Delorean's "Ayrton Senna" ep is epic. Too bad they didn't take the high road and follow it up with an ep called "Nelson Piquet." (Wonder about the Venn diagram overlap of people who are into Brazilian Formula One drivers from the 1980s/1990s and people who like electro pop...?) This is off their follow-up album, which is still pretty good.
28 July 2010
26 July 2010
Linearity, jamming, and soccer.
So, I went to a Dave Matthews Band show, and while I wasn't necessarily super into the idea, I do enjoy some of the band's music. I was of course dreading the utter abundance of douchitude, but it wasn't terrible, crowd-wise.
What caught my attention was that this was very different from the other improv-oriented rock band that I like (Phish.) Phish structures their shows into two sets. No opening act, just about 2.5 hours total of Phish. The first set typically contains more songs, with creative soloing but not necessarily a lot of improv that changes the musical structure of a song. The second set, on the other hand, tends to have longer songs that are broken open and which completely depart from the song's original mold. This makes sense to me: you start with the familiar, you play around with it, and by the second set, you see openings, cracks in songs, that weren't there before.
One of the endearing things about Phish, though, is that sometimes they have no idea how to structure a show. Because these concerts are often held in sports arenas, a friend of mine once referred to them as "a sporting event for hippies." That's not entirely off, though I don't thing likening anything to a sporting event is pejorative (I think Doughboy did when he made that statement, though.) And sports in America are - generalization alert - largely about the ending of the game.
Michael Jordan, John Elway, Doug Flutie, a pre-injury 2006 Gilbert Arenas - they were all inspiring and engaging to sports fans because of late-game heroics. Even Landon Donovan gets on that list now, with the miraculous finish against Algeria. Now, what does this have to do with seeing Dave Matthews at Nationals Park? Well, for starters, the crowd was sitting down for most of the show. I like sitting just as much as the next person, even if it will kill you, but I also enjoy standing quite a bit. I'd say I'm 50/50 on the sitting/standing thing. But at a show? I believe firmly in standing.
So, I noticed that the crowd was basically very complacent - sort of like a first quarter basketball crowd, or a third inning baseball crowd. Why get up? Why get into it? What happens early doesn't matter. It's all about the finish. And of course, as it became clear that the band was playing the last song, everyone was standing and behaving as though they were at a rock show.
What this has to do with soccer is that, in the context of how much ink has been spilled over the question of whether there is something fundamentally un-American about soccer or not (whatever the hell un-American means, right? Harvey Pekar was radically American, and so is Dick Cheney) and one thing that I think most scribes have missed is that in soccer, what happens in the first minute can make all the difference. In American football, there are so many possessions (and the possibility for half-scores in the form of field goals) that a good team can put themselves in position to remain competitive. Same in basketball, where a team can go on a sudden 12-2 run and make a game suddenly competitive. But in soccer, there are no half-scores, and no linear progression.
Put differently: a good drive in football that takes you 80 yards down the field can get you 7 points or 3 points. Unless you mess up, you'll get one of the two. A great possession in soccer can only result in a goal or not result in a goal. There's no reward for good effort - there's only the goal or not the goal. Similarly, a goal scored in the first minute of a game can be decisive. If you believe that the important stuff needs to wait until the end of an event to take place, you may find yourself sorely disappointed by a game where you can be locked into a bad outcome in the first minute, and spend 89 hapless minutes fighting to change that.
Besides thinking about this stuff, I also overheard a great conversation in the men's room, but I'll save that for later.
What caught my attention was that this was very different from the other improv-oriented rock band that I like (Phish.) Phish structures their shows into two sets. No opening act, just about 2.5 hours total of Phish. The first set typically contains more songs, with creative soloing but not necessarily a lot of improv that changes the musical structure of a song. The second set, on the other hand, tends to have longer songs that are broken open and which completely depart from the song's original mold. This makes sense to me: you start with the familiar, you play around with it, and by the second set, you see openings, cracks in songs, that weren't there before.
One of the endearing things about Phish, though, is that sometimes they have no idea how to structure a show. Because these concerts are often held in sports arenas, a friend of mine once referred to them as "a sporting event for hippies." That's not entirely off, though I don't thing likening anything to a sporting event is pejorative (I think Doughboy did when he made that statement, though.) And sports in America are - generalization alert - largely about the ending of the game.
