Being Searched

I can't tell you how pleased I was to discover, via Sitemeter, that somebody got to my blog by searching:

"tiger dupont circle cage painted"

Google it: I'm first--one ahead of PETA.

I told you it was an effective protest!

Lyric of the Day!

This is an actual poem-type poem, rather than song lyrics (although I first encountered it sung on the wonderful Beat Suite by the late, great Steve Lacy).

Since I was lazy all week, feel free to substitute "week" for "day" in the title, at your pleasure.

I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get from me.
They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.
Where are my sisters and brothers?
That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap.
And that idiot student of his -- I never saw that muffler before.
Poor uncle, he lets them load him.
How sad he is, how tired!
I wonder what they'll do with his bones?
And that beautiful tail!
How many shoelaces will they make of that!

--"The Mad Yak", Gregory Corso

I Heart Roger Ebert

On Basic Instinct 2:

"It's a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. I cannot recommend the movie, but ... why the hell can't I? Just because it's godawful? What kind of reason is that for staying away from a movie? Godawful and boring, that would be a reason. "

Disagree with his opinions if you will, but Roger Ebert is always great to read. I don't think there's another major film critic who would write anything like the above.

Friday Random Ten: AAAARGH! Edition

The worst thing that has ever happened to anyone in the world has happened to me: my fauxPod is on the fritz. The headphone jack keeps cutting out one channel. Still, although I can't effective listen to it, I can still cycle through ten random songs for your reading pleasure (lucky devils):

Ellery Eskelin, "Visionary of the Week", Kulak 29 & 30
Ellery Eskelin, "Ways and Means", Five Other Pieces (+2)
Joe McPhee, "Oleo (Take 2)", Oleo & A Future Retrospective
Tobias Delius...

...and the battery runs out.

My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Oh, because of that last post? Huh.

In Which I Don't Even Make Fun of the Dating Service Part

I came across this story by Doug Worgul last weekend and something about it stuck in my craw. It's a story about saving the children from being obsessed with celebrities:

In Psychology Today, writer Carlin Flora suggests that America's fascination with celebrity is a symptom of a larger cultural obsession with the three A's -- affluence, attractiveness and achievement. Celebrities seem to embody all of these.

Affluence, attractiveness and achievement are understandably desirable, and certainly not inherently harmful, but fixation on these can sometimes divert individuals, especially young people, from other values, such as community, charity and commitment.

The part that caught my eye was this:

Flora quotes psychologist James Houran, who says that in a secular society the "need for ritualized worship can be displaced onto celebrities."

"Nonreligious people tend to be more interested in celebrity culture," Houran says. "For them, celebrity fills some of the same roles the church fills for believers, like the desire to fit into a community of people with shared values."

I don't think "nonreligious" people are more interested in "celebrity culture"--my own unscientific observation is that people who are "religious", in the way that equates with feeling superior to others who don't mouth the same pieties you do, tend to be more interested in "celebrity culture", because it's so fun to be shocked at and tut-tut the stars' antics. (Nonreligious people might very well be more interested in the things celebrities do for a living, like making movies or music, but that's not the same thing as "celebrity culture"--whatever that's supposed to be.)

As it turns out my observation doesn't appear to be any more unscientific than Houran's, if Flora's Psychology Today article is any indication:

In a secular society our need for ritualized idol worship can be displaced onto stars, speculates psychologist James Houran, formerly of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and now director of psychological studies for True Beginnings dating service.

Oh--he "speculates". Worgul neglected to mention that. He also left out the word "idol", oddly enough. And now that you mention it, he put it all in quotes, attributed to Houran, but Flora paraphrases the good doctor, she doesn't quote him.

The Flora article continues:

Nonreligious people tend to be more interested in celebrity culture, he’s found, and Houran speculates that for them, celebrity fills some of the same roles the church fills for believers, like the desire to admire the powerful and the drive to fit into a community of people with shared values.

Again with the speculation. Again with the paraphrase. But that doesn't stop Worgul from putting quotes around what "Houran says". Odd, that, especially since he takes further liberties with the "quote", leaving out how people go to church to "admire the powerful". Hmm.

