Wednesday, December 26, 2007

More Night Sounds from the Other Side of the Orbit

Last summer I posted some sounds of tree frogs and cicadas I had recorded. Adam Schultz suggested I post some more in the dead of winter, when maybe we are missing such noises, so here you go. This audio clip is shorter than a minute, and unlike the previous one, uses some compression to pull the quieter mating calls out from the depths of the forest and cram them into your speakers, along with a little more air conditioner or nearby road noise.



Well, I reckon I've just been Mr. Audio/Visual lately, eh?

Continue . . .

Thursday, December 20, 2007

A Good Test of my Deodorant

At the local fun park, I don’t play the driving video games. Nor do I fly a plane, ski, or mess with secret martial arts moves -- at least, not any more, not since I gave up trying to make the character of Yoshimitsu, a swordsman, behave properly in the game Tekken, versions 1 through 3, years ago.

He just got weirder and weirder, with more and more moves that never really worked, like that thing where he sits down and masturbates with his sword and gets life back.

That’s always a good way to get clobbered. It happens by accident at just the wrong times, too. You’re trying to do the leg sweeps followed by the rising kick, and you hit the foot buttons at the same time rather than one after the other, and right there in the heat of battle he’s sitting down and masturbating.

I see Tekken 5 and I do try it once, and I find Yoshimitsu's skin now sunken in against his bones, his eyes glowing. Poor guy needs some lotion.

So I do it old school. I go to get a gift certificate for some kids in my family, and then I head into the fray, going past the 3-d pill-box shooter, past the pinball games that give you, like, 3 balls for a dollar now, past the game where someone rips off your head and pours your brains down his throat like he’s chugging beer from a pitcher.

I go to the Williams Electronics games of yesteryear, the mid 80’s, when video games ran on abstraction and geometry and they still used lasers by God. Lasers. That’s fair weaponry in video games. That’s Geneva Video Game Convention approved. You don’t gotta go online to some chat room to learn the code to fire your laser. You don’t gotta deal with some nearly naked Bruce Li -- though, to be honest, the video game characters, acting through their polygons, are better actors than Bruce Li.

Nope. You move a spaceship or a little dude around, you shoot a laser, and that’s pure and honest. When you're done, you're done. There's no inserting more coins to continue. No one gets resurrected either. You have your lives, usually starting with 3 and getting another every 10,000 or so, and once they’re used up, that’s it. The problem with kids these days is, they think they can just come back to life or something. Save the game. Sheesh. You think you got time to save the game when the last humanoid has been abducted and the planet surface is unstable and the whole thing’s about to go ka-flooy and all the landers will turn into mutants? No. No pausing, no saving. You step up to the plate and you’re there for the duration. You gotta class to go to and you’re on a roll? Forget it. You skip the class.

It's my first game of Stargate in years, and I forget to warp from the first level. Damn, that used to always be the thing to do. When it's over, tendons of my right hand hurt from dealing with that whole problem of manipulating the fire, thrust, and inviso buttons at the same time. When I was 14 I never hurt like this.

I next go to Robotron which, I later learned, was invented by EJ and LD, the same guys who brought us Stargate (and it's predecessor, Defender), after EJ received a hand injury in a car accident and needed to play a game that did not have buttons to press. So it's therapy for me as it was for him.

In Robotron, you just have to get in touch with the base of your spinal cord and not let any nerve impulses come any higher, because that takes too long. Fighting the grunts, you can shoot and move any which way. But when the pulsing red circles appear, quickly look to where most of them are on the screen and head toward them. Root them out. Shoot them as fast as you can before they start emitting those gray things that shoot little “plus” signs. In chasing the red circles, you get to the edge of the board, so now just start moving around the edge shooting diagonally into the center of the board or ahead of yourself to clear a path, watching out for the flying “plus” signs coming from the grey things that were emitted from circles you didn’t get to in time. Damn, that automatic weapon just doesn’t shoot fast enough.

When you get to the brains, at least they are kind of slow so you can pick them off pretty easily, but if you let them reprogram too many humans, you’re screwed. And often they are on screens with the red circles/grey things anyway, so mostly you have to deal with the red circles/grey things.

There comes the wave that begins with those pulsing squares moving all around you. They turn into larger red robots that roll quickly and shoot fireballs that bounce off the walls. Now you need a whole new strategy. Do not head for the wall and run around the outside like you did in chasing the red circles, because near the wall and especially in the corners, you have to deal with the fireballs bouncing off the walls. Instead, stay in the middle, where you only have to dodge them on the first pass. Run in little circles around the middle, shoot everything as much as you can, and just stay alive as long as you can, and hope for luck. You will probably die at least once on every level like this.

On every level, sweep up as many humans as you can. This is the best way to get points, extra lives, and prolong the game. Always, when there’s just one robot left, leave it alive until all the humans are swept up.

I got to 300,000 points on Robotron, probably the best I’ve ever done, though perhaps some of you readers have done better -- and note that some Immortals' scores are well into the millions.

Then, back on Stargate, I again missed warping on the first wave. Darn. But on the second wave, I found myself with three humanoids in tow. Was that enough? I hit the Stargate and BAM, there it went, the warp to wave 4. On that wave, I actually got three humanoids in tow again and warped to wave 7 or so, skipping over the Yllabian Dogfight, a disappointment since that wave is cool. By the way, Yllabian, as in Yllabian Space Guppies, comes from Bally spelled backwards. Also, the green lander aliens are of the Irata race -- Atari spelled backwards -- and the Munchies are based on Pac-Man. Bally, Atari, and Pac-Man are all competitors of Williams electronics, and are creatures you have to save the world from in this game. Meanwhile, the Dynamo and Space Hum are homage to the Frank Zappa song. This info I get from here.

I lose the planet at some point near 90,000, but finish the wave and arrive at the Firebomber Showdown. Here I confuse Pods for Firebombers on the scanner, and I end up smart-bombing a bunch of Firebombers when the Pod Intersection was occurring somewhere else. I'm out of smart bombs, so when I do encounter pods I shoot them with the laser and then shoot each Swarmer. Any Stargate player will tell you, when you are shooting the Pods and Swarmers with your lasers, you're in deep trouble. But I did make it to over 100,000 in that game, also a personal best, also not so hot compared to Immortals' scores.

After the second game of Stargate, I have more tendon pain in the right hand plus the old blister on the little finger of my left hand where I grind it under the up-down lever. When I was a teenager, I had a permanent callous there, and no tendon pain.

Driving home, I do hand and wrist stretches I have learned in arnis.

Playing these games makes me sweat more than anything else, except exercising outside in the summertime. Exercising at any other time -- outside in the fall, winter, or spring -- does not make me sweat as much as playing these games. And coming away from them, I feel like I’ve been somewhere I can’t explain, some other place where I was simply on, livid, living, and loose if it went well. If I play too many, I tighten up. So I leave before finishing my own fun card. Plus, my hand hurts.

Continue . . .

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Price of Gas

Photos and post title from friend Svetlana

Riding shotgun, Svets said, “There’s crucifixes next to a gas pump.” We were driving toward Meadow Lights, a yearly Christmas display produced in the town for which it’s named. I was making sure to match pace with the other slow vehicles, all of us moving at less than funeral procession speed with our headlights off out of respect for other lights. Funny how people know to fall in line at certain times, like while driving past Christmas lights or when bowing our heads in prayer. I’m always afraid at such times that I’ll stand out as the one who is not engaged. When among people praying, or being sworn in for jury duty, I feel nothing special. I also have little to no reverence for the holiday commemorated at Meadow Lights. I just love the overall glow created by all those little sources of light planted everywhere. Everything is lit from below, the sides. Shadows are filled in. Worries are chased away. Surely, anonymous in the dark interior of my small SUV, my irreverence would not be evident, as long as I did not draw attention to us by bumping the SUV in front of us.

