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I think I’ll watch the super bowl in the south side January 31, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Sports , 2 comments

south_side.jpg

Watching this video makes me want to watch the super bowl in the south side.

No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away (Ezra 3:13).

Am I reading too much into it? Maybe this was one of the dangers of lectio divina that my friend Peter was talking about.

In search of a fight song… January 29, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Sports, Music , 2 comments

The last couple days, I’ve been enjoying the east side of the state. My company sent me to Philadelphia for a one day conference on data formats for polysomnography. And like most company trips, I try to stretch out the time as long as I can. So I’ll be returning to the burgh on Sunday night.

I’m currently staying with my good friends Tim & Brianne. It’s been good seeing them more. A year ago, Tim (pre-marriage) was living in Burlington, Vermont which caused us to see each other only a couple times a year. But now being in Philly, we’ve had the opportunity to see each other more often. Saturday was spent exploring the different neighborhoods of Philly with our cameras. Tomorrow, it looks like we’ll tackle the Philadelphia Arts Museum. It’s free on Sundays!

One ritual that we usually have when we get together is to share music that we’ve been listening to lately. Unfortunately, most of my recent stuff has been on vinyl. He introduced me to some Innocence Mission and Denison Witmer. The latter I had seen open for Sufjan Stevens. And the Innocence Mission is a band that has been growing on me more and more. I brought Closing Time, one of Tom Waits’ earlier CDs. Some of his early stuff is really beautiful.

But with the Super Bowl looming on the horizon, this music paled in comparison to the Steelers fight songs that we both desperately longed for. So we abandoned our stereos and mp3s and scoured the internet, looking for anything to whet our appetite. We found that one circulating around Pittsburgh radio stations about Troy Polamalu. Supposedly, a sports announcer mispronounced Polomalu’s last name as puhlahmahlu. So Mr. Devious, a Pittsburgh band, cranked out a pretty funny ditty sung to the tune of that somewhat famous muppets song.

One that I wanted to find, but couldn’t, was a song that I heard on the X this past week. It sounded like a bad Cake (the band) on an answering machine. The song was probably called Get it Done, or something like that. Anyone know anything about it? We couldn’t find it.

Black, gold, and vinyl January 24, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Music , 7 comments

The weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night, I had a good time hanging out with my roommate Ken. It’s funny. Our house is so large and cold, we spend most of our time in our individual rooms when we’re home. So I can go weeks without seeing him. It was good to catch up. Not to mention, I learned that he bought both a plane ticket to Denver and a ticket to the AFC championship!

For some reason, both Friday and Saturday I visited a couple vinyl record stores in the area. The first one, Jerry’s, is one of my favorite places. It takes up the entire second floor of several storefronts in Squirrel Hill. The first few times I was there, it was amazing that every time I turned the corner, the room would open up into a whole other warehouse of music. While I was there, I picked up:

On Saturday, I visited Attic Records in Millvale for the first time. Their store and stock were greatly damaged by 2004’s flood. It took 50 dumpsters to clear all the damaged records. Check out this picture. They had a good collection there. A bit more pricey than Jerry’s though. I thought I struck gold when I found a very clean copy of Pet Sounds. But when I got to the counter, he priced it at $15 which was about the sum of the three records below. So I didn’t buy it. I picked up:

Saturday night was spent swing dancing to a live jazz band in Squirrel Hill. I went with a few friends and ran into some others. The moves were a little rusty. Dr. Zoot, a live band played too.

And last, but not least, watching the Steelers pulverise the Broncos was fun and definitely not as heartattacky as last week. I watched it at Roland’s in the Strip. Afterwards, I was driving to church and chose to drive down Butler Street in Lawrenceville. It was mayhem. People were all over the roads and sidewalks waving their terrible towels, shouting at the top of their lungs. Cars were honking their horns. Passengers were on vehicles, not just in them. I think I want to watch the Super Bowl at a place like that. Some place where it’ll be on the fringe of a riot.

Celebrating my favorite band of the last few months January 20, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Music , add a comment

I happened upon a series of mp3s from a Talking Heads concert that was in Tokyo back in 1981. You can download the thirteen tracks individually here. Or you can download as one large zip here. The concert was during their Remain in Light tour. Enjoy!

