Brian Alvey

A longtime reader and I have been having a debate about Krypto, the super dog that lived with Superboy (a.k.a. the Last Son of Krypton*) in Smallville. She read my post about Ace, the crime-fighting Bat hound and she took the position that Krypto was already the dog’s name before he was placed into the rocket ship that got knocked off-course and drifted for years before finally landing on earth years after Superboy had.

I disagreed. I’m pretty sure that “Krypto” was his Earth name and that his given Kryptonian name was Ken-El.

Now if only there was a giant authoritative Internet comic book data repository I could turn to for a ruling on this one…

Maybe I should add “Ken-El” to the Wikipedia’s Krypto entry before I reply?

* Last Son of Krypton: does not include last daughters of Krypton, last pets of Krypton, other last sons of Krypton, last robots of Krypton, last intelligent life forces of Krypton, last miniature cities in bottles of Krypton and any other last characters of Krypton to be introduced later.

My good friend Craig bought us all Yankees tickets last December. It was a crazy coincidence that our game fell on the day he would leave his company to come work with me.

What a game. Niki’s favorite Yankee Jorge Posada did everything right. He settled down relief pitcher Aaron Small, survived a violent collision with Mark Teixeira at the plate and hit a walk-off two-run home run in the ninth inning to bring the Yankees back from 9-0 to an eventual 14-13 win. They matched the biggest comeback in Yankee history and Joe Torre said it made his top ten Yankees games list.

What a fantastic, memorable night.

Last night Niki and I saw Depeche Mode at Jones Beach. We will be spending a lot of time there this summer. We used to see six or eight shows a year there and then we had kids. I decided that it would be a good thing to start breaking away for concerts again — like the date nights some couples have, except it’s an hour away and it’s on the beach and there’s live music.

Neither of us had seen Depeche Mode before and it was a good show. Seeing them of course reminded me of one of the businesses I was considering before Jason and I decided to do Weblogs, Inc.

I had done my Meet The Makers event series and was gaining some fame in the web design community and one of the web designers I met mentioned that he was Dave Gahan‘s webmaster. “Perfect!” I said, trying to hide my enthusiasm a little. “Can you relay my business proposition to him?”

“I want to open a restaurant with Dave. We’ll call it ‘Pizza are Pizza’ and our tagline will be ‘I can’t understand what makes a man eat another brand. Help me understand.’ The highlight of the menu will be ‘Make your own pizza’ where you get to pick: your own … personal … cheeses!”

I never heard back from Dave or his webmaster so I partnered up with Jason instead and there I was last night — watching Dave from the crowd, imagining what we could have done together.

Now I’m hungry.

Interesting story in Valleywag yesterday about how I’m pissing off John Battelle by squatting his nom du com, JohnBattelle.com. I happened to be the registrant for all domains Jason had back in the Silicon Alley Reporter days and I don’t think I’ve ever met John Battelle, so it would be kind of silly for him to be mad at me. Fortunately, Valleywag did an update that explains why the domain registration has my name on it. Between SAR, Weblogs, Inc. and my own projects I have had my name on at least 3000 domain registrations so maybe I have more enemies than I’m aware of.

I must add that I’m a huge fan of Battelle’s Web 2.0 event since AOL CEO Jon Miller confirmed the Weblogs, Inc. deal on his stage last October. Who wouldn’t love an event like that?

Thanks to Valleywag for putting so much time and effort into the infographic and for using a more flattering picture than Jason’s.

Seeing Glenn Tilbrook play live rolls back time a decade or two for me. Of course closing down the bar he’s playing in at 3am rolls that clock forward again and then some…

The Peak’s birthday show on Friday was a blast. We met some good people including some of the DJs, we heard a decent set from Jeffrey Gaines — who is best known right now for a live soulful cover of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, but thankfully only did a few lines of that one before doing Tom Petty’s The Waiting instead — and I got to hang out with Glenn afterwards in his rock star tour bus.

Glenn did his usual Best of Squeeze: Pulling Mussels, Tempted, Black Coffee in Bed, Hourglass, Annie Get Your Gun and Messed Around. He did Letting Go from Play and a recent solo song called Hostage. When he did Piccadilly from East Side Story the whole crowd shouted out the line “Heart like a gun was just half of the battle” over and over and Niki, who had stepped away, thought the place must be filled with Squeeze fanatics. Not so, I explained. Glenn gave us instructions before he began the song.

My sister got us on the guest list after the show was sold out so we thanked her by calling her repeatedly during the show so she could hear bits and pieces. Thanks, Jenn!

