These two should probably go into one post, right? Hey, it’s Craigslist.
These aren't related AT ALL, no sir.
Looks like someone’s starting an electro-glam band… (whatever the hell that is).
Also, for posterity’s sake, let the record show that my drive to work looked like the introductory sequence to Northern Exposure with less grass and fewer moose, and that the fire alarm in our apartment has been going off since about five in the morning. I should probably mention that the noise it makes is straight from Stephen King’s “Cell”, and that it apparently goes off when a sprinkler breaks in the other, unattached building.
“Someone’s apartment across the street is flooding!!! EVERYONE OUT INTO THE SNOW, RIGHT NOW!!!!”
If you were to look outside my window right now, and you took away the robust, jobs laden service economy, well planned mass transit system, and sunshine — you’d think I was back in Cleveland. Two feet of snow is a lot of snow, even for a New England raised weather cynic like myself.
Fortunately, it’s given me lots of time to record this weekend, since we were barely able to leave the house (more on that later). That, in turn, means I’m now more than halfway through that magical album I keep promising, with seven out of twelve songs in the can. I’m trying very hard not to break down and send my hard work out as each bit is finished, in part so that my admittedly very small, specialized audience is able to think of this thing as an album instead of a collection of songs, and in part so that this same audience doesn’t become sick of me shoving the same songs down their throat over and over (“no, you haven’t heard this version — i turned down the low-mid on the second half of the bridge!!!”).
That being said, holy smokes is writing an entire album by yourself hard. Back when we did these monstrous 17/20 song Glenn’s Army records, not only did I only write about half the songs, but even the half I wrote was full of ideas I got from the rest of the band. Basically I would write a little hook, some witty (to me) lyrics, and BOOM, skip right to the pat-yourself-on-the-back part. Now? It’s taken me half the winter just to come up with seven songs that don’t sound exactly the same or completely suck.
The other hard parts are, of course, recording by yourself, and mixing. Mixing is the most terrible thing ever, because unless you are incredibly disciplined, home recordings always seem to have things recorded at slightly different levels, with slightly deader guitar strings, or with the mic in a slightly different spot. Then I’m supposed to take all of this stuff and try to make it sound like it belongs on the same album? No wonder I have a headache. And it certainly could be worse — I actually wrote and recorded everything I have at once, for all intents and purposes, over the span of a few weeks. I don’t know how Billy Corgan was able to fart around in three different studios for like, two years and come up with a coherent record. I assume they wrote down the settings on their amps, which probably helps.
At any rate, my accomplishment (the halfway point) seemed to me to warrant some kind of preview, so I made one this morning. I’m still trying to figure out how to EQ this thing properly so it doesn’t sound tinny in the Honda and simultaneously boomy as all heck in the Toyota, so there could be some more mixing changes. But level wise (and certainly song wise), these are the real deal.
If a bunch of British guys end up making a game that kicks the crap out of Madden, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
But you know what? If this does happen — even if it’s not with this first version — doesn’t this sound like a creepy microcosm of what’s happening to American industries in general? We had Electronic Arts, on top of their game, facing healthy competition from an innovative, upstart competitor in 2K Sports. What did EA do — out-think them? Out innovate? Out price?
No. They paid a bunch of money to the NFL to buy exclusive rights to the necessary intellectual property, and then spent the next five years releasing heavily hyped $60 roster updates, and didn’t add a toss play that worked until just this season. Then, 2K did the same thing with baseball, releasing an absolute terd of a product with no competition on the Xbox. It’s ridiculous. The only thing worse than a clumsy, corrupt, Soviet-style command economy is a clumsy, corrupt, monopoly powered capitalist one. I hope the Brits do come in here and kick EA in the butt, NFL intellectual property rights be damned.
I’m not an engineer, but a lot of times, I wish I was. My father’s an engineer, and spends a lot of time telling me that I’m not useless, despite the fact that my career (which is coming along quite nicely by most measurements, thank you very much) is powered by fancy imagery and an inexplicable ability to communicate with the bumbling toddler that is the 21st century American consumer. The only thing that keeps me sane is the fact that I work with engineers — good ones — every day. They solve problems. In a lot of ways, I feel like our culture has absolutely no idea how to do that anymore, or even sees why it’s worth the effort.
I know that’s not true on a micro-level. This is still the best place to start a business, in a lot of ways. I went to some contest with my wife for area startups, and was amazed at how many awesome ideas people have (even old people), and how many of them seemed destined for, if not greatness, at least a very real possibility of success. But in general, we just seem hopelessly tethered to so many crappy, horrible companies with crappy, horrible products. And nowadays, the primary weapon isn’t even deceptive marketing — it’s mergers and the elimination of competition altogether.
