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Denizens of a Strange Planet
The sublime is ridiculous
28 May 2012 @ 03:58 am
28 May 2012 @ 07:49 am
27 May 2012 @ 06:08 pm
You all will be happy to hear that I now know the correct pronunciation of Daja's name. All these years I've been using an affricate for the j, and it turns out it's a straight fricative.* ALL THIS TIME I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE.
---
This revelation comes straight from a seemingly rather jet-lagged Tamora Pierce, who was the guest of honor at CONduit, Salt Lake City's slightly pathetic attempt at a big geek con. Normally I stay the hell away from cons, because I never have been able to grasp the fine art of milling around and am baffled by the format of panels.** But this was Tamora Pierce, so I put up with the milling so's I couldATTACH MYSELF TO HER LEG AND ASK IF SHE'D READ MY MANUSCRIPT urbanely say hello, show off Daja, ask a few writing questions, and listen to some panels. I even managed not to be the most obnoxious person at those panels! Good for me!
---
So for years I've had this big ball of hemp twine sitting in my desk drawer next to a whole bunch of little rubber bouncy balls, for reasons unexplained. Finally I figured I might as well use them and did the only logical thing I could: learned how to braid a shepherd's sling. Now we'll see who's man enough to try stealing my radishes.***
---
Been trying to create some more folktales for OGYAFEland. At the moment I'm working on their version of Santa Claus, because it's never too soon to start Christmas. It's been fun coming up with an origin story for him with folk elements, cultural assumptions, and of course bears. Everything's better with bears.
---
My sister, the incomparable![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1)
sunshine_shaman, has been posting a whole bunch of photos of her Euroventures. I must be hungry, because my favorite one at the moment is a photo of a bunch of cupcakes. You can't eat Notre Dame, after all.
---
I have discovered that the most irritating thing about trying to get an agent isn't rejections. Everyone always tries to make me feel better when I get rejected, but I just think, "Oh, well, onto the next one!"
No, the obnoxious thing is just waiting for an answer. Rejections are responses. But no response? That way lies Dorothy Parkerian madness.
*For those of you who care, that means it sounds like the French j, or the s in vision.
**When I'm interested in a panel, I tend to just start conversing with the panelists like I'm one of them. I don't know how to help it. I had the same problem with interesting classes.
***Perhaps I could also do something about those goddamn barking dogs all over the neighborhood. Like, hypothetically, clocking their idiot owners upside the head with a rubber ball whenever the poor mutts start yapping their fool heads off.
---
This revelation comes straight from a seemingly rather jet-lagged Tamora Pierce, who was the guest of honor at CONduit, Salt Lake City's slightly pathetic attempt at a big geek con. Normally I stay the hell away from cons, because I never have been able to grasp the fine art of milling around and am baffled by the format of panels.** But this was Tamora Pierce, so I put up with the milling so's I could
---
So for years I've had this big ball of hemp twine sitting in my desk drawer next to a whole bunch of little rubber bouncy balls, for reasons unexplained. Finally I figured I might as well use them and did the only logical thing I could: learned how to braid a shepherd's sling. Now we'll see who's man enough to try stealing my radishes.***
---
Been trying to create some more folktales for OGYAFEland. At the moment I'm working on their version of Santa Claus, because it's never too soon to start Christmas. It's been fun coming up with an origin story for him with folk elements, cultural assumptions, and of course bears. Everything's better with bears.
---
My sister, the incomparable
sunshine_shaman, has been posting a whole bunch of photos of her Euroventures. I must be hungry, because my favorite one at the moment is a photo of a bunch of cupcakes. You can't eat Notre Dame, after all.---
I have discovered that the most irritating thing about trying to get an agent isn't rejections. Everyone always tries to make me feel better when I get rejected, but I just think, "Oh, well, onto the next one!"
No, the obnoxious thing is just waiting for an answer. Rejections are responses. But no response? That way lies Dorothy Parkerian madness.
*For those of you who care, that means it sounds like the French j, or the s in vision.
**When I'm interested in a panel, I tend to just start conversing with the panelists like I'm one of them. I don't know how to help it. I had the same problem with interesting classes.
***Perhaps I could also do something about those goddamn barking dogs all over the neighborhood. Like, hypothetically, clocking their idiot owners upside the head with a rubber ball whenever the poor mutts start yapping their fool heads off.
