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| Busy Busy Busy March 28th, 2006 -- Can't post much today. This is why:  I'm in the middle of renovating our kitchen, and I discovered last week that the wall studs, the things the walls are supposed to hang on, aren't actually connected to the floor. That's not good. What's also not good is that the floor joist sags a ton right there at the bottom of the wall. What's really, really, really not good is that there is no subfloor there, so I'm having to tear out all of the flooring and put in a subfloor, and I'll likely have to cut out some rotted subfloor. Apparently there was a fire at some point fifty or so years ago, and instead of fixing the problem, whoever owned the house just say "eh, we'll just put some linoleum over it and no one will ever know." Blech. So, that's my life right now, fixing problems that were created fifty years ago. And since I don't have the time to write, I'll just give you a couple of links I've come across: An email from the casting director of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition hoping to help/exploit families with children dying of strange/humorous diseases. Roboclaw, a game of skill and robots. video of a song recorded by a cellist/recording engineer using only cellos. Very cool. Story about a Muslim couple who are being forced to divorce because the husband accidentally said the word "divorce" three times in his sleep. Gallery of overloaded vehicles. Also check out the site's picture gallery. That's it for this round. I'll see you guys next time. Keith |
| Malleability March 21st, 2006 -- Pop art is such a funny thing. And most of the time, it has a very short shelf life. If you go back and look at the number one songs through the years, you'll notice that most of them, well, are unlistenable. The song that was number one on the day I was born was "You Don't Have to Be a Star (to Be in My Show)" by Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis. If you're like me, you don't even know the song. If you scroll through the years, I would say that at least half of the songs are completely terrible, a half of the other half are only kind of good, half of the other half of that half are good, and half of the other half of that half which was the other half of the previous half are actually great songs. Lucid writing, bah! I looked at some of the other number one hits on my birthday (January 4th), and even most of the recent ones seem terrible, too. How You Remind Me by Nickelback? (I know I've linked to this some eight times, but it's still funny.) Don't Forget About Us by Mariah Carey? Let Me Love You by Mario? So, it makes me wonder, how is it that a song can be popular enough to be the number one song in the country, but yet be hated by virtually everyone just a few years down the road? I guess the obvious answer is that pop art is much more "pop" than "art". It's really just whatever happens to be the most fashionable thing that week, and is instantly forgotten or reviled as it passes out of fashion. So, that makes for a big problem for someone like me. I've never been fashionable, never been cool. I predicted a couple of years ago that prog rock would be making a comeback. Uh-huh, the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, wearing-a-cape-while-playing-eight-keyboards kind of rock. This kind:  So, in other words, my pop barometer is waaaaay off. And, when I listen to stuff that’s popular even in the indie scene, be it the Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, the Decemberists, etc., most of the time I scratch my head and say “this stuff sucks!" It kind of scares me, because I remember a few years ago watching an interview with Joe Eszterhas, who wrote Basic Instinct (which was extremely popular), and he said that he thought the new big writer-director guy’s new movie was just “talky and boring”, that it would be a flop, and his new movie would be a big hit. The “guy” he was talking about was Quentin Tarantino, the movie was Pulp Fiction, and his new movie was Showgirls. So, I think, am I akin to Eszterhas, am I culturally tone-deaf? And then Tom Petty came along. I heard him once say that he hadn’t really listened to a new album since the seventies, because he wanted to stay in that singer-songwriter kind of mindset and not be tempted to try to out-fashion the kids. That was about the coolest thing I’d ever heard anyone say. He was being intentionally out of touch, and I think the reason was that he’d rather get better and better at his thing rather than trying to constantly reinvent the wheel, DC Talk style. So, it made me think, does it matter if I’m culturally tone deaf? I think it only matters if I’m trying to be fashionable. If I’m not trying to be fashionable, I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’m good at it. ***************** Thursday mini-post: I can't stand Bill O'Reilly. I hate that he's called a conservative, that his opinion show is held up as evidence of Fox's bias, that he's delightfully ignorant, that he has a degree from Harvard and is one of the most highly paid entertainers in the media but pretends to be part of "the working class". Ugh. And here are some more. Keith |
| Disciplined Excess March 14th, 2006 -- There's a culture of excess in rock and roll. You don't do anything halfway. Alcoholism, drug abuse, promiscuity, etc., have been traditionally par for the course for a rock musician. It's funny, though, that when a rock musician tries to get back into a music career, people are amazed that instead of looking like this . . .  . . . the guy now looks like this:  . . . yikes. The problem is that the true rock and roll lifestyle just isn't sustainable long-term. It's still killing musicians every now and then, but the last one that I thought was a big loss to rock was Brad Nowell, of Sublime, who died of a heroin overdose some ten years ago. Some others have died from weird drowning accidents or plane crashes, but you don't really expect big musicians to die of excess related deaths like vomit inhalation, shootings, getting into fights or, my personal favorite, farming. Rock is more about living a disciplined and moderate life now, and part of me thinks that's not a wholly good thing. Partially because I, in my portly and full-figured state, have to compete with musicians who are svelte fitness nuts, but also because part of the appeal of rock was that it was supposed to be so carefree, so uninhibited. I think we've lost something when the lead singer of the most popular punk band in the world is a vegetarian. Maybe that's just me, I don't know. Keith |
