just catching up on the news after my vacation.
pr watch has lots of goodies, like more tasty morsels about
bush's turkey dinner in iraq. how bad must things be when
stars & stripes starts embarrassing a republican president?
ooh, and
slate reveals even more about how big pharma is trying to buy out the entire medical industry...
and okay, so it's pretty much official that
there are no WMD in iraq (in constrast to 20 years ago, when
rumsfeld personally told the iraqi govt that we still wanted to work with them even though we knew they were using chemical weapons at the time). saddam used to be such a great friend to us, so why are we supposed to be so excited to have captured him now? sure, it's kind of a relief that they finally caught
someone... i was going to say 1 out of 2 ain't bad, but then i remembered that 50% equates to an F.
i was ego surfing just now & noticed that if you do a
google search for
"pirates of the internet", our
pirates of the internet project is returned as the #7 result. and if you
search for
pirates of the internet without the quotes, we're the #5 result (a bit counterintuitive, but true). not too long ago you had to dig pages in to get to that link, so clearly the word is spreading...
this made me think of the
miserable failure googlewash & other experiments in mass link manipulation. google tracks links along with the phrase used to link to them. so i figure the more times i mention
pirates of the internet (being sure that there's a link pointing to
http://www.animalswithinanimals.com/pirates each time), the higher up
pirates of the internet will move in the google listing. if you have a blog or website, you can do it too! it would be nice to be the #1 search result. (then again, how many people are seriously going to do a search for "
pirates of the internet"? maybe i should be linking to a phrase like
pirate mp3s or
internet pirates or just
pirates or
piracy)
so i'm back from san francisco. great town with a hell of a culture, but it's also a cesspool of allergens. after two full days there my nasal plumbing was totally clogged. i mentioned that to barry when he picked me up at the airport & he recounted how bad my sister's asthma had been when she lived there. on the flight back i was reading michael moore's new book & he has a theory that a lot of what gets diagnosed as allergies or asthma is really caused by pollution. whatever it was, something in the frisco air does not mix well with my genes. a shame, because i loved the city overall, & am definitely interested in going back sometime...
i set a new personal record for the amount i've spent on records/cds in a single vacation. but how could i not when connie dragged me to two different locations of a great record store like amoeba, after i'd already bought so much at aquarius? i really don't want to say how much i spent all together, but my suitcase was so heavy i almost had to pay an extra $25 surcharge. (okay, there were clothes, gifts, & other things weighing it down, but let's not kid ourselves...)
so on tuesday night i went on
no other radio on
KPFA. i had been in touch with das for awhile & sent him some cds weeks back, but due to scheduling weirdness das ended up swapping nights with his cohost russ kent (better known to cali radio fans as mr hate). russ had never heard any of my stuff & didn't even have time to pick up the stuff i'd sent to das, but he was a real trooper & had me on anyway. luckily i was able to bring enough material to fill up the show (1 1/2 hours). the interview segments went pretty well too, though i'm curious how awful i sounded with my dripping sinuses. if anyone happened to record it, i'd love to get my hands on a copy.
i could go on with other tales from my visit, but it's almost 2am. i took a few pictures (almost all show-type pics, most of the ones from the show at the rx gallery being awful), so maybe i'll post those soon & possibly write some more then.
it's nice to be back in my own room, especially knowing that my congestion will probably clear up soon, but i can't really say i'm happy to be back...
the moment you've probably not been waiting for:
bad taste artist and animals within animals founder stAllio! will be on
KPFA "no other radio" with host russ kent TONIGHT (aka wed morning) at
12am PST (3am EST)
kpfa.org
KPFA broadcasts on 94.1 FM and KPFB 89.3 FM, Berkeley, and KFCF 88.1
FM, Fresno, California.
greetings from san francisco! the flight here was unexciting (the highlight was the in-flight movie,
seabiscuit, which was watchable & well-done but rather slow-moving).
yesterday i blew $160 at
aquarius records... the store itself is pretty small but proportionately speaking their selection is amazing. the good/bad ratio is far better than most record stores i've been to. lots of interesting experimental cds. we might go to another record store, amoeba, soon... connie says it's the biggest independent record store she's ever seen, so that might be pretty cool.
