Chicago Hog’s Neighborhood

Har Mar Superstar - Game Night Har Mar Superstar Tour Dates 11/08/09 Aquarium* Fargo, ND 11/09/09 Waiting Room* Omaha, NE 11/11/09 Brick Kansas City, MO 11/29/09 Oxford O2 Academy 3, UK 11/30/09 Relentless Garage London 12/01/09 Thekla Bristol, UK 12/02/09 Wedgewood Portsmouth, UK 12/03/09 Cabaret Voltaire Edinburgh 12/04/09 Bodega Nottingham, UK 12/05/09 Brickyard Carlisle, UK 12/06/09 King Tut’s Wah Wah Glasgow 12/07/09 Ruby Lounge Manchester, UK 12/08/09 Plug Sheffield, UK 12/09/09 Academy 2 Dublin, Ireland 12/10/09 Stiff Kitten Belfast, Ireland 12/12/09 Concorde 2 Brighton, UK 12/13/09 Barfly Cardiff, UK * with Bang Bang Eche Read More Har Mar Superstar http://weheartmus... Har Mar Mall - I mean Superstar - is back, after five years of absent since 2004's The Handler......

Parking in the college area known as "Dinkytown" in Minneapolis can be kind of hard, especially when the meters on 4^th Street runs until 10pm. I didn't mind walking a few blocks to the beautiful Varsity Theater as the weather was nothing less than perfect that Friday evening.

Opening up for Har Mar Superstar are three very different genre and acts. Starting with Koo Koo Kangeroo (official / myspace), whose music styling is that of hip hop - for toddlers. Their songs are dead simple, like "AOA" (sample lyrics: "aye oh aye oh aye") and "Cheh Cheh Chi" and "LMNOP", but they're catchy and easy to sing along. The highlight of their set was when they threw down a white tarp-like covering and the audience was dancing under it like a party fort.

Wow, Bang Bang Eche (myspace) are young. Someone told me that they're about 18 years old, but they certainly look much younger. Their music is very punk high-energy and reminds me a bit of Arctic Monkeys influenced. My easily favorite song from their set is "Fist Full of Dollars", perhaps a reference to Sergio Leone classic film? They ended their setlist with "Die Hippy Scum". Oh, also, it's worth noting that bassist T'Nealle sported a three keyboard cat moon t-shirt. Adorable.

The odd group on the bill was two-person group, Lookbook (myspace). The band is basically guitarist Grant Cutler, who plays guitars and handles the pre-recordings, with vocalist Maggie Morrison. Their music sounds like 80s pop, not exactly the "body-moving" type of music that you'd think Har Mar's audience would demand. Not really much to say, except I think Maggie looks really cute and I will be talking about them in further detail on my "book"-theme news on Sunday.

Har Mar Superstar ♥ Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (11/06/09)

Compared to the last time I saw Har Mar Superstar, which was basically a man and his undies and boombox - he now has a full band, all dressed in white with a red cross on the back. Also, the last time I saw him, he basically stripped down after the first few songs - this time, he started off very heavily dressed with an African cover, hat, etc.

After the first song, he took off his hat. After "DUI", he took off the overall to reveal a Prince "Purple Rain" shirt. He kept taking off articles of clothing as the night went on. From "EZ Pass", to "Girls Only", to "Creative Juices"... the audience was loving it all.

Har Mar and Melinda Park singing "Powerline"

By the time "Brothers & Sisters" was played, he inevitably took off his shirt. The pants disappeared with "Apple Sauce", followed by "Turn it Around". The finale song was "Tall Boy", which Zach, from Bang Bang, and some woman called Melinda Park (or was it Mindy Park?) joined on stage to help sing the song. Park would later turn up again to help sing one of the encore, "Powerline".

The very last song, Har Mar sang an a cappella version of Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday". He would pretend the song ended and everyone would clap... only he would continue to sing the refrain. After the third false ending and after he said "goodnight", he came back and sang some more.

Har Mar's latest album is Dark Touches, available from Dilettante Recordings. Read Andrew's review of the album, pick up a copy at amazon

 11/07/2009 04:22:06 ♥ vu () ♥ harmarsuperstar.com ♥ myspace.com/harmarsuperstar ♥ twitter.com 

I don't see the point of categories and tags. How am I supposed to define a post?

