Harry Callahan

Magnificent. I don't like all of his stuff, but he comes the closest to the aesthetic I've been lazily striving for in his photos of buildings. I love that he focused on the daily life of where he lived in his early work, photographing the mundane and making it beautiful, like this, the last photo that is of a building wall in Chicago. He experimented like mad, but his abstract photos were so tasteful.

Look at the composition of this. So fortuitous, but apparently he worked hard to get a handful of photos a year, photographing more in a weekend than others did in a year.

I love the barrenness of this. Mies Van Der Rohe was a big influence on him, great portrait.

Look how it abstracted and simplified this through contrast. Lovely.

Another beautiful winter scene from Chicago. Inspiring. I'll have to look for more books on him. It's becoming obvious that I need to take a history of photography class.

Hall and Oatesmeal

Look, I think, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am still a pretty hip guy. With it. You know, on top of trends, despite my vastly outdated slang in that first sentence.

I try and do keep up, but you know, glancing at pitchforkmedia.com every so often just doesn't cut it. I straddle that grup line, but it's starting to wear thin. Either the line or my straddle.

Anyway, I feel entirely vindicated today because in this week's SF Weekly in an article entitled "I Can Go For That: The Web 2.0 Generation recharges Hall & Oates Hits" I learned that Hall & Oates (H & O) are back. And if you check my lastfm profile, you'll see that H & O are my third most played artist. Again, I'm just ahead of the curve. Here's an interview with Oates in the SF Weekly.

Actually, I played H & O obsessively while grinding out two draft chapters of my dissertation in January and February. For some reason, the extremely well-crafted pop allowed me to hack my way through about 100 pages. I used to buy a CD when I had to write a paper. I'd just play that sucker over and over again, and I suppose H & O got me through the hump this past winter, although others suffered my enthusiasm for Messers Hall and Oates. My apologies again, J., but a boy's gotta compulsively blast his brain sometime.

Iceland in Hot Springs, Arkansas

Sometimes the cognitive dissonance gets a wee bit too much. But here's a point for the South. According to pitchfork media, Sigur Rós' Jón "Jónsi" Birgisson and Parachutes' Alex Somers have been coming together for the sake of art under the name Riceboy Sleeps and they are having an exhibit in Hot Springs, Arkansas at Gallery 801. What a coup for Gallery 801 based on the attention that they are getting. Riceboy Sleeps does paper and book art, it seems, and I think they did at least one album cover (ok, CD cover) for Sigur Rós.

Now, I've been a huge Sigur Rós fan since pretty much the beginning. I flew out to the Bay Area to see them on their first American tour in 2001 since they were only touring the Coasts. Well, I snuck in a night at Nickies to see DJ Cheb i Sabbah too. I even wrote a review about the show, which has been removed from their official site, and my encounter with three members of Metallica at the show. Metallica? Sigur Rós? Say it ain't so, Hall! I actually thought that the lead guitarist for Metallica at first was Dave Navarro and almost said so. That would've been funny.

I'm also a big fan of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why? Well, I've taken two long weekend-type vacations in that area, and when I lived briefly in Dallas, not exactly a nature preserve, trips up to Lake Ouachita (one of the cleanest lakes in the nation because you cannot build on the lakefront) were balm to my humidity-flayed soul. Hot Springs has, of course, old spas from the late 19th-early 20th century, which are a kick to visit, and the scenery is quite nice. You can rent a boat and go out on Lake Ouachita, which I've done twice, and there are some great swimming holes in the area.

But how did Riceboy Sleeps get a show there? There were a ton of little galleries the last time I was there in the mid-90s, but most of it was Western-oriented. They were a few galleries a bit out of the ordinary. I remember one that sold welded sculptures of hockey players dressed as samurai swordsmen, but still. Not exactly the most avant-garde place, Hot Springs. Or is it? Great story about how the exhibit came about here. It never hurts to ask.

Just don't eat at the Thai restaurant in downtown Hot Springs.

With a Samurai Rebel Yell!

Samurai Rebellion. 1967.

Ah, Toshirō Mifune. I have a great idea for a book based on you.

