End-of-May Public House Weblog Quiz

Ah, May, when every lusty heart, that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. Sharpen your intellect, loyal readers, warm up your printers, & test yourselves & your friends with the End-of-May Public House Blog Quiz. Turn off all mobile phones & your wikipedias!


1) According to Islamic Shia, why is there a fatwa against Coca-Cola?
a) There is a hadith that reads, "If a big quantity of anything causes drunkenness, its small quantity is also forbidden". This includes caffeine & unhealthy beverages in general.
b) Coca-cola has never publicly published its recipe - (once a recipe is copyrighted, the copyright can eventually expire). Because the bigwigs in Islamic Law can't know for certain what is in the "natural & artificial flavors", for all they know it could be pig or shellfish & other creepy non-Haram biproducts.
c) In the United States, the Coca-Cola Corporation is the only one legally allowed to import Erythroxylum coca, which it uses to this day as a flavor additive. Coca leaves are, of course, definitely not halal.

2) Why is a raven like a writing desk?
a) I haven't the slightest idea.
b) because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes.
c) because there is a 'b' in both.

3) Which two countries will be added to new globes in 2009?
a) Flanders & Wallonia
b) East Timor & Montenegro
c) Texas & The Autonomous Region of Schwarzeneggeria
d) Kosovo & Kurdistan

4) In the early 1970s, when Washoe the Chimpanzee started communicating in American Sign Language, whose theories did it undermine & invalidate?
a) Renee Descartes, who taught that animals are unfeeling machines who act only according to instinct.
b) Charles Darwin, who wrote that human language evolved from simpler forms in a common primate ancestor.
c) Noam Chomsky, whose theory of Universal Grammar understood that only Homo sapiens can creatively build sentences from several words, employ recursive language, & construct explanations for novel occurrences.
d) The works of earlier scientists, who believed that apes could understand & respond to language, but could not speak because they had "no thoughts to express."

5) Which of these literal translations of the expression for "hangover" did I just totally make up? (Thanks to The New Yorker's Joan Acocella)
a) "Made of rubber" (Salvadoran)
b) "Hair ache" (French)
c) "Howling of kittens" (Polish)
d) "Smacked from behind" (Swedish)
e) "Ten O'Clock" (Russian)
f) "Carpenters in the forehead" (Danish)

6) And, which of these hangover cures did I just totally make up?
a) Ten push-ups followed by two fingers of beer, repeated as long as possible. (Germany)
b) Sake-soaked surgical mask (Japan)
c) A bowl of water with honey (Korea)
e) “Pickle juice or a shot of vodka or pickle juice with a shot of vodka.” (Russia)
d) A vinyl statue of St Vivian, patron saint of the hungover (available on amazon.com)
f) Burnt toast
g) “Two shots of vodka, then a cigarette, then another shot of vodka" (The Ukraine)

7) Finally, as a farewell (hopefully) to Hillary Clinton's campaign, guess which flopped YouTube video got the least views:

Laguna Beach - shape-note demo

Here (below) is a trial four-part recording of the new shape-note tune "Laguna Beach". I post this only as a demo, to get a feel for what the tune might sound like, with my Yamaha PSR-500M "synth brass" backing it up. Another warning, me singing in four-part harmony may cause seizures or insomnia.

The words are from William Blake's Jerusalem:

I saw a Monk of Charlemaine
Arise before my sight:
I talked with the Grey Monk as we stood
In beams of infernal light.

Gibbon arose with a lash of steel,
And Voltaire with a wheel;
The schools, in clouds of learning rolled,
Arose with war in iron and gold.

'Thou lazy Monk!' they sound afar,
'In vain condemning glorious war;
And in your cell you shall ever dwell:
Rise, War, and bind him in his cell!'

The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

Titus! Constantine! Charlemaine!
O Voltaire! Gibbon! Vain
Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword
Against this image of his Lord;

For a tear is an intellectual thing;
And a sigh is the sword of an angel king;
And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

Download the MP3 here
Sorry - I can't get the player to work consistently, but I'll fix it tomorrow - download it at the link above.

