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David!!
I'm 25. Whoa.

And now a list of random show tune lyrics that mention how old people are. Bonus points for guessing all of them.

  1. After all, science has shown a person's character isn't really established until at he's at least 5 years old.
  2. There was the time Avram sold him a horse that he said was 6 years old, when it was really 12.
  3. You'll be 40 and I'll be 9
  4. There's a lot, I am not, certain of...Hello 12, hello 13, hello love.
  5. The best and the worst and the most and the least and the crazy and the scary and we are just about to turn 13.
  6. When you're a skinny child of 15, wired with braces from ear to ear...
  7. I am 16 going on 17, I know that I'm naive.
  8. She was just 17 you know what I mean.
  9. I'm 19, but I'm old for my age.
  10. I'm 19 and male, I play squash and raquetball.
  11. Why can't you stay 29? Hell, you still feel like you're 22. Turn 30 in 1990, Bang! You're dead, what can you do?
  12. It sucks to be broke and unemployed and turning 33.
  13. Then again, how many times do you get to be 35? Eleven?
 
 
David!!
01 June 2009 @ 10:30 pm
How's this for a one-two punch. Last Friday/Saturday, I participated in the 8th annual "7/24", the 24 hour play festival at the Tin Ceiling Theatre. This is my first opportunity to act in a play since the 7th annual "7/24". Then, on Sunday I catch a matinee of "A Chorus Line" at the Fox Theatre, a musical about people who spend their lives on the stage. ONE TWO.

7/24 was fun this year, although not as much fun as last year, but then again, what could possibly stack up against vampire fights. As I did last year, I picked a monologue that had a bit of double meaning. I did the "Coathanger Sculpture" monologue from "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown", which is all about how hard it is to judge art. I figure its a good attitude to go into an audition with.

The play I ended up in was Texts From Last Night: The Play. The basic idea was there is a guy in a high powered financial firm office who slept with two of his female coworkers, and they all text each other throughout the meeting, to which their boss is oblivious. I played the guy/man-hoe, but interestingly enough, the part was actually written for a woman in an office with 3 men (as opposed to 1 man and three women). So I played Lance instead of Lindsey. Reverse sexism I suppose. We actually had a fairly diverse cast, including myself, a professional actress, a girl in high school whose parents are Elise's professors and a recent immigrant from Poland. The latter had a little problem with the language, but then again, we all did. Half of the play was in "txt" form, and the other half was financial gibberish jargon, a la "We're looking at about 5 to 7 cents per $100 of second-quarter assets, plus Tier-1 capital. However, my source does indicate that we should be able to cap our premiums at 15 basis points per deposit." (My line, which I apparently still have memorized.) So a good chunk of rehearsal time was spent trying to spit out those delightful turns of phrases. In the end, it wasn't the funniest play of the night but did get a couple of good laughs.

Afterwards, Elise and I went out to dinner at Wildflower, and she and I conversed about acting at length. I asked her honestly how she thought my acting stacked up against the other actors. She confirmed what I had suspected, that they were mostly a cut above me, which is what I thought, but wanted to make sure it wasn't just my self-derisiveness. It makes me a little sad, because I honestly believe I don't know what to do about it. I came to the conclusion that no director had ever really challenged me, partly because I'm often cast in smaller roles which don't require as much attention, or because other things take precedence over working with me as an actor. The latter was the case for Texts From Last Night; we were focused on the language and the unorthodox staging more than really developing the characters.

Far be it for me to place all the blame on the director though. It's just that I feel I've reached as far as I can on my own, in terms of acting. I have a lousy inner eye, and when I'm acting, I can't really judge myself, especially when I'm concentrating so hard on acting. I put the onus on the director because I feel like I can't simultaneously be "in the moment" and evaluating the moment. The only person who ever did call me on stuff like this, and coach me second to second was never my director. It was Louima, my college voice teacher. He would stop me if I was thinking about what I was doing. He'd stop me if my attention wavered, even if I didn't realize it.

