Eclecticism

Universal dropping CD prices

December 6, 2019September 4, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Battered by online piracy, the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company, said yesterday that it would cut prices on compact discs by as much as 30 percent in an aggressive attempt to lure consumers back into record stores.

Under the new pricing scheme, Universal would lower its wholesale price on a CD to \$9.09 from \$12.02. The company said it expected retail stores to lower CD prices to \$12.98, from the \$16.98 to \$18.98 they now charge, and perhaps to as low as \$10. When CD’s first arrived on the market they cost \$15.98, and have climbed from there.

This has been far too long in coming — but at least it’s finally starting.

The blackboard jungle

December 5, 2019September 4, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Damien pointed to an absolutely wonderful article today: Failing at Living: It’s a blackboard jungle out there: It’s bad enough when the students don’t want to learn, but when they can’t even spell dirty words correctly, can a teacher really expect them to grasp Stephen Sondheim? It’s a rather sad commentary on the state of many inner-city summer schools, and the challenges teachers face in trying to teach those students at the bottom end of the curve. However, at the same time, it is absolutely beautifully written, and gave me quite a few laughs while reading it.

…I glanced around at my remaining students (the ones I hadn’t thrown out of class) as they scribbled away on their final. After five weeks of hearing them tell me that reading “sucked,” I’d finally followed the dean’s sage advice: Let them watch movies. Since he did not say: Let them watch movies they like, I’d made them watch Stephen Sondheim’s thorny Broadway musical “Into the Woods.”

“You are really, really going to hate this,” I’d warned them. “Stephen Sondheim is all about words and they go really fast, and he doesn’t believe in happily ever after. But please hate it silently and take copious notes so that you can pass your final exam.”

Early on in my innocent phase, I would have asked for the context clues that helped us to know what copious meant. But such is the way of innocent phases. “Now, if for some reason you don’t hate this,” I said, “I beg you to keep the news to yourself. Your peers will never stop punishing you.”

There’s also a discussion of this article on MetaFilter that has some interesting points to it.

Democratic debate tomorrow night

December 6, 2019September 3, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

New Mexico is going to host a “conversation” style debate among the nine contenders for the Democratic nomination tomorrow night, at the University of New Mexico, Albequerqe. Unfortunately, due to both my work schedule and my not having cable TV, I won’t be able to watch it, which is something of a bummer. Still, it should be interesting to see what comes of it. MSNBC political columnist Howard Fineman gives his ‘Debate Prescription for Dr. Dean:

CAMPAIGN 2004 already has been an amazing show, and it hasn’t even started. With shrewd management, high-tech savvy and an angry anti-Bush message, Dean—the one-time internist and former governor of Vermont—has surged to the lead in the race for the Democratic nomination. An obscurity a few months ago, he is the frontrunner now, and everyone knows it.

As a result, the dynamic in New Mexico (with its heavy Hispanic vote and pivotal early primary) will be Dean and anti-Dean. The storyline of the night—foreshadowing, perhaps, the fall season in its entirety—will focus on the question of how he responds to the inevitable attacks I expect to begin Thursday night. The sound bite that makes the TV news, and the lead that makes the New York Times, will be the one that features the sharpest, nastiest exchange between the good doctor and … whoever.

I’ll certainly be looking forward to reading the reports of this once it’s done.

The world's oldest profession

December 5, 2019September 3, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Okies, folks — Kirsten needs help!

In just a few weeks, I’m going to throw a shmantabulous bachelorette party for my best friend. The theme for this co-ed costume party is ‘Whores throughout History.’

Who are some of your favorite historical whores? How about slutty eras? Eras you wish were a little less prudish?

Someone already suggested Mary Magdeline, which was my first thought. I’ll see who else I can come up with, though — anyone else have some ideas? Kirsten would probably prefer if you commented on her site, but any comments left here will be sent her way too, I’ll make sure of it.

Diplomacy based on petulance

December 6, 2019September 3, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

The Bush Administration continues to amaze me — they have an amazing ability to firmly put both feet in their mouth with their head up their ass.

From a press conference with Richard Boucher (I have no clue who he is, though):

QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, do you have anything on the proposal for the creation of a European Union military headquarters in Brussels independent of NATO — something that have angered the United States, according to reports?

MR. BOUCHER: I’m not quite sure what proposal that is. You mean the one from the four countries that got together and had a little, bitty summit?