I missed what Svets had seen, and hearing her comment I could not fathom it. Crucifixes and a gas pump all in a mere lights display? Who would put a gas pump next to crucifixes anyway? It sounded like something I would do, if I can claim to be that clever, which I can’t -- but I can claim to have the desire to be that subversive at least. And aren’t crucifixes for some other holiday? Apparently, someone felt the need to bring it all in here, both ends of Jesus’ famous life. The same person would probably demand performances of Handel’s entire Messiah, not just the Christmas part. (The Wikipedia entry explains that The Messiah has three parts called Birth, Passion, and Aftermath. Normally at Christmas, only the Birth part is performed. The Hallelujah Chorus is in the Passion part but is joined with the Birth part for performances at Christmas.)

The Last Supper was also on display.

I had wanted to find a holiday display where we could walk in the midst of the lights. Once we parked at Meadow Lights, we found that you can merely walk to the edge of the meadow where they have the lights. You can buy a two-dollar “train” ride through the meadow, but the makeshift engine and plywood-walled cars looked pretty cold that night. So we stood around shivering at the edge of the meadow and did not get our shadows fully chased away, our souls fully cleansed.

Driving away, Svets pointed out the crucifixes again. We decided to take cell phone pictures. So we drove down the road to a dark empty parking lot, turned around, went back, rejoined the solemn procession toward the lights. The crucifixes were in a person’s yard, and ropes were strung around the edge of the yard, clearly indicating that we were not to walk into the yard. I pulled the car into a wide shoulder area where it was completely off the road, and Svetlana jumped out and ducked right under the ropes and ran up close to the crucifixes and moved around, finding various framings. She came back and said it looked like an old gas station had been there, and the pump happened to be still standing, not intentionally part of the display. But there it was, an accidental convergence of the two things that, I fear, are all America knows of the Middle East: Jesus and gas.


The Meadow Lights are an elaborate display appearing yearly, with unexplained origins like crop circles, in a remote field several miles off the interstate. It’s an impressive and charming occurrence despite my particular disappointment at not being able to walk among the lights. It is advertised along the interstate with small white square signs close to the ground which say, simply, “Meadow Lights.” People know what that means though, and when the signs go up they come, from miles around, clogging the local road with their extra-slow process. Aside from the lighted meadow itself with the makeshift train, which has no tracks and simply rolls on tires on a dirt path, there’s a large building wherein they sell all manner of candies. We bought a Grape Nehi and a Blenheim Ginger Ale. There’s another large building with many windows along one side and fair-food vendors selling food out of these windows. Clearly, it’s a major money-maker for someone.

One of the coolest things about Meadow Lights were the houses near to it with fairly tasteful decorations in their yards (perhaps trying to strike a contrast to the tackiness of the meadow display proper). These decorations were lavishly continued into the interior of the houses, where curtains were open and lights were on so that the interior decorations were as easily seen from the road as the exterior ones. No residents were seen at these houses. I guess no one around there really sits in their living room during the holiday weeks. They’re probably back in the den playing World of Warcraft.

Driving away for the second time Svets did spy one house less-than-tasteful, with its own peculiar convergence of imagery. In its well-lit front room, overlooking the seasonal array of hobby horses, carousels on tables, lambs, reindeer, were the heads of real, dead, hunted deer. We decided more pictures were needed. We turned around in the same empty parking lot down the road and, for a third time, joined the procession back to the display. I pulled over again and Svets got out, dove under the ropes, trespassed into the yard (“as we forgive those who trespass against us”).


This time I zoned out and watched the myriad of parking lights on cars coming toward me. I heard dogs growling and barking well before I thought to look back at Svets. She was calmly photographing through her cell phone with two white dogs milling in front of her. She came back and said the “hell hounds” had chased her and she had darted backwards until she realized they were stuck behind an invisible fence. So then she had gone right up to the safe side of the fence and taken the pictures.


So there we have animals hunted, revered, used as guards. And Jesus and gas.

But who are Svets and I to go through the countryside finding irony and photographing it as if we were on some anthropoligical expedition. We eat meat. We certainly had a great bar-b-que dinner at the Meadow Restaurant by the interstate, which sees a surge of business because of the nearby Lights. And I drove an SUV to get us there, thereby not only using gas, but more than a minimal amount. And I receive Christmas presents and even give a few. So who are we to be critical?

Maybe I should just keep in mind the higher message. This is something everyone can agree on.

And Meadow Lights will continue to remind us of this message as long as people continue to come to buy the candy.

As described, Svets spied these choice sights and took the photos. Also, she named the first one The Price of Gas, a perfectly chilling title to go with that image, so I stole that title for this post. Ideally, she would have blogged about this herself, but she doesn't have a blog, and I do. And you know how we established bloggers are about needing content.

Continue . . .

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Yet Another Iraq War Haiku

Now Iraq is what
Afghanistan is: tribal.
They call this progress.

Two previous Iraq War haikus are here. My first is here.

Some pro-war haikus are here. Read the comments after that post for even more.

Continue . . .

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

A Date with Death . . . And the Cats Were Blowing!

A friend overheard some high school boys talking at the next table in a coffee shop on a recent Saturday morning.

“What’re you doin’ t’night?”

“I’m goin’ ‘o see Mahler.”

“Who’re they?”

(Maybe these were the guys with moussed up hair I saw in the restroom after the concert. They were talking about “Sledgehammer Dude,” the tall gray-haired percussionist who has spent his life doing the cool jobs in the orchestra, who calmly walked between the instrument stations behind the orchestra, thumbing through his many pages of score as he moved. For the famous “Strokes of Death” in the final movement, he would pick up an oversized mallet with a wooden handle maybe 5 feet long topped by a metal-looking cube larger than a human head. He would hold this mallet vertically, with both hands at the end of the handle, as if playing some Highlander game (except he was probably wearing underwear), and bring it crashing down onto some platform about the height of a table. The specifics of the mallet and table I can’t find anywhere online. I guess each orchestra has to just come up with its own system. Or maybe they can just go on “Mahler’s 6th Sledgehammer and Platforms.com.” I read somewhere that the original score simply calls for a sledgehammer to be struck against a reinforced portion of the floor. It makes a sharp “Bang” without the reverberation of a bass drum.

All musical samples in this post are stolen from my wonderful recording of Bernstein with the VPO. They are under 30 seconds long except for two which are noted. The following is one of the loudest, so you can adjust your volume by it for comfort. Some other samples will be incredibly soft, but that's part of the experience. Everything would sound best on headphones, but be sure you don't crank them too loudly!

You can hear the sledgehammer at the start of this clip, but really, the brasses are louder.



“That whole symphony,” the high schoolers in the bathroom were saying, “an adagio and everything, and all I can think about is the sledgehammer.”)

I wanted to go to the concert with Svetlana, but she had her own date with destiny in the form of some alt-indy-lesbo-punk thing. What can you do?

You feel awkward asking just anyone to go see Mahler. You never know who may have had a bad experience with him. Some folks' parents dragged them to the symphony when they were kids and they spent the whole time thinking, as best they could at that age, “WTF is all the fuss about?” Or worse, maybe, like one woman, they had a “friend” who punched them repeatedly one night because he had been depressed for two weeks after hearing this exact symphony, Mahler’s Sixth, performed live. Years after the punching, she had to steel herself to go see it for herself, and her commentary pretty much sums up all the negative lay-criticism of Mahler’s themes and overwrought presentation. Death, Life, Heroism . . . my therapist would call it "All or Nothing Thinking." Don’t say I’m not fair and balanced for providing this anti-Mahler link.

Then there’s Lewis Thomas’ famous essay about the nature of death in the nuclear age entitled Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth. Or this businessman who had nearly no musical training and was so deeply affected by a performance of Mahler's Second (humbly titled “Resurrection”) that he sought conductor training, met with many famous conductors, and eventually made a recording with himself leading the London Symphony.

Sheesh. What a bunch of morons these Mahlerians are. They should have just gone to Dorkfest.

In any case, you can see why an invitation to Mahler is a touchy subject. It’s not like saying, “You catch Dylan?” or “Dude -- Nightranger!”

So I went online, perused the seating charts, tried to remember what that concert hall looked like when I was there years ago, and sprang for a single expensive ticket.

I was almost late getting there. I have trouble with that part of that neighboring city, and while speeding on the interstate well over the limit, I was trying to punch in the quirky address in a way that the Garmin would accept. For some reason, it kept not recognizing it. So then I was trying to enter the name of the auditorium, trying to think of what permutations of “Memorial” and “Hall” would work, checking the dark road ahead and in the mirrors between reaching for each letter. Several miles later, the Garmin recognized the destination in time to direct me on a fairly quick route I would not have thought to take myself. Doing all that keypunching while driving, I just about ended my date with death prematurely. I wouldn’t have needed the expensive ticket after all.

