April 2009 Archives
I hate to say it, but I think real, truly epic euro-style house music is... gone. Replaced by the likes of Basshunter.
That's not a bad thing, per se, but man do I miss the full-on epic anthems of yesteryear. Or maybe it's just been redefined and I, like my parents and the generation before them, have been left behind to wallow around in 'classic rock'.
But I don't think that's true - the fact is that I still recognize their 'anthems' as anthems. And I think the era of anthemic rock-n-roll music, the epic power ballad, the timeless rock tune, is pretty much over. Once and a while you get one that comes up but what happened to The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Led Zeppelin? Black Sabbath? Who stepped up and replaced them? To some extent, I suppose, Metallica (although when I was growing up I would never have imagined that happening), and I just can't think of any band of epic enough proportions to match the "classics". Nirvana? Maybe they could've achieved that status - who knows?
But the epic techno-anthem used to be so prevalent. I mean, who doesn't remember "Firestarter", or "Get Busy Child", or pretty much *any* Chemical Brothers song? And that goes way, way, way back. How about Orbital? Actually, I think nobody would recognize the name, but if you heard the song you'd nod your head and smile. Fatboy Slim was responsible for a whole slew of timeless songs - tunes that I can literally listen to at any given time, any given place, and always love.
Fast forward a bit, there's a few that were produced in the last decade (the Chemical Brothers came out almost 15 freakin' years ago!) Eiffel 65, Ayla, Armin Van Buuren and "The Sound of Goodbye", Paul Oakenfold's entire freakin' album (remember "Southern Sun"? Of course you do. Everyone does), pretty much any song that BT touched was epic by default, Ferry Corsten ushered in the new sound of Progressive House, Sasha & Digweed were incapable of preventing epic-ness in their music, JunkieXL just spewed epic all over crowds... I mean, once techno became more mainstream, it was nearly impossible to avoid getting swept up by the sheer waves of legendary anthems. Goddamn that DJ made my day. Yeah, I know you remember that one too.
Now what do we have? Justice, Basshunter, and a handful of other flashes in the pan. Here and there, a catchy song - and we're so starved for the epic thunder of yesterday's basslines that we consider these songs "modern anthems". They're not bad songs - I'm a fan of Justice, for example - but you can't possibly hope to put them side-by-side with Carl Cox, with Superstar DJ Keoki (okay, maybe not that guy - he was a big douche), with Roni Size. Kids these days just don't know what they missed.
So yeah, back 10 or 15 years ago, that was a golden age. It was a time of innovation and experimentation with music. Sometimes I miss it, and sometimes I'm glad we've all moved on. Most of us, anyway. And then I have to wonder if previous generations weren't thinking these exact thoughts while bitching about "these kids and their crazy rock-n-roll dance music..."
That's not a bad thing, per se, but man do I miss the full-on epic anthems of yesteryear. Or maybe it's just been redefined and I, like my parents and the generation before them, have been left behind to wallow around in 'classic rock'.
But I don't think that's true - the fact is that I still recognize their 'anthems' as anthems. And I think the era of anthemic rock-n-roll music, the epic power ballad, the timeless rock tune, is pretty much over. Once and a while you get one that comes up but what happened to The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Led Zeppelin? Black Sabbath? Who stepped up and replaced them? To some extent, I suppose, Metallica (although when I was growing up I would never have imagined that happening), and I just can't think of any band of epic enough proportions to match the "classics". Nirvana? Maybe they could've achieved that status - who knows?
But the epic techno-anthem used to be so prevalent. I mean, who doesn't remember "Firestarter", or "Get Busy Child", or pretty much *any* Chemical Brothers song? And that goes way, way, way back. How about Orbital? Actually, I think nobody would recognize the name, but if you heard the song you'd nod your head and smile. Fatboy Slim was responsible for a whole slew of timeless songs - tunes that I can literally listen to at any given time, any given place, and always love.
Fast forward a bit, there's a few that were produced in the last decade (the Chemical Brothers came out almost 15 freakin' years ago!) Eiffel 65, Ayla, Armin Van Buuren and "The Sound of Goodbye", Paul Oakenfold's entire freakin' album (remember "Southern Sun"? Of course you do. Everyone does), pretty much any song that BT touched was epic by default, Ferry Corsten ushered in the new sound of Progressive House, Sasha & Digweed were incapable of preventing epic-ness in their music, JunkieXL just spewed epic all over crowds... I mean, once techno became more mainstream, it was nearly impossible to avoid getting swept up by the sheer waves of legendary anthems. Goddamn that DJ made my day. Yeah, I know you remember that one too.
Now what do we have? Justice, Basshunter, and a handful of other flashes in the pan. Here and there, a catchy song - and we're so starved for the epic thunder of yesterday's basslines that we consider these songs "modern anthems". They're not bad songs - I'm a fan of Justice, for example - but you can't possibly hope to put them side-by-side with Carl Cox, with Superstar DJ Keoki (okay, maybe not that guy - he was a big douche), with Roni Size. Kids these days just don't know what they missed.
