Launch Day

So at first all I was gonna do was post this image and let the “initiated” do their thing. But then I thought, screw that. Let’s explain.

So the above thingie is called a QR CODE. “QR” stands for “Quick Response.” They’re popping up in various places, even on T shirts. If you have one of those fancy cell phones, you SCAN IT with your phone’s built in camera barcode scanner.

For instance if you scan the above with your phone using any number of free scanner apps, it’ll open your phone’s browser and take you to launchday’s facebook page, where you can click “like” on your phone to keep in touch with us. (Which sort of reminds me of that scene from Christmas Story, where the cute little kid waits all month for his decoder ring, only to find out the secret message is “buy more ovaltine” or whatever the product was. Total letdown.)

Maybe In 10 years we’ll laugh and say ooohhh my goodness how hilarious we used to think qr codes were cooool as we fly around in our solar Toyota jetpacks and fashion our hair into ironic mullets. Or we’ll get tired of Romanian 9-year-olds using QR codes to install catastrophic viruses into our phones and qr codes will disappear forever.

But for the moment barcode and QR code scanning is some sort of shiny diversion for “fancy phone” users, bringing us right up into, oh, about 1973 or whenever barcodes got invented. If youre standing in a store, you can scan a barcode with your phone and it will tell you where you can get that item cheaper. Including online — so you can be standing in costco, scan that sofa, find the item cheaper on amazon, buy it on your phone, and go home. Yes that’s right you can now drive to Costco to shop at Amazon. And pay Amazon shipping in addition to the gas.  It’s exhausting isn’t it. Or I guess you could have just gone to pricegrabber before driving to costco to scan the item to buy at Amazon and saved yourself the headache, but you would totally miss out on the $1.35 fruit smoothies at costco.

I’ve been plunking around with a free phone app called “ShopSavvy.” I can search for products by either typing the product in (yawn, typing, so old school, even with swype) or just scan that product’s barcode. Um, assuming I have the barcode. And that is a bit of a hilarious assumption, because if I already had it, why would I be …. nevermind. I’ve learned never to ask questions, and to just enjoy the smoothie.

I’d like to take a moment to mention that every once in a while I head over to the local Winco, sort of the Walmart of grocery stores (I once saw a 400 pounder pouring gummy bears into a sack there), and peruse the ice cream aisle.

They don’t have the most gourmet selections in the world but it’ll do. Also my neighborhood has few alternatives, unless you count iced fish at the local asian mart.

Speaking of which the local Cold Stone closed down, to my great concern. I stalked that place for days waiting for someone to show up. They eventually turned me away with a firehose. I even tried calling to figure out the dealio. No go. It’s gone. Such sweet sorrow.

So I have to cruise down to the local Winco and deal with the 400 pounders and the neck tattoos. Not that there’s anything wrong with neck tattoos. One time the checkout gal called me sweetie. More of a checkout grandma actually. From here on out, all check out people must call me sweetie by the way.

Winco stocks a brand of ice cream called Umpqua, and Umpqua has a flavor called Caramel Macadamia Crunch.

All that as a lead up to this: Umpqua’s Caramel’s Macadamia Crunch is really, really good.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

Thanks for listening.

Ps. New music is not even close, not by a long shot. However Launch Day the Live Band is playing Friday in Pomona at Character’s and Nov 14 at Blue Cafe in Huntington Beach. Just fyi there.

There must be something in the water this month — a little tiny extra dose of rocktasma. A ginormous — a double ginormous — dose of dapper bands are pulling through the uncharted backwaters that is my backyard. Check out the bands rolling through the Fox Pomona and the Glass House in the next month:

• Dirty Projectors. $20
• Reverend Horton Heat (with some guy named Jerry Lee Lewis) $30
• OC Scholars (For you ska lovers out there. And hey who don’t love a nice horn section.) $15
• Jimmy Eat World with “They Promised Us Jetpacks”. (I call this “cute band name night.”) $35
• Rufio. (The most cheerful and nicely dressed punk rockers of the bunch.) $13
• Matt & Kim (however I recently called a ban on charming DIY duos so … screw ’em. But still. I hear they put on good live show.) $15
• Tokyo Police Club. $16
• The National (This will be a peach of a show.) $32.50
• Interpol (with White Rabbits, whom I love! Can I say whom? I can say whom, right? It’s my blog, I’ll say what I want.) (But it’s sold out, so deal with THAT.)
• Polar Bear Club. (Though they’re the openers.) $17
• Mae. $13
• Blonde Redhead (nice to see these folks are still alive). $25

Don’t say I never told you nuthin.

Here it is, boys and girls. Here’s the first song of the first set of the first show. As always – crank it, and enjoy.

http://www.facebook.com/v/601190188014

As you know I’m a sucker for insider studio stuff. Here’s a cool (and short!) video with Butch Vig talking about recording Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” I think it’s interesting how much Kurt basically deplored slick studio production tricks. Whereas others, um, depend on them whenever possible. For the kids out there unfamiliar with Nirvana – the voice of God channeled through some idiot kid in a flannel, w/ a cool Fender jaguar, flashed briefly for a few years on the strength of a Pixies ripoff and poof he was gone, leaving a big sad lifelong hole in the hearts of admirers. His drummer grew up and became Dave Grohl.

