ianknox.net

A University can be a strange place to work.

At any university there are a myriad of little communities that appear seemingly out of the ether. I’m not sure why this happens so readily at a university (vs. private companies)– Maybe it’s that people at universities are naturally collaborative and social, maybe they feel put-upon and confused enough by the unnecessarily complex series of systems and groupings that govern the workplace that they band together out of necessity, maybe both.

Regardless I find these little social and professional circles to be pretty interesting and useful, in fact some days they’re the saving grace of what can otherwise become a pretty dull and uninspired job.

About two months ago when I realized that there were quite a number of music fans in my office so one of those little communities was born. Last night was the second meeting of RAWK (Which stands for the rockin at work krew– not my idea). Once a month the five of us meet and each person brings four copies of a favorite obscure album to share with the rest, then we talk about the previous months selections. It’s just like a book club, but it’s four albums a month and we meet at a bar and talk music for hours while drinking sangria. So far, it’s been a resounding success.

Oh and on a semi-related side note This came in from one of those university microcommunities (click on the Relax link). It’s a truly amazing piece of music, download it and give a listen if you have the time. Of course I can never leave well enough alone. That link led to the writer of said song, which led me to songfight.org, a really cool website where each week a group of composers duke it out for audiance approval by writing and recording a song based on a common theme. I know a few song writers who might reallt have some fun with this.
*cough* *Steve* *cough* *Luke*

Last night was the Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright concert (which we dubbed Boofus) out at Ravinia Park. I’ve never been a huge fan of Rufus, but you can’t live in or near Chapel Hill without becoming somewhat of a Ben Folds fan so a few friends and I went out to the park.

The fantastic thing about Ravinia is they allow you to bring any food/wine/beer/whatever with you, it’s like a giant picnic with 10,000 total strangers.

Since I fancy myself an amateur chef I made the spread:

Appetizer:
Champagne crackers
Brie
Fresh green seedless grapes

Soup:
Chilled tomato soup with crab salad & pesto

Salad:
Baby greens salad with balsamic vinegarette infused with thyme

Entree:
Poached salmon with watercress mayonnaise

Dessert:
Far Breton

Wine:
Cheap Italian Pinot Grigio
Cheap Cali. Riesling

My thoughts:
The soup was fantastic although far more difficult than necessary to prepare. Next time I’ll either skip the corn or just steam it, heck I could probably use frozen corn– I doubt I’d notice the taste difference with everything else that’s going on in this dish. I also substituted a mix of hothouse and plum tomatoes for the heirloom tomatoes because I couldn’t find any. I’ve never cooked with good quality sea salt before it really makes things pop, quite tasty!

The Salmon was good although the sauce, which sounds pretty exotic, tasted like a run of the will tartar sauce that someone chopped up watercress into.

The Far Breton was fantastic and extremely easy. The one thing I might experiment with is the fruit, I bet it would have been better with some fresh fruit instead of plums and raisins, maybe rainer cherrys and peaches or something like that. I bet you could do something with an almond/walnut/chocolate thing as well.

I really regret that I didn’t get any pictures. Maybe next time

Ye gods I’ve been busy!

I know I haven’t updated this in a bit but there’s a good reason. I’m currently in rehearsal for a Tantalus Theatre Group play 6 nights a week, 3 hours a night. It’s called Ragnarok and it’s all about the Norse mythology revolving around the end of the world. It’s been a fantastically fun, and extremely exhausting, process so far. If you happen to live in the Chicago area and feel like seeing it goes up February 24th.

As if 6 nights a week wasn’t enough theatre I’m also doing a 24hour theatre piece. 24 people have 24 hours and 24 dollars to create a play from start to finish, writing begins tonight at 9 pm and the show, complete with costumes, sets and lights goes up tomorrow at 9 pm. It’s a joint venture with the Munki Haus and the TTG. Oh, and after the last performance, we’ll party until we fall down. Come and see the show if you can!

So those are my lame excuses why I haven’t updated my blog lately.

Wheee.

The Scifi channel just completed a miniseries which was supposedly based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic children’s books. I always have high hopes for these things but they didn’t pan out at all. The effects were terrible the acting wasn’t the worst but the poor actors struggled with an absolutely terrible script. Not only was the dialog stilted and terribly unnatural, but the writers completely made up a main character, changed the ending and ignored many key elements of what makes Earthsea Earthsea.

