Blar Culture

Among other reasons...

2008-03-06T10:30:00.002-06:00

So you may have heard that Alaina and I are getting married. We spent last Saturday traipsing about Chicagoland, going into various big box stores and expanding our gift registries. The digital-age gift-registry process is pretty slick: You create a database, either online or at an in-store computer kiosk. They give you some variety of laser-beaming bar code reader. You run around the store, like kids at a world expo, giddily zapping barcodes to your heart's contentment. They then upload the data on the scanny-thingy to your registry, for all your friends and relations to attend to.

The laser devices come in several configurations, ranging from PDA-like devices to actual, point-and-shoot, trigger-happy pseudo-guns. The folks at Kohl's cheekily called the latter "phasers," which of course tickled my geek-zone immediately.

Me: "Set phasers...to SAVINGS!!!"

She: "God, I love you."

Naturally this is why I am marrying her.

Note that my recollection may be a bit fuzzy, and she may have actually said, "God, I love you sometimes." I am not sure if or how this affects the implications of what was said.

Bad things

2008-02-14T17:36:00.004-06:00

Blitheness, alas, is rather inappropriate.

I mean, I'm alright, but weird things keep happening around me.

If you hadn't heard, there was a shooting at Northern Illinois University this afternoon. It will no doubt be a familiar story; pathetic loner can't deal with angst and throws violence at his classmates before getting shot or shooting himself. It's rather a shame that this is a routine story, but there it is. I didn't have much to do with Cole Hall, where the shooting happened, but I walked by it every time I walked to and from class. If I am running a little behind I'll get there just as classes are coming out. It must be at some sort of traffic nexus, because there can be hundreds of people on the pathways at that time, going to and from classes. I've probably walked by the miscreant before, among the crowd.

This is doubly weird for me, because I just went through this very sort of thing a week ago. You may remember hearing about the Missouri courthouse that got shot up a while back. That's my hometown. Lots of calls back and forth, making sure people are okay, I've heard this song before. We were recalling how about a year ago we were learning about that bizarre kidnapping situation, where the guy kept the kid in his apartment for like a decade. That was also my town. One of the key witnesses was a friend of mine in grade school. The pizzeria where the kidnapper worked, which is the same pizzeria where the one cop was shot before the courthouse shooting, was where Alaina and I had one of our first dates (ten years ago, if you can believe). I've probably walked through that area dozens of times.

Someone on the news described Kirkwood as Mayberry, and she was right. It's not some cauldron of angst, or some cheery facade hiding a darker side, like some excitable journalism major might conclude. It's a genuinely nice town. Nice historic houses, a pleasant, largely un-yuppified downtown, a great park on the west end of town. Great civic festivals, at least a dozen churches, neighbors that actually know each other.

I'm just a little less keen on DeKalb. I have heard it described as being at a crossroads between Elgin, Aurora, and Rockford, which have crime rates that sort of spill over into our little town. There are shady parts of DeKalb. But it also has historic residences, a nice downtown, parks, churches and the rest. The worst that happened before this was a string of holdups that were most remarkable for their comic ineffectualness (the last I heard was that some girl maced them in the face and they ran away). Certainly nothing that we would expect to produce this particular kind of crime.

I guess this seems a little elitist. But even if we are not as surprised by violence in South Chicago or North Saint Louis (or Tel Aviv, Baghdad, and Beirut, for that matter), doesn't mean that the violence is any less unjust. I just mean that bad people can do bad things anywhere, something that is abundantly on my mind, given all the craziness happening around me.

Thoughts on Civility

2008-02-06T13:51:00.000-06:00

It's a snow day today, so it's a good time for my quasi-monthly blog post. I had about half a dozen ideas for characteristically frivolous posts, but there is a sort of serious issue that inhabits my mind from time to time, and I find that I am brooding on it now. So to paraphrase Steven Sondheim: Comedy tomorrow, ponderous gravity tonight!

Let's play a game. Think of religion. I think we can agree that everyone has some sort of religious attitude–even if it is agnostic or detached–and that such attitudes are personal, by which I mean assaults on these attitudes can be taken personally, since they are core to a person's identity. This does not mean religion should never be discussed, and I actually wish one could discuss it more often, but in casual company one must be careful before cavalierly introducing the subject of religion.

I think many people understand this, but to explain what I mean, let's continue with our game.

Think of a person, or a group, with a certain religious attitude, but who is insensitive to the issues surrounding the personal nature of religious attitudes. Such a person or persons flaunt their own religious attitudes in such a way as to not only assert that contrary religious attitudes are illegitimate, but to also show that, in their minds, those who hold such attitudes are unimagined absurdities. The attitude is not confrontational, for it does not anticipate confrontation. Rather, it is as though the contrary religious attitude has been so thoroughly demonized and abstracted that only caricatures can hold that attitude, not actual people, and certainly not the nice, intelligent people in their company.

Of course, such people are bound to find themselves in our abstractors' company all the time. But what are such people to do when their religious attitudes, which again are essential to their selves, are so contemptuously regarded?

They could initiate an argument, which would be honorable to their religious point of view, but which could be almost as uncivil as the behavior of the abstractors. The abstractors did not anticipate an argument, and so to fight back is as surprising an attack on their personal religious attitudes as was the initial behavior. Furthermore, third parties in the company might become very uncomfortable at the onset of any kind of religious argument at all, and one does not wish to force the awkwardness of an argument upon those innocent of any disagreement.

The other alternative is to keep silent, which would be more polite, but also less honorable. If one's friend is slandered, it is true to that friendship to defend the friend. The same is true for one's religious attitudes.

With either decision there is the possibility of much unpleasantness, but let us note that with either decision the fault is not on those who must make the decision, but on the abstractors who made such a decision necessary. If they had treaded a little more lightly and realized that contrary religious attitudes can be held by reasonable people, including people with whom they share company, then no one would be put upon to make such an awkward choice. Civility would be maintained.

I think we can agree that our abstractors are at best insensitive. At worst they are socially inept. What I have described doesn't happen very often precisely because nearly everyone recognizes it as rude behavior. I myself have not experienced this precise situation in some time.

But take everything I have written above and replace "religion" and "religious" with "politics" and "political," and it describes something I experience, in one form or another, about once a month.

It is a failing that many otherwise civil people commit, and I plead for the sake of civility that everyone consult their conscience and see that they avoid it in the future.

A Poverty of Excess

2007-12-15T23:59:00.000-06:00

Ting, who is something of a foodie, recently discovered the phenomenon that is turducken. If you don't know what turducken is, you probably live way further north of the Mason-Dixon line than I did. I've known about it for ages, but to everyone here in Stateline-Chicagoland it was apparently news, while in the South it is an institution. The basics are these: one chicken, one duck, one turkey. After deboning the poultry, you wrap the chicken in the duck, then the duck in the turkey, then sew the whole mess up and roast it at low temperature for like half a day. There is a giddy excess to the entire project that I think appealed to Ting, and it certainly appealed to me when he suggested that we make one.

Rarely do I use my camera for much of anything anymore, but I figured that this was such a momentous event that it deserved photo-documentation. The unnatural, mangled contortions we put these birds through are somewhat graphic, so I feel some kind of FCC-style warning is in order, even as I feel kind of silly making it. Anyway...

...It was my duty to acquire a turkey, but it was also important that I brine the sucker as well. Brining is basically marinading on a much larger scale, usually involving a good deal of salt. This should have been fairly easy, but I was told to do this at short notice and did not have an adequate container to brine an 18 lb. turkey in. I needed to go to Schnuck's anyway to get additional ingredients for the brine (to Saint Louis readers, yes, Schnuck's exists in northern Illinois, and one just opened in DeKalb). The only bucket they had was 10 quarts, and since the brining recipe called for two gallons of water, I should have known it would be insufficient. But the weather was icky and I didn't want to run around town, so basically I ended up with a bucket filled to the brim with brine, and an 18 lb turkey sticking out of it, sitting in my sink. Having been summoned, Ting eventually arrived with the 55 quart Sterlite bin you see above. At this point the thing had been soaking for about 20 hours, which is actually a little short, but it turned out fine.

Later, at Melissa's, Khana and Tiana endeavor to debone the turkey. When I arrived the chicken and ducks (Ting's recipe actually called for two) had already been deboned. I was glad that I had nothing to do with the deboning process, which is rather an ordeal. Rending the flesh from the animal's bones in ways God did not intend requires some strength, but you also must ensure that the skin and muscle stay in tact. Thus the procedure demands an odd combination of delicate finesse and brute hackery, and I was impressed with their work.

The turkey, divested of its skeletal structure, lies limp and helpless before us.

Having eschewed the difficult tasks thus far, I content myself with studying the instructions for stovetop stuffing, as Melissa pokes a saucepan with a spoon.

A mysterious floating hand indicates the degree of non-poultry related work that went into this project. We actually made three different stuffings for this abomination. I made the aforementioned, easy stovetop stuffing, augmented with honey and walnuts at Ting's suggestion. Ting made a cornbread and sausage kind of thing. Melissa made some sort of oyster based stuffing that was cruel to a palette ill-disposed to fish. Basically we used a different stuffing for each layer, as we shall see next.

This is the fun part. The deboned turkey is spread, flesh side up.

We add the sausage-cornbread stuffing as the first layer.

