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What a Difference a Year Makes

2007-12-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

My last post was exactly one year ago. Much has changed in my life since then. As it happens, that last post was on the birthday of the woman responsible for much of that change. And one of the things she asked for, for this birthday, was a new blog posting. (I think she's mainly just tired of seeing Jose Padilla every time she opens my laptop.) How could I say no?

So, in addition to being the triumphant return of Start Drinking Coffee, this here is the triumphant return of Our Most Popular Feature, "Lyric of the Day". This one is from an album I bought around the time we were first dating, a song I used to listen to, and think of her.

Hit it boys!

Suddenly, all your history's ablaze
Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates
Just like autumn leaves, we're in for change
Holding tenderly to what remains
And all your memories, are as precious as gold
And all the honey, and the fire which you've stole
Have you running through all your red-cheeked days
Shaking loose these souls, from their sacred hiding space

Hold your heart courageously
As we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast erect and see
That love is the province of the brave

Pushed under this expanse of bursting stars
Let this burning brightly illuminate the where we are
In this hollow that lovers' voices occupy
Let it follow that we let it free, let it fly

Breaking open the walls of this cage
Intoxicated, Oh so amazed
Much like falcons tumbling from the heights at play
Conjoined, talons engaged

Hold these hearts courageously
As we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast beside me and see
That love is the province of the brave

--"Province", TV on the Radio

Happy Birthday, Shannon!

Love,
Rob

Andy D-word

2006-12-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

'NewsRadio' actor apologizes for using n-word.

Since I never heard about this incident before the apology, I'm thinking ~~washed up~~ good old Andy Dick is just trying to generate a little publicity for himself.

Jose Padilla in the Pit of Despair

2006-12-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

I was extremely disturbed by this story in the NY Times today. We know, of course, that Jose Padilla has not only never been tried for or convicted of any crime, but he was held for years without even being charged with a crime.

Now we see an example of how an "enemy combatant" is treated:

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

What purpose could this extremity of sensory deprivation possibly serve? I mean, I can see if Padilla had mutant superpowers, like Magneto...

But, and here I'm admittedly just assuming, Padilla can't shoot laser beams from his eyes, and he can't make a sonic boom out of his ears. Is this kind of extraordinary measure needed because he's so fiercely dangerous? Doesn't sound like it:

One of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said, however, that Mr. Padilla was a “completely docile” prisoner. “There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of disobedience,” said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami federal public defender’s office.

In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, “I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’ ”

Granted, that's Padilla's defense attorney talking. But it sounds right to me. Assuming Padilla had any fight in him when he was arrested, who would after treatment like this?

This whole sordid story reminds me of nothing so much as that famous experiment anyone who's ever taken Psych 101 will remember:

Harry Harlow showed that baby rhesus monkeys preferred "mothers" covered in terrycloth over stark wire mothers, even when the wire mothers gave them milk. They apparently needed social contact more than they needed food, even. And in a later, more radical, series of experiments, Harlow put monkeys into what he called the Pit of Despair:

Harlow placed baby monkeys in the chamber alone for up to six weeks. Within a few days, they stopped moving about and remained huddled in a corner. The monkeys were found to be psychotic when removed from the chamber, and most did not recover.
...
After 30 days, the "total isolates," as they were called, were found to be "enormously disturbed": two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death. After being isolated for a year, the monkeys were found initially to barely move, didn't explore or play, were incapable of having sexual relations. When put with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied by the other monkeys.

Pieces of furniture.

Candles in the Wind

2006-11-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

So here's a site I came across today: "Who Have I Outlived?"

http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/Search.outlived?OpenForm&x=nf

My results?

Outlived Results for - September 24, 1970
You have been alive 13,213 days.
Here are your closest "competitors":
You've outlived Princess Diana by 3 days.
If you make it 2 more days, you will outlive Marilyn Monroe.

Goodbye English Rose; and I'm coming for you next, Norma Jean!

Klosed Kaptioning Funnies

2006-11-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

I'm up much too late on a school night, having a glass of wine, listening to some weird music (Naked City's Absinthe) and surfing the web, and have Craig Ferguson's show playing on the telly, muted (because I'd had on Letterman earlier to see Michael Richardson's rather pathetic and weird apology for his recent onstage racialist tirade). I glanced up a few minutes ago and saw Christian Slater being interviewed. I guess he must be in the new movie Bobby, because he was talking about it. (Yes, my senses remain sharp even into this late hour.) So but according to the closed captioning, the movie was apparently directed by... Well, goddamn, while I was writing my clever setup, I forgot the punchline. Shit. It was a real funny corruption of "Emilio Estevez" that some crazy typist threw in there. I think it was three words. I'm pretty sure the last word was "vezz", but that wasn't the funny part. It was the first couple words that made much chuckle. Dang.

Actually, this post is a pretty accurate example of how I tell jokes in real life.

Zing! Goodnight! I'll be here all week!

