The Cypress Trees are Talking Now

MTN

2011-11-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

This thick fist of granite is tattooed with swirls of red iron rock. I sit as the sun showily sets behind me, behind a ridge of peaks punctuated by the uproar of water. Water, the only element to defy the bravado of granite – but even mere water uselessly spatters itself across the face of crags without time, gravity, and the ponderous, dangerous thaw. Their combined attacks chip away thin sliver after thin sliver, year after year, until sliding scree and dust dresses the cliffs in a skirt – covers the cut through the detritus of life which embalms the earth’s bedrock, the cut this fin of solid stone sliced above the tree line, above the clouds, above the mortal mind, almost above even time. Divinity houses itself summit ward, respectful of the peak’s puissance. This relic, this ancient alpine outlook for the bedrock below, reminds mortal matter – root and beast and human alike – of their temporality, their transient status.

Later, lying in my tent, I delight in the night terrors, in the possibility of every snapped twig, every shift in the wind. This realm belongs to mortals other than me. The bear and the cougar control this valley and I merely visit, hoping they do not spirit me away in the dark to fill their empty stomachs. But despite my hope, the fear invigorates me – risk worth reward. The reward of healthy perspective, or wonder at the world again, or pushing legs past limits and realizing that they were mental, not physical. Yet above this tableau of love, loss, hunger, and pain, the mountain takes no interest. Both challenging mortals and impartially observing their follies, the mountain is untouchable.

In the morning, the sky colors the white peak pink. Colors plucked from air’s chemicals, placed like a garland across this crown of the earth. The sky knows that wind will not win while rock still stands. For all the force wind wills on mortals, it is no more than a flutter to the bluff. So the sky worships that which sits below it, that which sits within it, that which frames its form.

When the midday sun drums down on me, the rise to those divine heights cools my beating head. The realm of the gods, looking down on earth, looking down on sky, looking down over all of mortality, welcomes me temporarily. I am not meant to stay. This realm is only for me to visit. The mountain will throw me back into my place soon enough if I attempt to inhabit her peak.

Yet, as I pick my way carefully past her precipitous cliffs, her private valleys and clefts, I perceive my place anew. I appreciate the pleasures of culture and progress. I remember the joy of potentiality. I forget the depression of presumptions proved correct – the day-to-day expectations met as nothing novel happens. Perception is so full of prior experience. Perspective is so pleased with everything happening the same way over and over. But now it all seems unique again, as I am coming down off the mountain. And I know that realization will improve my perception, my perspective, for weeks to come.

Motorcycle Trip Haiku

2011-10-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

Day 1:
Burn miles and cheeks.
Pass valleys, dams here
where I used to live.
No time to stop now.

Day 2:
Mt. Rainier squatting
amongst clouds, glaciers.
Switch backs to get there.
Switch backs to get down.

Day 3:
Front of ferry line.
Hurricane ridge caught in calm.
Night in Twilight wood.

Day 4:
Beached driftwood giants
dwarf human forms. Offshore rocks
guilty of beauty, and murder.

Day 5:
Cloudbank moves inland,
Cape Kiwanda covered up,
cigars and campfire still lit,
growler still giving.

Day 6:
Painted hills, sculpted
cliffs – but deer in road make me
too scared to inspect.

Day 7:
Twist wrist to descend
serpentine ridge road,
or ascend bent cliff,
repeat, again, again.

On the 8th Day:
My skin still senses
ocean, or maybe dreams it –
tensing at distance.

Dear China Miéville: Thank You

2011-07-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

This isn't a critique on your book or a sappy fan letter. I merely wanted to write you and say thank you for including a couple of blank pages at the end of your latest novel Embassytown. While I was broken down over the 4th of July weekend on the side of the road, I was able to make a sign with one of them ("Cell Phone?") and get people to stop and pull over so I could first call my friend to come pick me and my bike up and then call my wife to say I wasn't going to make the trip to her family's. Then, as I sat there waiting for an hour and a half, I was able to read more of the book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

So thank you, Mr Mieville, for your good book and the extra blank page at the back.

Best Wishes,
Theaty Hannington

PS - By the way, have you ever been broken down for more than a few hours on an American Rural Highway? It changes everything.

Le Mans 2011

2011-06-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

Hour 1:
Great racing so far! Alan McNish ran into the #58 Ferrari and the #3 rolled, threw a tyre at a photographer and caused some scary moments. #58 got back to the pits and should be good to go. #3 is very very much out of the race, Alan looks to be okay. Safety car was out for 1 hour 9 minutes.

Hour 8:
Great racing so far! Mark Rockenfeller ran into a Ferrari and the #1 rolled after the Mulsanne's corner, rolling up and over the Armco and caused some REALLY scary moments. #1 is very very much out of the race, Mike looks to be okay, but I was sure he had died. Safety car was out for 2 hours twenty something minutes. 8 guys replaced 127 pieces of Arco and a ton of posts. That was a terrible crash. Rockenfeller is being kept by the hospital overnight but checks out as okay.

Hour 12:
#10 shunt at Indianapolis (I think). Limped back to the garage on three wheels.

Halfway Through
Peugeot #9 has been about 1:45 to 2:15 back on the leading #2 Audi for the last couple of hours is just waiting for something to break on the Audi. Just something small is all they need.

Hour 18:
7 Hours left. Safety car is out again for the #74, class leading Corvette, shunted hard. To give an idea of the racing quality, at the start of hour 18 there were three cars within thirty seconds and one more less than four minutes back on them. None of them have had any major problems and have stayed that way since... the last 17 hours, actually. Go Peugeot! Fantastic race so far this year! So many lead changes. So many. Also so much time behind the Safety car. I didn't even post two of the safety car periods. We are under our fifth, so far.

Hour 18.5:
NOSE TO TAIL. All four Peugeots, the two in first and third, the one a lap down in fourth, and the other in sixth ten laps down; and the second ranking Audi. Jeez. This is how it has been all race so far. You're missing an exciting one if you aren't watching.

3/4 Through
So much good. So much. Peugeot Sarrazin got a one minute drive through penalty for a mechanic not wearing his goggles at the last pit stop.

5:45 Left
#7 Peugeot off at Indianapolis with Wurz on board.

Two and a Half Hours Left:
#10 spun and lost rear body work at Indianapolis the same time rain started and the #22 spun at start-finish.

Two Hours Left:
Basically, everybody has gone off at least once in the last 1/2 hour. The rain can't decide where and when and how heavy it wants to fall. It's trying to be dry though. Most places. Engineers are fretting. Most exciting indeed. Still #2 Audi and #9 Peugeot within 30 seconds.

One Hour Forty-Five Minutes Left:
#4 Mark Gene seemed like he hit the leading #2 going into the 2nd Chicane on the Mulsanne, then maybe tried to push him off at the kink between there and Mulsanne's Corner. Shameful.

Forty-Five Minutes Left:
25 seconds between Audi and Peugeot. Incredible. Ridiculous. Both need to pit.

Thirty-Seven Minutes Left:
Both pit on the same lap. Audi has gone with Tyres, Peugeot not! We are down to six or seven seconds of gap for the end. What a gamble for Audi! Oh man. Oh man. Oh man. 7.8 seconds between them after 23 hours and twenty-three minutes. Ridiculous. 31 Pit Stops for Audi, 28 for Peugeot. Ready for a thirty-four minute sprint? The drivers are.

Twenty-Eight Minutes Left:
6.477 Seconds...

Twenty-Five Minutes Left:
The return of the rain. This race is unbelievable. "If you wrote this race, nobody would believe it." - Radio Le Mans

Twenty-One Minutes Left:
14.896 Seconds...

Eighteen Minutes Left:
12.7 Seconds...

Fifteen Minutes Left:
11.611 Seconds...

Ten Minutes Left:
16.755 Seconds... Is that it?

Four Minutes Thirty Left:
16.741 Seconds and there is now oil on the track thanks to the Pink Oak.

Two Minutes Left:
17.875 Seconds...

One Minute Left:
15.586 Seconds... White Flag. Full speed final lap.

It is Over:
13.854 Seconds.
Audi wins.
Peugeot 2, 3, 4, 5. Rebellion 6, Kronos 7.
Two cars on the lead lap, three on +45, and two on +55. Those are the only battles left.

Ford GT in third. :) On their anniversary.

Le Mans 2011 Predictions

2011-06-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

LMP1
Audi (And if it must be, can it at least be #3?)
Audi
Peugeot

LMP2
Strakka
Signatech
RML

GTE Pro
BMW
Ferrari
BMW

GTE Am
Ferrari (AF Corse)
Porsche (Larbre)
Ferrari (CRS)

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Less than an hour until Green Flag. Stay safe everybody.

My Le Mans 2011 Rooting Schedule

2011-06-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

With the first practice scheduled to go down later today, before anybody gets their times put forth, let me lay out who I am rooting for in the 79th running of Le Mans.

LMP1
1. Pescarolo: When nobody would show up and race Audi for years, Pescarolo did. Good luck Pesky! Still behind you! Welcome back!
2. Team Oreca-Matmut: Just like last year. I love my privateer teams in fast cars.
3. Rebellion Racing: I love Lolas. Such Purdy Cars.
4. Hope Racing: A Hybrid, at Le Mans? So racing is supposed to lead technological development, this shows otherwise. A Consumer development, hybrid technology, put into a racecar. I look forward to this.
5. Peugeot over Audi, any day of the week.

LMP2
1. Level 5 Motorsports: Lola Coupe. REALLY HOT. And Amurican.
2. Greaves Motorsport: the renamed Team Bruichladdich still has that drop-dead-sexy Zytek, but they now have a Nissan engine.
3. Oak Racing: Hopefully no fires this year, right? Well these guys got the old Pescarolo Chassis that I rooted for last year, but this year they shoved a German engine into it - BMW - and it'll be interesting to watch their performance. First time BMW has been in the LMP2, right?

GTE Pro
1. Lotus: Finally.
2. Jota Aston Martin: I already mentioned that it was an Aston, right? Nothing more needs to be said.
3. Hankook 458: Ferrari, Porsche, who cares? Hankook tyres spearheading Korean involvement in Le Mans? I'm all about that. Less flats this year please.
4. Corvette: They dominated for years - scared all the other competition away. Let's see if they can do it again, just in their new car.
5. Flying Lizard: Go Silicon Valley and ALMS team! They need another win at Le Mans.

GTE AM
1. Robertson Racing: Finally, my favorite new racing team of the last few years gets to Le Mans. American too. Spearheading development of the Ford GT as a race car, the husband-and-wife-duo have stolen my heart as a fan. I hope they have no reliability issues. Oh yeah, also the first husband-and-wife-duo ever at Le Mans.
2. Gulf AMR Middle East: Representing another under-represented country and region, and doing it in an Aston Martin on Dunlop tyres instead of the Michelins it seems almost everybody else is running. What's not to like?
3. Flying Lizard: Go Silicon Valley and ALMS team! They need another win at Le Mans.
4. Larbre Corvette: Yay! Corvette!

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Spotter's Guides
Radio Le Mans
Live Timing

Stanley Cup Finals Predictions

2011-06-01T13:36:00.001-07:00

Predictions Update: Don Cherry thinks the Canucks are going to win.

Predictions Update 2: So do 5 out of 6 staff members at NHL.com. I think senior writer Dan Rosen said what I think the best: "The Canucks were the best team in the regular season and the best team in the best conference in the playoffs. They have a deeper defense, a far superior power play and the Sedin twins [and Keseler (man gets no love I tell you)]. Tim Thomas will steal a game or two, but not the series."

Predictions Update 3: I've been asked to give my prediction. I can never predict hockey. Partially because I always pick the Canucks and, well, they've never won a cup. I think we have a good shot, but Boston scares me quite a bit. I'll say Canucks in 6.

A Canucks Fan Primer to the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals

2011-05-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

As a lifelong Canucks fan, I look forward to this Final Series immensely. In the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since the 1993-1994 season – way back in the Pavel Bure days of Canuck-dom – this year’s team marks the 40th anniversary season of the Canucks memorably. Though the names so tied up with my childhood excitement in 1994 still ring in my ears – Trevor Linden, Kirk McLean, Dave Babych, and of course, the immortal bad boy Pavel Bure (below) – this year’s team has one big difference over the glory boys of the mid-nineties: composure.

Bure’s expulsion in game three of the finals for slicing open the face of a Ranger with his stick, and his suckerpunch elbow to the face of a looking-the-other-way Shane Churla of the Dallas Stars – which should have gotten him expelled from that one too – showed a Canucks team that had passion, but I now realize they had little respect and composure to reign it in. No wonder Don Cherry (below) hates us. I would have too. But this year I dare say, we are the team my ten-year-old self should’ve been proud of.

Don’t get me wrong. We love our agitator/pest, Alexandre Burrows, enough to put him on the first line. And our early season enforcer, Rick Rypien – yes brother of that Mark Rypien – totally tried to kill a fan earlier this season. During a game. Actually after getting kicked out of the game for pushing a linesman. The fan was insulting him by sarcastically saying, “Way to be professional.” So yeah, some of the old Canucks energy still exists out there on the ice. All of our enforcers are coming off of injury (Tanner Glass) or playing in Minors (Rypien) right now, so Burrows is doing triple duty as agitator, enforcer (below - he needs a bit of help at the role still though he is getting better), and first-line-game-winning-goal-scorer. If he would fix his douchey haircut I could kiss the guy for that Game 7, OT win against the Blackhawks.

But when I think of the Canucks today I don’t think of our on-ice lessons in why to respect our authoritah, I think of the technical mastery of the twins (below) and Lou, I think of the hard work and dedication of Burrows, Bieksa, Keseler, Torres, Malhotra, Hamhuis, Ehrhoff, and Edler. I think of a team that, despite being outplayed on a night they couldn’t get their game going (except Lou who got 54 saves), worked their asses off and won the Western Conference championships for the first time in 17 years for Vancouver.

So, if you are going to sit down and watch this team for this Final Series, here’s what you need to know: The twins are the best in the league and Burrows backs them up well. Malhotra may come back for game one which would be emotional and exciting for Vancouver fans. Keseler (below) is probably going to stay on fire (any other team and he is their big name superstar - seriously - just Vancouver is so deep) and Torres is due for a goal or two. Lou is the best Goalie in hockey right now, or second best, and I'm pretty sure he is a reincarnated Hector of Troy.

But for me the biggest surprise of these playoffs has been the Canuck’s defensive players getting a lot of offensive points. Where the offensive forces listed above have been sub-par throughout the playoffs (Burrows failures were a big part of why the Blackhawks were one shot away from beating us while the twins have really only dominated the two series’ after that) the defense has stepped forward and gotten games won for the Canucks. From Ehrhoff’s 11 points – 9 assists and 2 goals – to Bieksa’s (below) clutch 5 goals and 4 assists and surrogate enforcing, Edler’s 7 assists and 2 goals, and Hamhuis’ five assists and single goal, the defense has gotten the job done and done it well, staying consistent throughout the post-season. The Canucks are more than the sum of their parts: they’re the best team in hockey right now. They just need to prove it. They've never won a Stanley Cup and this year is hopefully their year.

But Boston offers some stiff competition. This is the first time since the 1990-1991 season they have been in the Finals and they have some really good players leading them there: Nathan Horton, David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Chris Kelly, Michael Ryder, Milan Lucic, and Mark Recchi, to name the biggest offensive influences on their team. But they also have hockey's latest – as in the last three or four weeks – wonderkid Tyler Seguin. Seguin was the #2 draft pick in 2010 after some time in the OHL. At 19, this season didn’t show much from him – 22 points in 74 games. A good rookie year, but not great. However, in the post-season, after being a healthy scratch for a few games, he took his best game to the ice when his replacement was injured. In seven games he knocked out three assists and three goals. His replacement is healthy but coach is keeping Seguin. After seeing 21 year old Patrick Kane win the cup for the Blackhawks last year, and 22 year old Sidney Crosby win the Olympic gold for Canada, I’m afraid of the young ones now, and Seguin has been playing well. Boston can also rely on Tim Thomas (below) in goal, who is the only playing goaltender with some experience who can be claimed to be better than Luongo. Canucks have only scored on him once out of three games.

Four of their centers – Krejci, Bergeron, Marchand and Kelly – all have upwards of ten points. GULP. Notice though, that their defense has been lagging in the playoffs in terms of offensive performance. Where the Canucks defense dominates defensively and helps out a ton offensively, the Bruins are a very defined team: defense does defense, offense does offense.

Oh, and one more thing to worry about as a Canuck: we faced them once this year and they beat us, despite some awesome Canucks hits:
Recap
Six Minute Highlight Reel

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Vancouver Canucks:

The Twins: Has there ever been Two Hart Trophies (League MVP) handed out in one year? No? Well there should be. Or since Henrik got it last year, Daniel should this year. In a total of 82 games this season they averaged a combined 2.4 points a game during the regular season and that is unheard of. Separately, Daniel had 1.27 on 41 goals and 63 assists while Henrik had 1.15 on 19 goals and 75 assists. Yes, that is 7 assists short of one-a-game. (A point is for an assist or a goal) During the playoffs they had a bit of a slow start but have compensated for that. Henrik has had 19 assists and 2 goals in 18 games – 1.17 points per game, including a game where he got 4 assists – while Daniel leads the team in goals with 8 goals and 8 assists – .89 ppg. They were first and fourth in the league during the regular season.

Keseler: He seems to have been made for the playoffs. After finishing the season with 75 points – a third-place .91 ppg, third only to the twins – he has come alive in the post-season scoring exactly a point a game – seven goals and eleven assists – meaning that he splits the twins and sits in second for points. He was 15th in the league during the regular season.

Burrows: After scoring the lone, regulation Canucks goal in game seven against the Blackhawks – who knocked us out of the playoffs for the last two years – Burrows went ahead and scored in overtime to clinch it, and my heart. He sits fourth in post-season points with 7 goals and 7 assists – .78 ppg. He was sixth after the regular season with 48 points in 72 games – .67 ppg. He plays on the first line with the
twins.

Manny Malhotra has been injured since mid-March when an Avalanche puck hit him in the eye. He was a big factor in the regular-season dominance of the Presidential Trophy (Best regular season record) wining Canucks. His first practice since then was yesterday, so here’s hoping for Malhotra!

Torres is fiery. He’ll get a goal when the rest of the team is down in the dumps. He’ll work and work and work and create an opportunity out of seemingly nothing – work and good-luck. During the season he really bloomed late – 29 points in 80 games – and during the playoffs he has 2 goals and 2 assists already.

Lou: despite having the coolest hockey helmet graphics ever, this man is probably Hector of Troy reincarnated. He is totally MVP material but about once every 20 games or so he collapses and lets one go. His last collapses were in Games 4 & 5 against the Blackhawks when he let a combined total of 12 past before the coaches put Cory Schneider in for game 6 to let Luongo calm down a bit. Luongo came back in game 7 to hold the Blackhawks to stop 37 shots in the OT win. He has a .922 save percentage going into the finals, certainly helped by his 54 save game against the Sharks – the last game played. He has recorded 2 shutouts so far – game 1 against the Blackhawks and game 1 against the Predators. During the season he was at .928 and had 4 shutouts. Luongo is one of the best goalies hockey has ever seen. He is the second best Goalie, in terms of save percentage, after the immortal Dominik Hasek, for goalies who have faced over 10,000 shots. Third for goalies over 9000.

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Boston Bruins:
Tim Thomas’ goaltending is superb – he is second all-time in save percentage for goalies facing more than 9000 shots – behind Hasek, of Course. Because we’ve only played Thomas three times, we’ve only scored on him once – Malhotra was the one to put it in this year.

Nathan Horton is a big, scary good player. His shoulder is sore so he hasn’t been the force he was all season, but he still scares the crap out of me.

David Krejci has tied Horton for 17 point in the playoffs, but has ten goals to Horton’s eight. Patrice Bergeron is the assist master with 11, and a total of 15 points. Brad Marchand has 12 points. Chris Kelly and Michael Ryder each have eleven points while Vancouver native Milan Lucic has 9 clutch points.

Fifty-Four Saves Is Ridiculous

2011-05-24T22:52:00.000-07:00

Roberto Luongo turned in one of his best performances tonight - which is saying something - to send the Canucks to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1994. If you want to know what a god amongst mere mortals looks like, he looks like this:

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PS: I think the Canucks should return to the V jersey design they wore in the 1980s, but with the new colors.

Original 1983 jersey design:

But like this:

Presentation: William Gibson + New Media

2011-03-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Presentation will be followed in the future by The Paper then by a few diplomas. This presentation is placed between the research and paper writing phase.

Slide 1: Title Slide

1. Introduce myself (Nobody I didn't know showed up so I didn't need to).

2. My project deals with William Gibson and New Media. That is William Gibson, that is a famous 2005 map of the internet.

Slide 2: William Gibson Introduction

Out of the entire U of I English department, I was only able to find a single prof who has read Gibson, the brilliant Jodie, so I must do an introduction to Gibson. (Unfortunately, the only person to write a critical book about Gibson, Lance Olsen, used to teach at Idaho but was too busy to help me out. But this is better because I know my William Gibson and she knows her New Media.)

Bio: Born 1948. Father died while in elementary school, mother when he was eighteen. At thirteen he got a hold of his first Beat anthology and fell in love with Burroughs. He then draft dodged (sort of) to Canada - not necessarily because he hated Vietnam, but because he liked the whole free love thing Hippie women were into and war didn't fit into his goals in life, which were to try every drug out there. He moved to Toronto, then Vancouver, where he still lives today.

"Father/Noir Prophet" of Cyberpunk: After getting a Master's in Hard SF as Fascist Literature, he attended a few SF conventions and didn't like anything, so he wrote what he wanted. In Autumn of 1982 he read "Burning Chrome" to a group of four authors in an obscure backroom at an ignored panel during a SF convention in Denver, Colorado. This was a seminal moment in Cyberpunk - not the beginning, but when its trajectory became irreversible. Neuromancer, a book written on a typewriter, came out two years later and introduced many more people to Cyberpunk, then won the Hugo. It opened with the line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." (The picture is the Brazilian cover)

Penchant for Backseat Prophecy: Since 1984 he has become famous. From predicting the rise of reality television, describing what became the conceptual frameworks for virtual environments, and creating/defining the symbolic and iconographic representation of the information age, Gibson's words and works continues to heavily influence the people who are in the trenches of computer science. (The picture is from the bio/interview/prophecy/influence documentary No Maps for these Territories)

Slide 3: Bigend Trilogy

Project Focus: My project focuses not on those early works of the 1980s and '90s, but on his most recent three novels: Pattern Recognition from 2003, Spook Country from 2007, and September 2010's Zero History. These three have seen his most success - in terms of the NYT Bestsellers List and book sales - and are his first works to be couched in contemporary times. He calls them "speculative fiction of the very recent past". Essentially he views today as illegible enough to be treated as the future. That's another presentation though.

New Media Content: The recurring character, for whom the trilogy is named, Hubertus Hendrik Bigend, runs a Marketing company, Blue Ant, which perpetually operates by searching for the next edge and flinging themselves over it as quickly and profitably as possible and studying others around them. This allows an intelligent discussion about New Media and Marketing to guide the books themselves. Pattern Recognition deals with Digital Distribution, Viral Advertising (One-to-Many Communication), Forums (Many-to-Many Communication), Insecurity of the Web, and clearly shows him getting his toes wet in today. Spook Country discusses Repurposing iPods, DIY culture, High-Tech Pranking, Locative Art, and a Wired Magazine Clone. Zero History talks about Surveillance Camera Subversion, Private Twitter (One-to-One Communication), Order Flows, Cell Phone Technology, and Dark Nets/Deep Web (Few-to-Few Communication).

New Media Approach: I'll come back to these in a second (In Slide 9), but I want to mention them real quick. He supports three Online Catalogs of References, and he says two things about New Media that interest me for the purposes of this project: A month before the iPhone ubiquitously hit user's hands he said, "Everything has already migrated halfway to hyperlink" (5/31/2007); and "When I wrote Neuromancer [almost 25 years ago] cyberspace was there, and we were here. In 2007, what we no longer bother to call cyberspace is here, and those increasingly rare moments of nonconnectivity are there. And that's the difference. There's no scarlet-tinged dawn on which we rise and look out the window and go, 'Oh my God, it's all cyberspace now.'" ("Through the Looking Glass" The Washington Post, 2007)

Due to the sheer size of this project though, I believe I will have to largely limit myself to Zero History.

(The picture is the cover to the UK edition of Zero History placed over an approximation of Yves Klien Blue. I'm not explaining it, but reading Zero History will for you)

Slide 4: Question Slide

Question: So my question is a Relational Research Question: In today's mix of history, literature, new media, and old media, where is William Gibson? He talks about it a lot, he made his name off of it in the eighties, but where is he today? He is not doing the typical New Media trick of hypertext novels and digital obscurity, but how is he engaging with New Media?

Why Question?: Asking this question does three things for me:
1. Allows me to study New Media Theory, which I didn't get in the courses I took. "Gibson is in New Media and where is that?"
2. I'm a future author about to go out into the wide world. By studying a current author that I respect and how they do what they do, I hope to gain some point of comparison for my practices. "Where is he at within New Media?"
3. But, it also adds Gibson into the critical discussion. "Where has he gone?" He is a large reason why we interface with technology the way we do today. He is a large reason why we think the way we do about New Media today. Yet, as the most famous New Media theorist outside of the world of New Media Theory and Marshall McLuhan, he is not discussed. I want to discuss him.

There are four main research components to answering this:
1. The History of Reading
2. The History of Writing
3. The History of Cyberpunk
4. New Media & Remediation

Slide 5: History of Reading

Personal vs. Social: Today reading is a personal thing and readings are public. It used to be that all reading was a public thing – reading privately was punishable by death for many years in Europe. However, the pendulum has swung and we are coming from a time where many do not read aloud to one where more people are exposed to reading out loud. (The picture is from Flickr somewhere but I can't remember where. Sorry owner!)

Slide 6: History of Writing

Memory Storage: "All writing is information storage," claims Albertine Gaur in his book, A History of Writing. But it is information storage with a point: to communicate that information as effectively as possible (See this earlier post). Memory and knowledge are stored outside the body in writing. Memory is then accessible to anyone with the time, skill, and means. It is, unfortunately, not perfect, but it is passable. (The picture is a compilation of Alphabet Truck Part 1 and Alphabet Truck Part 2 from fantastic French photographer Eric Tabuchi)

Slide 7: Cyberpunk

What is Cyberpunk?: Basically, Cyberpunk is full of street-smart, bad-ass anti-heroes, post-human half-cyborgs, globally controlling conspiratorial corporations, fantastic technology duct taped to trash, while techno-babble, world-building ideas, and dense metaphors define the writing style. (The picture is from the Epic Comics aborted adaptation of Neuromancer from 1989. The words explain Cyberpunk and the image seems familiar today but was revolutionary then: the Matrix and Cyberspace were invented.)

