Wow. Of the 30 song lyric snippets I posted Sunday night, only 13 got guessed. geminigirl was the winner, with three correct answers.

( The answers! )

I think my music library just might be slightly skewed toward the mid- to late 80s...

Tags: meme, music

I was actually thinking about posting something similar with slightly different rules, but then I saw this one from ambyr:

1. Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
2. Record the first few lines of the first thirty songs that come up that do not give away the name of the song. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
3. Make hapless LJ denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating. For showtunes, the name of the musical is acceptable in place of the artist. Extra credit if you can guess what cover I listen to.
4. Least hapless LJ denizen wins admiration.

My additions:
1. I've eliminated duplicates from the same credited recording artist. (In other words, the same person could appear twice, as both a member of a group and as a solo artist.)
2. I've eliminated anything in foreign or made-up languages. Seriously, have you ever TRIED transcribing Lisa Gerrard?
3. The "first lines" below do not include spoken introductions, if any.
4. I've left in some really obvious ones and some pretty obscure ones, but I've eliminated anything that no one but me has any reasonable chance of getting.

( Lyrics! )

Tags: meme, music

With my son's tee-ball season in full swing, baseball season wrapping up, and Raffi's "One Light, One Sun" album in heavy rotation at bedtime, a burning question has been keeping me up at night.

Poll #1785232 Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

To your ear, which is the "correct" lyric?

Tags: poll

Stolen from mzkero, beah and others...

I'm giving this a go because my curiosity has won out over my fear, so please, play nice. Is there anything you'd like to say to me but haven't? Comments screened and anonymous comments enabled.

[Edit: Now anonymous comments really ARE enabled.]

Tags: meme

I still have ONE extra ticket (front center orchestra, 12th row) to see the U.S. Premiere of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at Wolf Trap on Friday, September 10 at 7:30pm. This is the complete 2003 film (theatrical version) projected in high definition on a HUGE screen (plus two more screens on the lawn), with Howard Shore's complete Oscar-winning score performed live by orchestra, chorus and soloists.

I saw the first two parts of the trilogy in 2008 and 2009, and they were FANTASTIC.

Anyone interested? I'd REALLY like a companion for the event, and for the ticket to not go to waste. Comments screened.

Max Headroom is out on DVD! Read/listen to David Bianculli's review (from NPR's Fresh Air) here...

Tags: teevee

Since I know there are a few roller derby folks on my friends list, here's a link to NPR sports commentator Frank Deford's roller derby story from Thursday's "Morning Edition."

Tags: links

Poll #1513706 I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the exclamation point all day...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

When used as a logical operator, an exclamation point is pronounced:

Tags: poll, silly

Shortly before the Palm Pre shipped last month, word leaked out about a previously unadvertised feature... it would sync with iTunes, just like an iPod. Apple, of course, was none to happy, and last week released iTunes 8.2.1 which, according to the release notes, fixed a number of bugs and "addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices."

About an hour ago, Palm released new firmware for the Pre. According to the official Palm blog, WebOS 1.1.0 adds significant functionality to Exchange Active Sync, blah blah blah. "Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync."

Ha!

[ETA, for those unfamiliar with the behind-the-scenes significance of this: The CEO of Palm, Jon Rubinstein, was Senior VP of Hardware Engineering at Apple and one of the main people behind the development of the iPod.]

Tags: apple, palm

Kevin Flynn lives!

As you may have read in rdhdsnippet's LJ, dababybean's latest addiction is "Land of the Lost." (The real one, that is, not the Will Ferrell abomination.) I got the complete series DVD set as a gift for the wifelet a week or so ago—in the collectors edition lunchbox case, of course. At Evan's insistence, we've been watching one or two episodes a night most nights since then.

Unsurprisingly, Evan's terrified of the Sleestak. But somewhat surprisingly, he's not terrified enough to stop watching. How long until he's watching "Doctor Who" with me from behind the sofa, I wonder? :)

The special effects are definitely, ahem... special. But actually not NEARLY as bad as I remembered. Maybe I've just watched too much 70s era "Doctor Who?"

The writing is simultaneously worse and better than I remembered. The dialogue is atrocious at times (although that's largely the delivery), but the overall plot is much more complex and multilayered than I remembered (and even than I remember from most 70s shows for grups). I'm vastly amused that of the six episodes we've watched so far, three were written by David Gerrold (who was also the first season script editor; and BTW, is Gerrold EVER going to finish the damn Chtorr series?????), one by Larry Niven, one by Norman Spinrad, and one by Walter Koenig. And looking ahead on IMDB, also coming up in season 1 are Ben Bova and D.C. Fontana. Wow. That's quite a lineup for a low-budget kids series!

