Running Through the Rain to the Ferry

Wind storm also

An entirely different experience than taking the ferry is running through the rain to the ferry. This may happen because you’re at a friend’s house before Christmas, and he lives in Campbell River, and you live on Quadra, and you were Christmas shopping and decided to go to his place for drinks and to listen to music. Or maybe for some other reason, I’m not a soothsayer.

So it comes to be 9:30, and if you don’t leave soon you’re not going to be able to catch the 10:30 home, so of course you procrastinate for at least 20 minutes because you’ve been drinking Scotch and Rye and listening to Tyler Fedchuk mixes and going over the year in music. You eventually decide to leave so that it’s easier to get things done tomorrow, even though it’s raining pretty hard out, and there’s a terrible wind storm going on and you’re not even sure if the ferry’s running anyway. On the way out you leave the present you bought Mom in your friend’s entryway.

And you’re doing it. You’re jogging to the ferry in the rain in a wind storm. Thank God it’s mostly down hill, and the Scotch has made you feel warm and unable to tell when you should stop jogging. So you get there in record time, about 10 minutes, and you have to sit and wait for the ferry for another 10 minutes in the cold wet waiting area. But at least the ferry is running, and your brother picks you up at the other side and drives you home. Good thing he got his license! Maybe he can pick you up tomorrow from the pub as well…

CONCEPT: 1/5 – Having to run through the wind and rain in a big jacket aren’t high on anyone’s list of things to do before they die.

INNOVATION: 1/5 – It’s common knowledge that running increases speed.

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Getting there on time is nice, but being too early just makes you think of all the time you could have spent still listening to a mash up.

EXECUTION: 4/5 – Well, you made it with time to spare at least.

FUN FACTOR: 1/5 – Suck factor: 4/5

OVERALL: 4/10 – Not all that bad, really.

Three Music Videos by Röyksopp

They are a group

What Else is There

This has been stuck in my head for a few days. Besides being a great song, the video is interesting to watch. The first time through I didn’t know what was happening, and was apprehensive because the mood is dreary and ethereal. Every frame is mostly blackness, and strange disconnected imagery of growing fibers, houses ripping from their foundations, a storm, and the woods at night create a haunting feeling of the otherworldly. The visuals fit the tone of the song perfectly, and the swells are met with equal visual swells; debris wildly flying, hairs raising, and faster cuts.

Remind Me

I can’t think of another video that’s simultaneously made me feel like part of a bigger picture and destroyed most of the wonder in the world. It makes you feel small, but at the same time necessary. The video causes thought as to the systems that run our everyday lives. While revealing a relatively small portion of how water is treated after you flush, and what corn flakes are made out of, it entices the viewer to think more critically about how these systems are formed, and their place in the order of society. What may seem like random action to you can be graphed, and charted, and are being so by people you’ve never met. Shout out to a 26 year old guy I know in Victoria for linking to this on his site months ago.

Eple

Just fun to watch. For a while at least. I found I got dizzy, and then a bit bored. The video isn’t repetitive, per say, but the concept gets old fairly quickly. The song is repetative, and you may have heard it before. Maybe while sitting in a trendy Cafe. After hearing this so many times every time I go to a Moxies, Earls, or other Hip Joint, I’m tired of the song itself (which I associate with overly done up waitresses) but I’d never seen the video before today. Enjoy!

CONCEPT: 4/5 – The concept of all these videos is very good and suiting of the music.

INNOVATION: 4/5 – Creativity pours out of each video, except Eple which is a concept I’ve seen several times before.

SATISFACTION: 3/5 – Each video is entertaining across multiple watches. You’re sure to miss something the first time.

EXECUTION: 5/5 – Production value is top notch.

FUN FACTOR: 2/5 – Most of the videos draw on uncomfortable thoughts to get their message across. They’re not a lot of fun, but not overly soul crushing either.

OVERALL: 7/10 – Well crafted art.

[Edit: I screwed up one of the links while editing, requiring a re-edit]

Weekend Warzone #3 – Saxophone, Back Pain, Kites

Saxophone

The worst instrument ever, 22 years running, has been the Saxophone. No other instrument quite catches the idea of expressing oneself through a series of chalkboards and nails quite like the Saxophone. The only instrument not designed to be listened to, the Saxophone dominates the musical landscape as the only contender for the title of “poor ugly person’s instrument.”

Alright, it’s not unbiased. I just don’t like the Saxophone at all. It doesn’t harmonize well, it’s always trying to do something crazy. When the tune is going one way, the Saxophone goes the other, inserting extra twoots and blaats in between beats where they shouldn’t be, and generally making me sad. Solos are the worst.

CONCEPT: 1/5 -Who’s idea was this? At least it’s music.

INNOVATION: 1/5 – I don’t know what to judge, the effort to create a thing of beauty, or make babies teeth shrivel up in terror. Because the Saxophone only excels at one of them.

SATISFACTION: 0/5 – None can be derived.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – Well done Saxophone, you make everyone else look better, even a cat standing on a 11 key Casio.

FUN FACTOR: 0/5 – Should not surprise.

OVERALL: 2/10 – They’re shiny, and that’s about it.

Back Pain

There’s nothing quite as immobilizing as back pain. Mild back pain can remind you are alive, however. More often it serves to remind you just how close you are to the beyond. It also serves to let middle aged men on TV sell you pads and pills to get rid of the pain. Mostly it just sucks though

Here’s a few tips! Take it easy. Try to sleep on your back. Google “back pain.”

CONCEPT: 2/5 – While people hate it, your body never hurts for no reason. You did something stupid, don’t do it again.

INNOVATION: 1/5 – Pain is nothing new. Unless you’re a fish. They can’t feel pain, right? Or is that a lie vegetarians tell?

