Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Gallimaufry 2

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Same as before, ten songs that iTunes chooses at random:

  • Naughty by Nature, ‘Every Day All Day‘, off of Naughty by Nature: One of the weaker tracks off of what’s overall a very good 80’s hip-hop album. I’ve never been a huge hip-hop fan, but generally when I am, it’s 80’s era stuff, and most of Naughty by Nature’s stuff was a lot of fun.

  • Rent Cast, ‘Tune Up #3’, off of Rent: One of the brief inter-song mini pieces from the Broadway musical. Works well in context, but these short bits are rather odd when mixed in with everything else in my collection.

  • Rent Cast, ‘Today 4 U’, off of Rent: Another odd coincidence with random selections. Angel’s introduction song, Rent’s single foray into a pseudo-techno piece. Again, one that works well in context, but it doesn’t really stand well on its own (it’s somewhat annoying on its own, to tell the truth).

  • Linda Perry and Grace Slick, ‘Knock Me Out’, off of The Crow: City of Angels: A slower, somewhat atmospheric song. Not bad background music in a mix, but it doesn’t really stand out to me one way or another. Of course, the movie it comes from is pretty hideous (sad to say, I’ve seen all of the Crow films to date, and the first one is by far the only one worth paying attention to).

  • James Horner, London Symphony Orchestra, Mel Gibson & Sophie Marceau, ‘Not Every Man Really Lives‘, off of More Music from Braveheart: A little bit of dialogue from the movie leading into some of James Horner’s wonderful soundtrack. Every time I hear some of the music from Braveheart it makes me want to give the movie another watch.

  • Nine Inch Nails, ‘Down In It (Shred)’, off of Down In It: One of the remixes of Trent’s early singles. At this stage, he hadn’t become nearly as experimental as he did later on, so there’s really very little to tell the various mixes of Down In It apart from one another. Still, not a bad little song in itself (even if he has openly admitted that he was essentially ripping off Skinny Puppy‘s’Dig It‘ when he did this track).

  • Eddy Grant, ‘Electric Avenue (Hot Tracks)’, off of The Edge Level 2: A DJ-exclusive remix from the Hot Tracks remix service, this is from one of their 80’s retro discs. “We gonna walk down to Electric Avenue, and then we’ll take it higher….”

  • The Weavers, ‘Goodnight, Irene‘, off of The Best of the Decca Years: I got this album mainly because of Wimoweh, and then figured I’d see what all else they’d done. It falls right in line with much of the music I heard growing up in my dad’s collection, and I ended up knowing a lot more of these songs than I expected at first.

  • The Remains, ‘Why Do I Cry‘, off of Rock: The Train Kept A Rollin’: A 1966 pop-rock track from another of the discs in the Sony Soundtrack for a Century series that I’ve been working on collecting. Not a bad track, but not really a standout track, either.

  • Nine Inch Nails, ‘La Mer‘, off of The Fragile: This is the album that got me to stop obsessing over anything Trent Reznor did. After quite a few years of talk about how different his next album was going to be, and hearing his remix work with artists like Puff Daddy and the Family, instead of anything new or groundbreaking we got an album comprised mostly of tracks that sounded like all the instrumentals off all his prior albums. I was unimpressed, and as such, have only listened to the album a few times.

Not quite as interesting a selection as I got last week. Maybe we’ll do better next time…

And now, the ‘bonus track’:

iTunes “Case #12” by 29 Died from the album Sworn (1995, 1:29).

Seattle Rep: Noises Off

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Prairie and I just returned from using her dad’s Christmas present to her, which while it originally appeared in the form of cash, was soon converted into two tickets to the Seattle Rep‘s performance of Noises Off.

If you’ve ever been involved at all in theater and haven’t yet heard of Noises Off, you’re really missing out and, if there doesn’t happen to be a local performance anywhere around you in the near future, you should at least rent the movie version (it’s a very good stage to screen adaptation). The story is that of a touring troupe’s troubled performance of ‘Nothing On’, a stereotypical British sex farce. With love triangles, murderous jealous rage, alcohol, and far too many plates of sardines all in play, it’s not long before things start to take a turn for the worse — and just get funnier and funnier as they go along.

The Rep’s production was outstanding and very well cast, but for me it was Bhama Roget as Brooke Ashton who stole the show (and not just because she spends the majority of it running around in her underwear). Even when Brooke didn’t have any immediate business, her wonderfully spaced-out moments and hilarious facial expressions had me cracking up throughout the show. Stephanie Timm as Poppy Norton-Taylor, Michael Patten as Frederick Fellowes and Mark Chaberlin as the long-suffering director Lloyd Dallas all also gave standout performances as well — though this certainly isn’t to slight the rest of the cast, as there certainly wasn’t a dud in the bunch.

