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I don't even know what the fuck the problem was. If you don't want to go see the Ghostbusters reboot, don't go see it.

Men ARE from Mars.

And if you say you don't want to watch a Ghostbusters rema...rebo... restar... cynical cash grab then you are a sexist mysoginist buthurt baby child(?) salty regressive trans-hater.

You must also be one of those men (i.e. THE men) who sabotage female shows on imdb.
We know that cause you are pretending to ignore that "'The Angry Video Game Nerd,' a misogynistic web show whose sycophantic Wikipedia entry made me pine for hemlock in my coffee" even exists.
When it was after all, right there in the article featured right here.

BTW, all that was even before the movie which was promoted like this came out to fantastic reviews which keep talking about women and naysayers and ruined bro childhoods of little boys - and to a disaster at the box office.
Then again, The Nice Guys also had FANTASTIC reviews and yet it flopped... but the tone of the reviews is markedly different.

Now, take all that happening before the Twitter controversy and consider if there is perhaps a chance that the entire thing was blown out of proportion on purpose?
By a company known for faking reviews for marketing purposes.

http://www.popmatters.com/images/news_art/t/the-day-recorded-music-revenue-per-capita-feb-2011.jpg

I'd much more blame the "indestructible" CD then piracy. A LOT of the industry's revenue, especially the boom that came with CDs, was people re-buying music they already owned on yet-another-format.

Vinyl wasn't useful in cars (boom of 8 track), 8 track wasn't that useful walking around and self-destructed over time (boom of cassette tape and Sony's Walkman), all of them wore out over time and/or broke easily from being dropped.

Enter the CD... Never wares out, much more durable, as portable as most anyone would ever need, and for 99% of people sounds better then anything that came before. BOOM, there's a HUGE spike in CD sales as everyone is re-buying everything they ever wanted to keep on CD (along with new music sales, of course).

Enter digital...

It's everything the CD was and then some. But there's a problem... Unlike every other format change in the history of recorded music, no one is going to re-buy music they already have on CD as digital. They're just going to rip their own CDs. As a result the industry is left with only new music sales...

It isn't about piracy - It's about the Music Industry losing the ability to re-sell you the same music over, and over, and over. It's about the Music Industry's ever expanding back catalog no longer translating to automatic ever-expanding re-sales. The Music Industry spent a hell of a lot of money to make copyright effectively never-ending, explicitly to protect that re-selling revenue stream...and now the carpet has been yanked out from under them.

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That huge drop in sales? That's called market saturation. Most everyone that wanted a Beatles or Stones recording already owns it...on a format they will effectively never replace again.

It's about the Music Industry thinking, wrongly, that they were in the business of selling toothpaste. Then waking up one day to realize they really are selling cast iron frying pans. You'll always need to buy more toothpaste...but you'll never need to buy another cast iron frying pan.

Google search: Godzilla personify

http://www.popmatters.com/features/godzilla/1ward.shtml

Godzilla personifies Japan's nuclear-age anxiety and stems directly from the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II

Sounds reasonable.

In this interview director Sam Raimi indicates that the footage was shot specifically for the teaser. He wanted to use the image but in a different context for a key part of the final reel. Hence they manufactured the bank heist story for the teaser, but the clip showing the web would have been used at a more pivotal point in the movie as opposed to a bank heist unrelated to the rest of the plot.

Great discussion thread. Glad not everyone is smearing Heston. Found a few other interesting blogs about Heston's films in a positive light. Don't agree with all they have to say, but good reads, nonetheless:

http://adventuresofcitizenx.com/2008/04/09/charlton-heston-in-memory-of-a-fighter-for-our-personal-freedoms.aspx

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/57115/charlton-heston-1200-bc-2022-ad/

If one has to add fear (by offshoring) over their heads to drive a point, something is terribly wrong.

You're more likely to get shot as well. Someone here once recommended Going Postal to me, and it covers such intentional marginalization of the working class, iirc.

This is a great book which debunks much of the nonsense about this subject and presents good common-sense arguments about why fantasy violence is not something we should fear. http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/k/killing- monsters.shtml

Warner is just jumping on a trend (although small so far) started by mainly electronic musicians on independant labels. I own 3 DVD audio albums that are definately worth it.

