8.15.07 debrief

thanks to ineveragreedtothat for the photo

It was a fun show at the Lucky Cat, though it felt a touch odd the whole way through. Huge difference in the sound of that club versus The Underscore. Fortunately, I could hear my vocals and Jeff's vocals fairly decently through a monitor, but I could barely hear my guitar at all. I'd kept it turned down slightly in the hope that the whole band wouldn't overwhelm the small brick room with unintelligible cacaphony, but I suppose I went too far. Rene couldn't hear the guitar at all, which actually helped him during our new song, Cleoporchcat, because he was able to concentrate entirely on Andy's bass.

On top of that, my guitar started cutting out during Liftoff and continued to give me problems through the end of the show. At the moment I'm blaming the cable... I hope it's not the amp again.

Overall I think we played decently. Not as well as at The Underscore, though. I'm not terribly happy with a couple of my solos and clammed chords, and I managed to sing the second verse of Boy twice somehow. Also missed the cue to go into my solo in Asteroids. But none of our individual problems threw us off in any significant way, which is a huge positive. The worst thing that can happen is that you get completely bent out of shape by some mistake and it becomes a downward spiral of bad.

About five people showed up of all those we invited, but there was a decent crowd of people affiliated with the bands after us who seemed to enjoy themselves.

I managed to completely forget to bring any guitar picks. Professional, yeah? Fortunately for me my very talented friend Laura from Bella Noir came to see us and happened to be carrying the exact pick that I use. Saved!

The show is available for download from seizethem.com, as usual.

fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame

Basically everyone I ever knew is more famous than I am.
This has been a strange week for sudden blasts from my past.

First, my parents sent me a clipping from our hometown newspaper regarding Jenny Powers, star of stage and screen and former Miss Illinois. In addition to being caught up on her latest exploits, namely landing the role of Rizzo in the revival of Grease and having been in Chris Rock's movie I Think I Love My Wife, I discovered via the IMDb that she also had a bit part in the pseudo-exploitation B picture Sexina: Popstar P.I.... which starred my roommate Don Red's ex-girlfriend's older sister in the titular role.

Second, my old NYU schoolmate Nicholas Jarecki (brother of filmmakers Eugene and Andrew Jarecki) has exploded into prominence. In addition to his book Breaking In and his documentary about director James Toback called The Outsider, he's written the screenplay for and is executive producing the movie The Informers based on the novel of the same title by Bret Easton Ellis. This is just about as appropriate a pairing as can possibly be, by the way.

The third instance of this oddness is also a hometown connection. Another of my roommates, editor Tyler Peck, has been expounding to me about this short film he's been working on called MADE: I Wanna Be A Hipster (doesn't seem to have a website yet) for some time now. Today I received a flyer for it in my email and discovered, to my shock, that the movie had been written by none other than Faran Krentcil, associate of mine from my theater days. Faran, it appears, is the editor-in-chief of fashionista.com, contributor to Fashion Week Daily and is something of a name in the New York City fashion world.

These last two entries can be filed under synchronicity, as well, considering that I found out both of these things after finishing reading Bret Easton Ellis' novel Glamorama. Which, by the way, I cannot recommend.

So, yes, I'm feeling a touch inadequate with all of these acquaintances of mine having such success. And I haven't even mentioned my other Broadway-luminary friend from high school or the friend-since-I-was-nine personal assistant to Tim Robbins.

Yes, goddammit, I will namedrop. I WILL. What else can I console myself with?

By the way: I'm in production on a feature-length documentary, my band is totally awesome (and playing tonight at The Lucky Cat in Williamsburg), I'm creating the most beautiful travel photomemoir you've ever seen, and I edit music videos for reggaeton stars. ALL HAIL ME. I knew there was a reason I moved to this town.

paging Mr. Madison

I've recently taken to spouting at my Internet Friends that I feel the most important topic of debate for the vast armies of Presidential candidates is the aggrandizement of power by the Executive branch. The probability that the current Administration will hand the egregiously unconstitutional weapons it has created for itself down to whoever succeeds it should frighten all of us tremendously.

Fortunately, Bill Moyers recent journal is a discussion with constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein (a former member of the Reagan administration) and The Nation writer John Nichols concerning exactly what impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney would mean and why it is absolutely necessary.

