joss whedon’s musical web series gets it start. love it!

watch it here.

dr. horrible

the first jonathan ames book i read was i love you more than you know, a collection of essays in the vein of david sedaris. after thoroughly enjoying that book i read his other collections before diving into his novels. for some reason i was a bit wary about reading his novels, it turns out that his novels seem like long versions of his essays. with the main characters seemingly based on himself and his adventures in new york and new jersey. the extra man starts with his character ,louis ives, moving from new jersey to new york city and sharing an apartment with an eccentric and mysterious older man, henry harrison. as he learns more about the man’s he gains a unique admiration for him and does everything he can to earn henry’s respect. henry, in his own way, teaches louis how to survive in new york’s society life while not spending a penny. all the while louis is trying to keep his own personal life a secret. the extra man was funny and strangely insightful.

when ever i try to describe jonathan ames writing all i can ever say is that he reminds me of charles bukowski , and thanks to wikipedia i know i’m not the only one. the only problem with that comparison is that most people i know don’t really like bukowski, people often find him abrasive and misogynistic. ames is nothing like that, it’s just they both seem to skirt a line of perversion and grit. i would also say he belongs in the same group as the mcsweeney’s crowd of hipster writers that recall, and are possibly trying to reinvent, the beat generation. i am a big fan of jonathan ames and look forward to his future writing, which include a graphic novel, the alcoholic, and a new book of essays in 2009.

yay! animal crossing if finally coming to wii on november 16th. this means that morgan and i will probably be unreachable till sometime after the new year.

there is something amazingly addictive about this game. there is no way to properly describe the joy of setting up your little house, running errands for the townfolks, chopping down trees, visiting nook’s store, and designing fabrics for my outfits. i should also mention the calming effects of the gentle looped guiter strummed soundtrack.

i am kind of at a loss for words to describe last wednesday’s show by matmos and wobbly at the aladdin theater. big thanks go to jamie for being my last minute companion replacement. thankfully she enjoyed the show, as a lot of you know it can be a huge risk to go to a show with me when you have no idea what it is.

wobbly opened the show, i was pretty excited to see him. his wild why album is a masterpiece of plunderphonics, so i was hoping for some crazy sample manipulations. like most experimental electronic musicians you never get what you expect. wobbly walked out and sat behind his mixing boards, samplers, drum machine and keyboard and produced a glitch filled piece full of broken beats that were constantly teetering on the edge of being danceable. two brave souls did dance in the large open space in front of the stage, i think one of them must have been a dance student becuase he could really move to wobbly’s disjointed sounds.

shortly after wobbly left the lights dimmed leaving only a bright flashing blue light. a theremin like sound seemed to be coming from somewhere. i heard some rustling in the crowd and noticed that m.c. schmidt and drew daniel, the adorable couple that make up matmos, were coming down the aisles with flashlights and laser pointers. they were shining the flashlights and pointers all over the crowd and the stage, after some study i realized that the flashing blue light was some kind of sensor and they were manipulated the sounds by hitting the blue light with varying degrees of lights. i knew we were in for something interesting.

when they made it to the stage they were joined by the honorary third matmos member (and a talented electronic manipulator in his own right) j lesser. together they performed matmos’s unique brand of electronic noise.  they played for a little over and hour with only two songs coming from their latest album, supreme balloon, including a slightly edited version of the 20+ minute title track. the highlight for me (and jamie) was a song off of the west, for which m.c.  and j lesser donned guitars and did some live sampling. also the version of “semen song for james bidgood”, off of the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast, was amazing, they tweaked it just enough.

m.c. schmidt also handled all the video manipulations, i should say that they weren’t handled live, he made it no secret that he was popping in a different dvd for each piece. he approaches his videos with the same sampling and collage work that is used in the music. an interest he explores further with his (far noisier and abrasive) phase chancellor side project.

after their set was over they came back on stage for an encore this time accompanied by wobbly. this made me happy because their live album wide open spaces, made with wobbly, is one of my favorites. this improv was far too short though, i feel like they were just getting into it when suddenly it was all over.

i have only seen matmos once before and that was in seattle at the detestable venue the triple door. that was more of a pop structured show. this time it was more out there, seemingly trying to eschew traditional song structure. this was an amazingly satisfying show, reminding me why i like electronic music.

throw away your cameras, radiohead has shown us the future of image capturing with their video for “house of cards”.

this atease explains.

The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead and several partygoers.

The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots. Geometric processed their own data while 510 Systems processed the Velodyne Lidar data. The data was then manipulated by Union Editorial and the Syndicate to create the final result.

thom’s thoughts on the process.

“I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points–and how strangely emotional it ended up being.”

i must admit that “house of cards” is not my favorite radiohead song, but that still means that it is better than ninety percent of what’s on my ipod.

here is a making of video, if your into that kind of thing.

a video that matches the brutal beauty of xiu xiu, it’s for the song “master of the bump”.

i would like to draw attention this miss manners column from last week.

