to find funny cats, Parkour footage, Family Guy clips, and videos of diet soda/candy experiments set to geek-punk!
The service is still in beta for now, and I've noticed two odd things about it so far:
First, if you search for a term, any term, and then click the "Refresh" button on your browser, you'll get a page of almost entirely different results. I can only guess that this has something to do the ranking system that they're using for video searches.
The second odd thing I've noticed is that Google seems to be preventing the most obvious use of this technology. It's no secret, the Googlemen specfically forbid it in the Google Video Upload Program Policy. It's even sparked some minor controversey.
A day or two after I posted about the "Wizards of Winter" video, I discovered Google Video. Finally! A search engine that makes it quick and simple to find funny cats, Parkour footage, Family Guy clips, and videos of diet soda/candy experiments set to geek-punk!
The service is still in beta for now, and I've noticed two odd things about it so far:
First, if you search for a term, any term, and then click the "Refresh" button on your browser, you'll get a page of almost entirely different results. I can only guess that this has something to do the ranking system that they're using for video searches.
The second odd thing I've noticed is that Google seems to be preventing the most obvious use of this technology. It's no secret, the Googlemen specfically forbid it in the Google Video Upload Program Policy. It's even sparked some minor controversey.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Wizards of Winter
[Working on Corky St. Clair's Christmas Pageant reahearsal at the college tonight. Two hours in and I've played one song, three times, so far. This could be a long night.]
One of the services that the company for which I work provides is concert lighting. And I guess it's for that reason that one of our vendors forwarded the following (5mb .wmv format) video to my boss.
http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-1810.htm
Now I know that everyblogger else has already linked to this video but I don't care, because it's that freakin' cool. Debate online is over whether it's a real video of a real display (programmed by somebody with too much free time and a serious hard-on for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra) or a faked stop-motion sequence with the soundtrack added.
I have to admit, I have my doubts about it's veracity. The soundtrack was obviously added in post-production. Also, the lack of any actual movement apart from the lights flashing on and off does lend the video some qualities of a George Pal Puppetoon. Something as simple as a car driving by or a person walking down the street would have gone a long way to making things more believable.
But on the other hand, there's something about this DIY-meets-Vegas display that appeals to the geeky board-op inside me. This is the sort of thing that guys like me look at and, whether it's faked or not, we immediately begin compiling a bill of materials, writing linked cues, and debating if we need to use SMPTE to coordinate the music and lights.
I'm sure the Snopes-dogg will inevitably weigh in and settle things, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. As a friend of a friend of my sister once said, "if it ain't true, it oughta be."
One of the services that the company for which I work provides is concert lighting. And I guess it's for that reason that one of our vendors forwarded the following (5mb .wmv format) video to my boss.
http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-1810.htm
Now I know that everyblogger else has already linked to this video but I don't care, because it's that freakin' cool. Debate online is over whether it's a real video of a real display (programmed by somebody with too much free time and a serious hard-on for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra) or a faked stop-motion sequence with the soundtrack added.
I have to admit, I have my doubts about it's veracity. The soundtrack was obviously added in post-production. Also, the lack of any actual movement apart from the lights flashing on and off does lend the video some qualities of a George Pal Puppetoon. Something as simple as a car driving by or a person walking down the street would have gone a long way to making things more believable.
But on the other hand, there's something about this DIY-meets-Vegas display that appeals to the geeky board-op inside me. This is the sort of thing that guys like me look at and, whether it's faked or not, we immediately begin compiling a bill of materials, writing linked cues, and debating if we need to use SMPTE to coordinate the music and lights.
I'm sure the Snopes-dogg will inevitably weigh in and settle things, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. As a friend of a friend of my sister once said, "if it ain't true, it oughta be."
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Lunch Time Game Time
I work in an office. Granted, it's not your typical office with a steno pool and men wearing suits and whatnot but it's still an office. One of the benefits of working in an office is that you get about 30 minutes every work day during which it is acceptable to eat food and/or surf the internet. We call this daily ritual "the Lunch Hour."
[Why the average Lunch Hour is only 30 minutes long is a mystery to me. I can only guess that it's some sort of cosmic balance for the fact that "Happy Hour" runs from 5-7.]
Not surprisingly, I like to spend at least some of my lunch hour looking at non-work-related websites. However, there's only so many times one can check one's personal webmail, and I've refined my webcomic reading down to about a half-dozen that I look at regularly. This often leaves me with anywhere from 15-20 minutes left in the hour and nothing to click.
That's why I was delighted to find Jay Bibby's site. "jay is games" is a regularly updated blog that reviews mostly Flash-based web games. Some are ports or remixes of classic arcade games, while others are completely new creations. Either category of game makes for an entertaining 20-30 minutes, but I find myself drawn more and more to the new stuff.
Take "Ray Ray Parade" for example, a simple puzzle game in which the "pieces" are cartoon schoolboys that look like the offspring of Chairman Mao and a Precious Moments figurine. The basic concept is simple, click on any one of the li'l commies and he'll stand up. If any of his immediate neighbors are crouching, they'll stand up too; if those comrades are already standing, however, they'll crouch back down. Get all of them standing at once and they'll flash their tummies at you and scamper off the screen. You're graded based on how many clicks it takes you to get through 5 levels. (The best I've done so far is a "B.")