PBS doesn't seem to have the episode available for viewing yet (check back later) but YouTube comes to the rescue. Here's the first part of the hour-long program.

En Que Fallamos

For your viewing pleasure, the tele-novelaesque music video I edited for Ivy Queen's latest single "En Que Fallamos". Reggaeton, but less so than my previous reggaeton video for Don Omar.





35mm film -> DigiBeta -> Quicktime (320x136 H.264 339kbps) -> flash-ized by whatever version of On2's Flash compression software YouTube is usuing

ooooooklahoma, and the wind

Some, most, or all of you may not know this (because I rarely think about it), but I have some roots in the state of Oklahoma. My maternal grandparents were from there, though they moved to California and raised my mother in Napa Valley.

Now I don't know much about Oklahoma. I've never been there, I've never met many of its citizens. But I do know that they've just created one of the most asinine goddamned things I've ever seen with my eyeballs, and it's this license plate:



First of all, the design is flat-out ridiculous with the faux-desert camo (hey! this Global War is going to be fought entirely in the desert, right?) and the incredibly shoddy clip-art eagle and inaccurate Twin Towers. Twin Towers, huh? Shouldn't that possibly be an image of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building? Must they appropriate a horrible event that happened in my city for their jingoistic idiocy? Maybe terrorism by white Christian people doesn't count in the Global War On A Tactic.

Which brings me to my second, more obvious point of ire: advertising the "Global War on Terror" with a license plate. What the hell is trying to be accomplished here? Do the trucks and SUVs of Oklahoma not already sport enough tacky, magnetic, Chinese-made ribbons "supporting" our troops? Are the faded US flag stickers proclaiming that These Colors Don't Run not making their owners feel sufficiently patriotic? Too embarrassed by their old War on Drugs plates?

Dear Oklahoma Tax Commission,
I realize you decided you could stand to make several bucks off of the fraction of your population that must constantly advertise their support of American imperial aggression, but not everything that can be done necessarily should be done. If these plates MUST exist, can we also get a plate featuring portraits of the major players in the Bush administration with the legend CRIMINALS printed below? It seems only fair.

Yours in slack-jawed horror,
QXZ

I Heart Danger

Last night I went down to Bushwick (you could tell because of the guy's t-shirt that read KEEP WILLIAMSBURG OUT OF BUSHWICK... too late, man, too late) for a party at 3rd Ward Brooklyn called I Heart Danger. Good times.

On the ground floor, in the alley, they had a rotation of bands and DJs. The stage was topped with a fire installation which would pulse the height of the flames in time with the bass (when they could keep it lit), and the alley was packed with dancers. Video projection from one level up on the fire escape raked across the alley walls, terminating behind the stage, which created the effect of being in a video tunnel. Back toward the entrance, behind the bar, a guy was carving huge blocks of ice with an electric chainsaw and transforming them into sterno-can-bearing torches. There was a crew of people silkscreening shirts with both "I (heart) Danger" and designs of their own.



Up on the fourth floor, accessible via fire escape, was another bar. Also a geodesic dome housing more DJs. A chillout area near the back had a great view out the industrial loft windows, a teepee, video projection and giant foil-covered stackable stars to play with. The main attraction was the Portrait Party being run by Jeremy Nelson.


I spent a good long while watching him shoot portraits and his assistant project them on the wall. Can you find the one of me?

My guess is I'll be at the next party these folks throw.

7.21.07 aftermath

The show went really well. We arrived at the club around 7 to get set up and do a soundcheck. I had ample time to get the recording gear running and was lucky enough to get a feed out of the mixing board to augment the guitar, vocals and keyboard.

We went on at 8:30 (which, according to the club, is what "8:00" means to Lo-Fi Entertainment), and that was great because a few people didn't arrive until minutes before we started. Turnout was probably between ten and fifteen people... I didn't get an accurate count. The band scheduled to play after us cancelled, so we didn't get the influx of people we were hoping for that would have included the next band and their early-arrival audience members.

