Gurdonark dug up a motherlode of work by E. Pique, the arranger of Slightly on the Mash. He got it from an interesting source — a branch of Creative Commons for scientific work, called Science Commons.
Forced to choose my favorite American rock guitarist of the last dozen years, I’d need two seconds to answer: Carrie Brownstein. If you want a showoff guitarist who plays arpeggios with her teeth while wearing a bucket on her head, she’s not going to be your axeperson of choice. And sure, I have moods that demand the range of Nels Cline, the subtlety of Ry Cooder, or the visceral rush of Bob Mould. But riff for riff, I’ll take Carrie for her grasp of what the guitar can say within a song, and for almost singlehandedly restoring the legacy of the late, great Ricky Wilson of the B52s. Almost two years after the breakup of Brownstein’s signature band, Sleater-Kinney, I still miss their combination of raw power, depth of purpose, human compassion, and sheer rock and roll fun. Sleater-Kinney also saved my love life, but that’s the subject for another post.
Carrie hasn’t been resting on her laurels. ThunderAnt, her new duo with SNL’s Fred Armisen, has released what is, scientifically speaking, the perfect pop song (clip below). Slate featured her test-drive of the Rock Band video game. She coaches and promotes a rock camp for girls. Best of all, her Monitor Mix column for NPR’s website has, in just over half a year, become one of my favorite sources of music writing; her written work is passionate, personal, and refreshingly free of hipster posturing. In recent posts, Carrie delivers a great road trip playlist (Wipers, Go Betweens, Music Go Music, Richard and Linda Thompson, Cal Tjader), captures the gift of the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg (“his songs have an adult acuity sung in an adolescent idiom”), admits her weakness for reality television (“I suppose that I’d rather get that artifice-parading-as-truth from The Bachelor instead of my government”), and explains why she enjoys, but can’t bring herself to love Vampire Weekend (“if you take preppy yacht rock too far, you end up back at Jimmy Buffett”).
The posts in Monitor Mix are thoughtful and reflective, even when Carrie is giving simple shout-outs to recent favorites, such as Bon Iver and Blitzen Trapper. One great recent piece uses the strange worlds of underground Christian/ alt-rock pioneer Larry Norman and Colorado hardcore obscurities Bum Kon to segue into the fertile subject of bands that fall under the radar screen. And instead of just sneering at the reviewer recently caught rating a Black Crowes album he’d never heard, Brownstein uses it as a springboard for some hilarious fictional music reviews. Here’s Brownstein on the Shins’ nonexistent opus Honey Poke Shimmy Lantern: “James Mercer and crew can do no wrong. They’ve added the Decemberists, the Thermals, and Spoon to their lineup. Recorded inside a deer carcass, the sounds on Honey Poke are haunting and cervid. These songs will change your life back to the way it was before The Shins changed it the first time.”
ThunderAnt, “Perfect Song”
After the click-through: Carrie on Saddam Hussein and Liz Phair.
A post discussing the impending re-release of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville captures Brownstein’s writing at her best. She captures Exile’s still-beguiling magic better than anything I’ve read: “The first thing I noticed about Liz Phair was the voice. She wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t being cloying, she wasn’t an amazing singer, but there was something serious about the vocals, something deadly. Part of it was the flatness; the strange deadpan delivery, like someone is singing on their back, like they woke up one night and decided they’d had enough and so they made an album. But the songs weren’t victim anthems just like they weren’t merely come-ons; they spoke of the fine lines between power and powerlessness, autonomy and isolation, they depicted epiphanies and the subsequent letdowns. The album was a journey vacillating between interior and exterior landscapes, the lyrics evoking halcyon moments always on the verge of implosion, either by the author’s own hand or by someone they loved. And the album was drenched in desire, of wanting and of wanting out.”