QUESTION: That’s exactly it — and Belgium insisting to this —

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, the chocolate makers.

(Laughter.)

What a wonderful little piece of diplomacy that is — deriding Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg as “chocolate makers” and mocking their “little, bitty summit.”

Gov. Dean has issued a statement condemning the administration’s “foreign policy based on petulance“, a wonderful choice of words.

Rule #1: Validate

December 5, 2019September 2, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Having problems with the design of your page? Things working in one browser, but not another? It happens to all of us, and it can be pretty frustrating when it does.

The number one way to fix issues like this is simply this: validate your code.

As Mark Pilgrim pointed out back in May…

Newbie Designer posts a link to a test page, asking for help because it doesn’t behave as expected in this or that browser. Guru Designer replies, telling Newbie Designer that their page doesn’t validate, and that they should go validate their page before asking such questions. There is no further discussion; no further replies are posted; no one else is willing to help.

Why does this happen? Why won’t we help you?

The short, smart-alec, Zen-like answer is that we are helping you, you just don’t realize it yet. The full answer goes like this:

Validation may reveal your problem.

Validation may solve your problem.

Valid markup is hard enough to debug already.

Validation is an indicator of cluefulness.

There’s even a new version of the validator that gives more helpful error messages and tips to get them fixed, though it’s still in beta right now.

Bottom line: valid markup is a Good Thing™. Sure, it’s a bit of a pain, and it can take a little time to get used to the conventions involved in writing valid code. The amount of time, effort, and anguish involved in solving niggling little browser issues that valid code saves, though, is more than worth it.

(Oh, and in case you were curious — yes, this page validates!)

esoterically.net: Psych Eval

December 6, 2019September 2, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

The Guardian has a fascinating and disturbing article posted where psychologist Oliver James analyzes George W. Bush.

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest possible discipline on themselves and others – the sort of regime found in today’s White House, where prayers precede daily business, appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women’s skirts must be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a 21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to “legitimate” targets, often ones nominated by their parents’ prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues.

(via Len)

Bumbershoot '03: Mon, Sep 1

December 10, 2019September 1, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Finally, we made it to the end — day four of Bumbershoot is over and done with. After this post, no more Bumbershoot babbling until sometime next year!

I made sure to get to the Seattle Center right around noon today, as I was looking forward to both of the first two big acts in the stadium. First up was Leftover Salmon, having a blast with some good down-home bluegrass. They were obviously having a blast, and had a small lineup of three can-can dancers who came out on stage every so often to liven things up just a bit more. Not a bad way to get the day started in the least.

After Leftover Salmon left the stage, we had the requisite half hour wait in the sun as the stage was struck and then re-set for the next act. I was so glad I’d remembered to grab a bottle of water on the way out today, otherwise it would have been way to hot at that point. Eventually, Nickel Creek got onstage and started their set. Sara (their fiddle player) is quite the cutie, isn’t she? I was really enjoying their set, unfortunately, I had to take off about halfway through — I needed more food and less pot smoke (the clouds of marijuana drifting by were noticeable all weekend, and this morning I think I was surrounded by pot smokers, and it got a bit much for me).

I’d picked Karsh Kale as a possibility, so after grabbing some food, I headed over to the Bumbrella stage to check them out. Seemed to be fairly good Indian-flavored pop, unfortunately, it turns out that I showed up just in time for their last song. Ah, well — the one song was good, at least.

Since I’d missed Karsh Kale, I figured I’d head over to the Blues stage to catch the last half of Magic Slim and the Teardrops. Found a good open spot on the hill, kicked back, and half-dozed in the sun while listening to some good old Chicago-style blues. Not much better than relaxing to the blues on a good warm day, sometimes.

At this point, I was starting to get overheated, so I figured I’d stop into the EMP and catch United States of Electronica. Unfortunately, the line to get in to their show was incredibly long, so instead, I just wandered around in the “Fun Forest” carnival area for a little bit, watching people on the rides. It’s a cute little carnival area — not much to it, but what’s there is at least decent. None that I was really interested in hopping onto myself, but entertaining to watch for a while.

