So. It's been a while, hasn't it?

This is a bit awkward.

I don't mean to go so long without blogging. It's been nearly a year. I'm beginning to think that it's a bit like quitting your job and trying not to impact your team. The saying is "well, there's never a good time to leave." See, I'm reluctant to blog when things change so much, especially if I'm unhappy. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I don't want to look back later and remind myself of when I was unhappy, or when I saw the world in a different (less mature?) way. Using that criteria, there's never a good time to blog. I should probably break myself of that mindset.

Maybe I just don't want to depress my readers. "Thank you both!"

A lot has changed in the past year and, if this becomes a more consistent thing again, I'll let you know some of what's been up.

I'm not great. I'm not that good at all. I mean, I'm not bad. I'm not in trouble or facing unaddressable health problems. But I'm definitely not a terrific person right now.

So, for now, I want to bury myself in music. I'm going to talk about it. In detail.

A lot.

Well, when I was watching The Tube the other day, I saw this KT Tunstall video for the song Suddenly I See. The video itself is kind of neat and she's very cute and expressive. And I think her first name is a recursive acronym!

Sorry Debbie, but I might not need that time machine after all.

Anyway, the song is catchy and I found I really loved certain moments in it. So I decided to spend some time understanding what makes me like it. It's true! I can't just enjoy something for what it is. I have to deconstruct it and understand it. I suppose I risk ruining the "magic" of something, but I have never regretted understanding and appreciating the details that must come together to create something interesting or compelling. With music, it usually starts with learning to play the song on the guitar. Each song that I learn I appreciate in a new way.

However, I'm definitely new to it. If anybody out there knows some music theory and can correct any mistakes I've made or offer alternate interpretations that make more sense, don't hesitate!

Thank you both!

I like the construction of each verse in Suddenly I See. The first two lines of each verse are lyrically similar and the chords alternate between D and D with bass C (D/C). It feels like we really aren't going anywhere musically: 

        D                    D/C                   D     D/C
    Her face is a map of the world is a map of the world

        D                     D/C                    D   D/C
You can see she's a beautiful girl she's a beautiful girl

It especially feels like she holds back some kind of change or momentum because this chord sequence is repeated twice as the song's introduction. This not only barely qualifies as two-chords, but the song is in the key of D major, which makes the D major chord the "root" chord. So far, the song "feels" firmly planted in the ground chord-wise. The melody introduces a quick rhythm, but the range of the tones remains pretty confined.  Interestingly enough, at this point in the music video there's a car cruising through a city which springs into existence spontaneously. The video is more dynamic during the parts where the song is busy making us restless.

The next few measures introduce a dynamic change in the song. The first 20 measures of the song have been either D or D/C and so now we're rewarded with a very catchy four-chord turnaround, repeated twice. Each measure gets its own chord and the melody begins to cover a larger range of tones: 

    G          A               F#m            Bm
And everything around her is a silver pool of light

    G          A                 F#m        Bm
People who surround her feel the benefit of it

Anyway, so far so good. She built up tension with the one chord being repeated and then pushed us through a quick turnaround. But what actually sold the song to me as far as the music goes is the next few measures which I found extremely catchy. The combination of chords, rhythm and melody is pretty perfect:

             G
It makes you calm

    Gm7                         D
She holds you captivated in her palm.

The song introduces and then resolves a couple kinds of tensions here. The first is rhythmic. After the 20 measures of the root chord, and then 8 measures of a chord-per-measure turnaround, we really don't know what to expect next. If anything, we might expect the momentum built up in the turnaround to continue on, giving us a new chord each measure. Instead, on "calm," we get the G chord for two measures.

In addition to that, the melody also takes a breather. Previously, each phrase in the melody is given at least 3 measures. But here, we barely get more than one. Once the G chord is hit, without chord changes or a melody, we're left with (the very musically appropriate) "calm" and we feel the rhythmic traction slide out from underneath the song. It's as if you were peddling your bike at full speed towards a ramp and then you take off and in mid-air you feel that lack of control and resistance on the pedals from the tires and the ground. But you know that one way or another, you'll be dealing with the ground again soon.

Another two measures of Gm7, which feels like an important but subtle change, remind us that the song is still moving, but the pacing is a bit uncertain. Our bike has hit the high point of the jump and is starting to fall while the wind pushes up against it. It's a cool feeling just before the very rhythmically interesting (and tightly scripted) chorus.

Another tension has to do with how the melody and the chords play against the key in the following verse. The G chord in the key of D is the IV chord, which is always an unresolved sound. That is, it feels like the song has to "go" somewhere else (perhaps eventually) when you're hearing the IV chord. This is illustrated well when she sings "calm." We know the song can take a step there, but it feels wrong to end up there permanently. It was the resolution of this sound back to the D chord and then into the chorus that I really was most excited to learn about and understand the song better.

When she sings "She holds you captivated in her palm," there's this feeling that she's leaning against and distorting the song's key and range of expected notes. It feels like the wind pushing up against you while you fall. It feels like something is being twisted musically.

I believe I've figured out why this happens. Again, the song is in D major. Here are the notes in a D major scale:

What's important to note is that if the song were in D minor, the F# would actually be an F natural. Now, that G major chord on "calm" fits within the key completely. However, the song begins to resolve that G major by using Gm7, which really doesn't fit so well in the key. Some of the notes in the Gm7 chord do not exist in the D major scale. Specifically, the A# instead of a B makes the chord into a G minor from a G major, and the F natural instead of the F# adds the minor 7th. The melody plays with that F natural in particular. 

Check out the F naturals during "She holds you captivated in her palm." When she's not singing the F naturals, she's singing either D or E. D and (to a lesser degree) E are both firmly in the key of D major. She alternates between notes that are strongly identified with D major and with the F natural outside of it. 

She's teasing us.

