Jesse Jarnow's Frank and Earthy Blog

Thurston Moore interviews Steve Reich (download)
recorded at Austin Convention Center, South by Southwest, 13 March 2008

Amid the extraneous meat market noize of the Austin Convention Center, there was at least occasional discussion of actual music. On Thursday, that included Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore interviewing minimalist composer Steve Reich.

If that sounds remotely up your alley, the whole conversation is worth hearing.

Of note to our headier ranks were Reich's comments on his pre-minimalism free improv group in San Francisco (listen), and his relationship with future Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, a fellow student at Mills College under the tutelage of Luciano Berio (listen).

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"Paperback Writer" - The Beatles (download, regular) (buy, karaoke)

Over the weekend, I asked Spupes how to create a user account on my computer with all temptation-abetting internet capabilities blocked. Instead, he told me about WriteRoom, a text editor that takes over the computer's full screen, literally blacking out all other apps in an emulation of a no-fuss '80s-style word processor. By necessity, a screenshot could never convey exactly what is so wonderful about this program, so I'm not gonna try. Conceptually, it raises some interesting points about the usefulness of the complex, multitask-enabling GUIs that've become the norm versus the efficiency of one-track productivity. Practically, it's just awesome. Or maybe it's just a nice change of virtually scenery after 10+ years of Microsoft word processing products. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting up tomorrow and using this.

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Friends! Landlubbers! Brooklynites!

I sincerely hope you are all weathering the season with minimum
weather-induced mope and maximum nog.

Here are 111 songs -- old faves, new friends, Dylan covers, shuffle-zen,
etc.. -- I have thought ginchy since the last time I did one of these (and
in a more compatible file format, too):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=F0AXAKIF

Sorry about all the ads & clutter on MegaUpload, here's how to navigate it:
1. Click above link.
2. Ignore flashing lights, find code next to MegaUpload logo, enter code into special box, click "download."
3. Wait 45 seconds (sing rousing chorus of "Contact" while watching onscreen
counter, waving arms), click "Free download."
4. Save! Go!

...when on harddrive, click on file happyholidaysxojj.zip

Helper monkeybots are on call in the comments section to answer any technical
questions!

Other'n that, see y'all next year.

xo,
jj.

Posted by Jesse at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 2007 La Superette DIY arts/holiday fair commences this weekend. I will be selling a small collection titled In the Autumn of the Island and other stories, each with a Polaroid. You should go.

!!!!!La Superette celebrates 10 years of making, shopping, and wrapping!!!!!! Please join us for this year's festive events all held at chashama's Times Square location: 112 West 44th Street New York, NY 10036 http://www.chashama.org

*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$**$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*

Shopping days are scheduled for:
Saturday, December 1st 12-7
Sunday, December 2nd 12-7
Saturday, December 8th 12-7
Sunday, December 9th 12-7

This year's installations artist is: Patrick Meagher
Theme song by: DJ neckbreaka

With works by:
Newyorkclocks, Aaron Krach, Amanda Boulton, Anna Harsanyi, alexis
scherl, Amy Sanford/Merry Monk Design, Aughra Moon, Ben Fino-Radin,
Becky Hutcheson, caroline byrne, carrie dashow, Twice Sewn, Collin
Cunningham, Corinne Enni, Colleen Rochette, Craig Comstock, Charm
School Design,
DIR + ACB, David Carter, Miggipyn, Donna Jo Brady, AcHT(eN), Eliz,
erica weiner, free103point9 Dispatch Series, Hannah Gibson, Heather
Phelps-Lipton, Ginger D'anus, Gremalkin, Kitty Jones, ( ), Josh
Goldstein, Jesse Jarnow, Jill Killjoy, deChow, ^^^, Jennifer
Nedbalsky, Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Climate Change Preparedness
Center, Kimm Alfonso, Karen's Monsters, kim couchot, Kim Scafuro,
egnekn, better than jam, Sheepishlion, no-time, Kristin Zottoli, Pink
Elephant, Levi Haske, Lori Bode, Lais Williams, Marie Evelyn /
Analogous, Marisha Simons, Molly Dilworth, Muffy Brandt, Mary Gagne,
Mira Artz, Miss Chief, Michael Krasoiwtz, Monika Webb, Radio Shock,
Mark Williams, Nathaniel Kassel, Nina Young, ipodtherapy.org, Patricia
Buraschi, Pillows for the People, rebecca alvarez, hawkwind, 35mm
Designs, Sue Havens, sallykismet, Flower Face Killah, Loud Objects,
Teresa von Fuchs