Jay's site is, quite literally, a treasure trove. I suspect I'll be able to occupy my lunch hours for at least the rest of 2005 just digging through the archives. Check it out during lunch if you work in an office with computers and not too many rules about the Internet.
[Edit: Thanks, Jay, for helping me fix my links!]
[Why the average Lunch Hour is only 30 minutes long is a mystery to me. I can only guess that it's some sort of cosmic balance for the fact that "Happy Hour" runs from 5-7.]
Not surprisingly, I like to spend at least some of my lunch hour looking at non-work-related websites. However, there's only so many times one can check one's personal webmail, and I've refined my webcomic reading down to about a half-dozen that I look at regularly. This often leaves me with anywhere from 15-20 minutes left in the hour and nothing to click.
That's why I was delighted to find Jay Bibby's site. "jay is games" is a regularly updated blog that reviews mostly Flash-based web games. Some are ports or remixes of classic arcade games, while others are completely new creations. Either category of game makes for an entertaining 20-30 minutes, but I find myself drawn more and more to the new stuff.
Take "Ray Ray Parade" for example, a simple puzzle game in which the "pieces" are cartoon schoolboys that look like the offspring of Chairman Mao and a Precious Moments figurine. The basic concept is simple, click on any one of the li'l commies and he'll stand up. If any of his immediate neighbors are crouching, they'll stand up too; if those comrades are already standing, however, they'll crouch back down. Get all of them standing at once and they'll flash their tummies at you and scamper off the screen. You're graded based on how many clicks it takes you to get through 5 levels. (The best I've done so far is a "B.")
Jay's site is, quite literally, a treasure trove. I suspect I'll be able to occupy my lunch hours for at least the rest of 2005 just digging through the archives. Check it out during lunch if you work in an office with computers and not too many rules about the Internet.
[Edit: Thanks, Jay, for helping me fix my links!]
Saturday, October 29, 2005
It's Nice to Have Friends
[Quick one: Spires Brass Band at FCC tonight so I'm up and down between numbers.]
I received e-mails from two friends from I haven't heard in quite a while recently. It's always good to hear from old friends, but when it's been years (in one case over a decade!) it's extra-nice.
One of my best friends from the 80's (or "back in the day" as we used to say) Brian Plume, e-mailed a couple of weeks ago. The last time I had heard from him, I was living in the North Country, working my first sales job in the industry and getting over teh divorce. Now, I'm living south of the Mason-Dixon and working hard at both my third job (fourth, if you count my recent move from selling tape to selling theatres) and my second marriage.
(Brian's still on his first marriage, the slacker, but has produced at least two offspring.)
AJ Strauss, another dear friend with whom I've been out of touch for far too long e-mailed me a few months ago. I was thrilled to hear from him and replied to his message to say just that. A week later, after getting no further messages, I tried e-mailing him again. Still no repsonse. A week after that, I decided to try e-mailing from my work account, thinking that he might have filters in place that blocked web-based e-mails. Nada, I gave up hope. Either I had imagined the whole thing (possible, and I couldn't prove I hadn't since I accidentally deleted his message) or he was ignoring me now (unlikely since he e-mailed me first) or something was keeping me from seeing his replies. Then, earlier this week, I received the following:
...which suggests to me that he never saw any of my replies.
[sigh]
So, I've written back to him, again, outlining several possible ways of replying to me; one of which, hopefully, will result in us actually being able to communicate.
Of course, I'll have to send a copy of that message from a few different e-mail accounts, just in case he's inadvertantly block all replies from me.
Man, the internet is hard.
Anyway, if you're out there, AJ, let me hear from you. Everyone else, go out and download Thousandaire, by AJ and his band The Sutras. Ooh! I just went over to the band's web site, and it looks like there's been a recent update! That's good to see, as I think the last update was shortly after the 2004 presidential election. Looks like they've got a new album, "Those are Mountains," coming out at the end of the year. Huzzah!
I received e-mails from two friends from I haven't heard in quite a while recently. It's always good to hear from old friends, but when it's been years (in one case over a decade!) it's extra-nice.
One of my best friends from the 80's (or "back in the day" as we used to say) Brian Plume, e-mailed a couple of weeks ago. The last time I had heard from him, I was living in the North Country, working my first sales job in the industry and getting over teh divorce. Now, I'm living south of the Mason-Dixon and working hard at both my third job (fourth, if you count my recent move from selling tape to selling theatres) and my second marriage.
(Brian's still on his first marriage, the slacker, but has produced at least two offspring.)
