Walking down Aristotle's yellow brick road

4:44PM

To lend the title from a section Kevin Smith's and Ralph Garmend's Hollywood Babylon: here's some shit that should not be. For those who don't listen to this excellent podcast, Shit THat Should Not Be deals with the weird stuff that appears in movies when they're released. Even though they are seen, and checked, by at least dozens of people before they are. A rather well known example of this is the stormtrooper hitting his head while walking through a door in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Normally it wouldn't have been there, but it got missed and there it is. Now here's my musical take on it.

As part of Red Nose Day boyband One Direction released the singe One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks). What gets me about this is not that they're a boyband, though I can get a pretty hefty alergic reaction to those. It's not that they're a teenage boyband, a thing that occasionally gives me violent urges even though I'm a laid back dude. It's not even the fact they managed to turn two enjoyable, decent new wave songs into one bland and annoying poppy non entity, an act that sometimes makes this happy go lucky guy depressed. It's the lyrics that got me going.

Before we go into why I think they're a monumental fuck up and we should punish whoever thought they were a good idea by having them listen to the entire One Direction catalogue for the rest of his or her adult life: I get what the lyrics are supposed to represent in the context of Red Nose Day. I'm gonna get you either refers to roping into taking part in the fund raising or having them take out their wallet to donate; Teenage Kicks might well be about the antics of fundraising or the fun and spectacle on TV, with its love and goodwill to mankind. Or something along those lines. On the first look, or listen as the case may be, that's the kind of vibe it puts out. Specially with the happy, bouncy music it sounds like there's nothing wrong it. But lets consider what's actually being sung.

Lets start with Teenage Kicks. First released in 1978 it deals with somebody, probably a guy, observing the pretty girls walking by and thinking about having sex with them. Nothing spectacularly bad. Might get a bit pervy if you want to have the first line mean the guy doing this is (well) past his teenage years, but even than it's reasonably ok. We've all been there one way or another.

Speaking of which (see what I did there?) let's look at the lyrics to the Blondie song. Now there's no mention of sex whatsoever. So, for a given value of good, that's good. What does emerge from the lyrics is a stalker determined to get their hands on the object of their affection by staking out their house and following them around town. Yikes. THat's not good at all. For a lot of values of good.

Which brings us to the audiance participation part of this post. You get three guesses. The first two don't count. Here's the question: what do you get when you throw those two lyrics in the juicer and let it do it's magic for a minute or so?

[insert thinking muzak here]

Yes indeed: you get a nice cocktail with a roofie. Or should that be cocktale? Either way: you get a song about a stalker following you around because he wants to hold you tight get his teenage kicks. All night long. With you. And contrary to what one might assume that's not being angsty and talking about your feelings. On the contrary. That's rather a nice image, isn't it? Now imagine five boys not quite 20 singing this to their target audiance of young girls who might not even have hit puberty yet. Just gets better and better doesn't it?

So there you have it: One Direction's One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks) is Shit That Should Not Be. And not even because they're a crappy band who make really annoying music. Well not entirely anyway.

12:34AM

This is fucking hilarious. I would love to see this movie. There's so much awesome b-movie potential.

Side note: I actually got handed a Chick tract after helping a lady out with bike on a train traveling home. In the Netherlands. It even was translated in Dutch. She asked me whether she could give me something after I helped her out. I said sure, why not. I was just trying to be helpful, not looking for some kind of reward, but what the hey? So I was kind of surprised, because it really wasn't a big deal, so why give me money? Wasn't really sure what to expect. But I can assure you I really didn't expect a Chick tract. It still blows my mind. It wasn't the Dark Dungeons comic unfortunately, just some random one. I'm not sure what happened to it. I think I was supposed to send it to gollumgollum, but I can't remember if I ever did. It was really weird to see one in real life.

Anyway: andrewducker linked to the kickstarter, I liked it and remembered I actually have seen one in real life so I thought I'd share.

6:42PM

Because it's Valentine's day: Jason Silva waxing lyrically on Love and the Human Condition.
"Love is the beauty and the promise of immortality and it's also the joined mourning of lovers that know that they might die. So... love is the answer to the problem of human existance, but it doesn't solve the problem of human existance."

LOVE from Jason Silva on Vimeo.

