Syrup

I have an enormous crush on the Syrup girls.

Movies

Netflix is no more. At least for me. I decided that I could borrow movies from the library and spend that money at a theater or something. Or I could rent things from the video store. It makes sense when I am earning money and busy, maybe, but when I have a lot more time than money, like now, I can fend for myself.

I was going to watch The Shining, but then it was scratched or something had been stuck to the DVD, so it was unwatchable. I liked the Metallica documentary and I liked One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a lot. I haven't been in much of a mood to communicate blog-wise, so I'm not going to write much of anything about them. I changed the list in the sidebar to movies that I have watched recently, and now they've got ratings along with director and year of release in the title of the link that comes up when you hover over the link.

Music in the Summertime

Nass El Ghiwane "Fine Ghadi Biya Khouya"
Andre Nickatina/Equipto "Morire da Solo"
Ed Shepp "Partydance"
Fred Phelps "America the Burning"
Mice Parade "Milton Road (My Skull with Flowers Remix)"
Ciara "Oh (Cadence Weapon Smartbomb Remix)"
Anquette "Janet Reno"
The Game ft. 50 Cent "Hate It or Love It"
!!! "Get Up (Nate Dogg Cover)"
Superpitcher "Happiness (M. Mayer Mix)"
LCD Soundsystem "Losing My Edge"
Brian Eno "This"

This is a mixtape I made just because. The first track is one that I got from DJ /Rupture's blog. I guess the group is from Morocco. A lot of times I shy away from exploring types of music that are quite different from what I'm used to for the simple reason that I'm not really able to listen to all the music I already know I ought to be hearing in the first place. I can't remember why I downloaded this particular MP3, but I'm really glad I did.

"Partydance" is like the best, most overblown PSA ever, except it's a full-length song. The best line is where he says not to "smoke some ecstasy or take a reefer pill".

You'll recall the hymn from when I posted about Fred Phelps a couple weeks ago.

I don't think I mentioned here about how after the Bloc Party concert I went to at the beginning of spring term, they (that is, the First Avenue sound guy, not the band) started playing "Hate It or Love It" after the encore, which struck me as odd in that it didn't seem odd. Has it always been appropriate to play mainstream hip hop at indie rock concerts? I'm guessing this is more of a recent trend, but have no way of really finding out.

That !!! remix has been in my head a lot recently, but I can't figure out if that's their doing, or if the original song could've done it on its own. We may never know.

I tried to use Audacity to change the tempo on a few transitions to match the beats, and I basically did, but it probably could have been more skillful. Anyway, other than watching sports and reading Pride and Prejudice, that's what I have done recently.

Public Broadcasting

Are you aware that public broadcasting funding is being cut? Now you are. Here is a MoveOn.org petition to oppose the cuts.

Jesus of Montreal, etc.

This (the movie referenced in the title) was another "crazy man who thinks he's Jesus" movie and I liked it almost as much as I liked The Ruling Class. The music was really dated (80s lite-rock guitars and synth bass), and one of the actresses looked like Molly Ringwald with black hair which suggested The Breakfast Club at times, especially given the rebellious small group dynamic, but it was great. It probably wouldn't be as good if you were not pretty familiar with the details of the Christ story because a lot of the enjoyment comes from recognizing parallels that aren't always completely obvious, but it would probably be good as long as you got the main idea, which is that a group of people putting on a reworked version of the passion play are transformed by the experience, and there are consequences, sometimes humorous and sometimes poignant.

I went through all my extra web pages and made sure they work right and added the relevant images. I need to spell-check all of it and make links between the pages, and maybe I will do all of that by Sunday night. It is a possibility. It is also a possibility that our internet will not work right this weekend. Sometimes it claims that I am connected and then does not load any pages. Who knows?

Also, I decided that just any old list of the bands (and DJs) at Intonation was not enough, so I ranked them, just in case there are multiple stages or something like that. Note, for perspective, that although Diplo is tops on Sunday, he would actually be somewhere around Tortoise if he were on Saturday.

