Culture Guerrilla

I’m really not a culture snob, or not much of one.

I don’t want to have my favorite things be obscure, it’s just that I have obscure tastes and enthusiasms. I actually get quite excited when things I like get popular, since there aren’t that many things that do. “My Name Is Earl” was the probably the most recent pop phenom that I endorsed with full fervor, but that’s since bit the dust, so I’m feeling ungrounded when it comes to TV of late.

That being said, I do have to admit that few things have made me grieve more for the soul of my Nation than those sad, dark nights when I forgot to take reading material to the gym, and realized that the only things left lying around the treadmills or spin cycles were piles of celebrity magazines. I picked a couple of them up thinking “Well, how bad could they be? They will certainly make the workout go faster, right?” Nope. They were far worse than I thought they might be, and it felt like time stopped as my brain seized in the face of the overwhelming vapidness, crassness and stupidity that filled them.

So it occurred to me that maybe I should try to shine a small candle of intelligence and taste into the cesspool of celebrity idiocy and reality show freaks that the gym magazine rack offers. I started by leaving my copies of The Economist magazine when I finished with it. That’s a good spot smarter than the latest issue of (I Wish They Were Friends of) Us or People (Who Would Ignore Me If I Saw Them on The Street), I figured.

And then I stepped it up a notch: I left my copy of the 33 1/3 series of books about Steely Dan’s Aja album. It’s a little, interesting book about a big, important album, filled with taste, style and intelligence. I figure if anything can repulse the forces of fake, shallow, hebetude that our pop culture inflicts upon us, then Aja most certainly must be that thing. In fact, the world as a whole would be a better place if more people asked themselves What Would Don and Walt Do?, rather than trying to figure out how to get reality shows by stuffing their uteri with babies or pretending to launch the ones that already fell out of them into space.

While I haven’t actually seen anyone reading the Aja book yet, I have spotted it in a variety of different places next to a variety of different pieces of equipment, so it’s being carried around the gym, if not actually digested. But as long as it’s there, I will feel good thinking that somebody, someday, opted to read about the chord progressions in “Deacon Blues” rather than reading about some couple of simpering idiots called Branjovi or Catapelt or Benjaweesie, because the pop culture media assumes our attention spans are too short to actually read both of their empty, meaningless names in their entirety.

Okay. So maybe I am a culture snob.

Greatest Album Cover Ever?

Miles Davis and Horns, a disc released in 1956, culled from a pair of sessions in the early ’50s, and featuring the first recorded collaboration between Miles and Sonny Rollins. Which is interesting, but not quite as much so as the album cover, a truly bizarre (especially for its era, especially for the music it presents) illustration, in a shocking color scheme, that takes several viewings before you really figure out what you’re looking at. Then, once you get your head around the image (legs!), you get to have it exploded again when someone informs you that the cover was drawn by cartoonist Don Martin, a decade before he made his mark with Mad magazine. While Martin’s distinctive “hinged” bodies were already fully formed at this point (a great touch, to me: all the runners’ wrists hinge vertically, except for #21 in the front, whose hands splay out to his sides), he apparently left the sound effects up to Miles and company, since there’s nary a FOINSAPP, POIT, SIZAFITZ or GISHGLORK to be seen (or heard) on this album. Pity, though I still consider this be a (silent) masterpiece of modern graphic design.

Food, (Less Than) Glorious Food

Two things about it . . .

1. Where has all the Puffed Rice gone? Long time passing. Where has all the Puffed Rice gone? Long time ago. I’m a huge fan of this cheap, filling, low-calorie, low-taste breakfast cereal, either in the big red Quaker boxes, or the generic bags of it that most grocery stores carry. But I’ve had a problem lately: for some reason, the two grocery stores where I shop have stopped carrying any kind of Puffed Rice. So I need to know if you can still find it at your grocery store, or whether I need to find some secret online source for bulk ordering. And if it’s all gone, then I need to know why. Explosion at the puffing plant? Rice weevils run amok? This mystery must be solved.