1:17PM

You've probably never heard of 50 Foot Wave. Which is quite a shame in general, but specifically if you, like me, grew up in the late eighties, early nineties and overdosed on anything and everything somewhat musically related to the Pixies. Which, ironically, was about the only band in the College Rock / Alternative Rock scene I wasn't listening to at the time. I got serious about music a bit after they hit the scene and missed (out on) them. But bands like Belly, The Breeders and Throwing Muses got, and still occasionally get, a lot of air time at my place. I had Last Splash on continuous play for days on end.

And even though they're a fine band as well, it's not The Breeders we're concerned with, but the Throwing Muses. That's because 50 Foot Wave is ex Throwing Muses front woman Kristin Hersch's by this time not so new anymore band. Formed a decade ago it features drummer Rob Ahlers and ex Muses Bernard Georges on bass. And they rock hard. In ways both reminiscent of the Throwing Muses and distinctly their own.

Exhibit A: Clara Bow from their 2005 release Golden Ocean. While the breaks give it a slightly more contemporary feel and the song is more up tempo than most of the Muses's were, Clara Bow features the heavy use of distortion and melodic vocals one would expect to find in one. As such it would have been right at home in the 90's. It's right on and straight up. Which is good news for any fan of the genre in general and the Muses in particular.

As and added bonus the clip accompanying the song is rather excellent as well. The concept is pleasently simple: feauture the band, and what I presume is a young son of one of the members, in white clothes on a black background and vice versa. It's a clean look which avoids unnecessary and distracting convaluted imagery and symbolism. This also could have turned it into a rather boring clip. That fortunately didn't happen.

There's a couple of reasons as to why. The aforementioned kid, as well as the band, look like they're enjoying the hell out of themselves and that's always fun to see. More importantly though the clip features kinetic type in the form of the lyrics flashing across the screen. It's well done and gives the feeling the band is actually inhabiting the song. Which is a cool feeling. I love the long drawn out line of i's in bitch in the chorus. And last but not least: the editing is excellent. The visuals fit the flow of the song and hit the accents spot on. With quite a bit of sharp cuts that make this not just a pleasure to listen to but to watch as well.

Some links:
Kristin Hersch's site, also home of 50 Foot Wave: www.kristinhersch.com
For the music they released under creative commons (with tip jar): 50footwave.cashmusic.org

For your viewing pleasure:

10:25PM

Poll #1889037 chose or lose
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Beatles or Stones?

Micheal Jackson, Madonna or Prince?

MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice?

Blur or Oasis?

12:09AM

It's officially 2013 over here! So Happy New Year everybody! Have a Good One^tm

5:27AM

Decided to be stupid and not got to bed on time. Instead I'm going to live blog the WWE's TLC. For those who have no clue what I'm on about: google tlc 2012, WWE and/or professional wrestling. Any which way: here we go. In case you hadn't guessed: spoilers for the results.

The Preshow
It sucked ass. The slammies they handed out were just not interesting. The Divas Battle Royal for the number one contender spot for the diva's title was turning ok until interference from Eve left Naomi of the Funkadactils the winner. That's going to be another predictable match that will go nowhere. And it's going to be on the ppv. Talk about no respect for the paying public.

Rhodes Scholars vs. Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara Table Match
Great match for the number one contender spot for the tag team title. Started very enjoyable with Damien Sandow insulting the crowd in his rather eloquent manner. What followed was lots of high flying, high energy moves from Mysterio and Sin Cara, lots of viciousness from Rhodes Scholars and some fine wrestling in general. The end came a bit sudden, with Rhodes shoving Sin Cara of the top rope onto and through a table, but wasn't an over the top surprise as some "shock" results have been lately. Would have been OK with either team winning, but like seeing Rhodes Scholars get a shot at the title.

R-Truth vs. Antonio Cesaro for the United States title
The current storyline dictated a win for Cesaro and that's what we got. As matches go it was OK, but rather predictable. Cesaro dominated at the start of the match with some submission ground work, R-Truth comes back, get a couple of kick outs on two and ends up losing the match anyway. Not badly done, but if this isn't anything other then reasonable filler, TLC 2012 is going to be a bust.

Miz TV
3MB insulting the Spanish announce team, getting attacked by Alberto Del Rio and the Miz?! WTF?! They expect people to pay money for this kind of filler nonsense? Oh of course, they needed another match. Ah well, lets have another match.

Wade Barrett vs. Kofi Kingston for the intercontinental championship
Barrett's power vs. Kingston's agility and speed. Nice back and forth. Specially liked the way Kofi actually was tossed back / rolled back into the ring. Some high flying kicks as well. I like him. Like Barrett as well, some nice power moves. The match had a couple of kick outs on two and roll throughs. Unfortunately the end was a bit sudden, one of those out of nowhere results, which was kind of a disappointing end to a reasonably entertaining match.

