Categories
music

Rise of the Masters – Various Artists

I’ve been keeping my eye on these Amazon Black Friday deals and I found a bunch of classical music on Cyber Monday. I just got 500 works of classical music for $19.95. Sure, I may have been able to find some of this stuff free on the internet because a lot of it may not be under copyright, but downloading and incorporating 500 songs into my library would take hours. This took seconds.

Here’s how I use this stuff. If I’m working and I need background music, I do this:

  1. Fire up a browser
  2. Get into the Amazon Cloud Player
  3. Click on my “Classical” playlist
  4. Hit shuffle
  5. Hit play.

Five steps, but it only takes seconds. It’s with me everywhere I have an internet connection and backed up for the rest of my life. I never, ever have to scurry around to find beautiful background sounds to tune out interruptions and make me relatively productive. Heck, I can even download it to my iTunes library if I want.

In short, > sliced bread.

Gosh I feel young and cool when I do things like that.

So I got 100 works each from the following artists performed by a bunch of different symphony outfits.

  • Brahms
  • Debussy
  • Grieg
  • Schubert
  • Tchaikovsky

That’s it. I can’t recognize any of them and I have no appreciation what-so-ever for the writer, creator, or performer. I’m completely ignorant of classical music (although, one time I recognized a Mozart tune that was used as an intro to some TV news program, or maybe it was Beethoven).

I just know that when I put this stuff on, I can relax and focus.

Categories
books

Drinking from the Fire Hose

People in my generation were there for the real transformation to the information age. I’m not talking about the creation of the supercomputer, or the launch of the PC, or the invention of the internet. I’m talking about the 1990s, when every person, not just the IT department, suddenly had a user-friendly spreadsheet and database program at their disposal. I mean everybody.

Continue reading “Drinking from the Fire Hose”
Categories
books

V is for Vengeance

This latest install of Grafton’s alphabet series is the first I’ve read in real time. By that I mean I read it right after it came out. I pre-ordered it at Amazon and banged through it over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m all caught up with Grafton now… just waiting around for the next one.

This felt like the longest and most rambling of any of her books. I say rambling because Grafton uses the perspective of three related parties along with the normal first person account by Millhone. This all happens simultaneously, unlike the last book, which dredged up a murder from twenty years ago. I like this a lot better.

It was difficult to put this one down. Really difficult. Grafton went in some new directions this time around. It was the first time I recall a scene with Millhone that was not told in the first person. It was fun to get a different perspective of Millhone from someone else. It also had the longest and most involved non-Millhone romance storyline that I recall.

Great book.

I have to believe that most of Grafton’s fans are women, say 75% maybe. Actually, that may be low. If you read through her Facebook comments, her hardcore fans are probably 99% women. I may be one of very few males who has read A through V in order. That makes me feel special.

Well, not really. But I’ll tell you this, I feel like I’ve made some strides since noticing how few books I read by female authors. Fully eight of the 29 books I’ve read so far this year were by female authors. How about that? I’m all about expanding horizons, pushing through boundaries, and great pizza, to name a few things.

Hopefully she is full blast on W right now. I’d preorder it if I could. What’s she going to call it? I can’t think of any obvious crime-related words that start with W.

One thing is for sure, she isn’t selling the film rights any time soon. Check out this interview at the 5:10 point. She says:

I worked in Hollywood for fifteen years. I hate those people. Most of the ones I met were just as nice, they were educated, they were gracious. They would savage your work.

That’s beautiful. It’s a great interview. Among other things, she discusses the book previous to this one and lists some of her favorite authors. I wonder how long this video will be up because it’s from Border’s Media. Hopefully they don’t blow it up along with everything else because of their bankruptcy. Heck, if you go to Borders.com you get redirected to Barnes and Noble.

She’s been on a two year cycle for books so I guess I’ll have to wait until 2013. Too bad.

Categories
music

A Decade of Steely Dan – Steely Dan

I found another great greatest hits album on Amazon’s $5 deals. Or rather, it found me, via some targeted Amazon campaign to email me whenever classic rock albums fall below some dollar barrier. If you recall, earlier in the year I snagged The Guess Who’s, which I owned in vinyl. This one, Steely Dan’s, was never in my collection in any form that I recall. I do recognize about 75% of the songs. They were a little before my time but these guys had some solid air time in the 80s.

This album mostly spans the decade of the 70’s. Reelin’ in the Years and Do It Again were from their debut in 1972. It goes through 1980 and includes Hey Nineteen and Babylon Sisters from Gaucho. That’s it. So it leaves out their comeback.

Yeah, in 2000, they made a comeback and rocked the Grammy Awards. I don’t recall a moment of that. I had some dark days in music from about 1995 to 2001 so someday I’ll need to rehash all of the music happenings in that timeframe.

You know what really messed me up? I’ll tell you. Portions of their song Kid Charlemagne were used by Kanye West in his song Champion from the Graduation album. I think I knew this, but it didn’t hit me until my first listen to the Steely Dan song. It’s not a song I was familiar with so that feeling of recognition was quite a rush. I was in the middle of something else while listening to Steely Dan on the Amazon Cloud Player and immediately flipped over here to make some notes. I was fired up. Graduation is my favorite Kanye West album.

