Untethered@Large

don't be afraid to howl at the moon

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DB Casting Hyundai Pride Ben Leyland from Ben Leyland on Vimeo.

Family 4, Father

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Idolizing the Greats/Idle-izing Ourselves

I spent the most awesome weekend in Coachella last weekend watching Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, the Who, and Roger Waters making a cross-generational raucous from the rooftops. There was one particular thing that struck me, and the contrast was particularly noticeable considering I was on the same grounds as are used for the April Coachella festival where a multifarious brigade of contemporarily relevant bands from all degrees of the sonic spectrum are represented. 

Whereas I congratulate anyone of any walk in life for wearing their identity on their sleeve, and whereas I would never denigrate anyone for cartwheeling over my Honda Civic to demonstrate their commitment to equal rights or eating firelighters to prove their belief in addressing climate change, these lifestyle and belief-system commitments were very differently represented at “Oldchella” vs “Coachella 1.0”. 

At Coachella, everybody is very vocal, very glammed up, very intent on making a political/cultural/sociological statement based on an aesthetic turnout. At “Oldchella”, the crowd, a diverse mix of generations, was much more modestly, yet still expressively, turned out. At Coachella I felt the need to pack my bag with fanciful multicolors, whereas at “Oldchella”, jeans and a grey shirt were sufficient. Drug use seemed minimal, with the exception of the inevitable weed smoking. Drugs have their place in the human quest for meaning, for sure, but dropping E, Molly or acid wasn’t a thing here from what I could see, and it wasn’t a necessity from what I could feel. Seeing bands who represented and had said more about political and social change than many do in a lifetime, meant there was less of a need to co-opt, or to attempt an individual journey to the heart of the event. Merely turning up said enough. Sometimes spending hours on a wardrobe choice says more about your political activity. Sometimes resorting to dropping a pill, a tab or the like, is an attempt to transcend something that’s already transcendent. Why make Everest higher when you’re on the summit?

Coming from LA where tight jeans, thick-rimmed spectacles, or flamboyant attire are donned by writers, hedge-fund traders, bartenders and insurance salesman alike without saying much more than that they frequent consignment clothing stores, saw Blackfish and Snowden, and integrate kale and chemtrail conspiracies in equal measure into their carb-free salads, it was refreshing to be surrounded by people who simply dressed for the weather and knew that underneath their fabrics, they were gay, straight, conservative, liberal, pro-Israel, read up on Syria, or aware of a war in Yemen.

The “Oldchella” shows quite effortlessly demonstrated that music composed over forty years ago, when audio engineering allowed little in the way of fakery and auto-tune brushstrokes, performed by the very same people who wrote it that many years later, can still retain its multi-sensory impact. I’m not saying this based on a biased apologetic. I’m not the drunkard eating week-old leftovers and calling Michelin to award stars to the tupperware container. This was Paul sounding like the Beatles, Roger’s band playing Dark Side of the Moon effortlessly. It was clear that Waters’s eccentric perfectionism was well placed - even though his granular insistence on note-by-note accuracy resulted in an almost identical live performance of the album tracks, they felt reinvigorated for a new generation, and instead of the stuffiness of something you’d expect from an album-identical performance, something sonically majestic that made you feel like you could smell the carpet of your bedroom or living room floor as you played or heard the songs for the first time.

When first announced, the festival was dubbed “Oldchella”. Even on Friday, Mick Jagger joked about the “Palm Springs retirement home for genteel musicians”, but the weekend proved very explicitly that the music of that age is still just as relevant today as it was then. Whatever your opinion on Dylan’s current delivery of his classics, his set list demonstrated a sensitivity to not just the requirements of the concert format (best of Dylan), but also to the sensibilities of a crowd embroiled in a heartbreaking divorce from itself.  “Everybody [should just] get stoned”, because “it ain’t no use in wondering why, if we don’t know by now…it’ll never do somehow”. Ending with Masters of War, as if that choice needs explaining. His words are as true now as ever. Even if he refused to be filmed after 20 minutes, we have to understand, accept and respect his choices (Dylan clearly exists somewhere on the spectrum and his inability to process social and emotional reactions that satisfy us is none of our goddamn business; if you want to idealize it, it’s his statement on how access to celebrities no more guarantees your understanding their art than does smelling your partner’s asshole give you a window onto their soul). Neil Young asked us to look at “[M]other nature on the run in the 21st century” (not 1970s, per the original lyrics), and Roger Waters’s extensive lambasting of Trump and his comments on Israel/Palestine couldn’t have been a more contemporary platform, while his entire performance revolved around a wall and a floating pig he’s been “trotting” out for years.. Even when McCartney played FourFiveSeconds, he omitted a cameo from Rihanna and Kanye because, I think, they wanted to show people that these performers are still relevant to people young and old today without any assistance from the current generation.

