Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Global Warming, Vacations Pics, and Letters from Iwo Jima

Published
by
Aaron
on January 6, 2007
in In the News, Movies, NYC, Personal, Photos, WTF? and Weather
. 0 Comments

Blizzard in Jerusalem, frosting in San Francisco Oakland, 68 degrees in New York (see today)? What’s the world coming to! Well, MSNBC says El Niño and the jet stream, but I have to say that I think Mr. Gore was right on the ball with this one. I mean, when New York breaks a record for longest period of time without snow (the previous was in 1877, in which it didn’t snow that season until January 5th or 4th), I think that this is more than just a natural cycle.

Speaking of crazy weather, my pictures from super-cold Paris (see the last week of December) are up on Flickr and are all geotagged, too.

Also, today I just saw Letters from Iwo Jima. The film, which corresponds to Clint Eastwood’s other film about Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, is about the the famed battle from the Japanese perspective. It is very powerful and well done, and worthy of Best Picture (though it’ll never get it, as Clint Eastwood already has at least two), even though it is Japanese with English subtitles (which actually adds to the emotion and realism). It’s controversy makes it very interesting to watch (it doesn’t portray the Japanese as saints, but they’re not demonic either) and more intriguing than Flags of Our Fathers, which I still want to see.

A night matinee at the Opera

Published
by
Aaron
on January 1, 2007
in Music and Personal
. 0 Comments

The opera isn’t exactly the most popular place for kids these days, But, in an attempt to attract more young viewers, The Metropolitan Opera in New York opened a 100-minute, all-English abridged version of Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Now, I used to be a little obsessed with The Magic Flute as a yound child. My grandfather loves opera, so I guess a little bit of his influence rubbed off on me when I started to watch the movie version of The Magic Flute incessantly when I was little. For those of you that don’t know, The Magic Flute is an opera written by Mozart towards the end of his life, which describes the journey of Prince Tamino to rescue his love, Pamina, and pass a set of trials and tribulations to do so, with the help of his friend, the bird catcher Papageno. It’s the perfect opera for kids, so naturally my parents decided to take me to a production of it at the Met when I was 7. I loved it, even though it was a) almost 4 hours long, and b) in German. But, for most kids, those things wouldn’t fly well. So that’s why this holiday season, the Met adapted Julie Taymor’s 2004 (and still running) production of The Magic Flute to a 100-minute, all-English abridged version for children.

I saw the production today. It was very well done, even though I sort of missed the original German in some of the songs. But, it featured the same set and cast from the normal version of the production, including the amazing puppetry. It seemed like a pretty good step in the Met’s attempt to reach out and get new members of their literally dying off audience. Another part of this plan was broadcasting that same production of The Magic Flute to over 100 theaters in the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Norway in high-definition and surround sound. The Met has plans to broadcast several more operas this season just like that, from now until April. This ties into an existing program where Met performances are broadcasted live on SIRIUS satellite radio (which I just got, and it’s sweet), and certain content is available on live webcasts online.

Overall, I think it’s great that the Met is trying to re-attract people to opera. I think that classical music is too under-appreciated in today’s pop-dominated world. People forget that it was Western music that first used standard musical notation, which is now used in virtually all types of music. Of course, it could also be a generational thing. My grandparents were the children of Jewish Eastern European immigrants, who experienced anti-Semitism, pogroms, and persecution long before the Holocaust. To them, opera, or even Western Art Music (the proper term for all kinds of “classical music”) in general represented in Europe a sort of identity with rich, secular Western Europe, and in the United States a way to be like the rich, WASP-y upper-class Americans; to feel assimilated into society. Today, their descendants (such as myself) have already assimilated into American society. We no longer need the music of upper-class America to feel included; we listen to the music of the country itself — rock and roll, pop, hip-hop, etc. But, I still firmly believe that all kinds of music should be excepted, or at least considered, by people, whether it be the Black Eyed Peas or Beethoven.