Current Mood: 
hungry
hungryCurrent Music: THE CONSTANT BARKING OF DOGS
27 May 2012 @ 08:05 pm
1. Night and Day 5:47
2. Gang of Five 6:39
3. Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise 4:53
4. 'Round About Midnight 7:08
5. Almost Like Being in Love 7:19
6. Balade du 10 Mars 3:18
7. The Lady Is a Tramp 6:16
8. My Old Flame 4:22
9. The Newest Old Waltz 2:52
Martial Solal - Piano
Marc Johnson - Bass
Paul Motian - Drums
AMG:
"Solal remains one of the most inventive, brilliant, and woefully underappreciated pianists in modern jazz. This CD should serve further notice as to his genius in completely reshaping and reinventing standards with the poetic fervor of a restless soul. Bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Paul Motian contribute mightily to Solal's raised temperature and metamorphosed rhythmic and harmonic notions, values he alone should be allowed to define. The proof is in the listening. Six of the nine pieces are standards, and if thought you'd never hear a fresh take of 'Round 'Bout Midnight,' here it is. Intentionally convoluted, more angular than Monk, Solal, completely off the cuff, molds this well-wrought melody in a 20th-century modernism that defies any standard nomenclature. It simply is its own perfectly pure interpretation. A reharmonized 'Night & Day' uses slashing chords to intro a scattered, quirky swing, again a la Monk with a twist of lemon. 'The Lady Is a Tramp' is treated like Swiss cheese; small holes of melody are gouged out while Johnson's bass hits on all eight. There's an off minor reset of 'Softly as in a Morning Sunrise,' a relatively standard-by-comparison take of 'Almost Like Being in Love,' with all loose ends tidied during 'My Old Flame' with some Oriental flourishes. The originals include Motian's free-jazz-based 'Gang of Five,' suggesting 'Out of This World' in a distant galaxy. Motian swings and gets into a dark groove at the end. The remainder are penned by Solal, the title track a spacy ballad with arco bass complement, 'The Newest Old Waltz' for solo piano, quietly rendered and peacefully thought-provoking. Because Solal's recorded output is smallish compared to Oscar Peterson, McCoy Tyner or Kenny Barron, that does not mean he can't rank in the upper echelon of great modern jazz pianists in the here and now. It makes each release that much more of an event, and this one is highly recommended."
( つづきを読む... )
27 May 2012 @ 08:01 pm
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/05/la
posted by Neil
We're in the last four days of Amanda's Kickstarter.
Over the last almost-a-month of the Kickstarter she's gathered a huge amount of support, set records for what crowdfunding can do, made the news internationally, and she is now planning a giant webcast block party in Brooklyn on Thursday night for the people who supported the project and to count down to 11:59 when the Kickstarter ends and she starts to play.
She's certainly got enough supporters, and she's already well exceeded her goal and is somewhere off into the land beyond her wildest dreams. (As I write this she's 900% funded, and looks on course to make this a million dollar Kickstarter.) But I still thought I'd stick something up here, in the last few days, because...
We put together the Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Kickstarter last year, to raise the money to professionally record the West Coast tour we did in November. We raised a lot more money from the Kickstarter than we had expected, so we made everything we could even better than anyone had expected. The double CD we had planned to do became a beautiful triple CD package, for example, and then we did a special super secret bonus CD with a banana on it to go along with that - as well as over two additional hours of extra material we released digitally for all the supporters. We worked very hard to make sure that everyone who supported us got something better than they had thought they were getting when they signed up.
And when the stuff started showing up in people's mailboxes and they started posting happy photographs of their stuff (like these...)
...then people here and on Twitter and on Tumblr started sending me sad messages, telling me they wished they had supported the Kickstarter, they'd missed it as they hadn't seen it, or had forgotten, or were broke at the time -- but was it too late to get the stuff? I wrote back a lot, and said yes, I was sorry but it was too late. We'd only made enough for the Kickstarter backers.
(We do plan to release An Evening With Neil and Amanda commercially, probably towards the end of the year. And it'll be a nice package, but it won't be what the Kickstarter folk got. That was special, and it was just for them.)
Amanda will be releasing a version of her new CD to the public in September. That's the one you'll be able to buy at your local store. But the two CD set inside a book (the blue thing on the right), or the quadruple vinyl in its box, or whatever else she decides to throw in to the other levels, the art-book she's making -- that stuff will only exist for Kickstarter. If you want it, or any of the other rewards (down to the $1 reward that gets you the whole album digitally when it comes out, which I promise will be significantly cheaper than it'll be on iTunes) then this is really just a reminder that you only have four days to click on the Kickstarter link and support it...
