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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

  • Summer Project 2008: Mic Test & Preview

    I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to the way I sound when recorded.

    [audio:Summer08/00-PreviewMix.mp3]

    The original plan was to use parts of three different tracks for the music bed so that this would be a proper preview of the Summer Project. Alas, I couldn’t bear to cut away from Yuki Kajiura’s “Melody (Salva Nos version)” and so you get the whole thing. Shucky darn, eh?

    Mind you, I also didn’t realize until I’d performed the final mixdown that I completely failed to refer to the music in any way… which is sort of the point of the project in the first place! It just figures.

    Enough of playing coy, here’s the deal: I want to highlight fourteen musical artists every Friday from the start of summer until the beginning of autumn. Part of the plan is to record introductory and interstitial material for three songs per week, but I could scrap the voice thing and rely on the written word instead. Hence this test.

    So, give it to me straight. Should I do it? Could you stand to listen to my voice once per week for fourteen weeks?

  • Wrath of a Mad God, by Raymond E. Feist

    I’m not going to bore you with a lengthy review. If you’re a Feist fan, you’re going to read this book. If you’re not familiar with his work or not a fan, there’s very little chance that you’ll make it far enough through his written output to end up at this book.

    I just want to say two quick things about “Wrath of a Mad God.”

    One: This is the first time that I’ve spotted glaring, huge continuity problems in one of Ray’s books. Erik von Darkmoor never married? Are you kidding me? A major part of the last two Serpentwar books just gets thrown away like that, eh? That’s not the only continuity error, but it’s the one which sticks out most in my mind. There are several others that even I was able to spot. And I’m not good at that sort of thing!

    Two: I’m glad it’s over. (No, I don’t care if he’s intending to write more books in this setting. Really, it’s over.) Enough of the questions are answered. Kind of. I mean, let’s count how many times have we seen Feist use a variant of this line: “Okay, the truth this time. I mean it.” Right. Sure. Whatever. But that’s not really my point. It’s just gotten to the point where the levels of threat and destruction and mayhem and sacrifice have gotten out of hand. There’s always going to be one more bigger badder threat which requires a total rewrite of the series’ mythology (how many versions of “the nature of the gods” have we been subjected to?) and a higher body count and… let it go already. There are only so many times you can crank up the threat levels before your story becomes… well… Dragonball Z. You don’t want your story to be compared to DBZ, do you?

    I consider this book to be closure on the Pug-And-Thomas storyline. I’m not even that curious about the Quor (who, of course, it is now revealed in the very book in which they’re introduced that they were native to Midkemia from before the Chaos Wars or some-such and the Valheru respected them (what??) and blah blah blah) since it’s actually kind of obvious what they’re meant to be (if the Dreadcritters are from a lower plane, where do you suppose the shiny Quor come from, duh) and… I’m tired of mythology rewrites.

    I still count the Riftwar through the end of the Serpentwar as my favorite storyline ever. This is much the same way that I still love (most of) Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books up to All The Weyrs, and the same way I (against all logic or decency) love the Eddings’ Belgariad and Elenium. It’s just that after a certain point all of these writers seem to have lost their sense of perspective and common sense. Sad, really, but apparently also inevitable. So be it.

  • First Weekend Of May 2008

    Hey, it’s a weekend catch-up post! We haven’t done one of these in a while…

    Friday: Lil’ shouldn’t be allowed into Best Buy unsupervised. I don’t count, as I’m not a very good supervisor. Then again, I did get the BSG miniseries DVD out of it (since she doesn’t need it anymore). I’m also a couple of books into the Eric Flint “1632” franchise; it’s not too shabby, all things considered, though I imagine that my interest will wane after another massive volume or so.

    Saturday (daytime): Erica and I watched Alex do improv theater games in a park in the rain for an hour or so. Amusing it was, but eventually it got cold and we got bored so off to Burgerville we went. It’s appalling how much BV charges for a “large” cup of orange juice. Oy.

    Saturday (night IRON MAN): Kyla and I decided to do the dinner-and-a-movie thing. Oh, what an excellent movie! I’ll spare you the full review (since, let’s see, nearly everyone on the Internet has reviewed the thing already) but suffice to say that it’s a solid, entertaining, surprisingly restrained, well acted, beautifully produced superhero movie which benefits from a touch of gritty realism but without the bloody mayhem or out-of-place sex scenes (the only one in the movie is very short and played entirely for laughs). Even the scenery chewing is kept to reasonable limits. The funny bits were genuinely funny! I know, I’m as amazed as you are. Robert Downey, Jr completely owns the role of Tony Stark. The other actors range from “quite good” to “better than expected,” though it’s not a movie with a large main cast. I think the worst special effect in the movie is Jeff Bridges’ skullcap. (Turns out that it wasn’t a skullcap after all; his head somehow managed to look wrong nonetheless. Oh well, minor quibble.) In short: Unless you hate action movies, you should see Iron Man. (As for the “after-credits” thing… all I can say is, better Sam The Man than David Hasselhoff.)

