D'You Know Juno? And the Sound of August Rush?

I don't remember buying a "soundtrack album" since Pretty in Pink, until recently that is, and I've bought two in the last couple months. The music opens up Juno and I caught myself thinking thinking that it's going to be a loooonnng movie if we have to listen to this low rent folk for 2 hours, but even that first tune (All I Want Is You by Barry Louis Polisar) quickly grows on you as you realize that it gloves the movie.

Back to the first soundtrack, which was August Rush, I got it for my wife for Christmas. (I wrote about the film here.) Van Morrison's "Moondance" is the classic here but it's the interplay of the music and the world and the world of the film that makes this one special. It's rich and symphonic and Irish rock and experimental; ethereal then cathartic.

Juno's got The Kinks, Mott the Hoople and The Velvet Underground providing classics (and Sonic Youth's cover of The Carpenters' "Superstar" which I hadn't heard before and it's pretty devo). But it's The Moldy Peaches and Kimya Dawson that rule the film and set the tone. The simple arrangements and acoustics sucked me in to the characters. Not that I identify with Juno herself much, at least not with her predicament (Uh, teen, pregnant). I didn't feel any parallels with Bleeker either (Hmm. What'd'ya think, Cindy?). Maybe high school was just too long ago. I did empathize with Juno's dad (J.K. Simmons); and with the Would-Be-Adoptive-Father-Wishes-He-Still-Rock-n-Rolled (Jason Bateman).

And the Juno soundtrack has Liner Notes! They're written by the Director, Jason Reitman and provide nice insights, just like Liner Notes of old!

Come to think of it, my son did buy the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? when it was fresh (2000) and these are in that same vein.

(I only see one soundtrack album on David Rawson's top album lists (1996's Trainspotting came it at #72 and he usually only takes the top 40), but there are more individual songs scattered among his top 100 songs lists so maybe there's something here to his liking....)

Dem's L.A. Love Fest

I caught a few minutes of the Democratic “debate” last night, and some of the analysis on NPR this morning on my drive to work. I was glad to see that the candidates refused to take any serious snipes at each other. I suspect that what precipitated that is that McCain is now the presumptive nominee for the Republicans. He is the strongest opponent, precisely because I’m not alone in thinking that among the Republican candidates, he is the one I would prefer if we had to have another Republican President next. That is, a lot of moderate Republicans and Independents won’t cross away from him the way they would from Romney, Giuliani, or Huckabee. (We don’t, by the way. Have to have another Republican next in the White House, that is.)

So Obama and Clinton cooled the hostilities, and even didn’t dismiss a ticket pairing the two of them as P and VP.

McCain won’t energize the evangelical Christians, so that will cost the Rep’s some votes, unless Hillary is at the top of the Dem ticket, then they’ll come out just to vote against her. I suppose it’s also possible that a third party far right Christian could appear and split some vote off from McCain, but they may be too savvy at this point for that (unlike the liberals, where Nader would still like to jump in).

If Obama is on the Dem. ticket at all I think he will energize a lot of young people and a lot of African Americans – both groups with a lot of folks who might not vote at all otherwise, so it is just a net gain, not a double gain where the votes are actually pulled away from the other party. To do that he needs to be at the top of the ticket, then the Religious Right may stay home on Election Day. That combination could swing some of the southern “red” states to the Dems, enough to counter the loss of a big swing state like Ohio or Florida should that happen, and it could if McCain picks up a bunch of independent middle-aged and older white male votes.

Hopefully Edwards will continue to pull energy into the Democratic electorate. He still needs a job, and while he isn’t exactly Bobby Kennedy, I’ve already heard speculation of his being appointed Attorney General.

Software Career Timeline Posted

It's not a resume, just a few highlights, and it needs some fleshing out, but I wanted to provide something of a roadmap for anyone digging into the professional "me".

You can find it here.

Obama in 'Bama

Today I drove down to Birmingham to see and hear U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the Bartow Arena on the UAB campus. It was a capacity crowd with a lot of young people; I guess that should be expected in a university setting, but it still took me a little off guard. He is erudite and personable; a realistic idealistic pragmatist. And I believe I feel the same way that Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, said she felt in her endorsement yesterday of Obama. She said that he is the first candidate to ever make her feel the way people tell her that her father made them feel about a Presidential candidate.

(Click on the links to see the snapshots that I took.) He was introduced by the local congressman, Artur Davis. Davis, representing Alabama's seventh district which includes Birmingham, is currently the only African American Congressman (or Senator) from Alabama. The historic relevance of this Congressman and this Candidate sharing the spotlight in this city did not go unremarked. All the same, it was a diverse crowd that cheered plans for ending the war in Iraq, increasing the national focus on education and healthcare, for open honesty in Washington D.C. and for an end to the era of George W. Bush and his cronies.

