Slow Show

So, a few weeks ago I began working on a new writing project, the exact nature of which, as with other projects I've mentioned here, I'll be keeping under wraps at present. I'll also continue to refer to the project as a beast (or more specifically, a Beast), but I think naming projects after Frankenstein movies is growing a little thin--or at least it seems that way, since I've not actually taken any time to look up any more names. Please feel free to list them in the comments!

After discarding a few options -- okay, after discarding one option (Beast 2.0, which seemed too Web-trendy) -- I've settled on The New Beast.

It's a bit marketing heavy, like I'd reformulated Coke or something -- okay, it's pretty much exactly like New Coke, isn't it? Perhaps I need to go back to the drawing board on this one.

In any case, The New Beast is a dream project for me in many respects, particularly since it's based on a property that I already enjoy immensely (and which will hopefully be getting a lot more exposure in a few years). However, it does present challenges that I've not had to deal with on past projects. Namely, the world in which I'm writing is already well-detailed, and I'm not really adding new material so much as collecting it from different places and presenting it thematically. It seems somewhat akin to taking pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and making a new picture from them. So there's a lot of research and precision involved, and combined with the fact that I'm a slow writer on the best of days has made this particular project particularly challenging.

Still, I'm making good progress thus far and I'm quite amped for this to see this publication. And while I had intended this post to convey a "yup, haven't really been updating the 'blog much, don't expect it to change and here's why" message, it would appear that I've alreday contradicted it.

Next: More about music!

East Side, West Side, Everybody's Coming Down

I can now report--with no small measure of pride--that the beach ghostlette is able to sing the entire first verse of "Meet the Mets."

Complaints from Yankees fans can be submitted in the comments field.

Waterfalls

So, a couple weeks ago I was interviewing people for a position at my company. As I was headed to the lobby I stopped at the bathroom so I could double-check that I was somewhat presentable (a challenge on most days).

I leaned over the sink to take make certain that there was no detritus hanging out of my beard...

...and promptly got water directly on the crotch of my pants. Khaki pants, naturally. Y'know, the kind that best displays water.

Now, I could have made the candidate wait a few extra minutes while I applied paper towels to my groin (which itself might have raised a few eyebrows), but I chose expediency over potential embarrassment. To her credit, the woman interviewing didn't mention it.

Trouble

My increasingly infrequent posts seem to be adopting a practically Seinfeldian tone of late ("Hey, d'ya ever notice..."). Eventually I'll be able to get back to full-on blather mode, but Work / Child / Other has dropped posting pretty far down on the list of things to do.

So, for now, another anecdote of bite-size length:

Last week, the mini-Beach Ghost was sitting in her high chair, playing contentedly with a few amorphous blobs of Play-Doh. Since I'd just gotten home, I was on my way upstairs to get into casual clothes. Here's the exchange that followed:

Me: "Daddy has to go upstairs to get changed. Do you want to come with me?"

Mini-BG: "No."

Me (two seconds later): "How 'bout now?"

Mini-BG (immediately): "How 'bout no?"

Yup, the wife and I are in for a world of hurt 10 years from now.

Lost

So I updated the 'blog to the new Blogger platform yesterday, which included updating the template to the new "drag & drop" interface.

Of course, updating the template resulted in the removal to all the customization I'd done to the HTML. So...goodbye sidebar links and goodbye to the Haloscan comments.

=Sigh=

On the plus side, it'll give me a chance to weed through some of the less vital links (there were kind of a lot of them). And the new dropdown option to access the archive is a definite plus.

Well, off to it.

Language is a Virus from Outer Space

I noted with interest a new commercial by one of the coffee illuminati corporations that slams one of their unnamed competitors for requiring customers to order drinks in "Fritalian."

The advantage of ordering that specialty drink at Dunkin' Donuts? "You order them in English. Not Fritalian."

And the name of that wonderful concoction you can order in English? Latte.

Here it is, for your enjoyment. Another highlight: "Ignorant American" subtext.

It's Human Nature

The Beach Ghostlette turned two last week, and we threw a combination birthday/costume party on Halloween to celebrate. A plethora of adorable children attended, turning our place into a chaotic whirlwind (and reminding me in the process why I'm very happy with just the one child, thangyewverymuch).

Of the gifts that the little miss received, of particular interest to her was a tea party set. We took it out of the box after we had finished trick or treating, and she immediately began to serve tea to MLW and I.

Not very interesting in and of itself...except for the fact that MLW and I drink tea very rarely and have never had a tea party to the best of my knowledge (in my wilder days...but that's a story for another time).

