|
|
|
February 29, 2004 February 28, 2004
A riveting and heartbreaking tale of medical misdeed from the Times. This piece is good reporting that still manages to be effective, unlike the sex-slave article from a month ago that was completely overblown.
February 25, 2004
This is too good. Rep. John Dingell from Michigan discovered that the White House was trying to reclassify food preparation jobs as part of the manufacturing sector in an effort to further mislead the American public. His letter of response is, shall we say, hilarious.
February 24, 2004
Can't decide whether defacing the Constitution or killing innocent Iraqis to enrich the state of Texas is worse ... Somehow we've landed in the Harding administration.
February 23, 2004
And I thought I was a big Trek fan:
These folks have reconstructed the original series sets and filmed a loving tribute to the old show, complete with sound effects, tricorders, and Kirk's hair swirl. You're guaranteed to love it. The acting is a bit shaky in parts, but the swaggering performance of James Cawley as Captain Kirk almost makes up for it. The effects are great too, sort of what Enterprise should have been like. February 18, 2004
Sorry for another DVD plug, but last year I did an interview with Mark Linnett, the ultra-cool audio freak behind all of the Beach Boys re-issues and restorations of the past 15 years. His PR person sent over Pet Sounds Live in London, the new DVD featuring Brian Wilson doing the entirety of the classic album onstage with a band at Royal Albert Hall. It has its moments, and the music & production are actually pretty good, but it's mostly touching to see Brian doing something after all these years. As a childhood fan of the Beach Boys, I literally thought they were dead like Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Little did I know that the music industry had just driven Brian Wilson mad at the peak of his brilliance.
February 15, 2004  For those of you still waiting to get surround-sound systems, I can think of no better reason than the recently released Queen "Greatest Video Hits 2" DVD. Brian May and Roger Taylor have the right idea here, two great DVDs featuring all the original hits and videos, with sound remixed brilliantly from the original session tapes into 5.1 and presented in DTS. The selling point here is the surround version of "Who Wants to Live Forever" from Highlander, one of Queen's finest moments. The song is cheesy, yes, but it's brilliant, and the surround mix is so smashing, it'll peel the paint off the walls. (It's also a fitting tribute to recently departed Michael Kamen, the composer of the Highlander score and arranger of the orchestral parts of this song.)
February 13, 2004  With Valentine's Day upon us, I have to put in a plug for the 1980 Boaz Davidson romantic epic Seed of Innocence a.k.a. Teen Mothers. (Teen Mothers is the U.S. video title.) One of the first Golan-Globus Cannon movies, this American drama focuses on the lives of Danny (Tim Wead) and Alice (Mary Cannon), two aw-shucks teen sweethearts from smalltown America whose lives are torn apart when Alice get pregnant at age 14. The two move to--where else?--New York City, where they have various adventures that can only be described as "scripted." This is a true gem, with gobs and gobs of the wonderful heavy-handedness that characterizes all of Boaz' movies.
February 09, 2004
You can amaze your friends with this little bit of fun brought to you by PatrickRunkle.com:
INeedSomeRibs.com Whenever you need to access the now-infamous "I need some ribs" Bush press conference, just type ineedsomeribs.com into your web browser. Never again do you need to depend on Google to find this important piece of history. ------------------- Also, it pains me to point out that the Warriors blew one for the ages last night in Oakland. They ended the third quarter with a 16-point lead on Toronto, then set an NBA record by scoring two--that's right, two--points in the entire fourth session. Amazingly, they didn't lose even then. Toronto forced the game into overtime, and then won 83-81. February 08, 2004
As promised, here's the 5.1 mix of "Hong Kong" in Windows Media 9 format. I encoded it at 96 kHz, 24-bit for all you audiophiles out there. Email me and let me know what you think of the mix and/or any technical problems you may have. (It should also be stereo-compatible.)
