The company Kevin works for, Music Intelligence Solutions, won a Savannah area award for something awesome last night! YAY! Everyone should email Kevin a hearty congratulations (and, erm, ask what the award actually is). I am really proud of Kevin. I know how hard and long Kevin works. Big congrats to all of the team over at MIS!
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A Boy and His Toys
I should be in bed, but the werewolf was sitting on my desk next to my camera. What was I supposed to do?
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A Divinely Inspired Lack of Historical Perspective
“During my lifetime I have seen a significant deterioration in the respect accorded to religion in our public life, and I believe that the vitality of religious freedom is in danger of being weakened accordingly,” Oaks said. “Atheists and others would intimidate persons with religious-based points of view from influencing or making the laws of their state or nation.”\
That’s a quote from LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks that I found in this lovely article from the Salt Lake Tribune via this post on blurbomat. In a speech given at BYU Idaho, Oaks said:\
bq. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation. (emphasis mine)\
The “incidents” you speak about are isolated and rare, especially when compared to the violence and intimidation inflicted on the gay community by supposed people of “faith”.\
Your two statements are connected, Elder Oaks, but not in the way you think. Why have we lost respect for religion in public life? Why have we lost respect for religious leaders of most denominations? Because they say blatantly stupid things in public and then stand behind them. They ignore Christ’s teachings and support persecuting the different, weak and those in the minority. They incite hatred, persecution, inequality and show no empathy. They use phrases like “alleged civil rights”. I don’t understand the Church’s support for Prop 8 at all. It’s hypocritical when you look at our history as a people. The early members of the Church were actually persecuted for their beliefs – tarred and feathered, shot on sight and driven across the country – not yelled at or protested against. Why? Because they were different. Because they believed in a different interpretation of marriage than the majority of the country. Does that mean the early Saints were wrong? Does that mean that outlawing that form of marriage was just or right?\
No\
It wasn’t right then, and it’s not right now for the majority to inflict its imperfect morality on the beliefs of others – especially when those beliefs, those claims of rights, have absolutely no impact on the rights of others. Has the entire church forgotten the second great commandment the Savior gave, to “love thy neighbor as thyself”? If it wasn’t right for the government to outlaw polygamy, then it’s not right now to outlaw gay marriage. That’s showing a shocking lack of empathy.\
And you expect people not to be angry when faced with your hypocrisy – with your persecution of the different? You claim that people who want to deny others their right to the pursuit of happiness are being persecuted by the very same people you’re persecuting? And then, to top it off, you equate the fight against your campaign against others’ rights to the fight for civil rights by a truly oppressed minority? Divinely inspired lunacy is the best thing I can think of to say about it.\
I would have been fine if the Church had said nothing. But, the Church asked members to donate to Prop 8 organizations and donated an unknown sum of money itself. That support is why I stopped going to church – and you’re not making me doubt my decision, Elder Oaks. -
We Were on Morning Edition!
We were on Morning Edition today! You can read the transcript or listen to the story on the site. It’s very exciting, and the story’s great too. I think the artist they interviewed has a pretty typical reaction when people first hear about what we do. The comments on the article, too, are fairly typical.\
A lot of people think it’s the “death of art” or “homogenizing the music industry”, what we do. I think that’s silly. There’s so much music out there, and the labels do a horrible job of picking the good stuff. We’re trying to fix the system, not replace the whole thing or remove “art”. We’re trying to bring the music that the labels will never showcase out from the “masses” of mediocre stuff out there. Ours is just one approach, but I think it scales and is less prone to gaming than crowdsourcing or the current label approach of blind hit or miss picks by a very small group of kingmakers. If you really look at how “hits” get made today, it’s pretty disgusting. Art in popular radio is already dead. We’re trying to bring the art back by showcasing the things that should be played, not regurgitating the same old stuff the labels will to be hits with their gigantic marketing budgets. -
Trip Down Mom-ery Lane
I have a 10 year old kid. I have a 10 year old kid. Ahhhhhhh. Which is better than not having a 10 year old kid. But still, way to make me feel O-L-D. Half of the birthday plans were put on hold since Max has a fever. Boo.\
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Max’s Karate Graduation
It’s a big weekend for Max. He got his yellow belt last night, and it’s his 10th birthday on Sunday! Check out all the pics in the set on Flickr\
Also, my first blog post for The South is up! They asked real nice, and I’ll be posting geeky bits there every couple of weeks. -
Max
I’ve been sick the last couple of weeks and haven’t done anything other than the bare minimum to keep the household functioning. Sadly, blogging does not fall into the priority chores list. I did have to pop in to say, “Max made yellow belt in karate!” YAY for him. Hopefully Kevin will post pics soon from the graduation. Also, Max received all A’s on his first report card. Double YAY!\
Max’s 10th birthday is tomorrow, and hopefully Kevin or I will post about how awesome Max continues to be. Until then, just take my word for it.\
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No More Applications, Please
Everyone and their mother-in-law seems to be covering Beyonce’s Single Ladies these days, but you can all stop now. Really. No more. It’s over. I’ve found the best cover of the song, and I really don’t think anyone’s going to top it. See?
