hang onto yourself

every once and a while, i'll watch a movie and get weepy. not weepy like, life is horrible and i can't take it or a small puppy is crushed by a bigger puppy. but more like, the grandness of life feels overwhelming. and it's absolute beauty is achieved and offered in 90 minutes of quickly moving frames.

the most recent movie to do that was "once." its story is simple. the shots are simple. the leads, however, are not simple. not by some undefinable characteristic, but by simply being confused, optimistic human beings. but what makes the film, is the songs. the songs carry this movie and they create amazing interludes that tell us more about these people than any conversation could. they tell us where they've been, they tell us where they would like to go and they tell us if they will get there or not.

i highly recommend this movie. listen to the songs two or three times. apparently, this duo in the movie is now a duo in real life in a band called the swell season. check them out too.

now i have to get back to elmntng vwls frm my vrdydy cnvrstn.

the show must go on

in 10 hours, i square off with BEC again.

i'm imagining a rocky II ending rather than a rocky I ending.

actually, rocky III would work too.

lessons learned from rocky I to rocky III.

tracy hide

it's a lively saturday here at the household. i'm studying all day. currently taking a break, wearing a hat and going through my wondermints albums, of which i have four. you read that currently. i have four wondermints albums. why? i don't know.

the s/t first album, bali and mind if we make love to you. i also downloaded an import of theirs, years ago, called the wonderful world of the wondermints. that's probably their best album. it's an album of covers including brian wilson (via glen campbell) the monkees and others. it's really, really good.

the rest are okay. some songs are amazing. some are pretty lackluster.

wow. see. i just stumbled across a song that sounds a lot like trader by the beach boys.

convinced of the hex

financial regulation reform passed last night. what does it mean? well, it means nothing. the bill contained nothing. no real regulation. no real change. it was as if your parents grounded you, but you still could do whatever the hell you wanted. "be home at midnight, unless it's a day of the week between monday and sunday, with monday being the beginning of the week and sunday being the end of the week, with all days considered to exist in between."

here is tyler durden at zero hedge. every word is true:

"as if anyone thought otherwise, the final shape of financial regulation has now been formalized and as Shanien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post notes, "many of the measures that offered the greatest chances to fundamentally reshape how the Street conducts business have been struck out, weakened or rendered irrelevant." congrats, middle class, once again you get raped by Wall Street, which is off to the races to yet again rapidly blow itself up courtesy of 30X leverage, unlimited discount window usage, trillions in excess reserves, quadrillions in unregulated derivatives, a TBTF framework that has been untouched and will need a rescue in under a year, non-existent accounting rules, a culture of unmitigated greed and all of Congress and Senate on its payroll. and sorry, you can't even vote some of the idiots that passed this garbage out: after all there is a retiring lame duck in charge of it all. we can only hope his annual Wall Street (i.e., taxpayer funded) annuity will satisfy his conscience for destroying any hope America could have of a credible financial system."

the debate is settled

in the 80's there were two types of men: men without hats and men at work. both had their unique characteristics.

one band of men made songs about safety. the other, made songs about coming from down under. both were unforgettable. both were equally strange.

so, who was the better man in the 80's? the men at work? or the men without hats?

i got the hots, pt. 2

those guys over at the burning platform, you got to love them. they're filled with more righteous indignation than any human being should be and bless them for it.

they watched gasland last night. and they were not happy with what they saw. i mentioned the documentary in yesterday's posting, "i got the hots." which is a great song from underwater moonlight by the soft boys.

did anybody else watch it? i do not have hbo. i only have channels a-g. from h-z, i got nuffin, with the exception of m. somehow that one comes in.

in other news, eons of darwinian evolution somehow produce mitch.

i got the hots

haven't we heard that natural gas is going to lead way into the future? cure us of our addition to oil? foreign oil? well it might all be true. and in the process, it might just ruin us all.

what? what you say? you did say what, didn't you? outloud. or under your breath. or into a coffee cup. but you said it.

fracking. that might be an issue going forward. fracking is also known as hydraulic fracturing. basically, they shoot a bunch of water, chemicals and stuffs into a hole to help get the stuffs out.

but that stuffs they're shooting in there, it ain't no good. it's made of some bad stuff.

and why are we doing this? for shale gas. it's going to power the world some day. which is a shame, because i shorted shale gas and went long on love.

but see, there's this town of damascus, where people are getting sick. their water is bursting into flames. i mean, that sounds fun, but i like soft water.

and if you don't like reading, which who really does, check out this film/trailer for a documentary called gasland.

jigsaw falling into place

radiohead has a new album coming out this year. that's what mr. ed o'brien is saying at least. i liked in rainbows, but i had issues with it. wilco got tons of flack for releasing an album that seemed to be made up of various phases in their collection of sounds. i gave them flack for that.