>> Saturday, July 16
The Go! Team
Death From Above 1979
Four Tet
Tortoise
Jean Grae
Magnolia Electric Co.
Will Oldham
Broken Social Scene
A.C. Newman
The M's
Pelican
Head of Femur

>> Sunday, July 17
Diplo
Les Savy Fav
The Decemberists
Dungen (plus DJ set)
Andrew Bird
Thunderbirds Are Now!
El-P
Deerhoof
The Wrens
Out Hud
Xiu Xiu
The Hold Steady

Marquee Moon

I was going to post about how I enjoy Television's Marquee Moon more and more every time I listen to it, but then the internet didn't really work, so I went and formatted my web archives so that I can someday post them. I finally worked out the dates from July/August 2003, which I think were complicated by an errant link to a Guardian story from a date which was later than the surrounding text. Anyway, I've got all the months and years laid out, so now I need to add links to everything and put all the other files where they go. Maybe they will make their way to the internet by next month or something.

But, yeah, about Television, I was thinking on the way home tonight that I always see them listed as "proto-punk," but they don't really sound anything like punk rock at all. I noticed that there is a section in their liner notes where they give credit for each song's guitar solo. I don't think punk bands put out albums with seven- and ten-minute long songs where each had at least one guitar solo. If anything, Tom Verlaine's unique voice and the guitar sounds are more like pre-post-punk, though that's a pretty awkward designation.

It took me a really long time to enjoy Television, for some reason, and I didn't until last fall or so, but I get the urge to listen to them more and more frequently. Mostly I'm in the mood for "Friction" and "See No Evil" because they're catchy, but tonight was all about the second half of "Marquee Moon". It struck me that the verses at the beginning are actually just a structural facade for the last six minutes of the song which build to a terrific climax at around two minutes left, allowing a little time to decompress and get ready for the second half of the record. I totally downloading the MP3 freshman year, and bought the album two summers ago, but never really got into it until now.

Also, Kyle Yoder will be coming along with me to Intonation. What self-respecting midwestern indie rock fan wouldn't?

The Southerner

This was good; it was like a western in that American male perserverance triumphed over nature, but sort of different because it was about sharecropping. The romanticization of the role of the farmer was a little annoying, and I didn't think the interdependence speech at the end (about how farmers need factory workers, and vice versa, this was the main dichotomy in the film) quite made up for it. I couldn't quite tell why the bar scene (in which the farmer watches his factory friend tear up the bar after the proprietor steals from him) was included, other than to show the temptation and also the decadence of "town life," but it seemed a little too wild for just that. Some roles, especially the grandmother, made this feel antiquated, like it was necessary to make excuses for filmmaking style that seemed outdated. It was also almost overbearing in its plucky support of the well-meaning steward of the earth, which wasn't what I'd been expecting from Renoir at all. I suppose that's maybe what happens when you immigrate and become enamored with your new country, which is not to say there aren't plenty of American scumbags as well. I think what I didn't like was that I kind of already knew what it was trying to tell me.

This might work as neorealism though, especially since Renoir was the forerunner of that movement anyway. It's kind of like Ladri di Biciclette, wherein there is a man who thinks he gets a break, then has bad things happen to him, is let down by others, has to support his kids and wife, and in the end is basically ruined. It is a little more hopeful, though, and shows a faith that family will carry the man through.

God Hates America

I am done with college for the time being.

If all goes as planned, I will be in Seattle next year. Once I have better information about just what I will be doing there, you will be the first to know.

Mere hours before graduating, I stumbled across the web presence of Fred Phelps, fag-hater extraordinaire. I refer you to his very specific page about the evils of Sweden's royal family as well as two MP3s: "God Hates America" and "America the Burning".

The Conet Project

I just spent a lot of time downloading The Conet Project recordings, and now I am enjoying them. I can't tell if the initial appeal will last or not, but they were free. You can read about them at the All Music Guide entry, and then maybe download them yourself. Or if you can see my music on iTunes or AIM, just download them.

NBA Finals, Again

It seems appropriate at this time to refer you to a post I made around this time last year. I think the six teams referred to in the first paragraph are the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angeles Lakers, the San Antonio Spurs, the Chicago Bulls, the Houston Rockets, and the Boston Celtics. The seventh team is the Philadelphia 76ers. In case you weren't aware, the Pistons and the Spurs made it to the finals by beating the Heat and the Suns, respectively, two teams who had no historical chance of winning the finals.

