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Wallpaper is the devil

...or how I learned to hate wallpaper with a passion.

So my dad and I just finished removing the wallpaper from the 30+ years old walls of my work office and I am spent both mentally and physically. I don't ever see myself using wallpaper in the future after this experience, because I don't have the heart to torture the poor sap who'll have to remove it again in the future when it looks old and dated.

Before starting this project I went and scoured the 'net reading about wallpaper removal techniques, what was best to use (chemical vs. steamer) and so on and so forth. The consensus seemed to be use a paper tiger (wall scorer) and chemical spray/gel for the best results. I call shenanigans.

Better than the CD

As far as I'm concerned here are a select few groups that sound better live in concert than on their CD (Third Day comes to mind). The Swell Season is one of these groups hands down, so if you happen across one of their concerts I highly suggest you check them out.

For those of you who don't know who they are, you might recognize their music on the soundtrack for the movie Once (if you haven't seen this movie yet, stop reading and go watch - thank me later). Check out their myspace page to hear clips and read more about them.

Julie and I saw them a couple weeks ago when they came to the Allen Theater and I'm become an even bigger fan than I was before. Julie's actually been playing their music nonstop since the show, so I figured I should do a write up about it and encourage everyone to support them on their tour.

There's something refreshing about artists who just get up on stage and pour their hearts out with music...no pretense, no glitz, no fancy lighting, just straight up soul on the stage and great music. Glen and Marketa seem so down to earth and earnest that you get sucked into their world and you never want to leave. It's like when you hear a lullaby from your childhood and you get that comfortable warm feeling - that's the closest I can compare it to. 

There's something for everyone to connect to when it comes to their music. Whether its feelings of lost love, personal growth, or getting older they have something poignant to say through their art. Check out their tour page and look for a date near you, seeing them live is like sitting with them in your living room and sharing life stories.

The state of theater today

Julie and I took a trip to the theater with some good friends last night to see Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and had a great time despite what I thought was a pretty mediocre performance by the local troupe. I couldn't help but come away with a few impressions after watching the show.

It has got to be hard for theaters to compete with other forms of entertainment available these days (movies, concerts, etc.) when ticket prices are as high as they are. If you're not a college student you're pretty much priced out of the loop unless you're somewhat well off. Sure, there are cheap tickets to be had for $10 way up in the balcony, but we were 14 rows back from the stage and I could barely hear the actor dialogue. Our ticket pricing was $50+ and whenever the players would face away from me or TB Joe coughed in the audience I completely missed what was being said. I missed half of the "jokes" because I'm relying on acoustics that should have been left to the ancient romans and greeks. Is it that hard to install a hanging mic system?

Couple that with 85-year-old seat ushers who insisted on leading us to our seats (one shuffling step at a time) and still brought us to the wrong row, and you have a pretty antiquated entertainment experience. I'm a fan of tradition as much as the next guy, but from this and past experiences at the theater I can't help but wonder why things can't be updated a bit. I'm not shocked that most 18-34 year-olds I've come across want nothing to do with the performing arts. It's not that we expect a hot dog derby race or a kiss cam, but the current state of affairs is just too expensive, stuffy, pretentious, and outdated.

Robert Looogia

L...for Looogia

Dubious Marketing Tactics

There used to be a sign near my home that read "Prostate Cancer Sucks." After researching the sign I learned that "cancer sucks" is a widespread marketing awareness-type campaign for cancer and cancer research. Even so, I couldn't help wondering if Prostate Cancer wasn't just a little too serious for a sign that incorporated the word sucks. The sign went down after a while but today there was a new sign....

"Let's put prostate cancer 'Behind' us."

A double-entendre - a little more sophisticated than "Prostate Cancer Sucks," but it still seems.......well, not funny.

Best Buy is really shady

Reading this story about how Best Buy was caught red-handed conning customers out of money reminds me of an experience I had there myself.

Julie and I were at our local Best Buy to buy her mom a digital camera because of a web advertised price we found while shopping on the internet. Since time was of the essence we decided to buy in-store instead of ordering online like I usually do. We went straight to the camera section of the store and asked for the specific model seen in the advertisement.

Coldplay rocked the house

(Photos above are courtesy of Coldplay Message Board member "MV")

I know I'm a few days late, but the high is still wearing off from the show Chris and the rest of the guys put on the other day at the Q. I wasn't a huge fan of the opening act, but was pleasantly surprised at how good of a live show Coldplay delivers. If you have any doubt that Chris Martin is charismatic enough to be a lead singer I think you definitely need to see him in concert. He more than held his own. If not for what I thought was a poor sound system in the arena (the music was so loud the speakers actually cracked and distorted at times) and the teenie boppers sitting in front of me who took self-portraits with their flash cameras throughout the whole damn show, this would have been the perfect live-act. Expand the post to check out pics, the setlist, and even a video from the night.

UL Reviews 2.0 now with the review crew

I'm trying to breathe new life into my side-project review site UL Reviews. To that end I've enlisted the help of some friends to contribute to the content and give more regular updates than I was able to provide. Keep your eyes on the site for the time being through the RSS feed and through the link I've posted in the sidebar under "Looking for some good reviews?" Also check the sidebar over there to read short bios about each contributor in the review crew and find a link to their weblog.

The first 10,000

According to last.fm, since joining March 7 of last year I have listened to 10,000 songs. I'll admit to leaving iTunes running a few nights and for artificially keeping Third Day at the top of my artist list (that's all about loyalty), but I also lost a lot of songs that were played on my iPod.

To put things in perspective, I've been a member for 355 days. With 10,000 songs I've listened to an average of 28 songs a day. At an average of 3-3.5 minutes per song, that's about 1.5 hours of listening a day. A good majority of that comes from my commute to and from work and the rest from those days when I have time at home to listen to a few albums. Not too shabby if you ask me, especially considering the hours I put in at the hospital.

Apple really has dropped the ball here when it comes to iTunes. I don't see any reason why I can't see some sort of generated statistic list by artist/genre/album. Play counts for each song alone really don't tell me much. Don't be mistaken, however, there are some features I wish last.fm had after looking at my statistics.

For instance:
- A color indicator of some kind to let me know how long it's been since I've listened to a particular artist (ex: artists not played in the past 7 days in blue, not played in the last 14 days in green, and not played in the last 30 days in red)
- An "artist of the month" and "song of the month" box that lets me know at a glance the most popular artist in my playlist and the most popular song for this particular month
- Play counts attached to each tag that I make (this in particular would make it easy and quick to see what kind of music a person listens to overall)

Arbitron ratings

I was surprised to get the following letter in the mail the other day:

Be a part of the radio ratings! Whether you listen a little, a lot, or not all, you are important. Yours is one of the few households in your area chosen to tell radio stations what you listen to.

It's easy and fun to take part in our radio survey. In just a few days, an Arbitron research assistant will call with more details.

PS: Please accept the small token of appreciation we have enclosed with this letter

That small token of appreciation is a crisp one dollar bill...not much, but I gotta wonder how many of these letters Arbitron actually sends out. Is one dollar really enough to get people motivated to take part in these surveys? Hell, I would have done it for free. Now if the Nielsen people to send me a letter and let me join in...