In all the posts I've done on the Wordpress platform, I've never ever used a single tag. On Vox, my tags are just set to "mobile" and "post", because of the way I crosspost things. I've never really sorted them out, but I know I should someday, as Vox doesn't really allow me to organise my posts in any other way. But when Wordpress already has categories, what is the point of having tags as well?

Sadly, I never know what category anything I blog fits into, nor do I know what to name these categories. What I do know is that I hate "Uncategorized" with a passion. At the moment, I'm sticking everything in my "NaBloPoMo" category to save myself from this horror. But how do I categorise what I write? Does a certain paragraph make it fit into my "Nostalgia" category, or does a word make it fit into "Random"?

What I do know is that I need to get better category names.

I think categories and tags are great for some blogs that write about certain themes (technology, for example), but when I just write whatever comes into my head at the time, it's difficult to organise my blog posts into topics.

Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.

I have so many ideas in my head. Grand pictures with beautiful scenery, website layouts that are perfect in every way, songs with lyrics that are actually relevant to my life, and perhaps even videos that people favourite thousands of times because they're just that awesome. Oh yeah.
The problem with this is:

• Art: I can't even hold a pencil properly, let alone draw a masterpiece. I wasn't blessed with the ability to see shadows and light, and could never shade appropriately in art lessons, making my art teachers bang their heads against the wall in frustration.


• Websites: I could probably make the website layout of my dreams if I was prodded really hard, but there's that laziness thing. It creeps up on me on the rare occasions I'm actually feeling quite motivated, and makes me give up before I can get into that "OMG! I NEED TO FINISH!" mode, which usually only happens around an hour before I have a project deadline. Things I do for fun don't have deadlines, therefore making me drop them like they're hot whenever I start to get a little bit tired.
  I know I have major issues when it comes to completing things - most of my posts on this website seem to be rants about how I'm not getting anything done. Meh.


• Music: Song lyrics come to me easily (much like ironic poetry does), but my one attempt at a musical career was taking a Grade 1 violin exam many years ago (I passed, but never bothered to practice). I suck at theory; it takes me ages to read notes, and even then I'm not thinking in proper terms. For example:
  Me: "That's where I'd put 3 fingers on the A string! Oh yeah, it's D!"
  Other musicians: *facepalm*
  My singing voice is also of dubious quality, so I'm not even going to attempt that. I've watched the X Factor and American Idol. I've covered my ears and cringed for the contestants. What may sound good in my head doesn't neccessarily sound good in anyone else's.


• Videos: I have all the right equipment to make a kickass video, but I'm a n00b at editing, and too shy to rope other people into making them with me when I'm not sure how they're going to turn out in the end.

Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.

In the past few years, I've morphed from a Microsoft-lover to a fully-fledged iTard. How did this happen? Clever marketing? Good SEO? Growing annoyance with Microsoft?
This may seem a bit strange to you, but I actually blame Last.fm.

You see, back in April 2006, I joined Last.fm, mainly because my peers at the Rathergood forum were joining it, and I didn't want to feel left out... It's bad enough being a loner in real life, but being a loner on a social networking website? That's just sad.

I've never been a heavy listener of music, and I didn't listen to it on my computer at all, because it was just too slow. My computer was a crappy Windows XP desktop that I had bought in early 2004, but 256MB of RAM really isn't good enough when you have a hundred applications open at the same time. >.> But as time went by, I slowly began to love hearing music on my computer, despite its flaws.

Eventually, I thought, "Hey! If I don't want my music to stop because my computer keeps crashing, I should get an MP3 player!" *claps self* I have awesome logic.
When I was a little kid, I owned a portable cassette player, which soon got upgraded to a portable CD player when I broke the other one (I've broken a lot of gadgets; explained in more detail here). My younger self only listened to Madonna and Cliff Richard on repeat, and needed a portable CD player when they stopped releasing their songs on cassette.

And so, all was well in the Rammi world, until something dreadful happened. I dropped it. As I was changing Cliff Richard's Greatest Hits from 1994 to Madonna's Ray of Light, the CD player slipped out of my hand, and right into a puddle. Despite my best efforts - talking to it, hitting it, coaxing it to work - it was never the same again.
I remember crying for a week.

I got a replacement eventually, but that one soon stopped working. After that, I just gave up. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing, because it gave me a much needed break from Madge and Cliff.