This year will mark 19 years with only 5 teams (the Celtics not counted), 22 years with only 6 different champions, 26 years with 7. Also, do you realize that in the 1980's (and the 1960's), an entire decade, only FIVE different teams even played in the NBA Finals?! 12 played in the Super Bowl and 10 in the world series. Okay, then, on the original post:

Well, I watched some of Game 5 tonight; I watched less because it was such a blowout. I enjoyed watching the Pistons a lot more than I ever enjoyed the star-studded Lakers because they play well together. However, I don't really have that much to say about the game itself. What I did note is that in the past 21 years, only six teams have won NBA championships, and slightly more impressive statistically, only seven teams have won championships in the past quarter-century. That comes out to 3.57 championships per organization. (They've also only had four commissioners in the past sixty years, but that's slightly less glamorous.) Now, in baseball, over the same period (plus one for the strike), there were 17 world champions; in football, there were 14; and 12 different teams have won the Stanley Cup since 1979.

Hockey is the only sport that even comes close in terms of domination by, not even dynasties, but by organizations. The odd thing about these statistics is that they don't measure "teams" in terms of a specific group of players, or even in terms of management, but they measure the protracted success of organizations. I haven't checked, but I doubt many of the personnel from the Lakers' 1980 team were around for the 2002 finals. In the NBA's 58 year history, the Lakers (both Minnesota and LA) have won 14 championships, and the Celtics have 15. That's exactly half the championships to only two teams. The recent numbers, from 1980 to 2004, come after the ABA folded, so that makes no difference.

The Boston Celtics won the NBA championship 8 times in a row; think about that. That's more than any team ever in the four major team sports here. The Los Angeles Lakers lost a staggering seven championships in the 1960's; they've been in 28 of 58 championship series.

The only reason I can come up with is that basketball has the smallest roster of the sports, with only five players on the court, who don't change from offense to defense. Hockey has the second fewest. Baseball has pitchers who rotate in groups of four or five, not to mention relievers, and football teams have as many as thirty different players on the field in various starting positions. So, losing Bill Russell or Michael Jordan means you've lost twenty percent of your starting lineup, but losing Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Sandy Koufax, or Mariano Rivera, for example, just isn't the same. Even so, that still doesn't explain why the same basketball teams would continue to win year after year, decade after decade.

Caribou/Junior Boys

As it turns out, I made some serious progress on the old statistics project and got out of here in time to get to the 400 Bar and wait for an hour and a half. It seems the bands had been held up at the border after playing in Winnipeg last night, and the Russian Futurists weren't admitted to the country.

The Junior Boys, who were admitted to the country, played a great set. Jeremy Greenspan asked at the beginning whether or not we were ready for the greatest gig ever. The audience claimed to be. I didn't really think the first song, which was new, was that great, but the other new stuff they played, in addition to "Birthday" etc., was all good. They added some tastefully atmospheric, ringing, buzzing guitar to their tried-and-true electronic sound, which worked really well. They seemed a lot more performative this time, though that might have to do with my perspective (last time I was late, this time I was early), and I knew the songs, but I think it was a very good set, better than last time, and will spur me on to future fandom as well as album and ticket purchases.

Caribou started out pretty hot and then my ears got worn out because they were pretty loud with their hugely multi-tracked songs and two drumsets and the like. I had to put in earplugs to salvage the night which kind of sucked, because they made the drums sound stupid and I couldn't really enjoy it as much. (Probably I will get some of these.) I think the music might have suffered, though, because I thought the encore was nearly as good as the opening, so maybe they really did have a lull in there. I was kind of sore because they never played "I've Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life," but it was really pretty good.

June #1

It is warm and humid in my room. I've taken to cracking my door open in an attempt to ventilate, but I don't know if it is working. At least the people in the hallway get to hear Pedro. They might also get to hear the new DJ /rupture mix for Lemon Red whenever that happens, if it happens in the next few days. I enjoyed the one he did for German radio so much that I'm moving his album way up to near the top of the pile for next time I think I have enough money to spend some on music.

Tomorrow will be the worst day I have had since at least mid-April, but afterwards I won't ever have to look at another math problem again. Given the terrible time I've had with my project, I won't be going to the Caribou show tomorrow night, as I forecast earlier this week. If it was not a group project I don't think I would have such problems, but that's the way it goes.

I think Charles and I are going to see Star Wars after I get off work at 3 pm Monday afternoon. I'm not sure about details yet, but that's the plan.

At this time next week, I'll be... well, I'll be doing whatever it is I'm doing at home in Iowa with a hard-won Carleton BA in Math beginning to collect dust in the closet.