The Kindness of Strangers

I used to write about nearly every concert I went to, but I stopped several years ago. (So that I won’t forget what I’ve seen, I do keep a list of shows on my computer — 78 thus far since I’ve been in Berkeley. I kind of regret doing only this, because it’s hard to remember details about specific shows, especially if I’ve seen the same band multiple times.) For various reasons, I decided to write one about the Stone Temple Pilots concert I went to last night.

One reason is that STP was one of the most critically underrated bands of the 90s, and it was satisfying to see them at a totally sold-out show. Critics invariably lumped them in with the grunge movement as a poor man’s Pearl Jam, which never made any sense to me. STP arguably are better pop tunesmiths and have a more consistent catalog. Besides, the music sounds totally different.

Another reason is that now my list of “bands I grew up with but never got to see live” has decreased in size by one. Nice!

The final reason is that immediately evoked in me some memories from waaay back when, and I was surprised by their clarity.

• Sitting at a table in Friendly’s (?) in Cheshire with Charles, around 8th grade. Charles took a tape (yes, tape) out of his backpack. It wass Core. “AJ, you have to check this out.” I did.
• Traveling in India with my family. I picked up Purple for 50 rupees, about $2 at the time. I listened to it the whole trip, and my sisters (especially Meera) even started to like it.
• Talking to my neighbor Dave after he saw them live, sometime in high school. “That guy has no knees,” he said about Scott Weiland. (I now know what he means.)
• Playing Rock Band for the first time recently. I was content to use the guitar and drums, but I did choose to sing one song — “Vasoline”.

So how was the show? I’d give it a 7/10. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club opened… eh. STP absolutely slayed on their heavier numbers, like “Wicked Garden” and “Sex Type Thing”. Weiland raved about Berkeley, and even went on a 2-3 minute long pro-Obama rant, which was cool. But the crowd lost some energy in the middle and it took a while took get it back. Luckily, STP has no shortage of monster riffs, which helped. The first encore was, awesomely, “Dead and Bloated”, which features one of the greatest-ever album-opening moments: “I am / smelling like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed…” shouted through a megaphone, followed by an immense riff. The second (at which point I was thinking, “what could they possibly play now?”) was the satisfying “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”. Yeah for 90s rock!

Question of the day: Are there more (a) American-made cars or (b) Priuses in North Berkeley? My informal sampling suggests that they are roughly even.

I’m usually pretty careful (some might say anal) about the meanings of words. For instance, “uninterested” and “disinterested” mean very different things, and “peruse” means the opposite of what most people think it does.

So I was surprised recently to find that “ravel” can mean the same thing as “unravel”. It is similar, in this way, to “bone”/”debone” … but doesn’t it seem like “ravel” should mean the opposite, to “tangle”? Turns out that that’s right, as well. Ravel can assume either definition. It’s an “autoantonym”, a word that has two opposite meanings.

After some googling, I found this great list of autoantonyms. The best part is that you know many of these already; it’s just that your brain is so good at inferring from context that it automatically decides on the contextually-correct meaning and the conflict is rarely apparent. My favorites:

• aught: anything / nothing
• custom: usual; normal / special; unique
• impregnable: impossible to enter / able to be impregnated
• resign: to quit; give up / to sign up again
• shank: latter part of a period of time / early part of a period of time

In case you were wondering.

I think one of the most succinct and illuminating ways to understand how a person thinks is to ask him or her explain the rules of any reasonably complex game to you. If I get a chance later, I’ll try to describe some of the things I’ve observed, but I suggest you just try it out and see for yourself.

So I’m doing this ESPN Tourney Challenge thing. Right now I’m in the 99.6th percentile, above all but 0.4% of entrants. And yet, due the the law of “the internet is frigging gigantic”, I’m still ranked 12199th. How can I feel good about that?

For the first time ever (I think), I just completed the NYTimes Saturday puzzle in under 30 minutes, unassisted.

HOLLERATCHERBOY!

In other news, I might start posting again.

I subscribe to Dish Network for TV. My most recent statement, which arrived today, advertised a new plan called “DishDVR Advantage”. The price is essentially the same as what I pay now (about $1/month cheaper), and you have to switch to paperless statements. Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. However, one benefit caught my eye when I went online to check it out.

This is a good deal: I already pay $20 just for DishHD, so based on this offer it looked like I could get both DishHD and HBO for the same price. So I signed up.

As soon as I finished signing up, it took me to the premium package signup page, where I saw

What gives? I called up Customer Service, and the guy “couldn’t find” the initial page I was on which displayed the promo ad above. Luckily, I had kept a browser tab open to that first page. After 10 minutes of arguing on the phone, I reloaded that page, and it was the same … except that the promo ad had changed! It now looked like this:

I have no idea how that happened, whether the CSR did something to change my plan behind the scenes, or whether there was a site-wide fix at that minute or what. With my evidence on the web gone, I didn’t have a leg to stand on so I had to hang up. Luckily I was able to save all the images involved to my computer, just to show how crazy and sleazy the whole thing was. Even the names of the image files on the DISH servers were “AT100wDishHD.gif” and “AT100noDishHD.gif”, respectively. I kid you not. Explain this to me.

I never owned a digital camera until 2004, and since then I’ve only owned one. But I’ve owned it four times.

The first time, I did a massive amount of research online and came up with a relatively obscure camera, the Minolta G400, that seemed to have a holy grail of properties: excellent picture quality, fast startup time, relatively small size, superb battery life, a decent optical viewfinder. And it was dirt cheap: around $200 at the time. So I snatched it up. Here it is:

Over the next couple of years, I carried it with me everywhere, and it was a champ. It performed as advertised and made me start looking at everything from the perspective of “What would be a good shot here?” Of course, this constant usage led to some troubles:

Camera #1: Dropped it after taking a picture at the top of mountain while skiing in Tahoe. Hit my shoe, cracked the LCD. Had to send it in for repairs (or what seemed like replacement).
Camera #2: Fell out of my bag while jumping a fence after playing some pickup ultimate. Came back 10 minutes later and it was gone. Submitted an insurance claim and used the money to buy the same camera again.
Camera #3: After another year or so of constant usage and getting beat up in my backpack, the CCD finally gave up the ghost. Pictures were heavily banded. By this time, Minolta had stopped making digital cameras altogether. I suppose this was because they were too good. I searched around for a better camera (figuring that I might as well keep up with the times) but found nothing that had comparable features in the same price range, even 3 years later. Solution: I hit up eBay and got a used G400.
Camera #4: Turns out the reason the guy was selling it was that it was busted and couldn’t focus properly (though he failed to mention this during the auction!) I sent it back and gave up.

That was over 6 months ago. In the meanwhile I’ve tried to use other people’s cameras but I invariably give up halfway through with a bad taste in my mouth. Either the picture quality is terrible (so common in subcompacts these days) or the shutter lag is interminable, or something. So I’ve hardly taken any pictures since then. I’ve also debated buying a DSLR but ultimately decided against it because of the cost and the fact that I like having a camera that fits in my pocket and allows me to take some spontaneous pictures.

Now my mourning period is finally over, though. I’ve stopped wearing black, and I’ve just ordered a new camera, the Canon SD850 IS, which I hope will be a worthy successor. In the meanwhile, here are some of my favorite pictures from the G400 days. (There are many portraits that I love as well, but I haven’t selected them to protect the innocent.) Tell me your favorite!

So you’ve read the last Harry Potter book, and you think it makes sense? Then answer me this…
Spoiler and plot hole follow…