One thing I’ve noticed in daily life is that humans place some importance on The Greeting and The Farewell.  I suppose all social animals have some sort of ritual concerning this, but me being a human, I’ll only comment on that.  Besides, I don’t want to write a dissertation about butt-sniffing just yet, so….back to the subject at hand.

You can tell a lot about how familiar two people are with each other, and indeed their perception of their social standing within each other’s circles just by how they greet and/or say goodbye to each other.  For example, with my inner circle of friends, if I haven’t seen you in a while then I’m likely to give you a hug as a greeting.  If I have seen you recently, then I may shake your hand on arrival, but I may still hug you on my or your exit.  If I see you all the time, then you’re just as likely to get the finger as a quick high-five or even a fist-bump.  Each of these gestures mean the same thing: “Hello friend of mine.  I value your friendship highly and enjoy spending time with you.  Please be at peace with yourself and to show you that I mean all of these things, here is a little physical contact to cement those emotions.”

The funny thing of all this is when shit gets lost in translation.  I’m almost 40 years old and I have friends who range in age from their 50s and 60s down to their 20s.  When I greet people older than myself, it’s all about the ‘old guard’ and ‘respect’ and whatnot, so a simple, firm handshake does the job.  But when I run into buddies who are 10 years younger than I am, shit gets all awkward and hilarious.

…oh shit, I gotta leave soon cuz I have to work early in the morning.  There’s Francois, and I’m gonna have to let him know I’m leaving, but I have no idea how he’s gonna shake my hand!  Is he gonna give me the standard shake?  Is it gonna be the homie handshake?  Is a fist-bump involved, and if so, does it come at the head of the shake or the tail end?  And what happens if I’m confronted with a grenade or a twizzler or a Cleveland Steamer?  Oh shit, what the fuck do I do???

These are the kinds of things that run through my mind when leaving a dinner party and quite frankly it’s terrifying.  I don’t care about appearing to be unhip or old or some crap like that, I just don’t know how to accurately convey my heartfelt and sincere gratitude for the camaraderie and fellowship that was shared during the preceding few hours.  I don’t want to seem cavalier or disingenuous, due to my inability to “shake like the kids these days”, so a lot of angst and trepidation is involved during those moments just prior to leaving a social event with friends of varying ages.

Take a look at the video here and ask yourself, “How, exactly, did that one evolve?”  Imagine leaving a swanky dinner party sponsored by the Golden State Warriors and running into this guy on your way out the door.  I think I’d pass out from sheer fright.

Notice that not only does he get his shake on with one of the venue’s staff, but he’s able to pull of that handshake while NOT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION! He’s yelling at some other guy the whole time, not even looking at the guy he’s shaking hands with.

Good on ya, mate!

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All I can say is, “Thanks, Doug!”

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As I’m digging myself back out from underneath the rock I’ve been hiding under, I am remembering things that had an effect on me in recent months.  Two are as follows:

Cpt Pearson sent me a link a few months back that he thought should go on my site.  He was right.  Let’s go back a few years…

I think it was 7th or 8th grade when I first saw Iron Maiden on MTV.  I was hooked.  Why?  Well, my dad was a high school English teacher and in his syllabus, Greek mythology was featured.  He taught the creation story from the ancient Greek perspective as a teaching tool, and so I’d been hearing it most of my life and as a result, I thought (and still do) that Greek mythology was cool as hell.  (Don’t tell anybody, but all my computer devices have names deriving from the Greek pantheon [geeks do that - have a theme for naming all the devices in their network])

Okay.  So by 7th or 8th grade, I already had an interest in Greek mythology and one day I saw a video on MTV.  This video was for a song called Flight of Icarus.  ?!?!?!  WHAAAA????  What’s this?  Imagine my surprise when the lyrics actually accurately adhered to the subject matter, which I already had taken an interest in.

