Infinity Cat rules Elliston tonight/LOST timeline, etc…
February 2, 2010
First of all, if you’re a LOST fan as I am, of course you know that the final season premiers tonight. To go along with that, I give you two links of interest:
The New York Times’ timeline of a few significant events. This is pretty helpful in remembering the time scale we’re talking about here…
The real physics involved with the time travel of LOST. As an avid science lover/advocate, I have of course been pleased with the fact that the time travel involved with LOST is at least somewhat based on real-world physics.
Image via Nashville's Dead
Unfortunately there’s a great show that I’m going to miss out on due to LOST tonight, and that is the Infinity Cat Rock the Block at Exit/In. In case you’ve been under a rock the past couple of months, Ryan Bruce has revived Exit/In’s free tuesday night weekly series Rock the Block. It’s similar to the 8 off 8th series at Mercy Lounge in that it’s hosted by a rotating cast of local musicians/scenemakers/bloggers/radio show hosts/etc…. It differs in that the number of bands is entirely up to the host, however most of the ones so far have been in the 7-9 band range. Tonight’s is hosted by Infinity Cat records and has a killer lineup. So if you’re not going to be glued to ABC for 3 hours, Exit/In should be your destination, because it’s free.
Speaking of 8 off 8th… Mercy Lounge released the actual lineups for each of the 4 Road To Bonnaroo series today. See the full lineups at Nashville Cream. This is going to get interesting.
For your daily dose of eye-candy, checkout local vintage clothier Carmen Jaudon’s official spring 2010 lookbook. Photography was done by Bradley Spitzer and of course the styling was by Carmen. A good pairing of photographer/stylist indeed.
Speaking of lookbooks… I present to you Hipsters Have to Pee. Must be all those PBRs and soy lattes… (Via Hipster Runoff)
Happy LOST day!
Weekend shows/New Mew/Zooey Deschanel
June 26, 2009
It’s been a while since I mentioned Zooey Deschanel on here. With her new movie 500 Days of Summer coming out July 17th, what better time than now? I was quite pleased to find a She & Him covers of The Smiths’ Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want on Stereogum this morning. Her beautiful voice is a perfect fit for the song and I honestly can’t stop listening to it. Go please your ears and stream it now. Also, at the bottom of that post is a video of ZD and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking to each other about karaoke.
Also on Stereogum this morning was a brand spankin’ new Mew track, Repeaterbeater. And this one is downloadable! I’m definitely looking forward to the new Mew album, but I really don’t feel like typing out the album title because it’s a frickin’ poem.
The A.V. Club reports that Big Boi is promising a new Outkast album in the near future…. I’m not holding my breath though.
This kind of cracked me up, then made me sad… apparently a Bolivian TV station was fooled into airing scenes from LOST as footage from the French flight 447 crash in the Atlantic Ocean. Really? I have a hard time even pitying someone so gullible. Via Kottke.
Dave Paulson did a great write-up of Those Darlins in the Tennessean, as did Sean Maloney in the Scene. Speaking of Those Darlins, that’s where I’ll be saturday night taking pics, at their album release show at Mercy Lounge with the Black Lips.
Other weekend fun-to-be-had:
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be doing the photobooth at Happy Valley tonight at Aerial. Obviously the other big news for tonight is How I Became the Bomb+Kindercastle+string section covering ELO’s Out of the Blue in its entirety live at Mercy Lounge. You should probably be at one of these two places tonight. Or go to Mercy and then come to Happy Valley afterward… cuz that shit goes till 230 or 3am!
Oh, and R.I.P. King of Pop.
Credit: Pete Souza/official White House flickr photostream
Obama officially announced former astronaut Charles Bolden as his pick for the new NASA Chief Administrator. FINALLY! I’m just glad they now have a clear idea of who’s in charge, and soon will have a clear direction as well.
In case you’re under a rock, Obama also announced Sonia Sotomayer as his pick for the vacant U.S. Supreme Court Justice seat.
Space Shuttle Atlantis landed Sunday at Edwards Air Force Base in California after 3 scrubbed attempts to land at Cape Canaveral. The orbiter will spend a week there being prepped for the piggy-back ride on top of a modified Boeing 747 to take it back to Florida.
With the scheduled Soyuz Rocket launch tomorrow at 6:34AM, the International Space Station will have a full crew of 6 personell for the first time ever. Coincidentally, this also marks the first time that representatives from all 5 agencies involved with the ISS have been aboard it at the same time. Those agencies are NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Ok, enough space stuff already… we’ll stick to science, though, because I found lot of good science news in my reader today, and not much else worth posting.
