The other day I snapped this photo with my camera phone:

Cardinal and gold flowers on a FMS cart/trailer. I heard somewhere that USC’s annual landscaping budget is around $1M, most of which goes into putting in these flowers in the weeks leading up to commencement so the campus looks good when people come visit. And the sight of these little carts driving around means that it’s approaching commencement again. I’m not graduating, but I’m halfway there. It’s weird to take a step back and see… I’m halfway through college already, and I feel like I haven’t done much. I mean, I haven’t gotten drunk, I haven’t pulled an all-nighter (come close, though), I haven’t used drugs, I haven’t dyed my hair purple, I haven’t done anything that’s really like “whoa, he’s a crazy college kid”. Maybe this is my college mid-life crisis, I’m not sure.

So when I get all angsty like this, I know from past experience that it’s a good idea to clean my room. Seeing the overflowing laundry basket in my closet, I figured it might be a good idea to tackle that task. I quickly gathered everything up that hadn’t made it into the basket (dishtowels, sheets, bath towels…. not what you might be thinking) and made my way down the (slippery when wet) steps to the second floor laundry room. For some reason, the south end of the second floor hallway always smells really bad; today, an amalgam of pumpkin seeds, trash, and rotting orange juice greeted me as I shuffled down the hospital-like corridor with my brightly colored pile of clothing. I stepped into the laundry room to see one other guy there unfolding his clothes from the dryer — really the first time I’ve ever run into anybody else in the laundry room. I sorted my laundry into two washers and, to my dismay, it didn’t all fit. I hate being that guy who monopolizes all the machines and makes it impossible to do your own, so I left the last third of my clothes in the hamper. To my dismay, I was out of laundry soap, so I made a run back upstairs to grab a fresh bottle (mmm Tide). When I returned, the guy sorting his clothes was gone, and sensing my opportunity, I quickly dumped my hamper’s contents into the third washer. Nobody was watching, so it didn’t matter, right? I kicked off all three machines and quickly left before anybody else showed up and identified me as that guy.

Coming back up the stairs, I wiped out again. Karma comes around quick.

Hope there’s nobody there when I go back down to put everything in the dryer.

Tonight Steven was kind enough to treat me to another concert at the Avalon in Hollywood. We saw Mae (Steven’s favorite), Relient K, and a band called Sherwood. The show was good overall, and we went to Lucky Devils afterwards for the world’s best hamburgers and cake shakes. Not too bad of a night.

Of course, the unique thing was that, instead of fighting traffic on the 101 to get there, we instead opted to take advantage of LA’s unique public transportation system, which until this moment I didn’t actually believe existed. You’d hear people talking about it in hushed tones — the metro — as if it were some magical entity that whisked you from place to place at its own whim. You never actually wanted to take it because it was slow and unreliable.

Wellllllll… we took it. It does, in fact, exist, and is more a part of the LA cityscape than I ever knew. I mean, sure, I had experience riding the red line from Union Station to Pershing Square to visit my dad when he worked downtown, but I never knew the train went farther than that. And I knew LA had buses, but I never knew how extensive the bus network was, how far it reached, or how often they came. Our trip was as simple as hopping on the Metro Rapid at the Adams/Vermont station, jumping off the bus and taking a quick walk over to the Red Line station, and then getting on the Red Line. Twelve minutes later we were at Hollywood and Vine, no traffic, no fuss, and it only cost $3 — and that included the trip back, too. That’s less than a gallon of gas.

We saw the show, went to dinner, and finished up around 10:45. I had to be at KCRW at 12 AM tonight, so I figured we had plenty of time. We got on the Red Line at the Hollywood/Highland station around 11, and arrived at the Wilshire/Vermont “crossroads of the world” at 11:15. Here’s where things started to get tough. The next bus showed up 10 minutes later, at 11:25, and it was a regular Metro bus, rather than a Rapid, which makes less stops. The bus is relatively empty, and it’s quiet, save for three neighborhood kids freestyle rapping in the back of the bus (the words f*ck, c*nt, d*ck, b*tch, et al. come up a lot…) Finally, at 11:35, we found ourselves back at Steven’s house. OK, we’re doing fine. We jump in Steven’s car and race to campus, only to get stopped by a red light and an overzealous DPS cruiser. Finally, at 11:50, I race into PSA, up the elevator, and jump in my car to get on the road to KCRW. I gave a call to master control as a heads up that I was running a little late, got the go-ahead, and showed up at 12:05… not too bad, considering the unplanned little jaunt on LA’s public transportation system.

