Dean ChristakosJuly 31, 2004
I Will Not Miss This Movie
Well, it's nice to see, this year, that political films are making a comeback. Everyone's heard of Fahrenheit 911, by now. The Hunting of the President, a lesser known documentary, was also released to good reviews. While there was certainly no reason to justify The Manchurian Candidate, a movie that was perfectly good as it was made in 1962, I'm glad that the genre of the political thriller is still popular.
Well and good. But come October, I am not going to miss Team America: World Police. Those who find that the aesthetic of the film looks eerily familiar may remember The Thunderbirds.
Posted by Dean at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2004
I saw Howard Dean. Twice.
I try to stay active in politics, and while I don't make it a big topic of this weblog (because it is so easy to devolve into a low-quality format of, "Here's a link to a column linked by a bunch of other weblogs that backs up what I believe! Heh. Indeed."), it has been very exciting to have the Democratic National Convention in town. Last year, I was a very active volunteer for the Howard Dean campaign and spent a lot of time trudging through the snow in New Hampshire canvassing for his candidacy. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get a chance to see him, again.
Wednesday, he was speaking at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge as part of the Take Back America Conference, and I stood in line out in the sun hoping to get in. Having come only about 90 minutes ahead of time, and there being only about 350 seats available that weren't already reserved for reporters, and about 1000 other people weren't able to get in, including me. Howard Dean saw that there were all these people trying to get in to see him, so he came outside and spoke to the crowd from the back patio with some impromptu remarks. It's is really the mark of a great guy that he was willing to come out and make an unscheduled address to a group of interested onlookers. Robert Reich took out some time to speak to the locked-out crowd, as well.
The next day, there was a lunch event for former Dean campaign volunteers, which is where the pictures from yesterday's post came from. I saw a lot of old friends, and Howard Dean came to address us all. A big point he made in both speeches was to encourage us to run for office ourselves, to stay involved in campaigns we believed in, and to remind us that he and his supporters can make a difference in influencing the larger Democratic Party and what kind of candidates end up winning office.
There are two big observations I want to make here. First, having seen Dean speak to us twice and having caught his convention speech, he sees that his time in the sun is over. His convention speech was toned down and sounded like a eulogy to his candidacy than anything else, particularly to those of us who were hoping that his speech would be something akin to the bring-down-the-house speech delivered by Ronald Reagan at the 1976 Republican Convention which nominated his rival Gerald Ford. When Howard Dean remarks about the future, he talks about us, his supporters, and the future of a revitalized Democratic party. However, you can tell that he sees this as a future that does not include him as a central figure.
In all of this, however, I've been excited and almost star-struck by getting to see him, speak with him, and get my picture taken with him. A friend of mine called me a "political groupie," which, I suppose is an occupational hazard. In fact, what's striking is how it is so easy to get caught up in the parties with good food, the famous people you've only previously seen on television, and the media coverage that you hope you'll be included in. It's fine for me to get caught up in it. After all, I can afford to be shallow... I'm not a journalist or a politician or a policymaker who has to get anything accomplished at the convention. However, via Kevin Drum, we see an article from The New Republic taking reporters to task for thinking that their job is to hang around with important people, find swank parties, and generally get awestruck by the personalities they encounter, rather than uncover information that would actually make readers more informed (i.e., their jobs). I have seen how easy that is. The excitement at seeing a political celebrity can cause those endorphines to get released, giving my brain a good feeling as though I have done something useful, and then that allows me to calm down and go on about life without actually having done anything or learned anything, if I'm not careful.
UPDATED: More pictures after the jump.
Continue reading "I saw Howard Dean. Twice."
Posted by Dean at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2004
Fortress Bostonia
Today is Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention. It's also the first day that I actually went downtown. What's striking is not necessarily the police presence. Certainly I've seen plenty of police cars and policemen out in force blocking and redirecting traffic. What's striking is how quiet everything is around the Fleet Center. The combination of streets closed to traffic and the fact that so many people are staying away from Boston during the convention creates an eerie quietness in the areas around North Station and the North End.