Update:  I had trouble unzipping the files on Windows because of the invalid filenames.  You might want to download the individual mp3s if you have a Windows machine.

Oh, the places you’ll go! January 19, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , 2 comments

The internet has been chock full of delicious sites today. Here are the ones I’m feasting on:

Context has been a word that’s been ringing in my ears since my visit to the Met with my friend Peter. We were looking at a Hiroshige woodcut, and talking about art appreciation. And he said something maybe somewhat obvious, but profound at the time. He said that the one thing that he had learned in seminary is that “context is king”. So in order to appreciate this 19th century piece of art, we should seek to understand the thoughts, ideas, and things of the day. The more we know its context, the more we can appreciate it. Pretty obvious, right?

As we moved on, he also commented on how we need to do that with the Bible. Sometimes without seeking to understand the context, we derive meaning out of the text that was never there to begin with. He brought up how that’s one of the dangers of lectio divina (reading yourself into the passage). The comment stuck with me and I find myself continually asking questions of context now. It’s really helped me appreciate things of all sorts.

Like most internet memes… January 18, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , 2 comments

I’m pretty slow at receiving them. One my sister mentioned over Christmas was reintroduced to me over New Year’s by my friend Jon. After watching THX 1138, he mentioned these Chuck Norris facts on the internet. He googled them and we laughed at the absurd, stupid, yet funny facts that people have come up with about Chuck Norris. Here’s a few that I liked:

In an attempt to explain all these amazing facts to a coworker the other day, I searched around the internet to find some fodder. In addition to several fact websites (some are crude and distasteful), I was surprised to find a Washington Post article about this curiosity. Also, I read this pretty funny short from McSweeney’s, where the author Bryan Bieber retells his relationship with his first girlfriend by replacing her person with Chuck Norris. So everything she says and does, he imagines what Chuck Norris would say and do. It’s pretty funny.

I can’t believe it’s not gutter

Posted by Patrick in : Sports , 3 comments

Well, the bowling season officially kicked off tonight. Our team is back for a second season and after a relaxed holiday break, we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. One of our team members even bought his own ball and shoes. Uniforms are slated for the end of the season. We don’t mess around.

Tonight, we probably bowled against the livliest crew in the league which made it extra fun. With bowling names like bowlomite, you know they’re serious. Unfortunately our team, I Can’t Believe it’s not Gutter, went 0-3 tonight. We’re convinced that it’s a minor setback and it’s all uphill from here. Hopefully I’ll get some photos posted in the weeks to come.

Camper Van Beethoven show January 17, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Music , 2 comments

Camper Van Beethoven played last night at Club Café. It was the first time that I saw them pull out the chairs and tables from the venue. The rearranging definitely made it feel more like a rock show. Other than a couple listens years ago, I was pretty unfamiliar with the band. The first time that I heard of these guys was in middle school! And middle school is 12 years and counting.

They played a pretty tight show. Some of their songs had this unique Eastern European flair to them. It made me want to kick out my legs and dance a Russian jig or something.

As my friend Matt reminded me, this is usually the drought season for concerts, especially in Pittsburgh. There are a couple on my list coming up in the next few months that will probably be worth checking out. And I just learned today that the Fiery Furnaces are returning to the burgh. I saw them a little over a year ago when they were touring for their Blueberry Boat album at Modern Formations. They were really impressive. Kind of like their songs, their entire set was played as one long overture, with each song blending into the next. And as they’d go along, they’d revisit certain themes or tunes from earlier. Really good live!

Anyway, here’s the list. Let me know who wants to come along.

Sometimes you hope you’re wrong… January 16, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , 4 comments

Thanks to my roommate Walt for sending me this story. It was a hyperbole, I swear.

Steelers Bars

Posted by Patrick in : Sports, Pittsburgh , 4 comments

Adrian links to a pretty neat site that lists most (or all of) the Steelers bars in the world. I can’t believe how many there are. Five in Alaska. Three in North Dakota. And then even some random places outside the US like Portugal, Hong Kong, Qatar, and even Iraq. There’s an idea for a coffee table book or something. Get some photos and stories of the patrons and owners of these places. Unfortunately, you could really only see these bars in action sixteen days out of the year. It’d have to be a team effort. You’d need people scattered throughout the US (or world!). Who wants to do it?