As I mentioned I've been watching a lot of Simon and Simon as uh "research" and stuff for Victory Chimp. My feeling about it is basically that it was better than Dynasty. Here's the opening with the Barry De Vorzon theme song:
My relationship with my own brother isn't really bad, we just don't talk or see each other very much...of course I wish we were as tight as these guys. Hey, he lives in Southern California (so that's a start.) I suppose I'd be the "Rick" since mother likes "AJ" best, mister preppie-- (although she is actually pretty cold to him too on his own terms.) Truly, though, I might have passed for AJ back in my childhood days, being then no stranger to the hair dryer or khaki pant.
One thing I have noticed is that the cases that made it into the show were predominately the ones they didn't get paid for. They must have done a lot of boring stuff to pay the bills but those jobs were not shown on TV.
The Kardiac Kosar bad magusaean shadow could be lifting. Nets fall to Cleveland by 19 points. The spread was 9 1/2. I did not bet this game. I had a feeling. And then...
Several former Cleveland teammates visited Zydrunas Ilgauskas in New York on Tuesday, hoping to persuade him to re-sign with the Cavs and help them make a run at an NBA title. Ilgauskas was traded last month to Washington in the deal for forward Antawn Jamison. Ilgauskas bought out his own contract with the Wizards, freeing him to sign with any team after 30 days.
Look Out, Cleveland, the storm is comin' through, and it's runnin' right up on you-- but in a good way...
Two months ago I had a complete A-Z rough mix of VC, every word. Then I went into each Chapter (there are 48, dividing one of the chapters into 3 parts) and worked on each individually (but not consecutively) to get them to a level that I enjoyed listening to as a self-contained piece of music. Then I put them all back in line and listened to how they worked as a whole. Then I started to make changes to each piece to reflect how they worked as part of the whole.
Then repeat the process: rewrite, record, get other hex members to contribute, take it apart, put it back together. And I'm finishing up that cycle.
Very influenced by sports radio, I'm even making some changes to reflect the ways it will all be misunderstood, that actually matters a lot in terms of $$.
Conceptually, I somehow have moved from Dark Shadows & Toto to Simon and Simon & Miami Sound Machine. I'm haunted by the melancholy image of Dick York guest starring on Simon and Simon in 1983 after battling back from his addiction to prescription pain killers. 9 years later he would be dead.
My soft deadline is late March. Once I get back to having another A-Z rough mix in the next week or so I'm going to take everything into someone else's studio for final recording or re-recording, mixing etc-- polishing, I guess...or Irishing. That's when I put the subliminal/masked stuff under it all (as required by the law...)
Also, reading this new bio of Louis Armstrong (entitled "Pops")-- just to stay in touch with reality (and out of the 80s.)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)-The NBA's worst team was getting one easy basket after another in transition, hitting outside shots, getting key defensive stops and celebrating a rare victory.
Simultaneously, this article appeared:
Tulsa, OK (Sports Network)- The Arena Football League has planned to announce its relaunch for the 2010 season on Wednesday, guests will include a few of the league's high-profile names, including Cleveland Gladiators co-owner Bernie Kosar.
Now, the Florida Panthers' next home game is March 3rd (Kosar is/was part owner of the Panthers) and that day the Nets just happen to be playing the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Given the possible adjustments Cleveland will still be making after whatever trades they get into, and given the likelihood of a big spread in that game. I might take the Nets that day. Of course, you can't really pick until the night before but I'd say the signs are auspicious, to say the least.
Manchester, UK...in fact, Greater Manchester... is to me like New Orleans or Seattle or Miami or Memphis might be to somebody from an other country: a phantasmic universe, a holy wellspring:
Headquarters of the World Chop Socky League
Chetham's Library (where Marx met with Engels)
John Cassidy, Irish expat sculptor
10cc
The Fall
The Hollies
Joy Division
Van der Graaf Generator
The Smiths
The Mindbenders
Happy Mondays
Buzzcocks
I could go on. I think there was a great comic book store downtown.
