L'histoire de sa vie

During the last Woot-off I managed to score a sick shirt as well as my first “Bag of Crap.” For eight dollars, I got a box full of a bunch of odds and ends. Some are cool, some are useless, some are just ridiculous. Anyway, since it was only eight bucks, I cannot possibly complain. Here’s what I got, with pictures below.

• 2 “Camp Rock” Twin Bell Alarm Clocks (which I will mod by replacing the faces)
• A 4GB SanDisk Sansa e260 MP3 player (which I’m giving to my mother who has a need for such a device)
• A Brother Label Maker (with which I have no idea what I’ll do)
• A Picnic basket that unzips into a picnic mat (which I will use in Central Park in the near future, once it’s officially warm enough)
• A “Flush Light” light-up flusher for a toilet (??)

 

Every year I try to see the Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films. It has been my experience that they tend to be amazing pieces with phenomenal animation, a great story, and they’re over before you have a chance to get bored. Last night, I went with a bunch of friends to the IFC to see this year’s slate.

We saw eight animated films in total, including a few that were “highly acclaimed” though not nominees. My favorite was The Lady and the Reaper, a Spanish film that was unbelievably funny. [Try this link.] In addition, French Roast, A Matter of Loaf and Death (the latest Wallace & Gromit Film), and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty were all excellent as well.

There was one film that was overly dreary, and of course it came from Poland (not much of a shocker then that it included a caricature of a Jew as one of the characters). Other than that, the films were all pretty awesome.

Of course, nothing will come close to the awesomeness of The Danish Poet. I have still yet to see an animated short as good as that gem.

Yesterday was the first class of my free Mixology course. The class is divided into two parts: one hour of teaching and one hour of mixing/drinking. The hour of teaching was all about safety and being a good bartender, and the hour of mixing was about Highballs, aka colorful drinks with not so much alcohol content.

Easily the most important thing I learned was how to pour properly. Using this skill, I made a Rum & Coke (the least colorful drink on the list), a Pearl Harbor (Vodka, Melon Liqueur, and Pineapple Juice), and a Scarlet O’Hara (SoCo and Cranberry Juice). Neither of the last two drinks were very good, but I suppose people order that kind of junk.

Here’s what I’ll say about the course: It’s a lot of fun and very laid back, but had I actually paid two hundred dollars to be in it, I’d probably be upset. The relaxed nature is nice, but had I put good money in, I wouldn’t want that relaxed nature.

One woman seemed to feel the same way. In the question and answers section, she very bluntly asked the people in charge, “what qualifies you to teach this class?” She tried to laugh it off when it was obvious that she was being rude, but nonetheless, the question was out.

The entire Columbia Bartending Agency is student-run, so while they were in fact students, they had gone through the same class and had since tended bar all over the US (and in England), and actually were qualified enough to make the woman look like a fool.

Anyway, I have four more classes, in which I’ll learn all kinds of other things regarding all kinds of other drinks, hopefully some a little more my taste than a Sloe Comfortable Screw (Sloe Gin, SoCo, Vodka, OJ). Evviva!

So technically I still have two outstanding classes which I have yet to attend (Databases is a seminar on Mondays only and the other is explained below) but I’ve attended the bulk of my classes in two days so I figured I’d provide a prediction-rundown similar to last semester.

God, Torah, Israel – The professor seems good; she’s German. The workload seems normal. The class is FULL though, with way too many people, many of whom, if they open their mouth (a risk since it’s a philosophy class) will lead only to annoyance.

Operating Systems – This will be the hardest class I ever take. Unquestionably. But on the other hand it looks like it will be pretty awesome so hopefully I won’t be consumed with the intensity of the course.

Galaxies and Cosmology – The professor is Dutch and wants us to call him by his first name. Also I learned that ‘galaxy’ is Greek for “Milky Way.” So that’s awesome. I think I’m gonna have a fun time in this class.

Advanced Talmud – Another Talmud class with Professor Milgram, so obviously I’m thrilled. The workload is gonna be much more than last semester, which is good as it will separate the wheat from the chaff.

Men & Women in American Jewish Culture – So I won’t actually be taking this class. I attended the first class though, and here’s my thoughts: the readings and content look awesome. Unfortunately, the workload is absolutely ridiculous for and we’re expected to show up during Spring Break.

The Dean of the undergraduate school expects us to show up during Spring Break because it’s a “graduate class.” All this for what basically serves as an elective for me (it fulfills a history requirement for JTS. I can/will fulfill this with one of many other classes in the future.)