When I joined Last.fm, my music taste was just as bad as it was when I was younger, but thankfully did not involve me vogueing down the road. I was just starting to get into this whole "scrobbling" business, and wanted every single song I listened to to show up on the website. Last.fm's website at the time told me that the only way you could scrobble was through your computer (duh) and an iPod!

I wasn't too impressed by iPods originally, because they didn't seem to be *that* special, when you compared them with other MP3 players... They didn't look like Hello Kitty or resemble something rude, they didn't come with pretty matching earphones, and they didn't have as much space as some of the other brands available.

Yes, I judge gadgets on appearance first, and then glance briefly at the specs. Shh.

But all my negative thoughts about the iPod disappeared when I saw that it could SCROBBLE. And so, I grabbed my money, ran off to the shop, and became the proud owner of a second generation silver iPod Nano. It went everywhere with me, and I dutifully plugged it into my computer every night just so it could scrobble what I had listened to earlier that day.

Soon, I realised I wanted more Apple items, and more Apple stickers to stick around my house. When the first generation iPod Touch was released the next year, it quickly became my next pet - to coddle, access websites with, dress up in pretty cases, and, most importantly,  jailbreak the hell out of the software. There's only so many times you can play Solitaire with the second generation Nano.

I sense that my beloved iPod was feeling jealous around the newer model surrounding it, because a few months after I had bought the iPod Touch, it kicked the bucket whilst I was listening to Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush... "Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away..." With lyrics like that, no wonder it croaked.

However, I still wasn't satisfied. After my iPod Touch came the iPhone 3G, because I had gotten sick of carrying around several devices when one could easily do the same job as them all. I promptly jailbroke my iPhone, dressed it up, used it to phone people and accessed the internet on the bus. Oh, and of course, I used it to scrobble all my music every day.

Later that year, my Windows desktop computer finally died. And with it, so did my music collection. After many years of using Windows, I guess I wanted a change. Looking around at my collection of Apple items, there seemed to be only one choice for my next computer...

See? Without Last.fm, I would never have been sucked into that abyss of font smoothing, rounded corners and shiny shiny things without interchangeable batteries. While my music taste hasn't improved much, my collection of gadgets with the Apple logo emblazoned on them has grown and grown.

And I have lots of stickers!

Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.

The Grates - Burn Bridges The Grates 1 comment  The Grates Setlist ♥ 7th Street Entry,  Minneapolis (11/03/09). Tour Dates 11/05/09 Radio Radio Indianapolis, IN 11/07/09 Schubas Chicago, IL 11/08/09 Magic Stick Detroit, MI 11/14/09 Bowery Ballroom NY 12/31/09 Purple Sneakers Sydney Read More the Grates http://weheartmus... Look at these guys, awww.... everything appearance-wise about The Grates oozes cuteness and fun (...

Patience in the Audience ♥ 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (11/03/09)

The Grates came on with full energy with their often-intro song "Trampoline". Yes, Patience does do that weird rabbit hopping dance, as seen on their Til Death Do Us Party: Live At The Forum DVD. Patience is now a blonde, dressed in a gymnastic outfit.... making her look even more child-like than ever. Which may sound quite weird to hear her talk about wanting a baby of her own (I thought to myself, well there's always cloning...)

Other things I learned from Patience: if you eat enough of your hair, you'll have to take a pill to poop out the hair. Hence "hair butt". Fist-bumping, she tells us is called "boning". She likes to climb onto things, or jump into the audience and singing... while using a twirling baton. Fun to watch, but they also require audience interaction.

"It was this big!"

I thought the highlight of their set was either "Howl" or "19-20-20". I'm not that familar with their new material, but I did recognize their single, "Burn Bridges", from the setlist.

If you are looking for a good time or see cuteness in action, check out Brisbane's export, The Grates touring through your area. They are quite approachable, so please have a friendly chat with them after the show. Their lastest album is called Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, which if you get it on vinyl, will come with a bonus CD. I might also suggest checking out their debut album, which four singles from that album made it onto Triple J Hottest 100. I'm sure Sally will keep us informed of the 2010's Hottest 100.