...
Amanda did a post the other day on her blog and for backers, explaining that, no, a million dollar Kickstarter wasn't actually going to make her rich. People are signing up for things, she'll make the things and provide them, but she doesn't get to put a million dollars into a swimming pool and then throw it into the air, like Uncle Scrooge. It's not tax-free donations, it's people signing up for services.
So, to clarify:
The Kickstarter exists to fund a CD release (to the public, not Kickstarter supporters) and a tour (ditto).
The Kickstarter money funds the studio and promotional costs (just as a record label might have done). The business model isn't, Make Money From 20,000 people. It's Use 20,000 people to crowdfund the costs of manufacturing and distributing and promoting a CD and a tour to the General Public. And then get rich from that.
You'd think a band who took their video and studio and promotional budget from a record label and used it as income instead of as an investment in their future were being pretty shortsighted. That's the Kickstarter money: it's a video and promotional and design and manufacturing and touring budget. That's what it's for.
...
There. That's the very last post about Amanda's Kickstarter, unless I start blogging from a rooftop in Brooklyn when it's all over, as the NYPD haul Amanda and the Grand Theft Orchestra away. She says they have all the permits in place for a midnight rooftop gig, and they've even hired the police to block off a road and so on. I just think of the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building, and the legion of uniformed cops who appeared to make them stop...
Over the last almost-a-month of the Kickstarter she's gathered a huge amount of support, set records for what crowdfunding can do, made the news internationally, and she is now planning a giant webcast block party in Brooklyn on Thursday night for the people who supported the project and to count down to 11:59 when the Kickstarter ends and she starts to play.
She's certainly got enough supporters, and she's already well exceeded her goal and is somewhere off into the land beyond her wildest dreams. (As I write this she's 900% funded, and looks on course to make this a million dollar Kickstarter.) But I still thought I'd stick something up here, in the last few days, because...
We put together the Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Kickstarter last year, to raise the money to professionally record the West Coast tour we did in November. We raised a lot more money from the Kickstarter than we had expected, so we made everything we could even better than anyone had expected. The double CD we had planned to do became a beautiful triple CD package, for example, and then we did a special super secret bonus CD with a banana on it to go along with that - as well as over two additional hours of extra material we released digitally for all the supporters. We worked very hard to make sure that everyone who supported us got something better than they had thought they were getting when they signed up.
And when the stuff started showing up in people's mailboxes and they started posting happy photographs of their stuff (like these...)
...then people here and on Twitter and on Tumblr started sending me sad messages, telling me they wished they had supported the Kickstarter, they'd missed it as they hadn't seen it, or had forgotten, or were broke at the time -- but was it too late to get the stuff? I wrote back a lot, and said yes, I was sorry but it was too late. We'd only made enough for the Kickstarter backers.
(We do plan to release An Evening With Neil and Amanda commercially, probably towards the end of the year. And it'll be a nice package, but it won't be what the Kickstarter folk got. That was special, and it was just for them.)
Amanda will be releasing a version of her new CD to the public in September. That's the one you'll be able to buy at your local store. But the two CD set inside a book (the blue thing on the right), or the quadruple vinyl in its box, or whatever else she decides to throw in to the other levels, the art-book she's making -- that stuff will only exist for Kickstarter. If you want it, or any of the other rewards (down to the $1 reward that gets you the whole album digitally when it comes out, which I promise will be significantly cheaper than it'll be on iTunes) then this is really just a reminder that you only have four days to click on the Kickstarter link and support it...
...
Amanda did a post the other day on her blog and for backers, explaining that, no, a million dollar Kickstarter wasn't actually going to make her rich. People are signing up for things, she'll make the things and provide them, but she doesn't get to put a million dollars into a swimming pool and then throw it into the air, like Uncle Scrooge. It's not tax-free donations, it's people signing up for services.
So, to clarify:
The Kickstarter exists to fund a CD release (to the public, not Kickstarter supporters) and a tour (ditto).
The Kickstarter money funds the studio and promotional costs (just as a record label might have done). The business model isn't, Make Money From 20,000 people. It's Use 20,000 people to crowdfund the costs of manufacturing and distributing and promoting a CD and a tour to the General Public. And then get rich from that.
