Saw The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, and the Slaughter of Twelve Hit Carols in a Pear Tree last night at the Bunbury Theatre.
It was tre excellent!
The whole cast was really well.. um, cast! Friend of friends Nick (who has no homepage, hence no link), played the Butterfingers Angel, something that he only had a week or two (or less) to get ready for, as the actor who was going to portray him decided to be a slacker. Welp, he missed the ROCKET TO STARDOM! Lemme tell ya.

Nick was excellent, and only backed by an excellent cast. The show was funny, but not bawdy. “Bill Cosby” sorta funny, ya know? Anywho, it runs through the 16th of December, and word is is that Nick is actually getting paid for this one! (w00t!)

Went to see Ben Folds and Clem Snide at Atlas@Jillians last night.
On the way home, kelly asked me “is it possible to rock too much?” — a question answered in spades this night! We both ache like mad. Both bands were excellent, with Clem Snide throwing down a 1/2 hour set (after coming on an HOUR LATE, due to some reasons that were not and are not apparent at this moment). They only had two of their apparently usual four, guitar and drums, but it worked, and worked well! Warming up, the guitarist/vocalist played a little Zeppelin “Over the Hills and Far Away”, and i knew then, as i know now — this is gonna ROCK. Clem Snide is listed under “No Depression – Alt Country” at ear x-tacy, though that wasn’t immediately apparent from the show. They played a number of cool little songs, like “Lifeguard”, which was “written whilst watching Baywatch”, and was wryly funny. Though, the thing that really sealed my love of this band was their rendition of Daniel Johnston‘s “Casper the Friendly Ghost”. Pretty cool stuff, indeed.

and folds seemed to be in a more playful mood than the Cinci show we saw him at last. He mentioned George Harrison’s passing, noting that “all things should pass” as being one of his faves, and playing “Evaporate” from Whatever and Ever, Amen (not often played). The bassist drank Ale8One. He also played “Santa is a Big Fat Fuck”. Really cool. Some older stuff, too — 200 Angry Dwarves…, Philosophy, Song for the Dumped, and a punker called “Make Me Mommy“.

During “Rockin’ the Suburbs”, Folds dons his Fred Durst backwards baseball cap, and rocks the house down with his strap-on keyboard. He chucked the hat into the audience, and I CAUGHT IT. I’m not usually one to swoon over celebrity, but I just kept thinking “this has been on Ben Folds head!”, and then I promptly shoved the hat into my pants to avoid a hat-theft.

The crowd at the show was reasonably tame, though the 2 hour wait had its low points what with the pushing, and the teenage girls getting crushed and claustrophobic. After the came on, it was all fun. Thats the great thing about a Ben Folds show — everyone knows the words, fills in the backing vocals — even on his earliest stuff like “Philosophy” (which he did unaccompanied). He’s a great performer, and really enjoys these shows. Like Kelly said afterwards, “it’s not so much a show as it’s a big sing-along.”

i released v2.0 of MPy3, my car mp3 player system to the public last night!

[mpy3 home]

[mpy3 @sourceforge]

[mpy3 @freshmeat]

new site design is up. the old one can still be found here

Sometime in the near future, I will be relegating this tired old blog to a sub-directory, and a new design shall be in its place. I’ve been working on something that isn’t so bloggy — it’s more personal, more stylish, and will hopefully not languish as this one has. As much as I enjoy this “community style” blog, and the coding I put behind it, it is a community of little greater than one, and there are some projects I’ve been working on that I’d like to get out into the open, give them their own pages on theLocust.org, etc.

In other words, make this site more about me, and less about my pathetic attempt at creating a “weblog”.

Essentially, it will lie somewhere in between ben.thelocust.org and what you see now. There will still be links and what-not, sure. However, the login will go bye-bye, etc. theLocust as it is known now will be put in dry-dock. I’d say a day or two, or the weekend shall see this happen.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows my love of the art of breakdancing. It’s a talent that I’ve never attempted to hone, and frankly it looks difficult. Oh, and I have NO rhythm. Let’s not forget that.

But you say “Hey Ben, I’m a B-Boy poseur, too, and I wanna ‘bust a move’”. Well, Junior, now you can with the Flash Breakdancing Tutorial. It’s a step-by-step Flash Tutorial on breakdancing! How great is that. You can view the move in motion, or step through it frame-by-frame! Text descriptions help a lot, too.

And if that hadn’t whetted your appetite for 80′s kitsch, enjoy this.

If you’ve never been to Leisure Town, then you’ve never lived. Okay, maybe you’ve lived, but you sure as hell haven’t experienced some truly accessible and yet genious comedy. The author of Leisure Town is a one Tristan Farnon — who is currently attempting to do Leisure Town full time, and not have to resort to bussing tables.

Anyway, the site has a brand new design, and is starting to get daily/weekly content going, and it has already sent me into a humour-fueled stifled-laugh fit here at work.

The writing is excellent, with a style reminiscent of The Onion for it’s gut-punching style, and yet there is MORE than just that. The art itself, a mixture of real-world photography and little bendy animals is breathtakingly complex and funny in it’s own right. Well, I can’t say enough about it — you should check it out, and while you are at it, give the guy $3.

Rowan Atkinson is a pimp.

Go, and read an article about men of Arab descent being removed from flights, and try not to become enraged.

And why were they removed? Because, and I quote, “the crew didn’t feel comfortable“, or “didn’t feel safe”. One man, Ashraf Khan, a Pakistani, was removed from a flight in Texas — and missed flights to take him to his brothers wedding. None of the people removed — including a 15 year old Saudi boy — were perceived as a “threat”, and were later cleared.

Everyone right now feels uncomfortable, unsafe, and the people who feel the most uncomfortable? Americans of Arab descent.

Microsoft’s Frontpage 2002 has just been released — and with this disparaging piece of text in it’s EULA^?:

“You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services, infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any state, federal or international law, or promote racism, hatred or pornography.”

Now, come on! I know that they’ll retract this after anyone who isn’t a totalitarian maniac collectively blows up about it. I know this will happen, so I don’t really care about the after-effects. What I do wonder and worry about is how in the hell could a company with so many talented, obviously intelligent people come up with something so blindingly arrogant, brash, and just plain STUPID?! That is one thing that really, really irks me about large corporations and the culture they provide.

Just think — THERE HAD TO BE A MEETING ABOUT THIS. Whenever I see a blantantly dunderheaded move on the part of a company, or even just an obviously wrong piece of marketing, i think “There had to be a meeting about this”. Where good, smart people who drive in the same cars we do, walk the same streets, breathe the same air, get together in a room, and make horribly inane decisions. Think. For. Yourself. Don’t check your intelligence, your common sense, your rationality at the door to your workplace. If something doesn’t sit right with you — object. You’ll feel better about it in the morning.

Oh, and you’ll be happy to know that this website was not edited, manufactured, or in any way touches a piece of Microsoft Technology… and I think MSNBC isn’t worth the pixels it pushes to me or the photons on my TV… and I fully promote pornography… of Matt Lauer.