In Case You're Wondering, Those Are Prison Jumpsuits

Occupation

K-Pop, again

This is a very impressive video. It subtly mocks the older conventions of Asian pop, which I find sappy and annoying, has some organic conversational moments and characterizations, and has the song go in and out.

Very impressive.

Lady Gaga and Ke$ha have done similar music videos where it's some sort of extended narrative. And of course, so has Michael Jackson. But this one has a sophistication to it that fits it perfectly.

I've gotten to thinking about why this is so popular, and it really isn't just the music, but also the lottery/American Idol part of it. Now, American Idol has been great, but really it hasn't produced the biggest acts. The biggest talents come up on their own, through the real industry channels. So Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, etc they never went on stage to American Idol.

In Korea, process is king, so you can take just about anyone, put them through the process, and out comes a pop princess. In Korea, the Idol winner (to a different extent of course, there's no voting or televised performances) becomes the biggest star. And she could be anyone just walking in the mall one day who catches the eye of a talent scout.

This used to happen in America, too. The biggest analogue to K-Pop is the Hollywood studio system. When Gone With the Wind was being produced, there was a nationwide casting call for the female lead. Any woman could be in it.

Nowadays, celebrities gobble up all of the bit parts. It's a more crowded world, simply. The previous system could ensure hits because it was the only game in town. Now, with digital tech, anyone can release a movie. Celebrities are basically a bigger and brighter neon sign.

But I'm tired of seeing Brad Pitt in all of the movies and thinking of the character not as like Colonel Jackson, but as Brad Pitt.

Korea is having it's golden age right now, I think. This is their 1950's and 1960's.

A Movie Idea That I Will Never Have the Time to Pursue

The New York Times is being annoying again. Here, they are sympathizing with a hit and run driver, who by the way has a hispanic/latino last name, telling us his life story of mishap and misfortune. He killed these two people when he slammed into the cab that was carrying them.

Raisy and Nathan Glauber. She was pregnant. The child did not survive.

Here's the hit and run driver.

So what's the movie idea?

Kind of unrelated to this event. It turns out that Mr. Julio Acevedo was once forced to kill a close friend of his. The close friend was a major criminal figure who went by the alias "50 Cent." Curtis Jackson, the rapper, later adopted the same handle. 

So what happened was a man named Richard Bush plotted to have Mr. Acevedo kidnapped. They kidnapped Mr. Acevedo and then threatened family members of his. They gave him a gun. He killed his friend, 50 Cent.

Hell of a movie idea if I ever heard of one. 

Dixe Dirt- Pieces of the World

Here is an album of heartbreak, of the most stricken female voice I've ever heard. It washes over you like a dust storm. It's music of noble suffering, of a western woman out on the hinterlands, of the worry if he'll ever make it back, and yet I don't think she'd have it any other way.

I can't this stupid korean song out of my head

It's catchy.

It's kind of neat how they do all these I guess feminine twirls, which I vaguely recognize from anime I've seen.

Then comes the chorus and they sound like clone ants. It's a little creepy at that point.

Number one group in Korea right now. I'm impressed, actually. The music won't win any, like, feminist race theorist accolades, but the craftsmanship of the music is impressive. The melodies swirl around each other, the beat bubbles up, there's a breakdown, it's all very good.

Chinese Man Sues Wife for Birthing Ugly Baby

Here's the baby

Here's the wife.

Here's what she really looks like

Korean Plastic Surgery

Apparently, men are having face lifts now.

T-Ara Roly Poly

Color me impressed! This reminds me of New Order's Perfect Kiss, just in the length and geekiness of it.

Early Day Miners

This is one of the most calming albums I've ever listened to. It's like a calm nature walk on a cool afternoon.

The Joys of Batman

I started turning against the darker batman when the news of the Aurora shooting came out. I know that the movie isn't responsible for the shooter's actions, but I do feel like he was influenced by the general tone that the movies promoted. And the movie itself, well, it was a mess. It had moments of brilliance but overall was uneven. My favorite part of the film was Anne Hathaway's catwoman. Watching her, the biggest influence for her catwoman was actually the original catwoman. The joys of Adam West's batman. I want to go back to that.

