Now I'm A Fat House Cat

Using my time machine, I’ve been visiting the future and listening to the new Iron and Wine album The Shepherd’s Dog. It’s due to be released at the end of September. After the first few listens, I thought to myself “I’m going to have to listen to this a lot more before forming an opinion on it”, but since bandwidth is cheap and so are opinions, here are some first impressions.

The new record is a lot more complex than previous I&W recordings, from the ground up. On earlier releases, most of the songs were built around Sam Beam’s voice and guitar - other instruments usually only serving as ornamentation. This time around, it feels like most of the songs were written with fuller arrangements in mind - there are more instruments, more harmonies, and fewer songs driven mainly by the acoustic guitar line. In a way, then, it’s similar to Wilco’s recent album Sky Blue Sky - the songs are less simple to break down to just “main songwriter brings in a song, other people add their parts on top”. This doesn’t necessarily make for a better album - it certainly didn’t for Wilco, but that’s another post.

In Iron and Wine’s case though, it makes for a more varied listening experience. Previous I&W albums were often fairly monochromatic - lots of slow, whispery songs, occasionally interspersed with swampy stompers. They’re great albums, because the songs are usually gorgeous, but it does seem that the band has been consciously trying to break out of its mold - first with Woman King and now with The Shepherd’s Dog. I’m genuinely curious whether the change has anything to do with the band’s increasing popularity and the difficulty of playing quiet acoustic numbers to festival crowds, or just continued artistic development.

One more thing. The first time I heard Our Endless Numbered Days, I knew immediately it was an album I’d listen to obsessively. That wasn’t the case with this one - it may grow on me, but it didn’t strike me at the gut level in the same way. Until I got to the last song.

“Flightless Bird, American Mouth” arrives at the end of the album like an afterthought, but it’s beautiful, and completely captures what makes this band so great. It’s a classic Iron and Wine song, in the sense that it brings together a lot of the common thematic and aural elements of the bands prior work, but expands on it with the broader palette of the new album at the same time.

It would almost be self-parody if it wasn’t so good: a simple chord progression (I hear D-Bm-G-A, I-vi-IV-V), finger-picked, whispery harmonized vocals, lightly ornamented first with accordion, then with a fuller band. Classic Sam Beam lyrics too: nothing too specific, just a misty, beautiful nostalgia. Here’s a clip of Sam Beam performing it solo, this recording doesn’t really do the album version justice, but it’s pretty good all the same.

Someone once told me that I could get nostalgic about things that happened five minutes previously, and that’s probably a part of why I like Iron and Wine so much. But I don’t think it’s about wanting to live in the past. It’s about remembering all the beautiful things you’ve passed along the way, carrying them with you, and thinking about how much wonder there is in the world.

Lions and Tigers

The Safari 3 Public Beta is awesome. But only because it makes a little orange bubble pop up when you try to find text. That is all.

Three Word Reviews: Transformers

Boring and stupid

Back in the Saddle

Posting from the rejuvenated PowerBook! I took it to a professional to get fixed, since my own attitude of “Well, I think I know how to fix it” was what probably broke it in the first place. The repair-man used the technical description “it’s all fucked up” to describe my old hard disk, so several months of journals, photos, etc. are gone for now. It may be possible to retrieve the data eventually, but will probably be quite expensive, so I think I’ll hold off until I’m rich and/or famous. In the meantime, it’s nice to be back on my old machine, and back in touch with all my music (which lived on an external HD, so wasn’t affected).

As far as my “crisitunity” plan of getting out more, reading more, etc., I’ve been spending a lot of time playing frisbee and softball, reading (finally finishing “The Master and Margarita”), and hosting house-guests. Apart from the usual time spent in the lab, of course! And somehow, I’m mistakenly a member of an A-League Ultimate championship team!

The plan for the rest of the summer is to do lots of lab work, head West briefly in August for camping and a wedding, and maybe even play a show with my band (which I don’t think I’ve discussed here, but is totally awesome). But for now, it’s Friday afternoon, and we’re going to see Transformers tonight.

Me in Springfield

Pretty close I think! I made this over here. This time I'm not even going to promise to update here more often.

Solstice, not Solace

So, not so much for no computer meaning more posts.

But, in my ongoing quest to turn the solstices and equinoxes into major holidays, happy summer/northern/June/Taurus solstice everybody! Today marks the day when the Earth's axis is tilted the most towards the Sun here in the Northern hemisphere. Unfortunately it is very cloudy here in Montreal today, making celebrating the latest sunset of the year more difficult.

And, just so this post isn't totally brief, my favourite ever summer solstice happened in 2002 when my friend Chris bought a pizza at Wreck Beach in Vancouver from a man wearing a fleece vest and no pants.

Crisitunity!

So, my computer is dead for now. What started with a warped DVD stuck in the optical drive ended up with a zapped hard drive and a broken Mac. A bit of laptop surgery later (of course I'm qualified to take apart laptop computers!), the disc is out of the optical drive, but the hard drive seems to be toast.

Failing to take my own advice to everyone, my last backup is about five months old. I haven't lost much actual work, since I've been mainly at the bench these last few months, but I might have lost quite a lot of writing in my journals. I haven't exhausted all the possible ways of resuscitating the hard drive or recovering the data yet, so all hope is not lost for getting the writing back.

In the meantime, while the computer is getting fixed, I think I'll treat this as a "crisitunity" - a chance to do more reading and more thinking, an opportunity to get outside more, get more work done, and to just generally spend less time online. Paradoxically, that might actually mean more blog posts, since those tend to get written in "productive thinking time" rather than "internet wasted time". We shall see!

Get A Haircut

Three of my favourite artists right now are M. Ward, My Morning Jacket, and Neko Case. So combining all those things together should be pretty awesome, right? Well, not so much. It’s OK I guess, but it seems like a bit of waste to put two incredible singers (Jim James and Neko Case) up there and have them just lay low.



My theory is that bands playing one-offs like Letterman or Conan should just play the most rocking song they have, regardless of what their current single or most popular song is. Also, I don’t know what to do now that Jim James has short hair. How will I know when to rock? For reference, this is what he used to look like:

What's that? New Wilco Record?

Watching A Stretch of Road

I got JB to take a picture of me the other day to show off my new glasses, and I thought it would be fun, or at least interesting, to re-create a photo of me taken when I first arrived in the lab. Before:



And after!



I guess I've mostly just become bigger and better-lit.

Meaningless to Almost Everyone In The World

One of the funny things about research is that it’s often really hard to relate to people when you get results. Especially when those results take the form of faint patches of light against a dark background. But for now, I’ll just say that this picture makes me very happy:

Time Flies When It's Someone Else's Son

Four years ago today:

Designed and Directed by His Red Right Hand

Inspired by JB’s triumphant return to the inter-tubes, an actual post! Or at least some semi-connected ramblings.

Facebook has ended up being a lot of fun - somehow it’s easier to get in touch with my sisters via that web-site than by email or even telephone. I think I have a very bad combination of personality traits for Facebook: a good memory for names and faces coupled with the belief that everyone I’ve ever met wants to know that I’m growing a beard again.

