The Fredösphere

A musical ... a sci-fi comedy musical ... released on the web?  I admit, I was grossly derelict in my blogging duties by not telling you to go watch Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog while it was available for free download.  (The DVDs will be on sale soon, with--wait for it!--a sung commentary track.  Geniuses.)

Anyway, I just found out the good Doctor is available for one more day for free.  Today.  What are you waiting for?

Oh, yeah.  You're waiting for the link.

Labels: fun, movie, Opera, sci-fi, VideoClip

The Catholic Church:  they've made some ... changes.  (Tip o' the red hat to the Sci-Fi Catholic.)

Meanwhile...

I'm going to get all Alexy Rossy on you and muse for a bit about the health of orchestras in the heartland.  We spent the weekend with some friends in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and on their advice attended the "Picnic Pops" concert of that city's Symphony.  This is not the kind of event I would choose on my own, and I admit the first half disappointed.  Grofé, Gottschalk:  the programming choices were neither canonical nor bold, but they did fit the New Orleans theme, necessitated by the guest appearance of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

PHJB isn't really my thing either, but they were at least compelling.  This concert gave me a chance to think hard about something I've been wondering about:  is Dixieland Jazz the only example of a truly popular countrapuntal style?  Where else do casual listeners tolerate so much independence of voices?  Is there a secret we lovers of counterpoint ought to learn and exploit?  These are not a rhetorical questions; if you have insight, please leave a comment.

The outdoor ambiance (on a ski slope) facilitated dancing, which really made the evening for my daughter and me.  Generally speaking, the best parts of the experience (landscape, picnic atmosphere, alcohol for those imbibing it, guest artists playing jazz at a very high level, kinesthetic interaction) had nothing to do with this idea that paying 100 instrumentalists to play together all at the same time is the right thing to do.  Still, the concerts are genuinely popular, and Grand Rapids has the corporations (Chase Bank) and the aristocracy (the De Vos family) to keep it funded, so bully to them.  I'll have to attend one of their regular concerts and report back.  (Hint to the GRS bosses:  Sibelius might lie at the exact center of the intersection of my and the popular tastes.)

One final bit of weirdness:  ever since reading the excellent Benjamin Britten biography written by Humphrey Carpenter, I can't help associating BB with Grand Rapids, since that city was, implausibly, bizarrely, the scene of ... well, apparently we don't know exactly what, but it was where ... oh, go read the book.  Still, the idea that this very conservative, very Dutch (Corrie ten Boom Dutch, not modern-day Amsterdam Dutch) town was destined to become a landmark in Britten's personal oddysey is something I couldn't quite put out of my mind as violinists sawed away, patrons sipped wine from plastic cups, the sun set, and my kids frolicked on a swing set off in the distance.

Labels: Counterpoint, Culture, local

I wanted badly to comment on this post over at 2Blowhards but I was prevented from doing so for some reason.  So I'll post it here.  The post and comment thread described various algorithms for culling movies quickly when flipping through them at the DVD store.  The post was an excellent excuse for me to mention something that I've been noticing for a while now.  Read the post, then imagine the following as one of the comments:

Gil is on the right track: there is no longer any excuse to be using other movie-selection algorithm now that collaborative filtering is available.  (I recommend Movie Lens.)

But to answer the question, I hate what I like to refer to as the ol' Hierarchical Head Size movie poster.  The cheesy painting where the top stars have huge heads, and all the other actors (or, in some cases, sheep) in the movie peer over their shoulders with heads sized according to how much they were paid. Its a reliable sign the movie is a middle-of-the-road, big studio, focus-grouped ending, super-safe, five-credited screenwriters kind of movie. (Although, I admit the first Star Wars movie poster suffered from Hierarchical Head Size, and I loved that movie--but in retrospect the artwork obviously doesn't belong, what with Princess Leia's slinky pose, don't you agree?  Yet, later [earlier??  Gaah!] installments of the series definitely do deserve the Hierarchical Head treatment.  Oh, and speaking of Star Wars posters....)

Labels: movie

Incontrovertible proof that aliens have visited the Fredölawn.

(Okay, seriously, what are those dark, perfectly round rings that show up in the grass every summer?)

Labels: fun, sci-fi

Good news.  When I last linked to Outsider, a free webcomic by Jim Francis (a.k.a. Arioch), the series was stalled at page 50, with much more of the plot yet to be written and drawn.  Regular checking-in on my part over the intervening months led me to fear this project was permanently comatose.

Today I have discovered that, somewhere along the line, four more pages have been drawn.  The work resumes!  Sadly, one can read the new material in a matter of seconds, a pathetic amount of time compared to what was needed to create it...and yet, we have progress.