No thank you. So I replaced it with Special Topics in Computer Science, which I’ll experience for the first time later today, though in communications with the professor seems like it will be infinitely better and which counts toward my Columbia major.

Saturday night, John and I went to the River Oaks Theatre to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, something we’ve done countless times before. RHPS is always a fun activity, and there’s nothing quite like yelling at a movie with everyone else in the theatre while toilet paper, cards, rice (though not allowed at River Oaks), and other things are thrown around on cue.

I particularly enjoy the Houston RHPS showings because of the number of people who are into the movie, shouting and throwing and generally acting crazy. On the other hand, I’ve been to the New York RHPS numerous times, and each time I’ve been disappointed with the very small number of people who take full advantage of the experience.

Sure, I don’t know every line to yell out, and sometimes I’m bothered when some people’s shouts go on for too long or are too obnoxious, but the experience is much better when it’s overdone than when it’s not done at all. Maybe the issue is that in NYC, there tend to be too many “virgins” (neophytes, in RHPS slang) whereas the crowd at River Oaks is more diverse, with quite a few regulars.

It’s odd because NYC is where the RHPS craze began, yet in my opinion it is done better elsewhere. Finally, I’ve heard of a number of schools hosting RHPS showings, yet no such thing exists at Columbia. It’s too bad, because that would be truly awesome.

On Friday, my family took a trip up to Shiner, Texas, to visit the Spoetzl Brewery, home of Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock, as you may know, will always hold a special place in my heart as my favorite beer. Thus it was a real treat to head up to the little brewery where it all began.

The brewery tour was typical, similar to so many other brewery tours. We saw the (all-copper) lauter tuns and the hoppers and the fermenters. We saw some neat memorabilia including a wooden chair that a previous owner of the brewery had carved from one piece of wood.

Most importantly we got free beer. Among these brews was their latest concoction, Shiner Fröst, a hoppy yet light-colored creation. In addition, I had some Hefeweizen and of course some Bock straight from the source. Delicious.

At this point I’ve come to expect very little in the way of actual touring from brewery tours. I enjoy them immensely (largely because of the beer I get, hence the reason I’ve now been to the Saint Arnold Brewery three times), but ultimately there’s not that much to see at a brewery.

We also stopped in Gonzales, home of the cannon that fired the first shot of the Texas Revolution, and the “Come and Take It” flag that has become synonymous with 1836. There we learned a story of how Texas almost became French.

The trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice to finally make the pilgrimage to Shiner. The beer flowed and may it continue to do so indefinitely. Evviva!

So I upgraded, as the title of this post suggests, to Windows 7 over the past couple days. The process was marvelously simple, especially considering that I had to do a “custom install” as I was going from Vista Ultimate 32-bit to 7 Enterprise 64-bit. I popped in the disc, rebooted, and a couple hours later, everything was running. After transferring my files from the “Windows.old” folder, everything was up and running. Here’s my thoughts of the new operating system:

• Fast. Everything just seems snappier. It could be because I’m now running a 64-bit native system and it can actually address all of my 4 GB of RAM (in fact, this is exactly the reason), but nonetheless everything is faster.
• There’s a lot of eye candy, which doesn’t do much for me, but some of it is actually functional. Aero Peek, for example, is really nice, as is the fact that the Start menu’s application icons allow you to see recent documents created in those applications.
• The “dock-like” behavior of the taskbar is wonderful. Major improvement. Sure, this is blatantly ripped off from OS X, but it’s quite tastefully done and solves one major problem I always had in Vista: applications staying in the same order on the taskbar.
• Apparently there’s better speech recognition. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but it’s next on my list.
• There’s a lot of protection. When I tried to install a driver that was incompatible, Windows alerted me to this fact and sent me to a website with the newer version. Wow.

Overall I’m very impressed. Microsoft clearly did a good job with Windows 7. I was actually a fan of Vista because from an IT standpoint it solves a lot of problems that XP had, but Windows 7 is above and beyond better than Vista ever wanted to be. I’m glad I made the upgrade.

So I’m sick again. I don’t know why but I’ve had more colds in the last three years than the rest of my life combined. Anyway, this one isn’t so bad and it’s already going away. But it does allow me to reflect on what was the growing trend in product design, though thankfully it has subsided a little bit: Minimalism.