Performances dates are:
Dec. 13 - Benton Bainbridge + Matty Ostrowski, Loud Objects
Dec. 14 - MV Carbon + Tony Conrad, Nautical Almanac
Dec. 15 - Luke Dubois, James Rouvelle + John Roach
Dec. 16 - Dan Iglesia, Gerald Marks

*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$**$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*

La Superette 2007 is brought to you by Ignivomous Inc, (www.ignivomous.org)
La Superette 2007 crew

Director: Tali Hinkis
Producer: Kyle Lapidus
Webmaster: Ron Rosenman
Graphics: Netta Rabin and Karen Lawler
Special Projects: Douglas Irving Repetto
PR: Evelyne Buhler
Superator: Amy Benson
Stage Manager: Ryan Welsh
Video Curator: Susan Agliata
Chashama Liason: Jenny Rogers

Posted by Jesse at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gone in search of the Boognish.

Back in action here Thursday. Probably.

Posted by Jesse at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Terrapin" - Syd Barrett (download) (buy)
recorded 24 February 1970, Top Gear, BBC Radio 1

(file expires November 7th)

About 10 years ago in Copenhagen, I saw a dude walking down the street in a leather jacket with the words "Rock & Roll" written on the back in bedazzled studs. And I think he really meant it. That's pretty much how Tom Stoppard means it in Rock 'n' Roll, currently in previews in New York, a play -- when it boils down to it -- about Czechoslovakian politics and, ahem, Syd Barrett. But, in the context of Czechoslovakia, where rock remained a revolutionary force for several decades longer than the United States (if it ever was here to begin with), the simplicity is totally excusable.

Midway through the first act, intellectual/rock dork Jan (Rufus Sewell) stomps around his room in Prague. His hair has grown out and he wears a long coat. When he turns to face his four shelves of vinyl, for a moment, he resembles nothing less than one of the proto-Commie dreamers of Stoppard's Coast of Utopia. Rock 'n' Roll is in, many ways, an epilogue to that trilogy, catching the last few decades of socialism before the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Wall, a bridge back to the modern world from the ideas Herzen, Belinsky, Turgenev and others opened up in Utopia.

As a standalone work, Rock 'n' Roll is a bit simplistic. Like Ethan Hawke's clownish Michael Bakunin in the Lincoln Center Utopia, the characters do a lot of shouting about Ideas. In places, the music is predictable -- cuing "Welcome to the Machine" after a typically Stoppardian debate about mind-as-spirit vs. mind-as-machine, for example. But Pink Floyd, it turns out, is still a foreign substance to legit thee-ay-terr, and the effect -- mixed, Jah bless 'em, at a genuine loud volume -- is at least a superficial mimicry of how Czech rockers the Plastic People of the Universe must have fit into political discourse: rudely. Indeed, the songs were always abruptly cut off before resolution, the lights thrown up and the next scene begun instantly. (And, sometimes, the music is totally unpredictable, like a totally WTF?! excerpt of the Rockin' the Rhein rendition of the Dead's "Chinatown Shuffle.")

Stoppard's got his post-existential/surrealist formula down pat: the life/emotional arcs of characters embroiled in sweeping historical/intellectual concepts, with a few plotlines about incidental contemporary happenings to keep things cosmically circumstantial. In Rock 'n' Roll, the latter role is filled by Syd Barrett, who haunts the play, sometimes literally. Formulaic or no, though, it always leaves me excited, the way I felt the first time I saw Arcadia as a freshman in college, like everything was somehow connected.

"Well, that's the last Stoppard I'm ever going to," huffed a British chap outside afterwards. Maybe Brian Cox switched accents midway through some scenes, as my friend suggested. Maybe it was just too loud. (Thx, G'ma.)

Posted by Jesse at 1:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love me some Super Taste. Their spicy beef noodle soup makes Republic's taste like a styrofoam cup of ramen flavored with the pepper packets from an airline meal. The hand-pulled noodles are soft, full, and delicious. Man. And it stings.

I had always assumed that it was the noodles that I loved, and that part of the Super Taste experience is the notion of getting through the spice to the noodles: eating with the fear of slurping a noodle that would lash around like a serpent's tail and flick spice directly into the eyeball (a sensation surprisingly not unlike what the tongue experiences). Recently, after I'd espoused this idea to Boomy, it was suggested that I simply order the soup without the spice -- in fact, an option directly below Spicy on the menu. Nothing to feel guilty about, she said. If you like the noodles, just get the noodles.

So I did. And it just wasn't as good. On one hand, I feel like this is a revelation my unrefined tongue has been working towards for years. On the other hand, maybe it's just 'cause Super Taste is so ridiculously ridiculous. Either way, my good blue shirt has some subtle spice staining action this eve.

