The following is a series of posts I made live from a sporting event yesterday.
From these seats, I can't quite tell what sport they're getting ready to play way down there. Fortunately, it's 2017, which means I can just sit and drink my 20 dollar Pepsi while I watch David Cronenberg's classic "Dead Ringers" on my phone. What's all the commotion? Did someone score a basket, or field goal, or something? I guess I was distracted; in my hand I've got Jeremy Irons playing not one but TWO nuanced perverts.
It's amazing how much money I have to shell out to watch a basketball game with this guy's head obstructing my view of 12.5 % of the court. If I'd stayed at home, for a much more modest outlay I could have gotten Paul Williams to stand in front of me and block nearly the entire screen. (With a coupon, I probably could have afforded Marco Rubio.)
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Monday, February 20, 2017
MATH, BATS, AND TELES
This morning, my son showed me some baseball geometry, by which I mean he demonstrated some of the new thinking about the angles created by your feet when you're batting. I wonder if some older baseball fans are nostalgic for the angles great players of the past used? ("Yogi Berra had an unshiftable faith in the power of the isosceles triangle-- these young kids today don't respect the parallelograms of the past.")
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a young music student who was visibly disturbed by my assertion that math affected people emotionally. She hated math class, avoiding it whenever possible, and couldn't really deal with the notion that math and music were connected. Music was like her oasis (try not to think of the overrated rock band when I trot out this metaphor).
To avoid charges of hypocrisy, I'll tell you that my relationship with math (and science too) is complicated. I hated having to sit in classes thinking about all that stuff, but although my actual understanding of those worlds is sketchy at best, I find that philosophically I'm in bed with people who see the world through those lenses. As much as I love music packed with mystery and chaos, I see even that stuff as governed to a large extent by ratios, numeric balance, and the like. I love the work of Schillinger, a man who wrote damned fat books about math and music that have influenced me profoundly in spite of my rarely straying past page three. (On the subject of fat wordy doorstops that mostly stay on my shelves, I used to enjoy reading Spengler while beginning an evening of drinking. I liked the way it illustrated my despotic treatment of my brain cells; it felt like I was forcing my staff to work really hard right before they clocked out for the day.)
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a young music student who was visibly disturbed by my assertion that math affected people emotionally. She hated math class, avoiding it whenever possible, and couldn't really deal with the notion that math and music were connected. Music was like her oasis (try not to think of the overrated rock band when I trot out this metaphor).
To avoid charges of hypocrisy, I'll tell you that my relationship with math (and science too) is complicated. I hated having to sit in classes thinking about all that stuff, but although my actual understanding of those worlds is sketchy at best, I find that philosophically I'm in bed with people who see the world through those lenses. As much as I love music packed with mystery and chaos, I see even that stuff as governed to a large extent by ratios, numeric balance, and the like. I love the work of Schillinger, a man who wrote damned fat books about math and music that have influenced me profoundly in spite of my rarely straying past page three. (On the subject of fat wordy doorstops that mostly stay on my shelves, I used to enjoy reading Spengler while beginning an evening of drinking. I liked the way it illustrated my despotic treatment of my brain cells; it felt like I was forcing my staff to work really hard right before they clocked out for the day.)
Friday, February 17, 2017
ALEX CHILTON AND ME
Last night I caught a little of the Big Star documentary on TV. I'd call the experience bittersweet, but that trite word seems a weak way to describe the blend of gut-punch anguish, excitement and ambivalence I felt watching it.
Forgive the back story intrusion here, those of you for whom Big Star is a long-known quantity. Alex Chilton was a precocious singer, guitarist, and songwriter who cut a hit song at an age when most of us are still dressing out for dodgeball. A few years later, he formed a band whose dedication to catchy bubblegum hooks and rock and roll energy didn't sell in a pop world now more Zeppelin than Beatles. His band's studio output then degenerated into a hazy and chaotic bad trip, and a third album that never really had what you could call a proper release.
Later Chilton's various talents and idiosyncrasies led him into areas that threaded the needle between the roots of rock and roll and the roots of mental illness. It's easy to get the impression that Chilton would periodically drug himself into a state of dislocated mania, round up a dubious entourage that more upmarket rock entourages would sneer at, and enter an unsuspecting recording studio waving a to-do list scrawled and clawed almost to the point of plasma in a fever of nutty conviction.