Another Friday, Another Random Ten

2006-11-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

Talking Heads-Once in a Lifetime
Big Satan-Description du Tunnel
The Thing-Sounds Like a Sandwich
Lupe Fiasco-Hurt Me Soul
Shellac-The Admiral
Kanye West-Skit #3 (I'm not sure this counts, since it's not really a song)
Naked City-I Die Screaming
Naked City-Metal Tov
John Zorn-Protocols of Zion
Kidd Jordan-Last of the Chicken Wings
Naked City-Poisonhead (extra #11, since in the last four songs, I decided Skit #3 definitely doesn't count)

Damn, that's a lot of John Zorn (Naked City being, as you all must know, one of his bands). Love Zorn, and especially love Naked City, but I'm finding that Naked City shows up ALL THE TIME on my shuffle play, since their records tend to each have like 30 songs that are mostly like 30 seconds long. And since in the recent Naked City boxset, which I just got relatively cheap at Tower's going-out-of-business sale (so long, Tower, you used to be cool), all the music was remixed (remixed = the volume was cranked way up), and since a lot of Naked City's songs start with crazy shrieking by Japanese crazy-shrieker Yamataka Eye, I've been getting my eardrums blown out on a regular basis. Thanks for that, John Zorn.

Holy shit, I just noticed that in that last tune, "Poisonhead", the barely decipherable lyrics are from Public Enemy's "Caught, Can I Get a Witness?" Awesome!

And her post before this one was about a record convention!

2006-10-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite bloggers, the always-worth-reading Amanda Marcotte, has explicated the difference between "small government conservatives" and "big government liberals" in a way that I haven't seen before and that seems to me to be kind of brilliantly observed:

"I think it all goes right back to my suggestion of what conservatives mean when they say they’re for 'small' government and liberals are for 'big' government—those adjectives describe the size of the number of people that count as worthy of government attention, protection, and assistance in their view.

"If you think the number of people who matter to the government should be big and in fact should encompass all Americans, then when one person oppresses another, you think that is a matter of government attention and the rights of women, racial minorities, and gay people actually count. If you think the number of people who count is limited to rich straight white men, then racist, sexist, classist oppression is a matter of “personal” morality, and how you treat the Untermenschen is between you and your view of Jeebus."

Stupid Blogger doesn't let you easily embed links in the Safari browser so, here you go:

http://pandagon.net/2006/10/30/who-counts/

I Do Not Approve This Message

2006-10-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

But it did make me laugh. I picked up a couple seasons' worth of Kids in the Hall DVDs recently. I loved this show when I was in college. It's more uneven than I remembered, but still good stuff. As a jazz fan, I enjoyed the following, even though it's so so so wrong.

[Bruce McCullough is flanked by two musicians, one playing flute, one bass:]

Wow. One thing I hear a lot is, people say, "Bruce, what's this with you and Jazz? What's the beef with you and Jazz music?"

I say, "Well, I really hate Jazz."

They say, "What do you hate about poor old Jazz?"

I say, "The sound. The sound that Jazz instruments make, when they're being manipulated by Jazz players, to the delight of Jazz respondents. I think of it as musical barf."

They say, "I don't think you've given Jazz a chance."

Well, I maintain, I haven't given SUICIDE a chance, but. . . Well, I did give suicide a chance. But that was only because I was threatened with Jazz. You know--jazz music.

One thing I hate? One thing I hate is being woken up in the middle of the night, when I'm dreaming about, say, promiscuity with dignity, by a rap-tap-tappin' on my window, by those guys with goatee things on their faces, saying, "Hey. Can we come in? Beano's clarinet's gettin' wet." And then they go into this sorta Gene Krupa trance.

Jazz schmazz. I'm sorry--I've got to go that far: Jazz schmazz.

You know what? I'd like to declare this a Jazz-free zone, about forty miles as far as the Jazz-hatin' crow flies in any direction. Just paradise. Those guys would go to work--and it wouldn't be there.

I'm gonna ask a question: What sort of music do you think there is in Hell? You know, H-E-double hockey sticks? Well, I think it's probably hateful, free-form Jazz.

And in Heaven? Country and Western music.

The choice is pretty obvious. It's not Jazz. It's not bop-a-dop bop-be-bop-bo Jazz.

[To flautist:] What's that? A recorder or something? I'm not into it. Fuzz pedal--that's what I'm into. You know?

Copied, and slightly edited by me, from here.

"Come In, Hip-Hop, We've Come To Resurrect You"

2006-10-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of weeks, I've spent a lot of time listening to Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to hip-hop over the past decade or so, but I like what I've been hearing from some of the bigger Chicago MCs lately--Kanye West, Common, and, especially, Rhymefest. But Lupe Fiasco is another thing all together. It's a very different sounding record. At first I thought it sounded overproduced, but I'm starting to like the sound of it--lots of keyboard, string and horn sounds, very lush compared to most hip-hop. But where Lupe really stands out is in his lyrics. They're brilliant.

I would call Food & Liquor almost a "concept album". In the opening track ("Intro"), after a woman recites a poem, Lupe issues his proclamation: "I've got this philosphy, right? I think the world and everything in it is made up of a mix of two things: You got your good, y'know, and your bad. You got your food, and your liquor." This album is meant to be food for thought, compared to the "liquor" of what he refers to throughout the record as "The Game", meaning thug life, the drug trade, gangsta rap. In the second track (and one of the best on the record), "Real", he announces his intention to provide something "real", as opposed to what people get from gangsta rap.

The Game is not to give 'em nothing real,
Nothing they could use, nothing that they could feel.
Give 'em a bunch of lies and teach 'em that it's real,
So that's all that they know,
That's all that they feel.