So yeah, back 10 or 15 years ago, that was a golden age. It was a time of innovation and experimentation with music. Sometimes I miss it, and sometimes I'm glad we've all moved on. Most of us, anyway. And then I have to wonder if previous generations weren't thinking these exact thoughts while bitching about "these kids and their crazy rock-n-roll dance music..."
I'm not even sure how I stumbled onto these websites, but they are... fascinating. Not necessarily in a good way. Possibly in a sort of train-wreck way. Definitely interesting and definitely difficult to avoid delving further into. Don't believe me? Well, here you go...
Let start with Ravishing Beasts. Sound pornographic but don't worry it's not. This site is all about strange and awkward taxidermy. Of particular interest is the taxidermy pic of the week. Take the time to go through them - believe me, you'll get sucked in. The thing is, there's actually some really creative stuff going on there. You can't deny (nomatter how much you might want to) that there's no small amount of skill being exercised to create some of these things.
Next is Rogue Taxidermists. Most interesting is the profile of Takeshi Yamada, who is apparently the man responsible for much of the strangeness one witnesses at carnival 'freak-show' events. Okay, maybe he's not responsible for them, but his work is... undeniably... good? Regardless, it's interesting to see such fascinating works.
Then we have Top Hat Taxidermy, which touts itself as the "world's leading online retailer of taxidermy." Without doubt, there's some seriously taxidermized animals for sale here... including pets and other interesting creatures. I'm particularly fond of the photograph on the home page of a woman walking in public with her stuffed toucan. Because we should all walk our stuffed pets at least once a day. Yeah.
Finally, there's Curious Expeditions. This particular site doesn't concentrate on taxidermy, per se, but it definitely travels along similar paths. There's a particular section, a visit to a museum in Italy that contains a lot of wet taxidermy, specimens held in jars of formaldehyde and other preservatives. I don't know why but I found it disturbing. There's lots of other odd content there... it's a really fascinating site to flip through and has a lot of potential to lead to even more awesomely wierd sites.
Interesting sites, all of them. I'm not sure I understand the fetish for stuffed creatures. I hunted for years and have always regarded any creature hanging on a wall as a trophy. I've been exposed to trophy rooms that held hundreds of such trophies, but each and every one was hunted and killed by the owner of the trophy. The whole concept of purchasing an animal's head seems... awkward. Perhaps not too terribly much more so than the simple fact of having an animal's head hanging on a wall, but awkward nonetheless. Keeping stuffed pets is somethind I simply don't understand.
The idea of keeping animals in formaldehyde, particularly creatures like birds and monkeys, now that just freaks me out a bit. I'm not sure what it is about it that bothers me, but perhaps I feel that the body needs to decompose after death, that it needs to return to its component particles, and that taxidermy - particularly 'wet' taxidermy - doesn't permit that 'final rest' for the creature. I couldn't say for sure, but it definitely feels wrong.
Years ago my ex-girlfriend brought home a small shark in a jar, suspended in formaldehyde. She named it and put it on a shelf, where it sat for about a year before we split up. To this day the memory of that shark haunts me, floating upside down in a small jar, staring with lifeless eyes. Extremely uncool, that.
That being said, it didn't stop me from marvelling at the images, peeking into the world that is clearly important to at least some small segment of our society. It's a kind of voyueristic thrill to experience another's fetishistic passion, particularly one for which I feel conflicted towards. On my most recent visit to NYC and the Museum of Natural History I saw a whole freakin' enormous building filled to bursting with stuffed animals, and I found it interesting not just for the fact that I was looking at lifelike representations of creatures that I would never see (simply because they existed in areas of the world I'm not likely to visit, or because they're extinct) but because I was looking at lifelike representations of dead animals.
On that same trip we visited the MFA (Museum of Fine Art) over by Central Park. One of the pieces was a big ol' shark suspended in formaldehyde in a big ol' tank (I know, I have some kind of wierd thing with dead sharks in formaldehyde.) When I say 'big' I mean big, it was at least 12 feet long. Monofilament held the shark suspended in the tank, so it gave the impression of being alive, rather than squished against the bottom in a heap of dead fish. Again, being stared at by a shark with dead, gray skin and dull, clouded, lifeless eyes was not one of my happiest moments. Kinda creepy even.
Without a doubt, stumbling across these websites has completely derailed my productivity for the evening in favor of philosophical introspection and a strong desire to go and hug something alive and well. And warm.
Let start with Ravishing Beasts. Sound pornographic but don't worry it's not. This site is all about strange and awkward taxidermy. Of particular interest is the taxidermy pic of the week. Take the time to go through them - believe me, you'll get sucked in. The thing is, there's actually some really creative stuff going on there. You can't deny (nomatter how much you might want to) that there's no small amount of skill being exercised to create some of these things.