Worgul is clearly trying to paint a particular picture of religion, against a different picture of "celebrity culture" and the "nonreligious". Mustn't let any talk of "idols" or "the powerful" in there to dilute the message. He also gives the distinct impression that this is the whole point of the Psychology Today story, when in fact religion figures in one paragraph of the article.

Oddly, too, Flora's article was published almost two years ago. And it doesn't mention the "three A's" that Worgul says Flora "suggests" are America's "larger cultural obsession"--the words "affluence" and "achievement" don't even appear in her article, though she does mention the other A, "attractiveness". Once.

Worgul's prescription for celebrity obsession is to teach kids to be skeptical and to think critically. Good advice for reading his article, too.

Zing!

Lyric of the Day! Er... Week!

"They say I shot a man named Gray,
And took his wife to Italy.
She inherited a million bucks,
And when she died, it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky!"

--Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind

Drunk Calls Are One Thing

But drunk blog comments are another thing entirely.

The Nation's Capitol Made Me Ill!

To add to my litany of complaints below, I'm sick. My throat started hurting yesterday afternoon and absolutely killed this morning when I woke up. So I called in, slept in, and haven't been doing much since.

But, it gives me some time to blog.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just returned from Washington, D.C. I was there to attend the Leukemia Ball for my employer, which sponsored a table. This was my first real black-tie gala event, and as we exited our hotel to walk to the event, we got protested by people who thought we were at yet another black-tie gala that was actually taking place at our hotel--one attended, we later found out, by George Bush. (As it turns out, this was only one of many protests I saw in D.C. this weekend. Others included the high-school squeakers playing "Taps" for unborn fetuses outside of Planned Parenthood; and the young woman wearing only bikini bottoms, painted from head to toe like a tiger, sitting in a cage on the sidewalk and holding a sign in front of her chest that read, "Animals aren't meant to be caged." This latter seemed to me to be a particularly effective protest.)

The weather in D.C. was just unbelievably beautiful this weekend: sunny, upper 70s. I walked quite a few miles while I was there. Where I went, and some highlights of each:

DuPont Circle: A good record store, Melody Records, and a good bookstore, Kramerbooks. All new stuff at both of these, so no real bargains, but nice places. I had a good lunch on Friday at a place with a not-so-good name, Thaiphoon. Overall, I'd (apparently) call the neighborhood "good".

White House: Enh. Hopefully I'll like it better in three years, ha ha. Actually, it's so well fenced-off, I didn't get much of an impression from it.

Washington Monument: Get tickets in advance if you want to go up in it. Not much need to bother walking all the way to it just to see the outside, either.

Smithsonian Museum of American History: There are a lot of flags, including, apparently, the one that inspired Francis Scott Key. There's a statue of George Washington as Zeus. Or Neptune. Some Greek god, at any rate. This was less inspiring than comical. There was a nice, though small, display about Duke Ellington, including video of old recorded movie and TV performances. I was the only one watching them. As with most museums, the gift stores were most prominent. One specialized in music. You know how they always call jazz "America's Only Original Art Form"? The museum store gave it about three feet of rack space. Meanwhile, there was a huge display of Beatles memorabilia. This is the Museum of American History, people! Sigh.

World War II Memorial: Enh. I went to the Vietnam Memorial when I was in D.C. last year and was surprised by how moving it really was to see. The WWII Memorial just seems perfunctory.

Arlington National Cemetary: Worth the Metro trip, even though it's weird that a cemetary is a Tourist Attraction. Maybe it's not that weird, considering all the other monuments to the dead. The eternal flame over JFK's grave; the simple cross over RFK's; the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (I didn't know it's "guarded" 24 hours--I wonder if the ceremoniousness of it continues all night long? I wonder if their rifles really have ammo?).

I wanted to check out at least one more museum on Sunday, but my feet were just killing me by then. I hung out at Borders for a while, had some Malaysian food, and took a cab to the airport.