Yōko Tsukasa as his best friend. Masaki Kobayashi as the director. Another long slow boil until the film finally erupts into violence. Don't watch the trailer, it gives away too much. Masaki-san claims that Mifune was distracted in this movie because he had just started his own production company, but who'd have guessed?

Mifune finally starts showing his age, looking haggard with bags starting to form under his eyes, and he plays the henpecked father who retires quietly but is stirred back to life when his daimyo makes outrageous demands on his son and daughter-in-law. It's an odd romantic triangle in a sense, but it works. You have to love the Japanese sense of politeness, at least in the subtitling, when a character apologizes profusely while dying from multiple musket wounds, saying, "I can't take you to Tokyo! I am sorry. It can't be helped."

Another best of samurai film in the bag. One of the better ones for building up psychological tension.

Bhangra, Sitar, and Tabla at the Stern Grove on a Sunday

What a disappointment. I've liked Karsh Kale since his first album, Realize, and I suspected that I was not going to enjoy the concert yesterday at Stern Grove after previewing some of the music online and sadly, I was proven correct.

I suppose there are several factors to account for this:
1) Somewhere in the past two years, I've gotten burnt out on Asian Underground, Asian Massive, Ethnotechno (my favorite generic tag since it's more... generic and allows for music from Africa, especially North Africa) or whatever you want to call it. I used to love this stuff, but now most of it sounds... bland.
2) The Karsh Kale/Anoushka Shankar 'Breathing Under Water' project, which played yesterday, has impeccable credentials, but sadly, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I'd expect that Karsh, Anoushka, and members from MIDIval Punditz would add up to something grand, but it was the aural equivalent of slightly pleasant and vaguely ethnic wallpaper from Pier 1. Perhaps I just don't get the 'rich orchestral textures' that seems to be an increasing part of this genre by Indian musicians. I know it's from Bollywood film music, but it makes it sound... syrupy. I thought that this element really weakened the last Badmarsh & Shri album, Signs.
3) The mix was horrible. There was no balance. In fact, given the intimacy of sitar and tabla, perhaps a smaller venue would have provided the intimacy to set the proper mood for appreciation of the music, but I doubt that it would've help.
4) Finally, arriving at 1:30 assured that I was perched precariously and uncomfortably on the hillside just to get a glimpse of the performers on stage. I have no idea why that they have put in tables in the main Stern Grove area. It seems to be a terrible waste of space and only allows a certain amount of people to actually be able to see the concert. And the number of folks in attendance yesterday far outnumbered that small space. Would felling trees actually be a bad iea in this instance to landscape the side of the hill into, I don't know, a proper amphitheater?

Random Thoughts from a Sunday

First:
If you are an Asian woman with attitude to burn, wearing this shirt should provide maximum deterrence against the would-be fetishists who seem to be endemic to the Bay Area. I saw this shirt on the MUNI, and that woman had attitude to ignite a fusion reactor.

Second:
The new movie Underdog has on its promotional poster at bus stops the following:
Underdog. One Nation Under Dog.
However, I initially read it as One Nation Under a Woof, riffing on the classic by Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove. Seriously. This is how my mind works. I actually like my slogan better since the original by Disney could be construed as blasphemous.

I suppose if you were Irish, you might read it as One Nation Built on a Bog. One Nation Under Bog would be the Clockwork Orange slang (nadsat) version.

Besides, I'm enough of a Gen-Xer (wincing) that I can't believe they are shot the new movie as a live-action film, abandoning the classic cartoon Underdog. Sad, the continuing regurgitation of the pop culture of my childhood. This ranks alongside with the new Bionic Woman, sheesh.

Third:
I've added some new elements to the blog. I have no expectations about the Google AdSense button. I hardly expect to make any money, but I was curious to see what kind of ads they'd run. Very similar so far to what I get in gmail. Ho ho ho.

Pottering Around

Well, I finished off the last Harry Potter book yesterday, and there weren't any major surprises, except that I for some reason was expecting a higher death toll. Shame on me. It was pretty engrossing, but it's hard to determine if that was due to the desire to race to the end to get it over with or genuine pleasure. I suppose it depends on where you fall on the Harry Potter like-spectrum.