At any rate, to intensify my longing for this magickal place I follow the exploits of the football team Manchester City (which I gather is like "Mets" of Man U.) Therefore I constantly read: King of the Kippax-- C'mon you Blues, the City is ours...
I know it is in English but I don't know what Kippax means, or most of this:
I thought our three stars stood for 1) us giving the rags our players so they could win a trophy 2) For giving them Busby 3) loaning them our ground (cheers Tony) 4) Our lights so they could play in Europe - oh that's four, and still counting.
Now then Keith, take your songs about Shankly, the 96, Russian submarines etc, and your missiles and you can stick your fuckin flares up your arse.
Loved this game SPY vs. SPY-- I played it on Nintendo.
The black crow and the white crow are out to beat each other before the time bell rings. Find the needed objects by digging through drawers, closets and furniture in the house. Foil your opponent by setting creative booby traps in the various rooms.
I'm to the point now where I am WATCHING the espn webcast of their radio hosts doing the shows. It's bad, people. But it is helping me to work on the VC project-- in fact, i keep the radio feed on while I mix or record; and I have 2 CD players going in the other room (each randomly playing thru a different disc.)
So, yes, things are going OK. Not that there haven't been some little bumps in the road. A "great" college QB who clearly isn't good enough to play in the NFL is going to be in some weird religious ad that will air during the Super Bowl. I guess it makes sense to capitalize on the peak of his popularity outside the Post-Bellum theocratic states. Although he resembles Kurt Warner in the respect that he thinks "science" is optional, it doesn't sound like he'll make the pros-- so why not go out with a boom (much like the dynamite)?
It's been a topic on the shows lately but I think it'll go away soon. I did panic & send a couple emails begging the hosts not to talk about politics-- BEGGING... it's one of the reasons I'm so hooked on sports now, no "politics" (in that special very stupid American sense) just sports and games-- for the most part.
I worried about that bald eagle they released during the national anthem on Sunday, afraid it was gonna land on Manning's head and jab his face. What a disaster that would have been. Do we really need vicious birds of prey flying around before these games?
Later, I thought about Joe Montana, and how I don't remember him EVER saying anything religiously creepy or political even though he went to Notre Dame. And to me he was the greatest QB ever. The new coach at that school, by the way, is a pro-choice Catholic.
and that's raised the question -- when does infidelity cross over into sex addiction?...
Tiger Woods IS seeking out treatment for sex addiction...
rehab for sex addiction is no different that any other addiction treatment course. He will have to sign a celibacy agreement - no masturbation, even - and will be enrolled in 12-step programs...
In an earlier post I said something in passing: the NBA was "heating up". What that means is the NBA gets more attention as the NFL playoffs end; in reality, the NBA heated up on October 27th, opening night. Pro basketball is my favorite sport to watch but it is really hard to bet on. You have to use a lot of research on subpsychic undercurrents, connections & trends and/or all the mundane details of each team and player that particular day of the long season.
Take the New Jersey Nets for instance, their record stands at 3 wins to 37 losses, with about a .420 average against the spread. Their three rare wins all fall along a strange axis parallel to recent news about Bernie Kosar. On Dec. 4th they got their first win of the season against the Charlotte Bobcats. As the game was being played the NHL's Florida Panthers, a team of which Kosar is part-owner, were in the airspace over North Carolina as they traveled from Washington, DC to Atlanta.
The Nets' 2nd win came on Dec. 8th in Chicago on the same day that the handcrafted basket weaving and specialty foods conglomerate Longaberger was holding its regional sales meeting there. Kosar is a spokesman for Longaberger, as his Chapter 11 court filings indicated.
