Man, I hate catching up

Well goooollllyy! It's been a while since I've written, I know. And I'm sure my audience has dwindled. But, it's not called an ego project for nothing, so I monologue, starting NOW:

I went to see my sister graduate in Oregon. I'm very proud, seriously. She's got her MA, taught like 150 quarters of french, makes a mean banana bread. . . And do say life doesn't reward you, because she gets to go to France for a year and live in Lyon and eat croissant and party (or par-tay) and speak in other languages. It's all well deserved. And, Gina, if you want someone to "watch" your stuff while you're away, I'll be happy to take watch it for you.

I also went to Kansas City, for the Duff school timpani masterclass. It was a hoot--most of the time was spent with Tim Adams (timpanist in Pittsburgh) and Tom Freer (assistant timpanist in Cleveland). They're very funny, and since they went to school with my teacher, I now have a lot of leverage to apply by means of embarassing videos. I got a lot of great information out of the class, as well as seeing a TON of great old videos of Duff playing, and some hilarious Omnibus tapes from the 1950s with Saul Goodman reading this terribly scripted dialogue. I know, I'm geeking out. I'm typing like a robot

Work is fine (can you tell I'm working from a list of things I want to talk about? Cause I'm not). I like driving around Tucson, and it's lack of stress is pretty relaxing. So undemanding, in fact, that I'm definetly having a tough time practicing. That blows. I really wanted to improve this summer, and now I have no motivation. Maybe it will come back to me.

I leave you (myself?) with this cool link. Looks like LEMUR (the league of electronic musical urban robots) has taken over an abandoned diner in NYC. Love their little bellbots, and the ubiquitous guitar bot.

I love these telephone ads from the 1920s to the 1960s. I love this one from 1920 (great dramatic photo!):

We do not criticize an ox cat or condemn the tallow dip, for the simple reason that they are absolete. During the reconstruction period through which out contry is not passing, if the public does not criticize and public utility or other form of service, it is because there seems little hope for improvement.

Damn straight!


And what else do retired footballers do than build giant public art pieces? Apparently this is par for the course in Britain, where Giancarlo Neri has installed a gigantic table and chair in the countryside to mark the beginning of ROLLO contemporary art. More on this later, and maybe a pun.

I'm a Loooooooonatic

The WB is planning an updated version of Looney Tunes. "Loonatics Unleashed," set in 2772, centers around Ace Bunny, Danger Duck, Spaz B. Wilde, Tech E. Coyote, Rev Runner and Lexi Bunny and their efforts to save the world from its fate of being flung off its axis.

Even funnier is the description of how the show will work, courtesy of Betsy McGowen, the senior vice president and general manager of Kids' WB (I hope you all have a keen eye for irony--I don't think there's any here. . . ):

Ms. McGowen and Mr. Schwartz said the Loonatics have tested favorably with focus groups of the intended audience, children ages 6 to 11. The series's initial plans called for 26 half-hour episodes, spread over two seasons. Each episode will have an "A" and "B" story with "ample opportunity for comedic pauses," said Mr. Schwartz.

One difference between the new and the original Looney Tunes characters is how they interact. "Unlike their ancestors who were rivals, they're working together as a team," said Ms. McGowen. Their powers will also be liabilities as much as assets. Consider Danger Duck, who can teleport but cannot necessarily control where he ends up. "Even though the characters are superheroes, they're not invincible," she said. Those sometimes faulty powers will lead to humor and some lessons. "They learn from each other," she said, "and they are empowering as a group and for the audience."

Working with the descendants of such beloved cartoon icons is a lot of pressure, Mr. Schwartz said. "I think we're doing it right, but I'll be biting what's left of my fingernails between now and the premiere," he said.

It's good to know they've left room for those all important comedic pauses. And as many as 2 story lines an episode! Is having your heart in the right place enough? Or, another remake that capitalizes on pre-existing branding in order to extend a franchise?

A Post-Modern Pastiche

I just reread Sonic Youth's Thurton Moore’s commentary from last month’s Wired, and it got me thinking again about a lot of the topics I explored in a lot of depth during Dr. Tolbert’s Transnationalism class.