These songs represent a time when art and music were synonymous, when political and social comment could come together seamlessly and impact upon a generation. One of the things that struck me was, especially by placing Bob Dylan and the Stones back to back on Friday, quite how common blues chord patterns were in their music. While you could look at it musically as an “unoriginal” time of merely copying basic 12-bar blues not far different from the accusations today that all music uses the 4-chord pattern, there are very clear distinctions from contemporary music: (1) the opportunities taken by the artists lyrically made those well-trodden paths fresh and new; (2) at the time, the use of those tropes by British bands served to introduce African-American blues culture to Europe and expose even the people in the USA to it for the first time because of persisting segregation residue; (3) the use of those tropes however cliche it seems in retrospect, took a similar tack to many other writers who inherited but reinvented a tradition to both glorify and evolve it for the next generation. Unlike now where use of the existing tropes is more a specifically conceived commercial enterprise driven conceit.

It’s very tempting to be nostalgic and romanticize the past in 20/20 hindsight, but the main takeaway from this weekend was the beautiful fusion of generations and the absence of judgment from the entire affair. The symphony of understanding and human understanding, acceptance, and more than anything, the listening. During Coachella there’s such an abundance of noise that listening to anything in particular is a relative, unfocussed concept. Focussing on anything without a fear of missing out is impossible.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people barely noticed or cared about missing a presidential debate that would only serve to dish out division and hungry anger. Not because they didn’t have an interest, but because in this moment, people from all walks of life and ages sat, stood, danced, jived, vibrated in a shared space where all that mattered was being together.

To quote Radiohead, “for a minute there, I lost myself.” I wish that we could lose ourselves a little more regularly because, if you’re at one with everything around you, being lost is just a more beautiful and playful version of being found. Furthermore, when you realize that your past, present and future is so inextricably connected to a thousand million things, alive, dead, yet to be born, and even inanimate (ever stubbed your toe?), it’s kind of silly to get bent out of shape by the silly things. 

In fact, oftentimes our inability to shake outdated or simply wrong opinions is based on a groupthink defined by sovereign or political borders and our self-identity is something that changes through life based on externalities most often if not always not directly related to or caused by the categories used by the powers-that-be to sway our decisions. 

Once we realize that our identity is something more fluid and amorphous than borders, that most of our information comes from sources we rarely check or aren’t even equipped with the skills to properly evaluate, and that more often than not, that our psychology and decision-making/prioritzation schemas are based on phenomena entirely separate from, pre-dating or at least not entirely reconciled within our minds (e.g. fear of forming relationships because of childhood relationships gone sour), our ability to agree with each other is enhanced, not undermined. 

Why? Idealist much? Maybe. But when I stand amidst a crowd of 75,000 people from all over the world every night for three nights and the only interactions were loving, and more than just frivolous get-to-know-you chats, in a place where when conversations turned political the overall conclusion was a confusion over how that other shit can be happening while people of all walks of life are exchanging dusty booger sneezes, I find myself contemplating a lot. 

Life could be simpler, easier, more connected, less conflictual and, although I am sure there are complications, more often than not, those complications are the result not of endogenous issues, but of agendas that have deliberately divided the world into an organization chart, a bureaucratic cat’s cradle of unfathomable foolishness that has turned difference into a greyhound race where not only does nobody catch the rabbit...the rabbit isn’t even real.

Every time we give in to thinking this way, we do ourselves in and shorten the breadth of our consciousness.

