Adding to a Conversation

This is a sequel of sorts to Starting a Conversation, a post on the Caliboyinbrooklyn site in which I wrote about the year 1967 in movies. I'm not here to start talking about another year, but rather shift the focus laterally, to the realm of musical arts.

The year 1967 was incredible in music as well as in film. The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, and Le Samourai all were released, and the world that accepted them was being raised on a steady diet of groundbreaking music. So many albums considered important to today's pop-music and rock and roll music were released.

In January, the world got The Doors first album, that eponymous classic. Tracks like "Break on Through" and "Light my Fire" are hybrids of folk music and impresario keyboard that add to the foundation of the popular youth culture as we know it today. The Doors also released Strange Days later in the year.

Okay, so I'll just start naming some of the albums from here on out: Cream released their second album, the one that lived up to the hype that they were a super-group, Disraeli Gears. Jefferson Airplane released Surrealistic Pillow, the album that contains the acid-head's anthem "White Rabbit". I'm not the biggest Jefferson Airplane fan, but I recognize the position that song holds in the head history.

Sometimes considered the greatest album ever released, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band hit the shelves later in the year. Enough/too much has been written about that album, and maybe more is necessary, but not by me right here right now.

Another icon in the rock world was released, Are you Experienced? Later in the same year they released Axis: Bold as Love. Jimi and Jim and Jon and Eric, icons near the height of their skills.

Those were the monster albums most everyone in America has heard at least one song from: The Doors, Sgt. Peppers, Disraeli Gears, Are you Experienced?...those albums have shaped music ever since, and are still effecting the medium today.

But they weren't the only good albums released in 1967: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Who Sell Out, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Velvet Underground & Nico, and Procol Harum. I did have to look some of those up, but I had heard the music, for sure.

So there you go. I'm willing to say that while the movies from 1967 are considered classics today their influence over the content in today's films pales in comparison to the music released in 1967 and it's continuing influence.

Influence is what we're talking about, right?

Plastic Rocket

Imagine in the far future, when the beaches of Long Beach have been under shallow water due to the rise in coastline, and then, during some seismic activity, some of the seafloor gets thrust upward. Now exposed, pieces begin to crumble away until a certain piece of sandstone appears, and locked in it forever is our legacy, our fingerprint for the future generations of dominant animals that may not have any concept of epochs or eras or past or future.

Our fossilized legacy staring back up at us, looking almost like a rocket:

At first I thought this composition looked pretty cool, like a plastic rocket  hurtling through the air. After I got it on the computer it began to resemble a fossilized nightmare.

Instead of Lucy's footprint in the Toba eruption's ash, the symbol of the Homo genus beginning it's upright march to modernity, we get our legacy, our footprint.

And it is scary and wasteful and indicative of our thing. We've created the world where weak drugs like caffeine can be spread all over the globe through a market, and the delivery method to your body is achieved through a receptacle that may not need fossilization to last forever. It is at once both wondrous and stupefying.

Cool Water Bike

On some random errand a few months back I came across the following advertisement postcard:

Sweet!, I thought, that's just what I need. I could ride all the way out to Catalina with one of those. It may get a little dicey, but...now, though, after having ridden from watts to Long Beach, which is ten miles less than Long Beach to Catalina, I'm less sure of my peddling ability. Maybe if I could tow a little raft to nap in, and carry food or something...

Anyway, I could definitely ride down to Mexico, right? That seems easier with the current...you know, start out, get tired and nap and let the current do some work, wake up and get back at it...

Then I started to read the flyer a little bit closer. Near the bottom of the reverse side, they make their policy on travelling on the open ocean unequivocally known

Slightly crestfallen, I realized that if I had my own waterbike, they couldn't stop me. Only the hundreds of gigantic vessels and bad weather could end that really bad decision.

Beard Studies, Part 1

In October of 2010 I performed an experiment with facial hair, and I'm at it again here in 2012.

I'm in a unique position of being able to let the hair n my face grow unabated. I've kept up shaving certain spots, just to keep it clean-ish, like my neck and under my eyes. I'm beginning to resemble a Ruskie.

Ultimately I'm planning on letting it go up until right before Dan's wedding, and then shaving the whole thing off. Corrie's not sure if I'll make it, because it get's annoying. Do you know that it can hold possibly an entire cup of water? Like a full 8 ounces?