He seems to blame quite a few ills on gangsta rap, most explicitly in the track "Hurt Me Soul":

Now I ain't trying to be the greatest:
I used to hate hip-hop,
Yep, because the women degraded.
But Too Short made me laugh--
Like a hypocrite I played it,
A hypocrite, I stated.
Though I only recited half,
Omitting the word "bitch". Cursing, I wouldn't say it.
Man, dawg couldn't relate to the bitch I dated!
(Forgive my favorite word for hers and hers alike,
But I heard it from a song I heard and sorta liked.)

Note that I'm pretty sure this is the only time the word "bitch" is used on the whole record, and it's used to make a point about how popular culture can affect its consumers' attitudes--even if it's only a song someone "sorta" likes. He continues, though, to say that some hip-hop inspired him to "tap the world and listen" and write down what he heard:

My mom can't feed me.
My boyfriend beats me.
I have sex for money.
The hood don't love me.
The cops wanna kill me.
This nonsense built me--
And I got no place to go.

They bombed my village.
They call us killers.
Took me off they welfare.
Can't afford they healthcare.
My teacher won't teach me.
My master beats me--
And it hurts me soul.

Here Lupe is stepping into the shoes of a number of other people--displaying an empathy that most hip-hop isn't exactly famous for. He continues his critique of The Game on "The Emperor's Soundtrack":

Ever since The Game trained us,
We came up like worms in the rain.

And on the track "Pressure", he further indicates why he wants to provide "food" rather than "liquor":

Giving 'em The Game, that's like giving chocolate to the fat--
Look, how you think I got here?
That's the same Game that came through where I lived as a kid
In the bad-luck truck, and threw boxes off the back.

Maybe the funniest and best jab he takes at The Game is in the track "Daydreamin'", in which he makes fun of every bad rap video ever:

Now come on everybody, let's make cocaine cool!
We need a few more half-naked women up in the pool.
And hold this MAC-10 that's all covered in jewels.
And can you please put your titties closer to the 22s?
And where's the champagne? We need champagne!
Now look as hard as you can with this blunt in your hand.
And now hold up your chain slow-motion through the flames.
Now cue the smoke machines and the simulated rain!
(But not too loud, 'cause the baby's sleeping...
I wonder if it knows what the world is keeping
Up both sleeves while he lay there dreaming...?)

In one of the most touching tracks on the record, "He Say She Say", the first verse is a long plaint by a mother to her son's father to be involved in the boy's life:

She said to him:
"I want you to be a father.
He's your little boy and you don't even bother.
...
You see what his problem is?
He don't know where his poppa is.
No positive male role model
To play football and build railroad models.
It's making a hole and you've been digging it,
'Cause you ain't been kicking it
Since he was old enough to hold bottles!
Wasn't supposed to get introduced to that.
He don't deserve to get used to that."

With the title "He Say She Say", Lupe sets up an expectation that the next verse will be a response from the father. Instead, it's the exact same verse, except from the point of view of the boy:

So he said to him:
"I want you to be a father.
I'm your little boy and you don't even bother.
...
You see what my problem is?
That I don't know where my poppa is.
No positive male role model
To play football and build railroad models.
It's making a hole and you've been digging it,
'Cause you ain't been kicking it
Since I was old enough to hold bottles!
Wasn't supposed to get introduced to that.
I don't deserve to get used to that."

The repetition and change of viewpoint deepens the song. He uses a similar technique between the tracks "Kick, Push" (the album's first single) and "Kick, Push II". "Kick, Push" is a love song about a skateboarder who falls in love with another skater:

He said, "I would marry you, but I'm engaged to these aerials and varials,
And I don't think this board is strong enough to carry two."
She said, "Bow--I weigh 120 pounds! Now,
Lemme make one thing clear:
I don't need to ride yours, I got mine right here."

The whole song is about the joy and sense of freedom they get from riding their boards ("Let's kick, and push... and coast!"). But then in the extraordinary "Kick, Push II", he goes deeper, and explains why skating means so much to them (read "kunk-a-kunk-a-kunk" as the sound a board makes rolling on a sidewalk):

Well, the cops didn't fine him for grinding, though
They kinda blew the vibe. Figured it was time to go.
Plus, he had to be at home a long time ago,
And he had made like ten dollars off the sign he wrote.
It read: "A little hungry, and need a little money, it's for my little sister, and her little tummy."
Wasn't lying, though: he didn't go buy hydro.
Went to the restaurant and bought two gyros,
'Cause he knew they wasn't cooking where he lived.
The "kunk-a-kunk-a-kunks" now took him to the crib,
A little hurt from the rail he took into the ribs,
Right past the pushers who couldn't "underdig":
"What's the use of pushing if you ain't pushing none of this?"
"If I kick with y'all, I'm just pushing for a bid."
But what was on his mind had pushed him to the lid:
Their best customer wasn't cooking for her kids.

The narrator's mother (he goes on to explain) is a crackhead. His father is absent. His white girlfriend's parents are together, but her father is abusive and has contracted HIV, which he has passed to her mother:

And that's why she skates with he:
Someone to feel her pain, and a place to be.

They find solace and community in skating with "a travelling band of misfits and outcasts":

A lot of scars, they did this without pads.
A lot of hearts who did this without dads.
One's father was fithy rich, two was middle class, and one was homeless.
Add in a paralyzed girl in a wheelchair who just liked to watch, and that was the whole clique.