In short:

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

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Happy Frieday (at Mama Shelter Los Angeles)

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The Millenial Whoop

A friend of mine just sent me an article penned by Patrick Metzger over at The Patterning, “The Millennial Whoop: A Glorious Obsession With The Melodic Alternation Between The Fifth And The Third”. Metzger’s general thesis is best summarized in his own words as follows:

“It’s a sequence of notes that alternates between the fifth and third notes of a major scale, typically starting on the fifth. The rhythm is usually straight 8th-notes, but it may start on the downbeat or on the upbeat in different songs. A singer usually belts these notes with an “Oh” phoneme, often in a “Wa-oh-wa-oh” pattern. And it is in so many pop songs it’s criminal.”

As I sit here in an apartment complex in LA inhabited quite regularly by incipient pop stars, reality TV show stars, social media celebrities, while listening to Katy Perry’s Prism, I can’t pretend I’m unaware of the homogenization of music and the slow creep to the middle, as it were. I also have my own theories on developing trends in music - has anyone noticed that the male pop voice is becoming increasingly androgenized and more trebly? Perhaps it's a move to accommodate the reality of more and more people listening to music on mobile devices or otherwise poorer quality speakers where higher frequency sound quality dominates, or a deeper sociological move that represents a more extensive blurring on gender lines? As much as I like the pretentious and academically attractive sound of the latter theory, it’s clear the former is more compelling and I would be remiss to not credit David Byrne of the Talking Heads for this particular perspective.

That said, there’s really nothing new about Metzger’s proposition and it’s difficult to understand whether or not there’s any real value in a music journalist or the editor of his publication in accrediting such a story if they don’t possess even the most basic musical theory grasp. The first, third and fifth notes of the major scale are the basis of the major chord, so the alternation between them melodically isn’t really something we haven’t seen extensively throughout musical history. Furthermore, if this sort of jeremiad, grumpy old man journalism is going to exist - and I’m always up for a good rant about the state of things - that’s all well and good, but there are so many unsigned or underrepresented acts out there who would benefit greatly from the time and ink of these social influencers who claim to care so deeply about the despairing thinning out of musical quality. Let’s get these people heard guys, instead of wasting time lamenting an irreversible commercial reality.

Also, when I say irreversible, I’m really not even saying it’s a bad thing. We live in a world of big banking, corporate greed, lobbyist dictated impure, non-democratic politics where the commercial reality is way short of ideal, but I think in this case there’s something much less nefarious going on, at least in terms of social impact. Of course there is money exchanging hands, favors cashed in and a precarious industry so unwilling to take risks that we end up with a steady stream of identical musical acts and songs. Worse still (and also very confusing), we have had plagiarism litigation or media focus on alleged plagiarism relating to genuinely great songs that have artistically impacted the scene in a meaningful way (Oasis’ “Shakermaker” lifting “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing:; Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s “Blurred Lines”. 

However, the important thing to bear in mind, and something that everyone seems to be overlooking, is that (1) the existence of melodic or rhythmic formula in music is something that has been around for a long while, and the qualitative judgment of songs has not attacked on the basis of constrained and structured format; (2) since when did music have to be pretentiously judged on the basis of artistically iconoclastic departure from the norm?. Regarding (1) just listen to fugues, reggae, salsa. Regarding (2): music has a very real social function, and historically music had an intimate relationship with religious and social rituals whose sole purpose was to inculcate a sense of belonging and group cohesion (what Durkheim calls “collective effervescence”). I have an extremely varied taste in music and always struggle to answer that most pigeonholing, “get-to-know-you” icebreaker question “What music are you into?” Jazz, soul, rock, pop, electronica, dub, I listen to it all, and what colors my decision in the moment isn’t always (in fact, rarely is) some desire to engage in artistically deep work. I often find deliberately confounding art is - as fascinating as it is to have a peek at troubled souls - not much more than a narcissistic attempt on the artist’s part to estrange themselves from any responsibility to work through their psychopathology. 