Posted by Jesse at 1:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bugger off. Listening.

Posted by Jesse at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Seahorse" - Devendra Banhart (download)

Reviewing is a guessing game, no matter how informed one is: a guess about what the contents will do with time. Will the melodies lodge and reemerge later as lyric fragments? Will the textures -- of the music, of the medium -- bond with the changes in the season and permanently lash to an ultimately arbitrary time and place? Listening is ephemeral, of course, but what's really there? Is there something there? What's left when the newness of context falls away? In that sense, it's terribly unfair to review an album after even after a few months of listening.

To use an indie-safe example: when I wrote about the Shins' Chutes Too Narrow upon its release, I listened a bunch, took it for absolutely decent standard-grade rawk, tucked it away, and forgot about it. That is, until months later, when I heard it played under the din of bar chatter between bands at Webster Hall, at which point I realized I knew nearly every melodic turn. Go figure. Once I got past the relative blandness of the more guitar pop, it was mondo groovy.

I reviewed two albums today by two other indieish standard bearers: Devendra Banhart and Iron and Wine. One grabbed me. The other didn't. One seemed like a real step forward for an artist I didn't quite get previously. The other seemed like a goofy step straight into the middle of the road for a musician I'd grokked instantly on his previous discs. Is that how they're going to hold up, though? I really don't know, but one can look for familiar signs: a certain way the guitars are recorded, a certain vagueness in the lyrics that suggests their abstraction will be useful, a preponderance of a certain mood. That's all they are, really: guesses about how people might want to spend their time in the future.

I sometimes think about Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape artist who designed Central Park, who intended for his work come into full bloom only with a century of time. Not that most musicians are as good or functional or meaningful at their work as Olmsted was with his, or that their work will make any sense whatsoever a century from now, but -- by their very nature of captured time reproduced -- albums are somehow like that. All they've got is the promise of future meaning.

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The only reference I have ever seen to the village of Jarnow, Austria comes via an account in the New York Times' "condensed cablegrams" section published on 7 February 1892 wherein it was reported that an unnamed doctor was killed by two unnamed comrades of an argumentative (and unnamed) Captain.

Since then, events in Jarnow, Austria ceased to be documented by the New York Times -- if it could ever be said that they were documented at all. Indeed, for the remainder of its years, the village of Jarnow managed to elude nearly every piece of written documentation since digitized, as well as the memories of at least three generations taking its name for their own.

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Whatever Victorian classification philosophy initially divided Sunday newspapers into their compartmentalized hunks of knowledge is long obsolescent in the culture at large. But I'm not sure it's outlived its usefulness. The Sunday New York Times was never interchangeable with the world it described, though it sometimes seemed like it was. Now, especially, it seems like an obviously incomplete sampling of events presented with a strongly limited perspective.

Lately, though, I've come to value its finite qualities way more than its reportage. One could probably find the same stories scattered about the cyberether, but the fact that the Times has chosen to focus on them is what's important. Data smog is an old problem (to borrow David Shenk's phrase) and one result of being so overwhelmed is to enter blogospheric niches -- be them centered around, say, obscure mp3s or liberal politics -- and simply never emerge. Or, worse, only see the world through that community's eyes.

The Times, especially on Sundays, isn't just all the news that's fit to print. It's not all the news, for starters. But it does fit, neatly and valuably, into a few pounds of tree meat: a microcosm, or at least an organized place to enter the dialogue.

Posted by Jesse at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

...we're clear.

Posted by Jesse at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dearest Wunderkammernists -

As you may've noticed, the site's been a bit a spotty lately. I've been getting everything migrated to a new server, a process far more oi-inducing than I could've predicted. Anyway, I'm gonna take a break until everything is all squared. Could be tomorrow, could be next week, I dunno. When we come back: field recordings of distant marching bands, more animation, new micro-fiction, and all kindsa mp3s.

l8r s8rs,
jj.

Posted by Jesse at 1:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, there was a new Frow Show to post & some other odds & ends, but Ropeadope is off 'til Monday, and I'm gonna do the same. We're just gonna get back to detonating marshmallows for freedom now.

Posted by Jesse at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am not quite sure what to call the below episodes of Robot Chicken and Powerpuff Girls, in which fairly fuckin' hilarious Star Wars and Beatles references, respectively, are framed in the shows' usual styles. They are not mash-ups, except conceptually. They are too scattershot to be parodies, and too oblique to be tributes, though that perhaps comes closest. Anyway, it's probably making too much of them, but both make comedy from the secret vocabulary of intimate fandom.

