About 3:00pm yesterday, as a typical Virginia summer storm was kicking up, the power went out in our building, which, as this sort of thing is wont to do, set off the fire alarm, right as the emergency backup diesel generator kicked on right under the window of the desk I’m borrowing and began belching clouds of black smoke. This prompted some of the less level-headed folks in the office to start wailing “FIRE!” before being quickly calmed down.

In any case, the fire marshall folks herded the entire building into an interior downstairs hallway (it was raining hard outside, and there were tornado warnings), dark except for the lights of people’s smartphone screens and the regular flashing of the alarm lights, where we were subjected to cruel and unusual experiments involving loud noises and cramped spaces for an hour or so before the fire department finally showed up to pronounce things safe and turn the alarm off.

That pretty much blew the rest of the day. I left soon after, only to find that many of the traffic lights in the area were disabled thanks to the power issues, and traffic was terrible.

Of note is the fact that earlier in the week, I was unceremoniously shunted over to the other office for a while in order to bail out assist with testing efforts on the project I left eight months ago (I suppose it’s nice to be asked for by name, but…). As such, I had a nice long drive ahead of me involving the beltway and signal outages, so I decided to amuse myself locally for a few hours before attempting to navigate the mess.

I found, luckily, a 3D screening of Transformers: The Dark of the Moon, which was just enough to kill two and a half hours, and with matinee prices, was actually somewhat affordable for this market.

Now that the Harry Knowles context pargraphs are out of the way, I guess I can talk about the experience, as this was actually my first experience with “modern” 3D theatrical presentation, save a few amusement park 4D rides over the years. I was pleasantly surprised to find I thought it was pretty cool, and not particularly headache inducing, as is sometimes reported. The simulated depth was sort of distracting at the beginning, but as the film went on, my brain kind of went with it, and I enjoyed the experience. Part of this is probably the fact that the film was conceived and shot for 3D, rather than having been converted in post-production. The 3D trailer for Captain America, a film converted in post, shown before the main feature, was not as seamless; it looked neat, but gimmicky (not unlike those old ViewMaster slide wheels). I’ll be seeing that film, but will almost certainly opt for a 2D screening.

I think the decision to shoot Transformers 3 in 3D also made the film better. To make effective use of the technology, you need longer shots (as they say it takes the human eye and brain a few seconds to process the depth of field). As a result, it made Director Michael “quick cut” Bay slow down a bit. This lets the viewer’s eyes fully absorb the majesty of three dimensions, and in a pleasant side effect, lets the audience actually see what’s going on in a given scene.

In the end, this is a Transformers movie, so the plot’s not going to be particularly deep. That said, personally, I’ll give the film better marks than most reviewers, who largely said, “eh, at least it wasn’t a jumbled mess like number 2.” Of the three, I’d say I liked this one the best, if only because it seems to take a little time to let at least some of the robots besides Optimus Prime be characters. Not complex characters, by any stretch, but actual characters rather than simply special effects. For example, Megatron and Starscream actually get a few moments that feel like the classic dynamic from the cartoons and comics (best example was the Lincoln Memorial, short as it was), which I appreciated.

So, to summarize: modern 3D, when done well, can be pretty cool. However, don’t bother unless the film was actually shot in 3D, conversions are just kind of distracting. TF3 was actually quite good, and I think a lot of why had to do with the fact that the 3D forced the director to focus on things like scenes and characters long enough for them to sink in a bit and create a connection with the audience.

Finally: What does “recycled” mean in terms of the glasses? Do they melt them down, send them back to the distributor, or do they have a heat-activated wrapping machine in the back that they just re-seal the old glasses and put them back into circulation? For no particular reason, I held onto mine – I’m sure someone’s hacked an alternate use for ’em out there somewhere. Anybody know of one?

After doing fifteen miles on the W&OD trail after working way too long today, I’ve been spending my evening mostly just sitting there, letting time pass around me. I tried to plunk on the ukulele a bit, but the music just wouldn’t come. Maybe tomorrow…I’ve got it in my head that somebody ought to write a song titled something like “The Ballad of Gwen Cooper” with several sly asides about how sexy the Welsh accent is, and I would kind of like to try to be that someone, but I won’t be doing that tonight.

