Chicago

Chicago is one of the most commercially successful bands in modern American music, one that has been running continuously in some form or another for decades. But the Chicago of today (of the last thirty plus years, really) is nothing like the group in its original incarnation. The band that eventually became known for love ballads and Lite FM radio began in the late 60's by a bunch of young hippies eager to play experimental, politically charged jazz/rock fusion.


What, then, caused their eventual shift in tone? There are many factors, but the catalyst was the loss of what is arguably the heart and soul of the band, Guitarist Terry Kath. Kath was incredibly skilled with his instrument, drawing praise from even the likes of Jimi Hendrix. His experimental performances and soulful voice dominated the band's earliest albums. Unfortunately, he was also a lover of firearms and drugs, which lead to him accidentally shooting himself in the head in the late 1970's. The band would try to move on, and would eventually land even greater success than they had in Kath's lifetime, but musically and artistically, they would never be the same again.

Most Chicago fans I have read agree that this era of "Classic Chicago" ends with Kath's death, but many would argue that the quality of their output went downhill sometime earlier. How much earlier varies from person to person. For some, Chicago is worth listening to through their first seven records. Others stop after five. Even fewer like only their first two, and I've even seen purists who only care about their debut release.

I too prefer the early albums, though I haven’t listened to enough of them to say where my cutoff point is (I’m going to guess it won’t go past their 10th album). At the same time, I can appreciate some of their later pop hits, if only as a guilty pleasure used sparingly.

Here are a few fun facts for anyone interested in the band’s discography:

- One of Chicago’s early band names was “Chicago Transit Authority”, which they had to shorten once the real CTA told them to do so. However, they managed to get their first album out before the name change. If you ever see an blue/yellow album cover with the title “Chicago Transit Authority”, know that it isn’t another band, or a weird aberration. It’s the band’s first record, and one of the few that I consider a must own.

- The band's releases are organized using a loose numbering system. Both their original works and compliations fall under this system, and there have been quite a few Greatest Hits works over the years. This is why you can walk into a music store and see a CD labeled Chicago 30.

Lots of anime

Yes, lots of anime out or coming out.  I'm currently watching FMA Brotherhood Vol. 2, FMA Classic, and Eden of the East.  The Trigun boxset is out now, the second (and final) set of FMA Classic will be too, and there's still some Gundam product I need to scoop up before it's too late.  Guess it's a good time to be a fan.

Addendum to last post

The Lennon remaster CD's have a specific URL on the back - johnlennon.com/70.  That's a sign that you aren't supposed to just go to the official site, but to a specfic part of the site specifically made for the release.    Here's what I found after following the URL:

1) The site isn't finished yet.
2) You won't be able to access it at all without having bought one of the bigger box sets or the deluxe edition of the new Greatest Hits disc. 

So if you're one to simply buy a few of the albums, the site becomes not an extra level of value, but a paywall, and that link becomes not supplemental, but advertising.  The cynicism only adds up.

John Lennon Remasters

Slightly more than a year ago, the Beatles album remasters were released.  At the time, I felt like I did as a child during Christmas time, actively counting down the days until launch (when I remembered to do so, of course).  It was a happy time, but deep down I knew there was a more cynical, capitalist angle to the event. It reminded us that no other band can quite get away as easily with charging premium prices for their material, nor can any other band quite dictate how it will be presented.  It is a bit maddening to know that you can't buy the mono remasters as single albums, and even more maddening to know that the Mono box set costs more money for less music. There's no point in asking why any of this is the case.  Paul McCartney will Force choke you and answer "Fuck you, that's why" (I say this lovingly). The fact that I was missing about half their discography was reason enough to plunk down, but when I see cranky old timers bitch about having to (or at least being asked to) constantly rebuy old music, I understand where they're coming from.


I can say, however, that my cynicism shield only exists for my favorite band of all time.  I know this because I can't muster it for the band member's solo works.  This week will mark the 70th birthday of John Lennon, and to celebrate the event, his entire catalog of solo work has been given the same remastering treatment that was used for the Beatles, right down to using the same alternating black/white album spines, and a giant, expensive boxset.  I went out and immediately bought two of the records, but I have no strong interest beyond that.

But it's more than a lack of interest.  I really feel that heavy air of cynicism around these remasters.  This article on the Guardian spells it out perfectly.  In short, much of the merchandising and branding of the man runs contrary to what he believed in, or at least, what we tell ourselves he believed in.  Additionally, the man was not a saint, and his post Beatles output often fell flat. I've seen some of this material get ripped on with a ferocity that no other rock legend tends to receive, even for their worst work.  Solo Lennon can be shitty, just like shitty solo McCartney can be. 


What does it mean, then, that there's an entire box set of this thoroughly uneven work?  It might mean that some revisionist cobbled up liner note material that tries to put the album Rock 'N Roll in the same Pantheon as Plastic Ono Band (though maybe it isn't so kind?)


What does it mean that there is a new greatest hits CD made for this remastering project?  For one, it certainly means that Lennon's solo work isn't considered as sacred as the Beatles catalog, which will probably never see another compilation CD ever again.  More importantly, there's already a fantastic hits disc which they could have worked with.  The fact that it was left behind shows a greater concern for marketing than on making a definitive compilation. 


And hey, there's some other component of the release - a box set compilation, containing CD's that organize the material based on themes, or some vague logic like that.  Again, I see this as a lack of confidence.  Not many fans will want all the albums, but maybe they want a decent chunk.  But maybe that means that even a selection of the full albums isn't quite enough... 


What I'm taking away from all of this is reinforcement of a growing feeling of mine, that the public at large has an odd dual relationship with John Lennon.  We revere him at the same time we consider him human.  We praise his great work with more gusto than we point out his failures.  We try to make positives out of the fact that he was frequently an asshole.  Maybe people are simply trying to hold on thee ideal they have formed in their minds, since Lennon isn't here to personally reshape their opinions. I think most of us know that we continue to be intrigued by the man at the same time that he frustrates us.  Perhaps that alone ensures his infamy. 


Look forward to some album reviews, hopefully.

Perl

I've spent some time at work finally learning Perl.  When I first looked at the language back in college, I was turned off immediately.  Now I understand what the problem was, and it is the same reason why the language has such a strong following. Perl's basic features and syntax are safe and straightforward.  A Java programmer can look at it and have a decent idea as to what's going on.  But Perl is also incredibly flexible.  If you want to do something, you can probably do it several different ways.  You can make a Perl program easy to read, or fast, or compact - whatever your tastes are as a programmer, the language will accommodate. This is what makes it so well loved, but it can also make it difficult to learn without the proper materials.

I also think there's another, more subtle psychological element to the way Perl works. To me, it strikes a happy middle ground between the various schools of thought about how a language should behave.  A few days after writing that last sentence, I came across a Perl book containing the closest thing the language has to a motto:  "Simple things should be simple, difficult things should be possible".

I guess I wasn't that far off. I think that is a great way to explain Perl.  There is an incredible amount of different ways to use the language, but you don't have to use any of them if you don't want, or more likely, don't need to.  And if you want to stick with the basics, there's no penalty.  It's refreshing to see a programming language that isn't trying to shove a religion-like belief system down your throat.  It can be frustrating to see object oriented languages which are so obsessed with making everything into a class that the simple act of opening a file requires six import statements and a method call that looks like

We.Don't.Want.You.To.Get.Any.Work.Done.FileReader.FileBuffer.LayeredBuffer.LayeredNachos.OpenStream(AndYouThoughtTheArgumentListWouldBeSmall);

On the other hand, there are a lot of small, fast functional languages that decide that you need a million data types, each of which uses every brace and bracket on the keyboard for different results.  Apparently, it isn't enough to have arrays. You also need lists (also nice), tuples (wtf?), and god knows what else.  And if you ever read the documentation for these things, they make it sound as if every exception and difference makes perfect sense.  Back in college, my friend Joe and I were frustrated with the fact that every time we asked what a certain concept was in our Hardware Engineering course, the answer was always "oh, it's just a 4-to-1 Mux", as if either of us knew what the hell that was at the time.  That's what these "whizbang" little languages remind me of (though to be honest, we should have known what a multiplexer was back then).

There's another great quote from the Perl book, paraphrased here - "you can do just about anything you need with a hash".  Amen to that.

PS - the crack at OO Languages above is more due to my time with .NET languages.  Say what you will about Java, but it lets you get to core classes very quickly.

anime

Today I bought Volume 2 of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Apparently, of the three Best Buys in my area, only one sells enough anime to stock the show in Blu Ray.  That's kind of sad, but one store is better than none.