As an added bonus, the program contains a secondary program for the play-within-a-play ‘Nothing On’ which is quite funny in itself, from the cast bios to the sponsor advertisements and the hilariously deadpan excerpts from ‘Eros Untrousered: Studies in the Semantics of Bedroom Farce’ printed on the back page:

The cultural importance of the so-called ‘bedroom farce,’ or ‘English sex farce,’ has long been recognized, but attention has tended to center on the metaphysical significance of mistaken identity and upon the social criticism implicit in the form’s ground-breaking exploration of cross-dressing and trans-gender role-playing. The focus of scholarly interest, however, is now beginning to shift to the recurrence of certain mythic themes in the genre, and to their religious and spiritual implications.

The show runs for the next two weeks through January 15th, and tickets are very reasonably priced (Prairie and I had second row center seats for \$35 each) — if you’re into theater at all, this really shouldn’t be missed.

Other reviews:

iTunes “Where the Lemons Bloom Waltz” by (unknown) from the album Ultimate Classical Collection, The (1995, 9:08).

My Netflix

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I’ve just added a new page to the site (and linked it in the header navigation of every page): my Netflix queues.

Thanks to the plugin goodness of the Netflix Suite, it lists the movies I currently have checked out, the last 90 days (?) of movies I’ve watched and returned along with what I’ve rated them, and my entire Netflix queue (sitting pretty at 441 as of this moment).

Quick Review: Quills

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Really, really good. Admittedly, they had a couple things going for them to start with — interesting subject matter and a powerhouse cast (Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade, Kate Winslet as Madeline, Michael Caine as Dr. Royer-Collard, and Joaquin Phoenix as the Abbe du Coulmier) — but that’s not always a guaranteed success.

Geoffrey Rush was loads of fun to watch, though, as the Marquis. I commented to Prairie not long after the movie started that while there are a lot of actors who can read and deliver their lines competently, Rush is one who obviously loves language and all the verbal games that can be played with it, and the Marquis’ neverending stream of innuendo (and frequent out-and-out blatant obscenities) was perfect for him.

“Well worth the dig!”

iTunes “Ignore the Machine” by Alien Sex Fiend from the album Gothik (1983, 6:42).

Legend

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Years ago, my brother and I found a cassette tape on the floor of the family van. Neither of us knew where it came from or who had left it there (as it wasn’t either of ours), but neither of us are generally likely to refuse free music, so into our collection it went.

Upon first glance, it didn’t seem all that special — Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘Legend’ album. When we tossed it in the stereo and started listening to it, though, it turned out that we were in for a bit of a treat. It turned out that rather being the “normal” Legend album, this tape instead had early 80s-era dance remixes of all of the songs. We were confused: it was all the same tracks in the same order as any other Legend tape, but versions we’d never heard before. Since Kevin is more of a reggae fan than I am, and I’m more of a dance music fan than he is, I ended up with the tape.

Over the next few months, every so often I’d try to track down where the tape came from, all to no avail. None of our friends remembered leaving it in the car, or even hearing it in the first place. Since it was an official factory-produced tape, I took it down to Mammoth Music (the single best locally-run music store in Anchorage) and had them punch the catalog number printed on the shell into their system, and they came up blank — no record of that particular version of the album existing at all.

Over time, unfortunately, the tape died, and I eventually resigned myself to its remaining a mystery.

Then, one day a couple years ago, one of the ladies I was working in at the Microsoft print shop came in with a new two-disc deluxe edition of Legend that she’d just picked up. We listened to disc one, she popped in disc two…and I damn near blew a gasket when the long-lost beats of the mysterious remixes came out of the stereo. I don’t have the liner notes available to me now, so I don’t remember all the details, but it turns out that all the remixes had been done between 1980 and 1984, and had been out of print for years before the deluxe edition was released onto CD.

That deluxe edition is now available on iTunes, complete with every one of the remixes I spent so much time enjoying after they appeared in my car. If you think you can handle the admittedly somewhat odd experience of 80’s dance mixes of Bob Marley reggae tunes, I’d definitely recommend giving it a listen — my personal favorite of all the tracks is the remix of Buffalo Soldier.

iTunes “Buffalo Soldier (Remix)” by Marley, Bob and the Wailers from the album Legend: Deluxe Edition (1984, 5:25).

The End

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Well, it’s over.

