| Monday, February 19, 2001 12:46 p.m. PST |
| saturday night i watched anime flick armitage 3 followed by yet another ridley scott film, his cut of blade runner. (if you need a link for that one, i'm sorry for ya.) an odd coincidence really, since the former came on the sci-fi channel and some people in the dorm just so happened to be screening the latter, but it turns out they're exactly the same movie. humans use synthetic humans as slaves, synthetic humans lobby for rights but face institutionalized annihilation, the two (male and female) main characters both seem normal at first but turn out to be synthetic. and they fall in love, of course. see blade runner for plot/character development, see armitage 3 for gory special effects and huge robots.
i've begun yet another new song which is sort of a departure for me. i keep thinking it sounds like 90 day men remixed by portishead. i wrote it pretty quickly too; i think it could be almost done as soon as i write some lyrics. also: due to my extreme lack of vocal skills, i've enlisted the help of larmey to sing "everybody wants to rule the world." so you get to hear what wolf 359 would sound like with a better vocalist. i can't wait; especially since i know that nearly anyone could do a better job than me. listen to larmey's band feef to get an idea of what he sounds like.
hm. i would very much like to say something relevant right now about the music world at large, but currently there doesn't seem to be much goin' on. so here's what i've got: stanford alum and occasional wolf 359 corresponder (sic) nick mirov is gonna be on npr tomorrow. how cool is that? check local listings. and of course, my mom will be performing on the grammys wednesday night with acappella group take 6. i'm not asking you to watch the grammys, but watch the grammys. give it up for my maternal unit. |
| Saturday, February 17, 2001 09:53 p.m. PST |
| last night robert and i watched hannibal way too close to the movie screen. i personally felt it was a worthy successor to silence of the lambs, augmenting the earlier movie's eerie atmospherics and dense psychology with buckets more blood. nope, this isn't a flick for the squeamish, but i suppose few films starring cannibals are. seriously though, there's some truly shocking shit in this movie. (to me anyway; maybe i'm just naive.) but i must say, it was quite engrossing, which surprised me because i had a lot of unfinished business hanging over my head that evening.
the element i find most compelling about the character of hannibal lecter is his complete dissociation between his desires and personality. the guy's only got one emotion: cool, or more specifically, condescendingly composed and only slightly acerbic. whether he's enjoying a meal or facing imminent death, his composure remains the same. it's truly difficult to fathom a man with a "level 10 pokerface." hey, i just made that one up, that's pretty cool. lecter's profile would probably be pretty unusual in real life, but it's probably within the realm of psychological possibility. what's pretty implausible is the way lecter can "make" people do certain things (like swallowing one's tongue) through the power of suggestion. actually, now that i think about it, given that a person is unhinged already, it probably wouldn't take that much to convince them to do horrible things to himself or others. so i guess lecter is a pretty solid character, believabilitywise.
i got a hearty laugh out of this. if you don't, it's prolly cuz you don't know me personally. |
| Thursday, February 15, 2001 10:42 p.m. PST |
| goddamn. another week in the motherfrickin wastebasket, so to speak. now i have a four-day weekend, which i will use to deal with five. . . shall we say, unfortunate individuals who've contracted various computer viruses. now these guys didn't just pick up some harmless shit like melissa. no, the rampant strain that's got my weekend cramped is a mutant form of veronab, also known as the romeo and juliet virus. this particular infectant exhibits the insidious behavior of attaching itself to the registry and rerouting several popular file extensions (including .mp3, .doc, and .exe) such that whenever the user attempts to activate one of these files, the virus overwrites the file data with its own dummy data. now this is non-recoverable shit, people: files that are simply deleted can often be reclaimed, but overwritten bytes are permanently ungetbackable. so when i find a user with this virus, not only do i have to clean the machine (a laborious process involving custom batch files and burnt cds), i also have to repair the damage wreaked by the virus, which can be extensive if it has compromised any of the system files. ohyeah, this weekend's gonna be fun.
other than that, i dunno. i've been brushing up on my drive like jehu lately, but i've decided i like the hot snakes better. also, a couple days ago a friend of mine pointed out that the closest point of comparison for my song "40" is "slow" by superchunk off their 1st album. good job, larmey. um, i'm working on a cover of tears for fears' "everybody wants to rule the world," one of the best new wave songs ever. it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-80s, in all its self-interested pretension and equivocation. in an era when everyone else was trying to be "cute" but ended up just looking stupid ("turning japanese"? what the hell were you morons thinking?), tears for fears dared to make a meaningful statement and thus stood above most of the airblown sugarsynthpop infecting the radiowaves. so yeah, expect that by the end of the weekend. if you're lucky. |
| Tuesday, February 13, 2001 06:59 p.m. PST |
| delusions of adequacy has an interview with the last decent emo band, the white octave. not only are these guys the only worthwhile act on deep elm right now, they're also based in my hometown and are friends with some of the members of lurve (but not me; i've never met them). i've seen 'em live twice though, and they do tear shit up pretty well. linc is dead-on about the nc scene; it just hasn't been the same since archers and polvo broke up. ahwell. that'll change once i hit it big. |
| Monday, February 12, 2001 05:52 p.m. PST |
| just in time for valentine's day, i've finished a new song. the perspicacious among you have already noticed the new song title at the top of my list over there, "prelude to a kissoff." i dedicate it neither to the lovers nor to the recently burnt, but to those who've been without love for a good while. for you, love sounds like this song: distant, cacophonous, and yet ominously stirring. i didn't let words get in the way of the expression. be sure to loop this track on wednesday. |
| Friday, February 9, 2001 09:42 p.m. PST |
| so i hung out with jack saturn today. but before i tell ya all about that little experience, i just want to say that i finally located a decently recorded live version of burning airlines' "no voices in the wire" on napster today. i had an old one dated 6-28-99 where the drums were at the front of the mix and everything else was way too low. but this new version is mixed almost as well as a studio recording. highly fuckin recommended.
i picked up jack from the caltrain station at around 12.10p, then we came back here to the dorm. first we got some lunch, and then we shot the breeze about topics ranging from music to computers and back to music. additionally, we jammed to 909 beats (him on guitar, and me on bass) and i got to show off some of my musical works in progress and two lame texas is the reason remixes i did a couple years ago. brief aside about titr, the greatest emo band ever to walk the earth: they recorded only 13 songs before they broke up, and every one was a mini-classic. based strictly on a track-to-quality ratio, they're one of the best bands ever. yeah, i said it. emo has totally sucked ass ever since they broke up, so all you promise ring/get up kids fans need to give their shit a listen. because quite literally, it's all good.
anyway, back to js. turns out he's quite a genial fellow, exuding a sort of retro-70s vibe from his old-school hairdo. he seems to be a pretty major player on the sf indie scene, but he was very modest about his knowledge and his role in the bay area rock underground. his voice is gravelly, froggy you might call it. it reminded me of nights spent up late talking, and waking up at 2 in the afternoon wondering where the day went. but i guess that lends the whole affair a more poetic aspect than's warranted, because jack's a really low-key guy. i was amazed that both of us managed not to overtly lambast each other with our prodigious musical knowledges (actually i was mostly amazed at me). it seemed like we were pretty much on the same wavelength conceptually, and you shoulda seen his face light up when i showed him my skills as a breakbeat scientist. honestly though, the best part of the whole encounter was that it was the first time i've spoken to someone who knows as much i do about music. we were on the same level as far as what bands we know and care about, the aesthetics we subscribe to, and the creative passion that inspires us. that's the way i feel about things. hit his page and see what, if anything, he's got to say about our meeting. |
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