When I got home, I looked up the show's episode count, and did some quick math. At the rate that Funimation is going right now, they can release all of Brotherhood in exactly five volumes.  At 44 bucks each on Blu Ray, that's.... ouch.  That's a lot.

I've been going back and forth on whether I should keep buying the show on BD.  To be honest, it isn't so much the price that gets me.  13 episodes for that much dough is still cheaper than anime in the days of singles releases.  I guess what bothers me is that so far, the show hasn't proven that it's worth watching in Hi Def.  The fight scenes look gorgeous, but like with so many anime these days, there have been episodes where hardly anyone moves, and so the BD quality feels like a waste.  Meanwhile there were a few stories in volume 1 which felt slow and unnecessary, despite the fact that the first fourteen episodes are already a compression of events in the original series. I know it gets better over time, but Fullmetal is one of the only surefire money makers right now, and I figured they'd be more willing to pull out the stops.  I want to make this a "one episode per week" show, but that only seems to work with 13 episode series, where every single one has to count.

IE 9

I tried the IE 9 beta out last night.  I had trouble thinking of a way to describe it, so I will go with my original, awkward summary - it feels like Microsoft is approaching their consumer oriented web browser the same way they treat their professional products.

See, if you're just a normal computer user, MS doesn't really have to try and sell you on its wares.  Chances are you're going to upgrade your computer right around the time that a new version of Windows comes out, in which case they've already got you.  Businesses, on the other hand, are trickier.  They're going to spend a hell of a lot more, and as a result, they're going to be much more hesitant to update their software on a regular basis.  It is up to Microsoft to find ways to get them to do so anyway.  They have a few methods, one of which is to make a product work on multiple OS's, but work best on only one.  If you want all the new features (and chances are, at least one of them won't be useless), you either pony up, or take what you can get.  Sooner or later, your OS of choice won't be supported at all, in which case you will have to move on whether you like it or not.  Another classic tactic is to lay a ton of sheen and polish on the surface of a program, but leave the inner workings and menus exactly the same, leading to an aesthetic nightmare and, in some cases, a program that spends too much time with useless, sellable features that it fails to work on the issues which really need addressing.

These tactics pretty much sum up what MS has done with IE9. Take a look:

-  It is tightly integrated into Windows 7, with all sorts of features which I haven't yet seen
-  It will run on Vista, but without all the same features
-  It won't run at all on XP
- The interface is brand new, minimal, and integrated into the look and feel of Aero.  Meanwhile, the Internet Options menu is exactly the same as it has been since IE4 or so.  Not only does it look old, but it makes you wonder - if IE keeps supporting all these new features on the web, then why are we still configuring a web browser the same way we did in the days of dial up?

MS is using IE to give users the double deuce.  It is telling WinXP users that if they're pretty much screwed at this point, while Vista users are going to have to pay for spending money on the company's mistake. 

Thank goodness for options.

Kindle reminds me of Kindling

Android phones finally have a version of Amazon's Kindle app.  I have been waiting for this for a long time now, though sadly if I hadn't unintentionally found it in the Marketplace last week, I probably still wouldn't know about it. 

Now that it's out, the question is whether it is any good, and even still, if it is worth a download.  The whole ebook thing never really excited me at first, mostly because they were always discussed in the context of expenseive e-readers, a device which I still consider to be unecessary. I know this comes from the guy who has spent the same amount of money on portable gaming consoles, but at least those are meant to run sophistacted pieces of software.  Spending hundreds on a large reading device whose sole selling point is a special screen meant to emulate the look of paper is not, in my mind, quite the same.  This was especially true to me after having finally seen a Kindle in the wild, and finding that magic "e ink" technology didn't look all that different than a regular old screen.

Of course, Amazon is smart enough to know that the real money comes not in selling their e-reader, but in getting people to buy their digital books.  Which is why they have made a free Kindle app for as many devices as they can.  In this context, ebooks start to become a lot more appealing. I still love the feel of a real book, and I enjoy the act of going to the library, but library selections can vary wildly based on your location, and time constraints keep me from doing so as frequently as I would like.  At the very least, a Kindle app could serve as a reader program for the hundreds of free classics available online.

This is exactly what I set out to do, and this weekend, I gave the Android version of Kindle a spin.  While it certainly isn't' the first reader program on the OS, and also not the first I have tried, I find it so far to be the best.  The main screen is pleasant, and makes it easy to find your books (it updates itself whenever it is started, so you don't have to manually refresh).  Reading the books themselves is also made intuitive.  You tap the sides of the screen in order to change pages (which I suppose is true for all of the different versions of the App), and the responsiveness is perfect.   You can also change the size of the text, which I find to have a powerful psychological component.  One one hand, I like to zoom it out a bit, so the little cell phone screen contains about as much text as a real paperback.  On the other, the default size breaks each page into bite sized chunks that are easy to stay focused on.  There's also a silly feature which Amazon has branded as Whispersync - whenever you finish reading, the app uploads your place in the book, so that your spot is synced up on all Kindle fueled devices you own.  While I'm glad to know I could switch between my phone and my PC, I don't see myself doing it.

And now for the most important question - is it actually easy to read on a phone screen, or any screen for that matter?  Lots of people believe that this isn't the case, and I agree that I struggle to read any good piece of fiction on an LCD monitor (which is why I stopped bothering to use that site that emails you a book chapter every morning).  However, cell phones these days have very excellent screens, and so the e-pages jump out at you, and do a good enough job at imitating a page.  Furthermore, while phone  screens aren't large, they tend to be oriented like an actual book, rather than the mostly widescreen monitors we tend to use on our PCs. 

I don't see myself buying tons of ebooks, but so far, I'm glad to have the option. 

Comic Timing

I feel like I need to use this blog more for venting.  It would probably do me a lot of good.  After all, no one's really reading this, right?  (hi Joe!)  And even so, there are plenty of people with actual fame and notoriety that get away with writing any old crap by claiming "it's just a blog post!"  Might as well get away with what I can.

I just wrote a review for the DS game Flower, Sun and Rain for videolamer. It is half critique, half rambling against the entertainment industries of the U.S. and Japan, but I don't think it ended up crossing the line.  I have a habit of railing against the games industry when I should be writing about a single game, but FSR is a game by Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture.  These guys are notorious for making games with deeper commentaries on both game design and society, who have a habit of making these points in games which are themselves faulty in design. 

It's the kind of conundrum that I feel like I see all the time these days; something comes out that is either bad, or just partially bad, and someone comes along to tell me that this badness is, in fact, intentional.  This leads me to stand there and wonder whether they're being sincere, insecure, or so condition to embrace the modern perception of irony that their response is simply rote.  With FSR, I came to the conclusion that there's an honest game somewhere inside, but I know that somewhere, someone is out there who would violently disagree.  This doesn't bother me, but as one who strives for honest critiques, it makes me wonder if I'm giving Suda's games the same kind of pass that I yell at others for giving the things that I hate.

In case you're wondering, this all stems from the fact that I was this close to devoting a paragraph of the review in order to make fun of the band Muse.  Luckily I punched out at the last minute and avoided this mistake.  I'm trying to review a video game.  I'm lucky to have anyone reading it in the first place.  The last thing I need to do is drive them away by trying to impose my flippant observations on popular music onto them.  It would be even worse to do so by pretending to make a clever comparison to the game.  There are already too many games writers who make their body of work more about them than the games they cover; the last thing I want to do is make that situation worse.

So instead, I'll take that reference and write about it here. Muse kind of pisses me off.  In my mind, they are the kind of band that is trying to get away with pulling off a variety of ideas that, in the year 2010, musicians should have a pretty fair grasp of how to pull off (and in some cases, the ideas are simply stupid, and they should know better than to use them).  Yet they go ahead with it anyway, and their fans make plenty sure to give it all a pass.  They're a fine example of why I struggle to get into a lot of modern bands, indie or otherwise; I can never tell who the fuck is being sincere, and who is simply lost and confused. 

A good example of my frustrations can be found in "Uprising", the opening song of their latest album, "The Resistance".  The song has this funky, fairly cheesy disco beat, with lyrics that tell everyone to rise up and fight against evil governments and corporate overlords.  The overall tone and lyrical content makes me almost - almost - think that it is a satire on inexperienced, overly delusional people who rail against The Man without truly grasping what The Man is, or how best to stop Him.  Yet the Internet has bred a generation of kids who easily eat this shit up, and the theme of the song is also in the name of the entire album.  So the fans can tell me that it's meant as a joke - you can tell me anything on the Internet, if you really want - but I don't have to believe it.  The fact that the band has been featured on the soundtracks of the Twilight films, which only know how to take themselves seriously, makes it apparent that at least someone in charge of marketing has deemed Muse as needing the serious angle.  That's not really damming proof, but it's a bit more concrete than the words of anonymous fans.

