Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

First off. People stuck in the glass box apple store elevator. This makes me laugh almost as much as the oxymoronic concept of a genius bar.

Second off… has autotune warble become a key part of Thom Yorke’s vocal stylings or is it just me? He needs to do a cover of that Cher song. Actually garageband has autotune too, so it’s now in the hands of the (Mac owning and not stuck in elevators) people.

Third off… Ninja Academy has finished their Monday night residency at the Silverlake Lounge. They basically destroyed 5 weeks in a row for me, in a good way. Haru Kuroi opened, and really ruled… and I don’t know spanish or japanese.

Spent memorial day weekend basically looking at eBay search results for vintage amplifiers… almost as exciting as the fact that I didn’t get one… Did manage to grill up a killer t-bone steak (chipotle tabasco / mustard seasoned) and eat it. Wooooooo.

Read a good amount of fluid dynamics stuff… finished building my Tweak-O pedal… and it works, it’s like a great highlighting fuzz to triads and bends and whatnot. That finishes this update, going for daily updates from here on out.

Wouldn’t you rather be listening to new sonic youth right now? Recorded at one of the oldest continuously operating studios, sear sound.

Like… it’s just got hell of presence on the guitars… I mean that seriously. Thanks to DG for streaming incinerate in his myspace profile which led me to look at the SY site… so thank them for putting it online by buying the LP from Goofin’ (or the CD from Geffen I guess).

So I think it can be said that there is simply no band that provides the varieties of religious experience that jucifer does. Their Thursday show at Alex’s Bar though sparsely attended (why??? are people too cool for thursday all of the sudden?) was yet again one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen. ~7000 watts of amplification ~70 speakers, 1 gigantic translucent blue Zickos drum set. Amber and Edgar destroy sound for a living. That’s it. And they make some of their own swag. Then afterwards she sells it and seems genuinely nice, in spite of exorcising the entire crowd at jet aircraft dB levels for nearly an hour and having “rock” “star” tattooed on her knuckles. They mean business. I have no real photos of this show, but the flickr tag jucifer has some of other shows. They play an early show at the echo Sunday.

I learned from their helper guy (he mustn’t travel with them, although who knows) that they actually have a record finished and now that they are signed with Relapse it should come out real soon. BTW waking up at 6 and making phone calls for work is fun after a night like that. Also, the openers were good, but Who” title=”http://www.myspace.com/whoridesthetigerspace’>Who” class=”autohyperlink” target=”_blank”>www.myspace.com/whoridesthetigerspace\’>Who Rides the Tiger stood out of the two.

I had a great mentor in college, who was taken away in an untimely manner a while ago now by an utterly cosmic natural event. He always used these bizarre malapropisms, such as everlater for elevator and gradual student for graduate student. Hopefully he would be happy that I am now a gradual student. R.I.S. R.I.P.

So now onto a review of this ever expandingly excellent Monday’s in May concert series being put on by the Los Angeles Ninja Academy for the Performing Arts at the Silverlake Lounge. Basically they rocked out again. Today though, I think they had some of their best openers: Fascinoma (myspace) which Alice from Eagle and Talon The songs were good, plus a cover of straight up (pretty out in terms of what it actually sounded like, which was good, but I was sort of waiting for a full “straight up now tell me is it gonna be you and me for eva oh oh oh, or are you just havin’ fun” … in fact maybe it wasn’t really a cover of that… I dunno, it was a conceptual paula abdul cover at least) They had Joey from N.A. joining them on bass which was very good. Then Brevi One which was a great gear shift. Basically anyone coins the phrase “superstarving artist” is good in my book (actually I think she says superstars and artists… but you know mislistening is my anti-drug). Her stuff on myspace is mostly short snippets… too bad, but you can get her EP if you have cash burning holes in your pockets.

Hung out with the men of masterslave after, since they are ready to rock it out next monday with unpopable… that show will no doubt be amazing too. Dom hooked me up with a friggin ride home which goes down in history as one of the nicest things ever since I had biked up to Sunset to see the show. People with trucks are awesome. Though with gas prices going where there are I felt like I should’ve dropped a buck on him for the ride… I’m feeling like there will be a communal car movement soon. People just sharing ownership of cars… “They sa a aay that I’m a dreamah, but I’m not the only one…” So yeah, see them next monday, they have the speed and prowess to make even the most jaded listener take notice. (also check them and the rest of the crew in killsonic” title=”http://www.myspace.com/killsonic’>killsonic” class=”autohyperlink” target=”_blank”>www.myspace.com/killsonic\’>killsonic at the firecracker friday)

And that’s it in monday’s LA music news… aaaw yeah

Also, tonight I shall finally regain entry into the studio… prepare for more clark 8 mixes kids! Wooooohooo.

