bookmarks

Bookmarks for Jan-Feb 2010 [Google Reader}

Bookmarks from Jan-Feb 2010 [Google Reader]
(just catching up, after moving my bookmarks from delicious to google reader)

Life, liberty and the pursuit of sanity – every thing you read in the mainstream media is true” “they call you sheeple” lol
DJ TechTools – “Little did G.C. Coleman know that his 5-second drum solo was going to spawn and influence multiple genres of music over the following forty years. In this first edition of DJ History, we are going to roll back the clock, open up DJ class and explore the mysteries of the Amen break, which has became a pivotal part of the dance music landscape. G.C. Coleman was the drummer for funk and soul outfit The Winstons’. In 1969 they released the single “Color Him Father,” which won the band a Grammy and broad critical acclaim. However, It was the B-side to the hit named “Amen, Brother” that would lead to the future evolution of dance music for decades to come. “Amen, Brother” was a quickly recorded B-side for The Winstons’ debut single.”
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Could It Be That the Best Chance to Save a Young Family From Foreclosure is a 28-Year-Old Pakistani American Playright-slash-Attorney who Learned Bankruptcy Law on the Internet? – “Could It Be That the Best Chance to Save a Young Family From Foreclosure is a 28-Year-Old Pakistani American Playright-slash-Attorney who Learned Bankruptcy Law on the Internet? Wells Fargo, You Never Knew What Hit You.”
What is Google Wave? | Business Center | Macworld – “Google describes Wave as “what e-mail would look like if it were invented today,” in the world of instant messaging, wikis, and online forums. But while the initial idea may have been to reinvent e-mail, in practice Wave is more akin to Google Docs than it is to Gmail. For example, how many times have you tried to develop a document through e-mail, with all those criss-crossing message threads clogging your inbox? Wave seeks to do away with that, by providing a single, hosted copy of a conversation that everyone can edit and discuss.”
BLOG.REPORTERWARSTORIES.COM: 1973: The Yom Kippur War; On The Benghazi Express; Meeting Idi Amin; Getting Strafed; Lunch with the Highjackers -”one of my favorite blogs. a lot of great behind the scenes shop top of “the story behind the story”
Expiration dates mean very little. – By Nadia Arumugam – Slate Magazine -”There’s a filet mignon in my fridge that expired four days ago, but it seems OK to me. I take a hesitant whiff and detect no putrid odor of rotting flesh, no oozing, fetid cow juice—just the full-bodied aroma of well-aged meat. A feast for one; I retrieve”
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace – “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
National Geographic Magazine – NGM.com – “Yet Dharavi remains unique among slums. A neighborhood smack in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull of a subcontinental Harlem—a square-mile (three square kilometers) center of all things, geographically, psychologically, spiritually. Its location has also made it hot real estate in Mumbai, a city that epitomizes India’s hopes of becoming an economic rival to China. Indeed, on a planet where half of humanity will soon live in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only on the future of India’s burgeoning cities, but on urban space everywhere.”
LA Eastside » The Mariachi-Oke Experiment con Trio Ellas – “Mariachi Plaza has been home to many troubadours, seeking to serenade the ears of passersby with their songs for sale. Across the way, this tradition has held true in the local neighborhood bar, Eastside Luv, a familiar and favorite spot of mine and many, away from the “Los Angeles” of late but with an added interactive twist to los Canciones de su Padre. For several months now, the barra monument to many things Mexican and Mexican American culture has been hosting “Mariachi-Oke!” Yes, it is what it sounds like, and it is the first and third Sunday of every month. Patrons step on to the stage and attempt to belt out the ballads of Beltran, Negrete, Gabriel, and Fernandez without fear and hopefully, without forgetting the lyrics. There are no bouncing balls highlighting the sing along words; it’s a sink or swim policy that ESL holds, which has filtered out the amateurs, but not always the hard of hearing.”
The Find: Magic Wok in Artesia – latimes.com – “Magic Wok is a porcine palace, a restaurant where the pillars of Filipino cooking are fortified by all things pork. Kids chomp on shards of pig skin as crisp as potato chips, grandparents leisurely ladle hunks of pork from sour tamarind soups — the homey restaurant went whole hog long before quivering cubes of pork belly cropped up on happy-hour menus and bacon became an almost de rigueur dessert.”

My Roger Ebert Story – Roger Ebert – Deadspin -Sir, Mr. Ebert, this is Will Leitch, an editor at the Daily Illini. I’ve had a bit to drikn and am going to just ask. There is an old story that you had sex on the EIC desk. Is that true? Everybody wants to knwo. Sorry for this.Best, Will”
The Find: The Slaw Dogs in Pasadena – latimes.com – “The Slaw Dogs is reimagining the humble hot dog with offerings such as a chicken Caesar salad dog, a Thai slaw dog and a Oaxacan dog.”
Los Angeles – “On a recent afternoon in the Eastside neighborhood of Lincoln Heights, Fay Green stands in the hallway of her apartment complex, which sits just feet above the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the I-5 freeway. A soft-spoken black woman, she lives with her five kids and one grandson in an urban planner’s idea of perfection: the dense, “Avenue 26″ master-planned community, touted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the city’s Department of Housing as an environmentally smart “transit-oriented development” in the city’s core, efficiently served by light rail. From the outside, the stylish-looking village of 156 condos, called Puerta del Sol, and 378 other apartments squeezed between Avenue 26 and the thundering I-5 gives off a Crate & Barrel vibe. But Green’s four-bedroom unit, in the building dubbed Tesoro del Valle Family Apartments, is regularly dirtied by a heavy film of what she calls “dust.” She explains, “I clean the place up, and in two or three days, I have to wipe again.”
Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back is a most curious creation | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com -”The new Peter Gabriel album—and what a rare phrase that has become!—is a most curious creation. An eclectic collection of covers from a fellow known for his original songwriting, it reimagines radio hits as modern-art music, full of shimmering orchestral effects and ethereal mood swings.”
The Mozart effect: Studies of music’s effect on children – latimes.com -”Even the author of the 1993 study that set off the commercial frenzy says her group’s findings — from an experiment that had college students, not babies, listen to Mozart — were “grossly misapplied and over-exaggerated.” Psychologist Frances Rauscher, along with the rest of the field studying music’s effects on the brain, has long since moved on to explore the effect of active musical instruction on cognitive performance.”
Well, This Employment Graph Is Just Terrifying – “This graph shows employment declines at the same chronological point during America’s last six recessions. Guess which one represents the current recession. Go ahead, guess. [New York Times] (Thanks, Dan!)”
Los Angeles subway shots and Hollweird, CA – “i walk these all the time and have never seen them this way. great eye”
The New Commandments | Culture | Vanity Fair – “Thus we are fully entitled to consider them as a work in progress. May there not be some old commandments that could be retired, as well as some new ones that might be adopted? Taking the most celebrated Top 10 in order, we find (I am using the King James, or “Authorized,” version of the text):”
is there a trail? [Flickr] – “my flickr feed is randomly posting photo’s from this summer”

Share on Facebook

Mar 07, 2010 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: cognitive performance, consumerism, food, google, hot dogs, interwebs, mariachi, mozart effect, music, peter gabriel, recession, religion, roger ebert, spectacle, tech, urban planning | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for March 2nd through March 6th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from March 2nd through March 6th:[del.icio.us]

A march on March 4th – [del.icio.us] one CSULA student’s point of view of the march 4th marches (via: LA Eastside)
Improving Education Through Better Teachers – [del.icio.us]
Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love – [del.icio.us]
El TakiTaco – Highland Park – [del.icio.us]
Like a car accident – [del.icio.us]
CSUN Protest – [del.icio.us]
Chimerica – [del.icio.us]
Advice: Do NOT Get A Circumcision On Craigslist – [del.icio.us]
Faces of Science #21 – [del.icio.us]
Michael Hiltzik: More on the Lap-Band guys – [del.icio.us]
10 Important Questions About Renee Fleming’s New Indie Album <b>…</b> – [del.icio.us]
Will Monkey Wrench Collective leave Fullerton? – [del.icio.us]
CSUF Humanities Building Reclaimed « STRIKE/ORGANIZE/MARCH 4TH – [del.icio.us] “And this is precisely why we are reclaiming the Humanities building: because we do not trust an administration that seeks to marginalize alternative narratives to the University of Phoenix business model (p. 10); because we cannot acquiesce to a university administration that called the 2007 CSUF on-campus noose-hangings merely an “offensive act” and not a hate crime; because we refuse to allow the absence of any disruption to a university system that seeks to expel Muslim students at UC Irvine for protesting a pro-Zionist speaker while a woman who hangs a noose at UC San Diego faces mere suspension; because it is absolutely impossible to offer our complicity towards the systematic downsizing of staff and adjunct faculty; and, finally, because we offer our solidarity to the Tongva Indians who, for 18 years, have been fighting developers to preserve the Puvunga, a burial ground on the western edge of campus of CSU Long Beach.”
Toyota flower patch on 110 culture-jammed – [del.icio.us]
Oppens and Rzewski to play at 9th annual New Music Festival in Fullerton – [del.icio.us]
Topeka renames itself ‘Google, Kan.’ to campaign for fiber-optic network – [del.icio.us]
Musician and Critic? « Jim Perkins [del.icio.us] – [del.icio.us] “My last post about tagging mediocre music as tepid has courted me a little criticism from friends who claim that if you go around being negative about other music & musicians you will just end up alienating people and getting your own music slagged off, essentially you can’t be a critic and a musician…”
Ok rant over…”
Adam Lisagor Responds to The iPhone App Review’s Shakedown Attempt – [del.icio.us]

Share on Facebook

Mar 06, 2010 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: ad-blocking, chimerica, circumcision, education, google, jim perkins, march 4th, rzewski, taco trucks, topeka | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for January 12th through January 19th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from January 12th through January 17th:[del.icio.us]

Brian Eno: “Recorded Music Equals Whale Blubber” – hypebot -
“I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time…” “It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber.” “Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.” – Brian Eno in The Guardian
THE KNIFE -
“Commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to write the music for their opera based on Charles Darwin and his book ‘On the Origin of the Species’, The Knife decided to make this a collaborative process, working with artists Mt. Sims and Planningtorock for the first time, to capture the huge width of the Darwin and evolution theme. They extensively researched Darwin related literature and articles, with Olof attending a field recording workshop in the Amazon to find inspiration and to record sounds. ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ is a unique musical project. Richard Dawkins’s gene trees have formed the basis of some of the musical composition, artificial sounds have been mixed with field recordings, with the music inspired by everything from the different stages of a bird learning its melody, to a song based on Darwin’s loving letters about his daughter Anne. These are compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music.”
Thoughts on the Naughts:San Francisco Classical Voice -
“Along with this development comes the emergence of “alt-classical” (alternative classical, an abbreviation with all the cachet of a computer key): This world of music existed for decades, but in the naughts (the decade of 2000–2009) it became newly visible thanks to decentralization and the lack of a dominant “mainstream” style in classical music. Imperfectly named, as is always the case with descriptive terms for large artistic phenomena, alt-classical represents the merging of genres of music, as well as the undermining of distinctions between “high” and “low,” classical and popular, along with an infusion of music formerly on the margins.”
Los Angeles News – 2009: ODE TO THE MUSIC MAN -
“While most of this story’s respondents are Flaherty supporters, Paul Bailey, an adjunct professor of music education and theory at Cal State Fullerton (and one-time band director at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz), has this to say: “Talk about the forest for the trees: Teaching a drum line does not make a music program. I can easily see why an administration would reassign a music teacher (no matter how successful and well meaning) if they were unable and/or unwilling to field a marching band. Like it or not, the marching band is the most efficient way to get a large number of kids to participate in music. It’s unfortunate, but at the end of the day a music program should give musicians a variety of experiences and not focus on the specialized competitive agenda of one teacher.”
Facebook | Sahar Saedi: what do you think about the musicianship classes? -
“I have had some really great professors both in csu fullerton and in el camino college and I feel that both of these schools which I have attended, have some very strong aspects to their music programs. However, I have one complain about the musicianship classes of both of these schools and I want to share it with you and ask for your insight. Unfortunately, in el camino college we had a very poor sightsinging class. There was absolutely no direction given to us as to how to learn to sightsing. We were given a few melodies that we would get tested on on our exam which by the time of the exam would basically be memorized, thus would not be sightsinging.”
Tom Swafford: Violinist, Composer, Arranger! -
“My goal is to create clear music that communicates directly and genuinely. I don’t like slick music that has been edited and perfected artificially. I like all the subtle nuances, scratches, ‘mistakes’ that happen naturally and I think that this is a big part of what makes music expressive. “

