If I Were Inside the Actor's Studio with James Lipton

[This is a post in a series.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

We begin our classroom with the questionnaire that my hero Bernard Pivot popularized for 26 glorious years.
— James Lipton

James Lipton was probably the first person I ever heard interview someone that made me really care about what the answers were.  Up until then, I was seeing people like Johnny Carson or even (in my youth) Merv Griffin talking to celebrities, and I mostly didn’t care—neither about the questions nor the answers.  Lipton was the one that drew me in.  Previously, I could barely stand to watch an actor get “interviewed” for 5 minutes.  After I discovered Inside the Actor’s Studio, I was watching it for an hour at a time.  Primarily this is because Lipton is a genius interviewer, almost certainly unmatched in our time.  He was such a cultural phenomemon that he became a running skit on Saturday Night Live, with Will Ferrell doing a spot-on impression (which Lipton reportedly loved).  He was famous for meticulous notes, often surprising actors with his detailed knowledge of their careers (on more than one occasion knowing about something which the person themself had completely forgotten).  And he was famous for ending every interview with what he referred to as “the Pivot Questionnaire.”

Bernard Pivot was a French journalist and host of several televsion shows, including Apostrophes and Bouillon de culture, an episode of one of which inspired Lipton to create Inside the Actor’s Studio.  Liption adapted his version of the questionnaire from Pivot; Pivot adapted his version from the Proust Questionnaire, which Marcel Proust answered in 1890 (or thereabouts).  The author of the original questions is unknown; apparently writing down your answers to a set of questions that were passed on from person to person was a sort of Victorian parlor game.  (Reminds me of the “purity tests” of my college career.)  But it strikes me as apropos that this whole thing started as a person answering the questionnaire unasked so that people who came after him might know more of him.  Which is exactly what I hope to achieve here.

The Pivot Questionnaire

(as adapted by James Lipton)

• What is your favorite word?

This is a tough one.  I can tell you that many people given this question tend to interpret it as “what word represents your favorite thing?” On the other hand, some people (including myself) are more of the opinion that it means “what word do you find most euphonious?” “Euphonious,” by the way, means “pleasing to the ear,” and is itself a pretty euphonious word.  Being a writer by inclination (though not by profession), I love words, and there are many awesome words which are both pleasing and useful.  I’m fond of “serendipity,” which I learned at a moderately young age (I would guess around 10 or 11) from a book of the same name.  I also like “verisimilitude,” which is a wonderful word that I use all the time in connection with my D&D games: to talk about “realism” in a fantasy game is silly, but you can strive for verisimilitude, which just means that the internal story logic has to be sound.

I tried checking what words I’d used most in my blog posts, but of course I don’t want to look at small words like “the” or “to.” So I decided to define “interesting words” as words of a certain length.  I experimented with my most used 8-letter (or more) words, 9-letter (or more) words, and so on up to 15-letter (or more) words, and found some interesting results.  Throwing out the proper names and whatnot, the word “interesting” itself is in the #2 spot for both 10- and 11-letter words (beaten out both times by “necessarily”).  In fact, adverbs make up a big part of this group, since you can make almost any cool adjective just a wee bit longer by tossing an “ly at the end.  Some of these (“particularly,” “unfortunately,” “occasionally”) are not that interesting, but some, such as “simultaneously” and “paradoxically” are.  Apparently I’m also fond of “responsibility,” “aforementioned,” and “implementation.” My favorite was the #1 word at 15-or-more-letters: “phosphorescence,” which I’ve apparently used 14 times (although that’s cheating a bit, since it’s in the name of one of my music mixes).

Actually, I don’t know if I can pick just one word.  I’m fond of semi-obscure words that people probably have to look up when I use them, like “diaphanous” or “mellifluous” or “effervescent.” I’ve often been advised by readers that I asked for critiques (in college or since then) that I should change this word or that to make it more “accessble,” but I say screw that.  If you never hit a word you don’t know, you never have a reason to expand your vocabulary, and the language starts withering away from lack of use.

I guess if I have to pick just one, I might go with “paradox,” which is both pleasing to say and also holds great meaning to me personally.

• What is your least favorite word?

I’m not sure I even have one ... I know that a lot of people hate the word “moist,” for instance, but to me it’s just another word, and it can come in quite handy on occasion.  There are also very few words (outside racial slurs) that I find displeasing to the ear.  I don’t know ... the best I can come up with is “dreck,” which is both dissonant to the ear and also an unpleasant concept.

• What turns you on?

I really love heat.  Almost everyone I know says they’d rather be cold than hot: “you can always put on more clothing,” they say, “but there’s only so much you can take off!” Pish-posh.  I despise being cold, and while being hot and sweaty isn’t pleasant, it’s more tolerable than shivering.  I also don’t really care for clothes all that much.

And there’s a lot of really great applications of heat, most of them employing limited amounts of clothing (or none at all).  I love taking a hot shower, for instance, and I love saunas, and especially hot tubs.  For that matter, just laying in the sun on a hot (preferably not too humid) day is pretty damned fine if you ask me.

• What turns you off?

I suppose it sounds a bit pretentious, but I have to say: injustice.  I often tell my kids “the world isn’t fair ... but people can be, if they choose, and it’s not unreasonable to expect them to be.” People treating other people unfairly really gets under my skin, whether it’s something as small as one person trying to pay less than their fair share, or something as big as institutional racism.  People can do better, and they damned well should.

• What sound or noise do you love?

The go-to answer here, from my years of watching Inside the Actor’s Studio, is “the sound of a baby’s laughter.” To the point where you kind of feel like a shitty parent if you don’t say that.  But I’ve always been one to buck a trend.

For me, it’s got to be music.  Music is always such a big part of my life: I play it while I work, while I read, while I program for fun, while I play D&D, while I sleep.  If you’ve read this blog more than casually, you’ll know that I have a ridiculously extensive collection of music mixes, where I try to have a mix on hand for any possible mood I might be in.  I’m listening to music right now as I type this.

• What sound or noise do you hate?

This is another one that some people try to turn into more than what I think the question is actually about.  “I hate the sound of people yelling at other people,” they might say, or somesuch twaddle.  But I take the question literally, so the sound that sets my teeth on edge—even more than fingernails on a chalkboard!—is a knife scraping across a plate.  Not all plates, and I suppose not all knives, but there’s a certain resonance and grinding dissonance that you can hit that just makes my whole body tense up.

• What is your favorite curse word?

This is, of course, one of my favorite questions.  In my experience, most of the men hesitate, and most of the women cheerfully respond with “fuck!” And, hey, don’t get me wrong: “fuck” is a great one.  It’s a classic for a reason.  But I’ve come to love portmanteau curse words: where you take a common curse and tack on something completely silly at the end.  I think “fucksticks” is my all-time favorite, but “shitballs” has its charms too.

• What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

For this question, “other than your own” was always assumed to mean “other than being an actor,” given the context.  For me, it would mean, other than being a programmer.  And I’ve always loved being a programmer.  I find it quite creative, first of all, and also challenging, which is important to keep from getting bored.  Other than that, I suppose “famous author” isn’t exactly a profession, so I think I would say a teacher.  Sadly, there just isn’t enough money in it to support me and my family and my house in sunny Southern California with the pool out back where I can engage in many of those heat-related activities that I described above ... I’m not primarily motived by money, but I do have a certain comfort level that I want to maintain.  I wish that our society valued teachers more.  I’ve taught a few classes in my time (technicall classes, for adults, that is), and I’ve also done some tutoring of people younger than I, and I’ve always enjoyed it and found it very fulfilling.  I would really love to design a college curriculum where I teach classes that eventually deliver you a B.A. in computer programming; I think the current B.S. degrees really don’t prepare you for the reality of programming.

• What profession would you not like to do?

Well, I suck at nearly all forms of physical labor: even when I was more in shape than I am now, I always lacked physical coordination, and I have a tendency to overthink things.  But that feels like a bit of a cop-out.  I think what I would really hate is any job where you have to reject people a lot: HR, maybe, or casting director ... something along those lines.  How can people spend all day breaking other people’s spirits without it breaking their own?

• If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

Well, being the confirmed agnostic that I am, I don’t always think of this one strictly in terms of religious imagery.  In fact, there’s something both poignant and comforting in the image that the Red Sea Pedestrians paint when they point out that “We Are So Small”:

So now we long to take to the sky and traverse the reaches of space,
Returning our bodies back to the source that led them to this delicate place.
We’ll ask the forces unknown,
“Are we out here all alone?”
They’ll say “you are so small we can’t see you at all,
But we love you: come on back home.”

But, to answer the question more succinctly and more personally, I think it would have to be: “You did the best you could, and that was good enough.”

Next time, I’ll essay the Colbert Questionert.

The Self-Interviews

What It Is

Sometimes when I watch or listen to one of these shows, I imagine how I might answer the interviewer’s questions.
— me

I’m embarking on a new series in which I answer the questions that some of the great interviewers of our time typically put to their guests.  If you’re interested to know why I’ve decided to do this, feel free to read “The Motivation” down at the bottom.  But it’s not required.

Here’s a list of of what I’m planning to do; I’ll update these so they’re links to the posts once I write them.  Note that I’ve actually already written one of them: it I have a post from nearly 5 years ago that fits right into this theme, so I’m retroactively declaring it to be part of the series.

I may add more later, as they come up.

The List

• Variation on the Pivot Questionnaire (James Lipton, Inside the Actor’s Studio)
• The Colbert Questionert (Stephen Colbert, The Late Show)
• One Question (Chris Hardwick, Talking with Chris Hardwick)
• Rapid Fire (Mayim Bialik, Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown)

The Motivation

So, it’s occurred to me that my blog is a bit like a diary.  My kids absolutely don’t read it now, but perhaps some day they will.  Now, I don’t know if any of you other readers much care what my answers to any of the questions posed by famous interviewers are, but I think that my children may find those answers interesting, one day ... maybe after I’m gone.  Not that I expect to be gone any time soon, but I do fully expect to be gone before my children ever get around to reading any of this stuff.

It’s a weird thing that we often want to try to connect with people after it’s too late to do that in person, instead of doing it while they’re right there next to us.  I’m sure there’s some aspect of human nature that explains this, but I have no clue what it is.  I just want my children to know that I did the same thing when I was younger—hell, I’m still doing it, though I’m finally old enough to realize I need to do better—so, you know ... don’t feel bad about it or anything.

Hopefully these posts give some insight into what I thought and felt, about life and living and all that jazz.

Caveats

I’m sure most of these questions are designed to be answered with brief responses.  I don’t do brief.

Also, there will be cursing.  Because, of course there will.

The Qyxling: A new familiar for your 5e warlock

You may recall that I mentioned last week that my youngest had started a new D&D campaign.  And, if you’ve been reading for a very long time, you may recall that I mentioned, upon the occasion of said youngest child’s first real D&D game (a little over two years ago), that she had actually joined us for a game a few years before that, when she was 5 or 6.  I was playing a Pact of the Chain warlock (in 5e slang, we call that a “chainlock”), and the Pact of the Chain grants your character a “improved familiar”—that is, more than just your standard cat or raven or toad.  One option is an imp, which is a type of devil, and one option is a quasit, which is a type of demon.  The other two options are more fey-oriented: a sprite, and a type of small dragon called a pseudodragon.  Now, warlocks have patrons, and you can have different types of patrons as well.  Your patron might be a fiend, in which case a demon or devil is an appropriate familiar; or your patron might be an archfey, in which case a small fey creature is an excellent choice.  Or, your patron might be a Great Old One (a legacy of D&D’s very early days, when stealing from the Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos was quite common).  In that case, there aren’t any great options ... at least not among those default options in the Player’s Handbook.  There have been a few more added in the years since 5e first came out, but of course the awesome thing about D&D is that, if you don’t like any of the options, you can just make one up.

So, for this game 4 or 5 years ago, when I chose a warlock who had made a pact with a Great Old One, I just took some of the bits of the imp, some of the bits of the quasit, gave it a bit of a tentacle-face, and tweaked a few things for flavor.  I named the resulting creature Anjeliss, and decided she was a cheeky, indpendent creature who was my companion more than my servant.  So, when my little girl wanted to join us, too young to really understand the rules, and not focussed enough to do much with the mechanics, I said to my other two kids, no problem: she can just be Anjeliss.  She didn’t actually do much, of course (I actually made all the decisions about what actions to take), but she provided a little extra personality: basically, she was just roleplaying.  Which is kind of the perfect way to start.

Now, I never imagined that she got much out of that session.  She basically just sat in my lap and delivered a couple of lines here and there—maybe I let her roll a die every now and again—but nothing earth-shattering.  I didn’t even really think she’d remembered the whole experience.  But, when it came time to start this new campaign, she suggested that I play my same warlock character from that game, and she would use Anjeliss as her GMPC.  She couldn’t remember the name, but she remembered quite a few of the other details, so it was easy enough to resurrect that character ... at least for me.  (He was a dhampir named Nicto, and a bit of a crazy person—inspired by the Joker, or any given Malkavian character from Vampire: The Masquerade—but a skilled investigator, which is what the original one-shot campaign had called for.)  For Anjeliss, there wasn’t much to go on.  But now my girl wanted to play her again, so I felt inspired to create a little something more.

Now, my faux-Photoshop¹ skills aren’t amazing, by any stretch, but I get by.  So I found a quasit with wings similar to an imp’s (I believe it’s a Pathfinder quasit rather than a D&D quasit, actually), and I swapped out its head for the closest thing that matched the picture in my mind’s eye that I could come up with by doing a Google image search for “cute Cthulhu.” Then I color-corrected things as best I could to make the colors mostly match, and you can see the results at the top of this page.

I also did a monster write-up, including a standard 5e statblock,² threw in some background flavor, and finally tossed in another image of the creature surrounded by all its alternate forms.  I struggled for a long time with the naming of it: I wanted someting that started with a “Q,” since the quasit was its biggest inspiration; I wanted something that sounded Cthulhu-esque, since that was the vibe I was going for; and I needed something that wasn’t already used for some other monster in D&D (which is very hard to come by).  And, as we all know, the Cthulhu naming convention is basically to use too many “X"s and not enough vowels, so I eventually went with a prefix of “qyx” and I tacked on a suffix of “ling” to imply that it was a little guy.  The name isn’t set in stone, so it might change,³ but it’s what we’ve got for now.

So I took all that info, formatted it like a proper monster entry from the Monster Manual,⁴ and here it is in case you were interested in using it for your own games.

Enjoy.

__________

1 I actually use a Linux program called the GIMP.

2 For which most of the credit has to go to a fellow on the Internet named Tetracube, who has a mad-easy statblock generator that I use for all my monster statblocks.

3 And my daughter has already pointed out to me that it sounds an awful lot like “quicking” when pronounced out loud, which is an entirely different monster.

4 For which I used my pro subscription to GM Binder, the absolute best way to to D&D homebrew write-ups.

A slow week

It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and then Presidents’ Day the following Monday.  In the meantime, nothing much has changed.  Our littlest one is still working on learning how to ride a bicycle—she’s a bit old for training wheels, but she’s getting a late start, so we’re cutting her some slack.  We got our middle child back on neurofeedback (the cutover to new insurance caused an interrpution of a few weeks), and he seems much happier.  Plus we started a new D&D campaign, with Merrick in charge.  (For those interested, it’s based on this fun little subscription.)

Next week, I’ll come up with something more interesting.  Probably.

Isolation Report, Week #100

It’s been 100 weeks since the start of the pandemic for me.  It may be a bit more or a bit less for you, but it’s probably right around the same ballpark.  Perhaps some might argue that this isn’t the same pandemic—maybe they count each “wave” or new variant as a separate one, or perhaps there are even some people that think it’s basically over now.  I’m guessing those people are the minority though.  I can tell you that it’s been 100 weeks since I’ve seen a single one of my coworkers though ... and I think that qualifies my blog post title as less than hyperbolic.

There was a time late last year when some of the folks from my old office got together to work at one of those shared workspaces (WeWork, if you’re familiar).  At least one other person and I said perhaps we’d hold out a bit longer.  Then omicron hit, and even WeWork was off the table.

Things are better in some ways: don’t get me wrong.  I no longer have to wait in line to get into the grocery store, for instance.  Every food place in my city delivers now ... but of course that’s because all the ones that don’t have gone out of business.  Even for the places where you still have to physically go there (like Target), most of them will let you order online, they’ll bag it up in the store, and bring it out to your car.  I suppose that’s more convenient, in many ways.  I have way fewer meeting to attend at work, I suppose ... but now I’m floundering, trying to look for positives.

I was never a hugely social person.  I don’t particularly care for being alone, but I also don’t like strangers.  This is probably why I spent so many years living with roommates: there’s always someone else around, and it’s always someone you know, at least a little.  The idea of going out shopping and it being a fun thing has always seemed mildly insane to me.  I sort of dug amusement parks and ski vacations and beach trips, but really only if I could go with a group of friends or family.  And I find I don’t really miss them all that much now.

But I do worry that, lacking any reason to go out any more, perhaps I’ll just stay in my house for the rest of my life.  I mean, I go out to the grocery store (although it’s only biweekly instead of weekly now), and occasionally to the chiropractor if I’m feeling particularly inflexible, but that’s about it.  The last time I had to buy gas was December 20th; the last time I had to go to the ATM was November 13th.  There are many satisfying things about having more time to myself to do things, and certainly it’s great to have more time to spend with my kids, but ...

Of course, even if things were to get different, I don’t know how well I’d do.  I’ve gained so much weight at this point that I only have one pair of pants that even fit any more.  The thought of getting on a plane, or sleeping in a bed other than my own, seems ... unpleasant.  The less I’m around people, the less I want to be around people.

And seeing other people on television is definitely not helping.  I really can’t believe there are still people protesting wearing masks.  But also I can’t believe there are still no consequences for not wearing a mask.  To me it feels analogous to seatbelts: people protested wearing seatbelts for a long time too, but eventually they got fined enough that they shut the fuck up about it.  I’m personally in favor of letting all people that want to not get vaccinated and not wear a mask do whatever they like: they just have to sign a waiver that says that they won’t get any hospital treatment once they get COVID.  If that’s too harsh for you, I would also support an alternate plan where such people have separate hospitals—all the health care workers who don’t believe in vaccination could go work there.  See? it’s a free-market solution.

I’m also somewhat at a loss as to how to feel about our current political situation here in the US.  The Republicans seem to have given up entirely pretending that they care about democracy: they just blatantly say nowadays that they’re restricting voting rights so that they can win.  Our former President is back, saying insane things (as usual).  Personally, I think that when “people who did crimes with me” is a large enough demographic that it’s worth appealing to, that ought to indicate a flaw somewhere, but I think those days may be gone for good.  And as to why someone like Kyrsten Sinema would defend an obvious tool of racism like the modern filibuster ... I think I’m in good company in being completely in the dark on that one.  I’m not sure anyone knows—hell, I’m not sure she knows.  (In Joe Manchin’s case, I suspect the answer is just good, old-fashioned racism.)  It’s a whole lot of what-the-fuckery.

In our house, we were all fully vaccinated, for a hot minute.  Now, of course, you’re not considered fully vaccinated unless you’ve gotten a booster shot, so we have to start all over again.  Appointments have been made.  But, even then: I feel like there’s just going to be another booster required eventually, and then another, and then another.  I’m of half a mind to just wait around until I can get ’em all in one go.  There’s really no hurry as far as I’m concerned.  I hardly ever leave the house any more.  I’m not really much at risk at this point.

So, 100 weeks in, some stuff is different; many things are the same.  The future is ... not bright, surely; not hopeless, exactly; not really anything other than inevitable.  It shall be what it shall be.  I know many folks out there are happy to go back to eating at restaurants on a regular basis, or happy to go back to the movies on a regular basis—some have even done so already.  But I don’t think I’m ready for that, and I don’t know how much I miss it.  I miss eating out for lunch with my colleagues, and going to museums with my kids, and our annual Heroscape tourney.  But we’re doing okay.  And we’ll survive.  And, perhaps one day, we’ll get back to being around other people.

One day.

Another month gone

Well, the first month of 2022 is behind us.  I have to say, so far I’m not impressed.  But it’s early days yet.  It might get better.

Maybe.

Next week, something more substantial, I hope.

Distaff Attitude I

"Warm Us Up and Watch Us Blow"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

I have a very clear memory from a few decades back: a friend, excitedly trying to describe a great new song he’d heard on the radio.  “It’s this woman, and she’s singing to her ex, and she’s ...” and here he faltered, unable to find the right words.  He finally came up with “she’s so mad.”

The year was 1995, and the song, of course, was “You Oughta Know,” by the then little known Alanis Morissette, and it ushered in a whole spate of pissed-off women singing about being pissed off ... so much so that the original title of this mix was “Angry White Female.” I’ve captured the greatest hits of that musical movement here: Tracy Bonham’s glorious screamfest “Mother Mother” and Patti Rothberg’s bluesy take “This One’s Mine” from the following year, all the way through Veruca Salt’s amazing punk-grunge-pop anthem “Volcano Girls” in ‘97.  Louise Post and Nina Gordon can do it all, but I’ve always felt their unique combination of harmonizing, screaming, and sick guitar licks really reached the perfect crescendo in “Volcano Girls”: when they sing “warm us up and watch us blow,” it’s kinda the perfect expression of this mix (and that’s why it’s the volume title, natch).

Of course, there were other women singing during this period, and they weren’t always pissed off.  For instance, I don’t think Gwen Stefani was actually angry when she sang “Just a Girl” (released just a few months after “You Oughta Know”) ... but then again she doesn’t seem very happy about it either.  “Oh, I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite, so don’t let me have any rights,” she sings, and the mockery is crystal clear.  At the other end of the spectrum, while No Doubt was making fun of people who dismissed women for being emtpy-headed in ‘95, Natalie Imbruglia was making fun of the women who were giving those people those impressions in ‘97; “Don’t You Think” contains lines like “there’s more important things than making sure your shoes walk just right” and “your second-hand opinions don’t make you look any smarter.” What all these women had in common was not necessarily being angry, but having a certain ... attitude.

Of course, women singing with attitude didn’t magically start in 1995, nor end in 1997.  Even just a few years before, there were a few pretty important precursors to Alanis Morissette, like Julianna Hatfield’s growling “Dame with a Rod,” which was always my favorite tune to crank up to the max from Become What You Are, which is turn was one of my favorite albums of the ‘90s: throughout the entire decade, if you took a road trip you took with me, you could pretty much count on hearing the entire album at least once.  Certainly I feel like you can draw a pretty straight line from Hatfield to Veruca Salt.  And, for an example of a woman who can scream with power and artistry and still make it sound beautiful, it’s tough to beat PJ Harvey; “50ft Queenie” is only one of many awesome candidates from Rid of Me; produced by Big Black’s Steve Albini, it’s raw and noisy and just amazing.¹  Among those that came after, I was actually somewhat surprised when I went back to dig out Michelle Branch’s “Are You Happy Now?” to find that it was from 2003—it mirrors the Morissette-Bonham-Rothberg period so perfectly that I was sure it had come from the same time period.  And, while I can’t recall how I first discovered Marina and the Diamonds, I do recall the first time I heard 2012’s “Bubble Gum Bitch”: I thought, damn this song rocks so hard.  And I remember thinking it had to go on this mix.

And then there are the “bad girls” of rock.  One couldn’t possibly do a mix like this without including Amy Winehouse, and “Rehab” is the obvious choice.  Luckily, it’s a top-notch song too, even though the lyrics are quite sad in retrospect.  Perhaps less known (outside her native New Zealand) is Gin Wigmore, who I first heard of when I just had to look up who was singing the awesome theme song for Crazyhead.²  Then I heard “Black Sheep” and I was blown away.  There’s a good reason she holds the #2 spot on this volume.

But I would say the undisputed bad girl of rock has to be P!nk, and I put my money where my mouth is by giving her 3 tracks on this volume, which I rarely do.  But she has plenty of songs to spare when it comes to attitude.  Possibly my all-time favorite P!nk song is “So What,” where she sings to an ex “I’m just fine, and you’re a tool.” Seriously, how can you not sing along to this song?  It was the perfect opener.  “Trouble” is also a lot of fun (“I’m trouble, y’all!”), but pride of place as the centerpiece of the mix goes to her best diss track, ”‘Cuz I Can.” While I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed that she appears to have actually written down “ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff” as an actual lyric, you can’t beat insults like “I could fit your whole house in my swimming pool,” and especially “my life’s a fantasy that you’re not smart enough to even dream.” Chef’s kiss.

But I knew I had to also pay some respect to the OG bad girls: Pat Benatar and Joan Jett.  Benatar was one of my first rock crushes: 1980’s Crimes of Passion was one of the first albums that I developed a fondness for when I began developing my own musical tastes.³  And it was also the first time I realized that an album could have more than one or two hits: featuring not only “Treat Me Right,” which I showcase here, but also “You Better Run,” “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” and “Hell Is for Children,” Crimes of Passion is jam-packed with radio fodder, and the rest of the tracks—such as “Out-a-Touch,” the weirdly wandering “I’m Gonna Follow You,” and the amazing Kate Bush cover “Wuthering Heights”—are pretty dope too.  As for Jett, “Bad Reputation” was tailor-made for this mix, and it’s always been one of my favorites of hers.  Sure, “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” gets all the love, but I always thought “Reputation” was underrated, and I was pleased to hear it used as the theme for Freaks and Geeks nearly 20 years later.  And, while I’m not sure anyone ever accused Debbie Harry of being a “bad girl,” Blondie is certainly OG in at least my conception of rock, and I always felt “One Way or Another” had a certain amount of attitude.

Distaff Attitude I
[ Warm Us Up and Watch Us Blow ]

“So What” by P!nk, off Funhouse
“Black Sheep” by Gin Wigmore, off Gravel & Wine
“Uummannaq Song” by KT Tunstall, off Tiger Suit
“Just a Girl” by No Doubt, off Tragic Kingdom
“Rehab” by Amy Winehouse, off Back to Black
“Bubblegum Bitch” by Marina and the Diamonds, off Electra Heart
“Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham, off The Burdens of Being Upright
“A Dame with a Rod” by the Juliana Hatfield Three, off Become What You Are
“Kiss with a Fist” by Florence + the Machine, off Lungs
“Are You Happy Now?” by Michelle Branch, off Hotel Paper
“Treat Me Right” by Pat Benatar, off Crimes of Passion
“'Cuz I Can” by P!nk, off I'm Not Dead
“Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, off Bad Reputation
“50ft Queenie” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Johnny Feelgood” by Liz Phair, off Whitechocolatespaceegg
“Don't You Think?” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“Volcano Girls” by Veruca Salt, off Eight Arms to Hold You
“You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette, off Jagged Little Pill
“Wild Woman” by Imelda May, off Tribal
“One Way or Another” by Blondie, off Parallel Lines
“This One's Mine” by Patti Rothberg, off Between the 1 and the 9
“Trouble” by P!nk, off Try This
“Tell That Girl to Shut Up” by Transvision Vamp, off Pop Art
“That's Not My Name” by the Ting Tings, off We Started Nothing

Total:  24 tracks,  78:55

Now, I’m not sure Liz Phair and her spiritual successor, KT Tunstall, ever really embody the anger of Morisette, the brattiness of P!nk, or the growling power of Harvey, but I love their music so much that it felt weird to exclude them altogether.  And one can define “attitude” however one wants, no?  “Johnny Feelgood” appears to be about an unhealthy relationship (“he knocks me down and he orders me around”) but it still portrays a strength in the singer.  Meanwhile, in “Uummannaq Song” (Uummannaq is a small town in Greenland), Tunstall sings lines like “did you see it, that I needed to prove that my stinger always stays ...” Just as I did on Sirenexiv Cola, I drew from the best albums from each: whitechocolatespaceegg and Tiger Suit.

Likewise, Florence + the Machine’s output primarily consists of soft, sparkling pop gems like “Dog Days Are Over,” the big hit off of Lungs.  But, somehow, right in the middle of that album that Wikipedia assures me is “art rock” or maybe even “baroque pop,” there is the stripped-down, almost punky, glory that is “Kiss with a Fist.” Another abusive relationship song, in this one the singer gives as good as she gets, and produces a song that is short and brutal, like the relationship of its subject.  Contrariwise, Irish-born Imelda May is known for a sort of rockabilly revival style.⁴  But with lyrics like:

I knew a feral girl, once upon a time.
She grew into a werewolf: that monster was all mine.
She was incarcerated, to the inside of my skin,
And then I sat and waited, for my nice life to begin ...

“Wild Woman” is quite perfect for this mix.  A wicked, wicked, wild woman, dying to be free ... that sort of says it all.

Finally, we close with a pair of pop-punk songs that I’ve always felt were spiritual sisters, despite being separated by 20 years and about 2½ hours on the M1.  London’s Transvision Vamp has strong opinions on your current girlfriend—“to be a musician, she goes to school”—and advises that you better “Tell That Girl to Shut Up.” Over in Manchester, the Ting Tings are not happy about how women are treated: “they call me ‘hell,’ they call me ‘Stacey,’ they call me ‘her,’ they call me Jane.” But of course “That’s Not My Name.” Her name, in fact, is Katie White, and while Wendy James was singing about how you better tell that girl she’s gonna beat her up, White was busy being 5 years old.  Still, I feel some sort of connection between the two Brits and their vocal styles.  Of course, it might just all be in my head.

Next time, let’s get dark.

Distaff Attitude II ⇒

__________

1 My second choice, for what it’s worth, was “Me-Jane.” Perhaps we’ll see that one show up on volume II.

2 Gin Wigmore’s music is also featured in Wynonna Earp, yet another show about badass females—or “hell bitches,” as Crazyhead’s Raquel refers to them—kicking demon ass.  Obviously there’s a trend here.

3 As distinct from just listening to the music of my parents.  I delve into this topic a bit more in my intro to 80s My Way.

4 We first head from May on Salsatic Vibrato III.

Day 3 of 4

This week I took Friday off in order to have a four-day weekend.  I’ve been taking advantage of those days to catch up on a lot of things I’ve been putting off lately, and I’ve been getting a lot of cool stuff done so far.  So I’ll continue the streak and not post anything here—other than this brief message, of course.  More exciting content next time, hopefully.

A Second Cento

Time ... Isn’t

I have lived to see strange days.  Which side are you on?
Have we reached the point where time becomes a loop?
Somebody must have said nobody.  When you’re laughing, nothing matters ...
but inspiration is hard to come by: time is a weird soup.
You see, time is an ocean, not a garden hose,
and when (or even if) it stops, no one really knows.

Now, some say time is a circus, always packing up and moving away,
or that there’s a time to every purpose, and that everything has a season.
But what if there’s no tomorrow? (there wasn’t one today ...)
Because time is a flat circle, the dreaming eyes of a demon.
Some say you can’t step into the same river twice, but those people are imposters:
time is not a river; time is a jungle, filled with monsters.

Time is a storm, liquid and simultaneous; time is a feathered thing, a jewel;
the whole design visible in every facet, yet all moments quickly run away.
Still, an unperceived dimness in thine eyes makes me believe in yesterday,
and that we are all lost—though it can be loved, the truth is cruel.
This is the school in which we learn; its sword will pierce our skins.
This is the fire in which we burn; it doesn’t hurt when it begins.

Perhaps I should say that I accept Time absolutely.
that here or henceforward it is all the same to me and my designs,
or perhaps I should observe, even more astutely,
that I reject linear time and all the other lies of the beforetimes.
Is it merely a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments?
Or is the future is never truly set: our fate defined by countless choices?

You run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking; the time is out of joint.
We are thrown down here at random, between the stars and matter’s profusion.
The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of ... look, that’s the point:
Night’s whatever you want it to be.  Time is an illusion.
It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Dear beautiful eternal night: no sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again.

But time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.  Time ripens all things.
There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space,
except that our consciousness moves along it, and you can hear the sound of her wings.
Time makes fools of us all.  Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.
Day and the angel Life circle the worlds of air ...  Yes, life is fleeting,
but also eternal; it will always find a way to begin again.
Our sole purpose to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

The Story of a Cento

I’m hardly the first person to notice that, since the pandemic hit, time has gotten ... strange.  In fact, so many people were making note of it that it became hard not to think it significant when you come across some piece of culture referencing the weirdness of time, even though many of them predate the pandemic itself.  I’ve no doubt that the fungibility of time during the pandemic was top of mind for Ashley Johnson when she made the brilliant observation that “time is a weird soup” in episode 1 of Exandria Unlimited, but then surely it was a coincidence that shortly afterward I decided to rewatch John Dies at the End (a movie that plays with time quite a bit), or that I finally got around to season 3 of Legion (which features a time travelling mutant), or that our family rewatch of Steven Universe just then hit the episode where Sour Cream (voiced by the brilliant Brian Posehn) makes his own observation on time ... surely just coincidences, but they started to feel like more, and I started to jot them down in a file, along with other observations about time—Worf’s, from STNG; Rust Cohle’s, from True Detective—and I started to become intrigued at how they seemed to fit together, to form a narrative ...

The last time I did one of these, I talked about what a “cento” actually is.  Go read that again if you need a refresher; basically, centos are the found object art of poetry.  I took the pieces that matched up and put them together; took the pieces that didn’t match to anything and found things to match them to; I even filled in a line here or there to add ryhthm or rhyme.  But I kept it very loose: the meter is very irregular, and the rhyme scheme fluctuates from stanza to stanza.  (In the latter, I am quite inspired by J. Patrick Lewis, a much better poet than I; if you haven’t read The La-Di-Da Hare, I highly recommend it.  While it’s ostensibly a children’s book, the poetry is very sophisticated.)  In many cases, I used slant rhymes instead of perfect ones; sometimes this was necessary (because those were the quotes I had), but sometimes it was just fun.

I also did something quite different this time around (vs my last cento, I mean): I rearranged the quotes.  Not all of them, but I didn’t hesitate to twist things around to make them fit my form and flow.  For instance, the actual line from “The Raven” is:

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

which I rearranged to “the dreaming eyes of a demon” (because that way I could use it to rhyme—sort of—with “season”).  And French historian André Malraux actually wrote:

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

which I condensed and rearranged to:

We are thrown down here at random, between the stars and matter’s profusion.

because I needed something to rhyme with “illusion.” In this case, I actually started with the word “profusion” and searched out quotes containing it.  Why?  Hard to say, really ... I knew I needed something to fit that rhyme, and I wanted a word that might be somewhat unexpected (not “conclusion” or “delusion” or “confusion”), and I thought that surely somebody had once said something about “profusion” that would fit this theme, and I found it.  I had no clue who André Malraux even was before I started; but now I do, and that’s a good thing.

My most ambitious rearrangements were in the third stanza, where the first line is actually 5 small pieces pieces of four different quotes, strung together to seem like they are all cut from the same cloth.  The bulk of those four quotes—the meaty bits, if you will—are then shuffled back in: the first half of line two matches the 3rd and 5th parts of line one; the second half of line two matches the 2nd part; the first halves of lines three and four match the 4th and 1st parts, respectively.  Then lines five and six are just two rhyming couplets (practically doggerel) spliced together.

I think my favorite rhymes in the whole piece are in the fourth stanza, where I rhyme Walt Whitman with B. Dave Walters, two sages separated by nearly a century, and yet their words contrast so beautifully.  (Note that this is a favorite phrase of B. Dave’s since the pandemic started; my link below is to but one example.)  I had to tack on a new ending to Whitman’s quote and write a whole additional line for this one, but I’m happy enough with it: I think it works well, in context.

About the only thing I’m not happy with here, other than maybe wishing I could tighten up some of the places where I just threw the meter completely out the window, is that I’m not sure I’ve got the order of the stanzas right.  I think each one is good on its own, and I think there’s a narrative that they form, but I’m not sure I’ve nailed the progression of that narrative.  Then again, given the nature of the subject matter, maybe telling the story slightly out of order is just par for the course.

Anyway, it’s not a first draft, but it may not yet quite be finished, so I once again ask that you be a bit gentle with it.  Still, if you have thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear them.

Credits:

First Stanza:

• Line 1.1: The Lord of the Rings.
• Line 1.2: I’ve Got A Nietzsche Trigger Finger!
• Line 2: Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Line 3.1: Winnie-the-Pooh.
• Line 3.2: Julian Barratt.
• Line 4.1: Bob Dylan.
• Line 4.2: Exandria Unlimited.
• Line 5: John Dies at the End.
• Line 6: traditional.

Second Stanza:

• Line 1: “Elegy for Wonderland.”
• Line 2: Ecclesiastes.
• Line 3: Groundhog Day.
• Line 4.1: True Detective.
• Line 4.2: Edgar Allen Poe.
• Line 5.1: Heraclitus.
• Line 5.2: original.
• Line 6: Legion.

Third Stanza:

• Line 1.1, 4.1: William Carlos Williams.
• Line 1.2, 2.2: Kurt Vonnegut.
• Line 1.3, 1.5, 2.1: Watchmen.
• Line 1.4, 3.1: Jasper Mayne.
• Line 4.2: George Santayana.
• Line 3.2: the Beatles.
• Line 5.1, 6.1: “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day.”
• Line 5.2, 6.2: M*A*S*H.

Fourth Stanza:

• Line 1 – 2.1: Walt Whitman.
• Line 2.2 – 3: original.
• Line 4: B. Dave Walters
• Line 5: The Devil’s Dictionary.
• Line 6: X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Fifth Stanza:

• Line 1.1: Pink Floyd.
• Line 1.2: Hamlet.
• Line 2: André Malraux.
• Line 3.1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• Line 3.2: original.
• Line 4: Steven Universe.
• Line 5: Alice in Wonderland.
• Line 6.1: e. e. cummings.
• Line 6.2: Maya Angelou.

Sixth Stanza:

• Line 1.1: “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
• Line 1.2: Don Quixote.
• Line 2, 3.1: The Time Machine.
• Line 3.2: The Sandman.
• Line 4: Eric Temple Bell.
• Line 5.1: Richard Henry Stoddard.
• Line 5.2, 6: Circle & Cross.
• Line 7: Carl Jung.

Anticipation of a More Exciting Installment

Originally, I had planned to just skip this week, due to the holiday.  But then I had a sudden inspiration for something I had started on a while back, so I’ve spent the last few days trying to put it together.  But it’s not quite done, and I don’t want to rush it.  So I think I’ll let it marinate one more week and ask you for your patience.  Can’t guarantee it’ll be worth the wait, but I can assure you it will at least be better than what I could give you this week.

Till then.

The Waning of the Year

In this time of year’s end and family coming together, I remind you of something Dean R. Koontz once wrote: “for in your family you saw, day to day, those specific things in specific people that justified, by extension, a broader love of fellow men and women.”

Hold your family close.  Because they will teach you how to love the rest of the world.

It's Christmas Time ... Again

Well, another holiday season is upon us, which means it’s time once again for me to wish you a merry christmahannukwanzaakah^* and perhaps invite you to revisit my two holiday mixes: Yuletidal Pools I and II.  Now is a time to be with family, and as much as I also love you, Constant Reader, one must always put one’s children first.

Nonetheless, I will take advantage of this time of the year, as I often do, to wish you and your family the brightest of Yuletides, Hannukahs, Christmases, Kwanzaas, Pancha Ganapatis, and even Boxing Days.  As the year winds down and a fresh one looms on the horizon, it’s a good time to reflect on what we had (or didn’t have), and what we hope for.  What I hope for is that all of us will be happier, and healthier, and more hopeful.  Perhaps it’s a bit meta to hope for hope, but I think we could all use a little right now.

Happy holidays.

__________

* As always, ™ Jon Sime.

Phantasma Chorale II

"Her Fatal Charm"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

I often say that volume II of a mix usually consists of the tracks that wouldn’t fit on volume I—and there’s a bit of that going on here, admittedly—but it’s also sometimes the case that volume II is an opportunity to broaden horizons.  Many mixes are inspired by a few core artists, and so volume I tends to feature them quite heavily.  But then volume II is our chance to stretch out ... to feature those artists again, sure, but with fewer examples, and to include more, and more varied, tracks to showcase the breadth of the theme.  Last time for Phantasma Chorale, we concentrated on the Coraline soundtrack (which after all was the primary inspiration for the mix), with a whopping 3 tracks from that excellent outing by Bruno Coulais; this time we use only one.  Two tracks each last time from the Beetlejuice soundtrack, the Four Rooms soundtrack, and French sometime-soundtrack artist Xcyril, plus one from the soundtrack for The Da Vinci Code, and out of all those, only Beetlejuice is back for more, and with, again, only a single track.  Of course, both City of Lost Children and Mirrormask soundtracks contribute one song each on both volumes, so we’re not completely scaling back, and, when it comes to Harry Potter soundtracks, we’ve gone from one to two (although from two different movies).  But, still, this is a distillation of the core so that we can make room for spreading out in new directions.

