archive.tylerdave.com » Entertainment

Bored

tylerdave — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 16:34:17 +0000

On Sunday I woke up at 9:15, unusually early for the weekend, and I was really bored. Around noon I remembered that my latest fix of computer game crack was just released. I haven’t been bored since.

Hold’em

tylerdave — Thu, 29 May 2003 05:44:40 +0000

At Sean’s cookout on Sunday I watched a few of his friends play Texas Hold ‘em for a few hours, a game that I’d never played before. Today when I got home I looked around for some strategy info and then played Yahoo! Games Hold’em Poker for a few hours. I think this will be my newest addiction.

Baby Got Back

tylerdave — Thu, 15 May 2003 02:15:39 +0000

Have you seen the new Apple Music commercial with the white-boy singing Baby Got Back?

It’s embarrasing how much the commercial reminds me of freshman year at CWRU.

Unwrapped

tylerdave — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 04:17:09 +0000

Megan and I generally won’t watch the same television shows. It seems like it’s always American Idol vs. NOVA or whatever the hell is on MTV vs. Mail Call or some similar debate.

We’ve found one show that we totally agree on: Unwrapped on Food Network.

It’s the perfect mix of how-to and pure sugar. One of the features of tonight’s show was deep-fried Twinkies. Now doesn’t that sound good?

Finally

tylerdave — Fri, 24 Jan 2003 03:06:40 +0000

I finally finished Neverwinter Nights! Well, actually just the main single-player game. Now I can try other modules or the preview of the first expansion pack. I love this game.

Lots of TV

tylerdave — Wed, 22 Jan 2003 04:11:43 +0000

A year and a half ago I didn’t really watch much TV. Ever since I got digital cable I’ve developed a semi-regular list of shows that I try to catch whenever they’re on.

In order of effort made to watch:

Full Metal Challenge (when it was on)
Home Movies
South Park
Good Eats
Junkyard Wars
Futurama
King of the Hill
Iron Chef
The Simpsons

I’ve turned into one of the kids I hated when I was in grade school: the ones that had cable.

Good Old PSX

tylerdave — Sat, 11 Jan 2003 04:20:44 +0000

I’ve had my old PSone packed away in a plastic bag in the corner of the room for about a year now. The last time I tried to use it there was something wrong with the v-sync making it pretty much unplayable.

For some reason I tried to hook it up and it worked just fine. Now I really need to look into getting some more older games, or maybe even DDR.

Free Music

tylerdave — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 06:54:33 +0000

I was browsing CDs at Amazon.com and noticed that quite a few artists have freely-downloadable MP3s. The main free downloads page mostly has songs in Liquid Audio format (which I wouldn’t recommend using) but if you browse by category almost all of the available files are MP3s.

Lunch Meeting

tylerdave — Wed, 18 Dec 2002 19:54:00 +0000

Our three-hour lunch meeting went well. I wouldn’t dare post a spoiler here so all I’ll say is that it left me satisfied. Being the middle of the story, there wasn’t as much character development as the first one but a lot more action. Luckily this one ended at a more natural break-point so I may be able to bear another year wait.

Oh, and the ents were so cool.

Rip-Off

tylerdave — Thu, 21 Nov 2002 00:25:41 +0000

Is is just me, or do the previews for The Emperor’s Club make it look like a cheap knock-off of Dead Poets Society?

Friday Night

tylerdave — Sun, 17 Nov 2002 14:13:31 +0000

The Mike Doughty show was awesome, as expected. It was just as much fun as a usual Doughty show with the added bonus of a newly made-up song, Crazy Fucking Bird From Crazyland.

The show started an hour later than the tickets indicated so we had to kill some time at BW3. I think that it was the first time Megan and I were alone drinking at a bar. It felt oddly date-like.

More Doughty

tylerdave — Fri, 15 Nov 2002 20:27:53 +0000

Megan and I are going to see Mike Doughty at The Odeon tonight.

I actually forgot to get tickets until a couple of days ago so I had to buy them from Ticketmaster despite how I feel about ‘convenience charges.’ In the past I would have had to get the tickets at the will call window before the show. Now they have something called ‘ticketFast‘ where you can print out your own ticket in stead. I would be totally into it if it didn’t add yet another fee.

The ticket tickets themselves look pretty cool. You can view a sample ticket on their website (Acrobat Reader required).