One of the first published definitions: "For [cyberpunk writers], the techniques of classical 'hard SF' – extrapolation and technological literacy – are not just literary tools, but an aid to daily life. They are a means of understanding, and highly valued." - Bruce Sterling, 1986, Preface to Mirrorshades (xi)

A recent definition: "Briefly, we believe that the signature obsessions of cyberpunk are: Presenting a global perspective of the future; engaging with developments in infotech and biotech, especially those invasive technologies that will transform the human body and psyche; striking a gleefully subversive attitude that challenges traditional values and received wisdom; and cultivating a crammed prose style that takes an often playful stance toward traditional science fiction tropes." - James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, 2007, "Hacking Cyberpunk", Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (ix)

Slide 8: New Media + Remediation

What is New Media?:
New Media always deals with cultural artifacts and the way we interface with them: access, change, experience, transmit, et cetera. I am going to share two of Lev Manovich's attempts to define it. In The Language of New Media he defines five principles of New Media:
1. Numerical Representation: Cultural artifacts can be described mathematically and manipulated algorithmically.
2. Modularity: Fractal structure of New Media cultural artifacts – in the same way that pixels are assembled but retain their individual structure.
3. Automation: Interfacing with cultural artifacts requires less human intentionality.
4. Variability: Cultural artifacts have potentially infinite versions. Architect and Theorist Markos Novak says it is replacing constants with variables.
5. Cultural Transcoding: This is the interesting one. Though artifacts may still be recognizable as cultural artifacts, they now follow the established conventions of the computer's organization of data.

In The New Media Reader Manovich defines it again using eight characterizations - five technological and three idea-based. He also says that more than these are possible.

Technologies:
1. New Media vs. Cyberculture: New Media deals with cultural artifacts, not social phenomena - it is not concerned with mere networking.
2. New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform: New Media requires digital distribution, not merely digital creation. A book is created digitally, but distributed physically, thus it is not New Media. Unless it is an E-Book. (He notes that this requires redefinition every few years. It seems to me that the iPhone screwed this definition all up.)
3. New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software: All cultural artifacts that rely on digital representation and delivery share five common qualities: the five principles above.
4. This is the interesting one: New Media artifacts are a mix between software conventions and existing cultural conventions. Cultural conventions change to better fit the model of new media, of software. Old and New Media define how we, as humans, represent, access, and manipulate data. If all writing is data storage, as Albertine Gaur claims, then New Media changes our very relationship to writing itself. As a writer, this is important.
5. There is a new media stage to every new medium - an aesthetic reference to the technology itself (like DV film-makers whose movies are exactly 80 minutes, or Frank Gehry's CATIA or Design Project based buildings, or Hypertext authors).

Ideas:
6. Faster Execution of Manual Algorithms: New Media is both a speeding up of pre-existing techniques, and a cybernetics controller – allowing real-time networking and control over extra-bodily experiences.
7. New Media is Metamedia: Communication tactics of the 1920's avant garde movement are simply re-encoded and re-prioritized, but also take pre-made representations of reality as their material (rather than seeing reality itself). He claims it is a postmodern sense to rework rather than create.
8. Connections between Post-WWII Art and Computing: Artists and Computer Engineers often tried the same things with their different tools. Manfred Mohr and Sol LeWitt, for instance.

The third interesting thing he talks about is the Database Logic/Narrative Logic relationship Jodie discussed last week. As a refresher, New Media has these two logics being composited together:
1. Database Logic: arrays, records, lists. Process & packet, sorting & matching, function & variable, computer language & data structure. Nothing is more important than anything else.
2. Narrative Logic: story & plot, composition & point of view, mimesis & catharsis, comedy & tragedy. Everything else is cut out so the important story is not distracted.

Remediation:
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin take the three interesting things Manovich talks about and labels them Remediation. They then spend a book discussing it. To quote: "Both new and old media are invoking the twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other. [...] Immediacy depends on hypermediacy [and vise-versa]." (5)

Immediacy: Everything is live, fast, and risky. Accuracy is praised.

Hypermediacy: Even newscasts are trying to capture the look and feel of webpages with screens within screens, elaborate backgrounds, tickers of information, et cetera. Diversity is praised.

In essence, New Media presents itself as refashioned and improved Old Media continually refashioning and improving current media. Nothing is in a vacuum.

Slide 9: I Love This Picture

Architecture: In Art and Architecture, the medium and the message consciously influence each other. If you design a building with straight rulers, you're going to get a lot of straight walls. If you design a building with curved rulers, you're going to get a lot of curved walls. This isn't necessarily true, but you would be artistically constipated to do it otherwise. Different tools have different uses. In literature, we are seeing the formative moves towards this relationship between the medium and the message. (Marshall McLuhan needs a crown and a cape)

"Everything has already migrated halfway to hyperlink." (5/31/2007): Gibson's writing has changed as he realizes that he needs only explain why an item is important to the story - not necessarily what an item is, its history, its appearance. All of the who, what, when, where, why, and how may be unnecessary. Let me explain. I too first thought that this sounded like a cheap, lazy, writer excuse. Writing has always been dependent upon context for meaning: the reader must have the specific skills and access needed to read that language, they must read appropriately to be taken seriously, the writer must adhere to some extent to proper spelling or grammar, and no piece of writing was ever created in a vacuum. Essentially, Gibson is writing to the reader plus Google, realizing that the reader's cultural knowledge is able to expand as deep as it needs to be immediately if he makes the reader sufficiently curious. For instance, a discussion about carburetors on various motorcycles is interesting to the story in that Fiona's do not work intermittently - and that's all the reader gets aside from obscure half-references to various bikes with presumably better carbs (Zero History 185). These specifics are lost to a non-motorcyclist, and were even lost to me, as a motorcyclist, except with Google. In a sense, he is writing a print-book as if it was a hypertext-work. The massive, Google accessible knowledge base that every reader has access to allows the writer to focus more on the story. This is Gibson beginning to allow database logic to supplement and sharpen narrative logic. (See, it ain't lazy, just smart in the "Why didn't I think of that?" vein)

Online Catalogs of References: Googling various specifics from the books may put you at one of the three online magazine sites (PR Otaku, Previous Node Magazine , and Current Node Magazine) that catalog, collate, and compile data about the references in the books. PR Otaku slowly built over a couple of years after Pattern Recognition was published. But Gibson sent one of the contributors an advanced reading copy for Spook Country and by the time the book came out, the references were already online. This takes a narrative and turns it into a database. But it also seems to be re-socializing reading and creating a sort of armchair critical discussion (According to author John Sutherland).

In Closing: Gibson wrote a future that was so seductive and cool that computer scientists adopted it as a model. Today we are within his future to some extent. But he is still ignored by New Media theorists. In my initial studies, it seems as if using Gibson as a lens through which to look at New Media is appropriate and informative. I hope I have convinced you of the same. If I haven't yet, let me know why, please. I'll share my paper once it is done.

Thank you for reading! (The above picture is from this Instructable. First thing I do this summer is make myself some Concrete Light Bulbs. I am going to try making a form too. That sounds fun.)

"All Writing Is Information Storage"

2011-03-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

The above quote by Albertine Gaur is the first line in his book A History of Writing. His premise is that writing approximates the original, human information storage - memory. I would like to expand that premise a bit to and point out that it also approximates speech and is therefore a communicative art as well.

Memory + Speech
Memory is only accessible to the owner, to the person who experienced it initially and remembers it. To share that with somebody who was not present at the impetus experience, a person must communicate. Communication through speech only gives a rough overview of the memory. How many times have friends told you a funny story and it wasn't funny? Even the reason for remembering is lost in the translation in that case. But even more basically, passing a memory to another means passing a memory to someone who doesn't have that memory, or the mindset, outlook, experiences, or intellect of the original. Speech loses a lot of the power of that memory.

Memory + Writing
Memory can be stored outside the body through writing. In writing it down though, the author is attempting to communicate to the page that memory through words. The author runs into the same problems that the speaker does above. The fullness, the context, the detail is lost and what gets communicated constitutes a new memory because it is so different that the original. However, through writing it down, the author gives up ownership of the memory to the device used to store the writing. Thereafter a reader may engage that written memory at the reader's own pace.

Compare
So in my mind, writing engages the same process speech does, but does it twice. Writing is not merely an approximation of memory, but also of communication - of making that memory useful. Where the speaker fills in details with inflection, hand gestures, and timing, the reader can travel at their own pace, can pause and do research or think about it, can take the time to form an imaginary mental picture. Writing and speech are both between memories, but writing itself constitutes a doubling which makes it its own memory, allows it to communicate years after the original experience had person have passed.

2011-02-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

It is a great treat to be able to study something I love in college. I fully believe that the authors and books that will be canonized are those that span the academic and reading worlds: those read on the summer beach and in the classrooms, those on top of the NYT Bestsellers and the stack of Books in the University bookstore. Most books are one or the other. Aside from teaching, my best collegiate experiences have been with studying things I already liked.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of those experiences for me. I have, since first reading it, consistently placed it near the first books thought of when the word “favorite” or “best” comes into play. This semester, my final in college, I finally read Frankenstein again, and this time in a classroom. Needless to say, I am enjoying it immensely.

However, an interesting thing happened the other day. Creed and I agreed that Frankenstein was one of the greatest novels ever written in the English Language. Creed. The man who disagrees with everything I say. Among other aspects, I love him dearly for that. Whenever Creed is around, there is never a dull conversation: he and I disagree regularly. But we agreed. Not only on something literary, but something specific. So let the waters rise.

A Poetic Fight

2011-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

While the Brotherhood of Tobacco Poetry has variously succeeded and not succeeded at our aim, a Poetic Fight broke out on January 29th that deserves some recognition. Out of the blue, Creed posted this, directly attacking Gunn, as a preface to his second Tobacco Poem:

'Twas yestermonth in yesteryear my last poem was wrote:
A rhymeless Dodectuplet of tobacco-praising note.
'Twas amply criticized for use of vapid Fragrant words;
And so indeed I promised to heed this warning that I heard.

But then upon a further discourse in this blag's concerne
It was foretold to me that I would not to here return:
That I was an infrequent blagger, nary wise to trust.
Henceforth I held to post on here again to be a must.

This prophecy of slackery to-wards my poet's Muse
The Fates have chosen to reverse as an ironic ruse.
This one who did accuse my Muse of slothful disposition
May yet one day eat up his words in somberest contrition.

That aspiring apprentice of an Oracle prophesied thus to me:
That my recognized status as a contributor was but illusory.
And yet while I unto this blag present this humble song
That voice of Fate's attempts to compete seem to be prolonged.

No sonnet has he spun to woo a lady's tender heart,
No epic has he sung to show his mem'ry to be smart.
Not e'en a short haiku has he yet posted on this blag-
A three-line paean to his pipe through January's fog.

O pagan Fates! Why do ye stay the writing hand of prophecy?
For what do you bless me instead? By what obscure philosophy?
That very fellow who informed me I would ne'er write another thing
Feels very mellow apathy himself towards the task of hence writing.

Is this a feat of Hercules, of such magnitude and strain
To mire him down from writing his poem with pangs and endless pain?
Or did he here consider Anon. Jr.'s poem to suffice
Despite his obligation, every month to post here once or twice?

Or does he aim to end this month by quibbling quips to humor us?
To grace this blag with noble quotes from Alexandre Dumas?
Shall therefore we consider him to not be posting frequent?
Negatory, I suppose; the reason for this is sequent:

+

The next day, the stung Gunn replied:

A man of ideas, stands for oration,
Constitutional law is his vocation.
His rebelling wrong, the battle un-won,
Power comes from the barrel of a Gunn

+

Creed came back with this masterful example:

"Might makes right!" he fiercely cries, with rhetoric and quoting,
"The Constitution wields no gun- so therefore it is nothing!"
"Republic is Rebelliousness"- this thought he's oft promoting,
And afterwards goes to the polls to take his part in voting.

+

Gunn then took the time yesterday to reply again:

The gentleman saith, "How can you speak thus?
We and our powers have a communal trust."
The powers that be will ignore this man,
And snuff him out, the best they can.

He pushes against the wind, soon forgetting the trust,
Obey the gentleman's system, the governors shall regard.
Abiding by this, the conspirator says we must,
For this is his law unchanged: Obey until life gets hard.

+

It seemed Creed already had a response at the ready:

'Twas God ordained Authorities, of all shapes, over men,
Ordaining o'er America the sovereign Constitution.
"This law is illegitimate!" the Monarchist doth stammer-
"MY only law is law of might, of shotgun and steel hammer!"

In order to save countless helpless fools lost in deception,
He mocks the Constitution with his brilliant new perception;
That great enlightened Monarchist gives us a wise perspective:
"It is the will of God for us to follow this directive:

Against what certain is God-given power, our Rule of Law-
Rebel! For thus God wills it ever, fore and even now!
Let government throw off all limits, let the nation tremble-
And him opposing this rebellion is the real rebel!"

"Obey the laws, obey them all!" is what he recommends-
And when unto the nation's throne he mightily ascends:
"No law shall bind me, though I've sworn an oath to law uphold!"
And soon, corrupted by such pow'r, he takes a tyrant's mold.

+

For my part, I think Creed has a huge talent for Satiric poetry and sincerely hope that Gunn, as only a true friend could, keeps egging him on. I've enjoyed the trip so far and hope it lasts forever.

+

UPDATE:At 12:03AM, a sleep-deprived Gunn posted this, his best effort to date by far:

The Citizen Who Thought He Was King

You may shout of ideal rights,
With police enforcement here to grow.
But have you seen a riot call fights,
They all are heathens who are born so low.
You may say you have solemn thoughts,
Creating a witness thereto fore.
When all the others are casting lots,
Of who next in power you shall abhor.
You are rippin', rollin', rantin' now,
When the masters breached their vow.
By the time your rebellion affects the mind,
A wicked soul you'll regrettably find.

Larger governments will have their poor ways,
Thus ensuing a loss of wits
But is this reason enough to say,
Licensed tantrums and kicking fits.
"The vow! The vow!", you'll cry and moan,
"Their justice shall be served!"
Though justice applies to you alone,
Your sentence made unnerved.
You are cringing, crying, crowing now,
As the masters amended the vow.
While I lay low and enjoy the attack,
Content with the smarts my leaders do lack.

+
Creed responded with another gem. Can this man write a poor satiric poem? I think not.

Behold! On new adventures doth our Hero swift embark.
To sail the seven seas, or maybe just to stroll the park?
His myriad crushing arguments, for Might-makes-Right's True Cause
In former times serv'd as his cymbals, clashing without pause.

But now, he chooses a new task, a most amusing chore:
He gives his challenge, whipping up a witty Poet's War.
Perhaps he entertains certain fresh subjects for this duel?
Indeed! For his old arguments, this duel's his brand-new tool!

And thus he hurls his javelins, his Monarchistic jabs!
Twice swinging at the Constitution, stumbling as he stabs,
While throngs of weeping flatterers adore his rival's verse,
Each begging on their knees "Mock Me! O! Mock me too!" 'til hoarse.

A third blow, now, the Monarchist brings down with vicious clamor,
And those around him tremble at this stroke's resounding tremor.
These new-spun stanzas show his creativity; his best!
He rhymes with eloquence, then writes it oth'rwise like the rest.

In Riotous effort to advance his point through rants and wits
In Tantrum urges 'gainst his foe, t'abstain from "Kicking Fits".
He who would freely break the Constitution for some cause
Accuses his vile rival of now posing 'bove the laws.

How public, bravely, fiercely, does he give his foe hortation
To "Lay Low and Enjoy" it all when evil chokes our Nation.
If only he'd believe in freedom- Paragon he'd be:
He puts such pain and effort toward the cause of Apathy.

Location Hunting

2011-02-06T09:26:00.000-08:00

“His arms are like, huge. Their muscle.”
“What are you talking about? Whose arms?”
“That cop's man. That one right over there.”
“That's no cop.”
“Rent-a-cop then.”
“No, that's a bouncer. See that door behind him?”
“But what's he doing here?”
“He's bouncing, I don't know.”
“Is there a club there?”
“Where there's smoke, genius.”
“Yeah but maybe he is a fake bouncer, you know? Like a dude posted up outside a building with nothing inside, just standing there to prank people.”
“What are you thinking for, ape? Take pictures.”
“I'm just sayin', maybe he isn't legitimate.”
“Legitimate? Man, I tell you, muscles like that, he makes his own legit. Thought the Army would've taught you that.”
“I was telling you, the muscles man. Now you agree.”
“I know, I know. I just now got a good look at them though.”
“Hey, hey hey, check it out. There is a group of people coming up the street.”
“Good. Now we can put down this crackpot theory of yours.”
“I'm just saying it is possible.”
“You don't even know what it is that you are saying.”
“Hey, watch.”
“I'm watching, I'm watching. And I'm watching six people walk through a door and some lights flashing inside. Colored lights. Like at a club.”
“I got it. So it's probably a club. But it could've been a fake club.”
“A fake club?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, that's a stretch. We are getting out of here.”
“Hey, can I pick the radio station?”
“Sure.”
“Some people say a man is made outta mud, a poor man's made outta muscle and blood.”
“Oh man, I love this song.”
“Muscle and blood and skin and bones, a mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong.”
“Could you turn it down a bit, I'm driving over here.”
“You load sixteen tons, what do you get?”
“How can you ask me to turn this down?”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“This is a classic man. A classic American tune.”
“Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.”
“Well that may be, but it's too loud for me driving.”
“I owe my soul to the company store.”
“Alright, alright, I'll turn it down.”
“I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine.”
“But let it be said there is a special place in hell—”
“I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine.”
“—for people who ask to turn down this song man.”
“I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal.”
“Really.”
“Yeah.”
“And the straw boss said 'Well, a-bless my soul.'”
“You think that God or whatever likes this particular song so much—”
“You load sixteen tons, what do you get?”
“—that he personally spent his valuable time designing a room in hell—”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“—just for people like me? Who have friends who listen—”
“Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.”
“—to music too loud while they are trying to do something.”
“I owe my soul to the company store.”
“God is outside of time man.”
“I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain.”
“Well then how come he created it?”
“Fightin' and trouble are my middle name.”
“Created what? Time?”
“I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion.”
“Yeah. Why did he?”
“Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line.”
“Man, I do not want to get into this discussion with you right now man.”
“You load sixteen tons, what do you get?”
“Why not man? What's wrong—”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“—with this discussion? You afraid—”
“Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.”
“—of your spirituality? Turn that—”
“I owe my soul to the company store.”
“—down because right now I am driving. I'm trying—”
“If you see me comin', better step aside.”
“—to keep our sorry asses out of oncoming traffic.”
“A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died.”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
“One fist of iron, the other of steel, if the right one don't a-get you then the left one will. You load sixteen tons, what do you get?”
“You know what has always struck me funny about the radio?”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“No, what?”
“Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.”
“That's a dead man singing.”
“I owe my soul to the company store.”
“So what?”
“So that is a dead man singing and neither of us find it odd. This is an invention that is new within the last hundred, hundred-fifty years and nobody even bats an eye while we roll around on tyres made from trees, in carriages made from metals that were designed to protect people in space, at speeds that ancient people only got to when they were about to die, and all of it to the accompanying tones of one Tenessee Ernie Ford. A dead man. A man who has been dead for years. But you can sit over there and get all excited—”
“Make the world go away.”
“—today, years after this showboat has been buried—”
“And get it off my shoulders.”
“—as his skull is being cleaned out by worms—”
“Say the things you used to say.”
“—we can sit here and listen to a man singing—”
“And make the world go away.”
“—from literally beyond the grave.”
“Do you remember when you loved me?”
“I'm saying that is weird. That—”
“Before the world took me astray.”
“—is seriously strange. Not some stupid bouncer.”
“If you do then forgive me.”
“But maybe he wasn't a bouncer.”
“And make the world go away.”
“Get off that bouncer man.”
“I'm sorry if I hurt you.”
“I'm just saying.”
“I'll make it up, day by day.”
“Stop talking now. I'm listening to dead men.”
“Just say you love me like you used to, and make the world go away. Just say you love me like you used to, and make the world go away.”

+++

Apologies to William Gibson.

Daily Write Part 5

2011-01-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

Gunn and I have decided to post our daily, 15 minute freewrites for five days. This one is a review of some pipe tobacco, Hearth & Home's Anniversary Kake. The core of it, the idea for it was flushed out in those first 15 minutes, then I spent an hour or so on it. So this very much is rough. This also counts as my sixth and final necessary Tobacco Poem. Thanks for reading.

+++

Around the edges of the glade nude
nymphs dance, show no shame –
there are none now to watch them
perform the old pieces again and again.

An exposed rock, low to the turf,
the outside dark, deep, aged,
pitted and pocked and potent,
overpowers the center,
controls the shape of whirling women,
their hair flung forth to lift in the wind
of their own making – the still stone
squats silent in their close tussle.

These two forces – the feminine
dancing figures who know what they do
and the terrible tip of the outcrop,
tiny in relation to bedrock below,
but filling the glade, giving shape, giving order
giving stage to the performers –
the power and pleasure of the forest
the flight and the fight of flesh.

But creepingly another comes,
pierces crenellation shrubs, perceives
and, arrested, allured, alarmed,
cranes neck back and dextrously side
to see the pale hides of these hidden women,
their blinding skin more splendid against
the bold black backdrop of Precambrian rock
than they ever could be couched safely on any cushion.

Daily Write Part 4

2011-01-27T06:34:00.001-08:00

Gunn and I have decided to post our daily, 15 minute freewrites for five days.

+++

The word had come upon him like a slow, rising tide, like a soft piece falling into place, making pleasure real. He felt the truth in the thing. It wasn't that he knew, logically or reasonably, but he knew nonetheless. That last bit of brain clicking softly with the rest like two cardboard puzzle pieces. And in the end, that is all it ever is. Science, Religion, Politics – these are all based solely on faith. Science even tells us itself that our senses our fallible and our mind over-interprets every input, every thing we see, every food we smell, every touch we feel. These things are, by the time we realize them, interpreted: our brain flips what our eyes see, strings together disparate snapshots of what is seen. On the other hand, Science tells us that truth only comes from sensation and reflection – neither of which are logical processes we can trust. Everything is based on faith. Show me in a way that I can remake that the tides are caused by the moon interacting with the earth, by their gravitational relationship. Hint: to do this you must first prove to me that the world is spherelike, the moon too, that gravity on a cosmic scale and in a cosmic location is active. We all simply rehash what we have been told, what we believe, what we know. Reason is a whore. The only thing it can do is take us from a set of premises and give us a logical conclusion. Those premises though are unreasonable, just by their being.
His chair creaked as he shifted his weight imperceptibly. His bulk causing one bolt or another to shift in relation to the rest of the chair, or that's what he thought it was.

Daily Write Part 3

2011-01-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

Gunn and I have decided to post our daily, 15 minute freewrites for five days.

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I ridicule these books. I laugh at their similarities and their subtle differences alike. I find it funny they they all have found the same suggestions, the same solutions to the Pleistocene problems. A literature has built up here, a sort of ars poetica on steroids, juiced into a full size self-help book for the blogger, the bard, the biographer. The basic tale is always the same: at the beginning they teach to write more, try new things, worry less; and at the end the tell us to rectify, rephrase, and rearrange – but use these edits to experiment as well, to continue attempting untried tactics. This is old hat for me. This is Rebecca's hat that she gave me. Her poetry rules have stuck with me through my writing, have echoes along my path parallel to my progression. Priscilla Long's book is the latest and was, initially, much the same. I was mentally comparing chapters of her's to chapters, to portions, to pages placed in other poetry self-help books. But chapter two I couldn't. I found an addition there. Though Rebecca's Rules apply here too, this is a new tactic, an insight that has not been illustrated in every other book of what is becoming a genre. Words words words. It is so simple and obvious and I am sure other authors wrote about it, but not in the way that her ten, fifteen pages on the pleasure and prerequisite of compiling pages of words, lists of lawyerspeak, or parts to a lathe, or colors that are yellow. Sure she hates the Latinate, calls Anglo Saxon the true English, ignores loving the revolution of the Romance invasion from France, but this idea is, after eight years of reading these things for classes, one I haven't come across before quite like this.

Daily Write Part 2

2011-01-25T06:45:00.001-08:00

Gunn and I have decided to post our daily, 15 minute freewrites for five days.

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The koi pond was a muddy mess. One could look at it, not into it. Every once in a while a streak of orange would mark the great expanse. The boys sat around it anyways, watching for those flashes of orange. The sun beat their necks into red-skinned, glowing, heat-radiating spans. One of them idly tossed rocks into the pond, small little stones really not that much larger than gravel. Every once in a while the plop of the stone starting to sink would attract a fish, would reward them with a flash of color. The green grass showed a definite yellowing, explaining the lateness of the season with such a visual cue. The boys sat on the grass. The stone bench nearby had steeped in the sun, sending too much heat forth for bare legs in shorts. There was a small bird bath – overly gaudy like most garden decorations – but the water kept evaporating away. The gravel in the path had basalt's slightly bluish tint, its field an alternating pattern of light and shadow in miniature. There really was no garden, the pond was placed in a wheat field between stalks of yellow growing out of the dark earth. The dark earth. With their mother's warnings to not muddy their clothes, the three boys arose and moved into those rows of their father's money. They all knew that a dirt clod or two would start it, but none of them wanted to be the one to toss that first transgression, though they all wanted to be throwing. Throwing what was once dust, and would be again once it burst on the skin of another. They stood like this for years.

Daily Write Part 1

2011-01-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

Gunn and I have decided to post our daily, 15 minute freewrites for five days.

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The zebra lay on its side. The taunt skin of the belly heaved and deflated with a rhythm, with a cadence all its own. The black nostrils of the beast puffed dust into miniature fogs while the thick, wet skin around them grew larger, then shrank. Its mouth was open just a crack, showing slivers of white teeth, suggesting a pink tongue. The black lashes springing from eyelids showed the effects of the dust: the gloss lost to a thin hail of particles. The thick trunk of the neck was tensed, displaying a smooth definition of muscle beneath short hair, a lumpy canvas of undefined musculature. The chest's characteristic stripe was less dusty than the eyelashes, though still with a patina of dullness. The back showed thicker tufts of fur along the regimented spine. The two front hooves were flecked with mud from a watering hole. The tail, as it lazily switched flies off, created miniature waterfalls of dust in the thin air – unsupported, ephemeral cascades of light brown looking, rolling, building like smoke but down to the ground instead of rising to the sky. Flies buzzed anyway, of course, as they always do. Their clear wings purred in the wind, their helmet eyes scoping good places to land, the hair on their abdomen exhibiting the dulling effect of the dust. Instead of circling, they seemed to make squares in the air, but when more than one got airborne, their squares intertwined, embedded themselves in each other like Olympic rings and, when one strayed too close to another's path, a double helix of buzzing rose, the pitch of their wings, perhaps their tempers, flaring.