AJ Strauss, another dear friend with whom I've been out of touch for far too long e-mailed me a few months ago. I was thrilled to hear from him and replied to his message to say just that. A week later, after getting no further messages, I tried e-mailing him again. Still no repsonse. A week after that, I decided to try e-mailing from my work account, thinking that he might have filters in place that blocked web-based e-mails. Nada, I gave up hope. Either I had imagined the whole thing (possible, and I couldn't prove I hadn't since I accidentally deleted his message) or he was ignoring me now (unlikely since he e-mailed me first) or something was keeping me from seeing his replies. Then, earlier this week, I received the following:
| From : | A.J. Strauss |
| Sent : | Wednesday, October 26, 2005 8:25 PM |
| To : | "Paul Shillinger, Jr." |
| Subject : | Albert J. says, that he wants to know . . . |
One more try!
HI PAUL.
Send all e-mail to
[ELIDED]
...which suggests to me that he never saw any of my replies.
[sigh]
So, I've written back to him, again, outlining several possible ways of replying to me; one of which, hopefully, will result in us actually being able to communicate.
Of course, I'll have to send a copy of that message from a few different e-mail accounts, just in case he's inadvertantly block all replies from me.
Man, the internet is hard.
Anyway, if you're out there, AJ, let me hear from you. Everyone else, go out and download Thousandaire, by AJ and his band The Sutras. Ooh! I just went over to the band's web site, and it looks like there's been a recent update! That's good to see, as I think the last update was shortly after the 2004 presidential election. Looks like they've got a new album, "Those are Mountains," coming out at the end of the year. Huzzah!
Thursday, October 20, 2005
This Post Sponsored by The Food Network
The Frederick Orchestra tonight; another babysitting gig, which I like because it lets me write. Also, I have the added bonus of three nights of classical music. I haven't looked at the program yet, but I'm pretty sure I heard a snatch of the perennial Halloween classic earlier.
A couple of foodie things I've been meaning to put in here. Since I find myself on the road a lot, I've been trying to keep mental notes of decent places to eat around the region. Yeah. Mental Notes. At least here they'll be written down somewhere accessible.
Cafe Gutenberg, in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond, is one of those few restaurants that made me consider making a return trip to the city (of about 4 hours, mind you) just eat there again. Sadly, I can't say it was entirely because of the food. The quiche I had was delicious, mind you, but it was the fact that the restaurant is also a working new-and-used bookstore that got me. I was able to browse while waiting to order, and picked up a used copy of Shardik by Richard Adams for a half-buck before lunch arrived. Their used books are cheap, but the food can be a little pricey.
Hey, I went to the U.S. State Department in DC and didn't get lost or wreck any vehicles! Yeah, so I took the Metro, I'm still proud. Casey's Coffee near GWU has a great breakfast bagel for the amazing-for-downtown-DC price of about $3.00. Any day I can get a sammich and drink in DC for less than $5 is a good day for me. The not getting lost or crashing was just a bonus.
Finally, a reminder to myself not to eat at the Panera Bread in Hagerstown. Normally, I love me some Panera, but the one out by Wal-Mart has got issues.
pugg
--
A couple of foodie things I've been meaning to put in here. Since I find myself on the road a lot, I've been trying to keep mental notes of decent places to eat around the region. Yeah. Mental Notes. At least here they'll be written down somewhere accessible.
Cafe Gutenberg, in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond, is one of those few restaurants that made me consider making a return trip to the city (of about 4 hours, mind you) just eat there again. Sadly, I can't say it was entirely because of the food. The quiche I had was delicious, mind you, but it was the fact that the restaurant is also a working new-and-used bookstore that got me. I was able to browse while waiting to order, and picked up a used copy of Shardik by Richard Adams for a half-buck before lunch arrived. Their used books are cheap, but the food can be a little pricey.
Hey, I went to the U.S. State Department in DC and didn't get lost or wreck any vehicles! Yeah, so I took the Metro, I'm still proud. Casey's Coffee near GWU has a great breakfast bagel for the amazing-for-downtown-DC price of about $3.00. Any day I can get a sammich and drink in DC for less than $5 is a good day for me. The not getting lost or crashing was just a bonus.
Finally, a reminder to myself not to eat at the Panera Bread in Hagerstown. Normally, I love me some Panera, but the one out by Wal-Mart has got issues.
pugg
--
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Why I Shouldn't Drive
[Posting from Frederick Community College Control Booth]
Monday night and I'm at MSO rehearsal. The Maryland Symphony Orchestra rehearses here at FCC about 2-3 times a year. They have their concerts at the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown but, due to some bizarre conflict with that venue, they haven't been able to rehearse there for the past few years. So, every few months they truck all of their music stands and percussion instruments and what-not up to Frederick, rehearse here for three nights, and then truck everything back down to Hagerstown for the weekend concert.
It makes no sense to me, but it's an easy 4-5 hour babysitting gig (lights on, surf the Interweb, lights off, go home, repeat as necessary) and gives me time to catch up on my reading.
"So," you're all asking by now, "why SHOULDN'T you drive?"
