1. I read on Pitchfork that Jack White is releasing a 7" single of a weird Auto-tuned Carl Sagan song called "A Glorious Dawn" on his Third Man Records.
2. I find out that the song/video are incredible.
3. The back of the 7" record will have a copy of the inscription on the gold records on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts.
4. The release date of November 9 is timed to coincide with what would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday. I was a Sagan-head when I was 14 or 15. And I was fascinated by that inscription, intended to be coherent to any alien species. I distinctly remember reading Sagan's Cosmos, a big, tall hardcover book, on the beach at Cape Cod. I was a pale one.
5. So I ordered the record. There's only 150 pressed, and it was $6 including shipping. |
So last night I saw Paranormal Activity. Scary movies usually don’t affect me, but last night I had a nightmare that there was this really fat sound tech walking up the dark stairway in my house. But seriously, folks… I wanted to write a little bit about it. So, you know, SPOILERS AHEAD.
I would like to think that everything you see happen really happened as you see it, that is, there was nothing added in post-production. They manage to keep that illusion for a while. The sounds from downstairs, the door moving, shadows. I especially like imagining a guy hiding under the bed with a blow dryer making the sheets billow, or the girl standing by the foot of the bed for hours. But when the special effects became more obviously added in post-production, say when the lizard footsteps magically appear on-screen, it lost its credibility for me. I don’t even want to talk about those last 30 seconds of the film. I would’ve been much happier if all that screaming that took place downstairs and was the end of it, and it left you wondering who or what killed who or what. But they bring the action back upstairs for no good reason, and it gets silly. We all remember how The Blair Witch Project ended, right? Not a silly note to be found there.
What made Blair Witch scarier, and correct me if I’m wrong, was that there was never a clear answer to what was happening. Everything that happened could’ve all been coincidences, pranks, and animal noises. You don’t know. Where in Paranormal, they establish that it’s a demon, and that it lives in the attic. You basically get what its motives are and what it’s trying to do. It’s like, guys, you could leave the house! The film crew in Blair Witch was helpless. They’re just out in the middle of nowhere. I’ll always remember the moment when one of the guys admits that he got so frustrated with their one map, that he just threw it in the river. The girl flips the hell out because now they’re lost for good, and I would be surprised we weren’t watching an actual event transpiring at that point. I never got the feeling that the people in Paranormal Activity were totally helpless. If only that demonologist wasn’t on vacation!
The two main actors in Paranormal Activity, that is to say, the only actors who are not portraying a psychic or a sister, are pretty good. I think I bought that the girl was being haunted by this entity for years. But I think it was the whole “it’s a demon” angle which lost me. Make it a ghost, or an apparition, and I’d buy it. But a card-carrying Demon? Seems a little far-fetched. That’s why the original Exorcist wasn’t scary for me. I think you need some religious beliefs to buy into it.
Blair Witch put a lot of emphasis on the fact that it was raw footage, and would jump in and out of scenes, and I remember being worried for the characters during the nighttime scenes, hoping that it would jump to daylight soon. One of our movie companions said he felt the same thing about Paranormal, but I didn’t just didn’t get that with this one. I think that might’ve been because I was looking forward to the next nighttime bedroom shot, wondering what trick they would pull off next. I did appreciate that, near the end, stuff started happening in broad daylight, which is supposed to be the demon-safe time.
I also liked some of the creepier details: the photo in the attic, the smashed picture frame, Katie sitting outside. I liked the half-assed internet research the guy did. He’s getting all his information from what appears to be a Geocities page (R.I.P.).
I was working at a movie theater when Blair Witch came out, and I remember people regularly walking out of the movie about 10 minutes into it. One guy complained to me. He asked for his money back because he paid good money and “this thing looked like it was filmed on a camcorder.” I wonder if people are walking out of Paranormal.
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Hello everyone! It’s time to sign up for SEFA again at work, which means we can choose to donate a few dollars from our paycheck to the charities of our choice. As always, they give everyone a big book of charities to choose from, and as always, I am going to test your charity knowledge.
From the following list, THREE are REAL charities from the SEFA handbook, and ONE is a FAKE charity made up by me. Which is the fake? No Googling!
CHAI Inc. - An after-school program providing free or low-cost tea, yoga and meditation services to at-risk children in New York City.
Children's Hopes & Dreams - Hospitals are frightening! Your pledge directly places our entertaining magazines into the hands of terminally/chronically ill children. Replace fear with amusement, laughter, education, and smiles.