The sound system was pretty darned good, and Jeff and I could actually hear ourselves sing! Shocking idea, that. I occasionally couldn't hear my guitar terribly well which caused a couple of my dumb mistakes. But overall we were very happy with the sound. The sound guy took some significant liberties with adding extra reverb and delay to the guitars, vocals and keys whenever he deemed it appropriate. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it took me by surprise and messed me up a bit.

The crowd, small though it was, seemed to really enjoy themselves and we got several specific and, to all accounts, sincere compliments on a few things.

Anyway, tons of fun, and here's hoping we pulled in enough people for Lo Fi Entertainment to want to book us again!

The show is available for download in both .mp3 and FLAC formats from seizethem.com.
The best way to get on our email list, if you want to be, is to register a username at seizethem.com.

PS: stickers coming soon.

TOMORROW

Seize Them! @ The Underscore
7/21/07 8PM EDT
$8 with this flyer, $10 without

Take a break from reading Harry Potter to come rock with Seize Them! in Manhattan. This is our first club show, and we're hoping for a really good turnout so our booking agent will feel moved to grant us more gigs.

Audience taping encouraged.

seizethem.com
myspace

my robot battles, let me show you them

Last night I went out to suburban New Jersey with some friends to see Transformers.

As a child I liked Transformers. I watched the cartoon and I had some of the toys (some of the ones with actual metal in them, dear readers). While I was never a superfan, I have an affection for them to this day. I, like many people, was excited to hear a couple of years ago that a live-action + CGI Transformers movie was in the works, and then immediately worried upon hearing it was to be directed by Michael Bay.

Bay has always been known for his slickly bombastic action style and scant attention to story and character. In other words, he's the modern era's quintessential summer event filmmaker. I've enjoyed some of his movies. The Rock is entertaining and as much as Armageddon is as over-the-top as possible in every single moment it does make me cry at the end. However, his more recent movies have been uniformly terrible. Pearl Harbor is one of the worst movies I've ever sat through in a theater, and as I've written about elsewhere I feel Bad Boys II is an insult to humanity. I've only seen The Island with the sound off on a tiny TV during a party, so I really can't comment.

What concerned me most about Bay directing Transformers, though, was what I saw during the car chases in Bad Boys II (and, to an extent, in every one of his movies, though the problem has gotten worse over time): his beloved style of hyperkinetic, vibrating, extreme closeup action is basically unintelligible. One of the car chases in Bad Boys II was easily the worst car chase I've ever seen, as it was completely impossible to tell who was where and just what the hell was going on. Cinematically, it was a complete mess and would have pulled me out of the movie entirely if the rest of the film hadn't already accomplished that. Suffice it to say that I was worried I would barely be able to enjoy the spectacle of giant robots battling each other because Bay simply, and ironically, has a terrible eye for action sequences.

So off to Jersey I went, with a friend who is a super Transformers fanatic. He is a nigh-professional collector of Tranformers toys, had just come back from a major Transformers convention, and has been diligently following every single tiny scrap of detail about the production of the movie for literally years. And the theater was filled with a bunch of excited Jerseyites, the type of mass audience this movie was made for. The type that spent several minutes before the movie talking smack to each other about their preferred cell phone, and the type that nearly came to blows over seat ownership once the movie had started. In other words, it was a perfect situation.

Transformers is, by and large, a lot of fun and very successful.

Shia LaBeouf is charismatic, relatable and engaging as Sam, whisking us through the early exposition breezily. I felt the story skipped a couple of character moments with Sam later on that I would have liked to have seen, but I guess that's to be expected. Megan Fox, playing Sam's love interest and partner-in-adventure, is... well, she's eye candy, really, but her acting was certainly not insufferable. Take that backhanded compliment as you will, I suppose.

The robots are incredible, which is no surprise. They're given characters largely similar to that of the original cartoon series; that is to say, they're sentient alien technological lifeforms with essentially human personalities. Their human-ness may or may not bother you if you are a sci-fi fan like I am, but, as with many things in this movie, it's essential to remember that Transformers is a "kids' movie" and that the source material (specifically the original cartoon) is certainly no more sensible or "realistic". Peter Cullen returns in fine form as Optimus Prime, and despite a few silly lines he manages to breathe real life into a 3D model.