So it seems obvious to me that this was not learned behavior; that this stereotypically female behavior was hardwired into her brain from the moment her neurons started to fire. It's pretty amazing, that genetics just kick in when the proper stimuli present themselves.

But it's also a bit scary. What other stuff is lying dormant in there? Will she decide that she'd rather talk on the phone than work on math and science? Will she believe that her gender makes her the "weaker sex?" Will she be a "shopaholic?"

I'd like to think that some of my "maleness" will rub off (or at least that she won't grow up to be a Braves fan), even if I don't exactly overflow with machismo. If she can at least grok how I think and what I enjoy, perhaps she'll be better prepared when she steps out into a world dominated by men.

I can hope.

BTW, a tip of the hat to the staff of the Wrong Turn Journal for providing the gift. Obviously one of the more memorable ones. ;)

The Magnificent Void

Seen on my way to work the other day:

Anarchy? You bet!
And organized too!

NY3

Not sure how to categorize this particular post. Perhaps "Random Crap That Shuffles Through My Brain" or perhaps "You've Heard it Before, But Becoming a Parent Changes Your Perspective." In any event...

I was recently listening to the remastered version of Robert Fripp's Exposure (which is quite good, by the way) when I came to the track "NY3." The piece features some of Fripp's patented fret complexities over a field recording he made in his Hell's Kitchen apartment during the time he lived in NYC. It's a Mother and Father (or so they've been indentified in the liners) arguing with their pregnant Daughter. At one point, the Mother yells:

You don't know whether it's a nigger or a spic or a white baby
You've got to go for an abortion baby
I never had to

In his notes about the remastering, Fripp states:

"I was told by my landlord, several years later, that the family arguments downstairs continued after the pregnant daughter became a mother."

The recording was made in the summer of '78, so the pregnant daughter probably gave birth no later than '79. This would make the child around 27 years old now. And I couldn't help but wonder how that kid's life has turned out. Has it been as awful as one might expect? Does he or she know that there's a recording of his mother and grandparents going toe to toe that's been heard by thousands of people? Has he or she been able to forgive them?

I Lost on Jeopardy

So last weekend I got to attend a taping of Celebrity Jeopardy at Radio City Music Hall. I watch the show pretty faithfully (for my daughter's sake, of course--it's educational), so I was pretty happy when my stepfather-in-law informed us that he'd gotten tickets.

I don't claim to be an expert at how game shows are taped, but I'm fairly certain that this was a pretty big audience. Then again, Wheel of Fortune (or, as I like to think of it, anti-Jeopardy) doesn't seem to have any problem filling stadiums with folks who find its =ahem= simplicity enjoyable.

About half an hour after people found their seats, Johnny Gilbert, the show's announcer, gave us the rundown: a rehearsal with the stars (except Alex), then live to tape. Our stars this time 'round were: Steve Schirripa, Miguel Ferrer and...Harry Smith. Once that was done, they waited a few minutes to get set and then it was game time.

What was most interesting about the taping was the fact that it unfolds pretty much as you see it on the tube. During the breaks, Trebeck would take questions from the audience (His most embarrassing moment? Accidentally giving away the "question."), and there was only one instance where they had to reshoot (Mr. Smith evidently had some problems staying put on his mark) so the whole shebang was done in less than an hour.

Some other random bits:

--One of the audience members asked Mr. Gilbert whether the answers were less difficult for celebrities. He replied with some hoo-ha that it's tough to get stars to come on the show and how they don't want to look foolish and blah blah blah. So the simple answer: yes. And while I wouldn't deign to assess the intelligence of that evening's contestants based on their peformance, let me put it this way: they didn't get through all the questions in either round.

--The closest I got to a celebrity was walking past a member of the Clue Crew, who I later saw help a disabled woman out of the hall. Give that woman a raise!

--Curiously, the sound out to the audience was spotty. Guess they only had so many monitors to point out at the seats.

--Since I was seated far stage right, I couldn't actually see the board. Luckily, they had video screens the size of trucks strung from the ceiling.

--Y'know the music that they play over the credits? That song is actually about three or four minutes long. It's hard to keep keep clapping for that long.

Who won? You'll just have to wait until November to find out.

While You Were Out

It's been quiet...too quiet.

There's not been a lot of news to report--or at least I haven't felt the need to expound on any particular topic, personally newsworthy or not. MLW is back in a full-time job, one that, so far at least, seems pretty enjoyable. Everything has been on a generally even keel and I've been pretty much unmotivated to write at home.

As is often the case, I have ideas for stuff I'd like to do (heck, I've got an almost complete rough draft lying about somewhere), but no deadline forcing me to do it. No kick in the literary ass, so to speak.