2. I’ve written about my love for diners before, and have a rotation of several in the Capital Region that I hit on regular basis. My standard order is a grease group masterpiece comprised of a grilled cheese sandwich on rye bread, with a side of link sausages. There’s a stunning variety of experiences possible within that seemingly simple order: different tastes and textures of sausage, different thicknesses of bread, whether it is seedless or seeded rye, how melted the cheese is, what type of cheese is used (pasteurized American cheese food product is the proper ingredient, though it’s up to you as to whether you use the orange or the white kind), how dark the bread is grilled, whether there are sides provided with the sandwich (I deduct many points if you put cole slaw and/or a pickle on my plate and either of them touches my sandwich, and I will eat potato chips if you give them to me, but I am happier if you do not), etc. etc. etc. You can go to the same diner two days in a row and have a completely different grilled cheese and sausage experiences. So I am happy to report that I’ve had a couple of nearly definitive breakfast experiences over the past couple of weeks at the Metro 20 Diner in Guilderland: thick, seeded rye, grilled dark, oozy white American cheese, no chips, no slaw, no pickle, and two firm links of mildly-flavored sausage that crunch when you bite into them. Bravo!

Bad Blogger

You’d think that the unusual confluence of being a college employee, parent of a college student, and college grad student myself would give me all sorts of interesting perspectives and insights into the experience of higher education in America with which to fill my blog. And, actually, you’d be right in thinking such things. The only problem is, that combination creates such a strain on both time and mental resources that all of those perspectives and insights generally stay stuck in my head, since it’s hard to get excited about sitting in front of my blog admin page during those rare moments when I have some time on my hands. So sorry to be a crappy correspondent of late. It’ll all come gushing out at some point.

In other news: I wish I didn’t know how to spell plantar fasciitis. It feels as bad as it sounds.

In other, other news: the girl is home from college this weekend for the first time. It feels as good as it sounds.

In other, other, other news: Go Marcia’s Twinkies! Go Nico’s Rockies! Boo, major market behemoths! (I’m looking at you, Yankees and Dodgers).

Hello, Shelter Island

Not the lovely spot between the North and South Forks of Long Island (where I went to summer camp, decades and decades ago), but rather another meteorite on the surface of Mars, spotted by Rover Opportunity, which is checking out all sorts of amazingly cool stuff on its way to Crater Endeavor. Opportunity’s sister rover, Spirit, is likely never going to roll again, bogged down as she is in high sand in the Troy site near the Home Plate Plateau, so it’s delightful to have at least one of our friendly neighborhood robots making good time and distance, and finding excellent stuff while doing it, on the surface of Barsoom. It awes me to see another world looking like something you might encounter in the deserts of the American southwest (only 200 degrees colder). Huttah, Opportunity!

Two Bits

1. I spent Thursday and Friday at SUNY-Potsdam for a conference of the SUNY Auxiliary Services Association. The campus was truly lovely, a well-designed, red brick complex with many excellent public spaces. The food service and retail operations were also excellent there. It’s a different business model there than the one I work with at UAlbany, but they pull it off well, and I’d be very comfortable recommending that students investigate this lovely Northern Tier school. The drive up through the Adirondacks was beautiful, too.

2. The race to 100 has been derailed for the Beloved Royals, although the Acquired Nationals did break the barrier of memorable mediocrity. The Beloved Royals have been having a great September, pulling back up above .400, climbing out of the American League basement, and managing to grab their 63rd victory, the one that precludes the 100 loss season. At the same time, Marcia’s Twinkies got red hot and have closed to within a couple of games of the Tigers for the American League Central title. The Twinkies have only two opponents left until the end of the season: the Tigers, and the Beloved Royals, with Cy Young contender Zack Greinke pitching twice against them. Because these are the Beloved Royals, and the Curse of Joaquin Andujar still holds, they should manage to somehow muck things up for themselves and the Twinkies. Watch this space for disappointment. Every year.

Long Live Ubu Roi!

Pere Ubu is a fat toad. His wife, Mere Ubu, is a grotesque harpy. They are French . . .

Pere Ubu are (also) a band from Cleveland named after the protagonist of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 proto-surrealist/absurdist play Ubu Roi. Pere Ubu (the band) have issued 14 challenging and rewarding studio albums since their formation in 1975, the latest of which, “Long Live Pere Ubu!” features studio versions of songs from Bring Me The Head of Ubu Roi, a 2008 theatrical adaptation of Jarry’s original work written by Pere Ubu (the band) singer-songwriter-producer David Thomas, who also performed the role of Pere Ubu (the character), while the other members of Pere Ubu (the band) acted cast roles and danced the choreography. Got that?