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I Declare War on Metaphors

The organization by which I am currently employed shall remain nameless for the next couple years. Seeing as I'm already hanging on by a thread, it's probably for the best that I don't aggravate them too much, right?
They have led me to the conclusion that metaphors are weak forms of illustrating a point. Living in a new culture has absolutely nothing to do with an iceberg, or with two icebergs for that matter. If I hear anything more about 90% below the surface, I think I may freak out. Furthermore, we are not like lobsters. We are not painfully shedding our layers or whatever and becoming stronger through this trial. Also, adapting to a new culture is entirely unrelated to learning how to swim. You can't just watch, you have to do, and sometimes it doesn't work. Yeah yeah yeah. I can smell these metaphors coming now and it pains me.
By the way, if someone wants to tell me that these aren't really metaphors but something else, I don't really care.
Greetings, English-speaking world!

Edible Chihuahua

The following is a video from several weeks ago, by Miss Jennie Victoria, at my attempt to eat a baby chihuahua named Narwhala in San Diego, California.

Travis John - Printable Shape-Note Score & Demo Recording

I finally have a pass-aroundable score for Travis John, a shape-note arrangement of a folk song about a fallen Iraqi Soldier, written in 2003 by Kate Power. My original post was here. Click on the bottom of the picture to see it large & print it. Or download a pdf here.

Tracy Grammer sings this song & passes out a copy of the music, to spread as a quiet memorial-style folksong protest. Hence, the shape-note arrangement, more so than any other music, capable of reaching across idealogical divides. A history of the song can be read here. A history of Shape-Note Music can be read at this wikipedia entry. A recording of myself singing all five parts accompanied by a 1990s synthesizer can be heard & downloaded right here:

Television Music Videos: Three for May 24th.

Before we start the show, here in the middle of this clip from the scattered biopic, I'm Not There, is my favorite part - Cate Blanchett & David Cross (i.e. Dr Tobias Füenke) as Bob Dylan & Allen Ginsberg, dancing around a crucifix. Today is Mr Dylan's 67th birthday.



Here are three examples of ways to present a song on television, from three different eras. The first is France's entry in this year's Eurovision Competition, Sébastien Tellier's "Divine". It surely evokes Wes Anderson's influence on the continent.



The second is Leonard Cohen singing the original version of "Hallelujah" on what appears to be live European television. I love this style of standing on a set with leaves blowing on the flower & a young-people-of-the-world chorus on the aqueduct.
(While I'm here, I'd like to register my displeasure that in Rufus Wainwright's famous version, he pronounces the line-endings "do you" & "knew you", as opposed to "do ya", which was written to rhyme with "hallelujah". What was he thinking? I also post Cohen's version partially because I don't think much of the Shrek-watching world - a large demographic of my blog readers - are aware of how strange the original was.)



The third is the Beatles' "All You Need is Love", which was the first-ever international satellite hook-up, & altho I couldn't find the exact numbers, I believe is still one of the largest television audiences. What gets my goat is their chewing of bubble gum, which somewhat undermines the gravity of their message. Discuss.

Dismissibly Nifty

You’ve probably seen this before. The haka according to the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national rugby team. They do it before each match. So do teams from other Polynesian countries, like Tonga and Samoa.



What comes to mind:
1) tribal display for the paying public
2) jingoistic glorification
3) dismissible misogyny

To consider:
1) The haka is a performance art.
2) Before the European musket, wars between horticultural societies usually ended when either side had their first casualty.
3) True. Though I just read on the ol’ Pedia of Wiki that Maori women also perform hakas.

Photos: Comparison of a Kraftwerk Album Cover (1973) & me at my Sophomore Prom

For Your Consideration!

Here is an image of the 1973 LP "Ralf und Florian", the album from Germany's groundbreaking electronic musicians, Kraftwerk. Pay close attention to the general look of Ralf Hütter (pictured left), who on this recording is credited as performing "vocals, keyboards, electronics, stringed instruments, drums & percussion."


