MMM

It looks like CNN is finally recognizing its descent into abject sensationalism, a symptom of which is its ridiculous headlines, which have become an internet meme of their own.

So CNN decided to take a hard look at their decaying sense of journalism and has begun a set of reforms aimed at delivering the news in a non-exploitative manner.

Ha, just kidding. They're releasing T-shirts, whoo!!

Now you can own a wacky CNN headline of your own!

Wacky headlines such as, um:


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Uh... haha... get it? Cowboys riding an economy? An economy is not a horse, silly!

Or this gem:


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Ha! Get it? Get it?? She, um... almost died!

(Cough!)

What makes it an even better deal is that not only do you get to own the zaniness that you once ridiculed as a symptom of CNN's crumbling integrity, but you also get the equally large "*I just saw it on CNN.com (followed by date and time)" that depletes any sardonic pleasure you may have derived from buying something from the source of your mockery!

Yay corporate humor!

I've been making some changes on this blog in the last couple days:

1. I changed the design template from that crappy dark blue bullshit to a simple white page. It's not ideal, but it's clear and will do until I take the time to fancy it up, which could be never.

2. I've cleaned up the page a bit, getting rid of one of my pictures and a couple redundant categories.

3. I've ditched the links to many of my songs, which were hosted by fileden.com (yuck). I joined the brand-spanking new SoundCloud, which is a nice music sharing site. I'll have a rotating embedded song (that doesn't play automatically), that has a link to where you can download said song and many others. The current song is Sing, give it a listen.

4. I've added ShareThis links at the bottom of all of my posts. This is an easy way to share things you read here on Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Myspace, etc. Just click the box and a menu will pop up. I'm still figuring out how to make the link show up in RSS readers, but hopefully I will soon. Btw, if you use an RSS reader and you received about 10 test posts from me today I apologize!


I'll be gradually making more changes in the future, so stay tuned.

So I've been getting back to work on my musical, after a break of about a month or so, and I happened upon a little milestone. I gathered all of my songs - finished and works in progress - from The Lil Death together into an iTunes playlist, and I have about 30 tracks. Over 2 hours of music. Almost all of it written in the last year. What the hell?

Let's compare this to 2005 Mafoo, who was basically dicking around on his sampler creating silly noise loops. I would say that one of the main things that has gotten me going has been my adoption of Ableton Live as my primary DAW. I think that productivity in composing is all about finding the right interface, whether it be pen and paper, Sibelius, Pro Tools, or hardware. Contrary to how most people use Live, I use it almost predominantly as a sequencer. I also perform with Live, but I'd say that aspect is about 3% of what I do on it. Live is great because of all of the DAWs, it feels the most like an instrument. I feel comfortable in front of a piano, just dicking around and seeing what comes out. Live essentially feels like that, but I'm controlling synths, samplers, and drum machines on my laptop.

It has also changed the type of music I make. My first fully-sequenced tracks were instrumental, collage-type tunes built around odd and humorous samples from my record collection. Now I'm writing very tonal weird pop songs that are increasingly free of samples and are built using mainly the instruments in Live. I often consider upgrading my synth from Live's basic Operator FM synth to, say, the synths in Logic, but I dig the simplicity of Operator. Sometimes I consider moving into Pro Tools, with its superior audio editing capabilities, but I don't think my edits in Live ever really sound that bad. Live is what it is, a specific tool, and I use that tool to create music.

I'm sort of a 'take it as it comes' kinda guy (I'm from California...). As a horn player, I'm not the type who is constantly seeking to tweak and make little changes and modifications to my instrument. I bought my Paxman because it felt great, and I'll live with it until it fucks up or I want something different. I'm the same way with DAWs. I'm an instrumentalist at heart, so I find the program I like and I fit inside of it. Sure, the minor changes and improvements that come with various upgrades are often very welcome, but overall I take it as it comes. Contrast this approach to the approach of many Max users. There is such freedom in Max. You can build your own synths, samplers, sequencers, etc. The only limit is your imagination and all that. It sounds great in theory, but that openness isn't always conducive to the production of art, which works well under restrictions and limitations. At least for me, I don't know if I could ever make music in such an interface. Max seems to be predominantly the domain of the builders - Ableton was actually crafted in Max - and this makes sense. How many instrument makers are accomplished musicians? There are a few of course, my buddy Mark Houghton is a horn player and a builder; and my dawg Presh is a producer, performer, and Max wizard. But they are freaks of nature.