I tossed my money at the parking attendant, blazed up through the spiraling parking deck, couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get my keys out of the ignition until I realized that I had not put it in park before shutting it off, ran to the wrong end of the performance complex, ran back to the correct end, got my ticket at Will Call, ran to the wrong entrance to the hall, ran to correct entrance to the hall, and was told that I probably could not go to the bathroom -- it would be a 22 minute wait before late seating if I didn’t make it. So I ran up to my lower balcony seat with a dry throat and wet bladder and had to ask half a row of rich old white folks who routinely occupy those seats to stand and let me get to my own plum single seat in their midst.

I had time to calm down before the music starrted. A former governor came out and started talking about how this would be the very last performance by our conductor laureate (who used to be the principal conductor) with the symphony. He said he used to hire the symphony to go on business recruiting trips with him, and it had helped bring a certain blah-blah impressive number of dollars into our state. This brought applause from the audience, and I had to agree that using the symphony in that fashion was an awfully good idea. I maybe would not have thought of it, even. A lesser leader would do the standard dog-and-pony-vinegar-Bar-B-Que show, maybe play Old Time music on a PA system. But no, bring the symphony, show those Texans or Conneticetians or whatever that we’re cosmopolitan down here, it’s okay to bring your glue factory and create 300 jobs. Don’t play Mahler on those trips -- play something like Beethoven or Tchaikovsky that everyone likes. Someone else’s Pastoral or Pathétique sixth, not Mahler’s ass-buster.

They went on lauding the outgoing conductor laureate, presented him with “tokens of their appreciation,” basically gushing landed-class love all over the stage, and I’m thinking, “Does anyone know what we’re in for?”

The governor and other speakers seemed oblivious. And surely, there were unsuspecting virgins in the audience as well, folks who had not known to bring their spray bottles, their slices of toast, their newpaper for covering their heads. It was like going back in time to early 1929 and hearing someone say they had just invested their fortune in blue-chip stock. You just wanted to shake them by the collar and say “My God man, do you know what you’re in for!”

Then the presentations and acceptances were over, the dignitaries left the stage, there was final tuning, and then the outgoing conductor laureate came back out, raised his baton, and lowered it.



It was like going back to an old house that has lived so long in memory, you can’t believe it’s real. There’s the corner of the kitchen where we kept the bag of navy beans which rotted, and eventually were thrown out. There’s that smell of natural gas which persisted though all pilot lights were burning, causing us to keep the kitchen window cracked. I used to live in that house with ShakeThatCat. It had grand white columns supporting the roof of the porch going around three sides, a frosted glass front door where the landlord had taught himself to do gold leafing, more columns in the interior foyer, tile-lined fireplaces, creaky hard wood floors. Leading upward from the foyer was a front stairway with three flights, a grand ascent to glass doors which would normally lead to a less private room, but which lead in this case to Shake’s bedroom. He kept the landing outside these doors packed with stuff, so nobody used these stairs. To get to the “front” of our apartment, one would walk along the creaky downstairs hall, past the two first floor apartments where chefs at prominent local restaurants lived, and climb a back stairway to a landing which had a door to our apartment’s living room, a second door to Shake’s room, and another door to the other upstairs apartment.

We lived there well over ten years ago, and I still have dreams of being home in the daytime in that house, as I often was in those days of under-employment. Sunlight would stream in and strike the white carpet of my bedroom floor, the only carpeted floor I knew of in the whole house, and be scattered about the walls, under the furniture, into the living room, chasing out the shadows, making the interior appear to glow from no discernible source. In dreams I leave our apartment and sneak into the creaky hall and find some other apartment I had not known of before, and go in. It’s also white-carpeted and sunny, and I am not supposed to be there, because it is someone else’s and they might come home. Once, maybe, it was mine, and it was empty, but I could not believe that I could afford such a place alone. Another time there was furniture, a dining room table with tall candlesticks, and I was famous, people were coming to meet me.

Several times I found an extensive glassed-in porch off the back of the house which had not been there before.

In reality, the landlord kept the thermostat in the upstairs hall locked in a box. The house was freezing. So, we would take ice packs from the freezer and put them on top of the thermostat box and make that dragon in the basement bark, make its hot breath blow, yes sir! I forget if the woman in the other upstairs apartment knew we were doing this, or noticed that her place, too, would sometimes heat up like a sauna.

I had not played my recording of Mahler’s Sixth, maybe, since I lived there. Still, I knew every turn and texture of pavement as it came, and it was amazing to see this work which normally existed only as a specific recording in my stereo speakers, exactly the same every time, be reanimated by our own symphony next door.



Here we have cowbells and other percussion (maybe celeste -- certainly the celeste appears later) for some of Mahler’s soft, ethereal effects



At the live performance, I was thinking that some things were being done better by our local orchestra than in my recording. In these transparent parts with interplay between various single instruments, much care was taken to stretch out phrases, to linger on final notes before tipping into the next phrase. But now, listening to these examples from my recording, I think they’re beautiful here too. This is a long, soft sample at about one minute.



Mahler really creates a sense of spaciousness with his large orchestra. In the next sample it’s done in two ways: with the contrast of blaring high brass and grumbling low, and also in rests where the orchestra shuts up to let its funk reverberate about the hall for an instant before moving on with more of it.



I know we’ve all heard a lot of loud orchestra music in our day, and we can become anesthetized to it. But seeing the end of the first movement live, seeing the conductor pushing the tempo, making all these cues, and the instruments making their layered entrances which easily could be mis-timed, it’s like watching some NASCAR driver press it down for his final lap, weaving among the other cars recklessly, and you’re like, “Buddy, don’t fall apart now.”



The orchestra nailed it at maybe a little higher speed than this recording, and in the hush that followed, that lasted while latecomers furtively took their seats, it seemed everyone was afraid to make a sound and be the one person in the room to fuck things up. But the woman next to me did suck in her breath and say “Whoa.” I looked at her and her husband and nodded. If I had known them better, I might have whispered, “This shit is tight!”

I was ready for the next movement to be the fast one, and was startled to hear them start the slow one. I don’t know why they switched these two.

12/7/07 Update: I just read that Mahler originally intended the fast movement to be second, as it is in my recording. It begins with a 3/4 time "march" that sounds a lot like parts of the 20 minute first movement which, when heard right after the first movement, gives a distinctive "here we go again" kind of feeling. I've always felt, that's like life. If its not one damn thing, it's two damn things. When it rains, it pours. Out of the jam and into the jelly -- or out of the closet and into the utility room, whichever you prefer. You get the idea. But then, during rehearsals for the first performance in Essen, Germany, in 1906, Mahler switched the order so that the slow movement is second, and the fast one is third, and the redundancy is concealed, so it's less like life. Which I guess means, it's more like death. Which is probably Mahler's point in the first place.

I think the slow movement of Mahler’s Sixth is his best slow movement in all his symphonies. In parts it is very mournful, but always with great tunefulness. Our symphony had much more opportunity here to stretch phrases more than this recording, as they had done in the first movement.



The fast movement lacked an element that my recording has. Mahler was a non-practicing Jew from Bohemia, and used a lot of folk styles in his symphonies. This riff in the woodwinds was played kind of squarely by our symphony, but on the recording, Bernstein knows how to work it



And let’s not forget Mahler’s kids playing in the sandbox!



Giving a modern-day reading to the final movement’s sledgehammer blows, they can perhaps be interpreted as trips to the doctor where one is reminded of one’s worsening condition.



But between the hammer blows, the final movement shows many moods of life: mysterious beginnings wherein we find the seeds of the orchestration used a generation later in Hollywood for dream and hypnosis sequences . . .



. . . troubled times . . .