So, though the story of "Kick, Push II" has a happy ending (it ends with Lupe having put out a video for the first "Kick, Push"), the chorus leaves the sense of just-barely transcended miseries:

You kick, push--
Over your shoulders you swore you'd never look.
'Cause wasn't nothing back there but the blackness,
And life wasn't too attractive.

The album sort of unfortunately ends with TWELVE MINUTES of shout-outs. But by that time, I guess Lupe has earned it. The records as a whole is the best hip-hop record I've heard in many years, one of the best I've ever heard. I think he points a way forward for a genre that has been in something of a rut (at least from what I've been hearing). He has a lot to say, a unique point of view, and the skill to get it across. Food & Liquor is a great album and I'm looking forward to hearing what more food Lupe Fiasco has to offer.

Marie Antoinette

2006-10-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

Long time, no blog.

Just saw a double feature of The Prestige and Marie Antoinette today. Don't have much to say about the former, other than it was a pretty entertaining way to spend a couple of hours. But I've been reading reviews and thinking about Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette for the rest of the evening after getting home, and since I didn't feel like any of them got it right (right=my opinion), I decided to jot down a few thoughts about it while they're fresh in my mind.

Most of the reviews talk about Marie being shallow and materialistic, and some take the film to task for its use of a contemporary soundtrack or for failing to properly explicate the political circumstances that led to the revolution that led to Marie and Louis's executions. But I think all of these miss the point. I view the movie as something of a feminist statement on how Marie, upon become Dauphine of France, was reduced by the social forces around her from a human being to nothing but a symbol: for the royals, she was a symbol of France's "friendship" with Austria, and a symbol of the future of the royal line; for the revolutionaries, she was a symbol of the decadence of the royals. As a person, she was useful for nothing more than her ability to produce an heir to the throne--which she wasn't even able to do for many years, through no fault of her own.

She starts the film seeming to be something of a "normal" teen, but after being (literally) stripped of her past, she's thrust into the strange and constricting world of Versailles. She has everything anyone could ever want--on the surface. But she has no freedom, and no self-determination. I think the movie shows that to the extent she becomes the shallow, materialistic Antoinette of history, it's as a quite human reaction to the stifling life she leads in service to the social order. It's a sort of rebellion, the only kind she is able to muster. She takes refuge in the shoes and clothes and food, and eventually in a brief affair, because she has nothing else of any meaning or consquence--because she's not allowed to have anything like that in her life. After all, why would a symbol need anything more?

As for the contemporary soundtrack, and lack of the revolutionaries' points of view, I think both of these are related to the film's focus on Marie's subjective experience. The music is meant to be one signpost to a contemporary audience toward what it would FEEL like to be in her shoes. And the movie depicts her as being quite insulated from the public, so it stands to reason that we wouldn't learn much about them in this film, either.

I did think the last 20 minutes or so dealt rather too abruptly with the Revolution, and didn't really explain why Marie would choose to stand by Louis when the peasants storm Versailles, rather than fleeing, as she is advised to do. But a lot of time is meant to pass in this last part of the film, and while I suppose the idea is that she has learned and grown and taken more responsibility, it's not made very clear how or why any of these things have occurred. I'm hesitant to say this last part is handled too quickly in what is, to be sure, a rather slow, long, and at times languorous film, but it does seem to me to falter a little here.

But this is a minor complaint. The film as a whole is really pretty great. I think the tepid reception it's received has more to do with the critics' expectations of what it "should" be than what it is.

Friday Random Ten

2006-08-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Liberty Ellman, "Borealis"
Sonny Sharrock, "Black Bottom"
Paul Motian, "Bill"
Charlie Parker, "Lover Man"
Tapes 'n Tapes, "Buckle"
Steven Bernstein, "Aveenu Malkenu"
Paul Motian, "The Bag Man"
Ornette Coleman, "C&D"
Bob Dylan, "John Wesley Harding"
Minutemen, "June 16th"

I've become a big fan of Paul Motian in the past few months, so I have a few of his records on my Nano at the moment. Just got Motian's latest, Garden of Eden, and it is great. Interesting lineup: two saxophones, three guitars, bass and drums. I was thinking of going to NY next month to check out Motian with his trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano. Now that's a great band--and Motian doesn't travel outside NY anymore. But I got frustrated trying to find a hotel that wasn't either ridculously expensive and didn't sound like a dump. So, I'll just enjoy the record I guess!

Breaking News

2006-08-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

Haley Joel Osment Drives 1995 Saturn

Irony is Dead; or, My Kingdom for a Camera Phone!

2006-08-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

I saw the best/worst bumper sticker ever yesterday.

Let me set the scene: I was out for a bike ride, when my seat came loose. Not sure how I would get home on bike with a seat that was akin to a rocking chair, I hauled the bike onto the Red Line El (I was in Chinatown at the time), and debated how I was going to get home--take trains all the way home or what? But I remembered where there was an Ace Hardware in the South Loop, so I got off at Harrison and ducked in to buy a metric wrench that solved my problem and I now have a new item to carry around on bike rides with me.

Anyway, I believe that fate arranged for me to be in front of the Ace that day, to serve as a witness. A witness to the dumbest thing ever.