Cyberpunk Inhabits Us Part 2

2011-01-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson, 1993, "Fresh Air" NPR

"Politics has, like, jacked itself up to my level of weirdness. I can work with this. I like the sheer sort of neo-Stalinist denial of reality. That's what makes it work. It's interesting. I'd like to see it get less interesting. But I don't know that it necessarily will." - William Gibson, 2007, "Through the Looking Glass" The Washington Post

"When I wrote 'Neuromancer' [almost 25 years ago] cyberspace was there, and we were here. In 2007, what we no longer bother to call cyberspace is here, and those increasingly rare moments of nonconnectivity are there. And that's the difference. There's no scarlet-tinged dawn on which we rise and look out the window and go, 'Oh my God, it's all cyberspace now.'" - William Gibson, 2007, "Through the Looking Glass" The Washington Post

"This is new. People in really small towns can become world-class connoisseurs of something via eBay and Google. This didn't used to be possible. If you are sufficiently obsessive and diligent, you can be a little kid in some town in the backwoods of Tennessee and the world's premier info-monster about some tiny obscure area of stuff. That used to require a city. It no longer does." - William Gibson, 2007, "Through the Looking Glass" The Washington Post

"If I had gone to Ace Books in 1981 and pitched a novel set in a world with a sexually contagious disease that destroys the human immune system and that is raging across most of the world -- particularly badly in Africa -- they might have said, 'Not bad. A little toasty. That's kind of interesting.' But I'd say -- 'But wait! Also, the internal combustion engine and everything else we've been doing that forces carbon into the atmosphere has thrown the climate out of whack with possibly terminal and catastrophic results.' And they'd say, 'You've already got this thing you call AIDS. Let's not --' And I'd say, ' But wait! Islamic terrorists from the Middle East have hijacked airplanes and flown them into the World Trade Center.' Not only would they not go for it, they probably would have called security." - William Gibson, 2007, "Through the Looking Glass" The Washington Post

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3 Page Interview/Article from The Washington Post here.

Seven Pictures From Inside The Cabin

2011-01-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

This cabin filled with caustic smoke while the basement smoldered then starved, saving the structure. This is Wood Light Frame covered in Silver Nitrate Spray Paint.

Cyberpunk Inhabits Us

2011-01-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

“For [cyberpunk writers], the techniques of classical 'hard SF' – extrapolation and technological literacy – are not just literary tools, but an aid to daily life. They are a means of understanding, and highly valued.” - Bruce Sterling, 1986, Preface to Mirrorshades

“Breifly, we believe that the signature obsessions of cyberpunk are: Presenting a global perspective of the future; engaging with developments in infotech and biotech, especially those invasive technologies that will transform the human body and psyche; striking a gleefully subversive attitude that challenges traditional values and received wisdom; and cultivating a crammed prose style that takes an often playful stance toward traditional science fiction tropes.” - James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, 2007, “Hacking Cyberpunk”, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

“I think we live in an incomprehensible present. And what I'm actually trying to do is illuminate the moment, and...and make the moment accessible. I'm not even really trying to explain the moment. I'm just trying to...trying to make it accessible.” - William Gibson, 2000, No Maps for these Territories

“In the '80s, when I became known for a species of science fiction that journalists called cyberpunk, Japan was already, somehow, the de facto spiritual home of that influence, that particular flavor of popular culture. It was not that there was a cyberpunk move-ment in Japan or a native literature akin to cyberpunk, but that modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. And the Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, "You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was. Japan lives in the future; it has lived there for a century. Hot-wired by repeated onslaughts of technologically driven change, temporally dislocated, deeply traditional yet subject to permutation without notice, we all, today, must to some extent feel ourselves to be warped, alien, disfigured. The Japanese have simply had a head start.” - William Gibson, 2001, “The Future Perfect” Time Asia

Six Pictures From The Road On The 2nd Day Of The Year

2011-01-09T00:33:00.000-08:00

North First Street, Elk River, Idaho

Taft Street, Elk River, Idaho

Elk River Road/Highway 8, Just East of Bovill, Idaho

Elk River Road/Highway 8, in Bovill, Idaho

Highway 8 near Helmer, Idaho

Highway 8 near Moscow, Idaho

Seven Pictures From The New Years Eve Road

2011-01-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Highway 95 Just North of Moscow, Idaho

Highway 95 Just North of Moscow, Idaho

Highway 95 Just South of Mary Minerva McCrosky Memorial State Park

Highway 95 Just North of the Coeur D'Alene Casino

Highway 95 Bridge, Lake Coeur D'Alene, in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho

Highway 95 Just North of Worley, Idaho

Highway 95 Just South of Viola, Idaho

Four Photographs From The Thanksgiving Road

2011-01-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Nothing to see here.

Eyebrows of the Loess hills.

The reservation.

A break in the clouds.

Dear Nathan Enderle,

2010-12-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the great couple of years. Way to go out on a 23 yard, overtime, endzone pass to lock up a season ending win for the Vandals. Nice 3,291 yard Senior Season. I will miss your long bombs that usually seemed to make it. Good luck!

Nasty and Inebriated,
ATY

Dear Boise State

2010-11-26T22:54:00.000-08:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Boise is not a State.

Sincerely,
ATY

How To Play Stronghold Kingdoms: A Beginner's Tutorial

2010-11-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

Stronghold Kingdoms is not Stronghold. It is not even very similar. Stronghold and Crusaders are two of the best RTS games of all time (Don't talk to me about Stronghold 2 - that game never existed). In Stronghold Kingdoms though, the RTS battles are now computer resolved and you are playing more the role of a chess-player than a general on the field. But with that said, the game is extremely fun and easy to play for a half hour or so a day. Your villagers work in real time: each time a woodcutter deposits wood, he drops one plank on the stockpile instead of twelve. Same for stone and iron and all the resources. This is a huge change from Stronghold, but what it allows is me to log on in the morning, use my resources and make some changes (Scout here, send an army there, research this, fortify my castle, build this building) then go to work for eight hours and come home to find that I now have eight more hours worth of resources, so I make my changes again and go to bed. This may be the perfect MMO. Free-to-play, easy to pick up, hard to master, addicting, and not super time-intensive. Here is the YouTube trailer.

There are a couple of different play routes. But both have the same goal in mind. The game does not allow you to “win”, you can only have 10 villages max, I think, but it does allow you to be a powerful political force in an England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland/Germany filled with powerful political forces.

Here are your basic goals:
1. Build up your village so it can
2. build up your castle.
3. Progress to Page and join or create a Faction.
4. Progress to Prince and have ten villages and ten castles and pick fights with people around you.

1. Build up Your Village
First things first: do the tutorial. It will really help you out. I mean, it's been a thousand years since this time period of monks, castles, merchants, and catapults, so you need to learn the basic skills.

When you are setting up your buildings, pay attention to the little numbers that show up on the building. Those numbers are how much your building will produce, or hold, or affect happiness, or whatever. Be sure to try moving the building around and seeing what it should be close to. For instance, the closer you place a fletcher to the stockpile, the more bows he will produce. Some things need to be close to the stockpile, some to the forest, some to the keep, some to the granary, some to the inn, et cetera. But a few need to be as close to two things as possible – a Woodcutter's Hut needs to be in the woods, but as close to the stockpile as possible. This makes sense as the woodcutter has to walk to deliver each piece of wood.

But the more important question is what to build. Three things right off the bat: food, Woodcutters Huts, and Stone Quarries. For food, Apples are a very good early game option: they provide a lot of food for few resources. But as the game progresses, and you can afford it, you want to transfer to Bakeries – they provide a lot of food quickly. A lot. To do any expansion though, of castle or village, you are going to need Stone Quarries and Woodcutters Huts.

You may think to yourself, “but I want my people to be happy! I'm going to spend my resources on ale and more kinds of food so I get honor more quickly.” Don't do that. That's what I did. As you become more honored, you attract stronger AI enemies on a regular basis. You NEED your castle to be strong BEFORE progressing too far in the ranks. Build up your wood and stone production through research and building more production facilities.

Research: wood and stone production, tools, and food. Tools is extremely useful, you know how you are saving up for that next Woodcutter's Hut? Well with Tools you can drop the price of it by 40%, and build it that much quicker. By dropping the price of buildings, you also drop the price of decorative buildings, which can do more for your honor production than Arts research. Plus, by researching Arts you get into Monks early on – they're useful, but first you need to build up your castle.

2. Build up Your Castle
Do this. Seriously. You ramped up your stone and wood production, right? Good. You'll need a lot of it. Here are two images of what your castle should look like while under construction:

As to the castle itself: a ton of archers on walls and in towers will always work wonders. In 1403, during the Glyndŵr Rising, a garrison of only 37 archers successfully held Caernarfon Castle. Though this example outlines the importance of archers, you're going to need a lot more. For your castle, archers are key. This requires making Fletchers. Put them close to the stockpile. Then research Fletching and Weapon Making as much as you can to bump up your production. Build some towers and put your archers in them. This will require not only archers, but also new buildings.

To get access to new buildings, Research Castellation, Fortification, and Defenses. Castellation will upgrade your keep, which fires arrows on the enemy, and allow the research of Defense and Fortification. Fortification will give you stone walls and gatehouses and towers that are much stronger, but take longer to build. Defenses will give you guard houses, which allow you to garrison more troops at your castle, as well as various traps for killing an incoming army. Command is also important to research, as it will increase the size of the army you can have. However, you still need more guard houses to station your army at your castle.

3. Progress to Paige
Now that you have Wood, Stone, Bow, and Food production ramped up, your villagers will be protected well. Now it is time to make them happy. You want to make your villagers happy for three reasons: because you are not an evil person; because the happier they are, the more villagers will come to your empire; and because the happier they are the more honor you get. You want more villagers because you need them to train more archers. But as you get more villagers, you need to increase food production to match.

The basic concept here is that you need honor to progress through the ranks. Attaining a new rank also allows you to research new things. There are a few ways to get honor: attack and win, defend successfully (You built up your castle, right?), have happy villagers, use honor multipliers like Arts research or decorative buildings to multiply how happy your people are, and banqueting. Attacking wolf dens and bandit camps and enemy castles – all three of those randomly appear on the map – is a useful way to get used to how many forces you need. You should scout out what you will attack first. Second, siege camps will pop up in your parish from time to time, as you defend successfully they give you honor. As you progress through the ranks, the siege camps send harder and harder enemies, so make sure your castle is strong. Third, simply by making your villagers happy, you get honor. Sweet eh? Pays to be the good, nice guy. Ale works really well to make them happy. As does quadruple rations of food and ale. Arts research and decorative or entertainment buildings are self-explanatory, but require research in Arts, Decorative, and Literature. Finally, Banqueting allows you to gain honor by building production facilities that produce things only the town-hall will use when hosting a banquet. The more things you produce, the more honor you get, and the more types of things you produce the more honor you get. This requires research in Banqueting.

Now those are a bunch of ways to get honor. But I would suggest not attacking somebody else, except the random occurrences on the map, until you are super strong or in a Faction. To be in a Faction you need to be to the rank of Page. It takes a lot of honor to get there, so yeah, you can do everything listed above, or you could just build an awesome army and castle and do some sieging and pillaging. I'm just saying you need to be nice to your villagers so more come and you can have a larger army, but it's just a plus to get honor from being nice to your villagers because having a big army is an unparalleled honor generator. Defend your castle, attack the random things on the map, and try to get in a good faction. Then when somebody in your faction gets attacked, you can beat down who ever did the attacking and get even more honor.

4. Progress to Prince
Congratulations, now go beat the crap out of other princes and try to take the throne. Good luck keeping track of everything.

In Conclusion:
1. Make a Viable Village:
Tutorial
Build Buildings:
-Food Production
-Wood Production
-Stone Production
Research:
-Food Production
-Wood Production
-Stone Production
-Tools
2. Build Your Castle
Check out some Stronghold Kingdoms castles out on Youtube
Build Buildings:
-Fletchers
-Guard Houses
-Castle Defenses
Research:
-Fletching – Increases Bow Production
-Weapons Making – Increases Weapon Production and allows new weapons
-Castellation – upgrades keep, unlocks Defense and Fortification
-Defense – gives guard houses and castle defenses
-Fortification – gives stone walls and castle buildings
-Command – Increases army size
Stock your Castle with Archers
3. Become a Paige
Get Honor:
-Defend your castle
-Attack Random Map Items:
-----Bandits
-----Wolf Dens
-----Enemy Castles
-Have Happy Villagers
-Honor Multipliers – Arts Research, Decorative and Entertainment buildings
-Banquets
Research:
-Arts
-Banqueting
-Decorative
-Literature
Join or Create a Faction
4. Princely Awesomeness
-Get Power
-???
-Profit!

Postum Scriptum
Of course I am not implying that certain things will not also need to be researched, I am just outlining what I wish my main focus was when I started playing. Merchants and Scouts are quite useful. Your Parish is able to help you if you donate stuff to it. Making Armies move faster is a good thing so you aren't beat to a bandit camp by a guy two counties away. Gold is necessary for some buildings but extremely useful for buying more research points. Engineering Research allows you to increase the capacity of everything – stockpile, granary, armory, town hall, inn, and housing. Et cetera, et cetera. There is a ton of other content in the game. Have fun exploring it!

Congratulations Sebastian Vettel!

2010-11-15T08:12:00.001-08:00

Congratulations on proving your mettle and become the best open-wheel racecar driver in the world! You certainly deserved it after that season of podiums and poles. Good luck next year! Don't let it go to your head like it has so many other young F1 drivers.

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And now I feel a little bit older. I'm used to gymnasts being like 14 and better at gymnastics than me, but this is the first time in my life that one of the racing competitions I care about bequeathed a championship trophy to somebody younger than me. I know I'm going to have to get used to it, but to be 23 and win the F1 world championship? That's good on Vettel.

Frank Herbert - Great Science Fiction Author

2010-10-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

Frank Herbert would've been 90 today, had he not died in 1986. His contributions to Science Fiction cannot be overstated though. Through reinterpreting the stories surrounding the Ancient Greek House of Atreus while talking about his passion, ecology, and paying attention to Gibbons and TE Lawrence, he was able to create a character-and-story-driven novel, rather than the technology driven SF that was prevalent. The publishing of Dune is one of the defining moments in soft SF history. It is Herbert who finally gets SF past the obsession with human technology and natural sciences that makes the hard SF of the 40s and 50s so hard for a modern reader to go back to. A friend and I always say we like SF stories that are about humans, and the technology and fantastic elements are merely playing around the edges of the story. Dune did this. It fell right into the epic tradition and re-took-up the mantle pioneered by HG Wells that had been dropped by hard SF.

In the 40s and 50s the science fiction placed emphasis on the Science part. America, as a whole, was placing importance on the natural sciences, and Science Fiction served as a propaganda machine for America's preference that little boys and girls become physicists rather than writers. Isaac Asimov was the fantastic writer in the hard SF genre. But sooner or later, examining the effects of possible technology on future humanity isn't exciting any more. Along came Robert Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke. Though Clarke was heavily interested in technology as well, his stories placed more emphasis on Fiction than Asimov's did. Heinlein was fanatical about scientific accuracy in his stories, but his 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land was entirely soft SF and very popular.

In 1963 the first half of Dune was serialized, the second in 1965. The first edition of the book was published by Chilton's, yes, that Chilton's, in 1965. This soft SF masterpiece is the best selling SF book for good reason. He clearly and accurately replaces sf into the epic tradition, proving it a worthy heir to the throne of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Achilleus, and Hamlet. He took a human story and set it within a fantastical world, then proceeded to talk about big things and big ideas. This was incredibly influential. The ideas that led to Star Wars, Cyberpunk, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and other soft SF landmarks really took off after his work and gained mainstream respectability. For this, I think that Dune is one of the most important novels of the 20th century. It showed people who associated SF with pulp that SF could give them something other novels were not: epic stories in the sense of the epic tradition.

I am very grateful to Rebecca for introducing me to Dune. I remember when I was first reading it, pretty much everybody around me was surprised that I hadn't read it before. It proved impossible to find a used copy of the book still today, 45 years later. The continuing popularity of Dune, and the rest of Frank Herbert's contributions to the series, is a testament to its importance and quality. If you do not like SF and want to try some out, you could do much worse than starting with Dune. The world is a better place for having known Frank Herbert. Just don't talk to me about Sting's crotch.

Herbert George Wells - Great Science Fiction Author

2010-09-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

It is HG Wells' birthday today. He is not the most consistent writer I've ever read, not by a long shot. But he is one of the most interesting. His fiction is, in a lot of ways, what science fiction should be: a thinly veiled critique of today's society. He accomplishes this by pushing tendencies of it to the extreme. The things I appreciate most about science fiction are clearly present in HG Wells' work. He also sits within the epic tradition.

I love the part in War of the Worlds when all the people just line up on the street, trying to escape town, and once they are out of town, amongst the fields, they stick to the street. Initially the act is so surprising for the aliens that they don't even target the people all lined up for killing. The protagonist, on the other hand, hides and sneaks and forges his own path, and because of that he has a hard go of it but comes closer to truth and comes out better in the end. If this isn't a parallel to day-to-day life I don't know what it.

The Invisible Man is a story about a man unable to fit into society. Unlike the Odyssey, where the protagonist is a PTSD scarred war vet who cannot re-integrate into the society that sent him out to kill, this is a kid that is poor, and therefore feels he cannot integrate into society. However, like Odysseus, he does superhuman things – becomes invisible – and, again like Odysseus, though it helps him stay alive it doesn't help him in the long run with his overarching problem of being unable to be a part of his society.

As Darwin's ideas hit the scientific community in the 1800s, the idea of degeneration, or the idea that the state of humanity need not be fixed, spread like wildfire. Wells took the idea of human evolution to a logical extreme in the Island of Dr Moreau. In that work a doctor on an island creates humans out of animals, but continues to treat them as animals. When he is done experimenting he sets them free on the island and they form their own society. However, this story is really dealing with the inhuman nature of science: warning against vivisection and human experimentation. The island's compound is a parallel for a lab while the island is a parallel for the memory of prior experiments gone wrong. The animals then become people from this scientific culture attempting to parrot humanity, while really engrossed in something other, something inhuman. Two years after this popular book came out The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was founded.

But my favorite work of his to read is the Time Machine. This is one of my favorite books of all time – in the top five at least. Sitting right around 32,000 words this incredibly dense story can be read easily within an afternoon. It is Wells' first work in a prolific career. Told by an unnamed man around a dinner table, this is the first major work to deal with the idea of time travel. Some say Wells invented the concept, and though I disagree, he does have a major influence on time travel fiction. In he creates a society where humanity has everything provided for it and no longer has challenges or conflicts. This lack of adversarial stimulation produces a significant lack in intelligence and the two races of human he encounters are neither able to think like humans today. As he becomes stuck and then frees himself, it is clear that these are truly post-human beings, but not in the typical (for 2010 at least) singularity sense, but rather in an evolutionary sense. The two groups are logical extensions of the lower and upper classes. It is a fantastic piece about never shying away from challenges in your life and about the adverse affects of a rigidly classed culture, where rich people cannot communicate with or understand poor people and vice-versa. If this tendency hasn't happened throughout history I don't know what else has. But the story is, in my mind, his best written and one of my favorites. It reads so well.

He has protagonists that, through the distraction, evolution, or stupidity of other characters are superhuman heroes who do what other people only attempt. Their deeds are superhuman in the sense that they are out of the norm of humanity. His setting in the War of the Worlds and in Time Machine are vast settings spanning space and time respectively. Supernatural or otherworldly forces intrude on humanity and the heroes, but sometimes it is just human culture that intrudes. It is overwritten and exciting – explosions, babes, crazy scientific advancements, half-human half-animal creatures, and highly stylized, especially with the triple narrator setup in Time Machine. The only epic characteristic that doesn't always fit is the omniscient narrator. Though that one fits War of the Worlds partially. (These six elements are from Tom Drake's epic page.)

HG Wells is an underrated author who should be read by more people. Yes half of his books are utter crap filled with misspellings and grammatical errors that drive even me crazy. But these four main books of his are cultural treasures that, unfortunately, culture ignores. This is what science fiction should be. This is why HG Wells deserves to be remembered on his birthday. So here's to you, Mr Wells, thanks for the entertainment and interesting ideas. Spot on mate.

The Audi Post

2010-09-11T15:34:00.001-07:00

First I told you how I feel about Mercedes, then BMW, then Porsche. Now, that ain't all of the German Automakers in the world, so let's talk one more today, that great evil, Audi. Now, it's not that Audi is evil, it's just that they always win at Le Mans. Always. They have lost three times at Le Mans: they lost their first race in 1999 to BMW and a Toyota, but they still took 3rd and 4th, then in 2003 they lost to a pair of Bentleys, but still took 3rd and 4th, and finally, in 2009 they lost to a pair of Peugeots but, you guessed it, still took third. Every race that Audi has ever been at Le Mans, they have been on one of the top three steps, and they have been on the top for 9 of the last 12 races - 75% wins. In the 1980s Porsche took seven in a row, and has 16 overall wins, but Audi and Ferrari are tied for second in overall wins with nine each. Audi's five consecutive wins from 2004-2008 is third only to Porsche's seven from 1981-1987 and Ferrari's six from 1960 to 1965. All this is just to say that Audi is very good on the track - and that statement is key to how I feel about Audi: I want some of that hot track action. The only good cars Audi has ever made have been derived from track-only models and, well, they need to do that more instead of creating their usual drivel. We're going to do this in order of my favorites. Four rings, four cars:

1. Audi Quattro - 1980-1991

In the 1980s, the WRC battles between Lancia and Audi were legendarily awesome. In 1981, Audi's first year, they took fifth, giving the WRC it's first female rally winner in the process. In 1982 they took the championship while Michele Mouton took second, just twelve points off of first. In 1983 Lancia came back with a vengeance and took the title off Audi's hands by a mere two points after 12 rallies. In 1984 Audi beat Lancia by 12 points. In 1985 Peugeot came on the scene with the Quattro inspired 205 Turbo, which took seven of the twelve wins. Audi took 1 win, 5 seconds, and 2 thirds. Group B was dying, and Audi was thinking about abandoning the WRC. In 1986 as the new Lancia Delta came on board for the full season, Audi only managed two third place finishes, ending the season in 4th - the last year of Group B racing was not to go with Audi. But they were prepared for the 1987 season, with Group A cars taking the stage: they took second place, but by quite a few points behind Lancia. In 1988 they took three thirds and third place overall. In 1989 they didn't podium, and ended up in fifth overall after strong efforts from Privateer teams. The Quattro was done, but it had made its name, and made it well. During the 1980s the Quattro also came to America and, at the hands of Michele Mouton, won Pike's Peak in both 1984 and 1985, setting a record in the process and giving Pike's Peak their first women champion.

This is insanity. It is long enough for a five-door, but they only put three in. It is confused between a hot-hatch and an estate. It has that gaudy faded-four-ring emblem on the doors. It has that little spoiler that doesn't do much else but block the driver's rear view. And if you ask me, and since you're reading this blag the question is inherent, this is the best car Audi has ever made. The wheel wells don't so much arch as slump out of the car. The rear is symmetrical but for the twin, offset exhaust pipes and the window washer. There is a vent cut through the top of the gas filling cap. I could go on and on and on about how much I should not like this car, but, well, it's perfect. It's almost so bad it's good type perfect but it gets so much right in the face of so much wrong that it's only partly so bad it's good perfect. I would drive this with pride. And get lots of tickets with it.

2. Audi R8 - 2006-Now

The R8 is perhaps Audi's best known car. In 1999, Audi decided to partake in the biggest race of them all: Le Mans. The competition was fierce with BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, and Dodge, amongst others, taking to the track. Audi brought two cars - a closed top and an open top. Audi surprised all by taking two open-top prototypes to third and fourth placed finishes. Then, in 2000, they brought their finalized car, the open-top R8 to a field significantly thinned out as Mercedes went to the DTM series, Ferrari quit, Toyota and BMW decided to try F1, while Porsche, after starting an LMP racer, decided instead to make it into the Carrera GT. This left Audi battling privateer teams, and they swept the podium. This was to be a familiar occurrence. They gave their closed-top prototype from 1999 to their subsidiary company, Bentley, and in 2001, Bentley managed a third place in their first Le Mans - behind two Audis of course. In 2002 the R8 swept the podium and Bentley took fourth. In 2003 Bentley took first and second while Audi took third and fourth. 2004 saw Bentley pull out, Audi sweep the podium, and an Audi take fifth as well - for good measure - while Pescarolo (Privateer Peugeot) took fourth. In 2005 Audi took first, third, and fourth, while a Pescarolo took second. 2006 saw the introduction of the R10, and newer version of the R8 - they took first and third while a Pescarolo took second. In 2007 they took first while Peugeot took second and Pescarolo took third and fourth. In 2008 they finished 1, 4, and 6, with Peugeots in between and Pescarolos behind. In 2009 they brought another new car, the R15, and took third behind a pair of Peugeots. And finally, in 2010 they swept the podium again. What was Audi to do with all of this winning? Why, make a road car of course!

Enter the Audi R8. Not exactly the best looking car on the road - sort of looking like a stretched version of their abysmal Audi TT. Style based off of the Audi Quattro Spyder, rather than the R8 Racecar. But this thing can go. It sounds gorgeous, it is well-put-together, and it is faster than a lot of cars much more expensive than it. This is a car that is stuck somewhere between practicality and supercarality. It is the daily driver supercar. It is the boring supercar, unless you're behind the wheel. And that, friends, is all I can say about it. It's so good that I can't deny that it is a good car, but if given one, I would sell it and buy something with design or style. Unless it was the rumored V12 TDI, that one I would sell only after putting some serious miles on it.

However, in a meta-moment, Audi than converted the R8 to a GT3 Racecar in 2009, when they took second at the Nurburgring 24. In 2010 only two of their seven entrants finished, but they still took the GT3 class win and third and fifth overall. This car is doing very well. Oddly enough, the GT3 is the prettiest one:

3. Audi B7 RS4 quattro Saloon - 2006-2008
It is, like the M3, a hideous and fantastic car. This is the M3 killer Audi has wanted for a long time. It is so good I cannot ignore it. This car is more cockish than the M3: if you live in a fraternity, buy this car. Leave the rest of us the M3. Here's a picture so I don't have to say anything more about this car:

4. Audi Avus Quattro - 1991

This is what I want from Audi - this retro-futuristic orgy of melted aluminum, stupid amounts of power, and a human driver as an afterthought. This is why Audi should be around today. Forget about all the cars they make today - they all suck but for the RS4 and R8. But if you look back over the concept cars that Audi has crafted, you realize that there are talented people there, and when they loosen up a bit they truly do create things that are otherworldly, deliciously stupid, and truly astounding. Audi, please do this more. Lots more. And let me buy one. I feel like this car would be right at home in The Metropolis of Tomorrow:

The Pre-War Auto Union Race Cars: Kings of the Past and Future

Streamlined, melted bodies made out of polished aluminum melded to engines that are stupidly powerful. The pre-war Auto Union racecars are what I wish so badly that Audi was building today. This is what I think of when I am inebriated and convinced that Audi makes good cars. Here is a 1935 Type B "Lucca" that was once the fastest car in the world and is is completely lust-inducing:

In Conclusion:
The Audi Quattro was a spectacular race car and a spectacular street car. The R8 was a spectacular race car and an good street car and then a spectacular race car again. The RS4 B7 Quattro Saloon's quality spoke for itself - because the design sure didn't. And finally, the Audi Avus Quattro and Rosemeyer are the rightful heirs to a fantastic design tradition that Audi continues to ignore. Screw you Audi. You started out the most exciting out of all the German Automakers, and ended up sucking the worst. And with that, I think it is pretty clear why I hate Audi. But, I want the Quattro. That is the one Audi road car I would buy.