United State Luge Association, Inc. - Provides for the achievement of athletic excellence in the sport of luge, with the highest degree of sportsmanship, honor, dedication and victory as the standard.
Venison Donation Coalition, Inc. - Coordinates the processing of donated venison which is distributed to New York's eight regional food banks.
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As a special bonus, here’s another charity test! I made up three of these charities. Which of these is real?
Methodists On Trains – Pays for train tickets for Methodists to spread the message of the Gospel to rural areas of the United States that would not receive The Word otherwise.
Slithering Home – When snakes are too old for Pentecostal ministers, they are cast off into the wilderness. We provide a safe alternative. Retirement home for former Pentecostal snakes.
Camp K-9 – Founded in 1985, Camp K-9 is a outdoor activity center and diet clinic for dogs in rural Sullivan County built specifically to help puppies shed extra pounds. Donations help buy exercise equipment and low-carb food options.
PHN Inc. - The panda needs our help! Without you, this ancient Chinese endangered species may disappear. PHN produces research into sexual stimulants that may provide a future for pandas.
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Answers tomorrow.
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I've happily reduced my Google Reader RSS load from a high of 165 blogs down to 100. Even though I've gotten rid of a lot of rubbish blogs I didn't really enjoy, I did add a new one: The blog of Jessica Watson, the 16 year-old girl from Australia who is currently trying to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. She's on a boat called Ella's Pink Lady and blogs about wind conditions, eating food that sounds like MREs, and keeping her boat clean. She just shoved off about a week ago, and is not allowed any help from anyone, so I think it should be an interesting read. Will she go bonkers? Will she get bored and give up? Will something awful happen? Well, let's hope not. |
| » App fiend |
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I’m becoming a total app fiend. I love these apps! Right now, my new jazz is the Grocery IQ app. It’s a simple grocery list application. I used to think that converting to electronic versions of things that should be easy enough to manage in the physical realm, like a list, was asking for trouble. But Farhad Manjoo at Slate convinced me to give Grocery IQ a whirl with this video. Now instead of a physical list which resides in my cupboard, which I can only add items to when I have it at hand, I have this electronic list which I have at my side almost always, so when grocery necessity idea strikes, and sometimes they only strike once, I can add it to the list. What’s even better is that it automatically sorts the items by grocery section, so when you're at the store, instead of scanning and re-scanning your physical list to make sure you have everything you listed for, say, the produce aisle, you just check off everything listed under the Produce group. And checking off the items and watching them disappear also gives a more satisfying feeling than just crossing them out, or if you forgot your pen, re-scanning the list and remembering what you have and haven’t grabbed.
In conclusion, I am a nerd.
Oct. 26th, 2009 @ 04:54 pm
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| » Autotuning the News and Willem Dafoe |
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I’m normally on the fence about this Auto-Tune The News thing. I can appreciate the extent to which they plunder video from the news channels, but the auto-tune joke has been worn threadbare. And the songs are never really good (Save for that “It’s the smoke” hook in the “Lettuce” song) But what they accomplish in this newest 3 minute bit is pretty amazing. They’ve got elements of gospel and beatboxing, a timbale, a Viking, and a blinding array of talking heads.
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Just realized the similarities between Willem DaFoe’s starring role in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and DaFoe’s fake film-within-a-film in Mr. Bean’s Holiday. In Mr. Bean’s Holiday, DaFoe played a very self-serious writer/director/actor premiering his very self-absorbed film Playback Time at Cannes. And it was very funny. And now here is DaFoe touring real life film festivals, premiering his very Serious film Antichrist from the self-absorbed Von Trier. So should I head to the next screening of Antichrist and start chuckling? Or is Von Trier not helping to film A Christmas Bean: Mr. Bean’s Holiday Part 2?
Oct. 19th, 2009 @ 04:55 pm
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| » Walkway |
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The Walkway Over the Hudson officially opens to the public on Saturday at 3PM. This is only after an astonishing array of public/private events (1,000 lanterns floating off into the air, Governor Paterson at the "grand opening," mayors of the two cities tying a knot at the center of the bridge) that the public is not allowed to attend. I imagine they don't want a crush of people in New York's newest and narrowest (15 feet maybe?) state park. We will be there Saturday.
