All cockblockery aside...

About to go to bed, but I felt I needed to post my favorite line from Kill Bill, Vol. 2, which we saw tonight. I can't believe he said that! Cockblockery! Actually really liked the movie, much more than the first; still really pissed that I've had to watch this movie one half at a time, 6 months apart.

All cockblockery aside, expect a treatise on the hook vs. the riff tomorrow.

An errandboy :: sent by grocery clerks :: to collect the bill

I enjoyed Willy's analysis. I'm not an avid follower of sports, but the theory/strategy ("the game within the game") is always good fun. Willy -- you might have what it takes to fulfill George Costanza's dream of being a commentator.

On the topic of George, the final Friends episode (I swear, I'm not an avid follower of Friends -- it just seemed like such a communal cultural moment that it would be a shame to miss [I was wrong about that: it could have been missed]) just puts into greater relief the strangeness and innovativeness of Seinfeld. Larry David's 'no hugs no learning' is obviously not abandoned for the Seinfeld final episode, and it really struck me how brilliant it was that Seinfeld ended by having the characters arrested and jailed. I was disappointed when I first saw the episode, and I still think the various courtroom testimonies attesting to the gangs misanthropism (that's not a word by the way), the core of that final episode, is a little reductive...being mean and antisocial wasn't all there was to them. But still, it's kind of admirable how they resisted a tidy ending, self congratulation (except for the "over-the-years" segment with that horrible Green Day ballad in the background).

What was interesting about the final episode of Friends though was in their choice of a concluding song, the one they assigned to the final shot of the door to the apartment closing behind the departing friends, the one that sufficiently agitated me to burst out into tears and start pummeling my fists into the couch cushion: Embryonic Journey by Jefferson Airplane! An instrumental by amazing and underrated guitarist Jorma Kaukonen.

There's something blogging wrong with this smurfing thing!

Hmm, blogger.com seems to have it's fair share of bugs. Based on what I see below, I double-posted. That happened because I hit "Preview Your Post" and then used the back button to do some more editing. Blogger didn't like that, and decided to publish my post to punish me. So I went to "Manage Posts" and tried to delete the first one. On my screen it shows deleted but if I go back to the blog it's still there! Hopefully there's just a delayed reaction and it'll disappear soon.

I hate it when things don't work like they should

PS - Blogger's own spellcheck doesn't know the word "blog"? Oi vei...

There's a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician

Greetings all!

Yes Dave, it turns out there was a bit of confusion with Sorkin's name. I must've miss-typed it, then hit "replace all" instead of "replace" thus compounding my simple typing error.

Anyway, thanks for the link. That's cool to hear about Elliott's work, and I got to download a live Ben Folds show to boot. Good time...

Breaking News! Jon Gooblar Shatters Fragile Ecosystem! Slides at 11!
Well Dave, he's finally done it. Your brother is one lanky eco-disaster. My mom has a wreath up on our front door and a few weeks ago a bird made a nest in it, (which my mom discovered when it attacked her one night) so that door is now off limits. The nest even has eggs in it now. So earlier this morning your brother calls me to borrow one of my cd's, and when he came over he came to the front door and rang the bell, forcing me to open the door. So if that mother bird abandons her eggs guess who's lap I'm dumping them in.

Ok music dorks, since you're all talking about cool riffs, I have a question for you. What's the difference between a riff and a hook? If I had to guess I would say that a riff is a guitar lick (I'm sure there's a more accurately descriptive word, but I don't know it) that a song is built around, while a hook is a type of riff commonly used in the chorus. Am I anywhere close to the right ballpark?

And lastly, from the Yes, We Really Are This Retarded Department: For those who don't know, a couple weeks ago Blecker actually got a girl's phone number, (I know you're all as shocked and amazed as I was) but he never called. When Willy, Sam, and I pressed him about it, we found out that she wasn't his type (Type? I don't think someone who hasn't gotten any action since Wham! broke up should be worrying about type, but that's neither here nor there). After spending an hour or so trying to figure out exactly what his type was, we came up with a system to find out once and for all. And we even incorporated drinking! Yeah for us! The 4 of us came up with a huge list of female celebrities, singers, models, amatuer porn stars, whatever. We're gonna track down pictures of them all and make a big NCAA-like bracket out of them and make Blecker choose, slowly widdling down his choices till we have his ideal mate. And just to spice things up a little the rest of us are gonna bet on which girl he's gonna choose and if you're wrong, you have to drink. After scouring the websites of Maxim, Stuff, and FHM, plus a few minutes on Googles image search, I have just over 100 photos. God damn, the things we do for kicks...

