VoTD: Pomplamoose covers EWF’s “September”
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on February 9, 2010
I had been hearing tracks from this outfit on college radio for a while, but never knew who they were; ends up they are local.
The Ideology of Cost Benefit Analysis
Posted by zeruch in Law, Observations, Politics on February 4, 2010
These might seem like general ideas, but they are a clear signal that Obama and Sunstein plan to purge cost-benefit analysis of its conservative bias.
I am amazed that cost-benefit even has a long perceived conservative bias. CBA can, by design, go in any number of directions based on the factors put into the analysis.
Having a method perceived the way the article presents it either just goes to the awe-inspiring daftness people can exhibit when something the individual does without ideological pandering about their own mundane affairs, becomes a political hammer associated with a particular bent or the article itself is assigning a theory to explain otherwise simple opportunistic shifts in administration behavior.
Wu Tang vs. The Beatles
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on February 4, 2010
Just so it’s clear: WU-TANG!…and the Beatles.
This is another one of those edge cases where creative brilliance trumps IP law. Well, maybe not trumps it as much as provides an amusing snub.
SVLUG: David Weekly and “Infrastructure Memes”
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts, linkedin on February 4, 2010
On a lark I caught the last portion of David Weekly’s Infrastructure Memes talk at SVLUG. It was probably the first SVLUG meeting I had been too in 7-8 years, and the crowd was notably smaller, and no Rick Moen or Marc Merlin to be found.
The talk itself was a good mix of items that seemed quite obvious (then again, community building -both online and in real space- is not exactly alien territory for me), along with some interesting statistics and some things which struck me as quite interesting.
The discussion on trademarks and the states that use first-to-file systems was animated, although much of it seemed to forget that part of issue will always lay in regional/local political imperatives versus any transnational tendencies brought about by bandwidth and pagerank (although it isn’t totally immune to either).
Geeks and wonks don’t seem to hang out together as much as they should.
The most interesting part for me was talking to David briefly after his presentation and asking him about places where he saw the intersection of hackerspaces and design/aesthetics folken. He gave me GAFFTA, and I was blown away. How such a group had been sitting right under my nose…?
Ben Allison – Buzz
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Sounds, Visual Arts on February 4, 2010
Because I just finished a rather out of the blue freelance gig doing a quick turnaround interview transcription for a great writer (and musician) at Bass Player magazine, I think it is going to be Bass Week here.
But I am on an acoustic bass kick these days, so…
The first time I heard Ben Allison was from a copy of his solo album Riding the Nuclear Tiger (it was a promo copy in a cutout bin at Streetlight Records and just seemed so removed from the rest of the jazz section…I don’t think I had even heard of the Palmetto Records label until that album). It rocked my face from ear to ear.
I spent something like $2.95 on it. It was worth full retail, and I have been a devotee of Ben Allison ever since.
Buzz came out in 2004, but I didn’t pick it up until last year. Yeah, I can be a bit behind the curve at times. What can I say, there’s a lot of great stuff out there, and sometimes you lose track of things.
The title track is probably the one that has the most memorable melody line, and it just sticks with you – offering itself as this kind of mirth-filled , mid tempo jaunt. Green Al kind of shifts around in an almost jam band vibe, but with more suggestiveness and finesse than most jam bands could aspire to. The use of flutes on Mauritania gives its seven minutes a breeziness and self-assurance that straddles 60s Blue Note and 90s Groove Collective in all the best ways.
Allison likes to stay rooted in the jazz idiom, but will throw curve ball inflections of hip-hop and funk, gutbucket blues and squeed-out avant-garde digressions, but it stays pretty coherent — like he’s just playing with your head a little…keeping things just off kilter enough to make sure you are paying attention.
A lot of the album isn’t upbeat as much as it seem kind of just…content. Not in a lazy way, but in a self-affirming kind of way…a “hey, if you don’t feel like conquering the world today, you don’t have to, but if you do, go right ahead…just don’t stress yourself out doing it” way. It’s relaxed, without being a sonic sedative. Well played without being a technical showcase. Ben has it down.
