Early November comes and means it is time for an annual tradition here on the Kevdo.com blog to start thinking about the Song of Year award. As in year’s past there are some songs that are definitely breaking out from the pack and based on my playcount in iTunes and just plain old gut feeling one of these three songs will be the song of the year.
Foster the People “Houdini (RAC remix)”
Don’t look for this on the album (which is quite good). It was a promo single that was issued on the Foster the People website and it’s far superior to the album version.
Evanescence “What You Want”
A strong entry from the group’s third album. Nice to see Amy Lee and co. haven’t gone soft… Â This song has such an epic feel.
The Black Keys “Lonely Boy”
This song was just released but is clearly in the mix. The music video is hypnotic even with the low-budget aesthetic . I didn’t love the group’s last album, aside from their breakthrough hit “Tighten Up” but if this lead single is any indication their new album coming in December might be worth a listen.
We visited Perry Farm over in Ardenwood today to get some pumpkins. They have all the traditional fun things we like going here for, including the mountain of straw, a small hay maze and some displays.
Unfortunately what they didn’t have was good pumpkins. So we left empty handed.
A busy weekend, though in many respects quite productive.
On Friday night, Julie and I took Riley to see Horrible Bosses. Not the most-appropriate movie for a 13 year old, but a kid has to learn about these things someday…
On Saturday, the three of us attended the Japan Bazaar at the Southern Alameda County Buddhist Church in Union City. They had carnival games and some merchandise, along with plenty of food and drinks and entertainment. I had a very tasty teriyaki burger and a beer (this, clearly, is a different kind of church than the one I’m used to). We were there since the family of one of Riley’s buddies goes to the church and was working one of the booths.
Quinn spent Friday night at a sleepover, then on Saturday at a birthday party where they saw Transformers (and Julie gives me a hard time for taking Riley to see Horrible Bosses!). On Sunday, I took Quinn out to hit some tennis balls. He has great fashion sense!
I also spent some time catching up on some blogging. I posted a ton of blog posts this weekend. Here are all the links!
As a former Librarian, I’ve always loved bookstores. Not to a fault, mind you  – I’m not paying twice as much for a book at retail if I can get it online instead. Starting in the mid-1990s, I’ve very much enjoyed the big bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, and especially Borders. Yes, those chains have hurt small bookstores, but in general I’ve chalked that up to changing times. For about 15 years, those chains have had a really good run, but now Borders is closing many of it’s stores.
I’ve gone out of my way to support physical bookstores. We enjoyed visiting the stores after going to the movies or after dinner at places like the Fremont Hub or McCarthy Ranch. In recent years, I’ve been given the opportunity to choose gift cards from several vendors while participating in a rewards program at work. In those cases, I’ve often chosen Borders cards and used them to purchase books, movies, and CDs at their stores. As the kids have grown up, we have regularly taken trips to these stores to browse or more regularly purchase books for them to read.
But, as we know, Borders is closing many of it’s stores. And this has made me really sad. Some of it is nostalgia – the Borders shown in the photo is at McCarthy Ranch and Julie and I went here a lot when we were dating or after we married without kids. And on a recent date night we made one final trip to the location. Inside, it was a bloodbath as people were seemingly picking over the bones of a dead carcass.
Here are my predictions for the this year’s Major League season, with my forecast for the playoff teams and the eventual World Series winner.
National League
East: Phillies
Central: Reds
West: Giants
Wild Card: Braves
American League
East: Yankees
Central: Twins
West: Athletics
Wild Card: White Sox
World Series Winner: Twins over Phillies
Risky prediction: I truly believe that with added batting that the Giants will actually offer a bit of run support for Barry Zito this year, leading to 15 wins.
Are parents stupid enough to fall for labels such as this one? Especially when they’re on an arcade game where the object is to shoot and kill as if you were a member of the military?
I have no problem with these sort of game, even for kids such as my son Riley (12, pictured). But all ages? I don’t think so.
This is one of those ironic tales that might not have been particularly funny or entertaining.
I left my office today a little after 11:45 to head over to another building for my weekly Toastmasters meeting. The drive in the car is pretty short – three or four minutes including stop lights but is takes too long to walk with my busy schedule. I’m a native Californian, so shoot me for liking to to drive, okay?
Most of the time I listen to podcasts in the car but today wanted to hear a long that was in my head. The song was “Last Day” by English band Editors. So, I hit play on the iPod and drove off for my meeting.
I was waiting for the stoplight at Mathilda Ave and Moffett Park Drive. I was heading all the way across the intersection, but many of the people turning left from westbound Moffett onto Mathilda got backed up a bit and so were a bit in the intersection. But, it wasn’t a big deal so I just inched a bit outside my normal lane and then finished heading across.
Next thing I knew I saw a car (a Prius no less) speeding through the intersection, heading northbound on Mathilda. I was using safe driving skills and was actually looking in that direction as I started across the intersection, so I saw the car and was able to easily brake and let the car pass. As it did, I looked to my left to confirm that yes indeed the Prius has completely ran a red light. And unlike most Priuses it wasn’t going very slow either (sorry, Prius owners, but gotta call it like I see it).
