Friday, October 15, 2010
What's on the screen?
Our television has been on at least 7 times in the past 3 months. The summer season never has new shows, but it's October and I have not been attracted to anything. I like Glee but all the great performances are on YouTube. I watch YouTube a lot. That includes Hulu and Vimeo and iTunes (College), the internet makes the best of television available by searching. This week I discovered the LipDub videos from colleges around the world. The format is interesting: a horde of students perform a continuous (one uninterrupted stream!) interpretation of a popular song on the campus of their college. Of course it's cute and corny, but the best presentations seem spontaneous, involve many individual personalities, and everyone has tons of fun. Where is the fun on television?
Monday, October 11, 2010
How could Drag Week be better?
Drag Week is a tour of dragstrips organized by Hot Rod Magazine and sponsored by vendors of high-performance car parts. In September 2010 the tour started at National Trail Raceway in Hebron, Indiana with over 100 cars in various competition categories. Each day of the week, drivers raced the quarter-mile dragstrip, handed in the best time result, and drove the racecar about 300 miles on a designated route, mostly following two-lane US highways, to the next track, from Ohio to Indiana to Michigan to Pennsylvania and back to Ohio.
I was driving alone in the Cookie Monster Charger. Navigating was a challenge, but the directions in 2010 were easier to follow than last year, maybe the attached map helped. I had a GPS map on a laptop computer in the car last year, but it was more confusing to me than an AAA map that was my backup help. I liked all cars leaving about the same time. I was usually in a pack of 3-5 cars that I could see ahead or behind me, although the group changed when I stopped every couple hours, for gas or food or to walk around the charming small towns on the route. So that helped me navigate. Of course the tour would have been more pleasant if the car were quieter, but, that's not an issue. It might have been more pleasant with a passenger, but, that's not an issue. I always felt that I was in great company the whole week.
Constructive changes? Not in my imagination. Every element (extreme-performance-street-cars, the brotherhood of great drivers, supportive magazine staff and sponsors, enthusiastic photo & video guys, world-class dragstrip tracks & staff, and long summer evenings cruising US highways) was magnificent!
I was driving alone in the Cookie Monster Charger. Navigating was a challenge, but the directions in 2010 were easier to follow than last year, maybe the attached map helped. I had a GPS map on a laptop computer in the car last year, but it was more confusing to me than an AAA map that was my backup help. I liked all cars leaving about the same time. I was usually in a pack of 3-5 cars that I could see ahead or behind me, although the group changed when I stopped every couple hours, for gas or food or to walk around the charming small towns on the route. So that helped me navigate. Of course the tour would have been more pleasant if the car were quieter, but, that's not an issue. It might have been more pleasant with a passenger, but, that's not an issue. I always felt that I was in great company the whole week.
Constructive changes? Not in my imagination. Every element (extreme-performance-street-cars, the brotherhood of great drivers, supportive magazine staff and sponsors, enthusiastic photo & video guys, world-class dragstrip tracks & staff, and long summer evenings cruising US highways) was magnificent!