The oft-derided "protest zone" is actually extremely close to the convention area. I had to walk right through it to get to Canal Street. Apparently no protests were in effect, this afternoon. The worst of it is really the netting and barbed-wire that was used to enclose the area. The distance from the Fleet Center itself is not an issue; the area is actually closeby to anyone heading in the direction of the convention. Netting and barbed-wire just means that complaints of a "police state" from the protesters suddenly don't seem as kooky as they are normally regarded.
Pictures follow.
Continue reading "Fortress Bostonia"
Posted by Dean at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2004
Gallery Opening at FUSE
Saturday, I attended the opening of Beautiful Mutants, a photography project of Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh at the FUSE Gallery in New York City.
This is actually the first time I've seen Mark Mothersbaugh in person. In fact, I really haven't seen him outside of album art, the music videos and the film Human Highway. In the intervening 20 years, Mothersbaugh has aged quite a bit. It's not that he aged badly for someone in his 50s, but when all your memories of him are of someone in his 20s and 30s, to see him as an older man all of a sudden is somewhat jarring. While I was only the most casual of Devo fans (I came to watch Human Highway because my interest in Neil Young), the very knowledge Devo's existence certainly played a role in making the 80s a lot easier to deal with while growing up.
Incidently, Devo is on tour and will be appearing in Portland, OR and Chicago, IL in the near future.
UPDATED: Pictures after the jump
Continue reading "Gallery Opening at FUSE"
Posted by Dean at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2004
Adventures in Music
Friday night found me driving down from Boston into Manhattan to see The Charms play at the Irving Plaza, and Saturday night I made it to the Lower East Side to see Freezepop at Rothko .
Irving Plaza is another Clear Channel venue. The Charms are a Boston-based band who I've seen at some other small venues near me, and seeing as how the band was going to be in New York at the same time I was, I figured it would be worth going, since I hadn't see them play since the Fall 2003 International Pop Overthrow came through Cambridge.
The Charms were playing as a part of Little Steven's Underground Garage festival, which was sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts. I wish I were making this up, or that I could come up with some sort of proof available for this online, but in between bands we were treated to special performances from dancers dubbed the "Dunkin' Donettes" which were, as far as I could tell, New York City model/actresses (mactresses?) in search of work and willing to pretend to be putting on a performance that the concert-goers were interested in.
Heavy rain meant I was stuck in traffic from Stamford, Connecticut into New York, but delays in the band-lineup over at the concert meant that I was able to make it in time to see The Charms as well as the band before them, Steel Pier Sinners. As the lead guitarist for the latter broke into an intense guitar solo, I thought to myself, "I like these guys, but then, I'm from New Jersey." Later on, I realized they hail from Asbury Park, NJ.
Rothko, in Manhattan's Lower-East Side played host to Freezepop, a Boston-based synth-pop band with the misfortune to have an awful, awful opening band precede them whose name I have attempted to block out of my mind. Rothko is a tiny venue that turns into a dance club after the shows end assuming, unlike me, you live in New York City and can get home in a reasonable amount of time in the middle of the night. But they win bonus points for having a disco ball and playing 80s music.
Posted by Dean at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)
Visiting the Asia Society
The Asia Society in New York's upper east side has a summer photography exhibit featuring work from new Chinese artists. Saturday, I got a chance to visit and see it for myself. It's worthwhile if you're interested in seeing what kind of avant-garde art is going on in China, right now. There are also some amusing photographic parodies of Chinese revolutionary sculpture. Plus, if your only experience with performance art is reading hilarious takedowns of the art form by David Sedaris, then you'll get a chance to see an example of Chinese performance art that, if not something that turned me into a fan, at least makes me think that the art form isn't totally unfortunate.
The second half of the exhibit is at the International Center of Photography.
The Asia Society also features a permanent collection of traditional art that's worth seeing.