You'd think a band who took their video and studio and promotional budget from a record label and used it as income instead of as an investment in their future were being pretty shortsighted. That's the Kickstarter money: it's a video and promotional and design and manufacturing and touring budget. That's what it's for.
...
There. That's the very last post about Amanda's Kickstarter, unless I start blogging from a rooftop in Brooklyn when it's all over, as the NYPD haul Amanda and the Grand Theft Orchestra away. She says they have all the permits in place for a midnight rooftop gig, and they've even hired the police to block off a road and so on. I just think of the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building, and the legion of uniformed cops who appeared to make them stop...
27 May 2012 @ 03:49 pm
http://joeymanley.com/2012/05/27/mark-wa
I enjoy Mark Waid’s comics reasonably well, but I don’t enjoy his comics as much as I enjoy comics by some other people.
Whenever I see that Mark Waid is doing something online, though, particularly whenever I see that he is talking, or writing, about his process of making comics — and by “making” I mean conceiving, writing, editing, publishing, and marketing — I am totally there.
Very few established professionals are as capable and willing to take apart their own assumptions and share their own experiences as thoroughly as he is. I learned a lot from him about editing comics, and positioning them in the marketplace, for example, by listening to the podcast he did while he was the editor-in-chief at Boom! Studios. It was like a master class in impresario-dom, conducted in fifteen-minute, super-casual soundbites. What makes a good first issue. What makes a good cover. And so on.
Now that he’s launched his own webcomic site, he’s blogging about what he thinks he’s learning during the process. I don’t always agree with the conclusions he comes to, but that’s not what is important, either. We are all still learning about this stuff. What’s important is that digital media requires a producer to always be willing to throw away his assumptions — assumptions he’s held for decades, maybe, or assumptions he’s held for weeks or days — in order to take advantage of new opportunities and create new, carefully attenuated, assumptions.
Digital is never settled. It will not become a new form of Business As Usual, ever. The people who try to tell you that they’ve discovered the One True Business Model for Digital Comics (and I swear to God, some of these people actually capitalize the phrase Webcomic Business Model unironically), though well-intentioned, are fooling themselves. The models are always changing. Most of the very small handful of self-sustaining, fiscally-viable webcomic sites currently in existence were launched, for example, before there was an iPad or even an iPhone. Most were launched before Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube. Many of them — probably not most, but a few very prominent comics — were launched before there was a Google.
I know this because I was there.
The environment in which these “hit comics” were able to take hold and thrive is very different from today’s environment. Tomorrow’s will be different still. You can’t create a hit digital property based on the assumptions that made sense five or ten years ago. You can’t even create a hit based on the assumptions that made sense last week.
So yeah. It takes constant changeability, a need to experiment, and the intelligence to analyze those experiments in a meaningful way, to really succeed in digital media. It takes sure-footedness on ground that is subject to a perpetual earthquake. I’m sure there are plenty of people in comics with all of these characteristics. Mark Waid is one of the few who of them is willing to share his analyses in public, as he’s in the middle of his experiment (Warren Ellis is another). Being able to walk in an earthquake and talk about it at the same time is the rarest of skills.
Am I especially interested in the comics he’s publishing? Not yet. Not especially. I like Insufferable reasonably well (that’s not meant to damn with faint praise — it’s meant to praise with faint praise). But I love getting to hear Mark Waid think aloud while he publishes these comics. That’s what Mark Waid is for, for me.
Tagged: comics, mark waid, thrillbent
27 May 2012 @ 11:02 am
27 May 2012 @ 12:50 pm
27 May 2012 @ 02:33 am
Originally posted by ![[info]](http://www.livejournal.com/stc/img/userinfo-support.gif)
theljstaff at Help Us Support Planned Parenthood
Join us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Planned Parenthood, the organization that delivers reproductive health care, sex education and information to millions of people worldwide, has come under fire in the U.S. lately, with many politicians on both state and federal level seeking to end funding (and in a few cases succeeding).
During the month of May, you can send a specially designed Planned Parenthood vgift to your friends to help support this cause. (And if you need someone to send it to,![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/user_ontd.gif?v=92.1)
frank is always happy to receive gifts!) There are three variations ($1, $5 and $10) for you to choose from, but they'd all look good on your profile when your friends know that you stand by something so important.