“Strange” and “deadpan” are also good descriptions of ThunderAnt’s low-fi sketch comedy. The skits have a loose, improvised feel that will seem familiar to fans of Chicago-style improvisation. Rather than relying on heavy dialogue or dramatic punch lines, Carrie and Fred start with an outrageous premise that has a ring of human truth and milk it for its awkward emotional nuance. You never know quite what to expect, whether it’s passive-aggressive employees of a feminist bookstore quietly arguing about which flyers to put up in the store, proprietors of Portland’s worst restaurant responding defensively to online criticism, or my personal favorite, Saddam Hussein reimagined as an aging indie rocker appearing on a Cable TV show.
The clips below include some favorites from ThunderAnt and Sleater-Kinney’s gonzo-heavy2005 swan song, The Woods. For news and updates on Carrie Brownstein and her former band mates, check the unofficial Sleater-Kinney news blog Tiny Suns infused with Sour. Another fan-run site has a gold mine of covers and obscurities.
ThunderAnt, “Boink!” (featuring Saddam Hussein)
ThunderAnt, “Feminist Bookstore”
Sleater-Kinney, “Jumpers”
Sleater-Kinney, “Modern Girl”
Sleater-Kinney, “Entertain”
Finally got a chance to see Cocksucker Blues, photographer Robert Frank’s rarely-seen spooge doc on the Rolling Stones during their 1972 American tour. I went on craigslist to sell some…
I've talked before about our innate predilection to like cute friendly robots... 'bots like Keepon, and R2-D2, and WALL-E(*).
Science observer Kevin Kelly has been thinking along the same lines, inspired by recently seeing some extraordinarily graceful robotic jellyfish.
The jellyfish come in two varieties, one that moves through water and a balloon-based one that gently pulses through the air. They're the creation of a German automation company called Festo, put together to demonstrate their technical prowess. But Kelly says they accomplish more than that...
I think we are primed to find lifelikeness in machines. E.O. Wilson calls it our biophilia -- our intense attraction to living things. As we design machines to approach the complexity of organisms and mimic their behavior (as these do), we will be very quick to include them in our love.Isn't it strange we rush to love these bots, but not to the same degree, say, automobile fuel pumps? The pumps are no less complex or capable. These mechanical jellies tell me that when we make artificial intelligences even 1/2 as smart as a dog, we will love it to pieces.
Read Kevin Kelly's thoughts here. Check out a video of the robotic jellyfish on Design News.
(*)Disclosure: I work for Disney, which owns Pixar, which made WALL-E.
This was the view out my back window in New York City for more than ten years. That time (1979-1990) was the heyday of Wild Style, when graffiti truly became an artform, as is documented most vividly in Henry Chalfant's photographs. These tags, though, are primal. You can imagine them--in chalk--festooning an alley a century ago, or even earlier. Gang tags probably go back to antiquity. Today, owing to a couple of decades of outsized police response to graffiti, much urban tagging, accomplished under great pressure, is even cruder than this primal sort.
Ulises León-México has added a photo to the pool:
As if you needed more evidence that Tom Waits has big ears, excellent interview (”True Confessions,” actually) with He Who Fears Giant Squid at the Anti-label blog. Excerpts:
Q: What’s the most curious record in your collection?
A: In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called “The best of Marcel Marceau.” It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.
Q: Most interesting recording you own?
A: It’s a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson’s label. It’s of crickets. That’s right, crickets, the first time I heard it… I swore I was listening to the Vienna Boys Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle choir. It has a four-part harmony it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, “What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape.” No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a Leprechaun out of my pocket.
Q: What’s wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made 12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.
It's widely agreed that the United States has the ugliest money on Earth, while countries such as the Netherlands have currencies that have become hallmarks of design.
Great Britain is furthering the tradition of innovation with the new design of their coins. Each coin shows a section of the Royal Arms, placed together you get the impression of the coins being cut out of a larger symbol. This page shows the full effect.
The design is a result of a nationwide competition, with more than 4,000 entries. The winning design is the work of Matthew Dent, a 26 year old graphic designer who now has a hell of a item to add to his professional resume.