Pere Ubu is the right hand man to Venceslas, King of Poland. Mere Ubu questions his ambition. Ubu kills the King, grabs the throne and loots the Kingdom.

There are certain things you expect to hear on a Pere Ubu album: EML synthesizer squeals and squiggles, rumbling rhythms dancing with jagged guitars, David Thomas’ very distinctive voice. These things are all delivered in generous, high-quality doses on “Long Live Pere Ubu!”, which also features some truly wonderful melodies jostling about in the clattering, churning cauldron of sounds that the band crafts so very well. The present incarnation of Pere Ubu is a mature and confident one, with bassist Michele Temple, synthesizer/theremin player Robert Wheeler and drummer Steve Mehlman all joining founding member Thomas in Ubu during a period of churn book-ending the release of 1993’s Raygun Suitcase. Guitarist Keith Moline began working with Thomas at around the same time as one of the Two Pale Boys, Thomas’ parallel group, though he did not join Ubu proper until 2002, making his recording debut with the band on 2006’s Why I Hate Women. While “Look-Back Bores” (TM: The Fall Online Forum) often express the opinion that works created by founding or formative members are somehow of greater significance than those made by latter day members, the core players on “Long Live Pere Ubu!” have been Ubus for a whole lot longer than any of the other earlier Ubus were, and they’ve reached a level of cohesion, control and confidence that only comes with time and persistence.

Double-crossed, Ubu’s lackey Cpt. Ordura enlists the Czar of Russia to get revenge: War!

There are certain things that you don’t expect to hear on a Pere Ubu album: lead voices other than David Thomas’ (although Michele Temple did take a lead on the last album, so that’s no completely unprecedented), skittery post-Aphex Twin electronica, and belching, among other items. But these things, too, appear on “Long Live Pere Ubu!”, and they add a whole new dimension of other-wordliness. While the first voice you hear on the album is Thomas’, intoning Jarry’s opening word of Ubu Roi, “Merdre!” (a word play on a vulgar French term, roughly translatable in English at “Shittr!,” which former guitarist Tom Herman once sang behind Thomas on the title track of Pere Ubu’s debut album, The Modern Dance), we don’t hear from him again until after a processed, alien-sounding voice warbles “Uuuuubuuuu” through martial album opener “Ubu Overture,” and then “Song of the Grocery Police“  commences with Mere Ubu, voiced by Sarah Jane Morris, asking her husband: “Are you content with your lot?” Morris is a force of nature on this album, her expressive, dusky contralto a perfect foil for Thomas, and well-deserving her album cover credit. The best songs on the album find Morris (who once sang the low parts to Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto parts in The Communards) and Thomas engaged in animated musical dialog, their voices intertwining in one of the most fascinating and unique vocal ballets that I’ve heard since The Residents parted ways with Molly Harvey. These are not traditionally pretty voices, but they are magnificent in their power, nuance, and emotional impact. Other new elements provide a more visceral, gut-based punch, especially “Less Said The Better,” a beats and belching duet between guest laptop wizard Gagarin and Steve Mehlman. It really needs to be heard to be believed.

Ubu’s Polish Army is defeated. He flees. He falls asleep in a cave. Mere Ubu, forced out of Warsaw by Prince Buggerlas and an angry mob, seeks refuge in the same cave.

Thomas’ stage notes for the theatrical production of Bring Me The Head of Ubu Roi reference the pataphysical cave, which we see when we close our eyes: “Dimly seen, things are happening in the walls of the Cave: machinations of voodoo science, weird dimensions, inscrutable depths. At the mouth of the The Cave is a shadow play, grotesque and flat.” (Pataphysics was a term coined by Jarry to parody the theory and methods of modern science; he defined it as: “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.”) In Thomas’ framing device, the Cave provides the depth and meaning behind the puppet show unfolding in front of it, and it is in the songs set in and around the Cave that “Long Live Pere Ubu!” reaches its greatest heights, especially on the atmospheric and dramatic Thomas-Morris duet “The Story So Far.” Pere Ubu’s music has always seemed to be about tapping inscrutable depths and weird dimensions, as traditional rock and roll instrumentation and methods are mutated, subverted, cut apart, and reassembled in new forms, that are other-wordly and multi-dimensional, though still clearly rooted in deep-seated, resonant cultural memes, moods and meanings. Pere Ubu’s work has been decribed as “avant garage,” a place where high-brow and low-brow concepts meet, shake hands, and get down to tearing up engines and spraying coolant all over the walls. This career-long proclivity seems to have reached a new pinnacle with “Long Live Pere Ubu!”, as some of the group’s most intellectually and creatively exotic, extravagant, and extreme music is deployed to tell the tale of a base, vile boor and his harridan spouse. The political spectrum is a horseshoe, where extreme left-wing behavior and extreme right-wing behavior manifest in essentially the same ways, indistinguishable from each other to the victims suffering under them. Perhaps art and culture are similar: the most extremely high-brow art and the most extremely low-brow art may well be indistinguishable from each other. I suspect that Pere Ubu’s members intuit that, and have thereby found the sweet spot where those distinctions become meaningless. It’s a jaw-dropping spot to sit, watch and listen.