Share on Facebook

Jan 23, 2010 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: alt-classical, alt-classical.com, brian eno, competition, composer, csuf, darwin, eartraining, field recordings, indie, marchingband, marketing, mp3, music, musiceducation, musicianship, opera, sightsinging, social, thesixtyone, web2.0, website | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for January 5th through January 11th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from January 5th through January 11th:[del.icio.us]

Till we meet again, in some screening room in the dark. (15) – By Roger Ebert Slate Magazine -
“To be fair, James Cameron undoubtedly knows this about genetics. We already know how the female Na’vi evolved breasts. They evolved them on Cameron’s drawing board, because you can’t have a love affair between two Na’vi who are both breastless and therefore apparently male. The bloggers from the tinfoil-hat brigade would really go bonkers then. Roger”
L.A. charter schools flex their educational muscles – latimes.com -
“Bauer, the Granada Hills principal who wanted the district “leveled,” said he actually sees that happening — but from inside, and by the district’s own choice. “I think the current centralized L.A. Unified structure is being leveled by the superintendent and board,” he said. “I think the climate has changed a lot,” said Jennifer Epps, principal of , a high-performing elementary school in Historic South-Central. “I think that just overall, they’ve been realizing that what they’re doing isn’t necessarily right for every school . . . and they’re saying, ‘We don’t have the resources to change these schools fast enough. . . . We need other solutions.’ “
Quotes on music -
“To those composers who use MIDI and drum machines: Keep using them! Realizing your scores via MIDI is not inherently better or worse than hearing them in your head. If you haven’t already, you will eventually figure out how to make your MIDI devices do things no one ever thought they would do! And then you might learn how to hear those kinds of things in your head, something that [the conductor] Dennis Russell Davies will never be able to do.” — Corey Dargel
The Founders Of Computer / Electronic Music | soundseller BLOG -
“Six world-renowned pioneers of computer and electronic music gather at Tulane University to discuss the future of the form – both as they saw it in 1967 and as they see it today…”
Dave Winer: “I’m a mystic about What It All Means.” -
“…Dave Winer’s writings make you “think.” What does this really mean? The best response comes from Winer himself in a remarkable note about Julia Child, whom he views as a “natural-born blogger,” even though she wrote before the blogging era: [snip]. A blogger is someone who takes matters into his or her own hands. Someone who sees a problem that no one is trying to solve, one that desperately needs solving, that begs to be solved, and because the tools are so inexpensive that they no longer present a barrier, they are available to the heroic individual. As far as I can tell, Julia Child was just such a person. Blogging software didn’t exist when she was pioneering, but it seems that if it did she would have used it.” In the same piece, he also mentions that “The story of the nobility of blogging largely remains, imho, untold,”
Hello… I Must Be Going-allaboutjazz.com -
“You are all the victims of Big Lies, conceived by Big Liars and spread by small-time hustlers, self-seeking weasels, Kulchur pimps and self-loathing whores – with a little too much help from some truly dedicated and optimistic individuals who are simply unable to see the forest for the trees. Combine this with those most willing victims – the musicians, who insist upon remaining slaves, shackled by their comfortable ignorance, short-sightedness and willingness to plant their silent lips upon the glutes of anybody who can offer them the luxury of allowing them to work for chump change – and you have got the ideal formula for destruction.”
20 years goes by so quickly – NetNewMusic -
“As in Dan Stearns recent Trolley video, this video is music from twenty years ago from a group I was in called the Glue Factory Orchestra in one of our first, if not our first show. The auspicious title of “no name” goes with this tune. As you can tell, the video and audio aren’t the best, but the club Beneath Broadway was a great place to play and to see music and theatre and this reminds me of those days. GFO was: Tony Atherton (alto sax), Diane Barkauskas (keyboard, accordion), Dave Black (amplified string bass), Joe Bouchard (Guitar), Jeff Fairbanks (drums, marimba), Martin Tardif (electric bass), and Jerry Wheeler (trombone). Tune by Jeff Fairbanks”

Share on Facebook

Jan 11, 2010 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: alt-classical, avatar, blogging, charterschools, computermusic, coreydargel, criticism, davewiner, education, electornicmusic, filmclub, gluefactory, interview, jazz, jefffairbanks, juliachild, lausd, losangeles, midi, music, quotes, rogerebert, slate, technology, video | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for December 27th through December 31st [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from December 27th through December 31st:[del.icio.us]

Doctorow, How to Destroy the Book | Electronic Frontier Foundation -
“When I buy an audiobook on CD, it’s mine. The license agreement, such as it is, is “don’t violate copyright law,” and I can rip that CD to mp3, I can load it to my iPod or any number of devises—it’s mine; I can give it away, I can sell it; it’s mine. But when you buy an audiobook through Audible, which now controls 90 per cent of the [downloadable] audiobook market, you get a license agreement, not a property interest. The things that you can do with it are limited by DRM; the players you can play it on are limited by the license agreements with Audible. Audible doesn’t do this because the publishers ask them to. Audible and iTunes, because Audible is the sole supplier to iTunes, do this because it’s in their own interest….”
how to make a living playing music | Ol’ Danny Barnes -
“i hear so much complaining about this subject, i just wanted to lay my practical experience on you. free. first, three pre-conditions: 1. if you are a very materialistic person, skip this article, i don’t think you are going to like what it says. 2. if you don’t have the music where you want it art-wise, you might want to go work on that, this article isn’t going to help you much either. you will be better off by practicing and studying and working on your music instead. you will need to get the art pretty close to where you want it, before you should worry about making much of a living out of it. 3. determine if you are actually called to be a musician. if you aren’t called, all the gyrations in the world, won’t make it work. if you are called, no matter what you do, it’s going to work. this determination will solve most of the problems you are going to encounter. “
Mixed Meters: Could Terry Riley’s In C Be Accepted As Classical Music -
“I fantasize that someday In C will be programmed on regular orchestra concerts. Yes, getting this piece into the standard repertory is a long ways off. If it happened, In C would change from a “minimalist classic” into an actual piece of classical music. That would provide strong evidence that classical music has some life left in it.” A chamber orchestra would be just the right size. Before the intermission the program could be, maybe, a Rossini overture and a Mozart concerto. And the second half would be a 35-minute performance of In C employing all the performers from the first half. Great concert! Of course, during In C the conductor should sit in the ensemble and play an instrument, provided he or she is capable. Otherwise tell the conductor to sit in the audience.
Militant Locationist Rant « 90042 -
“Recently in our humble corner of Los Angeles, a brewery opened. Which is great news to anyone, (especially myself) who enjoys what Benjamin Franklin said was, “proof that God loves us.” Microbrewing is something I have supported for a long, long, and expensive time. Having a new microbrewery nearby is a wonderful thing. The only problem is the name. And what is in a name? To quote Shakespeare, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Maybe so, but out of the millions of names to engrave on your mast, the brewers of this new brewery have chosen to name their venture after a location here in Northeast Los Angeles. It’s good to represent, right? The name of this new establishment is Eagle Rock Brewery. Great, Eagle Rock is a fine place; home to many of my favorite festivals, restaurants, stores, and newspapers. The only problem is the brewery is not located in Eagle Rock 90041, but in Glassell Park 90065.”
Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Gleevec -
“I’m still reading the responses to my “Leukemia” missive. I appreciate the good will. But I’m reading slowly not only because the missives are all personal, directed specifically to me, but because I’m learning so much. I heard from Steven Page, formerly of the Barenaked Ladies. Did I know that Kevin Hearn from BNL had leukemia? Steven copied him on the e-mail. Turns out Kevin had CML too. Before Gleevec. He had a bone marrow transplant, and it worked.But it’s not. [snip] Because some guy who wasn’t in it for the money, who was willing to sacrifice everything for his passion, put together the pieces to come up with a breakthrough drug that allows me to live.”
UbuWeb Sound – Marshall McLuhan -
“Marshall McLuhan appeared on the Dick Cavett Show in December of 1970 along with Truman Capote and Chicago Bears running back, Gayle Sayers. Both Capote and Sayers participated in the discussion with McLuhan. This recording was made on reel-to-reel audio tape in 1970 and directly transferred to computer in 2005. Unfortunately, the exact date of the show was not noted, except that the show did take place before Christmas. All commercials and breaks were removed from McLuhan’s appearance.”
The annotated world « BuzzMachine -
“Tweet: A view of our annotated world: Hyperlocal is what’s around me and how I search that There are eight million stories in the naked city and soon every one of them will be available on your phone through visual, aural, and geographic search and augmented reality in our newly annotated world. Every address, every building, every business has a story to tell. Visualize your world that way: Look at a restaurant and think about all the data that already swirls around it — its menu, its reviews and ratings and tags (descriptive words), its recipes, its ingredients, its suppliers (and how far away they are, if you care about that sort of thing), its reservation openings, who has been there (according to social applications), who do we know who has been there, its health-department reports, its credit-card data (in aggregate, of course), pictures of its interior, pictures of its food, its wine list, the history of the location, its decibel rating, its news… “

Share on Facebook

Jan 03, 2010 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: annotation, art, artmusic, boblefsetz, books, business, cancer, canon, copyright, culture, development, drm, innovation, interview, journalism, mcluhan, media, mp3, newspapers, orsonwells, publishing, rss, science, socialnetworking, technology, twitter, web2.0, wired | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for December 19th to 27th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from December 19th to December 27th

Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Drowning, Not Eating – page 1 – “Tortas cubanas are almost as common as burritos in Los Angeles. Mexico City–style pambazos rule the world of street food. The muscular cemita Poblano commands a fleet of trucks extending as far as the Westside. But the king of Mexican sandwiches is the mighty torta ahogada — drowned sandwich — a mass of bread and sauce and meat that is less a foodstuff than a way of life. You do not nibble at a torta ahogada; you dive straight into it, trusting that you will come out alive. I had always thought that roasted goat was the emblematic dish of Guadalajara, but tortas ahogadas joints there outnumber birria parlors at least 20:1…”
Four New Images by Street Artist Banksy… “Four new images by the elusive street artist Banksy have surfaced over the weekend, with one seemingly attacking global warming sceptics. Banksy graffiti. Photo: Londonist.com The pieces follow the Copenhagen summit. Photo: londonist.com The latest designs were discovered by londonist.com along the banks of Regent’s Canal. It found the first beneath Camden Street Bridge – “almost in the back yard of the British Transport Police building”. The second and third pieces were etched under and next to the Oval Road Bridge in the direction of Primrose Hill. The most provocative simply has the words: “I don’t believe in global warming”, with the writing gradually disappearing into a canal.”
“Alt-Classical”: Is This the Future? “Hot on the heels of James MacMillan’s red-hot piece in these pages calling Emperor’s New Clothes on Pierre Boulez, plus Dilettante Music’s digital composer-in-residence contest, and Norman Lebrecht’s poll of the living composers creating the most durable work (John Adams is no.1, then Part, then Reich), here’s more contemporary food for thought. Greg Sandow of Artsjournal’s blog about the future of classical music has run a post about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s two new composers-in-residence. They are Mason Bates and Anna Clyne. Not likely to be familiar names if your view of new music is simply what the BBC Symphony Orchestra…”
Richard Lainhart: Puremagnetik interview dec 2009“The Ondes Martenot is a very expressive electronic instrument – Maurice Martenot, who invented it, was a cellist, and wanted an electronic instrument that could be played with the same degree of expression as a string instrument. Oraison is a piece I’ve always loved – I first heard it years ago as a student – and when I got the Buchla/Continuum system, I realized that the Continuum would let me play the piece myself, as it’s a superbly expressive controller, with the advantage that it’s polyphonic, unlike the original Ondes. So I spent some time transcribing the piece from the original score, then spent a lot more time practicing it. The Buchla let me program a sound that was similar to the Ondes, but with even more expression in the timbre control, and that’s what I used for my version. So, my own realization is a kind of analog-digital homage to the original – analog in the sound-producing domain, but digital in the control domain.”
The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real – Anil Dash “Pushbutton is a name for what I believe will be an upgrade for the web, where any site or application can deliver realtime messages to a web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost and without relying on any single company like Twitter or Facebook. The pieces of this platform have just come together to enable a whole set of new features and applications that would have been nearly impossible for an average web developer to build in the past”
Orson Welles and His Brief Passionate Betacam Love Affair – Orson Welles – Gizmodo“In January 1985, the phone rang. The caller announced that he was Orson Welles and that he wanted to have lunch with me. Thus began one of the most extraordinary and bittersweet adventures of my life.” Sometimes the journeys we take through this life begin and end in the most unexpected ways. My encounter with Welles in the last days of his life centered on a common interest: Sony’s new one-piece camcorder, the Betacam. It had just come to market and Welles, always the genius filmmaker, had big ideas for what he could do with one. With Welles there were no limits. “You can’t do that” wasn’t in his vocabulary. This was a short, but very passionate story

