Rebel Prince

A corporate e-mail I just received notes that traffic volume in the area might be unusually high tomorrow morning. Why? Local auditions for American Idol will be held starting at 10 a.m. at the Round House Theatre here in Bethesda, Md. This theater happens to be right across the street from my office–in fact, just now I got up and looked out the window to see if the marquee spells “Round House” as one word or two (It’s two.)–so I’ll have a perfect view, within heckling distance, even, of all the crazed wannabes.

If you really want all the details, check out the press release from radio sponsor Hot 99.5. I use the phrase “press release” lightly, because well, it’s not exactly Reuters style or anything. I quote: “Can you say OHMYGOD!?! THIS IS SO HUGE!!!!!” (Emphasis is all theirs.)

Just as entertaining is the Post‘s take on it (“Breathlessly, TV’s ‘Idol’ Seeks Singers“). An excerpt:

“Can you say OHMYGOD!?! THIS IS SO HUGE!!!!!” reads the Web site for the radio station HOT 99.5, a statement so essential to the American Idol marketing message that it employs 21 percent of the memo’s 33 exclamation marks.

And the specifics of the audition for the nationally televised talent show on the Fox network–as in, the line forms at 5 a.m., and “ANY persons present prior to 5 a.m. will be automatically excluded from participating… NO EXCEPTIONS”–are spelled out in such serious teen talk that even bad news is conveyed with a typographic pat on the back.

“The first 99 eligible contestants will be registered and guaranteed an audition!!! Up to 100 additional eligible contestants will be registered, but are NOT guaranteed an audition at this event. 🙁 ”

Bring it on. (Tina writes in, “My ears are starting to hurt already.”)

[Update (13:53): Tina and I just got back from the Starbucks downstairs–despite already having had my usual morning frap, I decided to try a tall Columbia, a very strong brew which I’d describe as having undertones of berry flavors. Mmm. Where was I? Oh, yes–as we eyed the theater across the street, Tina observed: “There’d better be lines tomorrow. I want a freakshow.” Indeed.]

Thom and I had planned to see Thoroughly Modern Millie next Saturday, but yesterday afternoon out of curiosity, I decided to check ticket availability for the other performances. (The touring company opens at Wolf Trap on Tuesday, Aug. 26.) To my delight, the ticketing website yielded two front-row seats for opening night (woo hoo!), so of course we couldn’t pass them up. They must’ve been released for sale only recently. (Reminds me of last fall, the day of the Ben Folds concert, I decided that hmm, yes, I actually did want to go, and Ticketmaster rewarded my procrastination with a seat in the second row.)

So yeah, I can’t wait. By the way, you New Yorkers (and vacationers), if you haven’t already, go see Millie on Broadway while Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster is still in the title role. She is awesome.

Another rant about spam: one of the e-mails I just received has the subject line “You left your umbrella,” from someone named Angel Scott. Yahoo Mail had automatically filtered this into the “Bulk” folder, so I knew it was suspicious to begin with, but I was curious. I had indeed left my umbrella on the Metro a couple of weeks ago. Well, it turns out that despite the innocuous subject line, said e-mail concerns that ever popular spam topic: penis enlargement. What the… ?

In related news, after work that day I bought a new umbrella at Hechts, and have I used it yet? Not once. How ironic (or something like that). Sure, it’s rained since then, but I’ve always managed, mostly unintentionally, to avoid being caught outside in a storm. Go figure.

Agh. As if I weren’t getting enough unsolicited e-mail as it is, yesterday I started receiving a whole slew of it, and there’s a virus at work here. I’ve also received lots of “undeliverable mail” bounce messages, for e-mails with my address as the sender, even though I never sent them. So if you’ve received strange spam-like e-mail from my address, I didn’t send them, I swear!

Apparently, it’s “WORM_SOBIG.F”:

This worm propagates by mass-mailing copies of itself using its own Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) engine. It collects email addresses from files with the following extensions: DBX, HLP, MHT, WAB, HTML, HTM, TXT, EML. It sends out email messages with the following details:

Subject: <any of the following:>
Re: Thank you!
Thank you!
Re: Details
Re: Re: My details
Re: Approved
Re: Your application
Re: Wicked screensaver
Re: That movie

Message body: <any of the following:>
See the attached file for details.
Please see the attached file for details.

