Palladium, '81. Looks to be the same show as my Montana post, but clearly not the same recording. The banter at the beginning leads me to think this was broadcast, and the lines at the bottom of the picture suggest VHS recording.
Month: July 2012
Pygmy Twylyte
Given the sort of mood this day's put me in, I was considering perennial downer The Torture Never Stops (I saw ZPZ do a great version a few years ago -- really a mournful, plaintive flute part).
But fuck that, let's go with something a little more fun. I think we could all use it.
According to the uploader, this is Edinboro State College in Pennsylvania, 1974.
Ineffable
There's a word Ford Prefect uses when he feels like he needs to say something but he doesn't know how to say it: goosnargh.
I'm going to say some things anyway. Maybe that's a bad idea. Guess we'll see. Maybe I'll stumble, fugue-like, onto some deep and profound truth; more likely I'll say something trite, insensitive and offensive -- in which case at least my newfound posting frequency means it won't be on the front page for long.
In the early hours of this morning, a man in a gas mask and a bulletproof vest walked into a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, threw two cannisters of tear gas on the ground, fired once into the air and then began firing into the crowd. The death toll currently stands at 12, the wounded at 59. Those are the details as they're currently being reported, though it's still early and the information could change.
In the meantime, well, everyone is shocked and sad and horrified and, in compliance with human nature, trying to make some sense of this appalling act by making it fit some sort of narrative.
Was the killer a deranged Batman fan? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't; I don't think it matters. Maybe he just picked a movie he knew would be crowded. Maybe he picked a movie where he thought people would think he was just a guy in a costume.
But there's something that feels like Batman about it, isn't there? An over-the-top villain on an over-the-top murder spree. There's no making sense of it; it's a horrific cross of violence and theatricality. If this man wasn't doing an intentional impression of a Batman villain, then he was tapping into something in the zeitgeist that forms the basis of all the Batman villains.
There's something Alfred says in The Dark Knight:
Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
That's the kind of man we're talking about today -- a madman, a broken man, a man who cannot be understood rationally and whose motivations are fear and chaos on a scale that an ordinary mind cannot reconcile.
I heard an interview on NPR this morning -- it doesn't appear to be online yet -- with a reporter on the scene who also covered the Columbine massacre. The interviewer, sensibly, emphasized the fundamental differences between the two shootings, but, also sensibly, asked if the police procedure for responding to shootings had changed since Columbine.
The reporter said that yes, it has -- that in the case of Columbine, the police took time to set up a perimeter, whereas now they focus on getting in and stopping the shooter as quickly as possible.
And that makes sense, too, looking at something that's changed in how we see criminals. Setting up a perimeter and a dialogue is what you do in a hostage situation -- what you do when you're dealing with people who can, at least on some level, be negotiated with, reasoned with.
Random acts of violence are something else entirely. You cannot reason with someone who is just killing for its own sake -- there is nothing you can offer him to make him stop. He's not threatening lives in order to achieve something he wants; ending lives is what he wants.
It's a hard, hard thing to read about, to hear about.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing linked to Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?, Marilyn Manson's Rolling Stone article following the massacre which is sadly relevant today. He discusses how there is no single simple cause for such acts of violence, but how the media and society seek simple answers, seek explanations for the unexplainable. And how his own stage name is a criticism of the media's tendency to treat mass murderers like movie stars.
In the days and weeks to come, the news media will talk about this. They'll speculate. They'll engage in crass discussions of how this will affect the movie's box office, or what it's going to mean for Obama and Romney in the polls. Maybe they'll try and engage in some scapegoating and try to blame it on comics or video games, maybe they won't -- even speculating on such things is just too much for me right now. All I can think is how horrible this was and how my heart goes out to the victims and their families.
Perhaps the deepest and bitterest irony is that Batman itself is, on a fundamental level, a story about two people who went to see a movie and were gunned down, and the devastation that wrought on the son who would never see them again.
For Calvin
Berlin, '72. Another great post by YourArf on YouTube; he says it's an audience recording, which is surprising given the audio quality.
(Also: this is the only song on Grand Wazoo that has lyrics -- and here it doesn't have lyrics. Kinda neat.)
Standin' in Line
Not planning on seeing Dark Knight Rises this weekend.
I am the biggest fan of Batman I know.
But do you know what I'm an even bigger fan of?
Not standing in line when it is 108 degrees out.
And no, I don't want to see a midnight showing either. I've got work tomorrow.
Here is a short list of things I have stood in line for over the years:
- Episode I
- Episode II
- Not Episode III (I had learned my lesson by this point)
- A PlayStation 2 (actually Brad did the bulk of the standing in line on that one)
- A Wii (which I did not get; I was the third or fourth guy in line but all but 2 of them came in damaged; I later purchased one just randomly walking into the same store and asking if they had any, no line required)
- Spamalot
- Bruce Campbell's autograph
- All three Lord of the Rings movies
- The Avengers
Now, don't get me wrong. I had fun all those times. (Even the Star Wars ones.) I can see the appeal of standing in line with a bunch of nerds with similar interests. It is a conversation starter. Sometimes it's almost like a party. (Not a very good party, but, you know, one of those parties where people show up in costume and there's no beer or music.)