Ok, I gotta go do some work now. With a little luck this part time job is going to turn full time next week! Keep your digital fingers crossed.

From a Basement on a Hill.

Did y'all see this yet?

Get help to stop smoking: consult your doctor or pharmacist.

I'm afraid I've been meaning to post all day, but now have about 5 minutes in which to do it, before the siren song of school work pulls me away from you all. So I'll briefly respond to everyone's concerns.

1) 'The', as you may have suspected, is none other than Yohei, a.k.a 'The Butter Head', a.k.a. 'Jigga-rashi'. I hope this clears up a lot of confusion and sexual fantasy.
2) Riffs: I also don't think it's a matter of melodic combination vs. chord progression. It's more like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography--you know it when you see it (and so do I). Here's my vote for "You Really Got Me". Also the Brandenberg Concerto. Strangely, I think that "Smells like" is a riff, but "Deeper than Beauty" is not. Don't ask me why.
3) Paul: I do not, and have never watched the West Wing, but I'm pretty sure the creator is named Aaron Sorkin.
4) Petr Nedved is Czech.
5) hours. of. fun.

Fighting Mexicans and Unreliable Irish

I agree that Sweet Child is a better riff and but also that a 'riff' isn't strictly a unit comprised of notes and not chords. Upon further thought the chord/melody distinction is useless anyway. The famous opening to Smells Like Teen Spirit is four power chords, not even fully-formed chords/triads. The point is that it doesn't matter -- it's a riff if it is to you, a series of chords if you want it to be, and finally, a power chord can be considered a full-chord if you want it to be. On the flip side, arpeggio's are usally referred to by the chord that they are arpeggiating -- an argument can be made that an arpeggio of the C Maj chord, (e.g., C E G C E G or C E G E C etc., ) can be called a chord as well as a melody. A good example of this is when jazz bassists or jazz pianists referring to the left hand part, or even one talking about Bach, call a series of notes by the chord. Again, I think the distinction, which I am at fault for mentioning in the first place, is not really useful.

Anyway, I found out from my friend why she had even brought up this topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3677965.stm
Here, you can see their horrendous list (Paradise City has a riff? Where? When?).

I am off my work's end of the year party, Mexican-themed for Cinquo de Mayo (sp?) with Mexican food, pinatas etc. This reminds me, a visiting professor at Columbia, a well-known Irish playright, Roddy Doyle, explained to his undergraduate seminar that stereotypes of the Irish are often just as offensive as any others -- he apparently told his seminar, "I find it amazing that there is a University in the States that calls their sports team the Fighting Irish. I mean, would they have a team called the Unreliable Mexicans?"
Silly man. And not to end on an uplifiting note or anything, but Mexicans are not unreliable. They're very hard workers...they just like to call you maricon.

Well, it's sorta like the Plague...

Greetings all!
I figure that since this is a blog, I will use it to do some blogging, (at least as I understand things). And since I've got a nice rant in my all ready and raring to go, what better time? But first, some administrative things:

Again, great idea for this, I hope it becomes something of a catch-all for our discussions, opinions, observations, and the general macabre that is our lives. Second, whoever The is, good topic for discussion, but one that I am wholly inadequate to comment on. I've noticed that even though I seem to be more into music than the average Joe Punchclock, I don't know shit compared to you guys, so I'm gonna stay out of it. Ok, anyone who doesn't want to listen to my semi-coherent babblings can stop reading now. And PS, if you've never seen the West Wing, this is going to make very little sense to you, but this is me not caring.

I've been a fan of the West Wing for a long time. I would argue that for many years (at least 3) it was the best show on television. Sadly, that is no longer the case now that Sorokin has voluntarily jumped ship and retired to Mandyville (TM: TWOP). Incidentally, as I write this, I am listening to the song "Angel" by Massive Attack, which was featured in one of the last episodes penned by Sorokin, and may in fact be the best six minutes of television ever. That's fairly bold, I know, but bear me out (or you know, don't and bitch at me later). The final segment of the 4th season episode Commencement under which the aforementioned song plays, is a master stroke of editing. If you appreciate first rate editing, lighting, and directing, you'll love this scene. It was recently on and I backed the TiVo up 3 times just so I could keep watching it. If you're familiar with the character arcs at all the scene becomes even better.