When I’m in the car on my commute, pre-gaming on a Friday night, taking a relaxing nap or bath - I choose the music I listen to for functional reasons. I want a higher or lower tempo, a song which reminds me of an experience, a feckless, cheesy song about soppy high-school romance. Whether an escapist tendency or a concentrated, meditative immersion in a specific place and time evoked by a 3 minute dance with the speakers, it’s a primordial physiological and psychological appetite that’s being attended to here. Can we stop this cultural imperative of sanctimonious “I don’t watch TV”, “I don’t really listen to music on the radio/the Top 40/EDM. Anyone who talks like that is just incapable of fully letting themselves go. It’s got to be exhausting to live a life where you can’t admit to enjoying the moments where the only thing expected of you is your ability to not expect anything of yourself. I love Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Calvin Harris. I don’t care if this makes me a “basic bitch” - if “basic” is defined by the dictionary (so english of me, I know) as “forming an essential foundation or starting point”, I can live with my basic-ness.

My last point hits on something else that hasn’t been discussed by Metzger, or any of the multifarious critics of the modern age’s musical standardization. The “whoop” of which Metzger speaks might have another meaning that, if not objectively correct, is at least worthwhile entertaining. Maybe these vowel-based, lyricless hooks reflect an understanding that (1) expecting people to remember the lyrics to the constant barrage of songs is unrealistic; (2) live performance trumps record sales, so ensuring people at concerts can sing along is more important than having Yeats-standard lyricalness; (3) in an era where the traditional pillars of authority have been undermined, information is so ubiquitous and immediately accessible, and where despite the justice of our legal battles for equal rights, they also only ironically serve to make people think more about human difference than they would have done otherwise, maybe people just want to hear the sound in a theater, or imagine it in their cars, of 7 billion people just opening their mouths and uttering a sound that transcends all language and introverted pre-occupation. Something which makes us, for however brief a moment, realize that we all just want to sing when we feel real emotion, and that, strangely enough, the moments we feel most alive are the ones where we know words can’t say a goddamn fucking thing.

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GBR diving team. Reasons to be alive. #toohot

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The Child Inside

There's a video of my dad on or around his 70th birthday dancing daintily to Singin' in the Rain, hopping and jaunting around with the exuberant tomfoolishness of a child. Many people often talk of retaining your inner child, very few really do it. Dad does. He's a legend and a silly-billy, a wizened Gandalf, and a Dennis the Menace in one, wonderful albeit ginger hair-chested packet. He doesn't need high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten your experience. If there’s one thing I could do in this life that would allow me to say, with pride, without conceit, honestly, that I have truly lived, it would be that I have nourished my inner child, given voice to prankish and errant infantile nonsense, and thrown water balloons onto convention as it sits down on my whoopee cushion. Not to downplay the specialness of this quality in my dad, but I now realize this trait is something you find mostly in the baby-boomer generation. I would hazard a guess that, and clearly to be very selective and reductive, this characteristic owes its genesis mainly to a mentality developed during and after the Second World War, and throughout the Cold War. We’d do well to take a leaf out of their book. Those imminent and immanent threats of destruction hardened people, but didn’t eat away at the soft caramel compassion inside that shell. A silliness born out of a recognition that everyday may be our last, and that when the whole world is at odds with itself, when clearly nothing makes sense, then let’s stick our tongue out, make fart noises, and laugh at the nonsense of it all, preferably while dancing, hugging and infecting our atmosphere with candy-colored love.

I went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see Sting and Peter Gabriel perform. Honestly, I came by the tickets accidentally on purpose. Maybe a few drinks too many or a memory coated in dust bunnies, but suffice it to say a week or so before the gig, someone reminded me we had 6 tickets to deal with. I dealt with it. Of course, Sting and Peter Gabriel are legends, but my gut wasn’t supremely bothered by seeing them, but I figured it would be an experience, if only for the picnicking Hollywood Hills sunset atmospheric. When they began playing, however, everything shifted. Everything - not just a throwaway and redundant use of the word everything because I can’t be bothered to articulate a list. Literally the entire cosmos contained in a single tear that never stops trickling down your cheek.

