strum those strings granpa

i went back and re-read a few chapters of 'neuromancer' by william gibson yesterday. when i first read it i had mixed reactions. gibson's need to be cutting edge seemed to get in the way of the creative muse occasionally - or at least it seemed that way to me back then. i've since read 'count zero' and 'pattern recognition' and i can see that it's just gibson's mind at work. i can imagine him to be the kind of guy who talks in a stream of consciousness mode, constantly switching topics and rhythms in a stacatto nasal tone. pattern recognition was a let-down. my first reaction was "he's lost it". gibson seemed to be groping in the dark to catch up with the internet and online communities. the central theme of the book, an online bulletin board where footage-heads post messages is quite lame. in a way it's pretty funny - the man who coined the word cyberspace and whose description of a wired world excited geeks and technologists alike in the 80's hasn't grasped what's out there right now. someone load up a copy of napster on the man's machine. i'm sure he'll get a mini-series out of that! lance olsen has a pretty good piece about gibson.


a bunch of us went to see thin lizzie, joe satriani and deep purple at the white river amphitheater yesterday (why would anyone build a concert venue in auburn? there're more cows there than rockers). the show was great but the audience mostly consisted of forty-somethings with beer guts, long stringy hair and harley davidson t-shirts jerking sporadically in tune with the music. occasional drunken shouts of "yeah baby, it's rocking" threatened to tear a hole in the time-space continuum and take us right back to the 70's. joe satriani - the man is a genius. there's no way anyone can make their fingers move that fast. this man was actually doing that and making a musical instrument (sorry meatloaf) "play notes that i had never even heard before". he was absolutely brilliant. the deep purple folks should rename themselves 'preserved by cryogenics'. there's no way that someone that old can play a musical instrument.


i watched 'true colors' (john cusack) a few days ago. easy to watch movie, slightly prep-school and with corny music. oh why oh why oh why did i have to miss the harold and kumar movie? big studio heads, if you ever do read this, please put it on dvd. please, please.


it started out to be a warm sunny day but it's clouding over and weakening my resolve to go biking today. the burke-gilman trail gets windy, cold and terribly unappetizing on days like this. so instead i think i'll give mt.si another go. the last time around they were renovating the lower 2 miles of the trail, hopefully they're done with that. thank god for the ipod mini and wind-proof jackets.