Blather and Nonsense

It's official

The Cupertino Stacey's bookstore is going out of business, so I invited some colleagues to come with me this afternoon and pick through their remaining merchandise. All of the remaining merchandise was 40% off, which was of course an ill omen for my checkbook. Twenty minutes later I walked out the door with The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop, American Ground by William Langewiesche, and... Biochemistry, Fourth Edition by Lubert Stryer. I always used to wonder what kind of person would buy something like a biochem textbook for fun. Now I know: a huge dork.

It's a good thing they didn't have any decent technical books left.

Twenty-four

Happy birthday to me.

Typespotting

Seeing Catch Me If You Can shortly after Christmas made me curious as to what fonts were used for the pseudo-Saul Bass opening credits. Thanks, then, go to several readers of Typographica who report that the fonts used are Coolvetica and FF Zapata (or some derivation thereof). Interestingly enough, the former face could have easily been mistaken for Chalet New York 1980 were it not for the lowercase A's, which would have to have been lifted from New York 1960, and a miscellany of minor discrepancies.

Creeps

For any of my devoted readers who might be curious as to the lyrics to Massive Attack's "Inertia Creeps" (found on Mezzanine), the word is "eiderdown," not "eidertown," as it is clearly an example of metonymy as pertains the narrator's bed. Heck, "eidertown" isn't even a real word. That is all.

Safari dorkage

I'm really just posting this link as a note to myself since it's not available here anymore. The reader is suggested to look away lest he or she draw any conclusions as to my own level of dorkiness.

Just a sample

DJ Touché's rendition of Milton Jackson's "Incidental" on the Journeys by DJ album Ultraviolet was driving me moderately crazy this afternoon: at about 1:58 into the track was the first of many repetitions of a very familiar sample. The mix itself was quite tasty, the only problem being that I couldn't remember where the sample was from.

The liner notes mentioned that a sample was taken from Lalo Schifrin's "Danube Incident" from Mission: Impossible and after some rummaging I was able to verify that as the sample in question, but I knew I was thinking of another song. After some minutes and a very fortuitous Google search, I had it figured out and cued up my copy of Portishead's hauntingly beautiful "Sour Times" (found on Dummy).

And that is how I solved the case of the Mysterious Sample That Was In Fact Another Sample.

Apologies

I'm sorry, not only for that whole first post nonsense, but for 2002. To the latter I cordially submit: don't let the door hit you on your way out. After I waste a few checks by accidentally writing the wrong year on them, I think I'm going to like this 2003. I mean, I've got the whole thing wrapped up already. I even said the word "bunny" first thing when I woke up this morning, so I've got nothing but good luck coming my way. Even if you didn't do the same, I hope your 2003 is as fabulous as mine.

First post

w00t!