Now, here is an image of me at my Sophomore Prom, which we cleverly called "Morp", 1998.


And another with my date, Miss Debbi Scop of Miami, Florida.

Apple-Tropically

Conversations in WalMart, by the Oakland Airport, 20th of May, 2008.

Me: I think I'm going to go buy a one dollar beach ball before I leave.
Dad: And it will probably last just as long.
Me: About one dollar long?

This advertisement was on a poster in the boys bathroom at the Chabot Space & Science Center (in the Oakland Hills):

Sign up now Junior Space Explorers for our Space Exploring Summer Camp!
Space is Limited!

"Space is Limited" seems a poor slogan for aspiring Space Explorers. They should at least be able to find Space in a Space Cadet Summer Camp.

I was against Walruses before I was for them. From The New York Times today:

Calves might also need time to learn how to play — music, that is. It turns out that Odobenus is an acoustic genius, its body an all-in-one band. Males woo females with lengthy compositions that have been compared in the complexity of their structure and phrasing to the songs of nightingales and humpback whales, but that use a greater number of body parts.

Walruses sing with their fleshy and muscular lips, tongues, muzzles and noses. They sing by striking their flippers against their chests to hit their pharyngeal pouches, balloon-like extensions of the trachea that are unique to Odobenus and that also serve as flotation devices.

In full breeding tilt, the bulls sound like a circus, a construction site, a Road Runner cartoon. They whistle, beep, rasp, strum, bark and knock. They make bell tones, jackhammer drills, train-track clatters and the rubber-band boing! of Wile E. Coyote getting bonked on the head. They mix and match their boings, bells and knocks, they speed up and slow down, they vocalize underwater, in the air, at the bubbly border between. They sing nonstop for days at a time, and their songs can be heard up to 10 miles away. They listen to one another, take tips from one another and change their tune as time and taste require.

Nobody yet knows what a female listens for while she hears one or more suitors singing, but listen she apparently does, for she eventually dives from her icy perch and into the water to mate with a well-tempered male, and evidence suggests she will shun anyone who can’t carry a tune. And though females in the wild do not sing as the males do, they have the anatomical chops to make music and will happily perform the entire walrus Billboard chart if given the right incentive — like the promise of food or affection from Leah Coombs, one of the masterly trainers at Six Flags.

One more. From Jenny Ruth's unexpurgated diaries, an excerpt from a Sunday in c. 2003, when she was teaching English in Ecuador:

We had a "fiesta" at our home last night.
It was probably the worst party I've ever been to.

Happy Mimosas Witnessing Sunday, May 2008

As we approach the fourth anniversary of my graduation from college, it is time to reflect upon my various non-academic achievements. I've been a vegetarian the whole time; a non-violent non-driver; smoked the hookah; & co-founded the Mimosas Witnesses, a semi-religious organization which meets on Sundays (or on other observant days of rest) & witnesses Mimosas, Lemonosas, Pomosas, blended Mangosas, et cetera, et cetera. There is often fresh fruit & a spread of other delicious brunch foods involved. Someday we will go evangelical. Today we brunched at the Thai Buddhist Temple at the end of our block, which has a lovely non-secular alternative to witnessing Mimosas every Sunday (on Russell Street at MLK in Berkeley! It's all donations to the temple.) We have, indeed, snuck mimosas in there before, which complements the sticky mango rice magnificently. Speaking of rice, my winning Sunday overheard comment-of-the-day was at a table heatedly discussing the global rice shortage. One girl loudly blathered: "Rice is like so fucking easy to grow!" Incredible solution, just teach those stupid foreigners how to grow rice, problem solved. It reminds me of my exasperation at the Irish Potato Famine. Why didn't they just, you know, eat something else besides potatoes?

Friends! Proselytes! You can now become a "fan" of the Nargileh on Facebook! I suppose I'll work on a Mimosas Witnesses Group later this week. Any potential members among the diaspora?

