I was able to catch Sufjan Stevens in San Francisco yesterday.  I have to admit I was disappointed to not hear anything from "Michigan: The Great Lakes State".  Rather the entire night was devoted to his just released album about Illinois.

It's difficult to explain what Sufjan Stevens is all about.  I was standing next to some french tourists at the show and I realized that an indie rock show where every song is about how wonderful middle america is doesn't translate well.  The music isn't ironic, but it isn't all that literal either.

The strangest part of the night was seeing someone that looked exactly like me.  Or not just looked, but also had some specific mannerisms that thoroughly creeped out my girlfriend as well as myself in their familiarity.  The only difference was that my doppelganger was about 3 years younger than I am.  It is sort of like an out of body experience to see someone that looks exactly like you.

This is getting progressively more esoteric, but what's the deal with Sufjan Steven's weird time signatures?  I really like it, but I can't think of any other band that makes as liberal use of 5/4, 9/8 etc.

thing #1

I saw "Me and You and Everyone We Know" over the weekend.  Indie movie, film festivals, blah blah blah.  Anyway it was yet another recent movie where there are extended instant messaging/chatting sequences.  This plot device appears to be spreading.  I have mixed feelings about this.

Let me be the first to say this: When I see a movie that has an extended sequence of a person "blogging" I am going to barf all over the place. Seriously.

thing #2 (not at all related to thing #1)

I bought Half Life 2 last weekend and finished it late last night.  It was really good.  The original Half Life was one of the more engrossing games I have ever played, and I would say this was a worthy sequel.

I can't help but think about all of the man hours that went into making the game as I play it.  As a software person I imagine  spending hours and hours on models and maps and performance tuning.

I get a kick out of speed runs. (Video recordings of a person beating a game in the lowest amount of time possible) It's a pretty gross perversion of what a game is supposed to be about.  Instead of trying to have fun and explore the nooks and crannies, you are watching someone find any dirty trick they can to get through it.

This is a pretty cool site for speed demos: http://speeddemosarchive.com/GameList.html it has demos of both Half-Life and Half-Life 2.