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By the extremely talented Pomplamoose Music. Check out the rest of their stuff on YouTube, especially their version of La Vie en Rose – it’s gorgeous. -
The Best of the Decade: 2000-2004
Some folks on twitter (I saw Mark Trammell and Corey Denis do it) have started posting their top albums from the 2000’s. Now that’s an idea I can get behind! So, here are my top albums from the 2000-2004. I’m going to try to do just three albums per year, but I love my music, so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll post my favorites from the second half of the decade soon.
- 2000
- Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy: This is still my favorite Eels albums. It’s heartbreaking and gorgeous throughout, except for the awesome and funny I Like Birds.
- The Crystal Method – Tweekend: Just for Name of the Game… that song is so awe-inspiringly awesome, there’s no reason for any other song to be on the album. The clean version, the explicit one, doesn’t matter. It’s ten tons of kickass in a two pound sack.
- Amon Tobin – Supermodified: Unlike anything I’d heard before, or probably since. This album, a lot like Massive Attack‘s Mezzanine is still used in commercials, tv shows and movies to make you think something is futuristic or scary. I’ll bet you’ve heard Get Your Snack On and Four Ton Mantis dozens of times.
- 2001
- Zero 7 – Simple Things: When I need to calm down and take a break, this is the band, and the album I turn to. The vocals are gorgeous and the music is lovely. In the Waiting Line and Simple Things are my favorite tracks, but I can listen to the whole thing on repeat for hours.
- Cake – Comfort Eagle: Yes, it’s commercial rock, but it’s infectious… oh so sweetly infectious. Short Skirt/Long Jacket is a fantastic song, and Comfort Eagle is great and not commercial at all. Give it up, this is just a great album.
- The Constantines – umm, The Constantines: If you want rock, you can’t go wrong with this band. I’ve written about them several times before, and they just keep getting better. But, this album has some of their best all-out rockers, and one of my favorite ballads of all time: the haunting St. You.
- Gotan Project – La Revancha Del Tango: Oops, we’ve already broken the rules. Here’s album number four from 2001, but I just couldn’t leave it out. It’s gorgeous latin tango with a trip hop twist and I still listen to this album all the time.
- 2002
- Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons: Another album I can listen to on repeat for hours. This is the perfect coding music. It’s got great hooks but just flows from track to track. It’s not like anything else you’ll hear, but it lovely nonetheless.
- Sigur Ros – ****: This is the first album I got by the band and I was hooked. If you don’t know who Sigur Ros is, shame on you. Second, go get this album. If you like it, then get Takk and everything else they’ve done.
- Luna – Close Cover Before Striking and Romantica: Cheating again! But, since they released two albums in the same year, and I love them both, you get a two for one. This band writes great songs that kind of fall outside of genres. I think that puts them firmly in “Alternative Rock”, but that sells them short. They’re just great songs, masterfully played and produced.
- 2003 – I am totally going to cheat on this one. 2003 was an amazing year of music.
- Fruit Bats – Mouthfuls: Kind of like Luna, these guys defy genre for me. They sound like a band out of another decade, but the songs are so… perfect… that I can’t help but love them. I sing along with every one.
- The Wrens – Meadowlands: Enough feedback to fill a dozen albums, but these guys make it work somehow. Alternating between kicking ass and crying in their coffee, this is a great album to try to sing along with… if you can understand any of the words through the feedback.
- Eels – Shootenanny!: This album has my all-time favorite Eels song on it, and one of my favorite get-up-and-go tunes. Saturday Morning rocks. It’s dumptrucking sugar in your morning cereal, playing outside from sun up to sun down and moving as fast as you can because there’s daylight a-wastin’. It also has one of the greatest ballads of ever on it: Somebody Loves You.
- Sufjan Stevens – Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State: In one word, Sufjan Stevens’ work is heartbreaking. Always artful, gorgeous and layered, you just can’t get away from one of his albums without a tear in your eye.
- Mew – Frengers: Rockingly awesome and that’s all. I can’t really describe what’s so great about this album, but it grabbed me from the first chord on the first song and doesn’t let go through the whole thing.
- Massive Attack – 100th Window: It’s not as good as Mezzanine, but it’s still ten times better than almost everyone else. When Your Soul Sings is particularly good, though, and would have fit in nicely between Risingson and Teardrop on that album.
- The Polyphonic Spree – The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree: Jen calls them “Up With People for grownups”… and she’s not really wrong. They’re kind of goofy and happy, but the music’s so damned good. It makes me smile every time. This is my favorite album of The Spree’s three so far.
- 2004 – The year of the mashup!!
- The Kleptones – A Night at the Hip-Hopera: How can you go wrong mashing up classic Queen and hip-hop? You can’t. Well, at least, they can’t. I listened to just this album for over a month.
