I’ve seen some pleasantly odd things on Flickr this year. First was the kid in Ontario who takes pictures exclusively of police cars and emergency vehicles. A month or so later, I found the guy who collects Pyrex and 70’s kitchenware.
But today. Today I was introduced to the guy who seems obsessed with looking like Yul Brynner.
I’m doing freelance reviews for Arkansas Times again. This week: my thoughts on the new album by The Good Fear.
Also, a fun story. I was sitting in the park yesterday reading a book, when I noticed a guy out of the corner of my eye suddenly stop. I looked up, and he was staring at the trees across the water from me. The bushes below were moving. Slowly ambling out of them and up the tree: four young raccoons and their mother. Over the course of about 10-15 minutes various passersby all stopped and looked, fascinated by this surprising development. It’s good of Nature to occasionally stop us in our tracks to remind us of its casual awesomeness.
Twice this week I’ve come across this quotation from Eric Hoffer[1]:
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
The more I think about this statement, the more I realize how much it applies to religion, politics, pop music…even websites and magazines. As soon as a great idea spreads, it gains followers, and as soon as something has followers, it tends to lose focus, gain weight, and die. If power corrupts, then apparently popularity kills.
Upon reading more on Hoffer, I came across this little gem:
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
This is a perfect distilling of what I have always suspected to be the case among people who are excessively prideful in their nationalism, religious fervor, or racial superiority. When you have nothing to call your own, when you have nothing about yourself to take pride in, you have no choice but to attach your identity to the various labels and teams assigned to you by fate.
1.) His Wikipedia entry screams conflict, as it appears that conservatives and liberals are fighting to prove their positions with his words.
One of my biggest beefs with the universe is that there is no reliable way to get to know someone well upon first meeting them. Initially all we have is the physical presentation, and that seems to suffice for most people[1]. It’s always seemed unfair to me, though, that conventional methods for meeting new people (i.e. bars or other social gatherings) take so much time and are so often unrewarding. My problem I suppose is that I’m looking for rare people[2], and they are, by definition, hard to find.
I’ve noticed that when I’m attracted to someone that there are specific things I can point to about that person that appeal to me. Generally, the more I’m attracted to someone, the longer the list of things I love about them. In fact, my ex-girlfriend Natalie once gave me a list of over 100 things that she liked about me. I gave her one as well. And I could do something similar for all the women on whom I’ve had crushes.
As I look at other people’s relationships, I tend to think that they’re just running on random emotional/psychological attraction: tiny causes and effects too subtle or unconscious to be verbalized or quantified. Most people have a physical and emotional template that they’re attracted to for whatever Freudian/evolutionary/behavioral reasons. For myself, I know that in addition to that stuff, I’m also attracted to talents and passions. When I see an attractive woman, I can appreciate the physical beauty, but a part of me stops and says, “you don’t know this person, how could you love her at first sight? Chances are far greater that she’s boring.”
I am reminded of one of the final episodes of Freaks & Geeks where Sam finally gets to date the girl he’s been idealizing all year, and it turns out she’s pretty and sweet but dull. I wonder how many of my junior high and high school crushes would fall into this category. Given the benefit of time, and knowing who those particular women became, I’m sure the answer is: “the vast majority.” Had someone pulled me aside and asked me, “why are you attracted to this girl?” I would have had no demonstrable answer other than “she’s pretty.”
Still, the instinct remains. I could fall in love every day with a pretty girl on the street, but what’s the use in acting on the attraction if the odds are so heavily not in my favor that she’ll be intelligent, insightful, creative, etc.? How does anybody fall in love and have it all balance out?[3] I sense that it’s probably easier for uninteresting people to fall in love because uninteresting people are largely interchangeable. All they have to do is achieve whatever level of socio-economic success and wear whatever clothes meet the societal standard of the day. Being charming and clever are helpful, but those alone won’t help you in the dimly sparkling social jungle that is the New York bar/club scene where love, sex and romance are just another sport at which to compete[4].
So what do oddly shaped, non-interchangeable people do? How do they find each other? Is it even possible?