My favorite little world class rock station in New York’s backyard just turned two and celebrated with a concert in White Plains on Friday night. Niki and I spent the evening without kids for the first time in a long time. Well, I’m on the road right now so that happens more often for me than her, but it was nice to put on some makeup — more her than me — and hit a bar to watch a couple of singer-guitarists, meet the Make A Wish ladies and mingle with the talent behind a great radio station.

On the way to the show we had The Peak on and they played Suzanne Vega’s Blood Makes Noise. Who else would play that song? College radio?

We saw a story on them in the local Westchester paper, so I had a good idea what everyone looked like.

Between Jeffrey Gaines and Glenn Tilbrook’s sets, I spent a few minutes chatting with program director and creator Chris Herrmann about how the station came to be and how its listeners are so connected to The Peak. It began as a peek into his own iPod and quickly attracted some veteran DJs like Jimmy Fink. We had some friends over one Saturday night for cards a year ago and after listening to The Peak all evening long they asked if it was our own CD collection. You barely notice the commercials. You can listen to them online while you’re in VA on a business trip.

About six months ago I did a phone survey where they wanted to know what I liked in a radio station. By the end of the call I had figured out that it was KRock trying to figure out what to do for a format when Howard Stern moved on to satellite radio, but I frustrated the caller over and over. “Who do you listen to in the morning?” they’d ask. “The Peak,” I’d say. “What station is that?” “107.1. You can’t get it in the city.” “You mean WBLS, 107.5?” “Um…no, that’s an R&B and Soul station. The Peak is 107.1. They play Jack Johnson, Elvis Costello, Marc Broussard, The Strokes, The Killers, old stuff, new stuff, you know, world class rock?”

Congratulations, Chris!

I have to say that I don’t totally understand my Canadian sister and I doubt she understands me either.

But when I have a gallon of Coors Light in me and Glenn Tilbrook is on stage singing I could only feel closer to her if we were Siamese twins.

A few weeks ago, Niki and I met Rachael Ray’s half-sister, but she wasn’t aware of her family connection.

Our waitress came over and when she smiled you would have sworn it was a younger Rachael Ray. We told her who she reminded us of and she said that we weren’t the first people to tell her that. Then she added that it was funny because she comes from the same small town that Rachael Ray does in upstate New York. She walked away and Niki and I both said at the same time, “Paternity test!”

I mean, she even went into the food services business just like her older half-sister. How coincidental is that?

The whole time we were waiting for our food I was hoping that she would load her arms up with more items than a regular non-celebrity human waitress could carry just to see if she could do it in one trip. She didn’t, but it did smell awesome and it was delish!

Congratulations to Reese Witherspoon on her Oscar for best actress. I’m a voting member of the Academy, but one with lots of distractions, so I didn’t get a chance to review Walk The Line. I voted for her anyway, largely because she was brilliant as Tracy Flick in Election. I hope she tops her own $30 million record paycheck when she signs on for Legally Blonde III: The Wrath of Blonde.

Now I’m a huge Johnny Cash fan — I myself shot a man in Reno just to watch him die — but I was annoyed that they didn’t go with any of my Walk The Line screenplay edits so I never watched the final cut. I had this great scene where Johnny Cash goes to pick up his Tony Lamas and one of the stagehands grabs them first and apologizes saying, “Sorry, sir. These boots were made for Joaquin.”

I bring them comedic gold and they opt for serious.

Niki and I turned 75 today. Guess which one of us is 45 and which one is 30. (Okay, so we’re both still in our thirties…I’ve got a lot of gray.)

I kicked the day off with a 6am conference call. AOL hosting did some networking upgrades for us and I guess it’s better to get an early start and stretch the day out than to sleep in and risk missing the whole thing.

We’re having some people over this weekend to celebrate the “coolness that is us” — my words, not Niki’s — and I’m psyched to see them all. Walter and Kim Some of them have new babies and never visit or call anymore. Jeffrey and Carrie Some of them can’t make it because they’re famous and busy speaking at some web geek event in Texas.

A long time ago, I registered march6.com and this year I considered putting up a quick March 6 blog and doing the 30 or 40 posts I had saved up over the last couple of weeks while my own blog was upgrading to our new publishing system. I figured I would post all day long every year, but only on March 6 and then I figured who wants to spend their birthday blogging? More specifically, who is foolish enough to spend his wife’s whole birthday blogging?

What if I queued up all the posts in advance or got some March 6 birthday celebs like Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal, Michelangelo (and his virus), AOL blogger Tom Arnold and David Gilmore to contribute?

Maybe next year, guys.