The image above was done by me sometime in 2006 and is based of a photograph from his own EPK. It is pencil, acrylic ink, acrylic paint, triplus pens, tombo markers, gouache, water soluable colored pencils on bristol + digital
J*Davey at Yoshi’s SF 2010-01-28
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on January 30, 2010
The Brooklyn Circus came to town, bringing only a central attraction: J*Davey. They landed and raised a ruckus for the normally not so unbound party spot that is Yoshi’s SF. The last shows we saw at that venue were Roy Haynes and John Zorn’s Electric Masada, so this was indeed a notable departure.
The show began just before 11PM and carried on for 90 minutes, starting with a better-than-the-original rendition of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, taken from its Pixies inspired grunge dynamic to a kind of bump and grind electro-funk dirge. Almost melancholic and detached, yet seething.
From there, or supercharged duo covered a pretty broad swath of material from their earlier output like The Beauty in Distortion/Land of the Lost, some new cuts from their forthcoming major label LP New Designer Drug and a scorching rendition of Get Together from their just released (and free to download) 5 track EP, Boudoir Synema: The Great Mistapes.
The only tracks I would have liked to have heard and didn’t was Mr. Mister and their cover of Zappa’s Dirty Love.
K & I sat front row and almost center and were treated to a full frontal attack by frontwoman Jack Davey (real name Briana Cartwright), whose retro-futuristic sleazy punk-funk divadom recalls aspects of Jody Watley, Dale Bozzio and Sheila E (and by proxy Gwyn Stefani and even Toni Halliday).
The pair together seem like characters created by Charles Bukowski or Warren Ellis, and given a record contract and a license to make mayhem on stage…which in this case they did at regular intervals:
- Shifting between slinky poses and caroming into mic stands in an almost drunken punk rock fashion, Jack Davey could be called an elegant mess.
- Jack Davey singing a song while perched on top of the table next to ours and drawing attendees into orbit around her, trying to vie for her attention.
- Allowing a few dozen members of the audience to bum rush the stage and dance shamelessly like everyone is watching and none of it matters.
A highlight was the campy torch-song approach that had Jack Davey writhing on the stage next to Brook L’Deau playing acoustic piano. I took enough reference shots that an illustration of some kind will get out for public consumption soon enough. BTW Brook, I dug the WWI era airmans cap and the Municipal Waste t-shirt; that’s some style right there.
Now beyond all the antics and performance, the most important part of all this is that they make some of the best new pop music out there. You can hear all of it being condensed into an tweaked out, kinetic planet of the inherently eclectic, but still cohesive enough with solid beats and melodies to have not lack any commercial accessibility. The songs are fun, and impeccably produced. L’Deau uses a battery of sounds that really does evoke both Larry Blackmon and Brian Eno, yet sounding totally new and non-derivative too. Davey can sing well, but opts for creating a full overall presence rather than beating an audience into submission with belting laryngular seizures.
Go get the EP, then go buy the previous releases, then go buy the new album when it comes out, then go see them live. Actually, you do not have to do the above in that order, just do them all.
There is already posted footage, although the quality is a bit lacking.
On a side note, we ate at Yoshi’s restaurant, and they have a desert with creme fraiche ice cream covered in toasted rice. That is some next level addictive a la mode-ness.
VoTD: Simple Minds – This is Your Land
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on January 28, 2010
Simple Minds are mostly remembered in the US for their least interesting songs. Here is one which features cameos from Stewart Copeland, Lisa Germano and Lou Reed, and is far better than Alive and Kicking or Don’t You Forget About Me ever was.
MyKeneally…an Odyessy into Beer For Dolphins, Zappa, Atari, Snoop Dogg, a really good Pulled Pork BBQ sandwich, and other things essential to a healthy outlook on life.
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 26, 2010
A few months ago my former musical co-conspirator Greg Kucharo decided to embark on a small venture: book a MyKeneally date at a private venue in Orland (or thereabouts), a diminutive spot on the fringes of HW 32 with a total population barely over 6000, known as Elwood’s Cyberpunk Saloon.