But still, even if we were to buy the notion that Muse is cracking a joke, one more question remains; is it a good one?  I don't think so.  This gets back to another point I made in the FSR review - these days, an entertainer (or their fans) can simply state their intentions, and everyone behaves as if they succeeded in their goals just because they tried.  There's still a matter of quality of execution, and in this regard, the Muse song fails.  For comparison, look at most Dead Kennedys songs.  You can tell that DK isn't interested in killing the poor, and you know that they aren't cops looking to abuse their power.  Their lyrics discuss these topics because they're attempting to lash out at certain aspects of society, and this is made crystal clear by both the tone of the music and the vocal delivery.  With Muse, I can't immediately tell what side they're trying to push, and if you think about it, the side the fans want you to believe - that this mega popular band, signed to a major label, is mocking the idea of resistance - is actually a more scary alternative than if they were dead serious in their overblown, out of touch protest.  In either situation, good taste loses.

To go back to a previous statement, this shit frustrates me because there is no sincerity in it.  There's none in the music, or the fan's reaction to it.  A band like Muse exists solely to address the interests that gullible kids have been told to enjoy.  I guess the only difference between them and pasts bands of this ilk is that arrested development has caused an army of twenty somethings to eat this up at an age when they should probably know better.  But this can be a big problem, since these twenty somethings are so afraid to grow up, or even take a stand for what they think, that they muddy the waters of discussion by sewing doubt in the minds of  anyone who dares think that the stuff they started getting into in college may not be timeless.

Muse Nation, take it from an ELO fan: like symphonic pop, symphonic rock isn't awesome by default.  If you're not using the string section to enhance and improve the rock sound, then kindly get it out of the song.  Don't fuck things up because you feel the need to insert some false sense of classiness into your favorite genre, and are too lazy to explore actual classical music. 

Review - A Hard Day's Night

Album: A Hard Day's Night
Release Date: July 10th, 1964









 A Hard Day’s Night was momentous for several reasons.  It was the first Beatles album without any cover songs, as well as the only one written entirely by Lennon and McCartney.  It also served as the soundtrack for the band’s first feature film.  That’s quite a lot of firsts for just their third album, and it becomes even more interesting when you figure out the proper historical context.  A Hard Day’s Night, both the record and film, is said to represent the state of the band at the height of Beatlemania.  This assertion is so strong that I believed it to be true before I ever read anyone who outright stated it.  It became one of those givens of music culture.

The trouble is that the collective consciousness tends to ignore dates.  I always thought that Beatlemania was the result of years of success, but A Hard Day’s Night was released a little over a year after Please Please Me.  Beatlemania actually happened fast and early. What we don’t often hear is that pop music in the 60’s was not too different than it is today.  It was based entirely on trends, with no act having a shelf life of much longer than a year, at least as performing musicians.  After that, they might find opportunities in TV or film.  The industry was generating personalities, and was perhaps more blatant about it than it is today.  As the Pitchfork retrospective explains, the album’s response to this cynical outlook is it’s greatest achievement.  The Beatles knew that they didn’t have to bow out gracefully if they could prove that they were still relevant.  So they showed that they could write their material all on their own, and they made said material push boundaries that no one expected pop songs to try and bother with. 

So far I’ve admittedly only recycle other, better observations on this record.  Now for my own opinion on its quality.  It’s one thing to say that the band tried to push the pop envelope, but did they actually succeed? And can a modern listener without much musical knowledge tell the difference?  I think so, but it isn’t always easy.  Some of the songs here still have that sock hop sound, with cutesy lyrics and harmonies, but legendary tracks like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” certainly feel more mature and exciting.  The content is not about awkward teenagers, but perhaps somewhat older lovers, dealing with love and life and money and jobs.  They may not sound edgy by modern standards, but they make it clear that the band was now about touch as much as it was look.  Tracks like “If I Fell” and “And I Love Her” are slower and more mellow sounding.  A Hard Day’s Night deals with all the same themes, but childish pining and fictional pain are replaced with something that sounds more like real love and loss.  Compared to past works, there is definitely an evolution in sound and content, and if you  still believe it sounds straightforward, you’re right.  It’s just that the reasons for this are that The Beatles helped establish several decades worth of pop canon, starting somewhere around here.

Overall, I find A Hard Day’s Night to be something I have to listen to from start to finish.  There are no tracks that I cherry pick, nor are there real stinkers.  It is a thoroughly enjoyable event, from start to finish, and I tend to only bring it out every so often, so as not to burn out on it.  Perhaps my favorite thing about the album is how it reminds me that pop music doesn’t have to be disposable; it is simply often made that way by design.  When someone insults The Beatles for being a “pop band”, they’re gonna have to try harder.   

The Prisoner - Recap

So I never finished my Prisoner recaps. Sorry for that. At the very least, the last few episodes are wild and speculative enough that any interpretation I might won't add up to much. There are certain scenes and questions which cannot be answered, and they don't need to be either. Still, this post might have some analysis.

I do want to talk a bit more on my final thoughts on the show. It's been months since I finished the final episode, but I just rewatched a few with audio commentary on, and they provided some insight and observations which have helped improve my interest and appreciation of the show.

There are a lot of reasons to admire The Prisoner, and what I've really come to see is just how lucky we are to have something like it. It was different than most shows of its era, and difficult to write, film, and produce. The fact that it came out at all, let alone managed to be so good, is incredible.

Another point of merit is that the show's subject matter is easy to fuck up. Everyone loves referencing 1984 and Brave New World, and calling things they don't like "Orwellian", but it is easy to miss an important point of these classic books. Orwell and Huxley were against the terrible dystopias they created, but they also emphasized just how powerful they are. Neither novel's protagonist succeeds in the end, and in the case of Brave New World, the only person who really fights against society is someone from outside of it. I find that people seem to cling to stories like The Matrix, in which the heroes are pure and virtuous, being fully disconnected from the societal machine, and having little to no care for the poor "sheep" (or if concern does exist, it is so half assed as to be irrelevant). They like to believe that if they were in the story, they too would be free and enlightened. This, of course, is entirely bullshit. Orwell and Huxley knew that we're all part of society to some extent, and once you're a part of it, it is extremely difficult to break away. The answer, then, may not be to escape and destroy, but to prevent these nightmare scenarios from ever occurring. Most of the supposed "free thinkers" I am referring to are more like the Huxley's character Bernard. He has the ideas, and he thinks highly of himself for this, but he doesn't have the guts to act upon them. In the end, he's a flake who crumbles due to fear and jealousy.

The Prisoner, on the other hand, very much gets the point. For most of the show, we see Number Six find new and more clever ways to try and escape, and every one of them fails. He finally understands that the people behind The Village have influence far beyond it. There is no getting out; instead, all he can do is pretend to play along, while trying to fuck with them in any way he can. In the end, he wins the battle of the minds, but by the end of the final episode, it isn't clear that his efforts have done anything. The Village is destroyed, but there's no definitive proof that Six has escaped his captors for good. The cycle will continue, and escape is likely impossible.

I also found that, despite what you might expect, The Prisoner is friendly to the plight of its victims. Number Six is the most individual of anyone in The Village, and his plight is very much his own, but he isn't the only person who tries to escape or fight back. He often tries to enlist the aid of others who have seen through the lies (none of whom last very long), and those that have bought in to the system are not looked at as sheep ripe for collateral damage, but as people whom are worth saving. He has contempt for those that work towards keeping the prisoners at bay, but both he and the viewer can tell that the people are being trapped by very powerful mechanisms which a single person can't hope to break. In the end, Number Six very much wants to escape The Village, but he also wants to put a stop to it. This level of concern is rare, but it is important in that it shows that while The Village is the result of man's evils, it's success is caused by failings weaknesses of man which cannot simply be prevented.

This brings up an apparent contradiction - in the end, a single man does manage to defeat the system, at least temporarily. The key here is to understand that Number Six is more of an allegory for the human spirit, the fight for freedom, than he is a person that we can hope to perfectly emulate. Indeed, the only reason he succeeds at all is because he is able to learn from the failures of those who acted before him, and because The Village considers him so important that his rebellion is met with only mild punishment. Six is treated specially compared to everyone else, and this isn't because he is some special person. Rather, he is treated as such because he represents an ideal, one that is so powerful that they do not wish for it to spread. In most fiction of this nature, the viewer is tempted to see themselves in the hero, to believe that they too are special compared to the rest of humanity. That isn't the point of The Prisoner; we will never have the constitution or the lucky breaks that Number Six is gifted with. Yet he is someone we should all aspire to be like, because if enough people stand up and fight back, then we can cover our individual weaknesses and work together as a cohesive whole. I believe this interpretation works well with the ending, which shows that, alone, the ideal as man is only able to inflict temporary damage to the system. The only way to truly break it is for people to come together. This sense of inclusion is what makes The Prisoner so powerful and unique. It doesn't tell us to save ourselves and abandon the world, and it doesn't want us to hide behind a mask (which is why I still loathe the popularity of the V for Vendetta film adaptation). We must stand up and make our faces known, but we must do it together if we want to succeed.

