MMM

Do you remember that odd little Katrina story Jindal told as you watched him, half-listening, wondering why he was talking to the camera as if it were a three-year-old who'd just wet their pants?



Well, keeping in the spirit of the whole thing, it was basically a fairy-tale. Or, to put it a bit more harshly, a flat-out fucking pile of horse-shit lie:

a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

I do not feel sorry for the Republicans. I feel pleasure at their continual failure. Call it sadism, schadenfreude, whatever. I'm just in it for teh lulz with these guys.

One of the more interesting cultural differences that I've noticed between New York and Los Angeles is the use of the car horn - and by extension, the middle finger. In L.A., where I grew up, traffic laws are much more strict. As opposed to New York, traffic lanes are not merely a suggestion, people are ticketed for cruising through stop signs, and jay-walking is actually punished - as is the use of the car horn. You see, the car horn is technically only supposed to be used to avoid an accident. I'm not sure if that is specifically the law here in NYC, but it is in Cali - they'll ticket your ass if they feel like it.

In L.A. use of the car horn usually means one of three things:

1. "I don't want to die."

2. "OMG I just saw my friend on the street."

3. "I'm outside your house, let's go where we need to go."

Recently, the increased use of the cell phone has drastically lessened the need for the horn in the latter two scenarios, leaving the language of the car horn a primarily alarmist one. Drivers in L.A. will, if given enough provocation, use the car horn in anger (if, for example, a car has been waiting at a green light for 30 seconds or so), but a more powerful, muted expression of anger and frustration is much more commonplace, the middle finger. I've seen every member of my family use their middle fingers while driving. I've seen sweet old ladies flaunting theirs, doe-eyed children, middle-finger bumper stickers and mudflaps; it's a powerfully silent - and legal - method of telling another driver to fuck off. I've waved my middle finger to tens of cars behind me. I've pointed it in fury at drivers who dangerously cut me off and I've used it with a smirk at people who were driving 10 miles under the speed limit. No one has ever been shocked to see it, and in fact they are usually flipping me a bird of their own. We each forget the instance within minutes, if not seconds. These are, of course, the L.A. rules.

In New York City the car horn has a much more rich vocabulary. In addition to the L.A. phrases, here the car horn can mean:

1. "Please move out of my way, I don't really feel like moving around you."

2. "The light just turned green and I'm letting you know in case you didn't see it."

3. "Hi cab driver, I'm also a cab driver."

4. "Hey pedestrians crossing the crosswalk, I just wanted to let you know that I'm here."

5. "Your ride to the airport is waiting outside."

6. "I don't like traffic."

When I first started driving in New York, I didn't understand the breadth of the language - I understood the car horn more as a means of communicating shock and anger - so I would answer these casual cries with my own means of expressing petty annoyance. As you may know if you've spent time in New York, a middle finger is anything but petty.

The language barrier was illuminated during my first couple trips in New York by instances like this:

Mafoo waits at red light in front of seven cars.

Light turns green and immediately six of those cars begin blaring their horns.

Mafoo thinks, "What is the holy hell is wrong with these people??" and gives 1/5th of a wave goodbye to the screaming chorus behind him.

Mafoo calmly drives down the street and notices a car driving alongside of him, he looks over.

Deeply offended and irate New Yorker stares at Mafoo with fire in his eyes and tells Mafoo he would like to fight him.

Mafoo has to think for a second before he realizes that this driver is angry because of one of Mafoo's fingers.

Mafoo ignores driver and drives on, quite confused.


This happened several times before I retrained my left arm from automatically shooting out the drivers-side window. I can understand the interpretation of the middle finger as primarily a symbol of offense, but I cannot understand the attempt at expressing any nuance with a car horn. The car horn really has only two settings: on and off. Perhaps New Yorkers, known for their penchant for chatter, feel the need to express themselves more often while in their cars. But the problem is this: the restriction of the syntax into essentially a binary system, and the added restriction of an extremely limited time-frame in which to arrange said system into anything meaningful (i.e. the window of time one has to communicate with another vehicle is usually a matter of seconds), makes for a fundamentally dumb language - one that consists of the choice between shrieking or not shrieking.

Just as the naked sound of a gun firing will never be adequate at expressing, say, serendipity, a blaring tone will never be adequate at communicating, "Look, I've had a rough day. My boss is on my ass about a deadline, I'm worried about making rent this month, and I'm worried about my Grandmother's health. If you could pay a little more attention, it would help me get home more quickly to deal with all of this.". The translation will be, "Fuck you!".

Being an artist, I am often confronted with the question of the utility of art, or the function of it. In my opinion, the most that art can ever do is attempt to communicate that we are all of infinite complexity and worth. Things that increase our empathy and awareness of others are good, things that decrease or limit our empathy and awareness of others are bad. When I'm high in a Manhattan building listening to the polyphony of car horns in the streets below me, I don't hear an uniquely urban harmony, I don't hear ancient mating calls. I hear a big chorus of "Fuck you!".