It's not like other shows haven't done the thematic-inside-joke-as-leitmotif before, but these two happen to do it with worlds that have been with me (and probably a lot of people) since early childhood. So, it's absurd, but it somehow runs deeper than that -- as when the Robot Chicken dudes tell the story of Ponda Baba, one of the many creatures from the Mos Eisley cantina that resonated with my adolescent self as grotesquely creepy, or when the whole Powerpuff episode builds towards a joke based almost exactly on the way I misheard the French "Michelle" lyrics when I was kid.

Anyway, the shit's funny. You should watch it.

Check out this video: PowerPuff Girls - Meet The BeatAlls



Add to My Profile | More Videos

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I'd heard about Tideland, but my first notice of its release was when I looked down at the Daily News (I think) while eating a taco at two in the morning and seeing (I think) a half-star review of a new movie. Wondering what could possibly be so awful, I was informed of the existence of a new Terry Gilliam movie. I missed it during its New York run, and sat on the DVD for a month or so after it arrived. My suspicions were met head on when Gilliam himself arrived, in unflattering black and white, to introduce the film himself.

"Many of you are not going to like this film," Gilliam says. "Fortunately, many of you are going to love it, and a great many of you are not going to know what to think, but hopefully you'll be thinking." The math is a little dubious. It is not optimistic, and -- after Gilliam tells what, exactly, we should be thinking -- it certainly contributes like a self-fulfilling prophesy to the ruin of the movie, which plays out like the most hideous recesses of the adrenochrome nightmare Gilliam hinted at in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (with Jeff Bridges as the anti-Dude doing his best impersonation of Bernie of Weekend at Bernie's fame). Tideland's fundamental language is no different than the fantasy-infused grotesques of Brazil or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but -- as Gilliam's totally unnecessary and film-mauling introduction seems to emphasize -- it plays the grotesques for almost pure shock as opposed to building blocks towards larger truths.

It's nice to see Gilliam getting arty and strange again after a decade run at the mainstream. It's a logical step for him, artistically. All the darkness, of course, lurked near the surface of his Flying Circus animations for Monty Python -- which is exactly what gave them their power. I hope he keeps chasing this particular muse. Maybe he'll get it next time. (Don Quixote, sadly, seems the perfect manifestation for it.) I am not going to repeat Gilliam's instructions for viewing Tideland, because they give concrete shape to what could be an oblique and implacable experience. (Though you can watch the intro on YouTube.) (No, you can Google it yourself.)

"Don't forget to laugh," Gilliam reminds us, sounding like a total sourpuss. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," he gravely intones at the end of his message. The image switches to color (?!) for a frame or three. Only then does Gilliam smile. The joke is definitely on somebody.

Posted by Jesse at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Summer Salt" demo - Funny Cry Happy (download)

Wrote this song in October but had occasion(s) to record it this evening. I think there are some partying Puerto Ricans in the background on one of the tracks. It's a very rough mix right now, though C.P. Farnsworth will soon tweak it up proper. It's short & could probably use a bridge. Also uploaded to the Funny Cry Happy MySpace page...

Posted by Jesse at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A reasonable/utopian proposal to rebalance the cultural ecosystem.

If it can be proved that:

1.) In a neighborhood...
a.) ...there has been a recent boom in high-value residential real estate...
b.) ...the average rent for a commercial property has increased.

2.) An institution in that neighborhood...
a.) ...is of cultural value...
b.) ...has been open for five years or longer...
c.) ...was able to operate at the original rent...
d.) ...cannot viably function under the new rent.

Then:
The neighborhood's new residents should be made to pay a Gentrification Tax to cover the difference between the institution's original rent and the current market value of the property, as well as any attendant costs for the legal enforcement of the law.

Posted by Jesse at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

(via Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant...)

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

"I will gather the rain and the moon and I'm gone," I heard myself sing, my voice practically one with the background music. I broke for the surface of the pool, took a quick gulp, and plunged down again. "I will gather the rain and the moon and you're gone." Another breath. "I will gather the moon and the stars and we're gone." The song was buoyant, harder to stay underwater while it was playing. I was filled with joy, which I had not expected.

Posted by Jesse at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some people swear by Moleskine notebooks. Me, I'm all about the 6 1/8" x 3 3/4" 72-page Oxford Memo Book, stock number 6096 1/2. They look old school, age well after months in my back pocket, and never fall apart.

Unfortunately, the dude at the stationary store told me that they are being discontinued in that size. I, for one, am having a cow.

Emails with the Esselte Corporation, trying to order even just a single case, have proved fruitless. Googling and eBay searching have been similarly frustrating. As I embark on occasional missions to various lower Manhattan stationary stores, I figured I'd post a cyberplea, as well, and make an offer...