But since I lost my camera a few weeks ago, I won't be able to take any photos. I searched Flickr and found some of the lantern release volunteers' photos from their rehearsal.
Here's an old Bing bird's eye photo of the bridge as it descends into Poughkeepsie.
Oct. 1st, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Posting lj messages from an iPod Touch is more awesome than posting them from a computer. WAY MORE AWESOME! I totally feel like punching out a 1,000 word essay one tap at a time! Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Sep. 26th, 2009 @ 01:20 am
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| » Must see concerts |
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Did you know I'm excited about this Pavement reunion scheduled for next year? It's funny. If you had asked me what bands I absolutely had to see before I die at any point in the last ten years, Pavement would be the one constant. I got into Pavement not long before they broke up, so I never got to see a show. I don't think a reunion was ever out of the question, so I held onto hope that it would happen. There's not many other bands left that I must see. Slim Cessna's Auto Club is one. If Will Cullen Heart decided, after this Circulatory System tour is over, to next go on and get the Olivia Tremor Control back together, then I would have to see that. Bjork? I suppose I should add her to the list. I've heard that Sufjan Stevens is not a great live performer, so I think I could live without seeing him live. If Manu Chao ever came around, I would be there, but he seems to tour everywhere but America.
I was going through a list of some top-rated songs on my iTunes and I've been lucky enough to see most of my "must-see" bands. Beck, The Flaming Lips, The Magnetic Fields, Jens Lekman, The Books, and They Might Be Giants, of course. Anyone else have a live performance "wish list?"
Sep. 18th, 2009 @ 04:27 pm
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| » Obama Time |
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Word is Barack Obama is visiting Troy to give a speech on the economy next Monday. The rumor was initially that he was visiting Saratoga county next week, but that was changed to Troy. I work in downtown Troy, so obviously, I was excited! But it turns out that it will probably be Hudson Valley Community College hosting him, which is basically in East Greenbush. Not walkable for me. I used to get my groceries across the street from the HVCC, and I have to say, traffic gets unbelievable when class lets out. I can't imagine the kind of havoc Obama is going to wreak.
Sep. 16th, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
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| » Across the street |
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Went to the open house at Peebles Island State Park today. Incredibly, even though it's less than a two mile walk, this was the first time I walked to the park just to walk there. They had historic home restoration workshops there today. Plaster repair, masonry, old window restoration, etc. Also, information on the most excellent historic preservation tax credit we will be able to take advantage of for the next five years. Any work we do on the house, we get 20% back as a tax credit. I learned today that work on the garage, roof, and porch count as well.
Also, through word of mouth, I found out that the gorgeous house across the street from us (the first one in this picture) is being restored not for use as a house or apartments, but to house the Spiral Design Studio. A design studio? Can you say "gentrification?" There's always people showing up out back only to meet contractors and it doesn't appear lived in at all, so I was mostly afraid it was bought by some rich downstaters who weren't going to live there.
There were fireworks going off in Waterford just now, so I just walked around outside to see them a little bit. There were no less than three live music performances going on on Remsen St: A Black Cat Pub band, a Bread & Jam band, plus Dreamgirls at the Cohoes Music Hall. I could just barely hear the showstopper from outside. Wasn't Jennifer Hudson, though.
Sep. 12th, 2009 @ 09:20 pm
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| » Mistaken emails |
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I was just thinking back on all of those people whose emails get sent to me by mistake for whatever reason. This has happened a lot in the past, and continues to happen.
My email address is on the mailing list for a women's ultimate frisbee team. I think the real person's name is Rebecca, but they put in my email address. So I'm privy to when the girls are trying to schedule an ultimate frisbee practice, and in one particularly interesting email exchange, if they should try out for the championships in Montreal.
I received photos from a girl graduating from Harvard Medical School last weekend. I'm not sure who they were intended for, I could only find a Bob (My Last Name) on the email list.
There's the ongoing problem with Robin who buys prescription drugs online. I get all of her receipts for a stunning cocktail of drugs. Mostly painkillers. She must've asked a question one time about how big a certain pill was, because I got the reply.
I also get emailed receipts about a person buying movie tickets online in California. I know that they paid $12.50 to see Inglorious Basterds last weekend. I don't know their name. It might be in the emails, but I haven't really paid attention. I just read what movie they're seeing.
I used to get more, including those from a PTA board in New Hampshire, but I've since blocked that whole domain name.
Sep. 11th, 2009 @ 03:42 pm
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