With both the chords and the melody emphasizing that F natural, the song violates the expectation of what we're used to in D major songs. And remember, the she already did a lot of work drilling into us that the song was in the key of D major with that root chord repeated so many times at the very beginning. However, we've all also heard so many songs play the IV7 chord (whether your realize it or not). So that F natural doesn't sound all that wrong. It sounds "bluesy."

But because of how it's constructed and introduced and used, there's an edge to it. It almost sounds like she's changing the key on us to D minor. It feels like she's leaning against and bending and twisting the foundation of the song she's diligently introduced so far as she weaves in and out of notes that are in the key and outside of the key. Sure enough, to reassure us of the key of D major, on "palm" we get an unmistakable D major chord--the root chord--to launch us into the chorus.

And our back tire hits the ground.

The words here are especially appropriate after looking at how the music here works. Just as "she holds you captivated in her palm," at this point in the song, we're transfixed to see how this sound gets resolved. Oh! And at that point in the video the cab totally drives up into her palm. Clever.

Another reason that this chord sequence is satisfying is that each chord is actually very similar in construction to the others in the sequence. Adjacent chords are only one half step apart for some notes while the majority of the notes remain the same. This is obvious while looking at the staff above. G and Gm are only different in that the B becomes an A#. Next, we resolve to the D major chord nicely because the F natural from the Gm7 finally steps up to F# after being in the spotlight for so long. The A# from the Gm drops to A natural. That's why we hear Gm7 as a "step" to get to D from G. They did sound a little out of place and tense, but those significant notes that sounded out of place were just equidistant baby-steps between two of the key's strongest chords--G major and D major.

The rest of the song works similarly but isn't nearly as interesting as the construction of the verses. The chorus uses a similar four-chord turnaround as in the verses. One interesting note about the chorus is that the repeated line is "suddenly I see" which the lead vocals sing in one rhythm, while the backing vocals sing the same words in another rhythm. The result is a neat counterpoint (a juxtaposition of rhythms that happen simultaneously). The two rhythms are linked by the fact that they share the same lyrics.

There's also a refrain in the song where it drops back into a very long repeating pattern of D and D/C (again) along with lines that also repeat. The repeated root chord builds up a kind of static energy that we also heard in the beginning: "The power to be. The power to give. The power to see. Yeah yeah!"

This launches directly into the final chorus which repeats until the end of the song. 

It's a fun song to play and sing along to!

I need to admit though, that I originally thought the song was a bit transparent as far as its meaning goes. Looking at the video you figure it's shamelessly narcissistic. She hops in a cab being driven by a clone of herself and they "make eyes" at each other during the words "beautiful girl." And then a giant version of herself picks up the cab and makes eyes at both of them.

Other parts of the video do this too. She keeps encountering herself and it's as if when she sees herself, both versions of her seem to say to the other "Oh my! Fancy seeing you here, beautiful. Come here often? Gnhah! Gnhah!"

"But she's easy on the eyes and the imagery is neat," I figured. I tried to get more out of the lyrics on my own, but I really wasn't able to figure out who the "she" is. Who is the subject of the song? I couldn't believe it is only about herself.

But seriously. She's very pretty. 

I figured it was about an introverted girl who knows a more extroverted girl and wishes she was more like her. But that's very teen-movie and didn't feel like it fit the bill. On top of all that, one of the song's most emphasized line is: "Suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me."

Those are some unanswered questions. Who is "she" and what is the "it" that means so much to her?

Well I found out that the song is about how she views Patti Smith as her inspiration. Until I found that out, I wrote off the song as just a catchy pop-girl-song with some cool song-writing techniques that were within my grasp of understanding. But now I'm forced to lend this song a lot more weight. She is worshiping the person who illustrates for her why songwriting and performance are not just worthwhile, but imperative.  

Actually, that's not entirely correct. She's singing about a single moment where she realizes this. After all, it's Suddenly I See. I usually like songs about singular instances in time. Like The Beatles' I Saw Her Standing There, this song celebrates a moment when doubt and confusion and fear fail to coalesce because of some wonderful (and possibly, in the long term, tenuous) realization. Something fantastic and magical temporarily burns these negative feelings away as impossible irrelevancies.

After thinking about the song under this light for a while, I realized a couple of things. First, I don't think I've ever had this kind of moment in my life at least on this kind of "raison d’être" scale. I believe I've had it on smaller scales. When I say things like "That's why I love this band!" (at least spontaneously) something clicks into place. It happens a lot when I watch really good Star Trek episodes with Data. On the surface, some dismiss it as nerdy science fiction--and it certainly has that element--but when the show deftly uses Data to look at the human condition from without, this moment happens where I am reminded about how great the series was.

It's very much an "Oh yeah!" moment.

But what about the bigger stuff? Writing software definitely feels right as far as a way for me to work and express myself, but there's some gaps there in how that will work practically. Music feels right as well as a hobby and a passion. But I don't think I've had a real moment of getting "why."

Maybe I did but then forgot it. However, the song implies that it's the sort of thing that can happen at any time and it isn't a prerequisite to engaging in the expression or activity. That is, "why the hell it means so much to me" tells us that music and performance have already established themselves as important in her life. The revelation isn't what is important but an illustration around why it's important.

And how important is the answer to "why" anyway? I've always found "how" much more interesting and important.

It's humility--despite the video's seeming theme of light-hearted girly narcissism--because it's about recognizing your own potential in the actual accomplishments of somebody else.

The next thing I realized was that the concept here was a bit foreign to me. She sees what Patti has done and views it as an affirmation about her own similar goals. She looks at her black and white album covers and pictures in magazines and feels her looking back at her and supporting her. She nearly explores the fantasy of Patti encouraging her in person.

Actually, it's more significant than Patti encouraging her in person since it's happening through this almost supernatural kind of magic that happens through those album covers and magazine articles.  