My Home Studio

Published
by
Aaron
on December 24, 2006
in Personal and Podcasting
. 0 Comments

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What does the home studio of The Teen Tech Buzz look like? Well, I’ve created a Flickr set of photos of my desk/bedroom/home studio so you can see exactly where and how The Teen Tech Buzz is made.

Zune Unboxing Pics

Published
by
Aaron
on December 22, 2006
in Personal, Podcasting and Technology
. 0 Comments

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Check out the unboxing pics of the Zune review unit I got for my podcast!

WWDC and Vacation

Published
by
Aaron
on August 9, 2006
in Apple, Personal and Uncategorized
. 4 Comments

Hey guys, sorry for not posting in a while, it’s just that I’m currently on vacation now. I was in London from the 28th to theis past Saturday, and I’m currently in Rome and will stay here until Friday, and then I’ll be in Italy’s Amalfi Coast until the 17th. London was great but I’ve already been there before, but Rome is just amazing, especially me being the history buff I am. More on my vacation to come later.

As for WWDC, which I hope most of you have been following, I have a bunch of things to say:

Mac Pro - Awesome, great that Apple finally breaks 3GHz, but way out of my price range.

Xserve - Coll wuith Intel, but server products are of no interest to me.

Leopard - Soooooooooooooooooo cool. Number one favorite features: Time Machine (similar to Windoze XP’s System Restore, love Time Machine’s interface), Mail 3.0 (Notes and RSS), Spaces (liek Virtual Desktops on Linux and a program tahyt does Virtual Desktop for OS X), and new iChat (screen sharing and cool backgrounds).

For more detailed coverage, read the posts by my colleagues at MacUser, at http://www.macuser.com

My Best Friend from Iraq

Published
by
Aaron
on April 16, 2006
in Personal and Politics
. 4 Comments

Right now, most Americans are either afraid or angry at Iraqis, especially the Sunnis. But there was a time not so long ago when relations with Iraq and Iraqis weren’t as heated as they are now. Back in that time, I myself was friendly with an Iraqi boy. Little did I know exactly who that boy was, or what his family did. Now that I have come to realize the significance of our friendship, I hope to share it with you. Here’s the story:

It all started back when I was in 2nd grade in 1999. I was new to my school, which I had come to after moving from the New Jersey suburbs into New York City. Obviously, I was a little nervous about a new school with new people. But soon a met a boy, who for security reasons I will solely identify as T, who shared my love of Pokémon. We started to talk and hang out, and got to know each other quite well. T seemed like your average 7 year old boy, he liked to run around and play, he liked Pokémon cards (which were popular at the time), and enjoyed Lunchables, putrid child pre-made meals made out of everything you don’t want to know about. Though, there was one strange thing about T, he drove to school and home every day in a limousine. My parents just assumed that his father owned a car service. Boy, were they in for a shock.

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Continue reading ‘My Best Friend from Iraq’

Indecision 5766: Return of the Bee

Published
by
Aaron
on March 31, 2006
in Humor and Personal
. 1 Comment

As you probably already know from my previous posts, I am a big fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Lats night, while watching a recorded episode of Wednesday night’s show, I saw a segment about the recent Israeli Knesset (the Israeli equivalent of Congress) elections. Jon Stewart’s monologue at the beginning was great, but then comes a big surprise. When he introduces his "Senior Israeli Bureau Chief," instead of being Rob Corddry or Ed Helms, it’s Samantha Bee! Samantha Bee, who is the only female correspondent on The Daily Show, spent the past two to three months on maternity leave with her newborn baby. I always liked Bee’s segments and thought she, like the other Daily Show correspondents, had great wit and a sense of humor. Bee did a very good job in her first segment (besides an audio-only one of her about a month ago) with some good lines, like when she is describing which parties got seats in the Knesset ("Lefkowitz, party of four"). Jason Jones, her husband and also a Daily Show "correspondent" did some humorous coverage of Hamas’ reaction to the Israeli elections ("Hamas would not be very happy with the Israeli elections if Israel were a country, which it’s not"). Overall, this was a very nice way to usher back in one of the wittiest people on The Daily Show.