but wasn't in rainbows the same thing? listen to it again in that context and you hear the various sounds of their career. there's over-edited, cut-up tracks recalling kid a/amnesiac. there's melodic, soothing, soaring songs recalling o.k. computer. there are straightforward-ish songs recalling hail to the thief. i liked the album. but radiohead received praise where wilco received derision. they made the same album. neither one of them was horrible. but neither one of them was groundbreaking.

groundbreaking like this.

not like this.

cut your hair

i've had a lot of things said to me in my life. some positive. some negative. and i think the thing that i would appreciate the most would be for an old man to say this to me:

"what you got there is a solid haircut."

kind of in a hank hill-type voice. i don't know why, but that would make me really proud.

only in dreams

so i had another crazy dream last night. i was at a basketball game, i believe, maybe football, but a game no less. i was sitting there with my wife and a friend, watching the game. so halftime comes along and they start throwing the balls into the crowd for someone to catch and throw it back into the basket, you know how they get crowds to participate and think they're part of the action. so a ball comes our way and my friend and i both catch it somewhat at the same time. i was a little earlier. but i relented and in the spirit of good times, let him throw it. and he made it, which was amazing considering how far back we were from the basket. we celebrate and rejoice his awesome shot and await the return of the game. then things get weird.

before the game restarts, i notice lots of people reading something and turning around and pointing at me. so i grab one of the newspapers and there's a story about me. the story describes the aforementioned ball-into-the-crowd-me-relenting-my-grip saga from above and how gay i am for doing it. and i'm not exaggerating for the story. the article called me gay for doing it. there is was in big headlines, "kevin is gay!" how did they know my name? first of all, i have no idea how a paper was produced that fast. that was amazing. those people were reading about me literally 20 seconds after it happened. and second of all, how is that gay? i was being considerate. so i found a guy passing out the papers and asked him who wrote the story. he said he did and he was some 17 year-old punk calling me out. well, we go back and forth and no one wins and i don't really remember how the rest of the dream went.

my main point is to be careful what you do and say because there will be a special edition printed about your actions and distributed all across the land.

plus he made the shot!!! that should negate the whole thing!! if he threw it like a baby and it hit some old woman in the head causing her to vomit on the family in front of her, then maybe i'll take some blame about not taking the shot.

but he made it!!! i'm suing that paper.

thank you friends

i saw high fidelity last week. greatest movie quote ever:

"what came first, the music or the misery? people worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. did i listen to pop music because i was miserable? or was i miserable because i listened to pop music?"

most depressing album ever: berlin by lou reed. i honestly believe if you listened to this album at the wrong time in your life/day/night, you will find yourself riding your bike downtown at 3 in the morning, slightly intoxicated and wondering where exactly you were going to land.

the WAND

pictures courtesy of tanner.

in the morning of the magicians

so the freepress houstonfest is over. i still prefer the name "the super-happy houston funfest spectacular festival" but this name has yet to catch on. but by either name, it's over.

there are two things i will remember from this year's super-happy funfest. one: my wife and i huddled together under a small black umbrella as her left side was getting soaked and my right side was getting soaked during what was probably a 35-45 minute torrential downpour while sitting on the hill at eleanor tinsley park holding our spot so that we wouldn't lose it for the flaming lips later that evening.

two: the flaming lips. it was one of the most amazing shows i've ever seen. dancing bears, crazy props, walking through a women's legs, megaphones, plastic orbs that floated into the audience. and the sound. the sound of their songs was amazing. absolutely incredible show. i could barely move while they were playing because if i did, i probably would have slipped and fallen into the muddy hill that had become the park, but i was able to shake it enough to inspire the crowd to follow my lead.

backtracking to saturday now....saturday was weak. the sun was behind the clouds, which helped. but i would have rather taken a beating by the sun and gotten better music. ra ra riot was okay. but girl talk was just some dude behind a computer that would take a rock riff and paste it over a hip-hop song. what the hell? i could do that shit in my bedroom if i wanted to while watching reruns of scrubs. i can't help it. i love scrubs. i think i'm a lot like turk. anyway, he was the headliner for saturday! before him was some horrible stuff like medeski, martin and wood and detroit cobras and some rap dude. so that was saturday.

sunday was hot all day. the sun was out. we were preparing for the worst. but when we parked, the wind picked up and could feel it coming. we had no idea how bad it was going to be. we literally sat down and got out the umbrella, and it started pouring on us. and God bless her, my wife sat there with me, crouched together getting soaked in her nice pants and shoes and was happy to be there with me. no one else was there. all of our friends were in their cars staying dry. we held down the spot. she and me. i and her. and i thanked her for that. not many wives would do that. towards the end of the downpour, but still raining, lucero played. they weren't great, but it helped to take our mind off the fact we were getting soaked and having mud flung onto our persons.

the rain finally let up for stars. and i liked that show. i listened to a few tracks beforehand and thought it was a little weak, but i'm going to have to go back and listen again, because live, they were pretty strong. the lead singers (male and female) were engaging. the guy was pretty witty. i like that. wittiness.

then slimthug played(?, he didn't play anything) and we bolted and let everybody else watch our spot for us. but then the lips came on and it was amazing. they played several tracks from their new album embryonic. but they played she don't use jelly and what was cool, they used the screen behind them to have jon stewart, circa 1996, introduce them from his old show. nice.

we got home finally sunday night. with soaked feet. soaked underwater. dirty shoes. dirty blankets. and for a minute, we probably wondered why we did it. but i know why we did it. because i'll never forget that rainy sunday with my wife under the umbrella getting impaled by rain to hold our spot for the flaming lips. that was why.

who is it?