Share on Facebook

Dec 27, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: alt-classical, audio, banksy, buchla, cemita, design, film, history, innovation, jgold, music, ondes martenot, orson wells, photo, rss, social networking, sound design, stret art, tech, technology, torta, twitter, video, web2.0 | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for December 11th through December 17th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from December 11th through December 17th:[del.icio.us]

‘Wire’ A Study Topic At Colleges – Baltimore Sun – [del.icio.us]
“We did not design the show purely as an entertainment, but as a political treatise and social critique,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Baltimore Sun. “To the extent that academia has found the work and is intent on extending the discussion, we are, of course, pleased.” Simon said he’s also happy that the social themes he worked into the series will be getting more attention – themes including “the fraud of the drug war, the evisceration of the working class, our inability to reform our political infrastructure, the inequality of educational opportunity and, lastly, the declining ambitions and viability of high-end journalism.”
Los Angeles News – Truck vs. Church and State: Kogi Bites Back – page 1 -
“Wow! Little did our Squid Ink food blog editor, Amy Scattergood, know what she was getting into when she asked Church and State chef Walter Manzke a simple question, “Is there anything you won’t eat?” Manzke answered thusly and in the process set off a mini commentary storm: “Anything off a truck. L.A. seems to get caught up in these trends, when one person has great success with something and then no one can come up with anything new so they just copy it. And the most ridiculous one seems to be the truck. I mean, it was maybe cool when the first person did it, and it fits the economy because it’s cheap to operate and all that, but I think it’s everything that takes away from the purpose, the enjoyment and the passion of eating.”
Scott Brown on Film Reviews Written Before Cameras Roll | Magazine
“Can we talk about how much the new Cameron Crowe movie sucks? I mean, seriously, what was going on with that freakin’ volcano? And all that nonsense about the Chinese antisatellite device? And hoo-boy, that far-fetched third-act turn — oh, hang on. You haven’t seen the movie? No worries, neither have I. Neither has anyone. It hasn’t actually been made yet — but the reviews are already in at Scriptshadow. A no-frills Hollywood blog, Scriptshadow is diabolically simple: An anonymous figure who goes by the nom de Net of Carson Reeves harvests scripts from a network of industry contacts (including hype-conscious writers and their reps). He reviews the screenplays, critiquing structure, story, and character development …”
Judge denies awarding $391,150 to teacher’s defense team | court, corbett, attorneys – News – The Orange County Register -
“Corbett, an Advanced Placement European history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, was found to have violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause when he referred to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a fall 2007 classroom lecture.” don’t you think this might have a chilling effect of “free speech”
Facebook is the new Compuserve -
“The real concern is that we share so much behind the closed doors of Compuserve-esque Web “sites” that serve as Hotel Californias for our content. Yes, I want to keep some conversations private, but as more of my ramblings move to Facebook and other closed corners of the Web, I want to broaden the conversation beyond the borders of my “friends” list. I can’t. I’m stuck. What happens on Facebook, stays on Facebook. Even content that is cross-posted elsewhere: the ensuing commentary (often of equal or greater value to the original post) is trapped. Professor Jonathan Zittrain raises a warning voice about this in his “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It”, but I can’t help but think that the convenience of Facebook will trump the social benefits of broadening conversations beyond the borders of such services.”
Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: How saving a farming village from bandits in feudal Japan is like being in a big band circa 2009 -
“Because good musicians playing in a big band are like samurai deigning to fight without hope of glory, of course. They have to really love what they do, and they have to be willing to be paid in rice if need be.”
Logic made fun A new comic romps through one of philosophy’s greatest debates -
“What “Logicomix” niftily demonstrates is how well the graphic novel form is suited to mounting sprightly explanations of abstract concepts. Thinkers often employ concrete metaphors as tools to convey difficult ideas — the “infinite hotel” of mathematician David Hilbert, for example, an establishment that, although full, always has room for another guest. In “Logicomix,” Hilbert’s paradox is further visualized by a character checking into an actual hotel and drawing arrows on the posted floor plan. That character is the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the scene is played for laughs with Russell’s bemused new bride shaking her head and a German porter exclaiming “They are crazy, these Britons!”
In search of Eva Tanguay, the first rock star. – By Jody Rosen – Slate Magazine -
“To call Tanguay a “rock star” is anachronistic but appropriate. She was not just the pre-eminent song-and-dance woman of the vaudeville era. (One of her many nicknames was “The Girl Who Made Vaudeville Famous.”) She was the first American popular musician to achieve mass-media celebrity, with a cadre of publicists trumpeting her on- and offstage successes and outrages, and an oeuvre best summed up by the slogan that appeared frequently on theatrical marquees: “Eva Tanguay, performing songs about herself.” She was the first singer to mount nationwide solo headlining tours, drawing record-breaking crowds and shattering box-office tallies from Broadway to Butte. Newspaper accounts describe scenes of fan frenzy that foreshadowed Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theatre and Beatlemania. At the height of her stardom, Tanguay commanded an unheard of salary, $3,500 per week, out-earning the likes of Al Jolson, Harry Houdini, and Enrico Caruso. “
Giving tourists a look at gang culture — latimes.com -
“A group of civic activists, united by faith and a belief that the poor economy in the interior of Los Angeles is a social injustice, is preparing to offer bus tours of some of the grittiest pockets of the city, including decayed public housing, sites of deadly shootouts and streets ravaged by racial unrest. After a VIP preview last weekend, L.A. Gang Tours expects to open to the public in January, giving tourists a look at the cradle of the nation’s gang culture — the birthplace of many of the city’s gangs, including Crips and Bloods, Florencia 13 and 18th Street.”

Share on Facebook

Dec 18, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: 1stamendement, alt-classical.com, bestoftheaughts, bigband, blog/musings, celebrity, crime, culture, dedication, education, evolution, facebook, fieldrecording, graphicnovel, highhomicdeenclave, hollywood, kogi, losangeles, lostcause, newmusic, privacy, review, rockstar, salon.com, samurai, script, scriptshadow, socialcritique, streetfood, tacotruck, thewire, tinpanalley, tourism, vaudeville | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for December 5th through December 10th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from December 5th through December 10th:[del.icio.us]

Take a poll: Should I review Bocelli? – The Arts Blog : The Orange County Register -
“A classical music critic is always a little out of place at an Andrea Bocelli concert. Generally, he’s the only one who doesn’t want to be there. A Bocelli concert, for all the tenor’s merits, for all his charisma, is about as classical as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’ve written reviews of Bocelli concerts before. As recently as last June. It’s kind of a no-win situation for a critic. If you’re totally honest, which I try to be, you always end up pissing someone off — i.e. usually the people who are bothering to read your review…”
jacktrip – Project Hosting on Google Code -
“jackTrip is a Linux and Mac OS X-based system used for multi-machine network performance over the Internet. It supports any number of channels (as many as the computer/network can handle) of bidirectional, high quality, uncompressed audio signal steaming.” You can use it between any combination of Linux and Mac OS X (i.e., one end using Linux can connect to the other using Mac OS X). It is currently being developed and actively tested at CCRMA by the SoundWIRE group.
subway architecture -
“london’s underground became the first subway system in the world when it began operation in 1863. since then, underground subways have been built in almost every major city of the world. from new york and paris to hong kong and dubai, subways are an essential part of public transportation in cities. within these systems, architecture plays a big role in defining the environment of the subway. here is a collection of some of the most architecturally interesting subway stations. “
RjDj -
RjDj is a music and sound application for mobile devices with microphone and various other reality sensing sensors like accelerometer, touch pad, GPS etc. Currently the iPhone and iPod Touch are supported devices.
Cal State gets the wrong number in answering budget crisis — latimes.com
“We seem to be quickly moving toward the day when the once-great Cal State system moves to a three-day week, with academic buildings rented out to storage companies and professors teaching class in parking lots and under trees. But even so, I was taken aback to hear they might be shutting down phone service at Cal State Long Beach. I drove to the campus to see if it was true. When I got to the office of Lisa Vollendorf, who runs the Romance, German and Russian department, I noticed that she still had a phone. “I still have mine, too,” said Jeff High, associate professor of German studies, who wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to make or take calls. Vollendorf, who is on the university budget committee, said turning off the phones campuswide was recommended by committee members as a way to avoid further cuts in instruction. The thinking was that professors could use personal cellphones to conduct school business.”

Share on Facebook

Dec 11, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: advice, art, audio, bocelli, budget, composing, concert, CSULB, design, inspiration, linux, metro, nytimes, ocregister, recession, review, streaming, subway, timmangan | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for November 28th through December 3rd [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from November 28th through December 3rd:[del.icio.us]

www.wanderingear.com – [del.icio.us]
furthernoise.org issue November 2009 – [del.icio.us]
Stasisfield.com : sonic planar analysis : experimental audio and visual art – [del.icio.us]
The Narrowcast Future « Alan Furst’s Program Director Blog -
“Like it or not radio and all media are changing. There is no choice. Technology is the reason. Technology is changing the way we live, how we use our time, and what is available to us. We once thought of ourselves as ‘radio people’ or ‘TV people‘, now we are now simply in media. The web changed how we do our jobs and more importantly what those jobs are today. A person who concentrated on audio must know about written content and video. Radio news reporters now produce video pieces for their websites. The lines have blurred. Here’s the big one. Narrowcasting will replace broadcasting.”
What is on the other side of Siberia? The Jewish Autonomous Region. (1) – By Masha Gessen – Slate Magazine -
“BIROBIDZHAN, Russia—Never have I heard so many snide comments about an upcoming trip. “Don’t bother coming back,” said a co-worker, laughing nervously. Birobidzhan has a way of making people laugh. Several of my colleagues were convinced I was joking. The word itself is not inherently funny, but the idea for which it stands is bizarre enough and its history is macabre enough that it makes people giggle. It is also ridiculously far away.”
Facebook | Kronos Quartet: In C Interviews: Morton Subotnick -
“Can you give me a bit of background about the Tape Center and your relationship with Terry? Okay, well the tape center was a co-op, a very early electronic music studio that Ramon Sender and I started in 1961, I think it was. We also had a couple of performance spaces, so we did lots of performances. And we were a group of us, it was Terry, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon, myself and several other people were doing concerts together….”
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened | Vanish | Wired.com -
“In Wired issue 17.09, Evan Ratliff wrote a story about how people disappear in the digital age. Then he went on the run himself, with Wired readers trying to track him down. His story in Wired issue 17.12, Gone, tells what happened. This blog shows the history of the hunt.”
Seth’s Blog: Getting meta -
“Wikipedia contains facts about facts. It’s a collection of facts from other places. Facebook doesn’t have your friends. It has facts about your friends. Google is at its best when it gives you links to links, not the information itself. Over and over, the Internet is allowing new levels of abstraction. Information about information might be worth more than the information itself. Which posts should I read? Which elements of the project are at risk? Who is making the biggest difference to the organization? Right now, there’s way too much stuff and far too little information about that stuff. Sounds like an opportunity.” bpb (i’ts all about curation)
Helicopter Parents: The Backlash Against Overparenting — Printout — TIME -
“Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they’d taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants’ play backgrounds into interviews. “If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being” in life, Brown has argued, “play is as fundamental as any other aspect.” The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: “For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression.” Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play. “
Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Fried in East L.A.: Antojito’s Carmen and the Breed Street Band of Mexican Vendors – page 1 -
“Until recently, the center of the Eastside street-food universe was located in a small parking lot on Breed Street in Boyle Heights, a nocturnal band of vendors drawing customers from as far away as Riverside and San Diego, serving sticky, sizzling, crunchy, meaty snacks from all over Mexico; salsas hot enough to burn small, butterfly-shaped patches into the leather of your shoes; and quart-size foam cups of homemade orange drink. Over here were huaraches; over there Mexico City–style quesadillas; crunchy flautas; sugary churros; gooey tacos al vapor. The vendors never stayed open quite late enough, but Breed Street had become something of an institution, a place to take out of town visitors, a great quick dinner before a show. Sometimes there were even clowns.”

