Terrific full-length version of an interview David Foster Wallace did in the USA with (I think) a German TV program in 2003. It is 84 minutes long but I really recommend watching this right the way through. I think this guy was on to it on a number of levels.
Outside the Riverfront’s side doors off the parking lot, where it’s so cold and windy you have to smoke with mittens on, an OTS with Jim C. and his longtime friend and partner Frank C. means getting to bitch about the 12 Monkeys, and here Jim and Frank discourse with no small sympathy on the brutality of these campaign reporters’ existence — subsisting on the Campaign Diet, which is basically sugar and caffeine (diabetes is apparently the Black Lung of political journalism), always on the road in some sort of box for weeks at a time, very alone, connected to loved ones only by cellphone and 1-800 answering service. Rolling Stone mentions being in hotels every night, which a CBS sound guy on BS2 had said was probably the McCain media’s number-one stressor. The Shrub apparently stays in five-star places with putting greens and spurting-nymph fountains and a speed-dial number for the in-house masseur. Not McCain2000, which favors Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, Hampton Inn, Hilton, Signature Inn, Radisson, Holiday Inn, Embassy Suites, etc. Rolling Stone, who is in no way cut out to be a road journalist, invokes the soul-killing anonymity of chain hotels, the rooms’ terrible transient sameness: the ubiquitous floral design of the bedspreads, the multiple low-watt lamps, the pallid art-work bolted to the wall, the whisper of ventilation, the sad shag carpet, the smell of alien cleansers, the Kleenex dispensed from the wall, the automated wakeup call, the lightproof curtains, the windows that do not open-ever. RS asks whether it could possibly be coincidence that over half of all indoor suicides take place in chain hotels. Jim and Frank say they get the idea. RS references the terrible oxymoron of “hotel guest.” Hell could easily be a chain hotel. Is it any accident that McCain’s POW prison was known as the Hanoi Hilton? Jim shrugs; Frank says you get used to it, that it’s better not to dwell.
I have been a rapacious user of Ted.com, AtGoogleTalks & This American Life for a while now & I’ve wanted to share some of the talks I’ve enjoyed the most. Unfortunately the feed for This American Life only makes the download available until the new one is ready – which is every week, so I can’t link to any of those. But I will embed my favourites from the other two sites below. These come highly recommended & are in no particular order.
TED.COM Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes
“Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.”
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one.”
James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia (contains strong language)
“In James Howard Kunstler’s view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.”
ATGOOGLETALKS Authors@Google: Michael Krasny
“KQED Radio’s Michael Krasny is one of the country’s leading interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. In Off Mike, Krasny talks of his strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor. In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers inside his world—his coming of age during the heady times of the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement and political activism, to the vivid description of his journey from a student of literature to a struggling novelist to an educator and—somewhat accidentally—a radio host.”
Authors@Google: Lawrence Wright
“Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism, The Looming Tower. He begins with the observation that, despite an impressive record of terror and assassination, post–WWII, Islamic militants failed to establish theocracies in any Arab country. Many helped Afghanistan resist the Russian invasion of 1979 before their unemployed warriors stepped up efforts at home. Al-Qaeda, formed in Afghanistan in 1988 and led by Osama bin Laden, pursued a different agenda, blaming America for Islam’s problems. Less wealthy than believed, bin Laden’s talents lay in organization and PR, Wright asserts.”
@Google: Benjamin Maron
“Ben Maron lives a dual life as computer scientist and fashion designer. Since graduating from MIT in 2004, Ben has worked on a number of developments at the forefront of high-performance computation, most recently at IBM where he is a lead architect on the Cyclops (Blue Gene/C) supercomputer team. On the design side, Ben is completing his final year on the BA Fashion Design course at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins, and has worked for notable designers such as Donna Karan and Jonathan Saunders. His goal is to fuse the two disparate fields by creating thought-provoking, technically charged garments, which highlight the striking similarities between the artistry of a complex circuit and of a fabric’s interaction with the human form.”
