The Lost Trailers

I had sent this as email to a few people I know, but I think this is as good a place for it as any.

I'm a dork. We all know that, so there's no point in the hiding the fact. In any event, I'm on a mailing list for The Lost Trailers. I received an email just today advising me that The Lost Trailers have changed records labels. They are still with RCA, the same record company, but they have been moved to a different label. They are now on BNA Records. Of course, you're all saying "what the hell is BNA Records?" And my answer is ... are you ready for the obvious? It is un-f-ing-believable how predictable the music industry can be. The "Nashville" music industry is even worse than your average bear though. They have taken what started as a roots-rock band like The Lost Trailers, had them tour exclusively in Texas and most of the South. They teamed them up on a tour with Pat F-ing Green. Released a record that sounded (production-wise) like every freaking country album in existence (that is: compressed to all hell, removing any amount dynamic range that ever existed in those songs). And now, they have put them on the same f-ing record label as the Ubiquitous Kenny F-ing Chesney.

I don't like Kenny F-ing Chesney. His music is terrible. I have never seen the man live. Yet, he hounds me. Everywhere I freaking turn, there's Kenny Chesney. Log on to a music discussion group. Kenny Chesney. Hear about tours in Rockford. Kenny Chesney. Television concert to raise money for the Hurricane Victims. Kenny Chesney. Renee Zelleweger. Kenny Chesney. I feel like John Malkovich. Chesney. Chesney. Chesney. For the love of God when will people realize that no one give two rats asses about Kenny Freaking Chesney?!??? And now this. The Lost Trailers. Ruined by Kenny F-ing Chesney. He'll probably appear on their freaking record or something. And then tour the Midwest (for the first time in 2 years I might add) opening for Kenny F-ing Chesney.

When I last saw the Trailers they were lamenting the fact that no one was showing up for their shows in Chicago. You want to know why???? PAT GREEN AND KENNY F-ING CHESNEY THAT'S WHY YOU FREAKING TWITS!

Bastard.

By the way; if you're interested in hearing the Trailers before they were ruined, I'll try to post some MP3s or something at some point. If you go to their website they have some CDs there, none of which are their true releases before "Welcome to the Woods" (their first major label album). Prior to "Welcome to the Woods," they had an EP that they distributed at their shows for free. Then they had Passport - 18 tracks, some of which are contained on the "Story of the New Age Cowboy" album - but most importantly contained the original renditions of "Dougherty County" and "Averly Jane" (perhaps the worst victim of the aforementioned compression). Their second independent album was "Rock Band." It was "bigger" than the first - meaning it had the guitars more upfront and it was louder. It tried to capture their live sound, but suffered from the same compression problems - every song sounded exactly the same, even though each of them had more dynamic range when played live. Both Rock Band and Welcome to the Woods sounded flat. Both Stokes and Rider have great voices, but Stokes comes off sounding like Kenny Freaking Chesney and Rider sounds like the lead singer of Foreigner. Anyway. Crap production. A common problem in recent music history. Everything is produced so that it sounds OK coming out of a 1987 Chevy S-10 speaker - and 87 S-10s were not exactly known for their great sound systems. As a result, it sounds like shit when played on a system of any quality - rather than sounding like shit on a shitty system.

OK. I'm done.

A Busy Day...

Sorry to get caught up in stupidity: SG Not Contacted by FBI. In any event take the following post as a general claim against the waste of resources in tracking down porn depicting actions between two consenting adults and those who wish to view consenting adults taking baths in blood-like liquid and/or being tied up and/or whipped.

We went down to this bridge. It had some graffiti on it. It was supposed to say "I Love Satan." It said "I Love Satin."And that's some STUPID SHIT. - Scott H. Biram

For those familiar with the SuicideGirls site (see link above), this should be seen for the ridiculous shit that it is. For those not familiar with the site, there couldn't be a more "harmless" site; to target this one seems not only like a waste of time, but a waste of resources.

