Thoughts and musings of Peter Kupfer

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  • Bryan’s Appliance Repair

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    Our oven recently broke and we needed to call a repair man. Since I no longer keep a Yellow Pages in the house, I consulted Google. The most reliable result (the only one with a free positive review (which was from Yelp)) was Bryan’s Appliance repair. His phone number is 847-543-1000 and he gave us tremendous service. He is a just a guy with his own business who repairs appliances. Here is my review.

    We called Bryan on Thursday for our broken oven and he came over on Friday afternoon. He arrived when he said he would and diagnosed the problem quickly and accurately. He was willing to talk to me during the process about what he was doing and a lot of other good talk about appliance repair in general.

    When we found the problem, he was willing to try and repair the issue with a quick solder rather than order an expensive part. He thoroughly explained the fix and told me that if it ended up not working he wouldn’t charge me labor on installing a new part. The whole experience was very thorough and very professional. I don’t know how much other people’s rates are, but his rates seemed reasonable.

    I would definitely recommend Bryan to anyone else with an appliance repair need. I love that he is a one man operation and that he answers his own phone.

    Thanks, Bryan!

    Link to Yelp Review.

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  • Finding Humor in the Frustrations of Parenting…

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from a colleague with the PDF of a book entitled Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. I read through it an it was completely spot on in regards to trying to get the kid to sleep. According to the Wik, the PDF was part of an unintentional viral marketing campaign that pushed the book to #1 on Amazon’s best-seller pre-order list and pushed the release date up by about 4 months. I would post the PDF, but I don’t want to deprive this guy of his money. (There is a video of some guy reading the book on YouTube, but it is not the same.) Here are preview pictures from Amazon:

    Go the f**k to Sleep - Cover Go the f**k to sleep -- Sample on

    The book is written like a traditional children’s book except with a little profanity sprinkled in. If you can’t read the picture above here is the sample from Go the F to Sleep:

    The cats nestle close to their kittens,
    The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
    You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear.
    Please go the fuck to sleep.

    Some people have been critical of the book as if they think it is a book that parents would read to their kids. Those parents would scare me. This is not a book for kids, but rather it is for parents.

    On top of the awesomeness of this book, the only thing that could make it better would be an audio version. Even if I tried to think about someone better to narrate this book I don’t think I could have picked anyone besides Samuel L. Jackson. (Not Star Wars Samuel Jackson, but Die Hard and Pulp Fiction Jackson.) When you hear it he just delivers the lines with some passion and heart it is compelling. And right now the download is free from audible!

    It reminds me of a TED talk I watched a little while ago about Parenting Taboos. There are a lot of thoughts most parents have at some point that are not “correct” for us to say. Anyone who has a child between 1 and a half and 3 knows about the trials of getting their kid to sleep and the barrage of requests they make to stay up a little bit later. This book takes that shared frustration and handle it in a light-hearted and poignant way. Just make sure you don’t leave it on the kid’s bookshelf.

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  • American Idol Top 6

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    Carole King theme week? This is the top 6 and they are forced to sing songs from 1970′s to show how good of a contemporary artist they are? Really!? This seems silly.

    I really like when they start performing the duets at this point in the season.

    Jacob Lusk — Oh No Not My Baby
    I’m not sure whose outfit is goofier, Jacob’s blue and yellow bow tie get up or Randy’s or “R” sweater. Jacob does a nice job with this performance, but this song is not really contemporary at all, which isn’t really his fault, it is a Carol King song so that will happen. Jacob did a great job moving on stage and using his whole vocal range. I think it is too late for him to make a big move here, but you never know.

    Lauren Alaina –
    Lauren is definitely seeming more at ease each week and it is improving her performances. I like when Babyface asked her if she ever didn’t hit a high note she tried for and she said, “No.” Then, she went out on stage and nailed the big notes. Again, I’m not a big fan of the song, but she nailed it. She moved on stage, went for the big notes and really solidified her place in the competition. I think is neck and neck between her and Scotty for the third place now.

    I’m not a big Miley Cyrus fan, but I think her advice to Lauren about their always being haters was very helpful.

    Haley & Casey — I Feel the Earth Move
    If the rumors of them dating aren’t true, they did a heck of job acting like they are in their little video. Great choreography by this two in this performance. I really liked this performance by the two. They looked extremely relaxed on stage and they complemented each other well. I liked Casey’s little diddy at the end and Hailey keeps getting better. They both did themselves justice in this performance and it should help them in the end.