Then we add the ducks. We were originally going to stitch the duck meat together, but since it is in the middle of everything, it isn't at all necessary.

We added the next layer of stuffing, followed by the deboned chicken, which at the heart of the carnage looks quite insignificant. We eventually add the final layer of stuffing,...

...which gives us all our layers. When I first heard of turducken and the idea of stuffing birds into other birds, I had in mind something much more gruesome and violently invasive. This method of course makes much more sense.

The trickiest part of the project was folding everything into a cohesive unit and stitching it shut such that nothing spills out. A number of hands were required to hold our creation together while Andrew applied his experience as a Civil War field medic to suture the patient. That knife in the foreground was eventually used to stab the flanking ends of bird flesh together so that Andrew could better practice his craft.

For me the most grotesquely amusing part of the evening was when we discovered we did not actually have enough turkey skin to contain our mass of ingredients. Thankfully Ting and Melissa had been stockpiling all the leftover bird parts to make stock later on, so we actually had a good hunk of duck skin left over. What you see above is the more pinkish-colored donor skin being surgically grafted onto the paler skin of the patient, a successful cross-species transplant that would make Frankenstein jealous. Truly a marvel of modern medical science and a glimpse of a brave new world to come.

Eventually though we did get the entire package sealed up and ready to go. Wikipedia says that a serving of Turducken has over 170% of the recommended allowance of cholesterol in a day,...

...which we naturally augmented by wrapping the thing in slippery, fattening bacon. Besides folding the gratuitous indulgence into a universe-collapsing singularity, the bacon also serves as a sort of self-marinading system, adding moisture to the bird while keeping moisture in.

The finished product, wrapped up and ready to go. I don't know how clear it is from the picture, but the thing is bigger than the Albert's baby. Ting would pick it up again later that night and begin roasting it at about 3am or so.

It had been roasting for about twelve hours by the time I arrived at Ting's the next day (which was last night, by the way). Golden-brown and delicious-looking.

Andrew slices the turducken as Dave looks on. Dave had nothing to do with the project, but we required a great number of additional guests to even begin making a dent in our masterpiece. Surely the eating was as important as the making.

My attempts at a Norman-Rockwell style panorama were for naught, as everyone kept diving about for one variety of delicious food or another. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal, which is of course excellent.

Finally, Team Turducken poses victoriously for their moment of triumph. Left to right: Khana, Melissa, Ting, Andrew, Tianna, and your host, giddy from the excitement.

Whole bunch of culture

2007-11-17T00:05:00.000-06:00

So predictably, my wish to report on music events as I attend them has been unfulfilled. As such I have a tremendous backlog of reviews to write, but I really don’t want you all to suffer through a thousand-word post on disconnected recitals and programs. So in the interest of brevity, and novelty, I will confine each of my reviews to at most, nay, exactly, 34 words.

The Creation: NIU Philharmonic and Combined Choirs: NIU campus: Oct 24.

Haydn’s huge oratorio. Impressive, some nits. Famous “primordial” chromaticism not so wild, could be Schubert. Must classical basses (Myron Myers, Raphael) be unintelligible? Also, nothing like a long oratorio to emphasize Classical music’s sameness.

Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967: Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art: Nov 3.

Largely nonsense, some good stuff. Cool installation pieces. Neat 1970’s, yuppie dancer paintings. Too much punk, New York, CBGB’s. Modern art advice: if you must read the artist’s explanation to understand, it’s probably lousy.

Golden Fall Moon Festival: Dong Fang Chinese Performing Arts Association: Pfeiffer Hall: North Central College in Naperville: Nov 10.

Weird, Branson floor-show vibe throughout, in Mandarin. Highlights: Kunqu and Beijing opera excerpts. Wu Bixia, a Chinese soprano who knows Western and Chinese-style art singing. Chinese singing is odd, more nasally, but appealing.

John Novak, piano: NIU campus: Nov 13.

My boss. Pretty darn good pianist. Drama in “Moonlight Sonata” when someone turned out the lights accidentally. Good thing he wasn’t at a cadenza! Best compositions, performances were “lyrical pieces” by Grieg, very charming.

Finally, a review of my own gig.

Really New Music: NIU composition students: NIU campus: Nov 9.

My “Trio Profundo” was well received. A humorous piece, people got the joke. Kudos to my performers. Kudos to the other composers also. Liked “Mystic” (oboe, clarinet, bassoon) and “Athena” (tenor, wind quartet) especially.

The Depths of my Brother's Genius

2007-10-11T12:41:00.001-05:00

Pete sent this along, something he put together for a Freshman English paper.

The intro and closing music might sound familiar. I will take whatever credit I can scrounge.

The Depths of my Genius

2007-10-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

A proposed taxonomy for 80's hard rock bands.

Ranked in order of potential for enjoyment.

Class A: Bands that maintain a "dark" or "heavy" attitude, but have enough self-awareness that it doesn't seem silly (AC/DC, Ted Nugent, The Scorpions).

Class B: Bands whose "dark" or "heavy" attitude is unmitigated by any self-awareness, but who have the aplomb to pull it off nonetheless (Metallica, Kiss, Van Halen).

Class C: Bands whose inability to pull off a "dark" or "heavy" attitude is mitigated by their overwhelming earnestness (Journey, Bon Jovi, Def Leopard).

Class D: Bands whose inability to pull off a "dark" or "heavy" attitude is bereft of earnestness, but in whose excess one finds guilty pleasure (Motley Crüe, Dio, Whitesnake).

Class E: None of the above (Pat Benatar, Nightranger).

Note: Some of these bands may also have had prominence in the 70's and/or 90's.

You could easily use this schema to taxonomize 80's synth pop/new wave bands, by replacing "dark" with "quirky," and "heavy" with "detatched."

Hilarious Nature

2007-10-04T17:58:00.000-05:00

Amusing scene last Saturday. Alaina and I were taking a walk in her neighborhood along this great lakefront park near where she lives. It was a lovely, temperate day, and the locals were out in droves, enjoying some of the last days of pleasant weather we will see for a while. As we walk by and I'm looking around the park, people watcher that I am, spot some distance this trio of some tiny, woolly, yippy species of dog, excited by something. They were outside the far end of one of those public, fenced-in baseball diamonds, around left field or so. Atop the fence was a slightly panicked gray squirrel, juking to the left, then right, trying to shake his canine persecutors. The dogs, whose owner stood aside with a somewhat bemused expression, were for their part undaunted, although one would occasionally lose patience, run up to its mistress and roll around in the grass a bit, before recalling the excitement and running up to join its comrades in pursuit.

Life only occasionally presents these goofy little dramas, so we were going to stop and see how it played out. Would Super Squirrel risk jumping to the other side of the fence, unaware if it was in fact closed off from his foes? Would the little dogs ever relent in their sport? What would they do if they actually caught their prey? As it turned out, Super Squirrel tired of covering the same ground and started to run the perimeter of the fence, toward Alaina and myself in fact. Our intrepid hero was running toward home plate, where the fence tripled in elevation, to keep foul balls from going into the street. At the top a single branch provided a bridge to a nearby tree, the perfect squirrelly escape route. I can't be sure, but I think Super Squirrel knew he had an exit. The dog who was already a little bored with this adventure decided that he was beat, but the other two readily gave chase. Considering their stubby little legs were not much longer than the squirrels, they kept up surprisingly well, though the one who was obviously an older dog occasionally had to relent to a trot. Still, escape and victory seemed all but inevitable for our hero.

That's when the hawk descended.

Yes, yes, there are hawks in Chicago. Now if life were like an O. Henry story, I would have to tell you that despite his maneuvering, our hero met his demise in the least expected fashion. I would probably have some dour reflections on the nature of mortality, and how no matter how we may evade it, death finds us all in the end. But remember, this is Super Squirrel.

Not only did it manage to dodge this new foe's attack, while balancing on a twenty-foot high fence no less, but our hero even, I kid you not, scared off the bird of prey like Dirty Harry demanding to know if the punk felt lucky. Its attack thwarted, the hawk perched on the fence right in the path of Super Squirrel, who, cornered but not defeated, gave the hawk such a banshee scolding that the hawk decided it had more worthwhile engagements to attend to and flew off.

Super Squirrel continued toward his escape and found refuge in the nearby tree. The dogs, noble in defeat, saw that they had been bested and returned dutifully to their mistress. As Alaina and I walked along, our hero was still chattering loudly, defiant to a hostile world.

I would like to think that the gene pool for squirrels in Alaina's neighborhood could only have been improved.

Big Huge Music Theory Post

2007-09-13T19:04:00.001-05:00

So this has actually been sitting on my desktop for a few weeks, but I am only posting it now because of, I don't know, ninja attacks or something. Anyway, this is the new cool music theory pedagogy that I learned about this summer. I am normally not so enamored with trendy education theory, but this works for me, in large part because of good old confirmation bias. It turns out that I was more or less doing all this stuff when thinking about music theory anyway, but in a fairly inchoate way. A system of theory that confirms and organizes my preconceived prejudices? Ganz natürlich!

The guy at NIU who came up with all this is a fellow named Ed Klonoski. He's a sharp guy, and he is also very nice, which is why he kindly previewed the following paragraphs and allowed me to give away his pedagogy in my blog. He did want me to clarify that when I say things like "disregards in favor of," I am not suggesting that he wants to utterly do away with what we are disregarding. Instead, I mean that he favors a non-traditional approach for pedagogical reasons. The element he is temporarily ignoring is likely still important and will just be taught at a later date.