SATISFACTION: 3/5 – Does it’s job. You probably needed to lay down anyway.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – I’m not sure what this means in relation to back pain. How much it hurts? How it gets.. hurt?

FUN FACTOR: 0/5 – Can’t think of any.

OVERALL: 3/10 – Take it easy there, it’s no picnic but it’s not happening without reason.

Kites

You can fly them in the sky! All you need is wind. String. A kite. A tail for the kite. A small child to instill wonder in. And you’re set! I grew up in an area with lots of trees called Canada. Kites and trees don’t mix well, and neither do poor choices of afternoons to fly kites. As a result, I think I only had one or two actual good kite days as a child. I haven’t tried again since then.

Popular media seems to portray flying a kite as a very idyllic and peaceful pass time, especially for young boys wearing only overalls and chomping bits of straw, perhaps laying under a tree. I’ve never seen this happen before. Where did this image come from? Who is that boy who all the painting, card, book covers, and American dreams are based on? Well, he’s an old man now by any means, and probably has a job still because the pension checks aren’t enough to live on. He now works as the new American cliche joke dream, a Wal Mart greeter. How do you like kites now?

CONCEPT: 3/5 – An object that remains aloft using only energy from the environment. How novel!

INNOVATION: 4/5 – We have planes now, hotshot. But before planes all there was for sustained flight was kites.

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – They don’t really do anything, just sort of blow around. Hard to get up there too.

EXECUTION: 2/5 – Their success depends almost entirely on elements not of your control. Like a college student.

FUN FACTOR: 2/5 – There’s a brief period of time when they finally get off the ground where this rises to a 3, but eventually declines again. Like the kite itself.

OVERALL: 4/10 – Thanks kites, for being mostly frustrating.

Verdict – Winner: BACK PAIN! That’s right, this isn’t based on score at all! Back pain wins because it has a use, it lets you know when somethings wrong, and wont let you move until it’s better. Congratulations!

Q-Unit

Q-Unit by The Silence Experiment, a Queen and 50cent mashup album

While learning that IGN had voted The Silence Experiment the ‘coolest artist of the year’ in 2005 made me almost not want to write this two fold (I hate IGN and it’s old news to boot) I figured HELLS WIT IT! YEAH, UH HUH.

One can almost imagine a rock dinosaur and a wigger walking briskly towards the same corner on opposite sides of a building. They are both in the midst of changing CDs in their Sony Diskmans. Not looking up, they collide. Amidst a cloud of slow motion surprise; open mouths, soaring CDs, cringing eyes, crumpling electronics. They land hard on their butts. As the young man clears is large curly blond afraux out of his eyes, and the older man checks his leather jacket for holes, they both exclaim: “Aw man, you got Rock/Rap in my Queen/Fiddy!”

In reality, some guy made this album with a bunch of 50cent songs mixed with Queen songs. Why would anyone do this? To offend Queen fans? To make Rap fans angry? No. It’s for hipsters. People who are fans of either type of music involved in this unholy union are probably not the target audience. It’s for people too good for either, or people who appreciate both, but maybe thought that something a little more obscure was missing from either original to give it ‘cred’.

The entire album can be downloaded at either link above. It is good. It’s rocky, and rappy, and will scratch a certain itch in some people. Rather than going for a more direct conversion of Queen’s music with new lyrics, like The Kleptone’s ‘Night at the Hip Hopera’, Q-Unit is more mashed around. The beats and licks of Queen are cut up so severely in some cases that the original song is referenced in more subtle ways, the way that two songs both written on a piano “sort of sound the same” to the uneducated ear. Mostly though, it’s very respectful to both ends of the material.

Suggested listening: Bohemian Wankster

CONCEPT: 3/5 – Not a bad idea. Risks creating something that could easily have been poor, but manages to stay away from being too tacky.

INNOVATION: 1/5 -Mashups aren’t new, and Queen’s been done to death. Try again!

SATISFACTION: 3/5 – A lot more Queen than you would think, which makes the G-unit more palatable to some.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – Well done, although some niggling parts don’t hit my ears right. Make words music good.

FUN FACTOR: 3/5 – More fun than straight Fiddy.

OVERALL: 6/10 – I like it, but it’s not going to be on my playlist long. Also, I can only take about 4-5 songs in a row before I have to change to something else. Good in small doses, or as a single song in a party playlist, you know, to make everyone go “What IS this? Oh my God, Queen, and… Fiddy?”

Life in Review

Daily reviews of daily things. Articles, books, websites, smells, video games, food, sensations, concepts, conversations, drinks, activities, music, people, bits of earth, etc.

The idea is intriguing, and adds a feeling of usefulness to what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward journal. A formula will also be followed, including but not limited to:

Title – What the review is of.

What – More in depth blurb or explanation.

Body – Description and observations about the subject.

Pros/Cons – An optional component where the pros and cons of the subject are weighed.

Ratings – Rank the subject against other subjects. Subjects will be rated out of 5 in CONCEPT, INNOVATION, SATISFACTION, EXECUTION, and FUN FACTOR. There may also by an additional rating based on other observations of the subject as well as an OVERALL score which is out of 10, and is not an average of previous ratings.

There will also be swears.

CONCEPT: 3/5 – Interesting. Will be fun to watch play out.

INNOVATION: 2/5 – Blogs and Reviews are both nothing new, but at least an ounce of creativity is required which warrants a 2.

SATISFACTION: Remains-to-be-seen/5 – This will be updated in the future with an accurate score.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – The fact that I got off my ass and made a blog is pretty good. I’ll give myself a congratulatory ‘3′.

FUN FACTOR: 4/5 – If this ever gets below a ‘2′ I may have to discontinue writing.

OVERALL: 8/10 – Commitment and creative output are in conflict! Let’s watch!