To recap the plot:  a human male finds himself rescued/captured by a star cruiser staffed by aliens who are 95% humanoid and 100% female.  Form-fitting uniforms!  Blue skin!  Pointy ears!  Pouty lips!  You get your guilty, and you get your pleasure, all in one convenient package.  Don't miss it.

Labels: Comix, Fiction, sci-fi

My nine year old son, Der Drübermensch, recently discovered the joys of word processors, and was duly inspired to write this work of fiction.  I detect the influence of James Joyce, although I don't think I've noticed that author's works sitting on his shelf.

Jib's story.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I'm sleepy. Roar! Here comes the monster. I'm sooooooooooooo bored. Oh, I love your clues megabuck ?
Superior salamanders souped sugar. Lanie licks DJ when fungi show scoops keener mushrooms. Bats ask why. Because you fly! Mommy is a weeping sugar in the little pond. Bats ask why! Because you fly! Later games require wireless systems. Bats ask why! Because you fly! Dad is on his moter bike and driving to the store. Bats ask why! Because you fly!! Peewee saves the world when he is so powerful, and no bad guy can catch him if they try so full! Bats ask why! Because you fly!!! When a kitty is so silly sis goes round the bend. Bats ask why!!! Because you fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOODBYE!

Is this the influence of Joyce, or more likely, LSD?  Parental malpractice, in either case, I must admit.

Labels: CuteKid

Previously at the Fredösphere we discussed the discrete charm of French science-fiction.  (La Flamme Cosmique!  Métal de Mort!)  While French is an inappropriate language for le futur, Russian seems perfect, especially when spoken in the impatient growl of a Soviet apologist.  Io9 raises the topic; Dark Roasted Blend remains my go-to guy for images (galleries are here, here and here).  It would seem that, in space, all the stars are red.

While researching this post, a few oddities turned up that I cannot turn down:

Turns out there's a literary award for Russian science fiction which, as far as I can tell, is referred to as "Literary Award 'Russian Science Fiction'" (how ... appropriate!) which is interesting only because the trophy they give the winners looks like Howard Roark built a skyscraper model out of chocolate and then left it sitting too close to the radiator.  (Speaking of ill-placed radiators....)

Here's an alt-history novel that until now has flown beneath my radar:  it posits a world where the United States turned communist in 1917, but Russia remained imperial.  It's called Back in the USSA.  Cute.

An expert in ancient engineering techniques reviews some books in his field.  Any fan of the Age of Empires RTS (real-time strategy) game will fall in love with the catapults.  It seems the Romans (and even the Greeks) had some serious firepower at their disposal, including even hand-held weapons that could kill at one hundred yards.

BLDGBLOG has a wonderful collection of fanciful ruins, all from the game Guild Wars.  Don't you just want to eat these up?  I'm tempted to find a city and blow it up, just for the chance to indulge in some spooky/artsy melancholy.  (Memo to the good folks at the Counter-Terrorism Unit:  Just!  Kidding!  Anyway, why would I need a blown-up city when I have one so conveniently located just 45 minutes east of here?)

UPDATE:  Links are fixed now.

Labels: Architecture, Futurism, sci-fi

I think this post needs a special tag: SelfAbsorbedInfoDump.

Not much has been written here in a long time about current projects. I'm certain millions of my fans await with bated breath word of the birth of my next art child; no doubt they worry obsessively as the silence drags on.

They (those poor millions! or at least, those poor several--Hi, Mom! Hi, Aunt Virginia!) worry with good reason. I've endured my first-ever experience with writer's block. The experience has been unnerving. However, it has ended, and I think I know why it happened, and how it may be avoided in the future.

First, there's the awkwardness of shifting some of my creative efforts to a new, unfamiliar field: short science fiction. It's not so much that I don't know what I'm doing in fiction--I certainly don't, but the newness provides its own unique motivation, in the form of heedless optimism. The problem lies in the need to manage my time less wastefully, and to avoid endless fiddling and procrastinating. Each one of two projects can act in turn as an excellent distraction from the other.

Another problem is the continuing psychological change that began in my around my 40th birthday. This change of life, which I have decided quite arbitrarily to call "puberty," has made me far more cagey about choosing projects to pursue, and more inclined to ruminate before committing to any creative decision. I find myself asking myself truly bizarre questions, like "would any person other than me appreciate this if I proceeded to write it?" and "is it possible that my first idea may not be optimal?" That creativity gets harder as one ages is not a new observation, but for me it is a new experience. (The upside is, let's hope, and increase in quality. I'm continually appalled by how little introspection I used to bring to my writing.)