To see two people who have been playing for 30+ years still have so much fun on stage, and still retain the same vocal excellence is genuinely awe-inspiring. I mentioned my dad earlier, because there were moments of onstage chatter and jocular movement that reeked of the sort of behavior one would expect of a dad intent on embarrassing their kid in front of their friends. Baby-boom and drop the mic. These guys really, in an age of vocally corrected, planned “spontaneity”, showed us how it’s done. The idea for the concert format - taking it in turns to play their songs, but also occasionally playing the other’s song (Sting’s Shock the Monkey was incredible) - came from them simply playing around together with both their bands and enjoying an elbow-knocking, friendly competition to outdo each other, song by song. They figured other people might enjoy that. No theatrics, no contrived choreographic, just pure, raw, unadulterated and unicorn-beautiful music.

I share with you one thing. Jo Cox, the MP assassinated earlier this year was a friend of Peter Gabriel’s. He wrote and dedicated the following to her. The message is simple: love can heal. Not to be understood as a vacant platitude - not “oh, by the way, love is great. I think. Maybe. I mean, I’ve felt it, and I just smoked a joint, so it makes sense” love; this is, “I hear you all talking about responses, social policies, anger and hatred, retribution and revenge. Just a thought, but did you ever consider love and, what’s more, don’t you think it’s concerning that love as a response didn’t feature earlier in your thought-process?”. Enjoy and let yourself feel the emotions instead of stifling them in the name of keeping it together. If humanity can’t keep it together, then maybe we should approach our problems in shattered pieces, instead of pretending we’ve got it under control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOai80IA984

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Grace VanderWaal

I don't usually post these things, as a lot of it is sensationalized BS, but this girl, as many of you have probably already seen virally shared, is incredible. Not just because she's a great talent, but because she's so humble. She's not one of those young American girls with a mother pushing her into the spotlight to make up for her mum's own failed desire to be famous. Her remarks betray a wonderful humanity and true confidence - one not born out of arrogance but out of acknowledgment of the true miracle of luck in this world to be in the right place at the right time, when so many talented individuals never see the light of day. Her performance isn't musically flawless - she forgets the lyrics at one point, her nerves get the better of her, the tempo is inconsistent, the ukelele is out of tune (as it is on most of her YouTube videos). But she is real, all those "mistakes" are authentic artefacts in a world of auto-tune, and more than anything else, those "mistakes" show that she is affected by the fact that, for the first time in her life, the world is validating her talent and what's best, before this point she's become brilliant without ever worrying about what other people think of her. Enough to make a chronic, obsessive (as he should be in this industry) cynic like Simon Cowell make a statement such as "she's the next Taylor Swift". Someone in his position wouldn't and doesn't make comments like for shits and giggles. In 2016, with the death of so many talents, with the rise of tyrannical despotic presidential candidates and the errant decisions of Britain to leave Europe, thank god there are human beings who aren't giving up because of the dismal future of pension disappearance and global warming, but who are treading forth because what's more important than anything else is the power of music to bring us together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNxO9MpQ2vA

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Piano Bar LA

Piano Bar in LA is going to be torn down in the name of "gentrification" this year. It's not a bar, it's a feeling, it's a vibe. It's like Hacienda in Manchester in the 1980s (c.f. 24 Hour Party People movie). They may well relocate it post-condemnation. That's my hope, but while you can relocate a building, you can't recreate an emotion outside of its endogenous genesis. The soil on which it stands was kissed by angels before their first heartbreak. The music played there is testament to ripped jeans in a time when denim tore because of wear and tear, and not because a fashion designer contrived the cleave in the name of contrived punk. I could say, "Piano Bar is probably the best live music venue in LA" but that would be a lie.  It IS the best live music venue in LA. No cover charge; they pay the band; they don't ask the band to bring a minimum number of people to the bar to get paid, or worse still, as often happens in this pay-to-play environment, enough people to not have to help cover the night (as if you'd ask the kitchen staff to pay when not enough people eat at a restaurant). I've been going there since 2012. It was one of the first bars I went to in LA. It used to be a Capitol Records studio, and long after those days ended, it still fulfills its purpose as a recorder of timeless sonic meaning.  After 4 years of patronage, whenever I go there, the bartenders call my name, the door staff hug me, and whenever I bring friends, they hug them or shake their hand and introduce themselves by name. This evening my friend noted how much that warmth made her feel like more than a patron, but a part of the family.  Tonight I saw one of the resident bands play their last set there ever; the lead singer's parting gesture, what he said before the last song about standing across the street as it's torn down whilst smoking a cigar with a grin on his face for all the good times reminded me of what it means to everyone. My favorite band plays at 11pm on Thursdays. I won't name them. Just go, if you can, before October. They played a Ray Charles cover. A slow ballad with a deep bass backbone. A gut wrenching, heart clenching moment of passion and pain. While it played, the chandeliers were dancing. The lights flickered as if pre-saging the fuse-breaking moment when the steel ball of destruction smashes the front windows. "It won't be long before it's crying time"...tears were streaming down my face. This isn't just a location for me. This is a uterine portal of time-traveling after-glow. The song finished and I approached the piano-tinkling lead-singer to tell him how much the song moved me to tears. The closer I got to him, the more it became obvious that, despite the dim light, his face was glistening with tears. We both knew, before we even exchanged words, that the song meant the same thing to both of us. The time draws near, the crying time, when our darling brother, sister, father, mother, our family bar will sing its last. I will be there that day, and I know I won't be alone. Piano Bar, I have either never or rarely at most professed my love for brick and mortar, but you are a building whose foundations run deeper than wood, steel, mud and earth. Your girders protrude from our melodic heart, and your sound will resonate in our ears long after your days are numbered.