BONUS I Met The Walrus
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
There is a high-quality version courtesy of video.google.com if you follow the link, look for “watch in high quality”, I couldn’t find a way to link to that directly.
The New York Times:
“Flight of the Conchords is funny in such an understated way that it is almost dangerous to make too much of it. It’s much slighter than HBO’s big production comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage. It’s also a little sweeter, less a satire of show business than wry self-parody.”
New York Post:
“A fantastic flight. Something new and hilarious, and completely different. Unlike anything else I have ever seen before.”
Variety.com:
“Hardly a great show…It’s all pretty standard stuff, shot on a dime against grungy New York backdrops…the show isn’t much to look at, but thanks to those music videos, there are moments when it sounds like a gem.”
Chicago Tribune:
“The charms of this series are subtle, but only grow over the course of the first few episodes. Clement and McKenzie, perhaps because of their upbringing in the most polite nation on Earth, are well suited to understated, self-deprecating comedy, and their fertile imaginations are usually up to the task entertaining the short attention span of the YouTube generation.”
Whenever I read about or watch video about Scientology I come away feeling particularly unwell. As an organisation they strike me as becoming very media savvy and well-versed in tactics to distort information as or when it appears in mass media. I find more than most things Scientology makes me afraid. The way they practice the same marketing speak as large corporations means they understand it is not what you’re saying, but how you’re saying it. If you look confident and sound convincing, we the audience will often just roll with it. Which is why you have to give Scientology credit for latching on to the historical notion of the church, “The Church of Scientology”, it quickly places them as just another religion “doing good things”.
It was hopping through Google Video and YouTube I came across an intense video shot by a guy called Mark Bunker from XenuTV.com. In it he films what appears to be three Scientologists repeatedly questioning him “What have you done?” “What are you afraid of?” and telling him “you’re a little gnat”. It is compelling viewing.
I think it takes some guts to stand up in mainstream media and question something like Scientology. Given their history of pressuring and discrediting people who will do that, you would be forgiven for thinking that there might be stories out there easier to cover.
The internet is custom-built for an organisation like that of Scientology. Unlike more traditional media i.e. books, newspaper, etc, often there is no quick way to tell if something is legitimate or faked on the web. Audio can be chopped up and put back online as “unedited transcripts”. People can comment on YouTube or edit an Wikipedia article and what is written can be quickly picked up and spread as fact. An organisation like Scientology which relies on the public taking things at face value would appreciate the power the internet gives them. Got a negative video about Scientology on internet? Create your own video discrediting the video.
One issue that the computer game industry is having to face up to is the reality of paid surfers who artificially promote a game or service, for example a person being paid to visit online computer game forum’s and post “X computer game is awesome, it’s all I’m playing at the moment!”. The same person may be paid to find online negative comments about the same game and post seemingly honest contrary positions “I don’t think X computer is that bad, I’m playing at the moment and IMHO it’s pretty good”. Using the slang and language of the online community brings legitimacy to your actually-fake posts. This is where Scientology could use the same tactics, subtlety but falsely influence the tone of online conversations simply by using large numbers of seemingly legitimate user accounts to post comments.
Minuit (pronounced “Min-wee”) is French for the middle of the night but also means cracking good kiwi electronica. Minuit is husband & wife Paul Dodge & Ruth Carr along with Ryan Beehre (also of FunknSloCuts). Minuit hail from Nelson and have been around since 1998 but became more well-known through the release of their debut album The 88, released in 2003. The 88 includes the breakout tunes “Boy With The Aubergine Hair” and “Species II” along with gems like “Except You”, “Menace” and “Body-Shaped Box”.
In 2003 they were nominated for Breakthrough Artist of The Year at the NZ Music Awards but lost out to Brooke Fraser. Over 2003 – 2005 tracks from The 88 appeared on compilations by LOOP Recordings, Antenna Recordings and Universal Music, among others. The follow-up album was delivered in 2006, The Guards Themselves. One of Minuit’s big tracks “I Hate Guns” appears only on the Guns EP (2005) and not on either of their albums.
