Some notes on the culture:

I think a while ago I criticized Quizno's for their "Raised By Wolves" advertisements. Well, they have redeemed themselves with the (relatively) new "Horrible Singing Mouse Creature" ads. These feature two crudely animated things, with the bodies of rodents and human ears and mouths (which are just rows of teeth), and crazy mismatched eyes, that look like horrible mutations of nature. They yell about the current deals at Quizno's in awful abrasive voices that are just about halfway between singing and screaming. I have to admire any reasonably large company willing to take the risk of using horrible mouse creatures with abrasive voices to sell sandwiches. Whether or not it increases my desire to eat there is another story. In fact it really doesn't, because I can't stop picturing the creatures running around in the kitchen of the Quizno's. The jingles they sing are catchy though.

On the downside: When Kyocera needs an idea, they just rip off Wes Anderson! Recently in a movie theater I saw an ad for their new phone that might be titled "The Uncool Kid," about a private school overachiever who gets picked on by the tough kids. He first appears sitting in a posh academic office in a blazer with his legs crossed, as he describes his predicament. Then there is a montage showing all the extracurricular activities he participates in. Then he gets this wonderful new phone and, blah blah. Some of the details are kinda hazy because I put off writing this for so long after I saw it. But it was a total Rushmore ripoff, up until the phone stuff.

Yesterday on the train home a guy sitting next to me tried to evangelize me. He was a young Chinese guy, got on at the Columbia stop so it's probable he's part of the Campus Crusade or whatever it may be. He first asked me if I was a Christian, I said no, and that was about the last word I got in. He launched into the usual monologue that presumes I know nothing whatsoever about the religion, and yet at the same time presumes quite a bit, because it is so rambling and disjointed that if I were truly ignorant I would undoubtedly be completely lost. Because you just have to open yourself to the lord...you see he created us in his image...of course we don't have to try to sin, we sin all the time... there's really no attempt to establish the basics. With only a few stops before I got off, I was not particularly interested in a debate, and it was obvious that he was not interested in dialogue of any kind. I also can never bring myself to grow hostile and tell him what a jerk he is to interrupt my Japanese study by presuming that he's going to completely change my beliefs in the course of my commute. So instead I just zoned out and listened to the sound of his voice. He had a sort of interesting accent, a mix of softened consonants and some vaguely British vowels. At one point he tried to pretend there was some good reason for him picking me out by pointing to my Nihongo textbook as he said "that's why we may do so many things, learn many languages, and yet still we are not satisfied" (you can guess the solution). Oh, now it all makes sense! He could see that my language study was really a cry for help.

I think the tendency of people like this guy to ramble about this and that aspect of their religion with seemingly no thought of his own behind what he is saying, obviously just reciting what he has been told again and again since his youth, contributes to the impression of being 'brainwashed.' Once he knew I was an eligible target he appeared to have no real interest in whether or not I understood or agreed with anything he was saying. Perhaps he was just trying to feel good about himself for performing his duty, even if the attempt was half-hearted.

So, I've had this Marshall Valvestate amp since sometime in high school, probably around '98 or so. Some time in late 2001 or early 2002, it developed a strange problem. While playing, the sound would sometimes become suddenly softer and fuzzier, and not the good kind of fuzzy. This would happen maybe every 20 minutes or so, sometimes more. The cure was always a mild kick or tap, but it would come back again. The only thing I could think of to do was replace its lone tube, a 12AX7, but that did not help. At some point someone suggested to me that it could be a worn out capacitor, and that launched a whole investigation into multimeters, which culminated in buying a pretty nice one and then reaching new levels of laziness by refusing to even open up the battery compartment (it required a screwdriver, you see) for many many months.

Recently I decided to renew my efforts, as I'm hoping to start putting on musical performances soon and will need as many amps as I can get. My current technical advisor (my boss) was very skeptical about the burned out capacitor theory, and I hoped he was right, because it turns out one cannot test for a dried out capacitor merely by measuring its capacitance. Instead one must measure something called Effective Series Resistance, which is actually even more complicated than it sounds. One measures it by buying a tool which costs from approximately $100-$200. One can also, according to one web page, roughly replicate what the expensive meters do by pumping a square wave through the cap and examining the output for slopes that are too steep or shallow in the cycle of charging and discharging. This did not sound like something I would be particularly fit to carry out, and the number of capacitors in the amp's circuitry was also a bit daunting.