But I suppose when it comes to art or being expressive, the closest I have to somebody I look at like that is John Lennon. Craig and Mom gave me a drawing of him for Christmas when I was 12 since I was such a huge Beatles fan then. And they knew that John was my favorite "because he was the funniest." And it's hanging in my apartment today. I imagine the same thing KT does about Patti; I imagine what he'd think about me and about my views on the world.

And I'm forced to arrive at the same conclusion that I've arrived at since I was 12 years old. If John Lennon were to meet me, he'd hate me.

We wouldn't get along, I don't think. He might be rather upset about being raised from the dead. The press wouldn't blame me, the responsible necromancer, but instead blame John for trying to show up Jesus again, even though things between Lennon and Jesus were probably just fine. I bet he plays a mean bass guitar.

But the details of being raised from the dead aside, I think he'd hate me. I think linearly, as shown above. I'm a left-brained engineer. I'm cautious. I work for a large evil company. I'm slow to pick up on original ideas, especially if they need to be generated by me. I'm really not that good at the guitar. I struggle with harmonies and my voice is brassy and brittle. My parents gave me the same name as his son, which is just plain awkward. I avoid conflict at most costs. And I am empathic towards perspectives other than mine to a fault. It makes my confidence and positions wispy and I float from viewpoint to viewpoint without actually landing anywhere--without commiting to the possibility of being wrong.

I've heard the song All You Need Is Love countless times in the past 15 years and it wasn't until recently that I began to look at what it actually means rather than the superficial hippie "groovy power of love" message. What took me so long? What takes me so long to think "outside of the box" or to even to just pay attention to the words? 

My idea of being expressive is engineering extremely structured blog entries about music theory. My mind is too exhaustive and explanative to really ever create something subversive.

People know I work for Microsoft just by looking at me. I'm a "suit" or a "square" or whatever and it's written on my forehead and he'd be able to tell instantly. He'd lecture me about the hypocrisy of making fun of the narcissism in the music video for an artist with the guts to stand in front of a crowd and say something while I write obnoxiously long and self-involved blog entries and practice the same chords in safety of my apartment over and over. Alone in my apartment. With headphones.

I shut the door too. 

I'd tell him that I've almost perfected I Feel Fine on guitar and he'd remind me that he wrote it in a day as a throw away song that just happened to be catchy. We would both agree that the feedback at the beginning is cool, though. :-)

Did you notice how he made eyes at the camera? Who's the narcissist now, Lennon?!

And worst of all, I'm just another Beatles fan. I'd ask him the same questions he's been asked over and over. It'd be the same questions I gather he was trying to get away from during the last ten years of his life.

Really, I'm just setting myself up for self-hate, though. Lennon is dead and therefore is a canvas. I can assume whatever I choose to about how he would view me and today's world. And the comparison between me and Lennon will never be flattering. After all, he was bigger than Jesus! It's a perfect and safe mechanism for me to use to criticize myself ruthlessly.

I do it to myself and I am very good at it.

The crux of all of that is this: I'm jealous that KT looks at Patti Smith and naturally feels an assumed mutual understanding and support. She sees Patti Smith and then sees what she could be and I look at John Lennon and then see what I never will be.

I admire that KT can do that and that she feels it so naturally and easily that the feeling can be distilled into a song.

But Lennon was bigger than Jesus. No matter how I slice it, it's an impossible bar. Maybe I need to look elsewhere for the kind of inspiration KT sees in Patti.

Hm. Do you think he'd let me try his Rickenbacker 325?

"Oh shits! This guy has got Uno!"

"Get your head out of your ass, PointySwords, with your draw four shit!"

"Oh shits! This guy has got the Uno again!"

"So close yet so far, just like my ancestors at the Mason-Dixon line."
"... What?!"

"PointySwords is about to win the game. What color do you think his last card is?"
"I dunno, but I'd say I think that little bitch is holding fuckin' blue!"

Great stuff at 3 am. I also got to play Derek in a few hands of it. It seems like most people who play it get hooked. I'm surprised and pleased about how well a simple card game can succeed. :)

You'll see that I added Jack to my list of blogs. I was inspired to do this since he wrote up a manifesto of sorts about shaving. You should read it.

This week, I have never felt more at home. 

I moved to Seattle in August of 2004 after having spent nearly my whole life in Buffalo, NY. Seattle lost the Superbowl and, again, this week, I’ve never felt more at home.

Since my move, I’ve always felt more than a little jealous about how much Seattle has compared to Buffalo. Seattle shines with natural beauty, charming geographical complexity, and urban cleanliness. Its economy flourishes and property values continue to soar. It’s liberal and it’s open-minded almost to a fault. More people move into the Puget Sound area every day. And homeownership within the city limits is an expensive pipedream even for the wealthiest suburbanites.

Lately, homeownership within the city limits of Buffalo is viewed by most of its suburbanites as a liability. Move to Cheektowaga or else you’ll live next to people darker than you.

I am, nevertheless, fiercely defensive of Buffalo. I would love to be able to live in that city and pursue my career there. Sometimes, I catch myself looking at street maps of downtown Buffalo or pictures of its architecture.

Not only do I genuinely miss it, but I’ve found that it’s not uncommon for other Buffalonians to share in this stalwart defensiveness and pride. It takes many forms and usually involves a sort of nostalgic narrative around the superior pizza, or chicken wings, or other excellent food that Buffalo offers.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: Buffalo is the smallest city in the world to have a subway. It is also the shortest subway in the world and, as a result, serves more passengers per day per mile than any other.

Well, why are Buffalonians like this? It is because the character and history of Buffalo itself inspires something within those who call it home. It causes us to aggressively defend it from the critics who dwell in those other cities that already have so much.

It’s for the same reason you would stand up for your awkward little brother when he gets picked on by the school bully or snubbed by the popular girl.