Nicephore Bis has added a photo to the pool:
As new concepts enter the world, our language must change to keep pace. But language is more than just words, we also depend upon a rich, varied and subtle visual language...signs and symbols that speak to us throughout our day.
So where do new visual "words" come from? They must be invented of course, a task that usually falls to graphic designers. Here's an example... the English designers Jack Schulze and Matt Webb recently gave their design students the task of designing a symbol to represent the concept of commerce via RFID technology...using those little wand-like devices to make everyday purchases(*).
It's a subtle and complex topic to try to boil down into a simple gylph. One of the students' attempts is pictured above. Check out some other examples here.
You got a better design? Let's see it!
(*) And yes, I know that the use of RFID has been fraught with technical and personal freedom issues for years. I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's becoming a more widely used idea.
I went to Wisconsin. I stayed in the perfect B&B. I gave a good talk. I read a good book. I ate orange cheese. I had no idea that Western Wisconsin looked so much like Vermont, except for the cheese, of course. I had good bus karma; my flight arrived in Logan early and I caught the bus I was going to just barely miss. I got back almost before dark. I slept.
I am formulating a plan for dealing with the front yard. I’d like to just mow it with the push mower, but when I try to do that one of my neighbors will invariably hassle me to use their mower and then watch me (clumsily, ineptly) do it. Maybe I’ll sneak out at night with nail scissors. If it were up to me I’d just let the damned thing grow.
Chalkstream has added a photo to the pool:
The Wales and Newport hooker playing in the second Test against South Africa on the 1955 British Lions' tour.
Waffle Whiffer has added a photo to the pool:
Here’s a dynamite 7-Up coupon from 1972. Enjoy a tasty UNburger with your favorite UNcola! … Uh, but think twice if the un-burger is looking back at you.
I can't remember what I was doing. I was doing something, then I went to lunch, and now it escapes me. This would not be too bad except that the powers-that-be sense liminality, and appear in force from above to crush it. If I don't come up with something in the next few minutes, they will be here with another fire that just jumped the trench. I can already hear them in the hallway. I'd better start making a list.
This is a great time to be a kid interested in robots or programming or multimedia, what with Lego Mindstorms and computers and video cameras. But it's the worst of times if you're a kid interested in chemistry.
Over the past generation or so, kids chemistry sets have been emasculated and dumbed to the point of near worthlessness. There are a number of reasons for this... among them manufacturer's fear of lawsuits(*), post-9/11 paranoia about chemicals being used by terrorists, and war-on-drugs paranoia about the ingredients and equipment in chemistry sets being used by meth labs(**).
As a result, there are probably fewer kids in America getting turned on by chemistry, which means there may be fewer kids choosing chemistry as an advocation.
And this couldn't happen at a worst time. We're on the verge of a world-changing revolution in the material sciences, and we could use all of the crack chemists we can get to fuel it.
Robert Thompson to the rescue! Thompson's the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments, a new book that tells you how to set up your own chemistry lab, and then use it to perform dozens of fun and educational experiments.
The book lays out just what apparatus and chemicals you'll need, and where you can get them. (It turns out many of the chemicals that have been banned from chemistry sets are still readily available at your local hardware store). I was particularly impressed with the Guide's instructions on how to keep a lab notebook (I could have used that info when I was starting out in science).
Armed with this book, I'm looking forward to many hours with the kids, unlocking the wonders of the chemical world.
(*)So, is doing home chemistry dangerous? Sure, potentially, in the same way that cooking (another activity that every kid master) can be dangerous. Thompson's book does an excellent job teaching lab safety.
(**) Evidently, the state of Texas has made it illegal to buy an Erlenmeyer flask without a permit.
Birmingham Phil has added a photo to the pool:
I've got hundreds of these - literally. Green Penguins, Orange Penguins, Pelicans, old Pan and all sorts of other miscellaneous 1950's type literature.
They were my old Dad's.
The artwork on many of them is extraordinarily good. All done by hand of course - fantastic.
Birmingham Phil has added a photo to the pool:
I've got hundreds of these - literally. Green Penguins, Orange Penguins, Pelicans, old Pan and all sorts of other miscellaneous 1950's type literature.