Character arcs? That reminds me, I had a point to get to before I went all tangential there, didn't I? I think what used to set TWW apart from others shows was that you really got a sense that character arcs were worked out way in advance. This allowed for plenty of stories and really gave the viewers a sense of cohesion and reality when the series was viewed as a whole. Too often, character development comes at the expense of a plot point and then writers are painted into a corner. They either have to go with what they've written, or just ignore it and change the character to suit there particular needs. This didn't used to happen on TWW and it was fantastic.

But Elvis has, unfortunately, left the building, and he seems to have smuggled out continuity with him. The show has basically gone to shit, under the woefully misguided direction of ER producer John Wells. Naturally he can't write like Sorokin, few can, but I was hoping that he would at least be good. Hell, at this point I'll settle for average. He was entrusted several huge stories when Sorokin left; Zoey is kidnapped, there's a Republican POTUS, Amy asks Donna if she loves Josh (a huge deal for us shippers! Yeah!), and Danny has the Shariff story. And what came of all that? A gym sock on towel rod, that's what. The Amy and Donna thing? Dropped. Shariff? A non-story. Zoey and the new POTUS? Eh, she was locked in a closet somewhere, no big deal. Oh, and she was abducted on May 7th, and according to Wells, found 4 days later...in July!!!

No no, old Wellsy-boy had bigger and better things to move on to. He had stuff Will into a job so out of the way that he's barely on the show. He had to put Swimtern on so that all the teeny-bopper girls who watch will have someone to drool over. You know, it's really tough to turn all the characters in disproportional caricatures of their former selves with all that annoying plot and witty dialog getting in the way. Nish told me tonight that there's a petition out there to cancel the West Wing after this season, and I'm hoping against hope that the do it. This show has become a curse, I feel like I've been a fan for so long that I have to keep watching, but it's so painfull I can barely stand to look at the screen.

So I appeal to you, where ever you may be, if you see John Wells walking down the street, please, please, please hit him with your car, and then back over him a few times, just to make sure.

Nice sideburns, Harry.

Nish,
I think it's more the fact that when we're together at a ballgame, no matter how much fun we're having, no matter how 'nice' we all are normally, we actually are annoying. Maybe not all the time (I like to think we had it in us to be quite witty sometimes), but certainly some times. And once you're out of that group dynamic--and on top of that are trying to enjoy a 'cozy' day at the ballpark--whatever redeeming charmingness those boys (whoever they are) have sorta vanishes, I imagine.

Anyway, yeah, scoring a baseball game on your own. Nice one.

So I was out tonight, and saw a poster for this theatre version of When Harry Met Sally that's playing here in London (and that's not even the funny part), starring Alyson Hannigan (she of Buffy and Pie-fucking fame) and Luke Perry. Aside from that fact that Luke Perry is playing a part that Billy Crystal originated, I got a big kick out of the quote they've got on the posters, presumably from a review of the play: "Fans of Perry and Hannigan will be ecstatic!" As if that's gonna sell the play to the thousands of British passersby who either a) have never heard of them or b) have heard of them, and don't like them. I think it's very possible that it was a sarcastic line in a negative review..i.e., "fans of Perry and Hannigan will be ecstatic, but anyone with more intelligence than a bathroom sponge should save their money."

So good, you'll suck a dick.

Yes, Paul, it does work. I was just getting on my computer to masturbate, and instead found that three people (Three! People!) agreed to my half-baked plan. What a world. Alright, now I'm off to....check my email.

More soon. Promise not to read the bits of the blog that came before you.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Ok, I don't really know if this is working. The link says the invitation is invalid, and yet here I am. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Anywho, I think this is a great idea. We tried to make a bulletin board type site way back in college for everyone, but that was gonna cost money. This is free, so it's better. Now I finally have a place to post my rants, machinations, and ramblings, instead of just sending long emails to Nish bitching about bad tv shows and movies all the time.

So now I'm gonna see if this works before I type too much...

Free Association, vol. 1

Bill Murray.

This is the new post, same as the old post.

What do you think about this?