Caesar's Palace - Celine Dion

Celine Dion is not exactly at the top of my list of "singers I push the scan button in my car and hope to hear." Still, she's got pipes and I do like some of her songs. Somehow, DB knows people. I don't ask, he just does. he got us in for a private tour of Caesar's Palace where Celine does her show. The tour was a technical one. It was given by the front of house guy and I think a staging director. This was a very enlightening tour. I enjoyed it very much. What I enjoyed the most was when at the end they played a couple of cuts from her DVD they'll be releasing this fall. They cranked up the system, displayed the unmixed, and unedited show on the big stage screen and I could hardly stand it. The sound was amazing. A 5.1 room with truly enveloping sound. Five million dollars worth of sound system had better sound that good! It did. Her voice was strictly mixed to the center while everything else was left/right/sub and rear channels mostly for delay and fx. We got to see the show later that night. It was very enjoyable. She holds nothing back, and gives it her all. I took a lot of pictures on the tour and I thought I'd share them along with a few comments.

Here's the huge poster outside the theater.


Here's the front of house position. It's a digital board, of course, and it is linked to a Pro Tools rig where sound effects and other tracks are mixed with the live performance. Plus they record many but not all of the shows. This is useful for new musicians and substitute dancers to learn the material without a rehearsal.


Up the stairs and off of stage left is the monitor mixing area. The rack unit in the back is all for Celine's voice. It travels with her. If she sings at the Grammy's or something, it goes with her to keep her sound consistent. It is entirely analog. Behind it is the wireless director. Yes, wireless director. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of that, they don't want the frequencies getting out!


This is a shot of the stage and front of the house seats from just around the corner of the monitor desk.


A picture of the house from the "cheap seats." I believe they cost around $75/show. You can see the Front of House position. We got to sit in the row behind it for the show that night. Those seats were a little more than $75!


Another picture, showing the hight of the room. It seats just over 4000 people. They consistently put over 95% capacity in each night.


Now, walking around the back, here is the a spot and the area where the director and light controls sit.


This is the directors spot. Nothing to fancy but the funny thing about this, and the reason I took the picture is the monitor on the left. It is a static stage view that has sharpie outlines on the screen. The rectangles show where the trap doors on the stage are. This way, they know not to open it until it is clear of a stray dancer.


Now we're on the catwalks. Access to a lot of interesting stuff. Here we're above the stage looking down at the front. We're 90+ feet up!


And another view of the grid. It took a minute for me to feel secure walking around up there!


Up above the stage now, this is a swing that is lowered from way above the stage during a show. There are three of them and three girls descend from the ceiling in the middle of the song, come all the way down to the floor and start swinging. Then they're pulled back up by the end of the song. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it.


Now we're up a level above the previous pictures. It's dark up here so these pictures aren't the best. What you're seeing is a web of cables that run all the curains and props that open, close, move across the stage, etc. The are attached to....


...these motors. I think they said there were forty of them on each side of the stage.


If you have an event at Caesar's and you want to broadcast or record it, here's where you come and plug in. We're down under the stage now. To our right are load-in doors. The problem is, they made the loading dock too small and obstructed so no one can use these hookups.


And here's the Green Room. It is set up differently for Celine than for Elton John, who does Monday/Tuesday shows, and different again for someone else who may come in. Jerry Seinfeld was coming in soon after we were there. Now THAT would have been fun.


Of course, the Green Room isn't so green...


The door next to the green room houses the brains of the digital FOH board and this Pro Tools recording rig. They record 84 channels. Notice the modified G5 at the bottom.


This is an area back stage where the dancers can practice. Not a lot of room, but they make the best of it. They have exercies and warm up equipment in there too.


What we're looking at here are special effects areas. Not that interesting below stage, but here you can see where stairs and a tree are "stored" before they are "launched" up onto stage.


It's hard to see, but we're under the stage looking at the front seats from the bass player's position. The bass player can view the stage only through the mesh in the steps. In fact, the drummer, guitar players, and keyboard players all play under the stage. They are revealed in the show via a back light so that the audience can see them vaguely through the mesh.

One interesting thing is that the players under the stage cannot see the piano player/conductor, so they're fed his image on a closed-circuit TV. Each player can also tap a switch with his foot and talk with the director or any other musician if there is a problem.