Victory number 3 came against the New York Knicks, December 30. Everyone remembers Kosar's playoff-record 480 passing yards (4+8=12) on 30 attempts against the New York Jets in the 1986 playoffs-- but more significantly the Nets' win came 3 months to the day after Kosar filed papers with the court detailing liquidation of his assets in order to satisfy creditors' claims. These assets included his ownership share in the aforementioned NHL team and "Bernie's Knickerbocker Steakhouse" in South Beach.
Another way of betting NBA games is by examining matchup comparisons like this (via the Nets Are Scorching blog, re: a 01/06/10 game against the Atlanta Hawks):
Yi vs. Josh Smith
This is the first time since we have seen "new Yi" play against a PF like Josh Smith. A smaller but athletic guy. I don't know how Yi is going to be able to defend him, but I can't wait to see Yi take advantage of this mismatch in the post.
Advantage: Josh Smith
To me it's a hard thing to try to pull of winning on basketball. A lot of people try to look for a great team who might have a so-so night when they're favored by big points. I prefer the moneyline bet, though, to be honest; picking who wins straight out, with a varied level of payback for a win, for example a +160 moneyline pays $160 for a $100 bet, -160 moneyline pays $100 for a $160 bet.
Well. Bam! 2 for 2. Let me just say, in reference to the "HOT" Cowboys: you know who else was hot at the end of the season? The Cleveland Browns, 4 straight wins to end the season. Also not going to the Super Bowl.
I am a little shocked that the Jets won but I did not have a handle on that game. It is really important to remember that it is OK to keep your money in your pocket, don't have to bet every game. Or bet every week. I would usually wait until week six during the season (with the exception of certain over/unders or big unjustified spreads) to really go all out.
Only one more week to avoid work. Actually, I am working-- but it is nice to find myself being interested in something else.
Sometimes I feel like I don't
have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
is the city I live in...
Remember that song? It had a low center of gravity, like Jackie Wilson-- & BOTH had those clean glee-choir background singers. I think it is about L.A.-- although Rio de Janeiro is the real City of Angels.
Eventually, certain things come up on sports radio-- guy things. Here is where I part company, it's kinda the loser zone at that point. Too much passion about a college football team or bitterness at athletes-- vague "conservative" bullshit-- there's an authoritarian aspect, naturally, to sports fans.
One issue, lately, is Jeter getting married-- men are worried. It's a weird subject to hear men discuss, men in the 25-40 age range mostly-- an attitude against "marriage" like it is a big deal. It isn't. Marriage is easy-- Sinatra was married like 4 times, in the end he died married to Zeppo Marx's ex-wife. It doesn't ruin anything plus that's the way you can have kids and know they're being taken care of to some extent. Yes, you are going to have pay big money but that is just inspiration and motivation.
ONLY 2 PICKS THIS WEEK:
New Orleans to cover 7
Minnesota v Dallas UNDER 45.5
I took a break just before New Year's Eve after about 16 days of hardcore recording and mixing for the Victory Chimp project. Still on a break really, just listening now. I have gotten wired into so many software setups, Ableton Live, Native Instruments, Traktor Pro and Traktor Scratch, Acid, all kinds of Cakewalk stuff, weird Swiss granular synthesis,-- I'm crosseyed.
It was a good time to take a break what with the bowl games on and the NFL playoffs starting. Mostly, I had been hanging out on political websites in my down time, to kill time-- but I got politically overloaded by Victory Chimp. It brings up a lot of memories of the 80s. It reminds me of when I worked at the USIA, there are paragraphs here and there that I wrote in 1984, bad news.
So I switched over to watching and listening to ESPN online, games on the radio. It was nice to go back to it. It had really upped its game but I don't know how long I'll last. One thing for sure though, I HATE the attitude of people who have "politics" as a hobby, not so for sports fanatics-- even though there are certain similar cycles to the manipulation of both groups of people, ultimately sports is just about sports. It is all really just about games. Government isn't a game.
