Two Quick Notes on the Presidency

Obama also made a sort of off hand remark with Lehrer: that this was a time of great peril and great possibility, and naturally that's when you want to be president, but it would be nice if it weren't that every crisis was coming at him at once.

As I mentioned before, a president is really most effective in his first few years in office. Right now, big crises are letting Obama focus his agenda on the things that really matter, and the fact that they are all happening at once lets him move forward aggressively with a complete agenda.

I just want everyone to be prepared for Obama's second term when it seems like his main job is protecting his legacy from congressional meddling.

This is normal.

Note #2: I saw ribble's all-time favorite band They Might Be Giants live tonight. It reminded me of reading about Pres. Clinton's 50th, when Hillary got Bill's favorite band to do a concert for him at the White House.

Ever since I read that, I've wanted to be president just so I could get They Might Be Giants to do a private concert for me at the White House. This would have the advantage of my being the first person in like 30 years to request a song successfully during a TMBG set (they use a set list) and, second, my really freaking out the people who elected me with some new and surprising depths to my own dorkiness.

Earworms

"Earworms" is the English translation of a German word that means "songs that get stuck in your head." I like this name - reminds me of something that happens in a Star Trek movie.

I keep track of my Earworms in an iTunes playlist. The rule (and you've got to be strict about this) is that these songs must have no reason to enter my brain or must stay there much longer than they can be of any use.

They do not have to be any good.

I believe that I have by now found all of them. I present my earworms here, in the order they've occured to me over the years, from oldest to newest. From a meta perspective, that means this blog entry represents over two years of work and no more than thirty minutes of work simultaneous.

Cantaloop
Us3

Can You Get To That
Funkadelic

Handcuffs
Parliament

Run on
Moby

Bigger
Propellerheads

Praise You
Fatboy Slim

Dirty Harry
Gorillaz

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz

Satan Is My Motor
Cake

Zak and Sara
Ben Folds

It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career
Belle & Sebastian

The Bird That You Can't See
Apples In Stereo

Chewing Gum
Annie

Cities
Phish

The 50 States Song (Live)
Sufjan Stevens

She'z in Control
Chromeo

She Don't Use Jelly
Ben Folds Five

Alpha Beta Gaga
Air

19-2000
Gorillaz

Am I Black Enough For You?
Billy Paul

Mr. Blue Sky
Electric Light Orchestra

Jacksonville
Sufjan Stevens

Crazy
Gnarls Barkley

Up for the Down Stroke
Parliament

Hollaback Girl
Gwen Stefani

Rocketman
Elton John

Y Control
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

My Humps
Black Eyed Peas

All Night Disco Party
Brakes

DARE
Gorillaz

Freezepop Forever
Freezepop

Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
The Arcade Fire

I Turn My Camera On
Spoon

The Man In Me
Bob Dylan

Picture Book
The Kinks

Make Money
Jr Mafia featuring Lil Kim & Biggie Small

99 Problems (Produced By Rick Rubin)
Jay-Z

After Hours
The Velvet Underground

Christmas Time is Here (vocal)
Charlie Brown Christmas

Seven Nation Army
The White Stripes

Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk
Parliament

Girls
Beastie Boys

Appletree
Erykah Badu

Do You Remember Walter?
The Kinks

Tyrone
Erykah Badu

Sister Christian
Night Ranger

Touch The Sky
Kanye West

Road to Nowhere
Talking Heads

Lefty Loosey
They Might Be Giants

Demon Days
Gorillaz

Don't Get Lost In Heaven
Gorillaz

Where Do They Make Balloons?
They Might Be Giants

Good Time
Leroy

Over And Over
Hot Chip

Take Your Mama
Scissor Sisters

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Daft Punk

Crescendolls
Daft Punk

My Doorbell
The White Stripes

Waiting For The Bus
Violent Femmes

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
The Beatles

Flight of the Conchords theme song
Flight of the Conchords

The Night Chicago Died
Paper Lace

Fantasy
Mariah Carey

Hooray for Hollywood
Rosemary Clooney

Caravan
Duke Ellington

I'm Easy Like Sunday Morning
Lionel Ritchie & The Commodores

Genius of Love
Tom Tom Club

Alternate Route To Vulcan Street
Super Furry Animals

Sidewalk Serfer Girl
Super Furry Animals

Fun With iTunes Ratings

I've been having a great time rating my music on iTunes.

