August 2005 Archives

Turner Classic Movies was running Spencer Tracy flicks all day (and night) on Saturday. We managed to watch three Tracy-Hepburn classics in succession -- Adam's Rib, Desk Set, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. I should probably be more ashamed that I'd never seen any of these before. At the same time, I've tried to limit my obsessions to a manageable few (music, Red Sox, sometimes work) and that means films have typically been put on the back burner.

Of the three, there's no question that Who's Coming To Dinner was the strongest. The missed notes all come from the weakness of casting Hepburn's niece as the young female lead. In a particularly sad note, her naivete is born out today in a far more pathetic way. Big points to Isabel Sanford for her blunt performance as the family maid, and of course to Sidney Poitier for portraying the perfect mix of hope and pragmatism at the same time.

Surprisingly, Desk Set held the most interest for me... just the sheer prescience to make a film in 1957 about how "the computers are coming to take our jobs away." Of course, the punchlines can be spotted from a mile away (garbage in, garbage out) -- but there's something endearing and innocent about it, too. This film should be required viewing for every person using "Google" as a verb. (Plus, the in-building christmas party was a hoot in today's PC, over-litigated society.)

I tuned out much of Adam's Rib. An over-the-top "battle of the sexes" comedy + my lack of affinity for courtrooms (whether real or fictional) = a good time to catch up on browsing and deferred reading.

A couple weeks back, I bought a Griffin iMic for my TiBook. I'd been looking for a way to start digitizing various items from my record collection off-and-on for a few years. The iMic came recommended and at a decent price for something I may not use all that often. I finally hooked it up over the weekend and picked an old favorite 7" for the first trial, "Blacklisted" by Mac McCaughan's Slushpuppies.

Recording with Final Vinyl wasn't too bad... but editing with Audacity (to get nice fade-ins and to delete a couple of nasty surface crackles) took a long time. Total time to get a 3:40 song settled into MP3 format was about 35 minutes, and the processing completely annihilated my aging battery.

If anyone has tips on speeding up the process (or other cheap/free and effective software), I'm all ears. To be fair, I actually like the level of control Audacity offers -- it just wasn't always intuitive to get in there and tweak. It's also been nearly ten years since I spent any time working in audio (specifically, with the old 2-track predecessor to ProTools).

Apologies for the lack of new content recently -- I was on vacation (more on that soon) and couldn't manage to finish any of my customary long-form thoughts and ramblings. Lots to say, of course, but pulling it into form may take some additional time and research like reading "What's The Matter with Kansas" (I think I already know the answer, but I don't want to misrepresent the punchline).

I'm still settling into this whole blogging deal and getting more comfortable that this site won't be updated daily. I care too much about writing and full expression to let something go out the door before I've had time to consider and revise and complete it -- as noted at other times, it's that damn perfectionist streak that does serve me well in other contexts. And while I will do occasional link roundups, I'm not such a voracious consumer of other content to feel justified in that approach. I need to comment and respond and participate in a discourse -- linking just isn't enough for me to feel engaged.

Since I don't have any long-form pieces ready yet (just three in the works), I've seen (or been shown) a few things recently that may be of interest:

• An outstanding speech from Bill Moyers this past spring at the National Conference on Media Reform.
• The sad legacy of the Montreal Expos and their fans in the maple kingdom.
• WFMU's esteemed Wm. Berger on the overexposure of Natalee Holloway.
• Excellent tools for kids to learn music from Morton Subotnick, composer of the electronic/arcana classic, "Silver Apples of the Moon" (and unintentional progenitor of Depeche Mode).
• The Random Surrealism Generator.
• Maria T's insightful (as always) commentary on Philly vs. NYC.
• Instructions on knotting and lacing shoes and sneakers, including the classic checkerboard look I remember as a teen, along with the Polo jackets, Champion sweatshirts, parachute pants, and Adidas Gazelles (allegedly made from kangaroo leather and brought back in every color under the sun from Canada on hockey trips)
• Last, but certainly not least, Mike's tribute to Randy "Biscuit" Turner, including a great set of Big Boys music from his August 19th radio show.

My Pal Jon was kind enough to pass along the story of the latest demonstration of supposed outrage from our friends at the Parents Television Council.  Apparently, someone in a control booth at ABC during the Live8 broadcasts forgot that Roger Daltrey typically says a naughty word near the end of the song "Who Are You" -- perhaps someone who knows the song as little more than the theme to "CSI." As I mentioned to Jon, this kind of display is the continuing fallout from Bono's appearance at the Golden Globes a couple years back.

Was Daltrey truly considering or calling to mind a "coarse sexual image" (in the words of the Federal Communications Commission) in shouting the lyric "who the f--- are you?"  Was Bono thinking in a sexual manner when he declared the experience of winning an award to be "really, really, f------ brilliant"?  Did the FCC have to reverse and humiliate its own career staffers, the same people who have investigated and leveled millions of dollars in fines against Howard Stern and Bubba the Love Sponge and the Greaseman, when the Enforcement Bureau found no reason to take action against NBC for the Golden Globes incident? 

WARNING: I've spent a lot of time thinking and occasionally writing about indecency law over the past 10-15 years. The remainder of this post may be exceptionally boring unless you're both a broadcaster and a lawyer.

Housecleaning note -- As some of you may recall, "Coursing through the Wires" was a regular segment of FB, in which contributors offered lists of what they were digging at a particular moment in time.  The entries were scattered across food, music, books, videos, and cultural ephemera -- the equivalent of selective inclusions from a list of "ten most recent Google searches."  I always liked the title for its multiple connotations.  In this new venture, I decided to bring back the title exclusively for recurring posts focused on music reviews.  [Egg nog lattes really aren't quite the novelty they were ten years ago (and are now made in some locales with a mutant Torani syrup instead of the real deal like Wawa Gold), the original Austin-based Celis White is long gone (but resurrected now in Michigan), and my cross-cultural consumption habits have really never seemed as broad as those of my peers].  Not a big deal, but something that was bugging me a little -- thanks for bearing with me.

Reviews/Commentary this time around -- Radio Birdman, and the curious case of bands that should have stopped after one song (or at least stuck to that one song, in the model of Lungfish or Stereolab in their respective early periods).