I dig Washington, but one thing I noticed: It seemed like I got panhandled more times in the past three days there than I have in the past three months in Chicago. I dunno, maybe I've just become hardened and oblivious to my daily surroundings, and noticed it more there? Or is there really more of it there, and if so, does that say something about Washington, or about Chicago? Are there some kind of draconian crackdowns going on here that middle-class people like me just aren't aware of? Or maybe I was just more class-conscious than usual on this trip, attending a ball in a tux, taking cabs, staying at a nice hotel, eating in good restaurants.

Anyway, I'm off to drink some more tea and wait for spring to arrive here.

Off the Grid

I haven't been so good about posting in the past few days--I started a couple of things that never came to fruition earlier last week, then on Thursday, I had the best of intentions, but the phone company jacked up my line--apparently my line was going to someone else's house for a day or so--and I lost my DSL along with the dial tone. Then I was in Washington, D.C. for the weekend, where I didn't find (nor, admittedly, seek out) any internet cafes. (With wi-fi everywhere, do they even still have internet cafes anymore?)

But I have returned, sunburned (78 degrees!), foot-blistered (new shoes!), and annoyed (American Eagle took over an hour to get my bag out of the plane and onto the conveyor belt!). I did have a good trip. I am, however, too tired to write about it right now.

Lyric of the Day!

"Well, if you feel what I'm feeling, then it's a musical masterpiece.
Hear what I'm dealing with, then that's cool, at least."
--Beastie Boys, Pass the Mic

Lyric of the Day!

"And if my thought-dreams could be seen,
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine.
But it's alright, Ma,
It's life, and life only."
--Bob Dylan, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Lyric of the Day!

"Little Eiffel stands in the archway
Little Eiffel, Little Eiffel
Keeping low doesn't make no sense
Sometimes people can be oh so dense
They didn't want it but he built it anyway
Little Eiffel, Little Eiffel"
--The Pixies, Alec Eiffel

Crash: Did I Call It or What?

Why, yes, I did.

Oscars 2006: [Insert Lame Gay Cowboy Joke Here]

I'm a bit of a film buff. Yes, I do love the movies. And every year, somewhat against my better judgment, I find myself watching the Oscars.

These kinds of award ceremonies, that feed the vanities of the rich and beautiful, are sort of fundamentally obnoxious; but the saving grace is that the Oscars actually do reward merit, at least to some degree. The nominations and awards tend to go to good movies, even if the best ones, the truly great ones, almost never win, or even get recognized by a nomination. I mean, compared to something like the reliably putrid Grammys, the Oscars are like the Booker Prize.

It seems easier to separate the wheat from the chaff in the film world than in other media industries, if only because films are so expensive that only a handful get made and released every year (as compared to music or books), and the relatively small time commitment required means you can watch a lot of them--even the best, most challenging movies are over in 2 or 3 hours, whereas it can take ten times that long as that to read a fat "literary" novel.

So, it would be difficult, but it's at least conceivable that you could see most of the movies released in any given year, and it's certainly possible to see most of the worthwhile ones (after all, there are plenty of movies that, just on their face, have no real artistic aspirations). So I think a lot of people can have reasonably well-considered opinions about the best films in any given year.

Not that I've put in that much effort this year.

I usually find that by the time the Oscars roll around, I've seen four of the five Best Picture nominees. The fifth one usually wins: It's the one that I've avoided because it looks too earnest, sentimental and dull. This year, the one I haven't seen is Good Night and Good Luck, though I haven't actively avoided it, I just have't gotten around to it--I'd actually like to see it. As for the other four, I thought Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Munich were all really good; Crash was okay, but it's the one that seems to fit that painfully-earnest model that gets out the vote every year, so I think it's going to win, even though in my opinion, it's by far the least of the ones I've seen.

Anyway, I'll be watching the show tonight, to see how badly I lose the pool and to watch Jon Stewart. I'm also looking forward to seeing how they stage the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp". It should be quite the extravaganza! And speaking of pimps, it'll be nice to see Philip Seymour Hoffman get a well-deserved award--he's one of the best actors working today.

