Try to tell them they speak a bunch of different languages. China is funny -- as a state it's been around for a thousand years. And frequently "Chinese" is the word used for what we might laughingly call an "ethnic group" which presumably spans all of mainland China as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and other sovereign and not-so-sovereign states.
In many ways this is like all Europeans calling themselves "French". "Sure, I live in Norway, but that's just a dialect of French. And although my family is opposed to the present French government, which is why we formed the Norwegian government, we look forward to the day when we can all be one country again."
OK, so it's not quite that bad but it's in the ballpark.
And no, this ecard has nothing to do with the rest of the post. I have a cold, that's all.
So, I actually have one complaint about Apocalypse Now. We don't really see what Chef and Willard see when they get to Kurtz' compound which convinces them he's evil and gone insane (respectively). I wonder if that's because I'm looking at it on a TV. Maybe in the movies the heads and bodies were bigger?
Yeah, there are some heads in the background -- but you don't really notice them 'till Dennis Hopper mentions them.
The man is clear in his mind but his soul is mad.
You know, some of the dialog is way way stilted. But the actors use those otherwise-clumsy turns to act in -- and they use the changes of subject to act like they're thinking about what to say next. It's kind of neat how every single performance in it is as stunning as they are.
So the Google Voice thing isn't working for me. And I have Vonage at home but I never ever use it. I'm thinking about just buying a number from Skype and leaving it at that. I mean as long as I don't get any more deranged voicemails from David Ian Lee it might work.
"And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack!"
NOT! I am NOT a weasel!
You sure look like a weasel. I am an ERMINE! Sexy and svelt.
You look like a weasel. A 13-year-old girl's pet. I'm a freakin' PREDATOR, baby! Top o' the food chain.
I so bet that's not true. I be owls take you and your weasel friends out all the time. Oh MAN, you make me so angry. I'm a-gonna come down there and open up a can of...
What? A can of weasels? I AM NOT A WEASEL!
Wow, we actually had bookings on the calendar at Theatresource all the way 'till May. Aren't you excited about Pandora Machine moving to TriBeCa next week so you don't have to hear me talk about this? I mean, this is worse than my endless guitar case discussions.
Here's my favorite new absurdity: an email was circulated today looking for volunteers to help clean out the theater on Sunday the 18th and to take down the grid. I have no idea where they're planning to put all the pipe or how they intend to transport it, but it gave us all a good laugh.
+++++
Google Voice isn't quite doing what I want. But hopefully soon it will. Soon. It will.
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Vinnie Marano found the 12-year-old Scotch that Mitchell had left in our office. I was going to drink it when we moved in to the new place, but I hadn't realized that it had been opened -- four years ago. So Vinnie blew the dust off the box (dust -- everywhere -- all over my computer, ahem) and we imbibed. Me, I'm feeling a cold coming on so I drank strictly for medicinal reasons.
We have locked picture on acts 1, 3, 4, and possibly 5. Although there is a whole lot of cleanup which needs to be done on composites in Android Insurrection.
John August suggests guitar and piano for grade-schoolers. As in "piano and guitar only". In the classical-music world, learning piano first is a kind of trope. The piano is polyphonic, it's the default fundamental instrument of Western music (even though Bach and Mozart never had one, they had precursor sorts of things and wrote all kinds of music we today play on the piano.)
With the best of intentions, we’ve taught kids to be helpless cogs in a symphonic machine. Worse, we’ve created a system that pretty much guarantees most adults won’t be able to make music by themselves.
Well, sorta. But on the other hand we've taught kids to do something together. Of course, they do a crappity job of it, but they are at least trying to play at the same time. Which is interesting. But my main criticisms of his thesis are two:
1. that there seems to be a false dichotomy between piano or band. Which I think Mr August backs off on because he himself started on piano before moving to clarinet as a child. (If I were King I would order that each child take a piano lesson each day -- don't even make 'em practice at home, just sit and play with a teacher for an hour each day. But I wouldn't say they should do that instead of joining band.) 2. that kids will automatically learn musical theory just by playing piano as a kid. In my experience kids are able to play piano and guitar and have no idea at all how chords are constructed or how parallel movement works. In fact, as a guitar player, I deliberately took a music theory course in the 9th grade just to find out how chords are made so I didn't have to look them up in a book anymore.
So although learning at least a little piano is certainly a goode thinge, I'm not so sure it does a good job with replacing bands. I certainly enjoyed playing trumpet, and then trombone. And right, I didn't learn any music theory when doing that. But (as far as I could tell) neither did any of the kids who took piano since they were five.
But the other advantage Mr. August points out is that piano and guitar are stand alone instruments. You can play them and accompany yourself singing. Well, sure. That's true with autoharp too. It's also true with singing. The problem we have in this country is how anti-singing we are. Well, at least how anti-singing dumb white people are. But that's an issue for another post.
Mickey Hart and other dudes from The Grateful Dead did a bunch of the percussion for the score of Apocalypse Now.
Chicken systems has software that will presumably translate Gigasampler files. Apparently it doesn't work 100% though.
We have a new address. 81 Worth Street New York, NY 10013
Sarah Doe Osborne as Yurra-1 in Android Insurrection.
We also have a new phone number, although I haven't tested it yet. (718) 306-9696 [UPDATE: This is NOT our new phone number.] It's Google phone. So supposedly it'll ring directly to my computer. I'm not 100% sure of that yet. But we have a new home and we're very excited!
It seems that many of the writers, directors, and performers who've lost a home at Theatresource are moving over to the Workshop Theater. Workshop seems like a groovy joint. I've never been there myself. I should stop by and see a show.
The biggest thing I think I'm going to miss about having our studio in the theater is how people would and could just stop by. I don't know if there's another theater in New York which is as situated toward people just coming and hanging out. At the new place the Pandora Machine is going to you have to get buzzed in, and you'll probably need to call first as you really can't just stop by and see if we're there.
So that's too bad.
I think I want a sense of the world it physically inhabits, which is usually a discussion referencing some wheres and whens, either portraying a recognizable historical time and place or incorporating visual references to one or more, but could also just be pure visual invention
You know, Peter Frampton is a very precise yet tasteful guitarist -- especially for such a flashy guitar player. He gets those 32nd-note bits in with no slop at all. I mean really, where other flashy guitar players can be flashy and precise without being tasteful (I'm thinking Eddie VanHalen here). Or they can be precise and tasteful (David Gilmour). Frampton manages to be all three.
Perhaps I'm thinking David Gilmour because of the above (YouTube) 14-minute version of "Do You Feel Like I Do". I mean, most of the song is just I iii vii I -- you know, straight-up blues rock. So the trick is getting as many textures as possible with those three chords. In other words, you better have a rocking rhythm section. But the guitar itself has a fairly tremendous dynamic range in this song. Especially for an electric guitar. And it's interesting that the energy of the song actually amps up during the pianissamo section. The "talking guitar" section is the whole point though, right? Frampton pretty much ruins talking guitars for everyone else for all time just with this one solo. After hearing this, why bother even trying? And again it's interesting to hear his incredible precision alongside the very tasteful use of dynamics and his phrasing -- which leaves very musical "holes" and space not only for the other instruments but for the "breathing" of the song itself. There's songs like this which are so overplayed on rock radio that I think we tend to forget how good they actually are. And if the moment where the band kicks in and the talkbox goes off doesn't bring chills up your spine, then you're not alive.