It had gotten to about 3:30 in the afternoon by now, and I realized that there was nothing on my schedule for the next few hours that I was really excited about seeing, and I’d about hit my overload point. After three and a half days, I finally hit a point where being in the middle of all those crowds in the hot sun was the last thing I wanted to do. Since I had a good five hours before R.E.M. came on stage (who I was excited about seeing) I figured that taking a break would be a good idea, so I hopped the monorail, came back to the apartment, and took a nap for a few hours. Very, very glad I did, too. I’m not sure I’d have made it through the rest of the day if I’d tried to stick it out.

The nap did a good job of rejuvenating me, though, so roundabout 8pm I headed back out to the Seattle Center and got into the stadium about twenty minutes before R.E.M.’s set started. It took a bit of jostling through the first few songs before I found a decent spot, but eventually a good space opened up, and I was able to see most of the show pretty clearly (though the pictures really don’t do it justice). They filled the full two hours that they’d been given plus some, when they decided to toss in a few extra songs “just because we can.” Absolutely incredible show, and they finished off with “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”, which blew me away. Awesome show.

All in all, another really good Bumbershoot weekend. Tons of sun, tons of incredible music, and a lot of fun.

And that’s all, folks.

Bumbershoot '03: Sun, Aug 31

December 5, 2019August 31, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

And here we go again — day three of this year’s Bumbershoot!

I was running a little late on my way out the door this morning, so rather than spending any time wandering when I showed up, I went straight into the stadium and made it in about halfway through Black Eyed Peas’ set. While I’ll freely admit that hip-hop isn’t my strongest subject, the bill for today’s “Hip Hop 101” show was too good to pass up. About all I really knew of Black Eyed Peas was the single from a couple years back with Macy Gray, “Request Line,” but I thought they did a fairly good job. They even got Reggie, the lead singer for Maktub, up on stage with them for one song, which was cool to see.

After Black Eyed Peas finished, we were treated to about 30 minutes of standing around in the hot sun and waiting — very glad I actually thought to put on sunscreen this morning. Eventually, though, old-school hip-hop pioneers De La Soul hit the stage. They’re a group I’ve known of for quite a while now, and they had a blast playing with the audience and getting everyone involved. At one point they were listing off some of the many artists they’ve worked with over the years, mentioned Tribe Called Quest…and then brought one of the members of Tribe onstage with them for a couple songs. At first I thought it was Q-Tip, but then I think I heard them say another name, so I’m afraid I’m not entirely sure who it was. Still, a fun show. I took off after De La Soul, though. The third act for that bill was Common, who I’ve not heard of, and I needed to find some shade for a few minutes.

During my wandering, I happened upon a street performer who I remembered from my first year at Bumbershoot. I think his name is David Kelley (though I could be wrong), and he finishes his act by balancing upon three boards stacked on eight wooden blocks on top of a free rolling section of pipe, while juggling three machetes and holding a pointy stick in his mouth with a spinning plate on the stick. Pretty damn impressive each time I’ve seen it. Even more entertaining, though, was that he had picked a helper out of the audience to hand him the knives, stick, and plate once he was on the blocks. However, after handing the various implements of destruction to the kid, David stepped back, as if the kid was supposed to do the trick. Amusing in itself, but even more so when the kid shrugged and started to try to step up onto the contraption! David quickly assured the kid (and his parents) that he didn’t need to make the attempt after all.

Next up on my music list was Golgo Bordello, who were…well, they were certainly entertaining. The music was very loud, fast, raucous gypsy/cossack type music, and while they weren’t the best singers or musicians I’ve ever heard, they more than made up for in pure insane energy. The lead guy was tearing all over the stage, and at a few points added to the percussion by slamming his microphone on the stage hard enough to dent it — by the end of their set, the only mic he could find that still worked was the one that had been attached to the bell of the saxophone player’s instrument. Completely crazy, was the verdict of more than a few people I heard talking as we all walked away afterwards.

I meant to catch the end of Chuck Prophet’s set at the blues stage, but didn’t end up making it over there in time. So instead, I hung around to see just what the deal was with the Space Harp, an art/music installation at the base of the Space Needle. This turned out to be a fascinating show. The Space Harp itself (or, technically, Earth Harp) is a huge stringed instrument, with the strings reaching from a platform at the base of the Space Needle to a point about halfway up the Space Needle, at about the 250 foot level. Each string has a wooden stopper at some point to tune it, and they are played by being rubbed with rosin-coated gloves. Quite an impressive piece of work, and their compositions (assisted by drums and electric violin) were very fun. Definitely worth the time to see!