Eating an apple? Taking a shower. Corn on the cob? Oh, you better believe that's a shower.

I think I'll end up looking like Joaquin Phoenix before it's all over.

I'll be updating this occasionally, or at least once more.

Sports Notes for Norm

While I say this is a post about Sports Notes for my brother Norm, really, what I mean, is that this is a tiny post about sports for people who generally don't give a rats ass about sports, in an attempt to enlighten them to a point of having a bit of understanding. Not that anybody really needs to know any of this shit, but, it might clarify a few other things I've written on the sports blog.

This post will be about two basketball players.

The first is a guy who calls himself Metta World Peace. He plays on the Lakers, and since LA is a basketball town, and the Lakers are basketball royalty, his personal whims of fancy, like changing his name to "Metta World Peace" are respected. Since LA is such a huge media town, the other media centers are pretty forced to follow their lead, and now most everybody calls him some variation of MWP.

For those, like Norm maybe, who don't know, the guy who changed his name originally went by Ron Artest. A kid out of a rough neighborhood in Queens, Artest used monstrous defensive ability in basketball to change his lot in life, and was on probably the best team that never made the finals, the 2003-04 Indiana Pacers. They lost a brutal 7 game series to the Pistons after one of their best players went down with injury. The Pistons went on to beat the Lakers in the finals that year. That Pacer team was regarded as the best team in the NBA who had a few bad breaks.

The next season everybody was healthy, and early in the season, the Pacers played at the Pistons home court. What followed was what's called "the darkest moment in NBA history" by some folks, others call it the "Malice at the Palace", called so for the arena outside of Detroit, the Palace of Auburn Hills. This was the game where a fight broke out between the players and the fans, and Ron Artest, one of the game's, eh, crazies, went into the stands to put a hurtin' on somebody. Here's a link to a very good piece about the incident.

Artest was suspended for the rest of the season, and the Pacers have needed the last near-decade to build a winning team again. The fans have yet to return in droves in Indy, a place that loves basketball, even for the contender they have thus year.

Artest went to the Kings, and then was shipped off to the Lakers. He's helped the Lakers win a few championships. Then he changed his name to Metta World Peace, and everybody said "Uhhhhhhhhhh...ooooookaaaaayyy..." Then he started playing timid basketball. He wasn't playing like the defensive monster that he used to be. Then he started to regain the form, and Laker fans said "Yay, who gives a shit about his name, if we're winning!"

Then he threw an elbow at a guys head and was just suspended for seven games, a suspension that just ended, just ended in time for their playoff series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The player he nailed with that elbow? James Harden of the OKC Thunder. This should be interesting.

The second player I wanted to just say a few words about is King James himself, LeBron James. He just won a third MVP award, and his team, the Heat, just won their first game of their second round series against the Pacers, a game in which he scored 32 points and had 15 rebounds.

LeBron is one of the premier players in the game, and will probably go down as one of the all-time greats. I just wanted collect here a few things that I've heard or read about the player in his time in the league.

While he's a different player than Jordan or Kobe, he's different in a specific kind of way, in a way that people who don't give a rats ass about sports can be notified about. LeBron is an immensely skilled baller; I've heard him described as "a Jordan or Kobe who'll pass the ball."

Jordan will be remembered for being the greatest player of all time, and Kobe wants to be in that conversation as well, which is the only thing he's really chasing. He'll finish with more points than Kareem when he's done, and right now he's only got 5 championships to Jordan's 6. See, Kobe's chasing a legacy, while LeBron is chasing that first elusive ring.

LeBron is generous with the ball. He can score, and he can pass, which is way to make all of his teammates better, which is great. But, it seems from the evidence, that in the final periods of tight finals games, both in his first shot with the Cavaliers, and last year with the Heat, that he disappears. You wouldn't want to say that he's not a clutch player, because that idea is strained at best when faced with numbers.

Kobe or Jordan, say, if playing in a game 7, and suppose they've missed the last fifteen shots in a row, will still want the ball in their hands with 1 second left and a chance to win. LeBron seems to shy away from this time after time.

He went to Miami instead of the Knicks. He could have chosen the biggest stage in the world for the game, with the most rabid fans in the game, and been their savior. he could have been king of the world in New York...just look at Jeremy Lin, the scrub Asian kid from the Bay Area who had a few great games and became King of New York for making the Knicks fun to watch. He only made them fun to watch, and LeBron could have made them a champion contender...instead LeBron chose to go with the other superstars in Miami.

Check out the end of the NBA All-Star game this year. LeBron has the ball and the clock is winding down, Kobe's guarding him. LeBron helplessly looks around for someone to pass the ball to, and gives up a bad turnover, which the West turns into points and the victory. You can see Kobe--and this is confirmed by LeBron himself during a post-game interview--shouting at him to "Shoot the ball! Shoot it!"

That's the sort of maddening thing about LeBron. Every year sports writers and fans alike give him the benefit of the doubt...is this the year that LeBron will finally carry his team to the ring? He's got the skills, for sure...

Even I think this is the year, but will I be wrong? Obviously time will tell, but you could see Artest World Peace and LeBron face off in the finals this year...it would be branded, obviously, as Kobe vs LeBron, and don't think the NBA doesn't want to happen, eh? Who would fans root for, since they mostly hate both Kobe and LeBron...

Look what I did! (8, 5, 3, 3, 3, 4)

Zebras yanking xenophobes waxed volatile under tipped sanctums, ridding quails passing offended never, many liberty killing, justifying here instead, geeks flatulent enough, dodge can't bees average.

Look what I did! (8, 4, 5, 7, 2)

Average bees can't dodge enough flatulent geeks here, instead justifying killing liberty, many never offended passing quails, ridding sanctums tipped under volatile waxed xenophobes, yanking zebras.

Long Bike Ride

So, I went on a long bike ride yesterday, and depending how things go, it may show up here or not. I'll let you know how that works out when I find out. I'm trying to get LA Weekly interested.

In any case, I'll say a few things about it here, just so you know this is how I fill some of my days. I took my bike on the subway up to the Watts Towers, about ten stops away form where I picked the Blue Line up, and went to take some pictures. Feeling good and out of place, it was time to head home...on the bike.

The entire trip was just under 16 miles, and the majority of it was along the LA River bike path. Originally I wanted to avoid the river-way, but I changed my tune while riding through the neighborhoods.

Speaking of those neighborhoods, there are two ethnic groups living there, and while I obviously am not going to be mistaken for Torii or Tyreke, it was equally obvious that my pink and orange complexion, mixed with bushy red beard, I wasn't going to be mistaken for Candido or Rigoberto.

Every few minutes I'd pull this out of my pocket, just to take a look and catch my bearings, another giveaway I was, eh, different.

It chronicles my route through the Watts neighborhood of LA, then through Lynwood, and then through Compton to get to the river-way route at Somerset Blvd. That was all I brought with me, really. I mean, I brought water, and my ID, but I didn't bring any of my money cards (ATM or credit) or my phone, which on more than one occasion would have been helpful when a street sign was missing. I went unconnected and digitally naked, a contingency against the worst-case scenario.

I had a different plan for a long bike ride, and this was like a dry run, or practice run to test my legs and conditioning (not quite "woefully inadequate", but...well, I made it home). I have some pictures to prove I really did it, but they'll have to wait.

I still can't believe that was my only navigation tool, that crumpled slip of paper with street names and how to turn on each. I love "Pine, through the mall, continue on Pine". That was how Google maps set me up on the bike directions. Now, I've had issues with Google maps before, but that was mostly in Austin. Those bike directions though, were pretty awesome, and kept me off of major thoroughfares as much as possible, which was the entire trip until crossing the 710 and LA River on Somerset at the end.

After 32,000 Years, She's Back!

Russian scientist have resuscitated a version of a flowering plant called silene stenophylia that has, according to carbon-dating of the source's plant tissue, not see the light of day for 32,000 years.

Remnants of the plant were found preserved in a frozen squirrel den in the Siberian permafrost. There were modern versions of this ice age flower growing nearby, so the idea that the tissue could be from the same plant was reasonable.

They successfully were able to get a version to grow, flower, and make viable seeds using genetic material retrieved from the tissue. The flowers are of a different shape than the modern varieties nearby, and a success like this has provoked the Russians to push for the continued research done on the permafrost in eastern Siberia.