The beard is indeed back, so long as the Canucks stay in the playoffs. One unfortunate thing about living out East is that most of the games in this series won’t start til 10 p.m. in my time zone. I used to be a night owl, but in my new place, even with curtains, I wake up a little after 6 a.m. with the sun. It looks like this:



“At Dawn” is also one of my favourite My Morning Jacket songs. I once saw part of a MMJ show when they were opening for Wilco, but I had no idea what they were playing at the time.

Wilco has a new album, not yet in stores but available on the web after a few pre-release online listening parties sanctioned by the band. I was going to write a quick review of the album, but then realized that to get the proper context, I’d want to write a giant story about me and Wilco, filled with sentences like “when I pick up a guitar, the first song I’ll usually play is ‘Far, Far, Away’” and “those two albums, released in the same year but coming to me five years apart, basically define growing up for me”. So I’ll save all that for now, and just say that Sky Blue Sky has some really great moments, but is frustratingly uneven as a whole.

Finally, I have joined a band so awesome that so far I’ve played acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drums, and cowbell. Our name is Katie Loves Pain.

I Like My New Apartment

That is all!

I Wrote Two Entries Today Just Because I Put A Link To Here From My Facebook Profile

Hello Facebook people, this is my totally exciting blog! It's mostly about the weather in Montreal and taking Peanuts cartoon strips out of context, but also about listening to music, making bad hockey playoff predictions, and speed-metal videos.

I Didn't Sign Up For This

This blog will now be enhanced in new, picture-y ways. Awesome! What’s not so awesome is that, after a brief tease of Spring, it’s snowing again today in Montreal. Here’s a photo from a week ago, after the first “revenge of winter” snowstorm.

Vernal, Not Venal

Tonight, at 7:07 p.m. in my time zone, it’s the vernal equinox! Happy Spring to all, and Happy Birthday (tomorrow) to sister Christie.

Buckets of rain, buckets of tears

I upgraded my journalling / blogging software today, so I need to put something up here to see if it works again! I use MacJournal, which I highly recommend. I use it for my work logbook, my personal journal, my index for guitar tabs, and for all my blogging. Apparently I’ve written 52,000 words in journals so far this year. Uh, yeah.

And while I’m here, I’ll just say that we’ve had two days in a row of rain here in Montreal, and it’s been reminding me a lot of Vancouver. No more skiing for me, but I can go to sleep with the windows open again.

Also, I don’t have much to say about the TV on the Radio show except that it was really good. Heading to see Great Lake Swimmers tonight, and tried to recruit friends by telling them that they’re “pretty good if you're into the whole ‘guys with banjos and guitars singing in quiet voices about how sensitive they are’ thing”. Which of course I am, but maybe isn’t the most enticing way to invite people to a show.

Of Course This Is A Good Idea

"Of course this is a good idea - why wouldn't this be a good idea?"

I Just Want To See His Face

I broke down and joined Facebook, along with seventeen million other people. I was skeptical at first, but it’s really pretty fun seeing old friends and new turn up.

So, if you’re in the presumably miniscule group of people who (a) read this blog and (b) don’t already have me on Facebook - here’s a link where you can add me.

p.s. Hooray for Drew and Cara!

Where Were You?

And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it

Inspired by my Anonymous, Bob-Dylan-quoting commenter, here’s a post after a long hiatus!

The Midlake show was pretty good - the band were obviously all physically ill, but they still put on a good show. Not too much deviation from the album, but a lot of really nice playing - a lot of their songs seemed to be in open tunings for the guitar, which I’m really fond of lately. It was also fun to go to a show again where there’s a delay because the band got stuck at the border, then came and hung out at the Green Room for awhile.

I ended up not going to Sparklehorse, even after describing them to my friends as “the aural equivalent of walking up to an old Southern mansion, only as soon as you enter, it's suddenly twilight, all the leaves have fallen from the trees outside, your friends are gone and there's a rabbit talking to you asking where all the stars went to”.

Last night I went to another show at Main Hall. How did the world know that just what I needed was to see skinny Norwegian dudes in tight pants and sunglasses shimmying around to drum machines and synthesizers? 120 Days were totally awesome. The main act, Shout Out Out Out Out wasn’t quite as good - kind of like a gang of happy robots with bass guitars breaking into your house while you’re trying to read, and playing the same song for an hour. Anyways, I still don’t enjoy dance music that much.

Tonight is TV on the Radio. I saw them before, opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, so we’ll see how they’ve transitioned to being headliners and critical darlings. I was initially skeptical about the new album, but I’ve come around a lot today, based on some re-listening, watching them on Letterman, and lyrics like these:

Hold these hearts courageously
As we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast beside me and see
That love is the province of the brave

Happy Birthday, Charles

Hey, today is Charles Darwin’s 198th Birthday! So happy Darwin Day to all. There’s events all around, including at our own Redpath museum. Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to think of an appropriate caption for this image, and trying to write a review of last night’s Midlake show.

Oh You Yeasties, You Frightening Beasties , Sleep Tight In Your YPD

How easy it is to let half a month go by without adding anything here! Here are some scattered thoughts from a Thursday night in the lab, spent stealing DNA from yeast.

• When I walk to work, it’s about 1.8km. When I ski, which I’ve been able to do just about every day for the last few weeks, it’s around 2km, but seems to take a while longer because of the long underwear involved.

• Note to any roving ninja gangs: please don’t use that information to ambush me.

• My Morning Jacket’s studio albums are great, but are really only just a set-up for their live shows. This is something I hope to come back to, but for now I’ll just say that Jim James really knows the value of a well-placed random scream.

• I’ve started anthropomorphizing my yeast populations, and now sing them lullabies before letting them grow overnight. I’m not sure what this means.

• I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s recent live DVD “Sunken Treasure: Live In The Pacific Northwest” the other day. It’s pretty great, needless to say, but one thing I thought was cool was that the DVD had a special link to the Wilco website that lets you download MP3s of all the songs on the DVD, and some extra ones as well. Cool.

• I’ve decided to steal an idea I first saw at Neil Gaiman’s place, and start giving all these posts labels, which seems to be a newish Blogger feature.

• That is all

Il Neige!

We had our first big snow of the New Year - it snowed last night, and all throughout today.

A small dog came up to me on my way to work, and let me know that he would like it very much if I’d throw a tennis ball into the snow-bank for him. I did, and he followed me most of the way to work.

On the way home this evening, I decided to break out my cross-country skis, since they’d been sitting in the office all year. My new place is just on the other side of the mountain, so I can ski the whole way home. The snow was perfect, and there were already good tracks the whole way back. Just as I got close to home, I ran into a bunch of people sledding and snowboarding down Mont Royal in the fresh powder.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

What Comes After 'Y' Again?

Something More Productive, Like Roscoe

After a brief bout of actual original and not-so-original content, “Saturday Is YouTube Day” returns.

First up is current obsession Midlake. People should probably judge for themselves here, since I’ll have to recuse myself from this on on the grounds that I’d basically like any band that has 5-part harmonies, and songs about hunting for rabbits and oxen. For any Montrealers, they’ll be at Sala Rossa on Feb. 11.