1.) The fashion industry as a whole is predicated on this predicament.
2.) The Internet has greatly expedited this process, thankfully. Even at a local level (thanks, MySpace).
3.) Based on a discussion I had with two divorcees recently, the answer is, “they rarely ever do.”
4.) I’m trying to think of a satirical swipe to make at Sex and the City here but frankly it’s not worth the effort.
Reading through my new favorite site, DamnInteresting.com, I came across some things for which I’ve been searching a couple of years now: the collected recordings of the Conet Project, an out-of-print assemblage of numbers station broadcasts.
Numbers stations are repeated, anonymous, apparently encoded shortwave broadcasts emanating from various points across the world in various languages. The most likely explanation for them is that they carry encoded messages for use in espionage. Given the permanently looped nature of many of the transmissions, it’s likely that they’ve been abandoned and are still running only because they haven’t lost power. Prior to today I’ve only heard a few examples, but thanks to DamnInteresting.com, a link to mp3’s of all four discs of the Conet Project was provided at the end of their article on the subject.
So I downloaded all of them and have been listening to them for an hour now. Spooky stuff. It’s fun to wonder about their sources, who set them up, what they mean, and who receives them. And, given that I’m the type of person who tends to have sympathy for inanimate objects, I find a certain romance in the idea of a small transmitter, sitting in the middle of nowhere, lost forever, constantly sending out its odd little signal.
Here is the run-down on last week’s trip:
Tuesday – Landed, went up to this house where my cousin David‘s girlfriend was house-sitting. Turns out the house belongs to Hyde from That 70’s Show, and it used to belong to Chuck Berry. I touched a guitar signed by Chuck Berry! And I played bass by a hot tub in which I’m sure Mr. Berry committed felonies numerous and varied.
Wednesday – Went to the House of Blues to see two guitarists of whom I’ve been a big fan of since 9th grade but I’ve never seen them play live: Paul Gilbert and Richie Kotzen. And I was surrounded by LA guitar nerds, the ones who love to cross their arms and pontificate about who rules and who sucks. I’m glad I don’t live near them.
Thursday – David and I went to Amoeba Records to find my mom a Leonard Cohen DVD (she asked for it specifically because that’s how cool she is). Then we watched I Am Legend on David’s Blu-Ray hi-def wide-screen T-V and afterward we freaked out on Lost, ’cause it finally got back to Locke’s storyline.
Friday – I took the bus and walked all over town because I forgot that my Arkansas driver’s license expired in March. I let it because I figured, hey, when am I going to need to drive a car in NYC, right? Oops. Rental car agencies frown on expired licenses. I’ll get that taken care of next week, though. Anyway, I walked up La Brea, where I passed Jason Lee and his wife looking at furniture. I then had lunch at Barney’s Beanery where I sat a few booths over from Jason Schwartzman. After that I met up with my friend Meredith and we saw a really terrible band somewhere.
Saturday – Here’s a fun story. Some years ago my friend Randall gave me a CD by an Austrian guitarist named Alex Machacek (pronounced “MOCK-a-check”), and I became a big fan. He’s as underground as it gets, so few guitarists even know about him. To anyone else, he’s just another jazz-rock-fusion guitarist in LA, but to me he’s on a higher plane from pretty much every other guitar player I know. I’ve talked with him a few times via email and MySpace, and so last week I sent him a message asking him if he had any shows going on. He said he didn’t, but I was welcome to come over for coffee and hang out. So I did. He made me a couple fantastic cups of espresso and we talked about music and guitarists, and he gave me a guitar lesson. The whole thing really made me realize the dichotomy that is Los Angeles: most people freak out over meeting famous people, when perhaps they should be freaking out over truly phenomenal people – artists who do things few can, who push the boundaries of their craft, who represent the pinnacle of what can be achieved in a given medium. For musicians, Alex Machacek is such an individual. I uploaded one of his tunes to Muxtape, so check it out there. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Muxtape yet, so take a look at them, too. I have another playlist uploaded here.