I’m okay with the Japanese making a better car. I am NOT okay with England making a better football video game.
“It is a tough sell for any president who lives inside what Obama refers to as “the bubble,” but tougher still for Obama. His first year in office was defined in part by a paradox. He is a rare president who comes from the middle class, yet people still perceive him as disconnected from it.”
Well, excuse me while I paraphrase the father from “That 70’s Show”, but… you know what they say about people? They’re stupid.
Fortunately, Obama knows the way to show people you can relate to them is not to actually relate to them, but to go to places like cement factories and yell “I RELATE TO YOU” at the top of your lungs to a pre-screened audience of locals who support an ideology they have been told you share, a strategy perfected by bazillionaire fake-everymen from Bush I to John Kerry.
When I was in college, I used to find our stupid kabuki theater of a political system amusing; increasingly, I find that to be less and less the case.
From this list (warning, do not read the comments, or the list for that matter, unless you want to start yelling at the monitor) :
… came this…
I haven’t written about the singing emo-robot in a long time, mostly because — to be honest — I thought his batteries finally died. But apparently, he still exists, and is covering “Umbrella” on something called “Punk Goes Crunk”. Now, I don’t want to say this is the “worst” faux-punk cover of a pop song ever, because I don’t honestly believe it. Back in college, the radio station had some New Found Glory CD that was literally nothing but covers, so there’s some competition right there. But this has to be one of the more pointlessly derivative ones I’ve ever heard.
Thinking about this, I started wondering what the difference is between a hilarious punk rock cover, and a terrible, soul-crushing one like this. In the right hands (i.e., mine), something like “Umbrella” should be totally awesome to cover, although more so live and in the context of a set than as a recording. In the old days, Glenn’s Army had a song called “Nateing Season” (groan), and we’d always put ten or fifteen seconds of some ridiculous pop song in the middle during the bridge, awkwardly forced into a tempo matching disco beat that at least lined up with our standard smashing rhythm. It was stupid, it was funny, and for just one second, when we first started playing that part, it was really, really cool. At one point we used that “Discovery Channel” song from The Bloodhound Gang, and eventually we did No Doubt’s “Hey Baby”. If you didn’t enjoy watching Andrew snarling “Boys Say, Boys Say” at one of our shows, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re just not a fun person.
At the time, we liked doing current songs as a bit of a counter to the more common “let’s make fun of this 1980’s song that people really liked”-style cover. But later, when we started Streets Ahead, we took a third approach, and started covering 1980’s songs that were too stupid for most bands to even bother making fun of, ones that we secretly liked, or ones that fit both of those descriptions. Trust me, we weren’t worried about another band stealing our bit and covering Asia’s “Heat of The Moment”, that’s for sure. I personally recorded an Ace of Base medley in our apartment in Providence in 2005 that was completely ridiculous, but nothing if not an original take on the subject.
So yes, it absolutely bothers me to see some crappy emo-robot band ruin a perfectly good chance to cover a pop song, particularly as juicy a target as “Umbrella”. They couldn’t have mailed it in anymore without sticking a stamp on it. “Oh look, here comes the chorus, let’s do a breakdown”.
You lousy kids. Get a job.
BTW : This is how you do it, although it’s not really “punk” per se. If you’re going to be a monkey, though, go ahead and be a gorilla.
Good piece on the larger implications of iPad-ish technology :
“People talk about Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, and I don’t disagree that the man has a quasi-hypnotic ability to convince. There’s another reality distortion field at work, though, and everyone that makes a living from the tech industry is within its tractor-beam. That RDF tells us that computers are awesome, they work great and only those too stupid to live can’t work them.”
The “us” here are the same people who often determine how good UI is by how shiny and/or transparent it is.
“Besides, it’s a really cool toy. I want it the same way I wanted a BB Gun and a Chemistry Set when I was a kid, except now if Mom says no I can just ignore her.”
This is true, although in my case, my mom is probably going to get one, and I am probably not.
One thing I find hilarious in reading about the launch of the device, though, is how angry and self righteous the gadget nerds on sites like Gizmodo and Engadget get over the fact that Apple hasn’t created a device tailored to fix their exact needs.“WHAT??? NO USB PORT??? RIDICULOUS!!!” Another is the argument that Apple has to somehow prove that this device is essential in order for it to have succeeded. Now look, I know a lot of you recent Apple converts have convinced yourself that your iPhone really is essential, but in most cases, it’s not. You really don’t need to give the restaurant you’re at instant feedback. It’s just fun, and for dorks who are into that kind of thing (I might be if I had an iPhone), it’s kind of cool.
