I've updated my music pages, replacing the static ones with Blogger pages. This allows me to update more frequently and easily, and it also provides up-to-date RSS and Atom feeds without me having to hand-code them as before.
With the update we have some new music:
Doves is a funereal tribute to a neighbor.
Numbers on a Clock is an ode to Time.
I've got more new and old songs to post in the future. Hopefully this re-design will make that more frequent. The old static pages will be going away soon: if for some unfathomable reason you've linked to them, then link to the new static pages instead.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Journalism is dying? Whatever shall we DO!?
I'm more than slightly sick of hearing that Journalism is dying. Mostly this is coming from print journalists who have finally noticed that the newspapers for which they work are going the way of the dodo. They whine and moan about the Web, and blogging, and how all of this is diluting the information stream and degrading the quality of reporting.
It's bullshit, every single cotton-pickin' word of it.
Look, I was a Journalism major. I dropped it because even then, in the early 80's, the medium was on its last legs. This is literally how my epiphany went: I looked around in class one day and said to myself, "These people are assholes. I don't want to spend the rest of my life working with assholes." I said it to myself in exactly those words, and then I went down to the Air Force recruiter and spent the next seven years of my life working with patriots instead. The problem was this: I wanted to report the news; they wanted to change the world. Specifically, they wanted to make it over in their image, driven as they were by an activist vision of journalism popularized by Lou Grant. Everyone wanted to be Joe Rossi or Billie Newman. More's the pity. As you've seen from the horribly and horrifically slanted media over the last three decades, there is absolutely no one in print media today who has any business whatsoever pulling out the "quality of reporting" argument in support of their own livelihoods. It's all shit and they know it.
As to what happens to the poor, pitiful newspapers... they die, just like the chandler, the lamplighter, or the farrier did at the turn of the last century. And does professional journalism die with them? Of course not, despite the outright blatant lies that these self-appointed purveyors of truth would disengenuously foist upon you.
CNN. FoxNews. MSNBC. ESPN. ABCnews...
Broadcast journalism has and will continue to take up the role that newspapers relinquish; not only in the broadcast media, but in the ephemeral text of the Web as well.
How stupid can newspaper journalists be not to notice? That's NOT a rhetorical question. You have to be a card-carrying moron* not to see that the future of journalism was sealed with the production of the first MovieTone reel. And to any print journalist who hasn't figured it out by now, I don't want anyone as stupid as you reporting anything.
Get a job.
* I apologize to legitimate morons for the comparison. You have a genetic excuse for you your lack of intelligence, and it's not your fault; whereas print journalists have chosen to feign retardation.
It's bullshit, every single cotton-pickin' word of it.
Look, I was a Journalism major. I dropped it because even then, in the early 80's, the medium was on its last legs. This is literally how my epiphany went: I looked around in class one day and said to myself, "These people are assholes. I don't want to spend the rest of my life working with assholes." I said it to myself in exactly those words, and then I went down to the Air Force recruiter and spent the next seven years of my life working with patriots instead. The problem was this: I wanted to report the news; they wanted to change the world. Specifically, they wanted to make it over in their image, driven as they were by an activist vision of journalism popularized by Lou Grant. Everyone wanted to be Joe Rossi or Billie Newman. More's the pity. As you've seen from the horribly and horrifically slanted media over the last three decades, there is absolutely no one in print media today who has any business whatsoever pulling out the "quality of reporting" argument in support of their own livelihoods. It's all shit and they know it.
As to what happens to the poor, pitiful newspapers... they die, just like the chandler, the lamplighter, or the farrier did at the turn of the last century. And does professional journalism die with them? Of course not, despite the outright blatant lies that these self-appointed purveyors of truth would disengenuously foist upon you.
CNN. FoxNews. MSNBC. ESPN. ABCnews...
Broadcast journalism has and will continue to take up the role that newspapers relinquish; not only in the broadcast media, but in the ephemeral text of the Web as well.
How stupid can newspaper journalists be not to notice? That's NOT a rhetorical question. You have to be a card-carrying moron* not to see that the future of journalism was sealed with the production of the first MovieTone reel. And to any print journalist who hasn't figured it out by now, I don't want anyone as stupid as you reporting anything.
Get a job.
* I apologize to legitimate morons for the comparison. You have a genetic excuse for you your lack of intelligence, and it's not your fault; whereas print journalists have chosen to feign retardation.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Can't Live With 'Em
Well, last night was opening night of Can't Live With 'Em, this summer's Boogaloo play, in which I play Benny, a blind roofer.
The opening went more smoothly than we could have imagined, although another actor, who shall remain nameless to protect his dignity, forgot to say his most crucial line, which was critical to establish the storyline for all the scenes that followed. Despite repeated hints, he left the stage, line still unsaid, leaving five actors up there, hanging. Nevertheless, we managed to cover the flub and continue on.
Actually, this is only the third worst thing that can happen onstage (other than forgetting your own lines). Both of the things that are worse than this have happened to me in the past:
> Failed entrance: in Arsenic and Old Lace I played Jonathan Brewster, who is supposed to accost his brother Mortimer when Mortimer bursts onto the set. Except Mortimer didn't do that. Apparently he took a break, and I was left onstage performing an impromptu soliloquy for the benefit of the audience until he could be tracked down and shoved onto the stage.
> Prop/Set failure: in Guys and Dolls I was Nathan Detroit, who ran a floating crap game. This time, the game was set in the sewer*, which meant that actors entering the set did so from a ladder from above. That works pretty well, IF the ladder doesn't collapse, bringing down the set with it. Guess what happened?
This wasn't anywhere near as drastic, and I don't think the audience even noticed.
Check out the song, "In My Memory", which is inspired by the play.
* queue innumerable jokes about floating crap in the sewer.
The opening went more smoothly than we could have imagined, although another actor, who shall remain nameless to protect his dignity, forgot to say his most crucial line, which was critical to establish the storyline for all the scenes that followed. Despite repeated hints, he left the stage, line still unsaid, leaving five actors up there, hanging. Nevertheless, we managed to cover the flub and continue on.
Actually, this is only the third worst thing that can happen onstage (other than forgetting your own lines). Both of the things that are worse than this have happened to me in the past:
> Failed entrance: in Arsenic and Old Lace I played Jonathan Brewster, who is supposed to accost his brother Mortimer when Mortimer bursts onto the set. Except Mortimer didn't do that. Apparently he took a break, and I was left onstage performing an impromptu soliloquy for the benefit of the audience until he could be tracked down and shoved onto the stage.
> Prop/Set failure: in Guys and Dolls I was Nathan Detroit, who ran a floating crap game. This time, the game was set in the sewer*, which meant that actors entering the set did so from a ladder from above. That works pretty well, IF the ladder doesn't collapse, bringing down the set with it. Guess what happened?
This wasn't anywhere near as drastic, and I don't think the audience even noticed.
Check out the song, "In My Memory", which is inspired by the play.
* queue innumerable jokes about floating crap in the sewer.
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