then last night we went to a show at the
rx gallery, which is in a shady neighborhood called "the tenderloin", which just happens to be right next to a relatively affluent shopping district... you turn a couple corners & you can just feel the immense updraft caused by the plummeting property values. we even missed the gallery the first time we walked past it because the only distinguishing marker was literally an 8x10 sheet of paper with the "RX" prescription symbol on it, so i got a decent tour of the tenderloin at night. sweet.
anyway, the rx gallery is pretty new & the current exhibition has several pieces that involve sound & motion; basically electronic sculptures that move, freeform recontextualizing audio work, & stuff like that. this was their second night of audio performances, which i found out about on
blevin blectum's site. i took a few pics, but i can't post them (or really even see how good they are; the preview on the camera LCD isn't very helpful) until i can get them onto my hard drive at home.
before anyone started playing, we talked to
wobbly for awhile; we traded cds, talked about online plunderphonic discussion groups, & fun stuff like that.
first up was a performance by seth warren & dave dupuis. their instrument consisted of a water bottle with various tubes coming out the bottom. each tube had a valve at the end, which could be tweaked to drip water at varying intervals onto the pots, pans, cymbals, & other percussive items below. these pans were all mic'ed & one of the guys controlled the sound at a mixer while the other guy manipulated the water valves & occasionally played the pseudo-drums using drumsticks & brushes. the performance was fine, though i thought the instrument itself was by far the most interesting aspect (the audio itself was nothing spectacular).
next up was a set by joshua g churchill, who played using a guitar, laptop, various pedals, & probably some other things i couldn't see. he played some nice looping ambience & random noise; audio-wise i liked this set more than the previous (in fact, i think each set was probably progressively better than the one before).
after that was a set by
sean rooney. sean apparently had a couple tracks on
illegal art's commercial ad hoc compilation under the name
peekaboo hudson (wobbly made a joke about how sean is a "serious composer" now, meaning he can only perform under his own name). anyway, this was some nice digital noise, often getting rather harsh. during the louder parts of this set (actually, starting with joshua churchill's set), connie would cover her ears... now i admit that we were really close to a speaker & things got pretty damn loud from time to time, but she would cover her ears long before things got uncomfortable to me. this made me wonder whether i'm simply more accustomed to high volume at shows (some of our bad taste shows... hell, even when we're just hanging out in someone's basement... have been extremely loud. anyone who was at the pleasurehorse show knows what i mean), or whether i've already started to develop minor hearing loss & i simply couldn't hear the frequencies that were bugging her. anyway...
last up was the performance i was waiting for: it was billed online (in the few places that promoted or even mentioned the show) as
blevin vs
lesser... but wobbly performed also, even commenting beforehand that he thought he was now a member of sagan... so i'm not totally clear on whether this was a
sagan show, a blevin/lesser/wobbly show, or whether there is even any distinction between those... anyway, i thought it was a good set, much more rhythmic than any of the other performers (except possibly the first set), although afterward i heard that blevin was having trouble (she'd just installed OSX & it wasn't working for her), so i have no idea what it would have sounded like if not for technical problems.
afterward we hung out & briefly talked to lesser & wobbly (blevin had left to go get the car so i didn't get to talk to her). i gave lesser a cd, & it was established that all of us planned to go to the
one-year anniversary party tonight (sunday) for the
creative commons. so that might be cool. or it might be pretty boring. but i've heard good things about lawrence lessig's speeches, so that should be interesting at least, plus there might be free drinks, & at least a few interesting people (after all, lessig, lesser, & wobbly should be there, so one can only guess who else might stop in).
san francisco is interesting. i don't have a total feel for the city yet but the neighborhood where connie lives is called the mission: a largely latin neighborhood with tons of beautiful murals, taquerias, panaderias, mexicatessens, & even a fortune-teller nearby. it's maybe a mile or less from the bart (bay area rapid transit [aka train]) station, & connie can't drive, so we've been doing lots of walking & riding public mass transit. that in itself is pretty different from indy, where you can't get anywhere worth going in less than an hour via bus.
still lots more to see & do before i come home on wednesday... i'm not sure if i'll be posting again before then (i certainly will, at least briefly, if that kpfa thing pans out) but i had some free time right now with nothing better to do... more to come before
too long, i'm sure.