This is, admittedly, a pretty darn thin start.

Earthquake Weather

There have been many days this past month where the skies have been an almost uninterrupted blue, with temperatures much milder then they normally this time of year.

Of course, this makes me think of the events that occurred five years ago today.

It's odd, how a memory will become imprinted with a particular sense. I can still remember what I was listening to when I had my first fender bender (Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart"). For years, a certain fragrence would remind me of my first girlfriend. Now, when the temperatures get into the 70s and there are almost no clouds to be seen, I remember the attacks all over again.

I remember the hour of not knowing what had happened to MLW, how the Internet was brought to a standstill. I recall driving home and seeing the smoke rise from miles away. I remember the chaos afterward, the uncertainty, the fear.

I don't have as much fear since then--I don't think I'd be able to function otherwise--but then again I was lucky. I didn't lose anyone. But what I used to think of as beautiful, late summer weather I now associate with death and the end of the world as I knew it.

Perhaps, in that sense, the terrorists did win.

Appetite for Destruction

Starting around mid-July, I started writing a post about how that month had seemed to have been about change. The post grew by inches but didn't seem to be saying much of anything and what it did say it did so poorly.

When I'd not finished it by the beginning of August, I knew it was time to kill it. I can boil it down to its essence, however: death, birthday, divorce. In retrospect, I believe deleting the post was a mercy--especially from a reader perspective.

I'll try to post something a bit more substantial sometime soon, but I want to sign off with some positive psychic rays pointed toward the southwest. I know they could probably be used right about now.

Never Break the Chain

A little earlier this week, Sleater-Kinney announced that they were going on "indefinite hiatus," meaning that their most recent album will almost certainly be their last.

I'd like to think that the band waited to make their announcement until after I'd made The Woods' position on my Top Ten list official, but I'm pretty certain that they had made this decision some time ago. As I mentioned in my previous write-up, the creation of the album was very intense, and how they would be able to follow it up was an open question. I'd actually thought that they might record one more album after The Woods, but I also thought that such an album would either be a carbon-copy of the last, a step back, or a reaction against it that would be radically different. And I believed that would have been the end.

What I find curious is not the reason behind the decision (which, by the way, I'm extrapolating based only on press clippings I've read over the past year) but it's timing. The band is in the midst of a tour that will last until mid-August and I doubt very much that they made the announcement in order to increase ticket sales to their remaining shows (although their one date in NYC subsequently sold out). Perhaps it was simply because they didn't want to have to live with the decision anymore, that the pressure of being the only ones to know was too much to carry with everything else that comes with touring.

In any case, it's a shame and they will be missed--at least in this corner of the 'blogosphere.

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

Lately, after the mini-Beach Ghost has been put to bed, MLW is oftentimes busy surfing the 'net trolling for a job or selflessly giving of her time to one of the associations to which she belongs. This leaves me with some free time; naturally, instead of using it for something creative or constructive, I'll take advantage of the time to hone my fine motor skills. But I've also been watching quite a bit of baseball; I've probably viewed more games this year than in any other season since I've started following the sport. Of course, it helps when your team is winning, and that's certainly been the case with the Mets this year.

I didn't start out a Mets fan. My initial team loyalty was based on fair weather geography: my father's family was near the Cincinnati area, the Reds were in the midst of their Big Red Machine days, and Rose was still playing. So, I decided I was a Reds fan. But it wasn't like I made any effort to actually see what was going on. If any of my classmates (the vast majority of whom were fans of that other New York team) back when I was a wee tike asked who I favored, I had an answer. I don't think I would have been able to name anyone other than Mr. Rose from that team, but I was able to pass the minimum masculinity requirements necessary for that age.

I continued this passive form of fandom until the fall of 1986, my first semester of college in New York City. One of the new friends I had made was a Mets fan, so of course he was glued to the television for the World Series. Now just about every baseball fan or New York resident (and, I suspect, many folks who live in the Boston area) remembers how this turned out, but I had no idea what would occur when I went to his room to watch Game Six. And it was there that I saw a routine ground ball, dribbling right to the first baseman, go right through his legs. The winning run scored and the series went to Game Seven.

I don't remember most of the last game of that series, but I do remember what happened after the final out: my friend turned down the volume on the TV and opened the window. Outside the city was cheering, thousands of people screaming their jubilation in unison.

From that day on, I was a Mets fan.

Granted, I still wasn't paying very close attention, but I would keep an eye on the standings and catch the last few innings of a game on the tube now and then. It was probably my lack of scrutiny that allowed me to maintain my allegiance, as I missed the concerted--and all too successful--effort the team's management went through to dismantle them.