    Scotty McCreery — You’ve Got a Friend
    Scotty can’t help but sound country. So even when he tries to sing something else, he still sounds country, which isn’t a horrible thing, just an observation. Scotty forces the start of this song too much. He went too slow just to try to force emotion. I don’t know if a 17-year-old can convey enough emotion in this song as James Taylor did. By contrast, he makes the end too big, again trying to force the emotion. Having said that, I think that if he worked those out, he could record that as a single now. He sings the song really well and he wants to work hard and do a great job. He needs to let the song develop by itself and not force it.

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    James Durbin — Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
    I don’t want to overstate my feelings of this performance, but I think that minimally it secured James a place in the finale and may have won him the show (I typed it before Randy said it). The first 30 seconds of the song alone makes me want to vote for him. I was a little surprised that he went as pop with the song as he did. I know he was trying to get away from the wild performances, but this was really far the other way. If he had an album of rock songs, that would seem out-of-place. However, that performance was good enough to be a single. I don’t know if it was contemporary enough, but again I won’t blame him.

    Me and Steven seem to be in agreement on this song.

    I haven’t said it as much this season as last I think, but Ryan Seacrest is really phenomenal at what he does. James mentions the Idol forums and he doesn’t miss a beat with a witty plug for the sponsors. Likewise, when he pulled the boy who Lauren serenaded up on stage to interview him, that was great. And, when Jame’s guitar starts making noise, “A superstar wouldn’t let that happen”. He just understands his role and how to host the show. I do miss the exchanges between him and Simon Cowell.

    Lauren and Scotty — Up on the Roof
    Putting the two youngsters/country singers together makes sense and should be interesting. This was not nearly as impressive as Casey and Haley but it was okay. You could see clearly in this performance that Lauren is a stronger singer than Scotty. That is not to say that Scotty did a bad job by any means, but Lauren is just a better singer. In my mind, this helps differentiating between this too a lot easier.

    Casey Abrams — Hi-De-Ho
    You gotta love Casey’s outfit during the jam session: black tennis shoes, hiked up white socks, plaid shorts, and a blue sweatshirt. You can tell he is a musical genius who isn’t worried about matching. :-) I love the opening helping on the piano. I don’t always know what to do with his performances. He is living “on the edge of creativity” as Jimmy said, but that doesn’t always result in songs that make sense. I’m trying to put this singers in context and figure out if they can be stars on the radio or not. Randy is correct and saying that is “entertaining” but I don’t know if he is the American Idol.

    Haley Reinhart — Beautiful
    This is kind of boring song by Haley. I felt that her duet performance was better than this one. The slow bridge in the middle was the best part of this performance. She sang the song well and moved around on stage well, but it was just kind of boring. As I keep saying, she has improved tremendously as an artist over the past 4 episodes but I’m not sure where she is going to go.

    Jacob & James –
    Great duet by these Jacob and James. In a very good way, it was reminiscent of a great Broadway performance. There was a lot of energy and a lot of good vocals. It was a lot of fun and why I like duets.

    Tonight’s Performances
    James Durbin
    Lauren Alaina
    Casey Abrams
    Scotty McCreery
    Haley Reinhart
    Jacob Lusk

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  • American Idol Top 7

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    Scotty McCreery -
    This was probably Scott’s best performance to date. I love how he work the stage horizontally and vertically. He showed his personality and I liked it. (Except of course for his facial expressions, he’s almost doing it on purpose now.)

    I don’t know what Jennifer and Randy’s problem is. They blast good performances and praise bad ones (like the opening number.) As much as I praise artists stretching themselves, Scotty did in this case. He doesn’t often sing the upbeat moving around songs like that. This was a stretch for him and he did bring it. Ugh!

    James Durbin
    Great performance. He is the best contestant right now, but the question is can a rocker win?

    Why don’t the judges blast James for staying in the same genre? GKup thinks it is because the judges have a bias against country. Perhaps.

    Hailey Reinert
    Nice performance by Hailey. I didn’t care for the song myself so it was a little boring at times, but ever since she picked a style, she has gotten a lot better. Time tell if she has the votes. GKup say she looks like Minnie Mouse, ha!

    Jacob Lusk
    Decent performance from Jacob. He may have peeked a few weeks ago and is now playing it safe to stick around. I would have to agree though, he is a diva. (There was something wrong with the track. Suck it up.)

