spike

MTV turns 20 years old this year, saying goodbye to its awkward teens. Since grunge fizzled out, for the most part MTV shaped pop music into what it is currently. The experts are forecasting a huge, imminent shift in the popular taste of 12- to 19-year-olds who make up the network’s audience: “It?s gonna be a bucket of ice water in the face, and to those kids, Eminem and Britney are not gonna be enough. I think they?re gonna be biting the hand that?s been feeding them all this crap.”

Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul,
And make it hard for me to see,
Ahhh, thoughts all seem to stray to places far away,
I need a change of scenery.

That’s the Monkees, though probably not since they didn’t write most of their songs then. Anyway, our web host for work is giving me major headaches. Not only can they not explain the outages our web server has during the day, they refuse to admit there are outages. And I know I’m not crazy, or else all the people e-mailing and calling me to let me know the site is down are crazy, too. On top of that, their support site was hacked today. Yes, someone replaced the information on support.media3.net with a little message saying the site was hacked. Beautiful. My plan is to get rid of these jokers by the end of the week and have a new host up and running the site.

The Best and Worst (but mostly the worst) of New Jersey. I came across this while looking for drive-in movie theaters in the Great Garden State.

How a child realizes he is destined to be a percussionist: My parents said when I was really little, I would sit on the couch and listen to music on the stereo and bang my head against the back of the couch in time to the music.

Here’s an email I got today:

Also, it looks like we’re talking about a college football team and a drum corps with mostly high school students.

I think I’ll move to Washington, D.C., become an intern, and mysteriously disappear. But seriously folks…

Check out Congressman Gary A. Condit’s official website. Make sure you click on Internship Opportunities, and maybe even fill out the application. As you could imagine, he’s looking.

After work earlier today (yesterday, actually), I headed into The City for the free New York Philharmonic concert and fireworks in Central Park. After a little bit of drizzle threatened to postpone the performance, the storm stayed far enough away for the whole night. The first half of the concert consisted of music by Leonard Bernstein, including stuff from West Side Story, Candide, and On The Town. Special guest performers included Joshua Bell and a forgettable female vocalist. The conductor, who was giving his Philharmonic premier, was pretty animated. He felt the need to give “woo-hoos” when acknowledging the soloists.

After a long intermission, the orchestra returned with a Prokofiev symphony, which didn’t seem to hold too many people’s interest. About two minutes of fireworks followed the concert. I was hoping for a bigger display. Maybe next year.

At the concert, I met up with Melissa. She attended Camp Ramah when I did, about twelve years ago. I hadn’t seen her since. She managed to find me online at a Moxy Fruvous community website, and we made plans to meet at the concert, with a group of friends (Darren, Stacey, Randi, Stacey G., Amy, Devon and Keith). We talked about people we remember from camp, and the usual “catching-up” kind of stuff.

All in all, it was a good night. I like New York City; I need to find excuses to go there more often. I was even able to park on the street, in the same exact parking space I used last year for the same event. Although it was a space with a one hour parking limit, my car was thankfully not ticketed or towed, just like it wasn’t last year. It’s a good thing it wasn’t towed, since I intended on driving Randi, Stacey G., and Amy back home afterward. Luckilly, it all worked out.

Okay, I’m getting a little excited about tomorrow’s Concert in the Park with the New York Philharmonic. The program is mostly Bernstein, with some Candide, West Side Story and On The Town, with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 thrown in for good measure. Then the whole night will be topped off by fireworks.

Friday night, I drove down to D.C. to meet up with some friends. We moved furniture (seems to be a theme lately), ate at the Cactus Cantina, played a good amount of You Don’t Know Jack on Gwen‘s PlayStation, and visited the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I now feel it is safe to add “the D.C. area” to the list of places I would go if I were to leave New Jersey.

Considering it’s past midnight, I guess it’s too late for that. Ah well. This is the first Fourth of July where I did not see any fireworks. Granted, the past few years I’ve seen the fireworks at drum corps shows without any of my closer friends, and being with friends but without fireworks is better than seeing fireworks alone. Skipping most of the details involving New Hope, crazy ice cream, and Mexican food, I saw Cats & Dogs tonight. It was a little cute, and that’s all I really have to say about it. Cats were the bad guys and dogs were the good guys… not sure if I agree with that premise.

In no particular order:

• Walmart is not open 24 hours a day. Neither is Target (use the French pronunciation), Wegmans, K-Mart, CVS, or Michael’s Diner
• You can never find an All-Night Sock Emporium when you need one
• Just because you think you remember the location of the the bowling alley doesn’t mean you do
• Downtown Trenton isn’t as nice at midnight as it is during the day
• Ask for honey mustard, you’ll get honey barbecue sauce (I think)
• Deer won’t run into the road until you’re close to them