Clem Snide - There is Nothing

Yep. That's how I feel right now.

Israelisms -- Podcast # 17

OK. So I was a lazy iPod person. I knew about Podcasts but didn't want to be bothered. So when the new version of iTunes came out yesterday, I went a bit crazy. Now I have subscriptions to

• KCRW's Elvis Mitchell show The Treatment
• The Dawn and Drew Show
• Israelisms
• KPCCs Larry Mantle show AirTalk
• KPCCs Kitty Felde show Talk of the City
• Inside Mac
• And a rabbi's weekly parsha (I can't find his name right now)

so I think this Podcasting thing is now probably going to be huge and therefore, probably viewed as ruined by all the people who loved it before I got there. Like the Internet was before I started being on it in 1994.

OH! The Arcade Fire/David Byrne show on Sunday lived up to my expectations and then surpassed them. First off, I had never seen a show at the Hollywood Bowl. That was fun. You can bring picnics including wine with you. So everyone is in their seats trying to eat and drink with people squishing by to get to the bathrooms. Very fun. And then someone was always accidentally kicking over someone else's wine bottle... but the show was great. The Arcade Fire is so good in concert. This time last year they were playing in tiny clubs and today they are in huge rock festivals and they are as good and intense and fun. It was a great, great show. I'd go on about it some more but it's kind of hard to describe it intelligently. It was a very emotional thing. My G/F and I had a wonderful time. I had played her the Arcade Fire album previously and she read the lyrics as she listened, and that really made her like them as well.

Oh. David Byrne was joined midway through his set by the Extra Action Marching Band. HAH! A San Francisco marching band with cheerleaders wearing silver thongs and meshy tops (except the guy cheerleader who just had on the silvery g string and silver) and black pom poms and tall flag women with bondage attire and members dressed up in every sort of get up you can imagine, and they played really well and actually made David Byrne's songs even better. To close, David and the marching band did Beyonce's Crazy in Love. Whaaa??? It was obviously the Extra Action's idea, and David read the lyrics as he did it, but it worked well. It was so much fun. http://www.productshopnyc.com/archives/2005_06.html has a link to footage of that last bit. While the show for me was all about witnessing The Arcade Fire at what I sincerely pray is a long and vibrant career, it also made me like David Byrne a lot more than I had before. A great night.

David Byrne - Pirates

Well, the supposedly evil members of the Supreme Court, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and O'Connor, are the right ones today. The Kelo V New London ruling does exactly what O'Connor says it does-- "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded--i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public--in the process." We are used perhaps more to disputes involving private property owners rights to do things on their land that negatively affect others -- for instance, building a factory or business on one's property in violation of zoning laws, or developing one's property in ways that damage an ecosystem relied on by an endangered species. But this case is about a development corporation being able to convince a city that they'll be better off if they seize private property -- in this case, residential homes in the family for generations -- and give the property to another private entity who will, if their development lives up to the plan, produce more income for the city. And the Court held that only the city's opinion counts here. The Courts have no say in the matter. So there is no-one for the private homeowner to appeal to. The only consideration is whether the city wants to allow Party A to build where Party B currently lives. Can you say "EVIL?"

Currently in LA, there are areas where the little bungalows of the 30s and 40s are being replaced by McMansions that take up almost the whole property. Now, the little bungalows are often owned by people who have owned them for so long that they pay little taxes, due to the way Prop 13 works. It would be in LAs interests, purely economically, to pay the homeowners fair market value for their homes and allow a big developer to knock them down and build new megamansions in their place, because of the huge increase in taxes. And more tax revenue means an easier time helping the public. And what if they built fewer houses on the same land? That means reduced congestion. I could keep going on for ever. The "benefits" of such a land grab would be legion. And EVIL.

Coldplay - A Whisper

I sent another letter to the President today. If I took photos of refineries I would end up with the Secret Service at my doorstep. So far, I don't think they're cracking down on vigorous dissent yet...

McClellan has a thankless job. It must be getting so hard to put a positive spin on all the nasty stuff coming up about you. And it's coming too fast for him to properly duck. Today he tried to make us believe that Senator Durbin is critizing soldiers. But he is not. Durbin said you and your administration should apologize “for abandoning the Geneva Conventions and authorizing torture techniques that put our troops at risk and make Americans less secure." Durbin is not attacking the enlisted grunts who do what they are told. He is criticizing YOU, Mr. President, and YOUR administration. YOU are the one responsible. You are the Commander in Chief. It is YOUR failures we see in Iraq, not the failure of the soldiers who follow your bad orders.