His comments on needing to hear his favorite songs in a “more time-fluid way” struck me as an interesting take on the temporality of a lot of the music we hear. That is, as Steven Feld argues, as a sound is separated from its source, it soon comes back into focus as an element of this global pastiche Veit Erlmann and the post-modernists posit. A sound—in this case, a song or even a genre of familiar songs—is inseparable from its cultural context: speaking about the music of a culture as a partitioned element is a kind of structural homology. I feel that this can be extended, as Mark Slobin does in his book Subcultural Sounds. Here, the transmission of musics from a subcultural (that is, localized cultures) to a supercultural level (a hegemonic force, like the Western record producing companies) is this schizophonia—the reduction of a key cultural signatory to a disembodied fragment.

This is the kind of thing that used to get me the most riled up with respect to “world” music. The fact that some subcultural sound—be it Sa Yaleb weeping or even West African “high-life” music—can be reborn as a part of a rock song irked me. How could people like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon treat other cultures like they treated American pop music: as raw musical material to be borrowed, positing their music as authentically “global” just because it had enough difference to be exotic to a hegemonic homogeneity.

But, this pastiche also has some great implications. Besides what I remember thinking of at the time, which was the notion that these grey areas allowed for as much appropriation and hybridization on the part of musical subcultures as for the hegemonies, I returned to Thurston Moore. His depiction of destruction of musical temporality is classic:

That night, after my love Kim had fallen asleep, I put the tape in our stereo cassette player, dragged one of the little speakers over to the bed, and listened to it at ultralow thrash volume. I was in a state of humming bliss. This music had every cell and fiber in my body on heavy sizzle mode. It was sweet.

The sheer emotionality of Moore’s response reminded me of mix tapes as a vehicle for communication, a topic broached by Nick Hornsby in High Fidelity and Songbook—a phenomenogical examination of his love affairs with his favorite songs. I thought back to a chapter I read from a book by James Clifford. To Clifford, collection serves as a powerful metaphor for explaining Western cultures’ process of self-definition and authentification. Noting that collecting “objects” signifies the process of gathering things and giving them meaning, Clifford explores the notion that what is collected and its context of appreciation and legitimation as a collection is a powerful window into the underlying structures of a society. Cultural definition is strategic, with these strategies constantly in motion, meaning that the means of collection are often as important as the objects themselves. In the West, however, collection does not function merely as a tool for self-definition: Western cultures make authenticity and ownership of concepts, races and ideologies through collecting them; decontextualizing and metaphorizing cultural objects in order to bind and formulate essentialized identities. That is, objects and their environment replace real time with constructed time, a concept that Clifford first locates in emergent 20th century theory that based itself on the specter of cultural grey-out resulting from the global post-modern.

Here, mix tapes can be viewed as a sort of collection, a method of legitimation of musical dialogues and a projection of constructed time onto a hectic and uncontrollable modernity. What better way to stop time than to create your own time, a bubble of comfortable memories instigated by a set of preordained temporal events? I also think that this “brought-to-you-by” aesthetic—the idea of a familiar or “expert” person corralling the unknown and making it palatable (understandable difference) is a good way of thinking of the idea of mix tapes as a cultural introduction: note the way that Moore says he must have the new punk albums, but only in an order he specifies.

But is it true what Moore says about mix tapes becoming the “the new cultural love letter/trading post?” I think it bears some thought, especially considering the ease with which most Westerners coordinate complicated and often decontextualized symbols. And, we like to speak our minds by proxy, in a way that the mix tape is especially well suited. (Hate that girl? Give her a hate mix tape. Or, one fraught with teen malaise). The mix is, as Moore says, an act of “true love and ego,” the same caring and apathy that characterizes the West’s musical hegemony a lot of the time.

Linkage

Zug's John Hargrave latest prank is a doozy. Noticing the relatively lax security surrounding credit card signatures, he resolves to see how "artistic" he can make his signature before someone notices. Heiroglyphics? A diagram? Celebrities? How far can he go? I also recommend checking out his examination Massachusetts Turnpike's change collecting bins, and his quest to find America's Funniest Senator . And kudos to Senator Snow (D-ME) for her double joke, quipping "Red Lobster in Ohio. Isn't that an oxymoron?"

(via Boing Boing)

I am bored?

This is an official note to Casey Middaugh: Sourdough Place does exist! Here's how to get there from the pizza place where I work. I took a pizza our there yesterday, for a lousy tip. I did see a coyote, though, which is nice.