Exciting Racing News

2010-09-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

Mini is BACK!

After taking third place in 1963, the little car made its name on the slopes surrounding Monte Carlo with wins in 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1967, then capped it off with another third in 1968 as the Porsche 911 took its first win of three consecutive wins.

After Subaru's factory rally effort ended in 2008, Prodrive was left stranded. After competing at the very top, they needed to get back there. Their old buddies BMW showed up with their little car and now, the Mini will return to racing. This week it was testing on tarmac at the Pro-Drive track. Next week it hits the gravel hard in Portugal. Here's a picture to fap to:

And because this is all so very exciting, here is the Press Release:
* 09.09.2010
* Press Release

Munich. The new MINI Countryman World Rally Car has successfully completed its shakedown phase at Prodrive's private proving ground in Warwickshire.

This initial part of the car's test and development programme took place with the engineering team driving the car over four days, primarily on tarmac, but also including several kilometres on loose surfaces and Prodrive's low grip facility. The car will now travel to Portugal for a week of testing on gravel.

"As with any totally new car, it is vital to take time to ensure all the systems are working as intended before embarking on a week long gravel test," said David Lapworth, Prodrive technical director.

This first test car is running with an interim body and aero package, while design of the final World Rally Car bodywork is underway.

The Socratic Method

2010-09-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

"If I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less. What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you."

I am reading Plato for the first time, in my eighth year of college. I bloody love it. And disagree with about half of it. But it sure is fun reading! If you haven't read any of his stuff yet, you should read some of the dialogues. It's clearly where the idea of othering comes from.

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs

2010-08-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

The new Arcade Fire album is actually really deep. Win Butler is talking a lot about a lot of things, and it's obvious he himself is conflicted even as he passes judgment. It's quite interesting the way he attacks pretension and hipsters, his audience base, while at the same time beginning to agree with their opinions. The album is titled The Suburbs which is a lot of what it is about. Initially it seems that he is pro-suburbs and reminding all these hipsters that they grew up in the sprawl they are now trying to forget and argue against. In my own mind I feel like Suburban Developments are a fantastic idea usually done so very very very wrong in America. It seems like he comes to this point as well, but it might just be the poetry in his lyrics allowing me to see my beliefs in his words. However, it then becomes something much deeper where he begins to look at his life through the years he's been alive and can't decide whether it was childhood or the suburbs as the reason why he had a damn good childhood. It seems like he decides it's both:

"Cops showing their lights
On the reflectors of our bikes
Said "Do you kids know what time it is?"
Well, sir, it's the first time I felt like something is mine
Like I have something to give

The last defender of the sprawl
Said "Well, where do you kids live?"
Well, sir, if you only knew what the answer's worth
Been searching every corner of the earth... "

If memory is the thing he has for his own, then this is his most serious attack against the hipster mob. First, he realizes that though everything looks the same in the suburbs, it still feels like home. Second, he realizes that this feeling is something he owns. Third he realizes that what he was searching the world over was inside himself all the time. It follows that trying to fit in too hard (read: Hipsters) is really a bowing down to a man all its own: you've got what you need inside yourself, in short, be real, not trendy.

Win's whole argument is a lot more complex and deep than this quick example of two stanzas gives, but this point is a quiet affirmation and giving up. A silent step in the grown-up direction for a man who, throughout the album is almost obsessed with childhood. His use of the Suburbs to get into this discussion of the Youth of Today, what it means to be from someplace, and humanity is absolutely brilliant. I wish my Tobacco Poetry was as skillful as Win's Suburban Poetry. This album is masterfully lyrical, deep, and literate, all while remaining open and unpretentious in a way that is quite refreshing. After all, growing up in The Woodlands gives him first-hand experience of a better suburban situation than is typical.

Tobacco Poetry

2010-07-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

We have begun a new writing project. This one is aimed at correcting a massive wrong in the world: a significant lack of fantastic tobacco poetry exists. This is then something we hope to fix. For the rest of the year, us four guys will write a poem a month, then post them. We realize the difficulties of this project, we also realize the possibilities. However, in order to save the world from tobacco poetry that says, essentially, "Golly gee, I sure like me that tobaccee," we must embark on this journey. So, in the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling, who won a Nobel for writing the only great tobacco poem ever, I proudly present our roughest offerings to the gods of poetry and tobacco, who really are good friends. They go drinking together all the time. Death and Binky come along most times too. Death is always down for a party.

Derrida Is Eighty

2010-07-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Just saying.

And One More Thing About Racing

2010-06-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

At the 2010 Nurburgring 24 hour race, the Porsche 911-Hybrid got scarily close to winning its first outing. I, for one, didn't expect that performance out of that car. After all the media hype I figured its performance would turn out poorly, like that Jeff Koons Art Car did at Le Mans. But it almost won. It had a dominating lead before a maintenance issue trivialized its phenomenal performance.

This is what is sparking the resurgence in Endurance Racing though: new technologies getting tried first. You know, like racing should be, or like it used to be. First it was Diesel in 2006 at Sebring, Audi taking the inaugural win with that technology. Then Electricity at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy in 2009, and all electric motorcycle race over the world’s oldest track, the track that tested the first gasoline, diesel, and steam cars at the dawn of automotion. Now 2010 sees the advent of Hybrid race cars – and they almost won it as well. Next year we will see the Peugeot 909 Hybrid racing at Le Mans, and if their win last year was any indication, they could do very well.

But these newnesses are more change in the basic framework of racecars than in the last 100 years. I don't mean to diminish the spectacular advancements made in materials science, safety understanding, technology, space-frame structures, et cetera that racing has provided for so long, but this is a different type of change. This is not incrementally getting faster and faster, lighter and lighter, better and better, stronger and stronger, this is wholly and utterly sinking millions of dollars or euros into completely new ways of thinking, and testing them out on the track. This is what racing should be. This is why racing is exciting today.

Chaparral cars' 2J with the fans for downforce, and the 2F with its insanely large wing; Auto Union's early streamlined bodies mated to huge engines; Lotus' string of Formula 1 cars; Jaguar's disc brakes in '55; pre-war Grand-Prix advancements in crumple zones and aerodynamics – this period of racing outshines all of those awesome moments and advancements. This is, I dare say, some of the best racing, best cars, and coincidentally, the best drivers the world has ever seen: Michael Shumacher, Sebastian Loeb, Valentino Rossi, Thom Kristensen. Forget about adding motor to the front of the word racing, these are the days when things change and are changing. The cars are faster than Class C or Group B ever were, the tracks are more technical and the lines more precise, the breadth of knowledge of the driver is both deeper and wider, the forces on the body and car more severe and sudden, everything is lighter-faster-stronger-better, and it is only going to get better from here. This is, truly, the most exciting time in racing.

Le Mans 2010

2010-06-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

And so it comes - the greatest race every year. This year marks the last year of my favorite category, GT1. Admittedly, GT1 has been lacking in competition at Le Mans, but at the same time, that's partly the fault of the ACO with some great GT1 cars - Maserati and Nissan - notably absent from the grid, and very dominant around the world elsewhere. So thanks ACO, for killing off my favorite class. In honor of GT1, I'll start my rootings, hopes, and predictions there.

GT1: Goodnight, sweet sweet GT1 racing at Le Mans. I'll miss hearing your loudest and deepest roars rumbling past pit lane on the radio. I already miss you in ALMS.
Rooting: Ford. Honestly, I don't care which Ford GT Matech wins, I just want Ford to slap the ACO in the face by coming in, entering a car for the first time, and winning while the ACO says GT1 is dying.
Hope: You will always see me hoping for a Saleen win. Also, I hope JLOC lasts more than a single lap this year.
Predictions: The #52 Aston Martin DBR9 if it can keep from a major breakdown, which seems pretty impossible for that team. The #70 Ford GT Matech if - or once - the Aston Martin breaks down.

GT2: CHAOS - which, at this stage, is not so much of a prediction, as a pre-requisite every time GT2 cars get out on the track. So closely matched, so fast, always big shakeups.
Rooting: Corvette. First year at the big one in GT2, after being so dominant in GT1 for so long, I'm gonna root for their win, but I'll also keep my eye on Flying Lizard as usual. But this year, gulp, I'll also be rooting for the BMW Art Car. That thing has a nice paint jerb.
Hope: I always keep my hopes up for, in order, Spyker, that beautiful Aston Martin Vantage, and the slow and sexy Jaguar.
Predictions: You know what, even with the penalty and being pushed to the back of the grid, I still think the Risi #82 is going to take it. Honestly, that team is just too damn good.

LMP1: Will we actually have a race this year? The R15+ has been a consistent 2-3 seconds back on the Peugeot. But there may be rain coming and it's a long race - if the Audi get a lap or two more out of their car's fuel tank then it'll be a battle.
Rooting: Really, I'm just rooting for a battle. It'd be great to see Aston Martin come in and take the win from those continental diesel addicts, but if you know me, you know I'm probably rooting for the privateer team with the best chance to win, so Team Oreca Matmut it is this year. I'll miss Pescarollo on the grid this year though.
Hope: I hope for Rebellion Racing BECAUSE OF THEIR GOLD LEAF CARS. I cannot help myself. They are so garish they're right. And a Lola Aston Martin of course. And the Ginetta team because it's driven by three Mansells. Yay!
Prediction: I do think Bourdais, the home-town boy, is going to bring his Peugeot in first for his first home-race win. His #3 is on pole, and for once I am saying the pole car will win. No stupid pit-lane mistakes this year, please. Further, I predict two Audi drivers will not be driving for Audi next year after losing Le Mans two years in a row.

LMP2: Well, looky looky who showed up - Acura brought their fast but unreliable car to the big race. Where are the Porsche's though?
Rooting: RML is going to be my rooting for team. And Oak's Pescarolo car.
Hope: Pegasus Racing's Norma Judd - since when did Norma hit the scene? New body maker at Le Mans gets my hopes. Also the Radical SR9 because it's pretty.
Prediction: Acura. There's two of them so breakdowns shouldn't be as much of an issue, plus they are 5 seconds faster. 5 seconds. I'm gonna pick Highcroft Racing because of Marco Werner. If they break down though, RML can win it all.

So, that's my predictions, my choices for who I am rooting for, and my wildest hopes. Looking forward to a hell of a race tomorrow. I hope everybody is safe and there is good entertainment for the fans. But honestly, after being a fan for this long, I sort of like the way the rain plays with things.

This Le Mans Intercontinental Cup thing excites me a lot too. I'm looking forward to some good racing.

+++

After the Race: After 397 laps another great Le Mans goes into the provisional books.

GT1: So in GT1 the DBR9 broke down and Saleen legitimately won that race! Saleen, then Luc Alphand's borrowed Corvette, then the DBR9 were the only cars to finish. The Saleen only got beat by 2 GT2 cars too! SALEEN WINS!!!

GT2: In GT2 nothing changed in the last two hours for the frontrunners. First went to the consistent Team Felbermayr Porsche (77), second to Hankook Ferrari (89), third to the #97 Porsche (BMS Scuderia Italia SPA). #95 made it back up into 4th with their AF Corse SRL Ferrari. The IMSA Porsche, #76, ended up in 5th with a lap over the non-art-car BMW #78. The Prospeed Porsche #75 managed to stop spinning long enough to complete the race in seventh while the other Felbermayr car came in eight (88). And bloody last overall and in GT2, but still classified, sits the Spyker #85. Eight GT2 cars broke down, including the Jaguar after only four laps, but the Spyker lasted and was competitive to! It's race-best time was only really a couple seconds off the leaders and, well, look at LMP2 to see that slower cars will win. Spyker completed 280 of a needed 277. Good work boys.

LMP1: In LMP1 the Audi podium is deserved because Peugeot proved again how amateur they are. The #4, with two hours left, was about two minutes down on the #7 Audi for third. The #4 closed the gap to a minute, then a safety car split them up to two minutes. Then the #4 closed it down to 8 seconds – spitting distance for a car that much faster – then, guess what, the engine blew between Indianapolis and Arnage with an hour 15 to go. If they could've kept that pace they would've had a podium at least. But no, Peugeot, despite making this car for four years, cannot make one that lasts 24 hours apparently. The 007 in fifth, sixth over all, was the last LMP1 not dead or in the pits. Talk about a year of breakdowns: twelve LMP1s were officially retired, leaving six not-retired. Well, the #4 ended the race broken down on the track and the #11 ended the race in the pits with not enough laps to be classified. So realistically, four LMP1 cars finished the race out of 18. Why are they getting rid of GT1 again? Screw you ACO.

LMP2: In LMP2 things were a bit nicer to the cars this year, which is backward to the usual cluster-cuss LMP2 is and paragon of engineering LMP1 is. The Strakka Racing Acura with an HPD engine (#42) took a well-deserved win. Oak's Pescarolo-Judd, after running third and fourth for so long, was able to capitalize on Highcroft's misfortune and take second (#35). The Lola car with an HPD engine, run by RML, ran into their own problems but still took third. Fourth was the other Oak Car, 24, and fifth was Bruichladdich's Ginetta Zytek, which was on the same lap (#41). Those were the competitive ones. Further down the field were the ones that finished, were classified, but had major problems. The #28 Race Performance Radical SR9 placed better than I had hoped in 6th. The Quiffel-ASM team brought their Ginetta Zytek in 7th (#40). The #37 Gerhard Welter WR-Zytek surprised everybody by finishing. After running in second for so long, the #26 Highcroft Acura HPD ended up in 9th. And tenth was the KSM Lola Judd (#39). You can bet HPD engines will be in a lot more cars next year! Three front-runners and only one breakdown – that's better than a French factory effort in LMP1.

27 cars were classified, with the Drayson not quitting that makes 28 cars. A couple of those were dead in the water but had completed enough laps. The important part here is that nobody finished the race this year. Half of the cars were retired and a bunch more were dead but still classified. Out of 55 cars, it seems like nobody finished.

So yeah, my predictions were shot right from the start. After being 4 for 4 on the last race, I was 1 for 4 on this one.

The Fords were obviously quicker in GT1, but they all broke down - the best one lasting 171 laps - and the Saleen, a ten year old car that they stopped making in 2007, took the deserved win. The DBR9 did undergo a series of breakdowns though. I did not get a single thing right here, but my wildest hope car won!

In GT2 Risi did what I said they would, then cocked it up, while Corvette dominated than died. Flying Lizard, BMW, Aston Martin, and Jaguar all died too. Thank God for Spyker. I got not a single thing right here.

In LMP1 Peugeot had a race to lose and boy they did, hard. The Mansells crashed in the first 20 minutes, Rebellion didn't last, a single Aston Martin survived, and after an Audi 1, 2, and 3 I doubt that two drivers will jump ship. I got nothing right here.

In LMP2 one of the Acura's did not break down and the RML did. But those Pescarolo cars on that Oak team did well! Acura did win, RML did get a podium, and my rooting team Oak did well. I got this one.

+++

Race Recap:

Le Mans 2010
5:54 The Cars enter Mulsanne the first time.
What's with the 2001 A Space Odyssey soundtrack?

The first five minutes:
Starting on time.
#3 seemed to send up a smoke offering at the start of the start/finish straight. Lock-up or something more serious?
McNish is trying to pass Oreca already. But unable to do it yet. Audi attacking Peugeot psychologically already?
0h17 Traffic for the first time! #2 closes on #3, trying to pass.
0h17 Nigell Mansell is off around Indianapolis. Puncture – well, left rear tyre gone. Just where the Merc flipped.
0h18 Safety car is out thanks to the world champion. Again they miss the lead cars. 3 safety cars this year eh?
0h21 #70 takes a pit stop – from the lead. Takes off tape over the radiators. The track marshals wont let it back out on the track.
0h26 the #82 has already taken six places back. Damn Risi!
0h27 Jaguar is already in the pits and 2 laps down – ECU problem.
0h42 #4 into the pits. Down to tenth place from fourth.
0h48 Safety Car is in. ½ hour. Non-leaders see the start-line first. 31 minutes actually. Mansell's out for good.
0h49 Racing box spin at Arnage.
0h54 #83 is still in 13th. #4 is up into 7th. Matech 60 is in the lead while the #70 is two laps back and racing the JLOC.
1h00 Franc Montagny barely into the pits safely.
1h02 One Audi pits while TK watches...
1h02 Corvette into the pits from 2nd.
1h03 Pedro Lamy and Marc Gene both in. Timo Bernhard could get the lead on lap 14.
1h06 GT2 leading Corvette #64 is in the pits and almost hits a GT1 Corvette.
1h06 SALEEN IS IN 2nd IN GT1!!! Best time so far is four minutes and point 880 a second. Everybody else is in the mid-3:58s.
1h07 Strakker and Highcroft in the pits at the same time! And the #40! AND the #35!
1h09 #4 Peugeot is back in fourth.
1h11 Saleen in, and crawling. Out of fuel? Both BMWs are in, Flying Lizard too. Saleen couldn't pick up fuel from its reserve tank.
1h12 Oak racing pushed the #6 Oreca into a bollard at Mulsanne, bollard drops out at Indianapolis.
1h14 Lap 16. The Risi #82 is ALREADY up in 4th. FUCK. Top four GT2 cars into pit.
1h17 “Alan McNish is being careful very rapidly.” I love you Radio Le Mans.
1h17 #70 is up to 2nd place in GT1, behind the #60.
1h19 #2 has gotten four seconds on the #3. Not sure when that happened.
1h20 Corvette 1-2 again in GT2 as the timing has updated after the pit stops. Jaime Melo has done some AMAZING driving to get his car from the back up to the leaders again. He is up in 3rd? I think so. Yes, yes he is. From last to third in 1:20. Congrats Risi!
1h26 Lap 20. Highcroft down by 47 seconds in LMP2.
1h29 #70 is 2 minutes 14 seconds off the #60 – they are one and two.
1h30 Lord Paul Drayson is being interviewed and this is fantastic: he is 15 seconds off pace, in 14th or 15th, and he is SO excited. SO. Super effusive. “I AM LOVING THIS! I just wanted to hand off the car in the same place I found it, and I did. THIS IS SUCH A GREAT RACE!” Spot on mate.
1h32 RML is in and out after getting ahead of Oak. 1st pit was on lap 7. Their first pit was because the dashboard went out.
1h33 #4 in the pit. Comes out just behind McNish in the #7, and just ahead of Bernhard in the #9.
1h34 #70 is 1 minute 55 seconds off the #60 – they are one and two.
1h36 #70 in the pit. Routine stop.
1h37 #70 is 2 minutes 25 seconds off the #60 after the pit – they are one and two.
At some point the 28 spun trying to avoid an Audi.
1h41 Two GT2 cars spin at Mulsanne's corner.
1h42 #2 is in the pits. 12 laps after their last stop. Strategy or is that what they have?
1h43 McNish is in as well, loses a spot to the #4 again, but they are on different pit strategies.
1h43 #8 stopped with 13 laps. #9 with 12 and Bernhard at the wheel.
1h45 Sebastian Bourdais says, “We're racing flat out.” Yeah right. They're trying to get close to Audi's fuel consumption and beat them at their own game. Cute boys, cute.
1h50 Bernhard's #9 in front of McNish's #8.
1h50 Jaguar has nobody working on it, after running 4 laps. The Audis are rotating their drivers in alphabetical order by surname.
1h50 #70 is 1 minute 59 seconds behind the #60 – they are still first and second.
1h54 #79 BMW Art Car is stopped and the driver is looking underneath the car. Gone straight through the chicane. Left rear puncture. Gets back in and tries to limp it home. The #78 has a nasty vibration under braking according to Radio Le Mans.
1h55 Strakka in for fuel and driver change. Highcroft stays out and takes the lead.
1h57 #70 Marc VDS is off into the tyre wall at the Dunlop Esses. Still in the car for a bit. Then they retire.
2h00 Highcroft in the pit. Peugeot still 1-4. A full minute between them and Audi, led by McNish. 30 Laps.
2h07 My internet goes down.
2h26 My internet came back up with... suspension failure? Tyre failure? Something to do with the Audis? Peugeots? What is going on? Internet dies again. The chronos did show that RML took Highcroft to the tune of 15 or 16 seconds.
2h29 Blip of internet: it appears as if Highcroft has gotten their spot back. But they are only 11 seconds up on the #40.
2h30 My internet comes back up. McNish has just hopped out and TK has gotten in. Bernhard was replaced by Dumas. All three Audi's have changed drivers. TK IS IN THE CAR, but behind Dumas. Tyres are triple stinted so drivers are as well. Going to four at night?
2h32 #3 Peugeot has gone into the garage? What the hell happened? Ah, okay, they have a right front suspension problem.
2h36 Corvettes are 6 seconds apart in GT2, while just twenty seconds off them is that AMAZING #82, which started dead last..
2h38 GT1: #60 Matech, followed 22 seconds back by #73 Corvette, followed 7 seconds back by DBR9.
2h41 DBR9 has gotten past the #73.
2h42 TK gets past Dumas – #7 has passed #9.
2h44 JLOC has a right-rear puncture, limping back to the pits.
2h45 Peugeot #3 still in the pits. Car is covered. Checked front-right too.
2h46 JLOC got into the pits.
2h46 24 seconds between #52 and #60.
2h47 Peugeot #3 retired. A suspension pick-up point has pulled out of the carbon tub. Rebellion had the same problem but it was a 24 or 26 hour fix for them. Similar problem to their first Petit Le Mans. Since my overall pick has died, I'm gonna repick the #2 car for the overall win. Oreca is the oldest chassis: 04. #3 is the 06 – new in 2009. The other two are brand new.
2h49 Drayson's #11 being pushed back into the garage. Misfire.
2h52 Highcroft behind Strakka by a mere minute fifteen. Top 3 in GT1 & GT2 separated by a second or so on the same piece of track. The Saleen is consistently lapping under 4 minutes, which is competitive!
2h57 A minute twenty between Strakka and Highcroft.
3h00 #4 is on its way in. My internet dies.
3h06 Internet revives. #2 on Pit road. 12 lap stint.
3h07 50 seconds between the DBR9 and #60 Matech.
3h10 #4 is trying to hold off TK in the #7. Internet goes down. I go to Jon and Keni's wedding.
7h20 Return from wedding. Lap 120
GT1: The #60 is still way in the lead. Saleen is still running and competitive (3rd)!!!
GT2: Risi 82 is still in the lead and the #64 Corvette is less than a second down in second place. The other vette is a minute and 5 seconds down.
LMP1: The #1 has taken over from the #2 and has a minute 15. #4 is still in third but a lap down. Then 3 R15s and the 007 & 009 as usual. Drayon is still running!
LMP2: #42 and #26 are still a little over 11 seconds apart. Awesome! RML is in 5th now. The #35 Pescarolo is in third, two laps down.
7h47 the #1 has dropped off. As has the internet.
7h?? RISI IS IN THE PITS. By 8h02 they are 9th. Ouch. But hey, they came from the back once already, right? They could do it again.
9-10th hour: the #60 drops way down.
10th hour: JLOC breaks down. They fix it.
11h?? #4 drops down to 6th.
12h25 #14 Kolles Audi stopped on track.
16h00 Not much has changed, until the #2 Peugeot catches fire and is abandoned on the course from the lead. Right rear spewing flames and something slick, maybe radiator fluid. Audi 9 & 8 are now first and second. Over the next hour and a half, Anthony Davis in the #1 Peugeot turns in a spectacular drive, gaining a lap and he is coming close to gaining the lead lap at 17h24. Even Gunn was impressed. WE HAVE A RACE AGAIN!!!
17h25 The Corvette #64 spins off into the wall at Porsche Curves it is in the lead and a lap up on the #77 Porsche.
17h26 #64 started and driving again. How long will it take to fix.
17h27 #64 enters pit lane. Luckily he was close to the pits. A lot of rear damage, looks fixable. The team is going to try.
17h28 #1 Peugeot is in the pits, appears to be a routine stop. When are the Audis coming in? Oh, hey, not so routine. They're taping some of the intake.
17h29 #64 is having carbon fibre surgery in the form of ripping bits off the car.
17h30 Safety car is out. Is this for #64 debris and dirt? A lot was spread onto the track. Ah, okay, the #64 was being passed by a Peugeot and was bumped. The safety car is to clean up its debris.
17h36 Seems like everybody is in the pits under safety, but no Audi yet.
17h37 Luc Alphand getting something fixed.
17h38 Green flag, #39 spin. The Peugeot is in front of the two Audis, but is it at the end of the Audi lap, ahead, or a lap down?!?!
17h40 Peugeot getting chased by the #7. P is down 2 laps off lead. #7 down a single lap off him.
17h45 Peugeot has pulled away from the Audi rather steadily. Poor Audi. So slow.
17h49 #4 is in the pits, running in 5th. Saleen still in the lead!!!
17h51 Drayson is in the pits and torn apart. #42 is in the pits for a stop.
17h54 Race leader is in for a routine stop. Audi #9.
17h59 #64 back on track, 5th in class. #4 looks squirly under braking.
18h03 A Porsche, #75, off at mulsanne, 4th car in 2 hours. Drivers are getting tired. Brakes too?
18h04 #26 in pits for driver change. DBR9 back up to 2nd in class, still 10 laps off Saleen. Going to have enough time to take him? Probably not. GO SALEEN!!! Saleen is right on his tail.
18h08 #64 back in the pits for more fixes. Come on boys, you have a race to take back out there.
18h10 #8 in the pits from p2. Routine stop. Gets out in front of the #1 Peugeot.
18h11 #64 back out on track.
18h15 That Peugeot is going like his balls are on fire. No doubt that right now, the #1 and #4 are giving it EVERYTHING they got.
18h19 Driver change In the Saleen. Aston Martin got a lap back.
18h36 Saleen and race leading #9 in pits. Saleen appears to be shedding kitty litter. OH NOES! THEY BACKED THE SALEEN INTO THE GARAGE!!! They're cleaning out kitty litter. They got ten laps. DBR9 got back one lap.
18h42 #64 blowing lots of blue smoke and pulled off to the side. Mashalls push it behind the wall at Mulsanne. #7 in pits.
18h44 Driver change in #42.
18h46 #95 locks up and slides down an access road at Arnage. Back on track with front damage. 2nd place in GT2 currently.
18h48 #95 in pits. Wheeled into garage. Saleen getting wheeled back out. #89 Hankook has taken #2 in GT2. Saleen gave up four or five laps to be cleaned.
18h52 #8 in the pits.
18h56 009 missed the first straight chicane and is SPEWING flame out the tailpipe.
18h58 Got it running again. It's around Mulsanne and headed to the pits. Somebody gets to put more fuel in that. Good luck to that guy.
18h59 #1 is in the pits.
19h00 009 gets to the pits. A couple of bursts of flame for good measure. #95 still being worked on so the #97 Porsche will probably take 3rd in GT2 from them.
19h03 Saleen now only has 6 laps. Will that lead hold?
19h07 Highcroft is going slow on the straight!
19h10 Highcroft just made it around Arnage and the #95 is just starting to get body pieces put back on.
19h11 Highcroft on pit lane... They wheel it directly into the garage, and a round piece of rubber, donut-esque, falls out.
19h12 009 misses another chicane. Doesn't stall it, drives around the tyres.
19h16 Highcroft back into pit lane from garage. 008 spears a tyre wall at Indianapolis.
19h17 Highcroft is under way.
19h19 Leader is in the pit. Another splash and dash.
19h23 The #1, only a lap down, sees an Audi ahead.
19h25 #1 passes #8!!! 008 back on track after being pulled out of the wall with a tractor, limping back to pit lane.
19h27 #75 spins again at Indianapolis. Gets out of the kitty litter again. Highcroft in the garage. Peugeot is pulling away from the #8.
19h30 On the way back in, 008 has dropped some debris in the middle of the Porsche Curves on the racing line. #95 is back out. #52 Aston in for a pit. A radiator is exploding in the Highcroft pits. 008 still not home.
19h32 008 on pit lane. Pushed into garage.
19h35 Drayson is spotted on track running.
19h37 #1 Peugeot sort of cuts and than overshoots a corner on pit lane. By jumping in the air. Stupid. Come on boys, get that car in the lead. Beat Audi. #8 is also in for a driver change.
19h38 009 backwards on the track. Some scary moments as four cars almost hit it and the track marshals. 009 is back going the right way.
19h40 009 on pit lane for a driver change.
19h42 BMW is slow on track.
19h47 BMW makes it into the pits, wheeled into garage.
19h55 #4 in for driver change.
20h03 #1 in pits with a hole in its side. Routine stop. I just went to get a brownie, what happened? Just checked the Chronos and realized the JLOC has retired. Well, they made it to daybreak! If GT1 was around at Le Mans next year and they improved as much as they did this year, they would finish the race! Saleen only has 4 laps over the DBR9. The only other GT1 car left is the Luc Alphand #72 that they were working on at 17h37.
20h07 #7 on pit lane for a driver change.
20h10 Hankook has spotted Felbermeyr ahead. They're 2 laps down, but pushing like hell.
20h22 Both Strakka and Saleen in the pits. Strakka is getting taped. Oak came by to take a lap back, but they're still way down. 5 laps now?
20h25 #15 Kolles into a wall at Indianapolis.
20h27 Tractor pulled him out. Little to no front damage. Back on track.
20h29 #15 on pit lane with a driver change. New back bodywork, then back out.
20h34 #8 into the wall at Arnage. Lots of smoke as it heads back to the pit.
20h35 #8 in pits. New front body.
20h37 #8 out, #1 close. RACE FOR 2nd BEGINS.
20h38 Nose to tail!!!
20h39 first try, no go. Don't screw this up #1.
20h41 Pass complete for 2nd place overall. Now to build a gap before pitting.
20h43 #1 & #9 in pits, #8 gains lap on #9 and retakes 2nd. Splash and dash for #1.
20h53 #1 is 51 seconds down off #8. Let's do this!!!
20h59 #15 off side of road. Bring on the full course caution... please... doesn't look like a caution will be forthcoming.
21h00 Gap down to 45 seconds.
21h01 #4 is in the pits, back body panel is off. Not sure whether they tried to fix the squirly issues or just replaced a body panel or both.
21h14 #75 in for another tyre puncture, pushed into garage.
21h15 #8 in the pits, loses a lap. Peugeot into the second place spot. How do we still have a serious battle for first with 2h45 left? I love you Le Mans.
21h22 The Highcroft pilot has fallen asleep in the cockpit waiting for the boys to decide whether to fix it or throw in the towel.
21h25 #1 Peugeot and Audi #9 in the pits. After the exit, the #1 can see the #9 ahead, but #8 got past again to retake 2nd.
21h33 #1 is 15 seconds back on #8.
21h38 #1 can see him and is just reeling him in.
21h41 #1 takes 2nd place from the #8.
21h45 #1 can now see the #9 leader, but is still a lap down from him.
21h48 #1 smoking and a BIG puff of smoke at Indianapolis. That looks like a blown engine. You've got to be kidding me.
21h51 #1 wheeled backwards into the garage with magic smoke coming out the back – right rear. Is that the race? It tracked oil back to the paddock. They open up the rear, two engineers peek in at it and hang their heads. Looks like the race to me.
21h53 The Peugeot team boss bursts into tears on international live television and the bastards film him crying for a couple minutes.
22h00 So that's got to be the race. Audi 1, 2, and possibly 3. TK is in the 3rd place #7, but on the same lap as the #4. But he is TK. So barring acts of God or major lapses on Audi's part, an Audi 1-2-3 is most likely now. I'm not even gonna finish watching. I think Saleen will get the final GT1 win, they're up by 5 laps. Strakka will take the LMP2 if their car doesn't break down either. In GT2, each car is separated by enough laps that everyone can play it safe from here on in.
22h04 He's still crying and they're still filming it.
22h09 #4 is 2:08 off #7.
22h12 #4 is 2:03 off #7.
As I go to bed: That Peugeot #1 was spectacular. For six hours they made Audi their bitch, taking back lap after lap after the lead Peugeot retired – their cars were at least 2 seconds quicker. That was some of the best driving and racing I've seen in a while. They owned Le Mans. But, then again, Le Mans always finds a way to fight back, and a blown engine on the bad-luck Indianapolis day ended their chances. But, at the same time, it's a FIVE year old car. Seriously having three conk out on you like that at Le Mans? Come on guys. Get some reliability. EVERY factory Peugeot died. That's more than bad luck to me.