Parked (illegally, naturally) in front of the Ace was a Hummer. Now, if you're like me, you assume all Hummer drivers are total assholes. This is because they are all total assholes. But if you didn't believe it before, believe it now. As I walked my repaired bike, seat tightened, back to the street, I glanced at the back of the Hummer. There, stuck on the back of it, was the funniest bumper sticker of all time (though, I'm guessing, not funny for the reason that the Hummer owner thinks it is). It said, and though I would give my pinky finger for a photo of this, you'll just have to take my word for it:

MY OTHER HUMMER
IS A BLOWJOB

Random Ten!!!

2006-07-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Am I excited? Yes, because I again have a MP3 player. (And this time it's an iPod--why is that cooler than the other brands? I don't know. Because we are all sheep? Well, baah.) And that means I can do a random ten and post it to the internet, where no one will care! Hooray.

Rhymefest: More
Dennis Gonzalez: NY Midnight Suite III--Sketch the Wings of Midnight
Bob Dylan: Most Likely You Go Your Way
Lee Konitz: There Will Never Be Another You
Atomic/School Days: Kerosene

(Pause while I actually let this song play through.)

Steve Lacy: Work
Steve Lehman: Logic-Meshell
Steve Lacy: We Don't
Peaches: Slippery Dick
Steve Lacy: We See

I'm starting to think this might not be all that random....

More Firsts

2006-07-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

So this is:

(a) my first post in a long time

(b) my first post from a wireless location

(c) my first post from my new MacBook

(d) my first post while listening to the Nano I got to go with the MacBook

Apart from spending relatively massive amounts of $$$ on all this crap, this totally rules....

Music News

2006-07-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

While the below-referenced conference call drags on (and on and on) about issues irrelevant to me, I think I'll talk about music.

Sleater-Kinney is breaking up! This is terrible news. They are the best rock band in America. I say this definitively, even though I mostly listen to jazz. If you have heard their last (sniff) record, The Woods, you are missing out on some awesome rawk. (Grrrl rawk, no less.) You have about six and counting chances to see them live--if you can, do! I might even break down and buy a ticket to the dreaded Lollapalooza to catch their final Chicago show. Anyway--thanks, ladies.

With S-K going going gone, my new favorite rock band is Art Brut. I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago for my cousin's wedding, and made a side trip (er, two side trips, actually) to good old Vintage Vinyl, where I spent a good deal of time in my late high school years. Naturally, I first went to the jazz section, but the jazz section happens to be on the riser in the back of the store where they present live acts. They were setting up for somebody, and they said, "Sorry, dude, but I need to push all the jazz aside." "How long have I got?" I asked. "Now." Okay then!

Well, so I was forced to spend some time looking at rock, and I checked out some of the listening stations. I rather randomly listend to Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll and fell in love. How can you not like an opening track like "Formed a Band"?

Formed a band, we formed a band.
Look at us! We formed a band!

I was on a business trip in San Antonio last week and listened to Art Brut in my rental car. It was such perfect, such fun, driving music that it made me want to buy a car. I'll be checking them out at the Pitchfork Festival, and possibly at the Empty Bottle the night before that.

Conference call update: No, they haven't gotten to any issues that affect me yet. Thank god for speaker phones and mute buttons.

I'm wearing my new Vintage Vinyl T-shirt right now, by the way. I bought it on my first trip to VV on the Saturday I was in St. Louis, I was wearing it on Sunday, and ended up without advance planning going back to VV, wearing their very own shirt. What a dork I am!

It's not specifically music, but I just bought and watched the new Criterion Collection DVD of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. What a great movie. Better even than I remembered. And if you've seen it you'll know it fits the music theme of this post because, boy, what perfect music in that film.

Best line the movie:

"It's like the every other decade theory you know? The fifties were boring, the sixties rocked. The seventies, oh my God they obviously suck. Maybe the eighties will be radical, you know? I figure we'll be in our twenties and hey, it can't get any worse."

Still waiting for something relevant to me to come up on this damn call. I hope everyone else is having a nice Saturday night. Say a prayer for me, please.

Saturday Night's All Right for Conference Calling

2006-07-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Blogging while on a conference call for work right now....

And check out the dateline, bitches!

I guess this is what they call banker's hours.

Rob Has Needs, Too

2006-06-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

For instance:

Rob needs a job.

Rob needs a hero.

Rob needs your support and donations.

Rob needs Net Clued Lawyer, urgently.

[H]andsome [R]ob needs a home.

Rob needs credit for steeping up and fighting the biggest guy on the show!

Rob needs physically restraining to keep him off Vikki.

Rob needs to have a party in his honor!

ROB NEEDS TO SHUT HIS GOB.

Rob... needs a haircut.

Rob needs help badly!

Rob needs a refresher as to the meaning of purjury.

Rob needs to move his legs and he prefers to do such with a lady dance partner in his arms.

Apparently Rob does not want or need the help he asked for repeatedly in letters I have and I have other things I need to do so that is fine with me.

(Stolen from Susan.)

I Love to Singa!

2006-06-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

I love to sing-a
About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a....

Well, now it's official: You Tube is the greatest thing ever.

(For more information on Owl Jolson, consult your local library--or the Owl Jolson fan site!)