This little bit of childhood ingenuity was probably my favorite part of the entire day. At some point, some kids had discovered that with the relatively smooth slope of the bowl of the International Fountain, if you wet the stone down, then you can sit your butt down on a frisbee and go sliding down the side of the bowl! There was a group of about six kids doing this, occasionally joined by older kids (from teens to twentysomethings) who couldn’t resist the urge to give it a shot.

I ended up sitting and watching this for at least a good half an hour. At any given point, you’d have two or three kids running into the fountain, filling water bottles, and then running back up to dump them onto the slide area to keep it nice and wet. Meanwhile, there was the occasional cry of glee as one of the kids went zooming by. Sometimes they’d coast to a stop at the bottom of the slope, but every so often one would have the right amount of momentum to send them careening directly into the jets of water from the fountain. So much fun to watch, and probably to do, too — though I didn’t ever give it a shot myself.

I ended up having to take a break for a bit and run back into downtown Seattle to get more batteries for my camera. Once I made it back to the Seattle Center, I took a few minutes to wander through the video game area by the carnival. There are a few little-kid rides in the building, and there was an older gentleman, clearly ready for his shift to end, resting on one of the Dumbo cars. I noticed him on my way out, and grabbed a quick shot.

Impromptu drum circles have a tendency to pop up all over Bumbershoot, at all times, and with all sorts of spectators. Generally, you’re more likely to have a fairly large crowd of hippies gathered around and dancing, but this one caught my eye because the dancers were primarily your average trendy Abercrombie and Fitch or Gap dressed teens. While it made me laugh, it was also pretty cool to see some of them drop the pretension for a bit and just cut lose, have fun, and enjoy the beat for a while.

The two big headlining bands for the evening stadium concert tonight were Cold and Evanescence. Cold I don’t really know at all, and the only thing I’d heard from Evanescence was their single off of the Daredevil soundtrack, which got a resounding “Eeeehhh…” from me when I heard it. Having seen both of them live now, I can safely say that contrary to the promo copy in the Seattle Weekly’s event schedule, Cold sounds like every other modern pop metal band out there, and Evanescence sounds like every other modern pop metal band out there if the other bands had female singers. Neither of them were really bad per se, but they didn’t do much to really impress me, either. Considering how happy Evanescence said they were because local radio station The End was willing to “try something different” when they started playing Evanescence’s single, the only real difference I could see between them and any other modern metal was that they have a female vocalist. If people are hungry for strong, heavy, female-led music, as seems to be the basis for much of Evanescence’s popularity, I’d quite happily recommend any given Pigface track that has Meg Lee Chin on vocals, or the Kidney Thieves, or probably quite a few other bands that I can’t come up with right now.

But then, Pigface and the Kidney Thieves aren’t mainstream enough to be picked up by MTV or radio. I guess people will just continue to be sheep instead…

Anyway, enough grousing. Another good day done. Not as strong as yesterday, but not a bad day by any means. Tomorrow brings a strong opening with the alt-country/bluegrass sounds of Leftover Salmon and Nickel Creek, and a strong end to the weekend with Wilco and R.E.M. Should be fun!

Bumbershoot '03: Sat, Aug 30

December 5, 2019August 31, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Allrighty then — day two of my wanderings at Bumbershoot 2003.

As usual, I started the day with a little aimless wandering around, peoplewatching, and watching kids play at the International Fountain. These three boys were having a blast, constantly running in, shrieking at how cold the water was and running back out to shiver for a moment, only to to tearing back in a couple minutes later, huge grins on their faces.

The day was another gorgeous scorcher, too — at least 80-some degrees, but at times it sure felt warmer than that. If I didn’t have pockets full of stuff (including my camera) I might have done some soaking in the fountain myself!

The only one of Le Petit Cirque’s performances I caught was this acrobat. Again, the stage was revolving around as he did his tricks, first on top of two small hand-size platforms, then later on just one, as in this picture. I can’t imagine being able to hold myself in the positions that these people do during their shows, just incredible.

My first musical show of the day, and my first venture into the main stadium area, was for Macy Gray. While I’m not a huge fan of hers, I do like a fair chunk of the songs on her first album, so I figured I’d see how she did with a live show. I was actually really impressed, too. While there were times when I was a little curious if she was a bit tipsy as she moved around the stage, that may have just been part of her stage presence, and she certainly put on a good show. Especially amusing was her trying to get the crowd to strip down as much as they would during “Sex O Matic Venus Freak” — even in mid-80 degree sunshine, the predominantly mid-20’s to mid-40’s white suburban crowd was a whole lot more likely to cheer than to start shedding clothes, especially at around one in the afternoon. Still, it was fun, and the closing jam on “I Try” was really strong.