Here's the little guy now:



Hey little guy! Eat some cats: I'm allergic!


I haven't written a lot lately. Part of it is because I'm not sure anyone reads this silly thing. I guess some comments would help, but maybe my life's not interesting enough?

Wired News has an article about Nolan Bushnell, who you might remember as the founder of Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza--which, I believe, used to be called Show Biz Pizza. Apparently, he's trying to start some sort of video game-themed restaurant, where customers order via large touch screens and proceed to play large multi-player games with and against each other. Bushnell seems to think that video games aren't a source of social isolation:

This is going to be about meeting new people and having fun competing or cooperating," he said. "All of a sudden, you'll find people you've never known on your team. And you can talk to them or not -- that's OK -- but there's some kind of social component to it.

I'm not so sure. I guess I find it a little strange that someone would go somewhere, only to hide his/her identity and allow their social interaction to take place entirely on a digital level. I've always felt that the internet is a supplementary wellspring of social morays. Ah well. . .

I feel so uncreative. Seriously. I've been trying to write something for the past few weeks, but nothing comes out. It's as if my brain shut itself off when I finished school. I don't know if it's a better situation than rushing right into a bunch of mind-stretching work, but, at the same time, it's very frustrating. As anyone reading might notice, I can't remember a lot of my vocabulary!

The Internet is Cool!

I'll be the first to say that internet research is, at best, a tainted love. I like that the net's plurality of voices allows a lot of people to be heard, but its ease in use can create some factual discrepancies. There's something to be said for the layer upon layer of failsafes that editing and publising a book engenders. Also, hyperlinks are kind of bulky (and temporary) for documentation. But, there are a number of sites I really academically admire: they tend to take advantage of the web's globality while centralizing information well. If you can trust it, an online news source--for example--has great potential.

That's all pretty paradigmatic for the late 90s. I have, though, been thinking recently about the internet's capability as a repositoritory for more static information. Here are some of the better sites I've found in the last few days. In these cases, official status (as part of a museum or government project) and sharp design help to allay those common electronic fact fears. I've ignored all the keen ones on my link bar, because, redundancy is bad, which means that repeating oneself is not a good idea: I suppose my message is that repetition is unsightly?

• The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has a fantastic website. A lot of their galleries--which tilt prominantly towards 17th century Dutch masters, are available on the site, with a great "zoom" option. I really like the site's design, which is deferential to the past while positing modernity simultaneously. Also, if you'd like to be involved in getting me this scholarship, it'd be sweet.

• I also like the Minneapolis Museum of Art's online compendium of modernism in visual art. Based on the galleries 250 "artifacts" of modernism, the site is a good sound-byte history, albeit one that tends to ignore shifting ideoscapes and the distinction between articulated and submerged cultural knowledge. But, each of the movements is explored in more detail, with large images and nice background on every piece the museum has. Minnesota in the Bauhaus!

• I have a map fetish. Seriously. So, I went ballistic when I saw the New York Public Library's "in thy map securely saile," "an online version of the exhibition "In thy map securely saile": Maps, Atlases, Charts, and Globes from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection at The New York Public Library. Great British West Indies navigation charts, and some mid-17th century maps of the colonies. I especially like their informative "How to Read a Map" page.

• The University of Southern Maine hits the nail on the head again, with their collection of road maps from the 20th century. Tracing road maps published by oil companies, automobile clubs, highway associations, and commercial map makers, the exhibit attempts to show how maps played a part in the organization of a nation of highways, and the subsequent romanticization of a life "on the road." I think the focus is a little too heavily weighted towards covers, but a cool concept nonetheless. It reminds of going to Ron's Attic in Baltimore once, and buying a lot of 1950s AAA maps of the Midwest. Hmm. . . .

"Gingerbread-Shaped Hero. . . "

Looks like Gumby is making a comeback:

"Gumby is an icon," said Diane Gibson-Gray, 49, executive director of the Arts and Cultural Foundation of Antioch, which is sponsoring the monthlong exhibit. "He's a cultural icon that many of us grew up with. And there's another wave coming. There's a whole new generation that's going to embrace and love Gumby as much as I did."

The Antioch exhibit is the first event planned this year to commemorate the 50 years since Clokey made a short art film called "Gumbasia," featuring clay animation set to jazz music, that inspired the beloved television series that debuted a year later in 1956.