- Zero 7 – When It Falls: They successfully followed up Simple Things with another gorgeous album. The songs are a little more complex than on their first album, but still beautiful and mesmerizing.
- DJ BC and the Beastles – The Beastles: The Beatles + The Beastie Boys = AWESOME. It’s so freaking good, especially Tripper Trouble and Mother Nature’s Rump.
- Arcade Fire – Funeral: Granted, I didn’t actually buy this album in 2004, but it’s still really really good.
- David Byrne – Grown Backwards: I’m a huge David Byrne fan, and this is my favorite of his recent albums. I love his music because even though you really never know what you’re going to get, it always sounds like a David Byrne song – which is a lot of fun.\
There you go… I only cheated, well, a lot.
- 2000
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TV Talk: Bitter-making moments
The Emmys were last night and none of my favorites won, booo. Instead of moping about what should have been, let’s talk about other times I felt like throwing a shoe at my tv, ok? OK!\
10. Virtuality– This was a great pilot about astronauts in space, similar to ABC’s seemingly canceled Defying Gravity but so much better. It was written by Ronald D. Moore and directed by Peter Berg. That alone should have guaranteed a pick-up. But Fox passed on it, blowing a chance at having both a successful and critically acclaimed show on its network.\
9. Smallville– The first couple of seasons were entertaining enough, but the show never lived up to its potential, which I found extremely frustrating.\
8. Dr Who– Nine leaving broke my heart and I have never forgiven the show for it, even though Ten completely won me over within minutes of his first episode.\
7. Veronica Mars– Everything after S1 left me unsatisfied. The S1 finale was so great and contained a wealth of material for a follow-up mystery, yet S2 and S3 were mostly meh. Well, it was still better than most of the stuff on tv, but not as good as it should have been.\
6. Alien Nation– The show ended in a classic cliff-hanger as a bomb was delivered to the Francisco home. Fast forward a few years to the made-for-tv movie where the bomb was never addressed. Come on! Reward your loyal viewers. A throw-away line would have sufficed.\
5. Jay Leno on Prime Time. I can’t even stand all of the reality programs that have sneaked into the lineup. NBC giving up three to four hours of scripted tv (depending on how many Datelines it airs) just irritates me.\
4. Beverly Hills, 90210– Brandon and Kelly call off the wedding moments before it is due to start. I get that Jason Priestly wanted off the show, so of course they couldn’t get married. However, it’s the given reason with which I have a problem. They decided to not get married after Steve talked about how “all of life’s mysteries are over,” that their lives were forever planned out and nothing unexpected would ever happen again. Steve then made some lame-ass remark about having a one-night stand later while Brandon would be stuck with the same woman for the rest of his life. UGH. Only someone never married [for love] would ever utter such complete nonsense.\
3. Twin Peaks– The revelation of who killed Laura Palmer. It’s clear the writers didn’t have a clue who the culprit was and were just making things up as they went along. While the journey was fun, the resolution left me completely unsatisfied.\
2. Queer As Folk:US– This is one of my favorite shows of all time. It is campy, gripping, soapy, poignant, funny, topical, moving. (Seriously, you try watching Ted check in to rehab without crying.) I want to recommend the show to everyone I know. On second thought, scratch that, since I only know family members and this isn’t a show to watch with your family. But you, you all in land of the internet, should totally check out the show. The show grabbed my attention when the three guys started singing, “I love the night life” and I was hooked a few minutes later when one of the guys complimented a drag queen on her outfit, “Not everyone can wear tangerine.” Ha. I love the editing and the music and the acting. The show is flawed, sometimes tries too hard, preaches too much, but it is just so damn entertaining I don’t care about any of that. The great thing about watching the show on DVDs is the lack of hiatus and no waiting months for resolutions after cliff-hangers! But this list now is about moments that made me bitter, so I’ll stop praising the show and get to the point. The ending of QAF definitely deserves to be on this list. The finale seemed rushed, important developments were glossed over, characters became OOC (out of character), and most egregious: the lead character’s entire arc was sacrificed for some ideal about queer culture. Or something. I still don’t fully understand the reasoning behind it, I just know that I thought it was a cheap choice. (But even still, this show is in my top three favorites of all time!)\
1. Gilmore Girls– Lane’s “good” behavior results in bad sex. Lane was the the nerdy/quirky/cool girl who rebelled against everything her mother taught her except the belief of abstaining from sex before marriage. She gets married and finally gets to be part of Sex-Is-Great Club only to have horrible sex once on her honeymoon; it’s so bad she doesn’t want to do it again. She accuses Rory of purposefully lying about the pleasure involved. Later Lane finds out that her one time resulted in a pregnancy. With twins. Without ever getting to experience the good part. WTH? Nice message there, writers.\
Hey, internet: What are some tv moments that left you feeling bitter?\
Next time on TV Talk: Does an unhappy and/or unsatisfying ending ruin the whole viewing experience? (Think Sopranos, Quantum Leap, Angel, Seinfeld.)