The conclusion Elise and I came to under the stars in the Central West End was that if I wanted to get better, I need to get some outside help. Otherwise, I'm stuck in a Catch-22, where I can't get better at acting without getting cast in stuff, and I can't get cast in stuff without getting better at acting. Then again, only acting once every year can't help either.

The next day, with all this weighing on my mind, I took in the matinée of the touring version of "A Chorus Line." I was hesitant about seeing it since I had already seen it in NYC a few summers ago. However, despite this, I went and still found myself emotionally affected by the show. It made me think about singing, and acting, and my friends who do these things. I'll avoid my usual spiel about missing artsy people, but will note that I wish I had more friends in St. Louis that I could go see shows with. Friends who AREN'T studying 18 hours a day for boards.

I'm reminded of the philosophy of music class I took for my Take 5. Some definitions of what music/art is depends on its relation to other people. If I play trombone in the woods, and no one hears it, is it still music? That sort of thing. In some way, art is not something that can be experienced alone. It's why I love going to art museums with Elise. OBOC was fun because it was all-inclusive, and you were up there with 50 other people doing the same thing as you. I guess its lacking that connection that can make me feel quite lonely at times.

Hmmph. Sounds like the kind of angst that one could write a musical about...
 
 
David!!
21 May 2009 @ 11:51 pm
Handheld Nintendo Gaming Device

In scholarly news, my latest paper is in Google Scholar. Now you can go read officially all the wonderful things there are to know about cDNA to Genome alignment. While you're at it, you can read my undergrad thesis and Elise's undergrad thesis as well. I am working on getting my undergrad work going again, to some sort of publishable state. There's a conference that I'm hoping to submit my transcriber to. In Kobe Japan.

Went to Columbia over the weekend and saw Star Trek again. Still good, but enough with the shaky cam already. Also had the pleasure of seeing Ben Rossetter for lunch. We only managed to see each other for about an hour, but that is par for the course for our relationship: see each other for ten minutes over food before one of us zips off to far off lands. Speaking of Bens, Ben Snikoff is now technically a law school graduate, and starting a podcast called TechnicallyLegal. I haven't listened yet, but if its anywhere near as hilarious as jury duty or as intellectually profound as Ben's improv, it should be good.

In addition to Star Trek, I also saw Bottle Shock, starring Captain Kirk, Snape, the President of the United States and Echo. Plus, I also finally saw Slumdog Millionaire. I really enjoyed the movie. My biggest complaint comes after watching the deleted scenes. There's a scene in the movie where all the boys are stealing from the audience members at the opera in front of the Taj Mahal. Nothing really happens, and then later, they're back in Mumbai, looking for LatikuLatika. I thought the movie would have been much better with the deleted scene that fits in there inserted back in, with an opera patron explaining that the opera is "Orfeo ed Euridice", which tells the tale of how Orpheus goes to hell to get his true love back. This inspires Jamal to get Latika back, so they go back to Mumbai. Perhaps I just like it when people's major life decisions are made on the basis of music.

In sports news, the Mets are on a clever little losing streak. Just when you think they've got everything together...bam! Disaster. Maybe they'll rebound...let's see who they're playing next. Oh. Crap. Well, at least the Mets were good 23 years ago, and some of my favorite tv. shows mention them.
The Mets on Dollhouse and Heroes )

In tech news, , there's a contest to see who can encode an image in 160 characters the best so that you can post images on Twitter without links. It's really tempting to drop everything and try to code up something.

Lastly, in arts and entertainment, with any luck, this weekend I'll be in the 24 Hour Play Festival here in St. Louis that I did last year. To think that one year ago was the first time I'd heard of robots doing theatre...

And that about does it for me tonight. Join us tomorrow at 11. And here it is, your moment of zen.
 
 
David!!
11 May 2009 @ 12:05 am
Various news snippets...