A lot of people hated the ending to The Prisoner. Everybody wanted a proper reveal. Who is Number One? What does he want? How is he stopped? These are the questions viewers wanted answered, and McGoohan rejected them all because they were never the point. He wanted it to be an allegory on society, while everyone else wanted a traditional "good versus evil" yarn. If the show was leading up to a proper ending, with escape and victory, it probably would have built up to such an event, with clues and reveals being sprinkled into each episode. As it is, the show has little to no continuity between episodes, and no one can agree on an official ordering. It makes sense that viewers of the time were upset, but in the modern era we should know better. The Prisoner echoes many moderns shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, which fail to create a satisfying ending and often fall back to the "story as metaphor" explanation. The difference is that these shows spent several seasons previous behaving as if there is strong continuity and development within the plot, and that a resolution is forthcoming. The Prisoner was victim of audience expectations, but modern shows are victims of trying (and failing) to address those expectations. In my mind, they deserve far less sympathy. McGoohan had something he wanted to say. The writers on Lost simply fucked up.

And so it pains me to see that in the decades since, the TV critics who are supposedly concerned with the quality of modern programming continue to regard The Prisoner as a wacky footnote in the history of the medium. The truth is that it's themes, its tone, and its delivery are all far more powerful, interesting, and viewer friendly than most of today's failed serials. We compare it to so many other works as if they had anything in common, yet if we spent more time looking at what this show was trying to achieve, we'd see just how much different it really was. If we truly learned the right lessons from it, and improved upon its ideals, then I'm sure that TV storytelling would be worlds better than it is now. Like it's main character, the show was merely a dent in an ever moving machine.

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady are one of the great polarizers in modern music. Rather than trying their hand at some postmodern experimentation, they play straight up classic rock, inspired heavily by the sounds and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It's a familiar, fun sound that has given them the infamous title of being the greatest bar band around, something to play while the drinks are flowing among friends. Naturally, such a sound is considered unworthy of any deep examination or critical acclaim. As the albums kept coming, and the band continued to play songs about teenagers in peril, music fans began to stop fighting over the band, and simply stepped onto one side of the line, knowing that this schtick was the only sound they knew how to make.

Being a fan of both classic rock and sincere music, I find myself being pro Hold Steady. They may not shake my musical world, but I find them to be a necessary comfort food in an age where modern music doesn't know what the hell it wants to be. Furthermore, the band is a fine example of how age of a song or act can affect our view of it. No one faults an old and rich Bruce for singing about hardships and youthful mistakes, so it seems silly to make this claim against The Hold Steady.

Be that as it may, there can be striking levels in quality in even such a straightforward theme. my first Hold Steady album, Boys and Girls in America, had a sound that was far more fun than sober. It was as if the band was saying "take a look at our youth today. Aren't they so crazy??!?", at the same time that you could envision the keyboardist slamming back a brew between furious solos. This is probably why Pitchfork media gave it such a favorable review - the hippest and coolest of the music indsutry seem to latch on to bands where you aren't quite whether they're looking at you with stern seriousness or a wink and a nod.

Meanwhile, time has gone on since "Boys and Girls", and while the band is still covering the same topics, their approach has definitely changed (I won't say evolved, exactly). Critics have described this as The Hold Steady sliding into a position as elder statesmen of modern rock, looking back at the trials and tribulations of youth while no longer being apart of it. At first, I thought this was a bizzare statement to make. The band's first major release was only back in 2004, meaning that singer Craig Finn has been in his thirties the entire time. In music years, it seems like he should have been an elder statesman all along. But we live in an age where everyone is growing up slower, and you can bet your ass that a 32 year old can still be found partying hard, or at most, is starting to grow out of that phase. Now that Finn is closer to 40, play time is definitely over. The fact that we didn't see The Hold Steady grow out of their twenties doesn't negate the fact that people of any age can change a lot in the span of six years. They may not have followed the traditional rock band narrative, but how much does that really mean? In any case, regardless of what labels the band has been stamped with, the songs themselves are all you need to see that they really have done some growing up (more on that in a future review).

In any case, this transformation of sorts has led to the usual results. Their last two records have met with increasingly lower grades from the hipster critics, all the while gaining more praise from mainstream outlets such as Rolling Stone. This is due to the fact that, depending on where your music tastes lie, the concept of "growing up" means either giving in to wild experimentation, or settling down. Personally, my own tastes are far too unpredictable for me to agree with either approach wholeheartedly, so I tend to judge each band's progress on a case by case basis. In regards to The Hold Steady, their newest album is out, and I think I'm ready to hold court.

Follow Up - MLB At Bat

I've been able to use At Bat for a bit over a week now. My opinion of it is mostly the same. I can't really say how much more reliable the sound is on a Wifi connection, because the Wifi at the house has been flaking out a ton lately (plus the Droid just doesn't get a strong signal from it). I've had nights with completely uninterrupted sound, and others in which I've just quit listening instead of attempting to reconnect every inning. However, I'm quite positive that it isn't all due to problem on my end. There were a few instances where a game cut out, and I would open up the browser to make sure that websites still loaded. They did so without a hitch, making me believe the disconnects were due to problems with MLB's servers. Whatever the issue, I'd be happy if the game's reliably reconnected, but this only happens occasionally. The rest of the time, the program will simply hang unless you coax it into trying again.

Despite that, I was using At Bat to listen to at least one game a day from Monday to Sunday, and the majority of that time was probably disconnect free. In essence, this program turns your smartphone into an AM pocket radio, allowing to pretend that you're your dad for a night, sitting on the porch and tuning in before bedtime. That's really special to me, and if the disconnects would improve a bit more, I'll be in heaven.

With the Beatles

Album: With the Beatles
Release Date: November 22 1963








No help on this review; I'm going it alone. I have always felt like With the Beatles is susceptible to getting lost in the shuffle. Released just four months after Please Please Me, it breaks down to eight original tunes and six covers, just like it's predecessor. As the second album, it doesn't celebrate any major "firsts". Even it's iconic album art is easily forgotten among several more iconic album covers that would succeed it. In short, it was a quick and dirty follow up meant to preserve the band's unparalleled success.

But you know what? I like it better than Please Please Me, by a long shot even. True, Please Please Me is more iconic, and there are individual songs on it that tend to stick in my head more strongly. But every time I fire up With the Beatles, I am reminded of how many great songs are on it.

Where do I start? First there are the covers, which are some of the band's most memorable. "Please Mister Postman", "Money", "Roll Over Beethoven", and "You Really Got a Hold on Me" are all present here, and as expected, the Beatles' takes on these standards are so good that they are often the only versions that people remember. Surprisingly, my favorite of the covers is "Till There was You", which is so obscure that people are likely to think it is a Lennon/McCartney original. The rendition is light and airy, a ray of sunshine that stands out amongst the band's output to this point, at least in terms of style.

Among the original songs, I'm not sure how, exactly, I want to describe them. There's nothing that matches "I Saw Her Standing There" or "Love Me Do" in terms of "smacks you in the face" quality, though the opening lines of "It Won't Be Long" are damn close. Yet overall, the songwriting feels more mature. The harmonies are more clever and interesting, and just four months later, it already sounds like the band is coming into their own. While I'm listening to them, the songs on With the Beatles hold my interest much more easily than those on Please Please Me, but once I'm done they tend to slip away. I'm not sure why this is the case, especially with tracks like "Hold Me Tight", which practically sums up the entire concept of sock hop dance hits for me.

If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say the problem with With the Beatles is one of magnitude. The first and final songs on Please Please Me are definitive in a way that nothing here really is, even if this is a stronger overall body of work. This in turn causes us to go back to Please Please Me with greater frequency, which is what really causes it to stick in our minds. Make no mistake though; With the Beatles has a stronger overall set of covers, and it gives us a solid glimpse into the future sound that the third album, A Hard Day's Night, would use to cement Beatlemania. You may not always remember how good it is, but that just makes it one of the more generous album's in the band's catalog, and it ensures that every re-listen is a treat.