. . . and as always with Germanic Romantic composers, some moment of triumph



The final movement doesn’t settle down much until right at the end, and by then, you think, this must be it. That condition the doctor has been warning us about has finally caught up to us and we’re languishing in our easy chair with nothing but our memories and the quiet chorale in the trombones and other low brass. Starting halfway through this two-minute sample, listen for a series of notes in the horns which crecsendo quietly from nowhere, then drop an octave once they are noticed. There are three of these octave drops, the third quietly resolving the cadence, closing things down, turning off the lights for the last time.



They’ve come for you. They are tapping at the door, they are pressing their faces at the window, and soon they’ll be inside. They’ll be patient. They’ll wait for you to wake up in your chair and look around, startled, and get your bearings. You can put on your slippers. They’ve got all day -- the outcome is the same anyway. As they lead you away, supporting you by the arms, it seems good enough, sad enough, to simply fade like this. But then the rest of the orchestra starts to move. Flutes, oboes, clarinets, violins, violas, trumpets, the rest of the horns are raised. It’s the violent killer, whom you had thought was ruled out in favor of this quieter end, rising from the floor, out of focus in the background, hobbling toward you. You’re not going to get off easy. There is a final scream, and someone in the audience to my right actually jumped. She was one of the virgins, I presume. Then all that’s left is one quiet pizzicato “thump.”

Continue . . .

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Update on the No Show Showcase

(This is a continuation of part 1.)

I talked to L today, and she said everyone is apologizing to her. The three women B, H, and M apologized at L’s party on Saturday. D called her yesterday and fell all over himself apologizing.

What happened is, like I said, B, H, and M were organizing the showcase. But then some emergency matters came up for H and she gave duties to B and M. Then they realized they were not up to doing all the work themselves, so they gave all organizing duties over to their instructor D, but not before B and H got pissed at each other and stopped talking, which explains why B did not sit at the same table as H and M at the party, something I had not mentioned.

Then D, already known as a flake, decided he couldn’t deal with the organizing, so he gave all duties over to instructor T who, until then, had been a fairly minor player in all this. T was far removed from the original populist stance and saw no reason not to inject an exorbitant entry fee into the deal. After all, it’s just business, right?

L understands that this is how people do things. Her own students are out of the showcase and she is cool with everything. Of all the characters in this story, she has the most reason to be pissed, but she never really was pissed. The whole thing just makes her want to do things on her own terms, including having her own showcase sometime. And she says she still will go to this showcase as a spectator, because she knows all the people and wants to support them.

Me, I have not nearly as much reason to be pissed, but I am pissed. I'm pissed that it seems that B, M, H, and D just seemed to let T take over and levy his fees, and nobody really did anything about it until it occurred to them to tell L just 1.5 weeks before the event, and she started asking questions. Then it was like, "Oh yeah, sorry, I guess we screwed you." (But maybe there's more to this and I shouldn't speculate.) And I’m pissed at B for the way she told me about the entry fee, with the attitude that everything was settled and I probably wasn’t going to be performing, but I’d still be coming to watch, right? But maybe I should give her a break. When she first brought the issue up, she probably thought L had already told me. But I’m kind of glad L had not, because that put B in the hot spot of having to explain it to me and falling back on her Bush Press Secretary techniques.

After all those folks apologized to L, instructor T, originator of the entry fee, called L. In his salesperson voice, he said, “I understand you have some questions about the showcase.”

“Oh no,” L said. “No questions. We’re just not doing it.”

He was silent for a moment, then asked why.

She said she doesn’t believe in the entry fee.

He said some blah blah about why the fee was necessary, and he hoped they could work together sometime in the future, and L said cheerily, “Okay,” and that was the end of that.

Now the three women B, H, and M are eating their own breakfast for letting the showcase fall into the wrong hands. Though their entry fee is discounted to $100.00 (an offer not made to L’s students but which she learned about through a leak) it is still $10.00 higher than the $90.00 they used to pay to dance in the other studio showcases that had inspired them to hold their own showcase with no entry fee. So here they go paying an entry fee again. Genius, I tell you. The situation is way beyond my Dirty Dancing analogy. Now, it’s like how we always end up helping the sorts of people in the Middle East we claim to be fighting against. First we helped the Sunni tribes in Afghanistan to kick out the Soviets. Some of those jihadist fighters were the precursors of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who, feeling empowered by defeating one superpower, decided to lure the other superpower into fighting them in Afghanistan where they would be able to declare another “victory.” So we go and give them not one, but two wars -- and in Iraq, our war allows the influx of Al Qaeda into Sunni territory, causing us to empower Sunni tribes to fight Al Qaeda, thereby undercutting the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government that we had said we were working so hard to uphold, and empowering the tribes, which makes the Sunni regions of Iraq look more like Afghanistan, which is where 9/11 terrorism was fomented in the first place.

Meanwhile, in the Sunni districts of Baghdad, the leader of the resistance to Al Qaeda is someone nicknamed "Abu Abd" who was once an officer in the Baath party, then a member of the “Islamic Army” which resisted the Americans before allying with the Americans to kick out Al Qaeda. His three-month agreement with the Americans is about over, but it could be renewed. Read about it here.

Continue . . .

Sunday, November 25, 2007

No Case for the Showcase

I’m dancing with B and she says, “Are you coming to the showcase next Sunday?” I say, “Yeah, I’m dancing in it.” It’s what L and I have revised our old tango routine for. Everyone involved knows we are in the showcase.

B says, “Maybe.”

I say, “What do you mean ‘maybe’?”

She says there’s an entry fee. $150.00.

The showcase is a week and a half away, and this is the first I’ve heard of an entry fee.

Dance showcases are kind of like piano recitals in that dance students perform for other students and friends and family. Showcases are usually held by studios that have several instructors and lots of students, and on the docket of performances are student/student pairings, student/instructor pairings, and a few instructor/instructor pairings just to show off and spice things up.

Showcases are very much unlike piano recitals in that they charge big bucks to any performing couple where one or both partners is a student. (Since I am not a professional or an instructor, I qualify as a student as L's partner.) In other words, the students have to pay to perform. They are paying for this after having already paid for many private lessons to get their routine ready in the first place. So, while piano recitals are viewed by piano instructors as chance for students to show what they can do, dance showcases are viewed by instructors as a chance to gouge their students for more money.

One studio in our area charges $90.00 to perform in a showcase, and $35.00 just for a ticket for a spectator! Remember, spectators are paying this to see mostly amateurs perform -- not to see a wholly professional show.

In the past B has performed in such showcases, and so have her friends M and H. These three women have paid $90.00 to perform and have had nearly no friends or family come to watch because the spectators’ tickets were so expensive. So, the three of them decided to organize this upcoming showcase and run things differently. Their own instructor, D, who is not affiliated with a studio, was involved from the beginning. So was my dance partner L, who is also an unaffiliated instructor.

L got several of her student couples to prepare routines for it, and she asked me to do the tango routine with revisions with her and I agreed, and we’ve been working pretty hard on it.

So now, in this somewhat circumspect way, B is telling me that “Maybe” I would perform because, at some point, an entry fee was tacked on for performers. It is up to L and me to decide whether we will pay it -- but B is presuming that, because of the entry fee, we will only be “Maybe” performing.

She is right to think that the entry fee would be prohibitive. But it’s not her business to presume.

I say, “I never knew of an entry fee.”

She says most showcases have entry fees.

I say “But this showcase was supposed to be populist. You weren’t going to charge exorbitant entry fees like the studios do.”

She says “Well, we are trying to get away from [what another studio owner in our area does]. She charges $90.00 per performance.”

“But you are charging more!” All this time, we’re trying to do samba, but all I can think to do is the most basic step because of this ridiculous conversation we’re having.

B says, “We have to pay for the [venue at the local university].”

I don’t think to ask why they are only now realizing how much that venue costs.

“It was miscommunication,” B says. “People playing phone tag.”

The dance is over and we’re going back to her seat. “But anyone could have sent an email explaining about the entry fee at any time,” I say.

“Well, eventually that’s what happened,” she says.

It’s like talking to Bush’s Press Secretary.

All this happens at L’s dance party last night. At its end, as we’re taking down decorations, I talk to L about it. She says she’s sorry she hadn't told me about the entry fee. She had only heard about it two days before, and there was Thanksgiving.

“We are boycotting it,” she says. She doesn’t want her students to have to pay like this. So we’re not doing the routine.