(via ABC News)

Antioch's Lynn House Gallery is sponsoring an exhibition entitled "Gumby and Friends: The First 50 Years," featuring memorabilia and sessions with Gumby creator, Art Clokey. It's kind of weird to note that Clokey, along with his wife, also created animated Bible show Davey and Goliath. But, it's peachy keen to see that Gumby (perhaps via his flesh-and-blood bretheren?) is working with Tim Burton on creating new episodes and--possibly--a Gumby movie! What would Jerry Falwell say about a green, flexible clay icon who rides his best friend who happens to be named Pokey? I'll Pokey his eye out if he messes with my favorite claymation band!
Over 223 episodes with Mr. Gumby (first name?), his strangely anthropomorphic horse/friend Pokey, and their band. And who can forget the Blockheads:



--I always confuse them for the claymation blocks that Square One used to use to teach addition and subtraction with negative intervals. Also, I don't think that the Gumby-to-Blockhead proportions are correct there. . .

Over the next four decades, Clokey, along with his first wife and later his second wife, produced chronicled the "adventures of wide-eyed Gumby, horse Pokey and other pals as they traveled to the moon, the Wild West and Toyland."

Honestly, I'm not old enough to have watched Gumby when it was still being created. But, I do have some very strange, unsubstantiated memories of seeing Gumby in that awkward PBS-during-the-day-while-you're-home-sick time slot, between this show where an adult night-school class learns about simple mathematics (meeting with each other extracurricularly, in bars around the city) and a poorly-acted phone-in show about whales. This is one of those days when you're so sick, you can't reach the remote, and all you can do is live with that taste of Kix or Cheese-its on your tongue.
I'm much too sick to have anything else to eat, of course, but that little yellow plastic bowl is so gosh darned familiar, I don't think I'll try and feel any worse. I've got my puking bucket next to my bed, and Gumby's on TV. "I've heard about this!" I say to myself--at this point, I hadn't yet gotten into the habit of speaking to myself aloud. Hey, the music's better than Voyage of the Mimi anyway, so I HAVE to watch.

Well, that was a mental vomit if I've ever seen one. here are some conclusions:

• I like remembering cool things about the past, because it makes you all warm
• I like Gumby, mostly because of how he runs, and how awkward his voice sounds
• I like tangents

Yay Gina!

I AM PROUD OF MY SISTER!!

Gina Compitello, you will enjoy a year in cosmopolitan Lyon, working for the University of Oregon, a prize package valued at a lot!


Woohooo!!!

Stop Stealing My Slang!

My mom sent me this hilarious link to one of Kevin Kling's recent commentaries on NPR. I'm going to start saying "You obviously come from the island of thespos" more often. I would also take a listen to "Bagpipes Teach a Life Lesson." This reminds me of a morning at Interlochen a few summers ago. I was sleeping (as I am wont to do at night, or early morning). The boys campers usually were awaken by the unwarmed-up bleating of a college-age trumpet player, so the bar is most definetly high in terms of level of annoyance needed to force a cabin of 18 teenaged boys to collective question their will to stay under their comfy, white (or, after weeks of doing their own laundry, a pale blue) blankets. My clock hits 6:30--I always wake up before the trumpet anyway.

No bleating. No cracked notes. No nothing. I peer around at my fellow cabin mates. Joe, the Hawaiian clarinetist, has managed to fall to the floor from his bunk, but miraculously (a sign of good faith on his part) continues snoring. Andy, my bunk mate, rustles the collection of objects (or "crap," as I called it: his possesions had the tendency to fall onto my bunk. I remember once, he spilled a box of cookie crumbs ------Why would ANYONE keep a box of CRUMBS?------onto my bed at two in the morning. ) on his bed, but remains caught in the blissfull dream we all share where we're not wearing uniforms, and we're eating somewhere that's not a cafeteria, and bragging about it.

I sat up. How odd. I tend toward self-drama, so the droning sound of goat-bladdered reeds is appropriate. Especially since it's foggy out. Enter my counselor, Gareth, a brit with Italian-flag red hair and a penchant for the Groove Armada. Last week we had stolen all of his underwear, so HSB Cabin 14 is on probation.

"Come on guys," (or blokes) he bemoans, tired of one syllable verbs. "Get up!"