What I did find myself doing was reading back over the recent cut out racks posts I’ve been doing here for the last couple of weeks. Generally, I liked the ideas I tried to convey, but in the future, I should probably try to stop repeating myself. Not to get too meta or anything (not that it’s ever stopped me before), but what follows could easily be converted to the official drinking game of that particular feature:

• Really.
• Tuesday Night Music Club is the center of the universe
• “I don’t remember buying this”
• “…and that’s a good thing”
• Nostalgic yet qualified reminiscence about the rock scene in Central PA in the 1990s
• Vivian Campbell
• Really.
• shameful admissions about how I thought certain songs would impress the ladies
• what the early 90s sounded like
• It’s surprising it took this long to get to…
• Really.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post that will probably only be funny to me.

Once more into the well with this business; being off doing my own thing for the last week or so (“my own thing” largely being ferrying children to one place or the other, then retrieving them), I didn’t get much “new” listening done, but I did have a coupl e of stuff left over from before the hiatus that wasn’t yet posted. The prose may perhaps be a little terse in this one, but given my penchant for rambling on at length, that’s probably a good thing.

♦Dar Williams – The End of The Summer: Ms. Williams was one of the first artists I was introduced to via the excellent programming on radio station World Cafe, a now nationally syndicated program showcasing all kinds of interesting music and live performance. When I first got introduced to this hidden gem of Harrisburg Radio (which used to be on 88.1, but is now on 99.7 and/or 88.7), they were playing the heck out of Williams’ “The Christians and the Pagans” from Mortal City, which hooked me, thanks to her quirky voice and clever story-song style (It’s also become my second favorite “Christmas” song, after Joni Mitchell’s “River). This is the record that came after that one, and expands Williams’ progressive folkie style in a somewhat poppier, more energetic direction, but it’s still identifiably a folk record, and definitely Dar Williams. Her voice is unmistakable, going from smoky and mournful on tracks like “If I Wrote You” to, quirky (there’s that word again, but I use it because it fits) and engaging on uptempo songs like “Teenagers Kick Our Butts” and “Party Generation.” The highlights of the record, though, are probably “Are You Out There” and “What Do You Hear in These Sounds,” thanks to their interesting sonic landscape and catchy melodies.

♦Suzanna Hoffs: This record, the second solo effort from the Bangles guitarist/vocalist (who wasn’t the frontperson for that band – it was a team effort. Sure, she made those googly eyes in the “Walk Like an Egyptian” video, but why does no one remember that everybody took a verse in that song? Is there no love for the Petersens or Michelle Steele?), is just further proof that Tuesday Night Music Club was probably the most influential album of the 1990s, or at least the subset of the 90s made up by my CD collection. There’s a lot here that’s all Hoffs (most definitely the single “All I Want” which, oddly, she didn’t write!), and shows a lot of her progression from the Bangles sound to the stuff she’s doing with Matthew Sweet today (Two non-listed ’60s cover tunes!), though all one has to do is listen to “King of Tragedy” or “Beekeepers Blues” and the similarities to Crow’s seminal record (which came out three years before this one, giving its influence time to propogate) become apparent. Also of note is the track “Falling,” co-written by Hoffs and Go-Go Charlotte Caffey, which is the only Bangles/Go-Gos collaboration I can think of, though as prolific as Jane Weidlin is, I imagine it’s not the only one out there.

♦Mitch Hedberg – Strategic Grill Locations: I got pretty deep into the box before turning up a stand-up comedy record, didn’t I? It’s really a shame Mitch Hedberg couldn’t overcome the demons he was amiably palling around with (I can’t imagine Mitch Wrestling) before they killed him way too young, because he was really funny (insert the appropriate Bill Hicks joke, or the version of it Dennis Leary shamelessly ripped off here). If you were looking for a short description of his style, “Stoner Steven Wright” would probably suffice, given all the one liners, but there’s a bit more to it than that; it always seemed to me that Hedberg’s non-sequitir jokes were better conceived; both more clever, and way more out of left field, but always relatable. He also manages to connect with the audience more effectively than Wright; Hedberg’s personal charisma, even under all that hair and those sunglasses, really hooked people, and made you want to root for him. This was his first record, and it’s a little more raw and less polished than Mitch Altogether (though the joke from which that record gets its name is actually on this one), but it’s genuinely entertaining, and includes the classic “Smacky the Frog” and “Bananas are the opposite of traffic lights” bits, which never fail to make me laugh.

