the museum of contemporary art in barcelona’s exhibit the anarchy of silence: john cage and experimental art makes now a great time to visit the art heart of spain
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
haven’t ever even read a peggy noonan piece (she wrote speeches for reagan i think?), but this one is pretty good
The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren’t rising, they’re bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we’re entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They’ll miss the meaning of this moment, too.
on the up side, there’s flu-free holy water. . .
08
Nov
09
child beauty pageant pics
are soooo creepy
loss for words.
peter jon lindberg on “bad music in public spaces” [pop matters]
It would be revealing to compile an alternative history of Western music, focused solely on Songs Played in Hotel Lobbies and Cruise-Ship Corridors Through the Ages. You’d document a bizarro parallel universe, one where Michael McDonald is more popular than Led Zeppelin and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons trumps everything by Mozart. The Eagles would be more revered than Dylan; Jamiroquai bigger than Springsteen. And at the top of the pyramid, with her Nagel-print cheekbones, would sit Sade.
The quintessential background record of any era, Sade’s “Smooth Operator” (1984) was also the perfect theme for its time: languid, sexy, and reeking of money. This explains why it’s been playing in yacht clubs and business-class lounges since the Reagan administration, despite being a patently ridiculous song (not least for the sax solo). Its popularity highlights a key ingredient of the genre: If you’re going to make sultry, anodyne lounge music, it helps to sing with an accent. Sade’s own inflections—she rhymes Key Lah-go with Chicago—were indeterminate (French? Latin? Nigerian? Who could tell?), yet indisputably cosmopolitan.
An even better tactic for background success? Don’t sing in English at all. Whether it’s Serge Gainsbourg wooing Jane Birkin or Cesaria Evora lamenting her saudade, foreign-language songs are believed to lend any venue an air of sophistication. They’re easy to listen to and easy not to listen to, since the lyrics make no sense. Where would your neighborhood tapas bar be without the worldly stylings of the Gipsy Kings, the Buena Vista Social Club (the Gipsy Kings of the 90’s), and Amadou & Mariam (the Gipsy Kings of the 00’s)?
of course, i actually liked sade when they arrived on the scene, but that was the mid-80s and we all did things we’d rather forget back then. what an awful decade.
but whether you agree with his taste or not, i bet you can relate to the spirit of the piece.
Japan’s health system provides health care to its citizens as a matter of right. It earns some of the highest marks on various measures of quality, and costs far less per capita than the U.S. system–and less, even, than most European systems.
no more fucking excuses, greedheads.
23
Oct
09
the new sparks album (!). . .
is a radio musical tribute to ingmar bergman
whom i’m not really into, but i can’t help but be glad these guys are still around.
according to white house advisor
According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these “marginally attached” workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader governement measure of unemployment known as “U-6,” is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent.
And even this may understate the depth of the problem. By adding the 3.4 million Americans who want a job but have not looked for one in over a year, businessman, philanthropist and Obama advisor Leo Hindery Jr. infers an actual unemployment rate of 18.8 percent. In other words, nearly one in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed.
The sound you hear is the sound of the social fabric in America rotting and beginning to snap. Thanks to the unemployment insurance system adopted during the New Deal years, and thanks in part to the stimulus that the Obama administration and Congress passed earlier in the year, we do not have hordes of out-of-work Americans standing in line at soup kitchens and riding the rails from town to town. Even so, the invisible decay of America’s social order is just as real as the highly visible decay of abandoned McMansions in new developments that are turning into ghost towns across the continent.
if the moneyed class doesn’t get busy, they’re going to have issues they can’t throw a TARP over.
if the feds and the states want to shave their police budgets, drug prohibition is the only place to start.
finally, something to cheer about from obamaland.
13
Oct
09
headlines
obama allows big pharma to molest un-rich americans in the time-honored fashion, including outlawing imported, cheaper drugs. (some eyedrops i needed last year were $25 from a Vancouver pharmacy, $75 here)
simon reynolds on how 80s UK synthpop realized the promise of punk.
Conveniently, these singles ["i feel love" & "trans-europe express"] arrived at a time when synths got vastly more affordable, portable, and user-friendly. As the BBC4 doc Synth Britannia reveals, what once cost as much as a small house (and therefore stayed the preserve of prog superstars) became something you could buy for a few hundred quid, or cheaper still if you mail-ordered a build-your-own-synth kit and were prepared to spend weeks assembling the bugger. Groups who’d been inspired by punk’s confrontational rhetoric and sartorial provocations but who found the actual sonic substance of punk rock to be too ye olde rock’n'roll seized on the cheapo synth as the real coming of do-it-yourself.
10
Oct
09
chinese immersion class
buffalo ny high school to start chinese language immersion class in a year or so
expect to see more interest in chinese culture in these united states, as the empire winds down..