CM Punk and Paul Heyman in a sky box
The usual bad mouthing of opponents and the public. But they do it well. Never gets old.

The Shield vs. Hell No and Ryback in a TLC match to be decided by pinfall or submission
Jesus Motherfuck. That was one of the most physical matches I've ever seen. Powerbomb through a table, double suplex from a table perched on the top ropes, someone thrown from the top of a ladder through a table, Ryback went through the announcement table (again), it was carnage. It was awesome. The shield have been a good thing story wise and have shown tonight to be a fine addition to the wrestling side of things as well. The fact the Shield won was just a side note on an excellent match.

Naomi vs Eve for the Divas Championship
As predicted: low on wrestling content and low on entertainment content. The only good thing about it was the fact it was over in no time. Unfortunately this is the state of women wrestling today. It's going nowhere. Which sucks. But that's an article in its own right.

The Big Show vs. Sheamus in a chairs match for the world heavy weight championship
Reasonably slow paced match with The Big Show mostly stalking Sheamus, clobbering him with a steel chair. This followed by the usual exchange of big moves: a white noise by Sheamus putting The Big Show through two chairs, a knock out punch by the Big Show, followed up by a giant steel chair across the back of Sheamus. Which was enough to give The Big Show the three count. Stupid gimmicky end to an otherwise good match.

3MB vs The Miz, Alberto Del Rio and the Brooklyn Brawler
Well this explains this rather random match: it's a vehicle to give local old timer the Brooklyn Brawler one more chance to shine. Standard match which didn't last too long. Which was long enough.

Dolf Ziggler vs. John Cena in the Money in the Bank Briefcase ladder match
The crowd has been really vocal all night, but has gone absolutely crazy now during what turns out to be another incredibly physical match. Cena sustains a cut above the eye. Ziggler gets hit with the top of the steel steps. He runs into it head first at full speed. Cena climbs the ladder with Ziggler on his back, falls backwards through a table. It's incredible the amount of damage these guys soak up. Anybody thinking professional wrestling is fake just needs to take a look at this match. Bloody hell.
The match ends with Vickie Guerrero coming out with a chair to make sure John Cena is not getting up while Dolf Ziggler is out on the outside of the ring. She's followed by AJ Lee, who pummels her and sends her packing with Cena's signature five knuckle shuffle. This gives Cena the chance to climb the ladder and take the briefcase. As he reaches the top, AJ, who's been skipping around in the ring, pushes over the ladder, causing Cena to land in the ropes, Ziggler kicks out his lights and gets to keep his money in the bank contract.
I'm a bit conflicted it all. Story wise it makes perfect sense. Cena has been giving AJ the cold shoulder the last couple of shows, AJ was acting obsessive and has been known to go a bit loopy when things don't go here way. From a wrestling point of view I'd rather have seen a wrestling end to the match. It was a great match with to wrestlers performing extremely well and that deserved more recognition than it got. But at least it made sense.

The PPV in general
It's been a while since I've enjoyed a wrestling show as much as tonight's TLC. It's been pretty lackluster the last month or so, but not tonight. Apart from the Divas match it was all at least enjoyable if not spectacular. Only a minimum of bad filler and two epic matches. That's a good show. The appearance of the Shield has decidedly given more edge to the writing and tonight they showed they can deliver the goods wrestling wise. If handled wisely this bodes well for the future. Are we going to see a Paul Heyman stable? I think that would be awesome. Anyway it's now 5.19. I'm going to catch a couple of hours sleep before heading off to my parents. Good night.

7:03PM

Your music for today is a little gem by mid nineties alternative rockers Splendora. From their first and only album In the Grass: You're Standing On My Neck. The song was used as the theme for MTV's animated show Daria and as such their best known song. Pretty typical of the genre the song rocks out with quite a bit of distortion and nice vocal harmonies The rest of the album follows suit, sometimes veering to the left into a more rockish feel, sometimes a bit more to the right into punk/grunge territory. Anybody who feels at home with bands like the Throwing Muses, Veruca Salt and Belly should feel right at home with Splendora.

11:20PM - That's great

Logo I designed while bored at work. I rather like it.

12:39AM

I joined the dark side and created a facebook account. If you haven't been friended already and feel left out let me know and I'll add you. Or feel free to send me a friend request instead.