    Casey Abrams
    Wow, Casey is back with a vengeance. Casey showed what a great artist he was and showed why I had thought he was so great since the auditions. More importantly, perhaps, Casey showed that he could be musically relevant in today’s market, and kept his grunt. At this point, it is a race between James and Casey.

    Stefano Langone
    Stefano gave one of his weakest performances of the season. I am not sure what Randy heard, but that was bordering on bad karaoke without a doubt. He was hoping to rely on one long note at the end and his weak range failed him. I can’t tell if the judges are just trying to spare his feelings, or if I just don’t get it. How does Stefano get props and Scotty gets nothing?

    Lauren Alaina
    Great job by Alaina. She did seem to ignore the crowd and get into the song. She was jumping and dancing on stage and really getting into the song. I have been saying for a while that she could win if she got over her age and got comfortable and it is starting to happen.

    That was perhaps the most useful critique from the judges all season. I especially like Steven’s idea of Lauren singing Allison Krause.

    Tonight’s Ranking
    James
    Casey
    Lauren
    Scotty
    Hailey
    Jacob
    Stefano

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  • American Idol Top 8

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    It will be interesting to see if the judges say anything critical after last weeks love fest. There was not a single critical comment last week, except for a few constructive comments for Pia. I don’t even Jennifer and Steven don’t know enough about music to be critical because they can just do it, or if they choose to not be critical. The judges need to realize that when they are not critical, (when it is appropriate) that they are not helping the contestants get better. The contestants this year are not that much better this season to be above constructive criticism as opposed to the gushing praise for all show we had last week.

    Paul McDonald — Old Time Rock and Roll
    This song was wedding singer quality at best. He digressed from any level of quality he had raised himself up to over the past few weeks. the judges can talk about letting go and his abandon all they want, but I would like to see him pull that in and actually sing the song. He was starting to grow on me, but he lost me with this performance.

    Lauren Alaina — The Climb
    Lauren sings the song the way it should have been sung in the first place. She was poised, confident, and belted out the vocals. I grow continually frustrated with her refusal to move on stage. I agree with the producer guy that she definitely could steal some of those Pia votes. She is growing and doing well, but she needs to keep pushing herself. The judges comments aren’t helping her push herself, so hopefully she is finding that internal motivation to grow.

    Stefano Langone — End of the Road
    Stefano is becoming one of the best story telling singers on the show, but sadly he can’t back up with stellar vocals. He has this tiny little range of notes he can sing and he can’t nail the big notes. He puts the effort in and he can perform the songs, so I feel bad for being critical, but he just doesn’t have the talent the other singers have. I agree with Randy Jackson that they may be Stefano’s best vocal, but it is still not good enough, and I don’t think he can physically do any better.

    Scotty McCreery — I Cross My Heart
    Good performance by Scotty. I liked a slow song from him and he sang it well. Not much more to say other than that he needs to remember what the TMZ guys says and work on his facial expressions.

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    Casey Abrams — Nature Boy
    I didn’t get Casey’s performance. Gina says she would like to listen to it in a coffee house, but this is not Coffee Shop Idol, this is American Idol! I like Casey, and he sang it well, but it wasn’t really for me. I guess it could go on a jazz type album like Randy says, but I don’t know if everyone is going to get it.

    Haley Reinhart — Call Me
    Good performance by Haley. I would agree with her that she is growing as a performer. This is one of her best performances thus far and she is settling into a style of rocker girl type singer and it is working for her. This performance should be good enough to keep her out of the bottom 3 and get another chance to shine. Gina says that the boots along should get her some votes.  So, now Randy is going to criticize her performance, but praise Paul? It’s like they just jump on the band wagon, once one of them says something negative, they all follow along.

    Jacob Lusk — Bridge Over Troubled Water
    Jacob is taking on a song that Clay Aiken ruled with and it is an interesting choice. This is one of Jacob’s most seriously and believable performances to date. He did an excellent job showing off his vocal abilities and his ability to emotionally connect with the audience. It sounded a lot like he was singing in a church choir at times, but this came out a lot better than I expected. I’m still not sure if I could hear him on the radio, but that was a good performance.

    James Durbin — Heavy Metal
    James rocked the house again. I don’t know if a rocker can win this show, but he could be the first. Not much more to say, he is really good.

