Tumbling Towards Brevity

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Scene: At Ciao Baby for Kristin’s birthday. Currently eating dessert, a.k.a. “The Volcano”. That’s 14 scoops of ice cream in a chocolate shell container, surrounded by Oreo cookie bits and all kinds of other deliciousness. It’s now about halfway gone. Me: “It doesn’t look like much of a volcano to me. It’s not erupting or anything, it’s just breaking apart.” Jess: “That looks like love to me.” Kristin: “If that looks like love, you’re doing it wrong.”

Scene: At Ciao Baby for Kristin’s birthday. Currently eating dessert, a.k.a. “The Volcano”. That’s 14 scoops of ice cream in a chocolate shell container, surrounded by Oreo cookie bits and all kinds of other deliciousness. It’s now about halfway gone.


Me: “It doesn’t look like much of a volcano to me. It’s not erupting or anything, it’s just breaking apart.”


Jess: “That looks like love to me.”


Kristin: “If that looks like love, you’re doing it wrong.”

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Alkaline Trio at the Hard Rock Cafe, Las Vegas on 7/22/11. Set list: Armageddon In Vein Private Eye Nose Over Tail Goodbye Forever Another Innocent Girl Old School Reasons Mr. Chainsaw Maybe I’ll Catch Fire Trouble Breathing Mercy Me San Francisco This Could Be Love If You Had a Bad Time (acoustic) Clavicle (acoustic) You’ve Got So Far to Go (acoustic) Blue in the Face (acoustic) Olde English 800 (acoustic) I Held Her in My Arms (acoustic, with the Smoking Popes) Bleeder My Friend Peter

Alkaline Trio at the Hard Rock Cafe, Las Vegas on 7/22/11.

Set list:

  1. Armageddon
  2. In Vein
  3. Private Eye
  4. Nose Over Tail
  5. Goodbye Forever
  6. Another Innocent Girl
  7. Old School Reasons
  8. Mr. Chainsaw
  9. Maybe I’ll Catch Fire
  10. Trouble Breathing
  11. Mercy Me
  12. San Francisco
  13. This Could Be Love
  14. If You Had a Bad Time (acoustic)
  15. Clavicle (acoustic)
  16. You’ve Got So Far to Go (acoustic)
  17. Blue in the Face (acoustic)
  18. Olde English 800 (acoustic)
  19. I Held Her in My Arms (acoustic, with the Smoking Popes)
  20. Bleeder
  21. My Friend Peter

Notes

Sleepover with Aunt George

Jess:
You don't want Aunt George to come over?
Avery:
No.
Jess:
Ohh, but he was going to come over for a sleepover!
Avery:
No!
Jess:
So.. he can't come over to sleep in your crib?
Avery:
NO!
Jess:
..naked in your crib?
Avery:
NO!
Jess:
Can George come sleep in my bed?
Avery:
..yes.
Jess:
..naked in my bed?
Avery:
..yes!
Jess:
Eww. Can George sleep with Daddy in our bed?
Avery:
Nnnnnnnn.. YES!
Me:
NO!

Filed under avery sleepover auntgeorge gross

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“I’ve never done nothin wrong in my life. Misdemeanors, yeah, that’s growing up and stuff like that. But what did I do wrong? I had bunnies. That’s what I did wrong.”

“I’ve never done nothin wrong in my life. Misdemeanors, yeah, that’s growing up and stuff like that. But what did I do wrong? I had bunnies. That’s what I did wrong.”

Notes

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
11 Plays

Yes, I’m re-blogging myself from last December. Deal with it :P

mrpants:

Jean Shepherd - “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid” (12/24/1974)

“A Christmas Story” is one of the goddamned greatest movies ever created.

There. I said it.

A few years back, the topic of Jean Shepherd came up during talk of how awesome “A Christmas Story” is. I spoke to my Dad, who was a longtime Shep fan. He had a couple of his books, and apparently used to collect Playboys “just for the articles”. No, really - he wasn’t just saying it (or so I would like to believe, anyway). It used to be the only way to get any new stories from the man was to pick up the latest issue of Playboy, as he was published often.

So, rather than being creepy and asking for a Playboy back catalog from the 60’s, I instead asked for a copy of “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” that year for Christmas, and dove into it as soon as I got it.

The first story was “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid”. OMG! THE “CHRISTMAS STORY” STORY! It was incredible to read the original work that the movie was based on after watching it for all those years.

The rest of the stories within were wonderful as well. The adventures of Shep (or Ralphie, or whoever the lead character was that he was writing about) and Flick and Schwartz enthralled me for a bit.

Being one who *always* needs more info about things he likes, I did some searching on the interwebs and learned more about Shepherd’s radio show. Each episode was broadcast weeknights during the 60’s and 70’s on WOR in New York, and, most times, made up ON THE SPOT. Shep would just pick a topic he wanted to talk about and talk for 45 minutes or so. Amazing.

It was through this search that I learned that Shep would read some of his holiday-themed stories on the air as a fun, seasonal type of thing. Each year on Christmas Eve, he’d read “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid” on the air, in edited form.

For your amusement, I have uploaded the first reading of the story that I had discovered online and listened to. The original air date was December 24, 1974. I was -5 years old at the time.

If you have some time to kill, I can’t recommend listening to this enough. That is if you like “A Christmas Story” and Shep’s narration during the movie. If not, you’re just not human.

As an added bonus: vintage radio commercials!

Enjoy.

Download: http://maskmusic.com/audio/1974_12_24_edit_Red_Ryder_WOR_Jean_Shepherd.mp3

More Shep radio shows: http://shepcast.blogspot.com/

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CyanogenMod Installation

This is just a set of instructions for me to remember what the hell I did to get CyanogenMod v6 onto my Nexus One. Following instructions from multiple sources, this is what worked for me in the end:

  1. Install Universal Androot (get it here: http://blog.23corner.com/tag/universalandroot/) and root the N1 (with one click!).
  2. Install Titanium Backup from the Marketplace.
  3. Backup EVERYTHING (apps, data, etc.).
  4. Install ROM Manager from the Marketplace.
  5. Load the newest ClockworkMod Recovery. THIS IS WHERE I HAD ISSUES (I think). I wound up flashing RA Recovery instead and got everything to work from here on out.
  6. Download CyanogenMod v6.0.0 for the N1 (here: http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/forum/8-google-nexus-one-stable-mod/). I tried to do this step in ROM Manager and, even when the download was successful, it still gave me crap. Instead, I downloaded it using a trusty PC with a fast network connection and copied it over to my SD card.
  7. Download the GApps add-on (same location as above).
  8. Boot into Recovery via ROM Manager (or, as I had to do after I screwed something up, turn the phone off, hold down the trackball, turn the power on, let go of the trackball after you see the screen with three Androids and menu options).
  9. Within RA Recovery, select the “Wipe” option, and then the “Wipe data/factory reset” option.
  10. Move back up a menu level and select the “Flash zip from sdcard” option. Select the CM6 file (named “update-cm-6.0.0-N1-signed.zip”) and click to install.
  11. Wait a minute or two.
  12. Success!
  13. Repeat Step 10 with the GApps add-on (named “gapps-hdpi-20100817-signed.zip”).
  14. Move back up a menu level and select the “Reboot” option. The phone will reboot into CM6.
  15. Now that CM6 has been installed, it seems that my apps have been re-downloaded from the Marketplace automatically. That’s pretty cool, eh?
  16. Next up, load up Titanium Backup and start restoring missing applications and data.

That’s all there was to it. It looks like a lot to do, but, really, it’s pretty easy in the end.