Month: May 2005

Congratulations to illia for killing the competition in The Odd Squad. He/She (I can never tell with some of these screen names) won a free iTunes song courtesy of the Pepsi game that was running a little while back. I have two more iTunes codes that were donated by players and I hope to be able to give them out before they expire.

The next game of Odd Man In is starting extremely soon. Join In Odd We Trust now! We’re also running some fun side games in the private room.

Well it looks like the smoking ban may come to Philadelphia after all.

By a 10-7 votes margin City Council this morning approved amendments that clear the way for a citywide smoking ban in bars and restaurants.

An earlier version of the measure was withdrawn in March after it became clear that it didn?t have enough votes to pass.

The amended version exempts sidewalk cafes, offers a wavier to private clubs and gives bars an extra two years to comply with the law. For others the smoke-free rules kick in next January.

Does this mean smokers will venture across the Delaware? Maybe not according to our (cue Jon Lovitz) acting Governor.

TRENTON – Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey predicted yesterday that New Jersey will have a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars before he leaves office.

Finally, I’ll be able to quit that second hand smoking habit I’ve had for years.

The quick, spoiler free review: It’s awesome, despite the obvious flaws and annoyances we’re all used to with the Star Wars prequels.

The extended, spoiler free review: Bad dialogue and mediocre acting can’t derail Anakin’s train to the dark side. Hayden Christensen still comes off a little stiff, but he’s definitely improved since his awful performance in Attack of the Clones. His chemistry with Natalie Portman is so unconvincing you end up laughing at the wrong times. Actually, if there are any laughs built into this movie I had a hard time finding them. Revenge of the Sith is as dark as everyone says it is and I felt like I watched the second half with my stomach on the floor. The only rescuing you’ll see is the plot defeating the actors to make it a good movie.

Read on for discussion of the movie (with spoilers)
It’s hard to talk about the movie without mentioning the bad acting, because in a few scenes it’s so glaringly bad you wish Lucas had hired an army of British playwrights instead of just one. I actually thought Hayden Christensen did pretty well as long as Natalie Portman wasn’t around (“You’re so beautiful,” “No, you are!,” “No you are!,” “I know you are by what am I?”, etc.). It has to be Lucas’s fault, too, because we’ve seen actors like Portman and Samuel L Jackson many times and they never perform as poorly as they do in Revenge of the Sith. Jackson would have been better cast as a Sith lord or at least someone who gets to be pissed off once in a while. Ewan McGregor and Ian McDermid (Palpatine) were decent because they were the only actors not required to say exactly what they were thinking at every moment. McDermid goes over the top occasionally near the end of the film, but I think he was just trying to impersonate the guy who plays the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.

The special effects were great, but the action sequences were far above the earlier films. Anakin’s fight with Count Dooku, Obi-Wan’s battle with General Grevious, and of course, Anakin’s fight against Obi-Wan, were all entertaining. The cuts and edits were done well and I could always keep track of what was going on unlike other modern sword fighting films like Gladiator.

But we all know what the interesting part of this film was: Anakin’s turn to the dark side. The idea that Anakin would turn to the darkside to save Padme is absolutely believable. My only only problem was that it seemed to come too quickly after he kills Mace Windu. Only a minute before he was turning Palpatine in. After he kills Windu and screams “What have I done?” he immediately bows down to Palpatine. If his conscience tells him that chopping up Windu might have been bad, where the hell is Jiminey Cricket when Anakin mows down the Jedi Kindercare? A better way to handle this would have been for Anakin to look distressed, but not come right out and say, “What have I done?” (See my comment above about McGregor and McDermid). On a related note, the scene with Anakin and the Jedi kids was really shocking. I would have never guessed Lucas would go there and I’m glad that part didn’t get spoiled for me.

When Palpatine activates Order 66, which I predict will enter the lexicon, he does it at a time when you’re almost used to thinking of the clone/storm troopers as good guys. As odd as it seemed in Attack of the Clones, seeing the troopers fighting along side Jedi didn’t seem strange at all. I felt as blindsided as they did. Of course, Yoda sees that shit coming from a mile away and heads back to fight the Emperor.

Padme’s death seemed a little strange. They should have just made Anakin choke her to death (or brain death), but instead they say she lost the will to live. Hmmmm… I’m sure Luke and Leia really appreciate that one. They turned Padme into a total wuss and a quitter. Also, do they have to tell us the names of the kids? Come on, who doesn’t know that? I’m more curious to where Obi-Wan got the name Ben.

Finally, I think an important idea in the film that is easy to miss is the prophecy everyone keeps talking about. Yoda’s green brain finally lights up and realizes that the Jedi have been on top for a thousand years and the last thing they want is balance in the Force. Good thinking guys! In the end of Revenge of the Sith we’re left with Darth Sidious, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the force is nicely balanced out. As soon as Obi-Wan dies in episode IV, Luke steps up to take his place. Anakin eventually gets around to destroying the Sith by tossing Palpatine into the center of the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, leaving Luke as the only force wielder in the galaxy.