Undoubtedly, things would be much worse in Guantanamo were it not for our soldiers being so humane. That’s the only saving grace we have in Iraq and Guantanamo. The soldiers are so good and diligent and professional that they partially compensate for your arrogance and ineptitude and your wrongheaded orders. Thank God we have great American kids serving their country so that the world sees great Americans sometimes, and not just you and your administration.

Lee R. Tracy

Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition

"I don't really care about EMI," he told Reuters at a recent appearance in Manhattan. "I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world."
--- Idiot and talentless Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, discussing his band's boring new album debuting at #1 and how it boosts EMIs profits and stocks.

Of course, the great evil of this modern world isn't shareholders. It's boring music. Your boss listens to it. Your eight year old listens to it. Your gerbil listens to it. Your mother even listens to it. For about a month. Then everyone gets tired of it. After a year or so, everyone going through their CDs realizes that they haven't listened to X+Y in ages, and no, they don't want to listen to it again now. So dozens of copies end up for sale on the internet. Cheap. But all the copies of X+Y that everyone suddenly wants to unload in July of 2006 aren't going to sell, are they? So what happens to all the CDs? Coldplay's latest CD is definitely going to result in a significant increase in landfill problems, and the stupid father of Apple (No, not the Steves, silly) is to blame. Bastard.

On the good side of things, only a week-and-a-half till The Arcade Fire/David Byrne show at The Hollywood Bowl!!! God is good.

The Beatles -- Got to Get You into My Life

McCartney says this song is about his newfound love for marijuana back in 196-whatever. It's still a good song.

Which reminds me of Coldplay. It's not their fault. Well, actually, it is. Chris Martin combines macho cockiness with overdone faux vulnerability. He is so proud of his vulnerability. And in interviews, he always tries to put himself in with bands like U2. And the LA Times critic recently did too, which is so obscene. Coldplay has released three albums in 7 years, right? ANd they all sound like The Bends. U2 released Boy, October, War, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Joshua Tree. And the band develops over time, producing lots of awesome songs that you can tell from one another. True, u2 now tends to release albums that are more interchangeable -- HTDAAB is pretty much just ATYCLB rehashed -- but the first seven years -- the first eleven years, really, through Achtung Baby, were exciting releases moving to new ground each time.

What really makes me angry is not Coldplay's music. I don't mind it at all. To me, they are really MOR music. Nothing wrong with that. When I want something innocuous on that I can work with, I put on Coldplay, A Girl Called Eddy, Sinatra, Sarah McLaughlin, Nat King Cole, Bic Runga... nothing wrong with the music at all. Sometimes the lyrics are a lot better than Coldplays, actually, but the point is they are melodic pleasant music that isn't going to distract when you want to work. Easy Listening. KOST FM. That sort of thing. It's when journalists and Coldplay try to make themselves out to be more than pretty music to use in TV commercials and the like that I get angry.

It's like The Killers and how they try to be so big and Important. The singer was in a big bs article in the LA Times saying how when they heard The Strokes Room on Fire they tossed half their songs and redid them. When I listened to Hot Fuss I was confused. These are the songs they kept? How sucky the rejects must have been! Amazing.

Which makes me love bands like The Arcade Fire even more. They are so earnest and unassuming in their interviews. They are in a band to make music and share it, not to be the Biggest Band in The World. And that's perhaps the secret to making good music. Someone has to actually care about music in the end.

I never saw 24 Hour Party People but I heard someone in it talks about how the music industry is filled with music lovers. They are college grads who could have gone into any industry and they went into the music business because they love music. They are the people would were not good enough or lucky enough to be good musicians or singers but live and breathe it like the kids in High Fidelity. Most bands, on the other hand, the people who are making the music, they want to get rich and be stars and have groupies and use music as a vehicle for stardom. So the bands that are supposed to be the starving artists are the greedy materialistic ones, and the supposedly selfish and conniving agents and producers at the music company are the ones really caring about the music. At least with groups like The Killers and Coldplay, I'm sure it's true.

King Crimson -- Frame by Frame

This is the letter I sent to President Bush yesterday.


"I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me." Matthew 25:45

"A society should not be judged on how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals..." --Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When it was about Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International was a trusted objective organization whose reports were cited by you and your administration in documenting war crimes. Now their reports are "absurd." Your administration has spent the past few days trying to trash Amnesty rather than deal honestly with the concerns raised by the organization.

In Matthew 25, 33-46, Jesus explains that whatever we do to the least among us we do to him or for him. "Away with you, you cursed ones," he says to those who did not visit the sick or those imprisoned, who did not feed the hungry or clothe the naked. Whatever we do to the least among us, we do to him.

