This "Belief-o-matic" quiz asks you questions to determine your religious/spiritual beliefs. (I came out Secular Humanist -- what a change from my old days...)
Haven't posted in a while, what with grading exams and papers pretty much the day before setting off for Houston to see my in-laws for Christmas break. The 3 1/2-hour flight to Houston was really hard on poor Izzy; she threw up twice, after a week-long bout with cold and cough and fever.
Once we got there she got a bad case of diarrhea and diaper rash (the result of cheap diapers from Kroger's). All that and the fact that Friendswood is a dry town! (My mother-in-law got me and my father-in-law a six-pack of Tsingtao from Chinatown a few days later.)
The return flight home was pure hell -- we woke up at 4, got Izzy up at 5, to get to the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (figures) at 6 for a United Airlines flight at 7:15. We lined up for an hour and a half to find that it was delayed for a couple of hours, then until 12 a.m. Izzy at this point was already extremely cranky. Then we discover (just by strolling to the ticketing counters) that the flight was altogether cancelled, and that we had to line up again for another hour for rebooking.
Madeline runs off to try to find her brother Arthur a couple of terminals away (he was dropping his parents off at that point), and by sheer luck we get a Northwest flight instead to Minneapolis at 1 pm, and then from there to SFO. This effectively doubled our flight time, not to mention the agony of dealing with poor sleep-deprived Izzy (who only wanted to held by Mommy).
We finally arrived at home around 8:30 in the evening, over 12 hours after our original flight was supposed to leave. By then Izzy had vomited yet again after too much milk (it was the only thing that could calm her down, what with her crankiness and the air pressure on her ears), and Madeline had been holding her for hours.
No wonder UA has filed for bankruptcy. Such service was absolutely intolerable.
Does this sound like someone penitent to you?
Trent Lott told reporters:
"There are some people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time. When you're from Mississippi and you're a conservative and you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame."
While it seems awfully petty, I can see why Paul McCartney may want to switch songwriting credits around -- after all, it must burn him to see "Blackbird" or "Yesterday" credited to John for no real reason. It looks petty and small-minded, yes -- but give the man a break.
Just posted this on the Zorn list, after what looked like lists and lists of discs by Anthony Braxton and Dave Douglas and Polwechsel and the Ruins and what have you.
I probably have the poppiest and shortest of all the year-end lists so far -- kind of makes me wonder what I'm still doing on this list...
The best things I heard all year (including some oldies):
- Guided By Voices: Universal Truths and Cycles
- Diana Krall, Live in Paris
- Puffy: AmiYumi Jet Fever
- Swans: Soundtracks for the Blind
I went to exactly two concerts this year (this is what happens when you have a kid) and both were totally unforgettable:
- Boredoms, with Jackie-O Motherfucker opening, Slim's, SF
- Marilyn Crispell Trio, with the Susie Ibarra Quartet opening, Yerba Buena Theater, SF
And I barely saw any videos this year, much less see any films on the big screen (though in a few days the babysitter arrives so my wife and I can watch Lord! Of! The! Rings!), but here were two excellent ones:
- Lantana
- The Deep End
And the absolute worst movie this year -- indeed, one of the worst I've seen period, even if I saw it with already lowered expectations:
- Star Wars Episode something-or-other: Attack of the Clones
And I'm going to the Gerhard Richter show at the SF Museum of Modern Art tomorrow, so that'll be up there with the Yoko Ono show earlier this year, if not better.
And is Missy Elliott's "Work It" an amazing single or what?
Alas, some sad news: Mary Hansen from Stereolab died in a cycling accident.
Haven't posted in a long while -- just came back from a whirlwind trip to Ithaca, NY, and now a lot of catching up on paper-grading awaits me -- but here's a bit off a thread on the Zorn list.
Someone had requested some eerie music, that is, music that will freak you out if you were listening alone at night. Some mentioned Diamanda Galas -- the Plague Mass is wonderful, but for my money Schrei X is the scarier, if less interesting, one -- and Painkiller's Execution Ground (it is the Zorn list after all).
There's a Nijiumu-sounding track on the Purple Trap box set called... Forest of Spirits, if I remember correctly, and one of the sections sounds just like what the title says, as if Keiji Haino placed some microphones in the woods and did a field recording and picked up disembodied sighing. Scary as all hell.
The soundtrack to The Exorcist is also extremely effective (the George Crumb piece in particular). Hear it also on the Kronos Quartet's amazing Black Angels album.
There is also a whole genre of so-called dark ambient music, though a good amount of the practitioners rely on the same tonality of drone. Lustmord's "The Place Where the Black Stars Hang" is a great starting point, as is also "Heresy."
Nurse With Wound's "Homotopy to Marie" is excellent as well -- nowhere near as pure dada as some of Stapleton's other stuff, nor as droney as, say, "Soliloquy for Lilith."
Comus's "First Utterance" has a way of really getting under one's skin, though since it's acid-damaged psych folk it's an acquired taste. But if the image of mad, gibbering violinists, hangings, and things in the woods appeals to you... (Later David Tibet would do a very fine cover of Comus's "Diana" on Current 93's "Horsey" album -- now that I think of it, listening to Current 93's "Dogs Blood Rising" late at night really freaked me out.)
And now to black metal: it's hard to take a group like Abruptum seriously because their main dudes are named It and Evil. (I keep thinking of Cousin It and Dr. Evil hamming it up together.) However, their album "Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectere Me" is nothing but pure howling and screaming for an hour. Guaranteed to scare your neighbors.