  • The Mets are on a bit of a hot streak. The Cardinals, not as much, although they both are at the top of their respective divisions. I started feeling like the Mets and Cardinals could not both be good at the same time this season (a feeling helped by the Cardinals sweeping the Mets back in April, grumble grumble). However, statistics show this not to be as bad as I thought.

    As you can see in Figure A, the Cardinals, while they haven't been consistently winning recently, they've been floating at about 8 games over .500. Meanwhile, the Mets dive under .500 came right when the Cards got hot.

    Figure B shows when the Mets winning and the Cards winning coincide. This turns out much better than expected, since I expected both teams winning to be under-represented. It can be read optimistically or pessimistically. Pessimistically, most of the time, both teams don't win. However, optimistically, at least one team wins most of the time.

    Anyway, I need to head down to Busch more often. Oh, and I forgot to post this awhile ago, but I've been reading The Wright Stache, a whole blog about how David Wright and the Mets would be doing better if Wright had a mustache, or to use their neologism, a Metstache. Right before the season started, I was growing my own Metstache, setting a modern record for longest time without me shaving (two weeks!). Not coincidentally, this happened to coincide with the week that Elise had finals and the week that Elise was away on spring break. By the end, I had a pretty sweet goatee going. And by "pretty sweet" I mean sketchy/good if you squint. Anyway, said blog posted a link about the Mets and Cards playing back in the 2000 NLCS. I must say, I got very nostalgic reading those rosters. Piazza! Alfonzo! Ventura! Franco! Wendell! McEwing! Agbayani!

  • The most useful bit of code I've written in past weeks has been a Java graphing package. I always find myself trying to graph data quickly, but usually resort to some lazy swing visualizations. But on a whim/challenge by my labmates, I wrote a wrapper package to the Google Charts service, which makes quite pretty graphs with relatively low effort. (They produced the graphs seen above)

  • Last Monday the Tony nominations came out. Perennial blog-favorite [title of show] got nominated for Best Book, but that was it. I was very disappointed it didn't get a best musical nod, which probably means they won't be performing at the Tonys. Reading bunch of the NYTimes coverage, it seems in general, Tony nominations were doled out more heavily for plays that are still open, which could be a reflection of the hope that the nominations will increase ticket sales for those plays, and help broadway as a whole. This seems rather cynical, yet all too possible. Overall, I was a bit confused by the nominations, with a lot of things that I didn't think were deserving getting nominations. However, then I realized that I've only actually seen one show in the entire last year ("13") and it got zero (0) nominations.

    I've come to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with the Tony's, in that in many cases, it's rather lopsided. In my mind, it seems like a continuation of the OBOCracy, where the most-talented get all and the slightly less talented get little. Sure you get something like [title of show] or In the Heights breaking through occasionally, but most of the time, shows like Gypsy and Billy Elliot get 40 awards and somehow that's fair? [title of show] not getting more nominations would bother me more, I suppose, if it wasn't a central part of their mantra that they'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a 100 Tony voters ninth favorite thing.

  • Speaking of talented, singing underdogs: the Muppets. What is the name of the piano playing dog? Now say the name out loud. Say it again. Now read this overthought treatise on the "correct" pronunciation.

  • I saw Star Trek on Friday night with Zeke, Elise and the med students. An awesome, awesome movie. I had very few complaints, namely the soundtrack not being overly awesome, J.J. Abrams desire to make monster movies, and Nimoy seeming a little tired. However, nearly everything else seemed to work. Zachary Quinto did not disappoint, and I loved Scotty, although that might just be the engineer in me showing. The script was tight, and the alternate reality plot worked really well. Overall, a very satisfying experience.

  • Finally, in the latest installment of my Culinary Adventures, I have now made the following dishes: Apple Pizza, Black Bean Enchilada Casserole, Stuffed Shells and a Tofu Tower.
 