In other news, I've recovered from the excitement of Friday (see below) by listening to Kitaro's new album, Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai. Kitaro is one of the only artists keeping true, European-style new age music alive as Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre's output has waned. The surround-sound SACD of Ku-Kai is fabulous; in fact, I met Kitaro at a fancy release party for this CD in L.A. in September. He was a genuinely humble and cool guy. Also, I have to put in a plug for my friend John Gorenfeld's blog, which mostly has to do with his thorough and disturbing analyses of Rev. Moon's entanglement with the Republican party. It's fairly explosive stuff. February 06, 2004  Update 4:00 pm: Amazingly, I was playing basketball at Mosswood Park in downtown Oakland today when a man came on the courts and started shooting a gun, ostensibly at another man. The three guys I was playing with were as shocked as I was, but they were a bit more composed, and they were instrumental in getting my sorry white ass out of there as quickly as possible ... not only did they notice the gun before I did, they tried to help me despite the fact that I went about 2 for 15 shooting during our game. The Oakland Police were on the scene and had the suspect in custody within a few minutes, making me think they are a bit more effective than I had previously conjectured. I called the police afterward, and they told me no one actually got shot, which makes me wonder what was actually going on.
After having been about 10 feet away from an honest-to-God urban shooter, I think I've seen just about everything. Now I know what it's like when Allen goes back to the hood. I returned to California last night from a lengthy trip to the East Coast, during which I spent most of my time napping. I hate flying and am tense for the duration of long flights; who could have guessed that I would have to dodge bullets in broad daylight at a park 5 minutes from my house upon arrival? ------------------- In an interesting turn of events, the DualDisc CD/DVD has been finalized and is being test marketed in Seattle and Boston. (This is the long-in-development disc that has a regular CD on one side and a DVD on the other.) This has potentially big implications for the music industry, which would now be able to provide lots of extra content (not just DVD-Audio content) on a single disc that is compatible with the billions of CD players in the market. However, I fully expect the industry to screw the whole thing up somehow. I have to say that April's going to be a fairly exciting live music month here in California, with Kraftwerk and Yes on tour. (Separately, of course.) I saw Kraftwerk live in 1998 in Los Angeles right after I graduated from college, and it was quite an event. All I hope is that they don't play too much of their insane, somewhat crappy new album. February 03, 2004
Check out this house designed by Roger Dean, the dude responsible for all those trippy Yes album covers since the early 70s. I love this guy!
As another addendum to my last post, apparently the Times has reviewed the article and the reporter's notes and is completely satisfied, save one minor factual error that's going to be corrected. Again, I ask everyone to read the story and then read the criticism and tell me whether there's not a rat here. Another part of the story is that a big stink happened when the article's writer threatened to sue some folks criticizing his piece on the web. In some of the back-and-forth, Landesman claimed to have been in danger while writing the piece, and also that the piece's photographer, his pregnant wife, was also in danger. Does that strike anyone else as a system that could potentially be abused? Also, Landesman said in interviews that his main source, "Andrea," suffers from multiple-personality disorder, a fact that he conveniently left out of the story. For a newspaper that recently had its two top editors resign over truth-telling, you have to wonder. February 01, 2004
I have to join the howling chorus of disapproval that is following "The Girls Next Door," an 8,500-word story on American sex slaves published in the NYT Magazine last week. The piece struck me as a fanciful tribute to the 1989 Charles Bronson thriller Kinjite at best and seriously irresponsible at worst. Check the first link in this post for a great discussion by Jack Shafer on Slate about the whole thing; his observations are spot-on in debunking the anonymous sources, the inflated numbers, the lack of first-hand observation, etc.
Having lived through a journalism program at one of "the nation's best universities" that valued this sort of nonsense over real journalism, I have to wonder if there are any publications left that are willing to do a story that doesn't involve sex slaves or heroin addicts. (And as an addendum: I had the opportunity at Berkeley to meet fellow alum Charlie LeDuff, a reporter for the Times and friend of Jayson Blair's who was recently in a bit of hot water of his own. Without being libelous, LeDuff's visit to my class raised a few questions about his methods and attitude that didn't get answered to my satisfaction.) |