Some limits needed on topic of dieting

Judith Martin | Miss Manners

July 2, 2008

Dear Miss Manners: Dieting in public is a serious etiquette problem in a society that has made saints of women who wear a size 2. It is rude and offensive for a person to attend a joyous food-related outing and spoil the trip by ordering “a small salad.”

Public dieting casts a pall of misery over any such occasion. The argument that the outing is about the fellowship is only partially true—the fellowship is enjoying a good meal together. The occasion is about the food.

Holiday dinners and meals out with friends are a time, if not to eat heartily, to at least eat well—even if one chooses grilled instead of fried chicken or replaces the dressing with vegetables at Thanksgiving.

If one must diet in public, it should be done with absolute discretion and must involve a variety of tasty foods chosen from what has been provided. If the dieter wants a diet soda, she should ask for it quietly, as though requesting something with which to take medication and have it poured into a glass to ensure that the nature of the drink is not obvious.

If a person is on a super-restricted diet that requires she eat abnormally, she needs to stay home, instead of making everyone miserable.

Perhaps she can join the group later for a concert or movie if she is not too weak to stay out past 8 p.m.

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners suggests that you try harder not to notice what other people are eating. A lot harder.

Monitoring what other people eat is a good way to ruin a holiday or gathering of friends, whether it is dieters voicing disapproval of hearty eaters or the more rare reaction that you have.

After you stated your desire to ostracize everyone with medical food restrictions, Miss Manners banned you from any discussion about what constitutes fellowship.

i especially like the part where she wants dieters to use “absolute discretion” when asking for a diet soda.

i have been fairly sick for the last few days, that combined with the hot weather i have been very unmotivated. my illness started last friday when i noticed a soar throat. saturday morning i woke up full on sick, unfortunately we had a weekend of activities planned, i decided that i was going to ignore my illness and hoped that it would go away. usually i am very good at not doing anything on my weekends, this weekend was the exception. saturday brought with it 100 degree weather, perfect weather for a birthday picnic in washington park for my workmate jamie. despite being ill, we had a great time relaxing in the shade eating cucumber sandwiches. after the picnic morgan and i went home and i sat on the couch and stewed in my illness and watched shut up and sing, the surprisingly interesting documentary about the dixie chicks and how they dealt with all the hype after saying that they were ashamed that bush was from texas.

the roses of washington park

on sunday we had plans to go to the north american organic brewers festival. emboldened with cold medicine i ventured on. we got together with some of morgan’s school chums and took the max to overlook park. thankfully it was much cooler today, it was even kind of cloudy and there was a chance of rain. i made it a point to try all sorts of i.p.a.s and ales, for the most part all of the beers were very good. the best one being the hair of the dog’s blue dot double i.p.a., brewed right here in portland.

after the brewers fest i met up with dana for our evening at the theater, we had tickets for avenue q. by the time we made it to the theater my cold medicine was long gone. the show was enjoyable, from what i could enjoy anyway. i kept having to blow my nose, and my ears were plugged up so i could just barely hear it. what i took away from avenue q is that it is a great collection of songs. i think that the songs may have been a bit too cartoony and simple, also they seemed to be more about the shock value than story development. never once did i actually care about the plot, which i think involved a male human puppet falling for a female monster puppet and want to help her open a monster school. i thought the concept of the monsters living along side the human was good, they should of fleshed that out more. tensions around that were hinted at but not ever explored. also i couldn’t help wondering why they went for such a similar look to sesame street. i had a good time, it just failed to connect with me.

it is now wednesday i am feeling much better, not 100% but at least 75%. i still have a froggy voice, when i have my voice. summer colds are the worst, and i will be glad when this is one is gone. it better. morgan and i are going up to seattle for the holiday weekend, and i will be working at the dish. i don’t see a day off till next weekend, it would really suck if it carries over till then.

finally one of the best television shows from my childhood is out on dvd, square pegs. it’s strange to think that i have the sex and the city movie to thank for it. square pegs was sarah jessica parker’s first big hollywood role, so they timed the release of the dvd with the s.a.t.c. movie.

i have memories of watching square pegs on my little tv that i had in my bedroom. although it was never mentioned i always suspected the show took place somewhere in connecticut, ct was a popular location for eighties televison. i used to walk around quoting it, it introduced me to “gag me with a spoon”, “gross me out the door”, and “totally different head, totally”. musically this show was an influence also, with guest spots done by the waitresses and devo, i was entranced by the punkier side of new wave.

over the years i would periodically meet people who remembered square pegs, but for the most part no else seemed to had seen it. almost ten years ago nick at nite ran a marathon of a bunch of the episodes and i managed to tape them. i watched that video so much that i almost wore it through, not to mention i would also lend it out, recruiting others to the cult. finally after years of waiting the complete series is mine.

thanks to morgan i got fantastic seats for antony’s show with the portland symphony.
september 5th needs to hurry up and happen now.