Ultranormal

  • The World’s Largest Banyan Tree

    The second set of photos from Saturday are up. This set contains the first pictures of monkeys!!

    update: I’ve put up the stuff from the bird sanctuary as well. This one has the crocodile photos in it!

  • Watch Veronica Mars

    Tomorrow night, Tuesday, June 14, on UPN the Veronica Mars pilot you have all been waiting for – check it out!! Set your TIVOs, DVRs, VCRs, or just mark it on the calendar. It is a great show, one not to be missed.\
    The following night, Wednesday, June 15, UPN will air another episode. Wheeeeeeeee. Enjoy the ride, folks!

  • Home, Safe and Exhausted

    I can’t go into it now, because I can’t think straight, much less describe the past (what is it) 36 hours. But, we made it home safe and sound. 18 hours in the air, 4 or 5 more in airports, and some time in cars, and we made it back halfway around the world to our homes and families.\
    I’ll tell you all about it after 18 hours of sleep, a couple showers and a pizza. In the meantime, you can check out the first set of photos from Saturday. There are a ton more. That’s just on the way to the first stop… the world’s largest banyan tree. I won’t even start with the crocodiles until after I get pizza and sleep.\
    G’night. I’m glad to be home.

  • Dear Indian Megaphone Guy

    It’s 11:20pm. Enough with the megaphone already. Whatever it is, it can wait till morning. And last night? That was no fun either. I mean, can I come to your house with a megaphone tomorrow night? Would you like that? People are trying to sleep here. Did I mention is was 11:20 (now 11:21)?\
    Yeah, I’m running out of travel-juice. Training folks takes a lot of energy. Sitting, white-knuckled, while our fighter pilot driver takes us 45 minutes each way every morning and every night through the craziest traffic I have ever seen or heard of really takes it out of me too. Breathing in the exhaust from motor rickshaws that illegally mix kerosene into their gas to save money isn’t helping my asthma. Did you know that there are 80 times more traffic fatalities in India than in the US? I do, and now I know why.\
    Ok, enough with the complaining. The Indian people are great. They’re fun, nice and smart. They’ve made this trip enjoyable, even with the deathrace every morning.\
    I still just want to go home. It’s been two weeks. That’s long enough to be away.

  • Welcome to India

    We got to India early Sunday morning (1am), after nine and a half hours from Frankfurt. We made our way through customs, then out to the hotel’s car through a downpour. It was hard to get a sense of the place at night, other than after the sun goes down, apparently all the traffic laws go away (along with the stoplights).\
    The hotel is very nice, although I’m still not used to a place where you can’t drink the water. The room is stocked with bottled water, and I’m sure I’m paying for every drop of it.\
    This morning (Monday), we made our way to the office by taxi. I have never seen a place where lanes and lights are almost completely ignored. The roads are jammed with smoke-belching three wheeled rickshaws, scooters, buses and taxis. It’s a mess, and I’m surprised we didn’t see any accidents.\
    Crossing the street is also an adventure… you have about 15 seconds to make it across a lane before the oncoming smoke-belchers run you down. There are no lights, no warnings, and no crosswalk. It’s everyone for themselves.\
    Unfortunately, it’s that way on the sidewalks as well. I tripped in a pothole on the way to the office, and I think I’ve sprained my right ankle pretty good.\
    Some interesting tidbits:

    • Washington D.C. (76 degrees west) is almost exactly on the other side of the world from Bangalore (77 degrees west).
    • Geographically, we’re about even with Panama, The Sudan and Ethiopia
    • This is my first trip to Asia.
    • This is the farthest south I’ve ever been (we’re at 13 degrees north, D.C. is at 39).
    • We’re farther south that Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
    • We’re in Karnataka.
    • There were 80,000 traffic deaths in India in 2000, compared with 1,093 in the U.S.
    • You can read more about Bangalore at Wikipedia\
      So yeah, I think I can say at this point that I’d much rather be in France.

  • Jen Joins The Fun

    Now that I’ve kind of got Jen to join the fun here, I figured I needed to find a way to show when a post was written by Jen, and one that was written by me. I’ve always had the “posted by Kevin” thing at the bottom, but that’s at the bottom. So, I’ve added a class to the entry body, so posts by Jen are orange, and posts by me are blue. I may change that, and do it in a less-obtrusive way (I don’t really like background colors other than white for text, but I’m going to try this out for a little while).\
    In other news, avoid malaria pills and the typhoid oral vaccine if you can. I don’t know which one is to blame (and it could be something else entirely), but I’m not feeling so hot at the moment. I’ll spare you the details.