Next is Rogue Taxidermists. Most interesting is the profile of Takeshi Yamada, who is apparently the man responsible for much of the strangeness one witnesses at carnival 'freak-show' events. Okay, maybe he's not responsible for them, but his work is... undeniably... good? Regardless, it's interesting to see such fascinating works.
Then we have Top Hat Taxidermy, which touts itself as the "world's leading online retailer of taxidermy." Without doubt, there's some seriously taxidermized animals for sale here... including pets and other interesting creatures. I'm particularly fond of the photograph on the home page of a woman walking in public with her stuffed toucan. Because we should all walk our stuffed pets at least once a day. Yeah.
Finally, there's Curious Expeditions. This particular site doesn't concentrate on taxidermy, per se, but it definitely travels along similar paths. There's a particular section, a visit to a museum in Italy that contains a lot of wet taxidermy, specimens held in jars of formaldehyde and other preservatives. I don't know why but I found it disturbing. There's lots of other odd content there... it's a really fascinating site to flip through and has a lot of potential to lead to even more awesomely wierd sites.
Interesting sites, all of them. I'm not sure I understand the fetish for stuffed creatures. I hunted for years and have always regarded any creature hanging on a wall as a trophy. I've been exposed to trophy rooms that held hundreds of such trophies, but each and every one was hunted and killed by the owner of the trophy. The whole concept of purchasing an animal's head seems... awkward. Perhaps not too terribly much more so than the simple fact of having an animal's head hanging on a wall, but awkward nonetheless. Keeping stuffed pets is somethind I simply don't understand.
The idea of keeping animals in formaldehyde, particularly creatures like birds and monkeys, now that just freaks me out a bit. I'm not sure what it is about it that bothers me, but perhaps I feel that the body needs to decompose after death, that it needs to return to its component particles, and that taxidermy - particularly 'wet' taxidermy - doesn't permit that 'final rest' for the creature. I couldn't say for sure, but it definitely feels wrong.
Years ago my ex-girlfriend brought home a small shark in a jar, suspended in formaldehyde. She named it and put it on a shelf, where it sat for about a year before we split up. To this day the memory of that shark haunts me, floating upside down in a small jar, staring with lifeless eyes. Extremely uncool, that.
That being said, it didn't stop me from marvelling at the images, peeking into the world that is clearly important to at least some small segment of our society. It's a kind of voyueristic thrill to experience another's fetishistic passion, particularly one for which I feel conflicted towards. On my most recent visit to NYC and the Museum of Natural History I saw a whole freakin' enormous building filled to bursting with stuffed animals, and I found it interesting not just for the fact that I was looking at lifelike representations of creatures that I would never see (simply because they existed in areas of the world I'm not likely to visit, or because they're extinct) but because I was looking at lifelike representations of dead animals.
On that same trip we visited the MFA (Museum of Fine Art) over by Central Park. One of the pieces was a big ol' shark suspended in formaldehyde in a big ol' tank (I know, I have some kind of wierd thing with dead sharks in formaldehyde.) When I say 'big' I mean big, it was at least 12 feet long. Monofilament held the shark suspended in the tank, so it gave the impression of being alive, rather than squished against the bottom in a heap of dead fish. Again, being stared at by a shark with dead, gray skin and dull, clouded, lifeless eyes was not one of my happiest moments. Kinda creepy even.
Without a doubt, stumbling across these websites has completely derailed my productivity for the evening in favor of philosophical introspection and a strong desire to go and hug something alive and well. And warm.
During my travels through the hinternet (yes, the "hinternet", as in hinterlands of the net) I often run into some pretty amazing stuff. Sometimes it's news, sometimes it's hardware... there's no end to the potential oddness. Here's the most amazing keyboard ever, the Optimus Maximus.
Any keyboard that has a price tag of $1,600... for a keyboard... has just got to be amazing. And it is. I don't know that it's $1,600 worth of amazing, but it certainly has a lot going for it. Go check it out and be ready for Maximum Ogling. Hooray for crazy-expensive-yet-undeniably-cool technology.
Any keyboard that has a price tag of $1,600... for a keyboard... has just got to be amazing. And it is. I don't know that it's $1,600 worth of amazing, but it certainly has a lot going for it. Go check it out and be ready for Maximum Ogling. Hooray for crazy-expensive-yet-undeniably-cool technology.
I just read this great article on the Orlando Sentinel...
A 911 dispatcher had to tell a woman how to unlock her car on Sunday.Yeehaw!
A woman called Kissimmee police to say she was locked inside her car at the Walgreen's on John Young Parkway near Poinciana.
"My car will not start. I'm locked inside my car," the unidentified woman said. "Nothing electrical works. And it's getting very hot in here, and I'm not feeling well."
The dispatcher asked the woman if she was able to manually pull the lock up on the door.
The woman said she would try, and then, she said, "Yes, I got the door open."