Moral of the story, if there is one: LA has public transportation. It works. It runs on time. You don’t get mugged on it. And it’s cheap. What’s the problem with it?

“You used to when you did this. But you don’t DO this any more…!”

It made me smile. Really hard. Like, a lot. And then the weirdest thing happened. I started laughing, and then I was smiling and laughing and suddenly I was crying, too. I was entering the exit lane for Western/Normandie (one of LA’s finest merges) and I could barely see because there were tears in the way. It was beautiful, beautiful music, with such strong connections to my emotions; after all, the last time I heard a brand new Ulrich Schnauss song was back in 2005, when I was seeing him live at the Knitting Factory, and things changed a lot.

So here I am bawling like a baby in the driver’s seat of my car, listening to this awesome music, and terrorizing the off-ramp with my wonderful driving (oh crap, what gear am I in? what gear do I need to be in?). I was thinking about Rigo and meeting Ulrich and having him sign my “A Strangely Isolated Place” cd… and it made me intensely happy. Later on, I called in to master control to find out the release date of the album — JUNE!

I can’t wait that long for another trip down memory lane.

But I’m me, and I have so many thoughts on this world (that are such crap) that I just had to jump back into the game. Enter WordPress with their shiny templates (oOoOo shiny!) and a few new things, shake and serve over ice and you have the motivation to once again post. So, pardon the dust as I fix up a few things, put up some new artwork, change the linens, and make the place liveable. If you find broken links et al., let me know.

Item #1: your daily WTF:

Um, yes. They are a laundry card company. Um, yes, that’s an Adopt-a-Highway sign on the side of the 10 Freeway. What else do you see wrong with this picture? (And the irony is delicious.)

Item #2: the sad state of our world, according to the New York Times, courtesy of Google Homepage:

Better yet, the state of the world, as run by George W. Bush. Too bad he’s on “spring break” in Mexico. I’ve recently gotten hooked on David Letterman and his “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” series — examples include the “Yes ma’am — oh, you’re not a ma’am,” “What is this, a big distillery?”, and the (in)famous “My lawyer is a LATINO!” quotes. Wonderful guy in charge of the country.

I had an item #3, and it was a good one too (not Bush-bashing, since that’s the cool thing to do these days). But I forgot it. Crap. Oh well, here’s a YouTube video to satiate you:

(no juicy gossip, either. sorry.)

Oh, I remember. I went back to St. Margaret’s and saw the musical last night (what a great way to spend a Friday night… as if blogging on Saturday is so much better… I’m a nerd, and I love it ), which was pretty decent. It was weird to sit in the audience instead of be sweating and singing it out on stage, but it was a nice perspective shift. I sat in the “Womble Memorial Box” (so christened by Darcy Rice), ran into the Grogans and a handful of other SMES peeps, talked with all the actors after the show (um, micro-crush on the lead, I’ll admit it) and generally had a good time. AND it helped me procrastinate my homework which Dr. Safadi so pleasantly assigned us to do over break (which I did this afternoon, and totally wasted a good beach day).

It’s the end of Spring Break tonight. Well, it’s actually over tomorrow, but it’s the eternal Calvin and Hobbes conundrum — Sundays are always bad because you dread Monday’s coming, and as such you can’t enjoy Sunday. And Saturday sucks because you know Sunday is coming and you can’t handle that either. We only have seven weeks left in the semester, so it’s going to be tough as we dig back into the bottomless pit of knowledge that is college. I have to leave behind the simplicity of a clean desk with my laptop and desk lamp on it, cool nights with the shades open and my window ajar, listening to the deafening nothingess of suburbia for which I find myself pining after a months-long stint in the Los Angeles meat grinder. But somehow, like at the end of a good Chemical Brothers album, I’ll always snap back into the groove and things will turn out better than they were before.

