From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V18 #204 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, November 9 2010 Volume 18 : Number 204 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: REAP the record store [Michael Sweeney ] BSG: Midseries Report [Rex Broome ] Re: BSG: Midseries Report [2fs ] Re: BSG: Midseries Report [Rex Broome ] Holy Sucking Cockfuck! ["Nectar At Any Cost!" ] Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! [Rex Broome ] Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! [Miles Goosens ] Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! [Rex Broome ] RH bargains at Amazon [Harold Lepidus ] Pink Floyd Co-Founder Syd Barrett's Musical Legacy Celebrated With New Album and Biography [Harold Lepidus] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 17:14:22 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: REAP the record store Michael J. Bachman wrote: >Reckless Records has three locations in Chicago that are doing fine. Yeah, but...Wax Trax, Rose, Round, Gramophone, Rolling Stone(s)...and, crap, this far out in the space-time continuum I am forgetting about another half-dozen major ones, much less the occasional one-off storefront that a pleasant afternoon or 2 were so-often spent in during those long-ago days...Sigh! Michael (Nostalgia's Bee-yotch) Sweeney ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 12:58:24 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: BSG: Midseries Report Ha ha ha ha ha! We're having fun now! Bleak, dystopian fun, but still, fun. I'm actually a little bit past the midpoint in the series now, at the end of the New Caprica arc at the start of Season 3. And as expected I'm really enjoying it all, with absolutely no major reservations. My watch-it-like-a-novel approach to finished series really is my ideal way to do this stuff... I just hope there are enough shows out there which really are my bag that I get to repeat the pleasure more than a handful of times. Maybe my horizons will broaden... who knows. The one downside is that if there's ever been a show with a more irritating and interminable opening sequence, I hope never to encounter it. I may have imagined it, but I thought they gave it a rest early in Season 2, but now they seem determined to work it into the ground, and if you watch a whole bunch of these things in a row it gets tough to take: 1. Boilerplate Intro 2. Previously on BSG 3. Teaser segment, often containing more "previously" material and sometimes like ten minutes long 4. Theme song proper 5. Percussive bit featuring a bunch of preview footage for stuff that's going to happen in the next half hour (I've started literally closing my eyes through this part) 6. Credits over show proper, from Michael Hogan on, until what, halfway through the program? Oh well. To review where I'm coming from, while I in no way advocate the 1978 BSG as quality entertainment-- I just checked, and even the bits I recall as biblically epic are painfully Scooby Doo, in spite of some bravura '70s design work-- it was a big part of my childhood, and I remember it awfully damned well. I did, like, read all the novels and comic books when I was 7 or 8, and I had all the action figures and the whole deal. Despite that, my main reservation about the new series was, like, why not make something new, especially if it's going to be good? But that doesn't last for long. One of the biggest pleasures early on was how, after having endured a whole lot of reboots and reimaginings of stuff I saw as a kid (and ignoring countless others), I find that all of the "fan service" in the new BSG is totally, first and foremost, in the service of the story and aesthetics of the show at hand; none of it is a wink at the old fans for the sake of the wink. Mostly it's the incorporation of the killer old designs (I mean, seriously, half of the civilain fleet ships look *exactly* like they did in 1978), occasional plot beats that work (the Pegasus arc, the discovery of Kobol), and maybe a happy accident or two (Richard Hatch can act, at least to his character's oily specs, and the eerily moving deployment of the original theme music in that "documentary" episode, the game of pyramid, etc). (Erm, except for the fake cuss words, which I know everyone loves, but can't help but seem juvenile to me. I got over that for FIREFLY for three reasons: 1) The show was really good (applies equally to BSG) 2) The fake cuss words were integrated into a cultural and semantic slang (or slangs) that went so far as to include syntax, class variants, big chunks of other real-world languages and the like (BSG does a brilliant job of cultural world-building, but other than military jargon the only language adjustment is that when people should be saying "fuck" they say something else, profoundly begging the question of why that one word isn't "translated" from "real" "Colonial-ese" like everything else, other than to provide some kind of playground code for fans) 3) At least it wasn't "frak" and "felgercarb" (whereas in BSG it is obviously exactly that, minus the felgercarb (and the yahrens and centons etc. (but why minus those?))) Anyway.) There is one area and one alone