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Out, proud and standing by your side #prayfororlando #oneorlando #orlandounited #orlandoshooting #loveislove #loveisloveislove

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Life is good when your have the right people in your life #californiasunsets (at The Grove)

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#mozzagram deliciousness didn't become self-conscious until this dessert was created (at Pizzeria Mozza)

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Incredible set. Watch out world. (at The Hi Hat)

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My phone is alas dead, defunct, pro-choiced, GOP'd, so contact me here for the time being. 

Long live Samsung's conspiracy with the murkier parts of human inefficiency and their league of unholy interest in digital interface frustration. I'm glad you and Oculus teamed up - Oculus so they could benefit from your mobile agility, and you so you could benefit from Samsung's VR edge (any articles battling the two companies against each other are unresearched idiots who haven't done their homework to find out the two are working together, not against each other). 

Now there is hopefully a chance that you will, through a strategic partnership that is first-in-class, actually develop handsets that are actually competitive. For too long you have competed with Apple and your handsets have certainly delivered better cameras, larger screens, and certain apps have more seamlessly integrated (think Tindr where you can upload unpublished photos as profile pics, whereas the iPhone requires Facebook prior to Tindr publication, assuming you'll narcissistically post selfies just so you can update your Tindr). However, generally speaking your handsets have made me feel like an abused spouse who, although beaten and bruised, at least received attention from their "significant other", however meted, as opposed to the Samsung spousal relationship where we lay next to each other in bed, silent, unremunerative and at a loss, barely capable even of bitter words to mark our acerbic separation. 

Your fingerprint lock screen is like a hapless lover's search for a clitoris on a male panda, your blog reader apps close and reopen at the top of rather than the current position of the article being read, your clickthrough rate for someone trying to go from text to call that person/Google Maps location is about 3X too long (come on, Apple allows one click on the person to call them; you require one click to herald the number in the dial screen, another to confirm, and one more to call). 

Your voice activated Google search on the home screen is at first blush quite cute and affordably whore-ish, but it soon becomes apparent that a vocal search through this app utilizes an entirely different browser that means any later attempt to retrieve one's search lies outside any basic history search. Furthermore, multiple uses of the Chrome app entail the opening of different windows, so any attempt to search through currently open tabs in a meaningfully sequential way is rendered as useless as Ted Cruz's understanding of the infrastructure of ISIS.