I'm all for cracking down on porn. But it seems like it would be more prudent to go after the beastiality sites (see below for an interesting discussion starter) and the kiddie porn and the midget wrestling porn and, hell, porn featuring ugly women - ALL should be higher priority than SuicideGirls. Anyway.

Topic Starter for Boring Dinner Parties (by the way, I've actually had this discussion - the participants shall remain nameless, but we never really arrived at a conclusive decision): Do you think that producers of beastiality porn have specialties? In other words does Producer (or Director) A only do horse porn? Director B will only work with goats? Does a particular horse get more business than others because it is known for being gentle on the girls? For that matter, are horses bred for porn or does the director just find a horse that an owner will let him use for porn purposes? Do human bestiality porn stars have limits "I'll only do dogs, but not horses"? What is the decision criteria for that decision? Geez, it seems that every question just raises more questions.

Trusting Consumers

Another Shot At the Broadcast Flag

O'Reilly Op-Ed Piece on Google Library

The broadcast flag. AAC. DMCA. RIAA. Clickwrap. eBooks.

Everywhere I look lately there's more evidence that content producers don't trust the consumers. Of course, it's not like we're really trustworthy people. But, that's not really the point. Movie studios, record companies, and publishers are all pushing to restrict the ways in which you can use their content. If you want to buy a cd, they will make sure you can't rip it to your hard drive. If you want to buy a movie, ditto. If you want to download a song, they want to make sure you only buy a proprietary file type that will play on their player (and their player only supports proprietary file types). If you buy software, they want to make sure you don't know how it works (you might create a competing product!). If you buy an eBook they want to make sure you can only read it on an approved monitor.

Meanwhile, the consumer is left in cold. If I don't want to buy the proprietary player, I'm limited in the music I can purchase. Before buying a monitor I have to consider whether I'll be able to watch the movies I have or the books I've downloaded. If I download software I have to have faith that the developer will create patches to fix it (because it will inevitably be broken) or will update it (because it will inevitably be obsolete). Gone are the days when I can go and buy any music playing device I like and know that I can play any music that is released in that medium. The days are numbered that I can buy any monitor on the market and know it will work with my computer. Christ, even the days that I can buy a TIVO and know it will record the shows I want and keep them until I actually get around to watching them are rapidly dwindling.

The publishing industry is trying to prevent Google from creating a world-wide library catalog to be indexed by its search engine so that someone that searches for "George Washington" might just turn up a wonderful novel by a 3-time Pulitzer Prize Winner ("1776") that they may be interested in reading, or even buying. Or a student who searches for "Milton Friedman" for an economics class will be presented with all of his books that just might be of interest.

Each of these are examples of distrust of the general public. They don't trust the public because they are afraid that, well, I'm not really sure WHAT they are afraid of. They are afraid that if they don't protect the content we will share the content with everyone in the universe. That if I buy the new Arcade Fire songs that I may really like them and want to send them to my friend and that he won't subsequently purchase them. Of course, it's not that their DRM actually PREVENTS this, it merely makes it a bigger pain in the ass. (I can burn the AAC files to a CD, and then rip the CD to an unencumbered format) But, more precisely, and of more moment, is the fact that I become encumbered in the ways in which I can use the files I've purchased for MY OWN USES. Apple's files can only be used on 7 devices or burned only 10 times (down from 10, which they changed without asking first, thanks a lot Apple). So, hopefully, you don't run out of devices. Ever. And hope that they don't unilaterally decide to reduce it 5, or 3.

The "Broadcast Flag" and TIVO's little experiment is even worse. It would flag a TV Show as "broadcast" so that it cannot be redistributed over the web or saved to a hard-drive; or only saved for a certain amount of time. Sort of like if someone said "you can tape our show on your fancy VHS device, but after 10 days we're going to come in and take your VHS tape, so I hope you didn't go on vacation for 11 days."