Things are starting to come together. I wonder if Kanye West was familiar with their music before they made the comeback. I need to find an interview on this.

This is really soothing music. Donald Fagan’s lead vocals are smooth, clear, and mellow. The melodies are like nothing I listen to and include a lot of horns and electric keyboards and female background singers. I don’t even know where to classify these guys. I call them classic rock, but that’s oversimplifying their music.

I added Two Against Nature, their post-millennium Grammy Award winning album, to my wish list. I may grab it soon.

Categories
books

A Visit from the Goon Squad

This book kept rolling up on award lists and I thought it sounded kind of cool. Additionally, I needed some literature to round out the year, so I grabbed it. Yep, it’s lit. It won a few best book awards, including the Pulitzer. WAIT, don’t click on that yet! Watch the interview in the link after. That’s what I did. It’s better because there are some spoilers.

Trust me on this waiting thing; when things came together in the middle of the book, you want it to feel like something clicked, like something genuine.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

It’s a set of short stories that are loosely linked. Each story takes the perspective of one of an extended group of friends and acquaintances who are mostly connected, in some manner, to either Bennie or Sasha. The stories aren’t chronological and they don’t have any introductions. They do have somewhat of flow, and they all have some connection to the music industry, so you at least have something to hang your hat on.

Just be warned, this is not a standard novel. It’s not linear. I didn’t know that going in and I’m not sure if that made it more exciting or not. It certainly made it more mysterious and confusing until about the middle of the book.

At around half way, in a pivotal and highly memorable scene, the goon angle slaps you in the face. At this point things crystallize and this becomes a very meaningful book. It’s a memorable scene and still sticks in my mind for so many reasons. In it aging rocker Bosco plots his Suicide Tour and says, “Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?”

I’ve never heard this expression. But as soon as I heard it something clicked: big theme of this book is the passage of time.

That Bosco story I just mentioned happens in the middle. Then, near the end, in a Powerpoint presentation by the daughter of the assistant (Sasha) of the record executive (Bennie) who’s wife Bosco was speaking to while her ex-con, writer brother (Jules Jones) nods in approval at the idea of a Suicide Tour (he wants to get the story), you find out this:

Conduit: A Rock-and-Roll Suicide by Jules Jones

Mom bought the book, but she never mentions it.

It’s about a rock star who wants to die onstage, but ends up recovering and owning a dairy farm.

There’s a picture of mom on page 128.

Yep, that’s how this book unfolds. It just skips forward or backward, depending on whatever. You have to draw the connections yourself and letting them reveal themselves is most of the fun. And yeah, that snippet above is actually in Powerpoint form. It’s chapter 12. The whole chapter is a Powerpoint presentation. Genius. It may be one of the coolest chapters in a book I’ve ever read – I was dumbstruck, moved, blown away, saddened, enlightened, overjoyed. It was a stack of Powerpoint slides. Seriously.

And to think, Jennifer Egan had never even used Powepoint until this chapter, which she added after the publisher agreed to publish it. Great stuff.

Read the book. Read this post. Watch the interview, in that order.

Categories
screen

Page Eight

I was just sitting in my hotel room, staring at the TV and flipping channels, and I came across a particularly intense discussion that a bunch of people with British accents were engaged in. I recognized a few of them as relatively famous actors and they seemed to be playing a bunch of spies, so I was interested. I had no idea what channel it was – I was out of town, and this Courtyard by Marriott didn’t have one of those typed up channel guides sitting next to the TV.

I sat and watched it for about 30 minutes with the computer open, half working, half watching Steelers vs Ravens, but then I started focusing. Bigger stars kept walking in (Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes) and the plot started twisting, so it was pulling me in. I didn’t even know the title until after it was over. I guess I could have looked it up, I had a computer with a not-so-high-speed connection (thanks Marriott) right in front of me. But I didn’t.

This was cool stuff. Oh yeah, and completely free.

It was called Page Eight and it was part of PBS’s Masterpiece Contemporary offering. Makes me want to give money to PBS. Also makes me want to figure out how you get on the list to discover movies like this. Dude, c’mon. I can’t remember the last time I watched a PBS movie so how could I have possibly caught previews or heard about this? I think I watched a Jane Austen movie on PBS a few years ago, but I don’t remember seeing any previews for cool spy thrillers like this.

I’m only a couple of weeks out from reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold so my mindset was ready for a spy movie like this. I think I’m going to read some Len Deighton (Berlin Game) just to keep the momentum.

Categories
screen

Red

This is an action flick. If I recall, this did not get panned. It has a serious all-star cast and they have great chemistry. Mary Louise Parker was especially refreshing and Malkovich was spot on.

It was cute. It had a few cool action scenes. Oh yeah, it had a sweet action scene in Chicago. But the action didn’t really make up for kind of a weak story.

Sort of a waste of time, but I didn’t feel like an idiot for watching it. I know a movie is really crappy if I’m actually angry for wasting the time. So no, I didn’t feel like that, especially because it came at no incremental cost.

