{"id":934,"date":"2005-07-03T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-04T01:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=934"},"modified":"2005-07-03T20:14:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-04T01:14:00","slug":"say-what-you-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=934","title":{"rendered":"say what you say"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. The best music really does come from overseas. Continuing my magical mystery weekend video tour, I just finished Live Forever<\/i><\/a>, an excellent documentary on the Britpop phenomenon in the U.K. during the mid-to-late ’90s. Great interviews (the Gallagher boys are especially good–and funny<\/a>) and just fantastic music. The fact alone that often the most progressive, the most musically creative stuff is also the most popular in Britain cements the country’s status as having the best musical talent. I mean, what sells the most over here during any given week? The rap group du jour? More butt-rock? The latest quasi-indie “it” band? What has topped the charts in Britain? Portishead, Massive Attack, Underworld, Tricky, Blur, the list goes on–all on the cutting edge in their time. The country as a whole just has far better musical taste than our own. Mary, have you seen this documentary?<\/p>\n

2. Fixed the car today. With a plastic bag taped over my left hand. Ever since I replaced the front main seal a week and a half ago, the car would start and run fine, but seemed a little down on power and would ping under moderate load when warm. I had a sneaking suspicion that the cam sprocket was out of phase with the crankshaft, since I’ve had to pull off the timing belt several times in the past couple of months and there’s a good chance things had gotten out of sync. Sure enough, the cam was almost 30 degrees (!) off. I can’t for the life of me guess how the car still drove…my only conjecture is the fact that the distributor is driven off the cam, uses a Hall sensor and controls all advance electronically… The ECU must have been retarding the timing as much as it possibly could the whole time the car was running. In any case, it’s fixed; no more pinging, and the car feels like it’s picked up at least 10-15 hp. It pulls very smartly above 3.5K in second and third now. Runs very well indeed.<\/p>\n

3. I’m feeling much better today. Still have a bit of a cough, but almost all the congestion is gone and my energy levels are nominal again. Thanks for your prayers and concern, everyone.<\/p>\n

4. I discovered the anime shelf at the video store and was overjoyed to find an episode of City Hunter<\/i><\/a>, a Japanese cartoon I used to watch in France during the late ’80s, dubbed into French under the title Nicky Larson<\/i> (the protagonist’s name in the French version). It has a kind of pseudo-James Bond-ish secret agent detective-for-hire premise, with an alternately lecherous\/heroic lead character. The animation is quite fluid and good, and some parts are hilarious. It was fun to watch again after a dozen years or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. The best music really does come from overseas. Continuing my magical mystery weekend video tour, I just finished Live Forever, an excellent documentary on the Britpop phenomenon in the U.K. during the mid-to-late ’90s. Great interviews (the Gallagher boys are especially good–and funny) and just fantastic music. The fact alone that often the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}