 
David!!
04 May 2009 @ 11:37 am
From the Riverfront Times, an article about an Austin, TX mayoral candidate warning about Austin becoming more like St. Louis, the analogy being that St. Louis was once a great city and now it's not, and Austin is a great city. I think the comments had some interesting points (for once). Someone likened the general response to criticisms of St. Louis to "Custard and baseball." But my favorite has to be, "I’m familiar with 1904 St. Louis. I’ve studied 1904 St. Louis, and Austin, you’re no 1904 St. Louis!"
 
 
David!!
03 May 2009 @ 07:03 pm
Seriously?
@files = <*.mp3>;
That gets all the files in the directory that match that pattern? And no one told me?

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FRAKKIN TIMES I'VE WRITTEN THE FOLLOWING CODE:
opendir(DIR, $dir);
my @files = readdir(DIR);
close(DIR)


GRAH
 
 
David!!
29 April 2009 @ 10:02 pm
At this point in my training, I don't consider running to be a sport. That's not to say that it can't be for some people, or even for me at some point, but its not a competition in the sense that baseball is, its more of an activity. For me, it doesn't matter who wins.

However, its more than just something to do. There is direction to it. Goals to be reached. Progress to be made. It's not baseball, but then again its not just throwing the ball around either. There's a line you have to cross in order to be done and literally everything you do is in some way moving you toward that goal. And in that, there's a certain satisfaction that comes from every bit of measurable progress. 1 mile, already? How many more after this? I can do that. I can't see the end, but I know its there. Just keep running.

There's a similar logic behind TODO lists. Knocking stuff off of the list also gives some satisfaction, and knocking a bunch of things off the list feels even better. And I've crossed a couple finish lines myself recently. Finishing my paper was a big one. That's done now, and I can finally consider the next phase of my graduate education. That's a race I've been running since last June.

Equally satisfying is finally finishing the musical, and seeing the fruits of that labor pay off. I can't say it was the easiest production I've ever done. The drama-meter was turned way up, with people not showing up to rehearsals, creative disagreements from day 1 and so many Saturday mornings. It was a long slog, and at one point, I had to push myself to get through that one more rehearsal, blocking for one more song. And somewhere along the way, I also ended up biting off even more. Wait, wrong metaphor. Rather, as is par for the course for me, I started running a couple extra races at the same time as the others. Being set designer and builder and conductor was also fulfilling, and I enjoyed each of them. But adding more hours to those Saturdays for pit rehearsal, and toward the end, building stuff...it all seemed a little crazy.

But that's the way it always seems at mile 8: So much left undone, and the doubt of actually finishing starts to creep in. So you push through and you get to see things pay off. When I directed Rumors, I went around afterward claiming that it wasn't so much that I was a good director, but I was one hell of a caster, deferring credit to my collaborators the cast. Similarly, I couldn't have done Forum this time without the other producers (my fiancee doubly so), Bob who helped me build the sets, and the cast and pit members. However, I am particularly proud of a couple of my ideas on this production, particularly making Everybody Ought to Have a Maid an all-guys number and creative use of molding on the flats.

Show week went particularly well I thought. I will still claim that we probably could have stumbled through the show for an audience after Sunday's rehearsal. Seeing as that's usually where you end up on Wednesday nights, I thought that was promising. It definitely gave everyone a chance to step up their game for that last week and polish things for hilarity. Especially in the big chase scene I concocted at the end. I tried to give everyone a little bit in the scene, but some of them weren't particularly inspired. However, by the time the show came around, people had transformed my random directions into funny little bits. Things just seemed to come together. The crowd really responded to it well, especially the second night when all of the cast's classmates showed up. I'm also really thankful that my parents came out to see the show. They're the only ones who have seen my long journey from awkward Asian Brigadoonian to director-in-chief. My only regret is that I didn't get to spent more time with them.

