Category Archives: arts and entertainment

The Da Vinci Dog

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Priceless!

"If you know someone gullible enough to take a pulp airport novel as ‘evidence’ that Jesus Christ was not divine—but rather a horn-dog rabbi eager to “hook-up” with a former hooker, in order to father a race of bumbling French kings…do you really think the answer is to argue with him? Using, you know, reason? You might just as well pick up the book, smack him on the nose and say ‘No! Bad! No! Very bad!’ That’s likely to be more effective, and a heck of a lot more fun."

(Fedora Tip: Dom Bettinelli)

Fantasy & Science Fiction Review

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The nice people at Fantasy and Science Fiction sent me a copy of their July Issue, on the condition that I blog about it. I am happy to oblige.

As an overall assessment, this is issue is a lot of fun. I subscribed to this magazine for about a year in college before being broke and swamped with three majors knocked me out of the habit. But I do have fond memories of reading F&SF on Saturday mornings in the Oakland Bruegger’s Bagels. This issue took me back to those good memories, and is a nice change from the grim turn that so many stories have–I like a good dystopia, but a lot of the stuff in Gardner Dozois’ more recent Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies are really sad, and I can use the periodic break!

For starters, we have a novella by Ysabeau S. Wilce entitled "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire", which is a very trippy adventure set on a sort of Halloween night where magickal currents run high and a magickal grandson of a ruling family must track down Tiny Doom, his wife and heiress to the Pontifexa’s reign. It’s a very funny, intelligent story.

Terry Bisson’s "Billy and the Unicorn" has his classical warped sense of humor where a boy gets a magical companion to keep him company at his dysfunctional home and at school. Matthew Hughes tells us about a world in the far future where someone discovers a magical spell that can tell you a person’s salience action in life, your purpose, as it were. Now the question is do you really want to know?

Now onto the SF side of issue’s offerings.

Robert Garcia y Robertson delivers a novelet called "Kansas, She Says, Is the Name of the Star", which is an SF takeoff of the Wizard of Oz series. I don’t want to say more, but it is neat to see how he makes the classic mythos work.

"Just Do It" is a satire by new author Heather Lindlsey about a society where marketers use chemicals to trigger cravings and behaviors in people walking around town, and a woman who is trying to destroy the industry. Some nice, tart commentary on modern society made that story a pleasure to read and reread. Robert Onopa’s first-contact story,  "Republic" was very evocative, but he left so many tantalazing hints about the alien culture that I really hope he’ll write another story about them, perhaps even a novellas.

Steven Popkes takes us to the lives and times of replicants of a Central American dictator who were built just before America captured him. One of them may be the real guy. Jerry Seeger has a tale of espionage and assassination that seems inspired by the classic Dark City movie from several years ago. The former was a nice little puzzle story, and while the latter started strong, it seemed like an incomplete mystery. Maybe the author was more concerned with the world he built and the struggle going on than with any mystery per se. One doesn’t usually say this, but maybe he should have expanded the story a bit.

To sum up, the issue is very strong–stronger than most of the issues I’d seen in the past. I can see why they spread this among bloggers, because I can heartily recommend it to you when it appears on shelves next month or so.

But That Only Raises the Question…

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I get that a Shipoopi is a girl you’re glad you found. She’s hard to get, but you can win her yet. I suppose that’s all fair. So who’s the girl you wish you’d never met (and presumably does not kiss at all)? Or what about the girl who you couldn’t get, despite your best efforts?

As much as I enjoy musical comedies, and I do enjoy them, I wish they’d define their terms a little more clearly. But then, I suppose nobody would line up to buy tickets to Kant: The Musical.

Music Review: “As You Were” by Brother (2006)

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[asyouwerecd-side3.jpg]"As You Were" is a compilation of fan-selected favorites from Brother’s 13-year pre-Pax Romana repitoire, from Black White to Urban Cave. The tracks chosen, though limited to only one disc, match up well to my personal favorites mix, Point of View.

To fit as many songs as possible, most of the tracks have been edited down. The following is my review of the selected tracks and how they were edited. The grading scheme is as follows.

  1. Really Bad
  2. Bad
  3. OK
  4. Good
  5. Excellent

1. 2 Chairs and One Tree (then = 4:04, now = 3:52)

One of my favorites from Your Backyard, this is definitely a good pick. I’m fairly certain the only edit is a shortened fade-out, which is fine by me. I might use this track in the next version of Point of View. Score: 4/5

2. Crazy (same length)

I’m so glad the i you you me version was chosen over the lifeless Urban Cave version. This a fun tune with a somewhat serious message about getting sucked into life on the internet (including a reference to net porn). The chorus lyirc "I don’t want that hangin’ over me" resonates strongly with my life. Score 5/5

3. The Crow (then = 4:29, now = 3:55)

In its original form, this Exit From Screechville track is my favorite Brother song. This edited version, though, cuts the intro by a couple measures and has an abbreviated guitar solo (the edit happens at about 3:00). Score 4/5

