| CTP's RECURSIVEirony |
| Friday, April 30, 2004 |
Autopilot on the Autobahn: Kraftwerk cruises in comfort So I went to the Kraftwerk concert at The Warfield last night, and let me start off by saying I wish I had gone to see them both nights. It was truly amazing...even with the added fact that I have been a fan of theirs since 1978...it would have been amazing for many not-yet-fans. The link above takes you to the SF Chronicle review. It's not bad, but clearly not written by a fan of the band. The show opened with a scrim as a curtain, darkened theater, music starts playing, and then the curtain is lighted in a brilliant red light, and the silhouettes of the 4 members of the group at their consoles...the back lighting on them made their silhouettes as tall as the curtain - very, very cool. The curtain parted, and we got our first look at them, in all black suits, with red shirts - a nice visual - and perfect for the opening number, Man-Machine. The Chron review mentions that they are using laptops...not the case. They had keyboards with laptop sized LCD screens. Cool thing - they actually played a lot of the music. Bear in mind, the Kraftwerk sound is one that is very easy to just "phone in", but they did a fair amount of playing in this show. Speaking of which, they did a fair amount of updating their material...nothing earth shattering, but it's nice to freshen things up and not just dupe what's on the albums - again, something that would have been very easy for them to do. Eventually the curtains closed, the houselights stayed down, and the crowd clapped as if expecting an encore. This is something else the Chron review missed on...these were not encores...they were costume and set changes. They came back out and played a fair amount of the Computerworld album next before their second "encore". BTW - I should mention here, I think they have invented some sort of painfield generator for their bass parts - or else I had a key seat in the place. I could feel the bass in my chest and throat...like my sternum and ribs were being separated...not violently, but not sugically either. Since I knew I was actually gonna be fine it was pretty exciting - like roller coaster exciting. Woe be unto those who didn't bring earplugs though. The guy next to me kept rubbing his ears after some particularly sharp bursts and saying "WHOA" and shaking his head. I kept my plugs in. After the Computerworld segment the curtains closed for a short time, and when the music started we had no idea what was to come, and then - the strobes. What had been a red curtain at the start of the show, was now awash with strobing white light, and the silhouettes of Kraftwerk's robotic surrogates. For those who don't know much about Kraftwerk, they have these robots with very realistic heads, one representing each of them. The bodies are a humanoid shape and dark grey, and the arms and legs purely mechanical. Take a look. The robots moved slowly about while "playing" Robots. Kraftwerk is the only band I can think of that can play pre-recorded music while robotic surrogates are on stage, and it be an enhancement of the show. While I'm on this track I should mention the video screen. The entire back wall of the stage was a three part video screen with images, films, and animations projected onto it. The images were usually stitched together to form stage wide panoramic moving images. The final portion of the show, the robots had been put away, and Kraftwerk were in suits with fluorescent lines on them...which the Chron reviewer equated with Tron and body scans (criminy!). What the suits were was a representation of the wireframe images from the Electric Cafe era. Come to think of it, much of the video behind them was of that very wireframe animation which looked exactly like what they were wearing. Ah well. Anyhow, it was an amazing treat to finally get to see live a band I have been a fan of since age 11, and I truly hope this won't be the last opportunity. Posted at 3:26 PM |
| Tuesday, April 27, 2004 |
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Building REsources - San Francisco's building materials recycler and source for artists and contractors Well, how cool is this?! From their site: Building REsources is San Francisco's only source for reusable and recycled building materials. We are a source of inspiration for artists and contractors alike, as well as a place to donate tax deductible material from building and demolition. A unique mix of old-fashioned junkyard and ongoing art installation, Building REsources offers a huge selection of material to the community at great prices. We owe our uniqueness to the fact that we are the only salvage yard supplied exclusively with donations from the community. May I just say that we could sure use a lot more places like this? Posted at 3:30 PM |
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Official Ticketmaster site. Theiving bastards from hell, making money off you hand over fist. So how the hell did it get like this? I just bought a concert ticket...$35...fair enough. I would have gone to the box office to get it, but The Warfield Theatre only sells tickets from The Fillmore's box office, and only between 7:30PM and 10PM during the week...oh, and Sundays. So I buy this $35 ticket, and have an added $8.05 convenience charge. It was convenient, but not that damned convenient. As if that wasn't enough money, there was a $4 processing fee. Processing fee? This was a web based transaction. If ever a web based transaction cost $4, ecommerce would have been a non-starter. But wait, there's more. To get the ticket emailed to me is another $2.50 charge. Don't forget, that $8 fee is PER TICKET!!! I don't know if the others are because I only bought one ticket this time. So how did we get here? How did we get to the place where convenience, processing, and 'whatever' fees on a humanless web-based transaction can add up to half the price of the ticket, but if I go talk to a real person, in a real box office, and get to choose seats off a real seating chart, I pay only for the tickets? Tell me. Posted at 10:36 AM |
