June 16, 2009

There were 3 posts published on June 16, 2009 (this is page 1 of 1).

Cary’s Booth Amphitheatre: the place rocks

Sunday’s Elvis Costello show at Cary’s Koka Booth Amphitheatre was civilized in every sense of the word. We drove right up, parked so close to the gates that we didn’t need a shuttle to reach them, waltzed through the security check collecting smiles as we went, and were comfortably settled on the lawn in no time. Our spot on the lawn had a great view of the stage, the sound was perfect – not too loud or soft, and decent food could be ordered ahead for pickup. The management even sent me a customer survey afterward to see how they did.

And you know what? I gave them marks that were off the charts! The facility runs circles around the Raleigh-owned dump with the pretentious name of Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek.

Cary does amphitheatres the way they should be done. Raleigh has a new standard to beat should it ever get its proposed downtown amphitheatre started.

UNC-TV has bumpy DTV transition

Before last Friday’s DTV transition, when all analog TV signals were switched off in favor of digital ones, We used to receive the digital signals from Chapel Hill’s WUNC-TV Channel 4.1 like a cannon, thanks to our attic’s mega-huge Yagi antenna being pointed right at the tower. All that changed during Friday’s transition, however. The stations changed their channels’ frequencies as part of the move and UNC-TV mysteriously disappeared from all of my TVs.

Bits and pieces of information filtered out of UNC-TV. This was posted on the unctv.org website on Sunday:
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Iran

I’m fascinated with what I’m seeing happening in Iran right now. It’s beautiful to see people standing up for democracy and doing it in a peaceful manner. I also find it notable that many of the people demonstrating in the streets were not alive during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. They do not remember the oppressive Shah or the Ayatollah Khomeini. More importantly, in spite of what their government tells them they’ve never had any real reason to hate America. Indeed, many just want their freedom and friendship like their neighbors in Europe.

Even so, I’m still wary because of what happened in China twenty years ago this month. Could it happen to Tehran?

And there’s the fact that Iran is a republic in name only, as a small, unelected, powerful few actually rule.