They use "real" drums and electronic drums.


It's hard to tell what this is, but this is an aux perc stage that is cabled to the ceiling. It comes down from above stage during the show, some one plays on it, then it returns back above.


And finally, the hats, with "Dion" labeled in the middle.

Eating Some More- Las Vegas, Day 3

We have needs. We have to eat. Where to go. Someone decided we were going to "New York, New York." here's a picture of the hotel. It's a miniature Manhattan skyline, complete with the statue of liberty.

Parking is free everywhere you go on the strip. Valley Parking is free as well. You tip the guy a buck when you leave the car, tip him a buck when he brings it back. OK, it's not free, but it's very convenient.

Once inside New York, NY, we were very surpised to see once again...ANOTHER casino! Notice the New York Skyline. The shops in the mall area were made to look like you were walking down the street in the city. (but nicer)

Here is the restaurant we ate at. Called, as you can see "America." Pretty good food.

This was on the wall behind us. A map of the whole U.S. with little icons representing each region. I couldn't fit the whole thing in one shot. Sorry.

For some reason, we had on-going "bets" all week. I think Kimsu started this one. "Eric, for $5 drink this whole container of green chunky salsa." A few others threw another $10 into the pot. He did it, but he said it ruined his dinner.

Where else can you go from New York to Paris in just a few steps? Only in Vegas, I guess.

I can't remember where this was (can someone help me?). It reminded me of the mummer's parade, excpet there where not floats. Everything was made out of flowers. Pretty creative.

I'm famous

Thanks to my friend Jason who pointed this out and sent this highlighted picture, I have learned that I appear on Apple's web site. How cool is that? This is a picture of Tim and me trying to connect to the internet in the "Apple Lounge." All we could do was connect to the router, but the internet was down. Dumb.

Anyway, for those of you keeping score at home, this is my 100th post. Kind of pathetic since I've been running this for about a year and a half.

NAB, Days 2 and 3

Some of the things on display at NAB are things like helicopters, TV news trucks, big satellite dishes, and a big ultra-def theater. But my favorite thing was the sports truck. All the gear is actually in a trailer. It's the truck that shows up at a sporting event that is a self-contained television studio. Baseball games are broadcast this way, as well as football, hockey, you name it. This particular trailer was evidently most recently used for golf.

If you've ever taken the time to watch golf on TV, you may have noticed that as soon as you watch one guy put a ball in, they immediately take you to someone else on the tee, then to someone else in the fairway, then, someone else getting out of the bunker.

This is all monitored and scheduled for broadcast in this truck. It was kept very cool, by the way...

Tim may be the only person I know of who could actually sit down and know how to run this stuff. Don't worry, he's just pretending!

Here are all the preview monitors.

This is the audio mixing desk. The mixer was actually able to monitor and mix in 5.1 surround. Ahead of him (out of the frame) is a window that allows him to look into the main room where the producer/director sits.

On Wednesday, Tim and I met up with Neil who wanted to see an IPTV presentation. He is doing work on that at his company and so he wanted to see how other companies are using the technology.

So let me try to help set the stage. Most of the people who attended this tech conference were men. But many of the presenters were young, attractive women. I had no idea so many women were involved in the tech industry. Well, I'm a little slow.

This young lady is giving this slick presentation. She is representing a company who provides content and servers to companies like Time Warner, or Bellsouth. Companies that can combine content and on demand TV, telephone, internet, and wireless. The idea is that you may be sitting in your living room watching something but then need to leave to go somewhere. Using your mobile device, you can pick up where you were in your living room and continue to watch the show on your hand held. Pretty nifty. The presenter was going through this, showing simultaneous broadcasts of msnbc on both the large screen and the PDA.

I was intrigued by this, and after the presentation I began asking Neil a lot of questions about it. So he asked the presenter if we could see the PDA. We wanted to know if it was proprietary. It turns out it was, though it was running the microsoft handheld OS. I wanted to see it stream the video to it and see what other channels were available. "Sure," she said, handing me the device. "Let me know if I can answer anything for you."

So I started playing with it. I didn't want to just watch msnbc so I pushed a button that I thought would take me to a menu to view other channels. Oops. I did something. Couldn't get the channels back. I wasn't too worried, she obviously knew what she was talking about, she could reset it for her next presentation.