Gail and I have watched DVR’d movies two weeks in a row now. Not a trend, but a departure from hardly watching any movies this year.

Categories
screen

Summer in Genoa

My wife says to me, “I record everything with Colin Firth in it.” That’s cool, I guess. She’s in charge of the DVR, what could I do?

There are two striking moments early in this movie. One is in the opening scene, which struck me as one of the most horrifying and gut-wrenching death scenes I have ever seen. The second is a few scenes in, which struck me as wrong, as a father and his two daughters finish up the school year and leave Chicago for a year-long trip to Genoa, Italy. That’s not right. Who would do that just at the start of a Chicago summer? Um, nobody.

Shortly after these two scenes, at about 20 minutes, Gail and I debated turning it off. We stuck with it though.

It’s an artsy flick about this guy who takes his two daughters to Genoa as therapy for the death of his wife/their mother. In general, it was a little too artsy for me; no clear plot, ending not really an ending, shaky camera. It kind of lost me at times, but I have no regrets.

Categories
books

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

I was inspired to read this by the trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I saw before Moneyball. This is le Carre’s third book and one of the precursors to Tinker. It features George Smiley, the famous spy from Tinker, but for only a few moments. The main character of this book is Alec Leamas.

Leamas is a British spy, and recently, all of his agents in the East German section were killed (talking 1960 maybe). He’s back in London and seems to be playing the ruse of being retired, angry, and drunk, but he’s still working one last job for Control. He consents to this last job because it’s his chance to get back at Mundt, his East German nemesis and the guy responsible for exterminating his whole section.

This is a short, but classic spy novel. You really never know what’s going on, but you can follow it very easily. That’s a great compliment to le Carre. You’re in the dark, but you can easily survey the field so you’re not blind. He leaves stuff out that he thinks you don’t need to know, but not too much stuff. He’s mastered that part of the craft.

I’m starting to understand why I was so frustrated by this when I was younger. I’m a lot more patient now. I didn’t feel manipulated when I finished, I felt outfoxed.

And I enjoy the dialogue reflective of the times. There was a great conversation between Leamas and his captor (friend or enemy?) in the middle of the book about the justification for spying. It’s in the chapter entitled Pins or Paper Clips (page 120 of my paperback) and some say it reflects the mixed emotions of Brits towards the spying and turbulent times of the Cold War. There was a point where the East German agent justified spying because it was in the interest of the state, which he viewed as much different from the point of view of the west.

“You see, for us it does,” Fiedler continued. “I myself would have put a bomb in a restaurant if it brought us farther along the road. Afterwards I would draw the balance – so many women, so many children; and so far along the road. But Christians – and yours is a Christian society – Christians may not draw the balance.”

“Why not? They’ve got to defend themselves, haven’t they?”

“But they believe in the sanctity of human life. The believe every man has a soul which can be saved. They believe in sacrifice.”

While reading this I did not grasp the social commentary le Carre was putting forth. The wiki article for this book seems well-informed. I’ve started to read wiki articles for a lot of the books I read and love the “cultural impact” discussions. Plus, caring wiki editors often toss in links to cool stuff. For instance:

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This is grim, depressing, and stressful stuff. There isn’t too much action, but there is torture and cruelty. And the ending is not pretty. I’ve read two le Carre books this year and both have ended abruptly and not good for the protagonists. This one ended with an especially touching scene, as two lovers get shot dead in the last few paragraphs.

This is classic spy literature and I’m tempted to classify it as lit. But I won’t. It’s a must read if you like spy novels.

Categories
food

Oak Park Farmer’s Market Donuts

Donuts from Oak Park Farmer's Market
Gail has been talking these up for awhile and I’ve kind of tuned it out. She reads all of the food blogs and is in charge of finding new places, but I figured the chances of us dragging ourselves out of bed on a Saturday morning to hit the Oak Park Farmer’s Market were pretty slim. Saturday is usually a busy morning and Oak Park is about 10 miles away, about 9 miles further than our local farmer’s market here in the city. What’s the point? Could they really be that good?

Yes. Yes they could be.

I thought it was a dream actually. We got up early last Saturday for some reason. It was maybe 6am when we both decided that sleep was no longer an option. We started planning on getting an early morning workout in but then Gail pipes up with, “Maybe we should hit Oak Park and check out those donuts.”

Huh? Sure.

So at about 7:15am, on a perfectly crisp and clear midwestern autumn morning, we park on Lake Street in Oak Park about a half block from the Farmer’s Market. In the far corner of the market, backed up to the adjoining church, there’s a tent set up with three different styles of cake donuts for $0.75 each and some coffee, tea, and juices. They’re pulling bins of these donuts out of some trap door that leads to the basement of the church.

My initial reaction was, “Oh, cake donuts, big deal.” But after the first bite of the cinnamon and sugar version, my reaction was, “HOLY COW, CAKE DONUTS!” They had a perfectly crispy outer shell and a fluffy center. They must have flash-fried them in perfectly warmed oil for just the right amount of time. You don’t get that stark contrast in textures with yeast donuts. My perspective on donuts was turned upside down after a single bite.

I will plan on multiple visits in 2012 to the Oak Park Farmer’s Market.