Andy Gapin

Last night’s show was a little mellow, but I think it had a really good flow. I also think it was the first show since I started doing only a single hour that I missed having a two hour slot. There was still a lot of music left that I wanted to play. Maybe when Fall comes along, I’ll see about going back to two hours.

And if anyone listens to the show, or 90.3 The Core at all, there’s a new 128k stereo webstream up. It sounds great!

Source: 90.3 The Core

We missed the opening bands–I kind of wanted to see The Rosebuds too, but it didn’t happen–and got there in time to walk around the venue a bit and then grab a spot to watch from. The spot was a bit further back than I was hoping for, but we did get there pretty late so I wasn’t going to complain. I’d never been to Terminal 5 before, but I liked it. It seems like it’s in a weird location compared to where all of the other venues in NYC are, but it’s easy to get to. It’s a little bit of a bigger venue, with multiple levels, but you can’t really see much from the upper levels unless you’re up against the railing.

She And Him came out and Zooey looked absolutely beautiful. I mean, come on, I’m a bit biased here, but she looked great. More importantly though, her voice sounded amazing and M Ward and the touring band played extremely well. Everything sound very tight and right on.

They pretty much played everything from Volume One and didn’t leave much left for an encore so they came out with some new stuff for it. I really can’t complain about the set at all since they didn’t leave anything unplayed, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t really hoping for “Baby It’s Cold Outside”…even though it was the end of July and pretty hot out.

Here’s the trailer for Return To Sleepaway Camp which will be released on DVD this Fall. Sleepaway Camp is one of my favorite horror series so I’m really hoping that this doesn’t suck, but the trailer isn’t selling it. While the death scenes look pretty good, they don’t seem like they’re very imaginative. From the trailer alone, it doesn’t seem like Angela is going to be in this one which kind of sucks.

Source: Bloody-Disgusting

Last night’s playlist! Not a bad radio show. I got to fit in most of the music that I wanted to play.

Source: 90.3 The Core

This is the video for The Gaslight Anthem’s The ’59 Sound, the first single and title track off of the new album. It’s a simple concept, but with very high video quality for a band their size. Good stuff.

Thanks to the guys at The Syn for the link!

Wow. Just wow.

This movie could not have been done any better and it just proves that Christopher Nolan is seriously not messing around with Batman. Not that he did with Batman Begins either, but this was just…wow.

Just like in Batman Begins, Christian Bale plays Batman as a serious badass. I think he is absolutely great for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. But the real amazingness this time around came from Heath Ledger. When I first heard that he was going to be playing the Joker, I was really disappointed in the casting choice, but I can’t remember the last time that I’ve been more wrong about anything. Ledger seemed incredibly natural as the Joker and did the character exactly one metric crapton of justice.

Going into the movie, I had kept myself as shielded as possible from any information about it. I refused to watch any released footage of the movie that I could avoid. So I really didn’t think that they were going to go into the whole Two-Face thing. When Harvey appeared on the screen for the first time, I assumed they were going to develop him as Harvey for this movie and then save Two-Face for another movie. Boy was I wrong! I really liked the way they did it too. He was a bit different than the comics, but I think it worked really well and fit with the story and theme.

At two and a half hours, The Dark Knight isn’t a short movie at all, but I didn’t look at the time once. I felt completely entertained and engulfed in the story the entire time. And I get bored easily.

A+

From shirt.woot.com…

Pretty good show last night. I was feeling it, at least. I was really happy with the mix of music that I got to play and getting to talk about Our Band Could Be Your Life is always great

Source: 90.3 The Core

I don’t particularly like paying just under $4 a gallon for gas. In fact, I downright hate how much extra it costs for a tank of gas these days. And it’s putting a hurting on how often I’m willing to make the trip to see my family or my friends from home. But I refuse to really get upset over gas prices. I’m not made of money and with my student loan payments, money can get pretty tight for me sometimes, but in the general scheme of things, the cost of oil going up is probably one of the best things that can happen to humans and this planet.
Sure, there are things that really suck about it. The CEOs and shareholders of the oil companies are raking in the cash at our expense and posting record profits. The cost of food and pretty much every other product and service on the planet is rising way faster than normal inflation would cause since oil is either part of the production process or because it’s necessary for transporting it. And then there’s the fact that there’s no real reason why oil prices should be this high and it’s all speculation. These are the things that bother me about the oil prices, but it ends there.

According to USA Today, between November of last year and April of this year, Americans drove 22 billion miles less than they did the previous year. That’s a lot. And that’s a lot less pollution. I’ve gotten pretty sick of reading about global warming at this point. Yeah, it’s happening, but there isn’t really much we can do at the moment to slow it down since the technology isn’t there yet to give us proper alternatives. Global warming isn’t really much motivation for the average person to change the way they live since the affects don’t happen immediately. Gas prices, on the other hand, are a lot of motivation though. This is something that affects us all on a daily basis and is great motivation for everyone to cut down on driving. Obviously, it’s been working. This alone isn’t going to stop global warming, but it’s a trend that’s heading in a good direction.

So that’s great on the short term, but on the long term, if oil prices stay high–and even rise more–things are looking even better.

I have a lot of technology sites in my RSS reader and beyond articles just talking about oil prices directly, I’ve seen a huge change over the last six months or so. There are a ton more articles about alternative fuel and energy sources and hybrid vehicles now. Fuel cell, hydrogen, more efficient solar, wind, and all kinds of other crazy ideas. It’s insane how many there are. And most of the sites are news sites so they’re just reporting on things that are actually happening. It may be a fad right now because of the oil prices, but there is a ridiculous amount of interest in creating better energy sources right now. This is great and if oil prices keep rising this fad will continue. Hopefully, it will continue long enough for some of these technologies to really develop and make it down to the consumer. Once we start getting our hands on cleaner, more efficient energy, I don’t think there will be any going back.

But as great as the positive side of oil prices is, Bush doesn’t care. He wants to open up the US coast for oil drilling. Even his father was against this! And his own administration has admitted that lifting the ban on offshore drilling will neither help gas prices in the short term nor have any real long term effects. And of course he wouldn’t be George W. Bush if he didn’t blame the gas prices on the Democrats in Congress. If anyone is to blame, it’s greedy people within the oil industry that he and his administration support, but since when has Bush been one to accept blame for something and not just pass it off on others.

Now cue people hating me in the comments below!

UPDATE: I just saw that Ferrari looking to have a hybrid on the market by 2015. That’s serious.

UPDATE 2: Check out this article in Time.

You guys are going to hate me soon, but here are a couple more pictures of Leela!