When I started to become more focused on the team (during the ill-fated 2000 "Subway Series"), I quickly picked up the team hallmarks:

-- Hot players that get traded to the Mets very quickly cool off (read: Mo Vaughn)

-- Players traded by the Mets will go on to have very productive careers (read: Scott Kazmir)

-- Getting a closer to perform consistently is nearly impossible.

-- If the game is close, the Mets will lose.

-- If the game is important, the Mets will lose.

-- If you get your hopes up, you will be crushed.

So I've learned that not expecting too much is essential to retaining one's stomach lining. This year, however, has been different. The team's new manager actually seems to know how to scout talent, and not only are their new acquisitions perfoming superbly, but the players they've promoted from the minors to fill in when the marquee players have gotten hurt are also getting the job done. Better still, they are winning the close games, winning series against teams they have to beat (2 out of 3 from the Yankees, a 4-game sweep of the Diamondbacks, a 3-game sweep of the Phillies) if they want a shot at the post-season, and battling back to win games they would always have lost just a few years ago.

It's exciting to see, so any fence sitters would be well advised to get on the bandwagon now. And if you want some insight into the minutiae that hides beneath the seeming simplicity of the game, do yourself a favor and pick up this book.

Dancing about Architecture

Today, a little peek into my creative process (such as it is).

So breaking out each album in my top ten into its own post was something I tried for the first time this year. I don't think it's something I'm going to repeat.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, 10 whole posts that would practically write themselves. After all, this was tuneage that I really dug. But what I'd forgotten to factor in was that I just don't write quickly. Although I've tried over the year to crank out content before revising, so I can get as much down as possible, I still have a tendency to tweak words as I'm typing them. While I don't approach Flaubert levels, if I bang out more than a thousand words in a night, I feel ahead of the game.

As a result, I averaged about a post a week. So about two months of the blog are taken up with my ramblings, and the middle of the year is not that far away. So much for timeliness.

Then of course there's the fact that, for me at least, writing about music is horrendously difficult. My responses to it are emotional first, logical second. I also have little to no music grasp of music theory, so there's not a lot of technical gibber-gabber I can recite. And unless Amazon has been kind enough to record some audio samples, you're not going to have many reference points to what I'm writing about (that is, unless you buy the albums, which you should totally do).

Next year I think I'll go back to one or two bulleted lists. Brevity seems to be working a lot better as far as this is concerned.

So a question to the blogosphere at large: how do you write about music?

Who's to Say I Don't Have Wings?

#1: Sleater-Kinney - The Woods. Well, this probably wasn't much of a surprise. In truth, it wasn't even close.

Musicians reinventing themselves is nothing new--witness U2's sea change from Rattle & Hum to Achtung Baby--and is actually something that they should do in order to keep from stagnating. Sleater-Kinney has been slowly modifying their sound over the course of their entire career, and in retrospect where they ended up sonically on The Woods makes perfect sense given that gradual evolution. But it's a rare thing for a band to make the previous 10 years of their career seem like just a warm-up, and S-K does just that with the very first note.

The reason the album is such a shift is because the band embraced distortion, volume and a smattering of influences from other sources: the shift to overdrive in "Rollercoaster" is worthy of the Stooges, the solo in "What's Mine is Yours" is pure Hendrix, the keyboards in "Jumpers" could be It's Hard-era Townsend. But there's a difference between absorbing influences and being absorbed by them, and that's a crucial distinction. The band may make nods to Hendrix, The Who and Zeppelin, but it isn't aping them--none of what you hear sounds like anything other than Sleater-Kinney.

Producer Dave Fridmann has received quite a lot of notice for his work, and what he has accomplished highlights how production can fundamentally alter an album (see: Brian Eno). The band has always employed some levels of dissonance on their albums, but the production had been relatively "clean." Not only is the sound louder here, but it's distorted even when it doesn't need to be, and there are more effects layered than I ever recall hearing before.

None of which takes anything away from the band itself, who purposefully took themselves out of their own environment (the album was recorded in upstate New York, a coast away from Portland) and their own comfort zone. According to interviews they've given after the album's release, the recording process was almost enough for the trio to call it quits. But what they managed to create as a result of that stress and effort is, to my ears, probably the high-water mark of their career.

They may never make its like again.

And Then So Clear

#2: Brian Eno - Another Day on Earth. It's a closely guarded secret in the music industry that there are actually three Brian Enos: Invisible Eno, Pop Eno, and Ambient Eno. Invisible Eno is, ironically, the one who's probably had the greatest impact on the populace as a whole, as he's the one who helps other artists (including U2, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, to name a few) make the best albums of their careers. Few people may recognize his contribution, but should really give him a hearty "thank you" should they run into him.