I guess that makes me an optimist, huh?

It’s good to be back.

It’s happened to me before, meeting someone I thought was absolutely “the shit” and then realizing that they weren’t all that most people made them out to be, kind of like reading the “Yes, they’re people too!” pages in Star magazine. So I know and understand full well what it means to have your bubble burst, or more precisely, to understand that “yes, they’re people too.”

Now take a moment and think about some sexy-voiced radio personality. What do they look like? What are they like, for that matter? Does their voice always sound that way? (I always wondered about that with the guy who does the voiceovers for movies — “comingggg this fallll…”)

On Thursday at my regular front desk shift, the volunteer coordinator, Connie Alvarez, mentioned to me that she wanted to train me on playlist editing with DJs. I nearly jumped with delight, except Anne Freiermuth would have killed me. I got assigned to be trained on the Friday night Metropolis with Jason Bentley, a program and DJ to which/whom I have listened since 8th grade. Jason has, consequently, shaped much of my taste in music, and as such I consider him to be one of the biggest heroes in my life, since my music represents a serious victory of mind over pop culture. (Yeah, I’m a snob. Get over it.)

So it was kind of nerve wracking to finally get to meet this enigma in person — this “Metropolis” guy with a voice that my friends claimed could be sold for millions of dollars. Granted, I’m not a creepy stalker person, but getting to meet someone who’s had a huge influence on your life is kind of a big moment. (Hey, I pulled it off successfully with Raul Campos at least…) I’d get to see how he works, how he picks his music, and what he does to mix and remix stuff on the fly. Sweet.

And basically, it was awesome. I can’t wait to go back. Surprisingly, most of the mixing Jason does on the radio is digital, using M-Audio’s Torq software and interface, and a Trigger Finger control pad. And the fading up and down during his announcements is actually manual. And he called me out — on air — for knowing a Justin Timberlake song.

Ouch.

I love this job. And it wasn’t so bad meeting this hero.

Hey Professor Demers–
I’ve been doing more thinking on the discussion we had in class on Thursday about popular culture. The last comment I made was somewhere along the lines of “well, it worries me because we’re flooding the market with a bunch of crap, rather than focusing on the good stuff that’s out there.”

Something really bothered me after class: who defines what is “good” and what is “crap”?

I recall (I don’t remember her name) a girl in the back of the classroom responding to my comment with “it’s what people watch, so it’s what’s popular.” And that makes sense — but then again, with the internet freely accessible, sites seem to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Ironically, I was reading an article on Digg tonight about mathematics education in the US (I went out with friends tonight, I swear, I have a life!) and in the (heated) discussion that followed, someone posted this comment (pardon the language):

Say what you want, a country full of stupid people will fail at every level – economy, government, defence, basic services, and of course education. Its a vicious circle once a country starts to become less educated, education becomes more expensive as educated people become more scarce… If you want to carry on being retarded uneducated fuck-abouts then your country will die. The mentality of society has become centered around the most fucking stupid people. People actually want to emulate gangster fucking rappers? You think its fucking hard core to have a speech impediment and such a lack of intelligence that your only vocal ability extends to rapping about your fucking bitches and the fucking Bronx? Don’t get me wrong, the world would be a dull place without the hilarity of gangster rap, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to do it – CD mass production ensures that even a single Hummer full of rappers is more than enough for our entertainment needs.

which reminded me of our discussion on the first day of class as well — why do white kids from the suburbs want to listen to gangster rap and drive Hummers?

(Why is the Hummer popular in the first place?)

It then dawned on me: what should be tagged as “good” in terms of taste — music, movies, food, whatever — should be something that promotes the evolution of education and the diversity of society. We seem to be facing a dangerous singularity in popular culture.

Maybe I just haven’t been around long enough to see a true evolution of cultures, or maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. But everyone’s listening to either Fallout Boy or 50 Cent these days — and they think it’s the absolute most awesome stuff they’ve ever heard.

(if you’re a fallout boy fan, i apologize…)

Anyways, I’m still rattling this around in my head. I just thought you might find the quote interesting.