If I had entered that lane two seconds earlier – if I hadn’t been “slow off the gate” due to the backed up traffic – then I very likely would have hit by this very fast moving car. And who knows if I’d be in any condition to be writing this blog.
The ironic part? Remember… I specifically picked that Editors song to listen to. Not a podcast. Not a random song from Shuffle mode. But this very specific song: “Last Day.”
“This is my last day alive
Well, it’s one hell of a day to die”
Thankfully, I only had to listen to the the lyrics. Not live them.
Thanks to NetFlix and a list of critically acclaimed films that I actually wanted to see, I managed to see quite a few films in 2009. Here’s the list of every 2009 film that I managed to see, and listed here in order. I’ve grouped them into several categories, in order to show that there were differences between the Very Successful group and the Disappointment group, for example.
Regarding my top tier, I’ve managed to see most of these a second time and they do hold up. I’d say that Inglourious Basterds is number one by a considerable margin, however. It was such an entertaining, thrilling, and suspenseful movie! It also featured my favorite performance of the year, Christoph Waltz.
The Best of the Year – Transcended their Genre:
Inglourious Basterds
Avatar
Star Trek
Up in the Air
Up
I Love You, Man
The Hurt Locker
Observe and Report
Funny People
Zombieland
The Hangover
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Monsters vs. Aliens
Very Successful (within their Genre):
Anvil: The Story of Anvil
Taken
Year One
He’s Just Not That Into You
State of Play
Sunshine Cleaning
Management
The Blind Side
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Bruno
Angels and Demons
Extract
Julie and Julia
Paper Heart
Adventureland
Watchmen
Sherlock Holmes
Duplicity
The International
Disappointments:
Land of the Lost
17 Again
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Terminator: Salvation
Away We Go
Fanboys
The Girlfriend Experience
Just Plain Awful:
The Marc Pease Experience
The Proposal
Obsessed (“very successful” if you view this as so-bad-it’s-good and love a good catfight)
I wanted to celebrate the decade by noting some of the signature technology innovations of the decade. Obviously these are mostly consumer focused, so I’m not going to talk about obscure networking standards or have a religious war about operating system kernels. We’ll keep these things accessible for most of you readers. This list is really those products or innovations that defined the decade, and in some ways would blow the mind of someone we transported from 1999.
I’ve been working on this list for a while and then today Engadget comes up with a similar list with many of my choices. Oh, well… here’s my list anyway.
Canon Digital ELPH camera
For all the talk about the iPod or the Music Industry, there are few industries that were as dramatically transformed during this decade than the camera and film industry. I Â mean, does anyone even use film anymore? At the start of the decade most people hadn’t even heard of digital cameras! Â And while Canon didn’t invent the industry, the Digital ELPH was really the first super small camera that was really capable. If the adage “the best camera is the one you have with you” is true then these small cameras were a game-changer.
iPod
I know. Â It’s easy to pick this. And despite no longer being the shining star at a certain Cupertino company, it’s hard to argue there was a more signature device from the decade as a whole. Introduced in 2001 and not really perfected until the click-wheel was invented for the iPod Mini, the iPod changed the way we interact, consume, and transport our music. I still use one for hours a day. There are eight iPods (or iPhones) in frequent use in our household.
So, for fun… let me see if I can remember all my iPods this decade.
iPod Shuffle 1st gen
iPod 3rd gen
iPod nano 1st gen (4 GB)
iPod nano 1st gen (2 GB) – won this in a raffle and Quinn is still using today
iPod 5th gen
iPod nano 3rd gen – Riley is still using today
iPod nano 4th gen – my daily iPod for podcasts and music listening
iPod nano 4th gen – Julie’s iPod
iPod Touch 2nd gen – we have two of these in our household, used by Riley and Quinn. I got one free ordering a new computer and Riley got one from grandma for suffering through dental work
GPS
Combined with Google Maps, it’s pretty hard to get lost these days. It really is a revolution that we can track our location and that the hardware/software solutions out there can provide pinpoint directions whenever you need them.
Toyota Prius 2nd Gen
I’m more of a Honda guy, but if you were going to pick one single car to represent the decade it would be an easy choice. And, let’s face it, we could use a lot more hybrid cars out there. My next one will be a hybrid. My favorite Prius moment came in an episode of The Office when Andy was able to use the silent electrical motor to trap Dwight between the car and a fence. Perfect 00’s moment.
iTunes Music Store
I still buy a lot of CDs. I like the “permanence” of CDs, but also am looking at a giant shelf of them. If only there was a way to purchase that one great song from that obscure album. Oh, there is… Â Among the things we can thank Steve Jobs for the most is this invention that I think did save the music industry. There are other electronic stores out there but there is only one iTunes.