She says she’ll have her own little showcase at one of her parties. She’ll just have the students do their routines for each other that way.

I think that in the end, what L is describing is what this whole showcase was supposed to be in the first place. Just folks getting together and dancing for each other. Lots of mutual support there. And she and I will do our routine there, so all this prep will not be for nothing.

A third instructor, T, had been brought into the showcase mix later in the planning. He may have been the one to bring up the entry fee idea. L has written to D and T asking who will get all this entry fee money which, for the expected 20 performances, will come to $3000.00. No one has responded. The fact that they had told her about it as an afterthought means that she probably was not going to see any of the money.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner. This dirty dealing is like in Dirty Dancing, where misunderstanding and politics edged Johnny Castle out of performing the finale in the season talent show.

Now, it’s not that L and I were going to be the hit that Castle and Baby were when he came back to fight the power and perform. And it’s not like we would make a stand for populism the way Castle did when he involved the audience members in dancing at the end. But it IS about the common good being suppressed in the name of some personal gain -- in this case, greed. This independent showcase has become what it set out to counteract.

As she was leaving L’s party, B told me that she hoped I would come to the showcase. I said it depends on how much I have to pay. B said spectator’s tickets were only $10.00. So, in this respect I guess, it is cheaper than the typical dance studio showcase. I said “maybe,” using her word from our first conversation. But I’m not going. They changed the deal on us, then told us about it without the slightest sympathy for our position. So I’ll put my energy into L’s little improvised showcase whenever that happens. And you know what? I bet L won’t put up any restrictions or obstacles to who can perform (one reason being that there won’t be that many entries anyway). So probably B, M, and H can perform there if they want to. For free, and with their instructor D. Already, they regularly come to L’s parties, and don’t they feel welcome? As a single guy and capable dancer, don’t I make sure they get some dances in? Again, it’s not that I set world on fire. It’s that most of the men at L’s dances are pretty much beginners and have come with their wives and don’t feel comfortable dancing with anyone else. I’m usually one of about three men that do. So I make sure that B, M, and H get some dances.

Maybe its time I start charging a little “entry fee.”

Part 2 of this saga is here.

Continue . . .

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Revising that Red Dress Routine

Revised the tango routine from last March. Second half is mostly different. Now, to get to where we can really do it.

Gotta figure out what I should do with my hands in a lot of places. She always knows what to do with hers. Lot of style points for me to work on too. Regardless, it always looks better in compressed video. She wears the dress and shoes in practice every now and then, 'cause it makes a difference.



Continue . . .

Sunday, November 4, 2007

That Good News From Iraq You Keep Not Hearing

Sunny pro-war editorials say there is much success to recognize in the Iraq war. And they say I'm the one that can't face reality?

Fred Kagan at the Weekly Standard says Iraq’s politicians are just being politicians. It will take them time to hash out laws, just like it does in the United States, but basically the democracy in in place and is working. He says, not all the differences between tribal and religious groups need to be worked out for us to call the war a success. And he says, eventually, the warring factions will learn that they are hurting themselves more than helping with their violence.

The Times Online says that much success has been achieved by Petraeus in working toward the conditions in which Sunnis and Shia can begin to reconcile their differences.

Andrew Bolt says the war in Iraq has already been won, and that troops just need to stay there to maintain vigilance. His article appears at news.au, but a note says it’s from the Daily Telegraph.

In the Wall Street Journal, Natan Sharansky makes a lot of abstract statements to back his assertion that democracy is on the rise in the Middle East, that the Bush doctrine is the right track.

What do all these news publications have in common? You guessed it!

Here are my questions which, according to these articles, constitute my not being willing to face reality:

If it took cooperation with Sunni tribes in Anbar to drive out Al Qaeda -- that is, to do what the U.S. military could not do alone, and what the Iraqi military certainly could not do -- then doesn’t that mean that the power to make differences like this is in the tribes? Any pro-war advocate calling this ousting of Al Qaeda (which wasn’t there before we invaded anyway) political progress is forgetting that it has nothing to do with legitimizing the official Iraqi government. In fact, over at Small Wars Journal, there’s an article that explains that the tribes simply decided they had had enough of the fundamentalism that Al Qaeda was bringing to their regions -- fundamentalism that was being imported from outside Iraq which, I emphasize, was not there anyway before we invaded.

Here’s a video statement by Juan Cole on what he thinks is really happening with respect to the Sunni tribes. “We are bribing them . . . it’s not a matter of political loyalty,” he says. “There's no evidence that these groups have an interest in cooperating with the al-Maliki Shiite government.”

An anonymous commenter on Informed Comment says that the Basra region is almost completely under the control of Shiite militias. He says that though al-Maliki has fired the governor of Basra, that governor is still in charge because the militias that support him trump any influence by the official Iraqi government. He says that oil revenue in this region goes to these militias, not to to legitimate institutions in Iraq. Maybe an anonymous commenter is not to be trusted; but here is a Christian Science Monitor article saying that as the British left the Basra region, the local militias did take over. And here’s another article saying that Taliban-like strictures are on the rise in southern Iraq. This means that Iraq can not earn the expected oil revenue which was supposed to help with reconstruction; and it means that Islamic fundamentalism has not been decreased, but rather increased, in the region. How do these optimistic editorialists answer this?

(The neocon interrupts: "Hold on there, Buckaroo. If this is what happens when coalition forces leave, then it means the U.S. military should not leave." My response: "Easy there, Killer. Saddam kept a tyrannical lid on that country for decades. As soon as that lid was lifted, the Shiite militias appeared. Suppose our own military stays for decades and ends up enforcing peace and unity for that country. Eventually, we will have to leave. Who says Shiite militias, and other tribal loyalties, won't reappear just as easily then? You say you will win their hearts and minds truly by then? By doing what differently from what you've been doing so far which has not resulted in friendlier hearts and minds, overall?)

And if the Sunni tribes show no sign of cooperating with the Iraqi government, and the mainly Shiite region is being run by independent militias, then it doesn’t matter whether the Green Zone government begins to pass laws. They will never have an effect outside the Green Zone.

If Iraq is going better now, can the 4 million refugees forced from their homes (2 million out of the country to Syria and Jordan) return? ‘Cause they’re draining resources where they are being housed now, temporarily.

If Fallujah is experiencing peace now, as the Times Online piece says, it’s because there has been a complete ban on vehicle traffic. According to Juan Cole's commentary on that city and the Anbar province, there is 80% unemployment in Fallujah. What will happen when vehicle traffic is reinstated, as it must be for the economy to function normally again?

Okay, but maybe Iraq really is going well, and we just need to continue to usher the country along its noble path to true democracy. If these editorials stay online, they will be accessible a year from now. (I’ve saved some on my computer anyway.) We’ll see who was right then. And ask yourself now, have any neocons or pro-war advocates been right about anything yet?

Continue . . .

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Housemate D Effing Rocks

Housemate K says she likes to hear it when she comes home. When was the last time you heard a housemate say she likes to hear noise made by another? D does this in his room when he's taking a study break. The law texts are put aside and he doesn't want to fuss with music or charts. He just jumps in, no parachute, and lets fly with something like this.



I don't hear him doing technical exercises, like the scales and other patterns I used to practice on the piano. His idea drives him and his fingers have to keep up. It gives him that sort of "finding his way" kind of feeling like, I don't know, Jimmy Page's? I may have Rocktoberized the year (I can't believe it's Novendrix already!), but I don't know guitar music that well.


Having D around kind of makes up for the time a member of this band came to interview for a space in our house and we didn't have him move in. He had no references except for his father back home, said he was here to play in the band, and was living with his girlfriend who was also in the band. He could tell "by her fits and tantrums," he said, that she wanted him to have his own space. The whole thing sounded a little shaky to me. I had not heard of the band at the time. And also, the housemate whom he was supposed to replace ended up not moving out for another two months after he had said he would, and by then the prospective found another apartment.


Right about that time, a guy from Minnesota was emailing me to ask about working for two days on a documentary about a band that sounded familiar. I checked back on the prospective housemate's emails and saw that it was his band.