Buffalo’s economy continues to decline and, as a result, its population growth suffers terribly. The past 50 years have been devastating for the city. And it’s very much a Western New York thing to take things very personally—things which most reasonable people cannot take personally. It’s in that spirit, for example, that I vehemently despise the St. Lawrence Seaway because, as a superior alternate shipping route, it renders Buffalo nearly useless as a port city in the Great Lakes Region and thus has contributed to Buffalo’s decline.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: That’s not an opinion about the pizza being superior; it’s a dammed fact. And I don’t care if you’re from New York City or even Italy. On another note, it’s called pop, not soda.

You see what I mean? :-)

The resultant defensiveness causes me to behave in other odd ways, such as injecting interesting facts about Buffalo when I can smell at least a shred of relevance. Perhaps I see this as balancing the universe from the apparent lack of knowledge the rest of the world seems to have about my hometown.

A series of urban planning missteps have also harmed the city in immeasurable ways. For example, University at Buffalo—the school I attended—serves as the largest University center for the SUNY college system. When the second campus for University at Buffalo was built at the beginning of the 1970s, instead of building it within Buffalo’s urban core, the state decided that that campus was to be built in a nearby suburban swamp called Amherst. This caused the already real problem of out-of-control-suburban-sprawl to worsen. It forces the huge number of people who have business at UB every day to contribute to that harmful sprawl. It was a wasted opportunity to revitalize a city in trouble. There are countless other examples from the last half of the 20th century, but practicality prevents enumeration here.

It is the rise and subsequent decline of Buffalo that serves as one of the key factors in determining this character that I describe.

Buffalo illustrates the difference between liking something despite its flaws, and loving something because of its flaws.

And what really galvanizes and unites this character—even among Buffalo’s suburbanites—is the sports.

Many remember Buffalo’s run for a Superbowl victory. Most teams get one shot every decade or two. The Buffalo Bills won the opportunity four times—in a row—and lost them all.

The images and the sense of defeat and anger were seared into my childhood memories. From 1990 to 1994, the Bills would achieve so much—the entire region would get its hopes up—only to lose another Superbowl at the hands of some other city that already had so much more. Even though I was in elementary school or middle school, the communal sense of combined defeat, disillusionment, and anger was palpable after one of these Superbowl failures.

It is said that during the Great Depression, “The Wizard of Oz” served as a respite from the struggles of the times. Things looked pretty rotten, but at least, when you were in that theater, a girl from Kansas would become the most important person in the magical and colorful world of Oz. The comfort was real even though that alternate world is not.

A Superbowl victory for Buffalo had a similar appeal, but, admittedly with a different scope than alleviating the toll of the economic failings of the 1930s. With the region in undeniable trouble, a victory would mean that Buffalo would become the most important city in the magical and colorful world of sports. The comfort would be real even though that alternate world is not.

The first Superbowl was particularly painful. The New York Giants had won by only one point—20 to 19. See, in the final two minutes of the game the Bills pushed from their own end zone all the way into field goal range. Scott Norwood’s field goal kick went to the right. And despite Buffalo’s valiant final push that earned them the opportunity to kick and to win, the Giants still won by a point. At that moment, the words “Wide Right” were burned into the psyche of every Buffalonian. I’m certain that this is true fifteen years later.

You can’t get any closer than that to winning without actually winning.

On top of that, the Giants represented New York City and downstate New York. There’s a cultural rivalry here, I’m convinced. Usually, when I meet people from that particular region—one of the most popular and prosperous regions in the entire world, by the way—they view Buffalo in such a way that makes regular condescension look like reverence.

And to come so very close without winning is so Buffalo.

Reliving it in the subsequent years was like some kind of punishment out of Greek mythology. The opponents were always huge cities compared to Buffalo—David and Goliath. After the loss to the team that represents New York City, the Bills lost to the Redskins from Washington D.C. and then twice to the Dallas Cowboys.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: What also makes the opponent cities of those last 3 Superbowls interesting is that there are three cities in which presidential assassinations were successful—Buffalo (McKinley), Washington D.C. (Lincoln and Garfield) and Dallas (Kennedy). It would have been cooler if the Bills played the Redskins twice since assassinations happened in Washington D.C. two times and only once in Dallas.

A similar sentiment was felt years later in 1999 when our hockey team, the Buffalo Sabres, lost in the sixth Stanley Cup playoff game to the Dallas Stars in triple overtime. The final goal was extremely questionable and many people remain convinced it was illegal. Similar goals earlier in the season were ruled illegal. However, it was officiated in favor of Dallas. I remember the Sabres coach, Lindy Ruff, standing before the press afterwards and he told us in a display of defiance against the NHL, “No Goal!” And those words joined “Wide Right” as part of the Buffalonian psyche. Every local radio show expressed their anger at the loss. Not only was Buffalo close to a league championship, but this time, Buffalo was robbed. And the Sabres fans hated the NHL that supported Brett Hull’s goal against Dominick Hasek.

As with the Superbowl losses, the anger penetrated all elements of Buffalo’s local media.

You could also buy a “No Goal” bumper sticker.

Ultimately the NHL forced the guy running that website to take it down. Sabres fans still hold this grudge against the Stars’ success in taking the Stanley Cup.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: Buffalo has many nicknames, one of which is “The City Of Lights.” It earned this because Buffalo was the first major city in America to have wide-spread electric lighting, which was made possible by the hydro-electric power from nearby Niagara Falls.

These examples are only representative of many more elements of Buffalo’s history that follow a similar trend. They serve as an important backdrop for how I felt about two and a half weeks ago. For the first time ever, the Seattle Seahawks were going the Superbowl. I couldn’t help but hate what I saw. I saw the Seahawks fans so ecstatic over their chance at victory. I saw them so sure that it would soon be theirs. I was unable to not take this to heart.

