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No one wants to go back and read a previous blog post of mine so don’t.

There is overwhelming evidence that people who have a superior talent or skill that exceeds 99.9995% of the rest of the population will be deficient in another part of their persona. Maturity, social skills, ability to exist within our laws and morals, physical condition or just common sense.

Michael’s foibles and failings are well documented, I am sure more will come out as his ashes cool.

Michael Jackson conceived, wrote, sang and performed nearly everything he produced. He was a prodigious talent who made many of our lives a little better for many years.

A little wacko, he left us with more than he took from us. Re the kiddie stuff I do not believe any appendages entered any orifices, I suspect he remained a child in a poorly formed body until he died.

His charitable contributions were large and frequent, his childhood was apparently horrific, his father should have been jailed. Like most of us I suspect he was the sum of his limited life experiences, unlike most of us his gigantic talent made it through.

Shine On You Crazy.

Youtube

More soccer. This time American soccer in South Africa in the FIFA Confederations Cup final. US went up two nil, gave up an early 2nd half goal, you will not beat Brazil if you give them 44 minutes to score twice.

At the risk of stating the obvious FIFA cannot allow those fucking kazoos to be played by the crwod during the World Cup. South African soccer game attendees continually play kazoos throughout their games turning each game from a fan involved variable crowd noise event into a one long droning bee-like hum that drowns out all crowd response and crowd involvement in the game.

At least a little.

Bought Warren Zevon’s greatest hits: “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” which of course he is. Listening on my morning commute which my regular readers know is a hour. Verdict to follow.

Bought The Best of Marshall Crenshaw: This Is Easy. He makes quality music and does make it seem easy. Fourth time listen tomorrow driving into work. Some great songs more to follow.

Mari Wilson’s The Platinum Collection. More of an album for the Englishman in me. Includes some brilliant songs including Just What I Always Wanted, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps (theme to English TV show Coupling never to be confused with the unbelievebly horrible US remake of the show) and the best ever version of Cry Me A River.

Regret to advise I bought Fit to Be Tied, Great Hits by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As you all know Ms Jett has one hit and we all love it. 2 minutes 54 seconds I love Rock N’ Roll to.

Gordon Lightfoot Complete Greatest Hits. Not yet opened.

The Very Best of Burt Bacharach. Love it all. 16 of his greatest songs sung by the original artist he wrote the song for. Dionne Warwick sings 7. Sandie Shaw, Tom Jones (yes that song was Burt’s), Dusty Springfield, The 5th Dimension and more.

All purchased on Amazon.com, all arrived within 4 days of sale, all in condition advertised, only one from “Amazon”.

For the record I still despise Oasis, Wilco gives me a headache and I do not enjoy listening to The Who.

Shine On YCD

Lost the big one. Looked great for 10 minutes, let in a messy goal then played like we were done for the remaining 80 minutes. Suspect Sir Alex will make some personnel changes in the off season. Although it is entirely possible the entire team was hungover from the previous night.

Sadly I took the afternoon off work to watch the game. Silly me.

After 2 weeks of intense standing in Electronics stores, 4 and half hours staring at TVs in Best Buy, Conns and Sears, another 5 hours spent at Amazon.com and other sites comparing specs, prices and reviews I made my decision. I even had a spread sheet listing TV models specs reviews, details and prices. As I do not get paid by the word here are the highlights.

I have a huge wall in my living room, 46″ is the minimum screen I could buy. Someone pointed out the height of a 36″ tube TV screen is nearly the same height as a 42″ LCD screen.

Every store I visited the salesman pushed Plasma screens, every store I visited the Plasma picture looked bad. Every salesman agreed, I assume the commission is bigger on Plasmas.

The colours on Samsung LCD’s are bright, strong and shiny. The picture on the Sony LCD’s is worse than the Samsungs. When I was first bemused and bewildered by the choices in big screen televisions I planned on buying a Sony as a safe option-Sony must be good.

Most store TV’s picture are fed by the same crappy signal the store connects them to, the TV’s are usually left in factory default setting. The Sony’s look worse. Once the salesman starts fiddling with the settings you’re screwed. Watch the TV’s in factory default. Make the salesman prove the TV is in factory default. Some sales guys claimed the TV’s revert to factory default after 30 minutes, maybe they do.

A word about the programming you will see in most electronics stores, to use their picture feed and choose a TV sucks. The picture does not rest on any scene more than a second or 2. Trying to compare the same view on adjacent TV screens is tough. Be careful with any TV that is set up separately showing different programming.