Buggerlas drives them from the cave. They sail back to France.

A few years ago, Thomas sang a couple of traditional songs on Rogue’s Gallery, Hal Willner’s great collection of pirate songs and sea shanties, and the nautical conclusion of Ubu’s tale captures the queasy swagger and bawdy fun of those songs from the days of sailing ships. There’s probably a moral to be gleaned from the fact that Pere and Mere Ubu get to return home, largely unscathed, from their butcherous, treacherous, odious adventures abroad, but Thomas and company choose not to deliver it to us, and the open/non-ended conclusion of this epic work adds a delightful final twist of the psychic shiv between the listeners’ ears, as they leave the Pataphysical Cave and return to the normal world about them. Or to France. Or to Cleveland, the archetypal center of the Pere Ubu universe, which has also featured from its earliest days key collaborators Paul Hamann (engineering, at Suma Studios in Painesville, Ohio) and John Thompson (graphic design), both of whom return for “Long Live Pere Ubu!”, which is being released on Hearthan Records, also home to the group’s first singles. There’s a look, a sound, and a feel to Pere Ubu’s works that’s impossible to match, and I’m glad that with all the new elements they’ve added to their already impressive palette, they didn’t drop or alter those core concepts and conceits. “Long Live Pere Ubu!” is one of the most audacious pieces of new music that I’ve heard in ages. I can’t recommend enough that you visit Ubu Projex to order your own copy. (Mine arrived in a hand-written package with Steve Mehlman’s return address on it, like we were old buds swapping mix CD’s or something. You can’t get that personal touch ordering from Amazon, now, can you?)

Note: Italicized texts are taken from the liner notes of “Long Live Pere Ubu!”, copyright 2009 Ubu Projex/Hearthan Records.

The Apple iFail, 3rd Generation

I was raised by polite folks and taught that if I didn’t have anything nice to say about someone, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. Unless I had something mean to say which was also funny, in which case it could be shared, at which point we would all say “Ooooo, that’s mean,” as we laughed hysterically.

Even though funny criticism and meanness is allowed, I have generally avoided it throughout my career as a print and internet critic. I believe that bad press is better than no press, so if something I was out to review wasn’t very good, I would generally opt to just not write about it.I generally had a good enough sense of what I was about to see that I could avoid things that were likely to be just outright bad. (Because of this philosophical bent, I find it alternately amusing and appalling that I have been the king of bands that suck on the Internet for many years now. Here’s the test: Google “worst rock band ever” or any variant thereof, and the top result should be from my website).

Sometimes, though, I stumble across things that are so bad, and so offensive to critical sensibilities, that I feel violated by having either spent money or time on them, and in such cases, I do feel that it is in the public good to warn people off so they don’t make the same mistakes. Take, for instance, the “Jethro Tull: Aqualung” book in the generally well-done 33 1/3 series. This is one of my favorite albums ever, so I was very eager to read a thorough critical analysis of it when I purchased it earlier this summer. But, instead, I got this. This book was so screamingly bad that I felt obligated to post an Amazon review for the first time in over five years, and then I actually threw the book in the trash to ensure that no sentient being would ever have to stumble upon it again.

On a music front, the most heinous concerts I have ever attended were by Juliana Hatfield, Marcy Playground and Mary Lou Lord (separately, not all in one show). I excoriated each of them in print, but they were all so gross and bad that I don’t even want to link to those review again. Best left forgotten. Lesson learned. Avoid at all costs.