FPS Game Designers Take Note of This

The perspective cam here is gripping

The Iron Lady

One realization that came to me while watching the excellent movie "Downfall," the German movie about the final days of Adolf Hitler, was that while the Nazis were plotting evil throughout Eastern Europe, they were holding galas and balls, feasts, parties, revelries. A mid-level person could have been swept away in it, and not realized until later all of the evil that had gone on. Adolf Hitler is said to have always been able to win arguments in conversation. He won over the room, and from there, we got WWII.

That's an extreme case, but it can universally apply to any political system. Party politics is about convincing the people in the room. It's about showmanship, about projections of strength. People see reality on the ground in accord to their own ideology, some never let reality on the ground shake their convictions.

The movie glosses over the policies of Ms. Thatcher and I'm okay with that. She was the head of political party. Her story isn't about how she saved Britain. No, there are business executives to thank for that (if true, Britain doesn't seem to be doing too hot right now). Her story is about how she won over the room.

When it does do that. A significant part of the movie depicts Ms. Thatcher in her old age, and that is where it goes off track. There is nothing wrong with criticisms of a leader. I found Oliver Stone's movie W. to be pretty compelling. But here, they show her at her weakest -- really, when any human being is weakest, at the end of her life and in retirement. It's okay if you do that briefly, like the Titanic. In this movie, the old age segments are the bulk of the movie. They are the touchstone of the plot, and they make up between 1/3 to 1/2 of the movie.

No matter how you feel about a leader, this is simply not how to depict him or her. No one's life is about their end. You life is about your prime and what you do in your prime. The filmmakers really should be ashamed of themselves for what they've done.

Ecosystem the sculpture

Found on Etsy.

Video games are a lot like gardening. You care for a living organism, giving it nutrition and light in intervals, and watch it blossom.

Gardening is better.

Down to Earth

Happiness

Sitcom idea I will never have the time to pursue: Crisis management firm

A crisis management firm. Like Ally McBeal. Professional woman, office rival, boss, office dynamics generally. Crisis management for variety, lots of celebrity cameos, odd scenarios. Like House M.D.

Iran at night

This photo courtesy of Amos Chapple Photography.

I often find that when I am taking photos, I am usually miserable: suffering under the hot sun, thirsty, tired, body aching, and wanting to go to sleep.

When I get to viewing the photos several months, if not years later, I'm amazed at how good they are.

I just like this picture

This duo sued/is suing the Lonely Island for plagiarizing their work.

They're not the most glamorous duo, but they did come up with the backing track for this song

Musical Ideas

Late at night, I become a musical savant.

I can never put any of it down. I am pretty much musically illiterate and so I can't figure out the notes.

But some nights, and I can never really know when, when I go to bed, or when I'm just waking up, I can not only hear music, I can compose music. Stunning, amazing pop music that would set the pop charts on fire, that people would sing from here to Bombay in bars and pubs on every street corner and through the headphones of every teenager's bedroom.

Then I enter into waking life and it's all gone.

A better package for music

I'm not a fan of singles. I will occasionally buy them, but only when it's a novelty track. I don't like buying albums piecemeal.

But quick break, here are some good singles I've listened to over the years.

Skittles and Iced Tea by GdotO

Horse Outside by The Rubber Bandits

It's got a good video,

But okay, back on topic. Albums are too long.

But singles are too short.

I love the energy of a good song. It sets the day, it takes you to a different place. It makes the world seem different.

I also find that I'm good for about 15-20 minutes of song at a time.

After that, it begins to drag, like a party that has gone on for too long and the people are running out of conversation and ideas.

A well-timed single has the opposite problem. After 4 minutes, you want more, but there's nothing more to listen to unless you want to listen to it again.

Okay, so anyways,

Right now we have a release cycle where a band typically spends a few years in obscurity, releases an album, scrambles within 1-2 years for a followup, spend a hiatus of like 3 years working on some opus that is the maturation of their work, have a slump, then a return to form, break up, reunite, then go on an old-guys circuit tour.

