chuck.latournous.com » Personal

I. want. this.

Chuck La Tournous — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:02:04 +0000

Those of you who may have forgotten my recent birthday can make amends by buying this as a belated gift. Fear not; I will forgive you.

Macworld All-Star Band Live: ‘G-L-O-R-I-A’

Chuck La Tournous — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:45:47 +0000

The very nice folks at Echelon Studios produced a great video of The Macworld All-Star Band at our latest performance at Broadway Studios in San Francisco. Click here to see it.

Cirque du Soleil’s LOVE is all you need

Chuck La Tournous — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:30:52 +0000

I’ve been a Beatles fan nearly all my life, discovering the Fab Four only shortly after their breakup in 1970. Since then, I’ve spent a fair chunk of my disposable income on buying Beatles albums in all sorts of iterations: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD and even video. I’ve bought “regular” albums, re-mastered albums, rarities, anthologies — you name it. But through it all, I’ve stayed away from “re-imaginings” and reinterpretations. I’m a purist at heart; I wanted to hear the music the way the group intended it to be heard — no mashups need apply, thank you very much.

So it was with a little trepidation that I went with my wife to see “LOVE,” the Cirque du Soleil interpretation of the Fab Four’s music, with a story very loosely based on the band’s rise to fame and the influence both of and on the world around it.

The music is of course phenomenal. But the remixing of familiar licks, stings and phrasing is truly inspired. Bass lines from one song lead into and remain throughout another; drum kicks from Abbey Road become the foundation of “Get Back.” The mix between albums, eras and styles works in a way that seems not only seamless but in hindsight downright natural — even obvious, once you’ve heard them. And the quality of the sound is something that one imagines has never before been heard outside Abbey Road studio itself. I’m quite sure I never stopped smiling during the entire performance.

And speaking of performance, it’s hard to believe, but the music itself was only part of the experience. The acrobatics, dancing and staging were nothing short of incredible. With costuming and set decoration that seemed equal parts Peter Maxx, Dr. Suess and Rube Goldberg, LOVE is every bit a feast for the eyes as well as the ears.

Don’t look too hard for a storyline. The plot, if there can said to be one, serves merely to connect segments that are at times joyous, mystical, tragic, whimsical and funny…but always sensual and always a sheer delight.

With musical direction from Beatles producer George Martin and his son, Giles, LOVE is a meticulously, brilliantly, lovingly woven experience of a lifetime. To call it simply a “show” would be a disservice to the genius of not only the Beatles’ body of work, but the set design, choreography, sound design, performances and technological know-how it took to bring it all together. What I feared might be just another vehicle to milk the Beatles franchise yet one more time turned out to be a fitting capstone to the legacy of the four lads from Liverpool — one that would have been impossible without the intimacy with which Martin knows the material.

Writing a review of LOVE is a little like trying to describe, well, love. Words are utterly unfit for the task. LOVE needs to be experienced in all its multi-sensual glory to be understood. And once it is, it is something that becomes part of you forever.

Cirque du Soleil’s “LOVE” is now playing at the Mirage Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas.

I would so do this if I understood the instructions

Chuck La Tournous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:13:04 +0000

This would be a great week to have an extra three grand lying around

Chuck La Tournous — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:58:18 +0000

My geek lust is in full bloom today, after Apple and Barnes & Noble (yes, B&N) both released some pretty cool products. Apple unveiled a new iMac model with a better screen, faster processor and bigger hard drive. It’s mostly just the kind of speed bump you’d expect, but this one comes with a 16:9 widescreen LCD display that’s capable of displaying 8-bit color, meaning millions of colors instead of thousands.

But the real star of this release is the “Magic Mouse,” the successor to Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The Magic Mouse is a sleek, buttonless, wireless mouse that recognizes “gestures” the same way as Apple’s most recent laptops. I haven’t tried one yet, but it looks incredibly cool.

The other product is the “Nook” ebook reader by Barnes & Noble. I’ve seen Amazon’s Kindle (in all three varieties) and never found it compelling. The Nook, though, looks exciting, with a color touchscreen display, built-in WiFi to complement its 3G networking and books at just $9.99. Oh, and it also supports the ePub book format. At $260, I’m still willing to wait and see how it fares in the market, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something of its kind that shows promise. I’d love for my wife to give it a try.

Autumn: It’s not just the ‘season-before-winter’ anymore

Chuck La Tournous — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:23:51 +0000

Photograph by the author

I hated fall when I was younger. Not because there was anything wrong with the season itself, but because I just couldn’t get past the fact that fall meant that winter was just around the corner.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate fall for what it is, not just for what it means is coming next. It’s become my favorite season of the year. The temperature is brisk, the air clean and full of wonderful aromas and the colors are of course spectacular.

Oh, and the fact that there are no bugs doesn’t hurt either.

Like ‘Survivorman’ but with better food

Chuck La Tournous — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:17:04 +0000

Alex and I went to BSA’s Florida Sea Base — a high adventure camp in the Florida Keys. We and our crew (five scouts and three adults in total) took the “Out Island Adventure,” where we paddled five-and-a-half miles into the ocean to reach Big Munson Island, a deserted isle with no electricity, no cell phones and no fresh water. We lived there for five days, cooking our own food, kayaking, fishing, snorkeling and basically just surviving. It was an incredible experience. We dined on fish we caught and cooked ourselves, swam with sharks at night and snorkeled in crystal clear water surrounded by thousands of fish. Here’s a link to our troop’s photo gallery where you can see some of what we did. (We’ve got film from our underwater cameras out for processing as I write this.)

Our bedroom for the week. Talk about a room with a view!

By the end of the week, we were exhausted, smelly and eager for a drink of water that wasn’t hot. But one of my first thoughts on stepping back onto the dock at our base camp was that I hope James wants to do this when he’s old enough so I can go back.

Singing (and hiking) in the rain

Chuck La Tournous — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:01:17 +0000

The boys and I went on a hike to Point Mountain, a beautiful mix of trails, forest, streams–and of course, mountain–very close to our home. We had gone there once before, but this time, we went with James’ Scout patrol. It turned out to be a rainy hike, but we had fun nonetheless. I did a write-up on it for my TrailCamper.com site. You can read more about it there, but it was great to see that the rain couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm (although I suppose it did cut it a little short.)

Even in a downpour, the view from the top was beautiful. In fact, seeing clouds drift by below us was something special we never would have seen if we had postponed our hike for a sunnier day.

There’s a (Catholic) app for that

Chuck La Tournous — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:54:21 +0000

A friend posted a link to this very cool and very well done iApp commercial featuring Catholic-centric iPhone applications. I’ve used Mass Times on the web often to find a Mass when I’m traveling, but the app for it looks much more user friendly. I don’t know if I’d use a breviary (OK, I’d have to find out what a breviary is first), but it looks like there are some really useful things here.

There is hope

Chuck La Tournous — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:57:26 +0000

This is a pretty remarkable video. Be sure to listen and follow along with the words on the screen. Very inspirational.