Engineer's Daughter

trecento

Psychogeography

Will Self

from City Lights:
"Provocatuers Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces in this magnificent and artfully rendered meditation on the vexed relationship between personal psyche and physical place in the contemporary world. Together, Self and Steadman illuminate the ways in which human and physical geography go hand-in-hand—how one naturally influences the other, whether we are always aware of this connection or not."

the bestest song ever

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

With my fundraiser show coming up this Friday, I'd already been doing some serious delving into the recesses of my memory well before Idolator's Jess Harvell posted this.  But when I clicked on the video to see what song he'd picked, and I heard that unmistakable crescendo of sound that brings the track in, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck just the same way they did the very first time I heard it. 

I was a sophomore in high school, attending the annual Junior Classical League convention at University High School in Irvine, and after a tough day of declension contests and chariot races the Latin nerds were cutting loose at the Saturday night dance on the floor of the UCI Bren Events Center.  I had just begun to feel stirrings of interest toward fellow classicist Andy Rice, who had appealingly floppy hair and very strong opinions about music.  I myself was just starting to emerge out of the damage seven years of private Christian school had done to my psyche, where I thought I was being pretty rebellious by listening to Petra and Michael W. Smith's more, erm, experimental songs.

At the dance a bunch of us were grouped in the safety of a circle, and I was slyly edging closer and closer to the cute boy.  All of a sudden I heard what sounded like an airplane headed straight for us, and Andy fucking wigged out and started twisting his arms this way and that, singing along at the top of his lungs.  I turned around and looked up at the video screen, where jagged images of modern life cut quickly to bodies trampolining across a tranquil blue sky.  The lyrics spoke of love and melancholy, feelings just out of reach, set to a pounding electronic beat.  All I knew was that I wanted to hear music exactly like this for the rest of my life.

That was the moment that sealed my musical fate.  Later that night, after the DJ played Just Like Heaven, I asked Andy to slow dance with me, and then for weeks afterward refused to wash the top I had been wearing because it still smelled like his cologne.  He would go back to barely acknowledging me in class while I stole moony glances at him, and I would eventually transfer my affections to another floppy-haired boy named Rio who listened to the Smiths and admired the patchwork Docs I saved my allowance for three months to purchase.  But the weekend after the convention I went straight to the Wherehouse near the Orange Mall and dug out their single cassette copy of Substance.  My brother and I took turns listening to it until we had every single word memorized.  And on KROQ and on Rodney Bingenheimer's after-school public access video show I started discovering all the bands that had come before and learned how to look out for all those that came after.

When I play New Order at 1 in the morning on KALX, spinning in my chair with the audio cranked up as loud as I can bear, I can almost recapture the pure joy of first bouncing up and down to the track on that night long long ago.  Bizarre Love Triangle, my heart will always belong to you.

sun rise

from Grist:
The Berkeley, Calif., city council will soon vote on an innovative scheme to front the cost of solar panels to homeowners, who would pay the city back over 20 years as a property-tax add-on. The amount to be paid back would be roughly what homeowners would save on electric bills by being sun-powered. "This plan could be our most important contribution to fighting global warming," says Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. "We've already seen interest from all over the U.S. People really think this plan can go." What will those crazy hippies think of next?

sources:
San Francisco Chronicle
The Daily Californian
Contra Costa Times
Berkeley, Calif., goes all crazy with the green ideas
Berkeley shows the way to climate change mitigation at a local level

porter wagoner 1927 - 2007

Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton - Run That By Me One More Time

Country Music Hall Of Fame Member Porter Wagoner Dies

sainsbury bequest

GD5144612@SAINSBURY-TATE-Study--9501

Simon Sainsbury's bequest to the National Gallery and Tate includes works by Monet, Degas and Bacon. They will be exhibited together next year - but you can take a look at some of the highlights now.

rondeau

Murataesvposter

At Ratio 3 - Takeshi Murata: Escape Spirit VideoSlime.  Ratio 3 has a new space, and expanded hours!  About the show: "Takeshi Murata's new video furthers his exploration into digital abstraction. For this piece, Murata employs existing film footage of nature and chimpanzees, giving the viewer a connection to recognizable images that continuously pulsate and liquefy. The powerful combination of shifting colors and moving fluid shapes offer an intense experience in which the viewer witnesses the possible devolution of a species. This is the U.S. debut of Escape Spirit VideoSlime."

