White Kids Love Hip Hop

Posted on 31st December 2010 in Something Daily

Today, on a very special episode of Three Stegosaurus Moon: Emmett goes to a Wu-Tang show! The year 2010 draws to a close, leaving us all just under two years to exist as a species! The Windows operating system is heavily insulted! All this and more, today, on Three Stegosaurus Moon!

Yes, I did in fact see the Wu-Tang Clan last night. And yes, it was in fact stupidly awesome. My friend Eric and I drove into Philly around 8 and arrived at the Trocadero to find a line stretching all the way down and around the block; luckily we already had tickets. The opening acts took up the first two hours of the show, which we hadn’t planned on. Nonetheless, the Wu section of the show was unbelievable, if a bit belated. They started out with the first few tracks from Enter the Wu-Tang. The opener, of course, was Bring Da Ruckus: the DJ played the samples, and the whole group came onstage immediately when Ghostface’s rap started – it all happened very quickly, and was very awesome. Ghost had a bag of doritos that he held onto and munched from throughout the show, which I guess is normal for a hip-hop show? The whole group also had several herbal remedies that they were passing around onstage throughout their set, as well as a decent collection of alcohols in water bottles and flasks. It was just amazing to see all of them in person (except RZA, he wasn’t there, unfortunately). The highlight of the show was, of course, Method Man, due mainly to his crazy stage presence and tendency to crowdsurf. When he did his track from Enter the Wu-Tang, people were just going nuts. I wish I’d taken video, although in a big sense I’m glad I didn’t. That way, I was able to keep my W up most of the night. It was a fantastic show.

That was the first exciting thing that I did in the last few days, after my attempts to fix my mom’s laptop turned sour. Last I wrote about that, I had convinced her to try Ubuntu instead of Windows 7, a decision which lasted about 15 hours. She woke up and decided she had to have Windows, which quickly brought me to two realizations: that the Windows 7 install disk my dad bought required an existing Windows install to use, and couldn’t be booted from, and that Windows XP is an awful, awful operating system. I spent a good while (I mean a while) attempting to find the right service packs and drivers on the internet to get the XP laptop internet access, which was of course way more trouble than it was worth. I did not, however, have to call any kind of tech support. I can do it myself, thank you very much. And if you call tech support, you don’t learn anything.

At risk of sounding like a whiny 13-year-old girl: Being at home with the family can be really tough sometimes. I have, for the most part, a pretty good time at home, and I get along my with family decently well. I really have to figure out how to deal with being told what to do by my parents, though. I’m in an awkward situation as the oldest in my family, stretched between wanting to be independent and being seen as a kid by my parents. Living at school for the majority of the year, I’m not used to having people tell me to wash the dishes or walk the dog or whatever it is; there, I just do what has to be done and it’s all good. For some reason, though, coming home causes me to revert somewhat into a state of childishness, where every request, reminder, or admonition from my parents wears on me. I’m sure a lot of college students go through this: it’s a difficult position to be in, seeing oneself as capable of independence while being forced away from it by well-meaning yet slightly overbearing parents. It’s ok, I just wanted to get that off my mind. Thanks, internet.

Grandpa Jeff Bridges

Posted on 29th December 2010 in Something Daily

I was afraid this would happen. After only a handful of days off from school, I’m already feeling way too lazy for my own good. I like to think of myself as a pretty hard worker, and most of the time I don’t have any problem believing that. Right now, though, I am being extremely lazy. I think I watched more television and movies yesterday than I have on any single day of the last year (video games not included, obviously – but that does include the Lord of the Rings marathons). I watched Bill and Ted, Yessongs, True Grit in the theater (which was incredible by the way) and Audition after midnight. Let me just say a few things about those last two: Jeff Bridges is one hundred per cent the man, I didn’t really want to see that guy get his foot chopped off, the scene with the two guys in the cabin was awesome, and Audition was a lot less scary than I expected it to be. Even watching it at 1 AM didn’t really seem to make that much of a difference. I mean it was definitely gory, and it was definitely an interesting head game, but scary…not really. It’s a Japanese film from the late nineties about this guy whose wife dies and he holds an audition to find himself a new wife – it starts out pretty light and almost romantic-comedy-ish, and at certain point pretty quickly devolves to some classic horror incomprehensibility. It may be due to how tired I was, but I still don’t really know how it makes sense. I just need some time to wrap my brain around it. But it was pretty awesome, regardless.

I don’t watch scary movies too often, but one thing I’ve noticed about the ones I have seen is that a lot of the fear that I get out of them has depended on how scary I expected them to be. Maybe that’s just me, but I feel like horror movies would be a lot less affecting to me if I started watching them not knowing anything about them. I really think the genre depends to some degree on that anticipation and assumption that’s performed by the audience before they even sit down in the theater.

Instead of watching movies today, I decided to make myself a bit more useful and fix my mom’s ancient laptop that ran Windows XP but a few hours ago. My dad insisted that I use the upgrade DVD he bought to install Windows 7, but of course, due to my growing intolerance of things made by Microsoft, I spent a lot of energy attempting to convince him to go the way of Ubuntu. I tried to highlight the increase in performance the laptop would experience once being wiped and reinstalled with Meerkat, as well as the OS’ resistance to viruses, a problem that the computer had run into far too many times in the past. So just a few minutes ago, I managed to convince my parents and I’m now working on the switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu. I’ve never used Wine before, but that’s apparently what has to be done in order for iTunes to run. It’ll be an adventure. Anyway, that whole thing (backup, installation, and configuration included) has given me a nice big project that’s filled most of my day.

I’m seeing the Wu-Tang tomorrow in Philly! That should certainly be interesting. Until then, I’m going to be enjoying my break and chilling….so very hard.

Bob Genghis Khan

Posted on 28th December 2010 in Something Daily

In the last two weeks of this past summer, I spent the time during which most of my friends were back at school going to my high school friend’s house every night and playing through the first two God of War games with him. This happened literally every night for two weeks, and we ended up getting kind of sick of them by the time we left for school. We did manage to finish both in two weeks though. I can’t really decide if the God of War games are good or not. I mean they’re fun to play, and generally epic beyond comprehension, but the story and voice acting are just dumb. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Still, I don’t really think those alone make a bad game. They’re fun, so I’m ok with it. I like the huge enemy battles, despite the fact that the coolest parts of those fights are often just quicktime events. I do agree, though, that it does take a decent amount of thought to come up with a non-quicktime system that would allow for the kind of ridiculous moves that you can pull off in some of those big God of War battles. See what I mean? I’m so undecided about whether they’re actually “good” or not.

The point is that I was able to continue the journey last night for the first time in several months when I got together with Eric again last night and we started his God of War III that he got for christmas. What an awesome opening sequence. Seriously, that water-horse-crab thing is just too much. The third installment is just so much better looking than the first two; I was really hoping there would be a significant jump in graphics with the switch to the new hardware of the PS3, and as of last night, I’m not disappointed. Apart from the game itself, it’s always good to have some nondiluted bro-time when I come home (even though we all forgot our SNES consoles! Most non-triumphant.)

My true Christmas break started today, as I slept in until 10 (what!?) and have spent my morning so far shoveling the driveway and watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I had forgotten how bad that movie actually is – not that I expect any of it to make sense or anything, but some of the time travel stuff they do is just so ridiculous. The whole thing where they decide to leave the keys somewhere where they’ll find them and they’re just there waiting for them? I mean it’s awesome and hilarious, but the part of me that’s into theoretical physics has a problem with that. I know it’s just an 80′s teen movie. I really just watched it for the two lead characters and their vernacular. I think I’m going to start slipping “most excellent” into my conversation and see if anyone calls me out on it. I bet they don’t.

I’m watching Yessongs on DVD right now, and I have to say that it’s likely my favorite concert video that I’ve seen. It’s just the perfect era of Yes where everybody was in the band and they were really good live. I actually like the Yessongs version of “And You And I” way better than the studio one – because it rocks way more, obviously. I remember an old keyboard teacher of mine was watching Yessongs with me once and made the comment that Steve Howe is the reason to watch the show. Now I realize what he was talking about, because Steve Howe is inhuman in that video, but at the time, being the keyboard-playing prog-rock nerd that I was in middle school, I was so offended that my own keyboard teacher would disrespect Rick Wakeman so blatantly. Watching it now, though, I realize that Rick Wakeman, while also playing ridiculously well in the Yessongs performance, was really ugly in the seventies. Not that this detracts from his performance, but it’s just a hilarious realization to me.

EDIT: This just reminded me that there’s a picture of me floating around the internet from way back in the days of Rock School when we did a tour with Jon Anderson, the lead singer from Yes. I had my mom make me this sweet Rick Wakeman cape, and I wore it every night on that tour. It was awesome. Here it is, you can still see it if you google “Emmett Butler”. Sorry about the tiny resolution, it’s the only one I can find. And yes, I actually was this cool at one point in my life.

There’s the beginning of my winter break from school. I can’t tell if it’s going to go by fast or slow, or which of those I prefer. I plan to start not worrying about that (or anything) riiiight…….now.

Super Dinosled Attack

Posted on 26th December 2010 in Something Daily

I’ve been eating way, way too many Christmas cookies. When I said I was looking forward to them, I think I was downplaying my excitement a bit. I feel exceedingly gross right now, due both to the absurd amount of butter I’ve been eating and the fact that I’m apparently now allergic to my own house. It’s happened the last few times I’ve visited home that I get sick within one night of arriving – it might be that I’m allergic to my pillow or something, I don’t know. Anyway, I made my way through this frigid Ontario day with a cold and some layered jackets.

Since deciding not to bring my brand-new multitool on this trip to Canada with me, I’ve been noticing tons of situations in which a multitool would come in handy. Bad decision – they don’t care at customs! What was I thinking?!

I don’t watch sports a whole lot, but when I do, it’s usually football. You could say that I’m an Eagles fan, but today, being in the company of my Buffalonian relatives, we were rooting for the Bills against the Patriots. Let’s just say that it didn’t go well. The worst part was that the people I was watching with seemed to know the Bills were going to lose before the game even started. I mean I know they suck, but it seems like there’s something wrong when you have absolutely no hope for your own team.

So if you couldn’t guess, I’m mentally very much on break. Since getting back home, I’ve accomplished nothing; the weird part is that I’m ok with that right now. By the time New Year’s comes around, though, I’ll probably be itchy to start something new. I’m tossing around some ideas for another useful programming exercise – we’ll see how that goes. I did make a good find at a Play ‘n’ Trade next to our dinner restaurant tonight: Star Fox and F-Zero for SNES for eight dollars each. Of course I couldn’t pass up that kind of deal; I feel like those prices are really good. I’ve never seen Star Fox for sale, but F-Zero is typically at least $30 at places I’ve looked. I decided after this find that collecting old games is definitely fun. And yes, it has taken me this long to figure that out.

So we’re driving back tomorrow (another 6 hours, sweet!) and then my break can officially begin. It’s busy now, but life will slow down soon. Remember what’s rad, like Super Nintendo and dinosaurs and sledding. Maybe also a Super Nintendo game where you’re a sledding dinosaur.

I think I just came up with my next cartoon.

Happy Christmas

Posted on 25th December 2010 in Something Daily

According to mc chris, the fact that every day is mc christmas has rendered the 25th obsolete. Despite this new development, my family still celebrated. I woke up at 8 this morning (finally a bit of rest!), opened some presents, and then drove from 10 to 5:30 to Canada. I got some sweet gifts this morning though: the original Chrono Trigger for SNES, some wicked awesome knives, three different multitools, and some more external storage are the highlights. And tickets to see the Wu-Tang Clan at the Trocadero on the 30th. So there’s that. I didn’t do anything today, since I spent about eight hours riding in a car. More stuff will come tomorrow, but now, it’s time for cookies.

Thank you for reading and supporting Three Stegosaurus Moon. It’s great to know that even a few people read, especially in light of the fact that I’m just writing about my life. Merry Christmas (or happy Christmas, whichever you prefer. I like the sound of “happy” better, but nobody in America says that. I probably just like it because Emma Watson said it in a Harry Potter movie, honestly).

Sleeping in Train Stations

Posted on 24th December 2010 in Something Daily

Let me begin by saying that I don’t really know why I scheduled a 7:30 PM bus from New York to Philadelphia on December 23rd. That strategy probably would have worked awesomely if I had my own car, but since my parents are still my drivers, it wasn’t that great of an idea.

So since I had a late bus to catch and nothing to do yesterday, I spent my time squeezing in some last minute New York-only activities. I woke up far too early (for some reason, maybe it was the sun and the fact that we have no blinds on our windows) and immediately wrote the last post, then skated to Stuyvesant Town. This was at about 9:30 AM, after going to bed at 3 the previous night. Needless to say, my last New York skate of 2010 didn’t go very well, as my fatigue was throwing off my balance and stamina, bringing me close to injury a few times. I didn’t last very long. Even so, I’m glad I took the opportunity to go out that one last time.

So I packed and hung around with Eric and Justin for a while, and got myself some lunch at Yummy House (12th and 3rd) – General Tso’s Chicken: The Spicy Version. Yummy is a little bit expensive to eat there regularly, but every once in a while I find it very hard to resist. I also accompanied my friend Jen to a chocolate restaurant (bistro?) called L. A. Burdick where we got hot chocolate made from milk and melted dark chocolate shavings. This is not an exaggeration: absolutely hands down the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had ever. Of course it was rich and very filling, but apart from that I feel like it’s exactly what hot chocolate is supposed to be.

Check it out: after watching some Arrested Development and feeling a bit like a Mary without a Peter and a Paul, I caught my 7:30 Bolt Bus from Penn Station, and contrary to my expectation, we actually made the trip in under two hours – unheard of even for a Sunday night, let alone Christmas eve eve. So of course I get to the regional rail station in Philadelphia expecting to get right on the train that I’m now just in time for, and I see all of the scheduled departures on the board changing: “10 LATE”, “11 LATE”, “12 LATE”, “22 LATE”, “CANCEL”. Apparently some trees fell down on the tracks and made it impossible to get trains through, according to a stranger who was also in my situation and talking to someone with internet access. So I had to hang out at 30th Street Station and wait for my parents to drive the 45 minutes and pick me up. I listened to all of XO by Elliott Smith (what a great album) and did some reading, as well as some sleeping. And of course I bought my parents donuts for being so nice to pick me up.

So now I’m home and chilling out. I’m going out to buy some last minute presents, and then I’ll eat dinner with some family friends. Sounds good.

Since I’m home, check out the uncharacteristically detailed gingerbread men my family made in my absence:

We’ve got Will Ferrell from “Elf”, Goku, a penguin, a panda, the grinch, the phantom of the opera, a soccer player, Cleopatra, and some kind of mummy or zombie guy.

Also, I missed my kitty even though his hair makes me sneeze. His name is Carrot.

What the frak

Posted on 23rd December 2010 in Something Daily

Check it out: I got about five hours of sleep last night. This is fairly unusual for me. I have no idea why, but it seems that I’m pretty much incapable of sleeping in past 8:30. I’ve always been kind of a morning person, but it’s mornings like this that really make me wish I had the ability to sleep late. So it’s about 9 AM right now, I woke up an hour ago, and I didn’t write yesterday, so I feel compelled to update now.

Yesterday was my last day involving responsibility for the fall semester, in which my Recording Tech group and I finally presented the bluegrass cover of “Get Low” that we recorded to the class (so I can finally shut up about it! Sweet!). The teacher was late, then called ten minutes after class was to start to say that he was going to be another hour late. That was definitely a bit lame, as I came down to Steinhardt just for that class. But I had a fun lunch with Mr. Kevin Garrett and my class group. The presentation itself was pretty good, despite the fact that my board recall skills need a bit of work. We didn’t present a bounce; that is, we were required to use our multitrack and recall our mix on the board, making sure every knob is set in the position we used during our mix. This is, of course, a process that you need a few minutes to do accurately, and I didn’t really have a few minutes. As a result, the multitrack mix that we presented was a bit different than the one on Soundcloud, but I tweaked along the way. All in all, great project. Everyone actually had a great project in that class. Way to go, people.

Last night, I had resigned myself to not doing anything, as all of my roommates were, at that point, either at their houses, out studying, or asleep. As it’s the end of break, my motivation to do projects is pretty low right now, so I was looking forward to a night of reading the Tao Te Ching and playing Team Fortress…and then Jen showed up! I furthered my goal of getting her into Battlestar Galactica as we watched another episode – the one where Starbuck is stranded on a desert planet. It’s a good one. I remember seeing that episode my first time through the series – I think it’s the first where Starbuck really shreds, and it was also the first one that really made me think “Alright, this show is rad.” So I had a good night. A late one, but a good one.

Today I leave for home on a 7:30 bus. Before that, I need to pack my bags and say goodbye to some friends, as well as find some place to eat some food and hopefully skate around a bit. I just hope I don’t get hurt; I’ve been feeling kind of bold recently. Maybe not bold enough to hurt myself yet, but who knows. I’ll be careful, don’t worry! And hopefully I get to sleep on the bus, because I’m pretty certain I’ve missed my chance to go back to bed this morning.

Have a good Chirstmas eve eve!

An Aside About Blogging

Posted on 21st December 2010 in Something Daily

I’ve noticed that it’s really interesting for me to go back to some of the first posts I made on TSM and see how differently I approach the challenge of blogging than I did when I was starting out. You can tell, if you read the first week or so, that I really had no idea what I was doing when I started out. Every day it’s a different kind of post; usually short and singularly focused. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I know what I’m doing (unless you want to believe that, in which case: rad), but I can at least say that I understand a little better how to write a blog than I did back in October.

It’s often challenging coming up with interesting content, especially when my modus operandi is to use my recent activities as a jumping-off point. That strategy usually works pretty well when I’ve been doing lots of interesting stuff, but there are times when that’s definitely not the case; that’s when it gets tricky to come up with content. I’m preparing for what I’m sure will be a dearth of interesting events over the January part of winter break by taking notes on things that I could write about when they occur to me – finally giving my sweet Uglydoll notebook a workout! The interesting content thing won’t really be a problem until then, with Christmas and new year’s and all that, but I’m getting ready.

So, if you’re someone who comes around here often, thanks for stopping by. And stay classy. And thanks for stopping by. Really, it means a lot to see that I get a decent number of views. And, by the way, if one day you happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential quandary, full of loathing and self-doubt, and wracked with the pain and isolation of your pitiful meaningless existence, at least you can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that somewhere out there in this crazy mixed-up internet of ours, there’s still a little place called Three Stegosaurus Moon.

Here at the end of all things

Posted on 21st December 2010 in Something Daily

I knew since last night that today was going to be a bit rough. I had two finals today, which took a combined total of close to four hours. Having that ahead of me, you’d think that I would study for something. Yeah ok. I did discover some fantastic new music in the form of Siah and Yeshua DapoED (which I have no idea how to pronounce). The beats on their Visualz Anthology are some of the crunchiest I’ve ever heard. Comparatively speaking, the rapping on that album as a whole isn’t the greatest, but it really varies by song. Great album.

The point is, though, that between 8 and 1 last night, I could have been working, but I was instead hanging out with Eric and Jen for a good portion of that time, listening to music and talking about how we “should” be working on stuff. I reviewed a bit this morning, which ended up being quite helpful on my first test this morning, a 2.5 hour Performing Arts in Western Civilization final which comprised ten essays. The only time a test hurt my hand that badly was Audio for Video a few weeks ago, and before that, probably the SAT or something. What I’m really trying to say here is that that test sucked, and I’m happy that it’s over. It was a good class, just not a good test. I also took the Electronics final today, which I was similarly prepared for. Honestly, I’m just glad that my finals are over at last. I’m still in the decompression stage right now, just getting used to the idea that I don’t have to do anything for the next month.

I was checking out my mic last night, a Rode NT1-A, and noticed that the diaphragm was tilted on a slight angle toward the back of the grill. I did a little research and determined that it was pretty safe to carefully remove the casing and gently nudge the capsule back into place. I had never taken a mic apart before, especially not one that cost 300 dollars, so I was exceedingly careful. I was kind of surprised to find, though, that the capsule of that mic is secured to the body by a gummy, silicone-type substance, so when you jostle the mic around, it actually wiggles a little bit. It probably has something to do with the sound, too; maybe the rubber stuff acts as a diffuser. Either way, the capsule wouldn’t go back to the right position with a push, so I decided I’m just going to store it differently and let gravity slowly do my job for me. I tested the mic after putting it back together, and I succeeded in not breaking anything! Great job, Mister Emmett!

In case you haven’t gone on my Soundcloud from the “About” page, here’s the other finished Gameboy song I made a few weeks ago.

Level Three by Raised by Robots

These are fun, I haven’t worked with LSDJ for a little while now.

Apparently the mixing desk in the studio where we were going to present our final Recording Tech project is broken now, so it may turn out that we don’t present at all. That’s actually pretty unlikely, but it could happen. Apart from that (which will be fun, not work), I still have to tech tonight! What a bummer! I think we all know that I’d much rather be sleeping. But I’ll be home soon. And I just know winter break is going to go by very, very fast.

Let me reiterate that Dinosaurs are sweet

Posted on 20th December 2010 in Something Daily

I hope I get more Dragon Ball Z for christmas! I’ve also learned the perils of being too upfront about my love of dinosaurs when I meet new people, which is a bit of a problem…but not really that big of a deal. I mean my computer background is a picture of two dinosaurs making out,

I have a poster of dinosaurs on my wall,

and a dinosaur comic in my wallet. What’s the big deal, right? Also I have a blog called “Three Stegosaurus Moon”…what does that even mean?

I just finished my paper on Zappa’s Joe’s Garage. I think it went really well. At the very least, I got to listen to album two full times while writing it. I feel like listening as I write a paper like this is actually really helpful, albeit sometimes distracting. It gives me a better perspective on what it is that I’m actually writing about. Beside that, I just love the crap out the album, and I pretty frequently jumped up to play the songs along with the record. I still remember a decent amount of the easier ones from when I did Joe’s Garage with the School of Rock (who have an incredible new website, what the heck?). That was a fun show, though. We did the whole album start to finish, with costumes and the Central Scrutinizer with a megaphone and the whole thing. I ended up playing about half of the songs on the album, but I learned all of them for fun (and just in case the opportunity arose to vampire a song from some other keyboardist). What a great album. Seriously, people, go to Grooveshark and type in “Joe’s Garage Frank Zappa” and then listen to the album. You will certainly not regret it.

And now I’m listening to Yoshimi Battles the Hip-Hop Robots and writing a blog post, having just finished that paper. I have a test tonight, which I’m only a little bit worried about, mainly due to the fact that I went to bed at 11:30 last night and was still awake at 1. I’ve been having trouble sleeping these last few days, I’m not sure what that’s all about. Hopefully that will chill out after finals (only three more to go, two after this evening). I go home on Thursday evening, after presenting the multitrack of our bluegrass “Get Low” cover, which has been finished but unpresented for a while. I’m bringing my skateboard and SNES home, which together will have to be enough to hold me over until the spring semester.