Pop Eno is actually the original Eno from whom the other Enos were created. After his stint in Roxy Music, he went off on his lonesome to make beautifully twisted songs that sounded almost Radio-friendly if you weren't listening too closely (or reading the titles to songs such as "Baby's on Fire" or "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch").

Then, of course, there's Ambient Eno, who--classical composers aside--not only helped to launch the genre but also came up with what I believe to be the best definition of what it's about: music that rewards both passive and active listening.

For the most part, these three Enos are not usually seen together. Most music fans who aren't prone to OCD have probably been exposed to Invisible Eno without realizing it (after all, how many bazillion people own a copy of The Joshua Tree?), but may not be aware that he has his own, extensive catalog. Sometimes Pop Eno lets Ambient Eno pop his head in for a few tracks, but Ambient Eno has never returned the favor.

Until this album.

In the past, the one clear indicator that an Eno album had been crafted by either Pop or Ambient Eno was the presence or absence of vocals. If there was singing on it, it was Pop Eno; no vox, Ambient. In my experience, this suited the fans of the two, visible Enos just fine, as they almost always preferred one over the other (to the surprise of no one, Ambient Eno is my fave).

Another Day on Earth, though, is a curveball: it is, essentially, an ambient album with vocals. And not the vocals one would normally associate with ambient--harmonic choirs, chanting, or wordless phrases--but actual lyrics. But it's the way that the vocals are treated that shifts them toward the ambient realm. Eno's one big weak spot has always been his voice: he doesn't have much of a range and his delivery is as emotional as a Cray-2. On this album, he compensates for this by treating his vocals as just another instrument.

As cliché as that reads, on this album it's absolutely true. The treatments are pervasive and obvious, as his vocals are pitch-shifted, phased and layered throughout. None of which would matter that much if he hadn't crafted music to support it. As usual, the album's production is excellent and the music is languid and somewhat mechanical-sounding without feeling sterile or cold.

It's not for everyone--and chances are the more you like Ambient Eno may have more than a little bearing on how much you enjoy this album. For me, there was only one album that I liked better.

Next: What it is.

A Writer of Fictions

#3: The Decemberists - Picaresque. Another group to which I'd not been exposed until last year, although at least I'd heard of them. Their previous album, Her Majesty, had caused quite a few ripples among the indie congnosenti, but I had no idea what to expect when I first put this on. Which was a good thing.

What I got was, as I've taken to calling it, musical theater--without the theater. Colin Meloy, who handles both songwriting and lead vocal duties, doesn't write songs so much as long narrative threads that sound more like short stories that have been set to music. Take this little snapshot of cleverness from album opener "The Infanta:"

Among five score pachyderm
All canopied and passenger'd
Sit the Duke and Duchess's luscious young girls
Within sight of the Baroness
Seething spite for this lithe largess
By her side sits the Baron--her barren-ness barbs her

The music tends to be folky yet dramatic, which just serves to reinforce the theatrical connection (to my mind, at least). To accomodate the stories, some of the tunes are stretched out to prog-rock length, but the time is meant to serve the virtuosity (and--let's be honest here--occasional verbosity) of the lyrics instead of showcasing the playing.

I'm not just pulling this out of my arse, either. Heck, the review over at AllMusic name-checks Kurt Weill. So don't take my word for it.

The other advantages of this approach is that, unlike actual musical theater, you won't have to pay ~$100 to hear it. Or, for that matter, be bothered with all that pesky dialogue they use to fill in the spaces between songs.

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

#4: Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs. I'd never heard of Mr. Bird before I'd had a chance to hear this album. This would be somewhat understandable if this were his debut album--but it's his fifth.

Primarily a violinist by trade, it's not surprising that his album has a bit of a relaxed, chamber pop/jazz feel, even though the violin isn't always front and center in the mix. Mr. Bird also plays just about every instrument on the album, which helps it achieve a pretty consistent sound. He also manages a rather eerie whistle, which, when I heard it on the unnamed opening track, I thought was a singing saw. Really.

What I also enjoy about this album beyond the sound is the wordplay. Bird doesn't have a particularly large range (or at least he doesn't make use of it) and emotiveness is generally at a premium. But I do enjoy his lyrics, even though they're somewhat relegated to the Beck school of quasi-nonsense. How can you not like a guy who rhymes "Valkyries," "proclivities," "trustees" and "B-17s?"