My technical advisor suggested it was probably just the same thing that is the problem 99% of the time, a connection. This was also slightly intimidating, because there are a lot more connections in there than capacitors, and I had already jiggled all the ones that seemed most in danger of coming loose. A picture for reference:

But I went back to it, and jiggled some more. And sure enough, there it was.

When I pushed this ceramic resistor forward, bad. When I pulled it back, good. Why? Because one of its two contacts (impossible to photograph well enough to see) had no solder at all on it. Nice job, Marshall Quality Control.

There's jumping the shark, and then there's jumping the round (number). This is the name I'm giving to when forces of inflation are actually felt by the consumer, and something that has cost a nice round number for a long time, practically becoming a tradition, finally goes up in price. For my generation, it's things like twenty ounce bottles of Coke for a dollar, slices of pizza and subway rides for a dollar fifty, the New York Times for 25 cents (and then 50 cents), and various monthly services, such as AOL, for twenty dollars a month. For our parents and grandparents it's a lot of things like that for a nickel (in fact it does seem to really proceed in fits and starts--there were 5 and 10 cent stores, now there are 99 cent stores, but were there ever 50 cent stores?). Things like movie tickets seem to rise so rapidly that they never really rested on a nice price. But whatever it is, it always hurts, especially when it requires you to come up with an inconvenient odd number of coins to pay with exact change. Others have probably named this before, and probably better, and as usual I'm leaving that research as an exercise to the reader.

Now Netflix is going from $20 to $22. Obviously the change thing doesn't apply, but somehow the loss of that nice number still feels terribly inconvenient, a disruption of the proper order. Of course it makes one wonder again if one should be indulging in such a luxury service. Netflix surely knows all this and would not have done it if they were not losing money by the boatload. I do pity them this, since it's such a great service and idea. It amazes me how difficult it is for most businesses to make money even when they appear so successful. It probably has a lot to do with the problems of growth, with too many people getting hired into useless jobs and the company engaging in too many expensive activities that don't really help anything.

My real problem is not with Netflix lately, but with the postal service. The inconsistency with which my discs get back to Netflix, despite dropping them all in the same mail drop at the same time, is quite dramatic. Well, so far it's 1 day to 3 days. But 3 days is pretty dramatic for a trip that takes an hour and fifteen minutes on the subway. Perhaps this is an opening for another business, mail for within big cities that can be much more efficient than a system built for the whole country. Then this business will lose millions every quarter and raise its prices.

Last night I attended a concert with my cousin Jerome, an accomplished musician and friend whom I hadn't seen in quite a while. The bill was the Secret Machines, The Double, and the Plate Tectonics.

Plate Tectonics were an odd little band. There was a drummer, keyboardist, bassist, and singer. The drummer may as well have been the only one in the band. He played extremely complex rhythms in time signatures I don't even want to think about, with excellent energy. His playing alone was enough to at least hold my attention, and it was also just about the only thing I could hear. The keyboardist might have been playing a different concert entirely; she mostly looked bemused and played very simplistic lines, usually just shifting between two or three simple chords. The singer mostly, well, entirely, chirped and shouted nonsensically. The bassist, we agreed, was just weird. He was one of those antisocial bassists who spends the entire set with his back to the crowd. His bass lines pretty much ignored the complex drumming by ony lasting for about half of each measure; to take a cynical view, I think it's quite possible no one other than the drummer had any more understanding than I did of his rhythms. They did have some reasonably complex arrangements to their songs, but the bassist seemed to be the only one really affected by the changes. Then, between every few songs, the bassist would scream "FUCK!" Only he'd have his back to the crowd, so it took a while for us to even realize who kept doing it.

The Double were very good, and I bought their CD, which is the first one I've ever owned that has unique hand-painted cover art. Between every song their keyboardist would keep his sounds going and play around with them on his analog synths until the next song started. He had a MoogerFooger.