Whereas the iPhone leaves the initial purchaser humbled with a minimal array of pre-provided apps, the Samsung Note overwhelms in the vein of a perverted lover who fails to warn you of the golden shower before they unveil and spring forth. I was never one for the iPhone tutorial upon unsheathing my new purchase, although if something truly revolutionary were in the offing, I was always ready for my briefing. The Samsung, however, presents you with almost 50 apps with little to no introduction, like a friend who invites you to a family dinner and disappears immediately upon your arrival. My mobile experience, maybe unique and uninformatively so, is such that I move from device to device. Until recently, these have been Apple-Apple moves, and I haven’t needed much more than a restore of apps previously installed. This recent move, for pure idle curiosity and masochistic bite was Apple-Samsung - why assume that I require all these apps, amongst which count the entire panoply of Google apps, as well as any number of gaming apps that, while I may regale in their joy, haven’t been marketed to me and stand anonymous and unrequited in the shadows. I deleted them all - were I a gamer, I may have dabbled, but, and I don’t know about you, I wan’t to build my phone from scratch, I want to personalize it before I receive warnings about memory usage based on pre-installed/un-uninstallable apps beyond my vote. Apple understood this - they tried to give us a bare minimum of things they figured we’d want, and leave the rest to us. Samsung is like a prostitute that wakes us up in the middle of the night with a ferret up our ass and an invoice just in case that was something we might have wanted to experience. Ferrets are great, don’t get me wrong, and who knows about the anal benefits of their exercise tendencies, but please at least give me a heads up?!

Sure, Google Drive is a great thing. The ability to save and manage files from your phone is exactly what should be possible from them. Further, I love being able to send attachments or links to Google Drive from my phone; the iPhone is so 3rd party interface driven/so antipathetic to Microsoft/Adobe software that using the phone as a work email device makes things often unwieldy. The Samsung makes it possible to send multiple format attachments to emails and that’s fantastic. Also, (as mentioned before) Tindr on the iPhone only seemed to allow Facebook photos to be added as Tindr profile pics, while the Samsung allows any gallery photos to be used. 

Overall, however, I choose the iPhone. If I experience another call where my ears’ delicate epidermal dance is enough to cancel a call through the touch screen, I will expect a manslaughter charge to be levied against Samsung alongside my murder charge. Also, my rebate checks never came in the mail, thank you very much!

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Let’s Die Hard & Dance

God know what the spirits of fate have concurred upon with the back to back deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman. Maybe it’s just the meeting of the meteorological and the cosmological - the weather’s shit, so the fabric of meaning too follows the same course. Either way, a genuine British element in the silk of theatrical clothing has been lost this week. David Bowie was indeed a transplant to the USA very much like myself, but was one who retained his Britishness, and if anything reacted against and/or danced with it. His home in America may have been borne of many reasons, but among them was a desire to materialize what America had kind of but not quite realized in the pursuit of freedom and self-actualization. America was the place to follow your dreams, to be yourself, to, moreover, be proud of whoever yourself was and became. It may have deviated from that path, but it was on it, and certain people saw and encouraged that, Bowie included.  Rickman, for the most part in his roles, excelled in playing a man entirely, if not against his true will, defined and limited by a purpose established externally. Whether the Sheriff of Nottingham, Hans Gruber, Steven Spurrier (Bottle Rocket) or Severus Snape, Rickman always played a character defined against his better judgment as a crook and villain. Even in Love Actually, where he clearly recognizes the direction and desperation of his infidelity. He always played the stereotypical British villain, trapped in a self-perpetuating circuit of “this is what I do, even if I know it’s not in my best interest.” Like Bowie who taught us to be whoever we are, so too did Rickman leave an indelible lesson with us, most powerfully through Snape. Live a life which denies your truth only if the world depends upon it. Otherwise, open wide, sing loud and let the birds be embarrassed to wake you in the morning for the paucity of their song compared to yours.

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The moon tonight looks like the gods are filling a water-balloon mad getting ready to throw it at Pan, the little scamp. May your devilish spritely selves, and carefree magical ne'erdowells journey into the night with the singed eyebrow smell of innocent trickster children learning about the world around them

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"The nature of one’s own being where apparently rages the struggle between the finite and the infinite is to be grasped by a higher faculty than the intellect… For the intellect has a peculiarly disquieting quality in it. Though it raises questions enough to disturb the serenity of the mind, it is too frequently unable to give satisfactory answers to them. It upsets the blissful peace of ignorance and yet it does not restore the former state of things by offering something else. Because it points out ignorance, it is often considered illuminating, whereas the fact is that it disturbs, not necessarily always bringing light on its path." D.T. Suzuki

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Namaste who you are, never change ❤️ (at Zion National Park)