Thank you all for your help in our support for Planned Parenthood. This promotion ends June 1, 2012; LiveJournal is not affiliated with Parent Parenthood. For more information about Planned Parenthood, please visit: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
-The LiveJournal Team
(If you'd like to help spread the word that we're raising funds for Planned Parenthood, you can crosspost this entry in your own journal or community by using the repost button below!)
theljstaff at Help Us Support Planned ParenthoodJoin us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Planned Parenthood, the organization that delivers reproductive health care, sex education and information to millions of people worldwide, has come under fire in the U.S. lately, with many politicians on both state and federal level seeking to end funding (and in a few cases succeeding).
During the month of May, you can send a specially designed Planned Parenthood vgift to your friends to help support this cause. (And if you need someone to send it to,
frank is always happy to receive gifts!) There are three variations ($1, $5 and $10) for you to choose from, but they'd all look good on your profile when your friends know that you stand by something so important.Thank you all for your help in our support for Planned Parenthood. This promotion ends June 1, 2012; LiveJournal is not affiliated with Parent Parenthood. For more information about Planned Parenthood, please visit: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
-The LiveJournal Team
(If you'd like to help spread the word that we're raising funds for Planned Parenthood, you can crosspost this entry in your own journal or community by using the repost button below!)
26 May 2012 @ 08:10 pm
1. South 5:00
2. Moses 4:45
3. Mint Julep 4:01
4. Hot Today 8:36
5. Vomitation 2:35
6. The Garden 4:16
7. Looking For You 5:52
8. New York 5:03
9. Le Sud 4:37
10. Alcina de Jesus 3:36
11. Southern Feeling 3:20
12. Daddy Tarzan 3:02
13. Blues Des Chiens 4:39
14. Chanson Pour Petit Bout 1:19
15. Moon 4:57
16. Papagayo Frog 3:15
17. Les Morceaux De Fer 5:36
18. Chanson Pour Nathalie 3:12
Nino Ferrer - Guitar, Vocals
Arthur Young - Trumpet
Gerard Kawcsynski - Guitar
Claude Engel - Guitar
Frank Abel - Keyboards
Michel Bernholc - Piano
Lafayette Hudson - Bass
Christian Padovan - Bass
Andre Sitbon - Drums
Danny Donath - Drums
Marc Chantereau - Percussion
Kino Speller - Percussion
Radiah Frye - Vocals
AMG:
"Taking into account Nino Ferrer's personal view of his discography, the album Nino and Radiah should be perceived as his third album (although chronologically this was in fact number seven). It followed the prog rock approach of 1971's Métronomie and the rock & roll leanings of the Mickey Finn collaboration Nino Ferrer & Leggs from 1973. The album is partly named after Afro-American singer Radiah Frye, and her pinup presence flanking Ferrer substantially upgraded the original album cover. Accompanied by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band (aka Ice), Ferrer set out on yet another shape-shifting exercise. Building on the groovy vibe of Métronomie, the album ultimately steers toward majestically orchestrated, laid-back funk. Entirely different from his earlier take on Southern soul, the result requires several listenings before it gently entangles your subconscious and reveals its addictive qualities. Reminiscent of the New Orleans-inspired funk of Little Feat and California singer/songwriters from the same era, it's perfect company for driving the French countryside or West Coast highways. It was recorded in November 1973 and sung in English with one exception. Ferrer's longtime accomplice Bernard Estardy rearranged the track 'South,' adding some widescreen organ touches. The resulting 'Le Sud' had huge commercial appeal, much to the chagrin of Ferrer: he felt the artistic compromise of aiming at chart success had rendered everything else on the album pointless in a similar way to what had happened previously to Métronomie and its leadoff track, 'La Maison Près de la Fontaine.' However, the royalties did enable him to buy a 15th century fortress in the Quercy region, where he would retreat between albums and divide his time between his family and painting. 'Le Sud'/'South' refers to a Louisiana-style mansion situated in Italy: a pleasant and idyllic place where the moody Ferrer seeks refuge from his dark side. Both versions serve as bookends to the album, which works best as a whole. Still, standout tracks are the funky 'Mint Julep' (a relative of the Mojito cocktail) with its fuzzy guitar and the lengthy but mesmerizing 'Hot Toddy.' 'The Garden' with its lazy organ and the bongo-laden 'New York' sound fairly close to what the French band Air would build an entire career on. Remaining a relatively undiscovered gem, Nino and Radiah is in fact up there with classics like Melody Nelson and Polnareff's. (This CD release of the album adds the slightly disappointing, less coherent follow-up album Suite en Oeuf and unfortunately sports a different album cover)."
( つづきを読む... )