On the news that night, a drunken Seahawks fan tried to make a joke about Pittsburgh and its inhabitants’ lack of teeth. He failed. I’m all for the First Amendment but I was glad when the reporter cut him off. It didn’t even make sense. He was drunk—drunk on unchecked celebratory power. He was like a child that did not know to fear a power outlet because he had never felt its sting.

Seattle celebrated in a way that reminded me of Buffalo’s celebrations before each Superbowl. And I hated Seattle for it. I hated that Seattle already had so much. I hated the very real possibility that Seattle would succeed where Buffalo had failed so well.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: Last call in Buffalo is 4:00 AM EST. Compare that to Seattle’s 1:30 AM PST.

Now, while I’m aware that each year some team must emerge as the Superbowl victor, the last thing I want is for the resultant celebrations—celebrations which I never got to enjoy as a Buffalonian—to be celebrated in my face.

But Seattle lost. I watched the failure unfold with a sense of detached familiarity. And I weakly smiled. The referees’ calls in favor of Pittsburgh were pretty ridiculous. When there was virtually no time left in the fourth quarter, Pittsburgh’s control of the ball allowed the players to scatter, celebrate, and not even bother to line up for another play. The cameras, from a distance, turned to the sidelines. They focused on the Seahawks owner—Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen—a man so rich that his accountants have achieved enlightenment and are partially fused with infinity. Regular computers don’t possess the address-space necessary to compute his taxes. He also drives the development of space tourism. If, in ten years, you can buy a ticket for a space flight, you’ll probably owe Paul a “thanks.” But on that sideline, Paul was dumbstruck and angry and helpless, despite all his financial power.

Interesting Buffalo Trivia: Journalists Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer are from Buffalo, as is Chief Justice John Roberts. But if Roberts votes too conservatively, let's remember that when he was young, his family moved from Buffalo to Indiana.

The loss crushed the Seattleites in their still beautiful and still clean and still prosperous and still growing home. They were only able to taste a meal on which I had feasted so often in the past.

But they could taste it, alright.

That’s not when I started to feel at home, though. I started to feel at home the other day when, driving from work, I heard a local radio station DJ express his anger about the poor officiating. He continued to talk about the Steelers’ previous playoff and Superbowl success compared to the Seahawks. After all, the Seahawks have never won a Superbowl in their 30 year history.

Seattle lost and now they drown themselves in complaints about the officiating. Seattle feels robbed. It’s on the TV and it’s on the radio. One of my favorite websites, Seattle-based Penny Arcade, even relates to the loss. They have a great news entry and comic about it. Penny Arcade’s reaction demonstrates that the loss infiltrates something as far removed from professional sports as Video Game and Geek subculture. Penny Arcade also expresses its hatred for a city on the opposite side of this state. It was like Teiresias or some terrible Rob Schneider movie. Somebody waved a wand and showed Seattle a glimpse of something it could ordinarily never know—what it was like to be Buffalo.

You can also buy a “Seattle: 10 | Officials: 21” bumper sticker.

I read that Penny Arcade and I listen to the radio and for a just an instant, I am a kid again in Buffalo. I drown in the ridiculousness of taking the loss of a sporting event so personally. And as always, I love it. Before long though, I am reminded that in Seattle, I can only feel at home.

I see the mountains and I taste the terrible pizza and I smell the air and I look at the date.

And I let myself grow up, but only a little.

The Seahawks lost to the Steelers after Seattle's hopes were up so high. They lost against a team that has already won so much. They lost in a game with lopsided officiating. They missed an easy field goal. Mmm.

Welcome, Seattle. Welcome. How does it feel? How does it feel?

Debbie Harry's age falls almost exactly halfway between my mother's age and my grandmother's age.

But I don't care.

I'm going to build and use a time machine to marry Debbie and none of you can stop me. There might be side effects in the space time continuum.

I still don't care.

After all, Doc Brown put on the bulletproof vest and said "I figured, 'what the hell?'"

Recently, I picked up Blondie's "Greatest Hits" and Wilco's "Kicking Television: Live in Chicago." It's pretty clear from their titles that both albums aren't real albums. One is a compilation and one is a live show. I felt particularly bad having to buy the Blondie album, but the record store didn't have any real ones.

This is another thing I don't "get" about Seattle. It's supposed to be this music mecca or something, but there are very few decent record stores. Just between you and me, sometimes I go to Borders. And just sometimes I go for the selection.

I feel that I've let you all down.

I bought the Blondie album because I wanted to hear more Blondie music. There were no other Blondie albums so I made the purchase even though Bruce McCulloch had warned me that "Greatest Hits albums are for housewives and little girls!"

That reminds me that the next DVD I want to pick up is "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy."

Having listened to it a lot, I think my favorite Blondie song is their very first single, X Offender. I'm pretty sure it's their first single, at least. The song is about a prostitute who falls in love with the cop who arrests her. It's a poppy 70s song that calls back to the previous two decades of popular music. The wholesomeness of the music and the impure nature of the lyrics is an effective, but now overused juxtaposition, in music. She ends the song with:

And when I get out,
There's no doubt,
I'll be sex offensive to you.

It's a playful end to the song that works in the 70s because that's before romanticizing prostitutes was totally cliché.

I lack the understanding of music to explain what I really like about the song in an aesthetic sense. I'll be clumsy and try anyway. For one thing, the "hook" of the song that sticks with you is the individual verses, while the choruses and the bridge are pretty vanilla. Every other verse ends on some kind of note that creates tension. I like sevenths. Maybe it's a seventh. Whatever it is, it's in italics:

My vision is blue
I call you from
Insi-e-ide my cell.

And in the trial
You were there with
Your badge and rubber boots.

Any ideas?

This is pretty typical of me. If something's popular, I'll generally shy away from it. Then I'll wait a number of decades and adopt it. Who knows, maybe in a couple decades, I'll think that Gwen Stefani is pretty great, or even Madonna, or Blondie's newer music instead of just their classics.

Who am I kidding? Madonna will always be crap.