 There are often hiccups along the way.

Chinese Democracy is the sixth studio albumby American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released in November 2008 on Geffen Records. It is the band's first studio album since "The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993), released exactly 15 years before Chinese Democracy

...

It is the most expensive album ever produced, with production costs in excess of $13 million.^[4][5][6] 

There are a lot of...vestigial traces of vinyl in today's music. Artists feel that they need to fill both sides, and make at least 40 minutes worth of music. The ambitions lend to creative hell, Brian Wilson-esque breakdowns.

A shorter EP model, say 20 minutes music at a time, released every 1.5 years, lets you get out your musical ideas faster, get faster fan reaction and, frankly, sales, and is just as satisfying for a typical listener (or, at least, myself)

Kernels of Creative Ideas I Will Never Have the Time to Pursue

Bond, James Bond, of Her Majesty's Secret Service, carrying out a campaign of sabotage against a middle-eastern country which wants to nationalize its oil fields.

Stick with the 16% agreement of 1922 or else

Human-wave attacks during the 8-year Iran-Iraq War.

Better Days

Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is one of the worst movies I've watched recently. It is slow and disjointed. It treats the characters with kids gloves. So much effort is made into making the Japanese personable that they make them saints as well. But enough about the movie.

There is an interesting idea which I picked up on while watching the movie. That is of the unstoppable American advance and how if you're on the other side, how desperate you are to stop the advance. Also, how with mechanized war there is lots of softening up, but still, you need to eventually send infantry to secure the place. Lastly, the bombing while they're dug into tunnels underneath reminds me of the Empire Strikes Back. The entire Pacific campaign also reminds me of Babylon 5 and the battle of the line, with the Terrans as the Japanese and the Minbari as the Americans. 

Also, how fragile human beings are and how easily they break. Plus, how machine gun fire is used, strategically holding fire to draw them close, and then mow them down.

Speaking of Urban Outfitters, they never fail to amuse

The New Yorker on K-Pop

In effect, Lee combined his ambitions as a music impresario with his training as an engineer to create the blueprint for what became the K-pop idol assembly line. His stars would be made, not born, according to a sophisticated system of artistic development that would make the star factory that Berry Gordy created at Motown look like a mom-and-pop operation. Lee called his system “cultural technology.” In a 2011 address at Stanford Business School, he explained, “I coined this term about fourteen years ago, when S.M. decided to launch its artists and cultural content throughout Asia. The age of information technology had dominated most of the nineties, and I predicted that the age of cultural technology would come next.” He went on, “S.M. Entertainment and I see culture as a type of technology. But cultural technology is much more exquisite and complex than information technology.”

This week, the New Yorker has an article on the phenomena known as K-pop. 

The author has a general pessimistic tone on the actual quality of the art. Americans won't much care for the assembly-line packaging. The androgyny of the men simply won't appeal to American cultural norms. The stars would not survive a TMZ-world of celebrity gossip.

I don't know. Here's a video of one of the groups.


I find it catchy. I wouldn't exactly spend an evening poring over lyrics for deep meanings, but then I always thought that people took Nirvana too seriously for what it was: entertainment. I wouldn't mind listening to this in a mall or on the way to work. It sounds happy, energetic, optimistic, things which I need more of. It's escapism, an entry into a dream-world of color and beauty. 

This really reminds me of Richard Hayne's Urban Outfitters. Hayne oversees a stable of designers who work on the product line. It gets mass produced, like how the performers in these groups are pretty much interchangeable cogs. On that note, anyone who really knows say, hip-hop, knows that you don't follow the individual rapper, who really is an interchangeable cog, you follow the producer who is the talent. 

But on to the other points. Androgyny. N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys sold millions of records and they too were quite androgynous. Next?

America's celebrity culture would tear them apart. That I agree with. TMZ is the nastiest thing I've ever seen on television, worse than daytime talk like Jerry Springer.