Let me start by qualifying my initial statement. I shouldn't drive anything larger than a small-ish SUV, and probably should not be allowed to take even that into the DC-Metro area. This has been proven to me via several practical demonstrations over the past decade or so:
Demonstration the First, Spring 1993
I was approached by Jason Danner, a close friend of mine at college, and a fellow theatre student. (At least I think he was a theatre student. It's hard for me to be sure because Jason managed to extend his stay at Salisbury Steak University by switching majors at least once a semester. By the time administration finally caught on and forced graduation upon him, he had been at the school for six years and majored in almost every liberal arts major SSU offerred.)
Where was I?
Oh yes, Jason approached me and asked if I would be willing to drive with him to the Dulles airport and pick up two German exchange students who were arriving that night on a late flight. I had never driven in or around DC, but I agreed; partly because I liked hanging out with Jason, and partly because I knew I could force him to run lines with me in the car. We drove out to the airport, Jason half-heartedly feeding me lines from "Look Back in Anger" the whole way, and picked up the Germans, No Problem.
The First Problem With Driving in DC is this: The Way You Got There will never, ever, be The Way You Get Home. It started when I had trouble finding a way out of the airport and back onto Route 50. I toodled around the parking lots a few times until I saw a sign that I was pretty sure said, "MD50 - This Way." On reflection, I'm sure that what it really said was something like, "Turn Here If You Don't Know That MD50 Isn't This Way Sucker!" But I didn't take the time to read the fine print, I just turned That Way.
Needless to say, MD50 was not This Way. Of course, we didn't realize that until Jason, commenting on the various monuments and buildings we were passing, realized that we really shouldn't be seeing more monuments if we were, in fact, driving away from DC. At that point it was about 1:30am, and he and I started looking for a some sign to point us back onto MD50 while the Germans in the back seat tried to remain calm. This was their first visit to the Washington area, so all they knew of DC was what they saw on the international news; rampant crime, corruption and murder, in other words.
We finally got help when I sideswiped a Nigerian ambassador while trying to simultaneously make a right on red and read a street sign that some joker had mounted upside-down. The ambassador was very gracious about the whole thing, he didn't even bother to take my insurance information, and he was able to point out that Constitution Avenue (which we had crossed and re-crossed about six times that evening) was, in fact, MD50. We thanked the ambassador, piled back into the car, and headed home.
Looking back on that trip, years later, my only real regret is that I didn't swap information with the Nigerian Ambassador. Maybe if I had, I could tell him about the simply atrocious circumstances that Dr. Bisi Odum and his family have been forced into.
So now we skip ahead about ten years or so to...
Demonstration the Second, October 2004
I had graduated from college and was working for a respectable theatre supply company in Maryland. I was given the company van and asked to take some gear to a hotel in Reston, VA to set up for a trade show. This was only my second or third time driving the van, so I was a bit nervous to begin with. Reston, as you may know, is in Northern Virginia, but still close enough to DC for The First Problem to apply.
The Second Problem with driving in and around DC is this: Once You Get There, There Won't Be Any Place to Park. I pulled into the turnaround in front of the hotel, parked, and hopped out of the van, nearly colliding with a tiny Fillipino valet who had bustled over to intercept me.
"Hotel guest, sir?"
"Erm, no, I'm here for the convention and I need to load in."
"You cannot park here! Hotel guest only!"
"Yes, I understand, but I need to take my things [wave hands vaguely at rear of van] into the hotel [wave hands vaguely at hotel entrance]."
"Hotel guest only!"
At this point, the Head Valet (you could tell by the extra braids on his epaulets) emerged to take control of the situation.
"Are you a hotel guest, sir?"
"No, I'm here for the convention and need to load in."
"Ah-huh, well you can't park your vehicle here sir, you'll have to park on the street or in the parking deck."
I looked out at the street, filled with school buses from all over Northern Virginia. Then, I looked at the ... at the ...
"Excuse me, but where exactly is the parking deck?"
"What you need to do is pull out of the turnaround [straight arm karate-chop towards street] turn back onto the main street [double-handed judo throw towards rear of hotel] make a right at the corner [two-fisted tai-chi whatsis] go up about two and a half blocks and you'll see the entrance to the parking deck on your right."
"Two and a half blocks, you say? And there's nowhere closer that I could park?"
"Sure. You could park on the street."
I decided to not to point out that the large yellow buses lining the curbs meant that I could not, in fact, park on the street. I could tell that this was a man who would consider a mere physical impossibility no match for The Rules; and The Rules clearly said that if I wasn't a hotel guest, I wouldn't be parking in his goddamn turnaround. So I decided to try my luck with the parking deck.
There is something about parking decks that those of you who haven't driven a vehicle larger than the average SUV may not have noticed. There is almost always a large metal bar (or sometimes a sign) that hangs down in front of the entrance to the deck, suspended at the Maximum Clearance Height. I gather that the idea behind that bar is this: if you are driving a vehicle that is too tall to fit inside the parking deck, you'll bang into the bar before your vehicle can get wedged inside the deck.
Unfortunately, whoever built the parking deck in Reston didn't measure the max clearance correctly, or hung the sign at the wrong height, or possibly both because I was most of the way up the ramp to Level TWO before I heard a skreeee-unch! that told me the van was indeed too tall for their deck. I got out and surveyed the damage; the roof rack of the van had caught the underside of a support beam and had been pushed back about half the length of the roof.