I have been Apple-loyal since the IIc. Apple is easy to love because their software is versatile and accomodating - everyone can use it in his or her own way. It's like how Maxis (Sim City) used to say that they didn't build games, they built toys. There's only one way to play soccer, but there's a million ways to play with a ball.

I had been conciously avoiding the My Rating feature in iTunes - don't know why exactly, maybe because I thought it was the sort of thing I'd need to go all out with. I tend to never throw anything away. As a result, I have a lot of brilliant music, a lot of crap music, and a good amount of decent stuff that I am just so over.

Rating all the music in my iTunes library was going to be a long-term project. I didn't want to leave it half-done or just rate a few songs, because it only seemed liked song rating would be useful if I rated all the music I listen to.

But I think what was really holding me back was that I hadn't settled on a consistent system to use to rate my music.

It doesn't exactly define the eon, but we are living in the greatest age of personalized rating in history. Aside from this new iTunes habit of mine, I most regularly rate on Netflix and on my TiVo. I also watch a maybe a hundred short films a year for First Sundays, which I sort in to the categories of Show, Maybe and Reject.

Over my many years of rating shit, I've decided it's important to decide on a consistent criteria and stick with it. If I'd rated my music without a consistent system, the results would be worse than useless, because once I'd finally settled on a system I'd have to bring all my old ratings up to date with the new criteria and then there would be a terrible mix of the old system and the new system and it'd be a right mess.

I take this sort of thing pretty seriously.

For First Sundays, I rate by what I can in good concious show on the screen to our audience. For example, we reject a lot of good films that are not comedies because we are a short comedy film festival. Other stuff, especially stuff we're on the fence about, we reject because of length.

On the TiVo, I try to rate based on what I will actually watch since I leave TiVo suggestions on and it takes my ratings pretty seriously.

The Wire is the best show on TV and arguably of all time, but there's no point in watching it piecemeal - there's just too many plotlines to keep straight, for one thing. The Wire really demands to be watched on DVD or one eagerly anticipated week at a time. The Wire gets one thumb up.

Futurama, though, I will watch at any time. Futurama gets three thumbs up.

Netflix is where I really go crazy. Netflix has basically become the central data stronghold for everything I think about movies. I suspect I have this in common with many Americans, but at this point I am paying my $13.99 a month not for my two movies at a time, but to keep track of all the movies I've seen and all the movies I want to see. Netflix gets my honest, subjective opinion about every movie I've seen.

Because it's uses an out-of-five system, I decided it was useful to think about iTunes ratings in terms of video game review t.v. show X-Play's out-of-five rating system.

I used to be hooked on X-Play, not because I play a lot of video games, but because I respect a good bit of video game criticism. It's like I'm Tom Townsend for the digital age.

I also decided to base my ratings on how I felt at that moment - not on the song's greater significance in the music world, not on how I liked it when I was 8, but how I felt right then. I could always change my ratings, after all, unlike, say, my Netflix ratings, which I was probably never going to look at again.

With this as my basis, may I present my out-of-five iTunes rating system. I will give my examples in Beatles songs because, although we may all have differing opinions on which Beatles songs are preferable to others, everyone in the world knows all Beatles songs by heart, just like we have all tasted Coca-Cola.

1 of 5
Intolerable.
Beatles Songs With This Rating: Yesterday, Down in Cuba, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

2 of 5
Barely tolerable.
Beatles Songs With This Rating: Here There and Everywhere, Piggies, All My Loving

3 of 5
Indifferent.
Beatles Songs With This Rating: Something, Drive My Car, Revolution 9, Glass Onion

4 of 5
Good.
Beatles Songs With This Rating: I Am the Walrus, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Dear Prudence

5 of 5
Fucking amazing.
Beatles Songs With This Rating: Lady Madonna, Hello Goodbye, You Never Give Me Your Money

I thought long and hard about the distinction between 4 of 5 and 5 of 5. Finally, I decided that a 5 of 5 song was one that made want to loudly sing along with despite usually being on the subway at the time. Call it the Paper Lace test.

(This whole entry may be an excuse to post that last link, by the way).

Rating things is strangely gratifying.

It feels great just to get bad songs out of the way. It's like when I read Moby Dick - I wrote notes in the margin so that next time I read it, I can skip to the good stuff. Now I get to skip the bad songs on my favorite albums without having to think about it.