Anyway, here in a nutshell is his system. Comments welcome (ahem*tim*ahem).

Meter

The problem: Meter is not taught perceptually. The first thing music teachers tend to do when teaching meter is to discuss time signatures, followed by note values. The problem is that time signatures are a rather hollow way of describing meter. It does no good to talk about beats and subdivisions until you have a pretty solid understanding of what beats and subdivisions actually are.

Furthermore, perceptual meter and the meter that a time signature can imply are often at odds with one another. For example, it is ambiguous whether "Silent Night" is a moderate 3/4 or a slow 6/8 if you just listen to the music (which is the most important thing). Another example is whether a march is in a duple or quadruple meter, and whether the beat is perceived to be moving slowly or quickly (this gets in to the problem of rhythmic levels, discussed below). Another example: A Beethoven scherzo is always in 3/4, but it is almost never conducted or perceived as such.

The solution: Time signatures are labels to describe metrical phenomena, but they are not always consistent. The same music can almost always be described by at least two different meters, and all kinds of non-metrical artifacts can dictate the composer's choice (e.g. minuets and scherzos are in 3, marches are in 2, two measure subphrases are preferred). However, just because the composer has to resolve this ambiguity does not mean that the listener does.

Rhythmic levels is the idea that the listener experiences several metrical patterns at once. Take "Silent Night" again. Let's assume that it is in 6/8, which to people experienced with meter will indicate that the dotted quarter note gets the beat. So we count two beats per metrical group. If we focus on a faster pulse, we get a metrical group of three eighth notes. Faster still and we get 6 sixteenths. Conversely we can pick a slower pulse on the dotted half note and get a metrical group of two beats ("SI-lent Night, HO-ly Night"). In theory you can always find faster and slower pulses, but you will quickly find a point at either extreme where you hear no useful information, usually at up to five rhythmic levels total.

The point of this exercise is not to hone in on one particular level, but to realize that the relationship between these levels is what comprises our perception of meter. If students can learn to hear meter at multiple levels, it aids in the instruction of a whole host of issues related to meter, including duple and triple meters, simple and compound meters, and the relationship between triple and compound meters (i.e. triple meter can always be heard as a compound meter at the slower rhythmic level). Most phrase structures can also be addressed using rhythmic levels, as periods, phrases, and subphrases are partly about what level of meter you are looking at. Finally, time signatures should only be taught once the principles of perceiving meter are established, so that you are hanging labels on already understood concepts.

Harmonic Analysis

The Problem: Most music theory teachers grant a certain amount of attention to the idea that some harmonies are more important than others, especially at cadences. There is, however, no consistent, concrete method for discussing harmonies in a hierarchical fashion. Consequently, students are often very bad at distinguishing between, say, a passing chord at the beginning of a phrase and a pre-dominant chord leading up to the cadence. Thus they pay equal attention to both, and may even lavish more on the lowly passing chord, as they are often more difficult to analyze than chords with a clear structural identity. This is counter to the way musicians should be hearing music: The relative ease with which the student detects the structural pre-dominant is evidence of its importance, and it is far more important to good musical listening that the student recognize these structural harmonies. Agonizing over passing harmonies is an ancillary consideration.

The Solution: Microscopic analysis of every single harmony is a useless endeavor if the student does not understand the structural harmonic principles which underlie them. A combination of approaches are used. First, Riemannian structural harmonic categories allow the student to focus on a harmony's function without fretting over secondary details. So ii, ii˚, IV, iv, bii (Neapolitan), and all their associated inversions and seventh chords are designated PD, for pre-dominant, so long as they resolve to a dominant chord.* Otherwise they are dismissed as decorations of a single harmony. Second, Schenkerian harmonic levels provide a language for discussing the relative importance of given harmonies in a piece. While Schenker may seem too sophisticated for beginning students, they can with practice hearing when the piece is approaching a cadence and assign these cadential harmonies greater structural importance.

This process generates different levels of harmony. As one moves to a level of greater structural significance, more important harmonies subsume the functions of lesser harmonies. The connection between harmonic levels and the rhythmic levels should not be understated. The perception of harmony and rhythm reinforce each other in such a way that you cannot have one without the other. Learning to hear rhythm and harmony as a totality is an important step in analysis.

Like with rhythmic levels, the point of harmonic levels is not to de-emphasize one level over the other, but to show how the interaction between levels creates musical activity. One does not discount the differences between all the pre-dominant chords for long, but it is only easy to do so once the students understand more basic harmonic structures. This approach means that instead of plotting discrete linear harmonies, the student thinks about each harmony as part of a multi-dimensional whole, which better reflects how these harmonies behave in music.

*I would even argue that V/V and vii/V chords fulfill the pre-dominant function, though the act of tonicization makes it a little more complicated.

Aural skills

The problem: Aural skills is a complement to analysis, so it is not surprising that the two should have similar problems. The problem here is that intervals, chords, and other musical elements are often presented in isolation, as discrete units similar to the discrete harmonies that are found in most musical analyses. This is not only more difficult than it needs to be; it is contrary to how music actually behaves. Music is not one isolated element, but a combination of elements that work together. This is true not only of the parts that make up melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, but for melody, harmony, and rhythm themselves. If one element is missing, then that is one less clue the student has for understanding music. This is immensely counter-productive, not only because it makes the process of aural skills more difficult, but also because it is an unrealistic model of actual music. By treating these elements in isolation, the student learns aural skills not as they apply to music, but to a hollow travesty.

The solution: Aural skills are best developed all together, rather than in isolation. This seems counter-intuitive, but after some initial difficulty, the student learns to let each aspect of the music inform his understanding of the other aspects. For example, melodic intervals are much easier to interpret if they are heard not individually, but as part of a pattern that is related to the harmony of a piece. In western music, even unaccompanied melodies have harmonies associated with them. Similarly, knowledge of musical structure informs the understanding of both melody and harmony.

Aural skills exercises work best when the student focuses on the larger structure first. If the student hears a two-phrase period, that observation alone can predict harmony, cadential structures, and melody. For example, the first phrase most likely ends on a half-cadence, and the melody most likely ends on the second scale degree. The second phrase most likely ends on a perfect authentic cadence, meaning the melody ends on the tonic. The first and second phrase likely have similar if not identical beginnings. With this larger framework in place, students can then focus on more detailed matters of particular harmonies, melodies, and bass lines, while also verifying his predictions from hearing the structure.

The connection between analysis and aural skills is very important, as facility in one prompts facility in the other. The ability to do both simultaneously is crucial to the musician's understanding of western music. Improvisation is a great technique to teach and to practice because it strengthens the ability to use these two skills together.

Still Alive

2007-08-14T14:31:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a largish blog post summarizing what I learned in my pedagogy class this summer, because the world can wait no longer. In the meantime, it seems that my and Alaina's guestbook is now working, in that at least one individual has successfully signed it. So if you tried to sign it before and it didn't work, try again! And if you haven't tried yet, try it the first time! If there are still problems let either of us know.

Announcement

2007-07-31T14:01:00.000-05:00

So after years of hemming and hawing, Alaina and I have a concrete date for our pending nuptials. It shall be August 23, 2008. Since we are in The Future™, we naturally have a website, which will have all kinds of useful doodads like locations, people, important dates, registry info, accommodations, and the like. For now I should point out the story of how we met, which we are cowriting by alternating paragraphs, and which is of course absolutely true.

Pet Issues

2007-07-17T15:25:00.000-05:00

My music theory pedagogy class is done. To synopsize, some bits were a little gooshy, but a lot of it was actually valuable. Our instructor has a lot of worthy, concrete ideas about how to teach meter, harmony, aural skills, and part-writing, that are a little out there but make a lot of sense to me. I should post about it sometime.

Shortly after it comes out that cats may have "adopted" humans, rather than the other way around, I find a similar theory has been proposed for dogs as well. It's interesting stuff. I like how it highlights the difference between the dog's loyalty and the cat's aloofness. In general it also shows that evolution is a delightfully complex area of study, encompassing all kinds of diverse subjects, from anthropology to neuroanatomy to zoology.

On a nerdier note, the proposed story of human-canine co-dependency reminds me of the Wolf-Brothers from the Wheel of Time novels. And you thought a post on comparative evolutionary anthropology couldn't get any geekier

Contains Profanity

2007-06-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

Some guy at Slate does an in-depth analysis of "The Greatest One-Liner in Movie History." I find nothing to disagree with, though I always thought "Call me Roy" from the same movie was at least a close rival. I could go on about how Die Hard manages to insinuate compelling themes of heroism and American identity in giddy escapist trappings, and go on and on abouts its virtues generally, but just watch the thing and you'll see what I mean.

Speaking of, Live Free or Die Hard is getting rave reviews. Do I need to say that I am enthused? I am enthused! Yay enthusiasm!

One random observation: The new installment of the franchise seems surprisingly geek-friendly. The supporting cast includes Justin Long (the fanboy character in Galaxy Quest, and the Mac from the "Mac vs. PC" ads) and cult-film director Kevin Smith (whose geek-cred I should not have to qualify). The plot, such as it is, apparently has something to do with techno-terrorism. Is this a recognition of the original film's appeal to cine-nerds such as myself? Is it an opportunity for satire, considering that Jack McClane apparently spends the entire movie all that cyber-sophistication in the face with his meat-fists? Is it a graceful (or possibly graceless) synthesis of both?