Now, at this point, I had two options: I could try to back the van down out of the parking deck and then look for parking back at the hotel or on the street, or I could remove the roof rack entirely and find a parking spot on one of the upper levels. The "HOTEL GUEST ONLY!" incident was still a little too fresh in my mind, I guess, because I pulled some tools out of the van and took off the rack.
The guys at the shop gave me no end of grief about this, and I'm still more or less banned from driving the van, although special exceptions are made if there is absolutely no one else available and the trip does not involve any parking decks or low bridges.
Demonstration the Third, October 2005
Earlier this year, I sold a rolling dimmer rack to a client in Washington, DC. We planned to have the rack and assorted gear delivered to our shop in Frederick and then delivered by one of our guys. But, in sales as in DC driving, nothing is ever as simple as it at first seems.
The customer needed the gear sooner than the factory could provide it, which we solved by rush-shipping what we could and pulling loaner gear from our production stock. Then, we realized that all of our regular drivers were already booked for other jobs on the day the delivery needed to happen. To make matters more complex, the gear was too heavy to travel in any of the company vehicles. So what should've been a simple little sale now required us to rent a 16' box van with a lift gate, and then find some poor sucker to drive it into downtown DC.
I really don't need to tell you who the poor sucker was, do I?
I managed to get all the way into DC without any major problems and I must say, I was feeling pretty confident. I had looked up directions to my client's address online, and then double-checked those directions with one of our guys. He pointed out some roads that weren't truck-friendly, and offered some alternate routes. We found a route that would get me to my destination with the minimum number of turns, using truck-friendly roads, while avoiding as much of the actual city as possible. I hit the Beltway thinking I'd be at my destination in 45 minutes, tops, No Problem.
The Third Problem with driving in and around DC is this: No Matter Where You Get Your Directions, They'll Be Wrong. It turns out that the route we had worked out ahead of time as being the easiest and most truck-friendly became decidedly unfriendly once one entered DC proper. As soon as I crossed the Potomac, the road split and I was faced with two signs which said, "THE WAY YOU WANT TO GO (NO TRUCKS)" and, "THE WAY YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO GO (ALL TRUCKS THIS ROUTE)."
What DC hadn't counted on, however, was that I had been expecting something this time. I quickly found an exit off of the trucks-only route and onto "K" street. I called my client on his cell and got an alternate route to his building. Barring traffic, he said, it should only take me about 10 minutes to get to him.
Ha Ha, DC-Metro Area! Take That! I knew I still had the First Problem to contend with, but I have to admit to feeling pretty good about myself as I wove my way across town towards my destination.
And then I had to make a right turn from "H" street onto 3rd. Now, right turns are not normally a big deal for me and even in the truck I had successfully managed quite a few of them that day. The trick to making turns in a larger vehicle is that you can't cut things too closely. However, when making a right-hand turn onto a two lane side-street with Parking Allowed, you should probably turn even wider than normal.
Because parking in downtown DC sucks; it sucks hard. Parking lots and decks charge upwards of $12.00 a day, which doesn't really matter because they're always filled to capacity. And thanks to The War on Terror, parking is verboten on many city streets. Just slowing down on some of those streets can get you a face full of angry traffic cop. So those few streets where parking is still Allowed fill up quickly, and densely. Any curb lacking red paint or a sufficiently threatening sign and/or attendant is guaranteed to be lined with cars packed bumper-to-bumper from one corner to the other by 9:00am.
(I still don't know who owned that Honda Accord. It had out-of-state tags, which means it was probably somebody in town for the weekend who had decided to extend their stay by a day. If you're out there, reading this entry right now, I'm sorry, deeply heart-wrenchingly sorry.)
The sound of Flimsy Imported Car being squished by Sturdy American Truck hit my ears about three-quarters of the way through the turn. I had cut the turn too close by just an inch or two, and caught the back end of the Accord with the steel frame of the truck's lift gate. Even at five miles an hour, the momentum of the truck was enough to shatter taillights, crumple crumple zones and drag the front end of the car up onto the curb.
I realized I had to find a place to pull over so I could call the police. But I was in downtown frickin' DC! Where was I supposed to find a place to stop, let alone park? To make matters worse, a bike messenger zoomed up alongside me and began shouting helpful comments such as, "You have to go back, man! They've got your tag number! You're fleeing the scene!" Thankfully, just a block away, I found a curb that was completely unoccupied. I figured it was probably a No Parking zone, but didn't worry about it since I'd be calling the cops on myself in a few minutes anyway. I parked, hopped out and started walking back to the accident scene.
I hadn't even made it to the end of the truck when I heard someone behind me.
"Sir! Excuse me, Sir!"
I turned around to see a guard hustling out of his booth towards me and gesturing at the truck.
"You can't park your truck here!" By now, he had caught up with me and I could read the badge on his uniform shirt.
"FBI POLICE." Seriously, FBI Police. I never even knew such a department existed; I mean, I thought the FBI were the police, or in charge of the police, or something. It's really a redundantly funny name when you think about it; sort of like "Secret Service Security" or "Star Trek Geek." But this guy looked armed and cranky, so I decided to keep my observations about his department to myself.