Someday Apple may be able to leverage iTunes as well. If only there was a way to easily buy movies or purchase apps for my cell phone…
Palm Treo 600
This one didn’t have a long shelf life as it looked really old really fast once a certain computer company decided to make a cellphone. But, back in the day, the Treo was the first device that you could really use for all your daily “pocket computer” needs. An organizer with web browsing, a phone, 3rd party apps, and ability to play music and videos. That was the promise of the Treo.
If only Palm hadn’t sat on Palm OS 5 for what seemed like forever…
Over the Air Wireless Broadband (Internet WiFi / 3G)
You’ve seen those commercials that talk about the broadband revolution and how back at the turn of the decade most of us were still using dial-up internet. Yep, me too.
It is ridiculous how pervasive wireless broadband is now. My phone has internet speeds that blow past my landline internet from the start of the decade. Not my cable modem. My phone.
Kudos to Apple for really pushing the wireless internet WiFi capabilities in some of their laptops early this decade. You can hardly go anywhere with people and not find WiFi available. It’s everywhere! And for shame those cellphone manufacturers who omit WiFi from the feature list in deference to the cellphone carriers.
YouTube / Podcasting
This is arguably as disruptive as digital photography. Services like YouTube make it easy to consume and share video (especially now that we all have excellent video cameras in our phones. Or, at least we have some sort of video camera in our phone). It isn’t that hard to remember the time when there were a million video formats and that uploading and providing those files for people to watch and consume was a big pain. All of that went away with YouTube. Now, admittedly, some of the videos on YouTube aren’t exactly quality TV. But there’s a lot of great stuff there and as a producer of content it makes it easy to share.
Podcasting is similar in that it allowed for the same kind of electronic distribution systems that “big media” used to reach people online. And with the quality of audio and video software it is very easy and affordable to produce something that has high technical quality. The quality of the “talent” might be another thing…
Wii
For all the talk about “virtual reality” in the 1990’s, the Wii was really the first system that created an interface that really brought you into the game in a way that was far superior than pulling a joystick or pressing buttons.
iPhone
You didn’t think I’d forget Steve Jobs’ Jesus Phone did you?
On a certain level, it’s isn’t that different from the Treo and other earlier smartphones. But, they say, the devil is in the details and detail-wise the iPhone blew them all away. It’s become such an integral part of my life that if you put a gun to my head and said I had to get rid of either my iMac (with a gorgeous 20″ display) or my iPhone it wouldn’t even be a contest.
You can take my iPhone when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Of course, the iPhone leverages many of the technologies listed above (but where is the gas-hybrid battery?). But this was the device that put them all together. Camera in my pocket, great music and movies, excellent “PDA” apps, plus a great phone experience and tons of internet-connected apps. Truly the product of the decade.
I know the Oscars aren’t until March 7, 2010, but I thought I go out on a limb with my fearless predictions for the top categories. Yes, I know the nominations aren’t even out yet. But, here we go…
Best Picture:Â Up in the Air
Best Director: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Best Actor: George Clooney, Up in the Air
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Julie and Julie
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress: Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Best Animated Feature:Â Up
Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Best Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
So, clearly, I’ve got a lot of horses bet on Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds. I think that as often has happened in recent years the Best Picture and Best Director will split, so that could easily go the other way. But I think that Up in the Air feels more like “topical sign of the times” that the Academy often likes to recognize. I’m hedging my bets for these two films in the respective Screenplay categories as well.
When folks vote for Best Picture they often like to vote for a man in acting category, so the Best Picture support for Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds will translate to extra votes for Clooney and Waltz. There may be two “newcomer” candidates for Best Actress with Casey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe, so I think they’ll split that vote. If Sandra Bullock gets nominated it’ll be like Anne Hathaway’s last year – the nomination is the reward. Which probably leaves Meryl Streep as the last woman standing. There will certainly be some sentiment to reward Street for the first time in almost 30 years, though I happened to not love her performance in Julie and Julia personally. And I’m going for Farmiga for Supporting Actress because she’s playing against George Clooney (think: 2008 winner Tilda Swinton).
As a former Librarian, I’ve always loved bookstores. Not to a fault, mind you  – I’m not paying twice as much for a book at retail if I can get it online instead. Starting in the mid-1990s, I’ve very much enjoyed the big bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, and especially Borders. Yes, those chains have hurt small bookstores, but in general I’ve chalked that up to changing times. For about 15 years, those chains have had a really good run, but now Borders is closing many of it’s stores.
Here are my predictions for the this year’s Major League season, with my forecast for the playoff teams and the eventual World Series winner.
Inglourious Basterds
I know. Â It’s easy to pick this. And despite no longer being the shining star at a certain Cupertino company, it’s hard to argue there was a more signature device from the decade as a whole. Introduced in 2001 and not really perfected until the click-wheel was invented for the iPod Mini, the iPod changed the way we interact, consume, and transport our music. I still use one for hours a day. There are eight iPods (or iPhones) in frequent use in our household.