Also, that part they show in the trailer, where they're in the Holland Tunnel, and that one car is about to land on them, but they duck and it lands on two other cars that happen to be driving around them, then crashes and spins behind them? Boom!

Pepper's Ghost, The Dark Room, June 9th

2007-06-21T00:11:00.000-05:00

School has started. My attitudes toward my music theory pedagogy class are in development. I may have something to say later.

To help you contain your excitement, a review! I wish I would post these within a day of the event, but alas, I laze.

The reason I found myself in a dreary west Chicago neighborhood, hunkered down in a black and red leather booth in a goth/photography-themed ("The Dark Room," get it?) bar and venue listening to Pepper's Ghost, is because they were from Philadelphia. Alaina's friend Amrita is a Philadelphian and local fan, and she wanted people to drag along when she heard they would be in Chicago. Amrita's tastes tend toward the Whitney Houston diva-pop, so I was a bit nervous about what sort of treacle was in store, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear the kind of head-banging retro-rock that I find I enjoy. To put it in the most pretentious, rock-reviewer terms: Imagine if The Killers listened to less Cheap Trick and more Guns n Roses. The best stuff was heavily riff-driven and blues-ish, like GNR, the forms made great use of change in texture and tempo, again like GNR (listen to "Anything Goes" some time), and the vocal work was definitely reminiscent of Axl Rose. But like the best of these post-modern revisionists, they manage to manifest their influences without any slavish aping. For one, the aesthetic is much more intimate, not in the soul-baring singer-songwriter sense (Pepper's Ghost did not strike me as a very literate band, though I didn't pay much attention), but in the gritty bar band sense. Less arena than GNR, more roadhouse. All the ingredients are there for a big sound, but it doesn't seem big.

For another, these guys are actually darned virtuosic. Highlights included a flashing high bass lick worked into the bridge of one song, and an unapologetic guitar duel that I would not have expected from an up-and-coming band. Pepper's Ghost is obviously not embarrassed by their devotion to big ginormous 70s-80s rock.

I recommend them. They are a fine example of the trend in revisionist rock, something I predict will stay around for a little while longer. They have a handful of albums, so check them out.

Synopsis

2007-06-04T15:31:00.000-05:00

While the dearth of blogging this past month and a half was no doubt facilitated by the usual end-of-term blowback one expects, the fact that the spring semester has been concluded for several weeks now has not seemed to help any. We'll see if we can change that.

I managed to complete my music fundamentals class without a hitch. The most fun was grading some seventy-odd concert reports in a single day. I of course finished other responsibilities, including the report for my Schenker class that apparently pushed my final grade to an A, which is happy. Other good school-related news is that in the fall I will be working for the music theory folks, which, let us say, is more in keeping with my qualifications and interests than the music fundamentals class, as valuable and fruitful as that experience was.

I saw my brother's graduation over Memorial Day weekend. I was planning on putzing about town in DeKalb for the couple of weeks between the end of school and that week, catching the shuttle to Elburn, the Metra to Chicago, and the Amtrak to my hometown of Saint Louis; but I discovered that day that the shuttle was making it's last run before the Fall, so I had to scurry. I stayed in Chicago for a week, where I had not packed for some unseasonal cold, and headed to Saint Louis for another.

My brother Pete did in fact successfully graduate from Saint Louis U High, my alma mater and now his. He is going to Mizzou in Columbia, MO, where he will be pursuing a business degree in restaurant and hotel management and now, he tells me, some kind of poly-sci degree as well. I fully expect him to develop into some sort of Donald Trump -type figure, purchasing a neglected Caribbean island and converting it to a palatial Xanadu, with cabanas, casinos, resorts, and those weird alcoholic slushies with the paper umbrellas. I'm sure he will take this as a compliment.

My grandparents and my aunt Carrie were also in town, so it was a crowded house. Alaina was around for both weekends, as her sister also had a graduation (from Fontbonne University) and also a birthday. My brother had a birthday as well (same day in fact), so the social agenda for the week was chockablock.

I also have a car again. I gave up on the previously trusty Chrysler Cirrus in April when it decided to shoot up to 4000 rpm while it was idling, and had been without a car ever since. Alaina's family very kindly gave me their 1993 Saturn Twin Cam in its stead. Despite it's age and insane mileage (close to 180000 at this date), and an unnerving tendency to activate the anti-lock brake function a couple of seconds after starting the engine and going in reverse, it actually runs very well and gave Alaina and myself no trouble on the drive back to Chicago. What's more, unless my math is very wrong, or there is something off about the odometer, the jalopy is actually getting somewhere between 34 and 36 highway miles to the gallon. I credit the Baker's careful maintenance, plus the restorative power of Revive!, the miracle gunk which Mr. Baker insisted he pour down the oil tank before I took the vehicle. I was skeptical, but now I too am convinced!

Current status: mucking about in DeKalb again, waiting for my summer class to start in mid-June. As I will be teaching music theory, the school insists I take a music pedagogy class, so that is what I shall do. I also need a job, as my stipend doesn't cover the summer. I could rant about how the increase in the minimum wage in Illinois has depressed entry-level job markets, but instead I will calm down and give this clip of an adorable, laughing infant.

He's like a little person!

End of hiatus

2007-04-15T11:38:00.000-05:00

Blogging was sparse lately in part because of shiftless irresponsibility, but also because I spent a good hunk of the last month without a computer. It's a tragic story that is also very boring, so I will spare you.

Why am I breaking my blog fast? To issue a CHALLENGE!

It's unnatural, I tell you!

2007-03-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

I've gotten more than my fair share of strange looks for my beliefs on the matter, so it's good to know that I'm not the only one who has thought this. Though the notion of a sentient robot, of all things, delivering the message is a tad ironic.

Reviews

2007-03-07T22:32:00.000-06:00

I keep meaning to post reviews of events as I attend them, so to make up for this unforgiveable backlog I am presenting a whole bunch of reviews in handy digest form. I'm going to keep these fairly brief. Nothing quite as bad as slogging through one blog post that should have been four.

This is quite a smorgasborg, a veritable cornucopia of musical variety, for the broadest of musical palettes.

"Into the Woods," performed by the Dolphin Players
January 26, 2007

The Dolphin Players at Northwestern University have an interesting history. There site gives a detailed chronology, but very quickly: The Dolphins were originally Northwestern's swim team, who as a fundraiser in the forties decided to put on an annual production. Eventually it became disassociated with the swimmers and is now, apparently, the largest student-run theater group in the country. No faculty are involved; students act, direct, make the sets, conduct and play the music, and every other aspect of the show. "Into the Woods" is a Sondheim musical that twists a bunch of familiar fairy tales into one big extended metaphor for risk-taking and uncertainty; "Into the Woods" is basically "Into the Unknown." Acting and singing were all very well done. Particularly noteworthy was the actress who played the Witch. Bernadette Peters had this part in the original, and for this production the actress was able to capture a lot of Ms. Peters' mannerisms while still making the role her own. For this production they decided that the set would be an attic, the idea being that it is a place where children play fairy tale games. As an idea I suppose it works: The characters do start out childlike and innocent enough, even as they become more world weary and wiser by the end. That's sort of the point of the show. I never really got the sense that the characters were children, however, so I don't think it works in practice. On the other hand, it did provide for a detailed set in which smaller set changes could easily occur.

As for the show itself, apart from the performance: I do like Sondheim as a composer, and his songs are always very nice. Particularly good are "Agony," sung by the two Prince Charmings, who never are satisfied with what they have; "Children Will Listen," by the Witch, who is singing about her child Rapunzel growing up; and "Into the Woods," sung at various times by the ensemble, which has a narrative function and also captures many of the dramatic themes of the play. The stories are nice, and there are some good insights to be had.

I will say that I tire somewhat of the musical-as-ritual-drama trope that Sondheim started and others picked up on ("The Fantastiks," "Celebration," and "Pippin" all come to mind, all good shows by the way). I mean the sort of thing where the musical form is itself a metaphor about something or other, life or the search for glamour or some such thing. By my less than slavish following of the modern musical scene, this trend seems to be waning somewhat but still is very much a part of the times. Sondheim of course pioneered this approach, but it now seems like a shortcut to profundity, and it is a shame that my esteem for Sondheim is hurt by this perception.

NIU Philharmonic
February 12, 2007

Contrary to what the above link says, the Philharmonic played "Les Preludes" and not "Rhapsodie Espangle." They did play "Short Ride on a Fast Machine" by contempory composer John Adams, which was a big draw for me. The piece is exactly what it sounds like from the title: a 4-5 minute whirlwind that doesn't let up until the end. It's one of your post-minimalist pieces, so it doesn't have much of a tune, or even a hook, but it is actually very accessible. The one thing about the piece that always bugged me was the woodblock pulse. If you can keep it contained it creates an effective sort of metronome which plays against a lot of the heavy syncopation in the rest of the ensemble, but it is very hard to tamp down a wood block, and this performance was no exception. It seemed like the hapless percussionist was wailing on the thing like a kid on a soup pot. There were some balance issues between the strings and the brass, though I largely fault this to NIU's concert hall, which is this brick, boxy accousitcal travesty that was heaped up, along with the rest of the music building, in the 1970's, that glowing era of stupidly wayward design principles. Really though, they did the piece justice, keeping the up the excitement and intensity required until the end. The director, Brett Mitchel, told us during the pre-concert lecture that he was to purposely start with a faster tempo than the orchestra was used to. This is not a piece that benefits from complacency.