I'm over car horns. I'm so glad I don't drive anymore and my speech is no longer limited in such a terrible way. Now I take the subway, and I hear actual phrases such as "excuse me" and "could I just get by you?". It is really just so much nicer than a blaring "Fuck you!". Usually the closest thing to a "Fuck you!" I ever get is the usual "could you move that tuba on your back?". I don't even really feel the need to tell them it's actually a french horn, I just appreciate the fact that they used actual words.

This chart is fucking retarded:


(click link for full version)

It's bullshit and totally based on class. Notice how the music gets whiter as you move to the right? I love soca, gospel, Sufjan Stevens, and Beethoven, where does that put me? According to my SAT scores, I'm supposed to like The Shins. Fuck that.

While I'll agree that Lil Wayne is pretty much the worst music out there, I think that Counting Crows is a close competitor. Apparently I'm wrong though. Counting Crows is what teh smart people listen 2.

Get crackin' geniuses:



Guh... thank God the 90s are long gone.

She sounds like she doesn't really need it, odd that they would feel the need to use it.

Highlight: The auto-tune glitch mordent at 2:22.

Unintentional Ornamentation FAIL.


UPDATE:

The Academy has forced YouTube to remove the video of the performance (thanx for the tip Bandicoot), and are apparently pushing this studio version, which is conspicuously free of the glitchy live auto-tune.



If anyone finds the original, please send it my way!

I actually watched pretty much the entire show last night - well, Bill and I did flip back and forth a bit between a quite humorous comedy on the Spanish station where the bleeped out words were scribbled out with what appeared to be marker in the subtitles - and yeah, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Oscars. They were pretty neat I guess. Hugh Jackman managed to stave off annoyance for the most part; Ben Stiller delighted people for whom the Joaquin Phoenix meme is still funny (not I, said the worm); Queen Latifah had her auto-tune solo over pictures of dead people; the Man on Wire dude momentarily thawed my cynicism; Sean Penn dissed a bunch of people's grandkids while Mickey pretended to be happy for him; the Best Picture award was announced as my ass - who hadn't seen one of them - stared apathetically (with a shade more scorn for Benjamin Button, for whose screenwriter needs to be further punished for giving to world Forrest Gump oh so many years ago); and Tina and Steve made me smile (seriously dude, do a movie with Tina and Tyler Durden the part of your personality that makes you do shit like The Pink Panther and that movie where you have a bunch of kids or something!).

K, I'll attempt a little more focus (I was up late, please bless the mess that is my brain today!):

The freaking kumbaya-ass tributes to the nominated actors and actresses, WTF...
Who on earth wants to watch a bunch of rich artists get their ego's rub-and-tugged by other rich artists in some creepy prayer circle of feigned admiration? Show me a clip of them doing their job so I can see the work for which they are nominated. These awkward masturbatory gestures took 4 times as long as the normal way of doing it and have no relevance to anyone outside of the people in that hall. They are nominated for doing something artistic, show it to us!

K, I need more coffee. Tired ranty Mafoo out!

Use your new weapon wisely my children.

What in the holy hell is this all about:



Is this what the conservatives have resorted to? That somehow, with an Obama administration, we are headed a new civil war and a Mad Max-style dystopia with roving motorcycle gangs (they actually discuss this as a very possible outcome!)? I'm sorry - and I hate to use the term irresponsible when referring to the press - but this is the kind of irresponsible fear-mongering that leads to anti-government paranoia and events like Oklahoma City. It's rather entertaining on an ironic level, but I can easily imagine some radical, gun-loving nut somewhere taking this shit way too seriously. On one hand, it's nice to see conservatives literally going crazy as they rack up unprecedented amounts of FAIL, but on the other, it's kinda really creeping me the fuck out...

Hey all, my good friend James Moore is playing my piece for banjo and track - Like A Prayer REMIX - tonight at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark’s Church. James is a collaborator on several projects with me - including The Little Death, Ensemble de Sade, and the upcoming New Music Bake Sale (more on that soon!) - so I was stoked to write this piece for him. It's a straight-up remix, chock full of chopped gabber-style Madonna samples, amen breaks nearing 200bpm, and squelchy analog synths smacking that saccharine pop tonality straight into your earholes. Now imagine that with everyone's favorite bearded banjo player twanging his ass off over all over it. Worth checking out. He's playing several other pieces written for him as well, including works by Wil Smith, Lainie Fefferman, Paula Matthusen, and Matthew Welch, so my ass is in esteemed company.