There’s no reason something like this can’t enter that territory if it’s done well. We’re at a point where pretty much everyone my age or younger watches TV with a laptop next to them at least half the time, which is really kind of stupid, given the fact that we’re usually looking up things on Wikipedia, e-mailing, or doing something else that mostly benefits from a nice screen and form factor. Trust me, I’ve used a run of the mill netbook for this, and a Macbook. They’re totally fine — this just looks better for a lot of those things, primarily because instead of just being small and cheap, it’s been specifically designed to perform these functions. Most netbooks outsource the small-screen UI thing to web applications, so while you might have a good interaction, you might not. Meanwhile, Apple built a calendar, browser, music player, photo album, and even some work applications specifically for this thing –and they’re pretty good at UI.
Anyways, it’s a 1.0, so while I wouldn’t mind having one in my house tomorrow, I think it really gets cool in about a year or two, when I’m controlling the TV and stereo with this thing, and using Skype. I can prop up Jeff-Tron on the mantle and play NBA Live with him!
Google’s wacky little “Fast Flip” option at the bottom of Google News is a particularly tempting way to end up seeing vapid web sites you would never go to ordinarily. Kind of like this one.
Wow.
Holy smokes — that is a really, really pathetic headline. I have no idea if it’s taken out of context (and of course, I don’t care, because I mean… well, come on), but if the only thing you have to look forward to is reproducing with Mariah Carey, you probably need a hobby. Birdwatching, sailing, woodworking, whatever. Just pick something.
“Tax incentives, small-business veneration, glorification of the entrepreneur, chest-thumping on competition, and even a bit of nationalism. Obama articulates Republican policies better than Republicans do.”
Which is why I wonder if they are still really Republican policies anymore. Not to say they’ve been co-opted by the Democrats, because that party is now so big tent, it doesn’t really stand for anything (which makes the traditional boogeymen like unions even more ridiculous). Seriously though, can’t you just picture Bush’s father watching this speech and nodding quietly?
BTW – There’s a reason I was a strong supporter of the John Roberts nomination even though I disagree with him on many (maybe even most) legal issues; this is it. I can’t imagine this ever happening to Roberts — and it’s not a matter of being “rude” to me. These dumb little protocol things affect people’s perception of the Court, and I think Alito (and Scalia) are way, way too reckless with them, given the fact that they have lifetime appointments, and that the court they serve on has an enormously important role in keeping our patchwork democracy from descending into anarchy. I’m serious. Roberts, on the other hand, cares about the role, history, and importance of the Court more than he cares about his rulings, which is ultimately why I’m okay with him making them.
The solo album I mentioned the other day from Justin, one-time Streets Ahead accomplice, is now available at www.erasetoday.com (technically, it’s hosted here, thanks to my slightly above average FTP skills — okay, maybe only average, but does the average person even know what an FTP is?).
Then, all you have to do is right-click “erasetoday.ace” and choose “Save As” (or your browser’s equivalent). Boom, instead punk rock. Well, technically, you have to unzip the file first, but whatever, semi-instant.
Uplink the supertext!
If you like it, feel free to send the link around to your dirty punk rock friends. Justin and I are thinking about trying a little project over the intertubes, so this will get you in the right frame of mind for when I eventually start posting about that constantly.
I hope we ALL can save our marriage to Brett Favre.
… and then the Octo-Mom came over and we argued about health care reform until some ugly girl from New Jersey got punched in the face by Conan O’Brien and BAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
UPDATE : While we’re at it…
I can’t remember the last time I used the word “unfurl” when I wasn’t just trying to be overly difficult or generally obnoxious to someone. Not that Fox is necessarily trying to be obnoxious here, it’s just… I mean, picture a bunch of old white guys in suits “unfurling” something. It’s just ridiculous.
This Wired article on how video games have influenced modern athletes is fascinating :
Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. For certain football fans, the excitement of a last-minute comeback now commingled with the shock of the familiar: It’s hard to think of a better example of a professional athlete doing something so obviously inspired by the tactics of videogame football. When I caught up with Stokley by telephone a few weeks later, I asked him point-blank: “Is that something out of a videogame?” “It definitely is,” Stokley said. “I think everybody who’s played those games has done that” — run around the field for a while at the end of the game to shave a few precious seconds off the clock. Stokley said he had performed that maneuver in a videogame “probably hundreds of times” before doing it in a real NFL game. “I don’t know if subconsciously it made me do it or not,” he said.
Sometimes I miss being a kid, but it’s pretty cool to be of the age where many of the most famous, height-of-their-powers people in the world grew up during the same cultural era as you.