This is already a monster post, and I have two events to go, so I am going to spare you all and save them for another post.

Signs Your Music Fundamentals TA Is Phoning It In.

2007-02-26T10:31:00.000-06:00

A trifle of my own invention. And for the record, I have not actually done any of these things. Yet.

He just plays the "Badgers Badgers" song for 45 minutes.

"Opera day" is just him in a powered wig taking a nap in front of the class.

You catch him perusing the post-Holiday clearance rack for Lionel Ritchie Christmas albums.

You're getting really tired of that "if it ain't Baroque" joke.

Conflates Bach and Webern, covers it up by saying he meant "one of them German dudes."

"Study Guide" is a link to the Wikipedia article on music.

He seems really intent on demonstrating all the reasons that Paul is dead.

Shows up five minutes late wearing nylon pajama pants, sandals, and a fleece hoodie.

You find out that he spends more time writing silly lists than prepping for class.

Pepsi stains on your concert reports.

DRM wars

2007-02-09T10:42:00.000-06:00

Steve Jobs issues a fatwah against DRM, the super-secret coding that limits how often and on what devices you can use the music files downloaded from iTunes, Zunelandgard, and other download services. The trend lately has been to accuse Apple of abusing FairPlay, Apple's version of DRM, by keeping it proprietary and thereby limiting iTunes music to iPods and a handful of licensed computers. Pundits wring their hands, and meddlesome Eurocrats are making waves that such proprietary coding could be construed as a breach of antitrust laws. Jobs insists in his editorial that so-called open-DRM is as bad as no DRM at all, for DRM is constantly being hacked by misanthropic, code-addled deliquents, and it is bad enough trying to "plug the leaks" in-house alone. If Apple licenses DRM, it would make security all the more difficult.

If he had just done that, defended propriety DRM from the gibbering caste, then it would have been a fine essay, but the section where he calls on record companies to abandon its insistence on DRM is where heads start to turn. Basically he argues that the music industry is being hypocritical, in that it has released non-proprietary, digital music files for years, in the form of compact discs. Jobs cites that 97% of all music played on iPods comes from CDs and is therefore DRM free. Record companies obviously have no problem with this, so why be so obtuse just because downloading is involved? We know that Napster and Peer-to-Peer file sharing left a sting that caught them off-guard, but we are talking about music that people are paying for that doesn't even have any variable costs involved. Did file-sharing scar the music industry so much that they are spooked by anything with the word "download," like saying "Boo" to a chihuahua? Must they run yipping under the table until the big scary digital content is ensnared with proprietary coding? The RIAA demonstrates, that, yes, this is so.

Even if the RIAA doesn't bite, it is still a brilliant political move on Jobs' part. He not only deflects the FairPlay-related criticism, but also puts the music industry on the defensive. Still, is he bluffing? Would it merely take an "okey-dokey" from the recording industry to be rid of DRM forever? Critics have two sensible arguments to the contrary (and a lot of unsensible ones that are better addressed elsewhere): One, Steve Jobs now has a controlling interest in Disney/Pixar and could presumably shake up the board so that they give DRM on their movies a pass, and yet we don't see any calls for code-free releases of "Toy Story 2." This is fairly easy to answer: The movie industry cannot be saddled with the hypocrasy charge. Unlike CDs, DVDs have always had some sort of encoding that prevents easy transfer of files. The second is a little more problematic. Several labels that are partnered with iTunes also sell digital music on their own without any sort of DRM restriction. They would like to do the same on the iTunes store, but Apple will not let them. If Jobs were really honest about abandoning DRM, he should embrace their encription-free attitude instead of forcing them to fit a standard.

I haven't read a good answer to this, but I think I have a theory. Apple (read: Steve Jobs) likes to keep things simple. Back in the 90's when Apple was in trouble financially, they were marketing a confusing array of models in a variety of configurations, and no one could discern any difference among them. Part of the Jobs re-takeover of the company was to streamline the models so that each had a definite purpose and market segment that was clear to all, which we see in todays models: iMac (consumer), PowerMac (professional), eMac (educational), and MacBook (portable). The same applies to iTunes: all songs are $ .99, no matter how popular the artist. All albums are $9.99, Tv shows are $1.99, movies $9.99, and so on. He could probably give different prices structures based on popularity, release date, and other factors, and could theoretically even make more money, but it would prevent him from marketing iTunes with statements like "Thousands of songs. 99 cents each." That immediately connects with the consumer in a way that charging more for new releases, less for older stuff, would not allow.

If Apple embraced a different DRM standard for each label, depending on what their attitude was toward proprietary encryption, that would create a snag in the matter-of-fact approach to marketing that Jobs counts on to successfully convey his vision. If the slogan became "some songs now encryption-free, others not so much," there is now an unnecessary layer of complexity in the message. Better, in Jobs' view, to impose the same generally accepted standard on everyone than to introduce a confounded hierarchy that makes some music freely transferrable, but not others. This is why, I gather, that Jobs is calling on all record companies to abolish DRM. I don't know if conforming to a marketing strategy justifies the infliction of a top-down encryption scheme on independent labels, but it is at least explicable in terms of Apple's general approach to selling its products. It certainly isn't a drive towards monopoly.

Via BT, who in turn got it from Daring Fireball Both have good additional thoughts on the matter.

New Look

2007-01-15T22:41:00.000-06:00

Slight change to the way the site looks, by the way, brought to you by the newly updated Blogger 2.0 (motto: Finally, something got through the beta stage). The big change is the use of "tags," which allow me to compulsively catalog each of my posts in an arbitrary and idiosyncratic way, something that appeals immensely to the obsessive-compulsive pack rat in me. I've already sorted my collected ramblings from the past few months using this tool. As you may notice, I am keeping the "culture" meme as part of my cataloging system. I want to wait until I can find a way to create a list of all my tags permanently in the sidebar before describing what they mean, though most of the tags are self-explanatory anyway.

So to kick-start the new look, I figure I would throw in a new logo, brought to you and all of the interwebs by the Web2.0 Logo Creator

Hehe.

Brave New Phone

2007-01-09T12:51:00.000-06:00

Still around. First semester over, second beginning next week. Break was happy.

Perhaps a more in-depth year-in-review is forthcoming. Right now, though, this is occupying my attention. Apparently the iPhone rumors were true. The price, $499 for the 4 GB model, $599 for the 8 GB, struck me as rather high, PS3 high, though it really isn't much higher than the Blackberry, which I guess is the most comparable bit of tech available. I am also skeptical that a 3x5 touch screen could be as usable and responsive as they are claiming, though I am willing to be convinced.

All in all, though, I am impressed. The integration is astounding. At the MacWorld Expo, which is going on Right Now, famed CEO and folklore hero Steve Jobs used the device to pinpoint his location (there is apparently some sort of GPS wizardry in the thing), find the nearest Starbucks (no chance Jobs would want Blimpie's or Taco John's, I suppose), and call them up, all with a few button pushes.

Remember that goofy development video Microsoft made, with the wonky 5x8 tablet that looked like a flatbed scanner circa 1997? It was supposed to be the next wave of integration, but it seemed to combine the computing power of a graphing calculator with the portability of a calculus textbook. Oh, how we laughed. Looks like Apple figured out a way to make it work. Go Apple!

The above links to MacRumors, which is live-blogging the MacWorld expo and literally updating every minute. Brian Tiemann has some good comments as well.

School's Out!

2006-12-01T08:08:00.000-06:00

It's crazy! Either I will go out and find the biggest hill to sled down, or I will hole up in here for the rest of the day, thankful for the extra free day. Hint: I do not own a sled.

Also, I suspect most people who read this are sympathetic, but in case you live in San Diego or some such Avalon, here is a chance to appreciate the meteorological roulette-wheel that is climate in the Midwest.

Weather two days ago.

Weather yesterday.

Weather today.

Holiday Anecdotes

2006-11-27T19:57:00.000-06:00

My Thanksgiving was fine, thanks for asking! Met with a good hunk of my dad's side of the family, at the ancestral homeland of Wichita, Kansas. Good times, though nothing peculiar to relate. Instead I offer the following nuggets of bizarreness, garnered from the road.

1.) Alaina and I drove from DeKalb to Saint Louis on Tuesday. The battery light came on, and we read in the manual that should the battery light come on, "SEEK SERVICE IMMEDIATELY." You don't mess around when the manual yells at you in all caps like that, so we find this repair shop in a small town in Illinois just outside of Saint Louis. I could quake and moan about the precise nature of the repair and how much it cost, but the real fun was when we beheld the mechanics. They were definitely brothers and were quite possibly twins. The wore identical denim jumpsuits and talked at each other in this kind of high-pitched, rapid-fire, unaccented rural American English, like so.