Greg got me into Keneally over a decade ago; I generally enjoy anyone that can musically context switch from playing something like Zappa and the play in a mock-rock outfit like Dethklok. Keneally was not a tough sell to my ears, and he is great on stage. The opportunity to give some small contribution to putting something like this up was also not a tough sell to me.
To quote one description of Keneally:
Long acclaimed as one of the world’s most creative and intense guitar players, Mike Keneally’s talents as a vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist …and has built a body of work of remarkable inventiveness and originality.
He has recorded with/performed or produced with Zappa, Kevin Gilbert, Lyle Workman, Kaki King, Solomon Burke, Henry Kaiser…and on and on. Bryan Beller ain’t no slouch either, having been a long established bassist with Keneally as well as his own solo career and session work, and as a columnist in Bass Player.
Greg and his family, myself, Keneally and Beller all stayed in the same hotel in nearby Chico, and Saturday afternoon was spent having lunch at the restaurant attached to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company at the edge of town. After that, a quick rest stop back at the hotel, then off to Elwood’s to set up.
Elwood’s as a structure is unassuming on the outside and isolated on a sideroad of a sideroad, but the inside it is a whole different animal. It has ’stadium sofa seating’, whole Atari consoles plugged into various TV screens, arcade video games (notably Ms. Pac Man and Zaxxon), a full bar and DJ booth, small library stack, and really resembles something that might be a mix of Bladerunner and Munden’s Bar from Grimjack.
The house next to Elwood’s (the home of the actual owner) provided a supply of home-cooked goodness, with a particularly tasty pulled pork sandwich option.
It was perfect for the event.
Pre-show activity included hauling the gear in, setting up, drinking coffee, and watching Greg get his ego handed to him by Beller playing Rockem Sockem Robots.
The show itself started with keneally on acoustic, ran into a rocked out electric middle section, the glided back into a more chilled mode towards the end. There was no real set list per se; the duo ran through a swath of Keneally material (from the early Beer For Dolphins era on through the most recent bit of awesome, Scambot 1), there was some Zappa (Inca Roads is extremely non-trivial, and was various shades of awesome here), a solo Beller piece that evoked Jaco in ways I found profoundly engaging, and some hilarious cover diversions:
- An impromptu riffing of ELPs Tarkus
- Most of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, with just a dash of cheekiness
- Upon the mention that Snoop Dogg was playing at the Senator Theater in Chico, Keneally and Beller broke into the Peanuts theme (get it, Snoopy…never mind), with Keneally on guitar and keyboards at the same time. I have video footage, and if they let me post it here, I will later.
- A snippet of XTC’s Mayor of Simpleton (everyone agreed that XTC is quite full of win).
- Beller led a brief sojourn into Rush’s Xanadu, and then a shot of Tom Sawyer.
The casualness of everything made the gig so much more enjoyable. Everything was relaxed, but the performance was beyond solid, as clearly everyone onstage and off was having fun.
After the show, Mike actually joined some of the audience in a brief round of Rock Band. Showing impeccable taste, they opted for Talking Head’s Girlfriend is Better.
For a while after we kept playing records, and I hovered in the DJ both with a few others picking options from the vinyl stacks, staying pretty much in a strictly 80s mood.
The next day we all had breakfast in the hotel restaurant before I fell into a dull haze on the drive back to Berkeley, and then got back into the zeruch-mobile to home base.
Much thanks to Greg for pushing for this and finding the venue, and to Mike and Bryan for being gracious people and performers. It was truly remarkable.
Orson
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts on January 22, 2010
Ate here last month…felt like tweaking the matchstick cover I grabbed on the way out. The duck fat fries are pretty good.
Doodling in Dinkelspiel
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Visual Arts on January 21, 2010
A few weeks back when K & I went to see Steve Reich and So Percussion, I doodled someone who was sitting in seat I25 in Dinkelspiel Auditorium.