The Wilco album is pretty good. It's basically live versions of your favorite hits. Hurray!

I guess that makes it a greatest hits album in disguise. Bruce is gonna kill me. 

There are little bits during the live show where you hear the band members to tell the obnoxious crowd to stop being obnoxious. If I go to a concert, I have the good sense to know it's my own fault for going to a concert where people are guaranteed to be obnoxious. I shouldn't complain. I know what I'm in for. But with Wilco, not only did they choose to go to the show, the show is their show. The show--the obnoxiousness--exists because of them. They are the cause of the problem.

Is this characteristic of them? I've heard before that they don't do such a great job at getting over themselves. I've heard that they have an inflated notion of just how great their music is and how important they are as people and musicians. Either way, their comments prove that they are able to truly understand their audience when it comes to obnoxiousness.

Maybe that's not fair. They might not have such an inflated notion of themselves.

I mean, they don't blog. Do they? They don't use italics. Do they?

There's a certain amount of planning that went into this that makes you wonder if the writers view self-reference as a kind of pornography, that they've laced with jelly beans laced with crack.

Since early in the first season, the show makes it clear that the two most important people in Buster's life, are his mother (Lucille) and his love interest, who is his mother's friend/rival/neighbor, also named Lucille (or Lucille II). Phonetically, the names are equivalent to "loose seal." Clever.

But what really gets me are the small events beforehand which transcend any previous standard of foreshadowing or self-reference:

• Several episodes before, Buster unwittingly visits the home of his housekeeper where he finds many of his old things including a chair in the shape of a hand. He's so thrilled to see his old hand-chair that he says "I never thought I'd miss a hand so much!"
  
  
• When pretending that he's actually participating in Army training, Buster brings home a series of stuffed animals and claims that they are awards. These include a seal with a "good luck" shirt which he claims he got for marksmanship.
  
  
• He wins the seal by becoming an expert at a claw/crane game in an arcade. Soon, his actual hand is replaced with a claw.
  
  
• When searching for a way to get Buster out of the army, Oscar offers to cut off his pinky, which Buster refuses to do. Had he done that, he wouldn't have lost his whole hand.
  
  
• When his brother Michael tries to convince Buster to date Lucille II to prevent her from taking over the company, Michael uses a car purchasing analogy to suggest "maybe you belong in a Lucille?"

This can't be just foreshadowing because it's so obscure and forgettable. I know I'm probably missing several. I could watch the second season again just looking for these references. If you've seen others, tell me!

I also hear that this joke is expanded in the third season, of which I have only seen a few episodes. Fox doesn't do a very good job at advertising the show, particularly when it comes to letting us know when it comes back from a multiple week hiatus to make room for some terrible thing called "24."

These aren't jokes for the perceptive viewer. They are too obscure. These are jokes for the fan who watches the show over and over. It can't reward the person who just watches the next installment of the season each week on TV. The references move backwards. The punch lines are delivered before the setup or body or even the existence of the joke. It folds the fabric of space-time of the comedy universe in on itself.

Johnson says that this is an example of how modern media demands more of us, mentally. Television hasn't "dumbed us down," but instead has become smarter and more complex. To access these addition rewards, viewers have to work harder. People actually have to pay attention to pick up on the more subtle jokes of the show.

And when you do pick up on it, it's awesome.

I'm snotty and I'm not in a great mood. Let's fix this together. Walk with me and I will annoy you as I am annoyed right now. For an instant, we will vibrate on the same frequency. In the end, I'll feel better. Doctors call this "catharsis." You'll feel worse. Doctors call that "Masochism" because I told you up front that I was unhappy.

 

Then I'll be even happier. Doctors call this "Schadenfreude." Sick sick German doctors.

 

And I call all that a "Disclaimer."

"HURK-HURM!"

The last half of 2005 was pretty insane. And I should have catalogued the details of the insanity to give it structure, and order--to give it more purpose. But I didn’t. Having missed that opportunity, I’ll gush retrospectively.

Just about all of the insanity was a push towards the Xbox 360 Launch at the end of November 2005, which collided with the Thanksgiving Holiday. I’ve added a new photo album with pictures of the Xbox 360 ship gift everybody on the development team got, and pictures from the launch party that we had at the beginning of December.

E3 2005
Working towards the launch became progressively more surreal as we approached the date. I remember that E3, in May, had felt bizarre. Now that time has passed, I’m able to look at it more clearly.

See, the scope of this thing had exploded. Before E3, I was part of an elite group—the few hundred people who knew anything about the Xbox 360 aside from the fact that “another Xbox was coming out.” It was our baby! Surrounding E3, information and the presentation was surrendered and scope of the thing was now the hundreds of thousands of press and gamers who follow E3 as we presented our product and delivered its messaging.

When I started working at Microsoft, everybody wanted to know how my new job was going and, invariably, I would go on about how awesome the product was, but I couldn’t provide details. I was so proud to be working on something so big and so cool that its success was guaranteed. So with E3 having revealed those details, something personal was on the line. And with those details exposed, they drew criticism because that’s what details released by Microsoft do best, no matter what their content is.

My previous experience was around my school assignments that, if they weren’t solo endeavors, were massive projects with up to five people! I had never before contributed to something so visible and well known. I had never contributed to something so polarizing. I had never put as much time or effort into anything, even though my role was limited to a sliver of the final product’s success. And while others on the team are way closer to the product that I am, I took criticism the very personally.

Oh. And I am totally awesome at taking things personally.

It was disorienting and surreal. During E3, I became a clumsy and angry combination of pride, genuine competitiveness and defensiveness. I probably still am.

Xbox 360 Launch
As November approached, the bizarreness did not ebb. Playing games that were in-progress was weird. I got to see the elements of the product for which I was responsible become realized in each game, in awkward pieces. Seeing the advertising campaign lumber forward on a billboard in Seattle, in a store in Manhattan, in a commercial on TV, and in countless interviews on the Internet caused genuine double takes.