The National Ignition Facilily (NIF) in California is about to create a tiny man-made star with deuterium, tritium, and one big-ass laser. This has to be one of the coolest-sounding descriptions I’ve ever seen. In all honesty, though, it’s not really a star. But they will create nuclear fusion, the process that occurs at the core of stars, on a very tiny scale for a fraction of a second. This is just one small step toward the solution to all of earth’s energy problems. Not only will this device help solve energy problems, it will also help physicists study what happens when a star explodes, and also the inner-workings of any nuclear explosion. Back to the energy issue, though. If we can figure out a way to contain a sustained fusion reaction, and make it yield more energy than is required to create and contain it, then humans will have solved our energy crisis. As far as I can tell, there’s no Dr. Octavius employed at the NIF, thank goodness…
Stephen Colbert interviewed Seth Shostak on The Colbert Report. Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute. (SETI stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.) Watch it on Colbert Nation.
Ok I have to post something not-so-serious now- Hurley has a blog! Seriously, it’s not the most interesting thing I’ve seen but it’s still way-cool to read about his real life. Besides, who doesn’t love Hurley?
Awkward family photos/LOST/Empire Records tribute
May 13, 2009
The White Stripes. Via Awkward Family Photos. Seriously, go to this blog and thank me later.
So everyone knows that tonight is the season finale of LOST. I came across this post on io9 today with an excerpt from an interview with co-creator Damon Lindelof. He hints that the island will continue to exist after the series ends. This leaves open the possibility of a movie, or resurrection of the series somewhere on down the road. This leads to my next mention: the Empire Records tribute/cover night tonight at Mercy Lounge. Several bands (including Nite Nite, Armed Forces, Plex Plex, and my own, playing as “Damn the Man”) will be covering songs from the soundtrack. Mercy will also be screening the LOST season finale on a big screen/projector right before the show. (Which means the show will start just after 10pm.) I already had a LOST shindig planned with some friends at my place, so I will not be attending the screening, but will hop on over directly after it ends.
Hipster Runoff examines Sean Penn’s current and past relationships. Who is his soulmate?
The Bad Astronomer lists ten things you probably didn’t know about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Sold.
Off to Austin/global warming
March 17, 2009
So tonight I’m heading off to SXSW with my bandmate Seth Graves, Ryan Bruce from the Deli Nashville, and possibly Seth’s friend Carmen. There have been a lot of last-minute plan changes, which is par for the course in all things SXSW-related. But if travel goes as planned, we’ll be driving all night and arriving Wed. morning. We’ll drop some shit off at the house we’re sub-letting for the weekend and then the festivities shall begin. I have no idea how much or often I’ll be able to blog, so don’t expect too much. I will be updating my facebook and twitter stati, so if you’re my friend on facebook or follow me on twitter, those are the way to go. I will be, as usual, photographing for the Scene, and slideshows should be appearing on Nashville Cream daily, so be sure to check there first for pics.
Now for a few quick links:
You can buy a LOST Dharma Initiative jumpsuit on Ebay. For the obsessed LOST fans only. I sure as hell don’t have 85 bucks to shell out for something like that.
The Pixies are back. Though, I must say I really don’t understand this band photo. They look awkwardly posed, and… is Frank Black about to go to the gym for a workout? Head to the park for a jog? WTF?
In all the doom and gloom predictions of global warming, there is one discovery that’s slightly comforting- the Greenland ice sheet may not pass the proverbial “tipping point” quite as soon as they originally thought. The tipping point is the point at which the sheet is 100% guaranteed to melt completely. The research shows that the ice sheet should be able to withstand a global temperature increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Of course, some of the ice will still melt and contribute to overall sea level rise. Via the Daily Galaxy.
Daft Punk scores Tron 2/SXSW/LOST timeloop theory
March 5, 2009
Just a lot of quick links today. No time to really delve into anything. But first, some awesome news: I’m gonna have a wristband and photo pass for SXSW! I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s just say it never hurts to go straight to the horse’s mouth. That old addage “ask and ye shall receive” is sometimes very true. Now if my old Jeep can just make the trip…
Daft Punk is going to be scoring the soundtrack for the upcoming Disney film Tron 2. Awesome. I can’t think of a more perfect combination of musicians and film.
Hipster Runoff discusses picnic fashion. No, literally… we’re talking about a picnic being worn as a dress.
Stereogum had two great posts last night… One about the upcoming Zooey Deschanel film (500)Days of Summer (including a trailer), and another about the newly developing war between the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler.
