you're the Top, not!

The past two weeks my daily visits have been way up, still not anything that would get noticed by a serious nethead but quadrupling hits per day is a step forward. How would I know? Sitemeter, my own personal Panopitcon. much of this is due, of course, to Simon kindly linking to my entry in his "I Hate —" T-shirt competitions. Still a suspicious number of visitors' referrals started at a Google search for this image! Effing Dan Brown.

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss?; or the problem(s) with binary thinking.

Well not really. as we concluded last time there does seem to be a real shift going on in the music industry. And one can only assume it will affect the way scenes invent and constitute themselves. in a virtual world of MySpace do you still really need a physical locale? of course, at some level you do, but still and all . . .

However, this is also a good time to reassess the way we talk about culture and to get over/past one of my personal bugaboos: either/or binary thinking. Even Williams' famous tri-partite model of culture as emergent, dominant and residual is nothing more really than a 3D bell curve sliced along the y-axis. Factor out the temporal 4th dimension and you've basically another binary opposition UP/down or in /out. Don't get me started on all the subversion and containment nonsense which here rears it's ugly head in early Center research by Hall at others on Resistance Through Rituals and the way it infected the "New Historicism of the late 80s early 90s in my other field.

For example seeing the world in two dimensions or as a reflection of the options provided by two distinct and supposedly opposed choices fails to truly flesh out the complexities of life in its full dimensionality. Now I'm not going to blather on about twelve-fold strings or propose some kind of numeratist GTOC as the 2nd cultures answer to the wholy greil of the GUT. I do not mean to essentialize the study, analysis, discussion, and understanding of popular culture in its many manifestations through varying media for a simple starter cut-off. Rather I seek something like Geertz's notion of Thick Description but wit the caveat that the observer always already affects what he observes yielding moot the notion of Universal Truths & Cycle(s). Sure we must try to mean what we say but we must allow that we often misspeak or at least the linguistically encoded in a lexicon as rich as English's is the probability of noise, misapprehension, indeterminability. The ambiguity which is the true spice of life.

Well I seem to have circled around my topic dropping bunker buster ordnance without making real headway and it's now Friday quittin' time at 3 past 5, so I'll reel in. But we'll come back to these shoals and fish out some conclusions over the weekend. I promised after that only one more topic: the whole idea behind generefication.

Ciao.

Map ref 41n 93w; or, about places in/and space.

Now that the 7" scanning frenzy has ramped down, I return, at last, to Part deux of an extended meditation brought on by the great 'Nuum debate which occurred elsewhere and was chronicled, theorized, K-punked, woebotted, and impostumed starting here at one of Simon's other places. My intervention , no really more of an extending aside, a theorizing sideswipe, will avoid almost any mention of Hardcore, dubstep, or grime except these I just made. Why? because honestly I have nothing useful to add in that direction to what has already been said before. But the more generic questions of scenes and genres are issues that have plagued my waking hours (and perhaps even some more sleeping ones) since at least 1982 AKA sophomore year in Cambridge.

Back then I wrote an extended and intricate analysis of the Preface to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (162) Surely you know it "Democritus Jr. to the Reader"? A classic case of self fashioning, self-consumptions and several forms of self abuse rolled into one tight prose ball. Yes, I basically re-created Stanley Fish's classic text on same, Self-Consuming Artifacts, which I only discovered after the paper had been returned. Herschel Baker, no slave to fashion, was kind enough not to tell me what he REALLY thought of such conceits at one of our frequent meetings in his smoky Widener carrel. I suspect he and Stan the Man must have had some titanic intellectual brawls over Milton back in the day! But then everybody forgets Fish's first book was a rather straightforward reading of John Skelton's oeuvre: John Skelton's Poetry (New Haven: Yale UP, 1965). Even the master of misdirection himself admits the banality of said book, or at least its title:

Ever since my first book, “John Skelton’s Poetry,” was misclassified by Books in Print as an edition, I have tried to come up with titles that announced (sometimes in words that were too clever by half) that the content between the covers was original and even outlandish. I think I got pretty good at it — “There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too,” “Self-Consuming Artifacts,” “Professional Correctness,” “Is There a Text in This Class?” — but I can’t hold a candle to the headline writers of the New York Post.
—Stanley Fish, "Headline Art," The New York Times April 19, 2009.