There came a moment at the end of each show, as with the whole production, where everything finally clicked, and all that was left was a big downhill to the end. Transitioning from Finale Ultimo to the Curtain Call music always felt good. The show was over, and here was everyone in the audience appreciating everyone in the show for their hard work. I was on top of the world.

[The question, of course, looms, whether or not I'll be back next year. From where I'm sitting on Cloud 9 right now, I'm of course entertaining the idea. No guarantees, but I'm not ruling it out yet.]

The feeling of convergence resonates strongly within me. I love the feeling of things coming together at some predestined point, with numerous threads all coming together at once. It's the Act I Finale. One day more. This is the time when important stuff is happening. This is is when the show comes together. This is when you run the race. This is when you take an extended lunch break to see your favorite team get swept by your second favorite team. This is the moment!

And so in that moment, you find yourself running. Moving forward at a speed that you didn't know you could do, much less keep up for the entire course. You know that this is the point you've gotten to after all those miles. All of the training, all of your support from your friends and loved ones, all of your own personal will power has brought you to this point. And, as you near the end, all of the eyes turn toward you, but you don't necessarily see them. This moment is your moment, and its not about other people seeing what you've done, but knowing that this is what you've been moving toward the entire time. You cross the finish line and know that this was the goal you were destined for. You did it. The race is over and you're ready for more.




P.S. I may have run the entire half-marathon dressed as Homestar Runner. I needed some way to retain geek cred while performing clearly jock-like activities.
P.P.S. Welcome to the official blog of the new assistant conductor of WUPOPS. The head conductor's name is Ambrose Wu. I've already decided my portions of rehearsals will be called LUPOPS.
P.P.P.S. ::sigh:: Mets. Least I have the Cardinals.
P.P.P.P.S. St. Louis book fair acquisitions: Digital Fortress and a script for Rumors.
 
 
David!!
16 April 2009 @ 09:42 pm

GRUNT. WOMAN OUT OF HOUSE LAST WEEK. DID MAN THINGS INSTEAD. LIKE WHAT? BUYING CONSTRUCTION SUPPLIES. MEASURING STUFF. EATING MEAT. WATCHING PROFESSIONAL SPORTS. DRIVING BIG VEHICLES.



Yeah, that's enough of that. I did manage to drop $1500 at Home Depot in one shot, buying stuff for the set of Funny Thing. That's been my biggest time sink for the past couple weeks. Eventually, I'll post a time-lapse video of building it (the parts while my laptop battery was alive). I realized that I can do a decent job of faking being Nigel, but being Gordon is a lot harder: figuring out exactly what needs to be done, making sure a crew shows up, making sure everyone has something to do, and making sure they're doing it right...it's all kinda exhausting. Who knew it would take so much time? Somewhere Evan is laughing.

I bought a couple CDs in recent weeks that I'm enjoying, includng the soundtrack to 13, The Incredibles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Garden State. Despite the hype, I really like ESotSM better than Garden State. I'm going to have to see if I can find some more Polyphonic Spree music (I already have a Padora station for them). I also really enjoy a lot of the songs in 13. The girl who plays Patrice is amazing.

Ahhh....Mountain Dew, how I missed thee.

Other than being ridiculously busy and stressed, I'm kind of enjoying life right now. Perhaps BECAUSE I am ridiculously busy and stressed. All the stuff I'm doing right now reminds me a lot of the stuff I was doing back in my senior and Take 5 years. I saw on facebook that Seannon (a.k.a Sean and Shannon) just passed two years of being together (congrats!), which reminded me that Rumors was in fact two years ago now. And here I am back in the saddle trying to get stuff done for Funny Thing...the same stuff I was doing for Rumors, like building sets, directing, publicity, trying to get all the production elements together... In one way or another, I'm back in theatre. It's also reminding me of my sophomore year a bit, obviously, when I was IN Funny Thing.