One Talking Point Too Many

2006-06-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

I normally avoid the cable talking head "news" shows, but I did catch part of Scarborough Country last night, and got a nice chuckle out of Brent Bozell going to the talking point well one too many times for one sentence.

Scarborough and Bozell kept saying that "80%" of Americans do not want increased immigration, while the Senate's immigration bill would increase immigration. (I think they are being funny with the poll numbers, but that's another point.) Anyway, I loved Bozell's summation of the "problem":

Now, if this country wants a disaster, well, that‘s democracy. But you don‘t have democracy when 80 percent of America wants one thing and the Senate and the White House are going in another direction, and the media aren‘t telling the public what the facts are.

In other words: The uninformed people have spoken!

Q: Is This the Greatest Record Cover Ever?

2006-05-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

A Requiem for the Post-War Dream

2006-05-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't listened to Pink Floyd in quite a long time, but they were, I think, my third favorite band. I don't mean they were ranked third--I mean sequentially. My first favorite was The Police, my second was The Beatles, then, when I was around age 16, Pink Floyd. (Then R.E.M., then Public Enemy, The Pixies, Prince, and then jazz blew the doors off and favorites got too numerous to track, though the good people at VISA could probably tell you stories about my Miles Davis collection.) I tend to obsess serially.

So but I should probably specify that I didn't like all of Pink Floyd's stuff. I was a Roger Waters man, meaning that I was down with Dark Side of the Moon through The Final Cut, since that was the sequence of albums that increasingly centered on his personal vision, many would say the band's detriment. Not me, though. I distinctly remember sitting in my bedroom, listening for hours through headphones to The Wall and The Final Cut (my two favorites) and thinking (and it was probably the first time I ever thought this about anybody), "Roger Waters is a genius!"

(And yet, to my shame, when Waters and the Waters-less Floyd toured through St. Louis at around the same time when I was in high school, who did I go to see? Yes, I admit it, I went for the glitz, friends.)

But when I got a little older and a (very) little hipper, Pink Floyd seemed hopelessly paleolithic. In college, I was pretty much only interested in alt-rock and hip-hop, and through the latter I was discovering other black music that was mostly new to me. Pink Floyd, I think it must be admitted, is one of our whiter bands, yes? I consigned them to the tarpits of dinosaur rock.

But recently, I've been broadening my horizons, getting into old stuff like Dylan, for the first time, for instance. And I found myself wondering, not so much about the entire Floyd oeuvre, but specifically about The Final Cut, and whether it would hold up now that I'm a bit less angsty than I was at 16. So this weekend, when I was at a (ahem) record convention, pawing through crates of vinyl, and I came across a copy of the record that looked pretty good, well, I had to get it.

Let me point out now that the original LP doesn't have any text on the cover, unlike the CD reissue pictured above, so the cover is even starker. Unfortunately, the vinyl I bought, while not scratched, is really dirty, and though I've been trying to clean it, it still sounds pretty bad. But not so bad that I haven't listened to it twice through already. And damned if it doesn't hold up after all.

This is a record that even most Pink Floyd fans dismiss as a failure. I thought I was the only fan, but I have found in the past couple of days a few hardy souls who have praised it on-line. A lot of them say they didn't like it at first, but it grew on them. It probably did for me, as well, but that was almost twenty years ago, so I can't remember for sure. It's definitely less immediately accessible than something like The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon, though, that's pretty clear. It's a rather dense record, with uniformly dark lyrics. But it's so clearly and strongly stamped with Roger Waters' personality, and so charged with emotion, that I still find it as compelling now as I remember from my teen years.

Dark, did I say? Does it get any dark-night-of-the-souler than these lyrics from the title track?

And if I show you my dark side
will you still hold me tonight?
And if I open my heart to you
and show you my weak side
what would you do?
Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?
Would you take the children away
and leave me alone?
And smile in reassurance
as you whisper down the phone?
Would you send me packing?
Or would you take me home?

Thought I ought to bare my naked feelings.
Thought I ought to tear the curtain down.
I held the blade in trembling hands,
prepared to make it, but--just then the phone rang.
I never had the nerve to make the final cut.

Wow. That blew my 16-year-old mind. And it still gets to me now (somehow the reference to Rolling Stone makes the whole thing seem very real to me, not just a fictional piece, but a confession).

And the music (which I have to agree with one of the writers I read on the internet about this record, but unfortunately I can't remember who it was), practically defines "dynamics" in music, going from almost whispered lyrics to huge screaming vocals, with sound effects and a few patented David Gilmour solos for good measure. This is operatic stuff.

The final track ("Two Suns in the Sunset")'s imagery of nuclear war, which seemed so powerful to me when the record was fairly new, when so many thought the bomb was the inevitable end of civilization (you don't hear so much about it these days, with smaller terrors more present in the public's mind), now seems a little overbaked. But the record is, in some ways, as politically timely today as it was when the British war in the Falklands inspired Waters' lyrics. Let us consign George Bush to the Fletcher Memorial Home "for colonial wasters of life and limb".

This was the last Pink Floyd record that Roger Waters had anything to do with. Gilmour, et al., put out A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which I found deadly dull, and Waters put out Radio KAOS, which was even denser and more solipsistic than his Floyd work. But even though a lot of people seem to think of The Final Cut as a Waters solo record--which is understandable--it seems clear to me that though it was very much his personal vision that shaped the record, it must have been tempered by the band itself, because it's so much better than what the various parties did after it--at least those two records I mentioned: I haven't followed anything any of them have done since, but I haven't heard or read anything to indicate that I've been missing out on anything too great.

