Members of the Apollo Chorus backed up Josh Groban at Northerly Island last night. I wish they'd been on stage longer, especially after they sweltered all day without air conditioning backstage.
Sarah McLachlan was one of the opening acts, and the weather, once it cooled down, was superb:
We had nearly-perfect weather this past weekend, so I'm just dumping a bunch of links right now while I catch up with work:
Back to the mines.
Fifty years ago today, the Beatles released Revolver:
[I]n their spare time, the Beatles make the greatest rock album ever, Revolver, released on August 5th, 1966 – an album so far ahead of its time, the world is still catching up with it 50 years later. This is where the Beatles jumped into a whole new future – where they truly became the tomorrow that never knows.
Revolver is all about the pleasure of being Beatles, from the period when they still thrived on each other's company. Given the acrimony that took over the band at the end, it's easy to overlook how much all four of them loved being Beatles at this point and still saw their prime perk as hanging with the other Beatles.
There's an endearing hubris all through the music – captured perfectly in the eight-second guitar break that cuts in at the end of "Got to Get You Into My Life," flipping it into a whole new song, or the dizzying guitar frills in "And Your Bird Can Sing." You can hear that in the band's press conferences from their summer tour, as when a reporter in L.A says, "In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. They referred to 'Day Tripper' as being about a prostitute and 'Norwegian Wood' as being about a lesbian. And I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today." Paul replies with a straight face. "We're just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."
This was one of the first CDs I ever bought—it's #36, from September 1988—and it's still one of my favorites. I think I should listen to it today, in fact.
Ah, I can finally take a few minutes to read through my backlog of articles, which have a common theme coming off this past week's events:
That, plus a tour of the Laguintas Brewery this afternoon (the one here, not the one in Petaluma), ought to keep me busy.
Pitchfork was a good way to spend most of Saturday (and the weather was perfect). Hanging out with friends and running errands was a good way to spend yesterday. And now I'm back at work.
With the Republican National Convention going on this week, I expect I'll have regular posts*. But it's starting to look like July might be my slowest month for posting since I finished my MBA.
* For instance, what does it say about the Republican Party that Cleveland felt it necessary to quadruple its police force for the week?
Because I need to read all of these and have to do my actual job first:
I'll get to these this evening. I hope.
This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time:
A new site called OldNYC delivers a Street View-like view of what the city looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The site includes a map of New York City and a slew of dots that can be clicked on to see different images of that particular location.
According to Business Insider, which earlier reported on the site, it was developed by Dan Vanderkam in collaboration with the New York Public Library, which has acollection of more than 80,000 photographs of New York City shot from the 1870s to the 1970s.
While OldNYC is not a Street View clone—users will not be able to "drive" their way through the streets like they would on Google's service—it's somewhat similar. Indeed, users can zoom in and out on a particular location, pick their favorite crossing, and click on the small red dot. Upon doing so, images related to that location are displayed.
I'll be playing with this for a few minutes...
For a couple of odd timing reasons, this is my first full 5-day week at my new job...and it's already a 5½-day week. So I've barely enough time to jot these articles down for future reading:
Have fun. I'll catch up to these in a day or two.
Chicago saw the end of an era today:
The final Chicago-made Oreo cookies will roll off the line Friday, ending the iconic cookie's decadeslong run of delighting consumers and providing good-paying union jobs on the Southwest Side.
The last Oreo line at the Mondelez International plant is shutting down as the global snack and confectionary company shifts some of its production to Mexico. As part of the move announced last summer, the company said it would be laying off about half of the plant's 1,200 workers; many of them are already gone. The Chicago plant will continue to make other products, like BelVita breakfast biscuits and Mini Chips Ahoy cookies. Oreo cookies will continue to be made at three other plants in the U.S. — just not at the brick bakery at 7300 S. Kedzie Ave.
In making the decision, Mondelez executives said they could save $46 million a year by installing the so-called "lines of the future" in Salinas, Mexico, rather than Chicago.
You can get a lot of Double-Stuf for $46m.
As I offloaded the photos from Windy City Ribfest from my phone, this was in the same batch:
That's a steak and ale pie from The Greyhound Pub in Aldbury, Hertfordshire, this past Sunday. And it was much better than any of the ribs I had this evening.