There Should Be No Question About Who I Am Rooting For - But There Is

2010-05-16T14:03:00.001-07:00

This years Stanley Cup Tournament has been the most epic ever. You are missing out if you are not watching.

So, my rule is this: If my Canucks get knocked out, which they did last round, root for the other Canadian teams. So I am rooting for the Canadiens:

However, the confusion comes from, well, the Blackhawks knocked the Canucks out and they could seriously take it all. They have been playing amazingly. They have really really turned it on. And they're such a humble team too. And it's been so long for them. So I'm rooting for the Canadiens and Blackhawks to be in the final. If one doesn't make it - cough Canadiens cough - I'll root for the other.

Such an epic tournament so far. Looking forward greatly to the last two rounds.

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WOW. That was some hockey tournament. Thank you CBC for the awesome coverage as always. Screw you NBC for sucky coverage as always. Congrats to the Blackhawks on their first win in forever. Maybe next year it'll be my Canucks. That Stanley Cup Finals Game 6 was one of the greatest games of hockey I have seen. Thanks Hawks and Flyers for the entertainment. Congrats to Kane on that Stanley Cup winning goal in Overtime. Maybe now he can get a haircut other than a curly mullet.

WRC Round 5: New Zealand Rally

2010-05-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

Loeb, after building a SIZEABLE lead, as always, slid sideways into a one-land bridge yesterday, losing 50+ seconds trying to: first, get his car un-speared from the bridge's railing, second, get his car back on the road, and third, get his door back on the car. This put him in fourth, right behind the legendary Peter Solberg, the kid who is younger than me Jari-Matti Latvala, and the surprised and super stoked Sebastien Ogier. Ogier had never outright won a WRC event, Latvala had won three, Solberg had won 13 times with 1 championship, and Loeb, well, he had 57 wins and the last six consecutive championships, 2004-2009, and he was second in 2003. He is the Michael Schumacher of the WRC. To say he dominates WRC would be a gargantuan understatement.

This is what I like about racing, these type situations: new blood, underrated cars, old blood, and front-running cars all going head to head.

So Loeb drove brilliantly, making it back up to second place, 5.3 seconds down at the end of yesterday. That was some of the best driving I have ever seen. Loeb is amazing and he proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt yesterday. But today was a new day - only four stages. Ogier kept his lead until Loeb overtook him, but Loeb had an off and Ogier and Latvala got past. Ogier was barely holding off Latvala in the sole Ford in the top five. In the final stage, the second round run over the same trail, Ogier spun on the third-to-last corner and Latvala squeaked by with a 2.4 second advantage, the second lowest winning split ever in WRC. The first was Grunholm besting Loeb in 2007 by .3 seconds, oddly enough, also in New Zealand.

Bravo WRC. Bravo. Good show! Loeb needs to lose more.

And Latvala's win makes Ford the winningest marque in WRC history. Ford has just become the winningest marque in WRC history!

Le Mans Series Round 1: 8 Hours Of Castellet: Hopes, Predictions, Rooting List - Results!

2010-04-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

So, the first race of the Le Mans Series is upon us. In many ways, with the mass-exodus from the ALMS series, this is now the most important endurance series. This will be the first battle of the year for Audi and Peugeot. Audi have brought a factory works team with their revision of last years losing new car, Dindo and McNish driving, to try and take down the Peugeot 908 customer Oreca team. Peugeot lent Oreca Sarrazin, their factory works driver that I want to be: he's raced Formula 1, Formula 3000, ALMS, LMES, WRC, IRC, WSR, won LMS, and has come in 2nd at Le Mans. That is variety! And to tack on even more, he's driven in two different classes for endurance racing: GT1 and LMP1.

LMP1:
Prediction: Audi qualified 2nd, but I pick them.
Hope: Oreca Peugeot is on pole, but it's their first race in a new car. That spells trouble in the pits.
Hope Beyond Hope: There's some really cool cars this time. It would be nice to see Aston Martin beat both the big guys. Nigel Mansell is there with two other Mansells in a Ginetta. The other Oreca is doing quite well. But I'm going to be rooting for cars 12 & 13 of Rebellion Racing: a pair of beautiful Lola B10/60s that have stolen my heart with their amazingly garish paint job. Is that gold leaf? Why yes, yes it is in fact.

LMP2:
Prediction: Strakka's Acura is on pole, and it's got a damn good shot.
Hope: The Pescarolo-Judd of Oak Racing.
Hope Beyond Hope: Racing Box or RML. Sexy, sexy Lolas. Stealing my hearts again.

GT1: Oreca Saleen. So yes, I am obsessed with the racing Saleen GT1s. But they're the only car which showed up. Which means they get the win if they finish!!! YES!!! For once it's not embarrassing to root for Saleen again! Oh, except for the fact that they're not much quicker than the GT2 cars.

GT2:
Prediction: AF Corse Ferrari F430.
Hope: JMW Aston Martin Vantage (Not going to happen)
Hope Beyond Hope: SPYKER. Fucking love SPYKER. Like rooting for Saleen usually though: exercise in emotional hopelessness.

This looks to be a VERY exciting race. These drivers spent a two day test weekend on this track, now they've run another four hours on it this weekend alone, and that's just this year. This track gets a lot of use, these drivers are pretty familiar with it, but it's still the first race of the year, and that means excitement. Lots of it. This will also start to flush out the picture for Le Mans, though Audi didn't bring their new car. Looks to be an interesting weekend.

Results of Practices & Qualifying.
Results of the Test Session.

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Result: Man can I pick 'em. I either need to start gambling, or become a racing journalist.

LMP1: Audi won, Aston Martin and Racing box took second and third, Peugeot had trouble in the pits and ended up fourth. Now I'm going to finally post a gorgeous picture of the Racing Box cars. Get ready for shiny gold leaf paint job on a Lola. Are you prepared for this? This is their press shot cropped down a bit:

And one more of the car in action at the 2010 Test at the same course this 8 Hour ran over, all dolled up in stickers now, but still gorgeous:

I could not help but root for them. And they got 3rd and 11th. Not bad, gods of gold leaf, not bad.

In LMP2 I called the Podium: Strakka, Oak, RML. That's right: I called the podium. However, what surprised me very much, was Oak finishing on the same lap as Strakka, 33 seconds back. But, we can chalk that up to the Acura's mechanical problems, as usual. No wonder they got out of the racing game - it's not good advertising if your car breaks down every bloody race that lasts more than 3 hours.

GT1: Bear with me here - I've been waiting years to say this and I just might explode from my excitement. SALEEN WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Enough Exclamation points? Well, you know, they were the only car to show up, and they still got beat by the top five GT2 cars, but still, SALEEN WINS!!! (I held myself back on the exclamation points that time. Better?) Here's a sexy picture of the Saleen that won:

GT2: Insanity, as always. Did I get anything right here? Nope. JMW Aston Martin dropped out of the race early - 65 laps in. Spyker finished well, 8th in class, but that was dead last of the GT2 cars that finished though. AF Corse was the leading Ferrari, but surprise or surprises, a Porsche 1-2 again. How many years since we've seen one of those? Nice work to Felbermeyr Proton Racing, taking home 1st and 2nd in the same team in front of a pack of Ferraris has got to feel good at the end of the day. AF Corse took 3rd and 5th with the only other surviving Ferrari in 4th. The BMW actually finished, which is nice, taking home a 6th place, while the IMSA Porsche fit into the slot between BMW and Spyker. All in all, a LOT of retirements: Half of the Ferraris retired, three of them, my Aston Martin retired too quickly, and a single Porsche fell. Does this signal the return to dominance of the Porsche? I mean they've been doing quite well over in the Nurburgring Long Distance Championship with their new Hybrid race car. We'll see how they stack up when they come to the ALMS later this year.

Looking Towards Le Mans: Anyways, it's hard to tell from one race alone how good the R15+ is going to be this year, especially since Audi always treats the first race of the season as an extended test, rather than a race. But they did set the fastest lap of the race on lap 221: 1:42.541. The fastest Peugeot lap was 1:43.166. But does that really tell us anything? It's the first outing for this customer car and this team. Peugeot, on the other hand, beat Aston Martin by three laps in the 12 hours of Sebring and Audi beat them by five here. This though, means nothing as these are two very different tracks and racing events. We'll have to wait and see which of the big boys can pull it out.

Another Open Letter: Bravo Wieden + Kennedy!

2010-03-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that, based on reviews thus far, your marketing campaign may have been better than the game itself. I applaud your efforts to convince the masses that my favorite book is worth reading. I am sure EA has picked up the check, but from the bottom of my heart, I myself thank you personally. Your unparalleled efforts to frustrate, annoy, offend, and perplex pretentious journalists were some of the high points of news-reporting over the last few months.

I hope that some day a Paradise Lost or Canterbury Tales video game will emerge, and my hope solely rests upon the extended enjoyment of your efforts through 12 books or 24 Tales rather than nine circles. The variety is certainly what had me most tickled. Your surprising diversity in mediums and materials was an excessively exhilarating glimpse of a world not dominated by overly predictable paper- and web-based marketing. The craft, thought, and specific references to the original work was exceptional.

I hope, most of all, that these tough economic times will not get you down and that your genius will be recognized as the exciting and stimulating work that it is. I also hope that some day I will be as good at whatever I end up doing as you are at what you do. Please accept my thanks from the deepest parts of my soul.

Sincerely,
ATY

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The Marketing Campaign Overview - If you didn't see this happen, you missed some hilarious and excessively entertaining confusion and conjecture.

Wieden+Kennedy

Two Open Letters

2010-03-01T08:35:00.001-08:00

Dear Hockey Teams of Both the USA and Canada:

Thank you.

-aty

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Dear NBC:

Fuck You. I hope to not see you doing the coverage in four years.

-aty

Porsche & Me: A Comedy In Ambiguous Parts

2010-01-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

So I posted about BMW, then Mercedes, and now it's time for Porsche. Where do I start with you Porsche?

The 911 Classic (Above) and Current (Below)

Not named after a day in 2001, rather, the 911 is one of the most divisive cars in history - but love it or hate it, this car has staying power. First introduced in 1963, the 911 was the sporty version of the Beetle, sort of. (Audi TT anybody?) Designed on the same principles as the Porsche designed Beetle, (I'll get to you later VW) it was intended to replace the hideous Porsche 356 (Below), which was Porsche's first production car. The 356 was a rear-engined car as well - merely to free up space for more seats and save money. So you could say the storied 911 really began in 1948, with the 356 starting production.

Ferdinand Porsche: there are two of them. The elder is a god, I am convinced: he designed the world's first hybrid in 1901 AND the Volkswagen Beetle AND got thrown in jail as a war-criminal. While he was in jail his son took over. The elder Porsche died in 1951. He received a check for every Beetle sold, that's how his son got the money to do the things he has done. So Ferry (the son) had his daddy to look over his shoulder until 1951. Then he was on his own and didn't really do much (besides winning a Formula 1 race in 1962 and class at Le Mans in 1951) until he designed the 911.

It's gone through different bodies. Early on, it was about the only car Porsche sold and today many people, including me, wish it still was the only car they sold. And since I have been asked before, the 930 is the body to get, made from 1975-1989 (above). Porsche's generally look hideous though: the 944 and 928 look like cheap Mazda RX7 knockoffs, while the 968 like a rich-man's Mazda Miata; the Panamerica goes beyond looking like a used bar of soap to looking like stool; the Cayenne is just terrible and the Roxster is worse; the Panamericana looks cheap and trashy, or like a dune-buggy; the Carrera GT looks like a 911 spit out by a car designer who started out making it a low-riding hot-rod, then got confused, terribly confused. So has every Porsche except for the 911 been a terrible thing?

Yes and no. The 911, as a car, is a beautiful example of the German mind: revision after revision after revision after revision after revision after revision to get a bad idea to work, just so you can say you did it. It has become spectacular. It earns its place as the go-to supercar for the nouveau-rich. But the 959 (above), now there was a car. There were only 337 made but dear God, please can I have one of those in my lifetime? They were designed for Le Mans, then transferred to Dakar and replaced at Le Mans. In 1985 the three 959s went to Dakar and DNF. In 1986 they took 1-2. From a standing start the car will cover a kilometer in 21.6 seconds. And of course it has a twin, the 961 (below): the one Porsche did take to Le Mans. In 1986 Porsche took places 1-7 at the 24 hours, with the 961 in 7th place, 3 laps ahead of the nearest car, and 22 laps ahead of the only other non-Group C car to finish in the running. The 961 was a GTX car, and it beat 11 Group C racers, the biggest, baddest cars Le Mans has ever seen. The next year it didn't finish. That, that was a car. But in the end it was just a modified 911.

However, the 959/961 led to the 911 GT1, which was Porsche's most beautiful car since the 60s:

And it was completely impractical on the road. But when it looks that good, who cares?

Speaking of Porsche race cars, they all pretty much rock: the amazing 550 which just looks good from every single angle (above); the 787 F2 car; the beautiful 904, 906, 907, and 908 with the longtail body-kit; the 910 hill-climber; the 914-6 GT with its tiny engine; the 917 and 936 Le Mans runners; the 934 and 935 911 race cars; the 953 predecessor to the 959; and then of course the legendary Group C cars the 956 and 962 (962 Below); then more recent cars like the seemingly accidentally brilliant WSC-95, which won Le Mans twice, the uber-dominating LMP2 RS Spyder, and the secretive LMP project that never raced. There is only one or two Porsche race cars that I do not like. Too bad they only have one good road car, and two good extensions of it. I wish I could get in on some of the beauty and fun of the race cars. And even if you do get that one good road car, you look like a cad driving it. Whether you pronounce it "poor-chuh" or "poor-shh," the brand is a well known car-maker for no reason other than their penchant for winning races and their "Cheapest Supercar" status - oh, and Jeremy Clarkson sticking a lit pipe in his mouth backwards.

Here's a link JR found for some gorgeous posters from the height of Porsche beauty. And some examples. And no, I don't even want to talk about the Tapiro. If you drive a Porsche you look like this guy:

And one last thing, a terrible confession of sorts. I want a Porsche 928 in Gold. I know. It probably invalidates the entire post. They are terrible, but they terribly move me deeply to lust. I know I shouldn't, and I know the color is just strange, but I want it and it's called the Weissach Edition (1982):

Appropriateness Of Story

2010-01-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

Can I tell a story not my own? The Politically Correct Post-Modern era seems to imply that I need to stay within my cultural bounds and out of other people's. But can I tell anything but another's story? My story is, of course, mundane to me because it is I who lived it. There is a pronounced duality between that and my love of hearing other people tell my story. But this era tells me to keep my nose out of other people's business while progressively taking away my privacy. This is the era of contradiction for the sake of not offending somebody. But by attempting to remain vanilla, we offend ourself, our basic nature as humans – we ignore our desires for individuality, recognition, and the observed truths of our lives in favor of a PC existence that avoids confrontation. Confrontation is good – it is the only way I learn. Like iron sharpens iron, so me arguing another becomes. Stereotypes come from somewhere and they are not the whole story. Must that be a contradiction? Do we have to completely deny stereotypes to tell the whole story, or must we ignore the story to tell the stereotypes? It seems writer's these days think so. I must tell another's story, because that is what is fresh to me, that is what is puzzling, and that is what is worthy of illumination in my own mind. And explaining the stereotypes are one way to get there. If you want to read it, feel free, but I intend to offend. It seems that on the one hand, without experiencing it I cannot fully communicate it, but on the other, I can explore it more, push its boundaries; by looking from the outside I see things those on the inside miss. But this does not deny needing a base understanding to work from. Research is key, but can overpower too easily. Dichotomies do not exist. It is how we work things together where the genius lies, where the making is.

Part 2: After talking to Matthew, of Matt's Motoblag, we came to a broader consensus concerning these brief thoughts. We related this back to War Stories, using the Historian to illuminate the quintessential person telling another's story.

1. There is a consistency of quality of the person telling their own story. Though it is often not great. Stories like We Were Soldier's Once, and Young are good, but the amatuer author falls into cliches too often. This is forgivable because we imagine the experience would start to define the cliche for the experienced, but it still saps potential power from the story for the reader.

2. The consistency of quality for the other telling a story is much more diverse, though there is a greater possibility for it being better. It could be better because: the writer is a writer, and as such, can write; the writer is outside of the situation, so is more likely to be writing only because the story interests them, which could make their writing more exciting all around, and usually leads to a broader depth of knowledge from research (Richard Rhodes is an amazing historian). But it could be worse, and often is, because the writer does not understand the minds of the experienced and, further, may just be trying to cash in on a passing fad, which generally turns out terribly.

3. For the writer telling another's story, the research base must be broad, but too much research can overwhelm a story.

Thanks Matt!

Semester Sucks

2009-11-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Read this instead of my blag.

Architecture and Film blags next semester.

Brian K Vaughan: A God Amongst Mere Mortals

2009-10-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

(That title's not setting my opinion out there too far now, is it?)

My introduction to him was when I wandered into the comic book shop and said, "Sell me some Sci-Fi!" And they showed me a few, of which I picked up Ex Machina #1. I was back the next morning the minute they opened to buy the rest of this still-in-progress series. The owner of the comic book store in Pullman says that this is the best series he's ever read. It's about Politics and a superhero in real-world, everyday situation. That description doesn't make it sound interesting, but what it does through those lenses is delve into every deep, dark facet of American culture, discussing polarizing issues in a way that, to me, is thought-provoking, respectful without being meaningless, and, ultimately, intelligent and funny. You have to read at least the first, disjointed issue, and if you aren't on board after reading that, than I'm pretty sure you hate kittens and burn down orphanages in your free time. Just saying.

So I'm thinking to myself, "DAMN. Ex Machina is fucking good!" Then I finish the series and Wikipedia tells me he also co-wrote Y: The Last Man Standing with Canadian writer and penciller Pia Guerra. Now Y is a ten book, finished series and let me tell you friend, it's not as consistently good as Ex Machina, but to me it is much more beautiful. It is the troubled story of Yorick Brown who, in the first chapter, mysteriously survives a mysterious event the french term Le Grand Depart - iol est: all the men die except for Yorick and his helper monkey, Ampersand. That's right, in the first chapter all the men in the world explode in a bloody, grotesque fashion. Pretty freaking funny if you ask me. From there the story shies away from nothing - racism, drugs, religion, military, childhood, politics, rebellion, science, expired canned food, love, morals - nothing is safe, and very little is sacred - if anything. However, as a reader, it is pretty clear to see Vaughan's writing improve over the span of these books, from a tentative writer to a confident, strong one addressing issues in a fresh way. Initially, I was afraid he wasn't going to be fair to his character's fates, but after finishing the series (and restarting it) this week, let me assure you that he is heartrendingly fair and unbiased in the books - shit happens to everybody and good stuff too. There is lots of sex - and since there's only one man in the world a lot of the sex is lesbian - and violence and fucked up dreams and deep issues in our culture get laid bare and discussed in an intelligent way, with the gratuitousness at times serving to point out the absurdity of some of these issues. It's exciting, extremely thought-provoking, and wholly addicting. If you have a local comic book shop, like Safari Pearl here in Moscow, drop by and pick up the series for a roller-coaster ride of hilarity, (not all of it is death related humor, though a lot is) joy, sadness, and touching moments of friendship, hatred, love, and camaraderie. Ultimately, this series cost me $140 and it was worth every damn penny. If you want to borrow, feel free to ask - it needs read. Oh, and I guess they're making a movie - DJ Caruso directing - with a real monkey, not a CGI one. Sweet.

Frankfurt 2009 Post 2 + Formula 1

2009-09-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Three big events to report today. First and foremost is the fact that LOTUS IS BACK IN F1. None of this maybe shit, Lotus is team 13 for next year! If any modicum of the excitement F1 is giving fans this year carries over into next year, and Lotus is on the grid, I might just be the happiest man in the world. Plus they're returning to sportscar racing too. It's been a good week for Lotus racing fans.

Also, Elio Zagato died. He designed the above car, among others, and was a legendary gentleman racer. The world is worse without him.

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The other event is, of course, the continuation of the Frankfurt Motor Show:

More Insanity:

An Elise-based, gullwing sportscar? Yes!

A Hybrid, 200HP, Coupe sportscar from Peugeot? Oh man! This is crazy! I forgive you for the BB1! Actually, no I don't, but this is a start towards penance.

It's fitting that the name of this company, Mansory, is one letter away from "Man, sorry." They should be. Or their name should be "let's take a gorgeous, classic Aston Martin, and fuck it up."

The Russians scoff at the Frenchies' hybrid sportscar and build themselves a stunning hybrid supercar. Two, actually. Well, maybe. It has no details whatsoever, and construction quality is a little rough around the edges. But I want.

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Expected:

I think the new Saab 9-5 looks good. But then again, I'm an architect, so I don't really know. (All architects drive Saabs)

Two new Minis! Yay!