If anybody comes across any 6096 1/2s (or the ledger-lined 6094), I will gladly cover the costs of purchase and shipping, and will send a care package including a mix CD and other goodies. Drop me a line, y0!

Posted by Jesse at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

(And speaking of cams at shows...)

"You fucked my girlfriend with a cellphone!" said GWAR's Number One fan, upon encountering the band in Hell, shortly before they chopped into him and he squirted the sixth or seventh round of fake blood on the audience. Before that, though, the band clarified: "We didn't fuck your girlfriend" (pause) "...we raped her. And it wasn't a cellphone. It was a phone booth." (Cheers.) Then blood. Like every between-song skit -- which also included Adolf Hitler, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, and Jewcifer -- it was scripted with the obvious punchline: cover the audience in some kind of fluid. There was also a fake cock and a lot of fake cum.

"There used to be a lot more blood," said my friend, who'd seen GWAR "10 or 20 times." "It used to start gushing as soon as they hit the stage. It was a lot better." He'd never seen GWAR -- who celebrated their 20th birthday last year -- in any place larger than Irving Plaza, the small ballroom where we saw them tonight. It makes sense. After all, any bigger and the blood cannon (placed at crotch level and operated by a dude in a leather thong) wouldn't be able to reach the back of the room.

Besides the wall of tee-shirts and branded underwear at the merch table, there was also a veritable metal record store. Besides discs from GWAR and their two openers, there were also long cardboard cases filled with their brethren like Cannibal Corpse, Cattle Decapitation, Born Into Pain, and Destroy Destroy Destroy. It was a one-stop subcultural shop.

GWAR have been doing this for twenty years. With their anonymity-granting costumes -- which resembled, well, bad guys from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- they could tagteam members for generations (if they haven't already). GWAR could still be playing in decades, when metal feels quaint, like bluegrass does to us. One can never underestimate the power of being covered in fake blood, though. If being covered in sweat is the sign of an authentic ecstasy, then GWAR do all the work, virtually guaranteeing that anybody who wants to can have a literally physical, visceral experience. And that is a pretty good concept for a band.

Posted by Jesse at 2:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My first reaction to Tom Cox's "Don't film it, feel it" editorial in the London Times was annoyance. And, after thinking about, it still is.

I get Cox's point: if people are spending the whole shows taking pictures on their phones, they're not listening. Admittedly, it's frustrating. A few months ago, I saw my friend's band, the Rolling Stallones, play at CBGB. During the opening act, a gaggle of girls up front spent literally 20 minutes taking pictures of each other in front of the stage. I don't think it was even for the purposes of documenting themselves at the soon-to-closed venue. It was just obscenely narcissistic.

But were the girls taking pictures of each other really going to be "listening" to the show, anyway? Going to see live music is about far more than just the music coming out of the speakers, otherwise you wouldn't fork your money over and you could just stay at home and listen to the stolen mp3s. It's a social act, with all the attendant relationships.

Though I'm a big proponent of cell cameras, I almost never take pictures at gigs. But that's just me. Even though there are tons of differences, I associate their use at shows with the act of smuggling a cheap cassette deck in to make a bootleg. The content is different, even the action is different -- cell cams being condoned, bootlegs being, well bootlegs -- but I think it's the same impulse. The resultant tangle of Flickr pages, MySpace and Facebook pictures is obviously ephemeral. But so is live music. That's sort of the point, right?

It all seems like a way of engaging with the music. And by "the music," of course, I mean everything besides the music itself: one's friends, the rest of the crowd, the band, the club. In an age where one's relationship with music is more complex than just listening to albums and going to shows, it's sometimes good to be able to locate herself in the noise.

Of course I was annoyed by the girls at the show. It wasn't because they were taking pictures, though. It was because they just wouldn't shut up. But that's a much older problem.

Posted by Jesse at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent part of my Saturday afternoon reading on my couch and part of my Saturday afternoon playing video games with the neighbors. The latter felt healthier. Part of this had to do with the fact that they just acquired a Nintendo Wii. We strapped on the little controller boxes and played. It was social and, if not exactly exercise, then not exactly anything else, either. And I certainly wasn't alone in my own head anymore.

The baseball game was primitive. There is only batting and pitching. No fielding, no baserunning. In the bottom of the third, the last inning in this stripped-down rendition of the rules, with the score tied at zero, my friend hit a long fly out to left field with a man on third and one out. There was no option to tag, so no run scored. The game stayed tied, and there were no extra innings.