There I go again just like the titular Don Juan off topic and away . . .

So back to the harem or at least, a contained space about/in which we can think about the meaning of the concept of "scene."

When speaking of scenes I think of metaphorical homes: musical ones, social ones, spaces and places. But we must remember after Bachelard that the scene as home is nothing but a substitute, a kind of home while still not a home. Because eventually every one leaves the scene whether for the next one, death, a new life in suburbia, or some other conversion experience.


Why are scenes so important to emergent music? And in many ways even more so to residual tones? Raymond Williams would alert us to the fact that as a dominant cultural form, certain musics don't NEED scenes to survive. they have late modern capitalism and all its inherent self-replicating systems and yet the digital bug has gotten inside the analog world and basically crushed it. Kind of like a post-modern Boll Weevil. Newspapers dead and dying, music magazines closing left and right and/or shrinking and "Re-Positioning themselves with the marketplace." A&R types running scared shitless any which way they can trying to figure a doable fiscal model for the 21st century music "industry."

That's at least a start. I want to riff with Simon on Jameson re: time and place. But like many a long jam I've gotten to the bridge on Part 1. Part 2 on the flipside.

The one i love.

This is the opening gambit to a found object novel, Love Letters, I'll probably never complete. Still the opening was pretty fun to create and might mean something to folks who spent part of the 80s or 90s in the Bay Area.


Call me Ishie. Ishie of Dorkmandy. I used to be sorta like the King himself, Tommy. No not that deaf, dumb and blind kid, the MTX one, Tom H., Chi-Mo, Sheepie— that one. But then I grew up and left the whole rock star dream steadfastly in the rearview. Of course, Ishie's not my real name. But then Moby's not the real name of that short bald guy who made millions with Alan Lomax's or was it Harry Smith's [ed. Alan Lomax, Sounds of the South box set] musical offal. As Stubbsie said, or was it Simon? [ ed. Paul Morley, actually, in Words and Music: a history of pop in the shape of a city (2003), p. 199] an "example of corporately sponsored, fake-ethnic, ambient business blues." Melville that, Holmes!

It all began when I bought the aging Victorian on Portrero Hill 2 blocks north of Fritz Maytag's Anchor Steam Brewery. You see I was a young buck at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro or at least a new legal librarian with a freshly minted MIS degree from Florida State. Ironically I'm something of a Luddite or at least a retro fetishist.[1] Thus I use the old proper name for the SF half of the new über-global firm Pillsbury Winthrop LLP. Well … we can still see who was the Senior Partner! Take that you Pompous, Stuffy Manhattanites . . . Of course, coming from someone in PMS' employee that's the proverbial kettle calling the pot black. Ha, "PMS' employee" describing a guy, that's a good one [ed. Puhleeze!] Can you say "White shoe firm"? Good, I knew you could.

O.K. O.K. Back to the story at hand. So I had found this neat, nearly affordable three story house (think Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights, which by the way was shot on Portrero, O.J.'s original 'hood). With my new PMS salary (sorry can't help myself) [ed. "Apparently not!" said archly] and a small familial bequest I could just swing the down payment and make the monthly mortgage, assuming I went on a 5-day-a-week Top Ramen diet for at least 2 years and ate out only once every three months, but not at Chez Panisse, Ernie's, The French Laundry, The Lark Creek Inn, Geordy's, Boulevard, Alain Rondelli, Fleur de Lys, Woodward's Gardens, Restaurant Gary Danko, Masa's or any place of that ilk.[2] Instead I feasted on Rillette du Périgord—$5 at Café Claude—or an 8-oz cheeseburger topped with avocado—$5.50 from Slider's Diner—or the best yet: a Super Burrito—$3.50 at El Farolito in the Mission.