"SEETHEBATTERYISREADING11.5IT'SLOW"

"LOOKHERETHEBELTONTHECOMPRESSORISBROKE"

"OHWOWIDIDN'TNOTICETHAT"

"THAT'SGONNANEEDTOBEREPLACED"

"UNLESSTHERE'SABYPASSBELT"

"OHYEAHGOODPOINT"

And so on. Try to imagine two identical creatures gibbering at each other in this fashion. Now put them on a planet where everyone has purple skin, and wears elfin costume, and eats radio waves. It would not be any more alien than what I beheld.

2.) On the way back, we beheld a vanity plate that read "19 CATS." Sane people, like Alaina, might comment that people should advertise something like that, or maybe that their house must smell. I of course invent a novelty tune in broken German. The fractured grammar and syntax makes it funny!

Ich habe neunzehn Katzen.
Es stinkt mir nicht so gut!
Sie im mein Auto fahren,
Und seh'n das Film "Das Boot!"

Now in Latin! "Habeo...er...multii felini..." and that's as far as I got.

Uncle Milt

2006-11-16T18:20:00.000-06:00

Milton Friedman, RIP.

"...Eventually it becomes a CAT."

2006-11-10T00:26:00.000-06:00

It occurred to me the other day that I have memorized precisely two poems entirely by accident. If you are expecting "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," or even "Ozymandias," I must disappoint. The first is Ogden Nash.

Behold the Hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us.
And yet, in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him

Peace, peace, thou Hippopotamus;
You really are okay to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.

The second is Jack Prelutsky, of all people, and it's about dinosaurs, of all things.

Tyrranosaurus was a beast
that had no friends, to say the least.
It ruled the ancient out-of-doors
and slaughtered other dinosaurs.

Seeing as my better half spent a good deal of time in high school memorizing Shakespearian sonnets, I wonder how I should feel about the bits of verse that have insinuated themselves into my memory. Perhaps I should feel chastened and abashed, and yet I am basically proud of my profoundly anti-intellectual recitations. Take that, Academia!

On English humorists and high school mascots

2006-10-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

If you don't know who P.G. Wodehouse is, for shame. Especially if you, like myself, are one of those self-conciously nerdy types who, when not trolling Dungeons and Dragons message boards or downloading Torrents of Battlestar Galactica, will recite large swaths of dialog from Flying Circus or The Holy Grail. Without Beyond the Fringe there is no Monty Python, and without Wodehouse there is no Beyond the Fringe. I'm sure I am missing a few steps, but there you have it.

I've been reading The Uncollected Wodehouse, a volume that is exactly as the title advertises: a volume of serialized short stories and writings previously unpublished in book form. One such story is "Ruth in Exile," concerning an English, female protagonist who works for a pawn shop (the "mont-de-piété") near Monte Carlo. Her boss, M. Gandinot, is described as "the ugliest man in Roville-sur-Mer," but the reader is not supposed to imagine that he is some sort of gargoyle.

The peculiar quality of M. Gandinot's extraordinary countenance was that it induced mirth—not mocking laughter, but a kind of smiling happiness. It possessed that indefinable quality which characterises the Billiken, due, perhaps, to the unquenchable optimism which shone through the irregular features; for M. Gandinot, despite his calling, believed in his fellow man.

The Billiken is, of course, the mascot at Saint Louis University, while the Jr. Billiken resides at Saint Louis University High School, which is related to SLU and was the high school from which I graduated. The Billiken was a popular fad from about 1910 to 1912, not unlike the more recent Cabbage Patch Kids or Troll dolls, when SLU appropriated the creature as its mascot, and "Ruth in Exile" was published in 1912, so the reference is not all that fantastic. Still, it is the only reference to the symbol of my (high school) alma mater that I have found in literature of any kind.

Better now!

2006-10-22T17:53:00.000-05:00

The Chancellor had me undergo a regimen of dried-frog pills, and I am now entirely lucid.

That's all you get! Well, okay. This is generally awesome. The only things I didn't like were the grating MIDI loop of "Funeral March of a Marionette," and the fact that I had to watch about two thirds of the thing until it finally got to a cameo I actually recognized. It is no good for me to have to wait that long to feel smart.

Continuing Adventures

2006-10-17T03:17:00.000-05:00

I just checked to see if it was raining, using Weather Underground, because it was actually easier than looking out the window. Huxley would have something to say about this. Asimov too, while we are at it.

Also, it's three in the morning. I'm going to eat Malt O Meal brand puffed rice covered in brown sugar.

You can't spell "Smacks" without "Smack!"

I Recommend "Old Fashioned Outta Control Loverboy"

2006-10-13T10:05:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow Queen 50-Cent Mashup!

I just found out about this (from the Penny Arcade guys, in fact), even though it's a year old, and that's okay.

Though I am largely familiar with Queen's output, the ouvre of Mr. Cent (or "50cc," as his friends call him) is basically a closed book to me. I suspect that people, such as my brother, who can rightly claim that they know of the work of both artists will find this opus even more pleasing. As it remains, Q-Unit merely confirms my prejudice that contemporary hip-hop is a force of ridiculousness. If you do a little google-fu on this masterpiece, you will find that many Queen fans are upset by this apparant desecration. I find no similar complaint from 50-Cent enthusiasts, who I can only assume have nothing to lose.

By the way, if you suspect that hip-hop lyrics may offend you, this will probably offend you.

New TV Part 1

2006-10-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to do these for a while. It's the New Fall Season, and network TV is generally awesome right now.

Let's start with "Shark," CBS's new prosecutorial drama starring James Woods as sleazy LA defense lawyer Stark, who is recruited by the DA's office to head the "Special Case" squad, which tries high-profile cases, not unlike the police squad in TNT's "The Closer." Strange that it didn't occur to me that the show was anything like Fox's "House" until I read the reviews on Metacritic, but the similarities are there: the anti-hero protagonist, his merry band of bustling junior assistants, the bitchy boss who isn't quite sure whether to reign in the loose cannon that is suddenly in her charge. The role of Wilson is played this time by Stark's teenage daughter from his annulled marriage. I could probably go on, but that is rather beside the point. The reviewers have tended to compare "Shark" and "House," with "Shark" coming out unfavorably, and that is certainly fair. "House" has more interesting cases, better supporting characters, and arguably a better star playing a more nuanced central character. One reviewer complained that in "Shark" the central character has "softened" in the first few episodes, something that "House" has not done in over two seasons. This, however, misses the key difference, a difference which I think is why I didn't connect the two shows at first. The whole point of the character of House is that he is so conflicted, inwardly and outwardly, that we don't whether he is good or bad, and that tension can be carried through season after season. Stark is clearly a bad guy who gets a chance to do good, both with his new job and with the opportunity to raise his daughter, who chooses to live with him instead of her mother for reasons Stark does not quite understand. There is an obvious moral progress that Stark will contend with that is not even in the same universe as House. Whether "Shark" can effectively develop that progress and still maintain an interesting show for more than a couple of seasons remains to be seen, but it is a challenge "House" simply does not face.

Another difference: While "House" is undoubtably a character study foremost, and the show would be like ashes without the presence of Hugh Laurie, the show has more going for it than that. The cases are always intriguing: Remember that the show was first marketed as a detective show set in a hospital, before Fox went the "you won't believe what House does this week" route*. The secondary characters have enough going for them that they make for good storytelling, even when House is not in the scene. Hugh Laurie is not doing all of the heavy lifting, in other words. Not so for "Shark." The cases are standard CBS fare, and only a handful of the characters not played by James Woods have any kind of personality, at least so far. For now, the show is all about Woods. The man, whom I only really remember as the voice of Hades in Disney's "Hercules," is eating this role up. The fast-talking, the brio, the glad-handing übermensch only now suffering his first taste of self-doubt, Woods gets it, and it is fascinating to watch, even if the rest of the show is less engaging. Thus do I recommend "Shark." Though not the equal to "House," few shows are, and "Shark" is surely a one-of-a-kind experience.

*Isn't it odd, by the way, that the network that couldn't keep "Family Guy," "Futurama," "Arrested Development," "Firefly," "Titus," and whatever else I'm ignorant of or forgetting, is able to successfully market a show like "House"? You can argue about relative merits, but surely "House" is a more difficult show, in that it demands more from its viewers, than, say, "Firefly." I guess the lesson is that if you have a good show, tell people about it, and make sure it is on at a consistent time so that everyone can find it, you can get a hit. Even Fox can do that.

Dubious...

2006-10-02T19:43:00.000-05:00

Man, this is weird.

A fellow classmate says he has actually visited the store, which is of course how I found out about it. City Search has a profile, in case you don't believe him. The point being, its not one of those viral joke sites that exist solely to lead curious people to view Google ads: The LA County Coroner's office actually has a gift shop that sells macabre, tongue-in-cheek items like chalk-outline post-it notes and novelty toe-tag key-chains.

On the one hand, it's hilarious. On the other, it is apparently in no way distinct from the actual coroner's office, so you have to walk by people on the scene to identify their tragically slain kinfolk, if you want to buy your LACC-logo-emblazoned hoodies and cutting boards. So it's kind of messed up.

Happy Halloween, I guess.

Staying at Home

2006-09-26T23:37:00.000-05:00

Interesting, if slightly dated, interview with Harold Ramis, an important 80's-90's comedy guy. It's interesting to hear how he thinks as a writer and director, plus the jaded-yet-unrepentant leftist perspective is one we see very little of these days.