Tipper: Surrounded - http://www.gridface.com/reviews/surrounded.html
Amon Tobin: Chaos Theory - http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=1
Richie Hawtin: DE9: Transitions - http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/hawtin- richie-060210.shtml

The only reason that they are worth it is the fact that the artists are pushing the current boundaries of where recorded music is currently at. All these works were conceptualised and developed as 5.1 surround projects. I hope that this is just the beginning of a wider movement. That said, I don't neccessarily see the value of this kind of thing for Top 40 artists unless there projects are undertaken with this vision - a 5.1 surround mix of most of that stuff will not make any difference.

The WSJ article talks about value adding using ringtones, pictures, remixes, and other features. I think that this is a good idea but if this is seen as a way of resuscitating falling CD sales it is going to be the price that matters. If they can sell this at the same price point as a regular CD then it would probably work but only if the additional content is seen as 'worth it'.

Case in point, the Richie Hawtin DE9: Transitions release was packaged as a DVD and a bonus CD which contained an edited stereo mix of the DVD audio content (which was 97 minutes long). On the DVD was the 5.1 audio mix, interviews, video clips, and best of all, an already encoded mp3 of the audio content. All this content in a package at the price point of a new release CD, worth it? Hell yeah!

If Warner thinks they can charge a premium price for what they are planning then this initiative is doomed to failure. And instead of the low bitrate 'pre-ripped' audio for burning to a CD, how about including an audio CD in the package. CD duplication costs are cheap, just look at the number of AOL CDs, magazine cover discs, and other free CDs given away with nearly everything.

The Presidents Analyst~ http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/p/president s-analyst.shtml "And what might this meeting in the middle, this muddling of nation states into a blend of capitalist and authoritarian ideologies, look like? The movie's climax gives us more than a clue when Sidney's path is diverted one last time, into the secretive corporate headquarters of TPC -- "The Phone Company," a knockoff of Bell Telephone, which was in 1967 a tremendous and unpopular monopoly. Spirited away to the star chamber at the center of TPC, Sidney is briefed, James Bond-villain style, on the future of the human race by TPC president Arlington Hewes (Pat Harrington), aided by an animated film that sends up the brilliant propaganda cartoons Frank Capra and others made for Bell Labs throughout the 1950s and '60s. Only this ain't Our Mr. Sun. The company's scheme, Hewes explains, is to make communication more convenient by embedding electrical chips called "cerebrum communicators" -- which are rendered in the cartoon as adorable, big-eyed sprites -- straight into its customers' brains, thereby eliminating the need for expensive cable lines and infrastructure. In effect, TPC hopes to turn its customers into nodes of its communications network. "Congress will have to pass a law substituting personal numbers for names," Hewes explains placidly, "as the only legal means of identification." This technological nightmare fuses free-market corporatism gone amuck with the regimentation and loss of individuality that characterized the Soviet empire -- a meeting in the middle."

I recently switched from windows to mac...

Wow. Your situation and mine are so similar it's frightening.

Windows developer: check
switched to Mac: check
because of OS X: check
and because "it works": check
never going back: check

The only thing I'd add is that I stayed away from Apple for so long because I prefer having a command-line interface and really don't like mouse-centric GUIs. My impression of early Macs was that they were all GUI all the time. They had all the bells and whistles, but you couldn't get rid of them if you wanted to, and I prefer simple, clean, square lines. So, in the past, Windows suited me better.

Ironically, this seems to be shifting. Mac now has OS X (it's got bash!), while Windows is becoming "swoopier" (a la the EMP). I hate the way WinXP looks and always choose the "Classic" options. But the reports of the interface changes in Office 12 was the kicker. No thank you.

So now I use a PowerBook for my personal computing, turned off/down as many of the animation and sound effects as I could and am a happy clam.

Seems like they're not using any wire work to simulate walking on the moon. Space Cowboys is more real than this. ;)

I will try to answer these questions with a minimum of pretentiousness.

That's the average over a time period. Usually I will only buy one or maybe two and then go on a stock-up spree where I get, for example, 3 or 4 Funkadelic albums, or more Keith Jarrett records, or trying to complete some singles from a specific band. I do almost no shopping at music-only chain stores (Tower, Sam Goody) or online (with the exception of import CD singles). I shop almost exclusively at a local record store and are more than happy to buy a CD or two on a whim during these stock-ups simply because it is being featured. Usually the clerks will have a small write-up "Linkin Park meets Winston Marsalis!" that seems to get my attention. Also, a lot of these CDs come from places that are either used-cd or deep-discount warehouses. We're talking average cost of a CD $6 or below. The other day I got Songs in the Key of X, Beautiful Stranger, White Town's Women in Technology, and about 5-6 other CDs for $1 each. I would say safely the price of each CD I buy is, on average, under $10.