I had another moment of epic stinkerdom this week when my first generation 1GB iPod Shuffle bit the dust, and I ordered a new one using my Visa Credit Card points (same way I got the first one). While I’m no fan of Apple (don’t get me started on my Mac screed), I had over the years developed a grudging respect for the Shuffle, which was perfect for working out, easy to load, contained a manageable number of songs, and was readily plugged into the AUX jack of my car stereo, so I could rock out in the car too. I’ve used it pretty much constantly since I got it, and I finally wore the poor thing out (the contacts in the volume control button and the headphone jack have gotten iffy, creating a lot of static and pop). Given how hard I worked the beastie, I didn’t begrudge its demise, but happily ordered a new one to replace it.

When my new Shuffle (a third generation 2 GB model) arrived, I eagerly opened the case and was shocked to see something that looked completely different from what I was used to. The volume and play controls aren’t on the Shuffle itself (which has twice as much storage in half the size gadget), but rather on the cable going into the left ear bud. This rendered my current ear buds, AUX cable and docking stations unusable. Which is annoying, but even worse, when I went to FYE, Radio Shack and even the Apple Store to buy a new AUX cord that would work in the car, I was told that they don’t exist! I can’t use the hard plastic default iPod ear buds (they don’t fit in my ears and give me headaches), and was equally stymied in trying to find soft foam ones that had the required cable based controls. And the new Shuffle came with a stubby little three inch USB adaptor that I can’t get to reach my available USB ports without having to move stuff around, leaving the iPod hanging out of the side of my monitor like a tumor.

I did some internet research, and even called Apple customer service, and was told that there’s nothing available yet to address my concerns. I figured I’d suck it up and try to work with the thing, since I read that you could set volume and play list with the stupid control ear buds, and then play it (minus any control capability) through a conventional set of ear buds or AUX cords. It was still completely unusable for me, though: with my big hands, I have a hard enough time trying to push buttons on the Shuffle unit, but trying to manipulate them on a wiggly cable hanging out of my ear was completely frustrating. And don’t even get me started on the voice technology that speaks to tell you the names of the songs that are playing. If I wanted that, I would listen to the radio. I don’t.

So here’s to Apple for taking a nice product and completely destroying it in the name of progress. Sure, it’s smaller, and, sure, it can hold more songs, but it’s impossible to manipulate, and I suspect that the battery charge is going to expire long before you get through your entire 1,000 song playlist, so what’s the point, since you’re gonna have to plug it into something anyway?

This useless and ill-conceived piece of junk will be meeting an untimely end this weekend, though I haven’t decided how yet. I’m thinking grill or garbage disposal. Or maybe axe. And then when I’m done, I’ll go to eBay and buy an “old,” simple, first generation Shuffle 1GB and really appreciate having it. You Mac people have now lost your right to make fun of Windows Vista, because the third generation Shuffle is every bit as much of a corporate muff job, “improving” something that didn’t really need to be messed with, outside of the shareholder greed motive. No!! Bad Apple!! BAD!!!

The Race to 100

100 losses, that is.

My two favorite baseball teams, the Beloved Royals and the Acquired Nationals, are both in last place in their respective leagues. The Nats are sitting pretty in the lead with 92 losses, while the Royals (at 85 losses) are inexplicably falling behind in their march to sub-mediocrity with a nonsensical four-game winning streak and a sweep of the division leading Tigers. Who do they think they are with this late season surge? The Rockies?

While the Pittsburgh Pirates got a lot of media attention this week for their 17th straight losing season (more than any other team has ever experienced in MLB or the NBA, NHL or NFL), they’re kind of pikers at losing, as they’ve only managed to muster up a single 100-loss season during their ongoing losing run. The Royals, on the other hand, are on track to lock up their fifth 100-loss season since 2002. That’s impressive!

So, Go Beloved Royals! Go Acquired Nationals! Lo

What I Do (And What I Look Like Doing It)

The University at Albany’s Media and Marketing team produced a really nice video about students returning to campus this fall and how we’re welcoming them back with a wide variety of sustainability initiatives. Click here to see the video, which features yours truly talking about the most excellent new Indian Quad Dining Hall. It’s great fun, and very rewarding, to be working in a job that benefits student in this way. Especially since I’m also a University at Albany student myself again as of last Monday, with Week One of Ph.D. classes under my belt. This boy has no idle hands for Mister Sinister to make use of.