Sorry about the parenthesis.

–david

(original digg article at http://www.digg.com/programming/The_Shocking_State_of_Math_Education_in_America )

I’ve instead been thinking about minimalism, particularly minimalist electronic/techno music, and why it seems to be so (un)popular. If nobody likes it, or finds it to be boring, why is it something that I enjoy, when I consider myself to be an aficionado of other, more lush genres of music — eg classical, jazz, and (yes, I’ll admit it) pop?

What is minimal, anyways?

Look out, here comes another Flash clip (546.3 kb):

That’s Clipper by Autechre. And I consider it minimal (even though it’s labeled more as glitchtronica), along with much of the output from Josh Wink, John Tejada, James Zabiela, Richie Hawtin, and many others on the “bleeding edge” of electronic music lately. And here, when I’m referring to minimal, I’m referring to the “minimal” of the present — stripped-down tech house, not so much the early beep and glitch minimal of previous years. Minimal music always seems to be atonal at first — it starts in utter chaos, a myriad of sounds that are just kind of strewn about, then slowly comes together to form some coherent idea or pattern. And usually, once it comes together, this idea is expressed very clearly.

And everyone complains that (a) “I could make that!”, (b) “It has no lyrics”, or (c) “It’s boring. The same thing over and over again.”

But it’s truly a musical phenomenon. Let’s tackle these three in reverse order.

(c) “The same thing over and over again.” Listen to any track of minimal. No, listen. Really. It changes, ebbs and flows, even if subtly, to build and transform itself into something different. It doesn’t always reach out and smack you in the face, like the “INTRO-VERSE-CHORUS-VERSE-CHORUS-BRIDGE-CHORUS-CODA” format of any classic rock song (“take ‘em to the bridge!” as is shouted in SexyBack). And, for that matter, music IS repetitious — compare the format given above to any popular, rock, alternative, or other radio format song today, and you’ll likely see it’s similar, if not the same. Repetitious? Yes. Just not quite like everything else.

(b) “It has no lyrics.” Neither does a lot of classical music. It’s about the expression of your idea through music and melody, and not through words — that’s cheating.

(a) “I could make that” — Well, yes, you could. But the problem is, it’s really hard to do. To succeed at minimal, the artist must have an idea that’s so good, it can stand on its own for 4, 5, 10 minutes, be twisted inside out, cut up, tied in knots, pureed, and then reassembled, and have it still be just as refreshing as when it went in. And that’s the hard part. Getting a good idea.

Look at how many rock songs have been written on the ideas of “I love you”, “I hate you”, “Love is difficult”, “I’ll miss you”, or “I’ll never forget you.” Wow, what a plethora of ideas. AND they have the benefit of words! Add this with melody over a happy chord progression including a 1, 3, 4, and 5, and you’re all set. Boom, instant pop song. Why else is having a Garage Band so easy?

I guess this (along with so many popular influences) is why we see so many garage band startups in the vein of headbanging rock (“white guys musically masturbating” according to D.Nero), and so few in the vein of electronic music. It’s hard to have musical ideas that are good enough to be pulled apart and put back together again. In this respect, it reminds me a lot of early jazz music — here’s your idea, now go play with it. It’s just the instruments are different.

In a world so cluttered with expressions of the same tired ideas, it’s refreshing to take a break from Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouuuuu to take stock in musical technology today and play with it.

That’s why I love it, I guess — it’s the purest expression of thought and form in music — truly musical art.

Glitch on, Richie.

It’s midnight, I’m doing some studying for my math exam on Monday and doing the egg nog-hot chocolate thing. It’s cold and the sky outside is mottled with clouds. I’m enjoying the sound of the last of the rain dripping off the old apartment complex. It’s the perfect time to pull up one of my favorites: The Real Tuesday Weld’s I Love The Rain, this remix off the excellent Traveler ’06 compilation:

Also, on a completely unrelated note, somebody has figured out how to use the Wiimote as a MIDI controller for their Nord:

Fascinating to the electronic music nerd types. Jarre was ahead of his time with the laser harp.