My fears about incoherent action were mostly unwarranted, which was a welcome relief. The climactic battle in Los Angeles does suffer somewhat from Bay's style, however there are a few nice wide shots featuring several giant robots clearly battling each other in the street which blew my mind and made me want to see a movie that was almost entirely that. All you screenwriters with Mecha scripts in your back pocket, now's the time to put them in front of some Money People.

There are definitely things for purists to get upset about, and undoubtedly they will. This movie is not really for them. But I'm pretty sure that if I were ten years old or so and you plopped me in a theater and showed me Transformers, it might just change my life.

LTB video

Finally! The video I put together for the Laura Thomas Band is up on the Youtubes.


You can see them at the Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan this friday, June 29.

creatures of the deep

Yesterday (Saturday, June 23, 2007), I finally went to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I managed to forget sunscreen on the back of my neck, so that's feeling pretty brutal at the moment.

But I did get a few good pictures.

eat it

Don Red is a culinary genius for inventing the following sandwich (hereby known as the Don Red):

• Tuna
• American Cheese
• bacon

It also appears that I'm going to go see Moby's DJ set at Nublu on June 15th. Shut up, I have a good reason.

aaron, it's just not working out

NBC is in the process of dumping the remaining episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip onto the air and cablewaves, and I couldn't help but look. It's like a car crash.

Studio 60... may have, with its most recent episode, ascended into the grand ranks of Worst Television Shows of All Time.

Let us recall that Studio 60... is ostensibly a show about what it means to make television in this, the first decade of the 21st Century. There's a lot to be said on this topic, and it seemed like excellent fodder for Aaron Sorkin's obsession with telling the stories of elite professionals at the top of their game. Unfortunately what this show became was a staggeringly clumsy monument to Aaron Sorkin's ego.

I have already covered, in previous posts, the descent of the show into inane soap opera built around characters we're given no reason to understand, empathize with or care about. This is largely due to Sorkin's cathartic fictionalization of his stormy relationship with Kristen Chenoweth (in the guise of Matt Albie and Harriet Hayes) while, one assumes, fantasizing about finding true love and fulfillment via the ludicrous schmaltz of the Danny Tripp + Jordan McDeere fiasco. This left turn into outrageous soap opera has been exceeded as a source of terribleness, however, by what I can only call the "oh, the Humanity!" factor.

Studio 60... has, in its desperate flailing, resorted to elevating every single major character on the show to the highest possible level of cosmic drama. Let's take a look at the various plot points on display in this past week's episode.

• Tom Jeter (Nate Corrdry) has had his soldier brother kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Media has gone and effed everything up by revealing the hostage's connection to celebrity. The military dispatches two no-nonsense officers to visit Tom and "assess his level of trauma". Meanwhile, it turns out that the sexual harassment case lawyer who's been throwing herself at Matt happens to have shadowy connections to the paramilitary underworld and can dangle the carrot of ransoming Tom's brother in front of everyone.


• Matt and Harriet are forced to relive their constant fighting about faith and reason by Tom's crisis, and we're treated to a "through the years" montage featuring highlights of their battle. This montage ends, with Matt pounding his fists on the desk, rocketing to his feet, slamming his chair back and shouting "we've been having this fight for two thousand years!!!" It might possibly have been the hammiest moment of Matthew Perry's life, the poor guy. And this on the heels of being forced to channel his real-life struggle with drug addiction into the incredibly simplistic and patronizing portrayal of Matt Albie swallowing "anything" he could get in order to keep writing the show. Because, you know, he's not going to make choices about what type of drug experience he wants to have, he's simply On The (ever unnamed) Drugs. Conveniently for us, the audience, Albie's assistant is keen to the signs of addiction that are completely invisible in Perry's performance because of her hypertragic past with her suicidal mother.


• Meanwhile. Danny and Jordan are at the hospital, where they discover that the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck and an emergency caesarian section must be performed. Danny proposes marriage. Yes, Sorkin has included a pregnancy, a pregnancy in danger AND a potential marriage all in the first season. And what's worse is that he believes he can get away with this pile of horrible television cliches (as in previous episodes) by merely commenting on the fact that he is employing terrible television cliches. This is some of the laziest, most asinine writing I have seen on TV in years and Sorkin really, truly expects to get away with it.