Perhaps you are confused by Jesus' teaching. He is not saying that whatever you do to the least AMERICAN you do to him. He means everyone. Including those in Guantanamo and your other prisons that have been locked up for years with no way to appeal their detention.

You believe that America has a special role in history, right? Shouldn’t this special role entail a particularly fair and honest and compassionate treatment of the least among us? Shouldn't those accused of crimes by the greatest country in history be treated better by us than they would be other countries? Shouldn't we strive for the highest standards possible and be open about these standards rather than lie at every opportunity, or attack Amnesty International for telling the truth?

Julie Doiron - Gone Gone

Ron Howard has only made two good movies. Parenthood, and The Missing.

Since we are subjected to another Ron Howard/Russell Crowe monstrosity soon, just wanted to say that. I think Ron Howard is nice. I think his movies are generally Carpracorn without the redeeming social sensitivity. Just plain saccharine. Don't get me wrong -- I'm a movie slut, and I'll probably end up seeing the Cinderella whatever but America is a messed up country and one way we can tell is by how many mediocre Ron Howard movies are so adored.

The Arcade Fire - Wake Up

Well. It's kind of obvious I've been listening to The Arcade Fire a lot since their label got onto eMusic and I downloaded their Funeral CD a week or so ago. Whoa. Some article drew a comparison with The Walkmen, which I agree with in that The Walkmen are experimenting with sounds and making new stuff as well, but The Arcade Fire is just a unique gorgeous growing thing that's really, really, great. It's like they've got bits of everything from TOBASOL to Talking Heads to T Rex in there. And lots of other flavors I haven't identified yet.

So I had noticed that they were playing with David Byrne at the Hollywood Bowl next month. And then I forgot. And then I went to a fansite and was reminded. And it's a Sunday night! And my g/f is not working the next day! And tickets were only $30 each! So it should be a great show. The Arcade Fire and David Byrne and his stuff under the stars.

Arcade Fire - Crown of Love

I am back from Palm springs where we had a regional meeting for a couple days. LA is freezing compared to the 105-111 days I just experienced. When I was there, I went on the aerial tram to Mt San Jacinto State Park where it was 70. I sat next to Heraclitus' stream. I stuck my hand in and delighted in the snowmelt freeze. I sat on a rock in the shade and listened to birds chirp and the stream rush. I stuck my hand into the same stream and thought about it also being a different stream. I thought about how the stream and I are mostly empty space, that we don't really touch each other at all. Then I discarded silly scientific babble and enjoyed the icy water babbling over my hand.

My G/f's oldest daughter is graduating high school today and I have to get her a gift but I also have to leave early to get there so I have little time and even littler ideas.

I have so much to do that everything is crying out with equal urgency at every frequency, so it's all a soothing whitenoise. It's a bed of nails. One nail could kill me. A few hundred support me evenly. So it's a peaceful day. But it's time to do something. It's what I was born to do, this something.

The Arcade Fire -- Rebellion (Lies)

Well. Like sands through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

People keep dying. It's almost like it's MEANT to happen.

(I mean, we know that death is an aberration. It's a sickness. It's meant to be conquered. At least by the wealthy. In ten or twenty years, we'll have people living forever. Except those who can't afford the cell replacements. But anyway. That's like it is today. We lucky few have diseases like anorexia and anxiety and alcoholism and obesity, and everyone else has tuberculosis, malaria, and measles. We worry about our commutes and they worry about getting murdered by the repressive government/fanatical rebels. You get the idea.)

But once in a while, doesn't it seem like life and death are somehow linked!? Like one should go hand-in-hand with the other? It's almost as if a force was behind the universe and this force set it up so that new life comes from the death of old life or something... nah. What crap. We must cure Cancer! We must cure Heart Disease! We must cure Death!

The Jam -- Non-Stop Dancing

George Galloway is my hero.