I explained to the FBI Officer, or Field Agent Patrolman, or whatever his title was that I had just been in an accident and needed to get back to the scene.
"I don't care, man, you can't leave your truck here," he said, pointing at the building next to the curb.
Now, I may not always be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I managed to put Blue's Clue's together pretty quickly this time: Downtown Washington DC, FBI Police, imposing building with bland architecture that fairly screamed "FEDS INSIDE!" Basically, what I had just done was parked my large, rented truck outside of the Washington Field Office of the FBI and then (looking shaky and nervous, remember) started to walk quickly away.
Within a few minutes, a half-dozen or so agents/officers had either pulled up in cars or walked over on their patrols. I gave my name to a few of them, and I explained what had happened to all of them at least once. I surrendered my driver's license to one of them and I'm pretty sure I gave one or two of them my business card. I opened the back of the truck for one of them, and then had to explain that the large black metal box inside was, in fact, a dimmer rack. Then I had to explain what a dimmer rack was.
Once I had moved the truck and the officers were all satisfied that I really had no evil plans for their building, they dispersed pretty quickly. The last two to leave told me that the Metro Police had been called to come and file a report, and that I should wait at the scene for them.
Two hours later, I gave up on waiting and flagged down a passing patrol car. The officers (regular old police officers this time) were very friendly and seemed positively amazed that I had waited at the scene for as long as I had to file an accident report.
"Most people just take off and we never find out who did it," one told me.
Of course, most people probably hadn't already given their name, driver's license number and business cards to ... THE FBI POLICE!
And that, so far at least, is why I shouldn't drive.
pugg
--
Monday night and I'm at MSO rehearsal. The Maryland Symphony Orchestra rehearses here at FCC about 2-3 times a year. They have their concerts at the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown but, due to some bizarre conflict with that venue, they haven't been able to rehearse there for the past few years. So, every few months they truck all of their music stands and percussion instruments and what-not up to Frederick, rehearse here for three nights, and then truck everything back down to Hagerstown for the weekend concert.
It makes no sense to me, but it's an easy 4-5 hour babysitting gig (lights on, surf the Interweb, lights off, go home, repeat as necessary) and gives me time to catch up on my reading.
"So," you're all asking by now, "why SHOULDN'T you drive?"
Let me start by qualifying my initial statement. I shouldn't drive anything larger than a small-ish SUV, and probably should not be allowed to take even that into the DC-Metro area. This has been proven to me via several practical demonstrations over the past decade or so:
Demonstration the First, Spring 1993
I was approached by Jason Danner, a close friend of mine at college, and a fellow theatre student. (At least I think he was a theatre student. It's hard for me to be sure because Jason managed to extend his stay at Salisbury Steak University by switching majors at least once a semester. By the time administration finally caught on and forced graduation upon him, he had been at the school for six years and majored in almost every liberal arts major SSU offerred.)
Where was I?
Oh yes, Jason approached me and asked if I would be willing to drive with him to the Dulles airport and pick up two German exchange students who were arriving that night on a late flight. I had never driven in or around DC, but I agreed; partly because I liked hanging out with Jason, and partly because I knew I could force him to run lines with me in the car. We drove out to the airport, Jason half-heartedly feeding me lines from "Look Back in Anger" the whole way, and picked up the Germans, No Problem.
The First Problem With Driving in DC is this: The Way You Got There will never, ever, be The Way You Get Home. It started when I had trouble finding a way out of the airport and back onto Route 50. I toodled around the parking lots a few times until I saw a sign that I was pretty sure said, "MD50 - This Way." On reflection, I'm sure that what it really said was something like, "Turn Here If You Don't Know That MD50 Isn't This Way Sucker!" But I didn't take the time to read the fine print, I just turned That Way.
Needless to say, MD50 was not This Way. Of course, we didn't realize that until Jason, commenting on the various monuments and buildings we were passing, realized that we really shouldn't be seeing more monuments if we were, in fact, driving away from DC. At that point it was about 1:30am, and he and I started looking for a some sign to point us back onto MD50 while the Germans in the back seat tried to remain calm. This was their first visit to the Washington area, so all they knew of DC was what they saw on the international news; rampant crime, corruption and murder, in other words.
We finally got help when I sideswiped a Nigerian ambassador while trying to simultaneously make a right on red and read a street sign that some joker had mounted upside-down. The ambassador was very gracious about the whole thing, he didn't even bother to take my insurance information, and he was able to point out that Constitution Avenue (which we had crossed and re-crossed about six times that evening) was, in fact, MD50. We thanked the ambassador, piled back into the car, and headed home.
Looking back on that trip, years later, my only real regret is that I didn't swap information with the Nigerian Ambassador. Maybe if I had, I could tell him about the simply atrocious circumstances that Dr. Bisi Odum and his family have been forced into.
So now we skip ahead about ten years or so to...