Illustration: Zeldyn v3
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts on January 18, 2010
I really think there is at least one other iteration of this still seeking to be coaxed out, but this was a nice stopping point for the evening, and allowed me to play a little with some pencil and ink lines that had started almost a full year ago.
I started adding paint and extra bits (the ‘wings’ are actually drawn in straight brush pen on a separate sheet and digitally added in (this was intentional from practically the onset). The source image is from Jessica/Zeldyn.
Pencil, acrylic paint, alcohol based marker, brush pen on bristol + digital post-processing.
Earmarks of Project Management Gone Awry
Posted by zeruch in Observations, linkedin on January 18, 2010
<mild_rant>
Don’t you find it charming when preening, self-inflating people of pedestrian ability and bloated ambition blame others for their erratic and often scattershot initiatives not going according to (the nonexistent except in their own heads which they failed to communicate to others) plan? Me neither.
Projects that require a substantial amount of resources to roll out, regardless of level of urgency, must have something resembling tangible requirements spec’d out before, or at least during the design process so that deployment, troubleshooting and maintenance can be done relatively smoothly and with as few hiccups as possible. Otherwise, you are flying blind, which is a recipe with wasted effort and possibly abject failure.
Just taking a cavalier Sherman’s March approach with other departments affected by your actions (and acting completely oblivious to this throughout) not only is prone to pitfalls, but also makes you look like a juvenile cretin.
</mild_rant>
Drumming and more drumming
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 15, 2010
Last weekend was a big percussive fest of sorts.
Friday night, K & I cruised to Yoshi’s (Oakland) to see a supergroup of sorts: Allan Holdsworth, Terry Bozzio, Tony Levin and Pat Mastellotto. A night of total improvisation, the show was uneven, which surprised me.
Also what surprised me, was they they could fit three other people on the Yoshi’ stage after putting Bozzio’s kit on it:
I am not sure if I simply expected more fiery, cohesive performances, or if I simply was still too fried from work to fully engage, but the sparks flew in small bursts in between some long stretches of out in the wilderness meandering. And while at any one time there was always someone doing something amazing, I really expected more overall chemistry, especially when you consider they all have interlinked histories:
- Bozzio played with Holdsworth briefly in UK during the early 80s
- Levin and Mastellotto have spent time together in numerous lineups since their initial union in the mid 90s King Crimson
- Levin and Bozzio have played with Steve Stevens as a trio for two different albums
- Mastellotto and Bozzio toured and recorded drum duet material in the last few years
The times when things did come together really well was when either drummer took a solid anchoring role (either Bozzio with his ornate ostinatos or Mastellotto with his battery of electro-acoustic accoutrements) and allowed everyone else space to stretch with a good foundation to stand on.
I did pick up the album Tunisia by Mastellotto and Patricia Kurstin, who is known for her theremin playing…you heard that right, theremin. And what they do as a duo is some of the best arty instrumental post-rock you have likely never heard.
Then, on Saturday, we had something I had been looking forward to for months; the US debut of Mallet Quartet by Steve Reich, as performed by So Percussion.
This was extra special because Reich himself appeared and performed with So for his work Clapping Music, which was the opening piece. Two of my favorite Reich works were covered, Nagoya Marimbas and the first movement of Drumming. After watching them perform it, I have a new appreciation for Music for Pieces of Wood, but still can’t get into Four Organs. The centerpiece, Mallet Quartet, really was damn amazing.
I like the entire mallet-percussion family (Xylophones, Marimbas, Vibraphones, Mbilas, etc) but this was one of those compositions that just fascinates and pushes the boundaries of arrangement.
We stuck around for the interview session with the group and found four guys without any real ego or parochialism, just a lot of enthusiasm for the music.
DVD: Daniel Lanois – Here Is What Is
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on January 7, 2010
As one of the two people responsible for making U2 listenable (and by proxy insufferable with the fame that followed) one could write of Daniel Lanois as some big marquis anthemic arena rock producer, but that doesn’t really tell any real part of the Lanois story.