The Copyright Act doesn't prevent you from reverse engineering software (it may prevent you from making a "copy" but not from reverse engineering). But that agreement that you clicked "I Agree" to does. In fact, under the Copyright Act, as interpreted by the courts there is often a "fair use exception" that allows reverse engineering. Not if you clicked "I Agree" though. That's breach of contract. You didn't actually BUY that software, you are only licensing it from the developer. And even that's a misnomer. I "true license" grants the licensee rights to do something they are otherwise not allowed to do. "I grant a license to you to come on to my property." In this case, the "license" prevents you from doing something you are otherwise allowed to do! Talk about co-opting a word! More precisely your use of that software is subject to a contract; in exchange for your money and your agreement to abide by the limited terms of that contract you are permitted to use the software.

In any event. It's not that we are losing these rights that makes me so perturbed. It's the underhanded way that they come about. The MPAA knows that no one actually WANTS the Broadcast Flag, so they stick it in obscure legislation that is sure to be passed. The RIAA knows that everyone hates DRM on the files, but it refuses to license to anyone that doesn't encode their files. The publishing industry knows that there is massive support for Google's book project, but is upset that someone else thought of it first. These organizations get it in their collective heads that they want something done, so they go out and buy Senators (Joe Biden, Orrin Hatch, etc.) to do it for them. 10 times out of 10 the general public is unaware that their Senator is being so underhanded (we don't tend to think about intellectual property decisions when we vote) - they just know that the new technology is more limiting than the old technology.
Look, the publishing industry thought photocopiers were going to mean an end to the publishing industry via rampant piracy - it didn't happen. The record industry though analog tapes would mean the end via rampant piracy - they didn't. The MPAA thought VHS would spell the end of the movie industry via rampant piracy - it didn't. Did some people infringe? Sure. That's more or less a way of life. But, each of these industries, once they figured out how to use the technology, flourished with each of these inventions. Instead of specialized legislation carving out individual niches in the Copyright Law or, more invasively, social norms, perhaps these industries should learn how to utilize the technology to provide content in an easy-to-use manner that people are actually willing to pay for.

Rather than closed standards (broadcast flags, DRM'd music, DRM'd eBooks, etc.), if the content providers produced with open standards everyone would be better off. Make files that everyone can use and everyone will be more likely to use them. Not everyone owns an iPod; Apple is therefore limited in the number of files it can sell on iTunes because only those that have an iPod can take advantage of it. And, there are folks like me out there, who - no matter how "cool" the iPod is - will never own an Apple product (pretentious fuckwits with terrible customer service). On the other hand, if they sold an open format and competed with ease of use, or price, or selection, I may be more tempted to buy from them. Hell, I don't even mind DRM as AN OPTION. I may be willing to pay less for something that I'm not completely free to use. But, I'd like the option of paying for something that I can do whatever I god-damn please with.

Man, talk about rambling. Hopefully, you get my point.

Football is BORING...yeah. I said it.

OK, I don't really believe football (the American kind, not the European kind) is that boring. (Perhaps some other day I will officially put in my vote for European Football as the superior sport, but until that day, I will limit this discussion to American Football) However, I AM really tired of hearing that Baseball is SOOOOOOO Boring by football Fans who are either ignorant of baseball, or really just don't know what they're talking about it. The most cited reason that Baseball is so boring is that there isn't any action: that football is ALL ABOUT the action. There are 22 players on the field running and slamming into each other, blah, blah, blah. In baseball everyone stands around until the pitcher throws something the batter feels like putting in play and then someone runs down the ball and we do it all over again. Ignoring the fact that the description is horribly simplistic of the skill and strategy involved in baseball I offer the following incontrovertible facts about the amount of standing around doing nothing in a typical quarter of NFL football:

(first, as a bit of a description, I was at the Colts/Browns game on Sunday Sept. 25, 2005)
Quarter: 2nd
Quarter Length: 15 minutes (extrapolated game: 60 minutes)
Actual Time: 47 minutes (extrapolated game: 3 hours, 8 minutes)
Amount of Time Actually Played: 4 minutes 2 seconds (or: about 1 minute of football for every 10 minutes of standing around doing nothing) (extrapolated: 16 minutes, 8 seconds) - and to answer the inevitable question: yes, I actually timed it with a stopwatch starting from when the ball was snapped to when the player was tackled or the play stopped.
Scoring: Browns - 3 points; Colts - 3 points

So, for a typical football game (there's nothing in this quarter, other than the low-ish score, to indicate that it was an aberation) that last a little over 3 hours, the players are standing around doing not much anything for 2 hours and 44 minutes. You could play most baseball games just during the time that no one is doing anything for a football game.