12:23AM

12:18PM

The universal law of learning things: When you have learned how to do something said something immediately becomes obvious
Collorary 1: Something is only obvious when you have learned how to do said something
Collorary 2: When something is obvious you don't understand why you didn't get it earlier
Collarary 3: When something is obvious you don't get why other people don't get it

7:54PM

Bookmarking, feel free to enjoy.


Paul Baribeau - Strawberry




Kimya Dawson - Loose Lips

9:55PM - Present for my niece

When asked what she wanted for her birthday my soon to be four niece answered: I want you to color me something. When prompted as to what it should be she replied: a princess, with lots of pink. And this is the result. I'm particularly proud of the light brown highlights. The design of the dress is partly based on Lady Gaga infamous meat dress. Any people wondering why I'm posting this can blame fub as he prompted me to do so.

12:52AM

You folks must be well aware of my love for Later with Jools Holland. Maybe not as well known, but equally big is my love for woman who can rock. Be it Beth Orton, the Deal sisters or, as the case may be, Beth Hart. Equal parts grit and soul: if you can listen to this woman's voice and not have shivers running down your spine there's something wrong with you.

4:57AM

The excellent Saint Vincent and the Grenadines performing Heaven Echo. Video shot at West'ival by Marco Miceli and featuring a cameo by yours truly at 2 minute mark,

2:46AM

I woke up yesterday morning with the following thought: what if somebody would audition for the X-factor, The Voice what have you with Pet Shop Boys' Opportunities. This has amused me ever since.

2:51AM

I don't miss watching TV on general because most of it is crap. But there are a couple of shows that are excellent. Later with Jools Holland being one of them. Which I got reminded of when the new season kicked off this week and a clip of the excellent The XX got posted. It sucks but at least we've got the videos.

5:25PM

I saw the Matthew Taylor's RSA video on three fundamental sources of social power right after volunteering at Westival. And it clicked. Not just because I think he makes sense in general, but because I also saw the principles he describes - hierarchical power, solidarity and individualism - at work at the festival. Both within the festival as with regards to the festival as an entity in and of itself. Teams with different task lead by a team captain, the willingness to help each other out and the possibility to contribute ideas and work in your own way as examples of the former, the relationship with the local council with regards to permits, the goal of the festival to promote neighborhood coherency, people sponserign the festival and last but not least one person wanting to do something nice for the neighborhood en organizing the festival as examples of the latter.

The fact that these three sources of social power came together in a way that provided a stable platform to make the festival a success for both the volunteers and the visitors, is the thing that made the whole experience so wonderful for. As I wrote in my write up of the festival:

The high point for me personally was watching Intouchables with 500 plus people on a Saturday night. There's something magical about so many people all enjoying the same thing at the same time. People brought their own chairs, watched from their balcony... Call me sentimental, but when you hear that many people laugh at the same time when the stars are out, I get a lump in my throat. What can I say: it feels damn good.

And now I know why. It's the sweet taste of social empowerment. And it does indeed feel damn good. Spread the word folks. It could happen to you. And it could well happen so save the world.



For more of his thoughts on this subject: Matthew Taylor's blog
For more interesting thoughts on a wide variety of different subjects: The Royal Society of the Arts' youtube channel

6:42PM - Come for the women, stay for the festival

So I get this call from my brother, or I might have called him, and somewhere along the line he asks me whether I feel like volunteering at Westival, the free open air film festival his wife's in charge of coordinating the volunteers of. As usual with these kinds of things I'm not exactly enthusiastic about doing so. There's a bit of the usual banter about how I should - involving the fact that there's a lot of female volunteers and my brother and his wife feel I need to lose my single status - and I say I'll think about it. So my sister in law sends me the sign up form. And I kind of forget about it. That is until she sends out a general reminder to volunteers about signing up with the proper information and dates of availability.

At this point I'm like what the hell, it's not like I'm doing anything else, let's go for it. I'll be off from work for three weeks, haven't planned anything and will most likely end up spending that time on the couch watching DVDs or surfing the net. Probably getting bored out of my skull by the time weeks two ends. Besides, one of the plans was to get to know Amsterdam a bit better and this seems like an excellent opportunity to do so.


A Man's gotta do...