    Ranking of Tonight’s Performances

    1 – James Durbin
    2 – Haley Reinhart
    3 – Scotty McCreery
    4 – Casey Abrams
    5 – Lauren Alaina
    6 – Jacob Lusk
    7 – Stefano Langone
    8 – Paul McDonald

     

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  • Glee: Alcohol & Sex

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    After last week’s Glee I was extremely disappointed with how they handled the topic of underage drinking. While they made a weak and superficial attempt to confront underage drinking, it seemed like they glamorized it more than they demonized it. You had Rachel who wanted to learn about being an adult so decides to start drinking and the worst consequence that we see is them getting sick. Then Rachel thinks that it is okay to bring some “liquid courage” to the next performance and the worst consequence of that is that they puke on each other. Schuester makes a drunk call to Sue and she plays it over the intercom (how is she not fired?) and then still there is no consequence oh wait there was a consequence, they decide to sign a drinking pledge until after nationals. That is all well and good, but then they laugh about, “what about after nationals?”

    I’m not saying that someone needed to die to make the point about the evils of drinking, but I would have liked to see some other consequence. I don’t want to dwell too much on that episode, but I think they could have done better.

    [adsense]

    By contrast, tonight’s episode dealing with sex was substantially better. The episode really dealt with the emotional side to the issue as well as being realistic. I like that the episode was preaching education as was the drinking episode, but throughout the course of the episode we saw the consequences (or potential consequences) of having sex too early. As always, Kurt’s dad is my favorite character in the show. His talk with Kurt about sex was phenomenal, “don’t just throw yourself around,” is great advice for any orientation. Noah Puck realizing that he needed to start thinking about the consequences of his actions and actually just being in a locking relationship with awesome as well. Perhaps my favorite story line of the episode was Santana coming to grips to with her feelings about Brittany. I was really impressed by Naya Rivera‘s (Santana) performance in this episode, especially during the singing of Landslide. The emotion in her eyes was very sincere. In the end it turned out that Britney was more confused than Santana (which wasn’t real surprising) but the exploration of the feeling of the two young ladies felt very real and sincere.

    Ultimately, tonight’s episode about sex did a much better job of confronting this difficult topic than did last week’s episode about alcohol. In both episodes a very real issue of students wanting to explore a taboo area was setup in a believable and convincing way, but this week the show did a better job delving into the consequences and negatives to the issue. Show’s like Glee need to remember who their audience is, and should feel a responsibility to not glamorize these issues for teens. There are enough other shows out there to glamorizing these areas for high school students, and Glee should stay above the fray.

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  • The Daily: Finally an iPad newspaper; but is it good enough?

    Posted on by Peter Kupfer Comment

    I was so excited yesterday with all the buzz surrounding the first iPad newspaper, The Daily, which was developed by Rupert Murdoch. The model of a daily newspaper delivered to my iPad each morning, like my podcasts are delivered to my Droid while I sleep, should be the model of the future. The Daily was not receiving high praise for most of the sites that review this sort of product, Mashable, TechCruch, and others, but with a two week free trial, and two snow days, I thought I would give it a try.

    After downloading the daily and loading up my first issue I was still feeling like this was a good idea. Off the bat, I was surprised by the focus of the content. Rather than being heavy on news articles, the papers major focus seems to be on celebrity gossip and sports. On some levels this makes sense as any major news is covered in a much more timely fashion by live websites, but I was still a little surprised. Judge for yourself by the table of contents:

    The other big draw of The Daily was supposed to be the media content. The pictures I see are very beautiful, especially on the iPad’s screen, but the quantity’s lacking. I loaded up the story about the blizzard in Illinois and there were only four pictures!

    And there are videos also, but you can only view the videos if you are online. For me, and I’m guessing a lot of others, like those who might ride a train, being online is not an option. I would like to see an option to choose whether you want to use the space that the whole issue would take or to leave videos online.

    The deal breaker for me though is the delivery method of the paper. I do not have 3G on my iPad and I am often in places that d not have free public wifi, so I can not download the episode on demand. I was hoping (and under the impression that) this paper would bushed to me each morning. It turns out that the episode won’t old until is start the app each day. And the, later when I open it agin in the same day, starts downloading another issue. This is not a newspaper, and really is the deal breaker for me. If it can’t be pushed onto my iPad it does me little good.

    So, in the end, the idea of the daily is a good one, but it needs more work to become a solid app worth the one dollar week subscription fee.

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