The night before launch, many of us from work piled into vans and visited those who were waiting outside various electronic stores for midnight. These people were sitting in the cold just for a chance to drop the better part of a thousand dollars on what we had worked so hard to create. Stopping at Fry’s, we had learned that the store wasn’t actually opening at midnight, but the next morning instead. The people camped in the cold had already been there for twelve hours and were ready to put in over twelve more.

On launch day, I was on a plane to Buffalo to celebrate Thanksgiving with Kate. Flying makes everything surreal. It’s this whole day that just gets lifted out of your life because of useless overhead between you and the people you want to see and the things you want to do and now I had chosen to do this on the day that I had been anticipating for over a year. The CNN broadcast shown in the terminal in Cincinnati featuring stories about those corresponding lines everywhere in North America compounded this.

Launch Party
So I had several months of “weird,” but it all was capped off with a really great party shortly after launch. We hired Presidents of the United States of America to play during the party. They did a great medley of 80s songs along with their hits. They were pretty awesome. I flew Kate up for that weekend and proved to my suspicious coworkers that she was indeed real. The party marked the beginning of things starting to feel normal again.

The short version of all this is that for me, things have relaxed. I have a lot more to say now and so I’m you’ll hear from me a lot more. ;-)

Alright, I stole the title idea from Tristan. Bah!

I am getting another visitor in July! Well, it's the same visitor as before. So it's more like I'm getting another instance of a visit. Ack, look at what my job has done to the way I think! Curses!

I bought Kirby Canvas Curse for Nintendo DS. If you haven't heard, the game uses only the touch screen and the stylus. The idea is that instead of pushing a button to move Kirby, you use the stylus to draw a path on which he can roll and gain momentum. So if you want him to "jump" you draw an upward ramp and he will roll up it and go airborne. You can draw another path to catch him and swing him around in another direction. You can also use the stylus to touch Kirby to use his current power, or to touch enemies and stun them.

What's interesting is that at first the different interface is really distracting and consumes most of your focus. But once you learn it, it becomes much more intuitive than I would have originally thought. The lines I need to draw have become more intuitive and natural now and I don't really focus so much on them.

I also bought Psychonauts, but I haven't had a chance to play it. People tell me that I will like it because I like Conker so much. I guess there's similarities there in that there's lots of focus on bizarre gameplay and funny voice acting and story. I had seen a couple scenes before at a friend's house. The Milkman bit was really funny. So I'm looking forward to that.

I’ve gone nearly two months without making a post. But it’s been a busy couple of months! I’ve added pictures, many of which weren’t taken by me (thanks, Kate)! I’ll recap what’s happened with an obnoxiously long post:

E3 and LA
I’ve always wanted to see the rest of the West Coast and I hate flying. So when it came time to go to the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (or E3), I took a couple extra days and drove down with Kate. The trip nearly brought my car passed 10,000 miles!

On the way, we stopped in San Francisco for a couple days where I got to meet Kate’s sister and see a family friend—Jason. I really liked San Francisco. If I had to move to any other city on this coast, it would probably be that one. I was concerned about driving in San Francisco, but I did awesome on the hills with my stick shift. Divisidaro was so steep that it required me to downshift into first gear, because second gear didn’t have enough torque! Also, I found San Francisco easier to drive in than Seattle since all the stops are four way stops. Seattle for some reason has lots of two way stops, which are difficult since usually they are blind intersections unless you’re in an SUV.

E3 itself was pretty great. I’m not a fan of crowds and heat and lines, but it was still worth it. LA was too hot and too crowded. I guess I should give it another chance since 90% of what I saw was highway, but it was hard to do otherwise. What would normally be a ten minute drive usually took nearly an hour and there really was never a reason for everybody to slow down.

Driving for so many hours really turned out to be fun. The first six hours or so got boring, but as we got going, I got used to it and it was a lot of fun. On the way back, the last three hours seemed like nothing!

The Cell Phone
After constant badgering from my friends, I finally demonstrated that if I people bother me enough, I will bend to their collective will. Buying an electronic device for me requires hours of research and asking for advice. Brendan offered gems of wisdom like

“The whole thing takes like 20 minutes once you just go do it!”

and

“No, I don’t know what model cell phone I have.”

Other people’s advice was very similar.

Ultimately, I chose Verizon and the Audiovox CDM-8940. See! I know what I got! It’s not a Smartphone, but I really wanted to be “in” using Verizon. Also, I really like how it looks and feels. It’s just a really cool flip phone!

This is a big deal for me since I had been so resistant to getting a cell phone because I knew that a couple things would happen

• I would become completely addicted and obsessed with this new electronic toy.
• I would become very accessible when I really don’t want to be.

Both things have come true, but all in all I’m happy with the purchase. It even has me thinking of canceling my land line. What’s frustrating is that when I’m out, every five minutes, I think “Holy crap, do I have my cell phone?” Half the time, the answer is “No.”

I’m sure I’ll adjust.

High School Reunion

Everybody has something to say about how it’s rare that a High School would have a 5 year reunion. Ultimately, I’m really happy I went. It was a chance to go back to Buffalo (despite the flying). While landing in Buffalo, I got to see UB’s North Campus, with South Campus near the horizon, and the Buffalo skyline on the horizon. It was very cool but I couldn’t get my camera out fast enough. It was great to see so many people from High School, though. So many people work “in Banking” in “The City.” But they definitely seem to enjoy it. It was great that me and Brendan both got to go back and have our really cool “video game” jobs.

Jon had an impromptu barbeque at his place and it was a lot of fun. They made a potato cannon and they shot it at stuff including a piece of wood, and some water. It was great to see people from the Help Desk again too. The hamburgers and beer were really good.