So I sign up for the Construction/Deconstruction crew and the Know It All Crew for the four days of the festival. Which meant I'd be starting the day at 15:00 with helping out setting up the festival. This included, but was not limited to, setting up 137 beach chairs, laying out electricity cables, carpets and beans bags and assembling the screen and getting it up into air. Having done that I'd man the information point / crew headquarters, giving program information to passers by and coffee and cake, or beer and chips as the case may be, to my fellow volunteers taking a breather. To finish the day off all the things we set up had to be put back into the containers, closing up shop around midnight.

Complement this with a day helping to take delivery of the containers and filling them with all kinds of lend/sponsored decorations and a day to get all of it of the square and back to the people it belongs you end up with a six days of work. Some of it easy, setting up beach chairs is a rather pleasant way of spending a working day, some rather physical. The rubber mats for covering the cables were supposed to be light weight. They weren't. Cue the curses. But at least it's a way to work out without having to go to the gym. Which I don't do anyway, so I'm finally getting some exercise. I'm still kind of recovering from it several days after the festival has ended, but - as the saying goes - no pain, no gain.


Music and Movies

The gain: having a great week with fun people doing something the public enjoyed. There were at least 200 people enjoying the movies (one ore two shorts with a feature length movie to finish the evening) every evening. Even Friday night when the weather wasn't all that great. As in it actually rained five drops and we weren't sure if it'd blow over or start pouring. , Handing out raining ponchos took care of protecting the people and fortunately it didn't get any worse.

With the weather having been excellent the week before and the forecasts for the festival not too good, cue those curses again, the weather ended up cooperating nicely. Apart from the aforementioned five drops it didn't rain and Saturday and Sunday were actually quite sunny.

The three bands on the program played for quite a bit fewer people. It would be nice to extend the program a bit with more bands to make it more of a item, or find a better way to showcase them, but they sounded great and definitely added good times to the festival. In case you weren't there, which is pretty likely, check out Sounds Like Katia's dreamy indie pop, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines' post rock and the funky grooves of Steye at their respective internet presences.

Though I didn't really watch much of the movies, with the exception of Intouchables, all of them are/seemed enjoyable. Intouchables is an excellent movie about living life to the fullest no matter what. Rabat's a fun road movie. Personally I wouldn't have gone out of my way to see it, but well entertaining and certainly no waste of time. The Artist deserved the Oscars it got, and I like the ideas behind it, but is just not my cup of tea. Happy-Go-Lucky, to me, is best watched on a small screen in the comfort of your living room with a cup of tea and some good friends. Where several of my co-volunteers where incredibly annoyed by the main character, and I can see why, and found the movie unwatchable, I enjoyed it. As I generally do with slice of life, intimate movies with a just touch of magical realism. Not for everybody, but if you go for this kind of movie, think Smoke, well worth watching.


It's like watching the tides

In the end, there's a couple of things that stood out to me during the week. Foremost: there's nothing better than working with a group of like minded people towards something and making it work. You get to the square, there's nothing but a square, you start setting up, people arrive and enjoy a movie, and you put everything away to do it again the next day. Forty volunteers doing what needs to be done. In a sense it's like watching the tides roll in and out. Not just because it was setting up and taking down things, but because of the fact that if you weren't there, you'd not know we were there the next day. We left nothing but footprints and (hopefully) happy memories.

And it wasn't just the volunteers. Shopkeepers lent us decorations, sponsored food and drink and generally supported the festival. Which was a nice change from some of the low level bureaucrats that the people who organized the festival had to deal with. I really respect Ute, she who thought of and organized it all, for dealing with the hurdles that were put in front of her. Or more accurately, the same hurdle that was put in front of her repeatedly. I don't think I'd be able to deal with that and not go bat shit crazy. A badly run bureaucracy sucks when you want to play by the rules. In the end it didn't matter. The bureaucratic dragon was slayed, the festival came and conquered and a good time was had.

The high point for me personally was watching Intouchables with 500 plus people on a Saturday night. There's something magical about so many people all enjoying the same thing at the same time. People brought their own chairs, watched from their balcony... Call me sentimental, but when you hear that many people laugh at the same time when the stars are out, I get a lump in my throat. What can I say: it feels damn good.

And as far as my relationship status goes: I'm still single. Nothing new there. But even though I'm not particularly unhappy about it, it does have at least one upside. It'll give me a good excuse to volunteer again next time around. Not that I really need one. Even though I'm usually not that enthusiastic about getting off my couch, I'm almost always happy that I do. This time even more so. I got to know Amsterdam a bit better, met all kinds of interesting and fun people and was part of something the audience enjoyed. I don't think it gets much more fun that that. Which means only one question remains: where do I sign up for next year?