Obama spoke for almost an hour. And I listened to half of his audio book on the drive to and from Birmingham, "The Audacity of Hope". I enjoy listening to him talk; he has a Rod Serling-esque cadence and has an excellent command of the English language. He does not do the bumbling good ole boy that our current President does, yet he's still friendly and he can joke and tell a story: "...and everybody loves my wife Michelle. Yes, everybody loves Michelle! Hey, friend, don't be grinning THAT much...." And he riffed on "Hope": he hopes to have an Enviromental Protection Agency that protects the environment; and he hopes to have a Federal Emergency Management Agency that knows something about managing federal emergencies. And right now I hope he gets the chance.

My View of "Watchmen"

From my freshly minted review: "...an epic story, original in its juxtapositions..."

Cheaters Review

I've just posted a Current Reading List page and linked it off my Reviews page. I'm sure I'm not diligent enough to keep it up to date, rather it's just a sneaky way of being able to flog some books that I may well never get all the way through. Not that I wouldn't like to, it's just that one thing drives out another and my day job drains a certain amount of my mental and eyeball energies. And some of this stuff is relevant, with the elections upcoming and all.

A Review is not a Fragile Thing

Posted a brief review of Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things". From the review:
"...a story about a story and still Neil gives us the back-story...".

Pink McFactoid

Author Dan Pink posted a McFactoid yesterday, about which I have to say:

That’s generally true across the Quick Serve Restaurant spectrum (that most of their business is via the drive-thru), from Arby’s to Zaxby’s, which is one thing that makes HyperActive Technologies’ “Bob” product so interesting. From the gohyper.com web site:

“During busy meal times, no task is more difficult than anticipating your food production needs. Our flagship product, HyperActive Bob, actually sees the flow of customers coming into your lot and takes over the task of making real-time cooking decisions…”

Similar real time “Impending Demand” systems are being employed for such things as managing elevator usage in office towers.

(Disclosure: I was a founding employee at HaT, but have moved on.)

Pollsters? Pooey

Having recently become more of a fan of Barack Obama and his run for the Presidency (I was impressed by his Google interview), I wasn't thrilled to see his second place finish in the New Hampshire primary this week. But I was thrilled to see the pollsters get it wrong.

One pundit tried to explain away the unrealized Obama victory prediction by saying that New Hampshire voters don't like to follow suit to the Iowa voters. I think it is just as likely that the New Hampshire folks don't like their outcomes to be predicted and treated as a fait d'accompli before the fact -- that is, they just liked messing with the polls. More power to them.

Constitutional Convention in Iowa!

I watched just a few minutes of the Iowa Caucuses on TV last night. While I was interested to some extent in which candidates came out on top, what was more heartening was the process, at least in the one Democratic party precinct that I caught. They were seriously, and with decent debate, considering whether to send proposed amendments to the U. S. Constitution to become part of the Democratic Party platform. These were good, average Americans from our heartland and here they were having a serious discussion about amending the Constitution, and now with emotionally charged things like flag burning, but with practical and serious matters. The one I watched mostly was a proposal to strip corporations of the rights of actual citizens, i.e. those things guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Apparently case law has built up to where corporations have protection like free speech that make it difficult to limit things like billboard placements. I don't remember the exact wording of the amendment but it included something to the effect that corporations needed to be doing a preponderance of societal good in order to maintain the liability protection that they enjoy. The debate got down to where the liability should land, e.g. should the board of directors become personally liable? Should the common shareholders? the corporate officers? I think the idea has merit as a way to hold corporations, including multi-national corporations operating in the U.S., more responsible for their actions. But the big point is that typical Americans are still capable and interested in addressing issues at this fundamental level. It was good to see.

Elf Power Follow-up

Apparently Elf Power is an old Favorite for some folks .
It's actually not too surprising that my good friend and former WHRW DJ David Rawson was already well aware of the band. The embarassing part is that my own web site has had an Elf Power song listed on it for years. I host David's top music lists for each year, and you have to go all the way back to 1999 to find Elf Power's, "Will My Feet Still Carry Me Home", as his number six song in his Top 100 Songs of 1999.

Elf Power Discovered at Kohl's Department Store

While shopping the post-Christmas sales at Kohl's I noticed they were playing a better brand of muzak on the in-store sound system. The one song that I captured into my memory enough to look up on the web is a nice sing-songy chant-a-long called "All the World is Waiting" by a band I'd never heard of: Elf Power. They're one of these new-fangled lo-fi indie bands, this time from the hallowed alternative haven of Athens, Ga. The video is here on YouTube, it's composed mostly of a "long tracking shot" (that's film-speak) of the singer and his guitar walking through a party (directed by Nick Canada & Tim Nackashi). It's not exactly the Ray Liotta / Lorraine Bracco Copacabana entrance in Good Fellas (Martin Scorsese, director), but it's pretty swell for lo-fi/indie. Check it out.