This DVD doesn’t either, but it does fill some gaps.
Seeing his interplay with Brian Blade, his reverence for the New Orleans jazz tradition, his sense of feel over how a record should sound and how a studio operates as an instrument in and of itself, is the real meat of the film.
He’s worked with Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Harold Budd, The Neville Brothers, Chris Whitley, Willie Nelson, and Sinead O’Conner, and footage of most of them is here, along with some additional footage. There is random dancing scenes by Carolina Cerisola, who toured with Lanois as a living visual effect (the woman dances like some mesmerizing mix of solo tango machine, burlesque dynamo, and hyperstimuated rhythmic seizure) and a lot of footage with him talking to Brian Eno and Brian Blade, who are regular collaborators.
Some of the filter effects are hokey (solarization…really?) but the performance footage is all sweet, with an almost Anton Corbijn kind of muted graininess that adds rather than detracts to the atmosphere (footage in Morocco actually was Corbijn, but a lot of the other footage shares variations of his style).
Here is some live footage not from this DVD, but with some of the main players on the DVD:
Works in Progress: Bottles and Cases
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Visual Arts on January 6, 2010
Late 2008 I started dabbling in painting on found objects; bottles, small household product packaging, etc. I am back to playing with those kinds of things this week.
One set will likely produce some textures that will be packaged for a candidate release to Resurgere (under a CC license) and the rest will end up as objects for either my own home or for sale. A sample of the latest work is the first pass of paint onto a cask-sleeve for a bottle of Balvenie 15 Year.
I’m essentially treating it like a canvas, albeit a cylindrical one. It is mostly palette knife and brayers instead of brushes, but that will likely come later in the process, along with stencils and colour-shaper paint tools.
QoTD: Thelonious Sphere Monk
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 5, 2010
You know people have tried to put me off as being crazy. Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.
- the great prophet, Thelonious Monk
I have generally found that the above is most effective with the intellectually lazy and the socially rigid. It can be quite useful (even though it can also backfire horrendously).
NYE 2009 Festivities Recap
Posted by zeruch in Out and About on January 5, 2010
Nothing terribly exciting NYE (the missus and I really don’t get drawn to throngs of drunken revelry in the streets or in “ultra” lounges), but we did have a great dinner out at Donato Enoteca. In short:
The gnocci is the best I have ever had. Very decadent, very flavorful. Big points for the waitress who served us last time remembering us and giving us the same impeccable service (I can’t remember her name, but I do remember that she speaks Magyar…I know, totally off point).
Townhall
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Out and About on January 3, 2010
In celebration of the Missus and her new gig, we went to eat at Townhall. An elder sister restaurant to both Salthouse and Anchor & Hope.
I gorged on Blue Crab ravioli, and their Nantucket Bay scallops, self-paired with Midas Touch, a 2006 Ridge Vinyards Zin/Sirah and followed by ‘Coffee and Doughnuts’ with a serving of 1977 Porto Rocha Colheita. I had never even heard of Porto Rocha before (which is a lot more astounding than you think if you know my love of Port) and now I want to buy a bottle for the house.
There is an ironic twist to the fact that they brought our check in a very old book, but I will not explain what that detail is.
Rupert Murdoch Fouls Up Again
Posted by zeruch in Pop Culture, Technology on January 3, 2010
A Rupert Murdoch online property is almost guaranteed -by default- to get things wrong. The MySpace takeover of Imeem is no exception. Years ago, a colleague a got me early access to the then standalone desktop app that was Imeem. While it has made a rather wild evoltion over time, its eventual purchase by MySpace for what I thought was a woefully small amount was a sign of impending irrelevance.
My concerns materialized almost immediately after cementing of the deal; MySpace proceeded almost with all due haste replacing Imeem features with ads.
J*Davey at SOM
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 3, 2010
J*Davey, under the alter-DJ-ego Black Morris will be at SOM in SF this month. Check it:
SharePointless
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Observations, Technology on January 3, 2010
So I get these banal emails about ‘IT whitepapers’ (read: extended-length ad-copy masking as independent research) in my office inbox, and this week was a doozy.