So, you know, it was fun to do a few times. But I think there are lots of other fun things to do in Tempe in the summer. Like sit in my air-conditioned house and play video games.
I'll catch DKR -- maybe next weekend, more likely the weekend after. Do it up right, see at at the IMAX.
But I'll wait until there are no lines.
Some Stupid with a Flare Gun
I just heard that Jon Lord, keyboard player for Deep Purple, died two days ago of a pulmonary embolism.
So for tonight's Zappa post, I present, of course, Deep Purple's most famous song -- about a Zappa concert.
It's an appropriate video -- not only does Lord introduce it, but, while the song's best known for the guitar part, this version has a solid keyboard solo.
(Also appropriate: the fire started during a keyboard solo, too.)
Echidna's Arf
By the Grande Mothers: Don Preston, Tom Fowler, Robbie 'Seahag' Mangano, Christopher Garcia, and Napoleon Murphy Brock. Aachen, Germany, just over six weeks ago.
Frank's not dead. He just smells funny.
A Venn Diagram of a Circle Inside a Bigger Circle
Dear DC,
Thank you so much for putting an obnoxious-ass banner ad for The Dark Knight Rises across the top of all my fucking comic books. Everybody loves banner ads, and I was just wondering how you could make comic book covers as distracting as television shows!
Kudos on targeting the completely fucking imaginary demographic of people who buy DC comics but are not aware that there is a Batman movie coming out! Four dollars is far too small a price to pay for this bold and completely redundant innovation!
Stalkerin'
Last night, when I was digging for old Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic I wrote when I was 11, I ran across a page that had set up a profile for me.
Nothing I'd signed up for; a site that had apparently trawled search engines and found things out about me.
For example, it had an address and phone number on it that were both, at various times, attached to my domain registration information for this site. It asterisked out the last four digits of the phone number, as well as the street numbers of the address -- but I don't know how much that would prevent anyone from finding the house, seeing as the site's got a satellite photo of it with an arrow pointing to it.
Now, I haven't lived at that house in years. And I've been pretty good about keeping my current address off the Internet for most of this century. But you know, I did pick up a stalker once who posted vaguely threatening satellite photos of old addresses he'd found by Googling my name. He was laughably incompetent at the whole stalker thing, but it was still a little on the creepy side.
There are other things about that site that made me curious about its data aggregation. I know where it got my (old) address and phone number, but it also knew my brother's name, and I'm curious where it found that. (Not like it's a secret or anything, I'm just wondering where and how the scraper found it.) It also listed my age -- as "early 40's", which I have to admit makes me feel a little better about turning 30 in a couple months.
But you know, it's a bit disquieting to know that that address and phone number will be associated with me forever (or at least for years to come). If I ever attract any competent crazies, that could mean harrassment for whoever lives in those two places now. (My domain is now registered to the address and phone number of the hosting company. Please don't go after them if I piss you off, either; they're an understaffed local business and their job is tough enough as it is.)
There was a story a few months back about Spike Lee retweeting what he believed to be the address of accused child-murderer George Zimmerman but turned out to belong to a couple of elderly retirees. You can imagine how that went.
So, you know, not that I believe that the sort of gibbering maniac who stalks people who make him angry on the Internet will heed this advice, but here it is anyway: do not engage in Internet Mob Justice. You want to send an angry E-Mail to a public address or call in a complaint to a public number, okay, but leave personal phones and home addresses out of it. Not just because that's basic human decency, but because you might get the wrong person.
But Internet Mob Justice could make for a whole other post, or a whole series of them. (And, mind, I haven't actually been subjected to any, beyond the weirdo with the satellite photos a few years ago, nor do I expect to; I'm just indulging in general musing right now.)
But back to the point. Back when I used my real, personal addresses and phone numbers as contact for this domain, I wasn't thinking about long-term effects or unintended consequences. And I think that's an ongoing problem in the era of social networking.
Back in April, Cult of Mac wrote a feature on an app called Girls Near Me, which used Facebook and FourSquare location data to help users find people in the area and pull up their profiles. Charlie Stross had further comments.
At minimum, the app had potential for simple skeeze -- sliding up to a girl at a bar and pretending to coincidentally be interested in the same things she was. At maximum, well, full-on stalking. The app was pulled in pretty short order, but the app was just an aggregator -- people still post location data and personal information; that information is still out there, whether or not it's aggregated by a skeezy-looking app.
People post about being on vacation, and their houses get robbed. You'll recall I was out of town this past weekend -- but I didn't mention it until I got back. (I even scheduled two posts to go up while I was gone, to keep up my post-a-day streak.) Now, as I said, I don't think my current address is available anywhere on the Internet -- and my readership is far too small to pose any kind of statistical likelihood that somebody's waiting for a chance to rob my house -- but at this point it's just a best-practices thing.
I dunno. Guess I'm not going anywhere in particular with this. It's just weird, the amount of shit that's out there, the amount that's accurate, the amount that once was, and the amount that's just pure goofy-ass bullshit. (Still wondering where that aggregator got the idea I'm in my forties.) Something to think about.
favesearches
Updated the Favorite Searches List. Because people find this site looking for the strangest things.
(I recently changed the site's tagline from "Now with more gray!" to "Now with content!" I am kind of tempted to change it to "Your #1 source for god damn whoremonger bitch asshole!")