Posted by Dean at 4:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2004
Low Power Radio Finally Gets to Congress
Via the Hit & Run blog, I see that Low-Power FM radio has passed the Senate Commerce Committee which would allow licenses to be granted to low-wattage local FM broadcasters that would focus on community and local issues. Attempts to promote low-wattage FM radio have been percolating on for years. Originally, it was supposed to be passed by the FCC, but Michael Powell, now the director of the FCC, helped scuttle the idea at the direction of both public radio broadcasters worried about interferance and members of the satelite radio industry who seemed worried that if consumers had lots of choices on the FM spectrum, they'd be less interested in turning to satelite services.
Radio is, of course, supposed to serve as a specifically local broadcasting medium. Harper's Magazine wrote of some outposts of independent radio stations focusing on local issues still exist, but Clear Channel Communications has been adept at taking advantage of deregulation in order to turn all radio channels into non-local, national broadcasters and vertically integrate radio with live music venues and billboards in order to control where bands and radio personalities are broadcast, where they perform, and where they advertise. As the local radio broadcaster and the ability to interact with that broadcaster has declined, the New York Post reports that DJs have been feeling the heat from consumers who can play for themselves all of the variety of music they wish on their iPods. In an attempt to defend the profession, one DJ claimed, "radio still remains the most portable, the most local and the most personable." The problem is that radio is no longer the most local and most personable. That era of radio was destroyed by radio consolidation, where the radio program you're listening too was probably pre-recorded a day ago in another state.
Interestingly, The Wiltern, which I went to earlier this week is a Clear Channel venue. Yet the bands playing that evening were popularized by one of the few boutique-radio stations, Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles. Rooney is a band local to Los Angeles, and the ability to promote them locally (rather than try to break into Clear Channel's homogenized national playlists) no doubt served a role in their popularity and ability to fill a venue as large as The Wiltern.
I once joined in my friend's low-power AM radio program on Allston-Brighton Free Radio, 1630 AM, which, I have been told, is missing a few of the necessary FCC licenses but is apparently not enough of a problem to cause the feds to come breaking down their doors, as seen in the early-90s pirate-radio teen film Pump Up the Volume.
Posted by Dean at 12:10 PM
Sometimes bad prose is on purpose
Hard as it may be to believe, not all awful writing is the result of authors whose manuscripts fall through the cracks of publishers with editors that should know better or the product of authors who peddle strange theological tracts masquerading as books to a captive audience. Sometimes, if you want to create some bad writing, you need to try really hard.
The results of 2004's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are finally here. This is the contest to see who can form the worst opening passage for a novel, named for Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton who coined "It was a dark and stormy night."
One of my favorites:
Maynard Fimble was told that "you can't compare apples and oranges," but, he thought, they are both eatable, grow on trees, are about the same size, are good for you, have a peel, come in many varieties, and are approximately round in shape, thus, to his horror and guilt, he realized that he was comparing them and wondered what punishment awaited him and on whose order.
Of course, as the saying goes, to really foul things up requires a computer.
Posted by Dean at 12:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 22, 2004
Making Music Less Enjoyable to Listen To
Via metafilter, we find complaints about the dynamic range of modern compact disc recordings. As time has gone on, the "louder is better" aesthetic has dominated, compressing the range of frequencies being recorded onto a CD into a more and more narrow range.
Interestingly, my post yesterday covered a story about the genesis of the iPod in which Steve Jobs frequently demanded that the volume of the iPod be turned up. When combined with the loss-of-quality inherent to mp3 compression and low-quality headphones (which I have since replaced), it's no wonder that I simply don't enjoy listening to classical music on my iPod, despite my extensive collection of classical music at home.
Classical music has a lot of subtle, quiet passages that are hard to enjoy (or even hear) when dynamic range is sacrificed like like this. Turning up the volume to hear during those quiet moments can then cause the passages to be distorted. It's a loss all around.
Philip Greenspun, a fellow MIT alumnus, has written some related musings on music reproduction, particularly the shortcomings of CDs when it comes to classical music and argues for a preference for LPs. Use of LPs avoids many of the dyanamic-range problems that one confronts with CDs, and shopping for LPs can save money over CDs, since there is such a large surplus of cheap LPs to be found at garage sales, thrift stores, and used record stores. This is particularly true when it comes to "audiophile" CD recordings of classical music, whose good quality is mitigated by the high prices one must pay. On the other hand, good deals on decent-quality classical music CDs can be found from the Naxos music label.