MLB at Bat

Blackouts are the most frustrating thing a sports fan can deal with. You move away from your favorite team (or live somewhere in the midwest where the team affiliations of neighboring states get flaky), yet you still want to follow them. You can't see them on TV, since (understandably) the local stations want to follow their own home teams. But you can't easily venture online, since the Powers That Be have determined that listening to streaming radio online doesn't grant you permission to hear the game, even if you're listening to the same advertisements as the local audience. If you're dealing with the NFL, it gets even worse, as even the team minutes away from your house may be blacked out if ticket sales are weak.

For better or for worse, some of the sports leagues have developed a solution - pay them money, and you can get different kinds of access to the entire league's content. This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, you probably don't want access to the entire league, in which case you're always going to be paying for service you don't need. Second, said prices can be enormous depending on what you're after. Full season access to televised ball games? Better save your coins for that Triple Play package. And good luck making sure you get exactly what you need. My roomate got giddy over a supposedly sweet deal for NFL games on DirectTV, only to discover that there are at least two packages available, and the one he sprung for didn't grant games in HD or guarantee no blackouts. He haggled to get that version for free, but that's not the point.

As frustrating as this all is, I'll admit I'm willing to pony up a bit for a service. And thankfully (if you want to call it that), MLB has done better than most sports in creating different services. You can get TV access, online video and radio access, and now, in the era of smartphones, there exists a new program called MLB At Bat. Far as I can tell, it is one of the cheapest options out there. For a $15 flat fee, you can download an app for iPhone, Blackberry or Android that allows gives you live data of every MLB game, and even better, full radio broadcasts. If you're on iPhone, you can also get some video. It lasts all season and through the playoffs, and appears to have no blackouts.

No matter how annoying it may be to have to pay for this service, I'll admit that getting radio broadcasts of the Mets wherever I go for less a week's lunch budget is hardly the worst sacrifice. So I took the plunge and downloaded the Android version today.

So far, I'm liking it, but the season is long, and there are questions that still need answering. The best feature is the lack of one - there are no accounts to create, no signing in to be done. You just fire up the app and go. There's also a wealth of data at your fingertips. At Bat has all the info you'd expect from Yahoo! Sports or ESPN, including the box score, play by play breakdown, and analysis of every pitch. There are ways to get this info for free, but on a phone that lacks Flash and the like, being able to get it conveniently has its advantages over relying on apps that may not refresh correctly, or finding a browser page that will actually display.

Now about that audio... it lets you choose your radio station, if there's a choice, and the sound quality is crystal clear, or at least, as clear as it would be on AM radio. There's something about that AM sound, however, that makes baseball on the radio so charming, so I'm glad that everything sounds the way I like it. I have had problems with the connection already on Opening Day, though I have to test listening to it via Wi-Fi. On that note, I'll be curious to see how much data a single game uses up. I know I'm on an unlimited plan, but I'm still figuring out if these phone providers have some sort of hidden bandwidth cap (if it's five gigs, as I've heard it rumored, I'll be fine this month, but what of the future?)

Lastly, the Android version currently lacks gameday video. I don't actually need this feature, since baseball is the one sport that works perfectly well on the radio, but I can understand a bit of complaint on principle, since the feature exist for iPhone users paying just as much. Still, iPhone lacked it in its first year of the app, so I'm sure MLB will roll it out eventually.

Bottom line, At Bat is shaping up to be a solid program and a good value. As long as the sound quality and the streams stay strong, I'll be in heaven all season.

PS - Forgot to mention, there needs to be a better way to start/stop radio streaming. Currently you must go to audio, and hit a small stop button that doesn't easily recognize touch inputs, and looks more like a checkbox than a stop button. Something nice and big at the bottom of the app would be nice.

The Hendrix Remasters

I knew about the Jimi Hendrix remastering project for a while now, but I didn't know they were out until a week or two after release. I guess I expected the same level of hoopla that the Beatles remasters received. The fact that I didn't find it means that either Hendrix's staying power is weaker than I thought, or I just didn't look hard enough for press material.

In any case, they're out, which means that I had to pick up a couple of the albums, as well as do the usual research to get better acquainted with Jimi.

Said research brought up back my typical feelings of excitement, confusion, and despair. Let's start with the confusion part. Like many classic rock acts, Hendrix's discography is more complicated than it needs to be. The only records to come out during his lifetime were the three albums he made with the Experience, and one live album made near the end of his life. However, he spent a boatload of time in the studio during '69 and '70, working on material for new, post-Experience albums. His untimely death meant that Jimi would never have control over how this music would be used, and sure enough, the people in charge of his recordings would mine this collection throughout the 70's (and even the 80's) to create a ridiculous amount of posthumous records. There have also been various legal battles throughout the years, as one group or another tried to gain control of the Hendrix estate.

Today, members of his family have created Experience Hendrix, who, as far as I can tell, have full control over all of Jimi's music, and who are most definitely in charge of these remasters.

Much like The Beatles CD releases from the 80's, these Hendrix remasters attempt to create a cohesive, standard collection of his studio recordings. This collection consists of the three Experience albums, as well as two posthumous releases. The first of these is First Rays of the Rising Sun, which was actually created over a decade ago, and is the family's attempt to create the album Jimi was working on before his death. These tracks were all released in some form on the first three posthumous albums created back in the 70's, but those are no longer recognized, with First taking their place in the Hendrix canon. The other is Valleys of Neptune, which is a brand new attempt at recreating and the releasing the material Jimi worked on in 1969, immediately after finishing up with the Experience. . All in all, the catalog is fairly neat these days, and since the remastering project is only five albums large, it isn't too pricey to collect.

Now for the excitement. For ten or eleven dollars (only slightly pricier than a modern music release), each remaster gives you a CD, a documentary DVD, a hefty booklet with a lot of great photos and lyrics, and a hefty cardboard digipak case to hold it in. It's a fairly nice package that arguably gives you more than any of the Beatles remasters, and for less money. Okay, so those albums also come with exactly the same stuff, but the documentaries are shorter and relegated to on disc Quicktime files.

In regards to the quality of the supplemental material, the booklet contains the usual cock sucking essay by a nostalgic music critic, but the lyrics and photos more than make up for the revisionist Hendrix history. The DVD, on the other hand, is great all around. A number of Jimi's associates take turns reminiscing about the recording of the album, and we get to go into the engineer's booth to take a listen to individual parts of each song, learning how they were recorded and mixed, giving you a glimpse into the creation process that few bands ever reveal. Some of the interview segments don't feel entirely honest or thorough, but these are still useful, since you can still learn a lot by what they don't say.

Since I'm not an audiophile, my opinion on the sound quality isn't going to be worth much, but for my ears it's better than expected. Everything is crisp, and I have no trouble hearing the dynamics (which really do add something special to these tracks). That covers my usual gripes in regards to mastering. There might be some compression for the sake of loudness going on; after listening to Are You Experienced, I immediately switched to Sgt. Pepper in mono, and found it to be a hell of a lot quieter at the same volume.

And now for the despair: as is typical of the internet, no one is happy with these remasters, or the way in which Experience Hendrix has handled anything. I see some nicely made, well priced releases, and an official website boasting an impressive number of interviews and official bootlegs for free listening. However, for the old timers who were live for Hendrix's work, and the younger fans who can use the power of anonymity to pretend to be both audiophiles and Hendrix historians, none of this is good enough. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Jimi created hundreds of unreleased tracks and thousands of live recordings in his short career, making it likely that no one can agree on just what is and isn't worth releasing. But that still doesn't excuse the fact that haters won't let something as simple as acknowledging that their worldview is just one of many get in the way of their scorn. The bottom line is that if you're a new fan who hasn't bought past Hendrix releases, there's nothing wrong with these remasters. And if you truly are an older, experienced fan, the best thing you can do in a review is describe the music and why you like it. Not everyone has the desire, time, or money to track down whatever rare or definitive version you put your stamp of approval on. Share your interest in the music first, and let the reader decide for themselves how deep they want to dig.

Running Wild

So far, my experience with the Android OS can be boiled down to "baked in features are great, optional apps are hit or miss". That's quite acceptable for me, especially since the Android Marketplace is still slowly evolving. Even an official Google app like Listen can get a way with some flakiness, since I know it is a Labs product. But I had my first real issue with a standard phone feature, and I think it says a lot.

The basic problem was that gmail wasn't syncing with the phone. Out of the blue, over the last two days, I've had to manually refresh the program to get my messages. It started off as a mild annoyance, but grew into great concern when none of the simple fixes and settings tweaks I tried did a lick of good. Just as I was tempted to do a factory reset, I came across the true problem. I had been disabling almost all background process on the phone in order to test its performance, including Google Talk. As it turns out, gmail won't sync without this process running.

