Go see this. Go see it now. Noice. Stands up to alternative soundtracks quite well too, and it's released under the Creative Commons, so it's got me thinking on the possibilities. (Thanks to Tycho at Penny Arcade for the pointer and similar urging.)
Ricky Gervais is filming a movie called "This Side of the Truth", starring Louis C.K. and John Hodgman, among others. And he's blogging about, to hilarious effect. After a visit from a reporter:
When he left I shouted at people and had an orphanage closed down because I needed somewhere to keep my plane dry.
Mike Schmidt, one third of the first season of the very successful podcast "Never Not Funny" has started his own podcast, called "40 Year Old Boy". NNF features three extremely quick-witted gentlemen (with occasional guests), sharing anecdotes about their pasts and their lives in the world of stand-up comedy. Mike left the show unceremoniously but apparently not acrimoniously at the end of season one (well, his leaving ended season one really). In any case, he's a genuinely funny, quick-witted man. Give him a listen!
And NNF Primo is awesome too! Well worth $20 a season.
Let me explain. The book begins on Earth, an Earth that is kept tightly shut off from the rest of the universe by the Colonial Union. The CU allows the citizens of certain countries to become colonists, and allows anyone over the age of 75 to enlist in its defense forces.
But no-one else is allowed off-world. No-one. Not even to visit. And the CU doesn't share its technology, instead using it to keep those on Earth firmly under control.
As I lay in bed reading last night, identifying with the people of Scalzi's Earth, I was overcome with intense claustrophobia. The idea that there was a whole universe out there, within reach, that I was being kept from, being kept prisoner on this planet, was unbearable. There was a tinge of agoraphobia too, that there was something unspeakably large in the sky, over me, pushing me down, holding me down ...
Then it occurred to me that this is might be what astronauts feel all the time, especially those that have made it into orbit. Or maybe it's worse for those astronauts who are fully trained but will never get into orbit. There's only a few shuttle flights left before the Space Shuttle program is decommissioned in 2010, where they'll be flying at a reduced rate until the Orion spacecraft is ready to replace them (scheduled to be ready 2014, so probably 2018).
Update: the rest of the book is much more Boy's Own Adventure than the grittier, drier, "Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. I couldn't help but compare them while reading Scalzi's debut, but that didn't stop me enjoying it at all. Just started reading the follow-up, "Ghost Brigades".
Go watch, is funny!
In 1969, the newly created Corporation for Public Broadcasting was about to have its funding yanked (thank you, Mr. Nixon). Mr. Rogers testified before the U.S. Senate and in seven short minutes changed their minds:
Kylie Minogue is in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Voyage of the Damned". It's being televised in Britain, tomorrow, December 25th, and has been garnering rave reviews from the norotiously picky British press. Lovely!
Since I would record it if it were being broadcast here, using a torrent to download it on Boxing Day is fair use. Right? Right ...
Update, Dec. 25, 14:30 PDT: torrents are now available, just FYI.
My dear friend DJ Dud recently put me on to Minimalnet.ORG, a portal through to an alternate, utopian universe where some of the world's absolute best electronica musicians (mainly "minimal techno" and its cousin "progressive techno") upload very high bitrate (often 320 kbps), high quality MP3s of their latest work. And then you download them :-)
As I learned at the feet of my bodhisattva DJ, I periodically download, add to iTunes, listen, rate, and then cull. The listening tends to happen while driving around, or doing the dishes, or on walkabout, using a smart playlist matching the "Minimal Tech" genre. If I like something, I mark it 4 stars; really like it, 5 stars. If it doesn't grab me, or it grates, I skip ahead 30 seconds a few times, and mark it with zero stars if it doesn't pick up. Any zero star songs get deleted later. This last bit is essential, because otherwise you'll just get lots of crap filling up your MP3 listening device.
[ Aside: I wish the iPod had a rating wheel or something similar, so that when listening to something while driving, I can rate things in real time, rather than click-wait-click-wait-click-wait-turn. ]
The site has an RSS feed, and there seems to be 2-5 new items daily. Sometimes just one track (albeit a long one), more often an E.P. of three or four tracks, and occasionally, a whole 15 track album. There was even one five album download. Oh, and it's all free. They're not all corkers, of course, and some are atrocious. But the good ones are truly exceptional. Did I mention, it's all free? It's all free, and you don't have to pay for it.