Oops, the device is in French (just like the GPS display on Chuck's rental, but that's another story), and she doesn't have any idea how to fix it. She plays with it for a while and as it becomes more and more obvious that she can't navigate the device any better than I can, some things come out about her.

It turns out she's just the face for the company at that presentation. She really didn't know anything about the product, what it did, how it worked or anything. She was slick, she pushed the remote at the right time, navigated the menu correctly, but outside of the presentation she was clueless. In fact, she had a little cassette recorder with an earpiece in one of her ears that actually had a recording of someone reading the script. She just repeated it to everyone. So she was about a second behind what she heard on the tape and had the ability to stop it and start it as she needed. She said that they had just completed the script two days before the show started and didn't have enough time to memorize it.

As I thought back to other presentations I saw, it began to make sense. All the smart tech guys were there to answer your detailed questions about the product, and interact with other geeks, but many of the presenters were not only not with the company, they probably didn't even know half of what the stuff they were presenting did! (In most cases, we didn't really mind).

Where to Eat? LV Day 2

I know, I'm behind on my posts. As I have mentioned, my internet options are very limited. It is so unbelievable, and ironic, even, that the one place where the greatest concentration of tech minds are gathered, internet is scarce or unavailable all together. But don't get me started. I'm paying $10.99 for a 24 hour internet connection right now so I'm squeezing in all I can. We leave for home tomorrow, my internet runs out in about an hour, so I'm going to try to get this post off before I run out of time!

We flew in on Saturday night, technically that was day 1. Sunday was our first full day, however, so day 2 was Tuesday and here are some pictures and commentary of places we went, ate, and explored. Janet's probably right, people like pictures, so here are some pictures...

Where we ate Monday night.

A picture of something, not sure what, on the strip.

Inside the Venetian.

DB and Neil waiting for a romantic gondola ride.

Yeah right, notice the price!

Good ensemble--nice gig! playing to....

....these people. Notice the sky on the ceiling.

Rafael would be proud!

NAB Day 1

It is really hard to describe how big this thing is. For anyone who has ever been to the LV Convention Center, you will have a pretty good idea when I tell you that it consumes the North, Central, South lower and South upper Halls, plus the Hilton across the parking lot, where I believe a few keynotes and things like that are being delivered.

We started off the day heading straight for the Apple display, where they were demoing the release of Final Cut 2. A very impressive demonstration of the power and intuition of the video editing software. Actually, they've bundled several software items into that one package so it's pretty impressive. The rest of the day was spent watching a few demos of various software and hardware products from companies such as Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc. High Def stuff, displays, cameras, it's all kind of overload. At lunch, after having wondered around for a while by myself, Tim asked me what I thought. I answered that I was somewhere between overwhelmed and bored.

The Apple Final Cut 2 Presentation

Neil's jaw was perpetually dropped open as cool new feature after feature was revealed.

We are here as a team primarily to research SAN server information so that we can hopefully set up a high capacity video editing server that can be shared over fiber and edited on several work stations. It has been very interesting to be on a lot of these conversations of discovery and planning. I've learned a lot so far.


These pictures were taken on the stairs halfway between the upper and lower South Halls. One, looking left, one looking right. I can't even show the full size of the hall with these shots. Take what you see and multiply it by four, plus some things outside, which I'll show tomorrow.

The Dam Tour

Here are some things I didn't know about Hoover Dam:

It is 760 feet tall.



It straddles the boarder of Nevada and Arizona.


It was built during the depression.



It has smaller generators that provide the power needed to run the dam itself.

Ninety-Six people "officially" died while building the dam. Those were official government numbers of people who died on site. The distinction is important since those (in the hundreds) who died in the ambulence or at the hospital later on were not counted in the official government numbers, nor were their families awarded government compensation for their losses.


It provides electricity for parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada.



Where we were in the generator room, behind us, there was 450 feet of concrete between us and Lake Mead at a depth of 300 feet!

Here the guys are looking at some fish in the lake.

Church in Vegas

Part of the reason for coming to Las Vegas the day before the NAB show started was to have an opportunity to go to a church. The cool thing was that we had [almost] our whole music programming and media staff with us (we had to leave some behind to run the ship! (thanks Mike and Nathan!)