Not happy with releasing one of the most beautiful small-cars this year, the Fiat 500, Fiat went ahead and made it a twin-trick and released another gorgeous small-car.

But of course, both of the Fiat's pale in comparison to the Alfa Romeo Mito. This may be the best small car I've seen in a decade or more. I wants. I wants bad. This model here is the Quadrifoglio Verde, or green four leafed clover. This drops 170 horsepower into your pocket, more efficiently too, apparently. And you could almost fit this car in your pocket. Sure, the Mito GTA is the one I want, that 240 horsepower beauty, but I will probably be able to afford this. The biggest tragedy of these, if you ask me, is that Alfa Romeo isn't sure whether they'll bring the Mito to the US or not. Please Alfa, let me have a Mito GTA. Or the QV above.

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Some Renault's To Hunt & Kill:

The BMW Post

2009-09-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Alright, so let's talk ze Germans again. Seems appropriate right now, what with Frankfurt going on and all (more Frankfurt pictures tomorrow). This isn't going to be chronological, this will be... Favoritological! (It's Latin, trust me)

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1. 1995-1997 F1 GTR/LM: Okay, so it's technically a McLaren (British), but it has a BMW engine in it, was raced by factory BMW, and is claimed by BMW. The LM refers to the Le Mans victory in 1995 and only 6 were built - five sold and one prototype. The GTR is the car that actually won Le Mans, many of which have been slightly modified to drive on the road legally. The LM gets to 60 in 2.9 seconds. The LM gets to 60 in 2.9 seconds. 28 GTRs were built and dear God... these may be the most beautiful melding of lust and technology yet created. I have been in love with these for years now.

F1 GTR Le Mans Results:

1995: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 13th. 2 DNF. Reliability beat speed again. Who would have thunk it?

1996: 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th. 1DNF.

1997: 2nd, 3rd. 3 DNF.

1998: 4th. 1 DNF.

So let's review now. A road-legal car won Le Mans. Not only that, but it finished in the top five for four straight years against factory prototype cars such as: Porsche 911 GT1, Nissan R390 GT1, Panoz Esperante GTR-1, Ferrari 333 SP, Toyota GT-One, Toyota/SARD MC8-R, Porsche WSC-95, Honda NSX GT1, Mercedes-Benz CLK-LM (GTR), BMW V12-LM, and the Lotus Elise GT-1. Privateer prototype teams beat were Courage, Riley & Scott, Kudzu, Welter, Kremer, and Deborah. They were placed a class above the Porsche 911, the Nissan GT-R LM, the Chrysler Viper, the Ferrari F40, the Jaguar XJ 220, the Callaway Corvette, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1, the Lister Storm, the Toyota Supra, the Saleen Mustang RRR, and the Marcos Mantara LM600 - all other road cars transformed for racing. That, my friends, is purely and utterly legendary.

2. 1956-1959 BMW 507: This car isn't German. It's too curvy. It's too cool and not prickish or vanilla enough. In short, this car is too beautiful to ever come from Germany. This was BMWs attempt to take some 300SL Gullwing prestige away from Mercedes, to get part of that German sports-car market. 252 were built, and two prototypes, but it almost killed BMW - they lost money on every car. While the 300SL was 10% of Mercedes' sales, this was a drop in the bucket - a very expensive drop in the bucket. Fortunately for BMW, an investor, the BMW 700, the BMW Isetta, and the New Class (1500) came along to save it. But still, that BMW 507 is my favorite, wholly BMW car.

3. BMW 2002tii (Turbo E20): Based on the beautiful BMW 1500 "New Class," this body was gorgeous. The car saved BMW from bankruptcy and, ultimately, gave us one of the most modifiable cars of all time. When thinking of a modifiable car, most think of a Hyundai something-or-other that's been lowered, has a huge, decorative, useless spoiler, stickers, and some 18 year old wanker at the wheel. This car, on the other hand, decided to be beautiful out the door so modifications mostly occurred in the engine bay and wheel-wells. The 2002tii version was BMW's first turbo. It gives you 170 horsepower in a car weighing 2,200 pounds, and only 13.83 feet long (166 inches). This is what I love about the 2002tii: beauty, function, modifiability through simplicity, but most of all, pure driving pleasure. Mechanical grip, direct steering, no ABS brakes - in short, it is small, light, fast, and handles as well as it looks - beautifully. This is what I want out of a car today. Not computers. In this I feel like me, the car, and the road are all one being, working together towards one purpose: and having fun is so easy to attain. This is what I wish automakers would give us today - like the Miata.

4. BMW 328: Awww Yeah! The only surprise here is that it isn't higher up on the list. Kurt Joachimson penned a car that was not only brilliantly beautiful, but technically splendid. With it's hemispherical engine and tubular space frame it was fast beyond belief: it took class in the Mille Miglia in 1938, then won in 1940 and 2004, in 1939 it won the RAC rally and took class at Le Mans. Yet, the car retains it's sophisticated beauty, punctuated by the leather straps holding the hood on, the elegant curves to the rear end, and, above all, that front end is just to die for. Okay, so not sophisticated, but stripped down - with style.

5. BMW M1: Again, not German. Actually, Lamborghini had a hand in this one. From 1978 to 1981 these cars were hand-built. These were race-cars that you could drive, uncomfortably, down the street. Mid-engined, powerful, and the 1984 Group B champion, this car was on top. They even had Andy Warhol paint one of them.

6. BMW 2000CS: Take a 2002, decide to make a coupe, and then hire Karmann to do the body work - that's how you make a BMW 2000CS. The front end is hideous, the interior is, at best, 1970s luxury, and the car has a wee little engine in it. But I love it because of it's quirks. Because of it's failings.

7. BMW M3 (E36 + E46): This car, I hope you realize, I have to put on here.

I hate this car because: I hate the people who drive it. I hate that it's so damn good. I hate that there's too many computers. I hate that I don't feel connected with the roadway. I hate that it's a wholly vanilla design - even for the vanilla obsessed 1990s. I hate that this car looks like every other BMW. I would want people who don't know cars to know that I've got an M3.

I love this car because: It is in a league of its own. It may very well be the greatest car ever created - even I have to admit that. It's hideous but it goes faster than all hell. Everything beneath the vanilla exterior is perfect: chassis, suspension, engine, drive-train, and whatever else goes into a car that I don't understand. All I know is this works, and it works damn well. I just wish every business-school ex-frat-boy didn't have one of these. Go buy Audi's, assholes, leave us the M3!

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And there you have it. That is a list of cars that I like from BMW. Now can I just say, for the record, that I hate the Germans? They make good cars, without, sigh, passion *Clink* and soul *Clink*. They're too vanilla to really fall in love with. Only when they do things totally wrong can they be loved. Or when they get somebody else to design their cars. Perhaps someday soon I'll actually talk about car-companies I adore.

Frankfurt 2009 Post 1

2009-09-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

No, I didn't get to go, but from afar I wanted so badly it hurt. Here's a look at the best and worst from this year:

Insanity:

The Mercedes SLS is absolutely insane. And I am in love.

Okay, um, I didn't exactly expect that from BMW AT ALL. If they build this... huge respect.

Okay, so I like Miatas. Driver's cars. This though... this is dweebier than Thom Yorke in a Caterham. I want a Caterham. Mmmm... Caterham... I also want this.

NEEDS MORE INSANE. Come on Abarth. You guys used to be fucking crazy. What happened?

Fuck you Peugeot. I root for your incompitent team in racing and you repay me with this shit? Bad Peugeot. BAD!

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Expected:

At least the Ferrari 458 looks better than the car it replaces. But it's also cheesier. What are those slashes in the lights? And three tailpipes? Really?

Mmm... Weismann MF5 Roadster... Mmmmm... I'm usually not a back-door man, but for you I will make an exception.

It's a Citroen, and it's named the Revolte - one letter off of revolted - and it's purple. But still, somehow, my love of the 2CV can be requited in this.

It's a new fucking McLaren! Please McLaren, heal my eyes from the horrors of the SLR. Oh, this will do the trick nicely. Hot damn!

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Lotus Gets Their Own Fucking Section:

Guess what's showing up at next year's 24 Hours of Nurburgring? Ah yeah, the Lotus Evora.

The Lotus Exige Cup 260 is all kinds of awesome.

The Lotus Elise Club Racer is something I would like to own.

Formula 1: A Brief History Of Jordan & Force India, Including Results From Today's Qualifying

2009-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Some people are unclear as to why Fisichella's performance at the last race was so damn surprising. The team started out in 1991 as Jordan Racing - even employing a young Michel Schumacher for his first F1 race ever (He crashed out). They were back-runners until Barrichello took the seat and in 1994 every race he finished except 1 was in the points - granted, he only finished half of the races. In 1999, Former F1 World Champion Damon Hill (Son of Graham Hill) and Heinz-Harald Frentzen took the team to a third place finish at the end of the season. Hill had a terrible season and retired at the end of it, but he was still able to score enough points to get Jordan on the podium. 1994 to 1999 were the good years though. After only getting points in two races in 2004, Eddie Jordan decided to sell, commenting that the era of privateer teams was over. He is now a pundit for BBC's F1 coverage. After the 2005 season Midland F1 racing picked the team up and failed to score a single point in 2006. Their highest finish was 9th. In 2007 the team switched to the control of Spyker, who managed to get Adrian Sutil (Above) into an 8th place spot for a single point in the 2007 season. Then Spyker sold the name to Force India. I think it really was because Spyker was just using F1 to gain a little bit of pedigree and experience for their fantastic street cars. They're still GT racing to this day.

Force India didn't score a single point in 2008 - the highest finish was a 10th for Fisichella. However, Sutil was running 4th in Monaco before being speared by Raikkonen with 6 laps left - and the whole situation became a cluster-fuck, as it usually does in the politics-heavy F1 - and Sutil didn't score. In 2009 he was running 6th in China with, you guessed it, 6 laps left when he aquaplaned and didn't score again. Then, in the lead-up to the 2009 European GP - the first race after the traditional summer break - they looked good, but choked, finishing a typical 10th and 11th after qualifying a typical 12th and 16th. Then the weekend after it Fisichella showed the fuck up! He put Force India on pole and held the lead for a few laps before taking his race to a 2nd place finish. Those 8 points are the most scored by this team since 2005 - and the only reason they got points there was because of the farce the US GP became that year - only six cars raced. So, excluding the fake 2005 US GP, last weekend Force India scored more points than they had since 2003, when Fisichella took the top step of the podium for Jordan during the rain-drenched, politics-infested, odd 700th GP in Brazil. So because the winner was decided in a boardroom we can exclude that race too and that means that since 2000 the team has never done as well as they did last weekend - it was uncontested, clean, and a huge surprise. That is why seeing Sutil go on to qualify 2nd, merely .2 seconds behind the leader, for Sunday's race is so incredible. I don't know what the team did over the summer break, but it bloody worked!

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Qualifying is over, and the race begins on Sunday. Of course, the big shift is that Fisichella, who performed so well last race weekend for Force India, has switched to Ferrari and qualified 14th - good luck getting used to that new car. Kimi came 3rd in the other Ferrari on the track. Last year's champion, Lewis Hamilton, put himself on pole while Fisichella's old teammate, Adrian Sutil (above), qualified 2nd. Way to go Force India! Kovalainen took forth for McLaren-Mercedes and Brawn-Mercedes qualified 5th and 6th - Barrichello and Button respectively. In 7th on the grid is the other Force India car with Vitantonio Liuzzi at the wheel - test driver for the team for the past two years, and in his past he has beat Michel Shumacher. We'll see how he does on the track Sunday - good luck! Alonso put Renault in 8th. The sensation, Vettel, took 9th in his Red-Bull-Renault, followed .1 second back by his teammate. That's got to be a good feeling for a team boss - both my drivers are consistent, good, and the cars are at their tip-top shape.

We will see how things go at the fabled turns of Monza this weekend.

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The Race: Sutil opened the day with the statement, "I will have to defend myself from the KERS cars quite vigorously - my strategy will be ruined if they all get past me." This made me laugh quite hard right before the race opened.

In the first lap (above is the 1st chicane on the 1st lap) Hamilton was barely able to hold off Raikkonen, who took Sutil at the start. Barrichello moved from 6th to 4th immediately while his teammate Button took Kovalainen to get to fifth. On lap two (below is the 1st chicane on the 2nd lap) Vitantonio Liuzzi gets up to sixth. By lap five Hamilton has a 3.5 second lead - is he running a light gas load or is he as fast as he was last year again? On lap seven it's out to 4.2. On lap 10 Hamilton has a 14 second lead over the pair of Brawns while Sutil is trying to overtake Raikkonen for second. Fisichella meanwhile, at his home race in a Ferrari - has to be a dream come true for him, Italian driver in the Italian GP in the Italian car in front of Italian fans - has only managed to move up to 11th by lap 12. By lap 14 Hamilton's dominating performance has netted him 6.8 seconds over the second place Raikkonen, who still has Sutil up his tailpipe, and 17 seconds of Barrichello. On lap 15 Hamilton pits from lead, emerging fifth, right in front of Liuzzi. Sutil has taken Raikkonen only to pit on lap 17. Race lead is Raikkonene, Barrichello, Button. Both Barrichello and Button are on a one-stop strategy and it's starting to pay off for them - they are ten seconds up on Hamilton. On lap 22 Liuzzi retires with a clutch issue. Damn. I was hoping Force India would put two drivers in the points - and Liuzzi is at his home track; poor guy. Vettel has slowly moved himself up to eighth place and is staying there after Liuzzi retires. On lap 28 Button comes in. Barrichello comes in on 29. Hamilton is now in the lead but he still has a stop to make while the Brawn teammates are free-and-clear to the end of the race. At this stage, it looks like Barricello could win this, putting Brawn further ahead in the championships. And Hamilton pits at lap 33, coming out behind the Brawns. In second, right behind Raikkonen, Sutil posts the race's fastest lap on lap 35 at 1:24.739. WOW! Way to go Sutil! Still can't pass Raikkonen.

Okay, here we go, the Raikkonen-Sutil showdown (below) happening all day is coming to a head in pit lane. Sutil is still up Raikkonen's tailpipe as they come into the pits on lap 36. Conceivably, as the Brawn teammates fly past, whoever gets out of the pits first should get 4th place. Oh no! Sutil brakes too late and knocks over some of his pit crew. Bad form Sutil, bad form! Wait! Raikkonen stalls and also knocks down a crew-member! Wow. It's a sucky day to be changing tyres. After all that drama, they emerge lockstep and in the same order as before. Meanwhile, Hamilton is closing on second-placed Jenson Button while Barrichello starts to pull away at the front. Got to love team tactics - Hamilton is faster, but if Button can hold him off, Barrichello has a shot at a win and Brawn earns valuable points. By lap 42 Sutil is desperate - both to pass Raikkonen and to not crash. On lap 42 Vettel slides off track and Red Bull misses out on some more points. On lap 47 Button, in second, is just 1.5 seconds ahead of Hamilton, but the two Brit's appear to be lapping the same times. Raikkonen and Sutil are 14 seconds off the battle for second. Barrichello is less than six seconds ahead of Hamilton. Damn! This is a race! On lap 48 a frustrated Timo Glock accidentally spins his team-mate Jarno Trulli. Good work back there boys.

It is coming down to it now. At the start of lap 50 we have two laps left. We are running Barricello with a pretty safe lead of 4 seconds; a second place battle for British pride between Jensen Button, former world champion and Brawn driver in second, and Lewis Hamilton, current champion and McLaren driver in third; the battle for fourth is still captivating as Sutil is probing Raikkonen every chance he gets. Nobody is making any time. At the start of lap 51 we are in the same order before there's a crash on course and IT'S LEWIS HAMILTON! He spins out of the race from third place with half a fucking lap to go! Oh man that has got to be a sucky feeling! As the safety car comes out due to Lewis' debris all over the track the time to pass has ended and it's final as they finally cross the line under yellow: Barrichello took the win - his third at Monza since begining in Formula 1 back in 1993 - in a brilliant Brawn 1-2 (below) with Button on the second step. Raikkonen took a well-deserved third ahead of Adrian Sutil who, I think, posted the fastest lap of the day and scored some valuable points for Force India. Great work Sutil!

Anthony Davidson on BBC Radio Five Live: "I think Lewis will have learned a lesson here today - even Michael Schumacher never stopped learning this - sometimes you have to just relax take it easy to bank the points. You really shouldn't be crashing out on the last lap - that sort of thing can make you look like a little bit of a fool." So true. Because of the crash Vettel got back up to eight and scored some points for Red Bull! Fernando Alonso, Heikki Kovalainen, and Nick Heidfeld were 5th, 6th, and 7th respectively. Because at the end of the season we may look back at this and realize this was the most important race of the season - has Brawn really dominated so strongly this year? - here are a plethora of quotes from the BBC after a picture explaining how a Brazilian, a Brit, and a Finn celebrate their podium:

Lewis Hamilton: "Every lap I was pushing like a qualifying lap. It's to be expected. We didn't have the pace so we were pushing hard - I did all I could to catch the Brawns and win it. The car was still good today, just not good enough. I can only apologise to my team and all my fans. But we have some upgrades coming and hopefully they will help us have a little bit more."

Martin Whitmarsh: "Lewis was pushing to the end. That's how he is. Obviously there's great disappointment at losing third spot, but he was pushing to the end. He had a purple sector in the first score of that last lap and he was trying to catch Jenson - we can criticise him, that's what makes him the great racing driver that he is."

Adrian Sutil: "I feel really good it was a great race for me and I really enjoyed it - even though it was a bit disappointing to be stuck behind the red car with kers for the whole race. I had a great start and we have got five points so we should all be happy."

Rubens Barrichello: "It is a winning year whatever happens. It's not long ago that we had no jobs, so we have to remember that. - the team have done a fantastic job. The strategy was great - the work on Friday was really good and that all helped us to get this result. I am going to give my very best, it's going to be a good and a healthy fight - I'm looking forward to it."

Kimi Raikkonen: "Third place was a little bit of a gift for us here but we need the points so it is great - it's nice to be on the podium it's much better than finishing fourth. It is frustrating to do everything you can do during the race and still finish so far back, but we need to keep going and get as many points as we can."

Jenson Button: "My lap times were good and I always felt I had good pace at the ends of my stints. Lewis started pushing at the end and the team were getting excited, but I think I had him covered - it's hard to pass here even with Kers. I don't know what happened to Lewis, if he made a mistake or had a failure. Obviously I'd rather be sat where Rubens is, but I have extended my lead over the Red Bulls. The man sat next to me here (Barrichello) is obviously my big rival for the title now. That's good, we get on great, but obviously we are both super competitive and want to win. It's just nice to be back on the podium."

Rubens Barrichello: "It feels great, I have no words. I had a tough night because we didn't know about the gearbox and there were some concerns. But we came though and I had a great first lap - that's what made my race. It felt great, amazing."

Ross Brawn: "I think you could see Jenson Button was very tidy and it was Lewis Hamilton who was looking ragged. It's difficult to hold your nerve, but we had to keep at it and do what we normally do. As for the championship race, all I ask from my drivers now is they compete fairly and openly - everything has got to be on top of the table, they have got to work together fairly - they are old enough to deal with it!"

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The next race is the night race through the streets of Singapore. Such a sexy looking race last year. One of those pictures was the backdrop to my laptop for months. Looking forward to it on September 27th.

But next weekend, of course, is the tie-breaker. The final showdown of the year between Peugeot and Audi at the 10 hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. So excited!

My History Of Mercedes

2009-09-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

1. Mercedes made the first gasoline powered MOTORWAGEN in January 1886. Leading, of course, to the end of the world as we knew it.

2. Mercedes establishes itself as a racing brand and the legend of the Silver Arrows is born. Unfortunately, the innovation and beauty stays on the track.

3. After returning to Sportscar racing in 1952, the American importer of Mercedes said, "Hey, that sexy track car would sell well in America:"

And it does! In 1954, after a long string of uninspiring street cars, Mercedes created the 300SL "Gullwing". It remains one of the prettiest cars of all time. But not only that, it was the first fuel injected car on the road. It completely revolutionized Mercedes from maker of boring cars like the W120 to real cars like the 300SL (W198) and the 190SL (R121).

4. And then Mercedes makes a bunch of crappy cars again, for years. Blah blah blah, boring boring boring.

5. Until 1990, when Mercedes went absolutely insane and strapped a bunch of awesome parts to their vanilla 190 series:

and created the 190e Evolution II, one of the most utterly absurd cars of all time. I love it for its performance, quirkiness, hideousness, and absurdity.

6. Then they made shit again, to the tune of even making me not like McLaren (Which is one of the best car people groups in the world). However, they did perform some interesting aerial acrobatics at the track. Twice, actually.

7. Until now. Hear me out, but after 19 years of utter drivel, Mercedes has returned with this:

The Mercedes-Benz SLS is the car I have been waiting for from that original gas-car company. This is that rare mix between the utter absurdity of the 190e Evo II and the beauty and sheer inspired-ness of the 300SL. Has it got gull-wing doors? Yes, and they are as hideous as ever. Does the front symbol look like overstated plastic crap? Yes, but I'm sure that would come off. Is the car perhaps the coolest thing shown this year? Perhaps... perhaps.

It is, simply put, everything I want from a company like Mercedes who was, at one time, crazy enough to try a gasoline autowagen. This is craziness, not vanilla like the SL series, or a phallus like the SLR, this is truly and utterly mad. This is putting fuel injection in a car. This is painting your cars silver to blind opponents on a racetrack. This is absolutely insane, and I love it.

More pictures here.

Everything! All-In-One Post!

2009-09-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Writing: I am glad to announce that I have joined a writer's group. Perhaps we need to become a collective...

Writings: Listen to this poem - don't read it while you listen or before you listen. (Thanks, Rebecca, for that tip)

Picture-Taking: Pairing up Mark Klett and Peter Vincent in one gallery show may be one of the most brilliant moves the Prichard Art Gallery has made during my time in Moscow.

Architecture: School has started again, and to echo the enthusiasm in my soul, I would like to take this moment to say a heartfelt FUCK YOU to architecture. Oh well, back to work.

Music: Jay-Z's new album comes tomorrow, right? And let me tell you, this is the album we've been waiting for since The Black Album. As good as my friends, as good as. And I've taken to calling that album the Holy Grail of rap.

And now, let's talk about what I really want to talk about right now:

Racing: After what may have been the second most surprising race in the most Formula 1 series of the last ten years, Formula 1 has the weekend off, but that hasn't stopped the F1news machine from plopping this golden tidbit into my lap: Lotus may be coming back to Formula 1. Lotus. Excitement cannot be contained at the mere suggestion of this possibility. The Lotus 72 was the best Formula 1 car of all time and perhaps, after a couple of years struggling to catch up, Lotus can be what Lotus once was: the best F1 car maker around. Please Lotus. Please. I will beg.

Oh, and McLaren introduces their new, 1000 units per year car on Wednesday. I cannot properly communicate the sheer awesomeness of these two bits of news.

Ordering CDs From Circle Into Square: A Review

2009-08-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

This was, simply put, the best experience I have had buying music. To iTunes, Amazon, and all the other music peddlers, this is how to do it:

I heard a song on KUOI - how I find a lot of my new music - and decided that it was a truly splendid song - familiar yet edgy, allows the lyrics to take a place at the forefront of the song. Fantastic stuff really, and the only problem was that I had no idea who it was. This happens a lot on KUOI. I knew I had heard the rapper before, but couldn't place it. I started playing the .m3u stream off KUOI hoping it would come up again and tell me who it was. Well, two and a half months later, it did: "cars & trains ft. sole - rusty strings - the sky is clear." At least I now had an answer to who the rapper was, the fantastic Sole, but this song was a damn good Google stumper. First off, which was the band name and which was the song? I started by searching "Rusty Strings" - both Youtube and Google fail me as Rusty Strings is the name of a few songs and a band from Tahoe. Okay, I move on to attempt number two: neither "The Sky is Clear" nor "The Sky is Clear song" bring up anything of interest - well, except for George Straight and Explosions in the Sky (Guess which one I like more). Try number three, "cars & trains" nets me nothing either. Finally I try all of these with "music" at the end of them and end up here. Finally, three months later, I had found the song I was looking for. Now, onto buying the album.

Cars & Trains is a guy named Tom Filepp in a room in Portland who makes music as awesome as this stuff (look on the left of the page) and that page doesn't even have "The Sky is Clear" on it, the song I wanted to buy the album because. His "STORE" link took me to the market of Circle Into Square. I'm already thinking to myself, alright, let's see if we can get out of here for under $15 without any DRM ruined music. You know the type of small label I am afraid of. These are the best in the business though. Prices? $7 for an instant, DRM-free download. $10 for the same download and they'll mail you a hard copy CD too. $16 for the download and a AA T-Shirt by Tom Filepp. Did I mention this was Rusty Strings Deluxe, which had all the songs and remixes for every one? I got my DRM free, 320kbps .mp3 download immediately and chose the CD option so I could convert it to FLAC. They sent out the original CD, the deluxe CD, and a free download code for Consumer Confidence Volume 2, a CD which came out just the week before Rusty Strings. I must say, the next few albums I buy will be through them. I love their sound, I love the way they do business, and this was EXACTLY what buying online should be right now. My only beef was that I still had to provide the typical personal information to verify the Card and all, but that's a problem with the credit card companies, not Circle Into Squarea. Honestly I assume that people this cool to deal with will eat their own genitals before giving up my info. If they prove me wrong I'll pass that news along.

What it comes down to is that Circle Into Square is a label that knows how to make damn good music and knows how to sell it properly. This was, simply put, the best music buying experience I have ever had, as well as the best online purchasing experience I have had yet. Thank you.

Oh, and a little tip? Free music from Sole's new album is right here.
And here's a link to Fake Four, Inc.

Formula 1 2009

2009-08-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

I would like to take a moment to point out that those of you who are not watching Formula 1 this year are missing out on what is the most spectacular racing season I have ever seen from that series. This weekend I stood up on two separate occasions and applauded - not clapped, not congratulated, full on applauded - Giancarlo Fisichella. Fan-fucking-tastic show out there. That was great. I AM ENTERTAINED! And this is why this season is so utterly metal.

I Am Trying To Learn Latin & Anglo-Saxon At The Same Time

2009-08-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

And fucking up both. Oh well. At least there is some good news:

ROUND THREE IS A GO. REPEAT. ROUND THREE IS A MOTHERFUCKING GO!

And for once, I do not have a prediction yet. Anyways, after the first race of the year being won by Germans, the biggest and second race of the year being won by the French, Let us hope that the Americans can pull out a win next month at Petit Le Mans, the fantastic 10 hour ALMS event at Road Atlanta. HAHAHAHA. Who am I kidding? The Americans aren't even showing up. Well I hope Mazda wins. But they wont. Anyways, I can't wait for the race. September 23-26. The Race will be live on Speed TV on the 26th.