"alien tears will fill for him

pity's long-broken ern,

for his mourners will be outcast men,

and outcasts always mourn."

you wanted a hit

"when the constitution was destroyed, the u.s. ceased to exist. what exists today are power centers that are unaccountable. elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. the most powerful interest groups are the military/security complex, which includes the pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations that service them, the american-israel public affairs committee, the oil industry that is destroying the gulf of mexico, wall street (investment banks and hedge funds), the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the agri-companies that produce food of questionable content."

wow. that is not from some crackpot blogger, like myself. no, that is paul craig roberts, former assistant secretary of the treasury in the reagan administration.

read the whole thing here.

last night, an umpire blew a call in the ninth inning to steal a perfect game away from a tiger pitcher. a perfect game. again. we have had two this year and if he would have gotten the call right, we would have had three. with more than half the season to go. including the two from this year, we've had 20 perfect games in the history of baseball. if the ump would have gotten the call right, we would have 21. with 14% of them this year!!!! that's incredible!! the year of the pitcher is upon us.

tentative decisions

so what is high frequency trading (HFT)? well, i'm glad you asked.

several concepts should be understood first. they include (this comes from the PBS nightly business report website):

1. many tiny opportunities: HFT traders target opportunities to make minuscule returns and pursue millions or billions of those opportunities in a day.

2. advance tech: HFT is not possible without the rapid identification of a myriad of trading signals, a task that requires advanced computing technology.

3. latency arbitrage: HFT traders take advantage of latency arbitrage, which is defined as buying or selling a stock or other investment slightly ahead of other market participants who do not have the ability to rapidly identify small changes in prices.

4. raw feeds: HFT traders get their price data directly from stock exchanges. these raw feeds get them the data they need milliseconds before more consolidated data feeds reach other market participants, like fund managers.

5. co-location: HFT traders often co-locate their servers in stock exchanges to reduce the distance the electronic data has to travel and, in turn, reduce the time it takes for them to identify data and make trades.

why is this important? well it seems HFT might have played a part in the "flash crash" from earlier this month. there is a potential for something to go really wrong, really quickly. a lot of these buy/sell terms are based on price fluctuations and when the determined price is achieved, it triggers a buy or a sell. because of HFT, the buy/sell could be millions of options, as indicated in point 1 from above. the "flash crash" is a potentially small example of what might happen.

now that we know this, let's watch a funny video from samantha bee further detailing HFT.

also, here is an interview with james murphy of lcd soundsystem. excellent piece.

the national to houston

get out your october calendars. the national are coming to town.

never gonna give you up

i'm not in the camp that believes it's always sunny in philadelphia is the best show on the television. i don't think it's in the same category as seinfeld and it's for sure not in the same category as arrested development, seeing as how arrested development was the greatest television ever. period. seinfeld is firmly entrenched at number two, with the simpsons taking hold of the number three spot and newsradio holding firm at four. number five is TBA. number 135 on the list is mama's family. the mama's family with bubba, not the pre-bubba years. and how was bubba supposed to be a teen? the guy was 35 years old?

but, the episode where mac and charlie try out for the eagles is pretty funny stuff. mostly, the funny comes from one scene. mac and charlie are trying out for the eagles, ala, invincible. so, after the workout, they are psyched because they're going to meet donovan mcnabb, who is supposed to show up and talk to all the guys trying out. but when he gets there, it's obviously not him and charlie and mac notice this. but not only is not donovan mcnabb, it's actually the actor who played elvin on the cosby show. so charlie and mac start asking why was elvin from the cosby show there? and why was he peddling mcdonald's cheeseburgers? just the fact that they thought of replacing donovan mcnabb with elvin from the cosby show is comedic gold.

gold.

number 78 on the list is mr. belvedere, which inspired this hilarious snl skit.

strange powers

go here for the trailer for strange power: the story of stephen merritt and the magnetic fields.

here is the official website.

conversation 16

last night, i drove around the city watching a concentrated lightening storm to the west listening to the national with my windows rolled down. it was one of those nights. thinking. lots and lots of thinking.

i'm particularly moved by the line "i was afraid i'd eat your brains." that might be the best line on the album.

i also went to academy to spend a gift card that i got for my birthday last year. i wanted to buy a bandana, but they were $23.99. when i asked the lady why they were so expensive, she said simply "technology." and i asked, "like a radio?" she did not laugh.

i also watched the brothers bloom last night. great flick. i highly recommend it.