Karaoke Revolution!

This NPR segment made my day yesterday.

To appreciate

Briefly: I saw The Magnetic Fields perform on Boulder campus. A good band, not rock-n-roll, and they don’t seem to like performing, but quite talented. The opening act, Darren Hanlon, was quite good. He reminded me of Jonathan Richman, and when I commented on this to the woman next to me, she said he’d held her when she was a baby, and that Jonathan Richman was in her father’s tai chi class. Woah. I asked her to marry me right there on the spot, but she said she was “gay.” How do I find ‘em? Anyway, I asked Hanlon about Richman, and he said he was a fan, and that he’d played his most “Jonathan-like” songs.

Tonight I saw The Life of Brian at the International Film Series. Funny, good commentary on bureaucracy, independent thinking, feminism, and religion. Also on video is the PBS special, They Made America, which I linked to the video section of my website.

And right now on Charlie Rose, Nathan Myhrvold is on the show. He’s CEO & Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures and Former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Corporation. His new company is focused on invention, which ties to They Made America. He’s so creation oriented, which is great, and pointed out that people should be more scared of terrorism than nanotech. Good point.

Speaking of invention I met a Swarthmore graduate yesterday, Phil Wieser, a law professor at CU. He pointed me the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank I might be interested in. I have some worries about living in DC, though. Still, the idea of fostering invention and advancing politial and ecomomic freedom — false dichotomy, really — does inspire me.

Curb My Enthusiasm

The photos from the first private manned space flight are inspiring. Also, moviemistakes.com is a pretty neat site, despite the ads. Now on to my story, which could be an an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm:

Since my softball game was rained out, I joined some friends at an Indian restaurant last night, where I saw a young woman wearing a white baseball/cycling-style hat. At first I thought she was on one of the teams in my campus league, but then figured she was not. Still, I was not sure, so I approach her table and ask if she plays softball. She replies my explaining that, no, she’s not on a team, and that she was not expecting to go out to dinner, that is, that she was under-dressed. I commented on her hooded sweatshirt, joked that “not everyone in the restaurant was talking about it,” and continued on my way to the restroom. A minute later, while washing my hands, I it struck me. Doh! The woman probably thought I was teasing her about playing softball, and that my purpose was to point out her being under-dressed, and not that I was sincerely asking if she played softball. Still, I considered clarifying that on my way back to my table, but it just seemed too odd. Sometimes you just can’t win.