Sorry peeps. It'll be up in the evening, after I get home from work (and it's my last week of work... so start thinking of things you want to hire me for!!!). In the meantime, enjoy this Avatar (Airbender, NOT BLUE CAT PEOPLE!) line test animation:
Archive for the 'Misc' CategoryPage 3 of 26
A couple weeks ago, I met a dude here in Berlin that works between here and New York City as some kind of music business professional--an agent, or a lawyer, some such thing. He's been working in the music industry for a couple decades now. So needless to say, once we got to talking, it turned into a pretty interesting conversation (and subsequently, nicely, I've seen him again since and he thanked me for the conversation, so that's good, since it was a rather lengthy argument through which we came to approximately no conclusion). But it is the first time I've ever met, let alone talked to, anyone who actually bemoans the on-going collapse of the music industry.
And though this guy is an industry insider, his claims seemed to genuinely be coming from the perspective of a lover of music. So his sadness at the democratization of music via internet-enabled music sharing and publicizing comes because this new system is not producing music that he thinks is good. Goodness, as I've discussed in the past, is an impossible thing to peg down, but it most boils down to having a justifiable rationale for believing that something is good or not. This is how, for instance, I can still respect Nick even though he likes terrible movies; generally speaking, he can say why he likes a thing, or I can more or less estimate, based on various trends I've witnessed across the past decade, why he thinks what he thinks is good.
So here's our industry insider's problem: like many people his age, he learned/decided what goodness was during the hey-day of 70s album rock, and his idea of goodness involves a band being able to sell out an arena, and greatness involves being not only able to sell out said arena, but also to be able to do that for several consecutive nights. And arena rock is perhaps, a true victim of the internet. Since bands (new bands) don't make that leap to arenas anymore, since they don't get enough fans, since fans, thanks to the internet, have too many choices between too many bands.
The basic argument goes like this: once upon a time, several major record labels had the machinery and infrastructure in place to give a band a chance to record an album, to disperse that album to several million fans over night, and then to put that band on a national or global tour, playing shows in front of tens of thousands of people every night. This system then generated enough capital to fund the putting on of the band's next album-tour extravaganza. Without the money generated by the music industry, bands cannot be as good as they used to be, because they can't afford good equipment, studios, engineers, or even the time to properly record an album and then take it on tour. And the bands that do manage to be good, despite their lack of resources, do not play shows to sold out arenas. If you don't play shows to sold out arenas, you are not great. Thus, we can only, in contemporary times, have nostalgic outings to arenas to see the great bands of yesteryear, as they remind us that once upon a time, there was a time called the 70s, and the 70s were great.
It's a similar argument to one that's also being had amongst book-loving people about what the role of the big publishing houses should be, and to what extent independent and especially self-publishing systems should be trusted and utilized. The music industry, even this outsider would admit, treated most of its acts like machines and commodities. But is this abuse of our popular musicians worth it in order to make the best possible music? Will indie labels and the internet ever produce any arena rockers? Certainly, independent record labels now have the infrastructure in place to nurture and support relatively large and popular acts, but is it at the sacrifice of the epic awesomeness of an arena show? Can the indie methodology continue to scale up? Should it?
Alright. Let's make it two weeks straight, even though these weeks move to damn fast to really even feel all that separate. Why was #76 afraid of #77? Because seventy-seven seventy-ate seventy-nine! What did Freud say came between seventy-fear and seventy-sex? Seventy-fuenf!
I had a moment yesterday, having finished doing some work that felt good, where I flashed onto my on-going self-imposed famine from most things American-pop-cultural, and allowed myself some serious self-congratulation. Partially because I have not for a moment been bored since removing regular internet connection, television, newspapers, magazines, comics, and radio from my regular on-goings. Also, since the beginning of August (since coming over to Berlin), I have been living without a personal music-listening device. I have music on my laptop, which I listen to regularly when in my room with my laptop, but I have neither an iPod nor a portable CD player. I, as has been documented here before, have never had an iPod--remain fervently anti-Pod--but up to this point in my life, since first receiving a Discman for Christmas when I was 12 (along with a boxed-set of Weird Al Yankovic's music to that point (up through "Jurassic Park")), have always had a personal CD player handy, and have always traveled with one.