Next, for something a bit older, here’s some Neil Young - a great acoustic version of “Cortez the Killer” from one of the Bridge School Benefit concerts.



Finally, I just don’t get speed metal, at all.

In Which I Am Immortalized in Prose

One of her hands went to her lips. “I’m Cladis. Jimmy, I have terrible news for you. Someone came through that gate earlier today but he was killed by a rabid Boon almost as soon as he landed.” She lay a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder as she spoke. “I’m sorry.”

Jimmy was silent, stunned. The world seemed to lurch. “Rod?” He asked softly but Cladis went on, confessing.

I came across this story while doing some self-Googling, and wondered if it was coincidental that one of the characters shared my first and last names. It wasn’t, which I think is pretty awesome, actually, especially considering I die a gruesome, deserved death in the story.

Watch Out

Year End Wrap-Up Thingy 2006 (Introduction)

Since this seems to be the season for end-of-the-year weighing and judging, I thought I’d write a bit about some of my favourite music this year. This post has grown a lot more long-winded in the writing, so I’ve decided to separate things into five parts, with the standard caveat that this introduction may be the only thing that actually gets posted.

As in most years, I started listening to a lot more albums not released in 2006 (~90) than actually released in 2006 (~20). This is a bad habit of mine that I have decided to call my “Bob Dylan’s 49th Album” syndrome, i.e. “How can I listen to anything new when I still haven’t listened to Blood on the Tracks?”. I’ll consider the “new” albums (released in 2006), and the “new to me” albums in separate posts. After that, I’ll reminisce about some of the live shows I saw this year, and finish up with some New Year’s music-listening resolutions.

I’ll try to keep this post floating at the top, and new ones will appear sporadically over the next few days, with handy hyperlinks below!

• Sometimes I Do Listen To New Music
• Don’t Tell Anyone You Don’t Own Blonde On Blonde
• You Had Me At Track 1
• Hello Montreal! Merci Beaucoup!
• Hey, Hey, My, My

Hey, Hey, My, My, Year End Wrap-up Part Number 5

Here are some 2007 Music Listening New Year’s resolutions (not to be confused with my 2007 Get My Life Together New Year’s Resolutions, or my 2007 Music Playing New Year’s resolutions).

• Listen to more music

Specifically, I’d like to branch out a little bit more. A lot of the albums from this year’s lists are ones that I pretty much knew I’d like before I started listening to them, given their reputations. And a lot of them are fairly similar in style and approach - guitars, singer/songwriters, “Dude, Why Do You Still Love Her” music as JB calls it. So I’d like to listen a little more outside my comfort zone - more hard rock, more classical, more jazz, more weird.

• See more live music

This one is as perennial as the “exercise more often” resolution on my other list, but this is the year, dammit! Most of the shows I go to are artists I already know, so I’d like to go see more smaller shows, and more awful shows.

• Write more about music

This series of posts was fun, but a bit long to write! So I’d like to write more often about music, rather than let everything pile up til the end of the year.

OK, now to get to breaking these resolutions as quickly as possible.

Bonjour Montreal! Merci Beaucoup! (2006 Wrap-up Part 4)

For part four of the year end wrap-up, here are some of my favourite live shows of the year, in chronological order. Apparently I saw no good shows in the first half of the year.

• Martha Wainwright / Andrew Bird - July 2, Metropolis

Martha Wainwright in a totally packed hometown show, part of the Jazz Fest. The opener was Andrew Bird, who did some amazing things with voice, guitar, and violin - he’d create backing tracks by recording his own performance, then playing it back to gradually build songs.

This was the second Martha Wainwright concert I’d seen. I thought the first time was seeing her opening for Neko Case, but I think it was actually her opening for Cyndi Lauper. And that is a story for another time. But anyways, this time Martha was with her full band, and it was totally excellent - Stones and Leonard Cohen covers, as well as surprise guests the McGarrigle sisters. Out of all the shows I’ve seen at Metropolis, this was probably the most packed, with the loudest audience.

• Calexico / Mariachi Luz de Luna - July 9, Metropolis

My second time seeing Calexico, who fortunately overcame the second-show curse by playing with a great mariachi band for a lot of the evening. A really fun, albeit somewhat sparsely attended show. Calexico played mostly material from their recent album Garden Ruin, and it was nice to see the changes since the last time I saw them (last year with Iron & Wine). All I have left to say is that Joey Burns’ guitar looks like some sort of aircraft carrier.

• Wilco - July 10, Metropolis

Fourth summer in a row for Wilco and me. The first time (2003, Metropolis), they were playing mainly material from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but also the not-yet-released A Ghost Is Born. The second time (2004, Theatre St-Denis), they played material from the then-just-released A Ghost Is Born. The third time (2005, Metropolis), they played mainly material from... A Ghost Is Born.

So this year, with no new album still, I’m not quite sure what I expected for the setlist. What we got (2006, Metropolis) was, lots of songs from A Ghost Is Born! Plus a few new ones. I shouldn’t really complain, because I knew what was coming, but it was a little harder to get excited the fourth time around. Having said that, though, I always enjoy seeing Wilco, and always like Metropolis, so I had a really good time.

The day before the show, I was riding around on my bike, singing “On a Sunday morning sidewalk, Lord I’m wishing I was stoned”, when I passed a dude with crazy hair, an unkempt beard, a walking cast, and a Subway sandwich. As is always the case with me in these situations, it took me another ten seconds to realize that of course, it was Jeff Tweedy, and that I was now too far away to go say hello. I think he did give me a “Is that dude really singing Johnny Cash on his bike?” look though.

• Rancid (twice!) - August 30, Spectrum, and December, Metropolis

Rancid, kings of early 90s punk. I actually saw them twice this year, in two different venues. The first time was much more exciting - smaller venue, first time seeing them, etc. But Rancid definitely realized what most people were there to hear - at least half the setlist each time was devoted to material from And Out Come The Wolves and Let’s Go. Both shows were really high-energy - I’m glad I got to see these guys while they’re still around.

• M. Ward - September 12, Sala Rossa

I wrote about this the other day, but I came in knowing almost nothing, and left a big fan. This was also the show where I realized just how many indie-rock dudes in Montreal were wearing beards (as I was at the time). But I think the Autumn is an ideal time to see M. Ward, as lots of his songs seem slightly spooky.

• Sparta - October 13, Le National

Second time around for Sparta and I. As always, I’m amazed at just how much rock these four pack into each song. Not quite as good as the last time we saw these guys, mainly because it was the second time for me, and because of the venue. Le National is a new club here, and it felt much too well lit and clean for a rock show, with weird spaces off to the side of the show making the place feel emptier than it was.

The first time we saw Sparta, at Club Soda I think, was one of my favourite shows of all time, simply because it was such a communal experience - everyone in the audience collectively lost it. At this second show, it felt like fewer people were really into it.

• The Decemberists - November 5, Metropolis

The Decemberists, perfectly executing almost the entire The Crane Wife album - even the ten-minute-plus “The Island”. It’s hard to describe the Decemberists well, so I’ll just say that this concert featured 4/6 band members re-enacting the founding of Montreal in the middle of the audience, only to be interrupted by a meteor.

• The Tragically Hip - November 10, Metropolis

I’m including this show here even though I didn’t have a spectacular time, because it wasn’t really the band’s fault. They played really well, I just never seemed to get into it. The band adhered strictly to the formula of “quickly follow the unknown with something familiar”, alternating songs from the new album with older material. And while I think Gord Downie’s antics suit the new material pretty well, pretending to be a chicken during “Long Time Running” doesn’t work so well. It also may have been the first time where I actually enjoyed a band more in an arena than a club.

OK! Back sometime with New Year’s Music resolutions.

Say What Again

You Had Me At Track 1 (2006 Wrap-up Part 3)

Next, in the “You Had Me At Track 1” category, trolling through the back catalogues of artists I’ve recently gotten into:

• Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby / Blacklisted
• The Decemberists - 5 Songs / Her Majesty The Decemberists
• Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle / The Sea And The Rhythm EP
• My Morning Jacket - At Dawn / It Still Moves / The Tennessee Fire
• M. Ward - Transistor Radio / Transfiguration of Vincent / End of Amnesia

Three of these artists were mentioned back here. These were all cases, though, of hearing an album, and immediately wanting to hear more from the artist. Luckily, in all of these cases, the back catalogues were equally rewarding. I managed to see all of these artists live over the past year or so, and all put on awesome shows (although I only saw part of My Morning Jacket’s set when we arrived late to a Wilco show).

And finally, albums that don’t fit in any of the previous categories, but that I first heard this year and really liked:

• The American Analog Set - Set Free
• The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse
• Hayden - Live At Convocation Hall
• Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
• The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
• Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright
• Rufus Wainwright - Want Two

Looking at this list, and some of the previous ones, makes me realize that I’m listening to a lot of “quiet” music, and not nearly as much balls-out rock as I used to. I’m not quite sure why that might be.

Don't Tell Anyone You Don't Own Blonde on Blonde (2006 Wrap-up Part 2)

I actually do own Blonde on Blonde, but I liked that line from “High Fidelity”. These are some albums that I really should have listened to before, but somehow managed to avoid until this year. It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay.

• The Allman Brothers - Eat a Peach
• The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo
• Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
• John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
• Sam Cooke - Portrait of a Legend
• Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks / Highway 61 Revisited
• The Everly Brothers - Twenty Greatest Hits
• Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
• Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On?
• Joni Mitchell - Blue / Court & Spark
• Talking Heads - Remain in Light
• The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers / Let it Bleed
• The Who - Live at Leeds
• Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits
• Neil Young - After the Goldrush

My favourites from this list, or at least the albums that meant the most to me this year were of course Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks Joni Mitchell’s Blue.

More “new-to-me” albums tomorrow, and oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Sometimes I Do Listen To New Music (2006 Wrap-up Part 1)

So of albums that were actually released in 2006, these are some of my favourites.



Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Neko Case was one of those artists that I kept managing to see live somehow, without ever really digging into her recorded work. Now that I have, I’m a big fan. Her new album is really rewarding as well, not just because it continues her tradition of great songwriting and singing, but because of the detours it takes. For example, one of the main pleasures of her albums is just the visceral pleasure of her voice, hearing her crank it out. But on the first track of Fox Confessor, she stays low in her vocal range, letting the words and instrumentation gradually build the mood. The understated nature of the first track makes the second track, “Star Witness”, even more effective, with its multiple, soaring vocal lines.



The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

I’m going to steal a line from Pitchfork’s year-end wrapup: “The Decemberists have always been an interesting band, but with The Crane Wife, they became a great one”. I think I listened to this album probably more than any other this year, which is probably untrue since I got it at the end of October.



Joanna Newsom - Ys

This was an album that came heavily recommended by a lot of the hipper-than-thou indie music publications, but I couldn’t decide for a week whether it was totally awful or totally awesome. It’s definitely not the most accessible of albums: five songs, each longer than seven minutes, sung by a frantic pixie in a child-like voice, accompanied only by her harp and a string section. Singing songs about meteorites, monkeys and bears, being milked from thistles at twilight, etc. Then one night when I was kind of lost in multiple ways, it all started to come together, and I decided on totally awesome.



Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam was my favourite band for a long time, and are definitely the band that I’ve invested the most in emotionally over the years. I was pretty disappointed with their previous album, Riot Act. I’ve always been willing to follow Pearl Jam down interesting detours (I still think No Code is their best album), but Riot Act was their first release that didn’t feel like it had been really worked on and polished. It felt rushed, and half-baked, and for the first time Eddie Vedder’s lyrics weren’t up to his usual standards (“Thumbing My Way” and “Green Disease” are the worst offenders).

But the new album, Pearl Jam, is a huge statement about everything that makes the band, and rock music in general, great. The first half of the album is filled with unrelenting rockers, capped off by the best song on the album, “Marker In The Sand”, while the second half steps back a bit, and thinks deeply about living. I think Pearl Jam’s best work is always when they’re in transition. Dealing with sudden fame on Vs. and Vitalogy, dealing with adulthood on No Code, and now figuring out how to still rock out, and still make a difference, when they’re all in their forties. It’s nice to have them back, and so vital, after so long.



M. Ward - Post-War

I went to see M. Ward at Sala Rosa earlier this year, and immediately became a fan. His most recent album careens between rock stompers and slow crooners, telling a series of stories about lovers, losers, dreamers, and dead men. One thing I like about his work is the amount of space he gives the slow songs to breathe, and the way his guitar dips in and out of things, commenting briefly then fading out again. This album will also be forever notorious to me because of the impromptu dance party it inspired at a family reunion, featuring pogoing Uncles and ten people with ten different ideas about just when the semitone bend happens in the chorus of “Chinese Translation”.

Honourable Mentions:

• Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years In The Belly of a Mountain
• Bob Dylan - Modern Times
• Calexico - Garden Ruin
• Cat Power - The Greatest
• Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

These are mostly albums that I just started listening to recently, or don’t really have much to say about except I like them a lot! Also, I can’t believe I waited for five years for a new Sparklehorse album to come out, then didn’t hear about it at all until a few days ago.

Your Attention Please

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting to bring you this important message - who’s that hottie just selected as the Georgia Straight single of the week?

There's A Darkness On The Edge Of Town

As of about forty minutes ago, the sun reached its greatest distance from the Earth’s equatorial plane (for those of us in the Northern hemisphere). Happy Winter Solstice!

If I was in charge of things, the solstices and the equinoxes would be major holidays, mostly because they have great-sounding names. Solstice.

I Wasn't Born Of A Whistle Or Milked From A Thistle At Twilight

And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor
Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember

Then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center
And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never



Darling remember, when you come to me
That I’m the pretender
And not what I’m supposed to be
But who could know if I’m a traitor?
Time’s the revelator




And sometimes you don’t need words at all.

In Which I Rhyme "FitzRoy" With "hoi polloi"

...or, “$100 buys a lot of cucumber rolls”.

For the Biology Department Christmas party last night, myself and my friends Jeremiah and Jackie wrote and performed a song, and won first place in the skit competition along with $100 worth of sushi at Sho-Dan. Hooray! We tried to keep the details of the project top secret leading up to the party, with good success.

What we ended up writing was a bit of an adventure song, chronicling the famous Voyage of the Beagle, sung to the tune of “The Legionnaire’s Lament” by The Decemberists. Here are the lyrics, with a bunch of links for people who aren’t Biology geeks:

VERSE 1
I'm a clergyman, my name is Charles Darwin, hope my nose looks determined, for this voyage at sea
Sailing with Captain FitzRoy, ‘Round the world with the hoi polloi, trying to employ, Lyell’s Geology
And I’m writing down, all the new things that I have found, I pray we don’t run aground, so far from our homes
It’s been five years, so far, better check our chronometers, double-check using shining stars, as we sail through the night

CHORUS
We’re sailing on the Beagle now, the Falklands lie off our prow, Patagonias gone, Galapagos ahead
From Plymouth’s shores, sit back and hear the ocean roar, collecting fossil bones, finches, and new friends
And I don’t know if we’ll ever be back again, La Da Dum Dum La Da Da Dum

VERSE 2
Bleached bones lying in the sun, Megatherium and Glyptodon, eighteen pence buys a Toxodon, to send back to my home.
“One might really fancy, from an original paucity”, from one species to a multiplicity, these finches and their beaks
Watching this tortoise cook, maybe I’ll write a book, on this gobbledygook, that mystery of mysteries

REPEAT CHORUS

INTERLUDE (With a slide show)

REPEAT CHORUS (GO TO OUTRO)

OUTRO
And don't know if we'll ever be back again,
be back again, be back again, O be back again.
Oh oh oh oh oh, la la la la, la la la la, oh oh oh oh

As well as being to the tune of a Decemberists song, the lyrics are very much written in the style of The Decemberists: as many ridiculous rhymes, and as much archaic language as possible. My favourite moment in writing the lyrics was realizing that a famous passage from “The Voyage of the Beagle” actually matched the rhyme scheme of the song. Here’s the full quote:

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.

Keep in mind that this was written before the publication of “The Origin of Species”. Anyways, we had a lot of fun putting this together, and it seemed people really enjoyed our performance as well. I’ve currently got a pretty good cold, so I wasn’t able to sing at all, but Jeremiah and Jackie were awesome. I’ve been told that video exists of our performance, but for now here’s a picture of the three of us:

Saturday is YouTube day

In lieu of actual content, I thought I’d start putting up some music videos each week. Something old, something new, and something weird. First up, in the “something new” category, here’s The Decemberists continuing their tradition of releasing one of the weakest songs on the album as a single. This also reminds me that I really did mean to write more about this band, because I’m still listening to them all the time:



Next up, for something old, here’s Sam Cooke, who shouldn’t really need any introduction at all:



Finally, for something weird, here’s Apocalyptica. I remember hearing these guys back in undergrad, but I think you really need the video to get the full awesomeness:

With A Little Help From My Friends

Hey, the last post has a happy ending. I found a mysterious box on my desk today, which usually means I have some new yeast-food or chemical to mutagenize myself with. Today, though, the mystery box had a brand-new 30-gig iPod in it!

!!!!!!!!

Some very awesome friends of mine gave me a very surprising, and very unexpected birthday gift. So to Scott, Tricia, Kyle, Lisa, Geoff, Anneli, Amy, Jackie, Helen, Greg, Erin, Jean-Sebastien, Geneviève, Jeremiah, and Taïca: Thank you. I have dubbed it “Starship Superfriends!”



Because, how do you feel at the end of the day, are you sad because you’re all alone? No, I get by with a little help from my friends.

No More iPod

Man, my iPod got stolen yesterday. That sucks!

With three of us sitting less than ten feet away, no less, on the other side of a divider.

So here’s to you, old iPod, you served me well for almost three years! I bought you back in the Spring of 2004, when all things flash memory, mini, nano, colour, video, and click-wheel were still just a glimmer in Jonathan Ive’s eyes. I’ll miss your glowing red buttons, and the way your battery would run out almost instantaneously when I tried to change tracks in the middle of a Montreal winter.

There was a line engraved on the back of you, “One by one, to one by one, forever be”, which gives me an excuse to quote from the song the line was taken from:

        One by one the teardrops fall as I write you
        One by one my words come falling on the page
        One by one my dreams are fading in the twilight
        One by one my schemes are fading fast away

From just the snippet posted here, it’s kind of depressing, but the song isn’t really, though it’s definitely melancholy. It’s more about how, in a big, lonely world, love is one of the few things that lasts.

Guitars, cadillacs

There’s lots of things that I’d like to write about, but there’s never as much time for blog-writing as I’d like. Some of these entries may eventually be written. But since there’s about five people that read this, if you’re that interested in one of the ones that doesn’t eventually get written, just ask me! Anyways, here are some things that I thought I’d write about but haven’t yet:

• The new Decemberists album “The Crane Wife” is pretty incredible, and a real leap for them above their previous work
• I saw Sparta for the second time. Awesome again. They also have a new album out.
• Picked up new albums from The Tragically Hip, and the Be Good Tanyas
• Hey, I went to Vancouver!
• I saw the Bodyworlds 3 exhibit in Vancouver, and wasn’t really crazy about it, but that might have just been me
• I think some guitar chords are way over-represented in popular music because of the layout of the fretboard, and I thought that it was kind of like the spandrels of San Marco

Me With Nothing To Say

Fall is here in Montreal. Falling leaves, crisp mornings, early sunsets, me waking up freezing cold because I’ve left the windows open again. I’ve probably said it before, but Fall is my favourite time of year here. To celebrate Fall’s arrival, here are my Top 5 6, all-time, desert island, favourite songs that are either about or remind-me-about Fall. In no particular order:

1. Iron & Wine - Sixteen, Maybe Less
2. Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
3. Wilco - One by One
4. The Tragically Hip - Fiddler’s Green
5. Pearl Jam - Off He Goes
6. Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Posted Without Comment

Recent Shows

Jay and I saw two shows this past week, so here’s a post about that. We saw Mastodon at the Spectrum, then later that week we saw M. Ward at Sala Rossa. Both shows were excellent, but I suspect Jay and I were probably the only people to be at both shows. Videos below! Both bands featured really incredible musicians, albeit talented in completely different ways. Whereas the guys in Mastodon probably spent years in their bedrooms chained to ever-quickening metronomes, M. Ward has a much more jazz- and folk-influenced style.

All Is Quiet On New Year's Day

Today is the first day of the new academic year here at McGill. Time for all the undergrads to come back, to meet a bunch of new people, and to see everyone who’s been off in the field come back. I’ll be busy as ever this term, TAing courses in evolution and bioinformatics, and playing intramural ice hockey, volleyball, and Ultimate.

No More Bike

Man, my bike got stolen. That sucks!

More On Listening To Music: The Tragically Hip Edition

Or, “Moron Listening To Music”, if you prefer. A friend of mine paid me what I thought was a pretty nice compliment the other day. He wrote “Your opinion of an album a few days after you buy it is almost always the opinion I'll have of the album years later”. He was referring to the Hip’s album “Music @ Work”, which I thought was pretty good at the time, while he was quite disappointed with it.

So I was trying to think of why I actually liked the album. Most of the time, when I first form my opinion of an album, it’s strictly an intuitive thing. Does it have a good beat, and can I dance to it? (Aside: I tried to Google the origin of that phrase and was totally unsuccessful - anyone know?). Or more specifically, for me, does it make me invent some new stupid dance, or give me chills, or get caught in my head for days? Only after living with the album for awhile do I try to go back and articulate what it is about a song or an album that makes it work for me. This is something that’s always fun, and often surprising, in that I’ll usually realize I was completely misinterpreting a song. Or, more rewardingly, that the song had perfectly captured a moment in my life and I’d only picked up on it subconsciously at the time.

Listening to “Music @ Work” again today, there are really only four songs on it that make the album for me, and the rest is kind of forgettable. The lead track, “Music @ Work”, is just a great Hip rocker. But I think that “Lake Fever”, “Stay”, and “As I Wind Down The Pines” are some of the best things the Hip have ever done. I think what I like most about these songs is their intimacy. “Lake Fever” is basically “Bobcaygeon Part II”, which can’t be a bad thing. “Stay” is a fantastic, vulnerable love song that really captures loneliness and the need for companionship. Similarly, “As I Wind Down The Pines” is one of the few Hip songs where they manage to do more with less. Simple guitar lines and simple lyrics, but slightly out-of-sync with each other, forcing you to pay attention.

Gord Downie is always interesting as a lyricist, but I think that on the earlier albums he’s struggling a little to find his voice - trying to write big blustery “rock lyrics” without the Jagger swagger to really pull it off. And on the more recent albums, he’s descended into a bit of an obsession with words - to the detriment of the interplay between the words and the music. But on Phantom Power (unquestionably the best Hip album) and Music@Work he seems to hit a sweet spot.

And since I probably won’t write about the Hip here for a long time, if ever, my only two other strongly-held opinions about them are: (1) Gord Downie should not be allowed to play guitar live on “Wheat Kings” and “Nautical Disaster” because it absolutely murders his vocal delivery and (2) The Fully Completely / Day For Night album duo is over-rated.

Back in the City

The yeast course is done, and I’m back in Montreal. I learned a lot, met some great people, and didn’t sleep much for three weeks. So here I am, trying to get back to full speed at work, find a new apartment, get rid of my old one, and catch up on sleep. Here’s a picture of the group (click for a bigger version), I’ll try to write more (ha!) and put up some more pictures later.



One of the events held at the banquet was a song competition, where each group would attempt to insult the others through song. Here’s one I wrote, set to the melody of “California Girls” by the Beach Boys, that I creatively called “Cerevisiae Girls”. I’m not sure whether I should capitalize the ‘C’ in cerevisiae in this case, and I’m also not sure whether worrying about that or just the song in general disqualifies me from coolness. Here it is...

Verse 1


Well yeast are really hip
I really dig those genes we share
And with double-fusion PCR
I can knock any gene in there

Verse 2


With the green fluorescent protein
I can make any gene alight
And I know I’ll always have enough
A billion cells in just one night

Chorus


They wish they all could work on Saccharomy-
(Wish they all could work on Saccharomy-)
They wish they all could work on Saccharomyces

Verse 3


Expression people just watch lights shine
And nematodes are just so bland
The microscopists are only looking in
Without tetrads how can you understand?

Verse 4


I’ve been all around Cold Spring Harbor
And I’ve seen all kinds of work
So I couldn’t wait to get back to my yeast
Back to the greatest system in the world

Repeat Chorus 2x

CSHL Day 12

Day Twelve, our first day off after eleven very long, very intense, very satisfying days. I had hoped to write and read a lot today, but ended up mostly sleeping.

I’ve learned a lot about yeast genetics, pulled some tetrads, met some great people, and heard some great science. The external support for the course is great also - I’ve had some surreal moments thinking “I’d better not spill my beer on this $100,000 microscope”. And since I need to leave now for more drinks, here are some budding yeast cells stained with calcufluor. The bright spots are the bud scars, I took the picture using a Zeiss Axio Imager system.

CSHL Day 1

Woke up. Went for a run. Finished writing a talk. Spent fifteen hours hearing about and fiddling with yeast. Going to sleep now.

CSHL Day 0

One thing this space is good for is for impromptu travel diaries. I don’t have a camera with me this trip, so unfortunately there probably won’t be any pictures. But anyways, after 11 hours of busses, borders, trains, and one van, I’ve arrived at CSHL.

One thing I find funny when travelling is getting so caught up in trying to catch the aforementioned trains, busses, etc., that when I realized the bus I was on went to the Port Authority, and not Penn Station as I had thought, I actually spent awhile trying to figure out elaborate transportation plans for how to get there before realizing that I could just walk ten blocks.

The CSHL campus is pretty gorgeous - a collection of hold houses re-fitted into research and teaching labs, nestled at the base of Cold Spring Harbor. Here’s a satellite view of the campus, I’m at the base of the inner harbour right now. It’s much less humid here than Montreal, and it feels really nice to get out of the city for awhile.

Now, time to write a talk for tomorrow! Updates in the future will probably be something like “Woke up. Spent Twelve Hours Fiddling With Yeast. Going to Sleep Now.”

Back To The Ocean

Hey, I’m heading to Long Island for three weeks! I’ll be attending the Yeast Genetics and Genomics course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Three weeks of late nights in the lab, and lots of yeast talk.

Since I don’t really do any field work, I never get a chance to grow a cool field-work beard. So I’m taking this opportunity to give it a shot. Pictures may or may not follow.

Speciation by Musical Isolation

One of the principal mechanisms thought to be responsible for the evolution of new species is the process of allopatric speciation. Simply put, populations that are capable of interbreeding are separated for a long period of time (by, for example, a mountain range or ocean). Out of contact with each other, each new subpopulation adapts to its new environment, while neutral genetic changes also accumulate. After enough time has elapsed, the two subpopulations may no longer be able to breed with each other, because of the accumulated genetic changes in each.

I’m kind of feeling this week like I’m undergoing a musical allopatric speciation event. I keep listening to music on my own, and if at some point I end up trying to talk about music with my friends, we’ll have nothing at all in common anymore. I mean seriously, how often can one person listen to Sweetheart of the Rodeo in one week, and still be able to interact with other people? I’ll have to move to South Carolina or something.

If future scientists are trying to decipher how I ended up here, I think it went something like Wilco -> Uncle Tupelo -> Gillian Welch -> Gram Parsons.