in which the old BSG trumps the new one, and that's Kobol. New BSG Kobol sucks it. Fake Egypt was a vastly more credible cradle of humanity than real Canada. I'd read somewhere that the prevalent faux-Egyptian iconography of the original series was rendered off-limits by the use of similar styles on the current Stargate shows, which is fine, but I just didn't buy this place that looked like a totally temperate forest, abandoned for millenia, with evidence of human sacrifice just lying around on the surface and ruins that you can just kind of "dust off" to find the ancient path to the temple and stuff. By contrast, I thought New Caprica was brilliantly realized. It might've been nice to see an alien animal or two just for texture... I don't think the BSG universe needs sentient alien races, but a little occasional exotic fauna wouldn't hurt. Thus far one of the most amazing things is that there's not a single character whose screen time actively bugs me. Certain aspects of the Baltar character grate, but they are almost always compensated for by something interesting that's brewing with him simultaneously. There's definitely a question in my mind as to how he retains any credibility when everyone in the world is observing him, in ways big and little, spacing out and sometimes physically interacting with his imaginary Cylon bubble machine (sorry, my own private BSG78 joke) but I imagine that's partially an artifact of viewing hours of the show at a time as opposed to over several months. I have my favorites, of course, and it just has to be said that Grace Park is just really distractingly gorgeous. Now, I'm kind of disappointed in myself in that as I get older I actually do have the kind of "show crushes" that I really didn't develop earlier in life, but I guess that's just the way it's going to be. Again I can only really compare the experience to FIREFLY: in that case I had my beloved Kaylee, but in all honesty there wasn't a single one of the female leads who didn't capture my fancy at one point or another. In BSG it's all Grace. All Grace. Starbuck and Laura Roslyn are both fantastically awesome characters and brilliantly acted; either of them might have had a shot at my heart if not for the many delectable Sharons on parade. But it's all over and has been since early on. I even get the wacky pleasure of liking some Sharons better than others. Oh, Grace of my heart... The Cylon plan is still unfolding; I have some X-Filesy nervousness about a few potential holes in its construction, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions. The arc of the whole story has been very satisfying, and while there was a slight sag in overall excellence in the early part of the last third of Season 2, there was really only one overall bum episode by my estimation ("Black Market") which along with the lukewarm "Sacrifice" had the unfortunate lingering side effect of making the Apollo/Duwalla relationship feel a little flat to me. The end of the season and the opening of Season 3, however, were so chock full of all kinds of awesome as to make that basically irrelevant. A lot of the "hot-button" issues I'd read about being addressed on the show developed much more organically than I'd feared, but I still haven't decided what the driving message of the show, its overall viewpoint on humanity, might be, other than "it's complicated". The closest I've felt to it so far is in Adama's conversations with the captive Sharon, and I expect that to be where it continues. Anyhow, that's where I am (and rapidly plowing forward) so I'm just checking in to see what I'm supposed to be getting at this point, or maybe how totally different it all played out when watched in "real time". - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 15:19:07 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: BSG: Midseries Report On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Rex Broome wrote: > > I'm actually a little bit past the midpoint in the series now, at the end > of > the New Caprica arc at the start of Season 3. And as expected I'm really > enjoying it all, with absolutely no major reservations. My > watch-it-like-a-novel approach to finished series really is my ideal way to > do this stuff... I just hope there are enough shows out there which really > are my bag that I get to repeat the pleasure more than a handful of times. > Maybe my horizons will broaden... who knows. The one downside is that if > there's ever been a show with a more irritating and interminable opening > sequence, I hope never to encounter it. I may have imagined it, but I > thought they gave it a rest early in Season 2, but now they seem determined > to work it into the ground, and if you watch a whole bunch of these things > in a row it gets tough to take: > 1. Boilerplate Intro > 2. Previously on BSG > 3. Teaser segment, often containing more "previously" material and > sometimes > like ten minutes long > 4. Theme song proper > 5. Percussive bit featuring a bunch of preview footage for stuff that's > going to happen in the next half hour (I've started literally closing my > eyes through this part) > 6. Credits over show proper, from Michael Hogan on, until what, halfway > through the program? > Oh well. > This is why the gods invented fast-forward. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 13:34:59 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: Re: BSG: Midseries Report > This is why the gods invented fast-forward. > > I'm watching it all on Netflix's WatchShitNow streaming thinger, which is pretty good on the picture side but quick to go to hell if you do too much shuttling around. In fact it habitually goes into some weird picture-only stroboscopic stutter mode about 7 minutes into each show and I have to be careful that my attempts to defeat it don't cause the show to totally freeze up. That said, the price is right. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 15:57:32 -1000 From: "Nectar At Any Cost!" Subject: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! is so fucktastically good that i'm almost afraid to listen to the album (though i have downloaded it, natch). how did i not notice, until two months later, that there's a new cloud cult disc? well, it's just how it is these days. i shudder to think at how many others i've missed... cellophane square. you're right, though: awesome store. although, after having let me leave Eat The State!s there for years upon years, they then unceremoniously told me they didn't want it there no more. a few months later, they were out of business. coincidence? don't know! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 20:15:49 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Nectar At Any Cost! wrote: > > > cellophane square. Can't believe I got that wrong. But I so did. I knew something was off after I sent the message, but couldn't put my finger on it. I stand gladly corrected. Eddie, I say this as someone who defends the post-peak Kinks (which is, to me, anything that follows 1971's MUSWELL HILLBILLIES) more than almost anyone else, but I am amazed that you prefer the later stuff to the classic run. I'm also surprised that you didn't extend the "good later stuff" run to WORD OF MOUTH and Ray's RETURN TO WATERLOO soundtrack, joined works that to me are much better than STATE OF CONFUSION. The latter has just four good songs - they're really good songs, but there's only four of 'em. Can we at least agree on GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT being the best one o' these? And the first Kinks album has the problem that a lot of "classic" '60s rockers' early stuff does: a lot of covers, more energy/enthusiasm than craft, and in the case of both the Kinks' and the Who's first ones, being burdened with producer Shel Talmy's "Bald-Headed Woman." Granted, almost all of them predate the modern concept of "album," which the Kinks themselves had a lot to do with creating. But you asked. later, Miles - -- over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 18:25:00 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > > Eddie, I say this as someone who defends the post-peak Kinks (which > is, to me, anything that follows 1971's MUSWELL HILLBILLIES) more than > almost anyone else, but I am amazed that you prefer the later stuff to > the classic run. I just can't get into the Arista stuff. I used to feel kind of bad about that, like I was perpetuating some kind of unintended snobbery, but my wife feels the same way but even more emphatically and she's a much more longterm fan than I am. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 20:29:46 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Rex Broome wrote: > > > On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Miles Goosens > wrote: >> >> Eddie, I say this as someone who defends the post-peak Kinks (which >> is, to me, anything that follows 1971's MUSWELL HILLBILLIES) more than >> almost anyone else, but I am amazed that you prefer the later stuff to >> the classic run. > > I just can't get into the Arista stuff. I used to feel kind of bad about > that, like I was perpetuating some kind of unintended snobbery, but my wife > feels the same way but even more emphatically and she's a much more longterm > fan than I am. So you married John Mendelsohn? later, Miles - -- over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 18:42:31 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: Re: Holy Sucking Cockfuck! On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > > > So you married John Mendelsohn? Hee! I get a sick joy out of reading his stuff, but can you imagine living with it? - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 07:56:26 -0500 (EST) From: Harold Lepidus Subject: RH bargains at Amazon Yep Roc box sets 25.99 each Storefront Hitchcock DVD 3.98 Harold Lepidus Bob Dylan Examiner Twitter Facebook ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:44:13 -0500 (EST) From: Harold Lepidus Subject: Pink Floyd Co-Founder Syd Barrett's Musical Legacy Celebrated With New Album and Biography http://www.spinner.com/2010/11/09/pink-floyd-syd-barrett-compilation-book/ Pink Floyd Co-Founder Syd Barrett's Musical Legacy Celebrated With New Album and Biography Harold Lepidus Bob Dylan Examiner Twitter Facebook ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V18 #204 ********************************