4. One Heart, One Soul (then = 6:00, now  = 3:51)

The original version, found on The Digging Bone, is really long, so the copious editing isn’t a surprise. The abruptness of them, though, is a bit jarring. There are a couple obvious cuts at about 0:05 and 0:43. They also cut the very best part of the song, the vocoder-distorted guitar solo that ought to appear at about 2:43. Score 3/5

5. River (then = 3:25, now = 3:10)

Of all the edited tracks, this is the best. River is one of the bright spots on the otherwise annoying Urban Cave. What makes this cut so good is the purging of the spoken bits ("Ah, there it is", etc). While not outstanding, River is now a solidly good song. Score: 4/5

6. Believe Again (then = 3:26, now = 3:08)

*Yawn* This middle-of-the-road "You’re my personal hero" ballad from i you you me has never been one of my favorites. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s nothing special. Also, I’ve always thought the use of "seethe" was a bit strained if not entirely wrong. Score: 3/5

7. Lonely (then 3:51, now = 3:48)

This is another good song that received tortured treatment on Urban Cave. This Your Backyard track has been trimmed a little by cutting a couple measures from the introduction. Score: 4/5

8. Thetimeisnow (then = 4:05, now = 3:47)

I’ve always preferred this live version from This Way Up over the original Your Backyard studio version and it seems other fans  do too. The edits on this track are pretty slick and I’d have to have a lot more patience than I do to find them. 😉 Score: 4/5

9. Fly Away (then = 4:50, now = 4:28)

This is a decent chill-out track from Your Backyard that got *really* fubared on Urban Cave. Not being a song amongst my personal favorites, I don’t care enough to figure out what got trimmed out. Score: 3/5

10. Romp and Circumstance (then = 6:37, now = 2:41)

The amount of editing on this This Way Up track is a bit deceptive. The original has a lengthy intro with another song (Granny and Rory Macleod, I think), that ends at 1:51. Still, an additional 2:05 were carved out. That’s just too much to take from such an awesome song. I prefer the Exit From Screechville studio version, but the original live version is still good enough to get 5/5. Score 4/5

11. Stand Beside Me (then = 5:15, now = 5:03)

Not much was trimmed from this solid Your Backyard tune. Score: 4/5

12. Funny (then = 3:33, now = 3:27)

I’ve grown less fond of this Urban Cave song with time and will likely pull it from Point of View. Score: 3/5

13. Rainmaker (then = 4:48, now = 4:24)

The Digging Bone is my second favorite Brother album, and Rainmaker is one of its best tracks. The only edit I could detect was the unfortunate eviscerating of the beautiful cello solo near the end. Score: 4/5

14. Purple Haze (same length)

This pastoral ballad from Your Backyard is decent, but it didn’t make my cut. Score: 3/5

15. Take You Back (then = 4:24, now = 0:47)

What the hell is with these teaser tracks that have been on the last three albums?!? These 47 seconds would have been better used by making some of the edits less severe or by including My Rhubarb. Perhaps I’ll replace Funny with the Black Stone Tramp version of this song. Score: 0/5

16. Amazing Grace (same length)

Amazing Grace is a beautiful song and the harmonies by brother Richardson are very good, but there isn’t much to make their rendition from Pipe Dreams stand out in a crowd. Score: 4/5

17. All I Know (then = 4:52, now = 4:14)

This is one of my favorite Black Stone Tramp tracks. The edits are acceptable, but not desireable. Score: 4/5

18. Blackest of Blue (then = 5:38, now = 4:30)

I prefer the This Way Up live version of this song from The Digging Bone. As you can see from the time reduction, the edits are pretty severe. Score: 3/5

19. Carry Me (then = 4:38, now = 3:57)

Given the repetitive, meditational nature of this Black Stone Tramp track, the editing done is appropriate. As I listen to this track again, though, I’m no longer sure why I put it on Point of View. Hmm… Score: 3/5

20. The Machine: 2006 (then = ?, now = 3:37)

I have no idea what this song sounded like in its original Black White form (Anybody want to hook me up with a mp3 or ogg file of it?), so I can’t judge the edit. I can, however, say that there’s little noteworthy or interesting about this track. It reminds of some of the half-baked trance remixes the band did a few years ago. The beat is promising and some of the samples are intriguing, but the overall execution is sloppy and boring. Score: 2/5

Album Score: 68/95 (71.6% C-)

I decided to not include the aborted track 15 in the final score. Don’t let this low score fool you. If you don’t own and can’t acquire copies of the older albums, As You Were is a decent representation of the good old days. For those of us who have most or all of them, though, the best use we could put these edited tracks to would be squeezing as many songs as possible into our personal mixes.

Final verdict: Buy (or mooch) the original albums if you can, but otherwise get As You Were and be confident that what you have will give you hours of listening pleasure. 🙂

Ayn Rand Goes to Hollywood?

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So Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might be in a screenplay of an Ayn Rand novel. While Rand’s rampant sense of individualism lends itself to Hollywood egos, I’d like to ask Angelina Jolie what Rand would have to say about saving the children in Cambodia and whatnot? I try to think of a connection and can only shrug.