Ten Things to Look for in a SharePoint Recovery Tool
You know what one thing I look for in a SharePoint recovery tool? Alcohol content. Because if something goes wrong with Sharepoint, the desire to drink oneself into a loathsome stupor is immense, and you may as well have raided the top shelf where the good and potent stuff is.
Let’s face it, if there is that strong of a push to promote recovery tools, that means that doing so is likely just as difficult and cumbersome and unpleasant as the sound of the street makes it out to be. To follow that, your software should have a fairly straightforward method of recovery, that the evolution of a buoyant (and IT white-paper focused) 3rd party development ecosphere should not develop to fulfill that crucial task.
There is no ‘point’ to SharePoint except to go back to 1990s-era vendor lock in and painful administration costs. It is garbage and can be more cheaply, openly and flexibly be replaced with a multitude of options, including MindTouch, Alfresco, or depending on what your organizations actual needs are, something like Redmine, Sciret, or any of a long list of document repos, wiki engines or other collaborative tools (even Google Wave is probably more utile at this point).
Wesafari EP out + VoTD
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 2, 2010
Wesafari was one of my favorite random finds of the last decade (a promo copy in the bargain bin at Streetlight Records sat in a stack for ages, then after actually sitting with it for one pass, I was sold).
Their debut, Alaska, was chock full of good sounds; art-rock, atmospheric post-rock, indie-tronica, and other semi-useless compound descriptors of a sound that is really just very good music that offers rewards with recurring listens.
They released a freely downloadable EP called Moss Green in 2007, and while I don’t find it as strong as Alaska, it is well worth a try.
They also appear to have one very low-budget video on the inter-t00bs:
RIAA partners with someone as Inept as Themselves
Posted by zeruch in Law, Pop Culture, Technology on January 2, 2010
Let’s take a look at some of the things DtecNet claims and why these claims are bogus, inaccurate or just plain stupid.
Not that Big Content has ever had much of a clue; they are still deciding whether bull-whipping their customers or thinking of a technological workaround (DRM) is the best method to pursue. Acknowledgment that their business model(s) are not entitled to protection as an absolute would be a start.
Let’s face it, this is the same industry that would love to get rid of fair-use and the law of first sale, so this would appear to be just another indicator of a strain of mass derangement that will have to go through several more stages of decline before finally petering out.
Post-Holiday Cheer
Posted by zeruch in Out and About on December 28, 2009
Scarlett, myself, Vishal and Sharad.
A great way to cap the weekend is being out with old college-era friends in the city. Double Dutch and then dinner at Andalu.
BTW, Andalu has some nice tapas.
J*Davey releases (free) Boudoir Synema EP
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on December 26, 2009
I have been a fan of J*Davey since I first heard of them in 2008. A regal mix of new wave art-pop and modern R&B and electro-funk. The band is both instantly commercial and hardcore edgy. There is tons of grit mixed with slick grooves, and they openly profess a love of Brian Eno and Talking Heads next to Prince and the Neptunes.
They have just released a free Christmas gift in the form of a downloadable 5-track EP, Boudoir Synema. You should check it.
Wearable Miles Davis
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on December 26, 2009
Shook Magazine has some new wear with electric-period Miles Davis on it:
I wish they had them in black.
And now, some electric period Miles:
“Triple zero” home poses an interesting concept
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Politics, Technology on December 24, 2009
German architect Werner Sobek has designed a house that is aesthetically pleasing, but is also “energy self-sufficient (zero energy consumed), produces zero emissions, and is made entirely of recyclable materials (zero waste)”
This kind of construction, while not suitable everywhere, certainly offers potential in more places than Stuttgart, and I am sure there are many variations on that theme that can be adapted to different climates and geographies.