I do want to address this.

HR:...I can’t tell you how many people have told me, “When I go to the movies, I don’t want to think.”

BLVR: Does that offend you as a filmmaker?

HR: It offends me as a human being. Why wouldn’t you want to think? What does that mean? Why not just shoot yourself in the [...] head? Or people’ll say that they don’t want to see any negative emotions. They don’t want to see unpleasantness. I did a comedy with Al Franken about his character Stuart Smalley, which was really about alcoholism and addiction and codependency. It had some painful stuff in it. When we showed it to focus groups, some of them actually said, “If I want to see a dysfunctional family, I’ll stay home.”

This is ironic, considering this is the writer of things like Animal House, but those movies were made in the 80's, so we can allow him to change perspective since that time. What gets me is the idea that every show, every film, every novel, every song, indeed every work of art must challenge us, must rouse us, must shave the veneer and show us the pain and struggle that life is really all about. In other words, if it doesn't make your brow furrow in disquitude, it's a vapid waste of time. This is bull. There is nothing wrong with this kind of thing in dollups and intervals, but what is wrong with escapism every once in a while? What is wrong with feeling genuinely happy? What is wrong with art being elevating? How did we get from a standard that says art must send to heaven to one that says art must drag us through the mire?

This offends me on several levels. First, I am a champion of Dumb Art. I like action flicks, CSI, Nick at Nite, comic strips, Ogden Nash, and hair metal. I see nothing wrong or conflicting with my appreciation for "Higher" Art and my love for inconsequential drivel, provided it is well-done. Saying that a thinking person must necessarily deny those things is demonstrably false, and I am the converse that proves it. Second, even if your palette is such that you must only have the Higher, that which makes you Think, does this mean that you can only experience That Which Makes Thou Despair, or at least grin in smug comprehension of the daftness of it all? What about Copland's Third, or Beethoven's Sixth? What about The Tempest, or The Lord of the Rings? Or is higher feeling something so fleeting and illusory that beyond a certain threshold of cleverness we are no longer allowed to experience beauty without dour, ironic detachment? Third, let's talk about the fellow who said that he can see dysfunctionality at home. If there is anyone who deserves a little bit of escapism in film, it would seem to be that guy. If you are surrounded by hardship, why would you go to the movies to see more, without reprieve? Ramis would not only deny him that, he would scorn the man for his inability to appreciate Ramis' offering of Life Unvarnished. I have a feeling our man has seen plenty of such a life, and wouldn't mind seeing a tale of heroic simplicity from time to time.

None of this is to advocate pure escapism unmitigated by reality, as such a diet would be like eating steak and chocolate without taking your vitamins. But a program of untempered sad-sack cynicism and irony is like bowl after bowl of All-Bran and never having dessert. I like cynicism and irony, but I like unadulterated happiness too. Life is pain, but also joy. Let us have both and never forget either.

What's so funny?

2006-09-25T22:51:00.000-05:00

I know a great number of my, um, exclusive readership speaks German with varying degrees of proficiency, so translate away!

'Trane

2006-09-24T22:14:00.000-05:00

My dad suggested that I write something about John Coltrane, as his 80th birthday would have been this last Saturday. Here it goes.

In high school I took a class called Varieties of Religious Experience (it was a Jesuit school). We had an extra-credit opportunity that involved playing some bit of music that demonstrated some principle we learned in class. I think the teacher was expecting something in more of a popular vein, and that was mostly what he got (One kid played "The Grand Illusion" by Styx as an analog of the Hindu Maya). I play the first track off of A Love Supreme.

It was strange to some people in the class (especially the chanting at the end), but I stand by it. I don't take it to the extent that some people do, but Coltrane's expression of religion through music is very important. I have realized that in fact there are few musicians who are not somehow religious. Some examples: Josquin, Palestrina, Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Messiaen, Pärt. Even the messy pseudo-spirituality of Hendrix or Prince or Santana testifies to this tendency. Musicians see the divine because music is divine. But no one crystalized that perception as totally as Coltrane.

Had he lived, how much further would his vision have developed? Quite possibly nothing at all. I have heard mixed things about the stuff he recorded after A Love Supreme, though I have not listened to any of it myself. But even if all of those albums was so much obscure noodling, for all we know he was warming up to something brilliant.

Causeless Rebellion

2006-09-18T17:24:00.000-05:00

So I embarassed myself today by admitting that until this weekend I had no idea who Larry Austin is. Perhaps I should screen these sort of comments before letting them fly in new academic environs. Or maybe I should capitalize on the potential for a reputation as an unabashed speaker of my own mind. I think I like maveric better than wallflower. There is nothing more liberating that the expectation of candor.

Regardless, Mr. Austin came as part of a symposium at Northern Illinois University (where I am a grad student, for those of you who haven't kept up) that concerned John Cage and Buckminster Fuller, of all people. I could list the things that the provocateur-indeterminist compositional pioneer and the neo-formalist mathematician and architect have in common, and I wouldn't run out of fingers on my left hand. I suppose I could have learned more about the subtle relationship between these two gentlemen and their place in the mid-20th century, Modernist zeitgeist, or whatever, if I had actually "attended" said symposium. Sadly it cost money, and would have been an entire afternoon dedicated to some folks that are not terribly interesting to me. Anyway, Larry Austin was something of a Cagean disciple, so there was an evening concert of some of his works, which I did in fact "attend."

Now, if you were wondering why this blog didn't have more reviews of avant-garde performances of musique concrete, let me allay those concerns entirely. Basically it was very good. When I go to a show, I'm not terribly concerned with the genre or aesthetic. I care about how the darn thing actually sounds, and it sounded great. Intriguing and at times beautiful. Musique concrete, or the arrangement of pre-recorded sounds in a musical way, is not usually a favorite of mine, but Austin's manipulations were very effective. Many of these pieces were for "tape" (actually digital audio file) and solo instrument, and what he does is record a bunch of samples of that solo instrument, run them through some software, and combine them such that the original sound is still recognizable but very much altered in pitch and color. The technical term is "convolution," which has a very specific meaning of which I am almost totally ignorant. Then the soloist plays live along with this pre-rendered accompaniment track. The great thing about this process is that it is obvious: even though their permutations result in unique colors, the listener still knows that the sound is from a flute, or a saxophone, or a bass. One of the great failings of a lot of 20th-century music is that whatever is going on is so oblique it requires a pre-performance lecture, and it is nice to find an exception.

The downside was that it was too long--two hours altogether--and that individual pieces were too long as well. This is a general complaint of mine: I find that Beethoven sometimes goes too long for my tastes (cue rambling pre-Romantic symphonic coda here: "Come on Ludwig, let's wrap it up). Still this criticism applies specifically to the works of this concert. Particularly unfortunate was "Williams (re)Mix(ed)," a sort of "rescoring" of Cage's "Williams Mix." "Williams Mix," as I learned that night (my ignorance of music history can occasionally be appalling, despite my pedigree), was an elaborate, octophonic (as in eight speakers, not as in the octophonic scale) collage of various recorded samples that were categorized into certain groups: "City Sounds," "Country Sounds," "Wind Sounds," etc. Larry Austin decided to recreate this mix using his own sound files and a software program he created based on an analysis of the original piece. It was an interesting project with a flawed execution. The original Williams Mix, which we heard, is about four and a half minutes long, which is about perfect. Austin decided to create different mixes of each sound type by themselves in their own sections (there were six sound types Cage used), plus a mix of all sound types together, each about five minutes long. Now there is nothing wrong with a 35 minute piece if there is musical material to match, but by about the third section I realized that I was not really hearing anything that wasn't in the first, and I had four sections to go. Too bad, really.

One more thought: In the class where I confessed my ignorance of the man, as described in the first paragraph, someone commented on how young Larry Austin seemed, considering his 76 years of age. This was odd, because earlier in the week, as he was giving a talk on the concert he was about to perform, I had the exact opposite though. "My God, this man is old." I mean that not in a rude sense, but in a downright impertinent sense: I had the same reaction when, a week before, in preparation of the symposium, we watched a video on John Cage. The video was clearly made in the eighties, early nineties at the latest, and the musicians that were interviewed were old then, and are older (or deader) now. I felt like Boulez chiding Stravinski, or Stravinski chiding Rimsky-Korsakov before that. "Who are these dinosaurs to tell me what music is?"

This is a fundamentally stupid thought, because if I am lucky I will someday be the dinosaur against whom the next generation protest, and there is no moral authority in being younger than the establishment. It's a story as old as music history: Young whippersnappers seek to unseat the old fogies, only to become that against which they had rebelled. But it was a very visceral sense that I had never encountered it before. I have no idea what it means.

While I'm at it...

2006-09-16T20:31:00.000-05:00

Describing an excessive explosion as an "inordinate ordnance" is too good to pass up as well.

Heck, "excessive explosion" isn't bad.

Important Announcement

2006-09-16T10:48:00.000-05:00

If, for whatever mixed-up reason, I ever have the chance to speak of fish blood, I should use the phrase "icthyoid ichor" instead, because that is an opportunity that will pass by, never to return, and I don't want any regrets in life.

That is all.

News You Can Use

2006-09-14T17:07:00.000-05:00

Sweet!

