offhand remarks

links for 2004-09-30

• Voters Information Guide for the 2004 US Election
  (categories: voting)

links for 2004-09-29

• Ultimatebet Aruba Blog
  (categories: poker)
• Sherlock Holmes Action Figure
  (categories: wishlist)

links for 2004-09-28

• Treehugger

Baby Summit Participants

Baby Summit Participants
Originally uploaded by Big Sister.

Devil in the Details

Last night, Mrs. Check and I dropped by 826 Valencia to celebrate the release of Devil in the Details, a memoir by one of 826's most energetic volunteers, Jenny Traig. Of course, it's not her first book. She's put out a whole series of ultracool Chronicle books about crafts, all of them edited by friend-of-a-friend Mikyla Bruder. I suspect that, someday, Jenny's Judaikitsch will end up being Chronicle's best-selling crafts book ever. It's too funny and beautifully executed to go out of print. (I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying so.)  In any case, Jenny's whole family was present at the party and they very gracefully endured a Friar's Club style seating arrangement as Jenny read an absolutely hilarious chapter from her book. The best writers are graced with humor, insight, and, in my experience, the most astonishing powers of recall. Traig's reading definitely came through on all three, offering many opportunities to laugh out loud, nod in agreement, and wax nostalgic for forgotten childhood pleasures. My favorite reference was to "a strange and fairly pointless bubble-making kit you could find in the children's section of any craft store You squeezed out a blob of malleable plastic from a tube and placed it at the end of a straw, which you blew through, transforming the blob into a bubble colored like a gasoline rainbow. This, in fact, is exactly what it smelled like." What the heck was that stuff called? I loved that stuff. I want some of that stuff now. In any case, the book is about growing up as an obsessive teenager whose religious devotion leads to a bad case of "scrupulosity." Hilarity ensues. That much I know already. I can't wait to finish it and start lending it out...

Dear Recording Industry,

I got a bunch of CDs from Amoeba Records last night. It was just like college, coming home with a half a dozen discs to eagerly unwrap. Of course, in college, when I was buying a mix of vinyl and CDs, sometimes excitement turned to disappointment when I realized I hadn't discovered a Wire or Pixies or Meat Puppets or whatever, but held in my hands something much more run-of-the-mill. That said, I'm still nostalgic for those days, because now my disappointment is inevitable and immediate. It occurs before I've even put the disc into the CD player. And you know why? Because of those goddamn piece-of-shit jewelboxes you insist on packaging 90% of your offerings in! What's the most common sound I hear when I listen to a new CD? Majestic power chords? A wicked bassline? Nope. It's the plink-plink-plink of all the little broken plastic pieces of the hub of the jewelbox falling to the floor like the teeth of a boxer who walked into a right cross. But you know what, recording industry, I'm a big boy. I can adapt. I've gotten used to this insult to my long-running support of your artists and their products. Sure, I could punt the whole "buying" music and just pirate it from friends and strangers. Still, I like the artwork and liner notes on CDs, even though they're just a pitiful echo of the artwork we used to get on vinyl. Anyhoo, I've give you the jewelboxes. Eff it. No worries. Bygones. We're still pals. You know what though, I'm not going to give you a free pass for the motherfucking security stickers you insert inside the jewelboxes. I opened my new Los Lobos CD and tried to take the sticker off. You know what happened? Yep. Riiiiip. Bye-bye artwork. The jewelboxes are bad, but at least they're ostensibly for my benefit. So I can take up 50 cubic feet of shelf space for 200 cds. But I don't care if stores have a problem with shoplifters. It's not my problem. It's their problem. And if you insist on making it my problem, guess what, I won't buy from stores anymore. Not even Amazon.com, which also sends CDs with those confuckingfounded security stickers in them.  Of course, last night, it hit a new low. The new Elvis Costello record comes with an FBI warning on the back of it. "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning: Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law." Right next to a spiffy FBI logo. Sweet fucking mother of fuck, you coprophagous little parasites. Not only do you give me a shitty case and think I'm a shoplifter, but you also want to bully me into believing the F.B. I.  gives a flying fuck about whether I burn a copy or fifty of the Elvis Costello CD I just bought. Thankfully, to Costello's credit, he put a line above the FBI bullshit, stating that "This artist does not endorse the following warning. The F.B.I. doesn't have his phone number and he hopes that they don't have yours." Great, now recording artists are fighting with the Feds on the back of my album collection. Wonderful.

Yours sincerely,

Harold Check

[Fade to white. Cue the iTunes logo...]

P.S. - Kudos to SubPop and Epitaph for putting their CDs in those folding Digipak cases that don't suck, allowing me to enjoy the new records by Rogue Wave and The Black Keys without shaking my fist at the Man.

New Glasses

TiVo + Netflix

I Want a Movie! Now! - Newsweek

Sept. 13 issue - Netflix and Tivo ushered in an age of couch-potato bliss. Netflix lets its customers browse through its huge movie catalog on the Web and rent DVDs through the mail without having to worry about late fees. TiVo lets people digitally record their favorite shows and zoom through the ads. But now couch potatoes are perched on the cusp of true paradise. Soon they won't even have to stand up to trudge to the mailbox; fat broadband pipes will let them directly download movies over the Net to their television.

Worst. President. Ever.

  Worst. President. Ever. 
  Originally uploaded by finn.

The Dude speaks

  The Dude speaks 
  Originally uploaded by corrie.