The church we decided to go to is a larger church by attendance. The Church's name is Central Christian. It is located off a major highway and finding it didn't seem to present too many problems. We were able to go to first time visitor's parking right up by the building. It looked like regular attenders had to park in the "dust" parking lot, which was really just a cleared dirt area. There's plenty of dirt here.



The service began about ten to fifteen minutes ahead of the scheduled start time with a couple of praise songs led by the worship band. The band featured a leader playing acoustic, an electric lead, an electric rhythm player, a bass player, drummer, B-3/keyboard guy (who also doubled as a vocalist), a "front" female (soprano), plus to "back" vocals, two guys and another girl, who was covering alto. So all together, there were four guys and two girls, vocally.



From a technical standpoint, the look was outstanding. It should come as no surprise that a church in the Las Vegas area who wants to push the presentation envelop not only has plenty of resources to draw from in terms of expertise, but also is uniquely aware of what is possible. Walking into the room, you're greeted with a techno-idustrial look, house lights way down, a blue look on the stage, and a sense that something was about to happen.

The house presentation featured four front screens. Two on the off-stage outside provided I-mag and song lyric content, while the screens on the stage in the background provided visual effects, complemented by the LED display installed in symmetrical fashion in the back ground. The visual coordination and feel and look of the stage was nice.



One of the things that frustrate many churches is the ability to mix sound in a large room. This room was no exception. From what I remember, there was a great deal of low end, which is great. There was plenty of bass, but as you continued on up the frequency spectrum, the clarity diminished severely. The lead voice was always pushed out front, but secondary voices were hard to pick out. We watched all morning as the B-3 player worked and worked on his instrument, but we never once heard it. OK--I heard it once. Literally, once.

The players were having a great time, they were all connected musically to one another by IEMs which meant that they each probably had the sound in their ears exactly the way they wanted it.

So the "sermon" was presented as an interview between the senior pastor and someone I had never heard of, "Dog, the Bounty Hunter." He apparently has a big show on A&E where he, as a former felon, is tasked with hunting down other wanted criminals.

He came across as being somewhere between a WWF wrestler and a NFL running back. Cocky, self-assured, but articulate, a good story teller, and larger than life. He conveyed to all of us from Providence a vague understanding of God. He did this by acknowledging any good thing that happened in his life seemed accidental or fortuitous at best, as being directed by God somehow--with the help of his "crazy" praying, Christian mother.

What frustrated me was that the pastor did nothing to steer the conversation toward Christ. We brought our Bibles, but never once cracked them open, even the music, as slick as it was, tended toward pronoun-centricity, never rich with theology, never a hint, really, of theology. Here was a church who had thousands of people attend over five weekend services, and they all heard exactly the same thing: God (or the big guy upstairs, as "Dog" referred to him) has got your back.

When the interview was over, and the guest accepted the cheers and adoration of the "congregation," there came from the senior pastor an inexplicable offer to pray a prayer of salvation by repeating after him. There was no context for it, it just seemed perfunctory and out of no where.

So here's the question: Is this all a problem? Really?

The lady beside me repeated after the pastor to receive Christ. Did she? Who did she come for? "Dog," or Christ? Is it ok to lure the entertainment-centric Vegas community in with something fun to then say, "oh yeah, don't forget about Jesus...?"

Can we use any means possible to bring people into a church, entertain them, show them a glimpse of Christ, then hope they desire it for some reason, and plead with them after they've shown interest to join a small group where they'll really grow?

Are we comfortable in saying that we need a guy like "Dog the Bounty Hunter" to show up at our church because we don't believe the gospel alone is sufficient enough nor powerful enough to attract people?

Day 1 In Las Vegas

Welcome to Las Vegas

What am I doing in Las Vegas? NAB. But along the way, we're checking out a few other cool things.

Immediately off the plane, we were greeted with the most common thing seen around here. This is right inside the gate!



I wondered around the casino in the hotel we're staying in and tried to figure out the roulette table. I saw a great deal of money exchanging hands, mostly in the form of chips. The chips represented a dollar each. We're not staying in a high-stakes hotel. However, I saw one guy drop two Ben Franklin's on Red. $200 in the hopes that the little ball would end up on something red, not black or green. It landed on black. He lost $200. Sorry.