Share on Facebook

Dec 04, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: art, audio, contemporary, culture, curation, eastla, experimental, fieldrecording, google, helicoptering, history, jgold, journalism, laweekly, marketing, media, metadata, mortonsubotnick, music, narrowcast, netlabel, noise, parenting, play, recording, religion, sethgodin, slate, sound, statistics, steetvendor, terry riley | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for November 21st through November 25th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from November 21st through November 25th:[del.icio.us]

Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Fried in East L.A.: Antojito’s Carmen and the Breed Street Band of Mexican Vendors

“Until recently, the center of the Eastside street-food universe was located in a small parking lot on Breed Street in Boyle Heights, a nocturnal band of vendors drawing customers from as far away as Riverside and San Diego, serving sticky, sizzling, crunchy, meaty snacks from all over Mexico; salsas hot enough to burn small, butterfly-shaped patches into the leather of your shoes; and quart-size foam cups of homemade orange drink. Over here were huaraches; over there Mexico City–style quesadillas; crunchy flautas; sugary churros; gooey tacos al vapor. The vendors never stayed open quite late enough, but Breed Street had become something of an institution, a place to take out of town visitors, a great quick dinner before a show. Sometimes there were even clowns.”

Photo Gallery: Fried in East L.A. With Antojitos Carmen & The Breed Street Band of Mexican Vendors – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink -
“Need a visual aid for your print edition? Jonathan Gold visits the Breed Street vendors of East Los Angeles (“once you abandon yourself to the magnetic chalupa forces you will be lured across the river again and again — the CIA could learn something about mind control from antojitos masters”). Click through for Anne Fishbein’s spectacular photos and read more in Gold’s Counter Intelligence, “Fried in East L.A.”
Categorical Enervative: The Trouble With Genres | Classical Music -
People, we’re not really serious about adopting this “alt-classical” terminology, are we? I thought it was a joke, like “hobocore.” But no, it seems that there’s effort afoot to push it, un-ironically, into the classical lexicon.”"
Books of The Times – The Voice That Helped Remake Culture, From Terry Teachout – Review – NYTimes.com
“With “Pops,” his eloquent and important new biography of Armstrong, the critic and cultural historian Terry Teachout restores this jazzman to his deserved place in the pantheon of American artists, building upon Gary Giddins’s excellent 1988 study, “Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong,” and offering a stern rebuttal of James Lincoln Collier’s patronizing 1983 book, “Louis Armstrong: An American Genius.” (wish this book was on kindle and it would be my holiday reading)
Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Choza Mama (j. gold review) -
“Oh, Old Pasadena, dasher of hopes and destroyer of restaurants, a hostile, traffic-choked terrordome where only the strongest survive, where rents are breathtaking, where even the best-financed enterprises founder on the rocks. But out of the ashes of Hooters, within the very walls once saturated with testosterone and stale tap beer, comes Choza Mama, scion of the well-loved Burbank Peruvian restaurant, introducing Cusqueña and tallarines where once were Miller Lite and hot wings, and soft Latin American music where the likes of Hootie and the Blowfish once brayed”
MIDEM(Net) Blog: Bruce Houghton: Doesn’t It Feel Lately Like Everyone Is In The Music Business? -
“The line between music fan and music professional has become difficult to draw. The demise of traditional media and rise of social networks means that fans are as powerful as publicists and radio promoters once were. Digital distribution has given everyone access to the consumer that was once funneled through a few. Everyone with a web site had the potential for global reach. I’m an authority, not because Billboard prints my words, but because I do. The Bad News: Everyone is your competitor. The Good News: Innovation is everywhere. It’s time to stop worrying about the bad and start embracing the good”
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth -
“Introduction: I’ve changed careers every two or three years ever since I dropped out of university in 1990, and one of the best gigs I ever had was working as a freelance systems administrator, working in the steam tunnels of the information age, pulling cables, configuring machines, keeping the backups running, kicking the network in its soft and vulnerable places. Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the century, and if they’re not busting you for sending racy IMs, or engaging in unprofessional email conduct it’s purely out of their own goodwill. There’s a pernicious myth that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war; while that Strangelove wet-dream was undoubtedly present in the hindbrains of the generals who greenlighted the network’s R&D at companies like Rand and BBN…” (great story… make sure to read the woodie guthrie copyright quote”

Share on Facebook

Nov 28, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: classical, corydoctorow, eastla, electronic, experimental, fastertimes, fieldrecording, food, howto, improv, improvfriday, improvisation, improvised, jgold, laweekly, list, louisarmstrong, mac, matthewguerrieri, minimalism, minimalist, nytimes, opensource, original, overclocked, post-whatever, review, sciencefiction, shortstory, spokenword, street vendor, streetfood, tacotruck, terryteachout, tribal, vocal | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for November 10th through November 16th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from November 10th through November 16th:[del.icio.us]

I dreamed the press would be forgiving – Life’s a Pitch -”Due to the high price point of this box set we will only be able to send out review copies on loan on a case by case basis and will not be able to provide any contest copies. However, we can do contests using single disc bundles from the box set. Please let me know if you would like to run a contest. I have also included a widget below which includes a video describing the box set. … PS. Because there are no review copies we are allowing members of the media to purchase Outside The Box at the wholesale cost $475. Let me know if you are interested. Bold. Call. I understand the loan thing, but the “wholesale” cost? Is that almost insulting, or is it just me? I can’t imagine someone from the classical music press in 2009 paying $475 for a review copy, unless he or she was going to turn around and sell it on eBay for a profit. Which would probably make them more than their paper would pay for the review itself! “
Greg Mitchell: The Great Atomic Film Cover-Up -
“In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited. The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983 in Nuclear Times magazine (where I was editor), and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb. To see some of the footage, go to my blog. “
Michael Kaiser: Does the Symphonic Orchestra Model Work? -
“One of the Fellows participating in the Kennedy Center Arts Management Institute raised a serious question with me: can the traditional model of a symphony orchestra work in the United States? He observed that salaries are very high for musicians, conductors and guest artists, and ticket demand is not strong enough to cover most of these costs. High ticket prices are stifling that demand and contributions will continue to have to grow very rapidly to cover inflation. I cannot argue with this analysis. Somehow the cost structure for American orchestras has risen to the point that every orchestra is likely to struggle to make ends meet.”

Homicides: Nov. 1 to 9 | The Homicide Report | Los Angeles Times -
“The year-to-date number of homicides in Los Angeles County is about 645. This number does not include a few cases in which specifying the cause of death has been deferred.”

The McSweeney’s Effect « Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes -
“[I]t does this incredible thing for people like me, or people like me five years ago if that makes sense. Because a lot of publishers, for reasons of legitimacy, feel the need to include big writers. Or maybe it’s not even for legitimacy, maybe it’s just to put names on the front cover that will sell. And usually, to be honest, it’s the crummier work from those writers. They rarely, if ever, take risks on folk who they’ve never heard of. You might not have heard of them as the reader, but it’s almost always someone on the magazine who knew someone, someone’s old professor makes a call and gets the story in.”

Art review: ‘Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years’ | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times -
“But this is not just a promotional treasure-house show. Installed chronologically by chief curator Paul Schimmel, it also tells a story — although one that’s rarely heard. The postwar rise of American art is paired with the simultaneous rise of Los Angeles, from shallow backwater to cultural powerhouse. At the Grand Avenue building, which spans 1939 to 1979, the distinctive emergence of a mature L.A. art is embedded within the larger postwar prominence of the United States, artistically dominated by New York. At the Geffen — the story picks up in the year MOCA was born. Two telling works flank the Grand Avenue entry. At the left, a lovely little 1939 abstraction by Piet Mondrian signals Modernism’s shift from Europe to America as war loomed. At the right is Sam Francis’ luminous cloud of gray-white color, painted in postwar Paris in 1951 as an atmospheric evocation of urban light. Francis later moved to Santa Monica and served as a founding MOCA trustee.”
The Hundred Greatest Quotes From “The Wire” In Ten Minutes (VIDEO)
“The Wire” was arguably the best show to ever grace our televisions and now an entrepreneurial fan has strung together all the best lines from its five seasons into one ten-minute video. Omar, Bubbles, Bunk, McNulty, Rawls, Stringer, Avon, Snoop, Marlo, Cheese, Prop Joe, Clay Davis and more are immortalized for their funniest and most poignant lines. “
The Source » Twitter users weigh in on the Gold Line Eastside Extension
“Six years ago when the Gold Line to Pasadena opened there was no Twitter. Today on the first day of revenue service for the new Gold Line Eastside extension, L.A.’s first light rail since then, Twitter is a global phenomenon. Angelenos are taking advantage of the technology to share their feelings about the extension in 140 character blips. I counted over 300 tweets referencing the Gold Line during yesterdays grand opening and the tweets continue today as revenue service gets underway. Early Sunday morning, Twitter users were sharing their anticipation for the day:…”
John Cage Visualization on Vimeo -
“Kinetic typography sketch using an excerpt from Indeterminacy 136 and a section from Tossed as it is Untroubled, both by John Cage. The typefaces are Serifa and Bookman Old Style. The animation is done in AfterEffects.”
Disquiet » Keith Fullerton Whitman Live at Root Strata’s On Land Festival (AIFF) –

“Back in September, the first On Land festival brought a wide range of quiet-minded electronicists and other music-makers to San Francisco. I caught the first of the three concerts, which were conceived by the Root Strata record label, but unfortunately for me not the one featuring a solo performance by Boston-based musician Keith Fullerton Whitman. Of course, missed concert opportunities aren’t what they once were. Chances are, someone recorded what you didn’t witness — sometimes even the musicians themselves. And fortunately in this case, Whitman has just uploaded a high-quality recording of the nearly 20-minute set to his soundcloud.com/kfw space:”

Share on Facebook

Nov 21, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: atomicbomb, classicalmusic, coverup, disquiet, education, goldlineextension, hiroshima, johncage, keithfullertonwhitman, lahomicideblog, mcsweeneys, moca, music, nagasaki, orchestra, patronage, pedagogy, publicists, reviewcopy, thewire, twitter, video, web2.0, yoyoma | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for November 2nd through November 6th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from November 2nd through November 6th:[del.icio.us]

Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Streaming -
“Ownership is for pussies. Oh, don’t e-mail, you same people who said we should save the album. Notice what a few years do? Radiohead says no more albums, Rush the same thing. So, when your favorite acts give up on the long form format, don’t you too? I know you do. Because you’ve stopped sending me hate mail in quantity. If I write the album is history, I now only get a couple of e-mails complaining. Whereas I used to get hundreds! How many years until when I say streaming is the answer that I get the same miniscule response? How long until you nod your head and say I’m right? The major labels are confused. They were for streaming a decade ago, then they were for ownership, and now they’re afraid somebody’s gonna come up with a streaming solution and become the new MTV and have all the power. But maybe not all the profits, the majors are investors in Spotify.”
Your Carnitas Wonderland – Los Angeles Area Digest – CHOW
“Metro Balderas is a family operation with four locations in Los Angeles, each run by a different member of the family. exilekiss visited the Highland Park branch, run by Jasmine Guzman. Every Saturday and Sunday, Metro Balderas offers eight types of pork carnitas in the Distrito Federal style for a barrage of carnitas taco glory.”
WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » ON BEING BLUE: A Cop Talks About Cops – Part II -
2008 Witness LA interview with the new LAPD chief of police, Charlie Beck
Benjamin Smith: Improvisations -
“Benjamin Smith is an improvisor currently living in West Orange, New Jersey. Smith ventures far beyond the standard idea of jazz improvisation, into a sound world equally influenced by modern classical. All of the pieces are free improvisations invented at the time of recording, and feature Smith alone at a Yamaha P-70 digital keyboard. He say…”
Kalvos and Damian Show #557 with The Brick Elephant Festival of Firsts – ImprovFriday -
“David “Damian or is it Kalvos” Gunn traveled to Valley Falls, New York, to join M J Leach at the Brick Elephant for the “Festival of Firsts”. MJ co-hosted the K&D show for the four-hour concert that included music by Karl Korte, Dan Evans Farkas, Nicholas Chase, Alfred Brown, Al Margolis, Doug Van Nort, Petr Machadjik, Kjell Perder, Conrad Kehn, and Richard Lainhart — as well as David and MJ’s music. The show is up on the K&D site in four parts. http://kalvos.org/shows-2009.html There was a lot of interesting partial and full improv on the concert — full program is at ReSoundings.Net. “
Newspaper first to go live with public Google Wave | Media Owners | Revolution -
“Following the hype around the launch of Google Wave, German newspaper Welt Kompakt has become one of the first to launch a public Wave, helping readers interact with the title”
The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave -
The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a comprehensive user manual by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that’s notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Here you’ll learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that’s evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes. Read more about The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

Share on Facebook

Nov 11, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: benjaminsmith, carnitas, charliebeck, concert, DF, free, googlewave, highandpark, howto, improv, interview, lapd, netlabel, newrelease, newspapers, niwo, performance, podcast, reference, spotify, streaming, taco, tutorial, web2.0, web3.0 | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for October 24th through October 31st [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from October 24th through October 31st:[del.icio.us]

Brow Beat : The DORF Matrix: Towards a Theory of NPR’s Taste in Black Music -
“In the weeks since the publication of the All Songs Considered list, I have been puzzling over NPR’s musical coverage—in particular, its approach to black music. I wondered: Could NPR’s musical taste be as lily-white as the “The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)” list? After scouring NPR’s Web site and studying its broadcasts—All Things Considered profiles, Fresh Air interviews, even the music interludes played between segments on NPR’s marquee programs—I can report that the answer is no. It’s not that NPR doesn’t like black music. It merely maintains a strict preference for black music that few actual living African-Americans listen to.”
why i’m not afraid to take your money« by amanda fucking palmer -
“I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
Why did Andre Agassi hate tennis? | Sport | The Guardian -
“I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
don’t care about old composers-rogerbourland.com -
“I asked Aaron Copland what he was composing in fall 1976: “Nothing, and I am not accepting commissions; if people want to play my music, there’s plenty of it available in my catalog.” Today I went through an old journal, listing old UCLA Music faculty and their appointments and salaries. I looked at all the composers and saw their careers over a span of decades. I sighed and thought about how none of their music is heard these days. And I’m sure that this is true for every music school in America.”
Brand (Dis)Loyalty « The Quick and the Ed -
“A couple of days ago a message popped up on my Tivo informing me of a new service, “Blockbuster on Demand.” Ah, Blockbuster. That takes me back, to that period of about four years when all of the mom and pop video rental stores had been driven out of business but Netflix hadn’t yet arrived, so the only way to rent a movie was to drive to the nearest Blockbuster, spend ten minutes trying to find a place to park, discover that your first eight choices were unavailable, wait in line for fifteen minutes, and be informed by a surly, inattentive clerk that you owed the Blockbuster corporation 27 dollars in late fees and other assorted charges. snip This is what happens when organizations use their monopoly status to mistreat customers. Sooner or later the world changes, your monopoly is gone, and you pay the price… If there’s one thing that’s pretty certain, it’s that people will have more education choices in the future than they’ve had in the pas
Music review: ‘Einstein’ at the beach | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times -
So “Baby Einstein” won’t make your kids smarter after all. Last week, the Walt Disney Co. confessed that plopping kids in front of its video does not count as instant education and offered to refund gullible parents their money. But the few enlightened parents who tried “Einstein on the Beach” instead may have a wiser tale to tell. Saturday night, Jacaranda, the West Side’s new music series, concluded its first concert of the season at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica with excerpts from Philip Glass’ groundbreaking opera he conceived with director Robert Wilson in 1976. Glass offers the option of replacing the women’s voices at the end with a children’s chorus and that is what Jacaranda did. Asking youngsters to show up late at night to sing the last eight minutes of a five-hour avant-garde work is, obviously, unreasonable. Then again, little about putting on “Einstein on the Beach” has ever been practical…”

Share on Facebook

Nov 02, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: aggasi, amandapalmer, art, blog/musings, business, charterschools, choice, classical, composer, composing, culture, economics, education, einstein_on_the_beach, filmscore404, indie, jacaranda, marcswed, media, music, npr, philipglass, remix404, review, sound, sport, ted, tennis, video, winning | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for October 16th through October 22nd [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from October 16th through October 22nd:[del.icio.us]

Space, movement and Rudy Perez — latimes.com -
“The Times cited Perez as “the conscience of Los Angeles dance.” That he continues choreographing is something of a minor miracle. Not only is the arts economy dire, but Perez also has been visually impaired for the last decade. Moving slowly and burdened with hazy vision at best, Perez says the work keeps him going. The Armory engagement is particularly meaningful, because it was there, in 1992, that the Center first presented “The Dance-Crazy Kid From New Jersey Meets Hofmannsthal.” clip “The site-specific concert is dedicated to Cunningham, who died in July at age 90. It features two works with original music by longtime collaborator Steve Moshier, performed live by the composer and his Liquid Skin Ensemble.”
WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » The Arrest of Alex Sanchez – Part 5: A Game Changer?- UPDATED -
“FIRST LET’S RECAP THE BACK STORY: Alex Sanchez is the El Salvadoran-born, former MS-13 gang member who transformed his life to become a nationally respected gang intervention leader. Sanchez founded and is the executive director of Homies Unidos, and has been praised in cities across the country as someone who has helped turn around the lives of many, many young men and women. Then this past June, Alex was arrested by the FBI as part of a federal racketeering indictment and accused of plotting the murder of another gang member among other charges. It was not that the Feds accused Sanchez of shooting anyone himself, or personally dealing in drugs and guns. Worse, the indictment maintained that Sanchez is a shot caller—AKA a leader—of a particular clique of MS-13 who ordered such things done. He was, said the Feds, leading a double life and had successfully pulled the moral and psychological wool over the eyes of his myriad friends, admirers and supporters…”
Big teaching cuts this week at CSUF – College Life OC – OCRegister.com -
“Faculty at Cal State Fullerton will be on furlough Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week as part of a larger move by the California State University system to save hundreds of millions of dollars to help balance the state budget.” The furloughs will affect thousands of students and hundreds of professors and lecturers at Orange County’s largest university, and will be followed on Friday by a general furlough for management and staff workers who aren’t on the faculty.
Là ci darem la mano- A Conversation October 18, 2009 -
“Joe: seems weird to me that the entire genre of classical music is being portrayed as this sort of backwards, insecure entity it seems to me that the person who wrote it comes from the point of view of an outsider me: yeah except she doesn’t, i mean she knows classical music pretty well Joe: I’ve learned from the school that musical taste is extremely personal and if there are overall “musical trends” it’s more a result of music that either appeals to everybody by being kind of soul-less or music that captures the thinking of a particular time period to me, the 21st century is tech-obsessed, and preoccupied with nostalgia and particularly reworking the classics so these musical trends don’t surprise me at all. They’re just a product of the times…” …. Joe: it’s not new me: but 1. none of these artists are new they’ve been around Joe: though to some it may be great… … me: there’s no angle on this article that makes me care. none of the content or position is interesting”
The Random Band Game – ConceptArt.org Forums -
This is incredibly fun and addicting… 1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. 2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. 3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. 4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
LA Eastside » Target’s humorous “illegal alien” costume -
‘Dear Target, What’s up with this “Illegal Alien” costume? I don’t get why a corporation that boasts about giving back to the community (can’t say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the ¡Bienvenido Dudamel! concert a few weeks ago) and celebrates Nuestra Gente would sell such a despicable costume. (I know not all undocumented immigrants are Latino, but we do make up a plurality of the population.) Is it to make a buck? Is that enough to alienate (no pun intended) undocumented immigrants, their allies and our dollars? Couldn’t you make a buck by not selling “humorous costumes” that demean and make light of the situation faced by many undocumented immigrants and advance dehumanizing language? Is it humorous that thousands die trying to cross the US/Mexico border? Between 1998-2004 1,954 migrants died on the perilous journey north source). Since 2004, the Arizona Star Border Death Database has recorded 1,193 deaths at the border. Funny, no? ¡Chistoso!”
Artists Paid-Spotify -
“I love Spotify as much as the next music fan, but its struggle to extract value is in danger of becoming a spectacle. To consumers it’s a miracle, to the industry it’s a problem to be solved. The strategy looks right – drive a developing ad-products business as much as possible, while trying to upscale users to a pay model for a better experience. It has to be the test case and I would strongly argue, deserves all the help it can get from its music partners. We need to begin to realise though, Spotify’s potential. It has the potential to generate revenues equivalent to a large niche, while at the same time eating further into CD revenues. This is the future music market – fragmentation into a number of niches.”

Share on Facebook

Oct 23, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: crime, csuf, economy, education, furlough, gangs, hatecrime, liquidskin, losangeles, racism, rudyperez, stevemoshier, target, timelapse | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for October 12th through October 15th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from October 12th through October 15th:[del.icio.us]