That’s why I took an initial interest in Iron Maiden and I must say, they haven’t disappointed.  Well…the 90s sucked for them, but the 90s sucked for a lot of viable music, so what do you do?  At any rate, I’ve always loved Maiden ever since then and so what’s my long-winded point?  It’s this:  Anything (in this case, Maiden) + Star Wars = AWESOME

Now…having said that…as if that wasn’t even enough… Peter, who sometimes goes by the name Meatbucket, recently turned me on to another phenomenon whereby somebody out there on the Internets tried to answer the question “What happens when you make Rush a doom metal band?”  Well, I’d have to say that Total Awesome is what happens.

Enjoy your day.

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And of course, you’re expecting to hear all the gossip about what the hell was Danilo Di Luca thinking not using a TT bike on the final stage…how Denis Menchov ate crap with less than 1k to go and still won both the time trial AND the Giro overall….but no. Not today.

Tonight I was over at Brent and Kate’s, and we were watching the final stage when their beautiful daughter, Ruby, was able to show us her knowledge of Giro lore.

I apologize that the volume isn’t that high, since I recorded this with my cell phone, but you can hear her say ‘maglia rosa’ quite clearly.

I also apologize that the video isn’t embedded like videos from YouTube. I’ll work on that. Click to enjoy.

maglia_rosa

Editor’s note:  Menchov DID NOT win the TT.  And I knew that too.  Couldn’t tell you why I wrote that, but I did.  Eat it!

- Chewy

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While you sit there in your cubicle, making life easier for the next person who may push the papers that you’ve just affixed your signature to, there are others out there on the fringe making life better for us all by doing things that we never dreamed would be necessary.

I was emailed this little gem by Dave W, who has found out that the fine folks at Qualcomm are doing just that.  Imagining a better world for all of us.

Awesome link here

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Folks, it’s true…the economy is tanking.  Seems like yesterday that I was able to frivolously spend money on luxury items like…toilet paper and soap.  Don’t believe me?  Well take a look at this, courtesy of The Onion.

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As we were talking yesterday, Dave and I came up with Friday’s (today’s) plan.

Fart around all morning and then screw around in the afternoon.

It seemed like a good plan at the time, and now that it’s 4pm, I’ll say it worked out just wonderfully.  We did a little bit of work and actually got stuff done that needed to be done, but Dave’s already made himself a margarita, and I might have him make me one as well, since he’s a pro at that sort of thing.

At any rate, I’m done farting around and screwing around cuz hey, work is done for the day, and now it’s time to mess around for the rest of the evening!  So…here’s a video from Steve Vai, courtesy of himself from the official Steve Vai YouTube channel. Enjoy!

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I don’t know how I feel about this.

When you watch the old Disney cartoons (you know, the original witty, well-drawn, beautiful ones) you can see how painstaking the work was that went into making all the perspectives and angles and movements look as life-like as possible.  Costumes and curtains and fabrics actually draping and moving with the character’s bodies, camera angles moving around with the scenery moving in sync with them, and movements of characters that didn’t look like they were moon-walking along the surface that they were walking on.  I love the old classics like Jungle Book, Cinderella, 101 Dalmations, the Aristocats…the list goes on.  They all had a wonderful and organic look to them that made you appreciate them as fine art in their own right, along with being good stories with memorable characters.

So when I was alerted to this, I was of two minds.

On the one hand: The work that went into these animations was painstaking and took thousands of man-hours to put together, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’d use some animations as templates.  On the other hand, however: It seems that this goes a bit beyond that, with complete and entire sequences being used for more than just one or two different projects.  And this video is just from what this one person did the research to find…there may be more examples throughout the Disney catalog, in fact I’d bet that there are many more.

So, sure, nobody is going to lose a house or their job because of this finding, but I am a bit conflicted in my own mind about this.  My brother told me last December that he only liked the old classics and he hated the new, computer-generated animated features that are being put out.  I know that mostly it’s a case of him being a cranky curmudgeon and “They don’t make ‘em like they used to!!!”, but it illustrates something doesn’t it?  They DO make them like they used to, with assembly lines and bottom lines and pencil lines and worry lines and all that.

Whatever, it made me spend 20 minutes writing about it.   See for yourself.

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