"Man, I didn't hear no trumpet," comes the inevitable reply, anonymous in the field of pre-dawn, pre-pubescant voices.

"We've got bagpipes."

So I was right. So much for drama. So much for beginning sentences with the word so. So there.

I also urge people to listen to Kline's commentary about passing sayings on to other generations. Lately, I feel that people have been stealing my catch phrases, my unique, esoteric slang. "Oh really?" "Aw, how sweet?" "Give me a call?" "Niiiiice!" All the casualties of some sort of slang-ical NewSpeak. Grrr.

Mad Flow

Those of us living in Arizona probably have never been privy to the marvel that is the electricity pylon:



Maybe you think it's ugly. Flash Wilson doesn't. Her website features a lovingly constructed museum that contains:

Photos of structures supporting electricity carrying wires, especially those in different countries or those with unusual structures, location or artistic composition.

505 photos in 35 countries. I'm getting a buzz.

Take that, birds! Take that lowflying planes and wind-blown plastic bags!!!!!

(via Coudal Partner's "Museum of Online Museums")

Eurovision?

Well, it sure has been a while since I've written. A lot can happen in a year, especially in the world of layout and fonts. Also, I changed the title, to comemorate. . . well, to marcate that it's no longer summer, I'm no longer in La Jolla, no longer (mostly) sick, and no longer in Baltimore (at least for a while). And that, my friends, necessitates circles, and well, colors???

Are you prepared for an anecdote? I know I am.

But anyway, I was on the internet today yesterday. I was talking to Adriana today yesterday and she mentioned that the newest winner of the Eurovision competition is Greek. She recalled, in a blustering command of factoids, that ABBA and Celene Dion had both won the competition. (This information was only relevant to her because last year's winner--Ruslana (not of Ruslana and Ludmilla)--was Ukranian.)

When given two people, the first thing I say to myself is "self, why don't you compare said two people, in some sort of organized fashion?" And, I argue, what better way to measure the musical mettle of two Mediteuropean singers than by comparing their websites? Sounds about right.


Introduction/Selection of Languages

Loading Ruslana's webpage is a visual experience. I noticed immediately liberal uses of flames, tamborine and bass. Always a good trio. Add what appears to be a high school photo of Ruslana, more tamborine footage (on top of a mountain no less!) and I acheived complete sensor saturation. Seriously.

Ms Paparizou's site is simpler. But Greek looks pretty, doesn't it? And her bracelet matches her shirt! Cannot be topped! Helena (what an appropriate Greek name!) has for our linguistic pleasure only Greek and English, while Ruslana fields Eng, Deu, YKP, and PYC. I don't know why you'd want to read a website in Young Korean Penguin, or Pink Yucca Cacti (A Yucca isn't a cactus!), but this pushes Ruslana over the top.

Edge: from Ruslana, with love.

Main Text

Here, Helena's translators win hands down:

Yes, its true! Helena Paparizou will represent Greece in the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest that will take place in Kiev, Ukraine on the 21st of May? which coincidently, is also her name day!. . . . I opinion Helena is the ideal person to represent our country for the Eurovision contest, for she possess all the essential prerequisites including the experience of the event

No contest: Helena

Epileptic Possibilities of Splash Page

That spinny picture thing on Ruslana's page is hard to top, Helana. Where's your mountain now, Greek girl!?

I'm in convlusions: Helana

Ambiguous Catch-all "Content" Category

I really like the various things avaiable on Helana's website. When you go from page to page, her photo turns. It's like she's saying: "Please, rotate your desktop so I might continue to serenade you in Greekian." Helana's bio is Bad. Ass. :

"Antique?" "Opa Opa" Those sound like names from a Scorpians album. Except it'd be Anteek and Opium Opium.

And my favorite:

"Helena has Greece’s love and support, and we all wish her the best of luck!" Who's writing this, the unified nation of Greece? Shouldn't they have better things to do, like using their maassed bodies to spell out various funny catch phrases?

But on the other hand, one of Ruslana's songs is a "bestseller of the year" in Greece. Take that, Helena! Also, we find out that a microphone was her first toy (mine too!) and that "the nation of Ukraine smiles at you." hard to top.

Edge: Even!

So, with all that careful weighing of the facts over, it comes time to lay down my final verdict: distracted. I'm going to go watch tv.