Views: Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia – Inside Higher Ed -
“I propose that all academics with research specialties, no matter how arcane (and nothing is too obscure for Wikipedia), enroll as identifiable editors of Wikipedia. We then watch over a few wikipages of our choosing, adding to them when appropriate, stepping in to resolve disputes when we know something useful. We can add new articles on topics which should be covered, and argue that others should be removed or combined. This is not to displace anonymous editors, many of whom possess vast amounts of valuable information and innovative ideas, but to add our authority and hard-won knowledge to this growing universal library”
Terminal Degree: Is he kidding? -
“My previous employer just blogged about the need for a “health care solution that will enable a healthier place for all of God’s children.” Longtime readers of this blog will get the irony: While I was an adjunct there, I couldn’t get health care through my employer. Maybe that sentence should read “all God’s full-time, tenure-track children.”
Betty Draper Affair Advice: Not That You Asked | Unsolicited Advice -
“Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. I’m not going to recap your various travails here. I’ll leave that to the experts. But I can give you a few concrete pieces of advice (or plot developments, or whatever) that might exponentially increase your happiness. Ready?”
The music of Los Angeles on CitySounds.fm -
“DavidDavid Weekend fun: Citysounds 2.0 “Exactly one month ago, we introduced you to Citysounds.fm, a really cool mashup created by Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud during the London Music Hack Day. Citysounds is built on top of the SoundCloud API and makes it easy to browse through SoundCloud tracks from a specific city around the world. Today, Henrik and David inform us about a big update they just launched and let me tell you that it’s pretty exciting. They’ve added a great set of features and we think that the current look & feel is a big improvement. So what’s new? Show more tracks from one city: when selecting a city on the frontpage, you’ll be able to click through to the city overview page where it will show you more tracks from that city:”
SoundGrid @ mifki -
“SoundGrid aims to be the most advanced matrix sequencer for iPhone / iPod Touch to create stunning audio-visual performances in a moment and wherever you are. It was inspired by famous Yamaha Tenori-On and popular ToneMatrix webapp by André Michelle. Even if you never composed music you will find SoundGrid simple and exciting to play with and will start creating brilliant compositions in minutes with just the tips of your fingers. Then easily share them with other users and in turn browse, download and rate their creations. Or you can record composition to audio file, upload it directly to SoundCloud or export via email. You can even create your own unique ringtones!”
10/GUI on Vimeo -
Here it is: my crazy summer project to reinvent desktop human-computer interaction. This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers.
TuneGlue° | Relationship Explorer -
very interesting music mapping site based on band in last.fm
Essay – The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate – NYTimes.com -
“Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather”
Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » The Spotify Guys
“Spotify employs P2P software, that’s why it’s so damn good. It takes 2-5 seconds to ramp up each and every song, which has reduced bit rate during that window, but usually that’s a relatively dead window and the listener isn’t paying close attention anyway. Yes, there are tricks. Only seventy five percent of the song is downloaded, an algorithm provides the remaining twenty five percent. This is how they all do it, it’s de rigueur. And the files don’t only come from Spotify’s servers, bits and pieces come from other users with the software installed on their computers. Net effect? It feels like you own the track. Usability is equal to iTunes. You can fast forward, rewind, there’s no lag time. Well, that’s a bit different. You see then Spotify depends on the network. Which is why they’ve limited sign-ups in the nations they’ve already launched in. They want the streaming experience to be perfect on your mobile device, after all, you’re depending on it…”
Acclaimed composer Terry Riley celebrated at Bard — Page 2 — Times Union – Albany NY:3351: -
“Most composers notate a piece to perfection — hoping for a masterpiece, perhaps — and then move on. But Riley is a dabbler. “I’ll present a piece before it’s finished, then it will be different at the next performance,” he says. “Then after 10 years it will take a new shape that I’m happy with and maybe change again after 20 years. It’s because I improvise so much.” …his roots in jazz and Indian ragas should both come through on Saturday. To him, the term improvisation seldom means starting from nothing and just seeing what happen “They’re improvisations but built on existing structures, maybe not chord progressions (as with jazz), but modes and rhythmic cycles and looplike patterns,” Riley explains. “We’ll have a little rehearsal the day before (at Bard), but also a bit of flying by the seat of the pants. I like that and I think these players do, too.”
THE RESULTS ARE IN (Brown List 2009) -
“Welcome to the official site of the 2009 BROWN LIST, brought to you by the Hollywood Temp Diaries. As you’ve gleaned from my postings and your own experiences, there are a lot of people in Hollywood who are a real pain in the ass. Oddly enough, there are some decent people in this town too (they probably won’t make it too far, but that’s their problem). Anyhoo, I’ve compiled a list of people’s MOST-LIKED and LEAST-LIKED entertainment industry executives in something I’m calling the BROWN LIST. Click on the .pdf below and enjoy the read. Thanks to everyone for participating.”
Cloud Eye Control joins the traditional and futuristic — latimes.com -
“On the fifth floor of the Los Angeles Theater Center in downtown L.A., the members of Cloud Eye Control are trying to create poetry out of collaborative technology. On one end of the large studio, makeshift tables hold laptops and electronic equipment, with a cluster of musical instruments nearby. The middle of the room is dominated by two free-standing screens… It’s only days away from the debut of the full-length version of “Under Polaris” at REDCAT, and there still are snags to work out, transitions to be smoothed. This performance combines live action, recorded animation, multiple projectors, mobile props, and a five-piece live band, so there’s still much to do. And, in the spirit of what Chi-wang Yang, the director of the group, calls do-it-yourself aesthetics, they somehow pull it all together.”

Share on Facebook

Oct 16, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: animation, app, audio, bard, bettydraper, brownlist, cloudeyecontrol, design, executive, google, hack, hadrioncollider, healthcare, hollywood, inc, iphone, madmen, map, mashup, minimalism, miyamatreyek, multitouch, music, nytimes, p2p, ratings, redcat, sequencer, spotify, tenure, terryriley, theatre, timetravel, underpolaris, unsolicitedadvice, usability, video, visualization, web2.0 | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for October 2nd through October 8th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from October 2nd through October 8th:[del.icio.us]

(Glen) Beck Tries to Kill Parody Website : Dispatches from the Culture Wars -
“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990 website, but it’s fairly amusing. It’s a political satire of the style of argument Glenn Beck likes to engage in, which involves requiring that someone prove a negative (“prove you didn’t do X”) and making claims in the form of an interrogative (“Hey, I’m just asking questions here. I’m not saying he did this. What’s wrong with asking questions?”). Well now Beck is trying to kill the site by making a formal complaint (PDF) to an international internet governing body, the World Intellectual Property Organization. He wants the domain name taken away from the person who registered it…”
Manifesto (this one’s for you, Lindemann) « Là ci darem la mano -
I, Maura, aka mlaffs on twitter, “so white I glow,” do hearby declare my intent: Firstly, that classical music is awesome. In fact, it’s so great that we should all take Alex Ross’ suggestion and start calling it “Awesome Music.” After all, “classical” is an arbitrary label, has negative connotations, and isn’t very sexy. Second, that my friends are the best. I was shocked and flattered by the overwhelmingly positive response when I suggested that I might want to start a blog. I can’t believe that people actually want to hear what I have to say! I’m just a mousy little second-year employee at a regional orchestra that likes to whine. Third, that strawberries are the best snack ever. I am going to start buying them more frequently. Actually, I’m going to start eating more fruits & veggies in general. I am so much more focused and energetic this afternoon than usual. Love it. …”
David Cross: An Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy -
“…Okay, here’s what I said in the RS interview: “He’s good at what he does. It’s a lot of anti-gay, racist humor – - which people like in America – all couched in ‘I’m telling it like it is.’ He’s in the right place at the right time for that gee-shucks, proud-to-be-a-redneck, I’m-just-a-straight-shooter-multimillionaire-in-cutoff-flannel, selling-ring tones-act. That’s where we are as a nation now. We’re in a state of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride.”
Will California become America’s first failed state? | World news | The Observer
“Few places embody the collapse of California as graphically as the city of Riverside. Dubbed “The Inland Empire”, it is an area in the southern part of the state where the desert has been conquered by mile upon mile of housing developments, strip malls and four-lane freeways. The tidal wave of foreclosures and repossessions that burst the state’s vastly inflated property bubble first washed ashore here. “We’ve been hit hard by foreclosures. You can see it everywhere,” says political scientist Shaun Bowler, who has lived in California for 20 years after moving here from his native England. The impact of the crisis ranges from boarded-up homes to abandoned swimming pools that have become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Bowler’s sister, visiting from England, was recently taken to hospital suffering from an infected insect bite from such a pool. “You could say she was a victim of the foreclosure crisis, too,” he jokes.”
Dudamel’s press briefing – The Arts Blog – OCRegister.com -
“Dudamel was charming throughout, and genuine. I’m not cynical. The hype surrounding him may be hard to take at times, but he’s good, and appears to have his head on straight. His music directorship is going to be marked by his efforts to take classical music to the people, to the regular guy, but I don’t sense that he equates that with cheapening the product in any way. Just making it available to more folks. The phrase “creative use of digital platforms” was uttered, though not by him… …Underneath the hubbub, there are plenty of naysayers, atheists if you will. They give looks to each other, roll their eyes, just to show they’re not chumps. It doesn’t matter. It’ll all come out in the wash. The music’s the thing and we’re about to get to that”

Share on Facebook

Oct 09, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: article, artmusic, awesomemusic, california, comedy, david cross, economics, economy, funny, glen beck, humor, larry the cable guy, manifesto, media, politics, strawberries, website | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for September 28th through October 1st [del.icio.us]

/a>Bookmarks from September 28th through October 1st:[del.icio.us]

Taruskin, vol.5, page 220 « The Rambler
“I’ve just recently, and belatedly, started leafing through Richard Taruskin’s monumental History of Western Music, one of the musicological banner publications of 2005. Now, I’ve been an occasional fan of Taruskin’s work – his Grove article on Nationalism is flawed, but significant, and Defining Russia Musically was an inspirational book for me… There’s far too much to go into here about what winds me up about this book (how about the laughable Europhobia, in which European music after 1950 is merely a Cold War sideshow, and after 1960 non-existent), much of which will have been said elsewhere, but I just wanted to get my reaction to one page in particular off my chest. This is page 220 of volume 5, on which Taruskin is discussing (speculating on) the Cold War implications of Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. I fear, as an example of the lazy thought and downright falsehoods of this book, it may not be unique.”
Music Apps Blur the Gap Between You and Clapton – NYTimes.com -
“And this is where it gets back to being like a video game. Many musical apps offer the ability to record a track, then add layers on top of it. Doing this between disparate apps is impossible without external recording software, but a multi-instrumental app like Moocow’s Band gives novices the opportunity to record and edit tracks with drums, bass and guitar, and make sure it all sounds pretty good (even if one doesn’t know how to play a lick of music). It’s as much a game as Guitar Hero, only instead of trying to keep up with prerecorded music, the goal is to make music of one’s own.”

Share on Facebook

Oct 02, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: art, avant-guard, biography, blog/musings, context, controllerism, innovation, iphone, jazz, lincolncenter, louisarmstrong, mainstream, mass, media, medium, music, musicology, newgrove, news, obama, penderecki, politics, richardtaruskin, terryteachout, wyntonmarsalis | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for September 21st through September 24th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from September 21st through September 24th:[del.icio.us]

Their cut-and-paste world | Brand X | Los Angeles Times
“if you surfed L.A.’s public access airwaves in the 1990s, you might have come across a paunchy, balding man who loved dancing to John Phillips Sousa marching songs while wearing nothing but a Lone Ranger mask and an American flag Speedo. But that’s not the weird part. The titular star of “Dancing With Frank Pachowski” surrounded himself with a semicircle of elderly people who sat and watched stone-faced as he performed. “It’s absolutely brilliant,” declares Nick Prueher. Five years ago, Prueher and his pal Joe Pickett — both former writers at the Onion — created the Found Footage Festival, a traveling show of video oddities that they’ve culled from thrift stores, garage sales and garbage bins. The fourth incarnation of their show, which has its West Coast premiere at M Bar tonight and Friday, features nearly 60 videos…”
The Seattle Phonographers Union « Amaranth Arthouse Music – “The group eventually came out. After a brief introduction the performance began. Each performer played a part in the building and decreasing soundscape through samples ranging from everyday noises to political speeches. The genius in this form of concert is the ability to shuttle the listener to wherever their imagination, following the lead of the music, takes them… I noticed midway through the gig that the outer seating wasn’t the best spot, since a speaker sitting directly behind you takes away from the stereo experience. Therefore, I took the opportunity of changing to a middle aisle seat from a couple who had left the show. It made quite a bit of difference. I checked my watch after what seemed like 20 minutes and almost 90 minutes had elapsed. The show soon came to a close. Its hard to explain the show in detail, four months later, but the collaboration and improvisation of the group really worked. I highly recommend checking these folks out.”
Sequenza21/ » We Wuz Robbed -
On hearing that no musicians or composers were awarded the 2009 MacArthur Genius Award/Grant, Scott Unrein replies: “I had a tee-ball coach who would always say, “hey genius, put a little hustle in it.” I think that’s enough of an application to ensure I’ll be in the running next year. Good luck, suckers.”
Calder Quartet performs at University of Maryland – washingtonpost.com -
“This has almost certainly been good for their career (earning appearances on Leno and Letterman, along with several programming awards), but on the basis of Sunday afternoon’s concert at the University of Maryland, one wonders whether it has given them a helpful context for rendering the great masters. In a thoroughly conventional program of Stravinsky, Janácek and Schubert, the Calder displayed good basic ensemble skills but a blurry, generalized musicianship, everything sounding the same”
The Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living, & Making a Difference -
“THE SAVVY MUSICIAN, by Dr. David Cutler, is a thorough and comprehensive book created to help you 1) build a career, 2) earn a living, and 3) make a difference. It examines critical elements often overlooked or misunderstood by musicians, such as entrepreneurship, product development, branding, marketing, networking, the new recording paradigm, personal finance, funding, relevance, and legacy. This book helps you take control of your career by discovering opportunities that are both prosperous and meaningful.”
Coffeeloop -
Coffeeloop exists to create new experiences for a new musical era. To find the pulse of contemporary music. But what does that mean? What do you think of when you hear the words “classical music”? For most people, ideas like old and traditional come to mind. Yet the best experiences in our lives we would often describe as new, or exhilarating. “It needn’t be this way. Coffeeloop aims to bring experience back to classical music, not with fireworks or laser shows (though we don’t rule those out), but with engagement. Engagement with you, and between the audience, the critic and the performer. There is enough excitement to go ago around — in fact, the more we share, the more there is for everyone.”