The final problem is specific (let's hope it will prove to be unique) to my current music project. It came to pass that I needed to rewrite the whole thing, and my usual laziness roused itself with uncommon industrious zeal against the prospect of revisiting material I previously thought was complete. My piece, commissioned for the May 2008 concert of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, is a setting of a poem I wrote as a companion to a SF story I wrote, both called The Moon That Dreamed of Earth. Ben Cohen, the VAE director, warned me the May concert would be challenging one for his choir (it included Argento's Peter Quince at the Clavier, a wonderful setting of poems by Wallace Stevens) and I thought I had written something straightforward. After I sent the score to Ben, he gracefully suggested I would be happiest with the premiere if it were postponed until the fall. I looked again at the score, and was appalled by its difficulty. Part of the problem was readability; it had a 6-flat key signature, and began with an accidental (an F-flat ... F-flat! I was rather proud of that one, given my self-identification as a stylistic conservative--a not perfectly honest identification, I now realize) and partly it was the dense tone clusters I called for, plus the lack of instrumental accompaniment that would have given the singers a point of reference.

Yes, the piece was a monster. Rewriting it was an unappetizing prospect, and I avoided the work for a long time, playing around with ideas but never committing to a plan. Finally, I saw the need for drastic action, and I borrowed an idea from the SF author Gene Wolfe: an entertainment fast was the only solution, so at home there would be no movies, no books, no internet until I had completed the piece.

I didn't stick to the plan to the bitter end, but I stuck with it long enough to write half the piece, in only three days. (That's an unbelievably prolific burst, by my standards.) In so doing, I also adopted an approach that has worked well for me before: I wrote the piece backwards. That is, I wrote the last section first, then the middle. I recommend this approach for any writers who, like me, form a very clear idea of the ending and for whom beginnings are the challenge.

I'll be blogging more about The Moon That Dreamed of Earth in the future. Writing the text was one of the most satisfying creative experiences of my life. (I've fallen in love, love with my Roget's!) Whether any of it--poem, music, or story--is of interest to anyone but me remains to be seen. Stay tuned! Mom, Aunt Virginia: I'm talkin' to you!

Labels: Composition, Creativity

Cobly Cosh thrills to the news that a near-complete print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has be discovered in Argentina.

USB wine.  Le wow.  Also, we speakers of English may be losing control of the language--oh frak!  And those alien spacecraft just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Steve Hicken's fantasy life is pretty similar to mine, and I mean more than just the win-the-lottery part.  He's got the musicians, the new compositions, and even the bathtub filled with chocolate pudding.  At least, that's the way I remember it.

Labels: Composer, fun, movie, sci-fi

My buddy Don, the barbershop quartet enthusiast, invited me to join the local BBS chorus on Saturday night to watch a webcast of the final round of this year's Barbershop Harmony quartet competition.  Don invited me on the thoughtful suggestion of Rob Pettigrew, who has capably taken direction of the Huron Valley Harmonizers after the unexpected loss of its previous director.

The group was at its most relaxed, which is saying a lot.  Their approach to music is light on rehearsal; they know and live the charm of simply opening their mouths and singing.  Thus the emphasis on tradition; they are all about singing songs that "everyone" knows already.  Naturally, for we few, we happy few who can read a vocal score more or less effortlessly, the experience is a joy.  No matter what route you take--memorization or sight reading--it's a blast to skip all that exasperating note-pounding and just sing the dang thang.

So, Saturday night's webcast was interrupted at times to sing some old "tags."  Tags are the flash fiction of choral composition:  snips of music 4-8 measures long with terse, impressionistic texts.  Some of the tags were unknown to some of the singers present; these were taught in a matter of a minute or two by the oral method.  Tags are a glue for the international barbershop movement; any diverse group of barbershop singers can instantly begin making music together simply by singing the well known tags.  Writing a few would serve as an excellent exercise; I'll have to try it.

Singing is a catalyst for group cohesion like little else (except maybe incoming enemy mortar fire).  A visitor instantly feels the über-welcoming gemütlichkeit of a barbershop chorus meeting that reminds one of the atmosphere of an unusually healthy church.  Indeed, I'll bet barbershop singing is a substitute religion for some; you get the community without all that bothersome wrangling over theological minutia.  (Oops; I just remembered, barbershoppers are not immune to fighting their own holy wars.)