Microthrilling beats trainspotting

"I love the concept in the title / sub-title..." from today's brief review of Micro Thrills: True Stories from a Life of Small Highs.

Mobiles on Her Own

Over the Thanksgiving holiday my daughter did four more "mobiles", mostly on her own: an ice rink theme, a fenced area, a sun/cloud scene and a Christmas heap.

August Rush in November

Three of us went to see August Rush the movie this evening. It was unexpectedly good. Kind of a realist fairytale about the magic of music, Cider House Rules meets Stardust. The actors for the three main characters were pretty new to me and so they were fresh: the kid (Freddie Highmore) and the star-crossed parents (Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Myers). But there's a supporting cast of more familiar faces like Robin Williams as a character reminscent of The Fisher King and Terrence Howard as a very likable social worker.

The film moves a bit fast in parts -- I would've liked to savor some of the kid's musical awakening a bit more as well as his teachers'/discovers' amazement. Maybe a book version could have dwelled on these more, but what couldn't happen in a book is the magical musical integration, like where the film shows cutbacks between his mother's solo cello and his father's Irish rock band singing and guitar while the two songs play simultaneously and are interwoven. It's a nice effect. So is turning the everyday motions of wind on wheat, and people and traffic in New York City first into a symphony of joy and then into a cacophony of confusion. It's cool.

Pleasantly Robin Williams doesn't steal the show; the music does. We're already talking about picking up the soundtrack.

Richard Bach's Illusions Reviewed

I recently re-read this classic. Click my quote for my review.

"That the loss of my corporeal self would simply set my ethereal self free...."

November Tree

Mid-November and a tree
stands alone,
in the rough between what will be a YMCA
and what almost is a savings bank.
But today the tree stands alone,
a hundred feet from anything
made by man and it doesn't care.
Nor do I at the moment.
There is no weather here, now;
the air is calm but not dead,
the sky has a high haze;
though it is mid-morning
there is no visible sun,
no light and shade.
It's not overcast
in any noticeable way,
no oppressant cloudbase.
The temperature is just right.
In my full sleeves and pants I
am not cool (much less cold) and I
am not warm (much less hot).
No leaves fall.
No people pass.
A tree stands alone.

Guiltless

Yesterday, a Saturday, I ignored the pile of mail that had built up over the past couple weeks. I ignored my club duties. I paid no heed to the abundance of items on my "to do" list and the other adult pursuits or lazinesses that I might have indulged in on any given Saturday. Instead I spent much of the day with my daughter creating "mobiles". She had made one during the week in her art class and wanted to do more. First we ventured to Hobby Lobby for supplies and then we warmed up the glue gun. Using that gun may be her favorite part, but that's fine, this is the first time she's been allowed to use one. It was great to spend a few hours with someone who is old enough to use a heated tool but also young enough to treat a pound of plastic beads like a chest full of treasure . There are a couple photos. The one with the green base and the doves she did in class. The white based one we did at home -- the concept was all hers, you cross under the arch to get to the glory and riches from the "poor" side. We spent hours on transient art and I don't feel guilty one whit about the time.

Just Discovered! Poem Published Three Years Ago!

I was googling myself for the usual narcissistic reasons, this time in the guise of "C. R. Patton Jr.", when I found something unexpected. The top hit was to one of my poems, "Kramer's Clone Dance", but not on my ChipsterZone web site, but rather on the website of our local arts, nightlife and entertainment magazine, Valley Planet (here's the current issue). Apparently they'd published it a few issues after I sent it in but they never let me know. (Submissions to "The Deep End", the section where it ran, are unpaid.)

I wrote Kramer's Clone Dance back in 2002 with a little help from my uncle, Rev. C. Reynolds. I submitted it to Valley Planet in early 2004 and it ran in the July 15, 2004 issue. (We were also credited on the end-of-year Thank You page in the same issue. Other poems from the same issue: Anonymous is My Favorite Author by Jeremy Bradford; Slumbering by Nancy Compton Williams; untitled by Michelle P.; and untitled by Mary Susan Cannon.)

A published poet. Who knew?

First Figs

I was out in our yard yesterday, innocently killing fire ant mounds, when I noticed that some of the figs on our fig tree were turning purple. Hurray! These are the first figs to actually ripen. We've have quite a few that just got tough while still green and eventually fell off -- some last year and some during this long hot summer. It hasn't been any wetter lately but I guess the cooler temperatures agree with the fig tree.

Any way I picked 3 and ate one and it was quite good. Moist and reasonably sweet. I planted the tree almost a year and a half ago. The late hard frost this spring killed it right to the ground but it grew back quickly and is now about 5 feet tall.

Here are some pictures. This may be the first real fruit that I've planted and eaten. (Yes, I realize that tomatoes and many other things that grow in vegetable gardens are technically fruit, but here I mean traditional fruits. Like, er, figs, I guess.)