So the documentary maker and I go out to the local bus station to shoot this band doing it's weekly gig there. The prospective's girlfriend starts playing banjo and singing, and this other guy starts fiddling, and the prospective starts dancing around with his harmonica and his jug, and they are amazing and I'm wrestling with the boom and audio levels thinking, "Aw damn, I could have lived with this guy? I effed up."

You know what else is effed up? This site, Twango, where I stream sound from, lowers the pitch of everything. I play the mp3 off my desktop, and it sounds fine. I upload it and play it off the site, and it is definitely lower and I wonder why D's voice sounds more bassy. Anyone got any ideas? Where else should I be streaming stuff from?

Continue . . .

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Guess the Party!

I won't say whose campaign spot I worked on today. I won't say what peppermint-crunching-on-the-body-mic candidate I worked with. But given the following two comments I heard from the campaign staff members about the rain which came today, in the midst of one of the longest droughts we have ever had, when 71 of our state's 100 counties are in the federal government's highest classification for drought, when there has been talk (that I can't confirm right now on the web) that only a month or two of water remains in the resevoirs and nobody knows what to do about it, when some folks are wondering what this means for future water use and what we can do long-term to provide for humanity in a world where weather is becoming more erratic, see if you can guess what the party affiliation was.

Comment 1: Golf course needs it.

Comment 2: My husband and I bought a boat and then moved here and were like, 'The lakes are drying up.'

I swear on the carpeted expandable shelf kit for my Rock 'n' Roller cart, something that gets me through when nothing else does, that these were the only two comments the rain prompted among campaign staffers today. I listened out for more and heard none.

Continue . . .

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Dancing With a Star

It was at some point on the first day, the setup day, that I heard that MF and JP were going to be there. I called my dance partner and left a message.

“They’re having these auditions here and MF and JP are the judges, and all you gotta do is read some portion of some script -- all the info is online.” I carefully read the web address in the message.

My dance partner has been in local theater productions, has worked as an extra and a key extra, had a small part in the TV series DC.

I didn’t get a response to that message. I imagined my dance partner rushing to get ready for the audition, too busy to call me back. I wanted to not know when she would show up -- to just see her walk in the door and blow everyone away with what I know she’s got. Here was a chance to have her in something I was also working on, and with MF and JP as well!

The next day the judges started seeing contestants. Before each one entered, the producer would pass out papers to the judges showing the next contestant’s answers to his screeming questions. “Please note item number 7,” the producer might say, “which says that he sweats profusely.”

One contestant had stated, on his papers, that he has a rare form of diabetes involving kidney failure, and needs to drink water continually.

“You have to drink 3 gallons of water every day?” the judges asked him. He concurred. “You must be just constantly pissing,” they said. The contestant kind of nodded but said nothing, and I wondered if he were handling it some way he didn’t want to mention, like maybe with diapers. The judges harped on that for a while; it was then said that the guy was also an ironman triathlete; the guy read his part and wasn’t very good; they let him down easily and he left.

In his absence, the judges kept on about his disease, speculating on how he could compete in a triathalon if he had to pee all the time. I wondered, to myself, if maybe doing extreme exercise, and sweating, was the only time he could get a break from his constant peeing. The liquid was needed elsewhere, on the skin, so it could go there instead of to his bladder. You know, like how ADHD people finally get to focus and connect with the world, in a sense, when they are in an environment that reflects the spasms going on in their brains, like when playing a video game or performing search and rescue during a hurricane.

MF explained the name of the disease, pointing out that the prefix “nephr-” means “kidney.” Looking at her website, one can see that she knows about world health matters and diseases.

In the random conversations that occurred during the days, it was MF who had the assessments and background information to offer. While talking about relationships with JP, she said that she didn’t know what was up with younger folks these days. “I work on these shows with these young girls, and it’s amazing, they have nothing to talk about. Their minds are empty.”

JP said, “Plus, they’re crazy.”

MF said, “Well, men like crazy women.”

I was putting a mic in her orange sequined blazer at the time, and I said, “I tend to go for the crazy ones,” not even looking up from her blazer.

“Well, there you go, even [Elrond],” she said.

Another contestant had written on his papers that he loved architecture. After a series of contestants who had little to say for themselves, who got through the audition just by being cute (MF told one, “You can’t just vamp your way through this”), MF took the opportunity to ask him who his favorite architect was. When he named his first and second favorites (names I have not heard of), she nodded, smiling, as if seeing something new in a person -- knowledge of architecture that rivals hers, perhaps? She said, at another time, that she was an avid reader.

Another contestant mentioned something that he had “learned in social studies,” and MF said dryly, “At least they’re still teaching social studies.”

At the end of this first day of seeing contestants, I called my dance partner again and left another message. I said look, they’re doing this thing here and not enough contestants are showing up. They need people. I know you can bang this out. If you do it, you may see me in the room, but don’t worry about saying “Hi” to me. Just do your thing for the judges.

But I harbored a fantasy. What if they asked her about her ballroom dancing, and what if she said, “My dance parter is right over there?”

“[Elrond]?!?!” they would say. Surely, they would make us dance together. I would take off the headphones and leave the faders set in some lowish, safe position and go out there and hope I would look confident enough, happy enough, while struggling to overcome stiffness accumulated from standing all day, and to remember moves that we have not practiced for weeks because we’ve both been so busy trying to earn a living. No doubt, MF would have something to say about our presentation, would have notes for me in particular, because she has spent her life dealing with these matters of poise and stage presence. I would probably not feel that I had impressed her and the others, but I could at least say something like, “I did mambo for MF today, and this is what she said about my hip movement . . .”

I had decided I would suggest mambo because there was room for it on the small “dance floor” they had laid down for the contestants to stand on, and because I had heard a nice slow mambo in the music selections that the producer would play from his iPod during the down times.

That night I called my dance partner again, and this time she answered. She said it sounded like a neat thing to do, but she was really busy and had 5 hours of lessons to teach the next (and last) day of auditioning, and there was so much to do regarding home repairs and other matters.

Okay, I said, I understand. But, I told her, these folks are here, it’s right here in town, and I’ve seen them give a gold ticket to (that is, pass on to the next level of auditioning which will be in New Orleans a few months from now -- the second round of the ”tournament,” so to speak) people who have as much talent overall as you have in your little finger; I’ve seen you do so much better without even trying. But do what you want, and I won’t say any more about it.

She said she’d think about it.

On the morning of the second and last day, as we were about to start, the producer said that there were only six contestants waiting outside. I called my dance partner again, and she answered. I said, “Look, I had said I wouldn’t hassle you about this again, but I just wanted to say, there are only six people here now, so there might not even be much of a wait.”

She said that she had awakened with a migraine and couldn’t keep food down, but she’d do her best. And she said she had talked to her husband the previous night and he had said, “Where is the audition,” and she said, “in Durham,” and he had said, “well you silly, go and do it then!”

“Thank goodness for my coaches,” she said. “That’s what I’m talking about,” I said.

We went through the morning, seeing the contestants as they came. We had lunch at 2pm, and on the way through the hotel lobby to our lunch area, I scanned the upcoming contestants in the waiting area. My dance parter was not there.

After lunch, I did see her there, filling out her forms. I spoke to her. She was on low energy, mellow, quiet, unassuming.

The first batch after lunch were more of the cute ones who had hardly prepared, had nothing to say for themselves, and couldn’t act at all. By now, our judges had acquired a little bit of edge and would say, “It’s clear you have no experience, and if you really want to be an actor, then take some classes and see how that goes. And good luck. Stay in school.”

(My dance partner told me later that some of these contestants came out of the room crying. One of them said, “How can she shatter my dreams like that?” and my dance parter said to her, “Nobody can shatter your dreams. I’ve done this a hundred times and had my guts torn out. It’s the only way you learn to get better.”)

Eventually, the door opened, and it was my dance partner who stepped through, into the lights. She still had that low-energy demeanor. She took her place on the mark in the middle of the room, and MF said right away, “It says here you are a ballroom dance instructor.”

“Yes,” my dance partner said.

“Dance with JP,” MF and AZ said. “Can you dance with him?”

My dance partner nodded cheerily, and I was nodding as well in my shadowy corner behind the tent-like chimeras. She has been making beginning male dancers look and feel good for years.