    Saturday (late night): “Doctor Who,” end of the first two-parter in the 4th series of the “new Who.” We love Donna, we love Martha Version 2.0, we don’t necessarily love setting the atmosphere on fire, and the next-episode preview left me wondering what new kinds of drugs the “Who” producers have got their grubby hands on now. The love child of a Timelord and Baby Spice? Really, now.

    Sunday: Game day. Well, after we foraged for grub, anyway. In the “City Of” world, my lead villain dinged 40 and opened up her patron powers while my top Defender finally became a “real” Kin by acquiring Fulcrum Shift. Hellooooo, massive buff/debuff! Later, with “the boys,” I snuck in a win at Power Grid followed by a modest but respectable showing at Quiddler. Not bad for competing against five smart blokes, wot?

  • You want a rickroll? I’ll give you a rickroll.

    Apparently half of the pranks on the Internet this year involve something called “rickrolling,” and I guess there’s some 80’s pop star involved. Apparently you’re not one of the cool kids until you’ve “rickrolled” somebody.

    Fine. I can do that. Here you go. I’m getting it over with. This is a one-time opportunity, so enjoy it while you can.

    [audio:Rick-DanceThisWorldAway.mp3]

    I feel dirty now.

  • Part Two: Project Mix Mirror Pretentious

    “Now, my friends, without further ado and to permit those holding their breaths to breathe…” — Masterharper Robinton, from Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonsinger”

    Here, then, is the back half of the crazy project of the week.

    [audio:PMMP-2.mp3]

    Nobody who knows me at all will be surprised to learn that I used to make mix tapes, the real thing, back in the 80s and early 90s. One of my favorite tricks was to use one set of artists or title elements or what-have-you in one sequence for side ‘A’ of the 90-minute cassette and then reverse the sequence for the ‘B’ side. The effect, especially in the popular players of the day which would play both sides of the tape over and over until someone pressed the Stop button (or until the tape jammed or broke), was that of a musical journey, bouncing back and forth along some theme or another.

    I moved on to burning CDs when technology left cassettes behind for good, but it’s just not the same. CDs will cheerfully repeat their lone sequence and that’s all they can do. I can’t play the same thematic tricks in a simple circular form that I could with two “sides” of tape. Complexity is limited by the seventy-or-so minutes you have to work with. The one new feature, that of shuffle play, is nearly useless for my purposes.

    I must admit, of course, that this little project doesn’t fit the mold of the classic mixtape either. It’s two gigantic MP3 files separated by journal post numbers, launched by two different player widgets, and so forth. All this will really do is give you an idea of the kind of things I like to do, namely playing around with themes and patterns. Oh, and many of these are among my favorite songs, so there’s that benefit as well… dubious as it may be for someone who doesn’t share my particular tastes. (That would be 99.99% of humanity.)

    I tried to use one “current” and one “older” song from each artist as well as differing the tone between directions of travel. Duran Duran’s upbeat “Nice” is balanced by the somber “Winter Marches On,” while the Pet Shop Boys’ dystopian “Integral” and exuberant “Metamorphosis” neatly showcase the dark and light sides of their musical output. The plan didn’t always work, and in crafting the two mixes I ended up with imperfect pacing both directions due to the multiple restrictions and challenges I’d faced coupled with my lack of recent practice. I was also forced to cheat a little bit on one of the artist selections, as Kevin Gilbert’s limited musical output didn’t give me any choice if I wanted to keep him in.

    Yet, I’m generally happy with how it turned out… all things considered.

    Part One:

    1. Toy Matinee – Last Plane Out
    2. BT – Circles
    3. Depeche Mode – Suffer Well
    4. Duran Duran – Nice
    5. Pet Shop Boys – Integral
    6. VAST – Touched
    7. Kotoko – Iruka
    8. Dada – Surround
    9. Genesis – Feeding The Fire
    10. Yoko Kanno – The Egg and I
    11. Midnight Oil – Return To Sender
    12. Robert Plant – Down To The Sea
    13. Peter Gabriel – Growing Up

    Part Two:

    1. Peter Gabriel – That Voice Again
    2. Robert Plant – Little By Little
    3. Midnight Oil – No Man’s Land
    4. Yoko Kanno – Call Me Call Me
    5. Genesis – Not About Us
    6. Dada – Spinning My Wheels
    7. Kotoko – Re-sublimity
    8. VAST – I Can’t Say No (To You)
    9. Pet Shop Boys – Metamorphosis
    10. Duran Duran – Winter Marches On
    11. Depeche Mode – Halo (live)
    12. BT – Satellite
    13. Kevin Gilbert – All Fall Down

    I hope you enjoyed this little trip into both my psyche and my music library.

  • Pretentious Mirror Mix Project, Part One

    As promised, here’s the first installment of my brilliant idea. It’s a there-and-back-again music set using the same artists on the way back as on the way out, in suitably reversed order. I cheated in one particular case, but it was a case of “close enough” as well as “look, he just didn’t put out that many albums, okay?”

    So. Enjoy, if you’re so inclined.

    [audio:PMMP-1.mp3]

    If the gods are kind, I’ll have the second half posted tomorrow night…

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