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Daily Show Part IV: Caught

Published
by
Aaron
on March 16, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

It is a sad, sad day. Actually that was Monday, but it’s still sad. If you read my previous post, you know that I tried but failed to get a fake ID for The Daily Show. That was really bad, because we went down to The Daily Show studio, and the door people ask us for an ID for my age. Of course, we have none. My dad tried queitly bribing them, yet still no hope. Eventually we just left. That was just heartbreaking. There still is one last hope; one of my dad’s friends/collegues has a student who works for The Colbert Report. He may be able to get us into The Daily Show, or at least The Colbert Report. Let’s hope. But if your Jon Stewart or one of the door people, I really really really want to go and I know I’m only 14 but I’ve watched it on TV and my parents allow me to see the sexual content and curses, so PLEASE let me go.

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The Nutritional Benefits of Dog Food

Published
by
Aaron
on March 12, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

On Friday night, we had one of my dad’s friends and her son over for dinner. We talked about politics, technology, and "stuff." Somehow, I ended up telling a story about how in Zitomars, a clothing/make-up store and pharmacy in the Upper East Side, I was bored and found myself looking at the dog food aisle. Don’t ask me why, but when I looked at the ingrediants for some dog biscuits, I noticed that they contained some very healthy ingrediants including all-natural and organic chicken, beef, begatables, and fish. That got me thinking on how it would be cool if they made biscuits like that for people. I mean, think about it. You’ve got all of these healthy, nutritious ingrediants all in one little, tasty package. Yum! And they could also be good for children in poverty who can’t afford whole chickens, steaks, fish, etc., but they can instead get all of these foods from a biscuits. Wow, I gues great ideas really can come from strange places.

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The Daily Show Part III: Quest for a Fake ID

Published
by
Aaron
on March 12, 2006
in Humor, NYC and Personal
. 1 Comment

If you’ve seen my previous Daily Show posts, you know that I got screwed there because we came too late and weren’t far enough up in the line to get in. But what I didn’t tell you was that you need to be at least 18 to get in, which I’m not. We now have VIP tickets to a Daily Show taping, which guarantees us entry, but they’ll turn us down if they catch me as being 14. So, after a tip from a friend, my dad and I headed downtown to near NYU to pick up an item that college students love dearly, the fake ID.

We arrived at the tattoo shop that we were instructed to go to. It fit the description perfectly: small, scuzzy, and it had a back room that employees were constantly going in and out of. We walked in to the shop waited on line with several other people. While we were waiting, I obsrved my surroundings, which consisted of jewlrey, some fetish, and a man playing a game on his Treo while waiting to be tatooed, and most likely infected based on the look and feel of the store. After a minute or two, a man came to the counter and started taking orders for tatoos. When he asked my dad, he answered, loudly enough so that the whole store could here (which, to be fair, isn’t too hard) that he needed a fake ID for me his 14 year old son. The man started repeating things such as "ID, ID, what’s an ID? I don’t understand." After my dad clarified, the man insisted that he didn’t sell anythiing of the sort. After my dad giving the man a look, we left the store.

At first I was a bit puzzled at why they didn’t tell us they sold IDs, which they obviously did. But then it hit me: they thought my dad was a cop. My dad, a cop, NYPD, undercover, a narc. Just the thought made me bend over with laughter. I mean, come on, when my sister heard this whole story even she blurted out "Daddy’s too old to be an undercover cop!" True, but apparently the tattoo store guy didn’t want to take any chances.

Anyway, after that we went to another tattoo store across the street, and a couple down Christopher Street, yet to no avail. This closest we ever got to a confession to the existence of the fake IDs was at a store on Christopher Street when the man there, after saying "You know, that’s [buying fake IDs] illegal," told us that you could try the East Village, which was far too long a trek from Christopher Street right next to the Hudson River.

So, alas, the day ended with no fake IDs. Hopefully The Daily Show won’t catch us, but just in case my dad’s bringing $100 of bribery money.

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