Video: Kobayashi versus the Giant Bear

I've been down in Laguna Beach & San Diego for a week, playing on the beach with two impossibly tiny Chihuahua puppies, named Narwhala & Grizelda (a whale & a bear.) This video comes as a recommendation from Jennie Victoria, the great Kobayashi the Japanese eating champion takes on Nature:

Yodeling in Denglisch

I’ve found the forerunner to the modern sitcom: A cycle of seven one-act plays from 1893 by Arthur Schnitzler titled Anatol. In the act “Episode,” we see our philandering hero Anatol bitterly disillusioned when Bianca, a circus-girl with whom he has once had an affair, fails to recognize him on her return to Vienna. In the act “Abschiedssouper,” he gives what he intends to be a farewell supper for the ballerina Annie, whom he’s tired of, only to find, to his unjustified indignation, that she has come with a similar intention.

In June, Schnitzler’s country Austria co-hosts with Switzerland the Eurocup of soccer, which has a higher worldwide following than the Olympics, second only to the World Cup in the gathering of humans for any peacetime reason. One national team with intermittent success and constant participation in the Eurocup is England. During qualification England drew an easy group and took their chances for granted. After all, they had countless superstars on their men’s national team. However, like Anatol, their performance wasn’t memorable and they failed to impress. In a last-ditch effort with home field advantage at Wembley against lowly Croatia, England fully intended to serve their opponents a farewell supper but instead saw themselves dumped in an embarrassing 2-3 loss last November. This year’s Eurocup tournament events will have the dubious distinction of being conducted largely in Continental English for the masses of tourists, but lacking any national team from the English speaking countries of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, or Malta, all who failed to qualify.

Travis John

And a healthy welcome to Mr Brains Aha!, newest contributer, specializing in Sports & Leisure. Just a few orange questions from the cards: How many stumps are there in a cricket wicket? What game does the New York Institute for the Investigation of Rolling Spheroids specialize in? What's a fruit machine? Find out soon, with compelling reports from Mr Aha! Sports & Leisure correspondent. His first report about soccer is right below.

I wanted to post some of my shape-note arrangements, but I'm having trouble converting Finale Notation .mus files into PDFs or JPEGs. Anyway, I've been writing &/or arranging some sacred folk choral music - The following recording is me singing all five parts, accompanied by a my Yamaha PSR-500M synth, to be used only to get an idea of the song & what it might sound like with a larger group. I apologize if a creepy quintet of my voice induces any heartburn or insomnia.



"Travis John" is an arrangement of a 2003 song by Kate Power, which I heard Tracy Grammer sing at the Freight & Salvage a few weeks ago (her version is on that myspace link). Power wrote the song from the point of view of a Portland neighbor of hers, a young man who died in Iraq in 2003, who she claimed came to her as a spirit to help her compose the song. Grammer sings it alongside several songs about war & passes out copies of the song to help spread it. My arrangement adds some Sacred Harp harmonies & rhythms, but a bit more square, dissonant & modal. I'll post a down-loadable copy of the score when I figure out how to do that.

Under a weeping willow tree, you planted roses.
There with my family, eternal ghost is.
I am a boy, full of promise, full of freedom.
Now the joy is dead & done, I am gone.

The Parvenus versus the Old Guard

On May 21 European soccer reaches its finale after 13 acts in the UEFA Champions League, a tournament featuring the top teams in every league from Portugal to Israel. The finalists this year happen to be both from England’s Premiership league: Manchester United and Chelsea London. I despise Chelsea. They are owned by an oil oligarch who is always televised sitting next to a different supermodel each gameday in his shadowy executive box. He's Roman Abramovich, a billionaire from Russia who bought the team five years ago and infused it with cash for star players explicitly to buy trophies, the highest of all trophies being the Champions League. The fact that a billionaire’s money can in only five years subvert other factors like team morale, long-term stability, community support, and entertaining play – and still lead to success – excites such vitriol in me that I should change the subject.