Share on Facebook

Sep 25, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: calder quartet, coffeeloop, found footage festival, frank pachowski, macarthur genius award, mbar, s21, soundscape, suckers | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for September 6th through September 20th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from September 6th through September 20th:[del.icio.us]

5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet – “America’s best (and perhaps only) chance to keep the shreds of its tattered democracy intact is to get serious about cutting working Americans back into the democratic contract — and repair their broken trust by making damn sure those promises are actually kept. Once they’re back on board, the system will begin to work again for everyone. Until then, the accelerating breakdown is just going to continue. It’s not going to be easy. Right-wing populism is riding so high among the middle and working classes right now that there’s nothing progressives can say right now that they’re likely to believe. So we need to let our actions do the talking — and there are five solid places we can start that will get their attention.”

Nick Hornby on the liberating effect of MP3 blogs | Music | The Observer – “In the year that High Fidelity was published, a new CD shop opened in my neighbourhood and rejuvenated my listening habits. The shop did well, initially, and I spent a lot of time in there, buying pretty much whatever the owners told me to buy; they were very clever, it seemed to me, in targeting the ageing (or perhaps, more precisely, ex-) hipsters of north London, people who were growing sick of their REM albums but didn’t know what else to buy. They sold hundreds of copies of Buena Vista Social Club, and a lot of tasteful trip-hop – which, as Simon Reynolds pointed out, was “merely a form of gentrification”. But then, what are you supposed to do if you’re becoming gentrified? Pretend it isn’t happening?”

Criticism « Proper Discord – “That the longest piece in the concert was played badly, and should have been cut. Mediocre performances aren’t just a boring waste of time. If nobody acknowledges that they are bad, it creates the illusion that there’s something the audience doesn’t get. They feel alienated, and they don’t come back. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t stage concerts if there’s a risk of doing them badly – there’s an element of creative risk in any good concert – but I am saying that we do ourselves a disservice when we create an environment that is hostile to the idea that there is room for improvement. There are plenty of ways you can dismiss my artistic criticism. Here are a few that I’ve seen:”

Artists Paid – REASONS I PREFER A LESS KNOWN BAND -”1. There’s a good chance you’ll talk to me 2. Even better, that you’ll know my name and not be a passerby 3. You appreciate/recognize individual supporters and interact with us closer 4. WE CAN ACTUALLY BUY TICKETS TO YOUR SHOWS 5. Sometimes you’ll come and play at ours because you can 6. Sometimes you’ll Tweet and say “I’m going to be playing here” and play there… FOR FREE 7. Sometimes you’ll spend four and a half hours playing all your songs back to back to say thank you 8. Sometimes you’ll send us emails or letters to individuals just to say ‘Hey, I like what you’ve been doing, thanks’ 9. I get to be in your album notes and contribute in various shapes and forms 10. The music quality isn’t actually WORSE than the big bands, and in some cases, exceeds it”

Share on Facebook

Sep 20, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: america, article, blog/musings, class, classsystem, fascism, guardian, mp3, music, nick hornby, politics | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for August 23rd through August 29th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from August 23rd through August 29th:[del.icio.us]

How To: Find Out How Much Your Insurer Sucks -”When you’re shopping for an insurance company, check the insurer’s complaint record — especially if it’s a small insurer that’s offering a good rate, but you haven’t heard much about its reputation. Saving a few dollars per year in premiums can backfire if the insurer hassles you at claim time.” To access this information, go to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Consumer Information Source. Type in the name of the company, the state where you live and the type of insurance. (Under “statement type” and “business type,” click on “property/casualty” for home and auto insurance or “life, accident and health.”) The site then provides the insurer’s national complaint statistics.
The Industrial Jazz Group » Put Another Nickel In -”Donate $50,000, and get a copy of the new CD, the high five, the shout-out, the photo, the bit part, the personal liner note “thank you,” plus my Volvo Station Wagon, a historic vehicle which was used in seven IJG tours on the west coast (and which still displays some of the wear and tear from same).”

Stew is still stewing over L.A.’s snub of ‘Passing Strange’ — latimes.com -”When were we going through the classic L.A. club grind,” he begins, speaking of his days this decade with the Negro Problem, “at a certain point, we were selling out Spaceland like you’re supposed to do. But when we didn’t get handed the brass ring of the major label deal and we didn’t get handed the brass ring of the hip, indie label deal, it was like a lot of the powers that be were sort of looking at us like . . . ‘what good are you guys?’ “
School board approves plan to open up schools to outsiders — latimes.com -”The Los Angeles Board of Education voted today to open up 250 schools, including 50 new multimillion-dollar campuses, to outside charter operators and others. The move came after a nearly four-hour debate on a 6-1 vote, with board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte opposing. Under the proposal by board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, nonprofit charter groups and the mayor’s group that oversees 11 schools could compete for the chance to run these schools. Ultimately, it will be up to Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to select the winning bid for these campuses. Labor unions were especially opposed to the plan, with teachers union head A.J. Duffy saying the district needs to be collaborative if it wants to reform schools.”
Dream of a Common Language. Sueño de un Idioma Común.: Texas Monthly September 2009 -”In traditional bilingual classes, learning English is the top priority. The ultimate aim is to move kids out of non-English-speaking classrooms as quickly as possible. Students in dual language classes, on the other hand, are encouraged to keep their first language as they learn a second. And Ysleta’s program, called two-way dual language, is even more radical, because kids who speak only English are also encouraged to enroll. Everyone sits in the same classroom. Spanish-speaking kids are expected to help the English speakers in the early grades, which are taught mostly in Spanish. As more and more English is introduced into the classes, the roles are reversed. Even the teachers admit it can look like chaos to an outsider. “Dual language classes are very loud,” said Steven Vizcaino, who was an early student in the program and who graduated from Del Valle High in June. “Everyone is talking to everyone.”
Part 1: iTunes and the pen | theCLog -”What about all those other authors out there, banging away on their keyboards, giving life to characters, and telling stories that resonate in the lives of their readers? Do they need music to work? Is it simply a background, or does it find a way into their words? It wasn’t really a surprise to find a lot of the writers I spoke with had similar, lyric-less requirements when it comes to their own writing habits.”
Alexey Steele, Classical Underground impresario — latimes.com – scott timburg on alexey steele’s los angeles classical underground series “Certainly, at the Classical Underground concerts, art and music seem vital indeed. Not only for the audience, but for the players. The August concert included an austere, resonant Bach Cello Suite, a Prokofiev piano sonata rendered with sterling clarity by a pianist raising money for her CD release, and several melodic pieces by lesser-known composers. Afterward, many of the musicians came back and played; the cellist improvised on Bach. (Some nights, these after parties go until dawn.) “I don’t play it! I don’t know notes!” Steele exclaims. “I didn’t get one music lesson in my life! And I need it. I’m proof that people need it. I’m living proof that classical music lives!”

Share on Facebook

Aug 31, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: alexey steel, classicalunderground, consumerist, creativity, dualimmersion, education, healthcare, insurance, itunes, jazz, language, latimes, music, passing strange, scott timburg, stew, writing | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for August 17th through August 22nd [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from August 17th through August 22nd :[del.icio.us]

On Becoming Less Dumb About Wordpress (Subhead: H-E-L-P.) – ihnatko’s posterous – Andy Ihnatko blogs about some of the limitations on running a wordpress blog: “Not really. There are thousands of free, professional themes for Wordpress that’ll take you 75% of the way, but that’s a bit like a ship that will take you 75% of the way to the Sun. You’re still about 25,000,000 miles short so pack a lunch and wear comfortable shoes”
Networked Music Review — Join the Chiptune Marching Band [Berlin] -”Chiptune Marching Band (CMB) is a participatory DIY workshop/performance. CMB is a public workshop and actual public performance where participants make a sensor driven sound instruments, self-powered by a kinetic power source, and perform with their instrument with the band. With instruments at the ready, the group heads outside, bringing an event to the streets as the Chiptune Marching Band! The course invites any members of the general public, offering them the opportunity to explore localized resource communities, sound making circuitry, and collective sound performance through their realization.”
Create Digital Music » Alternative Music Distribution: Moldover’s CD Case as Circuit Board Noisemaker – “Moldover is the latest artist to experiment with ways of re-imagining the musical object. Already a fan of custom sonic circuitry, he made his CD into a circuit board. Some of it is just aesthetic, like the printed lettering. But there is also integrated noise-making circuitry for a very simple optical Theremin (well, at least, a light sensor-driven oscillator), plus a headphone jack. There’s actually quite a lot of function you can get out of that when plugging into a computer ” http://moldover.com/quicklinks/buy.html
Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: Watts Ensemble – “What follows is an email interview with Brian Watson, founder of / composer for the Watts Ensemble. Never heard of them? How’s this? (The tune is called “Funny Cigarettes.”) Based in LA, and supposedly created on a dare, Watts is an impossible, outlandish creature after my own heart, a kindred spirit if ever I met one. The group recently released their first album, Two Suites for Crime & Time. N.B.: I recommend reading the Chris Ziegler interview over at L.A. Record before reading this one.”
Critic’s Notebook – Nightly Guests Give an Insight Into Their Quirks and Tics – NYTimes.com -”I learned that the world is divided into the hoarders and the sharers, and into the perpetually slighted and the eternally grateful; that the diners who eat the least are the ones who pretend to eat the most; and that no manner of advance instruction can prevent guests from saying your real name and even referencing your last three reviews loudly, repeatedly and in direct earshot of the restaurant manager. There’s a reason most people don’t go into the spying business. They have no aptitude for it.”
Pajamas Media » L.A. Police Chief Jumps Ship “So he has earned his admirers, but as anyone who has followed his career will tell you, William Bratton has no greater admirer than William Bratton himself. Which brings us to the curious timing of his departure, coming as it does only two years into his second five-year term as chief. When Bratton came to Los Angeles, a friend in the NYPD described him as the P.T. Barnum of law enforcement, a handle that seems just as apt today as it did then. Like Barnum, Bratton knows how to put on a show, and also like Barnum, he knows to leave the audience wanting more as he exits the stage.”

