My favorite animal: Pig

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Went to Rochester with this weekend for Scoot’s yearly barbeque… We left Boston around 12:30pm, but thanks to traffic and other nonsense we didn’t arrive at the barbeque until around 8pm (after picking up )… The food had only been served at 7:30pm, though, so we didn’t miss out on any of the good eats. This year Scoot and company were trying to keep the number of people down as the event had become overwhelming… I didn’t see there, and there were a few other Rochestarians who I usually see only at the barbeque each year that were missing, but it was great catching up with those I did see… Corinna thought it was strange that I would drive 400 miles to a barbeque where I only knew 5-6 people, but I don’t think she understood that A) I only get to see these people once or twice a year, and 2) I really, really, really like pulled pork.

We stayed at James, Jared, and Paul’s… Jared was out of town, so he kindly offered up his room for us to use, which was much better than couch or floor surfing… After the barbeque, we returned to the house and just kind of hung out bullshitting and watching bad broadcast HDTV (the first time I really had a chance to watch HDTV for any significant amout of time)…. There was this documentary on covered bridges on PBS that was painfully boring but trapped us… Saturday morning we hit up Dibella’s for some delicious subs and then headed over to the Eastman House to check out the exhibits and take the house tour. Corinna really dug Eastman House, as I expected she would, so even if she felt bored the rest of the weekend, at least I scored some points there.. :) Saturday night we went to the Old Toad and had some food and drink before retiring with a bunch of people to the house…

Sunday we left early and on the way back stopped by my Aunt Kathy & Uncle Bob’s to visit with them and their menagerie… Both donkeys (burros, donkayas) were present, as was their blind horse who is lead around their field by the two donkey prophets. Their three legged dog (Buster, not to be confused with my parent’s dog), in addition to their more “normal” animals (two more dogs and an annoying bird) were around as well. We chatted it up with them (my Aunt & Uncle, not the animals) for a few hours, checking out my Aunt’s new Vespa and Bob’s MG (or as Corinna called it, his “buggy”). We left there around 2pm, which was FAR too late to make it back to Boston on time for the film club, so I showed up about halfway into Labyrinth (which still gave me plenty of exposure to David Bowie’s bulge).

Resurrection coming in stereo

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I saw Murderball, a documentary about Olympic Quad Rugby, on Sunday with the film club. Now I knew nothing about Olympic Quad Rugby (a.k.a. Murderball; a.k.a. Paralympic Quadriplegic Rugby) going into the film, but it seems to me that after this film this sport will be much more widely known. The sport is intense, and the players literally beat the shit out of each other and their chairs. It’s like rugby, but instead of using shoulders and elbows to take out the carrier, you use a big metal chair as fast as you can get it going. I think we are trained by culture to think of quadriplegic people as helpless, but this film will literally rewrite your definition of even what the word ‘quadriplegic’ means.

The movie focuses mostly on two people, Mark Zupan, a player for the USA Paralympic Rugby team and Joe Soares, a former player for Team USA who was dropped from the team and now coaches Team Canada. The bitter rivalry between the two teams is perfectly captured, both with the “action” scenes as well as some scenes where Soares is referred to as a traitor. The soundtrack is pretty good too, with several of the game action scenes backed by Ministry which I still have a soft spot for (by “soft spot” I actually mean “whips me into a frenzy”). Anyway, enough babbling, go see this movie.

Still hate Freebird

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and I got into a free screening of The Devil’s Rejects on Wednesday. It was first come, first served, but they were already turning people away when we had gotten there. Determined to at least give it the old college try, I went up to the ticket taker and said “Hi, I’m Sean Graham with The Phoenix“. The guy said “Oh, you’re with the press, right on through” and let us pass into the theatre. Now be clear, I did win my tickets from The Phoenix, so it wasn’t a complete lie… :)

We got into the theatre and pretty much all the seats were full (go figure, given the above), so we were banished to the front row… We probably would have asked for a refund if we had paid, but the tickets were free, so we sucked it up. The film was great, assuming you are into horror/gore films. Rob Zombie definitely gave the film a distinct 70’s horror feel, and even though this was a genre film, he did an outstanding job… He really does have a clear and vivid vision and is really able to get it up on the screen well. It went for fewer laughs than his previous film, House of 1000 Corpses, but there were still some funny moments (uncomfortably or otherwise).

Man, I’m a Bitch

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This weekend I was a total slob bitch, and while wanted to hang out with people, I didn’t feel up to it and needed a break, so we stayed home pretty much the whole weekend. I’ve just done something social for what seems like every weekend for a month or two straight, and while some people might be fine with that, the anti-social kernel of my being resists this sometimes. What makes matters worse is that I have plans for the next 4 weekends which involve travel… (Jersey, Rochester, Vermont, New Mexico).

We did go out with the SNFC to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night… Want my short review? The creation of this film was pointless exercise.. It didn’t really do anything better than the original film, and while the remake was closer to the text of the book, I think it just missed the mark…

Corinna and I have tickets to a free preview screening of The Devil’s Rejects on Wednesday. We both enjoyed House of 1000 Corpses, so hopefully Mr. Zombie will do a good job again.

I’ve been slowly going through and tagging my entries, starting at the beginning, back in June of 2000. So far I am up to February of 2001, and I’ve been at it for a week or two now.. I have almost 2200 posts total, so this is going to take awhile. The most popular tags are school (73), travel (42), csh (41), and whining (37), but that’s mostly a function of time (I was still in school in 2000-2001, so there are obviously going to be lots of school posts… :P). I suspect at the end of this tagging fiesta whining will win out.

Mah Leg

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I was talking to someone earlier today and I realized that I haven’t talked about the status of my leg in awhile. I’m still walking with a cane, but I’m going for longer and longer periods without it…. I’m limping, but even that isn’t as pronounced as it was a week or two ago. If I really concentrate there is almost no limp at all… My leg is still weak, though, so that is what’s causing it. I have two more weeks of physical therapy appointments and that will probably be the end of that (although I will still have to work on it on my own).

iTunes 4.9

Posted on by grahams

I have been listening to a few different podcasts for awhile now, but the overall workflow of getting them onto my iPod has always been annoying. First of all, there was lots of software to automatically download podcasts, but none of them seemed to have the ability to get the file onto my iPod (and remove it once it’s been listened to). Some of them could add the tracks to my iTunes library, but since I have too much music to make much out of the “Library Syncing” in iTunes, this didn’t really accomplish much for me. Enter iTunes 4.9, which makes the whole process much more bearable. First of all, it provides a whole new top-level category in iTunes which makes it very easy to find my podcasts. Second, and most importantly, it can sync podcasts to my iPod seperately from everything else, so all I have to do is connect my iPod to my computer and everything else is taken care of for me.

There are a few annoyances, though. First of all, I have set iTunes to delete podcasts I’ve listened to off the iPod. Unfortunately, their interpretation of “listened to” really equates to “began listening to”, and if you play the first second of a file, it marks it as played and deletes it the next time you sync. Also, my iPod has been locking up lately, as it did before, requiring a hard reset (which loses my current position in what I was listening to in the process). Those issues aside, this had made the whole podcasting experience for me far more bearable.

And just in case you are interested in what podcasts I’m listening to: