Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

* Last week at AugieShoots, I talked about my experiences shooting a Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers concert.  Pictures and technical stuff and more can be found in that five day series.

* Good news!  The new O.A.R. album has been announced, and it’ll be out in August.  It’s called “King.”

* Found an interesting band last week: Honeyhoney.  They have one album out on iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store now.  It’s a duo from California, and they’ll be opening for Christina Perri on her tour this summer.  They’re a great match.

* And, of course, Weird Al’s new album, “Alpocalypse,” is due out at the end of the month.

Ask Ann, The Aetna Assistant

Aetna has a “virtual assistant,” who is there to answer your questions on their website.  Basically, it’s a search bar with stock imagery of a smiling person who answers in conversational text.

Or, if you want to pretend it’s more expensive than it is, call it “artificial intelligence.” Being a technologically inclined kind of person, I decided to run it through its paces:

Ann: Hi, I’m Ann, your Aetna Virtual Assistant. I’m here to help you use your Aetna Navigator secure member website. I’m currently new to this job, so if I can improve somewhere please let Aetna know by clicking the ‘feedback’ button below. What can I help you find?

You Asked: Zork

Ann: Oops, I haven’t been trained on that yet. I want to get better, so please let Aetna know how they can improve me by clicking the “feedback” button below.

I’m tempted to leave the feedback that the correct answer is “At your service” or “They say talking to one’s self is a sign of impending mental collapse.”

You Asked: What is the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything?

Ann: That’s a question that only you can answer for yourself. As far as my own life, I find meaning in helping others.

Deeper than 42, but acceptable, I suppose.  and, yes, it looks like the kind of question the programmers have seen before and decided to have fun with.  OK, let’s test “Ann” further:

You Asked: Why is the sky blue?
Ann: The sky is blue because of the way the earth’s atmosphere scatters light from the sun. The light from the sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow. Blue is scattered more than other colors when it hits particles and gases in our atmosphere because it travels as shorter, smaller waves.

Yup, there are either geeks working on this system who are too young for Zork, or I’m the first one to test that system.

You Asked: Do you have a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies?

Ann: Looks like I don’t know that yet. Please let Aetna know about this by clicking the “feedback” button below.

OK, let’s try getting personal, then:

You Asked: Are you married?
Ann: I’m lucky to have a terrific virtual family, including a wonderful husband. Well, he’s wonderful most of the time: Even virtual people aren’t perfect! But I’d like to keep us on track. How may I help you navigate your Aetna Navigator secure member website?

Oooh, that pissed her off.  Let’s push our luck.

You Asked: How old are you?
Ann: I am rather young, or as we say in the virtual world, new. But I like to think I have many years’ worth of knowledge. How may I help you?

Dare I ask her weight?

You Asked: How much do you weigh?
Ann: As a virtual assistant, I don’t have an actual body. But I think my creators deserve credit for making me appear pleasant and helpful. Let me help you navigate your Aetna Navigator secure member website.

Hey, I’m THE ONE ASKING THE QUESTIONS HERE!  That’s it. I’m out of here!

Joseph Linaschke laments the loss of iPhone tracking:

It’s all a load of bull, frankly. Anyone carrying any cell phone is tracked by the cell phone companies anyway, and I don’t even subscribe to the notion that the real problem wasn’t “big government”, but the ability for your spouse to look on your computer and find where you’ve been. If you’re that worried about it, all you really need to do is enable that little check-box “encrypt iPhone backup” in iTunes and all your logs were locked up automatically. Anyway, it’s all a moot point now, since the most recent iPhone update gets rid of functionality. Which is a shame, because frankly, it’s cool!

I’m with him, actually. Looking at mine was pretty cool. I’m hardly a traveler, but I saw a couple of spokes in my travels that reminded me of specific trips. Fun stuff. Now, it’s all gone.

TMBG just announced their new tour. Check out this stop:

10/1 Boston, MA – Berklee Performance Center
(2 entirely different shows featuring songs from A-M
at 6:30pm & songs from N-Z at 9pm)

Crazy. I love it. And if you wanted to hear “I Palindrome I” AND “We’re the Mesopotamians,” you need to go to both shows. I make no guarantee that they’ll play either, though.

(Additional detail is in their email alert, though not on their website.)

Egads, I love this song:

Christina Perri’s “Lovestrong” album hit virtual and physical stands this week. What better time for Part 2 of this series?

While touring around earlier this year, Perri did a brief show in Paris at a small club of some sort. Someone up close took video of the entire thing. Here, then, is a six song set. Pretty cool:

More videos after the break!

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Remember the early days when Amazon wasn’t profitable, but was going to be any quarter now? This week, Amazon announced that its quarterly profits would be down by a third because they were investing in infrastructure to continue to grow into a larger company — and Wall Street was disappointed at the way the profits “tumbled.” They were still profitable by a large margin. They just weren’t AS PROFITABLE, because they spent money to make more money down the road. They’re bringing in close to $10 billion per quarter — $10,000,000,000 — with profits in the hundreds of millions. (Nope, not a great profit margin, but here’s the classic case of making up slim margins in volume.)

And, of course, Wall Street hates it because Amazon didn’t “meet expectations.” In other words, the numbers that analysts plucked out of thin air and guess at weren’t right. And that’s Amazon’s fault.

Compare this to Apple, where every quarter Apple sets low expectations and then blows them away and gets a big stock boost. Everyone knows Apple is underguessing its numbers to help “meet expectations.” And everyone also knows that the armchair amateur revenue guessers on-line are always better at figuring out sales figures and dollar amounts than the “pro” analysts who are aid to guess these numbers. And they never get them right, or close to it.

I hate Wall Street. On the other hand, their game is so consistent(ly wrong) that it’s a good game to play, so long as you realize it’s a game and not anything based in reality at all.

The day after I post my “Farewell to Wii,” this short story pops up:

…a successor to the Nintendo Wii capable of displaying games in high resolution. Will Nintendo finally make it happen? Multiple totally anonymous sources say yes: they told Game Informer, IGN andKotaku that just such a system will debut at E3 2011…

Things just got interesting.  I’m not sure how “backwards compatibility” would work.  You can’t just reconfigure the games for widescreen. I suppose they could make 4:3 higher def, but it would still feel like a waste of screen real estate.  It’s almost better to start from scratch at that point. Maybe we’ll know better this summer…

It was almost six years ago now that I first mentioned the Nintendo “Revolution” game console. It promised such amazing things as wireless connections straight out of the box and a wireless controller.

The die-hard gamers started complaining right away, but even IGN knew why a gaming console that promised easy playability was so important.

And there was the first look at the controller.

The hype built quickly, the “Wii” name change was a point of major initial controversy (I admit that I hated the change from “Revolution,” too), and the rumor mill suggested — in 2006, no less — that perhaps the Wii would be a 3D projector. Or a built-in camera to put your face on a Mii.

When it finally came time to buy one, Amazon’s sale was not unlike a lottery. I didn’t win that, either. I missed it the first day. But then I took advantage of the Blue Laws, went into work late one Monday, and grabbed one for myself. And had some initial happy impressions. (I never got used to Super Monkey Ball and sold it off later. It wasn’t my kind of game. “Rayman Raving Rabbids” was a big hit for me, though.)

That all was four and a half years ago. Things have changed since then. Wireless internet is everywhere, and everything in the house will be wireless soon, including your toaster. High Def TV is the new standard. And the Wii controls have finally been copied by Microsoft with the Kinect and Sony with something so embarrassing that I can’t even remember its name right now.

Lately, the 360 has pulled ahead, leaving the Wii as a strong second best seller from month to month. And, seriously, the difference between #1 and #2 isn’t that great here. Furthermore, the Wii will go down as the top selling video game console of all time. That’s pointed out by Chris Kohler in this article that explains why the Wii’s days may finally be numbered. With a rumored price drop coming next month, it looks like Nintendo is ready to set the old girl out to sea and move on to the next console for next year sometime. Such is life.

More from Kohler:

But if Nintendo’s plan to woo third-party gamemakers does revolve around a new machine, that leaves only Nintendo to keep Wii interesting. And even Nintendo seems to be washing its hands of Wii these days. The company is largely focusing on games for its recently launched Nintendo 3DS. To be fair, this is the more important task at hand, but the effort seems to be coming at the expense of Wii.

Yes, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will be released for Wii at the end of the year. I do believe that the excellent Japanese role-playing games Xenoblade and The Last Story will make it to America. And Square Enix says we’ll hear about Dragon Quest X for Wii later this year, which will be a very big deal … in Japan. Not in the United States.

The Wii was a great console for its time, and it did great things. It expanded the video game industry in a way much of the industry still doesn’t want to acknowledge, even as it’s spent the last five years trying to copy its every move, from wireless motion controllers to the stripped down family-friendly game console package. And it’s still very playable, with many years’ worth of addictive and group-friendly games. I’m not tired of my Wii; I just wish I had more time to do gaming. I still pick it up for the occasional game of Rock Band or Guitar Hero, and I wish I had the time to get back into both Wii Sports games.

But, yeah, at the same rate I really do with it was in HD, as I’ve become a complete snob about that. Other than that, no complaints here. I’m not giving mine up anytime soon, but maybe it’s time to acknowledge the passing of the torch to — of all people — Microsoft.

I admit it — I’m hooked on Christina Perri music. And she doesn’t even have an album yet.

I first wrote about her at the beginning of the year, after I refound her one hit song from last summer.  And I knew from following her that she used to post YouTube videos of herself singing her songs.  But it took me a few months before I delved into those.  Don’t know why that is, but here we are now.

Time to check out some of those videos.

We’ll start with the covers.  Pardon the bad still that this video generates, but here’s “Crying” from Roy Orbison:

“Hand In My Pocket” works very well, also. Here she sings it in her pajamas, although I don’t know many people who sleep in decorative scarfs…

Lady Gaga’s “Speechless”:

The Beatles, Queen, Anya, Coldplay, and more are all after the break:

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Less than a year out of college, I finally purchased my own computer with my own money.  Previous to that, I had been using an IBM Aptiva I bought at CompUSA a couple years earlier that I had paid for most of, but that my parents helped to fund.  (Let me tell you, that 133MHz processor was a screamer!)

On February 10, 1999, I bought a Gateway.  And just today, I ran across the receipt for it.  Check out these specs and prices:

My First Gateway Computer

The most painful part is probably the $550.00 I spent on a 19 inch monitor.  It wasn’t an LCD display, either.  (Here are the full specs.)  My next computer about two or three years later would have that.

The computer, itself, was $1666.00.  When I think about what that kind of money will buy in an iMac today, it’s crazy.  People complain about the expense of Macs, but look at what I got for $2600 12 years ago.  It wasn’t top of the line at the time.  For $2600 today, I could get the top of the line iMac with a 27″ screen.

Yes, I include the price of the printer in there, because the iMac I’m typing this up on right now came with a free printer/scanner/copier/fax machine combo unit — after $99 rebate!

Still, there was nothing cooler than the assemblage of brown boxes with black cow spots arriving at the office, was there?

Harumph.

So, judges, don’t you feel so smart for saving Casey now?

When Ryan Seacrest announced the results, who do you think they had to drop the audio because of?  Randy Jackson?  Someone swore, and deservedly so.

Better question: Were tonight’s results more reminiscent of Daughtry or Jennifer Hudson? In the NYC area, “Daughtry” is a trending topic.

Daughtry trends on Twitter because of Pia

Chris Daughtry responds:

Twitter's Instant Reactions

Daughtry made it to the Round of 4 that year, though. Hudson went out with only 7 contestants to go. As I explained in 2004, she lost because of vote splitting (three divas, including the amazing Latoya London). Daughtry lost because his fans assumed they were safe. So, yeah, Pia is Daughtry II.

Here’s the problem with Simon being gone, too: There’s no negative criticism anymore.  It used to be that Simon would lambaste someone and that would strike up the fanbase to vote vote vote. This week, the judges said nary a negative review to anyone, so no fanbase was energized.  That said, who did the judges go after the “hardest” this week? Pia. Yeah, we get it, she has no groove.  She probably should have stood still behind the mic stand for another week and avoided those criticisms all together, or made the judges look silly for repeating them again.

Good job, judges.

But they saved Casey.

Good job, judges.

Pia’s problem is a typical one for Idol contestants: She’s too good, too early, and too consistent. Voters love an arc in a reality show as much as they do in a movie.  They want to see someone come on strong and peak down the home stretch.  They don’t want someone who’s better than everyone else from Day One and then continue to be The Best each and every week. That’s boring.

She also had never been in the bottom 3 before, so her fanbase didn’t mobilize.  You can bet Paul was safe this week because he was almost cut last week.

Jacob was in the bottom three because he did a fair karaoke job, and because he went first.  Everyone forgot him by the time the show ended because he went on so early and didn’t do anything terribly memorable.

And Stefano was in the bottom three because he has no fanbase.  He’ll be in the bottom three every week until he’s gone.  All other rules being equal, he just doesn’t get the support.

But Pia almost never stood a chance.  You can’t be that amazing every week without people coming to expect it.  The slightest stumble would have doomed her.  The biggest song of the week would have been expected.  It’s just the way Idol is set up.

Also, the voting fanbase for “Idol” is tween girls.  They’re not voting for anyone but the boys they think are dreamy.  Six boys and two girls are left.  The girls are dropping like flies, and I hope Haley is next.  She’s painful to watch.

Pia has one other problem.  She doesn’t have a personality that makes you want to like her.  She comes off a bit as a beauty queen, always with the perfectly nice and perfectly political response to any question anyone ever asks.  She smiles politely and welcomes all feedback. She keeps perfect posture and never cracks.  She’s a bit aloof and, at times, almost a bit arrogant.  When her name was called for making the Top 12, the look on her face said, “Yeah, I know” instead of “Yes! I’m happy and shocked!” like all good Idol contestants should.

Here’s the upside for Pia: Going out so early in such a firestorm of controversy?  People will always remember her. Plenty of good singers have gone out before the Final Six.  You’ve forgotten most of their names already.  You won’t forget Pia.

The only dumber thing than Pia getting voted out this week was Jacob saying that if he went home, it wasn’t because of anything he did, but rather because America couldn’t look at itself in the mirror.  I’m still trying to figure out what that means.  At best, it’s arrogance.  At worst, it’s a nasty little racially charged thing.  I wanted him voted out this week just for that.

By the way, my DVR cut off the last minute of the show. They didn’t institute a second Judges Choice at the last second, did they?  Maybe Nigel should consider that.

Parting thought: I think Simon left “American Idol” so he wouldn’t have to listen to Constantine Maroulis sing “Unchained Melody.”

Extra bonus thought: Just to show you how much better Pia is than the other two girls on the show, look at the opening medley.  She blew the two away in their opening lines.  It wasn’t even close.

As overproduced as “Idol” has become in many ways — the gospel choir coming out on stage way before the Final Four, for example — tonight’s results show was produced so well from top to bottom that it was actually a thrill to watch, not just to fast-forward through. I like a lot of what Nigel Lythgoe has added back to the show. Putting the contestants in a house together and watching them interact more is cool. I like all the talking heads interview stuff. I liked the package tonight where Marc Anthony showed them how to use their IADs. (Sorry, “In Ears.”)

And, of course, the surprises were fun to watch. First, the group singalongs are miraculously improved when the mics are live, and it’s not all lip-synched. This year, it’s made a major difference. I don’t cringe at watching the contestants put on a happy face and cover their mouths with the mics to hide their poor synching skills. Second, bringing out Stevie Wonder was certainly a coup. It looks like they kept Steven Tyler in the dark about that. Don’t know about the other two judges. I presume they were in on it to help sell the birthday surprise for Tyler that came next.

The Hulk Hogan appearance was pure gold. Yeah, I hate wrestling, too, but to see James collapse with that big a smile on his face was fun.

The whole show tonight had the air of a season finale, with surprise after surprise.

And speaking of collapses — I was nearly certain we were going to have our first live on-air casualty on reality TV. Casey is not a well man. He’s been in and out of the hospital a couple of times since the series began. I think they’ve officially blamed stomach issues. I thought Ryan was giving him a heart attack tonight. It was almost uncomfortable to watch.

Also, I presume they reset the seven second delay at each commercial break? Those contestants all have quite the potty-mouths. Lots of audio drop-outs tonight, and they didn’t come from Steven Tyler’s seat.

Also, it’s nice of the producers to put a silver box around the bare speakers that sit atop the judges’ table now. I don’t know if they’ve been there all season, but I first noticed them last week. Those two big black boxes looked a little unfinished. I guess they need them at the judges table with the contestants using in-ears so there isn’t any feedback or something? Don’t remember seeing them there before, ever. The judges have always said that it can be tough to judge the live performances with all the audience noise, so maybe those speakers are there to help?

In any case, great results show tonight. Looking forward to next week now. Will they be eliminating two contestants next week, still?

Now, the only question is, did they do the right thing in saving Casey? I’ve championed him in the past, but to be honest, I’m not sure it was such a good idea. They should have saved it in case something tragic happened like Pia landing at the bottom due to fan complacency. Or what about Jacob or James? Should Casey win this whole thing? No. He’s entertaining, but he’s not the Idol. Ditto Paul McDonald, who might be the weakest guy, vocally, though he’s always interesting to watch and had a very good song this week.

And just when can we rid ourselves of this year’s most annoying contestant, Haley?

Every now and again, “American Idol” needs the reminder that “All By Myself” is NOT a Celine Dion song. It’s an Eric Carmen song used to great effect in an episode of “The Drew Carey Show” once upon a time. (OK, if you want to dig into the roots even deeper, it’s a Rachmaninoff song being sampled here, which Carmen didn’t realize wasn’t actually public domain and had to get a license for after the fact.)

And how could they not mention Latoya London’s performance of the song, which has set the Idol standard for it:

Where Pia is all technical and precide, Latoya’s version of the song builds better and has more raw emotion. I think Pia did better last week, still.

That video clip is fun to watch just for Ryan Seacrest at the end, back in his “I’m everyone’s brother on this show” mode. Now, he’s “Smarmy television host in a suit.”

One more cool Carmen fact from Wikipedia: “Carmen’s full version has an extended piano solo and lasts over seven minutes”

Bonus Idol video of Asia’h Epperson (yeah, I had forgotten her, too) from season 7 doing the same song after the break. It wasn’t pretty, but she was also sick at the time:

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I haven’d had enough time to watch bowling this season, though I still check in at the beginning of each week’s show to see who’s making the television finals.  There’s been one name absent all season, though: Walter Ray Williams Jr.  It finally bothered me so much that I Googled for an answer and came back with a New York Times article from earlier this year.  I think this sums it all up:

He is 51, perhaps near the end of bowling’s most remarkable career. He won his first Professional Bowlers Association Tour player of the year award in 1986 and his seventh in 2010. Five of those awards came after his 1995 induction into the P.B.A. Hall of Fame. No one has won more tour events (47), and only Earl Anthony, with 10, has won more than Williams’s eight major titles. [...]

This season, which began in October, unraveled after a September hernia operation, a change in ball sponsorship and Williams’s persistently arthritic fingers. His string of 17 consecutive seasons with at least one tour title is in danger, although he has exempt status for 2011-12.

He could retire after that season, should things not turn around for him.  I haven’t watched a week of bowling in my life on television where the thought of Walter Ray being on the broadcast wasn’t at least a possibility.  My own awkward style of bowling was always inspired by the simple controlled accuracy of Williams, though I was never anywhere near as good/

How good is he?  YouTube shows us:

I could watch that all day. . .   I’ve seen it countless times (including in its original airing) and it never gets old.

This is going to be long. I just wrote while I watched. I’m not going to edit it. Here it is, with all the verb tense screw-ups that made sense at the time:

Ta-Tynisa Wilson chose a bad Idol song.  This is an auto-tuned song that she’s trying to sing straight.  She got lucky that the new band is addicted to awful sounding synth effects, so she almost made it work.  But no.  Steven Tyler and J-Lo, as always, love everyone too much.  I’m glad Randy is so comfortable in the Bad Guy role.  He’s the only sane one on that panel now.  Crazy world, eh?

Wait a second, was she always “Ta-Tynisa?”  That names sounds different to me, and Idol does have a history of people changing their names before hitting this round…  GOOGLE!

Yup, that’s always been her name. Maybe she added the dash, but that’s it.  Ah, well…

Naima Adedapo went with “Summertime.”  Get ready for the Fantasia comparisons.  And she’s dancing to the opening music.  But she’s not going for the lower sultrier Fantasia version.  This one is more jazzy.  It’s OK. She stays on pitch and it’s good to hear a different version of it, but I’m not ready to crown her just yet.

And there’s Randy with the comparison.  Yup.

Two contestants in and my spellchecker is having a stroke…

Kendra Chantelle is showing great control and is hitting her notes.  The band is mixed a little too high, and the song itself never gets out of second gear, but her vocal is clear.  I like that.  And I think all the hand gesturing this season is going to bother me this year for some reason.  I remember Debra Byrd once picking on a contestant for doing all the obvious hand gestures (finger running down the cheek on a lyric for cry”).  I hope they start reminding contestants of that in the future…

Rachel Zevita is a nut, isn’t she?  That makes her interesting, and a little bit, er, gothy? Crazy? Oh dear god, she’s a bit too melodramatic/theatrical.  Did she almost forget the words in the beginning there?  I just don’t buy her as a sex kitten. And her voice died somewhere near the judges’ table.  This is going badly.  She tried too hard and it didn’t work.  Ouch.  And the judges let her have it.  Is she going to cry?

Oh, boy.  ”I was having a good time.”  Words of death on this show.  The ultimate bad defense.  Crash and burn?

Karen Rodriquez went down the Mariah well.  Uh oh.  And then switches to Spanish, and I’m out.  Oh, boy, she’s really stuck in the middle of this song.  Even when she belts out a note, it still sounds like it’s in the middle of her range.  And the hand gestures are so literal it’s painful.

That “Love You, Mom” will get her a few votes.  The Spanish will carry Southern California, Texas, and Florida in the voting.  They are powerhouses.

Someone needs to explain to J-Lo that “Romance Language” refers to Rome and not “romance,” though. UGH.

Or maybe I’m cranky tonight. I’m not liking anyone too much, really.

More crankiness after the break, and two Idol Moments?

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