I've also found that my new smart playlist of music rated 5 of 5 is great for building playlists. I start with what I've already decided is the best stuff and find the things that go together. Because of this, I sometimes think of rating new stuff as mining for new materials for my playlists.

Because I'm listening to music with a set of objectives, and because I'm making a point of listening to everything I'm rating above a 1 of 5 at least once, and I've been listening to a lot of music I haven't listened to in ages. I now have a "Haven't Listened to in Awhile" playlist for songs I've rated above 3 of 5 that I haven't listened to in the past two years.

Rating is most gratifying when I'm going through the songs of bands with a large and diverse repetoire - bands like The Beatles, or They Might Be Giants. Bands like these have songs I love and songs I love to hate.

Watching myself settle in to this new project has revealed to me some wider implications. We know that harnassing millions of opinions is a pretty good way to sort the good stuff from the crap. But that means our votes are one among millions. Why do people like rating things so much?

Rating things from our couch is easier than, say, going to the polls, sure, but I think it's more than that.

I remember hearing that one of the most effective methods the Japanese used to gather information in their POW camps was to just give prisoners a pad of paper and a pencil and gather up what they'd written at the end of day (God knows if it's true, but I'm trying to make a point here). Or, to site another example, I am not the only person writing a blog entry today that less than twenty people will read.

People have a natural tendency to want to express their opinions, and we love to feel like our opinions are heard, even if only by ourselves.

Prodigiousness

I believe we are entering a new age of prodigiousness in art.

As usual, my argument for this bold and sweeping claim begins with They Might Be Giants.

Many have tried to describe TMBG, and no description is complete without explaining that they've created a tremendous number of songs about a lot of different subjects (name another band that has over 150 "common themes" in their music.)

How do they do it? For one thing, TMBG, aside from their "Band of Dans," is only two people. They are low-rent. They spent years with just the two of them in their apartment, writing music. You can't do this with a band of six recent college grads.


They are also modest of ambition. TMBG have never gotten bigger than they can manage. Part of their appeal is that they are just two family guys from Brooklyn. They also don't mind doing good work that makes them a lot of money.

TMBG are talented, and they're also portable, modest and sustainable. As a result, they've thrived, and they've created over 1,200 songs (counting alternate versions).

My point is that it is getting easier for everyone to be more portable, modest and sustainable.

I've talked about this before at embarassing length, but take, for example, the comics industry.


First chair of comics Scott McCloud says in his afterward to Flight Volume 1 that the seminal volume represents a new generation of comics artists, one that does the work first, then worries about how it will be distributed.

A lot of these artists made a start on the internet, where it is very easy to publish, slightly more difficult to find an audience, and very difficult to make money, or at least enough money to cartoon full time.

This shows two things: first, these artists are not doing it for the money (modesty of ambition.)

Second, if more artists have greater access to an audience without the pressure of a traditional commercial market, they will produce a lot of work.


It's the same with writing. Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail meme, estimates that he has written over 200,000 words on his blog versus 70,000 in his published work. There are no publishers to deal with, no editors between what we've written and our audience, and (ahem) a lower standard for blog posts than published work.

Film is another medium that is quickly losing its barriers to entry. This month, I produced a six-minute short film for three figures - and I spent more than I needed to because I was scared of screwing up.

The surprising thing about that movie was how many people were willing to loan their time, equipment or labor to make my little nothing movie. People like to produce art. Decrease the barriers, and (link via Boing-Boing)

Last point: I read that the market for particular (non-comic) artists does not correspond to the usual rules of supply and demand. If an artist produces more work, she can participate in more exhibits and generate more buzz. Supply increases, so demand increases faster.

Greater access to markets will not only encourage more people to produce art, it will also encourage a larger audience.

I Triangulate Myself With Popular Music

I've mentioned before that I know nothing about music. Instead of constantly listening to new music like Speedrail does, I become fascinated by a very few bands that I never stop listening to. To me, it feels like these bands - They Might Be Giants, Parliament and Sufjan Stevens - grew up in the world that only I'm from. Sufjan is like my mind, Parliament is my heart and TMBG is my soul. Whatever it is that these three groups have in common, that's who I am.


They Might Be Giants
The first album I ever heard (aside from the four albums my mom listened to when I was growing up) was Flood by They Might Be Giants.