Neverwinter Night and Day

tylerdave — Mon, 11 Nov 2002 04:49:13 +0000

Ever since it’s release a few months ago, I’ve wanted Neverwinter Nights, the latest game by the people who made the Baldur’s Gate games. My big concern was that it would take over all of my free time for a couple weeks like Baldur’s Gate did.

Last night, while shopping at CompUSA with TB, I finally broke down and bought it.

I think I’m going to be okay this time though. So far I’d say the game impresses me more that BG did, but I think I’ll be able to tear myself away from it when I have to. While it will probably use up most of my spare time for a while, I doubt I’ll ever have another 36 hours straight of a computer game.

I must be getting older.

Cable Music

tylerdave — Sun, 20 Oct 2002 06:23:25 +0000

For the past few days I’ve been listening to the music channels that come with digital cable. I wish I had discovered how good they were earlier. I’ve been listening for the past three hours while working on my computer and haven’t heard a single song I didn’t like. It’s much better than anything on the radio at least.

Doughty Again

tylerdave — Fri, 18 Oct 2002 21:05:02 +0000

Apparently Mike Doughty didn’t get enough of Cleveland during his Oct 5th show with Rusted Root so he’s coming back for more. This time the show is at The Odeon and Mike is headlining. If you haven’t experienced the joy of a Doughty concert, come alone with me and see what it’s all about.

If you would like to keep up with Mike Doughty’s tour or whoever your favorite artist happens to be, try Pollstar.com. I’ve been using the site for years and it always seems to have up to date tour information.

Even Better Than Expected

tylerdave — Sun, 06 Oct 2002 04:37:12 +0000

The show tonight was even better than I expected as Rusted Root was just plain awesome.

The show opened with a band called The Polyester Starfish. I’m not going to say that they were great, but they weren’t too bad for a warm-up-the-crowd act. Apparently they’ll send you a CD with some live music on it for free if you e-mail them your address.

Mike Doughty played next and performed just as expected (which is to say he played well and was very entertaining). He played a new song which I didn’t recognize but sounded good. The rest of the show was pretty much like Smofe + Smang.

The surprise of the night (for me) was just how good Rusted Root was. I truely thought that they had to have gotten soft over the years. To my joy, I found my assumptions were wrong. I am amazed by their raw musicality. Every member of the band is a master of many different instruments. Half of the fun was trying to guess which ones they’d pick up next. It’s clear that they enjoy what they’re doing. I’m not nearly doing their preformance justice with this description so I’m going to try to get my hands on a bootleg of the show to share how really good it was.

I took a bunch of pictures at the show too. I brought the film to Wallgreens on the way home. I’ll go pick up the prints tomorrow morning and should have them scanned and viewable by the afternoon.

I’m going to go listen to some Rusted Root now…

[UPDATE: The idiots at Walgreens don't know how to make photo prints correctly so I need to take the negatives to a real photo place. At least I only had to pay $2 for processing. Maybe this is an indication that I need a new digital camera.]

Taking Bootleg-Swapping Furthur

tylerdave — Sat, 05 Oct 2002 05:57:25 +0000

Furthurnet is a new file sharing network designed especially for sharing live recordings of groups that explicitly allow recording of their shows. Their user base isn’t all that big yet (so it may take a while to get what you’re looking for) but it is growing quickly. The software itself is open source and is available for download from their website or from their sourceforge project site. The interface is simple and familiar (somewhat Napster-esque) but only performs searches for groups that are in the Taper-Friendly Bandlist. The list is surprisingly large. Give it a try.

Both Rusted Root and Mike Doughty encourage the taping of their shows so I’m now downloading some of their recent live music in preparation for the show tomorrow (uh… tonight). I can’t wait!

Good Music

tylerdave — Thu, 19 Sep 2002 04:36:55 +0000

This weekend I bought replacements for my Rusted Root CDs that were stolen a while ago in preparation for their Oct 5th show at CWRU. I like Rusted Root’s older CDs but I have yet to be won over by their newer music, which seems earthy and feels less intense. It will be interesting to see how this show compares with the last time I saw them live, way back in 1995.

I do like Rusted Root but the real reason I am going to the show is because Mike Doughty (formerly of Soul Coughing) is opening. He is by far my favorite musical artist. His uniquely poetic lyrics, simple guitar and imperfect voice match beautifully. You can freely download some of his music from his page at MP3.com (I suggest Grey Ghost and Busting Up A Starbux first).

If their tour happens to stop in a town near you, I would strongly suggest going to see it. The rest of the tour info is available on Doughty’s and Rusted Root’s websites.