Luckily they aren’t going to get away with this travesty unscathed. Le Guin herself has written several articles about how disappointed she was. This one in particular was interesting to me.

It’s just amazing how people can butcher a fairly simple and elegant tale.

So I finally joined the year 2002 and bought a Tivo from my friend Josh for 75 bucks. It’s just an old fashioned series one with a 30 hour recording capacity but I’m loving it!

I have to say I’ve had it two days and I already don’t know what the hell I did without one. It really makes TV something you watch when you feel like it or when you have the time. No more scheduling life around TV (or, as is more often the case, forgoing things I’d like to watch for real life commitments/slackness/forgetfulness).

So far on the season pass list:
The Simpsons
The Family Guy
Futurama
Nip/Tuck
King of the Hill
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
… and about 1/2 a dozen movies I picked out of the browsing list.

One of the most interesting features Tivo has is it trys to guess what kind of show you might like (based on what you have watched/recorded in the past) and if it has the disk space it will record them for you. So far it obviously doesn’t know me very well since it recorded Maury(daytime talk show) and some children’s show called Recess. I think the reason for the strange choices might be because some of the previous owners information is still stored in it’s little head.. but even Josh doesn’t watch children’s shows.

This weekend I plan to install TivoWeb and Tyserver which will let me program my Tivo from anywhere and download all of the shows for burning to DVD. If anyone knows of any other good Tivo hacks let me know and I’ll scope them out.

Oh the geekyness factor is huge ain’t it?

Oh My! It seem that Andres Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is being made into a movie and it’s due out this December.

This has always been one of my favorite musicals, but it’s being directed by Joel Schumacher who hasn’t made a good movie since Falling Down in ‘93 so I’m not getting my hopes up too high.

I had an idea to write up movies, books and albums that I’ve enjoyed over the last few weeks. I’ll try to keep this up to date, we’ll see how well I can stick to it.

Books:
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
A very interesting view of a pair of guys who break into someone’s house and kill the entire family. I’ve always been amazed by Capote’s writing style and once again he doesn’t let me down– fantastic stuff by a truly great writer.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.
The final in a series of books I’ve been reading for the past 5 years. King has been working on them since the 70’s. I have always taken issue with King’s endings but he got it right this time. Not as satisfying as it could have been but still, a good read and a fantastic series overall.

Frank Herbert’s Dune.
A classic. I’ve read it a hundred times and will probably read it a hundred more. It’s a pity the rest of the series aren’t as good as this one is.

Movies:
Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
Who knew Scorsese ever did a comedy starring (among others) Cheech and Chong?! It’s pretty weird, even for an 80’s dark comedy but I dug it. It was recommended to me by my soon-to-be-ex-neighbor Jim, who hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

Music:
Green Day’s American Idiot
I love the Green Day! It’s not cool any more, I know, but I stopped apologizing for my taste in music a long time ago. It’s peppy, poppy , occasionally very long (2 9+ min tracks!), and has all kinds of nifty political and social commentary stuck in between the lines.

I went to see a Korn show at the Aragon Ballroom last Wednesday. Limp Bizkit opened for them. I have to say that fame must be one fickle dame. I saw Limp in front of a crowd of 6 thousand screaming fans a few years ago, the other night they were all but booed off the stage, better luck next time Fred.

JD and Korn on the other hand were outstanding! My only complaint was because it was a weekday concert they only played for an hour and a half tops. Well, that and the fact that the pit was pathetic, but you can’t really blame the band for that.

I’ve been a big fan of Tatsuya Ishida’s online comic strip SinFest for quite some time. He’s been just one of the struggling artistic minions for years. You have to admire the tenacity of someone who’s been rejected by the comic book syndicates 11 times so far and keeps trying. Last Wednesday’s strip was a classic, check it out (along with the rest of his entire body of work) here. Although be careful if you’re at work, while its not graphic it has some slightly mature (or if you want to be technical immature) themes.

Oh, by the way, the website is www.sinfest.NET, don’t go to .com unless yer looking for some mediocre internet porn.

The Spin Doctors were in town this weekend so I went and caught the show. I was quite an affair; I had a blast listening to the music I grew up with. The venue (Sean Kaleys) was just the kind of place to see them. I heard a bunch of the old standards (2 Princes, Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong, Jimmy Olsens BLues, etc) and a bunch of tracks from their forthcoming album. The new tracks sounded good. A little more hard rock influence is on tap for the next disc judging from what I heard last night. I’m looking forward to it.