Aimee Mann -- I can't Help You Anymore

Zoo yesterday. It was fun, chaperoning my daughter and her friend. I was all prepared for it to be sunny with a big hat, and wouldn't you know it, it was overcast and cool the whole day. I think the chimpanzees were the highlight of the day -- those and the giraffes. Unfortunately, the zoo is an odd experience, because so many animals are in the enclosures facing away from us, and that brings us up to a weird truth about zoos. When we got to cages where the animals were in a corner or not near us, we felt irritated, disappointed. Like the Taliban who had shot at the lion in the Baghdad zoo, we may have, if allowed, or if we could have gotten away with it, poked the lions and wolves and other inconveniently oriented animals with long poles or shot rocks at them with slingshots to make them turn to face us. As much as we go to zoos obstensibly for education -- the kids had to fill out a few pages about a particular endangered species -- it ends up being entertainment and exploitative. The animal must present itself to us, must look our way, must be visible so we can be appropriately entertained and enlightened. I suppose that if zoos did their work with endangered species, like the condor captive breeding program, without having the public come in to look at the animals and be entertained, the useful and inarguably good things the zoos do would not get done, but still, it is a weird thing to basically go to the zoo and expect animals to be there when we get to their cages (or, to be diplomatic, enclosures). When we left, there were a few people outside the entrance with anti-zoo placards and Villaraigosa signs. Perhaps it was Hahn people trying to turn people off Villaraigosa, I don't know, but one sign talked about the animals suffering for our entertainments, and when it comes down to it, that's an inescapable truth, just as it's inescapably true that we slaughter animals and cause untold suffering just because we like the taste of meat. And eating meat on such a flimsy justification -- "but we like it! -- is reprehensible. Of course, these are all arguments and thoughts I think best left for adults. I am not going to tell my daughter that zoos are exploitative and evil, although I may wonder. Just as I am not going to tell her eating meat is evil, although she knows I don't eat what I refer to as "dead animals." But you know, I really did enjoy the zoo. I think my favorite part is always the aviaries. I like birds.

Genesis -- The Battle of Epping Forest

I got my Tiger DVD yesterday and upgraded my iBook to 10.4. The only negative thing I noticed is that right-clicking in Finder results in the beachball and a minute of Finder non-responsiveness. Doing the same thing by going to the regular menu works instantly. Which is odd. I wonder why Macintoshes have support for right clicking and scrolling and the like but sell expensive mouses that don't even have right-click? It's like starting people off with a needless disability.

But the Dashboard thing is cool. Spotlight works great to find stuff, though on this new laptop there's not much to find. And Automator is Cool. One thing I've learned with iTunes is how important it is to backup my iTunes library files, and I was able to quickly figure out how to use Automator to do a script that saves the iTunes library files to my USB thumbdrive when I click on an icon. Next I'll figure out how to have the same thing done automatically on a schedule for all my crucial documents...

I also started doing useful work on my brother's website last night, updating show dates by using Fetch. I had been using FrontPage and it LOOKED like FrontPage allowed me to edit text files right on the server. Perhaps it did not but made it seem like it did? Anyway, I have to download the file from the server, then make the changes, then put the doc back on the server, but then it overwrites just fine. Next I have to try to modify html pages. Obviously it should be the same process, but doing it via FTP makes you think more than using FrontPage. Of course, using FrontPage to do additions of photo pages and changing text in textfiles was a big waste of money. I originally wanted to learn FrontPage and how to do all the cool html/asp/blah blah stuff, but it's too hard to figure that out and do my real work and parent.... I think I may end up, after a little adjustment, getting the website handled easiler with the iBook...

Bruce Springsteen -- Rosalita

Well. Monday. It's showery today, but right now, when it's time for me to go, it's sunny with pretty clouds. I had a presentation this morning and the rest of the day was putting out fires, some of which I had set myself. But I got Tiger in the mail today, so tonight I'm installing and playing with widgets I think, as well as trying out different FTP products to find the best way to keep my brother's site updated with new gigs and photos...

Mother's Day was great until the rollerblader ran into my mom and knocked her down (Venice Beach)... luckily she didn't need stitches or anything. Honestly. Besides that, she had a great time.

I have my daughter back, so I have to leave right now to get her from daycare before it closes. I love LA, and having to leave an hour and a half early... I would take the train but I just missed it today...

The Stills -- Ready for It

It's Shabbat already! I am so happy but at the same time, horrified it's the end of the week and I have so much undone. I need better focus at work! Like right now. I gotta go.

Specials -- Nite Klub

It's a cool overcast day. My favorite kind of weather.

I am overly involved with my iBook, learning how to do everything on it. I wish I was like my g/f and able to use my computer and not learn everything about my computer. As it is, I am messing about with video importing and editing, which is really not something I need or want to do. But one thing that's good is that having a bunch of new software to learn makes me want to do creative stuff, and although I do creative stuff all the time, I want to do more -- like interesting gifts and cards. Not the usual dumb cards that look tacky but really cool innovative stuff like birthday brochures or booklets. And I need to get back into poetry writing. The iBook is so small it makes it a lot easy to take out and use.