  • Jen’s Ode To Veronica Mars

    Blogging note– I begged, pleaded, and promised Kevin sex if he would let me post this here. And what do you know, he agreed. So, Jen, not Kevin, writes this.\
    A love letter to Veronica Mars and a plea for you to watch it. Reruns of Veronica Mars will be airing starting in mid-June on UPN. I know, UPN, insert joke here. Seriously though, Veronica Mars is without a doubt the best-written and well-acted show in the last ten years.\
    Veronica is a former-popular-cheerleader-turned-outcast trying to solve her best friends murder. It is a season long mystery that gives a little all along the way. I beg you, if you watch, stay away from spoilers and forums on the internet. You dont want to be spoiled about the mysteries. I was positive I knew who had done it and positive I knew who hadnt done it. Of course, I was wrong. The best part, the mysteries (there are about 5 big ones) are wrapped up by the end of the finale. It is obvious the storylines were planned before the season started, unlike some shows that make it up as they go. Because the summer season is shorter than the regular season, some of the episodes are going to be skipped. I suggest you check out the Couch Barons recaps at Television Without Pity for the episodes that are being skipped.

    • The writing:
      • Written by smart people, for smart people.
      • Nice combination of over the top (“you got a trophy for a rim job?” Yes that aired on network tv) and subtle (no example, I dont want you to be spoiled.)
      • Continuity heaven (too many examples to list, watch for them yourself.)
    • The music selection is top-notch too. It deserves its own section, but I am not gonna. Just know that it is wonderful.
    • The cast:
      • Acting is the best all around.
      • Chemistry to spare! (Check out Lamb, Logan, and Weevil in particular. Just for the record, I want to punch Lamb in the face every time I see him.)
      • Kristen Bell (Veronica) is a super star in the making.
      • Jason Dohring (Logan) absolutely deserves an Emmy.
      • Harry Hamlin (Aaron) is wonderful! Who thought they would read that ever? Every single scene he delivers the goods, baby.
      • Teddy Dunn (Duncan) has been getting a bad rap. Watch the season, then watch it again. He probably has the hardest part in the show.
      • Percy Daggs (Wallace) was strained in the beginning, but finally settled into a groove about midway through the season.
    • The extras are nice to watch also, especially in the later episodes. It is obvious they are the stars of their own life, not just backdrop. Props to whoever is in charge of them\
      While the show isn’t perfect, it is the best thing on. It took until the latter part of the season for it to become appointment television for me. So, watch it, give it some time, and then come to love it.

  • Driving Songs

    This year on Top Gear, they’re doing a write-in survey of the best driving songs of all time. Since I love lists, and I love thinking about lists, I decided to give it a shot. This is the seriously jet-lagged malaria-pill-induced-hysteria list, so I reserve the right to look at this list in a couple days, call myself a tool, and redo it.\
    Before I bust out the list, let’s review what makes a good driving song. First, I’ll tell you what it isn’t – a good coding song. They’re two different things. Coding songs put you in a zonked out place where you can code without getting outside yourself – it pulls you into yourself. A driving song heightens everything. It makes you do everything a little crisper: accelerate, turn, brake, check your mirrors, etc. It also doesn’t have to be about driving… Anyway, here’s the list in no particular order (and feel free to add your own):

    • Busy Child – Crystal Method
    • Born To Be Wild – Steppenwolf: Duh, come on… this is the original and still king of driving songs.
    • Saturday Morning – Eels: Often blaring when Max and I go out to breakfast on Saturday mornings.
    • Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel: Actually, the whole second disc of Secret World could be in this spot, but I said songs, not albums, right?
    • Back in Black – Living Colour: The AC/DC version will do in a pinch, but I love the Living Colour cover. It’s balls out, no kidding around, and Corey Glover just runs away with it (you know, actually singing instead of screaming).
    • Cowgirl – Underworld: Pick your remix, doesn’t really matter. This song kicks so much ass, it needs a list of its own (you could probably easily do a top ten Cowgirl remixes).
    • I See You Baby – Groove Armada: See Cowgirl, all the same things apply. The remix from Boom is especially good.
    • Communication – INXS: Good piano riff, good guitar riff, and Michael Hutchence at his finest. Oh, and meaningless lyrics, which is a plus for any good driving song.
    • The Mango Song – Phish: A bonus feature for driving songs is length… the longer, the better. Six and a half minutes is just about perfect, and this song nails it. It’s not the hardest song on this list, but it flows so well it’s just a sublime driving song.
    • Short Skirt/Long Jacket – Cake: Cake could run over this list if I really thought about it (see malaria-pill-induced-hysteria). For driving albums, they could have the top two or three spots, easily. This song is my favorite. It has catchy lyrics, and a hook to die for. Oh, and rock trumpets kick balls, man (it’s like kicking ass, but it does it head on).\
      An honorable mention goes to Junior Senior for both Move Your Feet and Shake Your Coconuts (a song that needs more mash-ups, come on interweb!). I’m sure there are more, but it’s time for petit dejeuner (hooray, breakfast!).