Posted by Dean at 10:08 AM | TrackBack
July 21, 2004
How did consumer gadgetry become sexier than space exploration?
Via slashdot, there's an interesting article in Wired about the genesis of best consumer-electronics gadget ever, the iPod. Apparently this project consumed almost all of the attention of Steve Jobs during its development. This reminds me of how the Macintosh consumed all of Jobs' attention and became the platform that remade Apple. Some say that in 10 years, Apple will be primarily a music company. After all, by looking at Apple's homepage, one would think that their flagship product was the iPod, rather than their computers. This makes me wonder what will become of Apple Corps, the Beatles' shell company which seems to exist for the sole purpose of suing Apple Computer everytime the computer company makes an innovation in music.
In other science news, today is the 35th anniversary of the first moon landing. Shouldn't we have flying cars and outer-space vacations, by now?
Posted by Dean at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 20, 2004
The future of intellectual property protection
Major record labels, CD and DVD manufacturers decided today that they would hitherto release only CD's and DVD's in permanently sealed, unopenable packages to combat piracy.
Joking aside, this is the solution to the weakest link of copy protection in the music industry-- the moment when the music is finally played. Obviously, once a one transmits an analog signal that people can actually hear, then one runs the risk of having the signal recorded (and maybe digitized!) and copied for others.
Posted by Dean at 12:03 AM | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
Running around in LA
Sunday travels in Los Angeles included breakfast at The Coral Tree Café in Brentwood and a late lunch at Le Pain Quotidien by the Pacific Design Center.
What struck me about Los Angeles was that the new modern buildings were actually enjoyable to look at. The city seemed less apt to encourage the sort of eyesores so prevalent in the Boston area.
I got a chance to see Rooney at The Wiltern, along with opening acts Straylight Run and Ozma. This was the last show of the tour and was pretty good, thus establishing my friend's good taste in music, considering I had no familiarity with any of the bands before. I will have to make sure to see Ozma in a smaller venue at some point in the future, seeing as how they came across as outclassed by the size of The Wiltern.
The Wiltern is sponsored by LG Electronics, a company I can only describe as "enigmatic." Showcased in the Wiltern lobby was an attempt at an Internet Refrigerator, an idea which has become so cliché over the past several years since the start of the internet revolution that it cannot possibly have a future.
UPDATED: Pictures after the jump.
Continue reading "Running around in LA"
Posted by Dean at 12:17 PM
July 16, 2004
Café Internet Access
Incidently, let me give a big shout-out to Deep Blue Wireless and the cafés that use them, the Espresso Roma Café of Berkeley and the Dolores Park Café, for providing me with a place to recharge my laptop and get work done while I'm on the road.
Posted by Dean at 6:10 PM
For all your pirate-supply needs
While in Berkeley, last night, I met an employee of 826 Valencia, a project of 1999/2000-era literary it-boy Dave Eggers. Apparently it combines a writing workshop center with eccentric retail. In this case, that eccentric retail sells pirate supplies, along with various indie-publishing projects (Flak Magazine's print edition was nowhere to be seen, however). I did always wonder where pirates got their clothes and peg-legs from. Be sure to check out the fashion eyepatches (in your choice of colors).
Others have decided to export the idea to Park Slope, Brooklyn with 826NYC, featuring a superhero supply store.
Posted by Dean at 4:07 PM
July 15, 2004
Getting Away
I'm leaving for California on Thursday to visit old friends. I haven't been to California since I visited in 1999, soon after leaving my job at Sapient in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, back in my old home state of New Jersey, the state has managed to be rocked by a sex-and-blackmail scandal involving one of the current governor's major campaign contributors. Really, it sounds like an upstart rich guy trying to act like a mobster. However, the incident did remind me about why I like The Sopranos so much. It's just the sort of sleazy corruption we enjoy hearing about.
Also, recent book acquisitions: The graphic novel The Fixer by Joe Sacco and When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. Will make some good in-flight reading while taking a break from editing thesis proposal.
Posted by Dean at 1:12 AM