Part of me wants to analyze what has helped my creativity and productivity; part of me wants to tell my brain to shut the fuck up and keep working. I'll probably go with the second scenario because, ya know, I'm from California. But I want to acknowledge the other thing that has crazy motivated me, and that's my zany partner in crime Melly. She has had to listen to every single track good or bad that I have vomited into my sequencer, and she's been ridiculously supportive. It helps that she's a badass musician herself, so we have a nice healthy competitiveness. I would feel like a serious douche if I wasn't keeping up with her crazy list of achievements.

Anyway, this Lil project is ballooning larger and larger. It was originally going to be an album. Then I had enough material for two. Now I've got almost enough for three. It may be hard to sustain interest for enough time to actually produce the whole thing, but I kind of like the idea of releasing albums as a serial drama. I believe that's a unique idea (correct me if I'm wrong), releasing albums episodically as part of a larger drama. We'll see. Maybe my inspiration will dry up. Maybe I'll lose interest in the story. Maybe I'll get sidetracked by other projects (after I finish Part 1, I'm going to do a covers album, seriously). Who knows. I guess all that is really important is that I keep working.

The odds of Obama being truthful in his claim that he converted to Christianity are less than 100 to 1 against it, as fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.

- Conservapedia

Gotta love that logic.

Yeah, it's political. It's also relevant. While the 'but the Republicans would do it' argument often gets old, it is totally apt here. It would be one thing to go after McCain's failed first marriage - which the right would totally have milked if the situation were reversed - but the Charles Keating scandal and the S&L crisis, in which McCain was deeply involved, is directly related to what is currently happening on Wall St.

McCain is preparing an onslaught on Obama's character, due to a free-fall in the polls. The Obama campaign is showing their teeth here and they're using the truth. Good stuff. This is how smart politicians play the game.

The war against sex ramps up.

Interesting, but Family Guy did it first.

New Mac recorder called, um, Audio Recorder looks to replace Wiretap. Here's a big benefit upfront: It's free!

Will videogames become better than life?

Finally, a celebrity endorsement I care about.

Here is a much more compelling call to vote than the video I previously commented on. I don't really watch his show, but I like his earnestness. One thing I dislike about late-night talk shows is the reluctance of their hosts to have a real opinion on anything, seemingly out of fear that their audience will disagree with them. Ferguson doesn't exactly say anything shocking, but his directness impresses me. Everything said by Letterman and Conan is hid behind a filter of irony and sarcasm - you're never quite sure when they are being serious, so in a way it is a type of protection against criticism. I used to do that too when I was younger and more (yes, even more) sarcastic.

In the video Craig Ferguson argues that it is ones duty to vote, if you don't vote you can't complain, etc. Ok, I'll let my readers in on a little secret: I didn't vote in 2000. Yikes... Yeah, I know. But I complained. A lot. Especially after 9/11 when everything turned shitty. I had a right to complain. I started caring and then I started complaining. When I would reveal that I hadn't voted (I was smart enough to make this a seldom occurrence), some people would hiss that I had no right to complain. I had the right by virtue of the fact that I didn't really care in 2000 and I did in 2002. So I should be penalized for my past transgressions instead of welcomed into the world of the "socially conscious"? The whole 'if you don't vote you can't complain' thing is merely a fear tactic. The idea that said nonvoter would subsequently be sentenced to a 4 year detention period on airing their ideas is ridiculous. We are not in this shitty state because so many people didn't vote, we are in this state because so many people voted for Bush.

If people want to change politics they need to find a way to convince people to vote, and that responsibility will fall on the Democrats and the third parties. The Republicans don't want more people to vote, that's how they will lose. Case in point, have you noticed that most of the states that have that absurd registration deadline today are traditionally red? Not a coincidence.

The other thing we need to change is that ridiculous electoral college bullshit. One of the main things that discourages people from voting is the fact that, as is clear from 2000, your vote don't mean shit. Give people a sense that what they are doing actually matters and I think they will feel more empowered. We need to abolish the electoral college, enact same-day voter registration in all fifty states, have a commission to fight voter disenfranchisement, and have technologically advanced methods of voting and recording votes with intense oversight. Until this happens, you cannot blame people for not voting. You can guilt them and tell them they are going to um, Die or something, but it won't matter. We have to find a way to make people care.

PS. did you know that Puff Daddy didn't end up voting in 2004, after being the face of Vote or Die? What an asshole.

Ha, beautiful.

-via Andrew Sullivan

Check out my boy Caleb in this New York Times feature. It's a pretty kickass article and there's a video too!