  • Disconnects

    Good (early) morning from the sunny Cote D’Azur! I’m up at an ungodly hour unable to get back to sleep, so I thought I’d fill you in on where I am, where I’m going and how many miles it’s going to take to get there. I figured it out yesterday, and including my flights to get here, I’ll be flying over 18,000 miles in the next two weeks (hello Premier status!). That’s over a thousand miles a day. You’re probably saying to yourself, “But, Kevin, it’s only about 4500 miles each way to France from the States,” and you’d be right. I’m not just going to France. On Saturday morning, I leave for even sunnier (although right now it’s apparently raining) Bangalore, India. I’ve had more shots than I can count, am taking the Typhoid vaccine by mouth, and just too my first anti-malarial pill.\
    Back to the flying. 18,400 miles adds up to thirty-eight hours in the air. That’s a lot of poorly censored movies, reading, and peanuts. I watched Sideways on the plane before unsuccessfully trying to sleep, and wow… I couldn’t help laughing at how poorly they bleeped it. It was distracting to say the least. I actually heard Thomas Haden Church say, on more than one occasion, “That’s bubblefish!” Couldn’t they at least have put in “bull hooey”, or “bovine nonsense”?\
    Right now, I’m watching Phoenix and San Antonio, with French announcers. Wow. It feels weird. It’s the only place I’ve heard the French throw in a lot of English phrases (all Sportscenter-lite exclamations). I love being in Europe, for just that reason. I love seeing how cultures overlap, languages overflow, and how unbelievably comfortable everyone is with it. On the short flight from Munich (awesome airport, by the way) to Nice, the flight attendant spoke almost accentless English, superb French, and her native German. She switched between the three effortlessly (it appeared so, anyway). I so wish that we paid that much attention to language in the US. I feel so lost when I come here. My French is pretty bad, but I can get by. It feels like most Europeans, though, could do just fine in the States. I know, a good deal of the English absorption in Europe comes from all the TV, music and movies we send over, but still. It takes more than that. It’s taught in schools very early on, and people learn more than one language their entire educational careers. We only have to take three years in high school, which is really only enough to scratch the surface. It’s not enough to be comfortable with a language in a “native” way, or even close.\
    I know that’s not likely to change, especially with programs being cut left and right from public schools. If we can’t even handle teaching art, music or p.e., how can we handle teaching a language in K-12? I would love to see it though. Could you imagine if we taught Spanish (the “gateway drug” of Latin languages) from first grade on? How much better equipped would we be to handle the new multi-lingual America, and be more comfortable traveling the world?\
    It’s about time to start getting ready for my hike over to the W3C, well, after my petit dejeuner (I love that phrase – literally “little lunch”, but it’s really breakfast! language, I love it!), and some more Basketball a la Francaise.

  • Bookmark Now!

    I don’t pretend that I’m a writer, and that’s probably a good thing. Apparently, being a writer is both hard work, and the easiest thing in the world. I just finished Kevin Smokler’s new book, Bookmark Now. A collection of essays about reading and writing in the internet age, it’s a fascinating look into the minds of writers, an interesting examination of modern publishing, and a big sloppy wet kiss to the internet from young(ish) writers from all over.\
    There are some brilliant essays here, and the entire book presents an overriding theme of hope for writing, reading, and all the stuff in the middle. My personal favorites were the pieces by Dan Kennedy, Adam Johnson and Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith (they wrote the crown jewel of that section). They were all from the same section of the book: The Writing Life. Each of them gave a little glimpse into the process of a writer, not only how they see the world, but how they attack writing, how they deal with setbacks and criticism.\
    As someone who’s always toying with the idea of writing a book, this book was a good chunk of inspiration to put towards that goal. If you’re at all interested in reading or writing, you’ll get a kick out of Bookmark Now.