What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, March 23, 2005

   HOW'D THIS HAPPEN?

Somehow I've gone weeks without mentioning the new series of "Doctor Who," now officially announced by the CBC -- Tuesday nights at 8, starting April 5th (hooray, my tax dollars at work!).

Thanks to a friend, I've cheated and watched a bootleg DVD of the first episode (how could I not?) and I'm happy to say it's terrific -- a bit sillier than I would've liked and lacking the depth of the surprisingly-brilliant new redo of "Battlestar Galactica" (more on that some other time) but still an awful lot of fun.

And it seems I'm not alone in geeking out -- a new BBC press release says:

Celebrity fans of Doctor Who include: Jonathan Ross, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Jon Culshaw, Elizabeth Hurley, Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Dawn French, Mark Gatiss, Lenny Henry, Mike Gatting, Mark Lamarr, Victor Lewis-Smith, Ken Livingstone, Nick Park, Jennifer Saunders, John Sessions, Toyah Willcox, Robbie Williams, David Tennant and Rob Lowe.

French & Saunders clearly love the show, but...Rob Lowe??? You learn something new every day.

But the important celebrity here is Christopher Eccleston who took on a risky part and has succeeded brilliantly -- the Ninth Doctor is already one of the best and may one day rival Tom Baker's 'Connery' status in fan's hearts. In an interview in last week's Observer, Eccleston...

describes himself as 'emotionally tied up with the central message of the programme, which is: seize life, it's brief, enjoy it. The Doctor is always saying, "Isn't it fantastic?", which is one of Russell's favourite words. "Look at that blue alien, isn't it fantastic? Oh, it's trying to kill me. Never mind, let's solve it."'

Labels: Doctor Who

In the interest of fairness, I need to take a rest from wailing about evil hypocrisy over matters of serious interest, and indulge in some of my own. We're all very nervous about the way the Internet is eroding our privacy...unless we're talking about famous people. Then it's open season! It's especially fascinating when certain celebrities are considered dreadful enough to deserve it (looking at you, Paris Hilton!)

This week's victim is fawning TV entertainment "reporter" Pat O'Brien (you know, the "Insider" guy with the mustache and less talent than John Tesh). Our man Pat had a way-too-private telephone conversation leaked out onto the Net (New York gossip site Gawker says, "We’ve heard the audio files and would call them disgusting — but really, if a man likes cocaine and anus, who are we to judge?")

In a not-very-surprising coincidence, O'Brien checked himself into a rehab clinic this past weekend. Again, I marvel at the ruthless efficiency of the Internet, as there are already several posts on the hilariously cruel new blog, "I'm Stuck in Rehab with Pat O'Brien."

Technology is a beautiful thing.

I've been edgy over this Terri Schiavo circus for a couple days now. Originally, I didn't want to post anything. Why add one more opinion to a debate that none of us should've been involved in to begin with? As usual, however, I'm just too disgusted by all this to keep quiet.

I feel for the parents who want to keep her 'alive' and I feel for the husband insisting that she never wanted to be prolonged this way. It's a painful decision, no matter how you look at it, but it's not one the goddamned US Congress should try to make. Terri's husband and parents have been fighting this out in several courts for a decade now and, like it or not, the law found in favour of her husband. A society is built on law but that's not good enough for the Republicans' "culture of life" (so if you disagree with them, you're a deathmonger -- Orwell would be impressed).

That all this is coming from George Bush, who signed a bill in 1999 authorizing hospitals to pull the plug on life-support patients if their families couldn't pay, and Tom DeLay, possibly the most ethically-challenged House majority leader Congress has ever had, is simply unbelievable. The long-time stench of hypocrisy from this bunch is starting to induce gagging.

DeLay was quoted as saying, "One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America...attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others." So God kept Terri in a "persistent vegetative state" for fifteen years as an eventual present for conservatives? His "mysterious ways" are creeping me out. One of DeLay's liberal 'attackers' posted a Republican 'talking points' memo crowing about the Schiavo case as "a great political issue...a tough issue for Democrats."

The Republicans have seized upon a private family dispute over a complex moral question and turned it into a political football and media circus. We're at the point now where even Mel Gibson is weighing on the matter (direct from Drago's Seafood Restaurant!), though someone should remind Mr. Braveheart that, when we decide to pontificate on someone else's life, we should aim to spell their name correctly.