To begin again it all began after a late night walk/stumble home from the Bottom of The Hill in late January 2008. The Angry Samoans, I think? Or no? maybe it was The Mr. T Experience? Or perhaps even more obscure old school like a Samiam show? Don't really remember, do I? You get the picture though. Loud three chord punk rock with witty lyrics and the occasional sweet harmony. A Bay Area staple since B4 Penelope Houston & The Avengers hit the Mabuhay Gardens in '78 with a proof sheet from J. Neo (Marvin). Kinda reminds one of Darby & The Great Society, better yet The Mojo Men, "She's My Baby". Or some other Lenny Kaye approved Nugget™. Anyway, well Nevermind, that doesn’t really matter, does it? So let's continue shall we. [locks fingers pauses, and takes a deep OHM-like breath to clear the chi while searching for the lost chord] I'd been moving in slowly over a long weekend. The former owner had mysteriously left town in a hurry (rumor had it there was at least one woman involved)—some said an unwanted pregnancy, others hinted at something even more sinister no doubt inspired by Mr. Keaton's cinematic exemplar (I still shudder at the cockroaches)— there was kinky talk of non-baseball triple plays and swinging—just not for the fences, but the lone romantic on this sunny hillside—a sixty-something little old lady from Pasadena and solitary shut-in—assured me over tepid Paul Masson California "sherry" and brie slices on Carrs® Sesame Table Water® crackers that it was all (more or less) on the "up and up", while claiming convincingly or least with a kind of confident authority one never knows whether or not to trust, that "the 'couple' had 'eloped' [elaborate scare quotes made with both hands] to her hometown of Chicago and the quaint Andersonville neighborhood." She added conspiratorially, "She really didn't look Swedish you know? Beautiful yes, I mean truly drop dead gorgeous, curves where they should be—none of that modern model stick thin garbage but like a real women should. You know the type Lollobridgida, Mansfield, Ekberg, Monroe, Loren, Anouk Aimée the REAL beauties—and her with a mega-watt smile to boot, But Swedish never, too dark, too Latin." Whatever. What do I know about the intricacies/ethnicities of Chicago neighborhoods I've never heard of before?[3] So they ran away together, so what? Sounds like much ado about a henpecked you all intellectual to quote George Gordon [ed. Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I Stanza XXII "But – Oh! Ye lords of ladies intellectual,/Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?"]. Anyway to recommence, the house was in pretty good condition except for one room way in the back on the third floor; it seemed to have served as some kind of office cum library cum random storage space. It had taken me the better part of two half days to clear out the detritus that still remained in this "office". One sole cardboard liquor box of stuff remained to be culled through for any "treasures".

That's when I found the notebooks—Mead Composition 100 sheets wide ruled, the kind with the faux marbled black and white cardboard cover stock. 3 of them. Preternaturally genetically curious and with over 10 years training as an archival researcher …. Oh yes, I forgot to introduce myself, didn't I? So very sorry about that! That's Dr. Geoffrey Quillerman Beinstock IV to you; GQ to my oldest friends from down south except for the really witty ones who just yelled my surname "Beinstock!" like they were Joan Shawlee's Sweet Sue in Some Like It Hot. Then there was that eating club asshole in Cottage on Prospect who just wiggled four fingers palm backwards and did the head nod thing when he wanted to take my attention away from the traditional beans and franks at lunch. But then he was Wellington Dumont Percivall the Fifth and you know how bad "the Fifth's" can be, don't you? Did I mention I'm really into movies of all ilks? Merde, even some nouvelle vague French ones. Back in the mid '80s I did a MTL PhD at Stanford; Dissertation Title—My Brother Fought In Nicaragua and all I got was this lousy t-shirt: Life As A Faux Contra in Berkeley. Committee: Regenia Gagnier, Chair, Russell Berman, Marxist Interventionist and close reader extraordinaire, and Hans Üllrich Gümbrecht, "token" European theory type (get your umlauts here 2 for the price of 1). Not only did I win The Little Shop of Horrors (aka Roger Corman) Memorial Dissertation Fellowship, but I also actually won a tenure track job at a big Cow College near home, kinda like the one in Moo except way more fetid ("It's not the heat, it's the humidity"), But as you might imagine, it REALLY REALLY wasn't a very good fit at all.