Here are my two favorite tracks so far.
The whole album is worth a listen, but Daniel Blomqvist's slow, bassy, liquid rhythms on "Not For Me" are a standout. If you have David Attenborough's astonishing and moving "Planet Earth" series on DVD (or HD-DVD), then try watching the swimming polar bear sequence (the fourth chapter on the "Ice Worlds" episode) while listening to this track. The smooth, graceful visuals are the perfect counterpoint to the viscous, lush, hugging music, and there's some incredible synchronicities if you time it right. And it's released under a creative commons license. To those in the know: this would be played around 8 A.M. New Year's Day in the Kasbah, were we attending, and then repeatedly at opportune moments thereafter.
This is the track that inspired the title of this post. Bardo, aka Paco, really comes through in a big way in this E.P., [Essential Reload 04]: Bardo Surmodo. Again, the whole album is worth listening to, only more so. Track 3, "Tiempo compartido" starts slow, but around the 90 second mark, a PHAT weaving bass growl starts marauding through the track, tickling my pleasure center as it passes, basically making feel like a wirehead. It feels alive. I first heard this while driving and it literally made me laugh with the Joy Of Groovin' and giddy with aniticipation of sharing the goodness. Download and enjoy. I'm off to listen to all of the Bardo I can find. To those in the know: this would likely be my fun track to close out my set (or maybe spice up the middle if I can't wait that long) on the main floor at New Year's, were we attending.
And it's free. How is this funded? Ads? Not that many on the site, and those that are there are only at the bottom of a page (by Google). Is that enough? They have a fat pipe too, as I was able to get downloads upwards of 800 kbps (downloading one entry at a time).
Re licenses: most of the downloads seem to be legitimately "free", often available for download on the artist's site, and are marked with an appropriate license. There was an album remixed by Freeform Five that is for sale at Amazon UK, but they've since taken it down. I'm hoping that this means their main thrust is about providing a space for artists to give their music away, not a place for pirates to upload ripped CDs. The author of the blog calls it a "netlabel", which sounds more like the former, but I'm still puzzled about the business model.
Thank you Keith! Thank you Bardo, wherever you are. And thank you, guy who runs the Minimalnet.ORG blog.
Next time you find yourself wandering an airport, or on a walk along a busy street, or through a crowded mall, try doing so to a soundtrack. Almost anything with a beat will work. Plug in, turn up, and walk on.
In my current mood (travel trance, delayed connection, tired), a beat a little slower than the ambient pace worked wonderfully for me: The Salmon Dance, from The Chemical Brothers latest effort "We Are The Night", had me weaving slowly but with deliberate rhythm through, between, and with the crowd. It was actually both relaxing and energizing. The following track, Burst Generator, my current favorite on the album, took me to a very different place, and was even more enjoyable, recalling dance parties, associated positive energies, while somewhere not disturbing my traveler trance. Very cool!
Any soundtrack suggestions out there?
As of 12:32 P.M. PDT, July 29th, Amazon's front page looks like this (on Firefox):
Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
That's all. The source for the page is very uninformative, and doesn't have any meta-data indicating which server generated the error (but maybe this is just how Firefox renders unresponsive servers).
Probably not defaced, but when they've had outages before, there's been a much friendlier message (obviously official).
Woody? Has your pager been going off? ;-)
Recent Comments
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Morabbin said:
I would love to hear that growl on Keith's speakers! I think it could be used quite nicely on the... read more
on Tiempo compartido -
Davemonkey said:
[this is good]And this is really sweet Morabbin! Definite Kasbah fare! read more
on Tiempo compartido -
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Davemonkey said:
I've been hungering for a good rock and roll soundtrack for ages but becasue I'm between PCs and probably about... read more
on Soundtrackin'
Make sure you play it on a good system (it's all about the bass; laptop speakers can't cut it). read more
on Not For Me