Conservatives always rail about their mission to keep big government out of people's lives but this case is proof that they're only referring to people's financial lives. In their glorious future, you'll pay less tax but your private life, your spiritual life, your sexual life and -- it now seems -- your actual life will be subject to their approval. After all, as Bob Dylan warned, they've got God on their side.

Labels: George W Bush, Orwell says hi

We get the Hollywood Reporter at work (and there's a fun way to start your morning) and today's read had a little food for thought. As disappointed as many of us have been over the Oscar's latest snub to Martin Scorsese (5 nominations, 5 losses, one of them to Kevin bloody Costner), he joins this list:

Alfred Hitchcock
Sidney Lumet
Stanley Kubrick
Francois Truffault
Akira Kurosawa
Ingmar Bergman
Jean Renoir
Federico Fellini

Not one of these giants have won an Oscar for directing. While it's sad that one of America's greatest filmmakers goes unrecognized by his Hollywood peers, at least Martin Scorsese is in fine company.

No, not my letter to the White House on "Jeff Gannon" but my response to the San Diego Catholic diocese's refusal to grant a funeral to a gay bar owner:

In a stunning twist to a controversy that has created an uproar in the San Diego gay and Catholic communities, Bishop Robert Brom also promised to preside at a mass in memory of McCusker at The Immaculata Catholic church on the campus of the University of San Diego...the bishop was quoted as saying: "I deeply regret that denying a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata has resulted in his unjust condemnation, and I apologize to the family for the anguish this has caused them."

Wow. An apology from the Church! My head is still spinning, and it's a real thrill to see that public outrage and effort can still be a force for positive change.

I swear I've met this guy before -- check out his striped shirt!

But I'm not sure if I'll send it to PostSecret, an art piece that's found new life on the Net as an open-air confessional booth. It's funny, sad and human.

Eerie -- gay people almost got through a week without a vicious attack from the Catholic Church. This time, it's a well-loved gay bar owner who died of a heart attack at 31. I sent this e-mail to three members of the San Diego diocese:

Good morning,

Perusing my morning news, I was particularly grabbed by this comment:

"the bishop of San Diego concluded that to avoid public scandal Mr. McCusker can't be granted a funeral in a Catholic church or chapel in the Diocese of San Diego."

This interests me because, by denying this man a funeral, you've shocked and horrified good people across the continent. What a sickening and cruel thing to do to the family and friends of this man. Even if you disagreed with the way he lived his life, offering comfort and hope to those grieving would do more for your precious public image than this idiotic act of discrimination.

In the wake of the church's many, many paedophile scandals, attacking gay men in such a manner doesn't help you -- it only makes the church appear hypocritical and morally bankrupt. You think you're the voice of moral authority but your disgusting bigotry betrays you. No one wants to listen to you anymore.

Finally! Someone tells it like it is!

Since I was recently discussing the evils of the record industry, here's a little something I couldn't resist: a bus driver for the Dave Matthews Band has finally pleaded guilty to dumping the bus' septic tank as it crossed a bridge. 800 pounds of human waste poured down onto a hundred people aboard Chicago's 'Little Lady' tour boat.

The driver denied it when he was charged in January but surveillance tapes from nearby buildings proved it wasn't an accident. But why are people so surprised? The Dave Matthews Band has been dumping crap on the public for years!

Working in a record store for the last couple years, I've had to listen to much hand-wringing over the future of recorded music. "The kids" are downloading all their music for free and the executives shriek that this is the end of everything. I can only think of the Matt Groening 'Life in Hell' cartoon that asked:

Q: Is home taping killing the music industry?
A: Yes. Instead of making billions of dollars, they are only making millions of dollars.

I've argued for a while now that the solution has been staring these companies in the face -- scrap the 'hey-it-was-good-in-the-80's' CD altogether and go with DVD-Audio. They sound fantastic, they're compatible with the DVD players many of us have already, and they're endorsed by Neil Young!

In a lengthy interview for a Texas radio station in 2000, Young was asked why many of his albums had yet be released on CD and his answer was somehow rambling yet blunt:

CDs don’t sound good no matter what you do. But DVDs you can put so much information into them. But if you only have like -- suppose I made a record that was 39 minutes long. That thing would kill on DVD. I would use all of the computing in the DVD and focus -- and raise the level of quality of the sampling and the rates and everything to the point where the shorter it is, the higher the quality is. So the artist can control the quality vector -- you know, the quality level. And that’s -- that was a great thing.

