“For me, what really made this blog so good was the combination of two things: (a) really good writing by Tim about a variety of topics related to classical music (plus the occasional diversion or two). The official reviews that get published in the hard copy version of the paper have always been and will continue to be among the best. The blog went beyond that allowed for all of us to read Tim’s thoughts and comments on things that would not have otherwise appeared in the paper. I hope the new format will allow him some, if not all, of the same freedom. (b) The reader’s comments to the original blog posts which added their own value, and more importantly, Tim’s willingness/ability to write his own follow-up comments in reply. A wonderful dialogue exists between those of us unwashed masses who add our comments and the respected music critic of The Orange County Register. The quality of this two-way communication simply doesn’t exist anywhere else (I stopped readying the comments at Culture Monster blog of the larger “other newspaper” long ago because none of the staff writers ever participated in the discussion).”
link: So long from The Arts Blog – The Arts Blog : The Orange County Register
“Despite the decision to forbid members from receiving pay for AA-related activity, it had no problem letting professional institutions integrate the 12 steps into their treatment programs. AA did not object when Hazelden, a Minnesota facility founded in 1947 as “a sanatorium for curable alcoholics of the professional class,” made the steps the foundation of its treatment model. Nor did AA try to stop the proliferation of steps-centered addiction groups from adopting the Anonymous name: Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous. No money ever changed hands—the steps essentially served as open source code that anyone was free to build upon, adding whatever features they wished. (Food Addicts Anonymous, for example, requires its members to weigh their meals.)”
link: Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works | Magazine
“There is, however, a cost to this taciturnity. Limiting our emotional response to the travails fighting men endure is a little bit like limiting war aims; it distances us from the conflict, prevents us from engaging fully, dramatically, suspensefully, in it. Certainly in this instance no one in this beleaguered group becomes fully particularized as a human being. This standoffishness became a ruling convention in films about the Vietnam War. Putting it mildly, our moral qualms about that war prevented everyone this side of John Wayne from unambiguously identifying with our troops. Which left us with a rather squishy humanism—“Oh, the poor guys, it’s not their fault; let’s go levitate the Pentagon, instead”—to tide us along. Because the aims of our wars since have not particularly advanced, that’s pretty much where we remain.”
link: Richard Schickel: Into the Valley of Death Rode the … 15? – Film Review – Truthdig
“These 444 decisions pertain to the adjudication of security clearance cases for contractor personnel under DoD Directive 5220.6, which implements Executive Order 10865.”
link: 2010 Industrial Security Clearance Decisions
“At last, after two hours of his tedious, hacky, right-wing manifesto, Gallagher gets to the part his (willing) hostages have been waiting for. It’s time to smash some shit. There are the watermelons, there is some cottage cheese (“It’s got the curds that blow up, just like on the news!”), there is sauerkraut and syrup and honey. Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. “This is the China people and queers!!!” he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere. The hateful, bitter old man laughs. I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.”
Jul 11, 2010 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: Alcoholics Anonymous, gallagher, oc register, restrepo, securty clearance, tim mangan, war | Leave A Comment »
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.
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, reviews/press, salon.com, state department, war, wnyc | 1 Comment »
Bookmarks for July 16th through July 19th [del.icio.us]
Bookmarks from July 16th through July 19th:[del.icio.us]
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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, reviews/press, salon.com, state department, war, wnyc | 1 Comment »