Demonstration the Second, October 2004
I had graduated from college and was working for a respectable theatre supply company in Maryland. I was given the company van and asked to take some gear to a hotel in Reston, VA to set up for a trade show. This was only my second or third time driving the van, so I was a bit nervous to begin with. Reston, as you may know, is in Northern Virginia, but still close enough to DC for The First Problem to apply.
The Second Problem with driving in and around DC is this: Once You Get There, There Won't Be Any Place to Park. I pulled into the turnaround in front of the hotel, parked, and hopped out of the van, nearly colliding with a tiny Fillipino valet who had bustled over to intercept me.
"Hotel guest, sir?"
"Erm, no, I'm here for the convention and I need to load in."
"You cannot park here! Hotel guest only!"
"Yes, I understand, but I need to take my things [wave hands vaguely at rear of van] into the hotel [wave hands vaguely at hotel entrance]."
"Hotel guest only!"
At this point, the Head Valet (you could tell by the extra braids on his epaulets) emerged to take control of the situation.
"Are you a hotel guest, sir?"
"No, I'm here for the convention and need to load in."
"Ah-huh, well you can't park your vehicle here sir, you'll have to park on the street or in the parking deck."
I looked out at the street, filled with school buses from all over Northern Virginia. Then, I looked at the ... at the ...
"Excuse me, but where exactly is the parking deck?"
"What you need to do is pull out of the turnaround [straight arm karate-chop towards street] turn back onto the main street [double-handed judo throw towards rear of hotel] make a right at the corner [two-fisted tai-chi whatsis] go up about two and a half blocks and you'll see the entrance to the parking deck on your right."
"Two and a half blocks, you say? And there's nowhere closer that I could park?"
"Sure. You could park on the street."
I decided to not to point out that the large yellow buses lining the curbs meant that I could not, in fact, park on the street. I could tell that this was a man who would consider a mere physical impossibility no match for The Rules; and The Rules clearly said that if I wasn't a hotel guest, I wouldn't be parking in his goddamn turnaround. So I decided to try my luck with the parking deck.
There is something about parking decks that those of you who haven't driven a vehicle larger than the average SUV may not have noticed. There is almost always a large metal bar (or sometimes a sign) that hangs down in front of the entrance to the deck, suspended at the Maximum Clearance Height. I gather that the idea behind that bar is this: if you are driving a vehicle that is too tall to fit inside the parking deck, you'll bang into the bar before your vehicle can get wedged inside the deck.
Unfortunately, whoever built the parking deck in Reston didn't measure the max clearance correctly, or hung the sign at the wrong height, or possibly both because I was most of the way up the ramp to Level TWO before I heard a skreeee-unch! that told me the van was indeed too tall for their deck. I got out and surveyed the damage; the roof rack of the van had caught the underside of a support beam and had been pushed back about half the length of the roof.
Now, at this point, I had two options: I could try to back the van down out of the parking deck and then look for parking back at the hotel or on the street, or I could remove the roof rack entirely and find a parking spot on one of the upper levels. The "HOTEL GUEST ONLY!" incident was still a little too fresh in my mind, I guess, because I pulled some tools out of the van and took off the rack.
The guys at the shop gave me no end of grief about this, and I'm still more or less banned from driving the van, although special exceptions are made if there is absolutely no one else available and the trip does not involve any parking decks or low bridges.
Demonstration the Third, October 2005
Earlier this year, I sold a rolling dimmer rack to a client in Washington, DC. We planned to have the rack and assorted gear delivered to our shop in Frederick and then delivered by one of our guys. But, in sales as in DC driving, nothing is ever as simple as it at first seems.
The customer needed the gear sooner than the factory could provide it, which we solved by rush-shipping what we could and pulling loaner gear from our production stock. Then, we realized that all of our regular drivers were already booked for other jobs on the day the delivery needed to happen. To make matters more complex, the gear was too heavy to travel in any of the company vehicles. So what should've been a simple little sale now required us to rent a 16' box van with a lift gate, and then find some poor sucker to drive it into downtown DC.
I really don't need to tell you who the poor sucker was, do I?
I managed to get all the way into DC without any major problems and I must say, I was feeling pretty confident. I had looked up directions to my client's address online, and then double-checked those directions with one of our guys. He pointed out some roads that weren't truck-friendly, and offered some alternate routes. We found a route that would get me to my destination with the minimum number of turns, using truck-friendly roads, while avoiding as much of the actual city as possible. I hit the Beltway thinking I'd be at my destination in 45 minutes, tops, No Problem.
The Third Problem with driving in and around DC is this: No Matter Where You Get Your Directions, They'll Be Wrong. It turns out that the route we had worked out ahead of time as being the easiest and most truck-friendly became decidedly unfriendly once one entered DC proper. As soon as I crossed the Potomac, the road split and I was faced with two signs which said, "THE WAY YOU WANT TO GO (NO TRUCKS)" and, "THE WAY YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO GO (ALL TRUCKS THIS ROUTE)."
What DC hadn't counted on, however, was that I had been expecting something this time. I quickly found an exit off of the trucks-only route and onto "K" street. I called my client on his cell and got an alternate route to his building. Barring traffic, he said, it should only take me about 10 minutes to get to him.