It poses a cool dilemma; improve houses so that power costs get reduced, putting less strain on the grid (assuming you cannot do as Sobek did and use solar/geothermal sources. If you combine it with solar/geothermal/wind/wave options where economically and structurally feasible, you present the possibility of local areas over time becoming net producers in a distributed mesh, obviating the much larger points of failure in the electrical utility plants and by fluctuations in the petroleum markets.
At the same time, you threaten the utilities and the petro-giants. I personally do not find that to be a bad thing. Competition breeds good things usually, and right now competition in that area is still a bit emaciated. Frankly, the idea of efficiency in terms of needs as well as consumption is beneficial on many levels. The individual ones get discussed in the tree-hugging contingent often, but I think there are everything from regional quality of life improvements as well as wider policy implications (once you reach a certain critical mass) for everything from infrastructure to national security.
That last statement is clearly not a short term achievable, but other signs that this kind of thinking is starting to take hold exists elsewhere, including the US military.
I like the idea of even homes by default having some form of power generation built in, if only as a stand by in case of brown/blackouts. From a design standpoint, I also like lots of glass, although I wouldn’t mind some kind of system that allows for more privacy that some of his designs appear to afford:
VoTD: Idle Warship – Black Snake Moan
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on December 22, 2009
Idle Warship is a collaboration between vocalist/emcee triple threats Res, Talib Kweli and Graph Nobel. In truth, all three are singularly talented, and together they don’t seem to ego clash but form a pretty tight unit. Res has connections to Sant White (now known as Santogold) and Talib with his long running partnership with Mos Def is well known. Nobel has links to Okay Player and the Neptunes, and all three together form a mix of the edgy and the accessible.
Black Snake Moan is probably the most directly commercial outing, but all of their output (including their freely available mixtape with Mick Boogie) is solid ear buffet.
For those of you so enamored with “Avatar”
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Film, Out and About, Pop Culture on December 20, 2009
…what in bloody hell is wrong with you?
It is a good (not great) B-Movie with mostly C-grade scripting and D-List acting. Was it a decent adventure-y film for a Sunday night? Sure. Was it the grand cinematic experience its been hyped to be? Not even close.
Here is a rundown:
- Just to get it out of the way, yes, the effects are staggering in places, in particular the aerial scenes. On that front, and that is the only one Cameron seems to have any skill at, he scores.
- He gets one-dimensional performances out of actors that can do so much more, including one of my favorites, Sigourney Weaver. Seriously, the acting only works when it comes to cretins like the big Marine guy, who is supposed to be one-dimensional in terms of having a focused area to root against. By the end of the film though, you almost start hoping he wins and scorches the planet into a burnt cinder. Giovanni Ribisi is so pathetic, he almost wins out against what I have long thought was Cameron’s worst casting blunder, Paul Reiser in Aliens. Talent like Weaver and Worthington deserve better.
- The scenery in much of the film is at best an homage and at most a full blown pillaging of the Roger Dean library. Seriously, look at things like Arches, Dragon’s Garden, Sea of Light and one has to wonder. Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks this either.
- I’m sorry, but while some of the facial mannerisms and such of the Na’vi are impressive, the overall idea of a bunch of androgynous, gigantic smurf/elvin hybrids as things one could feel empathetic to, I am wondering if Cameron has joined some kind of bad anime-cosplay-furry commune and otherwise lost the plot of reality altogether. The idea that there is any emotional heartstrings to pull on when two of them get it on in a supposedly sacred religious site is also kind of baffling.
- The ecological and political themes of the film are so hamfisted, so overbearing and telegraphed, it almost insulted the intellect. Its not that expect big cerebral concepts in films like this, but even by that standard Avatar is just one drunk and clumsy epic.
- The use of some circa-1995 grade font to subtitle the weird Mezo-American/Urdu/Bantu miasma of a language the Na’vi spoke was just an eyesore.
- An element actually called Unobtainium? Are you…never mind. Maybe you thought you were being ironically funny. Hint: no.
No James, you are not King of the World. The only thing I can really thank you for is that in having helped the 3D camera tech you used in this film, real directors like Ridley Scott will be using it to make actually great films.
In all fairness, 5.5 out of 10.