The only "chain" music store I ever support is the Virgin Megastore on Times Square because their music selection is ridiculous. Not as expansive as Amoeba in LA, for example, or stocked with obscure titles like Kim's Video in NYC, but it does the trick.

Some other parent asked about which labels I support, and I don't really support specific labels. If I see something interesting, the artist being on Nonesuch or Astralwerks or Def Jux might get me off the fence into the "buy" side but I figure as I'm not supporting ClearChannel-approved entertainers, I'm ok.

As far as the parent, I honestly expanded by knowledge of music and my musical vocabulary about ten-fold once I hit college and downloaded gigabytes upon gigabytes of different music. I was introduced to George Benson, the Greyboy Allstars, MC Paul Barman, the Rolling Stones (i.e. not their classic-rock staples), etc. To this day, I still have friends approach me about good music they've heard, etc. Previously I've recommended sites like PopMatters, Pitchfork, and AMG for a good way to browse around and find out new artists.

Cheers.

Finder's interesting, the book's excellent -- of course, there may be some flaws, but Joe Finder does his research... it's fast fiction and fun. There's an interview Finder and it's on Popmatters -- published Tuesday.

Let's see if I can find a way to summarize the year's best music to my ears...

#1 : Do Make Say Think's Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn. Amazing production, and a very contemporary look on the merging between what dark jazz promised with a certain hopefulness that lingers long after the album is over.

#2 : Howard Hello's Don't Drink His Blood - Deceptive in its pop simplicity, but with this dark streak. Again, mostly instrumental but with highly processed singing in places that borders on sinister. A real sleeper on the radar.

#3 : The Cinematic Orchestra's Man With a Movie Camera :: this is by far the best soundtrack ever produced for this film. Mixing jazz, pure psychedelia, and even throwing in a Art Ensemble of Chicago cover, this album ties everything that is meaningful about the psychedelic experience into a beautiful package. A must listen.

#4 The Microphones' Mount Eerie -- In addition to the wonderful vinyl pressing, with hand-stitched sewn sleeve, this album is a complete trip through the forces of nature and man's place within it. Deep and meditative, good for listening once every two months or so when you are ready to confront your closet.

There were dozens of other great releases this year, but those were the ones I was most thankful for.

On the reprint front, we were given a brilliant repackaging of the Soft Machine's BBC Radio Volume 1. Fantastic music from this forgotten band, at their very best.

You might run into problems with The The.

I fail to understand what that means. Information is information - whether someone narrates it to you aloud, or you read it out of a book. And I fail to understand why "format" should be such a great deal especially if you view it in the way I view it. Sometimes a "well presented format" triggers passion for further discovery. And the TV is extra-ordinary in that realm since it has the power of the visual medium *if* you use it wisely.

Again, balance: think of the TV as a supplement to your daily information diet rather than a substitute. Again I use my own experience:

Watching the Geraman Kamakazi pilots of the second world war on History channel made me ravenous to suddenly learn more about the lesser known aspects of the war itself (also throwing light on the fact that not just the Japanese had them). I was merely channel surfing and happened upon the programme. After watching it, I looked up more on the subject in the local library and devoured several books on WWII, in the process learning much more about the war than I had hoped to.

I watched "44" minutes on Fox sometime back, and dug out more info about the North Hollywood bank shooting immediately afterwards on the Internet and learnt about how a down and depressed LAPD became heroes on that day. Fascinating. For those interested, look here

Watching Jurassic Park made me dig out Michael Crichton's books from the library - I have finished nearly every book of his since I saw that movie. Yes *books*.

I learnt more about the politics/politicians in California watching "Armstrong and Getty's" radio show (yes, on TV since we dont get it on radio in our area) each morning as I prepare to go to work, something I might never be inclined to learn about reading a newspaper - in this case, think of the TV as being my "audio/visual book".

We are trained to think that everything that appears on TV is crap, has zero-information value and you'd be better off "reading a book" instead. Thats painting with a broad brush.

I say, use it as a tool and it can work in your favour.

"Of Montreal" is a great indie band that has an old-style feel to them. Their music is kinda like (IMHO) very old Pink Floyd (i.e., See Emily Play), but my DJ friend will fight me tooth-and-nail on it. It's definitely and old-style sound, but it's new stuff, not rehashed oldies. And, Bonus, their albums are usually around the $10 mark, so trying them out won't break the bank.

