Got One Laptop and An Audio Board.
Anyway... tracks for the sound installations are done. Getting final additions from Rob for the ambient piece, so I'll be mastering that tomorrow and sending it off to the manufacturers. Theoretically.
Taking a break from my own music today to dig into Traktor and sketch out a few dj sets for the Knox and MIA thing. Fun program, but I'm chronically incapable of picking songs and have already changed the playlist about 20 times. Oh well. I really just need to get about 2 hours worth of decent songs together and beatmap the tracks.. no matter how much I plan ahead I almost always end up doing it on the fly and changing everything anyway.
Our friend Andy is in town, so hopefully he'll come down today and we'll head over to EJ's for a little memorial day bbq thing. And then back to work.
Just keeping busy. decent amount of regular work, and getting everything together for the festival. ambient piece is almost done, getting the artwork and ecd ready so we can send it to get manufactured. Starting to get my DJ sets together today... finished up 19 tracks for the audio installations at the museum and gave those to Rob... gotta sort out the travel plans and get the live sets together still. ugh.
Browsing through a new tech porn magazine, "E-gear" while waiting at the the chiropractors office.
I agree that it would be horrible to loose my data on the world, but probably better than it would be to lose it.
I've finally decided to turn my favorite pet peeve into blog content. Everywhere I go I see signs with horrid misspellings. The rules here are simple: it must be a printed sign, and it must have at least one obvious misspelled word. While handwritten signs with misspellings are still like nails on a chalkboard to me, there's something especially galling about people who have taken the time to design, print and then post a sign without noticing... or caring...
Today's entry: Samys Camera in Venice
Alright, saw it last night. I'm not even going to attempt to organize these thoughts, so bear with me. Or don't if you haven't seen it yet, because there will be spoilers in here. You have been warned.
First impressions - yes, it's definately the best of the three prequels, but that's a bit like saying you picked out the best out of three day-glo leisure suits. Saw it at the Arclight, totally sold out, blah blah blah... and you could tell people desperately wanted to cheer. It was a pretty quiet theater throughout the movie.
There are good moments. But I can vividly remember walking out of the same theaters after the Lord of the Rings movies (and those were NOT quiet theaters) and being so excited, jabbering away about all the parts of the movies I LOVED. We walked out and starting talking about all the parts we hated.
Again, it's not so much that this one was spectacularly bad. But it's the last one. And the other two, frankly, sucked. And this one did not redeem them.
Which brings me to the best part of the third movie - at least it's all over now. Lucas, you suck. I don't want to see another three movies, so I'm glad you've just decided that you were never going to do them. Your revisionist history tendencies make me ill. If there is to be a TV show, as people are saying, I'm not going to watch a second of it unless you're so perephrially involved you don't actually write a damn thing. These three movies you made have sullied a universe that was part of my childhood. You nerf-herder.
So, where to begin? The completely useless inclusion of the Wookies, purely so you could throw Chewbacca in to get a cheer? And then leave us wondering why, if Yoda and Chewie were such good friends, surely Chewie knew Luke was training with him? How did Obi-Wan go from a relatively young Ewan to a, well, not very young Alec in just 20 years? If Vader built C3P0 by hand and R2D2 was his personal astrodroid, why didn't he recognize them in IV, V, VI?
And then we can start in on the completely bullshit way Lucas had Anakin turn. No build up. So many subtle things that could have been done, but no, we're left with a few scenes that rang so hollow. A very thin and small Darth Vader in the costume. What, did he eat a ton of pan-galactic burgers in the 20 years inbetween movies? Spend a lot of time at the gym beefing up his entirely robotic body? The fact that a fucking medical droid basically tells us that Padme dies because she's "lost the will to live". The WORST SCENE IN A STAR WARS MOVIE EVER - the "vader scream". That one scene alone but the nail in the coffin for me. Sure, Star Wars kind of jumped the shark with the ewoks, but really... I half expected to see the Burger King guy from the lame commericals walk in on this scene. The clueless nature of the Jedi, who were actually never really all that badass in any of these movies. What a bunch of yokels. No wonder they lost the republic.
Oh yeah. The none-too-subtle stabs at our current political situation. Hey Lucas, this is supposed to be escapist sci-fi fun, a space opera for fuck's sake. While I agree with the scentiments, I'll pop in Farenheit 9/11 for my political viewing, thank you very much. Having Anakin drop good ol' Bushies "You're with me or the enemy" line was a little OTT and totally unnecessary. So quickly after Padme's crap line about how liberty ends.