Right off the bat, this is pretty stupid. Nowhere does it say that the Google Talk process is in charge of anything but incoming IM's. I suppose the logic behind this is "there's a reason this process is spawned by the phone at startup. Don't mess with it." But the other processes launched by the OS have names like "Android Keyboard" and "Voice Search". I know what they are, and that I should probably leave them alone. That isn't really the case with Gtalk.

But it doesn't stop there. It turns out that Gtalk sticks its fingers into other parts of the phone. Say you have another IM client, like Meebo. You can add your Google Talk account to it, but the standard Gtalk process will almost always get the messages first, in which case you're stuck managing two IM programs. Furthermore, based on what I can tell, if one of your contacts is online, Android will try to send messages via Gtalk, rather than an standard text. I'm still figuring out if there's a setting behind this one, because while this feature can be nice in order to save texts, it doesn't take into account the idea that someone may get up from their desk for an indefinite period of time (unless it doesn't use Gtalk to message idle users....I'll have to check).

A few points about all this. Firstly, the Gtalk process is not very Linuxy. It should do one thing, and one thing well, and instead it tries to master several areas of the device. Second, the confusion behind it is very Linuxy, in that a simple (but frustrating) problem is solved by something that a new user would never think of checking. Third, when things do go wrong in Linux, there's usually some sort of documentation that, if you had read it, would have shed a clue. The documentation that comes in the box of a Droid is sparse, and finding more robust manuals online requires quite a bit of digging.

In a way, Google has proven why Apple has disapproved of multitasking in the iPhone. There's no chance for mystery or surprise. Users get what they choose to use, and everything else about the phone's operation is tucked away. I'm glad that Android lets us have more control, but granting that control means that people will find ways to screw things up. This can cause chaos for regular users, and for the power geeks, there at least needs to be a chance to RTFM.

It also reinforces the "work in progress" feel that official Google software occassionally falls victim to. While I said I won't criticize a Labs product like Listen, I'm still scratching me head at the fact that the app never seems to close; it just works in the background. Now, there are a lot of instances in which this is a good thing - if it's downloading a show, or set to auto refresh subscriptions, or I pause a show and want to come back - but there's no way to tell it to close up for good. By allowing multitasking, Android also allows programs to behave however they want. They may actually close when you hit the back button, or they may sit in the corner and wait for you to come back. With any luck, the behavior of these programs will evolve over time, but right now it's just another one of those characteristics of Android that has the potential to drive away new users towards the iPhone, in turn reinforcing the idea that you can't have user power or whizbang features without the experience falling apart.

Android 2.1

In general, the comments section of any article on the Internet is usually worthless and terrible. No amount of useful information an outweigh the feelings of despair and sadness about the future of the human race that come from the rest of the users. Yet no matter how many times you hear someone say "if you don't like them, stop reading", the mere existence of these worthless comments can be enough of a temptation to comb through them. Thankfully, there's an easy fix - plugins like Noscript for Firefox usually prevent most comment threads from displaying, and I find that I usually won't go looking for one if I don't see it.

"Usually" being the keyword. Every so often I decide to live dangerously, and open the comment section of an unfamiliar website. The results are never pretty, but I can't remember the last time I witnessed levels of stupidity on par with what I found on display at mobile phone/Android enthusiast sites. I've been checking them out ever since getting the new phone, in hopes of learning more about the smartphone market and Android in particular. This is something I can do without ever touching a comment thread, but the flaky release schedule of Android v2.1 for the Droid caused me to wander into the belly the of the beast.

As my coworker (and months long Droid owner) explained to me, 2.1 has been promised to release on the phone since sometime in January, and both Verizon and Motorola have not always been crystal clear as to why it was constantly delayed. This, in theory, is where a comment thread should be useful - users can share rumors or information that they have, speculation can run wild without overrunning editorial. Since I missed out on most of the update drama, I figured the comments would be a good place to get up to speed on information that is too old to cover in the news, but important enough for users to care about. Too bad the 'net never works like it does "in theory".

The most recent information about the update has been a statement that "we'll get it out by end of March", and sure enough, the update really did kick off yesterday. By this morning, zip files containing the update were all over the web, useable by anyone who wished to a do a manual installation. On a whole, not only was Motorola's statement (finally) accurate, but all it took was a good night's rest for the update to show up. There shouldn't any reason for drama, right?

Wrong. For one, these phone enthusiasts abused capital letters, exclamation points, and grammatical errors in ways that I thought had gone extinct in back in 1998. People were calling it an April Fool's joke, despite the fact that the news lined up with what we were told and it still March. There were people flipping out at the fact that no one had uploaded an update.zip file before midnight, meaning there were people who were losing precious sleep over this fiasco.

And of course, now that Droid owners all over the 'net have manually updated their phones, Twitter is awash with the sound of "meh", as the same people who frothed at the mouth over 2.1 find that it isn't that big of a fucking deal.

I guess the biggest question of all is this - I've seen things like this happen throughout the years. Why do I still let it surprise me?

In any case, it's a cute little update. The news and weather application is handy and convenient, though I'll probably keep the Weather Channel program as well, since it has a much more detailed forecast for the rest of the week. I like the new photo gallery program, since it kind of works like the one on a Playstation 3. I tried the pinch to zoom on the browser, and it's cute, but I don't know how to use it very well, so it doesn't seem any better than the standard zoom tool. The only other "wow factor" feature are the live wallpapers, which are pretty much like the ones in Windows Vista - you'll show them off to a friend, and then switch to something that takes up less system resources. Actually, I lie - the Polar Clock live 'paper might be permanent for me, since it makes the phone look like something out of Wipeout or Ghost in the Shell.

From what I can tell, this update did not up the number of home screens from 3 to 5, though hell if I would ever need that many. I guess 2.1 does a fine job explaining why people got so worked up, only to immediately burn out. Gadget enthusiasts only care about having something that is new and cutting edge. They like seeing numbers go up. Once they actually have to use their device in a productive way, they realize that they already have everything they need. I guess it's their form of entertainment, though damn if it doesn't clog up fine websites and forums.

PS - I keep hearing from folks that April Fools is starting to become a weeklong barrage of pranks, rather than one day of good fun. Thanks trolls, you ruined something else.

24 has been Canceled

Yeah, I guess 24 may have been canceled in the middle of it's eighth season. Can't say I'm sad to see it go. While I do get a kick at the fact that it outlasted Heroes (I got so much shit when both shows competed in the same timeslot), 24 should have gone the way of the dodo a few seasons ago.

I was talking to my brother about this a few weeks ago, and interestingly enough, an article from Time Magazine had about the same explanation as I did about where it went wrong. In the start of season 6, Jack kills his friend and comrade Curtis without blinking, all because the writers decided to give him a previously nonexistent vendetta at the last minute. Moments later, a nuclear bomb goes off in Los Angeles. Jack is on the ground, shocked by the combination of both events, vomiting on the grass. I wasn't sure about it then, but the show was over for me at that point. That was when my subconscious realized that the writers had ran out of ideas. 24 was never afraid to kill off anyone and everyone on the cast if it helped advance or improve the plot, but Curtis' death was neither moving or surprising. It just felt unnecessary. More importantly, this was the first time the show had a nuke had gone off without a hitch, yet a few episodes later no one seems to care. I have vague memories of a scene in which a badguy of sorts is arguing with his wife while driving, providing what was supposed to be comedic relief. But I don't imagine anyone driving, or chit chatting on a cell phone, or walking on the sidewalk after a nuke goes off. One of the most powerful plot devices that 24 - or any show for that matter - has ever tried to rely on was turned into an afterthought. How could we have any trust in the writers from that point on?

Sure enough, there wasn't any reason to after that. Jack's family is revealed to have been involved in Secret Villain Plotting, but the conflict is introduced and resolved with such little fanfare or scope. It should have dovetailed wonderfully with the end of Season 5, but it was made into another afterthought. With Season 7 we got a new setting and a largely new cast, and once again characters are knocked off with abandon, and a yet another secret society is introduced. Fast forward to Season 8, which I haven't watched more than an episode of. I asked my family whether those Big Bads from Season 7 were still kicking around, and at the time, they said 'no'. In other words, 24 keeps dabbling with continuity, only to follow up with seemingly standalone seasons. It's sloppy, teasing, and hard to give a damn about.