♦KISS – MTV Unplugged: MTV Unplugged was always one of the more interesting things MTV did, back when it played music – sure, it wasn’t a video show, but it was live performance, and often managed to put well-known artists and songs in a different context, which sometimes worked really well, and sometimes didn’t – finding out which was the case for any given situation was part of the fun of watching. The KISS performance, like many of them, was a little bit of both. In the cases where it doesn’t work, it’s largely because the KISS catalog includes a lot of stuff that’s not particularly deep or melodic, and doesn’t hold up without the distortion and theatricality. “Plaster Caster” just isn’t that well constructed a song, and that’s especially apparent when the song’s stripped down to a couple of acoustic guitars and Gene’s not spitting blood. There is some good stuff here, particularly “A World Without Heroes” off of Music from “the Elder”, the poorly received concept record from 81. Also of note from this performance was the re-entry of Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, albiet temporarily, back into the KISS fold. Both original members sat in toward the end of the set and did their signature tunes (both of which, Ace’s “2000 Man” and Criss’s “Beth,” in an effective, piano-less arrangement, are album standouts), before closing out the show with “Rock and Roll All Nite” with everybody, including replacements-of-replacements Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer, crowding the stage. This record, then, set the stage for the infamous return of the makeup for the 1996 reunion, which played to nostalgia and continued the never-ending cycle of Paul and Gene firing and re-hiring and firing everybody who isn’t them over and over again.

In theory, I should be back to my usual schedule of rants, record reviews, and obsessive theories about automotive pontiffs directly.

Where was I? Nowhere; I just took some time off to address some meatspace things, mostly, though mostly to take a few days’ exile from the office grind. I was on the computer a little bit, but I wasn’t necessarily putting stuff up here. I needed a little break.

What did I do? Mostly ferry kids back and forth to camps and classes, and tried to rest a bit. We all need some down time. Saw some fireworks. Socialized with a few friends. Watched some movies. Took a bike ride or three. Read a couple of books. You know, the things people do when they’re trying to decompress.

No, I haven’t died or quit or anything, I’m just off doing other things that don’t involve pouring random thoughts into the computer. The usual course of programming shall return eventually, have no fear.

So, I haven’t seen Cars 2 yet, and I’m not sure I will any time soon, for it will force me to consider the implications of the presence of the Automotive Pope, riding along in his own sentient Popemobile, on the already quavering foundations of the Cars universe. The mere presence of a white Alfa wearing a Mitre while riding in the back of a plexiglass box on the back of an equally white truck, while almost certainly intended as a cute throwaway gag in a kids movie, invites all kinds of questions in all sorts of aspects of the world-building involved in creating a world, almost entirely like our own, except for the fact that there aren’t people, only sentient vehicles.

It’s not just the folks at io9 above that are thinking about this. The other day, John Scalzi, in his column over at AMC film critic posited a couple of theories as to how a world so much like our own, ruled by beings so clearly designed to accommodate human beings’ needs, but being apparently totally without humans, could come to pass. He offers up a couple of scenarios; all of which are interesting; I tend to prefer the idea that cars and such merely rose to sentience after humanity somehow disappeared; it allows for all the similarities to human culture and technology. It makes at least some sort of sense.

Also, this scenario does allow for the existence of vehicular religion (Roman Cartholocism, I guess, given the presence of the Car Pope), though the idea of vehicular Christianity tends to suggest the concept of a vehicular Jesus (Christler?), and how that all might work, which kind of causes the brain to hurt, and continued thought in that direction will probably draw threats of heresy.

Let’s not think of all the trappings of a motor vehicle priesthood. What are the implications of the idea of a priestly vow of celibacy in the Cars universe? This suggests that lay vehicles would not, by default be celibate….then the whole Rule 34ness of things starts to squick me out.

You see where I’m going? There are some places the mind should simply not go.

Oh well, read the io9 piece linked above, which has a great theory that kind of makes things less weird by framing Cars as an epilogue to the most recent Battlestar Galactica series.