But, it turns out that the technology that facilitates my anti-Podism is backwards compatible! I so despise iPod culture that I've decided to do away with listening to music on ear bud headphones while doing any of the following activities: flying, walking around, running errands, riding trains, subways, and buses, or using my laptop in public places. This has worked out pretty well so far. My biggest test were two 13 hour train rides to and from Budapest. But never has a 13 hour train ride felt so short!
These devices have their upsides, I admit, and there's definitely been moments where I've wanted to hear music that I would have had with me had I bring CDs along, but don't have since I don't have their .mp3 representations on my laptop. And for sharing music with others, the devices are nice (that's come up a couple of times now). And, for instance, the other day I went and saw Black Mountain play, and they were incredibly awesome, so I would've liked to buy their new album, but I didn't have anything here to play it on! So maybe, some day, I will break my fast from these devices, and use them (again or for the first time), but with an increased awareness as to how unnecessary they are. I think everyone should try this. Since when were we supposed to constantly be able to listen to music anyway?
I don't really like to be this self-congratulatory, but I guess it comes along with the territory of being a cultural elitist, and especially being a cultural elitist with a long-running and multi-variegated series of acutely incisive bursts of cultural criticism (har har har). I need someone like Weird Al to show up and parody this bullshit for me, cut me down a peg or two.
I was in class this morning, and I turned to the woman sitting next to me to ask her what day it was. I had decided in the previous moment that even though it kind of felt like Friday, it must actually only be Thursday. Boy was I wrong. It's Friday! And since I've already let two Fridays slip by without posting anything, and I'm always trying to improve my number (number of blog posts written), so here I am with your once-upon-a-time regularly occurring feast of cultural-analytical acumen!
Which brings up the usual problem of my really pretty thoroughly having checked out of following much pop culture at all. And I'm not quite up to the task today of giving a truly personal account of coming unplugged from mainstream culture. Except that, for instance, now I know that the American tv show The Office takes place in Scranton, PA, which I learned yesterday while doing some important research about Scranton. So that's where I'm at, culturally, dabbling here and there, but mostly wondering what's going on in Scranton. A kind of metaphorical Scranton of the heart, but Scranton nonetheless.
So once one realizes that they're in such a place--this figurative Scranton--one must then take the adjoining metaphorical coal mine tour, to really see what one has going on in the deepest recesses of one's supposed cultural vacuum. And then you realize that it's inescapable. Only with years of practice, for instance, would I be able to expunge all the Simpsons references from my worldview. I was just talking last night, in my still-far-from-fluent German about creative choice and one's mother tongue. Like, it wasn't up to me that I speak English. And my parents could have raised me multi-lingually, but they didn't. So here I am, more or less stuck with English, and sometimes bored by it, so always trying to make it interested again (or learning other languages, which can then inform back onto my mother tongue).
And in the same way, I guess once upon a time I started watching, say, The Simpsons (though I had pretty much stopped keeping up with new episodes by the time I got to college, back in 2000), but I don't really remember why. Except I thought it was funny, I guess, but I can't actually recall the day when suddenly my brothers and I became the thorough devotees that we were (though I do know that it was extremely aided by syndication, with the massive number of repeats being the ingraining force behind the total reference-making ability that I have through the first 6-7 seasons of the show). So, even if I made the choice to watch the show, I was definitely massively influenced just by syndication alone. And that hardly seems like my choice.
So there's all this cultural stuff, then, constantly replaying itself in syndication in my personal version of the zeitgeist. So then, is it ever really possible to actually fall out of touch? What if I move to Scranton?
Is it Friday again already? Golly. This week was even faster than the last.
As long time readers of Culturology (that is, Nick (and maybe Neal)) may recall, one of my favorite things about popular culture in Germany is the way they re-title movies, presumably, in order to fit in with German idiom. The classic example of this is 2008's In Bruges, which was titled See Bruges... and Die? in German. Where the English title was subtle and understated, the German title just went ahead and put it all out there. Another great example from that era (you know, back in like, 2006-2008, when movies didn't all suck?) was 3:10 to Yuma, which became, in German, Death-Train to Yuma.
So, on this trip, my most recent return to Germany, I am already defaulting to looking around to see what kind of titles foreign movies have in Germany. But it's been such a shitty year for movies that even the German titles are a let down. One exception might be Get Him to the Greek, though, as it's German title is just Man Trip. And further evidence that Germans want to be able to tell what a movie is about based on its title alone is Avatar's German sub-title, which I like to translate as Avatar: Sallying Forth to Pandora.