Shannon Garrity described TMBG lyrics as "catchy yet enigmatic" (Modern Tales subscription required, or take my word for it). TMBG is very funny, but it's a funny kind of funny.

They sing songs about a wide variety of topics - one personal favorite is the biopic "James K. Polk" - they love an odd little narrative, and always seem to be describing something very precisely, although it's often difficult to say what.

Sometimes I don't listen to TMBG for months at a time because my favorite songs are so much a part of me that I don't have to listen to them. TMBG is my childhood, and it's the child that's still a lot of who I am.


Parliament
Normally you couldn't say "Parliament" without saying "Parliament/Funkadelic" or "P-Funk," since the two bands are closely intertwined, but the albums I'm talking about; Fukentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, Mothership Connection and The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein; all say Parliament on the cover, so I'm sticking with that.

Like TMBG, Parliament and especially their leader, George Clinton, seem to have a personal world that they understand completely but no one could ever adequately explain to anyone else. In Parliament's case, this is a mythology involving aliens (afro-nauts) from a universe of funk who hid the secret of the universe below the pyramids and, meh, it goes on from there.

I love funk. I have said before that I think it is the highest form of art, and I'll stand by that. I even went so far as to work for a funk musician's company for a year. Funk and Parliament especially tap in to whatever it is that brings me joy.


Sufjan Stevens
I liked Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers until I saw him live at Bowery Ballroom here in New York, and then I loved them. That was the greatest concert of my life.

Sufjan's current project is to write an album for each of the 50 states (so far he's done Michigan and my favorite album, Illinois.) He reads a lot of material about each state, finds some stories or places that resonate with him, mushes all that up in his mind, and these songs are the result.

Unless you're a state local, there's no way to know from the songs what exactly the material is about, and, as a result, what you end up feeling by listening to the album is that you understand the medium better than the material; you understand Sufjan himself.

If you read some of Sufjan's lyrics, you can see that this is an eloquent, intelligent guy with a sense of joy about the world. What I realized only once I saw Sufjan play live was how funny all of his music is.

Sufjan isn't ironic, nor is he overly sentimental (although Speedrail pointed out that on Illinoise, Sufjan talks about crying, like, eight times). Sufjan's songs are completely heart-felt, and he's still aware that what he's doing is hilarious. I could compare it to Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, but that's as close as I'm going to get.

[Edit: I just realized I went through an entire post about Sufjan Stevens without mentioning Katrina Kerns. So, yeah. Katrina Kerns.]

Update: Erin files

Check out Erin's photo (top left of the "Oh My Rockness' March Radness! @ Brooklyn Lyceum, NYC" section) from last Friday's party. Note that in the photo caption, Spin totally blows Erin's cover.

The show I went to the next night at South Paw put me a bit more at ease about the prospect of a hipster invasion in Park Slope. The first show I saw at South Paw was a They Might Be Giants Katrina tribute concert, and the South Paw crowd struck me as more of a TMBG crowd than anything else, if that makes sense. A little more dork than punk, like me. I think there's probably just a different local crowd living here than I originally thought, which makes sense considering how little I go out in my own neighborhood.

In other news related to that post: I am not the only one tracking hipster migration.

ribble's cult

I've developed a sick fascination with the ads for Axe body wash, The Order of the Serpentine. I've never seen a cult recruitment video, but the oversaturated color, the deliberate use of an unsynched voice over, the use of video over film and the narrative structure of the story made it strangely affecting.

I am not going to blog music, because then this would turn in to a blog about They Might Be Giants and Parliament-Funkadelic. But I will blog obscure references, and I think there's a direct connection between these ads and the title track of Comfort Eagle. The first time I heard that song, I freaked like Jesus.

If you ride on a subway in New York for long enough, someone you don't know will hand you a piece of paper. Experience has shown these papers fall in to one of three categories.

The first two are Falun Gong literature and commercial advertisements. These should and can be easily avoided - just look for short women in funny hats or people who look like they're being paid to stand there, respectively.

The third is bible tracts, and I have had more fun reading bible tracts than anything I have ever brought on the train for myself. Bible tracts have a sentiment to them, an honesty, a straightforwardness, and, yes, a spirituality that as a dyed-in-the-wool, never-look-back atheist I appreciate with no more irony than that endemic to the situation.

Maybe I've just been deprived, but something about paper-thin spirituality really rings true for me.