A year and a half ago, I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the time, I’d never seen any of the show — though I had rather mercilessly teased my dad about being a fan. As of tonight, nineteen months and a lot of DVDs later, I’ve seen every episode, from Buffy first arriving in Sunnydale to her final look forward into a new, changed world.

Damn, but that’s a good show, and I’m glad I overcame my initial trepidation and decided to give it a shot.

It’s good to know that every so often, there actually is a good show on television. I’m impressed.

My personal top three episodes, just off the top of my head, in reverse order (there really should be a way to make an ordered list in HTML that counts down rather than up…but anyway):

iTunes “Walk Through the Fire” by Battle, Hinton/Caulfield, Emma/Gellar, Sarah Michelle/Head, Anthony Stewart/Marsters, James/Brendon, Nicholas/Orchestra from the album Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Once More, With Feeling (2002, 3:44).

Gallimaufry

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Terrance resurrects an old meme as a weekly thing. He titled it Friday Ten, but posted it on a Wednesday, so I’m not sure where things are going to go from here, time-wise, and so have decided that ‘gallimaufry‘ will make a good title (the definition works, and it’s a fun word). In any case, it can be entertaining to do, so let’s see what we get…

The rules are simple: put your entire music playlist on random, and post the first ten songs your music player comes up with.

  • The Postal Service, ‘Nothing Better‘, off of Give Up: Rick had me make a copy of this album to see what I thought. I’m still not entirely sure if I’d buy it, but it’s not bad — a very 80’s-synth-pop-ish feel to the songs. Catches my ear, but hasn’t yet snagged my wallet.

  • Pigface, ‘Hips, Tits, Lips, Power’, off of Fook: Pigface is one of my personal favorites, an industrial ‘supergroup’ with an ever-changing lineup. HTLP is definitely one of their better tracks, but it’s the live versions that really stand out.

  • Simple Minds, ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, off of The Breakfast Club Soundtrack: Okay, yeah, I’m a child of the 80’s — not only is this one of my favorite songs from that era, but often it’s all I can do not to pump my fist in the air like the character does at the end of the film as this song kicks in just before the credits roll.

  • Scott McKenzie, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)‘, off of Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975: The Sony Soundtrack to a Century collection has an incredible set of songs spread across twenty-some discs, covering literally a century of recorded music. I’ve got most of the sets that make up the full collection, and will track the last few down eventually.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Yes, Anastasia‘, off of Under the Pink: Much as I like Tori’s work, her more recent albums have just been getting weirder and weirder lyrically. This is from back when you could still figure out what she was talking about on most of her songs. ;)

  • Delerium with Sarah McLachlan, ‘Silence (Sanctuary Mix)’, off of Plastic Compilation Vol. II: The Plastic Compilation series of samplers are some of the best collections of modern electronica I’ve found in recent years. This track (in its various remixes) was quite a hit on the dancefloors a few years back.

  • Fischerspooner, ‘Emerge (DFA Remix)‘, off of iTMS Exclusive EP: I first heard of Fischerspooner when The Vogue got a bunch of free sampler CDs that included Emerge, which was one of the more requested tracks at the club for a while. Admittedly, though, this is a rather bland remix.

  • Bytet, ‘Anything‘, off of Split Single: Bytet is Robert Geiger’s dark electronica project from Anchorage. I saw him perform on quite a few occasions, and I used to chat with Robert every so often when I ran into him around town. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that he’s on the iTMS, even if I had to link to different mix of the song that popped up on my playlist. Going to have to drop him an e-mail later on and say hi.

  • Mojave 3, ‘Mercy‘, off of Dr. Martens: Shoe Pie: The Dr. Martens shoe company used to put CD samplers in with their shoes from time to time. Shoe Pie is one of two of the samplers that I have, though I picked it up used rather than with a pair of shoes. The song…well, I can’t really say it grabs me.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Past the Mission‘, off of Under the Pink: Now, that’s just funny. 15,189 songs in my collection, and iTunes randomly grabs two songs off of the same album. This one happens to feature Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails doing backup vocals — singing, even, rather than screaming!

Not a bad little list, that.

And now, a ‘bonus’ eleventh track (consider it a not-really-hidden track), thanks to the usual iTunes blurb I toss on posts when I’m posting from home…
iTunes “Higher Than the Sun” by Primal Scream from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 3:37).

Book of Blogs II

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Earlier this month, I linked to a project by Tvindy to collect and anthologize some of the better weblog posts by a number of contributing authors. I really liked the idea, and nominated a few entries for potential inclusion.

Tvindy’s hoping for a little more assistance in culling worthwhile posts, preferably posts chosen by regular readers of the participating weblogs, rather than solely author-nominated work.