They go and make all landline calls in the US & Canada free. Whooops, that’s awesome.
Here’s the announcement. I had to put a 1 before the area code to get it to work… which is strange since their example has no 1 prefix. But yeah it works. A lot of people seem to have some issues with it, but that can be expected with a popular internet tech.

So it was just another SNAFU at the office err I mean school, but somehow this one required me calling China. I’m sitting here staring at my VZW cellphone (asshats) which doesn’t do international calls (probably for the best, since calling China on it would be way over a dollar a minute) and this other school owned phone that, well, for obvious reasons balks at any attempt to dial 011-anything.

So quick thinker that I am I paypal Skype $10 and called China for just over 2 cents a minute. It took about 3 minutes to set it up (given that I already had a paypal and skype account) That’s pretty wicked. I’m not usually one to just plug a product for no reason, but this one saved my ass pretty seriously.

All this because of a typo in a MAC address. Sadly, the way my life is, I can look back and count at least a couple other times when a typo in an IP or MAC or line of code has sent me into a fury (and cost me $10…?)

So while I’m on the geeky tip, let me throw out a bit of uncommon OpenSSH knowledge, when a session hangs (you go offline, whatever) instead of just closing the terminal window, hit enter a couple of times and type in ~. to kill the session. Enter and then ~? will show you the other things you can do.

Note, ever see a livejournal post with the little mood icon, like “mood: chipper” or “mood: homicidal/suicidal” or “mood: hello kitty” or whatever (not to put all livejournal users into 3 groups, but… uh… I joke) anyway, what would this mood be?

Anyway, next time I’m sick, I’ll be sure not to go to work and get everyone there sick too. Sorry sorry sorry!

For some reason when someone searches for bike pLAgue zine on the old google, my blog has been coming up first… whoops! I dig the publication but I have nothing to do with it, I just half assedly reviewed the first issue here, and now you can get the second issue with out moving your butt away from your computer screen. Right here at the good old internet archive. It’s all creative commons licensed, which I think is a good thing.

Info provided originally by the elite Bicycle Kitchen Bici Blog

Too little!

I’ve been doing crazy amounts of things and stuff.

Yes. Hence, the blog has reached the back burner. Work has taken a turn towards more research with well defined goals, which is awesome. Spent Sunday at Santa Monica interviewing Pei Pei for my friend Tim’s upcoming webzine/zine zine. That was nuts since basically her and the other folks there defy death for fun. Lot’s of backflips. I have a good number of pix, I’ll put those up soon, but maybe just through the zine which is like a month away from final production.

Let’s see, what else, Ninja Academy rocked out again last night this time with a surprise guest (enemy?) on upright double bass. I have determined that the fun of their shows like drops off exponentially as you get away from the line of sight, because A) you can’t see them (and Gongis Kahn and D.P.) and B) it’s a bit harder to really get the punch of their rhythmic blasts.

DJ Frank Leopold basically brings a party to the ones and twos. He’s not the sort of DJ who like every third song you’re like oh that’s a good song, nope they’re all good and they come in nice genre waves. He is fully responsible for the destruction of bar 107 last saturday night.

Ok drawing a blank now, but you know… yeah Clark 8 will be bass free for the next month as Jan goes on a crazy globetrotting vacation with his better half. I’ll try to super duper master some stuff we have half done, add vox, etc. write new stuff… Oh right, finally, Jucifer is playing in Long Beach at Alex’s Bar on the 18th whoo hah. (bring ear plugs, or those earmuffs people wear to shooting ranges)

This is not news… this is perhaps something you’ve heard about already, but you should see it anyway, cause it kills.

Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (realplayer link) Fast forward a little over an hour in.

Well, I was planning on writing a post about Manzanar with some solemn pictures, but my MacBook umm… bit it last night. Hopefully it will come back to life soon.

In more upbeat news, here is a rather quality mix of the song factual that I had a jokey mix up of a while back. These new vox are totally live one take (with some doubled parts from another take in places)… and a brief touch of tambourine. You’ll love it, …or not. The lyrics are here.