In this article, Facebook CEO Mark “Youngest Billionaire Ever” Something-Or-Other says:

Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

Or — in 499.999 million people’s case — they have a way to have their voice be completely ignored by gads more people.

I’ve finally gotten Facebook to provide a semblance of an enjoyable experience for me by “hiding” the updates of nearly every FB friend I have. The ones I have in my stream now are the handful of people I actually see or like or look forward to seeing again someday. Or are related to. Sorry, unemployed dude who I knew briefly when I was 15. Sorry, unemployed divorcee who I barely remember. Sorry everybody. Sorry self-important lawyer person I sort of knew once as a teenager. I just can’t handle the constant stream of reminders of how completely pointless and vapid we all are. I’m so glad I’m not God. (God is the name of my cat, btw.)

Y’know, 1992 was a really busy year for me, so I somehow missed this Jackyl video when it came out. It’s treat after treat until you think there just can’t be any more treats and then …. a chainsaw solo.

Just think, for 35 bucks at thinkgeek one of these little guys can be yours.

I confess. We here in the ivory towers of Launch Day headquarters are cycling fans. We like to ride our bikes, we like to follow local racing, we like to watch the pros race their bikes on tv. With the Tour de France lurking just around the corner, I thought I’d take a moment to talk blood doping.

Mennonite bad boy Floyd Landis got a lot of headlines recently. Floyd’s a polarizing bike racer (well, former bike racer) known mostly for getting stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title. Currently he’s pretty well known in cycling circles for ‘fessing up to doping his entire career (and naming more names on top of that, including Master of Universe His Lanceness, apparently triggering a federal investigation) after spending the last four years proclaiming his innocence, raising money to proclaim his innocence, writing a book about his innocence, trashing the labs and people that worked to bust him, etc etc- basically making a big mess after growing tired of lying about his innocence.

But I like Floyd.

In interviews (at least in interviews not related to doping) he’s always had this sort of surprising, refreshing candor and frankness; a guy-next-door charisma, if you will. He seems a likeable guy. In this article he roughly details How To Get Away With Doping.

It’s a fascinating read.

These days, the term “doping” usually refers to riders transfusing their own blood. Ok? Not shooting up crazy chemical concoctions into their bloodstream, though that happens too but usually not w/o failing a test or two. You can test for chemicals. It’s harder to test for your own blood.

It can be confusing to understand at first. Allow me to elucidate. Endurance athletes will bag their own blood as they train and stick it in the fridge. This is good, yummy blood, full of healthy red blood cells. Then over the course of a nasty three-week stage race, as they deplete their red blood cells from continuous massive effort, they transfuse this good blood back into their system, and the healthy red blood cells make them feel all spunky and healthy again. This is “doping.” Ok? Got it? Are we all on the same page? Red blood cells deliver oxygen. The more you have, the faster you go.

So in the old days, riders would use EPO, which makes your body make more red blood cells. But you can test for EPO usage. So that ain’t gonna work any more.

So instead they bag their good blood, and transfuse it in later. Same net effect – more red blood cells.

So the tests have changed. No more EPO. You’ve got to somehow test for red blood cells.

So they created the “biological passport system,” where they track your levels of young red blood cells, which should remain more or less constant.

This is where it gets awesome.

When you transfuse your blood, your body slows down production of young red blood cells (called “reticulocytes.”) So that’s what the test looks for – a lower-than-normal count of young red blood cells.

But if you microdose EPO, because it’s just a teeny tiny bit, you don’t fail the EPO test. And guess what that EPO does — it makes your body generate just enough new red blood cells to get you back up to baseline, so you don’t fail the passport test.

Awesome.

In the article I linked to, Floyd says he bought a piece of medical machinery to measure his young red blood cell count.

Harnessing the power of the Google interweb thingie, I found a Coulter LH7000 for a measly $18k. I wonder if that’s what Floyd has. I bet it’s beeping and whirring away in his apartment right now.

I can just see Floyd up ’til 11 on a Friday night, huddling over his LH7000, sprinting into the next room “Honey I finally found a way to boost my reticulocyte count w/o flunking the EPO test!! Break out the Jack Danny, let’s have us some celebrate!!”

Chops, dudes. Blood hacking.

So that’s the science of it.

Note to kids: Take a lesson from Floyd – don’t lie. It’s simpler.

In this interview with Bonnie at Espn, he talks not about the science of it, but about the human side of it.

He lied, because he felt that’s what he was supposed to do to get back into bike racing. (Another note to kids: Sometimes we grownups trade our integrity in order to get rich/laid/ahead. We forget that it’s a bad idea … but we do get reminded later …)

Anyways, he thought cycling would welcome him back in if he toe’d the party line. (By “toe party line,” he means, “lie.” Another note to kids – if the party line of your organization is “lie,” look for some new friends.) But that didn’t happen. Lying made him feel pretty crappy. He was willing to deal w/ it if he could get back into bike racing. But he didn’t get back. He hasn’t had the same kind of results in races he was getting back in ’06. But he still felt crappy about lying, duh. He also probably felt crappy watching the peeps go on racing w/o him. So might as well ‘fess up, stop lying to his mom, feel less crappy, and reconcile w/ life as a non-bikeracer.

That’s the gist.

I like Floyd. Cycling’s full of lessons.