Still, as usual, the Academy missed out entirely on the two best films I saw last year: Me and You and Everyone We Know and Grizzly Man. But they're making up for it by giving the great Robert Altman an honorary award tonight, and as long as they keep doing the right thing like that, I guess I'll have to keep watching.

Lyric of the Day!

"This condition I got is crucial--crucial, baby!
U could say that I'm a terminal case.
U could burn up my clothes,
Smash up my ride....
Well, maybe not the ride."
--Prince, Adore

Ode to the Mashup

Yesterday's Friday Random Ten, which included "Boulevard of Broken Songs", reminded me that I've been wanting to write about this: I have recently been rather obsessed with mashups, those home-brewed remixes that, yes, "mash up" two or more songs into one new creation. I'd read about them, but had never really searched them out until Theo hipped me to The Beastles, dj BC's brilliant collages of (as if you couldn't figure this out) Beastie Boys and The Beatles.

(I know I'm a little behind the curve on this front, but, let's face it, no further behind than I am on anything else that can be considered remotely cool.)

"Boulevard of Broken Songs" is from the Dean Gray creation, American Edit, which, while not my absolute favorite, is certainly the most ambitious mashup I've heard, a collage of Green Day's American Idiot album with I-don't-know-how-many other songs. I do really love one track from teh project, "Whatsername (Susanna Hoffs)", and I think that song encapsulates why I dig the mashups in general so much.

The original Green Day "Whatsername" is a bittersweet song about lost love and memory, in which the protagonist tries to reconcile his past with his present, reflecting on the way another person, long gone from his reality, has in some way remained a part of him. At least, that's my interpretation of the lyrics:

I made a point to burn all of the photographs
She went away and then I took a different path
I remember the face but I can't recall the name
Now I wonder how whatsername has been
. . .
She's in my head
From so long ago

So, in the mashup, we segue from "I wonder how whatsername has been" straight into The Bangles' "Manic Monday":

Six o'clock already
I was just in the middle of a dream
I was kissin' Valentino
By a crystal blue Italian stream
But I can't be late
'Cause then I guess I just won't get paid
These are the days
When you wish your bed was already made

Suddenly, it's like we've jump-cut to "whatsername's" life today, waking up from her own dream (maybe it was even about our hero? probably not), dealing with her own daily life. There's something oddly effective about it. It changes the whole perspective of the song. Suddenly, it's like the listener has become an omniscient observer, able to be in two places at once (this effect is heightened by the continuity of the music behind the lyrics, I think), and now, instead of being a song about one person's memories of yesterday, it's about two people's lives today. "Whatsername" suddenly has an identity (Susanna Hoffs, duh!), a personality, a solidity that she doesn't have in the original song.

And that information gives us a different perspective on the guy, too. It puts him into a context that didn't exist before. We're moved outside of the guy's head and into the world, where they are, of course, just two people among many. To me, this new perspective changes the song from a sad-bastard story into a song about life going on, about two people whose problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Since I think that's always a good thing to remember when trying to get perspective on one's own life, I find the whole thing weirdly moving.

Also, it sounds pretty neat.

But all the mashups I like work similarly. I probably couldn't explicate most of them (which I'm sure will come as a relief to the reader), but there is something deeply pleasurable about seeing a new connection between two songs that you knew before and would never have thought could be put together. My thinking is probably influenced by a book I've been reading, John Carey's What Good Are the Arts?, in which Carey says that they aren't much good at all, except to the extent that the audience exercises its own creativity. Makes sense, though he says this type of creativity takes place only, or mostly, in literature, and I'm not sure I agree with him about that.

He says that language is by its nature "indistinct" and so when we read, say a description of someone's face, we have to draw on our own memories and imaginations to create a picture in our heads. But I think that can be true of other media, as well, and I think that's part of the pleasure I'm finding in these mashups. I mean, let's face it, all that stuff I wrote above about "omniscience" and "perspective"? None of that's in the song. But the song prompted my thoughts in that direction, because I was trying to make sense of the connection between two wholly-different songs. I mean, Dean Gray made the connection, but I was trying to understand the connection. And I think the attempt at understanding necessarily involves creativity (on top of the creativity of the DJs who put the things together for us in the first place), and that's why the mashups are just so much damn fun.