Also on the program is California EAR Unit's Eric km Clark, a composer and violinist of some really cool and far-out ideas; one such is exploring the effects of forced limitations on performers (What the fuck does that mean? You'll just have to come see!). He'll be playing his own work, as well as pieces by Catherine Lamb, Travis Just, Tashi Wada, and Harris Wulfson.

Here's the relevant info:


Oh yeah, and free beer.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that I don't think the cartoon was deliberately racist - ie. portraying Obama as a monkey because he's black - but I do think it's kinda sick, and really dumb. I get it, the stimulus bill is stupid (just like a chimpanzee!) and there was a recent story about a chimpanzee that was killed after mauling its owner (topical!), if only we could kill the stimulus bill like they killed that chimp! Ummm... yeah. Look, Obama didn't write the stimulus bill - and I seriously doubt the cartoonist somehow thought this to be the case - so it doesn't really make any sense in a racist context. Unfortunately for the cartoonist and the Post, it barely makes sense in its intended context, so unsurprisingly people are looking for other meanings.

In these instances I'm torn between wanting to see the Post (News Corp) fucked in any way possible, and my own inner barometer of fairness. I'm also a fan of seeing pathetic attempts at humor being punished (and after wasting 2 minutes of my life watching this Half Hour News Hour comedic abortion, I'd especially like to get my News Corp-humor rage on...), but it's hard to see Spike and Al's backlash as anything but opportunistic. The Post's apology was half-hearted at best:

"It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

"Period.

"But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

"This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

"However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

"To them, no apology is due.

"Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else."

As much as I hate to say it though, I'm gonna have to take the Post's side on this. If anything, they should have apologized for having a tacky, violent cartoon in a magazine that is readily available to children. But the enthusiasm with which many people call for censorship disturbs me more than hundreds of cartoons of this type ever could, even if it is a call for self-censorship. There are tons of reasons to boycott the Post - hell, I have an unofficial boycott on it, haven't bought one in God knows how long - but a tacky joke should not be one of them. The problem is, it's easier to get people riled up on one seemingly-racist cartoon then it is getting people riled up over continuous systematic right-wing jingoism spanning years. But just because I pray for the downfall of this paper (and News Corp itself) does that mean I should jump at the chance at kicking it while it's down? I'll admit though, it's mighty tempting.

I'm currently spending every free moment hard at work on my new album, so there's not too much bloggin' going on here for the time being, but I'll try and post some interesting videos and such as I see 'em.

Here's an amazingly simple and helpful explanation of the Credit and Housing crisis. I think I'm starting to get it...


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I don't care what people say, this was an awesome performance:

While sitting in a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina, I was just devastated by this song from the 1972 soul documentary Wattstax. I keep watching it over and over because I can't believe how perfect it is.



That spoken intro is literally one of the best things I have ever heard. And the song and video is simply gorgeous. Damn... I gotta listen to more Stax albums.

This came up when I was trying to listen to someones music:

I think it's kinda funny, if inevitable, that people are rushing to Christian Bale's defense after the release of the tape of him verbally abusing another coworker (if you haven't heard it yet, get yourself an internet). They all seem to be along the lines of this: 'It was a very important scene, which requires an intense amount of concentration, and the director of photography stepped on the scene for the second time, actors need to be in a special emotional place for scenes, etc.'

Really? Look, I'm all about being accommodating to performing artists. People often do not understand the emotion and concentration it takes to do successfully pull off a performance. But you know what is just as important as emotion and concentration? The ability to pull it back together when something goes wrong. Maybe I'm a little more familiar with this since I'm a horn player, and the deftness with which we recover from unexpected shit is one of our primary skills. But still, can you imagine De Niro losing it like this? Hell no, because he's a fucking professional. The most I've seen him lose it is when he directly defies the clown-ass director in this awesome video, and it's still classy.

No matter how integral the scene, how egregious the DOP's mistake was, how bad of a week Bale was having, whatever. It was an unprofessional Kinski-esque temper tantrum, and a more mature actor and person would have let it go after maybe a sharp word or two, rather than a four-minute pity party.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because Mell has a crush on him...

UPDATE:

This is unbelievably funny (and the best thing Steve Martin's done in like a decade):

Here is my latest toy, a birthday present. The Korg nanoKontrol:



Isn't it just teh adorable??


Here's how tiny it is:



As you can see, it comes in three distinct manifestations. A wittle keybawd, a wittle set of dwum padz, and the wittle set of knobs and pots I gots.

A-goochie goochie goo! I wuv oo my cute wittle nanoKontrol! You're a naughty little MIDI controller aren't you? You're naughty!

Ahem. Thanks Melly. :)

I was wanting to post something about the Michael Phelps pot scandal, but Radley Balko articulates it better than I ever could, in his version of what Michael Phelps should have said, rather than apologizing:

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Freakin word.