Let's face it folks - 24 has never been the height of TV entertainment. But it always manage to squeeze out more action scenes than I ever expected to see on Primetime, and the concept was intriguing enough to generate basic suspense. Nowadays, not only is the concept worn out, but there's no point in trying to guess what will happen next, not when the answer is forgotten within the span of two episodes.

Damn shame. Time to find something else to watch weekly.

Blockbuster

My local Blockbuster is closing down. I found out last week when I walked down to rent a game, only to encounter massive closing signs on the windows, and price tags on everything. I picked up a couple cheap games instead (making it almost six months since I've bought a $60 game).

I never used Blockbuster until I lived in Maryland. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, they simply didn't exist. Meanwhile, once I moved to Baltimore they became my only choice. Yet I never went to them with any great frequency, despite it being a mere ten minute walk to the store. I can think of a couple of reasons why.

Netflix - this is the reason every else gives, though it isn't the same for me. I don't subscribe to Netflix myself, but my roomate does, giving me access to their streaming service on the Xbox 360. The amount of movies they offer to stream is staggering, more than I could hope to get through. With that kind of selection, even a ten minute walk is too much.

The main point about Netflix, I think, isn't so much convenience as it is price. They helped make movies cheaper. A Netflix subscription lets you see quite a few movies by mail, and even more via streaming. There's no reason to even spend four bucks on a rental when double or triple that price can give you more films per month.

Gamefly - Calling Gamefly the "Netflix of games" is a bad analogy, since it's costlier, and the games mail out more slowly. Still, if you use Gamefly as a compliment to your gaming diet, it can change the way you play. You can buy the big, meaty games at full price, and rent out the quick and dirty action games you might otherwise have ignored. This system has allowed me to stay current with the industry in ways that would have been prohibitively expensive otherwise.

Gamefly also beats up Blockbuster on cost. $15 a month for a single game at a time will, at the bare minimum, even out to two games a month if you take your time. At one point this meant that they were not any cheaper than renting two games a month at Blockbuster, but that changed 'Buster raised their rental prices to close to nine bucks. They went from being competitive to a non option. The only alternative was Blockbuster's deal in which you could save by renting two games at once, but that puts a severe time crunch on you that simply isn't necessary.

Flaky policies/pricing - the "no late fees" policy was probably terrible for business, but great for me. It gave me a whole extra week with my games, which was often necessary. But they quietly removed this policy, such that games were back to having a strict 5 day rental period. I suffered some fees by not knowing this, and after that happened I pretty much stopped going to them (even with Gamefly, sometimes I wanted something right away). If it was made a bit clearer to me, I would have accepted it a lot more.

I also discovered that the Blockbuster Rewards program was bullshit. It only really rewarded you if you rented a lot of new, expensive films. If you just got old, cheap rentals, or didn't rent quite enough games in a month, you'd get little in return. If they modified it so that every four or five games netted you a freebie, it would have been much nicer, but instead they reset your count at the start of every month. That just made it less of a reward system and more of a way to sucker you out of money. Which I guess was the point, but the potential was always there for something good.

They Didn't Really Compete - A year after I left Pennsylvania, a Hollywood Video opened up in town. In the one summer I was home from college, I found them invaluable. They always had a good stock, their game rentals were cheaper, and they frequently offered up free rentals on any product if you didn't come in for a few months. That got me back in the store in a hurry. The only phone calls I got from Blockbuster were when items were close to being due. They were far more concerned with you giving back their products than helping customers out. But I guess they can't be blamed for that, as my next point makes clear.

They had Nothing - For a brief period of time, I worked close to another Hollywood Video. The one time I rented from there, I was able to get Bioshock the day it was released. There were at least 4 or 5 other copies sitting there. Many people would say that this kind of fast service is what we should expect and demand, but I'm a patient guy. If you told me that a game would come in within the same work week that it hits shelves, I'd be a happy camper.

Which is why I was so often frustrated with Blockbuster - even a time frame of "within the week" was too quick for them. Sometimes you'd have to wait until the next week, and when you went down to grab the game you had your eye on, it wouldn't be there. They had one, maybe two copies, and both had been scooped up. You would come back a week later, and it was still gone. Two weeks later, and it was still missing. A month later, and you were shit out of luck. It was once explained to me that this was the result of the company's "gamer pass" plan, wherein you paid a Gamefly-esque monthly fee and could keep a game as long as you wanted. But when I tried to sign up for the service, the clerk told me that not only was it discontinued, but had been for quite some time. Yet the games were still being lost in the ether.

Here's my best analysis of what happened - when the Gamer Pass service wasn't keeping the games off the shelf, the No Late Fee Policy was. As I alluded to earlier, this system could be used to your advantage. You got an extra seven days after the due date to hang onto the item, after which they charged you full price and gave you ownership. So long as you returned it before the extra seven days was over, you just extended your rental time considerably.

But while this would keep the games out longer, it would still only be a matter of two weeks, not months. But the other, more devious side of the policy took care of that. No Late Fees was hardly no late fees, but I was amazed at how many times I saw another customer complaining at the fact that they had been charged thirty bucks for a dvd they hung on to. Blockbuster knew that those who didn't read the rules of the policy would just become lazier with returning items, in turn allowing the business to make more money. But this extra-lazy customer also kept the shelves barer for longer.

But the cherry on top was that these issues were only issues at all due to the low stock, at least for games. They will devote an entire wall to a single big film release, but games never got more than two copies. They just didn't give a shit, and it showed.

It didn't have to be this way - I know they haven't (didn't?) fare any better, but at least Hollywood Video used a simple, traditional approach. You rented stuff, and if you didn't return it, they would ream you. As long as enough people were responsible with their returns, a store could rent out an item enough times to recoup the costs. When it came to games, they offset the numerous copies that they would stock by selling them off once the game was no longer hot shit. Customers got cheap buys, and they cleared their shelves. This system wasn't better for business I suppose, but if Netflix wasn't around, it probably would have worked. And hey, at least you knew what you were getting into.

Blockbuster, on the other hand, had to play games. They had to constantly tweak their return policies and pricing, and showed little consistency in their stock. One month, the games were in one area, and another month saw them on the opposite end of the store. The Blu Rays would be in a tiny section, and some time later there are stacks of them in the week-rental area (with no clear indication that yes, these are cheaper than new rentals, but still more expensive than a dvd rental). My local store was emblematic of the company as a whole - always trying to make desperate and extreme adjustments in order to survive, which in the end only served to confuse and annoy us. People on the Internet make it sound like every consumer wants to be pampered, but we're not all that stupid. We know that we'll never get the best deal from everyone we do business with. All we really want is some consistency and a bit of respect. Whenever a company begins to act against it's customers, finding the best ways to screw them over, bad things tend to happen. People notice, and they don't always put up with it. Blockbuster probably can't do anything to stop their inevitable destruction, but they've done a lot to help dig their own grave.

Considering how fond I am of the experience of dropping by the video store every week, I wish I didn't have to say any this. But I'd rather the experience go away entirely than have a twisted version of it.

The Beatles: Please Please Me

Album: Please Please Me
Release Date: March 22 1963






I often disagree with reviews from Pitchfork Media, but their critiques of the Beatles remasters offer some nice insights, or at the very least a valuable framework for viewing each album.

For Please Please Me, Pitchfork's Tom Ewing describes it as a way to deliver the titular hit single while also teasing the buying public with a large sample of what the band played through in their live shows. Based on what I know of their history, this makes sense. It fits in nicely with the story of how the album was recorded in one long session, using very few takes. Please Please Me was largely a promotional vehicle, a quick and cheap way to get the band out there to see what, if anything, would stick with listeners. It is perhaps only due to the band's talent that such a release is as good as it is.

I agree with Ewing's comment that the entire album can be danced to, which makes perfect sense if the album consists of live show staples. I also agree that the album feels cohesive despite being a mix of originals and covers. There's an overall sound of twangy guitars and sweet, syrupy harmonies which is only occasionally interrupted. But despite these positive qualities, the album doesn't always click with me. There are fourteen songs, which is right in line with the majority of Beatles albums, yet it's the only one where I end up wondering when it will end. I look at the track list, and think to myself, "These are all great songs. Why am I so impatient to get through them?" That's when I have to admit to myself that I don't like "Misery" or "Ask Me Why", or even "Please Please Me" itself nearly as much as I think I do. And the tracks that I don't like are scattered in such a way that they kill any momentum the album manages to work up.

But what's most striking to me about Please Please Me is that no song goes over three minutes in length, yet each feels longer than they actually are. My guess, as a budding writer, is that the dance hall nature of this early material leads to a heavier emphasis on vocal harmony over strong instrumentation. To my ear, all the long phrases and "woohs" and "ahhs" make even the songs with a brisk tempo feel slower than they are. There are no hooks, no wild shifts in tone, because these qualities aren't apt to dance.