But the experience was pretty remarkable, especially bowling -- which, when done in a group of four, strangely mimicked the group act of actually bowling. Even the gestures, mostly involving lining up shots and putting spin on the ball, felt real. I thought often of my college bowling coach.

Naturally, when playing these games, we all assumed the natural postures of what we would do when playing meatspace sports. In baseball, we held the controller like a bat. In golf, like a club. But we don't have to. One can trick the game into thinking he's made a full swing with just the slightest twitch of the wrist. But it is a precise twitch, subtler than the intricate hand-eye coordination required for traditional video games.

Until Nintendo releases boxes that attach to the ankle, to mimic the motion of running (or Dance Dance Revolution), the Wii probably won't slim down the post-cherubic youth of America. But it could do something else. The first generation of home video games refined the use of the thumb: those of the rotary era still dial phones with the pointer fingers while members of the Nintendo generation are more likely to use their thumbs. Who knows what the Wii will really do?

Posted by Jesse at 1:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have a yummy one.

See you Monday.

Posted by Jesse at 3:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(Don't even know if this is possible. If you or someone you know can possibly code this, do drop a comment below.)

Idea for art: an mp3 that changes itself with each copy. That is: a computer-generated piece of music that contains a mechanism/algorithm to alter its contents whenever somebody drags it somewhere. No two listeners would end up with the same song..

Posted by Jesse at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

These are some books I have written. For reasons of price and/or age level, I can't necessarily recommend the purchase of any of them (unless you happen to be between sixth and 12th grades, in which case the Princeton Review book will likely prove quite handy, or a percussion ensemble with a lot of disposable academic money, in which case Running at the Sunshine might serve you well).

o How To Remember Everything, Grades 9-12: 183 Memory Tricks To Help You Study Better, edited by Russell Kahn. I contributed a half-dozen or so mnemonics.

o Running at the Sunshine. The overpriced percussion score to Matthew Van Brink's Running at the Sunshine, for which I contributed the text. Listen here.

o Telegraph and Telephone Networks: Ground Breaking Developments in American Communications (America's Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century)

o Oil, Steel, and Railroads: America's Big Businesses in the Late 1800s (America's Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century)

o The Rise of American Capitalism: The Growth of American Bank (America's Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century)

o Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death Speech: A Primary Source Investigation (Great Historic Debates and Speeches)

o The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Race in America (Looking at Literature Through Primary Sources)

o Socialism: A Primary Source Analysis (Primary Sources of Political Systems)

o Manifest Destiny: A Primary Source History of the Settlement of the American Heartland in the Late 19th Century

o Johnny Bench (Baseball Hall of Famers)

o Phillis Wheatley: African American Poet (Primary Sources of Famous People in American History)

o Davy Crockett: Frontier Hero (Primary Sources of Famous People in American History)

Posted by Jesse at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the weekend, I spent some time recording, and finally started a MySpace page for Funny Cry Happy. Included are the two demos I just made, "No Wonder" and "Textual Healing," and a few songs from On A Clear Night, You Can Smell For Miles. I'll post more as they're ready.

Posted by Jesse at 1:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm gonna be mostly off-grid this week. Regular posting will resume Monday the 11th. xoxo, jj.

Posted by Jesse at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The idea of playing with copyright -- through mash-ups (musical, visual, or otherwise), pirating, mixes -- occasionally seems the modern equivalent of psychedelics. Like LSD, which had been in circulation for two decades previous to the 1960s, the notion of reappropriation took some time to achieve critical cultural mass (and has been present, in some form, for all human history). There are people who exploit it on a strictly recreational level (such as downloading music), and those who have used it as a great springboard of creativity (such as turning that music into something new and redistributing it). Committing one of the latter acts, especially, one automatically enters into the dialogue, rearranging the symbols around himself. It is an instant ticket to the group mind. Mostly, playing with copyright makes one see the world differently, as something more malleable than it was moments earlier. Though maybe not as dangerous an idea as acid, it still makes for a dandy of a bogeyman.

Posted by Jesse at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I was not raised bi-platform. I've been an Apple user since the day my Aunt left her family's IIe with us while they went on vacation. I was five or six. The next holiday season, one of our very own materialized in Dad's studio. The hulking gray console now sits in the corner of my room on top of a closet. In the intervening decades, my family shared a IIc and two desktops. In high school, I got a desktop of my own, and am now on my fourth laptop. Just as I can only effectively communicate in English, I can only really function on Macs. I'm an ugly American and a brutish Apple rube.