Michael Jordan, John Elway, Doug Flutie, a pre-injury 2006 Gilbert Arenas - they were all inspiring and engaging to sports fans because of late-game heroics. Even Landon Donovan gets on that list now, with the miraculous finish against Algeria. Now, what does this have to do with seeing Dave Matthews at Nationals Park? Well, for starters, the crowd was sitting down for most of the show. I like sitting just as much as the next person, even if it will kill you, but I also enjoy standing quite a bit. I'd say I'm 50/50 on the sitting/standing thing. But at a show? I believe firmly in standing.
So, I noticed that the crowd was basically very complacent - sort of like a first quarter basketball crowd, or a third inning baseball crowd. Why get up? Why get into it? What happens early doesn't matter. It's all about the finish. And of course, as it became clear that the band was playing the last song, everyone was standing and behaving as though they were at a rock show.
What this has to do with soccer is that, in the context of how much ink has been spilled over the question of whether there is something fundamentally un-American about soccer or not (whatever the hell un-American means, right? Harvey Pekar was radically American, and so is Dick Cheney) and one thing that I think most scribes have missed is that in soccer, what happens in the first minute can make all the difference. In American football, there are so many possessions (and the possibility for half-scores in the form of field goals) that a good team can put themselves in position to remain competitive. Same in basketball, where a team can go on a sudden 12-2 run and make a game suddenly competitive. But in soccer, there are no half-scores, and no linear progression.
Put differently: a good drive in football that takes you 80 yards down the field can get you 7 points or 3 points. Unless you mess up, you'll get one of the two. A great possession in soccer can only result in a goal or not result in a goal. There's no reward for good effort - there's only the goal or not the goal. Similarly, a goal scored in the first minute of a game can be decisive. If you believe that the important stuff needs to wait until the end of an event to take place, you may find yourself sorely disappointed by a game where you can be locked into a bad outcome in the first minute, and spend 89 hapless minutes fighting to change that.
Besides thinking about this stuff, I also overheard a great conversation in the men's room, but I'll save that for later.
13 July 2010
This Merkin Life
Every now and then, I get to actually spend more than an hour getting to or from somewhere in a car, and my default setting is to check out a “This American Life.” We were driving back from Roanoke this past weekend – also known as the town in a place where every town is a town you know from a bluegrass tune, like Flint Hill – and Ms. AC chose this episode to listen to. The second story is unbelievably sad and moving, and when we got home and had a so-called “driveway moment” (though the “driveway” was actually Kalorama Road, but whatevs), I thought I was in for a lesson about the importance of not staring an episode of “This American Life” when you’re too close to home. Typically, if they have a downer story, there’s a third, uplifting story to follow, and I thought, “Oh, if only we had another 12 minutes of driving, we could let Ira Glass finish us off with an unlikely tale of bonhomie and wit.”
Long story short, we timed it right. There was no third story. Just this horribly sad one, which went on and on and on, and which grows increasingly weird and transgressive. You can get curious by looking at this picture, or, even better, don’t look at the picture now. Listen to the show first, and then click through to the picture. Stupid Temerlins.
09 July 2010
Have I been gone for a while? You bet I've been gone for a while.
But I haven’t gone anywhere, really. Just been way too busy to carve out the time to do anything meaningful that isn’t either school- or home improvement-related. Also, the World Cup was kind of a time drain, but Brasil’s loss did give me the perfect excuse to watch the film version of “The Road,” which was lovely and truly inspirational when you hate humanity.
One thing I’ve been fighting for at work, for quite some time, is a fair and broad telecommuting policy. I could have secured a separate peace several months ago, but I kind of decided that I wanted to make my office a better place to work. And in the process – though it’s been miserable and I’ve been confronted with idiocy and small-mindedness at virtually every turn – is realizing that I’m sort of a company man. Not in the boomer “stay with one company forever” sense of the word, though that may come to pass…but more in the sense of enjoying the belonging-to-an-organization part of work.
To be clear, I hate most people, especially those in my office. And not having to suffer these kinds of people is exactly one of the things I envy the most about people who freelance. But what’s not for me is the feeling that I’m only in it for me. The organizational behavior, changing the culture of a place, trying to do a small thing to help senior management realize the world is changing – I really enjoy that part of things. I can’t quite say why.
Sure, it’d be nice to have more autonomy. But I have the obligation of going to work every day to thank for a number of friends (not to mention a spouse) and other adventures. So, even though at times it’s really bad, I’m having a moment of self-satisfaction with the fact that I work in a building with people. But please, let me get this telecommuting policy implemented already…
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