The important numbers you will care about when your turn comes are Resolution: buy HD 1080p, Contrast Ratio: new LCD’s are 50,000 to one, Plasma’s are one million to 1, my Sharp is only 10,000 to one but in my humble has the best picture. Response: 5ms or less, my Sharp is 3ms. Refresh rate: mine is 120HZ apparently the only product using 120hz vs 60hz is Blu Ray disc players, I say get 120.  Buy a TV with at least 3 HDMI inputs-XBox360, DVD/Blu-Ray and your cable box.

I bought the Sharp because the picture is more lifelike than the Sumsung or Sony. The LG and Toshiba’s were pretty good. During the 30 minute “show” the stores show, you get about 3 seconds of people on screen. The rest is beautiful vistas, waterfalls, beaches, animals, fish and snow. (In fact the Sears feed had no real people in the 30 minutes I watched). For 3 seconds every 30 minutes I saw 2 ESPN presenters, on the Sharp they looked human on the Samsung and the Sony they looked unreal. Samsung and Sony have brighter colours, for video games they look louder, for sports they look harsher, compare the Samsung sports team colours with the real colour your team wears. Compare human skin tones with TV skin tones. In my opinion there is no comparison. 3 weeks in, picture still looks great-golf is breathtaking, NBA looks great, baseball is beautiful, shows with a view are stunning we love my TV. (we have U-Verse HD programming) We bought a $30 mounting bracket for the wall on Amazon, works great, even Sears cheapest bracket is $120.

P.S. my 16 year old son likes the Sharp. That is the best news, like all 16 year olds he knows everything and I am wrong.

I do not disagree with the theory that gifted people are a little crazy. In fact it might be required that for someone to have significantly more talent at something they give up other facets of their being.  There are numerous example, I am not writing a paper.

Spare a thought for The Bunny. I’d say a prayer myself but doubt I’m on God’s (his or her) to do list.

Shine on you Crazy Diamond.

I do not know the exact dates when our professional team’s seasons begin and end but I do know when one of our pro teams is eliminated there always seems to be another one to rout for. The Rockets did great. If nothing else we forced the Lakers to play as well as they were supposed to be, they may thank us in the next round.

The Astros are waking up, although no one seriously believes we will win anything at least there is plenty of time to dream before we are mathematically eliminated.

The Texans will never win anything as long as the owner puts God first. In sports especially football winning has to be everything, once you win you can thank God. You will not win if you ask God to help before the game begins. God loves winners, any owner, player or coach who seriously believes God will help the better Christians beat the other team is an ass.

A word about English soccer. My favourite team won the English Premier League today. As the wags at ESPN will point out the score was nil nil and the game was pretty dull. Today is not the day to defend the most popular game on earth, it does not compare with the NFL or Baseball or the NBA. It should not be compared with those sports for the same reasons most Americans do not compare those sports with each other. Soccer will have never have built in commercial breaks ergo soccer will never be as important or popular as the big three.

Shine On Sir Alex.

I bought my first LCD TV.

HD is everything I dreamed it would be. The greens on the PGA tour look like crap highly detailed crap, the sweat on Tiger’s shirt looks icky, nature shows look unbelievable, you can see the pores on TV presenters faces, I am fast becoming an HD TV snob. I may cancel my 340 regular TV channels and keep the 50 or so HD’s.

I have been warned the participants in porn movies look awful in HD- I still watch porn on my PC.

Details on my long journey through Best Buy, Amazon, Ebay. Crutchfield and Sears before I took the plunge are for another day. For now I am looking for that show on mountain vistas of the Himalayas with birds flying over golf courses-special.

Shine On you crazy skin tones.

Bernie Madoff is guilty, “Sir” Allen Stanford ain’t looking too innocent.

Most puzzling are the sad and confused people who placed all their savings with either one. Luckily for me I don’t have any savings. If I did ’sure as hell would not invest them with one man or company. Even Fidelity and Met Life would only get some of my money. My biggest worry is when I win ten million dollars from the Texas lottery, take home cash after taxes of approximately four and a half mil, how can I possibly get to 45 different banks in a day to stash $100K in each to ensure I have FDIC insurance. (I know the FDIC ceiling was temporarily increased recently).

What possesses apparently normal people to take two million dollars-their only 2 million and invest it in a bank in Antigua.  Or place their fifty million entire net worth with one man. With Bernie’s customers it was greed-eighteen percent return when the market is going to shit-wtf. With Stanford’s customers it appears to be only one or two percentage points over Bank of America-is that still greed?

I suspect I will never get the chance to be smarter than those people, perhaps that is best for my ego and self respect.

Shine On.