Havoc is coming to the Mac! As a Mac junkie and armchair gamer, this is cool. For the significant minority that don't know but somehow care anyway, Havoc is a software package that is licensed to computer game developers. Havoc is what is called a physics engine, meaning it processes things like, say, an exploding crate, with realistic precisision. Sadly, because it's just too darn expensive, companies that ported pre-existing games to the Mac could not afford it. Blizzard, a major outfit who has published cross-platform (that is, PC and Mac) titles for years, one of maybe two other companies to do so, is in a unique position to both afford Havoc and use it for Mac titles.

I thought it had something to do with the new Intel architecture, but apparently they are using it for PowerPC games as well. So the burden Blizzard overcame was financial, not technical, meaning that there will not be a spate of Havoc games coming to the Mac anytime soon.

Still, sweet!

Wither my dreams of super-stardom...

2006-09-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

The listless nihilists at Something Awful, who only mock everything in sight because they lack any sort of beauty or divine aspect in their pithy black carbuncles of soul (God bless 'em!), have a quiz on whether or not you should start a band.

Naturally it is impossible to pass. I guess that takes care of that then!

Rated PG-13 for strong language and drug use.

Nein zu Gesichterbuch!

2006-09-14T16:46:00.000-05:00

To all the nice, daring folks coming over from Alaina's blog, a hearty "Thanks" and "Welcome." Not much here yet, but I'm working on it.

Blog-Blogging Blogging

2006-09-07T16:05:00.000-05:00

Another bit from Lore, satirizing blogging, which just seems odd. You know, because he has one. A blog, that is.

He also offers the "Ultimate Blog Entries" for a number of popular blogs, which are pretty funny if you know what he's talking about (I got maybe half of them). It is incomplete, however, in that he fails to include an entry for his own blog. Something like: "Copyrighting blegs for Santa-Clara-area chai bars: a new Flash toon." Or something.

Karma and the Consumer Economy

2006-09-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

Gas prices are volatile, and there is a lot of speculation as to why. Blame goes to OPEC, international oil conglomerates, security in the Middle East, Hugo Chavez, ethanol, people who hate windmills, and so on. I can't claim that I can settle the issue, but I do have a theory as to one aspect. It's nothing mundane like international cartels or loudmouth totalitarians, but something downright super-natural. I am cursed. Gas prices go up or down based on the direction of my own hubris.

I should explain. I consider myself a savvy consumer, which is distinct from a cheapskate in that it sounds better. I shop store brands, clearances, previously-owned, closeouts, and whatever other opportunities there are that let me shave a dollar here and there. I'd like to do the same for gas, but there is no such thing as closeout oil, and I wouldn't buy it if there were. My mind hurts thinking about what that would even be. That does not mean there is no potential for strategy that saves money on gas.

It works like this: Most people drive and drive until they are near empty, at which point they pull over to the nearest station and pay whatever they ask. Moronic, says my inner Scrooge. That is the kind of passivity that means you pay $2.91 per gallon, when you could have paid $2.88. It makes you hostage to the erratic whimsy that is the price of gasoline in the modern age. Better, says my internal bean-counter, to try to watch what the gas prices are doing, and jump at the chance to fill up when they seem to bottom out. Even if you have 5/8ths of a tank left, you'll save money if you can guess correctly.

The problem is that I can't. Every time I think that I am particularly clever in deciding that the price is as low as it is likely to go, darned if it doesn't go lower, consarn it. I could conclude that I am just inept, but that would be to admit personal failure, and we can't have that, not if there is a perfectly serviceable though unlikely explanation available for me to rely on instead. Hence the curse. If I act on the presumption that prices will go up, they go down. If I try to wait it out until they hit the floor, they spike up 20 cents the next day.

If you are sort of clever, you might be asking yourself, "Mike, why don't you just act against your hunches? Every time you think gas prices go up, they go down, so why not do the opposite and buy when you think you shouldn't?" If so, you must think that kizmet is pretty stupid. Do you not imagine that the cosmos cannot perceive the game I would be playing? If I say, "I suspect that prices will go down soon, but we know that that will never pan out, so buy, buy, buy," my stupid curse will say, "Nice try. Price bomb!" Then I just bought a quarter tank at a higher cost than if I had waited, except that if I had waited, prices would have gone through the ceiling. Curse you, you accursed curse!

So the recent decline in gas prices, that was me trying to beat a price spike which never materialized. And if they go up again, that's also me, waiting for the price to reach the nadir. Either way, you have me to thank or blame.

A Very Colorful Office

2006-09-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

Presented without comment, via Lore.

Without overtly political comment, that is. I will say that it bears a remarkable similarity to Why Mommy is a Democrat, or Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! given the kind of remarks it will likely summon. The former was even under suspicion for being some kind of hoax or ploy (although it seems to check out.), but if Why Mommy is a Democrat is a stunt of some kind, It's Just a Plant most certainly is. Part of the charm, for want of a better word, of Why Mommy is a Democrat is how innocent the author seems of any notion of the ridiculousness of the project. It's Just a Plant seems more outlandish than naive. Everything seems caricatured, from the organic farmer to the alternative doctor to the three stoners the protagonist literally sniffs out on the street corner. Even considering the premise, it's too off, is all I'm saying.

"You Keel My Father"

2006-08-31T12:40:00.000-05:00

I find myself strangely enthralled by the spate of CBS procedural criminal dramas. I know I am not the first to point this out, but it seems like CBS is nothing but these days. It's like they are trying to corner the market. We have CSI, the two spin-offs, NCIS, Cold Case, Without a Trace, the annoyingly-titled Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, and the up-and-coming Justice, which seems to be a clone of ABC's new series Shark, only redone as, you guessed it, a procedural criminal drama.

I don't know what I expect from these shows. Obviously CBS is trying to latch on to whatever made CSI so successful and duplicate it again and again and again. They all have the same premise: watch as a particular investigative unit uses its Special Powers to solve cases in their own Special Way. Most have the same quick-cut flashbacks, the same pensive soundtrack, the same Lead Investigator with Issues and his crew of non-notables. Half of them are engineered by marketing-wizard and CSI creator Jerry Bruckheimer himself. They are rote, bland, and have nothing to distinguish themselves.

And it seems to be working. So far, CBS is the number-one network this season, and the fare described above is a big part of that standing. Perhaps people like these shows precisely because they are so low-maintenance. There is no need for involvement with the characters, so difficult backstory to juggle, and you can watch them while eating or working and not miss much. Compare to the recent trend of highly continuous shows like 24 or Lost-shows I love, by the way-where the required investment is very high, and you can see why people may prefer something they can casually slip into and know they can appreciate. I think that's the mojo that's going on when I get suckered into these shows: I want something that I can have on and ignore if need be that will still keep me entertained.

The problem is that even by these undemanding standards, a lot of these shows aren't very good. Of the lot, I'd say Numb3rs has the best cast and most intriguing premise, but the one episode I saw, where J. K. Simmons plays a pathologist who unleashes an anthrax epidemic, struck me cold. NCIS has the sharpest writing and some of the best developed characters. At first CSI NY was very good: It distinguished itself from the glitz of its Las Vegas and Miami counterparts, and it had this very intriguing chemistry between Carmine Giovinazzo and Vanessa Ferlito, but it has largely nosedived since Ferlito left the show. I'm still a fan of the original CSI: It manages to balance the freak-show voyarism of some of the earlier episodes with some of the deeper characters and meta-plots of any of the CBS CPDs, likely a function of it being the prototype of the model. Kat's father-daughter relationship with the unethical casino mogul Sam Braun, and Grissom's constant feuding with his departmental rival Eckley are all great fun, but the winner here, I think, is Greg Sanders. Superficially Greg went from being a lab tech to a field officer, but their is a deeper story of maturity from arrested adolescence and the role-models that allowed it to happen, that is very effective and surprisingly deep, considering that it is, after all, CSI. Of the remaining contenders, I would say that Cold Case distinguishes itself by not being completely banal, and the rest are fearful tripe.

And yet I keep finding myself drawn in. It's like eating really cheap chocolate. It is neither wholesome nor even that good, but you keep taking it in until you force yourself to stop.

By the way, this rant is brought to you by Criminal Minds, which I watched for the first time last night, even though I should have known better. I thought I might like it because it stars Mandy Patinkin, who was Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride and a fellow alumnus besides. Bleah. It was an hour of pedantic trail-chasing, interspersed with the occasional constipated tantrum from Mr. Patinkin and more murder porn than anyone should possibly be comfortable with.

FPOE!

2006-08-31T11:55:00.000-05:00

Everyone else has a blog, why on earth shouldn't I?

For those of you who know me, you know all about me. For those of you who don't, you will. This "weblog" will serve as a repository for the sundry and variagated bits of disorganized cerebral activity I rather crudely call "thoughts." Most anything may be discussed, so long as it falls under the broad rubric of things that interest me. I will try to keep it clean, as I know that Certain People and their Relatives will be reading this; and I will try to avoid anything overtly political for the time being. I am keen enough to know that my political beliefs, taken as a body, have the capacity to offend, or at least annoy, pretty much everyone on the planet, and since I am not being paid, nor are my particular insights especially unique, I figure it will be best to eschew the alienation that comes from trying to explain why everyone else is wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong.

Within these cheerfully liberal guidelines, I feel I am ready to begin. Engage!