Also, they sound pretty neat.

Lyric of the Day!

"Well the telephone rang and it would not stop,
It was President Kennedy calling me up.
He said, 'My friend Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?'
I said, 'My friend John, Brigitte Bardot... Anita Ekberg... Sophia Loren...
Country'll grow!'"
--Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Free

Friday Random Ten

As far as I can tell, this is a popular posting tradition in this here "blogosphere": to pull up ten random tunes on the iPod and post them.

Well, I don't have an iPod. I have a Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra MP3 player. I guess that means I'm not one of the "cool kids". OR AM I?

Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet--Stone/Water
Charlie Parker--"Ooh Ooh, My My, Ooh Ooh", A Studio Chronicle
Tortoise--"Dear Grandma and Grandpa", Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Stan Getz--"On the Alamo", Complete Roost Recordings
Miles Davis--"Venus de Milo", Birth of the Cool
Louis Moholo/Larry Stabbins/Keith Tippett--"Tern (Second Part)", Tern
Dexter Gordon--"Second Balcony Jump", Go!
Dean Gray--"Boulevard of Broken Songs", American Edit
Miles Davis--"Pee Wee", Quintet 1965-68, The Complete Studio Recordings
Miles Davis--"Splashdown", The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions

That actually is probably a pretty accurate indicator of the percentage of my record collection that's comprised of Miles.

End of the Independent Record Store

There's this record store, right around the corner from my office, that seems to be going out of business. They haven't actually announced this yet, but starting in December, they had 25% off everything, then 30%, then 40%, then 50%. The people who worked there didn't really know what was going on, or wouldn't say, at any rate, but it seemed pretty obvious.

But then they went back to 25% for a few weeks, which made me think that maybe they'd raised enough cash with the fire sale to keep things going. But then, yesterday, I saw the "50% off" sign back up in the window, and I stopped by after work.

(It's only fair at this point to mention that I've spent more money there in the past three months than in the previous ten years. I feel like a vulture with headphones.)

Anyway, I picked up a few things (surprisingly, they'd gotten in more inventory, since the last time I looked), and when I checked out, the bill came out to a few bucks less than I had thought it would. I asked, as the girl behind the counter handed me my credit card slip, "Is it even more than 50% off?" Yes--she told me it's now 60% off.

So I reckon it's not going to be much longer now.

It makes me a little sad, the death of the independent record store (they're closing all over the country, it seems, thanks to big chain stores, internet retailers, and, especially, downloading). But at 60% off, I may still have to pick the bones of this one a little cleaner.

Lyric of the Day!

"Bearer of the flag from the beginning--
Now who would have believed this riot grrl's a cynic?
But they took our ideas to their marketing stars,
And now I'm spending all my days at girlpower.com,
Trying to buy back a little piece of me."

--Sleater-Kinney, #1 Must Have

My Ash Wednesday Story

Actually, it's more of an anecdote. And it's not really an "Ash Wednesday anecdote" so much as a "Rob is clueless anecdote".

I didn't know too many Catholic kids growing up, and I guess the ones I did know must not have done the ashes-on-the-forehead thing. In any case, I somehow got well into college before I learned about this custom. And my education was thus:

I sat down at my desk before class started. A girl I knew slightly was sitting next to me, and I noticed a smudge on her forehead. Thinking that I would want someone to tell ME if I had a big black smudge on my face, I said, "Hey, you have something on your forehead."

She responded, "I'm Catholic."

Totally bemused, thinking she must have grossly misunderstood what I said, I stammered, "Uh... no... I mean... you have something on your forehead."

She said, "I know. I'm Catholic. It's Ash Wednesday."

"Oh," I said. I still had no idea what the deal was, but I nodded and shut up.