That night, David and I went to see the LA Galaxy play the New York Red Bulls. I sat with the Riot Squad, the officially sanctioned corner of the stadium populated entirely by authentic football hooligans. Good times, even though the Galaxy lost. I told no one I was from NYC. For once it was better to say I’m from Arkansas.
Sunday – We went to see Rush in Irvine. I realize of course, as someone who is occasionally paid to write about rock music, that I am almost obligated to say that Rush sucks and progressive rock is a pox on the face of authentic rock and roll, but to that I say quite simply: Bite Me. If you can’t enjoy the refined Canadian flavor of Awesome that is Rush, then you can’t enjoy anything in life without wondering if someone is going to think you’re uncool.
Monday – Flew home. Took all day. Special note to Virgin Airlines: the little TVs in the seats are nice but $7 to see a movie on a tiny screen with headphones? $8 for airline food? No sale.
At least give me a bag of peanuts or something!
Here are some other photographic highlights from the trip:
Pink’s Hot Dogs are apparently spectacular
Billy Bob at Guitar Center?
Giant Magnatone amp on Sunset
The biggest Indiana Jones poster ever
99 Cent Store window display
Very old candy
Old Simpsons promo statues
Vintage Film editing console
Vintage Coca-Cola machine
GORT!
German Muppets
Bungalows
The 50’s live on…
…in Culver City
Refurbishing LAX
I was walking by an anarchist book sale[1] recently, and I noticed a surprising uniformity to the attendees’ mode of dress. Why is anarchism the only school of thought that has its own dress code? Given the tenets of anarchism, I would expect a much wider variety of clothing styles to go along with the “self-government” theme. Yet they all seemed to be wearing variations on black. Curious.
1.) Seems appropriate. I can’t imagine the anarchist book industry is very profitable.
I was posting some new pictures to Flickr just now, and i wanted to name this picture after an old line from I Love Lucy. I typed in the title, and later Googled it to see if I spelled it right. I didn’t, but the #1 result in Google was THAT VERY PICTURE. Google now takes less than 14 minutes to update its cache.
I went to the office on Saturday to get some work done, but the weather was so nice that I gave up around 3 p.m. and just walked aimlessly around town. I visited a comic shop, bought some old back issues of Starlog magazine from my childhood, picked up some cookies and a beer and sat in a park in the Village. The streets were really alive with people for the first time. Or rather, alive with people who were on the street by choice, not because they had to be somewhere. The gelato stands were a feeding frenzy and park benches everywhere were packed. Every business’s windows were open, every outdoor table was full.
Later on I ambled my way to a coffee shop to set up camp by the open door.
Here are some of the photo highlights for the last week:
the last unicorn
amusing trash
my early morning transit ride
bear runs loose in Union Square
Fab 5 Freddy runs loose in Union Square
the privacy of homelessness
the complaints of homelessness
F stop symmetry
specializing in male DVD
clock tower one and two
nothing to see here
Life just got creepier and more exciting in equal measure. Apparently I was home when Google Street view drove by. Street View is now available in 40 major cities in the US.
I once had some friends[1] who were your typical Rush Limbaugh-loving conservatives who loved to complain about welfare programs. CNBC offers a nice slide show on your tax dollars at work. It basically breaks down like this:
42% – Military
22% – Healthcare
10% – National Debt
8% – Anti-Poverty programs
4% – Education and social services
4% – Law enforcement
3% – HUD
3% – DOE, Environment, Science
1.5% – Agriculture
So let’s say welfare programs as we know them are split between social services and anti-poverty programs. Let’s be generous and say welfare programs take up 5% of your tax dollar. So if you gave the US $1,000 in taxes, that means you spent $50 on welfare programs. I realize $50 is a lot of money for something you hate, but when the money is pooled, can’t you just pretend you didn’t spend that $50 on welfare and that I gave $100 for it? Does it really matter that much to you?
1.) They are no longer my friends because when I repeatedly requested that they not send me pro-Bush, pro-Iraq War emails, they did not stop doing so. I told them I would block their email addresses if they continued, and they did, so I blocked them and have not spoken to them since 2004 or so. I wonder what they think of Bush, Saddam, WMDs, etc., now.