By the time something hits national circulation (Headline news, People, Time, Newsweek) whatever it is, is a was, and it’s old news, probably dead, and teenagers, tastemakers and anyone in the know has already been there, done that and sold the carcass on eBay at a profit to get out before the B&T people mung it up lest they be associated with the pasty faced philistines who are just now arriving.

I don’t fancy myself that far up at the bleeding edge but I’d be horrified to think that I just found out about something cool by reading a weekly magazine. I’m at least cool enough to not be there. I hope.

Julie sent me a note on Absinthe that was posted on Trend Central which I’m taking as Official Coolness Death Notice. Now we’ll see this in every bar until it finally, but assuredly gets to Applebees where ordering it would be akin to a scarlet letter of not cool.

Not so? How about the Mojito, Apple Martini, Caiperiena, Maxican Martini and espresso martini? All very cool little drinks that have made it beyond the cool membrane and entered the mainstream. Are you now acusing me of being an indie drink snob? Well, I might be. I favor the Modest Mouse of drinks rather than the Kelly Clarksons. That’s just me. Call me a snob if you like.

I’m the same way with beer, but beer is a slower burn and often you can stay underground for years. I like Kronenbourg 1664, a very nice French brew that is pretty much the Budweiser of France. It’s not fancy in any way, not some special hops or barley, nothing spectacular of note, just a nice Lager (could be a pilsner, I honestly don’t know) that I like and now can find at a few grocery stores. I’m also a fan of the Hogarden which is a great white beer and Shiner Bock (a bock… and the Bud of Central Texas) and Newcastle. The last two, not weird or indie or rare at all which is what’s nice about beer. It’s not as susceptible to being rought into an indie-beer mold. It can be, but beer is more ‘common’ even if it’s a ‘fancy’ Chimay. So, call me two-faced. I find it annoying that drinks go mainstream but I don’t care if beer does. I might not be able to explain that.

But back to absinthe. I’ve enjoyed an absinthe here and there for a few years and even bartered for some “artisan” hand crafted absinthe at Burning Man in 2001. I tried samples here and there in soft-spoken establishments in Europe where it’s been served, quietly, for almost 80 years. And now it’s legal and everyone knows. Good. Good for the brewers like Anchor in SF (who make an UNREAL gin, BTW) who will likely capitalize on this but we’ll also see it turned into something of a party trick and there will be lower-end offerings that just spoil any “interesting” aspects of it, rendering it pedestrian, boring and ultimately, a dusty bottle in the liquor store when people realize that it’s charm is in it’s craft and subtlty, not in the other hyped and silly aspects that are completely lost in 20,000 gallon stills. It will end up as a weird sister of Ouzo and thats sad, that the sun will be allowed to shine on it and that while it will be free, it will at the same time die.

So, in my quest to stay away from the boring drinks, I’m taking a hard right turn and embracing an old vet that needs a good shaking off, Mr. Harvey Wallbanger. Essentially a screwdriver with a good dash of Galliano. It’s a fun story, easy to make and very nice to alternate with a good Pimms. What’s a Pimms you ask? Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.

Dammit dammit dammit… I need to stay ahead of this stuff better.

This is where reality TV is going. Cops started it, so this is where it all comes back and tears open the fabric of space and time. Or it’s just amusing.

I can see how that’s enough to wipe out a bunch of zombies.

And yes, you just got rick rolled.

Well, that was awkward. I wonder if he left her a voicemail after the game “hey, it was a joke, hahahaha, LOVE ME!!!”

While people are being sues for downloading a few songs here and there in the US, IP infringement about 4X in magnitude is in full swing with our largest trade partners.

While the intended brand knock-off is obvious, it’s also obviously fake and probably not worth chasing people around to make them cease and desist. As if they would cease or desist. So we pick on US residents in an effort to take out corporate rage on someone.

What’s worse, www.nire.com.cn doesnt even work! What a scam.

I’m more of a cremation guy myself but if you’re going to be remembered, why not have your image immortalized on granite, with your car, in color, 8′ tall…

It seems that mid-90′s E-Class Mercedes are still very popular with Russian mobsters as in image of these cars seems to be standard issue on their tombstones. As are cigarettes, lighters, gold chains, and the requisite horrible font.

What scares me the most is the first guy looks like he could be on my father’s side of the family who are from that area of Russia. So, that’s why I secretly find this so appealing.

We got the message, thank you very much. HD-DVD is dead. There is no need to trumpet it over and over again, every single day from every hill-top. We’re clear on the concept, Sony won, there are lots of parties in Tokyo and the Big Machines of Industry are ramping up production. Everyone is calling for the impending price-drops around Blu-ray players and media. Yay. Not quite yet.

In all of the bloodshed we forgot why the formats were different and how Blu-ray is not exactly “friendly”. Blu-ray is about content control. I don’t need to spend too much time on this but it’s a matter of months before it’s cracked and Blu-ray rips are all over the torrents making the Interwebs even more crowded. It’s just a fact, lets not pretend it’s not going to happen.

That’s not what I’m interested in, I dont have any need for downloading 25GB movies, it’s just not worth it, VOD and Netflix are far simpler. What I do care about is the fact that none of the Blu-ray players support xvid / divx / dvd-mp3 etc. Since we all know that a $50 Philips DVD player from Walmart will play just about anything you throw at it, I could wonder why a $500 player doesn’t. But I don’t wonder. I know the reason, it’s control. It’s the same control that’s in play with Apple TV not playing other formats like Divx & WMV, they want to control how you consume media and that’s not good for the consumer. You see, I edit video and like to encode it into XviD for online and DVD distribution. So, I’m going to have to own 3 DVD players now? (XBOX, Philips & Blu-ray)? Thats just stupid.