They were my old Dad's.
The artwork on many of them is extraordinarily good. All done by hand of course - fantastic.
Here's a cool mix of custom manufacture, geography, and modern design. The European company Fluid Forms lets you specify any location on Google Maps, and then they custom mill a laminated wood bowl matching the topography of your choice. A bit pricy at 230 Euros. But very cool.
Birmingham Phil has added a photo to the pool:
I've got hundreds of these - literally. Green Penguins, Orange Penguins, Pelicans, old Pan and all sorts of other miscellaneous 1950's type literature.
They were my old Dad's.
The artwork on many of them is extraordinarily good. All done by hand of course - fantastic.
Reminiscing about my early days in the used-paper trade, I find that I can become tender if not actually moist-eyed at the thought of the publications that were both produced and purchased by the raincoat brigade. You young people today, saturated in smut, are so jaded and jaundiced and all that you may not immediately appreciate the pathos of the many approaches to porn in the time before the soi-disant sexual revolution. Consider the many shadings of the word "art," especially as applied to privately printed portfolios and editions of "exquisite" and "piquant" and sometimes "frank" character, intended exclusively for an audience of "discerning connoisseurs." Think of slim paperback novels, published in Hollywood in awkwardly boxy typefaces and dirt-colored wrappers, armed with introductions by persons able to append a Ph.D. to their names. Imagine a bookstore of the bygone sort, as discreet as a boudoir, with a curtained doorway in the rear leading to locked glass-fronted bookcases housing a category known as "curiosa."
The movies are (1) The Blue Angel, (2) Ecstasy, (3) Tabu, (4) The Lady from Shanghai, (5) Notorious, (6) Bitter Rice, (7) Manon, (8) Los Olvidados, (9) Miss Julie, and (10) One Summer of Happiness. No, I'd never heard of that last one, either. Don't you wish you could nonchalantly illustrate your humid reveries with charts so rigorously white-smocked? I certainly do.
I’ve been away again and I did the usual get back super late at night (or early in the morning) thing so I could wake up in my own bed and start the day doing something other than driving or getting on public transportation. A little more about the Vermont Library Conference and the Berkman Center Tenth Anniversary maybe in a bit, but this is about today.
Being on the road is fun. I get to see people and talk to people and have meals with people and generally be social in a way that I’m not up here. Not that I don’t have friends up here or not that there aren’t people up here, but getting together for a beer with more than maybe two or three people if I’m not hosting a party myself is a bit of a challenge. I had food and drinks with twenty librarians one night. Big fun.
One of the things I don’t get to do when I travel is concentrate, on anything really. I give talks. I drive or fly or bus or subway places. I stay up late and get up early. I schmooze. However, I’ve gotten a little used to the big blocks of time I have up here for what I’ve always called (before the term was co-opted) getting things done. There’s always front burner and back burner projects and today the project was “Get all the music off the iMac and put it all on the Macbook and remove all the duplicate music and then back it all up.” Due to user error, I deleted an entire hard drive of MP3s at one point consisting of my entire music collection. I have basically an archival computer with my music collection from sometime before that (from Topsham), and my current laptop with everything I’ve gotten afterwards. They’ve needed merging for some time now and today was the day.
Over a few hours, during which I kept an eye on the progress and did a lot of small other things (bill paying, receipt organizing, spreadsheet filling out) I managed to import over 5000 songs of which about 18% were already duplicated in my collection. Thanks to iDupe without which this would have been agonizing. Yes, I paid my shareware fees. Yes, this is what I do for fun while I have a discretionary day. Yes, it’s good to be home.
cod_gabriel has added a photo to the pool:
"Regina Margot" de Alexandre Dumas.
1958 Romanian edition.
Editura Tineretului, 1958.
cod_gabriel has added a photo to the pool:
"Print si cersetor" de Mark Twain.
1955 Romanian edition.
Editura Tineretului, 1955.
as a starting point... 