An Outsider In San Francisco

I recently went on a week-long vacation to San Francisco/Napa/Sacramento/Tahoe. These are just some observations.

McAfee Coliseum needs to be re-renamed back to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Seriously. Why did anyone waste their money naming that piece of garbage. As far as toilet-bowl-stadiums go, I liked it the best of the ones I've been in (Pittsburgh, Cinci, Atlanta), but that's not really saying much. Mount Davis in the outfield is a joke - it's a standing testament to the jackass that Al Davis is. Having said that, it's really funny. The basic issue is this: Davis wants a new stadium and he doesn't want to pay for it - he wants the city/county to pay for it because he's already saddled with a crappy stadium. So, to force the city's hand he built an addition on to the stadium that is so huge and so far away from ANYTHING it that would never possibly be filled. The result is that Raiders games never sell out and therefore they are never shown on TV (local blackout rules apply). Davis figures that if the citizens complain loud enough on his behalf he'll get his new (smaller capacity) stadium. Of course, this is all incredibly stupid because no one would ever pay advertising money for a game that is never shown on TV. But it's Ok - because the NFL shares its revenue, Davis is sure to turn a tidy profit every year - his actions are subtracting from the general revenue pile of the league - which they don't mind because new stadiums are good for business. Anyway - it's all very amusing. And, by the way, the A's won the game we attended by scoring 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th. Luckily the Indians had also won that day.

Igor Medvedev's work is astonishing. Randomly walked into this gallery because the paintings were so vibrant and alive with color. If only I had a few grand to blow on paintings.

Bimbo's 365 is a pretty cool music venue. It looks like an old 30s or 40s club from the outside (and it looks like it hasn't been touched since the 30s or 40s!) and inside it ... well, it still looks like an old 30s or 40s jazz club - lounge seats in the back, nice open space up front. It reminds me a bit of the Park West in Chicago, except smaller and more velvety.

Someone once told me that Napa Valley was like an adult DisneyWorld (there's even a train to take you around to the different stops!) And I would say that's a pretty apt description. With some exception (see below) the local establishments exist to take your money from you in the most efficient manner possible. The food is EXPENSIVE (do not go to the restaurants, you will only be ripped off by passable food at silly prices) but not really good enough for the price (two glasses of wine, one grilled tuna sandwich, one pulled pork sandwich, plus tip = $53!?!???! Seriously, What The Fuck!?) There is a Dean and Delucca grocery store on the North end of "the strip" on 29 - just go and get some bread, some cheese, maybe some lunch meat or pasta salad and go to one of patios/verandas/terraces at one of the smaller wineries and enjoy a couple glasses (or bottles) of wine. You will make it out with less money invested and a CONSIDERABLY better meal. Other lessons learned - go to the smaller vineyards (I suggest Regguchi) or the smaller wineries (such as Franciscan - not 'small' but certainly not Mondavi or even "Stag's Leap" - one of these days I'll post on why that whole mess should have been avoided by just finding "Stags Leap" [note that one has an apostrophe and the other doesn't] to be an infringing trademark [I don't really care who's infringing who - one is infringing the other and the existence of an apostrophe is NOT a valid basis of differentiation when the two are FUCKING DIRECTLY NEXT TO EACH OTHER]). Finally, one other lesson learned - we stayed in Davis, CA - just outside of Sacramento and took the "back" way, through the Mountains in to "the strip" - it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than putting up with the bullshit traffic on 29. Oh. One more thing. Avoid taking a left if at all possible.

I could live in Davis, CA.