At 28, Mr. Burhans has pursued a career path so logical that it seems almost foolproof. Just sing, compose and master several instruments (besides the violin he plays viola, guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion) and the New York freelance world is your oyster. But this is a new development. Until recently, the conventional wisdom went, musicians with diverse talents should specialize: decide whether they are better suited to composing or performing, singing or playing an instrument, working in classical music or a variety of pop.

I've been playing with Caleb in some facet or another for about 10 years now (hell we're on a gig right now!) and he's definitely one of my favorite people to play with, and one of my favorite people in general. If anyone deserves a full-blown feature it's him. Rock out C-Lab!

Now, y'all know I spend a lot of rant energy on the social efforts of artists. This is kind of ironic I know, since I'm an artist who rails against social issues. But what bothers me are the fuzzy, feel-good efforts that seem inherently divorced from any reality-based expectation of actual results. So many of these I have written about seem to be predominantly self-indulgent, efforts to sanctify oneself through highly-visible acts of charity. So when I saw the headline How John Legend's hero changes lives with fruit, I was all ready to get my bitch on.

Thing is, it actually seems like it could be a productive approach:

"I don't want people to only see Africa as a bunch of victims," Legend says. "The people that I've come across in these extremely impoverished villages, they want to work. They want to participate in their own development."

To help people lift themselves out of poverty, Legend founded the Show Me Campaign, named after one of his songs. Partnering with economist Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Promise organization, Legend's group adopted Mbola, a remote village in Tanzania that has little access to drinking water and improved farming techniques, according to Millennium Promise.

"The folks in Mbola are starting at a supreme disadvantage. Most of them are living on less than a dollar a day," Legend says. "It's difficult for them to even survive."

On his 2007 visit to Mbola, Legend met "Mama" Mwadawa Ruziga, a single mother of two who was freeing herself from poverty. Her entrepreneurial spirit impressed Legend and solidified his belief that sustainable development at the community level can work in the fight against poverty.

Ruziga leads a local business collective that sells products -- like wine, jam and juice -- that it makes out of indigenous fruits.

"I was really inspired by her willingness to not just wait for a handout, but really take an active role in helping to uplift her community," he says.

I don't really get the specifics of the plan from this article, but the approach appeals to me more than most I see. I'm not against aid to Africa, but I'm very skeptical of the type of blanket aid that gets filtered through corrupt governments and rarely leads to any sort of sustainability. I'm a fan of Andrew Mwenda's approach to solutions in Africa, that any real progress in Africa will come from Africans themselves (notice in the linked video that Bono does not share Mwenda's view, and in fact heckles his speech).

John Legend seems to get this, and makes the foundation of his charity work the entrepreneurial spirit and energy of the African people. I believe that this is the best way to ensure sustainability. Blanket aid, while essential during crises, is like the old finger in the dike allegory. But give the people the tools to convert that dike into a mill and you're working toward the future.

The Crystal Method (remember them?) has an atrocious new Obama-inspired track called Now is the Time. It's a pretty shoddily-put-together breakbeat track that will transport you back to the glory days of late-90s mainstream electronica. Remember those days? The days of The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Orbital, etc., when these groups repackaged dance music from the early 90s for MTV audiences? This is about of that quality, except with worse production.

Meow.

Listen to the pile of propaganda slop here.

Wow! Fun!

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Among all of the recent celebrity political videos, I think this one wins the grand smug award. Do they really think that sarcasm is the best way to reach voters? I don't really know if this was meant to be funny or what. It seems like the different celebrities had varying ideas on what they were supposed to be doing: Forrest Whitaker and Halle Berry were all serious, Jonah Hill and Sarah Silverman were silly, others I couldn't even tell. It's just weird.

One more thing. There is nothing wrong with not voting. There are plenty of valid reasons not to vote: protest, ignorance, apathy. It's our right. I am very sympathetic to nihilists and there is a lot of reason to believe that our world is going to hell in a handbasket. I'll be voting in this next election, but I can understand why many choose not to vote. I disagree with them, because I still have a shred of hope. But this 'all the cool kids are doing it' approach is crap. I think it's highly unlikely apathetics are going to suddenly start caring about their country because a bunch of celebrities are trying to guilt them into it. Any credibility is also undermined by the fact that everyone in the video is almost certainly voting for the same person. The real message in that video is not that it is essential to vote in this next election, it's that it is essentially that Obama win this next election. Have the balls to come out and say what you really mean. This is really no better than that pathetic Vote or Die bullshit from 2004.

/rant

Rarely in the course of human events does something come my way that so completely combines my passions for bad music and ridicule of political figures.

This may possibly be one of the best things I have EVER seen:



This is a gift bestowed upon us from God. Let us never again question his divine plan.