Oh, I almost forgot: Audi has a new logo now. Will it make them faster? Only the race will tell.

It Gives Me Great Pleasure To Announce...

2009-08-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

I will be starting two new blags for the fall semester.

Beginning next week, Kel and I will debate films, starting with our top five favorites.

Beginning sometime after that, D.E. and I will debate architecture, starting with our top five favorites.

This could very well be a bust. But, it could be too interesting to give up at the end of the semester. I don't know where it's going and I don't care. We'll see, eh?

-aty

p.s. - Links will be provided once the sites are up.

Pikes Peak, A Retrospective: The Driver And Car You Thought Would Win In 2009 Did

2009-07-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

Pikes Peak: I have been there. I have driven this road. I know what it is like. But at the same time, I know absolutely nothing. To others, this road is not a beautiful, continuous photography workshop. It is not a resting place. It is not something I visit in my dreams when I'm too scared to look at the pictures for feelings of home. This is... epic. There are a few deeply spiritual places that I have been, and even fewer where there are other people, but Pikes Peak is stunning. I came out of there shell-shocked, smitten, and satisfied. Because of other people, rarely does a national park affect me like Pikes Peak did. And yet, after all that, I still have never known it like some people do.

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb - The Race to the Clouds: 12.42 miles, 156 turns, 4721 feet of elevation gain, and an average grade of 7%, PPIHC is an American race that I adore. In 1916, the inaugural race was run in the Open Wheel cars and won by Rea Lentz with a time of 20:55.40. In 1994, the current Open Wheel record time was set by Robby Unser at 10:05.85. In 1994, Rod Millen set a mountain record in the Unlimited class with a 10:04.06. In 2007, Nobuhiro Tajima, "The Monster," broke that 13 year old record with a 10:01.408 in the Unlimited class, 39 years after he first started racing. He recorded a 10:15.368 this year, leaving the mythical 10 minute mark to be broken another year. In 2009, Rod Millen's son, Rhys Millen, set a 2WD record of 12:09.397, while driving the last four miles with two flat tyres.

Ari Vatanen: He is currently embroiled in a massive political campaign to become the president of the most famous motorsports organizing body in the world, the FIA. He is a ten year member of the European Parliament, and still found time to race in his home race for the 2003 WRC season. In 1981 he took the aging Ford Ford Escort RS 1800 to the top step of the WRC podium three times, retired three times, and somehow came up with the championship by only 7 points - still the only time a privateer team has won the championship. But I don't remember him for that. Like many, I remember Vatanen for Climb Dance, the cinéma vérité short with Vatanen, a Peugeot 405 Turbo 16 GR, the 1988 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and a record breaking run up the mountain with a time of 10:47.77. When my mind is full of architecture or poetry or philosophy, I calm myself by watching Climb Dance. I can't even estimate how many times I have seen that film - and every time I watch it I fall in love again. Here it is on Youtube.

Marcus Grönholm: By far my favorite WRC driver. He doesn't close his eyes when he races - he doesn't blink. In the WRC he took first in 2000 and 2002, third in a terrible car in 2005, and a pair of seconds in 2006 and 2007 - losing by only four points in 2007 and only 1 in 2006. In 2007 he finished off the podium only 4 times, two fourth places and two late-season retirements with the plagued new car. Those two seasons were the most exciting WRC seasons I have ever seen - Loeb versus Grönholm country after country. In 2006 and 2007 they were together on the podium 9 times. And then Grönholm retired after 2007. In 2009 he has raced one WRC rally, Portugal, and was running fourth when his engine broke down and he was out of the race. And earlier this month, Grönholm took a Ford Focus RS to an 11:28.963 in the Unlimited Class, which was second in-class and fifth on the mountain, behind the Monster and three open-wheel cars. Less than a month after the race, Peak Performance surfaced. The Grönholm team's homage to Climb Dance. At 9:04 in length, to me, this is nothing short of spectacular. Perhaps the best racing film of all time. It surpasses Climb Dance.
Here is a Grönholm montage.
And here is Peak Performance.

Epilogue: Mach 2 Racing took a 1984 Ford RS200 and coaxed 1150HP out of it before letting it loose on the mountain with Mark Rennison at the wheel. They achieved a 12:11.561.

The 2009 Le Mans Is Over And The Car You Thought Was Going To Win Didn't

2009-06-14T16:55:00.001-07:00

Hour 1:

The First Five Minutes:

#39 Kruse Lola-Mazda peeled off into the pits for gas. Odd strategy. Hope it works out for them. Never seen it before. Wait a sec, the stops not according to plan! They backed it into the garage! On the grid they tightened an oil pipe and this is probably their continuation of that.

McNish is passed in the middle of Mulsanne! Peugeot just reeled him in effortlessly! McNish is still defending against the Pescarolo Peugeot.

Frank Montagny leads after lap 1 with a broken leg. Pescarolo still in 4th!

Oh, I'll also be rooting for Team Seattle in GT2! I forgot about them.

At the start of Lap 2, on Mulsanne, McNish lost another place.

Let's hope Pescarolo can take him as well.

In GT1, the JLOC is pushed into the garage and the Aston Martin is as well. DAMN! That was quick. 1 lap to be precise.

End of the First Five Minutes.

Pedro Lamy is attacking Montagny. McNish has 1.5 seconds on Pescarolo.

On lap 3 an Audi works team car (#3) goes off at Indianapolis with Premat at the wheel!

One of the Ginetta-Zyteks and #97 BMS Ferrari both drop into the pits with issues.

First scheduled pit stops at 10 laps in! The Peugeot #7 hit the #17 Pescarolo Peugeot in the pits - the Peugeot #7 gets waved out of the pit box right in front of the oncoming Pescarolo #17! The best quote from John at Radio Le Mans so far is, "And this is why Peugeot can't win Le Mans - because they are incompetent in the pits!" HAHAHA So true!

McNish leads and Audi has not pitted yet, except the #3 after the wreck on lap 3.

41 minutes into it and the Peugeot #7 shed its tyre on Mulsannes, after skewering itself on an Aston Martin in the pits. Safety Car is out because the #7 is spreading debris.

McNish pits under safety car.
Here, the sun is just coming up over the Rockies, Le Mans is on, and I'm drinking a bear at 6:00 AM. Life is just good sometimes.
The safety car has dodged back into the pits. We're back to full speed coming into hour 2.

Hour 2:

The damage to the #17 Pescarolo Peugeot seems to be more substantial than first thought. Even though it was pretty low-speed, the location appears to have damages the floor, ride height is off, or something is wanked and they're off pace. Damn. I wanted Henri to FINALLY take down Audi. I hope they can pull it off still.

The #17 is repaired fairly quickly.

With ten minutes left in hour two, the performance of the 007 and 008 has been fantastic so far. I hope they can begin to challenge the diesels, but even if they can't, they're running a good, clean race, and having a damn good fight between them for 5th place.

At the end of the hour there was fantastic footage of the Peugeot #8 forgetting to stop on its way into the pit box and almost killing the stop board man. Oh dear.

In the last second of the hour the #10 has a big off! Tetre Rouge claims another one. They are managing to limp it around the track without the rear wing.

Felbermayr lost one car.

Hour 3:

Damn it's a good race out at the front this year!
2 Peugeot
2 Audi
2 Aston
Pescarolo
Audi R10
Pescarolo Peugeot
Audi R10

So at the mid-point in the hour, everybody came in for pits, and everybody went out. Peugeot didn't spear anybody this time. Currently, Audi has 5 cars in the top ten, two generations worth.

The Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club Lambo has officially been retired after completing only 1 lap of the race.

I'm off for a bit to head over to Gaspain's house to smoke cigars, have steak, and watch the race.

Hour 4:

So, we're all set up here and watching the race. Nothing much changed while I drove. Radio Le Mans guys are commentating on the Speed Chanel coverage, which just started.

The pace has slowed up a bit: over the last half hour, Audi has stayed at the same pace but Peugeot has slowed a couple of seconds. Perhaps realizing they don't need to go flat out when they have a four second per lap flat out advantage?

Team Endurance Asia is having issues on Mulsanne's Straight.

Pace is back up now for the Peugeots. Last was a 3:29. Must have just been traffic.

At the end of the 4th Hour, Audi has jumped back up to the #2 spot with Marco Werner in the #2.

Hour 5:

Heading into the Fifth Hour I'm paying more attention to GT2 since the front runners seemed to have sorted themselves out a bit. Flying Lizard, from pole, is 18 seconds down off the IMSA Matmut. I'm happy with the performance of the GT2 Spyker Squadron - beautiful car, horrible paint job - and the GT2 Aston Martin: both are running pretty clean and only 3-4 seconds off pace. We all know, at Le Mans, that is sometimes enough.

Rinaldo Capello just turned in Audi's fastest lap at 71 laps with a 3:28.520, then a 3:28.556! Dindo is FLYING in the #1!

Sun is just starting to go down. Thunder & Lightning is forecast for the night.

#3 Audi locked up and went off at the first chicane on Mulsannes.

Hankook lost a tyre on Mulsannes.

009 just slammed the Radical #26 off at Ford Chicanes, hard hit, me and Gaspain were thinking it's out for the race, then they started it up again and drove it into the pits. AMAZING. The wheel was destroyed. Gaspain: "The wheel had a crumple zone." HAHA. Safety car is out and everybody jumps into the pits.

As the end of hour five, the safety cars dived into the pits and HOLY CRAP racing happened. That's why I watch Le Mans. Anyways, #3 Audi is having... issues. Lots of issues. In the garage as we go into hour 6.

Hour 6:

LMP2 Big battle for the front! Team Goh has taken the lead from Essex! They're going around nose-to-tail. As a fan, God I love safety cars sometimes.
A friend remarked: “Dindo just went 3:27:192 in the 2 Audi, fastest lap for a Audi so far, the 8 was 3:26:436. The gap between the 908 and R15s is only a little more than half what it was last year in pure speed.” And last year Audi won.

The #17 Pescarolo Peugeot (or Poogot, for those so inclined) got up to 5th before diving in for a routine stop, dropping back to 7th but RIGHT on the tail of the 008 & 007 Aston Martins.

009 is back in the pits with electrical problems. Pushed out, tried, then sent back in.

Audi #3 is still in the garage, 15 laps down from where it was before. It's been there a LONG time.

007 has a flat on Mulsanne's Straight. It's being limped back around.

The Peugeot #8 is backed into the garage, from lead. Checked rear suspension, lost the lead, lost second, lost third, then took the rear suspension off and replaced it. Left the pits 9:26 minutes later.

1/4 Into the Race (After 6 Hours): We've got our first real leader change: the #9 now leads, 45 seconds ahead of the two Audis. The #3 is tied up in the pits getting a very significant rebuild. The two Porsche RS Spyders are still battling it out for the lead of LMP2. GT1 is Corvette, Corvette, Corvette, Corvette, and Aston Martin WAY back there. GT2 is Risi's to win right now. Flying Lizard is 6th. Spyker has held on and is still in 7th.

Hour 7:

TK (Tom Kristiansen) just made his first appearance. Mister Le Mans steps into the second place car. The best driver ever around these parts.

Pescarolo #8 has taken 4th. It is 2 laps off the lead lap, but closing down at 3 seconds a lap.

The #2 Audi, in third, has a big off in the Porsche curves. This could result in an Audi retirement. Aparently something broke going into the corner and Luhr sent it into a tyre wall. He got it started while getting towed, then stalled it. Couldn't get it started after the tow rope came off and was oficially retired.

Battle between 008 and 17 is awesome. 17 takes the place.

Hour 8:

As the sun sets, the 8 continues working its way back up the grid. Sebas (Sebastian Bourdais) is in, and ROCKING.

The Audi #3 is back out of the garage and in the race.

Only 4 cars have been retired so far today. Quite a safe race this year! Good to see that.

008 just went back into the pits.

#3 is back in the pits as well.

Spyker steps up a place. Consistent today!

Kolles has gone up to 6th overall in one of their Audi R10s.

LMP2 leaders are still just 6 seconds apart. The sun is down. We'll see if the lightning comes tonight.

And right at the end of the hour, Kristiansen gets wheeled back into the garage from second place! Short stop to blow crap out of the car. Audi's car is badly designed and picks shit up into the cockpit that they have to blow out every once in a while. Bourdais gets past.

Hour 9:

TK sets Audi's fastest lap, at 3:27.192.

Top 7: Peugeot, Peugeot, TK, Pescarolo, Aston Martin, then the two Kolles R10s.

Spyker's consistent day just got less consistent with a stop-go penalty.

Goh racings LMP2 got pushed back into the pits. It takes them three laps to get the car back out there, ending the awesome LMP2 battle.

The Bruichladdich Radical #26 that was pushed into the wall by the 009 was fixed up after 5 hours, including “Mostly rebuilding an exhaust system.” It was fixed with duct tape, aluminum foil, and chicken wire.

The #92 JWW Ferrari had a problem with the door, at second place in GT2. Then got back out.

The IMSA #74 Porsche has retired with a clutch failure.

Hour 10:

Midnight in Le Mans. The race at the front is mellow now, but the race for 7th is awesome: 7th-10th are all on the same lap to begin this hour, with 7th and 8th less than 9 seconds apart.

Power outage on parts of the track causing increased darkness.

009 driver Stuart Hall was asked to not compete any longer for the damage to the #26 Radical that went off in hour 5. That means the remaining two drivers, Harold Primat and Peter Cox, will have to finish the race without him.

Audi just cleaned out a car again. Apparently, speed detailing is all the rage at Le Mans this year.

Hour 11:

Pescarolo just changed their tyre pressure.

Top 7 haven't changed. But the pace has increased a lot!

008 served a lengthy stop-n-go – 4 minutes lengthy, actually – for punting the #72 Lu Alphand car into the walls, ending the #72's chances today.

The #8 Peugeot ion third is close to the #1 Audi in second. The battle commences. The #8, with Serrazin inside, just turned in a 3:24.844 - fastest of the race so far.

Hour 12:

The Audi #1, with McNish at the wheel, is back on the lead lap.

The 009 is wheeled back into the garage. Again. These guys can't catch a break today! They used this as a test car for their new engine all week, and it is worn out now.

The #8 Peugeot, and #1 Audi are nose-to-tail, battling for second.

At the end of the first half, we've got a big off between the #12 Signature Plus Oreca and the Team Modena #84 Ferrari around the Dunlop bridge. The gravel has trapped the Oreca. They get a tow.

1/2 Update - We're Halfway Through! In the last six hours we have seen a lot more retirements. We are down to 48 officially on the books now. Dear God this race never disappoints. Here's to continuing safety! *Cracks another beer*

Hour 13:

The #7 Peugeot had a bit of trouble with the nose, again, and had to replace it, again, which seems to take a bunch of time every time they do it.

McNish came into the pits from second and the rear bodywork came off. Replaced brake pads. 2:49. Holy crap that's fast for a brake pad change and pit stop! They still lost a place though, and they're now in 3rd. Apparently by replacing a brake pad the pit stop only took 1:20 extra time. Astounding.

The #66 GT1 Aston Martin got stuck in some kitty litter. Got underway after a couple of minutes and a tow.

Peugeot had to clean out their radiators again too. They have the coolest invention this year: a replaceable filter in front of the radiators - like in a heating unit or AC unit at home. So when the radiator isn't sucking in enough air, they just yank out the filter, slide in a new one, and off they go. Audi, on the other hand, keeps having to get out the Hoover and the air compressor.

Hour 14:

The #17 Pescarolo Peugeot has gone off in a big, scary way with Benoit Treluyer at the wheel. The safety cars are out, as are the ambulances. The driver is not moving. The esses just after the Dunlop was the scene. He had just come out of the pits and changed his nose and engine cover and not sure if he lost one of those under braking, causing massive loss of down force and the crash we see. Safety car has been out for half an hour so far and the driver is just getting loaded into the ambulance. The driver is extricated and placed in a vacuum splint, then hauled off in the ambulance. The just announced that he was conscious when extracted. That car just saved his life: the monocoque chassis and the driver are ALL that's left.

Pit strategies under this safety are interesting. Some came in right away, and with how long this is lasting, they're going to have to stop early after racing begins again. Corvette and Risi Competizione, on the other hand, pitted every time around filling up the fuel, and because of the safety car, didn't lose any place. Fantastic strategy. No wonder those two American teams are on top. After 47 minutes, the safety cars came off. Cars are back up and running full speed.

Hour 15:

Another safety car is out for - it appears to be - fluid on the track. Dangerous stuff at night. Both the #30 Racing Box and Team Goh are wheeled back into the garage with contact damage. Team Goh is still running second in LMP2. The #80 Flying Lizard went off with the oil and wrecked big, spreading debris just before the safety car was to come back in. The safety car is staying out a long time now. Just to be on the safe side.

The #66 GT1 Aston Martin is hurting. Again. This time under safety. Still an awesome car though.

Hour 16:

After a boring hour 15, we're back under green. As the sun rises at Le Mans, under green, it's the best racing there is. After both the long Safety Cars, #9 Peugeot is in the lead, then #8 Peugeot, then #1 Audi, 007 Aston Martin, then Kolles' two R10s. Fantastic race for Kolles so far.

The #80 Flying Lizard Porsche GT2 is officially retired after their off last hour. They were leading part of the race in GT2, but a series of minor issues had pushed them down the order until the crash under safety pushed them over the edge. That's a great, professional, progressive team from Silicon Valley, California. Sad to see them go.

TK is back in and lost a lap immediately coming out of the pits. So he's RIGHT up the tailpipe of the Peugeot.

#35 Mazda exits pit lane on fire.

Sun is up and bright in the eyes of the drivers as they drive beneath the Dunlop bridge.

Hour 17:

The top three cars - 9, 8, and 1 respectively - are separated by a lap each. 007 is up in 4th. The Kolles guys have dropped down. The top two cars in LMP2 are now separated by 3 laps. And in GT2 we still have Risi on top, but the battle for 3rd is epic with a 1.9 second gap between the BMS and JMW Ferraris. Spyker is still running consistently at 7th.

Dr. Ulrich was just seen asleep! 7:13 AM Le Mans local time and Dr. Ulrich was asleep! At Le Mans!

Team Goh just pulled back a lap on Essex.

008 is in the pits and torn apart. Big fix. Could be preventative to see what might be happening on their 4th placed 007 car.

Big plume of smoke from the #15 Audi R10 at the second chicane, may have just been a tyre lock-up.

#35 Mazda on fire. Again.

Montagy is back in the #8 at second position and only 1:28 down from their sister car. We could have a Peugeot battle coming.

Hour 18:

Such a fantastic battle coming as the cars tighten up. I forsee a #8 and #9 battle coming. Hopefully a battle for LMP2 lead as well. The 007 is performing well and if one of the three front-runners has a problem, 007 is only 6 laps back and COULD pick up a podium. The top two Corvettes in GT1 are separated by only 1:17. Battle on.

Team Seattle had an off at the second Mulsanne's chicane.

The JMW had a big off/spin/stall at the entry to the Porsche curves and could be out.

The #14 Kolles went straight off at Arnage. Got running again just fine.

The last remaining Pescarolo just got wheeled back into the garage from 6th place.

008 is having an engine problem. After being in the pits for about an hour, they went back out for a lap, then came back into the pits.

#13 Lola Aston Martin had a big off just after the Dunlop bridge. Got a tow, got passed by the Kolles #14, got it restarted, and the #13 is now battling for 6th place with the Kolles #14. Epic battle here.

The 3/4 Update: Six hours left and the race is on. People are pushing to try and gain that last couple of places and the race is always exciting here at the end. The big news is that rain should not show up this year! "There's always rain at Le Mans." But not this year. Yet. 14 retirements so far. And 1 driver.

Hour 19:

The Oreca #11 is performing splendidly in 5th place.

ECU change in the Audi #1. TK: “I'm a driver, I don't know what they fixed.” HAHA

#82 Risi Ferrari, putting together a damn good race and solidly in first in GT2 for a long time now, just put a big plume of smoke into the French air with brake lock-up on his in-lap.

009 just went off into the tyre walls. Big hit at the first of the Porsche curves. Safety car out. The 009, I think, has finally given up the ghost. After Stuart Holl was excluded from the remainder of the competition, that cars two remaining drivers have been doing a fantastic job. Yep, driver is out and the 009 is done for the day.

The #11 Oreca just got wheeled out of the garage. Didn't see it go in, or hear why. Huh. That car is the highest placed privateer team. Hope they are alright. Must have just wanted to check a couple of things under safety.

Under safety still, the #9 Peugeot has an engine bay cover change.

The #15 Kolles has a spin on Mulsanne's straight and crashes while in tenth place. Will need repairs.

As the safety car dives back into pit lane, the two Peugeots are only 1:44 apart. But with the #15 spin, one of the two safety cars stays out. Odd.

Oh God! Almost two HUGE crashes with just one of the two safety cars out there – an ACO fuck up if I've ever seen one! On the straight right after Mulsannes, the #15 just about gets rear-ended by a gaggle of cars at speed while it tries to limp back to the pits. On the start finish line there is a stall of one of the black LMPs, not sure which one as it almost gets skewered as cars exit the Ford Chicanes at speed. Those were close!

Safety car also brought the #13 Lola-AM and the #14 Audi R10 up close to battle again. W00t!

#3 Audi has an off at Indianapolis, then gets back on quickly. That car is just hurting today.

Hour 20:

At the start of the hour, the two Works Corvettes in GT1 are just 3.232 second apart! Corvette puts on a one-make show for their last GT1 race!

Rain is now forecast in the next hour! Looks like Jason Statham may turn out to be right: "It always rains at Le Mans." - Truth in 24

#64 Corvette took the lead from the sister #63 for the first time - for half a lap, then pitted.

Risi's Krohn car has a spin at Indianapolis.

The first glimpse of rain – more of a flirtation with a glimpse really. More rain expected in 10 minutes. And it never shows. Does the 10 seconds of rain count Statham?

Hour 21:

Game on! 4 hours left.

#13 Lola Aston Martin is in 6th after taking the #14 Audi. The #7 Peugeot is reeling him in. And the #14 Audi is just behind Peugeot.

Spyker is running up in 6th again. They have been so consistent all day long.

The #1 Audi is in trouble! Looks like rear suspension! Aston Martin could get a podium with their 007! The Audi is wheeled back into the garage. It drops to 7 laps back due to rear suspension repairs. Dr. Ulrich says it's all fixed now. We'll see. 14 minutes of pit work doesn't help this late in the race. But they do get out of the pits just one lap in front of the 007. Audi better hope they got it all fixed!

Lots more #63 and #64 GT1 racing still going on. Beautiful racing in Corvette's last GT1 race.

Hour 22:

Going into 3 hours left, the LMP2 battle I foresaw coming between Goh and Essex never happened and unless something goes wrong with Essex, it wont. There have now been 16 retirements.

Endurance Team Asia is still in it. The only other Porsche GT2 car still out there is the #76 IMSA.

#64 stopped on track just before pit entry. It has "lost drive." I guess it's a gearbox. Its nose is over the pit entry line but the marshals wont push it over and rules say the mechanics can't pull it over, so after eight years of GT1 dominance, the Corvette factory squad will finish the race with only one car, the #63.

Team Seattle just passed their $200,000 fund raising goal for Children's Hospital of Seattle. Being from those parts, that's good to hear.

LMP2 Goh Porsche has a spin at Playstation Chicane.

#76 IMSA Porsche, one of two remaining GT2 Porsches, has stopped at second chicane. They got back underway, but way off pace.

No! The Aston Martin #87 GT2 is pulled off track by the driver.

The #14 Audi R10 has locked up and threaded it's way through the tyres at the Playstation chicane. No damage.

Hour 23:

Only two hours to go! Some interesting situations on track to open this hour: both the #64 GT1 Corvette and the #87 GT2 Aston Martin are stranded out on track. If the #64 is retired, then Luc Alphand is getting second and the GT1 DBR9 may get a podium!

The #13 Lola Aston Martin has trouble out on track. After being pushed off it's restarted and it has rejoined. It's still in sixth, behind the #11 Oreca. It goes into the pits.

The #24 Mazda has apparently caught flame, like it's sister car did way back in Hour 17.

The 007 spun and recovered under the Dunlop bridge on fresh tyres.

008, putting out a bit of smoke, is in the pits. Again.

Oh No! Team Goh's suspension popped under braking, slamming hard into the left hand wall then spinning through the Playstation chicane's tyres. That's a big, race-ending off and the safety car is back out. Driver is out and looks a bit shaken, but okay. He's walking on his own power. That's the chassis that won last year and was flipped in practice last year. Maybe it's finally a dead chassis? Well it gave it's life to save the driver's.

Meanwhile, another Mazda, this time the KSM, is not to be outdone and it dramatically bursts into flames in pit lane. They rolled it into the pit box. Poor Mazda this year!

Hour 24:

The last hour here! The sun is coming up over here in Idaho and I'm getting pretty tired, but the last hour always gets me fired up again! We're still under safety from the Team Goh off at Playstation while they try and clean up the oil as quickly as possible. Those marshals and corner workers have been out there keeping everybody safe all day - they've got to be exhausted out there – but they're really busting their asses trying to get that oil cleaned up. Good for them. Great people, corner workers.

Team Essex is in the pits. Unsure what they're doing, either checking their suspension after the failure on the Goh car, or cleaning stuff off. Maybe they're just giving the car a rest now that it's main competitor has exited dramatically through the tyre at Playstation.

All but the LMP1 cars are pitted under safety and full up for the finish. Only problems or checkers should bring the back in now.

When this safety car comes off, the Audi will be just ahead of the two Peugeot's on track. Safety car is off! It's the 7, then Audi #1, then 9 on track behind one car, and the 8 and 3 together behind the other.

#1 – the leading Audi at third – is in the pits. It comes back out after a bit of extra attention and a REALLY close call with the hose getting hooked around the rear bodywork. Careful boys! You've got a podium, just don't lose it!

Race leader into the pits and out normally.

In GT2, the Spyker is in 5th, the highest non-Ferrari out there. Consistent, clean running has made the difference at Le Mans again! Way to go Spyker!

We're up to 20 retirements, including all the Porsche GT2 cars besides Asia Endurance, but I think they're short of the qualifying mark.

In LMP2 we've got Essex, Speedy, OAK, then Barazi-Epsilon.

In GT1 we've got #63, Luc Alphand's #73, and the Aston DBR9 as the only remaining cars.

LMP1 is Peugeot 1-2, Audi #1, Aston Martin 007, the #11 Oreca, Peugeot #7, Kolles' #14 R10, Pescarolo's Pescarolo #16, and Kolles' #15. 25 minutes to go.

Bourdais just slowed up to let the sister cars catch up. They're all on track but on different laps. The race pace has slowed dramatically as the leaders see the strength of their lead and this may turn out to be a 25 minute victory lap out there. All three Peugeots are now on the same stretch of race track in what I like to call "Sponsor Formation."