Meanwhile, I'm finally on the brink of being a published author. Wooo! Watch this space. Then there's training for the half marathon which is this coming Sunday. That's right. Hell week starts with a 13.3 mile run. Possibly in the rain. Not so sure I'm okay with that. And I suppose I'm getting married in a little less than 4 months, which has necessitated some planning of its own. And I ran a trivia night for the comp sci grad student group. My favorite question:
  • Which of the following is the most appropriate name for St. Louis' most famous monument?
    1. The Gateway Parabola
    2. L'arch d'sigmoid function
    3. Gateway to the Hyperbolic Cosine
    4. The Jefferson National Expansion Sine Wave Memorial


Bottom line: I'm excite because I'm doing stuff. I think one of my biggest frustrations last year was just being a grad student. I have never been one thing. I'm a grad student and a director and a trombonist. It reminds me of some of the good times back in undergrad. And that makes me happy.

So enough reminiscing. It's time. Time to slay my "ugly color set" vampire. Time to build some robots. Time to drink some more Mountain Dew and prepare the best musical the med school has ever seen. Time to put on make up. Time to light the lights. Time to get things started.



P.S. Go Mets!
P.P.S. This Video makes me feel better about the random time I've spent doing all of my random programming projects.
P.P.P.S. C'mon Heroes, you were doing so well....big finale...please!?
P.P.P.P.S.

P.P.P.P.P.S. I forgot to mention I played in the WUPOPS concert today. Sad because I won't be able to play in the real concert which is next Saturday. But I love those guys.
 
 
David!!
04 April 2009 @ 12:38 am
Hmmm....its late. Don't drink and blog.

I spent $1700 today. I bought all the set for Forum. Or rather, I bought all the pieces for the set of Forum. Bob and I hit up Home Depot today after work. Well, actually, first I had to get a UHaul Van. Turns out renting a van is a heckuva lot easier than renting a car. And cheaper. And you only have to be 18+. It was really hard to drive the van, and I can't tell if it is because the van I rented is either really big or because I just haven't driven a big van since 2003. I do miss the ol' Lu-mobile. But after zipping around in Elise's sunfire for the past two years, driving a big van is very different.

Pictures to come of progress on the set.
 
 
David!!
01 April 2009 @ 12:35 am
A) I'm excited for Heroes being good again.
B) Tonight on "Chopped", the reality cooking show on Food Network (that I don't normally watch, but was on after Ace of Cakes whilst I was at the gym), one of the finalists was a woman from Poughkeepsie. For those of you keeping score at home, that's the city across the river from where I lived. That itself would be interesting enough. It's actually not surprising when you factor in the CIA. However, the kicker is where she cooks. She's the executive chef....at the IBM Poughkeepsie cafeteria. On the show she talks about how she cooks for 500-700 people, which for two summers, included me. WEIRD.
C) I'm conflicted as to whether I should keep watching Dollhouse.
D) Jon Stewart tells it like it is.
E) I think Michael L. Scott should start the Michael L. Scott Concurrency Company.
 
 
David!!
27 March 2009 @ 06:35 pm
How to Date a Med Student

8. Romantic date = Chinese take-out in front of the TV on their 10 minute study break.

9. A vacation together consists of a trip down the street to Walgreens for new highlighters and printer paperINDEX CARDS.

10. Their study habits will make you feel like a complete slacker. For them, hitting the books 8-to-10 hours a day is not uncommon, nor difficult. You'll wonder how you ever managed to pass school on your meager one hour of studying per night.


In other news, while donating blood on Wednesday, I also signed up to be a potential blood marrow donor. Here's why its awesome.
  • Double the number of things I'll donate while I'm still alive.
  • Low odds that I'll actually need to donate
  • But if I do need to, I'll feel like a winner!
  • Racial pride actually works well here, since odds are, my marrow would go to a half-Chinese half-white person
  • Got to play CSI: Home Edition by swabbing my cheeks for DNA.

Here's why it sucked.
  • Ate an Oreo right before I swabbed my cheeks. Ew.
 