Speaking of New Orleans, they had the 'bye' last week. Cards win. Neil Rackers avoided execution because the refs blew a facemask call that allowed the Cards' defense to win in overtime. It was a good thing for "Neils"-- it's a pretty rare name so I'm always worried when "Neils" fail. The Cowboys looked like a good college team playing the game of their lives in their first appearance in a "real" stadium. The Eagles suck so I don't take much from that game. The Vikings aren't great either. People are all over the Cowboys but to me they seemed like they were playing dress-up at Jerry Jones' command, pretending to be the Aikman Cowboys in order to justify the bizarre, new stadium they play in.
Some good NCAA bowls/conference championships: Nebraska/Texas, Idaho, Auburn, Boise State, CMU/Troy game...Iowa looks good (also forgot: Gators pwning Cinn). However, the whole "lolColt" thing has gotten old. I feel sorry for the guy. But, y'know, so what? Big-Time college sports are 80% suck-- just the sanctimony and the whole plantation business model. It gets on my nerves quick so I can only watch a few football bowls and March Madness.
And then the steroids confession, which really made me laugh thinking about Mike Lupica and the sentimentality business. Like Lupica's stupid book about leaving notes back and forth with his kid during the home run chase in 98-- oh my god, they were all doped up. These are games not metaphors for anything. But hell, the extreme cynic fans are just as bad. There were a lot of irate people calling into ESPN-- but of course it'll all blow over and there will just be more games. NBA season is heating up. I have to say ESPN covers everything well and they have great bumper music for their online broadcast.
Getting back to work soon. I need to construct an elevator pitch for Victory Chimp (other than: "I dunno, it's a bunch of fucking bullshit.") But first I need to run out to Walmart to buy some jewelry and trinkets for all my "friends"...
'You can walk with me. Even though I was your enemy once we will walk together. I was sad when I realized that I was not the only creature to receive this gift. But now I see you are worthy of it, too.'
And they walked on in this way, the lizard using his senses to follow the smell of the coffee and the cricket playing songs that kept him from feeling sad. They walked on and on, ignorant of the noise and dangerous commotion of the city. They came to believe that they had been called to find the source of the mysterious gift they had both received. They would sit together when they rested and describe to each other the taste of the sweet rain that had changed their lives so. Finally, the lizard stopped near a drain set into the outer wall of a busy coffee shop.
'We are here, my friend. I am not mistaken.'
They crawled into the drain and emerged in darkness under a sink where through a cracked pipe poured the runoff from all the shop's beverage preparation areas. The cricket leapt in ecstasy and started in on a new tune of celebration, a rapid burst of almost inaudibly high pitches. The song rattled and vibrated so sharply that it disturbed the enormous colony of ants who had previously established themselves in the space beneath the sink. The ants swarmed out viciously and quickly overwhelmed the lizard and the cricket until all their parts had been ripped away and carried individually back down into the ants' nest in the earth below."
The train had stopped some time ago at its terminal station and when the old man finished his tale he departed. I stayed on the floor of the train for a few minutes, collecting myself and reassuring myself that I was now alone. I emerged from the station and wandered through New Jersey for a short time looking for a working ferry to take me back across. Instead, I found a shabby helicopter charter office. I negotiated a price about 7 times above the standard rate and soon enough was back in the city. That inflated rate I felt was perfectly justified and even something of a bargain when you consider that I lacked a reservation.
Months passed this way with the lizard and the cricket each believing that this gift had been intended for them alone. Then a storm passed over and left so much refuse in the streets that the truck ceased to visit and with that the daily rain of coffee vanished from their lives. On the first day they were confused but they ignored this feeling and continued to wait even as the sky grew dark and then light again. The second and third days passed in the same way and eventually the two creatures edged out past the grass with the hope that the source of the nourishment might be discovered. They saw each other.
'I won't eat you,' the lizard said, as the cricket began bowing a tune nervously. 'I have moved on from base foods to a better taste.'
'As have I. It has improved my playing.'
'I'm waiting now for my food to arrive. It falls from the sky only over the place where I live.'