| Worry Worry Worry March 9th, 2006 -- Everyone's so uptight, it seems. I tend to be a worrier, too. I guess it's a natural thing. I like to think of myself as optimistic, but I'm just as much of a sucker for whatever the next big catastrophe around the corner happens to be, whether it's the bird-flu, the national debt, cartoon-enraged muslims, or a new Nickelback album. But, I've come to realize, worry is simply a side-effect of fear. And when I really look at it in a larger context, there's no good reason for me to live life afraid. I have a good life. Regardless of how big the latest governmental corruption scandal is or what wars are happening where, my life is fairly secure. And if it's not secure, so what? I'm not promised a stable life. Heck, I'm not even promised life. Plus, I live at a level, though common in our time and place, that would be considered obscenely rich for people throughout history, and for many currently throughout the world. I'm a freakin' gentlemen of leisure compared to a person of my class 100 years ago. So what do I have to be worried about? If I want to gauge the proper amount of worry I need to have, I can start by focusing on the things that are the closest to me and affect me the most, see how much I worry about those things, and then work from there. So, since I don't really worry about my health, traffic, money, or what I eat, why should I be worried about the atmosphere or about some crazy lunatic in the Middle-East? It makes no sense. I wonder if the need to worry is rooted deep within us, that maybe it's hard-wired into us from thousands of years of experience. In the same way amputees have phantom nerves, where they get itches on arms that don't exist anymore, we know, on some level, that we should be worrying about something, be it a plague, or starvation, or the blood-thirsty marauders in the village next door. However, we can't find anything immediately around us to really worry seriously about, so we cast our worrying net farther and farther away, until we're worried about the weather in Asia or the endangered mongoose of a country with too many vowels in its name. And what's worrying ever done for anyone? All I can think it's ever done for me is to suck my life force and make me a completely ineffective person. I'm ineffective enough on my own, thank you very much. And here's a picture Claire took: 
Keith |
| From the Archives: The Fascinatingly Boring March 6th, 2006 -- Here's a post from back in June of 2004 . . . enjoy! ********************* I was thinking about trying to make the world's worst public consumption post, where I'd talk about something like free trade or how we perceive three-dimensional images. I tend to get fascinated by things that no one else cares about. Of course, everyone does this to an extent. I remember seeing something on TV about this lady that had the world's largest collection of historical and decorative bedpans, ranging from ancient bedpans made out of clay all the way to stainless steel ones decorated as the American flag. I'm guessing it was meant to be patriotic. I think the passion for the mundane is one of the things that separates the artist from the art enjoyer. I've been to art museums with art student friends who have literally spent over an hour looking at one particular painting. I, on the other, really enjoy art, but if I look at a painting for more than thirty seconds it's probably because I've fallen into a standing up coma. It's not that I don't like art as much as they do, it's that I only care about the effect of the art, not the execution of the craft required in order to draw out the effect. I see a painting, I enjoy the painting, I move on. A lot of artists see this non-passion and interpret it to be evidence of ignorance or low class, and many artists end up justifying their non-success by the fact that they haven't condescended down to the mass's little desires and needs, because the masses are ignorant and unworthy of their "amazing" talent. Here's the truth, kids -- people like art because of what it does for them, not because it gives them a taste of what their superiors create. If you make art that doesn't do anything for them, they're not going to like it. If you don't succeed, it's because you have either done a poor job of trying to succeed or because you suck at what you create. There's really no other answer. Growing up in the art world, I've noticed that there has always been this unwritten rule that whoever is commercially successful must be a talentless hack. If the stupid people like him, the logic goes, he must be stupid too. Unfortunately a quick glance at history doesn't support this idea. Most of the older music that gets played in concert halls today was written by commercially successful composers. There are some exceptions, of course, but mostly because those composers weren't trying to be successful, they were writing music for their own peculiar (or outdated) tastes. Their peculiar tastes became unpeculiar over time and their music became more popular as a result. Unfortunately for modern artists, however, most of the examples of unsuccessful artists throughout history are not the "poor misunderstood and unappreciated geniuses", they are people that simply weren't very good at what they did. The KGPT's really not trying to make fine art. We want to make art that's fun, art that people enjoy. Music that actually touches people where they are instead of where we'd ideally like them to be. I see nothing disgraceful in that. I hope we're successful, in that I hope that people enjoy it, but if we're not I'm not going to blame them, I'll blame my own abilities. I hope the music is better for it. Keith |
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