In the 1784 tragedy “Egmont”, Goethe thematizes the occupation of the Low Countries by Catholic Spain. The Dutch governor Egmont spends five acts ignoring everyone’s suspicions that the Spanish king will execute him for being too kind to protesting Flemings. In the final act his lover Clärchen takes to the streets trying to arouse the citizenry in Egmont’s defense. When this fails, she takes poison. Egmont finds out about Clärchen’s death, sleeps well in his jail cell, has an epiphany that Holland will be free from Spanish rule, and is later executed.

The political issue in “Egmont” is one of the local nobles’ inherited rights versus a new power, the strong centralized government in Madrid. It’s not really about an underdog. It’s often pointed out that the uprising in the Netherlands was conservative in character. Liberation was its aim, but it was essentially concerned with restoring ancient privileges and freedoms.

I intended to cheer for Manchester United on May 21, or actually, hope for Chelsea to lose. I wish it was as simple as cheering for the underdog. United have won far more trophies throughout their history than Chelsea. United even have a corrupt owner of their own, a fat Floridian named Malcolm Glazer who has sent the team into debt. Chelsea is an upstart. They were recently a small club in a big town losing to plenty of other London teams. Then they got bought up and started winning, whereas United have always been rich and have always been winning. Maybe in following this tragedy I was originally pulling for Egmont and his revolution, but who would want to pull for aristocrats and their inherited rights? One outcome no longer feels better than the other. Soccer fans will pay tribute to either champion on May 21 and accept their fate with reluctance, then serenity. And Goethe wouldn’t have it any other way. The wheels of the gods grind slowly but exceedingly fine.

Design Competition: Exploding Maroon TNT of Love

Friends, as you have noticed, for six or seven years now, the background image for this website has been an exploding maroon thingy. It was an image linked directly from another website, which apparently has vanished, leaving my background blank~!

I must work all day, important things which must be completed, so it may be a few days before I can meddle with the html (always a laborious brain-breaking exercise for me.) In the meantime, here was the image. If anyone is interested in designing a new one, Please! I'd love to mix this up, & at the very least, it will be displayed in the background on the studio of The Colbert Report.

Rules:
-It must be that same light-dark-red color, & muted enough with enough white so that text can be read over it.
-It must scream "Wowee!", in a half-apocalyptic, half-ruminative way.

Easter Anthem at the Golden Gate

The first recordings & photos are trickling in from last weekend's Golden Gate Sacred Harp Convention.


Here's William Billings' Easter Anthem, 236 in the big book, recorded by Will from Kalamazoo. Sorry it's over-driven, but we're singing real loud in a medium-sized old room.

Easter Anthem
William Billings (1746~1800)

The Lord is ris'n indeed! Hallelujah!
Now is Christ risen from the dead,
And become the first fruits of them that slept.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

And did He rise? Did He rise?
Hear it, ye nations! Hear it, O ye dead!
He rose, He rose, He burst the bars of death
And triumphed o'er the grave.

Then I rose,
Then first Humanity triumphant
Passed the crystal ports of light,
And seized Eternal Youth.

Hail, all immortal hail, hail.
Heaven all lavish of strange gifts to man,
Thine's all the glory,
Man's the boundless bliss.

I will post more later, as I weed thru for gems. The whole afternoon can be heard here.

Berkeley

I've made four copies of my slow-builded cathedral, Prophecy & Doggerel, of which almost all of the nonsense poems can be found scattered across this website. Meanwhile, while I wait for the Nations of the Earth to heed it, my newest newer project is top-secretly being kept under wraps, until such time as its location can be disclosed, declassified. However! Bad at secrets, & without revealing the nature of its nature, I'll publish the text of a tune called "Berkeley".

Oh, Jesus like a mountain faun upon the verdant plain,
Oh, Jesus like a coming dawn, close as your jocular vein.
So long I've wandered down below, so long I've lived in pain.
That I will love my Lord above till only fossils remain.

Till only bones remain, my Lord, and all the plants are dead,
A mighty angel clothed in cloud, a rainbow upon his head.
So long I've traveled on this ground, so long I've died in dread,
Now I will come to you, my Lord, and live forever instead.

Election Recap from Slate

As the Nation waits for Guam's votes to be counted, here's a Seven-Minute Summary: