a.k.a. Used Books & Records

In the late '80's and '90's my mom ran a bookstore / record store called a.k.a. Used Books & Records. She and her partner took care of every aspect of the store: they traveled all over the West Coast buying books, records, & comics, built home-made tables, shelves, and racks for the merchandise, and painted / made every sign they hung in the store. It was a huge undertaking; almost every waking hour involved something with "The Shop," and my first job was helping them out in the store. It was a formative experience; the three things I seem to value most in life are books, comics & records.

Eventually they went out of business. There was just too much work to do, not enough money coming in, and few places a pair of lesbian business owners could turn in the small, closed-minded town of Cottage Grove. Eventually they sold the business, except for the Records, which the new owner was not interested in. Ever since, my mom has had the back-stock from The Shop in storage.

Every so often she would kick down a few Records here or there, and then we eventually fell into a regular routine: she would deliver to me a box of Records that she didn't want, and I would keep anything I was interested in and dispose of the rest for her. It was a fair deal, as I got free records for a little amount of work, and she was rid of a box that was cluttering up her house.

Yesterday I got the most recent delivery when my sister and brother were passing through town. These boxes of records are always very well picked over by the time I get them. Occasionally you'll find a gem here and there, but on the whole, you are better off selecting for reasons other than the music contained within. I now have the complete Moody Blues collection; aside from looking at the album covers, however, they remain unplayed.

Here are a few selections that came in yesterday's shipment:

Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House. I collect Halloween Records and music, but so does everyone else that has any good taste. Thus, there are certain ones that I've been looking for, but have never managed to get. My roommate laughed at me when I found this one, because I actually gasped audibly and quickly began pouring over the liner notes. This record is the Soundtrack to The Haunted House in Disneyland, and is one of the earliest Halloween "Scary Sounds" Records around. Side A is a series of scary stories, while Side B is a collection of scary noises and sounds (Screams, Animals Howling, Doors Creaking, etc.) I can't wait to put this next to Sounds To Make You Shiver and A Night In A Haunted House.

Robert Gordon w/ Link Wray - Fresh Fish Special. Robert Gordon was the primary mover and shaker behind Tuff Darts, a little-known band in the NY punk scene. Robert went solo and started playing with Link Wray (yes, THE Link Wray), and recorded a few albums of covers with Wray as the primary guitar player. Gordon led the East Coast rockabilly revival in the late '70's, but without any original tunes on this album, nor the promise of the full power of Link Wray coming to the forefront, this can't possibly be as good as, say, actually listening to a real Link Wray album instead. Why my mom had this or knew about it is still beyond me. (My guess: this album is most notable for Gordon & Wray doing a cover of the Springsteen hit, "Fire." )

Emerson Lake & Palmer - Love Beach. As allmusic.com is quick to point out, this is ELP's "contractual obligation" record with Atlantic, and thus, is all you need to know about this album. I would contend that you should also know that all three of these men have their shirts unbuttoned to some degree, are all wearing gold chains, and have hairy chests. I would also assert that you should know that Side B consists of one, 20-Minute long suite that is broken up into four parts, and was also released in 1978. Aside from that, I don't think I ever need to know anything else about this album, or even listen to it, for that matter. It's the little pleasures in life...

Al Hirt - Music To Watch Girls By. Al "He's The King" Hirt released this "Dynagroove Recording" in 1967, and was (apparently) available in both Mono & Stereo. The back of the album shows Al playing trumpet, next to his name inside of a crown logo, above the phrase, "Al Hirt - A man for all girl watchers."

Which is funny, because I have always been looking for the perfect man to compliment my girl watching activities, and now it turns out that he recorded a soundtrack for me to do this by, too. Will wonders never cease?

Guh?

Is this for real?

http://www.batterblaster.com/

I mean, it's a joke. Right? Organic Aerosol Pancakes? From a spray can?

The Truth About De-Evolution, indeed...

(Thanks to, or terrified horror to, Colin for forwarding this.)

How's It Named? Links

For those of you who missed yesterday's episode of What's This Called?, fear not! The power of the Inter-Web enables you to retrieve a recording of this broadcast at your leisure, and thus listen to it with the .mp3 playing device of your choice. Observe the links below:

Archive Link: Nov 8th, 2008 Broadcast from noon - 1 PM. (Note: we went over by a few minutes, and so our last voice over may be recorded in the following hour, archived here.)

Playlist: Includes links and information about all the songs we played.

In preparation for the show, Ricardo created this really cool photo remix (featured right). This was included in all the promotion he did for this episode, and you can find more information about this photo (and viewer comments) here. If I were you, I'd check out the rest of his photos, too. Very, very cool.

Lastly: on April 14th of 2007, Ricardo hosted the group Mortal Engines on What's This Called?, and as I was working at KPSU at the time, I got tapped to run live sound. Well, little did I know that three of these recordings would wind up on one of their albums: Sugar Skull, which was just released a few months ago. It was really cool to get credited again for some live sound work I've done, and the album is well worth checking out.

Hopefully there won't be nearly as much of a gap between this and the next radio appearance I make. This was just too much fun to put off this long again.

How's It Named?

For those of you who were keen on listening to the various incarnations of my radio shows, now is your chance to hear me on the air again this Saturday, November 8th: KPSU's very own Ricardo Wang, host of What's This Called?, invited me co-host his show, something we've been trying to arrange, "All Summer Long." (A song you will never hear on his show.)

For those of you who have not been obsessively podcasting his show for the last few years, Ricardo has been in radio since 1985, with a focus on Experimental Music that covers a wide range of styles and sounds. When I first met Ricardo, he did a guest spot on my show almost four years ago. Why it took us this long to team up again is anyone's guess.

You can listen to the show in a variety of ways: in the Portland Metro area, tune in at 1450 AM. For those on the PSU campus, tune in at 98.1 FM. And for those with access to the Inter-Web, point your browser at to kpsu.org to stream the show live.

While I'm not entirely sure what you can expect in terms of specific music, I know that I will be bringing my Interurban Memories LP - a collection of recordings of public transit systems from the 50's and 60's - to use during voice overs. The rest, my friends, I will leave up to the fates.

Until then: enjoy!

Wow.

That was fast.

I was really expecting it to take much longer.

It occurs to me that I haven't voted for a winner in a presidential election since the first time I voted, in 1996. Wow.

I'm still sort of shocked.

Social Interaction Observation

In no particular order:

1.) If you happen to believe something (let's say, x), and there is a name for x (let's say, y), why would you deny that x = y, even though you support both?

2.) Is it better to let people deduce your opinion based on behavior and action (which can be, under observation, misleading), or directly tell them what you think, risking their misunderstanding your definition of terms?

3.) Which is more painful: being asked to rehash skills you may already have in the hope of strengthening them (at the risk of boring the practitioner), or assuming the practitioner already has the skills you are judging them on, and penalizing them for each time they practice the skill incorrectly?

4.) Pet Sounds or Sergeant Pepers? (Exile On Main or Who's Next? The Stooges or The Ramones?)

5.) Is it better to let the loud annoying guy disrupt class, ruining things for everyone, or single him out for his disruption, now dividing the classroom ire amongst the two of you? (Ancillary question: whom do you sympathize with when this happens?)

6.) Socrates was an annoying, pretentious asshole who finally pissed too many people off, and had to face public ridicule and death. Your boyfriend is heading down the same road. Discuss.

7.) Yo, Loud Annoying Guy! How many times do I have to tell you?

8.) At what point do you admit defeat and actually read every article, do every assignment, engage in every discussion, do two hours of studying for every hour of class, and give up all hope of pursuing your hopes, dreams, goals, and social life? Three years?

9.) What is the likelihood that you will ever get a job relating to your minor? What are the odds anyone will ever even ask you about your minor? How many future dates will depend on it? Will your children show interest in it?

10.) The horrible truth we all don't want to admit: C's Get Degrees, you will still wind up in a cubicle sooner or later, and the ideals you hold strongly now will quickly be tossed in the trash if we can just get a decent, regular paycheck. Discuss the pros in cons in an 8 to 10 page page, noting that you'll need to cite at least two outside sources, relate it to one of the primary texts and stated classroom goals, and turn your assignment in on time, in perfect grammatical English. Minus one letter grade for each red mark on the page. MLA Format preferred.

Life Really Does Imitate Art... In Comics

As a person dependent on bus transportation, you quickly tire of many of the usual ways to pass the time when being ferried back and forth. To shake things up, I've been listening to NPR on my iPod, since it's not only a surefire way to show my instant alignment with the political Left, but it also sends a clear signal to the masturbating homeless man sitting next to me that it's not okay to engage me in conversation. (Might I add: mission accomplished.)

Recently I listened to this Radiolab episode, in which Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene get down to brass tacks about the nature of the universe. It's pretty compelling stuff, and Robert's incredulous questioning not only acts as a proxy for the usual kind of scepticism new ideas like this tend to become associated with, but Brian's cool demeanor in what must be a pretty uncomfortable position creates a perfect science narrative for us to take home: even in the face of absolute hostility from skeptics, the bigger truths that science is uncovering are, without a doubt, compelling and fascinating, even for Christians.

Even more interesting than the encoded religious discourse is the fact that, according to Brian's understanding of the universe, Comic Books had it right all along: we live in a universe where every imaginable variant universe - and, in fact, exact, to-the-molecule duplicates - exists somewhere, "out there." Not only that, but there are exact duplicates of me in other duplicate universes posting this exact same blog entry... along with all the other versions of me that are posting entirely other things (or, similar things worded differently). I'm sure the duplicates of you, reading this, are having the same reactions to reading this sentence as you are, too.

Metatextual jokes aside, the hilarious part to me, listening to this, was how easily I believed Brian's "crazy" ideas. The whole time I was thinking, "this is like the multiverse concept in DC Comics... a concept propagated by every other version of DC Comics in all the other universes, too." It led to some pretty funny moments throughout the podcast, which I'm sure was amusing to the other people riding the bus, as they inched further away from the giggling kid with the iPod at 8:30 in the morning.

Shave And The World Shaves With You...

Some questions with regards to shaving:

1.) Does anyone actually enjoy shaving? (Outside of fetishes & 19th Century barbers?)

2.) Is there any way to know if people of the opposite sex like / don’t like facial hair until it’s too late? And if so, how come no one has marketed a device that can answer this question for us early in the dating process? Do we really need that many ring-tones, when we really just want to know if they'll go out with us?

3.) Do any of those bearded indie rockers realize how lame they actually look? I mean, really? Does the beard make their music bad, or does the bad music stimulate beard growth? Do I really want to know the answer to that question?

4.) How much longer can us clean-shaven weirdos hold out for a date without an indie-rock beard? Five years? ...Six?

5.) Will someone ever develop facial hair that doesn’t appear inherently gay? If so, what would we call it?

Wall-E or Add-M?

Pixar is well known for including Easter Eggs in all their movies; the best known example is The Pizza Planet Truck that turns up in all of their movies. Part of the beauty and wonder of their films is the level of nuance and detail within. Ostensibly dealing in animated children’s movies, this overt description does little to get at the depth Pixar’s films usually contain. The text of Wall-E may explicitly depict the animated goings-on of a cute robot, but beneath the surface lies a rich world of images and themes for the casual (or academic) viewer to unpack.

Wall-E has two very different themes on the surface: that of a robot love story, and that of the future of consumer culture on (or, as it turns out, off) Earth. Despite the comments of critics and defenders of this film, these elements seem to be undeniable, and yet are handled with humor and pathos in a way that audiences find endearing. Many critics felt the “cute” factor was pushed too far, and that it was too easy to ignore the ecological story. Still others say that, while present, there was little in the story to spark genuine awareness of – and, thus sympathy for – any “cause” that might spark such a story.

I would argue that, while both themes are big elements of the film, at the center of Wall-E is not a love story, or a commentary on consumer culture, but that of religious and romantic satire. Wall-E, the robot, not only perfectly embodies male gender roles that are prescribed to us in modern culture, but he is a bot searching for meaning in a seemingly-meaningless universe. As we look to Wall-E to teach us about humanity, he looks at the stars in search of God.

Wall-E fulfills the role of the single, working-class man as he goes through his sad and lonely existence as the last robot on Earth. Filthy, short and squat, and filled to the brim with tics and neuroses, he gets up every morning to go to work, waiting to go back home and enjoy the company of his pet and his ever-increasing collection. Ever the pack-rat, his interests skirt the mainstream and focus on the unusual. (He tosses aside the seemingly unimportant diamond ring in favor of the novelty “box” that it comes in.) His obsessive interest in Hello, Dolly! is particularly interesting; as a robot, he could easily remember the plot of the film verbatim, and yet gets immense joy out of the ritualistic, repeated viewing / singing of a single scene and song.

This repetitive, ritualistic behavior is almost pathological with Wall-E. As the only robot left on Earth, the task of cleaning up after the humans becomes extremely moot; in 700 years, he has come no closer to cleaning up the planet than we have today. Yet, he continues the task day in, day out. Why? If we maintain the above-mentioned “cute” aesthetic reading of the film, then it seems that the “work” is just a cover, an excuse to leave the house to add to his ever-mounting collection. But if this were the case, why compact garbage at all?

There is a moment in the film, as the dust-cloud that covers the planet parts for a brief moment, where Wall-E looks listlessly at the stars, and it is this moment that puts into perspective his continued efforts. Remaining on Earth is a lonely existence, and the self-evident truth that persists in Wall-E is that the humans are somewhere, in space, aboard a ship called the Axiom. As he listlessly looks to the sky, the compulsive habit of compacting garbage and building them into towers suddenly makes sense. Wall-E’s collection (and pet) do give him joy, but it’s the ziggurats he’s building toward Heaven that will ultimately pay off for him.

In ancient Babylon, so the story goes, Christian’s built one particular ziggurat – The Tower Of Babel – as the ultimate achievement of their united culture. But the hubris of man displeased God, and he destroyed the towers and muddled their language so they could no longer understand each other. This emphasis on language is interesting, as it is one of the primary problems that Wall-E faces in the film: Wall-E can barely talk. While extremely expressive, “God” has punished him for his ziggurat building. When he finally meets another of his kind, he can only spout off a few nouns, impairing their ability to communication for most of the film.

These religious symbols crop up throughout Wall-E. Alone on Earth, “God” sends EVE to meet Wall-E, and they are alone initially, with only a few leaves (dangling from a plant) between them. Eventually, “God” calls upon EVE to find out what she’s been up to, and while it is Wall-E that found the plant, they are both punished when they arrive on the Axiom. The Axiom itself works as a religious metaphor: a “self-evident truth” that sits in the sky, above Earth, that does not need to be proved. The Axiom imparts knowledge, and once this spark of knowledge is alive (for example, in The Captain), he (and the others) must be cast out of the idyllic human existence they were used to.

When “God” provides Wall-E with an EVE to partner with, however, the movie begins to slowly present prescribed gender roles in the form of opposites. Wall-E represents the modern male: compulsive and messy, he indulges in ridiculous collections and inane, neurotic behavior to pass the time. EVE, however, is reasonable, clean, and duty bound. Wall-E is not sure what to do when confronted with life, instead opting to plop it in an old shoe and add it to his collection. EVE, conversely, is instantaneously able to understand how to nurture and care for life, going so far as to protect it in a womb-like environment.

Wall-E maintains a job, but his interests are much more important to him. He is more desire and emotion-driven. Conversely, EVE is much more willing to tend to life, which is essentially her job, first and foremost; her interests and desires don’t even come into the film until near the end. And the scenes with Wall-E and EVE together are particularly intriguing: as if they’ve already settled into a long-term romance, EVE is constantly embarrassed by Wall-E’s behavior in public, nagging him and berating him until he’s almost embarrassed. This culminates in the “cleaning” scene: as Wall-E watches through a screen and becomes horrified by what he assumes is EVE being slowly dismembered, he comes to rescue her only to find she is extremely embarrassed to have him burst in on her at the “salon.”

In the final scenes of the movie, these elements are completely ramped up. Cast out of the Axiom, EVE & Wall-E return to Earth. EVE desperately tends to Wall-E, ultimately saving his life as she fulfills the role of the maternal nurse. Having been the only two inhabitants of Earth before, after being cast out of the Axiom they are now the parents of the human inhabitants, all completely naïve as children. As the credits roll, we see this primitive culture move through the historic artistic movements, each one coded with specific romantic and religious elements.

The final “sting” at the end of the credits seems to bring the consumer / ecological message full circle: throughout the movie, we slowly learn that the “Buy ‘n’ Large” company was responsible for the planet’s ultimate downfall, and their corporate logo brands the film in the final seconds. And there is no reason to ignore this aspect of the film: consider the garbage that was produced in creating – and then going to see – this movie in the theater. Did you throw out your ticket stub, or recycle it? The irony doesn’t always register, nor should we expect it.

What we can expect, though, is a richer movie experience when seen through the lens of religious metaphor and prescribed gender roles in our culture. Wall-E functions as a way of propagating this meme in our society; the film is family friendly, and aimed at kids. As we watch Wall-E nervously reach out to hold the hand of EVE, we should be asking ourselves if this is a careful observation of one aspect of dating, or if it’s an attempt to reinforce his Adam-like station in life as he tries to reach for the hand of God.

Whoa. Déjà Vu.