So apparently the blogosphere’s buzz/hype and my taste are actually in sync for once… The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s new self-titled album has been on repeat on my iTunes lately, and come to find out they’re playing 10, yes TEN shows/showcases at SXSW this year. A few of which are day parties thrown by bloggers. Count them- 2 shows on the 18th, 3 on the 19th, FOUR on the 20th, and 1 on the 21st. SXSW is basiclly a POBPAH-gasm! Then they’re hitting the road for even more tour dates in April and May, one of which is right here in Nashville at the End on May 2nd. THAT will be an interesting show… since they’re probably big enough to play Mercy or Exit/In.
If you’re a fan of LOST, you might be interested to see the latest update on the Time Loop Theory. I’ve seen this before… about a year ago, and they keep updating it as more is revealed. Warning though, this could taint your experience of the rest of the series. If you do read this, I recommend that you try your best to keep watching the show from an objective perspective, as if you hadn’t read this. Also be sure to check out the timeline diagram. It helps make the whole theory make more sense.
And finally, a talking goat. Via Courtney Wilder’s facebook.
Breakfast cereal club/Texas has balls of fire…
February 16, 2009
Via Ironic Sans. Click the image to go directly to the post.
The official SXSW music schedule has been released. It’s pretty user-friendly, as you can sort by day or by alphabetical listing. As with any festival, it’s gonna be a game of saying, “ok, who do I really care the most about seeing?”
Two great links from Kottke.org, as always:
I’m officially going to attempt having people over to watch LOST and play the official LOST drinking game. Please, if you watch the show, go read this. And then do it on wednesday. Preferably at my apt. My favorite: take a drink whenever “The island jungle scenes look as if they were shot in someone’s backyard, or the oversize potted plant section of an Office Max.”
Some really cool chemistry experiment videos. HORRIBLE WEB DESIGN ALERT! Warning- this website looks like something straight out of 1997. But the videos are pretty cool nonetheless.
I saw a story on CNN.com yesterday about a fireball and corresponding sonic boom heard/seen over Texas sunday morning. While the story doesn’t say specifically that the fireball was falling debris from the satellite collision last week, it does seem to hint at it. But the Bad Astronomer doesn’t think so, mainly becuase the debris appeared to be moving too quickly. It’s more likely that it was indeed a large meteor that just happened to hit the atmosphere a few days after the satellite collision. But as you can see in the BA post, nothing is for certain just yet. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this…
Finally, an interesting clip on the Daily Galaxy from an interview with astronomer Neil Degrasse Tyson on why the world will not end in 2012. I would embed the video here, but as far as I can tell, you can only embed YouTube and Google videos on WordPress blogs. Grr.
New LOST trailer/Obama- keep the scalpel away from NASA
December 3, 2008
A sneak peek from the new season of LOST. I’m officially excited. I might even try to start having LOST viewing parties. I don’t really have people over to my place very much… if at all, so here’s to trying something new.
What does Obama have in mind for NASA’s Constellation program? Ok, I get it, we have budget problems… but we can’t just throw away all the hard work NASA has put into the successor to the space shuttle- the Constellation program. We have to see Ares I, Ares V, and the Orion capsule through to their completion. As quoted in the article, those programs are years ahead of any alternative. Changing course now would only widen the gap between the space shuttle and its successor. Mr. Obama, I love you, but please leave Constellation alone. For that matter, leave NASA’s budget alone… I’m all about your “scalpel” approach to budget cuts, but take the scalpel elsewhere. Too many people see space exploration as “unnecessary” or think “oh, it can wait.” The science that NASA does is VITAL to the progress of the human race. It’s more of a “big picture” mentality, but we’ll never achieve the goals of putting men on Mars, and eventually colonizing other worlds if we keep putting off the first steps toward them. NASA has been put on the backburner with increasing budget cuts ever since the end of the Apollo missions. The nation must get out of the mentality that space exploration and scientific discovery are secondary to the problems we face here on earth, because the scientific breakthroughs/discoveries that come as a result of said exploration will probably help to solve many of those problems- the biggest of which is the energy crisis and global warming. Sorry about the soap box, but I feel like I need to start including more of my own thoughts into this blog rather than just posting lots of links.
I was unaware of the legislation that passed in 2007 to phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2014. I’m glad it passed… but this article points out that the mercury contained in the new compact fluorescent bulbs will pose a major environmental hazard if people don’t dispose of them properly.
In local music, The Features have a special Christmas package deal going at their website. You can get their latest album Some Kind of Salvation and a new Tshirt as a package deal. Get it while it’s hot.
steve cross loves music and science 