Share on Facebook

Aug 23, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: 8bit, art music, bratton, controllerism, culture, diy, eating, food, frank bruni, humor, interview, jazz, lapd, marketing, moldover, nytimes, ptbarnum, watts ensemble, wordpress | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for August 9th through August 17th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from August 9th through August 17th:[del.icio.us]

TRIUMPH OF HIS WILL: GQ Feature on Quentin Tarantino – “You can lie about a lot of things,” he says, “but your filmography doesn’t lie. It’s right there. And it doesn’t give a shit about why you did it.”
Clare Graham’s Wonderama – LA Times Magazine -”As for the question of art versus craft, Graham comes down definitively on one side. “I don’t like the terms outsider art, or naive art. What I do is craft,” he insists. “Fine art has a need to communicate something. My work is about simple processes done to the nth degree until the accumulation is significant.”
Lefsetz Letter » Amanda Palmer email; the new art of twitter and blogging – “BUT this is, hands fucking down, also why people listen, why they search, why they want art. connection = primary. music/art = secondary.”
Ready for the devil we don’t know -LA Times endorses a constitutional convention to fix CA budget mess -”A single initiative to end the current rule requiring a two-thirds supermajority of the Legislature to adopt a budget may be doomed at the ballot box. But opponents are more likely to accept the change if they can keep the supermajority to increase taxes and are assured that future taxes will no longer be disguised as “fees.”
Fieldnotes from a Rock Band Bar Night | – “Much to my surprise, the scene reminded me of the participatory tradition that was the focus of my first major research project: Sacred Harp singing, an American vernacular hymnody tradition that is open to anyone, regardless of perceived musical expertise, and that revolves around drop-in community “singings” rather than rehearsed performances for an audience. “
Views on Music and Life from an outpost.: Making the case for the musical amateur. -”think to say that people simply need more exposure to jazz, to classical music, etc- is only half-right. I think that people need to be directly involved. Make people an active part of any activity, and they are much more likely to stay engaged.”
This Blog Will Change the World: No neon arrows – “What we need here is a third option, one which avoids asserting the absolute superiority of any one musical style without sliding into relativism.”
YouTube – GAMEBOY FOOT CONTROLLER DEMO + 8BIT GUITAR -
joey mariano [animal-style] demonstrates his GBC Gameboy Foot Controller
How American Health Care Killed My Father – The Atlantic (September 2009) -”Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis.”
A music lesson for LACMA’s film program | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times – “It is not without a twang of envy that I watch the film community react to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s announcement that the 40-year-old film program would go the way of the even older Monday Evening Concerts, which was thrown out on the cold street three years ago.”
Cal State Fullerton abruptly begins canceling classes – College Life OC – OCRegister.com -”Cal State Fullerton officials say the university has begun canceling classes, including those that were already underway, because its being required to make tens of millions of dollars in cuts to help the state balance its budget.”
WATTS ENSEMBLE: IF WE ALL GOT MOHAWKS -”What would I call the next punkest classical record? Fuck. I could tell you probably the Andy Kaufman of classical music, which is probably Terry Riley’s ‘In C.’ Don’t get me wrong—I love the piece but it almost feels like it’s daring you to like it. ‘In C’ is typically 45 minutes to an hour long and it’s everyone playing the phrases at the same tempo—but they play it staggered so it creates all these different patterns. It’s an amazing piece. But I’ve shown it to people before and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is driving me insane—I can’t deal with it.’ It’s kind of the same thing with Andy Kaufman. Some people were like, ‘Wow, this is fucking amazing’ and other people were like, ‘I can’t stand this guy.’”
The Fun Music Company Ultimate Flashcard Set -”In the Ultimate Instant Print Flashcard Set you get a comprehensive selection of printable flash cards that you print yourself, right from your computer.”
Create Digital Music » Hexagonal iPhone Sequencer-Rhythm Machine from Jordan Rudess -”Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess and noise.io developer Amidio have made a crazy-looking hexagonal sequencer for the iPhone. It comes with plenty of samples and factory sessions if you just want to play around…”
Terry Teachout Asks, Can Jazz Be Saved? – WSJ.com -”No, I don’t know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they should like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle. If you’re marketing Schubert and Stravinsky to those listeners, you have no choice but to start from scratch and make the case for the beauty of their music to otherwise intelligent people who simply don’t take it for granted. By the same token, jazz musicians who want to keep their own equally beautiful music alive and well have got to start thinking hard about how to pitch it to young listeners—not next month, not next week, but right now.”

Share on Facebook

Aug 17, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: 8bit, amanda, amateur, art, artgallery, article, artmusic, atlanticmonthly, bigband, brianwatson, budget, california, cdm, claregraham, constitution, controllerism, critique, csuf, culture, economics, film, flashcards, folkmusic, gameboy, gq, guitar, healthcare, highlandpark, iphone, jazz, lacma, latimes, lefsetzletter, losangeles, masterpiece, mondayeveningconcerts, moryork, music, musiceducation, palmer, politics, popmusic, recession, reform, relativism, rockband, sacredharp, supermajority, tarantino, technique, terryriley, terryteachout, theory, twitter | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for July 16th through July 19th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from July 16th through July 19th:[del.icio.us]

WNYC – New Sounds: Minimalist Music Theatre (July 2009) -”Minimalist Music Theatre Hear some music theatre pieces on this New Sounds show. Listen to Philip Glass’s recent release “Waiting for the Barbarians,” adapted from the novel by the South African writer and Nobel Prize Winner John Coetzee. Also, there’s music by Paul Bailey – his post-minimalist music theatre piece “Retrace our Steps.” He describes it as a four act vocal/instrumental spectacle based on texts by Gertrude Stein, Guy Debord and Jenny Bitner. The “alt-classical garage band” Paul Bailey Ensemble performs the work”
Big Brother Is Listening – The Classical Beat (Anne Midgette) – washingtonpost.com - -Anne Midgette neatly sums up musoc.org “But statements like “Art Music is in many ways objectively superior to Pop ‘Music’” (note the quotes) make me grit my teeth and want to play Talking Heads albums really, really loudly. And this, from the FAQ, is just stupid: “The ‘music’ is melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, structurally, texturally, dynamically, thematically and conceptually barren compared to Art Music; it’s also spiritually and politically shabby by comparison. It’s short, trite and highly repetitive.” One is tempted to order a copy of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” for the site’s editors, just for starters, but one wouldn’t know where to send it. Indeed, there’s something vaguely creepy about musoc’s deliberate anonymity, which is evidently part of its philosophy, though there are limits to how much an audience will care about what a website says if one doesn’t know who’s writing it.”
Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – In the hours and hours of preening, ponderous, self-serving media tributes to Walter Cronkite, here is a clip you won’t see, in which Cronkite — when asked what is his biggest regret — says (h/t sysprog): What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn’t make them stick. We couldn’t find a way to pass them on to another generation. It’s impossible even to imagine the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and friends interrupting their pompously baritone, melodramatic, self-glorifying exploitation of Cronkite’s death to spend a second pondering what he meant by that.
Philip Glass to perform film, opera works at Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles Times – With “Koyaanisqatsi” — the name means “life out of balance” in Hopi — Glass had more than two years to work on the score. “There was no one waiting for the film — there was no distributor! So we were left alone to make a film — which I realized later was a great luxury.” Today Glass is struck by how pertinent the film seems, at a time when its notions of the world’s interconnectedness and the runaway power of technology have gone mainstream. But the film’s identity has changed since its premiere in 1982.”When we first showed it,” he says, “people thought it was a head trip. People seriously thought you had to get high before you watched it. It wasn’t too long, only four or five years, for people to realize there was actually a movie.”
Guest Blog: The Actors Diet: How I’m Recovering – Carrots ‘N’ Cake -Guest Blog: The Actors Diet: How I’m Recovering “…I’ve been struggling with binge eating and anorexia for a while; if you read my bio on our blog page you’ll see a little more about my history with food. I know a lot of women look up to actresses, and there are plenty of them who are in great shape, healthfully (my co-blogger Christy being one of them). As somebody who has been celebrated for her figure (in my feature film debut I played a ballet dancer AND got naked), I am proof that sometimes it is a false ideal, even when you have all the resources available to you, like a personal trainer, meal deliveries, a shrink, hypnosis coach, a best friend who’s a nutritionist…I felt like I had legitimate reasons to obsess about my weight – after all, my career depended on it.”
Intolerable Beauty: Chris Jordan Photographs American Mass Consumption – Photographer Chris Jordan describes the photos in his series “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” as his “first foray into being an engaged artist.”
US State Department employees ask Hillary clinton for Firefox – Video – “Have you been trying to get your corporate IT staff to let you use Firefox or another web browser instead of Internet Explorer? Then you apparently know how a fair number of folks at the US State Deparment feel. At a recent town hall meeting with staff, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a question from one government employee who wanted to know if they could “please” use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. You can see the Q&A by skipping to the 26:32 point in the video above. ” [del.icio.us]
Los Angeles News – Russian or Armenian Mob Used “Model Employee” Con at PCH Arco --
An organized-crime ring that police believe is Russian or Armenian targeted a high-volume Redondo Beach Arco gas station, assigned a low-level soldier to infiltrate it and waited eight months while he worked himself into a position where he could implant a tiny, high-tech “skimmer” to steal customers’ credit-card information.

Classical pick of the Week: Film Music at the Hollywood Bowl, Arboretum, and the Disney Hall (laist.com)

Share on Facebook

Jul 20, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: acting, america, anne midgette, anorexia, art music, blog/musings, comedy, commentary, consumerism, cool, critic, cronkite, culture, design, diet, environment, firefox, funny, guy debord, gwbush, hillary clinton, hollywood bowl, humor, jenny bitner, journalism, koyaanisqatsi, lacma, latimes, los angeles, map, media, musoc.org, news, philip glass, photography, politics, popmusic, propaganda, recovery, retrace our steps, review, salon.com, state department, war, wnyc | 1 Comment »

Bookmarks for July 6th through July 15th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from July 6th through July 15th:[del.icio.us]

Who Lincoln Was- and was not: Sean Wilentz, The New Republic – Sean Wilentz’s detailed and exhaustive review of six books on abraham lincoln. debunks much of the ‘two lincolns’ and ‘team of rivals’ scholarship and portrays him as a shrewd politician that was far more complex and nuanced than the current trends to deify him. best article i have read all year.
Domino | Albums | Parallax Error Beheads You (Special Edition Soup Can) -interesting idea on music packaging”To celebrate the release of Max Tundra’s new album, Parallax Error Beheads You, your friends at Domino are revolutionizing the music industry with the launch of a new kosher format on the 20th October.” Yes, buy a can of Max Tundra’s limited edition Kosher Chicken Soup and you will receive a copy of his new album from our new Domino download store, plus an exclusive bonus download album of covers called Best Friends (a reinterpretation of Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be by Max Tundra’s friends).
Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: Soup of the day – “One of the things I am thinking about right now (in addition to thinking about the upcoming tour, and also thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch) is this:How exactly am I going to release the next record? I have pondered a variation of this issue before, of course, but this time out, I’m not so concerned with the optimum media / packaging for the release.”
What OC sheriffs learned at Jackson’s funeral – OC Watchdog – OCRegister.com -“One point we learned from LAPD, the VIPs invited to the service were not screened for weapons and this posed a problem, should the LAPD have to make rapid deployment into the arena for anything. Several of the VIPs had their own armed body guards and this was noted by the LAPD commanders,” said lieutenant J. Passalaqua. Passalaqua manages special events for Irvine Lakes, the county parks and the Orange County Fair grounds.
Create Digital Music » The Music Bore “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to listen to Coldplay.” What would radio be like if playlists were not only robotic, but had robot DJs pulling information from the Interwebs dynamically? That’s the question asked by the winning team at London’s Music Hackday last weekend, which created an epic mashup of data sources to produce a voice-synthesized IRC chatbot that researches and plays music for you.
Missing Los Angeles violinist found dead – Los Angeles Times – “Coroner’s officials said Korda, 68, had been found unresponsive shortly before 7 p.m. July 8 at a home in Glendale. The violinist was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead less than an hour later, Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Ed Winter said.” The violinist had gone undetected by investigators looking for Korda because he had been mistakenly entered into the system as “Robert Norda.”
CSU might hike student fees by about 20 percent – College Life OC – OCRegister.com -”Barely two months after it increased students fees by 10 percent, the California State University system is considering raising fees by about 20 percent to help California balance a budget deficit projected at $26 billion.”
Create Digital Music » Cellist Zoe Keating on Quitting Your Day Job, Going on Tour – “Should you quit your day job and go on tour with a rock band? That’s the question answered by cellist Zoe Keating at Ignite, the 5-minute hyperpresentation series put on by O’Reilly.”

Share on Facebook

Jul 16, 2009 | Categories: bookmarks | Tags: csuf, dayjob, dead, design, downloads, drm, financial crisis, firefox, funeral, google, history, irc, lapd, laphil, lincoln, mashup, michael jackson, music, musician, network, playlist, security, sheriff, staples center, wage slave, zoe keating | Leave A Comment »

« Older Entries

Related articles by Zemanta

Popular Posts

Recent Posts

recent comments

Lifestream

Recent Photos

Meta

blogroll

los angeles

spectacle

technology

wordpress

Top Liked Posts

Subscribe to RSS

Social Links

Akismet

About

Popular Posts

Lifestream

Archives

Credits