To recap: we have staggering family tragedy, earth-shattering international incidents, The Great Debate impeding True Love, pregnancy, endangered pregnancy and a marriage proposal all in one episode. What really galls me to the core is Sorkin's apparent belief that he's earned the dramatic right to impose these monumentally huge stakes onto every character. Characters, mind you, that he has largely failed to make us care about at all.

Why can't we explore what we were promised, namely the thorny realities of making television in the modern age? Why must we instead be presented with some of the most over-the-top inanity this side of a Tom Clancy novel? Aaron Sorkin, why are you such a dick? Seriously... when did you decide to flip this series into a tribute to yourself? Your cosmic relationship woes, your supposed ability to employ classic television cliches, your reknown for tackling The Big Issues, the sweeping, unnecessary and ridiculous SCALE of it all.

Take some time off, Aaron. Maybe spend a while on the Internet, that medium you go to such lengths to minimize and deprecate and ignore. Deflate yourself, maybe take a vacation. Mull on this spectacular failure of a television series, and maybe in five to ten years you can come back and create a show about a man who was so good at his job that nobody ever understood him. That poor genius bastard.

TEH SEKRIT

It's taken me a long while to pin down my off-putness at the popularity of The Secret. On the face of it, the mere fact that it's facile, bland pop-metaphysics pushed at frustrated middle class strivers by Oprah should be enough for me to want nothing to do with it, but I still couldn't quite decide what made it so objectionable.

Now, before you write me off as a curmudgeonly empiricist who enjoys telling small children that Santa Claus is merely a symbol, I will declare that I have hoodooish leanings of my own. I do believe that human consciousness is intertwined with the greater universe beyond our bodies in ways that we're only beginning to understand, for example. I find a lot of resonance and verisimilitude in many of the ideas of Taoism and Zen practice (I only wish I had the discipline for that practice). So, in sum, I am loathe to simply write off the idea that one's mental state affects the greater world around them.

However, in my estimation the ultimate point of any spiritual practice is to further empathy and identification with one's fellow human beings. The impression I get from The Secret, however, is more of an "every man for himself" sort of vibe. If your situation is less than optimal, it seems to be suggesting, well it's all your fault. Dare I say this smacks of (shudder) "conservatism"?

Author Daniel Pinchbeck seems to have cut to the heart of the matter in a way that was heretofore unclear to me, and therefore I will quote him. (the entire article can be found here)

From this perspective, the individual's psychic state determines his or her physical reality, and the occult laws of attraction can be utilized to increase one's bank account or sexual magnetism. If you haven't cashed out, it is because you are not using your psychic powers at their maximum rate. If other people aren't getting their's yet, it's not your problem, but their bad karma. This is a metaphysics suited to the narcissism of the baby boomers and the "Me Generation," whose lifestyles have denuded the planet's rainforests and ripped big holes in the ozone layer. bold added by me for emphasis

So yes, people of my parents' generation, this taps into my low-level ire at you: those who utterly failed to prevent the various potential environmental and political catastrophes everybody with a brain has seen coming for decades. Could we expect anything other than The Secret and its pseudophilosophy-for-profit ilk?

My friend Rebecca was kind enough to point out that my germ of a thought here has been better elucidated by finer writers than I. There's an excellent Salon.com article about the insidiousness of The Secret here.

Here at the end, though, I suppose I must turn toward positivity. Perhaps exposure to The Secret will inspire Joe and Jane Suburb to explore their own minds and know themselves better than they would have otherwise. Perhaps an orgy of "enlightened" self interest will bring peace and prosperity to the globe. Perhaps David Byrne said it best:

He would see faces in movies, on t.v., in magazines, and in books. He thought that some of these faces might be right for him. And through the years, by keeing an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind... or somewhere in the back of his mind... that he might, by force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal.

the internet is silly

LOLcats, I believe, won out over other possible LOL(variable) options because the internet is 90% cats already. Also, for an inhuman killing machine, a cat's got a good personality.

What other things might the Internet also enjoy anthropomorphizing?