So why don't Americans want to know what movies are about? This of course ties in with the internet-era monstrosity that the notion of "spoiler alerts" has become. That somehow, if we know what a movie is about in any specific way, or know what is going to happen in it, then we can't possibly enjoy it. This is juvenile and foolish. So, then, even though we're the juvenile and foolish ones for feeling like the essence of a movie is (the sanctity of) its plot, it's the German titles that come off as stupid, and the Germans as the foolish ones for needing to know in simple fashion why they should bother going out to see a movie.
Though, the American movie industry still seems to make boat-loads of money despite not producing much shit that's actually worth watching, and then sometimes terrible movies (say, The Aang Legend) actually do way better abroad than they do in the States. So we're each and everyone of us--any of us with the social and financial wherewithal to go see movies at all--special little snowflakes of stupidity.
I like to read short stories. I wouldn't say I am a terribly well informed reader, but I read WSJ articles when I am at my parents' place, The New Yorker when it is sitting around, creative non-fiction to pass the time, and short fiction as a break from novels.
Collection and series such as Best American are great because they curate my whole experience and take the work out of subscribing to thousands of journals and blogs just to find something decent to read. I get to read across a range of authors and themes. However, as of late, I have a serious bone to pick with the editors of these collections: every story I read is depressing as hell.
Have any of you seen Wendy and Lucy? Imagine a film festival where every entry was like that. How about an endless loop of the last 10 minutes of Nights of Cabiria and The Bicycle Thief? That's what these anthologies seem like: a broken record of hopelessness and heart ripping grief.
I know that some amount of conflict is necessary to drive a story. Obviously a 100% positive narrative would not make a compelling story - but why does every anthologized short story that I read leave me with a pit in my stomach? Lee Gutkind's Becoming a Doctor, a collection of creative nonfiction written by doctors, almost had me crying myself to sleep. Three of the first five entries in The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories made me feel so dejected that I lost my appetite.
In my high school Spanish class, we read a lot of Mexican literature, There too, all the stories followed the same pattern: tragedy besets family (vital livestock/family member dies), youth goes on a journey to better his circumstances, tragedy befalls youth again, tragic end. I wish I could find the book we used so I could quote some of the examples to you, but I recall one story where a cow was killed by a snake, another with a recurring comparison of a man's hands to worms, a long drawn out tale documenting the aftermath of a grand mothers death. There was just no positive message anywhere. In fact, these may be the most terrifyingly depressing stories ever.
Editors - I'm not asking for a cute romantic comedy (I have bittorrent for that) - but would it kill you to include a few chuckle worthy tales in your neatly collected volumes? Can't the guy get the girl every now and then? Does fire/war/pestilence/disease/CANCER have to ruin every narrative? Why even bother foreshadowing or irony when your peer authors have already extinguished any possibility of optimism?
The Bottom Line: Who decided that short stories can't end in anything less than general malaise?
One of the nice things about being 6 hours ahead of the East Coast (I'm in Berlin doing location scouting for the Time Log Web Comic) is that my "oh shit it's Friday and I forgot to write a culturology report!" moment, even as it happened at 6pm, really only happened at noon, and now I've still got a few hours to sneak in a post within some fine modicum of ontimeliness. So how about that. Now, of course, the problem is that, as per usual, I don't have all that much to write about, it still being 2010, one of the worst years for movies ever.
But I do want to mention, I suppose to Nick & Neal, that I can take a hint, guys. How, now on the side bar, under "Current Features" I'm no longer listed on my own, but instead lumped in with "and books." Now, certainly, most of the (non-comic) book-related material on the blog comes from Culturology. But not all of it. But is there really enough stuff about books on Audioshocker that it deserves to have it's on little link there like an annoying shadow cast by the awesome obelisk of Culturology?
And well, I guess I'm not really gonna add any content other than that little snippet of griping, 'cause I don't have a whole lot else to say for myself, except that Hesse's Siddhartha, in the original German, is great reading. And South Park, dubbed into German, is a fun way to bone up on one's language skills.
I was in Cobble Hill Brooklyn today and I ran into Terry Crews and his daughter at an open house. I was totally starstruck -- it was that big of a deal. He was incredibly nice, perhaps a little embarrassed, and assured me that he was doing everything possible to make The Chronicles of Camacho a reality. I walked away and quickly tweeted/texted/emailed/called everyone I knew. And here is the proof:
(Catch up on SUPER FOOT TO HEAD (Part I) here.)