So what happened? We got it all together and then somebody figured out how to crack it, so that, of course, now it could be duplicated and so nobody -- you know, the record companies couldn’t make any money off of it. But, you know, that’s already happened with the CD, so what’s the big deal? Why not put out the quality?...The MP3 is less than CD. I mean, MP3 is dog. The quality sucks. It’s all compressed and the data compression - it’s terrible. They’ve -- it’s -- that’s not good. But the DVD stuff was approaching the way it should be. And it was frustrating to me...I like the original analog masters. And I don’t want people to have CDs to listen to for the rest of time. I want to wait until these things are ready to be dumped into a format that I can understand is really relative to the original format in quality.

Since then, Young has released those missing albums in the superior DVD-Audio format and his recent "Greatest Hits" album was released in a two-disc set -- one, a normal CD; the second, a DVD-Audio in surround sound.

But such releases are rare, firstly because few of us have shelled out for home surround sound systems, and secondly because those who have are split down the middle. In the same way it pit its superior Betamax against the ubiquitous VHS in the battle for the home video market twenty years ago, Sony has split the high-fidelity audio market with its "Super Audio" discs. Word has it they sound absolutely superb but I wouldn't know, as they require a special Sony player to use them! This is typical of the Japanese conglomerate, which creates cutting-edge technology but refuses to license it out to anyone else. Consumers have mostly turned up their nose at Super Audio because no one wants to shell out for another disc player, nor an extra five bucks for each disc.

And now the record companies have reached the point of desperation -- the introduction of the "innovative" new format, DualDisc. For the price as an ordinary CD, you get a dual-sided disc combining a regular CD on one side of a disc, DVD video and/or surround sound on the other. Realizing that Super Audio has apparently hit a ceiling of acceptance by the public, Sony has joined with Warner and BMG in aggressively pushing DualDisc in both North America and Europe this past week with a host of odd choices like an REO Speedwagon live album, Avril Lavigne's "Under My Skin" and the new Jennifer Lopez album.

But here's the hilarious part: while Sony Music hypes away, the Sony Electronics division has issued a warning about DualDiscs. At least seven other major audio electronic manufacturers have chimed in against the new format as well (here's a rundown of why).

I myself threw caution to the wind and picked up the DualDisc version of Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" because, hey, it's Miles and I love what surround sound DVD's I've bought already -- R.E.M.'s "Automatic For The People" has a gorgeously rich sound and even Diana Krall's "When I Look In Your Eyes" (its loathsome 'yuppie jazz' ubiquity making it a 'love/hate' disc) becomes irresistable when that massive string section swells up from behind you during a Johnny Mercer number. "Kind of Blue" deserves that treatment but doesn't quite get it with the DualDisc. While hearing each player separated out in each speaker creates a thrilling 'you are there' vibe, there's a tinny fuzziness to the sound on the DVD, which -- according to various audiophile websites like this jazz forum -- isn't true DVD-Audio. Sadly, I could tell -- throw in the possibility that the DualDiscs will damage my player and you've got a recipe for failure!

Not that any of this will stop the usual marketing juggernauts. Word has it that the new Bruce Springsteen album will be available ONLY on DualDisc:

DEVILS & DUST... DUAL DISC? DEFINITELY!
Album release to include film footage, surround sound
When Bruce's new album is released on April 26, it will be his first in the two-sided Dual Disc format, which combines both CD and DVD content on the same disc. One side will be standard audio -- a CD of the full album (for track listing, see below). On the flipside will be DVD content, including both audio and video. How's this for a B-side: the DVD portion will include the entire album in 5.1 channel surround sound and in 2-channel stereo, as well as a special Devils & Dust film by Danny Clinch, capturing Springsteen at work. Clinch, whose work with Bruce has included The Rising album cover as well as the "Countin' on a Miracle" video, filmed acoustic performances of five songs to be included here: "Devils & Dust," "Long Time Comin'," "Reno," "All I'm Thinkin' About," and "Matamoras Banks."

As always, when we're paying record companies nearly $20 for music, caveat emptor!

Labels: Bruce Springsteen