My brother went out to the grocery store yesterday and I asked him to pick me up some Orange Juice with pulp. I love pulp. Anyway, when he came back with the box, it had almost no markings on it. “Great Value” is the brand, and “Orange Juice” is in fact what I’d like. The picture of the orange also encourages me. Knowing that the juice is 100%, from concentrate, Kosher, high in Vitamin C, and has no artificial flavors or colors is also nice.

But does it have pulp? Well it’s “Country Style” which apparently means pulpy, according to the Spanish translation, “con pulpa.” But seriously? Does it have to be that difficult? I have to revert to Spanish?

I asked my brother how he figured out which one had pulp. He said he looked at the ingredients. He had to look at the ingredients to determine which product he wanted.

Last year, Tropicana, led by Pepsi’s new campaign, also redesigned their package to be minimalist. There was serious outcry, their sales plummeted, and they eventually changed it back. It was a brouhaha because everyone found the new design to be ‘ugly,’ ‘unhelpful,’ ‘bland,’ or any other number of insulting attributes.

There is no question that this minimalist design is not only an eyesore but also frustrating. “Great Value” failed to convey which box has pulp, and had I been the one doing the purchasing, I would have ignored the confusing packaging and gone straight for the Tropicana, with its less modern packaging, clearly stating “Lots of Pulp.”

Last night, John called me and asked if I’d like to go to this bar called The Ginger Man in the Village (there’s a Village in Houston too. It’s near Rice University, and it’s a lot of fun. Also my eye doctor is there.) I responded in the affirmative, and we headed over there.

The Place

So the bar itself was pretty cool. It’s a beer bar, and their selection is fantastic. First of all, they have seventy-six taps, including one cask-conditioned ale, which was Saint Arnold Elissa IPA. They also have, unlike my favorite NY beer bar, the Pony, an amazingly extensive selection of bottled beers.

Also very awesome is this patio area outside. (Which we could enjoy late in December because of how warm it is, as opposed to the snow-hell I just left behind. I love my city.) It featured long large wooden tables, in such a way that the atmosphere screamed “beer!” I was thrilled.

The Company

So John told me that Frank would be coming as well. What I was not told is that I would also get to see Zach and Poulos. The five of us (friends from High School) reminisced, cracked each other up, and enjoyed our time. After we finished at the Ginger Man, we went next door to a cheap icehouse, “Little Woodrow’s” due to the fact that they had huge Lone Stars for $2.75. You can’t turn down a deal like that.

There’s no way to put it other than that the night was awesome. I’m really thrilled that I’ve been introduced to an amazing beer bar in Houston. Evviva!

A few weeks back, I was watching the Dallas Cowboys game on TV and the commentators announced that before kickoff, the stadium occupants, as well as viewers like myself, were about to see, on the 11,520 sq ft JerryTron, an “Avatar exclusive.” The ‘exclusive’ just turned out to be an extended trailer, but it was cool nonetheless.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time I heard of Avatar: that distinction goes to the “Regal Cinemas FirstLook” piece that I viewed on the film before seeing Inglourious Basterds for the first time, in August.

So it shocked me when I found out that the film isn’t even out yet! It comes out for general release tonight at midnight, yet the advertisements have been going on for half the year! I think it’s safe to say that the world has been oversaturated with Avatar ads. In addition to the JerryTron ad, I’ve also noticed Avatar advertised in a multitude of ways including:

• more “exclusives” between football games (every week on Fox and CBS).
• embedded ads other commercials, such as the new LG phone/projector, which used an Avatar trailer to show how well it projects.
• advertisements for the film from McDonalds and Coca-Cola, who have licensing deals with the movie.

In addition, I’ve been informed that some Fox show called “Bones” included a gimmick which advertised for Avatar, inside of the plot of the TV show!

But it’s not just the US that has to witness this oversaturation. Apparently, the largest billboard ever made for a movie is just outside Mumbai, drawing attention to, you guessed it, James Cameron’s new vehicle. Fifteen countries saw their YouTube taken over by advertisements for Avatar for a day last week.

A healthy amount of advertising is something I can stand. But this has gone too far. Apparently, the production budget for Avatar was $230 million, yet a total of $500 million was actually spent on production and marketing. That means that $270 million is for overhead! More money was spent marketing the film than making it!

I surely hope that Twentieth Century Fox makes back their money, which I’m sure they will, but in the meantime, I don’t plan to give them a red cent for this film. And I do so because no matter what this movie is about, I was annoyed by this advertising oversaturation, and I do not intend to reward the pestering. After all this advertising, I must ask, Avatar: who the hell cares?