 
David!!
25 March 2009 @ 02:00 pm


Food at the New Mets Park


I posted earlier how there was going to be a Shake Shack at the New Mets Ballpark. The article above goes into greater detail. Shake Shack remains one of my favorite restaurants in New York. Turns out it, and a portion of the food offerings at the new stadium, are managed by Danny Meyer, a St. Louisian native, who claims to be "a Mets fan — except when they play the Cardinals". Also pretty cool: the skyline from the old scoreboard (seen above) will be above one of the concession stands.

And now I really want a burger.

 
 
David!!
15 March 2009 @ 09:23 am
  • 1 month since I submitted my paper to Bioinformatics.
  • 34 days until I run a half marathon
  • 38 days until I see the Mets in St. Louis
  • 38 days until opening night of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, directed and conducted by me
  • 39 days until my parents arrive in St. Louis
  • 53 days until ISMIR conference deadline
  • < 5 months until the Big day



Random musical theatre links:
African American Musical theatre, performed by Koreans
Puerto rican Musical Theatre, performed by Puerto Ricans, featuring the epic collaboration of "Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and Lin Manuel Miranda.
 
 
David!!
18 February 2009 @ 04:41 pm
The first portrait to appear on U.S. money was Lincoln's portrait on the penny to honor his 100th birthday. 50 years later, they added the Lincoln memorial on the back. Now, for his 200th birthday, they're releasing new pennies with other Lincoln-related images on the tails side. They show the cabin where he was born, Rail-splitter Lincoln, State Senator Lincoln and Lincoln's Inauguration.

However, the capitol building looked a lot different for Lincoln's Inauguration, specifically, the dome was incomplete, making the penny look like it depicts another building entirely. Your thoughts?

Penny backs
 
 
David!!
02 February 2009 @ 06:41 pm
Two websites have come to my attention in the past month, demonstrating the immense power of images.


So I developed an ImageMagick script back in October to turn any picture into the iconic Obama "Hope" style. I thought it was pretty cool, and I considered turning it into a facebook application. However, I looked into it and it just didn't seem practical to do, especially given all the other things I had to do at the time. However, around inauguration time, I discovered a website that could do that very task. But not only did they have a facebook application, but they also had the ability to vote on the images, and here's the best part: the ability to slap your Obamicon onto MERCHANDISE! Shirts! Mugs! STAMPS! Ah, if only I had thought of that, I'd actually have followed through and maybe could have made a few bucks. Because that's really what HOPE and CHANGE are for: profit. Actually, I'm thinking of spending time volunteering for byteworks here in St. Louis, helping city youth with computers, instead of cashing in on someone else's artwork.


Meanwhile, I found the single most depressing website on the intertubes (for a Mets fan). I liked Shea Stadium, and although I've seen how much better stadiums can be, I'm still sad to see it go. And man, is it going. To me, it was one of the most defining pieces of architecture in NYC, just because I would always drive past it on my way to my grandmother's apartment in Queens. The neon players on the sides are etched into my memory; a glowing symbol of pure baseball. And now, it's a pile of rubble, slowly being torn down and carted away. Ironically, Shea itself is not collapsing, as the team that played there so often did. Instead, piece by piece, the Mets move toward a new home, a new era and a new HOPE.
 
 
David!!
02 February 2009 @ 01:28 am
 
 
David!!
29 January 2009 @ 10:26 pm
1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
Attend an academic conference. Plan a wedding. Play on a softball team regularly. Campaign. Direct a musical.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Still haven't written a musical, but I have gone to the gym a good deal more than I would have expected. I guess the same resolutions as always: Exercise and be healthy. Make the most of my free time. Write more in ye old blog.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None. But I did go to Colorado and Idaho for a bit.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Rather than say "downtime" like I have for the past few years, I'll say I'd like to have some of my side projects actually get out the door. Like Broadwiki, or my music research. Oh, and I'm still waiting for that publication.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 8 - Biology of Genomes
May 24 - 24 Hours of Vampire Fights
July 4 - Bierstadt Lake
November 1 - Time for some campaigning
November 22 - Pretty Sweet Decade