In my relatively short life, I have come to discover that a great many difficulties can be remedied by the simple act of cutting through all the bullshit and attacking a problem head-on. Rather than spending much frustrated time and effort in trying to untangle all of the crap, rumor and innuendo surrounding an issue in hope that you might clear a circuitious path in a way that won’t upset the status quo, it’s sometimes easier to just slice straight through and expose the disputed point to the disinfecting light of day. This, in the vast majority of cases, lays bare the fact that the actual issue is easily solved; it was all the other stuff surrounding it that made getting to a resolution so difficult.

Not only does this generally solve your problem, it often shocks and horrifies all those people so invested in maintaining all the traditional social impediments to actually getting things done.*

This is a plus: the Status Quo is overrated.

_____________________

* – It’s a shame that in a small number of cases, you run into a situation where, after cutting through the knot, there will be people who just pretend it still exists, even when it’s non-existence is pointed out to them. This is because they’re so invested in the idea of being bound to the prevailing paradigm that they simply cannot handle the fact that it’s been shifted.** If you come to that point, it’s probably best to just walk away.

** – I can’t help but illustrate this idea with the image of a dog chained to a pole for a very long time. Even after the chain has rusted away, the dog remains within the worn circle in the grass that describes the limits the chain imposed on it. It’s world is so very small, and it cannot conceive of the concept of freedom after remaining restrained for so long. I can think of few concepts sadder.

Seen here, artfully posed with some of the crap lying around my hotel room:

This, my friends, is a Lanikai LU22CGC Concert Ukulele. As it happened, I had taken a drive over to Guitar Center this evening to amuse myself after work, and after playing a bunch of guitars and basses I had no intention of buying for an hour or so, I bought this, because it was neat and sounded pretty and wasn’t too expensive, and it’s small enough for me to haul around with me and plink on.

I’ve actually been itching to get a uke for a while now, mostly because I’ve been watching with great interest all the neat things Molly Lewis does with them, and from what I hear, it’s easy enough to play if you have a background in strings, as I do.

So, anyway, this is what I’ll be amusing myself with for a while. And, the nebulous “they” are right; it’s not that hard to play; after an hour or two of plinking around and looking up some chord charts, I can make some reasonably pretty sounds and chord progressions, and fumble my way through that twee little Jason Mraz song…you know the one.

So, yeah. << Insert your preferred Tiny Tim joke here >>

This is the tenth entry of this particular feature, which is longer than any sort of project I’ve tried to maintain save the random ten (which doesn’t really require all that much effort). With this piece, I’ve talked about 40 records, which barely cracks the contents of the box. If I want to keep going, I’ve got plenty of material to work with. It’s been kind of serendipitous how these records come up in contextual order, since I’m largely drawing handfuls out at random; I could probably write a few thousand words on the subject of indulgent solo project records, for example, and I’m pretty sure someone already has. If the av club hasn’t included it in their long-running Inventory series, they really ought to get around to it.

Without further adieu, here’s my latest stab at playing music critic/pop culture anthropologist:

♦“Weird” Al Yankovic – Off The Deep End: After listening to Alpocalypse over and over for the last week (quick review? generally awesome, but with a few caveats that I’ll attend to below), pulling this record out of the vaults was an interesting comparison. For the last three decades or so, Al’s records have always been a great marker of what’s big at the time of record release. Al’s transcended pop culture because he’s always been so great about identifying and making good-hearted fun of it; the guy’s got a tremendous sense for the zeitgeist (the regular Polka Medleys are consistently a crash-course in popular music of the era). It’s that, and along with one of the tightest, most versatile backing bands in music history, that have kept Al viable longer than pretty much every target he’s ever skewered. That said, Off The Deep End, circa 1992, shows a couple cracks beginning to show in the formula; not that these are Al’s fault. Starting about this time, pop music stopped giving Al as much to work with in terms of parody material. It always bugged me that Smells Like Nirvana was a comment on the subject as much as it was anything else (which is the same trap Perform This Way falls into), even if the craft was pretty great. The other parodies (New Kids on the Block, Gerardo, Milli Vanilli, and MC Hammer) are fine, but aren’t as good as the original Yankovic compositions. This has always been the case, but it started getting more apparent with this record because the pop music of the day just wasn’t as well crafted. I’m not going to complain, as long as we get more tunes like “Trigger Happy” and “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” Which we do, since the best original tunes, like “Albequerque,” “Wanna B Ur Lovr,” and “Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me” came after this one.