I am becoming increasingly aware of time's passing because I've been looking at old photos and recordings, and my daughter was 5 years old a second ago, and now she's 11. I miss the little girl, even though the almost-teenager is a wonderful, wonderful person, a lot of fun to be with and immensely kind and compassionate and creative. But I miss the way she was before. I miss the way I was back then as well. I don't think I was different but I'm sure I was in some ways besides looking skinnier or fatter depending on what day it was.

Peter Gabriel -- Only Us

I am now one of the switchers, one of the Windows users who has gone over to the Mac world. I bought an iBook this weekend. I wasn't sure if I should get the Powerbook, but after being honest with myself about what I use my laptop for, it made no sense to spend the extra money. The iBook does everything I need, and does it well.

Even though I've switched, I am, like a large portion of switchers, still firmly in the Windows camp. First, my old laptop is going to be my daughter's laptop, and so I'll still be dealing with Windows. Secondly, there are a couple things I have to figure out how to do on the Mac, so I'm still using the Windows machine for that stuff. Third, I work with Windows at work. So it's like speaking one language and work and another at home, I guess.

The Mac is set up to make it pretty easy to switch. There are some things that are frustrating -- I have some needling issues, like the ten year old AVIs of my daughter that I can't get to work in Mac (I'll have to mess with them on the PC and export them to a straightforward mac-friendly format) but overall it's been easy, helped out by the fact that all my personal and calendar stuff is on the Palm, which was easy to set up on the Mac. And the 12" iBook is so light and portable compared to my old 15" Dell... about half as thick as well. Also, it's about the best-priced 12" you can get, even considering Windows PCs, when you include the included software. It has 10.3 on it, but for $10 I ordered Tiger, so that should be here in a few days, and then I'll be up-to-date and happy happy. As far as the computer goes. And then I'll have to make my apartment as nice and sparkly and clean as my iBook...

The Clash - Police On My Back

My Significant Other -- she really is like the Other part of me -- and I saw Electricidad this weekend at the Mark Taper Forum. Wonderful play. It was basically the Electra story updated to East LA Cholo culture. It managed to be very local in time and place -- the action takes place only about 5 miles from the theater -- and yet very classic and mythological at the same time. The playwright, Luis Alfaro, did a great job in balancing the Spanglish used by the characters, the hilarious contemporary culture references, all the stuff that made it immediate and palpable to us Angelenos, with the timeless elements of tragedy. It's a great examination of being true to one's culture while yet at the same time being true to one's soul. Each of the characters has motivation and cause for their actions, each has a fatal flaw, and although you know the tragic heartrending violent end is coming when you sit down, it's no less painful and tragic when it comes.

PJ Harvey -- The Darker Days of Me & Him

So I'm counting the Omer this year. That's a new one for me. Every year I try to add on a mitzvah or two. Although this year, it's all I can do to cout the omer. Next year I hope to actually have a better handle on what I'm counting. I get the 49 days being combinations of the sefirah, but exactly what it means that yod is in hesed? Well, I dunno. I hope G-d has plans for me to live a long time otherwise I'll definitely have to have another life to get everything right.

Friday work is as Friday work usually is. It starts out with the promise of being slow, so I can catch up on longterm projects. Then there's a flurry of activity that's all the more difficult to deal with because I've committed to doing longterm activities. But it works out ok. I had a salad from the restaurant downstairs but forgot to tell them to hold the crutons, so I had to pick them all out of the salad. Otherwise, good salad. Not eating bread this week has helped me lose a pound or so, I think.

Losing weight is a preoccupation of mine, which is silly, because I am really about 8 pounds overweight. But I want to be at or below my target weight by my 40th birthday, and that's pretty soon. It's important to me because I'm part of LA culture. It's interesting. When I am in Santa Monica, I look fat. Honestly. I am not skinny enough. But when I am in West Covina, I look like skin and bones. Different cultures. We have people trying to be "healthy" and sunken at the same time others are doing a "Real Women Have Curves" sort of fat-acceptance flip off of the world--- it's amazing how many huge guts I see proudly hanging out these days. It's hard to stay moderate in the middle of such extreme differences in culture, and I'm just talking about weight here. It's taken on such a significance, and I think partly it's because people are afraid to talk about anything important. Character and morals are so dangerous that we've retreated from everything but pure physical. We can struggle and overcome our yetzer haras, but only when it comes to rejecting the temptations presented by donuts and french fries. To talk about bigger issues, moral issues, in an honest and productive way? Too dangerous. Too likely to result in hurt feelings or worse. So we talk about weight. Scales. As if G-d asks us when we die how well we stuck to our diets.