The Literary Festival of Arkansas

Ordinarily I’m not a huge fan of sitting still for hours at a time listening to people read and talk, but the Literary Festival was a great deal of fun. Good consumer that I am, I bought five books:

The Coast of Akron by Adrienne Miller
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
I’ll Take You There by Bill Friskics-Warren
These People Are Us by George Singleton

I attended discussions by each author, and found their presentations to be compelling enough to buy their books (and have them signed), so while I can’t say I recommend the books yet, I can at least say I found them to be interesting and entertaining people.

I’m also curious to know why I didn’t see any of my friends down there – where was everybody? Did y’all not hear about it? I guess I didn’t pester people enough.
Oh, I also had a private party gig with Amnesia Saturday night. We played much longer than usual and wore me out. And after getting up Sunday morning to do yardwork, I’m surprised I’m still awake right now. I had planned to go see John Corbett (actor/singer from Northern Exposure, Sex in the City, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding) tonight at Juanita’s but I’m too tired. Coincidentally I’m watching some episodes of Northern Exposure right now.

Powers of Two, or What I Think About Before I Go to Bed

This is the sort of thing I wonder about at night before I go to sleep. Some nights these things actually prevent me from sleeping. Like this one: consider the fact that, in order for you to be born, you had to have two parents, who also had to have two parents, and so on. Given that my grandparents were born in the early part of the 20th century, let’s say that there are about three generations in a family per century. So, since the year 1, about 60 generations (3 generations times 20 centuries).

So the math goes like this: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents and so on to the 60th power.

2 to the 60th power = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976.

So 2,000 years ago I would have had about 1 quintillion great60 grandparents? That can’t be right. Somebody tell me why my math is faulty. My brain hurts.

Free Live Music Downloads

I keep forgetting to tell people about the Internet Archive and its enormous store of free live recordings. The list is huge and eccentric (and obscure), but if you take the time to skim down the list I’m sure you’ll find something you like. A lot of it comes from the ‘taper’ community, so there’s a ton of Grateful Dead and jam bands, but like I say there’s something for everyone. So far I see good stuff from: Alex Skolnick, Ari Hest, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Ben Lee, Ben Kweller, Buckethead, Charlie Hunter, David Gray, David Mead, Damian Rice, G. Love, Mogwai, Moe, Kaki King, Jump Little Children, Jack Johnson, Howie Day, Henry Kaiser, Guster, Robert Randolph, Spoon, The Argument, The Decemberists, The Samples, and Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Intelli-pop : The Pilot Episode

Back in 2001, Chris and I produced a radio show for KABF. We would record an hour long show at his studio and put it on disc for KABF to play at their convenience. They said they would use it after baseball games, but we can neither confirm nor deny that any episodes ever aired. We even started a website, intelli-pop.com, but since the project never took off, I just pointed it over to rossrice.net.

Thanks to Margot, who recently pointed out to me that the Internet Archive offers free media storage, I uploaded the first show there. Take a listen and let me know what you think. If you enjoy it, I’ll upload the rest of the episodes.

Streaming | Download (80MB right click to ‘save as’)

3 Down, 1 to Go

Dotty Oliver from the Little Rock Free Press emailed me a couple of weeks ago saying that my “name had come up” as a possible writer for a piece on Max Recordings‘ 5th anniversary. It’s nice to know my name comes up. And this time I’ll get paid! Not much, but enough to say I’m a professional journalist[1].

I put it together in just a few days, and it turned out OK. I think it will be in the racks here soon. So I’ve conquered Arkansas Times, Localist, and now the Freep. Onward to Nightflying.

1.) In the same sense that I’ve been a professsional actor because I’ve been paid to act once.

Freakiness

I neglected to mention this wire story from Pittsburgh recently, which freaked me out for several minutes. As I read the story I was thinking how bizarre it was, and then I see the sentence “my name is not Nikki Allen.”

I only know one person in Pittsburgh, and her name is Nikki Allen. She, like the girl in the story, is 24.

After a quick search of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the girl’s picture, and it wasn’t my friend. Here’s her myspace page and livejournal. Still a weird way to start your day. The story is developing into something truly weird.

Musical Paradox

Something I’ve noticed as I expore the keyboard is that I tend to have a lot more fun getting lost in the music I’m playing. I’ve been playing guitar so long, I have a hard time getting lost. But with the keyboard, once I find a groove I’ll get lost in it for a half hour. It’s a paradoxical struggle that instrumentalists have: on the one hand we want to be in complete control of our instruments, but on the other hand it seems like the best stuff comes from those times when you have no idea what you’re doing. Small wonder, then, that many Buddhists seek the ‘child mind’ and I think that plugs into what I was saying earlier about being 30 – I want to keep as much of a child mind as I can. When the world stops fascinating you every day, then you know you’re an adult.

The 80’s Movie Quiz

Josh and his apparently insane co-workers at the Harrison Daily Times put together this mammoth 80’s Movie Quiz. Download it if you dare. It’s painful[1]. Be forewarned that I only got about half of them right. This thing goes deep, and most of the ones I got wrong were from films I’ve never seen or only seen in parts. Post a comment if you want the answer key and I’ll email it to you.

1.) “What do we love?? PAIN!!”