I also saw "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" last Thursday at a matinée showing in downtown Berkeley. A blissfully empty theater, but never sit against the wall where another action movie is showing because the sub-sonic rumbles from the Surround Sound were quite annoying.

I think that they did a disservice in cutting this movie. I've read that it's the shortest of the films, and that's alarming, considering how dense the last 3 books are. Surely, given the target market for these films, children, the child-like and me, they could've gone for a longer cut because it seems like it was the breathless Cliff Notes to the book (with a few inevitable minor changes), and I think anyone who hadn't read the book would be hardpressed to make sense of it all. Hasn't the Lord of the Rings films taught anyone that or is it going to be the inevitable DVD release with all the extra scenes or the director's cut to sop up some more of that marketing money? Alas.

It was disconcerting for a while until I realized that Robert Hardy, who plays Cornelius Fudge in the movie series, is also the voice for one of the main characters, Lord Malan, in my favorite new BBC radio comedy, His Master's Voice. He is quite spry for a gentleman of 81 years, for I would have never guessed his age.

One thing that they did absolutely right was the casting of the character Luna Lovegood, a 5th book character addition that adds a lot to the series. They picked the perfect unknown actress, Evanna Lynch: she has the perfect look, manner and voice. Kudos for that. She is apparently quite the Harry Potter fan with correspondence with J. K. Rowling predating her involvement in the franchise. The rest of the film was enjoyable, but marred by the necessary perfunctory treatment of most of the major characters. I await the DVD then.

Always Awake for the Earthquakes

Yet another earthquake that I wasn't asleep for. This was my third, and I was already awake at 4:30 am this morning, probably due to the first BART train waking me. This was the worst I've been in, actually. The one I was in in Boston just rocked my old dorm room back and forth gently, there was one I was in in Oakland that felt like a truck hit the building with a short sharp jolt, but this morning I was afraid that the bookcases were going to come down in my room.

The one in Boston I was awake for (it was very early on a Sunday morning) and that I wasn't really sure it was an earthquake was because I was... um... tired from the rather active evening before, let's say and couldn't sleep.

I suppose the strength of this earthquake due to being close to the epicenter here in Berkeley, unlike the other earthquakes. Ke garne. I was always terrified of an earthquake while in Kathmandu since the geology there is very similar to Mexico City: a valley of loose soil above a major fault. And the faults don't get any more major than when the Indian subcontinent rams into Eurasia. And given that KTM is due for its periodic 75 year quake, it seems inevitable sometime soon. Cinderblock buildings seem to have little chance against any earthquake of any size, the one international airport in KTM would probably be damaged, and the overpopulation and overbuilding in the KTM Valley in the past 10 years would all add a major catastrophe. It was the biggest fear of most long-term expats in KTM, not surprisingly, even after Jana Andolaan 2 in 2006.

Well! That's gloomy enough to begin this morning.

Bowling by Candlepin Light

Look, metafilter: candlepin bowling, while it might be experiencing a revival, is really, really an offense against the gods of polished wood slats. It may be that I haven't bowled in an antique wooden alley in New England or Nova Scotia, no, I haven't, since my haunt of choice was Lanes and Games. It screws up your regular bowling game like that one semester of badminton (don't ask) screwed up my tennis game.

It was sure entertaining to watch candlepin bowling on cable access in Boston though. Too bad I don't have a candlepin bowling Hall of Fame t-shirt to match my bowling HOF tee.

Get a Southern Belly

Not a Jelly Belly, not a beer belly, nor a red-bellied woodpecker, but a Southern Belly.

Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South by John T. Edge looks great. Any book that discusses Kool-Aid pickles has got to be a keeper. There is a good article in Salon about it.

What is it about the South and pickles? I had a deep-fried pickle spear with my BBQ in the Charlotte N.C. airport, and I'm still bemused.

Harakiri

Praise all the chthonic spirits that Berkeley Public Library has such a good film library. I finally got back to watching samurai movies last night, and it was a gem, a psychological thriller that burns slowly until the very end, Harakiri. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the introduction by Donald Richie, the doyen of Japanese cinema, to play, but what to do, neh? Surprisingly, there wasn't a full commentary, usually a feature of Criterion Films, especially for a 2 disc set.