Oh no! The #63 has been pushed into the garage! They have to be running to win! Is Corvette finally going to make a mistake? Wait, what are they... HAHAHAHAHA They are polishing it! Corvette has just pulled the soon-to-win GT1 car into the pits to polish the shit out of it! Team owners, pit crew, drivers, mechanics – everybody is polishing this car up. It will win its final race today after eight years of power. God it looks good all polished! Fantastic race today for them, as usual. Bravo Corvette, bravo. I am entertained. And have been for a while!

The two Aston Martins are formed up on track in their sponsorship formation.

The two Audis have prepared their sponsorship formation as well.

This is shaping up to be a very photogenic finish! After almost 24 hours, these last couple of laps are really leisurely. Except in the #13 pits, where the car's finish is still in question. Those boys are FRANTIC down there.

The two remaining Corvettes, the freshly polished #63 and the #73 Lu Alphand, are formed up for their “Please GM don't kill us off, let us race in GT2!” shot.

Teams are all on the pit wall! This is it, the final lap!

OH MY GOD! As the Peugeot comes around the Ford Chicane to end the race, the #13 Aston Martin Lola just gets out of pit lane! You cannot cut it ANY closer than that. 5 or 10 seconds later and they would have been disqualified after having truly a fantastic race.

And Peugeot comes across the line 1-2 and the #7 car in sixth! It's Unofficial: Peugeot 1-2, Audi in Third. Le Mans 2009 is over, but the party has just begun at Le Sarthe.

Le Mans 2009 Is 15 Minutes Away - Here's My Predictions & Hopes

2009-06-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

God I've missed radio Le Mans. These guys are great. "Total coverage, totally free." And it's the best coverage. They've been doing this for years.

Listen to the race here: http://rlm08.0157.org/# (Full coverage)

LMP1: So, after qualifying, the car I want to win has a shot - Pescarolo!!! I'm rooting for Pesky. Henri's team should win. Henri's team could win. I will be rooting for Henri's team. They qualified 4th in a 2008 spec Peugeot 908, splitting two factory-Peugeots. Peugeot or Audi will win - which includes Pescarolo this year. Yesterday I said an Audi will win if it's wet, a Peugeot if it's dry.

LMP2: Dear God, who to root for here? Bruichladdich and Barazi Epsilon rock, as does Ray Mallock and the Quifel Ginetta-Zytek! God that's a cool combination! (With four choices, hopefully one of my favorites finishes.) I'm actually a fan of all the teams here. Porsche will win.

GT1: The JLOC is the underdog, and right now Radio Le Mans is saying that at least they're starting. "They've been stealing parts off road cars all week to get it going!" Well, I'll be rooting for them and the Aston Martin. But Corvette is going to win.

Engines are revving up! Warm-up Lap underway! 8 minutes!

GT2: I'm going to be rooting for Aston Martin and Spyker and Endurance Asia, the first Chinese team in a long time (Maybe ever?) to show up. At the front I'll be rooting for Flying Lizard. Risi will do quite well, as usual. I have no winning predictions in GT2 because I'm not crazy.

The cars are on Mulsanne's and just coming back around. The crowd is wild! Let's go racing!

Isle of Mann TT 2009 Recap - The Driver You Thought Was Going To Win Didn't

2009-06-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

So the big race, the Isle of Man Senior TT, went off today with a few hitches.

First, Cameron Donald lapped the course in Thursday's evening practice faster than McGuinness - or anyone else for that matter - ever has, at 131.457 mph (unofficially). That was on his Suzuki. Unfortunately he crashed up on top of the mountain at Keppel Gate in practice, dislocating his shoulder and injuring his back, excluding him from the start of the Senior TT race.

Then came the rain, so the race was delayed half an hour.

Then the race started off with a bang, namely, John McGuinness (above) breaking his own lap record by over 3.68 seconds from a standing start, on a wet course - 130.593 mph. The second place rider, Manxman Steve Plater (below), was also ahead of the old record and on the same exact bike - 130.490 mph. Then McGuinness went ahead and proved why he has won 15 times, resetting his lap record to 131.578 mph on lap two - the lap where he had to slow down for his first pit stop. That record currently stands. By lap four he was 20 seconds up on Platter then the unthinkable happened - he didn't show up at the Ramsey Hairpin. A couple of tense seconds while people frantically looked for him or the wreckage, then news broke that it was a snapped chain out at Cruickshanks - McGuinness was fine but his bike was broken. That was the end of the race for the master, and Steve Plater certainly took advantage of his absence.

Down by only 20 seconds when McGuinness retired - a damn good job for any rider to be that close to McGuinness after more than an hour of riding, even on the same bike - Plater was up by 10 seconds over third, and he put on more speed and pulled out ahead. Ian Hutchinson, also on the Honda, was scheduled to take the overall championship, but had a huge wreck at the Quarter Bridge and Plater's good day turned better. Winning both the Senior TT and the Isle of Man Overall Championship in the same day in your home town? That's a damn good day. Especially for a Manxman. Congratulations to Plater!

With six retirements in the top ten, there were huge place changes going on all over the pack. Congrats to Carl Rennie for his 5th place finish - I've got a soft spot in my heart for privateer teams, and he finished highest out of all of them, after starting 10th. Louis Carreira started in 26th and ended the race in 18th, after taking five riders on lap two to start lap 3 in 21st. The rain returned late in the race and some riders were unable to finish.

My condolences go out to the family of John Crellin, age 55, a racer whose life was cut short this year during the Senior TT. But what a race he was putting together! Starting in 60th he made it all the way up to 43rd before fatally crashing out in lap five, at Mountain Box. Earlier in the morning he had taken a podium, 3rd place, in the TTXGP. It is a tragic loss of life, but at least he went out doing what he loved: racing on the Isle of Man. His last interview is here.

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On the other side of things we had a fantastic TTXGP - or exhibition electric motorcycle race. Some beautiful bikes showed up and raced. However, with most of these bike's top speeds not even close to McGuinness' average speed over his winning lap, the fastest electric bike came in at 87.434 mph. However, turn your books of TT lore back to 1904, and what was the Isle of Man TT originally? Oh, that's right, an exhibition race for new technology, and the average speed was 34.33 mph. 7 hours and 26.5 minutes to do 255.5 miles. That was damn good then, and 87.434 is damn good now.

These are the first electric bikes to be raced. So you've got brand-new, untested technology (most of these bikes weren't finished until the last couple of weeks) and they pull off a time 66% of what the current height in motorcycle engineering can do. Fuck yeah. Now those are some racing teams right there.

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Also, just a reminder that the TT will be broadcast in HD on Discovery through the months of July and August, every Monday night at 9:00PM.

Summer Music Post: Four Over-Hyped Albums That Lived Up To Their Hype

2009-06-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

So there have been a couple of albums to come out this year that are extensively hyped, but actually live up to it. I'm just going to list them here with a sentence or two. Go read the thousands of other reviews out there if you don't trust me.

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Sparklehorse & Dangermouse & David Lynch
Dark Night of the Soul

This album is by two of my favorite musicians and one of my favorite directors, how can it be bad? Well after all the hype I was worried, but it turned out incredible. Absolutely incredible. Featuring a cast of indie and rock vocalists (including David Lynch, Iggy Pop, and others) singing over music by Sparklehorse and Dangermouse, this album does not take a wrong step anywhere.

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North America/South America (N.A.S.A.)
The Spirit of Apollo

Five years in the making, and being hyped the ENTIRE time, I had very low hopes for this album, but knew I wanted to hear Tom Waits on a hip-hop album. Well it didn't grab me right away, but I seem to keep playing it. I took the words of the producers to heart when they said it would be SA beats and NA emcees, and I want more of a South American feel to the album. It feels like SA music influenced by NA. It's good, but I just can't help feeling it could have been so much more. Here's hoping for another N.A.S.A. album.

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Cursive
Mama, I'm Swollen

It took two and a half years, but Cursive finally came out with another album. As far as I'm concerned, Burst & Bloom and The Ugly Organ are two of the best albums ever - they are members of the Immortals. Because of this, I place unfair expectations on Cursive albums. This is a great album. Great. And anything further would just be unfair to what is a fantastic, addictive, and long overdue album.

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Bat for Lashes
Two Suns
Question: How the hell do you follow up an album as great as Fur & Gold? Answer: Make an album so utterly seductive that I can't help but be sucked in. It's pretty, it's poppy, it's sensual, it's complex, and I love it. Above all, Natasha Khan just confirmed the suspicion I've had since her last album: She is one of the best composers/songwriters out there. Period.

A Message From The Gods: "Have Hope! The Old Republic Draws Nearer And Looks... Epic."

2009-06-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords are the best computer games ever created. (And if you haven't played them don't argue until you do.) I spent time on about 12 complete playthroughs of KotOR I and about 7 of KotOR II. I am personally unfamiliar with the MMO genre because, well, I don't have internet at my house and I'm not going to play a game I have to spend money for every month purely at coffee shops. However, I will get internet and buy a subscription to at least try Bioware's new MMO which is a spiritual successor to KotOR I and II. I cannot even begin to communicate my excitement over this phenomenal trailer. I will patiently wait for the game and if there is a midnight release party near me, I will be there only long enough to pick up the game and get to playing it.

At 3:52 long, the trailer certainly gives a glimpse of the political environment the game will exist within, which has always been important to the KotOR franchise. However, this shows nothing of the gameplay. It is a cinematic trailer, therefore it reveals little - and possibly nothing - about the gameplay. However, look at games who had bad cinematic trailers - Age of Empires III comes to mind first - and see how those games turned out. What I'm saying is that this fantastic cinematic trailer shows that the art direction is right on. However, my biggest issue is the Twilek just over the Sith Lord's shoulder during his assault on the Jedi Temple (Yes, I know I am a nerd). Can I be the male version of that? My main gripe with most Star Wars games is that I have to become a Jedi to beat the game. I appreciate the philosophy of the Jedi, but at the same time it is a huge tribute to the franchise to say that it is strong enough to stand losing the Jedi in a game or two - or at least making them optional. I just want the Jedi path to be optional. To end this, I hope Bioware has learned from the mistakes of Star Wars: Galaxies.

In short, Star Wars and video games go together hand in hand. Sure there have been a lot of failures, but successes like the aforementioned KotOR series, the X-Wing & Tie Fighter series, the Jedi Knight series, the Lego Star Wars series, and the Star Wars Battlefront series show that the lore has good precedent in being translated to a variety of video games genres. I hope this game is good. I really really really really really do. Please dearest Bioware, don't fuck this up.

More Videos.

Summer Music Post: mewithoutYou's It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All A Dream! It’s Alright

2009-05-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

Good Review: Continuing the Awesome

MewithoutYou's new album continues their reflections on spirituality in contemporary society. Rather than saying, "Woe is me, yet I have kept my faith after all these years in this evil world," or "Fuck faith, I've found reason," the truth is somewhere in between. The thinking, spiritual band's new album is an affirmation of both faith and reason, and their respective struggles. The longest title for any album I've bought this year comes from a book of parables by Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. This becomes the key to unlocking the album, which is a wonderful mixing of parables and music. The parables all make sense, and the music begins to support them, and like any good parable, they tend to stick with me. Great album, go buy it now. I've already listened to it 32 times. The complexity of themes and music that I've come to love about mwY is still going strong. Again, their album artwork is the best in the business.

Bad Review: A Lawnmower Engine Screws and is Screwed by a Mac Truck

First off, this is not mewithoutYou. The music and vocals are awesome, as we've come to expect from mewithoutYou, but the songs too often take on the structure of the story they are telling - and a lot of these parables are not by mewithoutYou. Because of the similar structure of the parables, a lot of the songs start to take on the same structure and the album is a progressive rock album. Which isn't terrible, it just means that sometimes it's hard to distinguish each song from the other. I'm not saying the mwY cannot make music inspired by others, I'm just saying that this album feels more like a tribute album to Bawa Muhaiyadden (Bawa put to music) and not like a mewithoutYou album. The music is strangled by the need to match it up with these stories - I feel like the songs were not allowed to grow to their full fruition because of being shackled to this other medium - these written and told parables that are already judged. From perception the human mind should discern, not judge. The western mind judges and holds just or novel judgments in high esteem. In short, I feel the album and the parables are shackled by each other. Bawa and the music should change in such a fundamental way that something new comes forth. Unfortunately that doesn't happen here and the premise falls flat. Though there are some great songs, the album does not attain what it set out to and it feels like putting a lawnmower engine in a Mac Truck - sure it'll work, but neither will work as well as they should because both are designed for different situations. So taking mewithoutYou and making them an interpretive band, and taking Bawa and making him a lyricist, then placing the whole contraption in the context of contemporary music just doesn't work. That said, I've listened to it 33 times. Though it is a failure for mewithoutYou, it is still more interesting than most things out there.

Final Review: It Polarizes Me.

Though the basic premise of the album doesn't work, it still manages to be one of the best albums I've heard all year. It's a bit like if Keanu Reeves would've played Rick Deckard in Blade Runner - sure it still would've been a good movie, maybe even great, and he's competent enough to briefly make it work, but NO. Just NO. Reeves should not play Deckard. He could, but that doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't. I feel the same way about mewithoutYou's new album: sure you could mate these two different aspects of your life, but you shouldn't have. Really. These stories would've been much better put to hip-hop, because that's what hip-hop does - it gives us parables to follow. But after all this, dear God it's a damn good album and much better than most things I've heard so far this year.

photo by corymassa

The Jewish Museum Berlin: Daniel Liebeskind

2009-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

I hope that this continuing series of diagrams and texts will help understand this building. First, the obligatory money shot:

Now, on to the diagrams:

This connotation is pretty apparent and so I start with it. The exterior form of the building can be seen as a destructed Star of David.

Le Mans Mystery Solved

2009-04-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Team Seattle from Milan, Italy is this team. An AF Corse subsidiary is prepping their car. Go Seattle non-profit racers!

In short: Non-Profit racing team from Seattle partners with massively successful AF Corse racing team from Italy to take on Le Mans, raising money for Children's Hospital.

Who knew all I needed to do to solve the mystery was to type "Team Seattle" into google?

Dirt Dart (To Forget To - 1. Deploy Your Parachute 2. Fill Your Diving Suit With Air - Both Causing You To Hit The Dirt Hard)

2009-04-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

I learn more from failures than successes. I have always said this, and usually followed it up with, and school is the place to fail. I believe this. Entirely. But that doesn't mean it doesn't suck and throw me into a funk when I fail.

Congratulations Peter Zumthor!

2009-04-13T10:24:00.001-07:00

He deserved this. Zumthor's work speaks with clarity and complexity while all the while remaining grounded in what normal people want. I can love the thoughts of the famous architect, but when it comes down to it, I want to live in a Zumthor, an Ando, or a Pallasmaa. Maybe even a Holl. It is this non-diagrammatic architecture where I want to be. Congratulations, Peter Zumthor.

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I have heard a lot of people speaking out against the Pritzker Committee's choice and to those people I say, "Fuck You."

Is This Building A Car?

2009-04-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I sit back, eyes closed, with the beat heavy in my head, the blur of the nights and days confusing my eyes, the space beneath them storing whatever it is that I have left, and I feel the pressure of the headphones on my ears, thinking, Thank God for Aesop Rock. Sometimes he's all that can keep me up.

As all the joints in my body tell me to stop, tell me the building is done, I distract them with Aesop Rock. My joints like music too. I distract them with Terry Pratchett audio books, I distract them with podcasts, the sound of engines, caffeine, nicotine, the breathtaking silence of Moscow at 4 AM. To think I used to hate this. I used to want to lose this battle. I used to want to quit.

I keep clicking. I always keep clicking. Maybe it's a sign of laziness that I can't even stop. Maybe it's a sign of addiction greater than nicotine, music, and all those other things. Whatever it is, I'm hooked. I used to tell myself, If I win the Pulitzer before I get out of Architecture Grad School I fucking quit architecture. My joints and I both know the truth though.

So lying back as far as my chair will go, I close my eyes. I feel my hoodie turn into grass, I feel the LCD turn into sunshine, I hear the beat thick inside it all, guiding the body back to the light of... It's just SketchUp. It's just a building. It's just a grade. Now I just have to finish. And that's where Aesop Rock comes in. Or Pratchett, or CPI, or Crystal Castles, or Flogging Molly, or the smooth voice of an architect giving a slideshow I'm not seeing and as he says, "I actually went over to Tokyo and built this shit. I'm amazed people still want me to build things. It's a Roman wall in the middle of Tokyo. I hired a bunch of Italian workmen from a small mountain town and took them over for three weeks because the Japanese don't even know how to build like this." I imagine what a Roman wall would look like in downtown Tokyo. I imagine one just popping into place one day, and the smoothly choreographed and memorized bodies suddenly forced to explore as the main road is blocked off by this wall ignorant of time. And I imagine a woman looking up, a man beside her, and both decide to spend the day in a restaurant nearby, and after twenty or so beers they wake up the next morning leaning against the wall, each on the other side. And when I pay attention again I hear a woman talking about a poolhouse, and various methods of thatching and I imagine it all. But I'm always wrong, it's just good to amuse the body every now and then so it will try to help you last until the end. But I guess that's the basic problem, that the body and the building are on different schedules. Oh well. Back to work.

-Theaty

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6:33 PM Update:

It's certainly something different than I've ever done, but at the same time it is exactly the same. And that's what I am addicted to: this wicked question. The myriad solutions to every problem and the myriad outcomes of every project. "Architecture is monstrous," and it's so true. In order to allow I have to deny. This might be where my main link up with poetry is: both are monstrous in the same way. And yet in both I am only a part. Tschumi: "Architecture is the violent and sometimes pleasurable of space and its use/uses/users." I can design the building, but the construction team changes it drastically, and most importantly the use itself alters the building irrevocable by attaching meaning to it, something an architect cannot do.

I Write Myself A Building And Who Knew It Would Take Two Pages

2009-04-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

SITE/
BUILD

None of these ideas came from nowhere and I would like to thank my classmates, professor, and critiquers for their conscious and subconscious interventions and suggestions throughout this project.

Rather than raping the site, or destroying the site, or even thinking about the site as something to be used, my goal was to work with the site and allow the site to relate to the building in an indispensable way. This interest in site-building integration led me to the site I chose, which is currently home to six old trees that this design retains. My initial explorations centered around fitting rigid, geometric shapes into the spaces between them, allowing the focus to be on the trees. However, it was too facade driven, and the experience of being inside the building was terrible. After our mid-crit I started over, now having something to react against and a better understanding of the site.

The trees stand 70 feet tall, and even though the building takes up almost two-thirds of the site, the size of the trees allows the squatter but wider building to not overpower their visual weight. Literally the building was formed by drawing on a site plan where the building could be while still preserving the trees. The two compliment each other, with the building's main circulation a direct response to the home of the trees, and the lower height of the building allowing them to shade the upper levels from the hot western sun. The stairs open onto the trees rather than the interior of the building. But their light is carried inside through the opaque glass that shields them from it. The Western Elevator views the central tree as it rises, and the Eastern views those just across the street in the Admin Lawn. The ramp is the notable exclusion to this tactic, rather responding to Art and Architecture instead of the trees – a duplicated image of the new exterior path separated only by a piece of glass. The entire form of the building is derived from the placement of the trees, and steps back as program requires to allow more light into the space between the two buildings and the offices inside Art and Architecture.

The site is also important as it sits in a very prominent location on campus: between the Admin and double A, Life Sciences and the Commons, close to Gibb and Morrill Halls, and in a prominent location on the historic admin lawn. As a result of location the building seems to want to engage its surroundings, which is one reason why keeping the trees was necessary. The western stairs view the Commons on their lower levels, the Kibbie on their upper. The Eastern stairs look out over Admin Lawn all the way up. The rooftop lawn, used for outdoor ceremonies, smoking, or lounging, looks at all the buildings around it, but also over their tops to the Palouse in the North and West. It is sloped inward to allow some privacy, and the trees provide further privacy. Water collected off the ceremonial space's roof allows the grass to stay green until it gets covered in snow. The other roofs are planted with native Palouse bunch grasses in order to survive the harsh winters and dry summers. These smaller roofs are viewed from both inside and out, unlike the grassed roof.

Operable windows to the East and West, as well as in the central circulation bridges, allow natural ventilation to take place. The atrium of the central space acts as a stack ventilation chimney and the hot air can be vented either outside to the north or to the largest room in the building: the banquet space on floor three. This will hopefully reduce heating costs versus comparable banquet spaces.

The top, or fourth, floor is occupied by the roof-lawn and the ceremonial space, as well as two dressing rooms. The elder's apartments are on the quiet and least-used third floor, separated from the banquet space for privacy and sound isolation. The evergreen trees shield direct views between the banquet hall and the elder's apartments, furthering their privacy. A small balcony for the elders allows outdoor viewing of the central tree, as well as fresh air. One apartment features a large bookcase, another a larger dining area, and the last a multimedia space. I hope these three different focuses will help increase communication between the elders. The offices are one floor down next to the smaller classroom, which I imagine could be taken over for larger meetings or conferences that do not fit in the conference room. Art's office shares a balcony with the AIST director's office. The two labs, two science faculty offices, and lab supply room are adjacent to each other just across the central space. The first floor has the large classroom next to the Student Center, which is zoned from north to south as social to study spaces. A bank of computers separates the two. Steve's office is in the quieter study area. The child care center is across the hall from the door to the courtyard, which is a playground for the children. The ramp leads from this floor down to the ground floor, which has a cafe in the north and a museum in the south. Alternate sections of glazing and non-glazed wall allow the ramp to feature smaller display spaces. The museum is partially underground, allowing the thermal mass of the earth to keep its temperature more stable, good for the health of the artifacts. Light to this floor comes in from the stairs and from the north, leaving the southern display space artificially lighted for an adaptable and controllable lighting scheme.

The stairs are basalt slabs. The interior walls are a combination of gypsum and glazing. The roofing materials have already been stated. The structure is steel for two reasons: the variation of these bands of floors requires a lightweight, strong material that works well in both tension and compression; also, structural steel is 96-97 percent recycled. The exterior cladding is a metal embossed with six foot vertical bands. Their visual rhythm and overlapping not only recall Tule mats, but act like a processor's heat sink to shed heat from the south-facing building.

The ceremonial space is punctuated by a skylight which allows direct noon sunlight into the space for only 1 week each year, centering on the summer solstice. The rest of the year only diffuse sunlight, direct skylight, and due east-west sunlight penetrate the space. Directly beneath the skylight is the strip of earth. The roof is metal not just to provide clean runoff for watering the roof-lawn but primarily to capture the aural qualities of the rain. This kind of out of body experience, hearing but not feeling the rain in this case, seems to recall tactics of other sacred spaces: cathedrals hiding the light's origin except for the rose window; the ocular skylights of many early mosques creating an unearthly indirectly lighted area in the land of sun and shadow, perhaps even recalling the special moments just before dawn and just after dusk in the desert; and the unusually cool, dry interior of Hindu temples contrasting the hot, humid climate of India. The roof and skylight are held up by north-south wooden beams, which in turn hold up east west plank sheeting, held apart a quarter of inch for the aural infiltration of the rain. The metal roof rests on slats above the planks.

The varied exterior of the building allows natural daylighting in all of the spaces except the museum. I tried in everything to allow the building to respond directly to its location and adjacencies at multiple scales: engaging the Palouse, the campus, the immediate surrounding, and at points even turning in on itself to view the central tree. The site remains its main influence, and I view the building as simply another information layer of the site.

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I'll put up some final renders when I get time. But the first time I get is going to be sleep, not posting. Priorities. Instead, have a sketch of the ceremony roof with the AA roof and Palouse behind it:

Sebring Wrap-Up: Oh Man, Maybe Audi Can Be Beat!

2009-03-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Fantastic race.

LMP1: 9 leader changes between three cars: Peugeot's 07, 08, and Audi's 2. The Audi 1 was right there all along too, just never lead. It was a fantastically engrossing back and forth battle (above). Some of these passes, especially a couple of McNish's passes, were the stuff of legend. The Audi is better looking than the pictures show it to be. Pole Position was an upset: the brand new Acura LMP1 (below) took pole, and didn't keep it for long at all -- actually, it was in second place at corner 1. That car has the same size tyres front and rear, allowing VERY high speed cornering. They estimate this car can corner at around 5 Gs. However, Sebring has a lot of straights and the corners are bumpy. This car will do phenomenal throughout the season, but this just wasn't its race. Both of the Acura's were in the pits quite a bit, I hope reliability is there in twelve days.

LMP2: Only one survivor: Acura. Took fourth overall after the 07 died. I was, of course, rooting for the Dyson-Lola-Mazdas (below). Why? I've always been a Dyson fan, a Lola fanatic, and a Mazda lover -- plus it's a BEAUTIFUL closed top car. Only three cars entered this class. Oh well, at least that's one more car than GT1.

GT1: Two cars, both Corvette. I wonder who won. Ah, who fucking cares? The only interesting thing here was this is their last ALMS GT1 race. Corvette is changing over to a GT2 factory effort for ALMS. Sign of the economic times or looking for somebody to race against? The GT1 cars will be back at Le Mans. I assume they will win again.

GT2: Risi and Corsa are still doing quite well with their F430Rs. I was excited by BMWs (Above) return to ALMS (FINALLY) and dismayed that one M3 didn't get off the line and the other died a few hours in. However, until the death their pace was very competitive. I look forward to seeing those cars do better in the future after resolving some of their reliability issues. The new Porsches were phenomenal, but who didn't expect that? They said they wanted more durability in the new ones, then the beautiful Ford GT (Below) merely taps the 45 behind the rear wheel and Flying Lizard gets a puncture. That car just had bad luck all day. Later on there was this awesome video capture of them trying to hammer out the hood so they could get the fuel in. The best here was Panoz (Bottom Picture). After being introduced five years ago, this team works their asses off over the winter and pull in a podium position! That's a fucking racing team. Another good thing is the Ford GT was on track, gorgeous, and lasted the race!

Analysis: The Peugeot and Audi battle was fucking racing! (Top Picture) I look forward to Le Mans where there will be 4 Peugeot's, 3 R15s, and 2 R10s on course. The ACO totally knew what they were doing. I retract my previous statements of disgust. THIS YEAR'S LE MANS WILL BE FUCKING EPIC AT THE FRONT! THANK YOU ACO! I have hope that Audis will fall. I REALLY hope that Pescarolo takes them down too, but probably not: Peaugeot has too much invested to not get a win here, so I doubt they will let Pesky win. Pesky deserves to be the ones to take Audi down though: after so many years of being the only people to challenge them and of getting beat by them, Pescarolo deserves Le Mans. I mean, 2000-2008 has been all Volkwagen cars winning Le Mans. I want somebody else now, and this year, I actually have hope. After all, BMW came back, didn't they? Perhaps Audi can fall too!

Here are the results for those who wonder about laps and fast laps and anything like that. It's a .pdf.

Happy Pi Day!

2009-03-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'll be celebrating later tonight! Also happy birthday Einstein!