I don't know if they have a website, but here'a a link To a review of their recent album, aldhills arboretum.

I discovered my love of music at a fairly young age. I don't know if my family was any more musical than any other typical family of non-musicians living in the Detroit area in the late 60s/early 70s, but many of my earliest memories are of songs we'd hear on the radio while on weekend trips, shopping excursions and camping outings. I have vague memories of being in love with songs like "Tears Of A Clown" and "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" and "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Silly Love Songs", though at that early date (around 5-7 years old) I couldn't have told you who performed them or even have done much more than hum the chorus for you. I can remember the very first single I ever purchased, though. I liked a song by Joe Tex called I Gotcha, which research shows was a hit in 1972, which means I was about 5 years old, and that sounds about right. I can't remember whether Mom gave me money to buy it or whether she just asked me to pick out a 45 while we were at the store. In any even, I know for sure that it was the first non-"kids record" I ever owned myself. I have vague memories of playing my older sister's records, but nothing really specific from that early on.

My first "real" album purchase didn't happen until years later: Parliament's Mothership Connection. Even after I bought my first albums, though, for years my musical purchases overwhelmingly came in the form of 45 RPM, 7-inch singles. American singles of the time were very distinctive looking. Unlike European singles, which replicated the small center holes of 12-inch albums, U.S. singles sported a large center hole. This meant that you usually needed some sort of adapter to play them on a standard turntable. The little plastic adapters were somewhat fragile and impractical, but they sure are a wonderfully iconic element of a bygone age, aren't they?

The prevalence of singles among my early purchases was largely practical. I got a small allowance, which if I remember started out at 25 cents a week, then escalated through 50 cents a week, a dollar a week, and finally $5 a week by the time I entered middle school. When I first started buying singles regularly, they went for about 99 cents to $1.25 apiece. That got you a (usually edited) single mix and a b-side, some of which were purest filler and some of which were fascinating. It would probably seem alien to a music buyer younger than, oh 25 or so, but up until the mid 1980s or so record stores would stock hundreds or even thousands of 7-inch singles, with the top sellers proudly displayed on the walls. Singles were a huge part of the music business, and a lot of record stores devoted just as much space to singles as they did to albums.

My music buying took off in earnest when I turned 12 and got my first paper route. I discovered many artists via 45s during this period, many of which I would come to love and by many many albums by in subsequent years. Some early 45's I bought were by Kraftwerk, XTC, the Police, the B-52s, Devo, Gary Numan, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. I mention this not to try to buld up any cred points, but to point out that the easy, cheap availability of music by these artists made it possible for me to try new things musically without a lot of risk. Albums were a formidable $5-$7 apiece, and $7 bought a lot of M&Ms and Hot Wheels. A kid with a paper route just didn't have a lot of dosh to blow on any full-length album that wasn't a sure thing. For a while, the record industry was fine with this. They'd made a mint on bands like the Beach Boys in the 1960s, who were practically hit single machines, releasing multimillion selling single after single, which would eventually get compiled onto albums almost as an afterthought. Of course, as bands like the Beatles (and eventually the Beach Boys themselves) gained more artistic control they began to deliver albums that stood as coherent statements, but for a long

Richard "My heart bleeds Iraq oil" B. Cheney?

Read about the Top 10
Speculations About 9-11 and The United States War on Everything

Cheers,

W00t

Get Your Peace On

Called "The Cup". About foreign 'culture' influencing ancient Buddhist traditions.
Read about it here, here and here.

Although I don't come from a Buddhist land, I know first hand what it is like to have your country destroyed by Americanism.

Hmm, time for some slightly OT karma whoring...

The bug that was found in that seal was invented by none other than Leon Theremin, inventor of the instrument of the same name.

There's an excellent biography available about Theremin by Albert Glinsky called "Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage" - there's a review here. (No affiliate link here, just a review.)

Theremin was quite an inventor - Glinksy's book is a good read, managing to be interesting and informative in equal measures.

Go here for more about Theremins, or here to buy one.

In the immortal words of his final parable "Never count your blessings with haste / Even a prophet can catch a case".

We can all take solace in the knowledge, mentioned earlier in his works that "I'm a wild barbarian... Felonious / My description is doo rag pants sag down to my feet".

Read children, read and then reflect on what it meant to you. And then remember, remember where you were on 10:29, January 16th 2002.

Do not cry, but rejoice that change is coming, like I am right now over alt.binaries.erotica.redheads. Mr Thinly Sliced