I Remember You Well

So there I was in my old blue raincoat watching the new Leonard Cohen biopic/concert film Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man. A lot of the artists in the film told their stories about how they first heard of him, so here’s mine. My dad used to play Leonard Cohen all the time, mostly the I’m Your Man album, and I thought it was the worst music in the world. I was probably ten years old at the time. He couldn’t sing! It was all cheesy eighties keyboards! One day, I thought I had a telling argument. In “Tower of Song”, he sings:

        I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice

This was clearly untrue! I thought I’d caught him in a lie, so we wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore! Aha!

This was also obviously before I’d heard of irony.

Anyways, the movie is pretty great, but probably only if you already like Leonard Cohen. It blends concert footage (from, strangely enough, Australia), interviews, and biographical footage collected from throughout Cohen’s life. The performances are a bit of a mixed bag - while some were incredible, some came off more like karaoke. I was surprised that I didn’t like Nick Cave’s performance of “I’m Your Man”, since I love Nick Cave and that song. There was also way too much U2. I’ve got more to say about the film, but I think I’ll save it for other posts.

Montréal Jazz Festival, Part I

Hey, the Jazz Festival has returned to Montreal! The Festival is one of the best things about summer here - two weeks of great, mostly free music. There’s a lot to say about the Festival, but for now I’ll just stick to a few things.

Each year, the Festival has a few big free shows, that typically draw tens of thousands of people down to Place des Arts. Sometimes they’re incredible, like Cirque du Soleil. Sometimes, like last night, it’s the Neville Brothers. I usually try to go to the big concerts, even when I’m not crazy about the artists, just because of the scope of the events.

So I tried, valiantly, to appreciate Aaron Neville’s crooning, but it just wasn’t happening (even after an afternoon of drinking and baseball). Luckily for us, there was a great band from France - Smooth playing at another stage. Billed as “an electro-jazz sung in English but grooving in the universal language of hip”, these guys were really good. Their sound was built up from their really funky rhythm section of a drummer and bass player, with a singer/guitarist/keyboardist on top.

That show was part of the Groove series at the Festival, which always has the best party music each year, and looks to be really solid again this year. Tonight, I’m going to try to see Gomez, but might not, because who starts a rock show at 6pm?

World Cup Predictions

I haven’t been able to watch too much of the World Cup so far because it falls during my workday, but here are some predictions anyways.

England will not win the World Cup. The only reason I say this is because their fans seem to have the same mentality as fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Charitably, blind optimism, less charitably, denial.

I’m rooting for Argentina again, which I think I’ve done since around 1994, when I was swayed by their cool blue jerseys, and old Disney cartoons that made me think everyone in the country was a cowboy.

Sushi and Tit for Tat

Since I’m ostensibly thinking about evolution a lot of the time, I started thinking about how I decide where to shop and eat in terms of game theory. I think that, when I’m in the process of deciding which restaurants to go to, or which airline to fly, or any decision like that, I play a pretty standard strategy of Tit-for-Tat.

A lot of evolutionary game theory is based on trying to answer questions relating to the evolution of cooperation. Cooperation at first seems counterintuitive from an evolutionary perspective: selection acts on organisms, and organisms that are selfish will generally end up with more resources than organisms that are unselfish, and so end up having more and better offspring. Selection should then generally favour selfish individuals over altruistic ones.

But altruism, and cooperation between organisms are quite commonly observed. How does this evolve? One classic, and tractable way of approaching the problem is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Briefly, in an iterated game of Prisoner’s Dilemma, two parties are subjected to repeated interactions with each other. Each round, they are able to select a strategy of cooperation or defection. The highest possible reward is for defecting when your partner cooperates, followed by both individuals cooperating, then both individuals defecting, and finally the worst possible outcome, cooperating while your partner defects. The object of the game is to select a strategy that maximizes your individual fitness over time.

The story of the original Prisoner’s Dilemma competition is really quite interesting, but I won’t repeat it here (read about it here if you’re interested). The relevant question is, what is the optimal strategy? If you know that your opponent will always cooperate, the best strategy is to always defect. Similarly, if you know your opponent will always defect, you should always defect too. But what if you don’t have any advance knowledge? What if your opponent’s strategy changes in response to yours? It turns out that a remarkably good strategy is a very simple one: Tit-for-Tat. Simply, a Tit-for-Tat strategy involves cooperating on the first turn, then repeating your opponents last move. If your opponent betrays you, betray them back next time. Tit-for-Tat is an evolutionarily stable strategy (or ESS), implying that a whole population playing this strategy cannot be invaded by individuals playing any other strategy.

Back to me and shopping. I was thinking that I’m just very boring and stuck in a rut of only going to a few places. I’ll give new places a chance, and if I enjoy them, I’ll return. As long as I keep having good experiences, I keep returning. But, if I’m unsatisfied, I don’t get mad, I just never return. So if I’m really playing Tit-for-Tat, it would seem that to get me back as a customer, a business would have to do something for me - a free pizza, or something like that. But even if I was offered something, I might just cynically take their offer, then never return anyways. So perhaps my strategy is “Cooperate until defected upon, then always defect, regardless of whether the opponent cooperates or defects”.

I’m not sure the analogy completely holds up - as a consumer, I usually have quite a bit of prior knowledge about a service before I enter the store. So I don’t just go out and try everything once, then only return to the places I like. Also, I have the advantage of knowing how likely I am to interact with that business in the future. In an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game, the players don’t know how many times they’ll interact in the future, otherwise defecting on the last turn is always the best strategy.

So maybe I am stuck in a rut of having a few favourite haunts. But at least this lets me feel like I’m just being strategic.

EDIT: There was an actual point to titling this post "Sushi and Tit for Tat", though I forgot about it when I actually wrote the post. The sushi place I've been going to recently always tosses in a few extra cucumber or avocado rolls. Awesome! Last time, however, they didn't. Do I keep going back, or have they betrayed me?

Thoughts on Writing About Music

I have a few entries on music that are stewing around in the back of my mind right now, and that may eventually get put up here. But thinking about those entries, and starting to write them, got me thinking about what I want to write about when I write about music.

I don’t think I’d be very good as an “objective” reviewer of music, and that’s not really my interest anyways. One of the writers that I’ve read for a few years online (Caryn Rose, formerly of 5h, now of jukeboxgraduate) once wrote something about how she wasn’t writing about music per se, she was writing about listening to music. That’s what I’d like to do here. Not an attempt at objectivity or ranking, but something much more subjective: how does it make me feel when I hear a song, what memories get dragged out, and does it make me tap my feet?

The first album I was going to write about was Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, but that one is cutting a little close to home right now. I’ve moved from “Simple Twist of Fate” and “You’re A Big Girl Now”, going briefly through “Idiot Wind”, and settled in now at “If You See Her, Say Hello” and “Buckets of Rain”, thanks for asking.

Instead I’d like to write about Pearl Jam, and their new album. This post will either eventually be complemented by a bunch of others, or will stand here alone mocking me! The plan is to go through the new album, track by track, with a few autobiographical detours thrown in as necessary.

Buying me off: Cheap and easy!

A few friends and I received free tickets to see Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, the other night. I think the idea behind giving free tickets to people working in the sciences is that we’ll convince all our friends and acquaintances that it’s a really important, compelling, and scientifically rigorous movie. Since I’m easily bought, and the movie really was good, I don’t feel bad saying: This is a really important, compelling, and scientifically sound movie. Go see it if you get a chance.

The film focusses on Gore’s efforts to educate people about the global warming crisis, mainly by depicting scenes from a slideshow Gore regularly gives on the topic. The biggest potential stumbling-block for the film is that it’s as much about Gore and his work as it is about global warming. The presentation on global warming is interspersed with vignettes from Gore’s life, and travels, including stories about his family, his political career, and his failed presidential campaign. While I (and my friends) thought this approach might be at best a distraction from the movie’s message, and at worst a campaign ad for Gore ‘08, it actually serves the film quite well. Each story from Gore’s life serves to underline just why Gore has dedicated so much time to the issue, and why warming really is a moral issue that should transcend political or economical concerns.

As someone who’s seen more than his fair share of talks on atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming, it’s really easy for the material to come off as either terribly boring if it’s presented poorly, or terribly depressing if it’s presented well. One of the real achievements of the movie is in how it conveys the seriousness of global warming, while maintaining a sense of optimism and determination. Previous “insoluble” problems like ozone pollution have indeed been tackled, and at much less cost than doomsayers initially predicted.

The direction of the film is quite good, with many of the vignettes having a real autumnal quality to them. Though autumnal themes and 3/4 time are two of my main weaknesses, it’s still good. The most similar examples I can think of in tone are (cheesily enough) the voiceover monologues of Galadriel at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, and Private Witt’s voiceovers from “The Thin Red Line”.

As several other reviews I’ve looked at have noted, it’s really easy to ask at the end of the film: What might have been? What if the US had a president who really did care about science and the environment? Though I can’t imagine how he did it, Gore seems to be at peace with himself, and ready to move on. He’s doing a noble thing.

Obligatory Mac nerdness: Gore uses PowerBooks and Keynote throughout the film, which makes sense, since he’s on the board at Apple. They’ve put up a key to "An Inconvenient Truth" at their site .

We Should Spend More Time Together in Crowds

Interpreting a person’s intent from email messages has always frustrated me. All sorts of nuances present in normal conversation are lost, and internet-speak only makes it worse. I recently learned a few of my friends have a pretty good triple-tag-team textual parsing thing going on to try to interpret some of the emails they get from guys. So I thought it would be fun to write ambiguous emails, specifically designed to vex them. Here’s my first shot:

From: Rod
Subject: We should spend more time together in large crowds
Date: June 3, 2006 8:26:13 PM EDT (CA)
To: X

Dear X,

        I've really enjoyed the time we've spent together recently. You're like a sister to me (a sexy sister!). We should definitely hang out more - do you like Indian food? I know a really great place, but we'd have to go in a group of at least eight. Do you have many cute friends?

        Oh yeah, I couldn't stop thinking about that story you told me the other day - It made me laugh, and I was thinking about you all day. The girl I was talking to at the gym thought it was totally hilarious too.

        Anyways, I do think we should get together sometime soon and talk - maybe coffee? Or maybe drinks? I don't want you to think I'm moving too fast, but...

Kind regards,
Rod

p.s. My old friends Pat and Terry might be in town too - would it be cool if they came along?

I Don't Know What I Expected

I had a bit of an “Arrested Development” moment yesterday in the lab. There’s this scene where Michael opens his freezer to find a bag labelled “Dead dove. Do not eat”. He opens the bag, closes it, and says “I don’t know what I expected”.

So there I was, opening a small container of dried salmon sperm. I don’t know just what I expected it to look like. But if you can imagine what a bunch of dried salmon sperm would look like, that’s pretty much it.

More hockey predictions

Okay, in this round Edmonton will beat Anaheim in 5 games, while the Buffalo-Carolina series will go to at least 6.

Also, I haven’t updated here in awhile not because of a lack of interest, but because I’ve been dealing with some personal issues at home. I think I’m ready to start writing here again, so we’ll see how it goes.

Things I was wrong about, part one of many

So it turns out that “sad bastard music” is actually a reference to High Fidelity, which surprised me when I was watching it last night.

Also, I still suck at predicting hockey playoffs. Given a bunch of advance knowledge (2 games played in each series I think), I predicted only one correct result. The lesson, obviously, is that I need to wait til series are at 3-0 to make predictions.

And If I Could Find My Way Back Home, Where Would I Go?

Say what you will about the silly name, the new Nintendo console will feature a re-release of Duck Hunt, which erases any doubts I had about its awesomeness.

Uniformed prognostication

Any hockey predictions I make should probably be ignored, since I always expect that the Canucks will win the Cup, and get frustrated every year.

But anyways, Ottawa will climb out its 0-2 hole to beat the Sabres in 7, while the Oilers, Avalanche, and Devils will all lose their series in 5 or 6 games.

More Listening Commentary

Continuing from this entry, some additional thoughts on listening frequency charts.

1. It seems there might be some issues with autocorrelation going on in the data. For example, it’s not clear whether the high position of “Meadowlake Street” is due to me really liking the song, or just due to the fact that it follows “Sweet Illusions” on the album. But then “When Will You Come Back Home” is played more than either of those, and is the fourth track on the album. So who knows? Subjectively, I remember listening to those three songs as a block all the time last fall.

2. It also seems to me that “number of times a song is listened to” doesn’t (or shouldn’t be expected to) correlate exactly with how much I like a given song.

3. Man I’m a sucker for sad or slow music. Of the Top 20, only five or so are rockers. It could be that I tend to listen to a bunch of different rockers while only a few slow songs will really grab me. Or that I just like listening to “sad bastard” music, as Loring puts it.

4. A few albums I listened to obsessively last fall are heavily represented: Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days, Ryan Adam’s Cold Roses, and the Iron & Wine / Calexico split EP In The Reins.

5. I can’t believe that when I saw Iron & Wine with Calexico, they played every single song from the EP except “History of Lovers”. What the fuck!

Doodads and Whatsits

I’m still playing around with the format of the blog, but it’s starting to come together a bit. I’ve added a stats counter at Site Meter, and I’ve hooked up a Last.fm account as well. Both are down to the right on the sidebar.

The idea of the last.fm counter is that it listens to what I’m playing on my computer and iPod, sends it to their website, and then formats it into a chart that gets displayed back here. I’m not too worried about privacy issues here, but more worried about what people will think when they see that I’ve already listened to “Margaritaville” twice this morning. Once it’s got a bit more data to work with, I think I’ll switch to a weekly chart, rather than a “just-played” chart.

One drawback is that the count is only starting from yesterday, so it’ll miss out on a decade and a half of listening. But it does work well for getting an idea of what I’m listening to these days in general. For the sake of comparison, I looked at the data from my local copy of iTunes. This data goes back to November ‘04, when I started working on this machine. Here are the Top 20 most-played tracks:

Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam’s new album, cunningly titled Pearl Jam, came out today. First listen report: whoa.

I also picked up the new Tool album (both albums were only $10 today), and I can report that it has goggles.

Also, I didn’t die connecting the barbecue.