Bonus: Enjoy "Trampoline" from Til Death Do Us Party: Live At The Forum DVD

The Grates - Trampoline

 11/04/2009 04:57:32 ♥ vu () ♥ thegrates.com ♥ myspace.com/thegrates 

Ok. Loathes first:

I'm alone in my bed. (No cuddles for me.)
It's cold. And dark.
All the children in my life have Swine flu.
Some customers are just no fun at all.
Eric Cantor. He looks like a smug asshole. Maybe he isn't always that way, but every time they stick him on a TV screen, I want to spit on him. (That's how I really feel.)

Loves to end with:

It's fall and I will adjust to the cold and dark thing.
The shed's almost done, so I'll be painting soon. (This will probably become a loathe in a little bit, haha.)
I got some of my Christmas presents in the mail (I might have mentioned this already) and they are SUUUUPER cute. (Any etsy fans? Check out Down & Out Chic.)
I'm getting ready to curl up with Time Traveler's Wife. (I was going to start a few minutes ago...)

Things to look forward to:

Creating a packaging technique for the cute Christmas gifts I've received, since they all came in one box. (Time to get festive and creative... a bit early, I know.)
The weekend. I have off again on Saturday and I think I'm going to block off my morning for breakfast. I want baked oatmeal because it's delicious.

How old do you think children should be before they join social networks like Facebook and MySpace?

Just FYI, parental controls are bloody obvious. When you're on a public network or a work area, where your activity is monitored, you subconsciously don't visit the sites you normally visit at home, because you don't want your boss knowing what you do on Facebook. It's the same with parental controls. Children with parental controls installed on their computers will know not to go on the websites they normally go on at friends' houses, in case you might be watching.

If you don't think your tween/teen has had some form of persona on a social networking site already, then the chances are, you're wrong. Maybe they signed up at their friend's house, putting in a variety of fake details so they won't get caught by you; a fake name, a different picture, a relative's birthday. Your children are smarter than you give them credit for.

You see, an online life is just an extension of real life. Parties are planned, pictures are uploaded, and gossip is discussed on websites like Facebook. All too often a person without an account on one of these websites will be left out because people just forget; they assume that everyone is on the same website as they are. 12/13 year olds are no exception to this - they plan birthday parties, arrange meetings with friends and do the same things a college student would do, only possibly in a more innocent way. More and more young people are moving their social lives to the internet, and leaving others behind.

I started playing around on the internet when I was 8 or 9 without any parental supervision. My mother is computer-illiterate, and there weren't that many parental controls for the Windows 95 system, anyway. In all my time on the internet, I managed to learn the good and bad things for myself. I chatted to many people online, but if someone made me feel uncomfortable, I blocked and/or reported them.
If someone asked me personal questions like where I went to school or my address, it just seemed logical to ignore and block them. The one thing I was encouraged not to do was to upload pictures of myself online. I didn't have a webcam, there were no photos scanned in, and with the vast number of free avatars and display pictures available for free, why would I need a picture?
Without being encouraged to explore, I probably would never have learnt how my computer worked, how websites were created, and who I could and could not trust on the internet. I've developed ninja skillz from being left to my own devices. ^_^

The one thing that's different from my internet experience and the experiences of those using it now is the abundance of social networking websites, where people are encouraged to put down every single detail of their lives. But, to balance it out, younger people get much more education than I did when I first began using the internet. From an early age, young people are constantly being surrounded with tips and advice on how to stay safe on the web. Don't meet anyone you know online, never give out any personal information, never share any pictures of yourself... All the stuff that took me years to learn for myself.

Most of it boils down to common sense, really. >.> Anyone you're communicating on the internet with is basically a stranger, no matter how long you've talked to each other for. You don't know how they walk, talk, if they have any neuroses - all the things that would normally form your first impressions of someone.

Would anyone go off into a secluded park with some stranger they've met on a bus? No. It's not that much different with an online acquaintance. To stretch out this long metaphor, you're all on an online bus. If a random stranger you met on the other side of town offers to walk you home alone, well, you see where this is going...

If parents don't let their children become experienced in the online world, then they're going to have problems when they finally get a chance to experience it. As long as good judgement is taught from an early age, then parents shouldn't have any qualms about trusting their children to make the right decisions. After all, trust is what it all boils down to in the end; the earlier parents learn to trust their children online, the better.

Just think about it this way: an 8 year old needs help when they want to go somewhere. A 14 year old doesn't. It's easier to stop an 8 year old from meeting their online friend than it is a 14 year old.

Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.