| Monday, April 26, 2004 |
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FINL Vol. 5, No. 2 Manure Fly Production Howdy folks. How strong is your stomach? Imagine using soldier fly maggots to eat chicken poop, then picture these maggots crawling out on their own to a 6 inch pipe to be used as feed for other livestock. This isn't some anti-meat gross out story...this is a pretty cool way to reduce poop problems while making food. Okay, okay...yea, not raising chickens for food is an even more effective anti-poop strategy, but it's a far too effective anti-chicken dinner strategy for my tastes. Posted at 4:07 PM |
| Friday, April 23, 2004 |
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Short Words to Explain Relativity The Theory Of Relativity...explained, completely, in words of only four letters, or fewer. very nice Posted at 2:18 PM |
| Thursday, April 22, 2004 |
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Quotes From (and About) W.C. Fields: A ton of quotes by one of my favorite funny people. "During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days." Posted at 11:49 AM |
| Wednesday, April 21, 2004 |
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Lupo the Butcher What a wonderful world! A world where a brilliant work of art like "Lupo The Butcher" can be found on the web and played over and over. Go on...you know you want to play it over and over. Well, go play it at least once. (for those unfamiliar, the soundtrack is NOT worksafe) Posted at 10:56 AM |
| Monday, April 19, 2004 |
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Urban Tree Mill Ever wonder what happens to trees that get cut down in the cities and suburbs? A lot of them go to the landfill, some of them get ground up to make stove pellets, some of them get split into firewood, some of them get chopped into mulch, but very few of them get turned into lumber - yea, lumber. Did you ever think that that tree your neighbor just cut down could be turned into flooring, or a table and chairs, or cabinet? Well, in a lot of cases it can. These folks are doing just that. I just got some beautiful pine from them to use in my garden...awesome stuff. They aren't shipping any of it, but if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, and need some wood, give them a look. Posted at 4:53 PM |
| Monday, April 12, 2004 |
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WorldChanging.com: Buying Up the Right to Pollute This is way cool. I knew that big companies could buy "allowances" to allow them to emit pollutants. What I didn't know is that you and I can also bid on these allowances, and remove them from the marketplace. Pretty f&#*ng cool, no? Posted at 1:52 PM |
| Thursday, April 08, 2004 |
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Drop Trio: groove-oriented organ-based funk jazz trio TNFA alert. What's my current Temporary New Favorite Album? Glad you asked. It's Big Dipper by a band out of Houston called Drop Trio. Instrumental funky jazz...not really acid jazz, but more on the MMW side of the tracks...except that I like Drop Trio more than MMW. At least at the moment. Anyway - these guys are over at Magnatune - click on over and listen to the whole album for free - if you like it, buy it...half of your retail dollar goes straight to the artists. Posted at 3:32 PM |
| Wednesday, April 07, 2004 |
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HOLY HELL, IT'S THE @*&#ING POWER TOOL DRAG RACES! Crazed Engineering Monstrosities Wreak Havoc at ACE International Speedway for the Second Fourth Annual Power Tool Drag Races! Thrill as the super charged chainsaws match up with Big-Block belt sanders for an alarming time guaranteed to remove clothing and frighten children at the Third First Annual POWER TOOL DRAG RACES!! Did you hear me!? You thought they wouldn't happen but HOLY HELL, IT'S THE @*&#ING POWER TOOL DRAG RACES! We have TWO all new racing classes and ONE FABulous filming contract with the Discovery Channel so come out for a day at the races and become the media whore that Deep Down you KNOW you are! Join us On June 12th (builders only) and Sunday, June 13th (Open to the public) for Hot Racing Action that will absolutely, positively NOT be rescheduled, we mean it this time, No Really! Posted at 11:53 AM |
| Tuesday, April 06, 2004 |
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Brickmation What could be better than a Ween video done entirely with Legos? Okay, a whole lot of things...that's not the point. Just go watch it...and check out the waves on the ocean...mighty cool! Posted at 9:48 PM |
| Thursday, April 01, 2004 |
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The Immersion Composition Society: The Immersion Composition Society is a slightly international organization of speed-songwriters that grew out of a series of 'composer duels' between creator-founder Nicholas Dobson and co-founder Michael Mellender Members of this sect are most easily identified by their songwriting game; members wake up as early as possible, and begin to write and record new music very fast, often writing six, ten, (twenty!?) pieces of new music in one day. This is done individually, at home. When the hour of the evening meeting arrives, the members of the 'lodge' converge for show and tell, and listen to every single song, their eyes twitching intermittently. Then they feel better..... I forgot to mention, eternal gratitude to Jeremy Lutes for turning me onto ICS. Posted at 10:26 PM |
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