Thankfully, when Please Please me does work, it clearly demonstrates that the Beatles were playing with genius. "I Saw her Standing There" may be the greatest first track in the history of rock. The beat is fast, every instrument is clear and perfectly used, and the harmonies are golden. On the other end of the record, their cover of "Twist and Shout" is so raw, at once both surprising yet seemingly appropriate. Even when dealing with covers, the Beatles knew how to combine the intent of the original with their own personal spin, in this case creating a definitive version of the classic tune. The same can be said for their cover of "Boys" by The Shirelles, which somehow comes to life on the Rock Band game tie-in. As for other originals, "Do you Want to Know a Secret?" always wins me with its charm, and I'd easily take "Love Me Do" over "Please Please Me" as the best song to identify the record with.

There's a lot of fun in Please Please Me, but don't be afraid to pick and choose on this one. There are better whole album experiences to be had.

A note on reviews

I figured out why I keep promising, but then failing, to write album reviews. As much as I have learned over the years in regards to popular music, I haven't learned quite enough to be able to express myself properly. I don't know quite enough history, nor can I identify influences or styles with enough precision. I fear that I will write something that sounds definitive but incorrect, excited but unorganized. But if I let that fear take control, I'll never get better. So I decided that if I have to read other reviews to get an idea of what it is I'm feeling but can't express, so be it. I'll still try and agree/disagree when I feel it is needed.

One Week

One week with the Droid. How has it been faring?

- The learning curve is pretty much gone. I haven't used every little feature (like keyboard shortcuts), but I don't think there are many that I don't at least know about. Having to use the Menu button to access app settings and features isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The most important ones are easy to get to, and a lot of the ones I thought can be mostly ignored once you get things configured the way you want.

- I'm liking the touch keyboard more and more.

- I like the ability to add widgets. It forces me to do things like actually check my calendar in detail.

- The accelerometer is a bit wonky.

- While the built in apps are very well made, for some reason I assumed that Android Marketplace would be filled with all sorts of optional, fun apps from Google themselves. That isn't really the case; they've got some stuff on there, but in far less quantity. Maybe they're too busy updating the OS itself.

- Too many "bastard stepchild" apps. The best ones integrate seamlessly with Android, but others are quick and dirty ports from the iPhone. You can tell which is which based on whether the MEnu button does anything. On the iPhone ports, it won't, and instead all of your options will be on the bottom of the screen. Not the end of the world really, but without proper optimizations for the Droid's screen/touch capability, these apps can be more troublesome to use than they should be.

- Google Listen is a great program, but not a perfect one. You can add podcast subscriptions in Google Reader, and Listen will sync up with them, allowing you to tune in to your favorite podcasts wherever you are. At first I thought this was one of those programs that enables lazy people, and I guess it still is, but it is the kind of convenience I can get behind. Before, I would have to download podcasts to my PC (often rebooting from Ubuntu to Windows solely to do this), load them onto the Zune, and delete them afterwards. I would also have to make sure I had enough space on the player. It wasn't terribly time consuming, but it required a lot of effort and upkeep just to listen to some hour long shows. Google Listen allows me to fire up a show, then ditch it as soon as I'm done. And since it downloads the sound files, I can start a 'cast when I get on the subway, and continue listening when I go underground and lose phone signal.

So what's the problem? While the interface is simple and crisp, the updating mechanism is confusing when set to manual. It never really tells you whether a refresh is successful, so you have go to your show list and see if there are any changes. Furthermore, the playback mechanism is not explained in detail. I guess the best way to describe it is that Listen downloads any show you start to play, but begins playback immediately. So it looks as if it is streaming, but it saves the buffer for later use. This is nice, but I'm not sure if there is a way to force it to just stream or just download. I don't mind having to delete old shows, but I would like to know exactly what is going on (and why).

More thoughts

I made errors in judgment in my last few posts. Next time I'll do better research. In our last episode, I chided LG for making what I thought was a silly iPhone ripoff with the Venus. What I forgot is that it is only one of many phones that they make. I was recently informed of the LG Prada, which launched close the iPhone, has many similar features, and looks rather slick.

So I need to revise my thought about Apple's success. I still believe that they know how to make basic computing concepts simple and user friendly, as well make hardware that looks nice and packs power. But the problem with the competition is not that they can't do the same things. Rather, they get into trouble because Apple puts their balls in a vicegrip. They can make something that's slim, fast and gorgeous, but if it isn't the same as the look and feel of Apple's products, people won't be nearly as excited. They end up being forced to abandon their own concepts and mimmick Apple, because everything else gets crushed.

Of course, doing this makes their products look like second rate knockoffs, so they still wind up losing.

I guess the best approach would be to stake out one's own path, carve out a niche, and try to expand it. Still, this has to be frustrating when you realize that the only reason you have to work that much harder (and longer) is because you can't generate a Reality Distortion Field.

This makes me think some more about Apple's recent lawsuit against HTC for patent violations. As always, these software patents are used irresponsibly, and the nature of the descriptions create enough wiggle room for people to create poor but convincing defenses, either because the text is too vague, or the concept is.

There's a whole lot of bickering going on about this over at slate.com, and the thing that gets me is that Apple apologists mount their defense based on very specific, strict facts. We all love facts, because compared to opinions, they're a hell of a lot better at proving things. But facts work come in different flavors. If you have a scientific fact, there's nothing you can do to rationally wave it away. It isn't going to change, unless you can use more science. But if state the fact that some terrible thing a corporation does is entirely legal, does that end the discussion just as quickly? Yes, it is a fact, but unlike the laws of physics, the laws of government can change. And the fact that something was allowed doesn't make it right. Humans make mistakes, after all. I'm sure someone out there would grill me for this, but in my mind, a person who argues the gravitational constant has no leg to stand on, but the person who is upset that a corporation screwed someone over by using loopholes shouldn't be immediately dismissed.

This is why the pro Apple arguments bug me so much. Yes, patent law as we know it today allows them to file a suit, but that doesn't mean that patent law is working properly. And yes, there are certain aspects of the iPhone that are original in a very specific sense, but that doesn't mean it was fit to patent. The argument that we should "hate the player, not the game" doesn't always work. If we don't hate the players, then the game will never change. You can try, but if we don't see anything wrong with the someone's actions, then there doesn't appear to be any reason to change.

One of the worst arguments I saw on slate boiled down to claiming that Apple is in the right place at the right time. He claimed that their use of a entirely multi touch based device was unheard of before, and is original enough to patent. Everyone else has to build touch features onto pre-existing interfaces, such as a key or mouse based device. (PS - can the iPhone work without ever using it's single button? If not, it ain't a multi touch only device).

But on a gut level, I see no difference between "multi touch based device" and "mouse driven device". The argument can be interpreted as saying that if the mouse or the GUI was invented in the 2000's, then the inventors would be right in patenting them, and forcing other device makers into building it on top of other interfaces. Imagine if we actually had to do that. It sounds absurd, because it is. Keyboards and touch screens have been around for a long time. Using them in different ways is only so original. And in my mind, they are not original enough to patent. There's also the problem that hardware like a keyboard and mouse is such that their functionality is largely determined by the actual configuration of the hardware. Touch screen interfaces are governed far more by their software than a Logitech mouse. Hardware is a lot more concrete than software, which is why software patents are almost universally despised. We can use this example in my previous argument - there were some legal issues surrounding GUI's, which are interfaces based mostly on software, during their creation. These were resolved, and these days no one can really stop you from making a GUI based OS. But imagine if instead we had a legal showdown like this one Apple is brewing up? That would be rather dangerous. Not to mention that the actual issues that came up were resolved by Apple working with Xerox. In this current battle, Apple has put competitors in the situation they were once in, without the chance to wheel and deal. This is a fact too, but it won't be used by apologists to negate the necessity of the lawsuit.

Lastly, there's the really finicky, not-so-fact based dilemma of Apple being in a position of power. One commenter argued that if they didn't file these patents, someone like HTC would. It was a first strike scenario. When the law works as intended, size won't matter, and indeed, we have seen large corporations lose out to smaller patent holders, and vice versa. But if HTC had these patents, and filed suit against Apple, you wouldn't see Mac fans defending the little guy. They'd laugh at the fact that the underdog dared to try and get in the behemoth's way. But in the world of Internet debate, such touchy feely ideas are stomped upon, no matter how accurate they may be.

I should have just made this argument with a bit of common sense. If Apple is going to purposefully ignore features and software that they don't like, then screw them for trying to stop people from building upon their ideas.