Posts Tagged ‘losangeles’

Bookmarks for June 13th to June 21st 2011

Bookmarks for June 13th to June 21st 2011

These are my links for June 13th to June 21st 2011 wild Up – nuance megaphone. Classical Music in LA (#tuxonstage) – I do believe that new music needs new dress. I dress with respect for the music and my audience, but it would be disingenuous to show up in tails. Simply, its not me. [...]


Bookmarks for June 7th through June 12th

Bookmarks for June 7th through June 12th

These are my links for June 7th through June 12th: Class, power & ideology – – the illusion of control causes people to over-estimate the chances of them escaping the working class through their own efforts, and so under-estimate the importance of collective class action . – the in-group heterogeneity bias (which is the flipside [...]


Bookmarks for May 23rd through May 29th

Bookmarks for May 23rd through May 29th

These are my links for May 23rd through May 29th: Last Night: Top 10 Quotes from KCRW’s Global Street Food Panel – “Some [trucks] are good, some are dreadful. I don’t think it’s accidental that most of the time when they have those competitions, the traditional loncheras win. Lux loncheras are catering to people who [...]


Bookmarks for May 6th through May 10th

Bookmarks for May 6th through May 10th

These are my links for May 6th through May 10th: The first sign that humans are on the verge of evolving into another species [Evolution] – “What Carlson’s work suggests is that species whose brains are evolving fairly rapidly – hello, Homo sapiens – are likely candidates for speciation under the right circumstances. The key [...]


Bookmarks for May 1st through May 2nd

Bookmarks for May 1st through May 2nd

These are my links for May 1st through May 2nd: L.A. as foster city run by outsiders – "Something narrow and coarse in the imaginations of the McCourts and Zell and Selig and their business partners squeezed out any moral dimension to their deals or any feeling for Los Angeles. But to question how they [...]


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

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”

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

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.”

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

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.”

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.”