“Nothing hard. Not tango,” said MF, again knowing something about a subject. Tango is indeed one of the harder ballroom dances.

JP was crossing the room -- no urging needed here for a star to do something when he’s on camera already.

“We’ll do a box,” my dance partner said. “So, come forward on your left foot.” She back led him, keeping her head up, her poise that MF would approve of. JP was looking down, watching his feet. The other judges hooted and clapped, and then JP took the lead, breaking out of the box and turning my dance partner in quasi-swing, stepping back too far on his rock-steps and letting his arm get too extended. My dance partner made it look good though, doing what she knows how to do, her eyes stabbing along their momentary sightlines as she spun, her long curls bouncing.

JP started to go back to his seat, then returned to the dance floor and said, “Can you jitterbug?”

“Sure!” my dance partner said. I have never exactly jitterbugged with her. Or shagged, really. She says that it’s all the same, just swing. JP started leading her in something that was pretty much swing, and there were more turns and spins, and then it was over.

“Wow, she really can dance,” he said, returning to his seat.

MF said, “It also says you run a non-profit acting troupe that goes to assisted living homes?”

My dance partner talked about that. MF said, “As someone who has had a mother in that situation, thank you for bringing joy into those lives.”

It was time for my dance parter to show what she had prepared. She spread papers around on the floor, and I thought “Uh-oh, she’s going to be one of those that moves around.” We had just the boom mic for the contestants, and the boom operator was up on a ladder to keep himself and shadows out of the sightlines of the four cameras. Being up there meant that he could not move laterally very much. Some contestants had walked out of his boom range and had to be heard off-mic.

She was doing a scene from this movie about a rock star, the scene where one of his girlfriends is on drugs and becomes furious with him. She started sitting on the floor with those papers around her, and our boom guy had to lower the boom much more than normal. This risked getting it in to the criss-crossing camera angles, but he could see the monitors from where he was sitting on the ladder, so he could see if he were dipping in anywhere.

My dance partner started with her manner confused and quiet, her pale Irish face wondering but not inquisitive, like a child’s. How does it affect parents when they see their grown children, as actors, revert to childhood like this? She stood up and came to my side of the room, off mic, and was now paranoid, strung out, her voice cracking near some nervous breaking point, warning some imagined person that the rock star would not care about her; then she flew across the room to the other side, again off mic, and screamed at the rock star in the way that it sounds like the throat is being torn. It was the only audio that distorted in the whole two days.

I had not been able to see her face, and now I really wish I could see the video of it, but this may have to wait until the show comes out, and even then, who knows if they’ll use it.

The judges were quiet for a few moments, and then AZ started saying things like, “You were really well prepared . . . I thought it was a little over-the-top, but has potential . . . as far as voting on whether you should move to the next level, hmmm, I’m not sure . . . it seemed a little crazy . . .”

The authoritative MF said, “JM would drive any woman crazy.”

AZ said, “Well let’s see how the others vote.”

MF said, “I say absolutely yes.” It was the most positive response anyone got from any judge the whole time.

JP waffled like AZ. It was like they were judging my dance parter by different standards. They had given the gold ticket to others who showed “potential” or “could be directed.” If they thought her performance was a little crazy, couldn’t they ask her to do it again, tone it down a little, see if she can take direction?

No, she got no second chance. I had practically begged her to come here and do this when she had other things to do, necessary things with a clear goal that she was certain to achieve. She had changed her priorities for the day, put her heart into this, and now two of the judges had gone all “New York Times Critic” on her, acting like exacting standards had been theirs all along.

She had been right in her first reaction to my messages, which was to blow this off and get her errands done.

I forget how the two guys actually voted. At least one begrudgingly voted yes, because I recall them saying half-heartedly, “Congratulations. You got a call back,” and AZ handing out the ticket to her.

My dance partner said “Thank you,” and stepped up to take her ticket. As she went back to the stage area and bent down to pick up her papers, JP said, “Nice job. Thanks for coming in.” And my dance partner said, with a little crack in her voice, “Thank you too, it’s a pleasure, I really admire your work.”

When she had left, the producer talked it over with the judges. They talked about how, with some direction, she could be someone who might have a chance. They shrugged. I was thinking, “You knuckleheads, you don’t know what to do with someone who is good; who may, with a little more focus, really surpass the acting skills of any of these judges; someone who has also demonstrated a practical side by employing herself and earning a living, who has a college degree, who took the time to learn ballroom dance so she wouldn’t have to support herself by being a secretary, who has put much effort into a long-term relationship which has turned into a very solid marriage, who has built a following of real friends and clients . . .”

Oh wait, those are real accomplishments. Hollywood just wants someone they can use, who gets the ratings, who gets a few laughs, and who cares if the laughs are the malicious kind.

On the phone later, my dance partner told me they had made her wait for four hours before her audition. I had not expected that to happen. One of her dance students had cancelled that day, so that was good, but the next one she had to cancel. Even with that, after the audition she had five more hours of teaching, then grocery shopping to do.

We were talking as she was driving home. It was almost 10 o’clock and I had just finished my day and packed up all the gear and put it in my car. For me, it had been a 13 hour day.

I said that I couldn’t believe the judges had acted uncertain. I told her she was easily in the top three who auditioned the whole time, and they gave out maybe eight or so total callbacks over the two days. The other two top contestants, in my view, were a student at the local university who acts in a soap opera there and, on her second try at her audition (after getting some direction!) had made herself really cry over a lost lover; and a woman from a town to the west who is in a semi-professional improv comedy group and gave a fairly original-seeming interpretation to a scene she did, though I don’t remember now why I thought that.

My dance parter said it was all political. The actors behind the desk were just trying to prove something because “they’re all washed up,” she said.

“But MF is on top of her stuff,” I said. “And she gave you an absolutely positive ‘yes.’”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not gonna think about it. If they call me, I’ll think about it then.”

“Would you go to New Orleans for the second round?”

She sighed. “I’ll just have to see.” She had practical matters to think about.

I guess it gets even more political in the later round, as in all reality shows. I can’t wish this nonsense on her. It’s like MF said in the previous post. If there’s anything else you can do that will make you happy, then do that.

“At least you got to dance with JP,” I said.

“Yeah, that was awesome.”

“It sounds like you really admire him.” I had not paid attention to him back in the SNL days, or at any time.

“Yeah, I liked his stuff. He was hilarious.”

So there was that at least.

She was arriving home. I could hear her dog barking in the background on her phone.

“Are you gonna celebrate?” I said.

“I’m gonna eat some nachos and go to bed,” she said.

Continue . . .

Thursday, October 11, 2007

"If there's anything else you can do that will make you happy, then do that."

This was advice given by actress MF today to an auditioner who had said he was in a pre-med program. She told him that she had been acting since she was a child, and when she was in her teens and thinking about going into it as a profession, she had sought the council of an actor friend. That was what he had told her, because “It’s too hard to do, if there's something else you can do.”

This auditioner’s reading of a part had been only slightly more lively than the average high school book report.

“You are in school to be a doctor?” said actor JP. He, MF, and AZ are the judges for this touring casting reality show in which members of the general public audition for parts in a movie (key extra parts, or small supporting roles). This is a pilot for now, may become a real show later.

The auditioner nodded yes.

“Well, I’m not going to say what you think I’m going to say next,” said JP. I had heard the producers on our show saying that JP, MF, AZ have been, in previous cities on the tour, too nice. None of them have the grumpy, harsh critic persona like judges on some other reality shows.

JP told the student he needed a lot more experience in acting, but if he had the drive and was willing to take classes, then he shouldn’t let anything stop him. Then JP went ahead and, perhaps remembering recent coaching by a producer who wanted him to be tougher, said “Really, you should stick to medicine.”

When auditioners were out of the room, the judges talked amongst themselves about their personal lives. “You know, I’ve never been to a strip club,” said JP. MF turned her pristine head to him and said, “Well J, I’m really proud of you,” deadpan.

“Let’s go tonight,” said AZ.

JP talked about a relationship where the woman was a young sexy wild person, and the older male actor decided he needed to quit dealing with her. "The thing is, she wants a sugar daddy,” said JP.

“They all think we’re rich,” said MF.