...the first block i walked i only had to fight one street tough, who didnt even get in my way. the next block i fought two street toughs, the next block i fought four. the next block i had to fight eight, and i did some math and knew at this rate i would have serious problems. cause they were all low level street toughs they were easy to fight, but with too many of them i was getting bruised and bloodied from getting whaled on from all sides. plus i thought i might be hallucinating from the pain, i was seeing weird bright shapes and this nightmare version of jesus, in a purple robe like a kimono with lightning shooting out of his nail holes, he was hanging back at the outside of the fight, watching, and i didnt know yet whether he was for or against me. so i knew i would have to face the street tough leader.
I CHALLENGE YOUR BOSS, i exclaimed. as he emerged from the shadows of an alley i could recognize The Chief because he was so many feet taller than the rest of the toughs. he had war tattoos all over his face and he was carrying a weapon that only a dungeons and dragons freak would know what it was, it was like an axe head at the end of a long pole. he took off a ceremonial ninja star from a chain around his neck and threw it fast at my arm, where it shattered my japanese watch. YOU MOTHERFUDGER, i shouted at him, not like i was losing it but just real cold, YOU DONT EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH ITS ON.
i went into a defensive crouch, i could feel my stamina was at an all time max. The Chief charged at me and threw a body punch, i just clenched my gut and felt his hand break against my rock hard abs. but he just laughed and fucking bent my left knee inside out with a low leg sweep. christ that hurt, but i kept my concentration and when he thrust at me with his weapon ihead butted the pole in half. grabbing the axe head i RAMMED IT into his collar bone, i felt it stick in the bone and i could see he was bleeding pretty bad from his aorta but he stepped back and prepared for one more onslaught. i tried to stand up onto my left leg but the inside of my knee felt like a handful of bottle caps. the weird shapes were whirling all around my headcackling at me. oh man, i thought, this is looking bad but i got to stay PSYCHED TO FIGHT.
i saw the purple robe next to me and without even thinking about it, HELP ME, NIGHTMARE JESUS, i said. without saying anything he jumped up into my arm, folding his body into the shape of a flying kick. right when The Chief charged me i threw Nightmare Jesus full on into his face, and when the lightning from his foot stigma touched The Chief's head he torched instantly, like holding a lighter up to a dirty mattress. when the smoke and screaming were gone all the other street toughs had run away, i knew i had beaten them for good.
i was in front of the unitarian church now, but Nightmare Jesus blocked my way to the door, and i understood that the price of his help before was that it had to be me versus him. this was the most spiritual fighter i had ever faced and during our combat space and time lost all meaning. i blacked out for the whole fight and dont remember a thing, all i know is when i woke up he was on the ground in front of me looking like a can of sardines someone had dumped out on the pavement. i picked up his barbed wire crown and put it on my head, IM THE KING NOW, i said inside my mind.
i looked behind me and no opponents were left standing, just unconscious or dead bodies, and one pair of blood footprints leading from my burned out car to in front of the church. plus the second pair of blood footprints right out front from where i had to fight the j man. i went down into the basement.
when i limped into the octagon i knew i was too late. the referee was about to put the division championship belt around Mad Leroy, the thousands of people up in the stands were cheering and a whole symphony was playing crowning music. but then everyone saw me and it got completely quiet. Mad Leroy looked at me really intense for a whole minute and, oh shit, i thought, hes going to fight me. cause now i knew i could face anything but he was on top of his game right now, and id lost too much blood plus the one knee and most of my hand. but then Mad Leroy just kneeled down in front of me. everybody in the crowd and the symphony all just stood up, they didnt even cheer, it was a silent salute.
thats when i learned about myself what they were all trying to tell me. that i was the baddest ass one just for making it there that night. the referee put the belt around me and i felt like my heart was cracking open like an egg, and like a great mighty bird of violence and championshipness hatched out of it and filled me with its wings. i am the one. i can put myfoot through the whole worlds head, not anyone could stop me. i will beat them all down.
THE END
EPILOG
a lots changed since that night of fighting last week, i know ill never have an awesomer fight so im staying out of the octagon for good. im a sensei now, and my foot to head move that made that guys head explode in the alley is studied by all the mixed martial arts academies. i only fight people with my mind. and ill train any younger fighter whos strong enough, not just a strong body ... but SMART ENOUGH to know how to say ILL NEVER QUIT, ILL NEVER GIVE UP NO MATTER HOW TOUGH.
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