Attachment: <any of the following:>
your_document.pif
document_all.pif
thank_you.pif
your_details.pif
details.pif
document_9446.pif
application.pif
wicked_scr.scr
movie0045.pif

It may spoof the FROM field using e-mail addresses found on the infected machine so that its e-mail messages appear to originate from one source but was actually sent from another. This worm deactivates its propagation routine on September 10, 2003. This worm runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP.

More info at Trend Micro and Symantec.

Check out the cover of Rufus’ new album, Want, whose first installment will be released Sept. 23. Wow. All I can say right now is boy, he’s such a prince:

And there’s a lot of new info on the official website, finally. From the “Bio” section:

“Want One is a presentable, accessible entity,” Wainwright explains. “Want Two will have some of the more daunting tracks, the operatic, weird stuff, some heavy numbers that relate to my classical sensibilities.” Not that the initial volume eschews the daunting, the weird or the heavy, all of which have emerged as distinctive arrows in Wainwright’s ambitious, gloriously stylish musical quiver.

The singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist elaborates: “This album really made itself; it commanded its own parameters. My first record took three years to make; the second took a year and a half. This one took six months, and during that time we were able to cut 30 tracks. Want One has a good balance of the maze I tend to wind people around. And it was a fun record to make. A lot of it was made just jamming, so it’s sort of laid back as well.”

I’m so excited.

Tonight–actually, in about an hour, so I better tear myself away from the computer and get ready–Thom and I are heading out of town for the weekend. Yay, fun!

Here’s last week’s Friday Five. Late a whole week, I know, but I couldn’t resist the travel theme.

1. What’s the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?
Outside my home state (or the larger D.C. metropolitan area, if we’re quibbling): New York City, May 2003. Outside my home country: Amsterdam, Netherlands, Apr. 2001. Huh. Has it really been that long since I’ve traveled out of the country? Gotta dust off my passport and put it to use.

2. What’s the most bizarre/unusual thing that’s ever happened to you while traveling?
While in Budapest (Jan. 2001), one night Subarna and I were walking along somewhere near the river–the Buda side, if I remember correctly–and a man comes up to us, asking if we want to exchange our money or some such. He’s persistent despite our attempts to shrug him off, and a minute later out of nowhere two police officers appear. They ask for our passports, and tell us to look through our wallets to make sure we have all our money. Turns out they’ve been looking for this guy. The cops take him away in their car, and that was that. Okay, I suppose this wasn’t so bizarre or unusual, so much as kind of interesting (once the long arm of the law magically appeared). Very Cops-like.

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?
Ah, so many places. Maybe a few months in Europe. Then again, after having vacationed mostly in cities, I’ve been wanting to visit a really relaxing destination, where I can just while away the days on a beach. Maybe the South Pacific. Heck, why not a trip around the world?

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train, or car?
It’s really hard for me to pick among them, since each is well-suited in their own ways. I have a strong fascination with aviation, so I love to fly, and since I don’t travel by plane as much as I used to (these days, a handful of times a year), it’s more of an experience than other modes of transportation. The train gets good marks for convenience; most of my train traveling has been on Amtrak between D.C. and New York City, and with Penn Station right in the middle of Manhattan, getting around is really easy. I haven’t been on a road trip in a while–my friends and I took a memorable one from the Bay Area to L.A. a few years ago. Driving along the coast with the awesome views, while taking on some hairpin cliffside turns, was amazing.

5. What’s the next place on your list to visit?
Hold on, let me throw a dart at the map.

The “From:” field of my most recently received spam reads “Your Serenity.” The subject line was something to the effect of “Dealing with depression.” Or maybe it was “Don’t live with depression.” (Now that’s depressing, or morbid, if you think about it long enough.)

In any case, who would’ve thought that my serenity would have an e-mail address? Quite high-tech (and thoughtful), my subconscious. Serenity now!