Ha Ha, DC-Metro Area! Take That! I knew I still had the First Problem to contend with, but I have to admit to feeling pretty good about myself as I wove my way across town towards my destination.
And then I had to make a right turn from "H" street onto 3rd. Now, right turns are not normally a big deal for me and even in the truck I had successfully managed quite a few of them that day. The trick to making turns in a larger vehicle is that you can't cut things too closely. However, when making a right-hand turn onto a two lane side-street with Parking Allowed, you should probably turn even wider than normal.
Because parking in downtown DC sucks; it sucks hard. Parking lots and decks charge upwards of $12.00 a day, which doesn't really matter because they're always filled to capacity. And thanks to The War on Terror, parking is verboten on many city streets. Just slowing down on some of those streets can get you a face full of angry traffic cop. So those few streets where parking is still Allowed fill up quickly, and densely. Any curb lacking red paint or a sufficiently threatening sign and/or attendant is guaranteed to be lined with cars packed bumper-to-bumper from one corner to the other by 9:00am.
(I still don't know who owned that Honda Accord. It had out-of-state tags, which means it was probably somebody in town for the weekend who had decided to extend their stay by a day. If you're out there, reading this entry right now, I'm sorry, deeply heart-wrenchingly sorry.)
The sound of Flimsy Imported Car being squished by Sturdy American Truck hit my ears about three-quarters of the way through the turn. I had cut the turn too close by just an inch or two, and caught the back end of the Accord with the steel frame of the truck's lift gate. Even at five miles an hour, the momentum of the truck was enough to shatter taillights, crumple crumple zones and drag the front end of the car up onto the curb.
I realized I had to find a place to pull over so I could call the police. But I was in downtown frickin' DC! Where was I supposed to find a place to stop, let alone park? To make matters worse, a bike messenger zoomed up alongside me and began shouting helpful comments such as, "You have to go back, man! They've got your tag number! You're fleeing the scene!" Thankfully, just a block away, I found a curb that was completely unoccupied. I figured it was probably a No Parking zone, but didn't worry about it since I'd be calling the cops on myself in a few minutes anyway. I parked, hopped out and started walking back to the accident scene.
I hadn't even made it to the end of the truck when I heard someone behind me.
"Sir! Excuse me, Sir!"
I turned around to see a guard hustling out of his booth towards me and gesturing at the truck.
"You can't park your truck here!" By now, he had caught up with me and I could read the badge on his uniform shirt.
"FBI POLICE." Seriously, FBI Police. I never even knew such a department existed; I mean, I thought the FBI were the police, or in charge of the police, or something. It's really a redundantly funny name when you think about it; sort of like "Secret Service Security" or "Star Trek Geek." But this guy looked armed and cranky, so I decided to keep my observations about his department to myself.
I explained to the FBI Officer, or Field Agent Patrolman, or whatever his title was that I had just been in an accident and needed to get back to the scene.
"I don't care, man, you can't leave your truck here," he said, pointing at the building next to the curb.
Now, I may not always be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I managed to put Blue's Clue's together pretty quickly this time: Downtown Washington DC, FBI Police, imposing building with bland architecture that fairly screamed "FEDS INSIDE!" Basically, what I had just done was parked my large, rented truck outside of the Washington Field Office of the FBI and then (looking shaky and nervous, remember) started to walk quickly away.
Within a few minutes, a half-dozen or so agents/officers had either pulled up in cars or walked over on their patrols. I gave my name to a few of them, and I explained what had happened to all of them at least once. I surrendered my driver's license to one of them and I'm pretty sure I gave one or two of them my business card. I opened the back of the truck for one of them, and then had to explain that the large black metal box inside was, in fact, a dimmer rack. Then I had to explain what a dimmer rack was.
Once I had moved the truck and the officers were all satisfied that I really had no evil plans for their building, they dispersed pretty quickly. The last two to leave told me that the Metro Police had been called to come and file a report, and that I should wait at the scene for them.
Two hours later, I gave up on waiting and flagged down a passing patrol car. The officers (regular old police officers this time) were very friendly and seemed positively amazed that I had waited at the scene for as long as I had to file an accident report.
"Most people just take off and we never find out who did it," one told me.
Of course, most people probably hadn't already given their name, driver's license number and business cards to ... THE FBI POLICE!
And that, so far at least, is why I shouldn't drive.
pugg
--
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Huzzah!
This evening, I finally got around to installing the wireless card that's been sitting on my desk at the office for the past two months. To my surprise and delight, I discovered upon rebooting that there's an unsecured network in our neighborhood.
I have no idea if it's a neighbor, one of the businesses across the street, or what, but I'll milk it for as long as possible. If and when it dries up, I'll probably have to break down and install a network here myself.
Until then, however...huzzah!
I have no idea if it's a neighbor, one of the businesses across the street, or what, but I'll milk it for as long as possible. If and when it dries up, I'll probably have to break down and install a network here myself.
Until then, however...huzzah!
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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