I watched another guy feed a $100 bill into a $0.25 slot machine. I thought to myself, "oh, this oughta last for a while."

He was done in less than 90 seconds. Apparently, you can bet in several multiples of the original twenty-five cents, as well as all sorts of variations related to which line everything will stop on. Kinda weird.

As far as the city, it's odd. Surrounded by mountains, clearly in the desert, it seems a bit out of place. I thought it was interesting how the pyramid hotel, the one with the light shining out of the top of it straight up into the sky can be seen from just about anywhere in the area (I know, that's the whole idea!) I took a picture of the light, kinda cool.



Oh, and the stretch hummer. That was here at our hotel.



More will be coming as I get a chance. I am surprised and fairly disappointed with our hotel. It's like staying at an airport. And it's one of the least expensive ones around. I heard it's like a ghetto compared to some of the other high-end casino/hotels here. You not only pay for everything, you pay extra for everything. Two big examples: There is a safe in our room. Nice, right? Well, you have to put two quarters in per use. What?

Second: Internet access. Wireless? Oh yeah, it's there, nice and strong signal, but what? We have to pay $10.99 per 24 hour period for the privilege to us it. I haven't given in to that yet. I am using a free Wifi louge here at the convention center. More on that later....

Oh...and another thing...I had been planning on visiting the local Y here for my work outs. Good plan, right, well, I found out that there's an exercies room at our hotel. So, I go take a look at it. Yeah, it will do, reasonable amount of equipment, I'll use it instead of driving around and trying to find the Y. But wait. It costs $5 extra to use. What? OK, so I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and go use it. You have to go to the front desk in the morning to get the key (card) for the room. So here I am at the front desk at 6:15 AM, asking for the key.

"oh, it doesn't open until 7:30." WHAT? Dumb. I'll be at the Y tomorrow morning!

Travis and Katherine

I got a pretty good view of the ceremony from my spot at the piano. Nice ceremony, they held it together, and Chip did a great job as well. I don't think I've ever been a part of a wedding where the bridal party was so huge! I had to play while eight girls came down the isle. Fortunately, it was a small auditorium so it didn't take them too long!

Congratulations to Travis and Katherine who are honeymooning in Ireland!

Overheard at the Y

On Wednesdays I do a chest workout. I end by doing three sets of push ups to failure. That isn't important, but you should know this is why I overheard the following conversation. (While I was resting, and resting, and resting....)

Next to me, on a floor mat was a woman, mid-late 40's, I guess, stretching and contorting in some crazy fashion after pilates or yoga or some combination thereof. An acquaintance of hers, on the other end of the exercise mat asked her this:

"So do you miss teaching at State?"
Yoga woman: "I didn't at first but I've been missing it more and more lately."
Friend: "Are you a doctor?"
Yoga woman: "I have my Ph. D., yeah."
Friend: "What's it in?"
Yoga woman: "Thermodynamics"

So I haven't been able to get that conversation out of my mind. I wonder what it would be like to have a Ph. D. and then, for some reason, decide not to use it. It sounded like she took some time off (several years) to be with her kids while they were young.

I sometimes think about getting a Ph. D. but for me it would likely be more for the experience and growth rather than actually using it the way most people do. Both UNC and Duke offer Ph. D. degrees in musicology, but I'm scared to death of the language requirements. (German or French just to get in, plus two other languages by completion (Italian, German/French, Latin)). The actual course work would probably seem easy compared to the languages.

A Composition degree doesn't really interest me. The admission requirements are difficult, as they should be, and though I enjoy trying out an orchestration every once in a while, my passion is not composition.

The other question of earning another degree is the "what for" question. I want to learn more, and I guess if I'm going to go to the trouble I might as well earn something along the way. Oh, maybe some day.

Our New Van

Here are some pictures of the new van. Nothing fancy, and actually, nothing new, just new to us.


And yes, I've checked, rust is at a minimum on this thing. The shock towers look great as well as the body, a scratch here or there, nothing major, but no evidence of rust. So, no bells and whistles, just a regular, hopefully reliable van that will last us another 100,000 miles or more!