Isn’t that unbalanced? I rewatched the original movies and Luke is not like any of the old Jedi Knights except Anakin. Yoda tells both Luke and Anakin that they must let go of their attachments and forget everything they care about. That is the shittiest advice since somebody told Andy Richter to leave Late Night and get his own TV show. Anakin succombs to the temptation and falls into the dark side. Luke risks everything for his friends and his father and in the process, shows that you can be both a Jedi and a human. It’s possible to tap into the dark side and not fall in. That’s a balanced approach to the force and I bet that’s how Luke will instruct his students after episode VI.

I raved about Greasemonkey the other day and I’m proud to unveil my first script. It’s called noPicsNoService and it’s for craigslist. It always bothered me when people posted furniture listings without photos, so this script filters out any furniture listing without a pic. It also informs you of how many listings you’re currently hiding in case you want to turn greasemonkey off for a while.

It’s already listed on the GM wiki.

My brief return to host the Treehouse open mic was a lot of fun. It was great to see Rob, Willie, Jason Wheatley, Jarod, Bob Michel, Jack Sparks, The Forest Greens and a few others like Bob Kelley. Jason Vertucio was there, but he was too sick to play.

I played a bunch of songs including the new one I’ve been doing, The Genius of it All, 99%, Built to Spill’s Big Dipper, and Johnny Cash’s Big River.

Nothing really eventful happened, but it was a lot busier than the last few times I was in there. Hopefully things will pick up for the summer even more.

Bryn Mawr, PA’s The Point, whose weekly open mic I routinely referred to as the “open mic sweat shop,” is closing it’s doors on June 25th.

The Point – the cozy Bryn Mawr coffeehouse whose list of before-they-were-stars performers reads like a who’s who of music – plans to close after June 25’s show by Jim Boggia.

Owner Richard Kardon says that he wanted to upgrade the 115-seat venue and add a liquor license, but that he and landlord Steve Bajus couldn’t agree on a new deal for the space inside the Romanesque Revival building at 880 W. Lancaster Ave. Sticking point: terms of the lease, with regard to the license and its potential effects on the neighborhood.

Kardon opened the Point in October 1998, inspired by the Main Point, the pioneering coffeehouse two doors away from 1964 to 1981. The Main Point was an earlier showcase for such unknowns as Billy Joel, Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen. The Point, meanwhile, has been the first place many Philadelphians saw Vanessa Carlton, Norah Jones and Howie Day.

Make sure you stop by the Treehouse open mic tonight from 7:00PM – 9:00PM. I’ll be guest hosting for Johnny Miles. All musicians, poets, comedians, etc. are welcome.

A few weeks ago someone posted a Greasemonkey script in a game of Odd Man In. I had heard of Greasemonkey, but I didn’t know what it was until now. It’s a firefox extension that allows you to easily install simple JavaScript files and apply them to various websites. In short, this extension lets you improve the user interface of any web application and share it with everyone.

For example, I installed a script that lets me use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out at google maps.

Other scripts can modify IMDB to automatically calculate an actor’s age and add links that put the movie in your NetFlix queue if you like browsing IMDB better than Netflix.

Another embeds a tiny MP3 player next to an MP3 link, so you don’t have to load an external player and can continue browsing as it streams in. This is great for browsing MP3 blogs.

This is exciting stuff and will scare the crap out of advertisement supported websites. I believe once information leaves the server it’s out of the author’s hands and the user can do whatever they want with it as long as it’s legal. Filtering out ads and changing menus is certainly legal.

Check out all these scripts.

Built to Spill rocked the Electric Factory last night. The opening band was so dark and brooding that it made even the most plodding Built to Spill tune sound upbeat. The set list was great and included I Would Hurt a Fly, Plan, Distopian Dream Girl, and my two favorite songs, Big Dipper and Stop the Show.

The only weird part was two people behind me having a tug of war with a long piece of tape between the bar area and the main section. I’m not sure what was going on there, but they seemed to be having a great time.

Update: Found the setlist here

built to spill
the plan
when not being stupid is not good enough
distopian dream girl
goin’ against your mind
i would hurt a fly
strange
one thing
(caustic resin tune)
big dipper
sidewalk
in your mind
virginia reel around the fountain
carrry the zero

encore:
stop the show

I went to the Dali Exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum and it was amazing. Typically, I favor exhibits about a period or a group of artists, because seeing the same artist’s work over and over dilutes the impact of seeing an individual piece. Dali can pull it off. I feel like I learned more about the person than the actual paintings, which is probably fitting since Dali was typically the source of his own inspiration. The exhibit was very long. It took us almost three hours to get through everything, but it was well worth it. Stop putting off getting tickets. Just go.

While I’m sort of on the subject, can I say how awesome the Philadelphia Art Museum is? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think the city brags enough about it. It’s one of the only museums I’ve been to that has work from every single period and it would take forever to see it all. I love all the museums and galleries in DC and San Francisco, but for a single location I’ll take Philadelphia’s Art Museum over anything I’ve been to.