When it comes to those familiar soundtracks, “You Know I Love You” by Coulais from Coraline is a particularly spare, haunting one that I’m surprised I managed to restrain myself from including last time; the Beetlejuice selection, ”‘Sold’” by Danny Elfman, is a pretty (if mildly creepy) little bridge to our closer; Angelo Badalamenti’s “L’Anniversaire d’Irvin” (from City of Lost Children) sounds like abandoned carnival music as played on a toy musicbox; “Conjuring a Dome” (by Iain Bellamy, from Mirrormask) is just as trippy and dreamlike as most of that movie’s music is; Nicholas Hooper gives us a chorus of formless vocals in “Dumbledore’s Foreboding,” off Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; and John Williams, the O.G. Harry Potter soundtrack composer, showcases his mischievous side with the classic “Double Trouble” (from Prisoner of Azkaban).  So a lot of on-the-nose choices, given what we came to expect from last time.  I brought in a few new soundtracks, too: “Secret Room” is off the Dark Shadows soundtrack (that is, the music for the original TV series, not the Tim Burton movie remake), and “Lothlórien / Lament for Gandalf” is from The Fellowship of the Ring.  The former, by Robert Cobert, is a creepy bit of neoclassical that showcases the best of late-60s television music; the latter, by powerhouse movie composer Howard Shore, uses more wordless vocals to take us on a journey through wonder, grief, and mysticism.

But perhaps the most interesting soundrack tune here is “Twisted Nerve,” by Bernard Hermann.  While it’s most familiar to modern audiences as the tune Daryl Hannah’s character in Kill Bill whistles in the hospital as she’s hunting the Bride, it’s originally from a movie of the same name from 1968, in which a creepy young man pretends to be deveopmentally disabled in order to get close to a young woman he fancies (played by The Parent Trap’s Hayley Mills) and then goes on a killing spree.  Hermann’s main theme starts out as an almost jaunty whistling that soon turns genuinely menacing.  It’s a musical portrait of a dream turning into a nightmare, and I thought it made the perfect opener here.

I haven’t forgotten the gaming music either.  For actual videogame music, I went with the theme from Arkham Asylum, as reinterpreted by the London Philharmonic.  They actually have several entire albums of them playing videogame themes,¹ and they’re pretty cool.  It tends to elevate the the game music to give it a broader, more sweeping and dramatic impact ... although, honestly, even the original in this case is pretty breathtaking.  Certainly it has the full creepy going on, though perhaps it’s a bit lacking on the child-like aspect.  But that’s okay: I’ll make up for it with returning champs Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana, who contribute two tracks each.  From MS, “Dusk” is the perfect bridge into “Arkham Asylum”: it’s a creepy build-up, some howling winds, and then bam.  “Room 47” has more of a haunted house vibe, but the spooky musicbox motif in the middle is what earns it its place here.  NA, on the other hand, gives us “Labyrinth of Dreams,” which is all spooky musicbox right from the jump, plus the formless vocals to back it up.  It’s the soundtrack to walking through a dark forest while being stalked by a big, bad wolf.  Finally, “Once Upon a Nightmare” (from the same album, Grimm Tales) is almost a companion piece; here, the musicbox-style opening is almost immediately swallowed up by those wordless vocals and then a very dramatic neoclassical piece featuring timpani and chimes.

While I wanted to step away from the Four Rooms soundtrack, I didn’t want to omit Combustible Edison entirely, so I went with “Les Yeux sans visage” (which is French for “eyes without a face,” I believe), which uses a slow organ and cymbals motif to break up two quite carnival-esque sections.  And, speaking of carnival-esque, while I had nothing quite like last volume’s “Oompa Radar,” “Rue de Moorslede,” from late-80s German synthpop band Camouflage, is a similar (if much shorter) track that makes a nice bridge to the volume’s back half.  And, since volume I included a track which reminded me of the theme from the original Star Trek, I decided I needed one of those here as well.  “Ritual of the Torches,” by exotica artist Frank Hunter, is surely more upbeat than last volume’s “U Plavu Zoru,” but that only hits the carnival vibe that makes it work here all the better.

And we couldn’t have a volume of the mix without some offbeat neoclassical and a Dead Can Dance tune.  For the former, I went with Amber Asylum;² “Heckle and Jeckle” is a weird little tune that almost sounds carnival-like ... except a bit off.  Which of course works perfectly here.  For the latter, I’ve always liked “Anywhere Out of the World”—it’s possibly my favorite track off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun³—and I think it works brilliantly here: the bell-like intro (which might just be synth, or maybe something more like a glockenspiel), the pipe-organ-like bass drone that then sweeps in, and Brendan Perry’s excellent baritone vocals ... just gorgeous.  “Maybe it’s easier to withdraw from life,” he sings, “with all of its misery and wretched lies.” A very dark tune, but it still works here thanks to the bell-like counterpoint running through it (and another lyric provides our volume name).

Phantasma Chorale II
[ Her Fatal Charm ]

“Twisted Nerve” by Bernard Herrmann [Single]
“Anywhere Out of the World” by Dead Can Dance, off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
“Labyrinth of Dreams” by Nox Arcana, off Grimm Tales
“L'Anniversaire d'Irwin” by Angelo Badalamenti, off The City of Lost Children [Soundtrack]
“Ararat Legong” by David Parsons, off Ngaio Gamelan
“Double Trouble” by John Williams, off Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [Soundtrack]
“Room 47” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“You Know I Love You” by Bruno Coulais, off Coraline [Soundtrack]
“Ritual of the Torches” by Frank Hunter, off The Exotic Sounds of Tiki Tribe [Compilation]
“The Secret Room” by Robert Cobert, off Dark Shadows, Volume 1 [Soundtrack]
“Dumbledore's Foreboding” by Nicholas Hooper, off Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Soundtrack]
“Rue de Moorslede” by Camouflage, off Methods of Silence
“Heckle and Jeckle” by Amber Asylum, off Frozen in Amber
“Les Yeux sans visage” by Combustible Edison, off Schizophonic!
“Once Upon a Nightmare” by Nox Arcana, off Grimm Tales
“End of May” by Keren Ann, off Not Going Anywhere
“Conjuring a Dome” by Iain Ballamy, off Mirrormask [Soundtrack]
“Teach Me How to Drown” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“Dusk” by Midnight Syndicate, off Vampyre: Symphonies from the Crypt
“Arkham City (Main Theme)” by London Philharmonic Orchestra, off The Greatest Video Game Music, Vol. 2
“"Sold"” by Danny Elfman, off Beetlejuice [Soundtrack]
“Lothlórien / Lament for Gandalf” by Howard Shore, off The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Soundtrack]

Total:  22 tracks,  72:44

There’s not a huge number of unexpected tunes here, but perhaps the most such is “End of May” by Keren Ann.  We’ve seen her before, but typically in a more upbeat context.⁴  Still, the anti-folk Dutch singer can go a bit darker when the mood strikes her,⁵ and this one is just the right balance of innocence and menace to work perfectly here.

Unto Ashes is more known for goth and darkwave, but I always thought “Teach Me How to Drown” had a weirdly light counterpoint going on (probably the bells thing again).  It almost plays like a super dark nursery rhyme.  And, finally, we have a track off of David Parson’s Ngaio Gamelan, which is primarily electroworld, but there’s just something about “Ararat Legong” that harkens back to that Star Trek sound: there’s ghostly, wordless vocals, echoey percussion, and rapid trills on something in the xylophone family, and it all comes together to form a beautiful track which fits quite nicely on this mix.

Next time, let’s take a walk on the angry side.

⇐ Phantasma Chorale

Phantasma Chorale III ⇒

__________

1 One of which I used on Paradoxically Sized World II.

2 We heard from AA on Shadowfall Equinox I and II, as well as Eldritch Ætherium I.

3 Other tracks off this album that I’ve used include “Xavier” (on Dreamscape Perturbation I), “In the Wake of Adversity” (on Penumbral Phosphorescence I), and “Windfall,” which was on our last volume.

4 Such as Sirenexiv Cola.

5 Such as on Wisty Mysteria II.

Witchlight Wild Launch

This week my youngest (not quite yet 10 years old) officially started her first D&D campaign (the Witchlight campaign, which I alluded to in a previous post).  She’s very excited about it.  And, so far, she’s doing a great job, youth and limited familiarity with the voluminous rules notwithstanding.

As I mentioned previously, I’m going with my dinosaur-person.  Our middle child (who I still sometimes refer to as “the Smaller Animal,” even though he’s now a good bit taller than me) is being a sort of a blob-like creature called a plasmoid.  Meanwhile, the youngest is running a character to help us out who is a small mouse-person called a jerbeen.  So our party looks something like this:

So far, we’ve met each other (which was fairly entertaining), and then we found the Witchlight Carnival and met its proprietors, Mr. Witch and Mr. Light (naturally).  Our first mission is to find a missing pink unicorn.  Should be a piece of cake.

I’m pretty excited for the adventure, and I’m excited to see what modifications the girl will make to the published adventure.  Changing things up to suit yourself or your players is pretty standard for experienced DMs, but newbies often try to run the adventure exactly as written.  But our girl has already thrown in several of her own touches (I know this because she proudly announces it whenever she does so).  So I’m excited to see where things go from here.

A more extensive post next week, and more news from the Witchlight trail as I have it.

Research and (Personal) Development

It seems as though it’s become fashionable to make fun of people who say they want to “do their own research.” Every late night host that I watch has done this bit, and I’m sure you’ve heard people doing it on television, online, around the Thanksgiving table ... probably pretty much everywhere.  This bugs me a bit.  I understand why people do it: they’re trying to combat a lot of ignorance and misinformation out there regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, and sometimes it requires extreme measures.  But I still think this is the wrong approach, for a few reasons.

First of all, it’s completely making fun of people for the wrong thing.  I’m not actually opposed to making fun of people who are still claiming they’re going to do their own research on the vaccine.  But don’t make fun of them for wanting to do the research ... make fun them for taking so damned long.  It’s been a fucking YEAR people!  Look, I’m one of the people who said they wanted to do their own research, so, you know what I did?  I did my own fucking research.  It didn’t actually take that long.  The information is out there, easily available, and it comes from multiple sources so you can cross-check accuracy.  At the end of my research, guess what I discovered?  That the vaccines might not be perfect, but they’re WAY better than the alternative.  So I completed my research and then I went out and got vaccinated.  Now it’s a year later and anyone who’s still claiming they’re going to do their own research is full of shit.

Now, there’s also a contingency of folks out there who are pointing out that making fun of people is not really going to change anyone’s mind.  Oddly enough, pointing out to people how stupid they are doesn’t immediately make them want to listen to what else you have to say ... go figure.  While I’m sensitive to this line of reasoning, I also think that it’s probably too late to try to change the minds of folks like these.  And I suspect all those late night hosts have come to the same conclusion.  Still, even though I appreciate this, and I also make fun of those people (if for a slightly different reason), I do have to admit that there’s a certain amount of self-indulgence going on here.  A certain amount of wink wink, nudge nudge, it sure is fun to share a joke with another superior human being about how superior we are to those other inferior human beings, eh?  There are probably better ways to expend the effort.

But the biggest reason that it bugs me to make fun of people for wanting to do their own research is that it seems like it’s sending a very weird message ... a message that’s exactly the opposite of what we really should be sending.  The people who want to do their own research are the ones who don’t want to believe everything they hear on TV, after all.  So, I guess the message that Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah are trying to send me is, just shut up and believe whatever I tell you ... ?  But, see, that’s exactly what got the idiots into trouble in the first place: just blindly believing what some idiot on Fox “News” told them.  So I don’t really think encouraging blind trust in whoever is “smart” enough to get their own TV show is really the message we want to put out into the universe.

It’s a weird feature of the echo chamber that most of us live in these days that we are constantly bombarded by people saying “don’t believe what that idiot told you just because they’re on TV!” and then they expect us to believe them when they say that for exactly that reason.  And what’s weirder is that we do, for the most part.  And what is perhaps the weirdest (and saddest) of all is that we perceive absolutely no irony in this cycle that we’re locked into.

I see a weird parallel with the Republican party’s current trajectory.  See, I’ve long said that the number one threat to our democracy is gerrymandering.  The use of judicious gerrymandering makes it so that Republicans don’t have to appeal to Democratic voters (nor Democrats to Republican voters): the majority of Congressional districts are “safe” ones, where there is essentially zero chance of the other party winning.  The only thing these politicians have to worry about is being “primaried”—that is, being beaten by another member of their own party during the primary.  This has a tendency to push the Republican districts to the far right and the Democratic districts to the far left ... even though neither extreme actually represents the majority of the voters.  This is absolutely a problem with the Democrats too, but the reason I think it’s a bigger problem on the Republican side is that (as I mentioned in one of my isolation reports) the Republicans are not only no longer the majority party in our country, they’re not even #2: there are now more independent voters than Republicans.  So I find the Republican use of this machinery even more offensive, because they’re using it to enforce minority rule—literally subverting democracy.

And recently I heard someone on television pointing this out and saying that it really needed to be addressed.  Except that person wasn’t a Democrat.  It was Chris Christie, a prominent Republican, and one of the few who is currently unafraid to oppose Trump (and actually ran against the man in 2016, although he certainly did spend a fair amount of time kissing his butt in the interim).  I found it weird at first to hear my opinions coming out of the mouth of someone whose party would almost surely suffer if the ideas were implemented, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this man recognizes the echo chamber trap too.  Perhaps the irony that we’re all so bad at perceiving is not lost on him.  I mean, maybe he also believes that drawing the district lines in an unbiased way would be good for democracy.  I mean, that’s not how I thought Republicans were supposed to think ... but then that’s just my echo chamber talking.

I’m glad that Noah (and, to a lesser extent, Colbert) are really making an effort to get more people who are opposed to their point of view on the show.  I always thought Jon Stewart was the best at this: the delicate dance of “I’m going to force you to come out and say that you really believe the bullshit you’ve been spouting, or else categorically deny it” without descending into mean-spiritedness.  I don’t know that Colbert has the knack, as much as I adore the man for his other qualities.  Noah has potential, but I really think he’s just now starting to flex.  It’s not like there’s been more Republicans on The Daily Show recently than Democrats, but certainly more than there used to be: Kristen Soltis Anderson, Dan Crenshaw, and the aforementioned Chris Christie, all in the past month.  I look forward to seeing more discussions like those.  Maybe more breaking out of our respective echo chambers is exactly what we need.