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Mythbusters Are Coming!
For those who are unaware, the Mythbusters, specifically Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, are coming to Salt Lake City tonight to perform a live show to a sold-out audience. I was among those fortunate enough to get tickets. As a result, I was also fortunate(?) to be interviewed by The Daily Utah Chronicle regarding the show. It’s not just me in the article so I thought that it would be good to share with you, our regular readers.
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are best known for hosting the hit television show “Mythbusters.” They will bring the same theatrical stunts and experiments to Kingsbury Hall for a sold-out live performance tonight.
“This performance will capture the spirit of everything that the Mythbusters do,” said Bruce Grantham, marketing officer for Magicspace Entertainment.
This is the duo’s second trip to Salt Lake City, when they also spoke in front of a sold-out crowd. For previous tours, “Mythbusters Live” was in a lecture format, but this year’s tour has live demonstrations and audience participation.
The night will feature special effects, music and a Q-and-A session after the show, Grantham said. He said he did not want to reveal specifics because “the surprise is the exciting part.”
“ ‘Mythbusters’ appeals to me because of the scientific aspect,” said Jeremiah Zohner, a Davis County resident. “I also like to see stuff blow up — it’s good entertainment.”
Zohner said he has been watching “Mythbusters” since the first season, but has never seen the Mythbusters during a live performance and wants to see how Hyneman acts off camera. He would be thrilled to get picked to participate, he said.
The tour began Friday and is working its way across the country. After the performance in Salt Lake City, the duo will move to Arizona, then California.
The performance takes place at Kingsbury Hall at 7:30 p.m.
You Have Options
We’ve all experienced it. You go to a webpage and it fails to load. You check another site which also fails to load. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting, you come to the conclusion that the internet is down. What do you do? Well, thanks to the folks over at Geeks are Sexy, we now know how to fill the void in our lives until our ISP gets their crap together and restores our connection to the World Wide Web.
Steve Jobs 1955-2011
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
Netflix Must Hate Their Shareholders
Yesterday, Reed Hastings, the co-founder and CEO of Netflix sent an apology to all those Netflix subscribers that have been pissed off and alienated over the past few months. I actually thought that it would be good but it turned out to be “We screwed up… blah blah blah… pricing structure… blah blah blah… we’re splitting our company… blah blah blah… we really aren’t sorry.” OK. So I paraphrased a bit, but that’s the jist of it. All it seemed to do is make those who chose to keep paying for the service angry and those who left, even more satisfied with their decision to leave.
I thought about posting the whole “apology” but then I found this which sums it up nicely.
Are you still riding the Netflix bandwagon? Will you make the jump to Qwikster?
We Survived The Alpocalypse
And when I say “we”, I’m referring to Stark, myself, and all those in attendance on Monday night when Weird Al Yankovic made his triumphant return to Salt lake City as his Alpocalypse tour rolled into town. I’ve been a fan of his for nearly 30 years so there was little chance that I was going to miss this concert..
The last time Al came to town, my wife and I had great seats on the fifth row. Since we decided that it would be a good idea to take three of our kids with us this time, I wanted to make sure that their first concert experience was beyond awesome so I got us some sweet seats on the third row. I guess it could have been better if we were on the first row, but not by much. The seats were pretty amazing and everyone, myself included, loved the show.
The song selection was incredible. It was the perfect mix of old and new and I couldn’t have been happier to get to hear Frank’s 2000″ TV and a bunch of stuff from the 1980′s performed live. (Frank’s 2000″ TV is one of my favorite songs ever. Just imagine having a 166′ television screen!)
I was also very happy that certain songs were not performed. It’s not that I don’t like them, I’d just
much rather see songs like I Want A New Duck and Amish Paradise being performed as opposed to Let Me Be Your Hog. It isn’t a bad song, it’s just not necessary unless you have 30 seconds of time to fill. Also, my seven-year-old son was thrilled when he heard Theme From Rocky XIII. (I don’t think that he knew the Weird Al version, but he is a huge fan of the Survivor version thanks to Guitar Hero.)
For those who missed the concert, here is a list of the awesomeness of which you were not able to partake:
- Polka Face
- Frank’s 2000″ TV
- TMZ
- Smells Like Nirvana
- Skipper Dan
- Party In The CIA
- CNR
- Canadian Idiot
- Wanna B Ur Lovr
- Medley: Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies/Another Tattoo/Ebay/I Want A New Duck/Theme From Rocky XIII/Spam/Ode To A Superhero/Lasagna/Eat It
- Amish Paradise
- Perform This Way
- White And Nerdy
- Fat
- The Saga Begins
- Yoda
In addition to the live performances, those not in attendance also missed out on some highly educational films that taught me that the human brain needs 20 hours of sleep a day and that the only way to cure a brain freeze caused by ice cream is by setting yourself on fire. (Don’t eat ice cream!) I also learned that some people think that dirt is just dried mud and that it will become mud again if you get it wet. (THE FOOLS!) Some of these same people are also under the assumption that ice is just frozen water…
During the show I had two pretty cool experiences. As usual, Al decided to come out into the audience. He happened to come off of the stage right in front of me and start singing to people in the crowd. Had I chosen to, I could have reached out and touched him but since I wanted evidence of my proximity to him, I decided to take a picture instead. The image you see here is that evidence. The guy was close! I always love it when a performer interacts with their audience.
The second cool experience that I had also involved Al and my camera. As he was performing the last song of the evening, he seemed to stare right at me as I was taking pictures. It was almost as if he was posing for my camera. Of course, in a venue full of thousands of people, anybody could think that, but I could swear that he posed for me. I initially kept these thoughts to myself but after the show another concert goer (Stark’s brother who was two rows behind me) made a comment about how Al posed so I could take a picture of him. I wasn’t crazy! Well, probably not anyways. I had witnesses claiming that he posed so I could take his picture. (The photo I’m referring to is at the beginning of this post. Judge for yourself.) Whether he did or did not actually pose really doesn’t matter much but I did get an amazing picture nonetheless.
All in all, I took around 140 pictures throughout the show. Unfortunately, the white balance on my phone was a bit off so most of them are of a faceless Weird Al Yankovic. (They make him look like he moonlights as The Question.) I did manage to get some good pictures though. Here are a few of them. I hear that if you listen to his music while looking at the images, it’s almost like you are there. Nah. I’m just playing with you. There’s no experience in the world like being at a Weird Al concert. And since my kids are still talking about it three days later, I’m sure that they would agree.