My personal mid-life crisis entailed going back to school. Because library jobs were plentiful, my training and temperament suited the profession, and I'd been interested in the law ever since I saw Inherit The Wind as a 10 year old, rapidly devouring Irving Stone's Clarence Darrow for the Defense the next week, I decided to pursue an Information Systems degree and sell myself to the biggest/richest law firm I could find in a city I could stand to live in for at least five years. Like Mr B, I guess I too left something in the Bay Area [ed. We can only assume it wasn't a heart]. Thus I managed to crib the holy grail of Legal Librarian jobs, a junior position at Pillsbury Winthrop nee Madison & Sutro [ed. probably an Ivy league summa pedigree, Cambridge "starred" first at Milton, Darwin and Schama's Christ's on a Marshall Scholarship then followed by the Stanford PhD had a little something to do with "earning" this coveted position]. So where was I? [consults his handwritten ms] Oh yes, ahem "Curious and with over 10 years training as an archivist (yes much better more succinct, direct, and to the point), I dove into the last cardboard box. A bunch of legal documents, some bank records and then the mother lode. Those 3 inconspicuous black composition books entitled, in handwritten black ink, probably from a Sharpie®, LoveLetters. There was an Act I, an Act II, and an Act III. What follows is my recreated case study of In Re: HFM vs. Jane Does 1–3. Without further let or hindrance [ed. We told him to cut the legal mumbo jumbo . . .sigh], we begin . . .

[1] Luddite a term from 19th century English history referring to anti-industrialists who destroyed looms as well as wool and cotton mills in the Midlands first (Nottinghamshire), but then primarily in Northern England (the west Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire); one of their primary defenders was Beinstock's culture hero Lord Byron. More recently in his epochal The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson has forwarded the thesis that Luddites were not anti-technology but rather were worried about the abolition of set prices and the introduction of the free market.
[2] This is a rather curious list for 2008 as Ernie's, Geordy's, and Alain Rondelli had long been closed, but then we assume Beinstock dined there during his halcyon graduate school days. Elsewhere he has written rhapsodically about an earlier memorable meal at Chez Panisse (2nd seating) with his Princeton college roommate Chauncey Frobisher whose Lazard Frères expense account covered the bill.
[3] More than most people! A trait at once infuriating, charming and somewhat unique. Beinstock defines knowledge and the art of knowing a bit about some topic differently than the average person; when he says he doesn't know about something be very wary because chances are he knows a lot more about it than you do. He just defines "knowing" something as being considered close to a last word expert on the topic: "anything less is NOT KNOWLEDGE" he once (in)famously exclaimed to a student who was complaining about the difficulty of his final exam for a split-level junior, senior, and master's candidate class on the 17th century.

Revenge of the nerds

Flatten this Friedman!

Those who heard Hill deliver the lectures on which it is based - lectures delivered in a nervous, slightly stuttering voice - will always reserve a special place for his 1972 study of radical and millenarian ideas, The World Turned Upside Down. Not only was this one of the very few history books to be turned into a play (at the National theatre), it was also a work made more exciting by the time in which it was written, an era of counter-cultural energy which Hill observed (and quietly celebrated) from the Balliol master's lodgings.
-Martin Kettle, Obituary for Christopher Hill, The Guardian Wednesday February 26, 2003


We may be too conditioned by the way up the world has been for the last three hundred years to be fair to those in the seventeenth century who saw other possibilities. But we should try.
-Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: radical Ideas During The English Revolution

In our digital/post-analog/post-industrial/post-mechanical age, it's brain power not horsepower that runs and rules the world. There's a reason the richest guys (and they are mainly guys after all) are now Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Google Two et al. In honor of this refreshing topsy turvy world turned upside down model of high school culture, TNA notes with great pleasure the fantastic blog by one wit/raconteur/actor/author/general man about town Stephen Fry as well as what should prove to be a most eggs-cellent Saturday blog, Dork Talk on guardian.co.uk.