As readers, are there any posts that stand out in your mind as particularly noteworthy, for whatever reason? They don’t have to be long, or serious, or anything in particular aside from standing out in one way or another. If so, toss ’em in the comments here — if you don’t want to dig through the archives yourself, just throw up whatever details you can remember, and I’ll track it down.

Not only will this help the project, but I’d be interested to see what — if anything — comes out of this.

iTunes “Conga Fury” by Juno Reactor from the album Bible of Dreams (1997, 8:06).

Post-Melodramatic Stress Disorder

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Funny stuff from the Onion…

Psychiatrists in select cities nationwide have reported a surge in Post-Melodramatic Stress Disorder cases following the Dec. 22 release of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom Of The Opera.

“We’re seeing a barrage of psychological consequences in those who have been exposed to the violently overblown acting and protracted, heightened emotions in The Phantom Of The Opera,” said Bill Lambert, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago. “After such intense abuse of their artistic sensibilities, melodrama victims are finding themselves plagued by extreme sentimentality, flashbacks to especially torturous scenes, and canned-emotional detachment.”

According to Lambert, a good portion of PMSD sufferers are experiencing distress so great that it is interfering with their jobs as overweight receptionists, struggling fashion designers, and community-theater actors.

“PMSD sufferers walk through their days with the specter of an unnecessary musical number hanging over them like a mask,” Lambert said. “The prelude is constantly playing in their unconscious minds, threatening to crescendo into exaggerated, choreographed action at any moment. Anything can set them off: a chandelier, a strain of saccharine music, a gaudy outfit.”

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it — I actually like The Phantom of the Opera. It goes beyond that, too — I like quite a few of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s musicals…in fact, I tend to like musicals. I’ve even seen quite a few of them on stage (Phantom, Cats [twice], Jesus Christ Superstar [three times], Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Tommy, Les Miserables).

In my defense, though (if a defense can even be mounted), I couldn’t help it. I’ve been brainwashed!

For a full ten years — some of the most formative years of my childhood, and nearly a third of my life to date — I was a member of the Alaska Children’s Choir (well, first I was a member of the Anchorage Boys Choir, then the Anchorage Girls and Boys Choir, then the Anchorage Children’s Choir, then the Alaska Children’s Choir). As such, I was exposed from an early age to a wide range of choral music, both classical and popular, and of course, the Webber repetoire was well-represented. There’s hardly a song in Webber’s most popular works that I don’t still have memorized, as if I wasn’t singing one piece or another in one of our concerts, I had the soundtrack albums at home.

Some of us just can’t be helped (though on the bright side, I’m probably immune to PMSD).

Of course, while I do like it, Phantom is hardly my favorite of Webber’s works. That honor is reserved for Jesus Christ Superstar, which is not only my favorite of Webber’s musicals, but my favorite musical across the board (though Chess does come in a very close second — pity I’ve never had a chance to see that one on stage). Three versions of the JCS soundtrack show up in my music collection (the original, the 20th Anniversary, and the Resurrection)…one notable version that I don’t own, though, is the actual soundtrack to the motion picture, for as good as the movie is visually, it is by far the worst version I’ve heard from a musical standpoint.

As far as the Phantom movie goes, I’m really not sure if I’m going to see it in the theater or not. As appealing as it sounds (speaking as an admitted fan of the show), two things worry me. The first is simply that Joel Schumacher is directing — but then, he has done things other than Batman and Robin, some of which I actually enjoy (The Lost Boys, Falling Down), so that doesn’t entirely rule things out right off the bat.

The bigger worry is simply that what I’ve heard of the music so far entirely fails to impress me. Admittedly, it’s only snippets in the trailer and 30-second samples on the iTunes Music Store, but the feeling I’ve gotten so far is that it may be falling into the same bin as the theatrical version of JCS, where the movie is fun visually, but disappointing musically.

So far, the reviews aren’t promising, either, as they seem to be boiling down to “if you already like Phantom, you’ll like it, otherwise, find something else to do.”

At the moment, I’m leaning towards renting — so I can’t be that rabid of a Webberphile, can I? ;)

(via Dad)

NNW missing images

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NNW Image Bug

This is odd — sometime over the past day or so, NetNewsWire has suddenly stopped displaying images. Images on pages show up fine in Safari, but never load in NNW.

I’ve checked all the preferences I can find in NNW, and can’t come up with anything that might be doing this.

Has anyone else ever seen this, or have any idea how I can troubleshoot this further and figure out what’s going on? I’m stumped at the moment.

iTunes “King Crack” by Dax, Danielle from the album Blast the Human Flower (1990, 2:10).