I got to tick that one off the list of the 50 Greatest Samurai Movies that I got from a book which unfortunately I can't find the title of. Tatsuya Nakadai, familiar from Akira Kurosawa's films, was excellent. It's one of those anti-authoritarian early 60s samurai movies similar to Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but with much more pathos.

I highly recommend it.

BBC 4, Baby

Recently I've taken to listening to the BBC while working since I'm doing rather repetitive grunt work at the moment. Normally if I'm writing, I can only listen to instrumental music, preferably baroque music, with the odd earworming infinite repeat of certain bands that aid me in my madness. I'm sure you can suss that out if you check my lastfm stats.

However, I've been really enjoying BBC, particularly BBC 4 "Literate Speech" for the indeed literate and often very witty discussions, and the comedies can be hilarious. It's like reverting back to the Golden Age of Radio.

For comedy, I particularly recommended His Master's Voice, a political satire that has just started, and I'm Sorry I Haven't Got a Clue, an extremely long-running program that bursts with innuendo and bon mots.

For a more serious bent, there is Start the Week, a discussion group of four newly published authors about their books and related topics. Very literate, very well-informed. It's hard to imagine mainstream media of this quality in American.

You can also poked around and find local programming in the arts scene in Scotland, say, which can be fun. I think I'll avoid the Welsh language programming for the moment though.

7:07 on 07/07/07

First pitch for the Red Sox game tonight in Detroit was at 7:07 pm on the 7th of July, the 7th month of the 7th year of this Millennium.

Good timing, I'd say. Today most numerologists and astrologers are going nuts, I reckon.

A Picture in the Hand is Worth Two in the Gym

Ah, good news to brighten a dreary June gloom Berkeley day.
Tomorrow begins the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit at the de Young in San Francisco. I became aware of Sugimoto-san's work while in Nepal from an international version of Time or Newsweek, so I am very excited that I'll get the chance to see this exhibit while in the Bay Area. It runs from July 7th to September 23rd. I'll probably have to go at least twice!

There was a book signing by Sugimoto-san tonight, but oh well, can't be everywhere all at once.

In other related news:
It's rare that I find photography that I like so today when at my gym I discovered some photos that I really admired in a new exhibit I was of course excited. The quality of the exhibits at my gym, Berkeley Ironworks Rock Climbing Gym, has been mediocre at best so today was quite a surprise. The photographer of the new exhibit, Ryan Zeitler, seems to have a deft touch with abstraction and landscapes. His website is Sharp End Photography. However, once I visited his site, I realized that all the pictures out of what he has available for viewing that I like best are of course the ones that he has put up in the gym in his Focus Exhibit. All of his other photographs of climbers and outdoor scenes are well done, but I'm enthralled by his compositional skills.

New News on Old Persian

Over at the Language Log today, there is a brief article on the discovery of an Old Persian administrative text on what looks like to be a clay tablet. Old Persian was thought to perhaps only have been used for inscriptions, but this looks like evidence that the use of it might have been more widespread that thought. I've only briefly studied Old Persian at the University of Texas, Austin, with Dr. Mark Southern when he was there, and it was striking how similar it was to Sanskrit.

However, the reason that I posted about this is that the article mentions one of my mentors and my teacher of Khotanese at Harvard, Professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø.

It is gratifying to see that the Language Log has mentioned the various Iranian language primers that Dr. Skjærvø has generously made available for free download at a webpage entitled Iranian Studies at Harvard University. I know he worked hard on those primers with a lot of feedback from his students.

So you can now get started on Old or Young Avestan, Sogdian (which I studied with Dr. Skjærvø for two years) or Old Persian. Just remember that I believe that it was Émile Benveniste, the famous linguist who called Sogdian "the devil's own language." Don't say that I didn't warn you.

There are also two Kurdish primers by W. M. Thackston, and two course readers for Dr. Skjærvø's Intro classes for Zoroastrianism and Manicheism.

All in all an Iranian cultural feast gratis.