After I made my way out of the stadium, I heard some really good sounds coming over from the Bumbrella stage, and made my way over there. Turns out it was Kinky, who I’d marked down as a possibility, and man did they put on a show. An incredible blend of mexican rhythms and drumming with rock-style guitars and a strong and very well incorporated electronic/synth element mixed in — the entire crowd was moving for their entire set, and later on when I tried to pick up their album, they were completely sold out. I was also impressed with how young they were — they all looked like they were in their late teens/early twenties, and they put on a show to rival (and beat) some of the older, more experienced artists I’d seen. Very, very cool, and I’ll definitely be picking their album up at some point.

After dancing around in the sun for both Macy Gray and Kinky I needed to cool off a bit, so I headed up to the wading pool to kick back for a few minutes. As with yesterday, quite a few families and kids had discovered the pool, and I was able to get some fun shots of kids splashing around in the water. Having that cool pond to soak your feet in midway through a hot day feels so nice too.

After cooling off for a bit I had three different acts marked down at the same time, so more or less at random I chose Carbon Leaf, and worked my way to the Backyard Stage where they were performing, and got another treat. Really solid celtic folk rock, and another show where the audience was obviously packed with fans. At one point the singer mentioned that they had CDs for sale, saw that someone in the audience already had one, and asked to use it for a visual aid, at which point it got handed over — complete with pen for an autograph. After signing it on stage, he complimented whoever handed it to him on a smooth little trick. Carbon Leaf also made it onto my “worth buying” list for the end of the weekend music binge.

Planet Beat Sound System was an interesting group, and a nice way to kick back and rest for a bit. While they weren’t really much of a show — primarily just a DJ and vocalist, with some extra drums added for some of the songs by an Indian drummer — the music was excellent. It was a style of Indian dance music called Bhangra that’s been gaining popularity over the past few years, something of a mix of today’s electronica dance beats with traditional Indian music and vocalizing. Neat stuff, a lot of fun to listen to, and they had a good couple groups of dancers bouncing around on either side of the stage.

Sitting back at the International Fountain, I got to watch a couple little boys indulge in a time-honored tradition for children everywhere — pigeon chasing! At times I almost feel sorry for the birds, but at the same time, I’ve yet to see them get caught, and they’ve got to be used to this kind of thing by now. And besides, it’s fun for the kids.

Next up on the schedule was the Dusty 45s — another incredible show (I had good luck with chosing bands today). Blisteringly cool rockabilly, and some of the best live rockabilly I’ve ever seen, too. Lots of original material, with a couple covers tossed in towards the end of the set, including “Saved!” (which I know from the ‘Commitments’ soundtrack) and “Misirlou” (most recently resurrected thanks to ‘Pulp Fiction’). For the last number, the lead singer/guitar player/trumpet player lit his trumpet as he played — that really is a flaming trumpet you see in the picture. Lots of swing dancing going on in the front rows, too. Another definite addition to my “worth buying” list!

There are DJ’s going all evening long in the Sky Church inside the EMP, so I swung through at one point to look around. The music was really good, but I just can’t justify spending a lot of time inside a building on a gorgeous weekend like this, so it was mostly just a spectator run. Still, whoever was spinning last night had some good stuff going, and the floor was pretty well packed with dancers. On the way in, I played a bit with the reflective outside of the EMP, and got this shot of the Space Needle reflected in the wall of the building as the sun was setting.

As night fell, I worked my way into the main stadium for the tribute to rhythm and blues with Bonnie Raitt, Shemika Copeland, Maxi Priest, and more. Unfortunately, the security was being pickier about not allowing photography, and even if I could have taken pictures, the floor was so crowded that I couldn’t get anywhere near the stage. Having already watched a fair amount of good blues over the weekend, and expecting to see more, I figured that I could live without having to deal with the crowds for this particular show. I ended up wandering around the grounds for a bit longer, than deciding that I was in a mood to finish of my day of Bhangra, mexican electro-pop, rockabilly, and celtic rock with some industrial and gothic music, and found my way home to head up to the Vogue.

And so ends day two of Bumbershoot.