I was pleased to find out that, of the 10 quartets competing on Saturday night, my pick won:  OC Times, which you can see here from the 2006 competition:



OC Times won simply because they outsang the others, with nothing harsh or wobbly anywhere, and excellent balance.  I think their decision not to wear deep purple suits with chartreuse shirts did them no harm as well.  That's something that cannot be said about all the quartets.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony

It is in the cold light of a post-July-Fourth morning that we can shake of the effects of that drunken orgy of patriotic jingoism we so recently indulged in, and reflect soberly on an interesting question:  why do so many nationalistic songs have lyrics that, on close analysis, reveal themselves to be crazy?

(And we don't normally give them close analysis.  Perhaps our fear, or better, our piety prevents us from probing.  Or, most likely of all, these words are too familiar to be understood, just as one cannot focus on an object that is too near the eye.)

Let's start with The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  Unless my interpretation is way off, the song seems to posit the idea that the U.S. Civil War is nothing less than the harbinger of the Apocalypse.  Shiloh, Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg...Armageddon.  Forrest, Jackson, Lee, Davis...Satan.  I'm sure those persons immersed in the events found these progressions compelling and believable, but why do we today still sing "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored"?  God metes his punishments to each nation sooner or later according to his mysterious timetable; just because it happened to be our turn for a lickin' in 1861 doesn't mean the whole world is coming to an end.

Next, consider Jerusalem:



It poses a question:  did Jesus Christ visit England as a youth, and does not that event portend a special destiny, a special burden placed on the shoulders of the English people, one which endows them with a greater dignity and mission?  Short answer:  no.  The British Empire was unusually cool, as empires go, but William Blake was nuts when it came to the whole Joseph-of-Arimathea-Brought-Jesus-To-England thing (as he was nuts about so much else [William that is, not Joseph]).  On the other hand, I'm inclined to give Jerusalem as many bonus points as needed to offset what the lyrics lost, because I think it is about the most mind-blowing tune ever written.  Plus when the second verse kicks in, with it's burning gold and its chariots of fire--wow!  All is forgiven.

The U.S. national anthem also asks a question.  (Isn't that a sign of insecurity, by the way?  Why can't we have a national anthem that asserts something rather than begs for affirmation?  Deutschland über Alles doesn't begin with an Ist, after all.)



In it's obsessive concern for the flag, the anthem never get around to discussing any other attribute of our nation, or noticing anything else beyond the flag's wave status, so no crazy philosophical or theological idea emerges, but as has been observed many times before, the tune is awkward and unlovely.

Most national anthems have lyrics belonging to what might be called the "purple mountains majesty" school:  lots of talk about the landscape, culminated with a promise before God to defend the country.  The beauty of O Canada is marred by a particularly lame (and so quintessentially Canadian) vow to "stand on guard for thee," a timid, passive phrase which has never been dumped, although that's what they did to the old, unofficial anthem "The Maple Leaf Forever" wherein "Wolfe the dauntless hero" is celebrated for crushing the francophones.  I guess the feeling was, it was only a matter of time until les Québécois noticed.

For England, it's not just Jerusalem; the country scores of twofer of kookiness with this verse from God Save the Queen:


...and some countries' anthems get bogged down in historical controversies that probably seemed terribly compelling at the time--here is Andorra's:


Well, la...tee...da.  Here's the Netherlands:


Come on people, get over it.  Then there's Poland, still dancing on the grave of some guy who's been dead for over a century:


I look forward to hearing verses that describe the many positive side effects of Hitler and Stalin.  Furthermore, it doesn't help matters that the national hero of Poland is named Dabrowski, who sounds like he should be famous, if he were famous for anything, for being the best bowler in Chicago.

Algeria's patriots adopt a favorite strategy of my kids:


...which is, if no one is paying attention, TURN UP THE VOLUME!  Other miscellaneous oddities include Austria (Land of Hammers! -- but hey, nice melody for once, Wolfgang; too bad the lyrics are, gasp! sexist) and Iceland (a reference to the solar system gives the song a nice sci-fi vibe); Turks worry that their "coy crescent" may "frown" (gee, I wish my life was that uncomplicated) and the Mexicans denounce "Masiosare" who wants to make their country "dirty with his plants."

Finally, we come to the Japanese, whose anthem is the most ... Japanese ... of them all.  The lyrics are a tanka, a 5-line, 31-syllable poem:

May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great stone and become covered with moss.

...in other words, it's about a rock garden.

</cynicism>

Labels: Culture, fun, Poetry

Ooh, yes, I do hope they find a way to "boost" the "concentrations" in the "flesh."

Also from Instapundit, another romantic fool refuses to acknowledge that, if man were meant to fly, he'd be born with giant balloons.

Labels: Airship, Food, fun

Why isn't everyone in the Bløgösphère linking to the Joshua Bell busking scandal ... of 1930?

Labels: Culture