Some good battle scenes, but even those were flawed by Lucas' inability to exercise any self-control whatsoever and jamming each and every frame full of so much useless background CGI that there was never any focus. Of course, with his dialogue and crap acting, that was probably a good thing. Light saber battles so over the top and packed with CGI and twiddling and flinging about so there was never any real tension or sense of danger. No characters I actually cared about.
One scene, and one scene alone was done right - the end of the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan's final anguish.
Other than that, the past six years have been a total wash.
Head no longer aches. Looks like I've been having some comment issues - thanks to Jason and some other random guy, sorry, deleted the email - for bringing it to my attention. Apparently at some point I added *.com to my blacklist. Oops.
Anyway, tonight I'm off to a midnight showing of Star Wars. very excited. And Amoeba's right there as well, so I can blow Rob and Miyoko's gift - a fat gift certificate - on all the Cure reissues that just came out as well. Thanks you two!
the bday was fun. thanks to everyone who came. nice dinner on the patio at enterprise, then a stumble down to finns... apparently, there were three to four separate major dramas that occured, of which I was only partially aware of two and didn't find out anything about the others until yesterday, through various emails and phone calls.
Ahh, large steins of beer. Didn't notice a damn thing. Had a blast, thanks again everyone, and special thanks to david for shutting down the bar, locking the doors, and basically letting us have full run of the place until around 2am. Much fun. Sorry about the mess.
What's wrong with having a really nice glass of wine with 2 hot dogs for dinner? Nothing, I say!
Off to see Rasputina tonight. After Jason's review of the San Fran show, looking forward to it. I'm hit or miss with them. Wendy's a huge fan.
Been super busy... lots of cool stuff going on. Updates on all that soon.
Been a crazy week. Even having just three/four days off for coachella meant massive amounts of work and email catch-up. Greg sent me back some guitar stuff he did for my piece, and it's fucking awesome. Going to spend the weekend adding it in and playing around with it, then i'm done with that piece... and on to the next 20 or so I need to have done by July.
Went down to Disney for the private party for their 50th anniversary. Having grown up there, hanging out all the time as a kid/teenager, it was pretty surreal to be walking around the park with booze in hand. Having rafts waiting for me to take me over to Tom Sawyer island after dark. Bitching good fun. Today it's off to the Peterson Automobile Museum for some BMW event which looks like it'll be pretty swanky as well. Good times.
Finally, my favorite spam headline of the week:
"You said once you like hard erections, abel"
awesome.
Another excellent year. Time seemed to go really quickly this year... before I knew it, it was all over.
Wen and I drove out late Friday night, found our not too bad but not great hotel. Didn't even have a bar. Everything closes at midnight there so it was off to the gas station/am/pm to pick up some beer and snacks. Stayed in, watched some TV and tried to get a decent night's sleep before day one.
Greg and Anna drove out the next morning, a few beers were had, a little lunch, much slathering of sunblock, and then we headed over to the polo fields around 2-3ish. Not sure if they radically changed the way parking is dealt with (certainly the large numbered balloons were a welcome improvement in terms of finding your car at the end of the night) but we were in the lot within 15 minutes. It took over an hour last year. The line to get in was fairly quick as well; next to no security check for whatever reason.
Once inside, it was time to head to the beer tent. I wanted to catch a few of the bands playing in the tents, so we grabbed a beer near the area and I was able to listen to a bit of Ambulance Ltd while enjoying the sun and brew. A perfect start. Headed into the Sahara tent to catch a bit of Perry Farrel (oh, sorry, DJ Peretz). Boring. But even with a boring act on, the dance tent always has the best feel to it. Greg and I spent most of the weekend discussing how much more vital dance acts tend to be live. Guitar bands have gotta get their shows together - standing up and playing just doesn't cut it anymore.
