Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Traces

    For Mother’s Day (a day early) we went to see Traces off Broadway.

    It was definitely a “wow” kind of show. There are two moments that go by in a flash in the video above. One of the best parts was an acrobatic dance with the one girl and the tallest guy. Freeze the video at the 2 second mark. She is standing on his hands with him lying down. He spins and somehow smoothly lifts her so he is holder her above him, still standing on his hands. He had absolutely no leverage to do that lift, but it looked effortless.

    Part of the same dance, freeze the video above at the 25 second mark. At this point the guy has been balancing her above him and then basically throws her up. She comes down head first behind him, grabbing his body to prevent her from landing head first on the floor and then she slides between his legs, again looking effortless. But she came about four inches from bashing her head.

    The whole thing was impressive and the kids loved it.

  • My First Gay Wedding

    We moved into our current apartment about 5 years ago. Our next door neighbors are a lesbian couple with a 13 year old son. They are very nice and he’s about the nicest kid you’ll meet (serious babysitting potential).

    I was saying to a friend the other day how interesting it is that my 9 year old daughter is growing up thinking that there’s nothing particularly unusual about this. When I was 9, I don’t think I knew what lesbian meant.

    Given that they have a 13 year old son, they’ve clearly been together a long time. New York recently made same sex marriage legal, so the other day they mention that they are getting married. It was kind of funny, the invitation sounded more like a regular party (“hey we’re getting married next Sunday, you should come over”). But in context, a wedding on Mother’s Day made perfect sense.

    The wedding was just across the hall at another neighbor’s (much larger) apartment. They really did it up nicely, and about 70 people were jam packed in there. Other than the fact that there were two women up there, the ceremony was like any other small non church wedding (interestingly, both women are Catholic, though obviously not getting married in a church).

    About the only difference in the ceremony I noticed was that at the end when the minister said “I now pronounce you legally married” the cheers seems a bit louder than at straight ceremonies. I guess if you’ve been together for 15 years without being allowed to get married, finally doing it is that much sweeter.

    During the wedding, Danielle said to me, “I thought they were already married”. At 9, I haven’t explained to her that in most places in the US they aren’t allowed to get married. We’ve known them for 5 years, and to us they are just two parents raising a kid. So I haven’t decided whether I should point out that it is historic, or make it seem like no big deal.

    Right now, no big deal is winning.

  • Deep Blue +15

    Fifteen years ago, Deep Blue rocked the world. Happy Anniversary.

  • Wow

    Just look at the size of this wave…

    Apparently a new world record

  • How to make money online

    From Seth Godin.

    The first step is to stop Googling things like, “how to make money online.” Not because you shouldn’t want to make money online, but because the stuff you’re going to find by doing that is going to help you lose money online. Sort of like asking a casino owner how to make money in Vegas…

  • Super Cool

    Bonus points if you can identify both spheres.

    This is a shot of Saturn’s rings with the moon Enceladus in front and Titan in the background. For more actual astronomy info, check out Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog.

  • Facts Before Snark

    Jon Gruber, in Apple Fanboy mode tries to make the point that even Google develops for iOS before Android.

    Only he’s wrong. The Android Google Plus app has been out for a while…

    I predict a correction before the end of the day.

  • Acela WiFi is Lame

    I’m doing better tethering with my old 3G Android phone than using their WiFi. It’s only the Boston to New York train, not like that’s a popular run…

  • No Piracy, No Piracy, No Piracy, No Piracy…

    Gruber nails it…

    So to encourage people not to engage in piracy, they’re going to force everyone to watch yet another annoying, time-wasting, gratification-delaying warning screen that can only be avoided by engaging in piracy. They’re purposefully making the movie-playing experience worse for honest paying customers.

  • Sports Endings

    John Elway finished his career by winning the Super Bowl as the MVP of the game. That’s how we want all sports greats to end their careers.

    Sadly, it rarely happens.

    My favorite Yankee, Mariano (Mo) Rivera, tore his ACL catching fly balls during batting practice yesterday. It was widely assumed that this was going to be Mo’s last season, so it’s quite possible this is a career ending injury.

    Non Yankee fans are probably wondering why the greatest closer of all time was catching fly balls during batting practice. He did this every day. Mariano is a great athlete and always joked that he wanted to play center field. Defensively, he had the skills (offensively, not so much).

    Mike Lupica of the NY Daily News wrote this today:

    I would stand with him in front of his locker and say, “Who’s the best outfielder on this team, really?”

    Mo Rivera would smile and say, “You know the answer.”
    And I’d tell him I wanted to hear him say it. So he would.

    “I am,” Mo would say.

    So it was a freaky injury, but he got hurt doing something he loved. Could be worse. But not the way you want to see a great player go out.