What a crazy couple of days. I suppose the biggest news is that Tuesday I got into my first car accident. It wasn't even that bad. The extent of the damage is only paint damage. Oh. And uh, oh! My neck hurts! I don't want to give the details, aside from the fact that the driver of the other vehicle and I do not agree on whose fault the collision was. Who'da thought that? I'll include pictures.

In other news, work has been frustrating and demoralizing so far this week. I hope that by the end of tomorrow I'll be able to get my head above water again.

I'll be working late tonight. This blog entry is a little break. But I don't mind working late. During the day, changes and meetings make it hard to focus. I think another part of the problem is that my regular morning routine consistently involves these steps:

1.       Wake up at 7:30am

2.       Check email

3.       Grumble

4.       Go back to sleep until 9:30am

5.       Rush

So I don't think that this affects my work negatively, but it does make me feel that I'm behind on the whole day. I really should work on just biting the bullet and starting my day earlier. On top of that, the past 36 hours or so have involved me talking to insurance companies about what happened Tuesday. A lot of my focus has gone towards clearing that up. Today did have the saving grace that I wore one of my favorite shirts.

I found a couple things about MSN Spaces that kind of bug me.

For one thing, I do like that when I create a Music List, I can use a Music List from WMP. I think this is cool because I can tell WMP to make a playlist from all the songs I've listened to today. That way, it's super easy to post a list of the songs I've listened to today. I also really like the Custom Lists modules that you can make. I think the list of games on the right is pretty cool and it's very easy to maintain (though I would like to be able to rearrange the ordering). But in the same spirit of the Custom Lists and the Music Lists, I'd really like to have a custom free form text "blob" that I can control. That way I can have some kind of "Quote of the Day" or song lyrics I like or something like that. I know I can "hack" a Custom List to do this in a minimal sense, but I shouldn't have to do that.

Also, a couple people have told me that they've wanted to comment on my blog, but MSN Spaces greets them with a totally awesome "Sign up for Passport" message. It's not a huge deal because you can make any email address to be a passport account. It doesn't take that long. Also, I think all hotmail.com addresses will work as a Passport account (right?). It makes you log in with a passport account, even though you can elect to hide your email address in the comment. But I think I should have the option to receive anonymous comments from non-passport users. Maybe these anonymous comments would be allowed, but pending my approval, so that I can be accountable for the contents?

Finally, MSN Spaces really seems to be pushing RSS feeds for blogging. That is, if you're really interested in a blog, you can access it in some RSS reader, or have the feed parsed on a website you own. I think that’s cool, but I'd really like the option to have RSS feeds read "into" my site. Wouldn't it be cool if I could have a little text blob in the corner that will use RSS from weather.com and compare the temperatures in Buffalo and Seattle at that moment?

But Spaces is still only a few months old. I bet more improvements will continue to come in. Anyway, my requests are probably on the "geekier" side of the set of features they could implement, well, except for the passport nonsense. What do you think? Any other MSN Spaces users who have ideas for features that should be there?

Today I slowly put it together that I had been mixing up the names for GameStop (a store near work which sells video games), and GameSpot (a site which provides reviews and gaming news similar to IGN). It might not seem like a big deal, but this seriously injures my geek credibility. My name's going to have to appear in the credits for a video game or something before I'll let myself live this down!  

There has got to be some joke about companies merging and sorting in constant or linear time time. This is a necessity given today's current events. Specifically, Adobe is purchasing Macromedia. And, GameStop is purchasing EB Games (linked from GameSpot, just to be confusing).

So both of these pieces of news are interesting, but I can't pretend to accurately predict what will happen. People seem concerned that the mergers will result in less competition and therefore higher prices. I really don't think that's going to be the case.

"Professional" versions of Adobe's and Macromedia's software already cost over $500. Also, Adobe and Macromedia only really overlap in vector graphics (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). The most interesting consolidation is going to be between Illustrator and Freehand. These tools solve the same problem of generating and manipulating vector graphics in slightly different ways. File formats, importing, exporting, interface design, are going to be very interesting problems for the people at this new merged company to solve.

Other arenas don't really seem to be that conflicting. Adobe's web design solution falls right behind "notepad.exe" as far as web design applications that compete with Macromedia Dreamweaver. And there's no commercial solution out there quite like Photoshop for raster graphics.

So I really find it hard to believe that the prices they chose had anything to do with the now-absent competition. The same goes for GameStop and EB. People are worried about prices going up, but so long as every Target, Walmart and Best Buy sells games, the prices will still be competitive.

Any guesses on the new names for these newly-merged companies?

For a while, I've toyed around with the idea of maintaining a blog. We'll see how it works out. I was originally going to use something like wordpress, but MSN Spaces seems to be really easy to use. The integration with MSN Messenger is what ultimately sold me. I like the lists and layout options too. I'll use that to maintain lists of games, books, movies and favorite kool-aid flavors.

Today was a pretty lazy Saturday. I slept in as much as possible and then went to work for a while. I watched the South Park movie again. It's been a while since I watched it. It's better than I remembered. All the jokes were familiar, but they had they had that little bit of a punch which was lost after having seen it so much once it came out.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about moving from Redmond to somewhere in Seattle. So today I walked around a neighbordhood in North Seattle called Wallingford. The area reminds me a lot of the West Side of Buffalo, except with a really cool skyline. I took some pictures.

Recently, I bought, framed and put up a new Napoleon Dynamite poster in my office at home. I also put up some other things.

Tonight, I drank Fat Tire, which might be my new favorite beer. I also tried Katamari Damacy, a game which clearly should be combined with alcohol. If you don't know already, the premise of the game is that the all of the stars in the sky have been destroyed. It is your job to go to Earth and build up a collection of random stuff into a giant ball, which ultimately turns into another star in the sky. I really like the sense of scale since you start out picking up candy and packets of soy sauce. Later though, you pick up buildings, cities and islands.

I want the soundtrack.