How Fast Are You?

What a fantastic show, with a great cast and an excellent arrangement of material! iFMagazine has a better review of the show than I could write, but suffice it to say that I highly recommend it! From their review:

Of the stand-out moments, Holmes gets to re-enact the “Travel Agent” sketch from the show and goes off on a long involved tangent that never quite stops. Tudyk (a Joss Whedon regular on FIREFLY and DOLLHOUSE) gets to showcase what a truly underrated performer he is. He’s flawless throughout the show and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was British. He is given the Cleese part in the Parrot sketch, but takes it into surprisingly darker and more intense territories. It’s a signature moment for him and he delivers it with zeal.

It’ll be at the Ricardo Montalbán Theater in Hollywood¹ through October 4, then in NYC² October 6-10.

From the official site (which also has a link to buy tickets):

A celebration. A very, very funny night. Not your usual theatrical experience. A Celebration of Forty Years of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

A very silly and refreshing interlude of Sketches, Spam, Songs and Custard Pies lovingly drawn from the Python canon.

OR

SIMPLY, THE VERY BEST OF MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS’ SKITS & SONGES PERFORMED L I V E !
(But only for a few nights.)

Starring the very Python-esque: Jeff B. Davis, Jane Leeves, Alan Tudyk, Rick Holmes and Jim Piddock performing:

(This is the partial list of sketches)
PEPPERPOT MONTAGE – SPAM SONG – CAMP JUDGES – MICHELANGELO – SILLY WALKS – SPANISH INQUISISTION – NUDGE NUDGE – LION TAMER – WORKING CLASS WRITER – ALBATROSS (Also featuring the original fowl!) – CRUNCHY FROG – ARGUMENT CLINIC – THE BRUCES – TRAVEL AGENT – PARROT SKETCH – FOUR YORKSHIREMEN – CUSTARD PIE – LUMBERJACK SONG.

All written and composed by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Jealous?

Ping. Sorry about the recursive posts. Media Temple is having problems, and so therefore is my cross-posting magical thingy.

No, in a good way!

Quoth the creator, John Boswell:

A musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn -- Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s Universe series.

RIP Dr. Sagan, you will be missed!!

Please, click HQ to watch in better quality.

Go here to download the track:
http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/youtube.html

Via @JaneWiedlin.

Hoping that the fire and solar radiation die down in Ojai soon.

I’m at an event where there are conservatively 250 people camping, and only three portapotties. Someone is not good at math.

Wired 17.09 contains an article about MagiQuest, a LARP-like product that can be installed in a physical facility like a hotel.

Invented by Creative Kingdoms, a company that designs theme-park attractions, the game is built around infrared sensors embedded in the wands. “It’s like having a joystick that controls a 20,000-square-foot facility,” cofounder Denise Watson says. After paying $14.99 for a wand (plus more to soup it up with fantasy bling) and a $10-per-hour activation fee, players begin a scavenger hunt for Tolkienesque paintings, sculptures, and installations scattered throughout the hotel. Video kiosks of wizards and maidens dispense clues and track your progress by picking up your unique IR signature. Guides in Elizabethan garb roam the grounds dispensing advice. Victories and discoveries trigger up to 150 visual and audio effects, and frantic kids drag weary parents to and fro until they catch them all.

The franchise has 15 installations in the US and two in Japan. I can only echo Pat Cadigan’s sentiment: “If they’d had this when I was a kid, I’d have *killed* to do it.”

Read the whole article at Wired.

Via Cadigan.

Click through for the official commercial…

Thanks J!

Now, let’s turn the conversation to more serious matters…

Neodymium on Wikipedia

Interesting news from Reuters:

Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed…

Among the rare earths that would be most affected in a shortage is neodymium, the key component of an alloy used to make the high-power, lightweight magnets for electric motors of hybrid cars, such as the Prius, Honda Insight and Ford Focus, as well as in generators for wind turbines…

Jack Lifton, an independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert, calls the Prius “the biggest user of rare earths of any object in the world.”

Each electric Prius motor requires 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of neodymium, and each battery uses 10 to 15 kg (22-33 lb) of lanthanum. That number will nearly double under Toyota’s plans to boost the car’s fuel economy, he said.

Via GreatDismal (William Gibson) > Gromit01.

Another delightful track from Pogo, this time composed of sounds from from Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991):

Via Dr. Tiki.

BONUS: Click through for Pogo’s Alice in Wonderland remix…