MF really knows her stuff. Someone was asking who is the president of a radio conglomerate, and she knew. She knew references and speeches from famous movies, old movies, the good stuff, not recent kitsch. I didn't catch all of the story, but her current name she adopted from a character in an old movie who had risen up against adversity and fought for social justice.

One auditioner had written on his form that he does Karate.

"Can you show us a kata?" said MF.

The guy went through some motions, then stopped and said his pants weren't loose enough for the kicks.

"I know," said MF. "I took Kung Fu for several years."

JP said to one male auditioner, "I like how you filled in the answers for bra and cup size, saying 'I don't have breasts.'"

(I think these measurements are requested on the audition form for costume fitting later, if the auditioner is accepted to the next level.)

"Well, I don't," said the auditioner. "Is that a prerequisite?"

"No." "No." said JP and AZ, looking across MF at each other. "That's not why we're here."

"It's why I'm here," said MF.

"Mmm," someone muttered, and it was quiet for a second or two before the conversation moved on.

I first saw MF last night, after the horrendous day of setting up the audio equipment as described in the previous post. I was leaving the hotel, and as I entered the space between outer and inner n doors, I first saw the short dark-haird sub-producer of this show who is bossed around by the producers as if she were a PA, coming in through the outside door. She was smiling and has one of those haircuts with longer hair tapering to a point about neck length in front of her ears, and shorter around the back like a boy’s. I had not met her personally yet, but I nodded to her as a familiar face around the set; then I saw the woman in front of her who had just let the outer door nearly close on this sub-producer, who made eye contact with me and then looked back at the sub-producer giving orders in her sort of gripy, nasally voice. This second woman’s turning head was perfect, a sculpture to be viewed from all sides: skin pure white, noise pointed, hair coiffed to immobility but in a way that sets the standard for how it should be done -- not like your local newscaster’s, but with a level of virtuosity that returns, at its height, to a level of ease and naturalness. It’s like MP playing piano, that coif is.

They had a makeup artist, but MF did her own in her room before coming down today, and again, she looked like a pristine doll. She was patient with me clipping the mic to her orange sequined blazer, but I sensed that she may not want me to clip the transmitter pack to her waist. Women in tight jeans tend not to like that. In fact, clipping the transmitter pack to a woman’s waist usually causes more consternation than my putting the microphone itself in, or near, her breasts. Most of the women I do this to are regular folks who have not been in a video before and are completely unprepared for the experience. They have spent the morning making themselves up a little more than usual, preparing for the camera; then here comes the audio guy dropping a mic cable down their shirt and tucking it into their pants waistline. And if they’ve got a roll of fat there, it takes me extra time to get the cable under that roll and into the waistline, and I have to push against the roll in back to get the transmitter close enough to their pants waist to clip it there. By the time I’m done, they’ve given up a certain amount of dignity, like maybe they’ve been to the doctor or something, and they’re all the more malleable for the director.

But I have learned, starting with PH a few years ago, that woman actors in reality TV like to clip the transmitter on themselves, so when it came time to do this, I said, “M, should I clip this to your waist, or do you--”

“I’ll do it,” she said, and took it from me.

I got her and AZ miced, and then the producers said they wanted the mics hidden, so I had to go back and re-plant them inside the shirts and blazers. All three of these actors were cool with that, not complaining. And their clothes were quiet, so it all sounded pretty good.

MF was totally cognizant of her transmitter. Whenever there was a break, her transmitter was the one that went off, turned off by her, to avoid any possible sticky situation. And she knows audio -- when an auditioner came in with his cell phone to use as a prop, she spoke up right away and told him to turn it off. “It makes a beeping noise on the mics,” she said, “even if you have the ringer off. It’s the radio waves.”

Amen, sister! I’ve never had anyone who goes on camera understand this before. Usually I’m saying, “Can you power down your cell phone,” and they’re saying, “it’s on vibrate,” and I’m saying, “we can hear that, can you power it down?” and they’re saying, “okay now the ringer is off,”and I’m saying, “no, we may still hear it, it’s not the sound by the radio waves it emits, the mic picks them up and makes a chirping noise,” and they still don’t get it.

MF is very down-to-earth, sensible, professional, nice. JP is also very nice -- he walked in, walked past boom operator S and myself and said, “Hi guys, how’re you doing?” sensing, I guess, by our appearance, that we were some of the “guys who get this thing done.” I did not recognize him, not being an SNL afficionado, but he had makeup on so I guessed it was him. And AZ is very nice too. All are easy to work with and good people.

Continue . . .

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Tomorrow We'll See If This Works

We’ve got 4 cameras, 2 audio tracks each, for a total of 8 tracks. We’ve got 1 boom mic on the contestant and 3 wireless mics on the judges. Contestants will cycle through all day, one at a time, and the judges will trash or praise them.

The 3 wireless systems will enter the mixer in channels 1-3.

The boom mic will input in channel 4

The direct outs for channels 1-4, post fader, will be sent to 4 isolated tracks on cameras. (This uses 4 of the available 8 camera tracks.)

The 3 wireless mics will be panned Left and sent to Left Master. This will go out to another "wireless mix" track on a camera (1 more camera track used, total 5 now). I’ve been told that this mix track of the wirelesses is what the editors will probably use for the wireless audio, because it’s easier for them to use this one track than to deal with the 3 isolated tracks. But if one mic on this mix is screwing up the whole mix, then they’ll go to the isolated tracks.

If it were me editing, I’d want to use the isolated tracks only, because even if the 3 wirelesses are behaving properly, there will be phasing problems between them on the mix track. But the production may not have the money and time for its editors to deal with the isolated tracks unless they really need to, or they may not care about the quality that much, or they may not know that phasing could be an issue.

The boom will be panned Right and sent to Right Master. This output will be split via y-cable and be sent to both tracks on the Talent Camera. (2 more tracks used, total 7 now)

The Mono Out (mono mix of everything) from the mixer will go to the 8th track on a camera. Also, all mics will go to an Aux which will feed a y-cable which will send one feed to the camera operator's intercom system, and another feed to a small mixer which will step the audio down to mic level so that I can feed a second-rate wireless mic system which will substitute for first-rate wireless headsets for the director and producer.

Each camera will be fed by 2 or more 50’ XLR cables (for the two tracks/camera) joined to an ENG duplex cable which will attach to the camera itself.

It’s not enough just to send audio to the cameras. I have to be able to listen to the audio on the cameras. So, I need to bring all their headphone outs (a stereo output for each camera making a total of 8) back to the mixer and input them to 8 more channels.

To begin this link, the ENG duplex cable has a mini stereo return feed from the headphone out on the camera. At the other end of the ENG duplex cable, this mini stereo headphone return will go through the following adapters: stereo mini female to stereo 1/4” male; stereo 1/4” female to female turnaround; stereo 1/4” male to XLR male. It’s got more simultaneous male/female linkages than Behind the Green Door.

A third 50’ XLR cable for each camera will continue the headphone return back to the mixer where it will go into a XLR female to 1/4” stereo male adapter; then into a 1/4” female stereo to Left/Right split TS males, which each feed two more inputs on the mixer (8 total).

These 8 inputs of audio on the mixer will be what I use to monitor the audio on the cameras. They do not get recorded to anything.

The wireless tracks, isoated and mix, will go to Subgroup 1. The boom tracks will go to Subgroup 2.

On the Control Room/Phones selector, I will listen to Subgroups 1 and 2 and fade up the returns from whatever camera tracks I want to listen to at any moment. Now that’s power.

I will calibrate meters as follows. I’ll use my tone generator to send tone to all cameras. Left and Right Master will be set to Unity. 0 dB VU on the mixer will equal -20 dB on the cameras. Then I set all return input trims and faders, and all subgroups, to Unity. Then I set the meters so show the levels of the return inputs, and I set each camera headphone monitor level until its level on the Mackie meter reads at 0 dB VU.

Or, actually, I may have to turn the Trims way down for these camera monitor returns because they are really meant for headphones and may be pretty hot.

In any case, the point is that when the camera is getting -20 dB tone level, the meters for the returning monitor audio read 0 VU. This way, I can double check on the levels on the camera meters by checking the return levels on any return whose fader is set to Unity.

Got that? If it works, I’ll raise your children for you.

Continue . . .