search

Confetti

Dear Stephen,

Your shipment is now on its way to you via FedEx Ground. While Kelli was carefully hand-packing your shipment, we all sang a song of farewell and blew confetti about the warehouse. Then we packed your speakers on the truck, snapped to a smart salute and sent them on their way.

If any confetti remains on your box, please dispose of it carefully. One can never fully trust confetti.

Your new Aperion Audio speakers have seen much in their travels. Now they're ready to take you on cinematic and audio adventures of your own. Treat them well, love them, and they…

The Violence of the Lambs

I told you baaaad things happened when you monkey around with sheep.

Traneumentary

If, when listening to the music of John Coltrane, you've been asking yourself what am I missing?, Traneumentary will give you answers. It's a podcast series that interleaves commentary and Coltrane's music with interviews with collaborators like McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Cobb, contemporary musicians like Terence Blanchard and Jason Moran, and legendary producers Michael Cuscuna and Joel Dorn—not to mention the great man himself.

They call me caboose because I always follow the 'Trane.

Via be.jazz.

Happy Birthday Slava!

To celebrate his 80th birthday, EMI is loading all of Mstislav Rostropovich's discography onto iTunes for download. That's 5000 tracks.

I think that's great, but I don't know what bugs me more—that they're only available as DRM-encrusted lo-rez files or that we're still talking about "tracks." Grumble, mumble, sigh.

Yet Another Reality-Based Review of <I>300</I>

It's funny, but one of the topics Jeff Wong and I have been discussing, seemingly on a daily basis, has been the endless barrage of negative reviews of 300. I have my misgivings—principally the film's depiction of Hoplite warfare that completely ignores the existence of hoplon armor or Hoplite tactics.

Eugene N. Borza's review in Archeology gets that 300 is fiction, not simply sloppy. Yet, some inaccuracies are still hard to stomach. One, obviously, was having the Spartans march south to Themopylae, which is north of Sparta—shades of The Green Berets, which ends with the sun setting in…

Which Philip K. Dick Story Are We Living Now?

Philip K. Dick, far from being too paranoid to be prophetic, might not have been paranoid enough. After all, even my comments section makes you prove you're not a robot (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and there really are cameras everywhere for our protection (Through a Scanner Darkly). Oh yes, and legislation aimed at protecting us from terror may have invaded our privacy (Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said).

So, says Frolix_8, let's have a quiz.

A Failure of Intelligence

Somehow, the November issue of Technology Review made it to the top of my Empire State Building pile of unread magazines and I happened upon this fascinating recollection by Freeman Dyson about working for the Operational Research Section during WWII.

One advantage to reading it online is that you can go to part two very easily. I'd still be looking in that monster pile 'o mags.

Give Me That Ol' Time Aviation

When John Atkinson and I were driving from Kansas to New Mexico after recording Rendezvous, we spotted a crop duster spraying a roadside field. I was stunned by his precision at high speed—and by the exuberant loops with which he terminated each run. It looked incredibly difficult, and also like he was having a ball.

The Song (Somehow) Remains The Same

Lest I begin every blog entry in a negative fashion let me begin by saying, I love the music of Led Zeppelin.

Now that the positive portion of the evening has concluded, let me get to the reason I write today. I ventured into a Virgin Megastore on Monday to purchase a Zoso CD for my nephew who I'm trying to convert from a fan of the lowest common denominator variety of rap music. Not all rap is lowest common denominator by any means but the stuff he likes definitely hits that mark. The more ghetto the better. There's an entire other blog, or book perhaps about white kids from small towns…

The Impenetrable Wisdom of Al Marcy

I've mentioned my problem with sleep. It's not that I can't fall asleep. I'm usually so tired that I'm completely gone before my head meets pillow. I could go to bed at 7pm and fall asleep, no problem. I'm half-asleep right now.

But I just can't seem to stay asleep. Me and sleep don't get along very well. We touch but never hold. I'm convinced that I'm simply "a light sleeper," the various sounds of Jersey City night&#151symphonies of smashed beer bottles, choruses of high school children, sirens of all sorts&#151rising up from the tireless street below and invading my…