Went and saw a bit of M83 - great stuff, but felt a bit weird in 90+ degree heat in the middle of a day. This is a band to see live in Iceland or something like that. Actually, most of the first day was amazingly mellow. Headed over to the other beer tent between the main and outdoor stages, caught a bit of Snow Patrol and Keane (more mellow stuff)... headed over and saw some of UNKLE's set, which seemed great - again, massive energy in the dance tent, as opposed to polite nodding everywhere else. Back over to catch a bit of Wilco and head into the VIP area for easier access to drinks. Bit messy back there this year - the port-a-potties were worse than the regular area, the food lacked in comparison to the mostly excellent choices in the regular food areas, and it was way overcrowded. The people watching, however, was excellent.
Hung out for Weezer, then headed into the fray for Bauhaus. Started their set with Bela... with Peter Murphy hanging upside down in front of the drum riser. Nice. It was a great set, they were awesomely theatrical. Everything that Greg and I were talking about - everything that's missing in rock bands today. A real show, with excellent but minimal lighting, really relying on Pete's charisma, which is ample. Cool shirt too.. but he really should have ditched the gear he had on to hang upside down. Looked like he had a truss on later in the set.
Turnout was pretty weak for them, which was unfortunate, but then again... most of the people at the festival probably weren't born when they split up. So not much of a surprise. Unfortunately, both Bloc Party and the Secret Machine's sets was entirely during Bauhaus so I didn't get to catch any of them. They'll play LA soon enough, Bauhaus won't.
Immediately left post-set as the Coldplay massives began to swarm towards the main stage, and headed over to the dance tent to catch the Chemical Brothers, catching a bit of Mercury Rev along the way. Great stuff. A little disappointed that Bernard Sumner didn't come out and sing the track he did with them, since he was hanging out all day. Oh well. Exhausted and covered with dust, it was back to the car and hotel, and fairly quickly to sleep. After watching Robert Schimmel uncensored on Comedy Central. Fucking funny stuff. Coachella should have a comedy tent next year. Wouldn't take up much space and it would make a better music break than most of the "performance art" crap they've got every year.
Day two... slow morning... drove around Indio to find a nice place for lunch, which ended up not being particularly great. The waiter was fantastically snooty though. Off to the venue, once again, no problems parking and getting in.
Headed straight over to the Gobi tent to catch a bit of MIA and see what all the fuss is about. A DJ and two indian female rappers. Interesting stuff, but not particularly exciting. Going to get the album and see how that sounds. People were getting into it, though. A lot of white girls doing the herky jerky dance.
Time for a beer again, and I was able to listen to a bit of Kasabian's set while enjoying yet another Amstel Light. Off to the outdoor stage for Tegan and Sara. Real potential there, but man, no onstage charisma whatsoever. Cue another beer and another talk with Greg about the dynamics of playing live. Split up at this point, as Greg wanted to see Gang of Four and my priorities were Junkie XL at the dance tent. I loved his set; Wen though he was a little too showy singing along with the lyrics to whatever he was playing. I see her point, but I think anything that a DJ does is an improvement over just nodding rhythmically.
Missed the Bravery, which I wanted to see since they're getting a massive industry push yet the scuttlebut is they totally suck and they're the equivalent of an indie boy band, put together by a smarmy label exec. I'll never know.
Off to New Order and the VIP tent for drinks while watching the shockingly old looking guys pound it out. They did three Joy Division covers, which I thought was a little over the top. Then it was time for Nine Inch Nails, and Wen decided she was going in to the pit. It's been years for me, but what the hell. It was pretty fucking awesome, and I'm still sore. Great set. The band needs a little more time together to tighten things up, and there weren't any visuals yet, but it was pretty fucking sweet. Lots of old stuff. Much pain. We decided to get out about three songs before the end, and he started playing "hurt". Pretty fucking cool stumbling and pushing your way through 10,000 people or so who are so enraptured they don't even see or look at you as you shove past them.
Met back up with Greg and Anna and headed over to the dance tent for the Prodigy. They should have followed up NIN on the main stage instead of Black Star, but whatever. Great, GREAT set. Even after the last crap album. Which they didn't play much of. Keith and Maxim were back, and it was pretty amazing. Went back into the pit, which had a fair amount of people who didn't want to be in a pit and seemed quite upset about it. Probably shouldn't be in the front of a Prodigy show then, you morons. Go watch Bright Eyes.
Met back up with everyone at the misting tent, which now had a DJ in it and quite a few people busting their stuff. Which was very funny. Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite was in there, seriously getting down. A nice way to end the evening, and yet another Coachella experience.
The rumors for next year - Depeche Mode and the White Stripes as the two main headliners.