The Secret Machines put everyone else to shame in terms of showmanship. About five minutes before they came on, a fog machine laid down a nice thick layer. They had three handmade-looking lights, one directly behind each member's stage position, and all the other lights were turned off for most of their set. This made for incredibly dramatic sights, especially when the drummer would swing his arms and appear to be shifting the entire venue. The guitarist and keyboardist appeard mostly as silhouettes. Their music might be described by supporters as a harder-rocking Interpol, and by detractors as a harder-rocking Coldplay. The music was very stately and booming, with lots of arpeggio delayed guitar. The drum rhythms and the melodies were both quite basic. The vocals were definitely a strong point, very breathy and smooth, and skillful harmonies. At first it was impressive, but as the set wore on and it became clear that this was the deal, that no more ideas were going to be presented, it got rather repetitive.

The real treasure of the night was undoubtedly the guy setting next to us, in Northsix's strange rock bleachers. During TSM's set, he went back and forth between cheering on the band like some kind of coach or motivational speaker, and trying to explain to his lady friend why exactly they were so good. "When the drummer makes those rhythms, kish kish kish kish....Aw man!" "You see that thing he's doing there, that's it, right there!" "[to his lady friend] Well, I think we got our money's worth!" (the show was $10). But his greatest quote of the night by far came between two songs, when he felt compelled to shout "That is how you do it. That is how you rock. THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT!"

On the way out we struck up a conversation with a drunk couple and compared our thoughts on the evening. The girl said I reminded her of someone on tv, but she couldn't think of whom. The guy supplied the answer, Superboy from Smallville. I pretended I had seen the show.

Finally I've recorded some new songs. These were written and recorded by me with much appreciated help on both fronts from Zach Stern. They are up on the music page; here are direct links for the lazy or spastic.

1. my god I just realized
2. zooming in
3. seeing ourselves
4. the thieves rush in
5. there is no girl

please do leave comments on this entry. thanks for listening!

Two nights ago I saw another show at Northsix. In order the bands were the High Water Marks, Apollo Sunshine, and the Apples In Stereo.

The High Water Marks' drummer was a dead ringer for Everclear's Art Alexakis, but my photos of them turned out terribly.

Apollo Sunshine's drummer bore a passing resemblance to Noah Wyle, and my pictures of them turned out okay.

The Apples' drummer looked like no one so much as Hilarie Sydney, who she happens to be, and my pictures of them turned out quite well.

I mistook Apollo Sunshine for the Sunshine Fix before the show, and I think Apollo Sunshine wins for having the sunniest band name ever. They appeared to be a young band, and they were very, very good. They had more instruments than I've ever seen from a band of their ilk (4 guys, and young). The singer played a couple of keyboards, a bass, a ukelele, and a double-necked guitar/bass combo; the guitarist also played slide guitar and had a uke of his own; the drummer had a pretty standard setup, and then they had a guy who played a huge vibraphone and had a bunch of percussion odds and ends. But more importantly, they used all of these instruments extremely effectively, even when switching between them in the middle of a song. Their stage presence owed a significant debt to that of the Flaming Lips--they extended the strobe-light-around-the-neck thing to have three members of the band wearing them, plus a camera being projected onto a big screen was put right in front of another one, for a whole lotta strobin'. They also used the camera and projector for some crazy video feedback effects. Their music was not devoid of that influence, but it was good enough that it did not really matter. They had the earnest, surreal storytelling lyrics. Most of the songs shifted wildly in every respect, and the melodies were very complex yet powerful. Unfortunately their vibraphonist was a bit underappreciated, because he just couldn't compete in volume with the drums and the fuzz bass. The guitarist was a bit of a showoff, but it can be forgiven. Incredible potential for these guys.

The Apples in Stereo played a spartan show in just about every way. The stage was lit no more brightly than the audience. No fancy gizmos or stage props for them. They flatly denied requests, even from members of the opening bands. To my delight, they played "Seems So," saying that they had gotten really sick of it for a while but now they liked it again. At one point a guy requested the song "Allright/Not Quite," to which Robert Schneider cheerfully responded "that's right, we're not going to play it." This exchange was repeated about 3 times, until the fan gave up.

Here's one picture of Apollo Sunshine:

and one of the Apples:

My only complaint: when will sound engineers figure out the technology necessary to have someone other than the "lead singer" of a band sing a song on their own? Every time a band tries this, the occasional singer's voice ends up totally buried. Do the engineers just sit back and take a nap once the set starts? Lazy bastards.