I'm that wierd blogger who still has a whiff of the Luddite about him. No, I don't have a cellphone and no I don't want one. But someday soon I will have an iPod touch and then it'll be time to think about a USB turntable for conversion of all that crucial vinyl which has never been reissued on CDs.

I'm not the total fetishist Fry is but I have waxed rhapsodic on occasion about the beauty of recent Apple designs. And I've been known to take a digital picture or a hundred and upload them to the Net. Still I'm old enough to favor the purely physical tactile sensation of holding a book rather than some eDownload.

Senses working overtime.

Today I took the MCAT (well the Verbal Reasoning section at least). I am contractually obligated to not reveal anything about this sample test developed by Kaplan. But I can say the readings were varied (mainly sciences and social sciences) and full of precise details. If I score high enough (90% which doesn't seem like too much of a stretch) I'll be teaching young MD-wannabes this stuff in the next couple of weeks or so.

At the same time I've been reorganizing my iTunes folder and following this month's MacWorld's suggestions on how to back the whole thing up on my Zinio reader. But my DVD burner doesn't like the colored discs I had, so I have archived smart playlists but no physical back up yet. I did copy my iTunes Music Library.xml to my nifty Zip Drive (I know, I know, I'm at least 2.5 generations behind on storage technology. so what? the Zip works fine for my needs and still has over 180 MB of storage left), so at least that data should be safe if some kind of electrical apocalypse occurs on my G4 iMac. Plus I've been moving some more of my CD collection into the virtual world. This week my iTunes has gone from 22 gigs of stuff to 38 with a few more days left to burn my key blues and more jazz albums. When done, I expect I'll be in the mid 40s at least. In contrast my purchased playlists contains a scant 308.6 MB of songs. Not probably what Apple was hoping for consumer-wise. But I don't like Big Brother watching me with my music as a general rule.

The last two days have been spectacularly beautiful here in a way that reminds me of Stanford and Palo Alto. Great sunlight, little humidity, coolish highs in low to mid 70s and lows in 40s. AAAAHHH! Hope it stays that way so I can keep up the long walks and do some yardwork this weekend.

On Tap: The Persians at Dave's on a final smoky Saturday night. Yes, Starkville goes smoke free starting next week on Saturday May, 20th. How forward thinking for a "dumb little" southern town! Now I won't have to strip immediately after a night out. What? You were thinking a woman was involved. I wish, but nope—just stinky apparel.

All mod cons.

Later today weather and/or Super Bulldog Weekend baseball permitting, I'll be launching a new feature on TNA, the MP3 vault. Oficially artist-approved MP3s will be hosted in perpetuity. Others will be hosted for 5 days at a time.

Baby, it's you; Or, On the essential beauty of the iMac G4.

I know, I know computers continually get cheaper, smaller, faster, but do they always get better? In 1976, my parents bought me a TI-11 with special square root feature for like $75.oo. By the time 9th grade rolled around the TI-35 had been birthed at less than half the cost with like triple the computational features. And so it goes. But about the new iMac G5: hasn't the I-Pod cross branding design thing gone far enough?



Personally I'll take my G4 any day. Just look at it (or a reneral representation thereof; rat's rite Rastro bulbie can't type good):



Now see that's what I call crossbranding: the computer as Pixar Studios lamp icon. Plus the disc tray as tongue ads were hilarious. I have a model with the SuperDrive and for now it's my sole way to view DVDs at home. The screen is beautiful, the sound in the tiny bubble speakers worthy of any good mid-range stereo. And it all comes in a package straight out of the best Scan Design circa 1980. I could go on and on. But I won't. Steve Jobs is and always will be a god! Even if the Lisa did cost too much and NeXT didn't really work out.