I believe this was done by Jeph Jacques; correct me if I'm wrong, won't you?

projects are happening

Over the weekend of the 18th I flew down to Florida to shoot wedding footage for the documentary project. It went quite well and we should be able to give Tedd and Christa an excellent wedding video as both a present and a "thank you for participating" gift. On our way out of the state we made a detour by Kennedy Space Center, to enjoy their tourist-related activities, which was quite a lot of fun. We did learn, however, that rocket scientists can't spell.



Seize Them! went into the recording studio yesterday to begin laying down tracks for a demo / album. This is something we've been looking forward to doing for quite some time. Unfortunately, due to the idiosyncratic way the studio was set up by its designers, we weren't really able to get anything done. After spending over four and a half hours attempting to do extremely exotic things like "getting sound in the headphones" we had time to record two takes of "Let Me Be Your Boy" before we had to start packing up. It was, in a word, frustrating, but it was also a great example of the Quality Triangle.

The Quality Triangle has you use Fast, Cheap and Good as the vertices and then says you are allowed any two at a given time.

retraction correction amendment

The situation has evolved, and it appears that my claim stated during the Seize Them! show on 5.12.07 (which you can download in .mp3 and/or FLAC format from here) that James Doohan's ashes were lost in the New Mexico desert is no longer true.

I know you were all very concerned.

let me explain something to you

©Leah Riley

When Leah starts selling things, you will buy them.

rock n' roll debriefing

Seize Them! successfully rocked their first "public" show at the Last Resort Art Space on May 12. It was an interesting time, if I do say so myself.

Photos from the event, taken by Spencer Gordon (who just happened to be there and was kind enough to employ my camera) are viewable on flickr.

If you're curious, and/or a die-hard Seize Them! fan, you can download an audience recording of the show from seizethem.com. We've got an MP3 version and a FLAC version for you audiophiles.

Performancewise we were solidly high-energy and entertaining but definitely sloppy, at least in comparison to how tight we've recently been in rehearsal. I chalk this up to the accumulation of many little details that conspired to place us, or remind us of our place, outside our comfort zone.

Immediately after our cursory soundcheck we began to play. I forgot to actually insert my earplugs, which dangled around my neck for the whole show instead. Because of that my guitar seemed extremely loud to me, which made me self-conscious. I clammed quite a few chords and notes throughout the evening but all of us in the band agree that it was a really positive thing that nobody's mistakes threw anyone else off or caused the person in question to spiral downward into a shame-based disaster.

The event was... odd. It was billed as a barbecue but failed to be billed as a DIY barbecue with grills that may or may not actually be properly coaled and capable of grilling food. Even with the extremely low attendance (in fact, absolutely none of the people I invited came to the show, aside from a very recent acquaintance who brought several friends) the beer ran out practically immediately and over half the party had to leave to go buy beer. That puts a bit of a crimp in the party flow, I'd say. DJ Porkcube did his best to keep the party live but was hindered by band scheduling and clumsiness with the PA.

A representative of Iraq Veterans Against the War had an info table set up, which was great, but then got up to make a speech promoting his cause, and for some reason chose to connect with his audience by flatly insulting them outright and inspiring most of them to temporarily leave in search of beer or less hostile vibes^*. I'm completely in favor of connecting political activity to these kinds of shows and parties but I just don't understand what's to be gained by aggressively antagonizing the very people you're theoretically trying to sway.

As we came back to Last Resort to finish packing up our gear we were told that the cops had arrived during our absence to shut the party down, claiming they'd seen the fliers advertising the show, but unfortunately for them the whole event was over by the time they arrived. A party isn't really a party unless the cops show up; that's what I say.

---

*If I recall correctly he chastised the crowd for failing to mosh during Stuedabaker Brown's set... SB is a midtempo pop-rock band that doesn't exactly inspire moshing most of the time... and then proceeded to call the crowd "vapid". Smart move, there.

oh how I hope

Chris Onstad, creator of the Achewood (the world's greatest comic strip) said the following in a recent interview:

"Today I was working on a screenplay. You know, where Ray and Roast Beef went down and fought in the Great Outdoor Fight. We’ve got a couple studios interested in the script, so we’re trying to finish that up and get it sold."

ACHEWOOD MOVIE, Y'ALL. Oh man... attention all producer types - FUND THIS FILM. It goes without saying that I, of course, should be hired to edit it. Is there a film editor out there who loves Achewood more than me? The answer is clearly no.