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Giving a poster presentation at an academic conference.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not acting.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes. Long lasting or serious? No. Inconveniently timed? Yes.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A softball glove for Elise. Not nearly as romantic as last year's best thing I bought, but damn if I don't like me some softball. Oh, and Super Smash Brothers. That's pretty romantic.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Elise, as always, for being there and helping me grow. Dan, Rachel, Rob and Heather for keeping in touch. Plus, Zeke and MSTP2040.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Californians. Computer scientists who think they're biologists.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, groceries and airline travel.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Gettin hitched. Robots. WU-Pops. Biking.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Will I? The Wii Sports Theme? Brand New Day? I got nothin.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Tough to say.
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner! Yay running.
c) richer or poorer? Slightly richer. Having a job year-round will do that.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Music. Theatre. Sleep.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Biology.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Vomiting. No joke.

21. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2008?
You know, Dan, I've never been with a physics grad student before.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Yes, and its not #21.

23. How many nights of drunken debauchery?
See #21. And the biology of genomes.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
The Daily Show, Heroes (still), the Office, Top Chef

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Sarah Palin

26. What was the best book you read?
This is Your Brain on Music and the first half of The People's History of the United States

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Curtains, Wall-E, Dr. Horrible

28. What did you want and get?
Vacation with Elise, a softball team, a visit to Shea one last time

29. What did you want and not get?
Tickets to [title of show], Mets in the playoffs, a publication

29a. What did you get and not want?
Jury Duty

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Hands down: Wall-E. See, Halloween. But I did see the Dark Knight at the very end of the year, and DAMN.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Celebrated at home with Elise, eating a cake she insisted was horrible, but I still thought was delish. Veinte y cuatro.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Knowing how to manage my time. Knowing what I want to do.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
If Eddie Izzard can be an Executive Transvestite, then I'm saying my personal fashion concept is slowly moving toward suave geek. Or maybe that's another way of saying wearing a suit jacket over long sleeved tshirts makes me look like a college professor.

34. What kept you sane?
Never being alone. The Wii. Softball. [title of show]. Talking to people from the UR days. Personal programming projects.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Kiera Knightley, Masi Oka and Barack Obama. If I weren't engaged, I'd be really worried that two of three were dudes.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Change. Hope. Gays.

37. Who did you miss?
The usual crowd of Rochestafarians. My family. Friends from the NP.

38. Who was the best new person you met in 2008?
Bill

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
Uneventful doesn't mean boring.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
It's about one second
And just when you're on the verge of success
The sky starts to change
And the wind starts to blow
 
 
David!!
11 December 2008 @ 01:35 am
University of Rochester alumnus Steven Chu will be named Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration. He won the Nobel prize in Physics a decade ago, and is a dorky looking Asian American. Good choice.

Also, the Mets have recently acquired three new supposedly decent relief pitchers, named K-Rod, Putz and Sean Green. Sean White could not be reached for comment.
 
 
David!!
04 December 2008 @ 12:06 am
I have a post forthcoming about my crazy OBOC weekend (see facebook for pictures) and thanksgiving weekend, but in the meantime, two very different videos about love.



I really like FunnyOrDie videos because they are able to stack their videos with celebrities and not even call attention to it. Cast includes Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney, Margaret Cho, Barrett Foa, Maya Rudolph, Kathy Najimy, Craig Robinson (i.e. that guy from the Office), Sarah Chalke (i.e. Elliot from Scrubs) and Neil Patrick Harris. Damn.

Also, it was composed by Marc Shaiman of Hairspary and the South Park movie, who said "If I'm going to stand on the soap box, at least let me sing and dance."



I picked up this video off of angryasianman.com. Shot with only still photographs. It makes me happy because the title of the song is a lie.