♦Richie Sambora – Stranger In This Town: In the five-year void between New Jersey and Keep The Faith, there were a few blip of Bon Jovi activity to keep the devoted fans interested. The big hit was the Jon Bon Jovi solo record/”Young Guns II” soundtrack, which was pretty good, and keyboardist David Bryan put out a record I never managed to find, but this was the record I was looking forward to, the opportunity for Sambora to step into the spotlight and lead a band after wailing “Wanted!” every night and doing that harmonic blues box thing. As I said previously, I was really into what Sambora was selling, probably more for the cool sideman stage presence and songwriting than the guitar playing, although his style is distinctive, if not flashy, and works in the band setting; “workmanlike” is probably a good description. I once heard somebody describe him as “Neal Schon lite,” which, after listening to the record this week, is about right, since so much of this record has a real Journey vibe to it (it doesn’t hurt that Sambora’s singing voice sounds like a slightly more masculine Steve Perry). Like all “solo” projects, it’s awfully self-indulgent, especially in the early tracks – lots of lyrics about “gypsy”, “blues”, and “voodoo” with all the resonance of someone who’s only heard these things mentioned in songs by more iconic guitarists, and a lot more guitar noodling than on your average Bon Jovi record. Still, after he gets it out of his system, he breaks out tracks like “Rosie” which, while mining the tired “stripper with a heart of gold really loves me!” lyrical trope, is musically about as rocking and definitively Sambora as you can get, including all of the signature guitar licks (it’s not a coincidence that this one was co-written with JBJ, Desmond Child, and Diane Warren), and “River of Love,” which is an appropriately sleazy blues rock tune featuring barely veiled cunnilingus euphemisms and some clever guitar riffs. It was a great record for fans, reasonably accessable for newcomers, and a hell of alot better and less indulgent than “Undiscovered Soul” was (though I reserve the right to change that opinion if and when I pull it out of the box).

♦Nuno Bettencourt – Schizophonic: This one has a lot in common with the previous review, being a solo project from the guitar player of a successful rock band known for its vocal harmony that I was quite a big fan of. Nuno recorded this one during Extreme’s “Punchline” tour before the group disbanded. In a lot of ways, it’s way more ego-stroking than Sambora’s record, what with Nuno playing every instrument, the overblown soundscape, the “edgy” lyrics, and the artful, copyright-skirting mispelling of “Dizkneelande” on track six. That said, there’s surprisingly little guitar noodling from a guy who’s kind of known for it; it’s kind of a treat when the wheedling kicks in now and then. Although it’s got a lot of the same sort of funk influence Extreme was known for, it tries hard to catch the Alternative Rock wave, succeeding a bit, in the sense that much of it sounds a hell of a lot like modern Foo Fighters and Weezer (which, as I’m fond of saying, isn’t really a bad thing). The vocals are often intentionally buried in the mix and heavily processed, adding to the alternative feel, although there’s some (as you might expect) decent acoustic based Beatles-esque stuff there as well. I liked the whole project, though “Fine By Me” (a nice piece of power pop songwriting) and “Note on The Screen Door” stood out as the best of the bunch for me.

♦Joe Walsh –The Best of Joe Walsh: I’m most familiar with Joe Walsh, known to many as the outsized comic relief of 70s rock and roll, in the context of the later Eagles records, where he contributed some excellent slide guitar, and totally owned the show I saw on the “Hell Freezes Over” reunion tour, despite the huge duelling egos of Don Henley and Glenn Frey. However, I always enjoyed the “hits” out of context on the classic rock radio I heard constantly on my college summer jobs, so I eventually ended up with this record and But Seriously Folks to get the triumvirate of “Rocky Mountain Way,” “Funk #49” and “Life’s Been Good” into my collection,. It’s all good stuff, even if it never resonated with me the way some other stuff did, and thanks to this record, I discovered “Help Me Thru The Night,” which I would otherwise have never heard, because it’s only the three previous songs from the Walsh catalog that ever get played on the radio, and adds a bit of depth to the popular clownish image Mr. Walsh normally presents.