'I find myself drawn here by the same cause. Could it be that we are both here for it?'
'No, that cannot be.'
And so they waited in silence for 3 more days but their coffee never came. The lizard was very depressed now and the cricket started playing a tune to help raise his spirits. The lizard was inspired by this to move out into the street and it was there he found a paper coffee cup. He could smell a hint of sweetness in it and was again inspired to walk on. The cricket followed him all the while keeping up the happy tune.
"My boy, it will pass-- just concentrate. I'll whisper to you. We're under the water now and the tunnel walls are so thin-- but we'll make it."
"I feel like I can't breathe very well."
He stroked my hair and recited to me:
"Once upon a time there was a cozy dead end street that rather than being transformed from its industrial origins into a parking lot was allowed to become overgrown until its metal buildings were torn open by rain and wind, nor were its brick buildings spared a similar trial as they fell in parts to become sturdy sanctuaries for the wild animals of the city, not excluding humans. Within a decade of neglect the yards of the dead end street had reached an equilibrium that afforded each resident rat, reptile, insect or bird their own healthy niche. Likewise, the active irresponsibility of mankind had accelerated by destruction the creation of a barrier of hazardous passage which prevented all but the most insanely benign humans from invading the peace that the creatures of the dead end street had found.
The site became lost but one day a truck began stopping there just as the sun reached its peak. Before it left the man inside tossed the dregs of his coffee with milk and sugar into a patch of grass where a lizard and a cricket lived unaware of each others presence. The two creatures waited each day for the sweet rain to fall and enjoyed the tasty bounty each in their own way.
I can still see the image of the shoulder blade of the bride yet today nor will I forget the interminable pace of the exit procession as the newly married half siblings descended from a pedestal upon a rise decorated to make them appear as two living wedding cake figurines. When I saw the bride's naked shoulder from the helicopter's windscreen I felt as if I were looking at a slide through a microscope, so intense and exclusive was the attraction it held for me. As she moved before the procession with slow painful steps her shoulder flexed in an effort to hold there the thin strap of her gown, and to prevent it from falling into the cradles of red between the craggy plates of her skin. The groom helped her to clutch the bouquet in her weak hands, preserving the dignity she might have managed alone through the pain had not the surrounding revelers been so seemingly ignorant of her condition, including Sinatra himself who was walking just behind them and attempting fitfully to hurry them ahead. I was grateful to have seen the groom's tender gesture, and I cursed myself when I recalled how angry I had been hours ago, stranded in New Jersey by the wrong train.
On the trip from the airport earlier that day I had come under the scrutiny of that particular sort of individual who regards facial expressions as equally public to the spoken word. Influenced by the accumulated delays of my trip and the darkness and rain of the early morning I looked at my bare wrist with a perplexed grimace. I never was one to wear a watch and the act of glancing at my wrist amused me because I realized how useful a tool it would have been to have a watch to peek at in consternation. It seemed like it would have been a simple way to alleviate or at least manage the frustrations of my journey. An old man noticed this activity and with the confidence of complete misinterpretation felt obliged to speak:
"Don't worry, we'll get there. The train only runs one way. Enjoy the down time. I know your generation came up without the slightest memory of inconvenience so let an old man remind you to take these moments of boredom as a gift. You know, when I was a child the first time I heard music that really moved me-- it was called bel canto then-- I heard the sound of neighborhood boys singing in an alley. Not the radio. I bet you can't remember hearing music that way. I can just imagine you sitting on the curb with your pals leaning over a plastic turntable playing those little records or walking around with your head in a dream plugged into a portable tape player. We'll get you where you need to go, if the train doesn't do it there are more sophisticated alternatives, technology is like that, it's one step ahead. Whether or not that's a form of oppression I'll leave to the judges. I only ask" 'what use is this thing?' That's all we need to know, not that a Pre-Raphaelite might have hated your Casiotron watch. Who makes these kinds of comparisons when we can all hear the bells from Mount St. Ursula counting through the day?"