Minuit have remixed Pitch Black and also did a remix for the LOOP Recordings CD Music For Nature Documentaries.
Musically Minuit is clever breakbeat/rock electronica made into songs, songs with personality. Vocalist Ruth Carr is a delight and her lyrics are reminiscent of Karl Hyde from Underworld’s “slice of life” lyrical style. Ruth Carr comes across as a real kiwi chick, down to earth and up for it. She names The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land and Tricky’s Maxinquay among albums that have made her life fun (nzgirl). Ruth Carr actually worked as a builder over the course of making a lot of their music.
Having toured the UK, Europe and Australia recently, Minuit will soon be back on New Zealand’s shores for an August tour. Overseas their single “Fuji” has been played all over Europe including Radio 1 in the Czech Republic putting it in their HitParade for the Breakbeat Conference (meaning the top 5 new tracks). Their latest single is “Suave As Sin”.
The Crystal Method is Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, an electronic/rock music duo from Las Vegas who showed up in the boom time for electronic dance rock and big beat in the mid-nineties. I’ve often thought of them as the USA’s equivalent of The Prodigy, just without the stage presence of guys like Keith Flint and Maxim.
The Crystal Method have released three “studio” albums Vegas (1997), Tweekend (2001) and Legion of Boom (one Grammy nomination, 2004), three video game soundtracks and one film soundtrack (London, 2005) which by the reviews I read was a very missable movie. They have completed two mix albums, Community Service (2002) and Community Service II (2005), these albums take their name from the radio show Jordan and Kirkland host in Los Angeles on Indie 103.1 FM. They have produced, collaborated and remixed many, many tracks over their career and inevitably these make their way into their live shows.
Most recently the Method have put together a 45-minute mix of 10 songs called The Crystal Method Drive: Nike+ Original Run for Nike which is only available from the iTunes online store (The Crystal Method Drive: Nike+ Original Run on iTunes, requires iTunes to be installed). Being a Nike project, the mix has a warm-up section, it builds and then has a warm-down section and is considered by The Crystal Method as “an official new album” (pe.com).
It is no surprise to see The Crystal Method getting involved with this kind of project, as they have admitted themselves, people seem to really like working out to their music. I can personally attest to this, just listening to ‘High Roller’ reminds me of running laps around my high school soccer field. Good times.
Sometimes commenting a band’s sound has remained consistent over their career can be a slight, suggesting they have not progressed their sound and remained stuck in a style or era. I think in The Crystal Method’s case their heavy electronic beats infused with synths and vocals has become their signature and remains their passion. Their progression is evident, moving into genres and formats that are electronic music’s natural home and continued involvement in the scene. They foster the next generation through their radio show and have worked with the Grammy Awards to publicise electronic music.
In 2004 Ken Jordan said:
I like the concept of the Grammys, artists and people in the industry recognizing each others’ work. But we’ve started this electronic music advisory panel because basically electronic music is a big part of music in America. There’s a Billboard chart for it. But there’s no Grammy for it. They have a Grammy for f—–g polka music. They have a Grammy for American Indian music. They have Grammys for the most smallest, tiny, zero-fraction of music. But at the same time they’re not recognizing the music I make, and that’s really upsetting at this point. So I’m trying to get involved and change it. But it’s going slow.
I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex or Silex-it doesn’t matter. The main thing is to try. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests at the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: good business and good television.
Perhaps no one will do anything about it. I have ventured to outline it against a background of criticism that may have been too harsh only because I could think of nothing better. Someone once said–I think it was Max Eastman–that “that publisher serves his advertiser best who best serves his readers.” I cannot believe that radio and television, or the corporation that finance the programs, are serving well or truly their viewers or listeners, or themselves.
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.
We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure–exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.
To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.
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