New Van

What's wrong with this van?

Nothing, right? Looks like a 1996 Grand Caravan in reasonable shape, but there are problems. Two big problems under the hood.

I didn't know what a shock tower was until I had two mechanics in the last year tell me that the rust is really bad on this van and that I should really consider getting rid of it "in the next year." What?

I figured these guys were not used to seeing Ohio rust. But this was an exceptional rust job! The shock towers house the shocks and springs. The shock is bolted to the top of the tower and the whole weight of the van rests on the shocks and the springs. Of course, the shocks are supposed to absorb the impact of uneven roads and along the help of the springs.

So anyway, the rust is eating away at the top of the towers. This, as you can imagine will be problematic soon as eventually, the steel will give way, the springs will pop through the top of the tower, and the van will be crippled, probably worthless.





So we made an upgrade. Remembering our experience with a certain Previa that got us to 352,000 miles, we went back to Toyota, with the purchase of a Sienna (sorry, no picture!)

Feeling Prepared

This has not been my week.

I know--it's only Wednesday.

I walked into my office on Sunday morning to the sound of all five (or more?) fans on my G5 up at full speed. That is not a good sign. Usually this means the computer was reset for some reason--probably due to a power outage. Sure enough, there was a fire that effected several thousand people Friday night. All I remember seeing was a flicker, but I live on the other side of town.

Anyway, rebooting the computer did nothing. It gave me the usual Mac startup sound, but then nothing. Like it was stuck in neutral. No hard drive noise, no display at all. Nothing. I shut it down and tried it again, and again, and again.

On Monday I took it to the Mac store (thankfully just up the street) but the warranty had expired so to my surprise, the guy behind the desk suggested I try an authorized Apple tech in town that would save me some money over using the Apple repair.

So that's where I took it. They diagonised the issue as a faulty video card. I should have my computer tomorrow.

BUT--the thing that saved me was an external hard drive. Not just the hard drive but a little software program called SuperDuper. Months ago I set it to backup my internal hard drive. After making an initial backup of everything on the drive, every night around 11:00pm it backs up anything from the day that had changed or had been added. This keeps it very current and keeps the backup fairly short.

So, the very last chart I edited, pdf I ran off, mp3 I added on Thursday was backed up and available for me. All I had to do was plug the drive into my laptop and everything I needed was there.

The only thing I couldn't do was create charts. I didn't take the time to try to configure this computer for the midi and keyboard settings, plus, even though I had access to Finale, I could not use it to print or save since two instances of it had already been registered on two different computers.

So friends, take my advice, even though it appears my hard drive is ok, I've been without my computer all week, but not my data! It could have been a lot worse.

Favicon

I spent a good portion of this afternoon trying to be clever. It turns out, I'm not so clever.

Have you ever noticed the little icons in the location line you your browser? It's called a "favicon." The blogger template kind of comes with one, but I decided to try to put my own up there.

After digging around, I found a simple little graphics editor/creator for OS X, and I made this little icon on the right. A little more research revealed that this little icon (a favicon.ico file) is a 16X16 bit file in 4 bit colors. This means that it would not be a matter of simply reducing my original icon, but the colors would never work as well, since they are out of the scope of 16 bit colors.

So I downloaded "graphics converter" and tried to create a little 16X16 version of what you see above. It ended up looking ok, but then I couldn't get blogger to read it and incorporate it. I used code I found from a website, but as you can see, all I get is a "can't fine this file" icon. (At least that's what it looks like in Firefox).

So how does MLB.com do it? They have red white and blue (basic colors), but the resolution seems much greater than 16 bits. What about the Apple favicon? It has smooth rounded edges. I'm starting to think that the whole 16 bit thing isn't really true.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Oh yeah, is "PB" too obvious?

Church Evangelism

This is AWESOME! Thanks to Jeff for bringing it to my attention. Give it a chance. It gets better as it goes on. Kind of like a Christian Ask a Ninja.

Sounds like a train

Not to trivialize recent tornadic events around the country, but I am curious, what did they say a tornado sounds like before the train was invented?

Quote of the Day

Jack Bauer [yelling at a guy while pointing a gun at him]:

Interlace your fingers.

Who talks like this?