With the death of my third iPod in three weeks by unprovoked harddrive failure, I think my faith in Apple's hardware has been irrevocably scarred. There's nowhere I can go, and -- from now on -- there will be a half-second of near-panic every time I turn anything on: Will it work? Am I about to get all stressed and shit or am I going to get that demonically sad icon again? Is my computer about to die on me? (Holy shit: did my back-up jump drive actually just die on me? What the fuck?)

Fuck you, technology. I'm going to bed.

Posted by Jesse at 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

(See part 1 for explanation.)

When I was a kid, I had a poster of Earth on my wall -- a fold-out from National Geographic, I think. Clouds and storms and systems obscured parts of the planet. When it rains, I like picturing myself beneath some twisting gray-black cover that can be seen from space, no different from the atmospheric turbulence (give or take) on any other planet. We're preparing for a heatwave now. I'm not sure what those look like from space, if anything.

21.) What was the total rainfall here last year?
56.01 inches.

22.) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Cars and trucks, mostly, but also the endless factories (chemical and otherwise), incinerators, and other structures of industry all around the tri-state area.

23.) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?
12:38 am & 1:24 pm.

24.) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
The water left behind by the melting of the glaciers, which pooled in lakes and carved rivers, valleys, and islands.

25.) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
Mile-a-minute vine, giant hogweed (ooh, giant hogs!), pale swallow-wort are all recent arrivals. Japanese knotwood sounds pretty exotic, too.

Posted by Jesse at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(See part 1 for explanation.)

Just to play devil's advocate here, what's more important: knowing the information here instinctually or knowing how to find it on the world wide cyberinterwebnet? Clearly, all of this information is good to know. I feel more responsible as a a citizen for having some idea, now, where my garbage is going. Is it useful? Maybe in the broader sense that I'm now thinking about these questions. Strokes chin.

11.) From what direction do storms generally come?
West.

12.) Where does your garbage go?
Since the Fishkill landfill on Staten Island closed in 2001, New York area garbage has been shipped to various out-of-state landfills. Last week, a plan was approved to ship it out by barge.

13.) How many people live in your watershed?
I'm a-gonna guess about 3.7 million, given that the Northern Long Island watershed is about half of Long Island, which has about 7.4 million residents.

14.) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
Anybody who purchases products from A&R Lobosco, Inc., Potential Industries, Inc. (awesome name for a company!), Paper Fibres Corp., Rapid Recycling, and Triboro Fibers.

15.) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
Hmmm, over there and over there (points towards clusters of buildings).

16.) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
In the Atlantic, south of Far Rockaway beach.

17.) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?
I'm not entirely sure, but I'm sure the Federal Pump Corp., who drill wells, would be able to tell me if I really needed to know.

18.) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
I live in Brooklyn, but I like Jason Kottke's answer too much: the bedrock beneath Manhattan was truly a sacred consideration in the construction of those most holy skyscrapers.

19.) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?
Early April-Mid May through October.

20.) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Common loon (migratory), red-throated loon (migratory), horned grebe (migratory), red-necked grebe (migratory), Cory's Shearwater (migratory). (Lots more.)

Posted by Jesse at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Answering Kevin Kelly's questions about The Big Here were way tougher than I imagined. I knew in advance that I didn't know many of the answers, but even tracking some of them down via Google was a bit tough -- quite different from an age where most people would probably know most of this stuff instinctually. I only got through the first 10 (of 30) and it took a good long while. If any of these seem horribly wrong to fellow Brooklynites, please correct.

1.) Point north.
Thatta way: over the basketball court, past the vacant lot, across Bogart Street, and towards Queens.

2.) What time is sunset today?
Probably 8:30ish? (Weather.com says 8:18.)

3.) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
Water collects in the Catskill/Delaware and Croton watersheds, in 18 reservoirs and three controlled lakes, before being channeled underground through the Croton Aqueduct, to the boroughs.

4.) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
The waste water in my neighborhood eventually makes it way to the Newtown Creek treatment facility in Greenpoint. The sludge is dewatered into biosolids and subsequently used as fertilizer or something else pleasantly beneficial. Yay poop!

5.) How many feet above sea level are you?
Looks to be about 20.

6.) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
Ferns, from what I can tell. Are they a wildflower? Yeep.

7.) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
Northern Long Island. The Southern Long Island watershed begins not-so-far to the south, a mile or two tops.

8.) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
More clay than sand, leftover from the Wisconsin Ice Sheet.

9.) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
The Canarsee Indians, Algonquians, were hunters, including ducks, turkeys, geese, deer, and clams. They grew corn, too.

10.) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
No idea, but I bet Wildman Steve Brill can tell me!