Tags: dababybean, land of the lost, science fiction, teevee
Current Music: Laaaa-and of the Lostlostlostlostlost...

So, I've joined the Cult of Mac. A 2.4 GHz 15" MacBook Pro. It's very shiny. The multitouch trackpad is very cool, but is going to take a bit of getting used to.

If you own or use a Mac regularly, what are your must-have applications/utilities/whatever? Either free or commercial, but let's focus on free, at least until this thing's paid off. :)

I need a laptop, very soon, and I'm very close to deciding to get a MacBook Pro. I still need to be able to run Windows, though (particularly since I have lots of money invested in Adobe products, and Adobe doesn't do cross-platform licensing)—should I go with VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop? Does anyone have experience running the Windows versions of Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom on a Mac in either of these environments (or through Boot Camp)? Any problems or caveats? Anything else I should know before taking the plunge?

Tags: geekery

Who the fuck is Ashton Kucher, and why the fuck does CNN think that him (her? it?) winning some stupid Twitter contest is worthy of a "Breaking News Alert" text message?

Current Mood: annoyed

It seems that Amazon has seen fit to remove from its search results, sales rankings and bestseller lists any book it deems "adult" oriented, including just about anything gay or lesbian themed. Among the books Amazon thinks are too offensive to display in search results:

D.H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterly's Lover
Michael Wilhoite: Daddy's Roommate
Leslea Newman/Diana Souza: Heather Has Two Mommies
Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain
ETA (and removed the links in case people were tempted to buy them from Amazon):
Randy Shilts: The Mayor of Castro Street
Randy Shilts: Conduct Unbecoming - Gays and Lesbians in the Military
Rita Mae Brown: Rubyfruit Jungle
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Dr. Nathaniel Frank: Unfriendly Fire- How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America
Stephanie A. Brill: The Transgender Child - A Guide for Parents and Professionals
Richard Plant: The Pink Triangle - The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
Gore Vidal: The City and the Pillar
Tristan Taormino: Opening Up - A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (and everything else she's written; see Tristan's letter to Amazon here)

For a nonexhaustive list of deranked items, see Amazon's own list of products tagged with amazonfail.

Funny, though... Kindle results $eem to be unaffected. I wonder if there'$ a rea$on for that?

markprobst, whose (sex-free) YA gay romance novel The Filly was deranked, has more in his LJ.

ETA: The LA Times is now reporting that Amazon is calling it a "glitch." Yeah, right.

Tags: amazonfail

rdhdsnippet, dababybean and I just watched the International Space Station pass nearly directly overhead (give or take 30° or so). With the recent completion of its solar array, the ISS has now surpassed Venus as the second-brightest object in the night sky. rdhdsnippet thinks that's unnatural; I think it's amazingly cool.

Find out when the ISS will be visible over your location here.

Next time I'll set the camera up on a tripod and try to get a time lapse.

Tags: geekery, space
Current Mood: geeky

What does it say about me that I see the headline Spector a 'dangerous man,' prosecutor says on CNN.com, and the first thing that pops into my head is "Arlen" and not "Phil?" And remember, I was a Music Production & Engineering major in college—I studied Phil Spector a LOT...

(And yes, I know Arlen's last name is "Specter," not "Spector.")

Current Mood: silly

Just posted to my friends list (via bianculli_blog) is a spoiler-free preview of tonight's BSG finale, posted to ("Fresh Air" and former "New York Daily News") TV critic David Bianculli's TV Worth Watching blog by guest blogger Ed Martin. I think I've enjoyed the second half of the final season more than many on my friends list, but even I've been a bit dubious that tonight's finale could satisfactorily wrap things up. This post doesn't erase all of my doubts by any means, but it does have me even more curious about how Ron Moore is going to pull it off. And it did prompt me to make absofrackinglutlely* sure my DVR is set to handle the fact that the final episode runs two hours and 11 minutes.

* Although I still want to spell it "Absofragginglutely, dammit!"... B5 fandom dies hard!

Tags: bsg, teevee
Current Mood: curious

Steven Page left BNL?!??!!???

Despite the "pursue solo projects" line in the announcement, I've got to wonder how much this has to do with last year's "If I had a million dollars, I would buy you some coke (but not real cocaine, that's illegal)" incident?

Tags: music
Current Mood: awake