[examining a guy who just got shot in the arm, without even removing his sleeve]:

It went clean through, didn't hit any major arteries, you'll be fine.

Jack Bauer, M.D.

[upon realizing his father tried to have him killed]:

How could I have been so stupid?

You go, Jack!

Shark

There's a show on CBS that I began watching a few weeks ago. It's called Shark. It's about a LA (where else?) DA who specializes in solving high-profile criminal cases. I've maybe seen four or five episodes. There is a clear and unfortunately, predictable formula that is emerging. Viewers of this will know what I'm talking about.

1. A crime is committed. This is usually a murder. We only see glimpses and flashes. It's never clear exactly what happened, but we know it can't be good.
2. Shark, the DA, who has no life, immediately appears on the crime scene, talks fast, barks orders, and returns home where he struggles to have a relationship with his almost-college-aged daughter.
3. Evidence starts to become clear. It points to Shark's initial hunch. Who's guilty? A spouse, usually. Things are going well. The trial starts but you know things are going a little too well. There is, after all, a half-hour left. Something has to go wrong. Sure enough,
4. something comes out of nowhere. It is usually an unexpected person, an unlikely piece of evidence, or a simple oversight on the part of the suave DA A-team. Totally disrupts the plan. It looks like the one we thought a minute a go was so going to jail is about to get off free. Is he really guilty?
5. But wait. Someone says something. Something that's maybe always been there but always overlooked comes to Shark's Holmes-like attention, and ah-ha, with 15 minutes left, he yells more orders to his team, go find out this, get someone to admit to this, stall this person and before you know it,
6. we're back in court in the closing scene, showing that Shark's instincts were right after all and presto-chango, original suspect goes to jail.

So what's the problem with this? A good mystery seems like it oughta supply the viewer (or reader) with all the necessary information up front, so that we can play along at home. This doesn't happen. We can guess at certain details to try to fill in the blanks, but there's no Matlock-like put-it-all-together at the end, only new material that of course would point to an obvious conclusion. I don't watch crime shows for some reason, and maybe this is why. This show, if it represents the popular genre, is far too tidy. One hour, crime committed, suspect nabbed, suspect almost gets off, DA discovers something (along with the viewers), back to the court room, suspect found guilty, DA makes a cleaver quip toward the unlikely chief DA, reconciles with his daughter in some sub-plot, and just like in real life, wraps it up in an hour.

I'm already board with it...I thought I once liked it. I guess my Thursday night TV viewing is just gonna be a half hour of 30 Rock. Maybe some Office too.

Knight Rider's KITT up for sale

This is a picture-perfect reproduction of the Knight Industries 2000. Unfortunately, after all that money and man-hours, the gooey center is still an '80s F-Body. Canadian seller zapper80 has done an awesome job putting this car together, and claims a cost of over $40,000 CDN. For all of us kids of the 80's.



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Say What?

A recent pre-meeting conversation:

Patty[who is from Georgia]: Sheri, did you bring the peanuts?
Brian[who is most definitely not from Georgia]: You like peanuts?
Patty: Oh yes, Bob and I eat them all the time
Brian: Do you buy them in the shell so you have to crack them out?
Patty: Yeah, we like them that way.
Brian: I LOVE peanuts--eat them a lot! (they're the perfect snack!)
Patty: I like to eat them balled.
Brian: Balled?
Patty: Yeah, I really like them that way.
Brian: Balled. I've never heard of that before. Balled?
Patty: Yeah, you know, put them in hot water, then drain it and eat them.
Brian: Oh, you mean "boiled?"
Patty: Yeah, that's what I said, "balled."
Brian: No, you said "balled." I've never heard of "Balling" something. I have, however heard of "boiling" something--though never peanuts.
Patty: Well, "BOY-ALed" peanuts are good.
Brian: Ok, I'll have to try them some time.

This Day in History

A very significant event happened today many years ago. It sent cultural shock waves around the country. It was an arrival anticipated like no other arrival. It had a profound musical impact on the nation, and really, the world. We have never been the same since. What happened on this day so many years ago? Click here to find out. (If you click on this link AFTER Feb 7, you'll have to follow the link then change the date to see what I'm talking about)

Guaranteed to waste your time!

Vote for your favorite Superbowl commercial!