Kingpin-small

At 20 GOTO 10 - Joe Grand: When Electronics Become Art.  20 GOTO 10: A fairly new gallery in the Tenderloin with one of the genuinely best names ever.  Joe Grand: "Involved in electronics since the age of 7, Joe works on secret projects for his company, Grand Idea Studio, and is a well-known electrical engineer and hardware hacker. He now lives in San Francisco, is the author of two books, contributor to four others, on the technical advisory board of MAKE Magazine, and is a co-host of an upcoming engineering build show for Discovery Channel."  Match made in heaven!

I woke up yesterday morning with very little desire to leave my house, so I missed out on the Día de los Muertos festival in Fruitvale Village and the Cardboard Tube Fighting League tournament that took place late yesterday afternoon in Justin Herman Plaza, though undoubtedly I would have found said events both healing and cathartic.  Carnacki and I raised over $600 for KALX last night, and after being on the air with him I feel sufficiently warmed up to DJ my own fundraiser show this Friday.  9pm to midnight.  Have I mentioned it?

In the meantime I am awfully sleep-deprived and down in the dumps today (and eyeing the upcoming time change with pure dread), so if you have any extra good energy lying around that you can spare please send it my way.  I feel nothing like a conquering heroine these days and more like some dull creature who barely manages to muddle through.

Patterson_Great_Bear85

Simon Patterson: The Great Bear, UK, 1992

sunday am 5

After a very rough Saturday:
1) More Than I Can Do - Steve Earle
2) Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You - Kevin Ayers
3) Get A Hold Of Yourself - The Persians
4) 5 Years - Bjork
5) High On A Hilltop - Nick Lowe

empire building

Richardandrubychambury-7310

Have you managed to make your model Empire State Building from the Guardian yet?  What, you don't subscribe here in the U.S.?  Pshaw.  Here are some of the photos they've received so far.
-More about the competition

baker's dozen

Le-green

At Hosfelt Gallery - Driss Ouadahi: Another Place, Another Me and Susan Marie Dopp: Ether.  Oudahi's large-scale paintings like the one pictured above at first looked to me like geometric grids had been laid over blurred landscapes, until I realized what he was depicting was the reflections in banks of shiny high-rise windows.  Whether they are offices or apartments, they reveal nothing of their interiors, only structure and a vague mirror of their surroundings.  Dopp's paintings in an adjoining room also use geometry in a more purely abstract way, and her soft colors and simple designs invite the viewer to stop and stay awhile.

Paik.Ezawa.Rath

At Haines Gallery - Nam June Paik, Alan Rath, Kota Ezawa: The Temporal Moving Image.  This show is downright fun, with Paik's cobbled-together technology whirring away and Rath's giant eyeballs winking and blinking at you.  Ezawa continues to be one of my favorite local artists, and the short piece on display here combines redrawn footage of three of my heroes (John Lennon, Susan Sontag, Joseph Beuys) expounding on the nature of art.  I could have sat there and watch it loop for a while.

The KALX fundraiser is here!  The KALX fundraiser is here!  I'm going to selfishly encourage you to hold off from donating until my 9pm-midnight DJ shift next Friday, November 2nd, but if you'd like to whet your appetite cruise on over to the Web site and check out the different packages.  I'm going to be donating my own money to get my hands on the double 7", that's for sure.  Tomorrow morning I'll be acting as pit boss for the volunteers taking phone pledges from 9am to noon, and then Sunday night from 9pm to midnight catch me on the air pitching for Carnacki during his show.  But seriously, my show next Friday is going to be one of the best ever.  Don't miss it!

Also, if you're looking for something to do tomorrow night I highly recommend meeting me at the Caribou show at Slim's.  Caribou is really just one guy, Dan Snaith, but when he tours he puts together a full band to recreate the music on his records and practices with them for hours every day.  I saw them open for Super Furry Animals some time back and it was seriously a religious experience.  And the new album Andorra kicks ass and I played the hell out of it on my show.  Good times, guaranteed.

triskaidekaphobia

What Is the What

Dave Eggers

from Modern Times Bookstore:
"...acclaimed local author (and Modern Times neighbor) Dave Eggers [celebrates] the paperback release of his most recent bestseller! Based closely on true experiences of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who fled their war-ravaged country to come to the United States in the mid-1980s, this novel is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph."

Science Thursday:
Extreme makeover for space station | Space.com | Voice of America |
MP3 hogs don’t get final oink | MTV | Technology News Daily |