The train swayed so widely as he spoke that I felt sick. The old man came close to me as I knelt down.
It is little known, even by those who remember him, that two of Frank Sinatra's illegitimate children were born with Harlequin-type ichthyosis. Their skin appeared brittle, shattered into diamond-shaped scales which revealed the deeper inwrought tissue undulating at every breath like cold bacon. It is a hideous congenital disease that is almost always fatal within days of birth. But Sinatra had the means to keep the children alive; in fact, the drug Isotrex (the only effective treatment for the disease) was largely developed through his funding.
With constant love and medical care the children lived into adolescence and it came to pass that Sinatra got it into his head to bring the two stricken youths together in a platonic matrimony of like creatures, celebrated at great expense in a hidden region of New Jersey close by the water in Paulus Hook. There are many such privately owned portions in the area, estates not mapped and made impenetrable by illusionistic barriers and mazes of false paths both physical and psychological. Check your GPS machine the next time you take a long walk near the water there, you'll notice coordinate jumps of an unnaturally turbulent character.
I myself had walked a path previously hidden to me that day, a path strewn with authorial interferences as predictably ubiquitous as chopsticks in an abandoned uranium mine. These circumstances left me at the end riding along on an unscheduled gypsy cab ride in a helicopter. The bargain I'd struck for my safe return to the city island included silent participation in a contract job that would claim a mere hour of my time before I could be deposited at my intended destination. The pilot didn't know the purpose of this particular job but it was too lucrative to pass over for my excursion alone. He'd been hired to go up slowly at certain prearranged times in a New Jersey grassland and float from point to point, creating micro bursts of hard-winded weather by the effort. During one lift he became distracted by our conversation and we drifted over the secret Sinatra family wedding.
Had some vandalism at one of my houses a week ago or so (and when I say house think hovel, junkyard and/or shack)-- just some kids climbing into the yard of what they thought was an abandoned scrapheap, breaking some glass with slingshots and sh&t like that. When I noticed it I called the cops just to give a report, and then I caught the kids the next day. I made a deal with their moms not to press any charges or ask for reimbursement for the damage-- just requested they attend one session of boxing class at the gym, see if that's a good outlet for them. I also requested that they not do it again.
I mean, I didn't even notice the damage right away. Honestly, it was indistinguishable from the rest of the yard which is already like Sanford & Son meets The Haunted Mansion (with more North Mexico gothic paraphernalia over the New England gothic flavor of the original.) That's how I have established my work environment.
And so the striking thing about this event was escorting the cops around, differentiating the very worked-over trashcan style I have constructed from the violently random alterations caused by the wayward youths. I found myself explaining why I lived here (not just WHY in that house but WHY in this town, WHY in New Mexico.) And I had to finally justify what they saw by explaining what I did for a living and how this was all part of it, how I worked outside a great deal, &c. &c... as usual, when asked about employment, I deemed myself content provider. That's my work.
And I am in the middle of working, getting content together to provide to Drag City. Referring to the full-tilt-audio-version of Victory Chimp.
I earlier had explained here that I broke down the text into small cells. I assigned these cells to voices, music, radio-show style exposition &c. The first step had been to immerse myself in the emotion of the book, it's period and purpose; consulting my original notes, exploring the music of the time of its creation, as I remembered it. This research helped me approach the monolith of the text and begin to see what each part might want to be in an audio version.
So that's where I am, the thing is in parts on the assembly line or I'm like a little Chuck Close over here working on each detail that recapitulates the whole, details that will make up the whole eventually when I take a step back OR I am currently coloring each thread of what will be a tapestry once I construct the proper loom (to ruin the analogy and bring in some Medieval flavor...)
Once the parts are all finished, another week or so, I will lay it all out in a rough cut (something I think I have already mentioned here but it's the step that I'm still getting to) which I'll then start to polish with overdubs and redos and eventually go to mix down for the master.