Anyway, check it out, or re-investigate it if you didn't like it twenty years ago. It's a truly great record.

What is the sight of one hand clapping?

2006-04-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

I picked up this new DVD last week--a live recording of Fred Anderson, Harrison Bankhead and Hamid Drake performing at the lamented Velvet Lounge, Fred Anderson's great jazz club. The new VL should be opening soon, I hear, but the old one was really a special place. So the DVD is a pretty cool document to have of the joint, in addition to being extremely worthwhile musically.

As it happens, I was at one of the two shows that were filmed for the DVD, along with my buddy Jay. So let's just get to the question on everyone's mind: Can Rob be seen in the DVD?

Well, at the very end, the camera pans across the whole crowd, but stops right at edge of me: You can see my right hand clapping at the edge of your screen. I think you can hear me chuckle once during Bankhead's solo on the corrugated tube thing. And--most intriguingly--I think you can see me way in the background of the opening scene. I say "think" because even I can't be 100% sure. But I think it's me.

The only hope of a positive ID is probably if I get accused of a murder that took place that night, and my crack defense team has to use Blade Runner technology to digitally enhance the thing, and then call in the expert witnesses. Then it'll be up to 12 angry men to decide.

Barring that, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Seriously, this thing has some great music (also available on CD) by some great players. Harrison Bankhead must be the greatest unknown bassist in jazz. Hamid might be the greatest known drummer. And Fred is in rare form.

Recommended, if you like this sort of thing.

Overheard in Chicago

2006-04-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

I stopped off at Caffe De Luca on Damen this morning to have some breakfast. I didn't care for the place much, though the coffee was good. It's the kind of place where (at least when I was there) they have as many employees as customers, and it still takes forever to get anything. Also, it's one of those ultrayuppie places where everybody comes equipped with a stroller or a dog, or, most often, both. Not really my scene.

Anyway, the woman in front of me in the interminable line to order was talking to someone who was already seated, and he asked if she was working today.

She replied: "People love Jesus, and they love real estate. Easter weekend is big for me."

Flowers for Jackie McLean

2006-04-01T07:12:00.002-08:00

Jackie McLean, one of the greatest alto players in all of jazz, died yesterday. I'm not too surprised, because I'd been reading rumors of ill-health for quite some time. But I was still shocked to discover the news this morning.

No one had a tone like his--he had a unique sound even in his earlier work in the fifties. But his run of albums on Blue Note in the sixties is some of the most timeless music from that era. Three of my very favorite records are his Let Freedom Ring, One Step Beyond, and Destination... Out! Here he embraced the freedoms of Ornette Coleman, while still retaining his mastery of Charlie Parker's idiom Between the technique he had been honing by playing bop at the highest level for so many years, and his willingness to "step beyond" and take inspiration from the younger revolutionaries who were changing jazz at that time, he was able to make music different from anyone else's, and greater than most.

He wrote the liner notes to Let Freedom Ring, and in them he presents a short, incisive history of his musical life up to that point (1962), generously crediting so many others for their teachings and inspiration, right up to the people changing jazz at that time. He ends by saying, "The new breed has inspired me all over again. The search is on. Let freedom ring." Jackie was himself a great inspiration, even to a non-musician like me. I never even saw him, but I miss him.

He famously once said that we should "give them their flowers while they're still here." Meaning that we shouldn't wait until our heroes die to give them the recognition they deserve. Well, even if it's too late for that now, I still want to say: Thank you, Jackie McLean!

Being Searched

2006-03-31T15:55:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-31T10:48:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-24T16:33:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-03-23T15:53:00.000-08:00

But drunk blog comments are another thing entirely.

The Nation's Capitol Made Me Ill!

2006-03-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

"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!

2006-03-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

"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!

2006-03-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

"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?

2006-03-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

Why, yes, I did.

Oscars 2006: [Insert Lame Gay Cowboy Joke Here]

2006-03-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-03-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-03-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-03T04:15:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-03-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Ain't Sayin' He's a Gold Digger

2006-02-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

But he ain't messin' with no broke Sumerian high priestesses.

The world's oldest love poem was in the news--yes, a week or two ago, give me a break, please, I just started this thing--and it's... well... you be the judge.

You've heard of the 1,000-year-old man? Meet the 6,000-year-old player:

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is you beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber.

Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savoury than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savoury than honey.

Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.

Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn.

You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.

Your place goodly as honey, pray lay (your) hand on it,
Bring (your) hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup (your) hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment.

You can't front on that! But I did have to chuckle at the part about "Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies", which seems to date it slightly. I'm trying to picture the scene:

"Good morning, ma'am, I've taken my pleasure of your daughter--now gimme some candy!"

Nature Is Chaos, Murder and Whale Sharks Eating Shrimp from Your Shorts

2006-02-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

All right, so I know this isn't exactly cutting-edge timely, but my pal Theo lent me his DVD of Jackass: The Movie. I hadn't seen much of the show before watching this (I've watched two half-hour sessions while riding my exercise bike so far--good workout video distraction, I have to say).

