today we spent the day in boston. the plan was to hit the MIT museum and then stroll on over to the harvard square oktoberfest and get hammered. we woke up a little before the museum opened so we went for a walk.
we walked across the charles river, which is the one where you see all the snooty harvard kids rowing down the river and really healthy young college people jogging along it's banks.
on the other side of the river is newbury st. which is like if you took georgetown and made it trendier. someone had this really awesome house with this even more awesome dog chillin' on the front steps.
the MIT museum was pretty small, but pretty cool. the first floor was not that exciting but the second floor had all their cool robot displays. they had cog and kismet, a bunch of the old hopping and walking robots from the media lab and they happened to be showing an episode of scientific american where they were interviewing my AI professor from CMU.
they also had a whole bunch of what i will call kinetic sculptures by arthur ganson where were all totally mesmerizing. for some reason, laura thinks people will be able to save the world with them. i just think they are kinda neat to look at.
after the museum, it was beer-o-clock, or so we thought. time to head to the harvard square oktoberfest and get smashed, right? wrong. these bastards don't have any god damn beer at their oktoberfest. i mean, not to sound bitter, but wtf? no beer? after walking around in a state of bewilderment we found the john harvard brew pub and proceeded to take matters into our own hands.
i would hump daft punk. no i would not hump guy-manuel de homem-christo or thomas bangalter, even though they do have some pretty gay sounding names and are french. i'm talking about abstract musical entity that is daft punk. guy and thomas are merely vessels, physical manifestations of daft punk. the real daft punk is actually two robots from the future. to understand why i would hump daft punk, you need to do two things. one, you need to understand that they are musical prodigies and two, you need to see a clip of one of their live shows.
first, listen to their albums in order. when i first heard daft punk's "homework", i was amused. it was fun, cheesy house music, i enjoyed it and it made me smile. "discovery" certainly stepped it up a notch in sophistication, making them somewhat more legitimate as musicians in my opinion. "human after all" again took it to another level. but you really need to listen to "alive 2007" to appreciate the full genius of daft punk. as you might suspect, alive is a live concert album and how these guys can pull this off boggles the mind. somehow they manage to mix together various songs into something that is far more than the sum of its parts. everytime i listen to it, i am amazed. check it out.
once you've acquainted yourself with the music, check out one of the stage shows. it's impressive to say the least. i haven't been to one in person, but if they are this good on youtube, well...
now, i know that some people probably think that this is some sort of altruistic research project to help disabled people or some other nonsense. but i know what is really going on here, and i'm pretty sure it has something to do with a new japanese game show. the two most awesome things in the world have been brought together in what can only be described as a miracle. and no, i am not talking about the XFL. i'm talking about monkeys and robots. scientists have created the perfect marriage of simian and machine, resulting in what i can only hope is the most entertaining development of our lifetimes.
in related news, three japanese scientiest were killed in a bionic poo-flinging incident.