So, here’s what needs to change:
1. Apple TV, allow more codecs (the ones people use)
2. MS, same deal, you opened it up half way but now you need to do it for the Extenders too
3. Blu-ray player makers, don’t alienate the consumer when there is a real legitimate need here

How legitimate is it? With all of the video recorders moving to MPEG4, many of which encode directly to divx, that’s how people edit and record their home movies. Video editing is making its way into the home at a rapid pace and people are sharing a lot of video. The players that work with the most formats will win over the ones that have the best Faroudja processors.

So, when I see a player that plays nice with my formats, I’ll upgrade my Netflix account, get that Mitsubishi Diamond 64″ 1080p DLP rear-projection screen and figure out which receiver I’ll be getting (probably the new Pioneer Elite).

Until then, my money stays in my pocket.

I like WordPress but I’m having issues… A bunch of the plugins are just not working and it’s making me completely insane. I can post and do the important stuff but little things like the social media bookmarking is wonky. The kicker is that these plugins are “supported” through the developers comment sections on their own WP blogs. If we needed proof that comments are just about useless for anything other than “commenting”, this confirms it. Have they not heard of VBulletin?

Having lived in LA for a long time I found that the bigger the car (SUV) +
more gizmos = distracted & bad drivers. It’s bad here too and I HATE to be
that guy but. people used to drive better before all those gadgets.

Full disclosure, I contributed to an O’reilly book on how to install a
complete PC in your dashboard and even had a touch-screen with windows XP in
the dash of my 04 Yukon. And you know what, it was completely distracting.
Particularly when the good parts of a movie were playing while on my morning
commute. Nothing like Ronin in the morning. I can’t imagine the cacophony of
a fully loaded media-laden minivan filled with squealing kids and SpongeBob.
It’s no wonder more people don’t wreck.

Since trading in the Yukon (which I truly loved and I still miss) I find
great pleasure in my noisy Carrera where it’s far too loud to be on the
phone and the car has (as most 911s do) few if any “convenience” features
(does PSM count?). My wife picked up a new A3 Sportback in October and it’s
just as bare as a 911 which is so nice. Audi does simple very well. The idea
of some silly I-Drive, NAV screen, dash-o-buttons is so repellant to me. And
I’m a full-bore gadget freak. It’s just that in the car there are some
priorities (for me at least); awareness of my surroundings, safety and the
sound of an engine barking behind me. IMHO, that should be enough, right?

I’m all caught up on lost again. My mind is reeling. I thought it would start to come together and we’d have more answers than new questions. But no. It’s digging deeper.

Looking back on this, knowing what I know now, It’s not like you can just tell someone to check it out, see if they like the show. It would be out of context and make no sense at all.

If you want to get into the show you have to start back at season 1 episode 1 and lock in for what’s now like 70 something episodes??? And now, even after seeing every single one, this season I’m trying to keep track of the intertwining flashbacks, very complicated current state and multiple time-frame future-flashes.

While I like House and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (The UK ones, not the stupid US ones) and Criminal Minds, when I want to get lost, Lost is it.

I trust that J.J. has everything completely mapped out and that the story does have a finite end that ties up things as much as he wants to (making sure to leave enough questions to torture people) so I know that this all leads somewhere. I know it’s a lot of thought about a TV show but it’s almost like someone took a very good book and made a TV show out of it with a beginning, middle and end. Let’s hope the writer’s strike ends soon enough so they can go back into production.

Great lead-in for a film. I grew up skating, not at this level, but still love this sort of stuff.

I want to drive this. I couldn’t own it for fear of Greenpeace RPGs but the looks one would get driving down the street would be PRICELESS.

Super Tuesday ended up giving me a bit of hope. My fear was that we, as a country, have become so backwards that right-wing ignorance would prevail (fear, hate, willful-dumbness) and we’d see the posterboy for all things diabolical Romney get the nod from “issues” voters. In a shocking twist, we’re not all that bad.

It seems that people don’t want to go back to the dark ages with the Mit-ster. Glad to hear it. No surprise that he got 90% in Utah. Romney as president is a truly frightening thought. But it looks like we’re going to see him fade back as John comes to the front and while I support the left side, he’s not a bad guy and is a huge departure from the current wacko nonsense.

As fas as Clinton & Obama, I’m curious to see it play out. They’re so embroiled in trading punches they might make themselves look bad in the process.

By the 12th we’ll have a very good idea who will have the most delegates and we can move on to the fun part of naming VPs and a good race. I’m looking forward to the next 2 weeks, we’re in for some excitement.

People love to beat up the Hummer. I have no real opinion either way. They get low MPG but no less than a Yukon, so if the big GM super-SUV is bad, they all are. I think it’s more to do with the look what draws the ire.

I actually like the design but the interior is a bit cheap looking for what you pay. In what seems like an ironic branding exercise, I found mention of a Hummer scooter. Since the scooter is the ultimate economical motor-transit, it’s funny to see one dressed as a hummer.

Assume, for a moment, it got the same MPG as a Vespa. Would it still be evil? I don’t know, but it looks like fun. As long as no one I know saw me on it.