You know how the political spectrum is said to wrap around, so that the extreme far-left and the extreme far-right practically bump into each other? Jackass makes me think the same can be said of culture--this stuff is so lowbrow, it's practically highbrow. Johnny Knoxville and company's level of commitment is pretty amazing, and it puts me in mind of my comments on Werner Herzog, below.

But not even Werner Herzog has gotten himself shot in the abdomen, like Knoxville did in the movie.

Oh, wait, yes he has!

"Not a significant bullet."

Bear Necessities

2006-02-26T13:49:00.000-08:00

So, you want to know what the last best movie I saw was? Thanks for asking.

I rented Grizzly Man a couple of weeks ago, and I liked it so much I bought the company--er, I mean, the DVD. It's en route from Amazon, and I can't wait to watch it again.

Poor ol' deluded Timothy Treadwell. Got eaten by a bear. But while that's the grisly hook that drags you into the film, it's far from the point. Because while he was deluded in the specifics--that is, he thought bears were his friends, and that he was their protector from the human society he had largely rejected--in more general terms, how different was he from anyone? Because I think the movie is really about how people search for meaning, and a place, in a chaotic and meaningless world. When I say "meaningless", I mean that it's meaningless in a vacuum, on its own. Whatever meaning we perceive is given to it by us.

Treadwell speaks in the film of his troubled life, his alcoholism and his failures with relationships. He says the animals saved him by being his friend. And the reason he lives with the bears, he says, is to be their friend, by protecting them from poachers and other humans. And he speaks of the good he is doing, and how important this work is. But, of course, most of this is in his own mind.

Most of the comments about the film that I've seen, in reader reviews on Amazon and so on, seem to say that Treadwell is a fool and got what he deserved for being so dumb. Well, I wouldn't totally disagree. I mean, I don't think anyone "deserves" to be killed so horribly--but he was, in a sense, asking for it. But isn't he still just an extreme example of a universal phenomenon? All of us want to feel we live meaningful lives, all of us want to feel we have a place in the world. And how many of us, if we try to step back and be objective, can say that we do meaningful work?

Actually, I think some of the hostility I've seen toward him in these comments is because people recognize on some level that there's something universal about aspects of his story, as presented in the film (which I mention because we only see about an hour of the 90 or so hours of film he shot--clearly there's editing at work, and a purpose to that editing--more on that in a moment). It's like laughing at those Darwin Awards, laughing at people who die stupidly. Why is it funny? I think it has something to do with fear of mortality, and the hope that maybe if we don't do such stupid things, we won't die, or at least we'll die with dignity. Which is another form of trying to find order in a random world.

Gee, I didn't really intend to get this deep in my first hour of blogging.

Anyway, Grizzly Man has really turned me on to its director, Werner Herzog. I had (fairly recently) seen his Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both great films with some unforgettable images, but it wasn't until I saw Grizzly Man that I really connected with his work. But then, it was so much so, that I actually just got a box set of his films with the actor Klaus Kinski, which includes Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo. I watched one of the films today, a documentary called My Best Fiend, about Herzog's relationship with Kinski. Interesting enough on its own terms, but mainly it has really gotten me lubed up for the rest of the box.

I also watched Burden of Dreams, which is a documentary by Les Blank about the filming of Fitzcarraldo. This is a must-see as well, if you liked Fitzcarraldo. It shows the lengths Herzog went to to make the film, which were, let us say, not insignificant. A smaller example of what makes Herzog so great is in the short film (included on the Burden of Dreams Criterion DVD) Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He had challenged Errol Morris to make his own great first film, Gates of Heaven, by offering to eat his own shoe if Morris could get it done. And he made good on the promise at the Gates premiere at Berkeley, after cooking a pair with onions, garlic and hot sauce. As he scissors apart the tough leather into bite-sized chunks, he puts the same challenge to the audience: follow your dreams, don't be scared, you can do anything you put your mind to. Just do it. He makes a point of saying, too, that the shoes he cooked are the same ones he had been wearing when he made the bet. He could have bought a newer, softer pair to eat, he says, but that just wouldn't be right: "I don't like cowards", he says.

All of which is to say that Herzog is my new hero. And rent Grizzly Man, because it's a great movie and even though most of the footage wasn't shot by Herzog, it has his stamp all over it, in his narration and his editing of Treadwell's footage. And I can't believe it didn't get nominated for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars.

The Obligatory Introduction

2006-02-26T13:46:00.000-08:00

[I started this blog yesterday over at myspace, decided today I wasn't totally happy with their functionality, and decided to start over again at Blogger before I got too far in. So, here is my initial post, all over again.]

So (since every blog has to start with a slightly embarassed explanation, right?) I called this blog "startdrinkingcoffee", a play on one of my favorite quotes--which I unfortunately cannot find in whole on the internet at the moment, and will have to look for in my books, and which I probably have hopelessly wrong....

Anyway (if I'm remembering this right), Miles Davis was doing a "blindfold test" in Downbeat magazine, and they played him something by Cecil Taylor. Miles asked, is this what the critics like these days? If so, "them critics better stop drinking coffee."

Since I'll probably spend most of my time here writing about music and books and movies and all of that type of shit, I figured the title fit. Plus I kind of like Cecil Taylor. Plus I love coffee.

So. Hi there!