Posted by Jesse at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not really a consolation, but I am glad that I never dislodged the teetering stack of favorite CDs from the top of the stereo. The sudden death of my iPod (as opposed to probable theft by a lesbian stripper) will at least give me a chance to reacquaint myself with the quaint fetish objects, such as the Automatic For the People disc I accidentally got blood on when I didn't realize my finger was bleeding one late night in high school (still there on the surface, a brown-red smudge atop the timing of "Monty Got A Raw Deal")...

Posted by Jesse at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

- A rush of water through pipes.
- Bells, followed by train. Repeat.
- Wind, trees rustling.
- The occasional distant squeal of breaks.
- House guests in sleep loft; loft creaking slightly.
- Truck reversing, bleeping.
- Truck discharging air brakes.
- Desk chair.
- Humming electronics: Christmas lights, stereo, computer.
- Another reversing truck, still further away. .
- Car accelerating.
- Another car, with a squeaky frame, going by.
- A faint industrial stamping.
- Fingers on keyboard.
- Car being started, wheezing past.
- A chorus of idling motors (possibly imaginary).
- Something metallic, dragged for a moment on the asphalt.
- Something plastic, blown briefly down the sidewalk.
- Car horn, honked once, far away.
- Two other cars bellowing responses like foghorns.

Also, the cinnamon smell of the cake factory.

Posted by Jesse at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, so the name wunderkammern-twenty-seven-dot-com doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, I admit it. Neither does Jesse-Jarnow-dot-com, but at least it's (sorta) easier to remember. In an act of rare common sense, I finally bought the domain over the weekend and set it to forward over here. Y'know, in case that makes life easier for you or anything...

Posted by Jesse at 1:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love the democracy of YouTube. Search for "Wilco," and the first results (for now, anyway), include unofficial music videos, what appears to be a Dutch school play (whose keywords include "robot," "funny," "hardcore," and "zelfgemaakt"), and some kids partying in the basement of a dude named Wilco. Then comes footage of the band, but first shaky audience-shot bootlegs, before finally getting to the TV appearances and music videos, and Wilco covers by random people who thought it'd be a swell idea to cover Wilco and put it on YouTube.

Anyway, some of my favorite (non-Wilco) YouTube discoveries:
o Yo La Tengo attend Mr. Show's rock academy in the "Sugarcube" video.
o Brian Wilson performs "Surf's Up" solo on a Leonard Bernstein television special in 1966. (Bonus: 1992's "Hot Fun in the Summertime," in which the Boys cram bikini babes, old ladies, children, and John Stamos into three-and-a-half minutes of glorious, uh, hot fun.)
o Wes Anderson shills pleasantly for American Express.
o Jerry Garcia rubs elbows with Hugh Hefner during the Grateful Dead's 1969 appearance on Playboy After Dark. (Hef was later dosed by the band.)
o Jeff Mangum sings "Engine."

Posted by Jesse at 1:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight at dorkbot, I saw NYU's Jeff Han present on the multi-touch systems he has helped invent. These are touchscreens that expand their input from one finger to, in theory, an infinite amount. In his presentation, Han argued that the one-cursor/one-mouse model that computers have run on for decades is limiting. If he hadn't insisted that the screens depicted in his videos were real, I would've sworn the clips were mock-ups.

Hands roamed a celestial desktop filled with photographs, effortlessly resizing them and sorting them at will; they soared over a GoogleEarth-like mapscape zooming in and tilting with mild finger twitches; they sculpted a virtual face as if it were clay; they danced across a MaxMSP-type environment, attaching sound widgets to oscillators, keyboards, drum machines; they played strange futuristic games; they navigated pure abstractions. I guess it's kinda that whole virtual reality thing, huh? Whether or not it will ever catch on, it's straight-up next level.

Here is a short overview video demonstrating the multi-touch project.

Posted by Jesse at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, Owen brought over a bootleg DVD of the Talking Heads performing in their original three-piece lineup at CBGBs in December 1975. Needless to say, I was bloody well psyched. What I wasn't expecting, and what I kind of enjoyed about it, was how bad it was. That's not meant as an insult.

If anything, it came as a relief. It's good to know that the Heads didn't spring from the ground fully formed. During this performance (filmed in black and white), in what appears to be a not-very-packed CBs, the band runs down their early repertoire. David Byrne looks incredibly nervous, far from the charismatic frontman he'd become. Tina Weymouth, though not staring at her feet, doesn't look much more assured.

The only member of the band who looks (or sounds) remotely comfortable is Chris Frantz, who holds the half-formed songs together with remarkable panache. Even "Psycho Killer," which pre-dated the Heads' existence, isn't quite done. The killer bassline is there, but Byrne doesn't have the phrasing of th