Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Car
 Just remembering the car Peter said he would drive forever. Labels: cars, flickrpost, petersconrad
- Rich,
2:39 PM
Friday, February 09, 2007
Top Dog
This might be the best picture taken of me so far this year. I told Elea that I would use this photo on dating sites if she took it. It is already my LJ icon and MySpace profile photo. Peter told me that he finds this photo to be both endearing and disturbing in equal amounts. I am not sure I agree with him. Should I put this photo up on my Yahoo Personals Profile? I would think it would weed out a lot of people who would not understand me. Labels: candy heart, flickrpost, livejournal, myspace, petersconrad, self
- Rich,
7:50 PM
Friday, February 02, 2007
Network Effect of Dating
The long standing question for me is, "How do I meet women?" When I ask this question I mean, "How do I meet women who are available and interesting in dating?" I have never been good at answering this question. I was not good at finding interesting women even when they were all around me. I know a few people who think that it is almost impossible to meet that person once you are out of school. That is a depressing idea. Both Andrew and Peter have been telling me that I need to work on the Network Effect. They both have the same play for meeting women. Here is the plan: 1. Become friends with women 2. Go to parties with the women you are now friends with 3. Meet their friends at the party. 4. Have your female friends endorse you to the women you met at the party 5. Go on dates with the women you have met at the parties. I have never been able to put this kind of plan into action for myself. I have a handful of female friends. When I tell them about this idea they live me the "I hope he does not ask me for help on this one" look. Most of them tell me that the theory is not going to work. The answers from my female friends range from, "I do not have any female friends" to "I would not wish my female friends on anyone" to "I don't get involved with other people's love lives." Maybe part of the first part of the plan needs to become, "become friends with women who hang out with single women." This idea will clearly not work with my current group of female friends. I wonder if this is reflection of what my female friends think of me. If you would not date someone, would you tell your friends about the? If anyone has a good idea of how I can meet single women, let me know. I need to go on some dates. I think it would be good for me. Labels: Andrew J Thomas, dating, network effect, petersconrad, women
- Rich,
8:06 PM
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Good and Bad Part One
I told Peter that I do not think I am doing enough to be a good person. Peter said of course you are not doing enough to be a good person. No one in America is doing enough to be a good person. We are taking cheap labor from the rest of the world. I wonder If I can do enough to be a good person. Labels: America, conversation, good, petersconrad
- Rich,
11:34 PM
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Bad in a good and bad way
Here is Peter Conrad's review of The People's Choice Music. Peter has told me that he is going to buy this CD for everyone one he gets christmas gifts for. An experiment like The People's Choice Music can't help but fail, at least partially. The story is that Komar and Melamid surveyed web visitors about their musical likes and dislikes. They used the results to create one song that should theoretically be the most popular on the planet. Fortunately, they also let us hear the other shoe drop-- a song that they claim only 200 people on Earth should be able to tolerate. The CD contains only these two tracks, but oddly enough don't leave the buyer unsatisfied-- the concentration of the material is so great as to overcome its slight ratio of minutes to dollars.
The first song, "The Most Wanted Song," pokes gentle fun at the listener and at itself. At first listen, it sounds like a bland 21st-century rhythm and blues number. But the stringent requirement to include all the most popular subject matter of modern music compresses the lyrics into a tongue-in-cheek gibberish that darts madly among themes and characters. The music, too, is inclusive to the point of overload-- still, it's quite easy to listen to. I regret to say that it's growing on me.
"The Most Unwanted Song" is a monster, to be sure-- at almost 22 minutes long, it consists mainly of an operatic rap about cowboys and politics, interrupted by harp and accordion music and children singing about holidays and Wal-Mart. It took me several tries to listen to it all the way through, largely because it seemed to frighten people nearby. "The Most Unwanted Song" battles audibly to control an unruly mob of instruments and styles that clash so thrillingly that the only reaction to a first listen is a painful yelp of laughter, such as one might emit on finding oneself the sole survivor of a massacre. The soft harp that begins the piece is a cruel lure into a murky forest where tubas, banjos, bagpipes, harmonicas and accordions lurk behind every tree, jumping out and hiphopping relentlessly without warning. The tempo, melody, and style change at inopportune times, musically unbalancing the listener as much as the random shots of the man watching from a bedroom chair disturb viewers of certain movies.
In a way, "The Most Unwanted Song" fails twice. For one thing, it asks the listener to suspend the strictest definitions of the word "song." But its true failure is that it's not that bad. After losing one's cherry to a first listen, one finds it easier and easier-- some sections are downright catchy. The second and third times around, themes begin to reveal themselves-- commercialism, Americana, pluralism and diversity-- oddly enough, some of the same themes that appear in "The Most Wanted Song." During what could be called the bridge, political epithets shouted through a megaphone provide an odd climax, setting up an ending that could have come from a Broadway musical. Or perhaps an off-off-Broadway musical. Or an off-Canal-Street musical. Whatever.
The atonal sections of the piece work-- if you like atonal music, you might not find any broken ground here, but you will certainly appreciate Dave Soldier's able composition. The rap parts work comedically, but also fail to fail in one particular way-- by omitting the line "I'm so-amd-so and I'm here to say," the earmark of truly bad rap, the song accidentally takes on morsels of quality that threaten to make it popular in the rap/opera crossover markets. In fact, the rap is remarkably fly, for all its shrill Frontierland gaudiness. A few of the melodies that appear in between are downright pretty. As the saying goes, if you like accordions and tubas, you'll survive this song.
Dave Soldier fights valiantly to make the composition harsh and unpleasant, but he's just too compentent. And despite a few moments reminiscent of Jonathan and Darlene, the performers are all remarkable. The whole experience is most impressive. The fact that Komar and Melamid were actually able to get all these instruments into the same studio, with a skilled operator for each one, is so unbelievable, so marvelous, as to be nearly unforgivable.
Labels: Komar and Melamid, music, petersconrad
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