He did all of that, but he also did more than just about anyone else to read into the record the Rosetta Stone kinship among soul music, rockabilly, and bubblegum.
Forgive the back story intrusion here, those of you for whom Big Star is a long-known quantity. Alex Chilton was a precocious singer, guitarist, and songwriter who cut a hit song at an age when most of us are still dressing out for dodgeball. A few years later, he formed a band whose dedication to catchy bubblegum hooks and rock and roll energy didn't sell in a pop world now more Zeppelin than Beatles. His band's studio output then degenerated into a hazy and chaotic bad trip, and a third album that never really had what you could call a proper release.
Later Chilton's various talents and idiosyncrasies led him into areas that threaded the needle between the roots of rock and roll and the roots of mental illness. It's easy to get the impression that Chilton would periodically drug himself into a state of dislocated mania, round up a dubious entourage that more upmarket rock entourages would sneer at, and enter an unsuspecting recording studio waving a to-do list scrawled and clawed almost to the point of plasma in a fever of nutty conviction.
He did all of that, but he also did more than just about anyone else to read into the record the Rosetta Stone kinship among soul music, rockabilly, and bubblegum.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
YAMMER OF THE GODS
Fans of interminable blather will be gratified to learn that last night's Hot Plate recording session yielded a mammoth amount of political chat. Tom Alderson and I recorded 121 minutes of pontification, chest beating, and chin wagging, wrapping up the self-indulgent marathon a minute or two past one AM. In fact, the cutoff was more or less arbitrarily imposed, as I felt we were just getting into it towards the end, but Jarrett Nicolay's computer kept crashing due to his use of state of the art blather-resistant software.
The long and winding gabfest went into extra innings in part because of my attempt to criticize all ends of the political spectrum. After ninety minutes, I suddenly realized that we'd forgotten to insult libertarians, but at this point I was busy explaining my groundbreaking concept of Telecaster Tolerance, and Tom was starting to remember that he had a four hour drive home, and an early meeting at Philippi.
For those keeping score, here's where this leaves us.
We've now recorded all of the material for the pilot show, as well as much of what we'll need for the next few episodes. I'm planning to use 10 or 15 minutes of political material on an episode, because of my theory that people will only be able to stand a certain amount of such drivel from me at one sitting.
The pilot show editing process will be wrapped up (we hope) next week, and at some point soon I will begin negotiating the learning curve of turning all this content into a podcast, as well as discussing with various colleagues the possibility of Hot Plate airing on an independent radio station or two.
I'd like to emphasize that, despite the dissent of an Instagram friend assuring me that I am not a windbag, the numbers would seem to bear out my claim to windbaggery. Last week's forty minute bloviation exercise with one Dave Nuttycombe now appears to have been a bagatelle or warmup for last night's epic threnody, and I'm strongly considering a Keith Jarrett-esque solo tour.
The long and winding gabfest went into extra innings in part because of my attempt to criticize all ends of the political spectrum. After ninety minutes, I suddenly realized that we'd forgotten to insult libertarians, but at this point I was busy explaining my groundbreaking concept of Telecaster Tolerance, and Tom was starting to remember that he had a four hour drive home, and an early meeting at Philippi.
For those keeping score, here's where this leaves us.
We've now recorded all of the material for the pilot show, as well as much of what we'll need for the next few episodes. I'm planning to use 10 or 15 minutes of political material on an episode, because of my theory that people will only be able to stand a certain amount of such drivel from me at one sitting.
The pilot show editing process will be wrapped up (we hope) next week, and at some point soon I will begin negotiating the learning curve of turning all this content into a podcast, as well as discussing with various colleagues the possibility of Hot Plate airing on an independent radio station or two.
I'd like to emphasize that, despite the dissent of an Instagram friend assuring me that I am not a windbag, the numbers would seem to bear out my claim to windbaggery. Last week's forty minute bloviation exercise with one Dave Nuttycombe now appears to have been a bagatelle or warmup for last night's epic threnody, and I'm strongly considering a Keith Jarrett-esque solo tour.
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