Whether or not the scientists should have resuscitated plant DNA from 32,000 years ago hasn't ever really been addressed, at least in anything I've read. If anything, it leads to a rather serious precedent.

It also has inspired me to consider this post and concept as a Part 2 in a trilogy, with Part 1 being this post about guest mitochondria and zygotes (which I can say is quite good after I read it for the first time since writing it back in June of 2009). If "science fiction" is abbreviated by sci-fi, then let me state that something I'm calling "science reality" can be abbreviated by sci-real.

This trilogy is about the "Banality of Sci-Real". Part 3 will be about tetrodotoxin and datura.

For an article on this really old school stilene tundra flower, check this out.

"Troll 2" Notes

Using our streaming Netflix account the other night I cued up Troll 2, considered one of, if not the, worst movie ever committed to film.

Using the same Netflix account I saw Best Worst Movie, the documentary about the cult status of Troll 2 and how the movie affected the players in it as well as the filmmakers.

Let me start by saying that it is definitely not the worst movie ever made, er, Worst Movie Ever Made.

I'm a highly critical viewer of film, and there are plenty of movies that are less comprehensible, less well-executed, and less fun than this (have you seen anything by Ed Wood?).

Troll 2 was originally going to be called Goblins, as it has nothing to do with trolls, or the first Troll film, or ever even uses the word "troll" anywhere during its 94 minutes.

It's not a great movie, but it does create genuine tension, something a movie like Charlie's Angels can't even do. It's a low budget movie shot on location in the south and populated by real people who can't hide their inherent crazy. The main problem would have to be the lead actors, who run the gamut from B-movie silly to downright awful.

The main character is a young boy, Joshua, who still occasionally sees and converses with his dead grandfather. Written like that makes the're encounters seem silly, but they're played rightfully for spooky tension. That dynamic pretty much does work.

Josh's family is part of a summer exchange; they switch houses with a family who lives in the country. The grandfather tries to get Josh to stop the move, and failing that, tries to warn them about the food. All the food stuffs has a strange light green paste, like branding. It's pretty neat.

The town they're staying in for the summer, Nilbog (check ithe spelling backwards!), is populated by a gaggle of creepies, always pushing their green food crap on the family members. The main conceit of the film is that Goblins populate the woods around Nilbog, have a connection to the creepy townfolks, are vegetarians--almost--and the green pasty foodstuff starts a transformation in the eater.

After eating the food, they start to sweat green, chlorophyll laden sweat. Eventually they start to transform into plants, and that's when these veg-hybrid Goblins like to eat the stricken plant-man.

Vegetarian-like Goblins? Novel, at least. Josh's older sister, whom I think moved onto an actual career as an actor, is the weak link in the main cast. She's pretty goddamn bad. Their mom is, according to the documentary Best Worst Movie, is a little batshit crazy, and this comes out in her performance. The dad, George Hardy, the star of the documentary, is also pretty bad, but just a run of the mill B-movie bad, but remember, he's a dentist.

The youngster playing Joshua has flashes of competence mixed within B-movie typical. The best performance--from an actor anyway--has got to be from the maniacal dead grandfather. Other than him, the guy who tells the kid, "Coffee's the devil's drink!" is equally creepy and crazy looking, and after seeing Best Worst Movie, you see he's spent the majority of the years since Troll 2 institutionalized.

Watch Troll 2, then go watch the Wild World of Batwoman. Or Plan 9 from Outer Space. Or Charlie's Angels. The tell me that Troll 2 is worse than any of those three.

Thank You Cyannobacteria!

What would you call the emergence of a bacterial entity that actually put off as waste a poisonous gas and eventually killed off all other forms of life on the planet? The life of the party, baby!

One life form back in the day, and I mean way fucking back in the day, like more than a billion years ago, emerged as being quite effective at replicating itself. It had two secrets: the first was that it used the sun's energy for food; and the second was that it expelled poisonous gas as waste, thereby dealing effectively with their neighbors.

"Using the sun's energy for food" is an oversimplification of the photosynthesis, but the idea's set: something is directly using the sun, like a parasite of sorts (not really, but...) The gas that these little suckers used to murder off everything else was oxygen, quite the nasty poisonous gas to many an early living thing.

Once the oxygen really started to fill the atmosphere, the die off of the other organisms quickened, all the way until today, where the only life-forms that don't use oxygen are living down in thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean or living in random caves near sulfur vents.

Those little bastard bacteria that killed off so many others with their poisonous gases are called cyannobacteria, and there are still types around today. All life that uses oxygen have them to thank for getting the planet ready for us. Animal life developed as a parasite of plant life, and plants just yse sunlight, and we all need to thank those little cyannobacteria.

Legends from the Land of the Rising Sun

In the comic book industry you have Stan lee. Stanley Lieber, as his parents would have recognized him, created either alone or with Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the comic book Thor, and the X-Men. No one person in the industry has had his hands and creativity on so many different beloved characters in  the entire medium.

This type of status rarely happens. The case could be made for George Lucas and his Star Wars universe, but while he presides over that universe as a god, Star Wars doesn't make up nearly half of the film industry, like Stan the man's comic creations.

While both Stan Lee and George Lucas have been called innovative for their different techniques--Stan with his complex humanity seen in those characters and George with his special effects developments--both didn't really come along early enough in the history of their respective media to really get to define the vocabulary to which each media would eventually conform.

I'm talking about the ability to be technically advanced with each step forward, character creation-driven, and able to define the vocabulary of the following eras...like Stan Lee, George Lucas, and Gutenberg rolled into one. Does this person exist?

Well, yeah. It's a guy and he's Japanese.

While you may not have heard of him, I'd be willing to guarantee if you're reading this entry online somewhere, you'd heard of at least one of his creations.

I'm talking about the legend Shigeru Miyamoto.

He's responsible for the Nintendo characters Donkey Kong, Mario and Luigi, and Link and Zelda.

Shigeru the man is from Kyoto and had a job with Nintendo painting the sides of their arcade game cabinets. Nintendo had a game that wasn't doing so well, and let this young artist try to come up with a game. Shigeru had an idea based on Popeye, with Bluto and Popeye and Olive Oil, but changed it to the antagonist to an Ape and the names to Pauline, after somebody's wife, and Mario, after the landlord of their warehouse workshop.

The premise was that the Ape was Mario's pet, but he escaped and kidnapped the girl, and it was up to Mario to rescue her. I only mention this silly premise because Shigeru couldn't program that well, and used it as an explanation for his desires from his prom programming team. That, and it was the first time a story or premise was used around which to build a video game. They named it Donkey Kong.

After it's success, he gave Mario a brother, named him Luigi, and created another rudimentary jumping type game called "Mario Bros". This was marginally successful. His next game was a industry changer: the iconic "Super Mario Bros". This side scrolling adventure game focused more on gameplay than score accumulation , and came to define a style of game called "platformer" for, pretty much, all-time.

Miyamoto's next game was the next thunderous medium shifter "The Legend of Zelda". Unshackled by time constraints with a world you needed to explore and puzzles that needed to be solved, a new type of video game genre was created. Still difficult and popular today, the 1987 "Legend of Zelda" ranks on many lists as one of the best games ever.

One of his last games for the first generation of Nintendo, Miyamoto dropped probably the pinnacle of the 8-bit cartridge based video game: "Super Mario Bros. 3". Seen in America at the end of the movie The Wizard months before it was released brought the excitement and anticipation to a fever pitch. It was closer to the next installment--on an entirely different game system--than it was to it's predecessors.

Shigeru then launched "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" for the Super Nintendo, which is generally considered one of the best games for that machine, and one of the two or three best Zelda games ever. (One of the other pinnacle games for the Super Nintendo was "Donkey Kong Country", although Miyamoto didn't work on it.)

Next he moved on to Nintendo 64 and developed the world's first truly 3D game with "Mario 64". The medium lurched forward. His next big game for the N64 has gone down as generally considered the Greatest Game Ever, "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time". (Also, it's the only game on this extensive list I've ever beaten.)

Then he was pretty much promoted to the head of development for the company, where he spearheaded the Wii Sports games for the Wii console before getting back into the thick of things with "Mario Galaxy", the Wii's Mario installment. It was considered the bets game for the Wii console ever, until "Mario Galaxy 2" came along. I have Galaxy 2, and let me just say that that shit is difficult as hell.

The media is so new relatively to other media that it makes sense that one person could have such a profound effect upon how we understand and discuss the thing itself.

It still blows me away, though. One guy.