Sacramento was pretty disappointing. We saw (and photographed) Governor Arnold (even from across the street the dude looked like he could kill me with his pinky).

I REALLY want to go back to Lake Tahoe/Olympic Valley in the winter when I can actually snowboard there.

It is far easier to get around San Francisco on foot/bus/train/metro than it is to pay $22-28 a FUCKING DAY to park (and then walk around on foot). Yerba Buena Gardens (or whatever the fuck they're called) are a fucking waste of fucking time. They should just be renamed "Sony's Backyard." Honestly - nothing there that isn't in your backyard and it's about the same size. The City Hall is damn impressive - in fact it's much cooler than the STATE CAPITOL in Sacramento. Golden Gate park is much bigger than it looks - and September is NOT the time to visit the gardens there. We saw just about everything Chinatown had to offer and I have determined, in my non-objective, professional opinion, that it is indeed the cat's pajamas (or was it the bee's knees?). We ate at House of Nanking on Kearny (thanks Sarah!) and it was most excellent - just tell the server person what type of meat you want for an entree (we specified chicken) and give her a second meat (we specified beef) and see what they bring you. We had the Nanking Chicken (most excellent) and some spicy beef appetizer/small meal thingy; every table looked like they had something different. Good stuff.

Pier 39 is a waste of time (unless you are looking for a "San Francisco" coffee mug or magnet). But Pier 41 (Alcatraz) was damn nifty. I wish we had more time to spend at Alcatraz. We only spent about an hour on the island, but I easily could have spent at least another 2 to 3 there. SBC Park was nice enough, but it's honestly not as nice as I expected. The outside is fairly bland and boxy. The inside was good looking, but the sight lines looked out into the bay. And water just isn't that interesting. Even worse, the prices there were ridiculous. $4.25 for a 20 oz soda! $8.50 for nachos (though they were the best ballpark nachos I've had - and I've had a lot of ballpark nachos - they barely beat out Miami's nachos and they are slightly above Milwaukee's Nacho Helmet. For a more detailed analysis of ballpark nachos ask me in person or I'll dig up the website address when I get a chance to point you at the comparison John and I have done). Additionally, the ballpark was windy. Really windy. And in September it ain't really that warm there, either. We had a beer at "The 21st Amendment" near the stadium before the game and it seemed like a great place to have a beer before (or after) a game.

Oh. And Dennis. Seriously, not a problem about the club. It looked nice from the outside though. We were asleep within 20 minutes of getting back to our hotel! I'll take the raincheck, though. Look me up when you find yourself contemplating coming out to Chicago. And let me know how that 30th goes in Colorado in Feb.

Economic Impact of the New Orleans Disaster

A Topical Story from the Washington Post

It occurred to me this morning (I'm slower than the average bear) that there are impacts to the greater US economy outside of the obvious. First, the obvious - New Orleans doesn't, and won't for many months, exist. For all intents and purposes the city is dead in the water (excuse the pun). Any business that once flowed from and/or to there has now stopped and must find an alternate route.

But, just to take ONE example, New Orleans was a shipping hub. The ships will need to find a new place to dock. This may sound easy, but N.O. already had the employees and infrastructure in place to handle such a volume; whatever city gets that motherload will struggle to keep up with demand, requiring more employment of a fairly specific skill that may not exist in that community in the requisite numbers. This could have two impacts: first, some other city will find the employees and the shipping business will expand, causing the city to expand, and some city will reap great rewards; the other impact is that the city will struggle, the shippers will cast about looking for other docks that CAN handle their business, or they will find alternative, and cheaper (because now you have dock-search costs, plus extra labor costs for the extra days it days it takes, etc.) alternatives to move their wares from point A to point B - most likely plane or train or truck (all of which require lots of gasoline). In any event, once the shippers settle on a method, the city of N.O., once it is back up and running, may never get that business back. And even if they could, there is a high likelihood that the dock workers never moved back from Houston. And this is just a partial impact of ONE industry.

Which brings me to my second point. The outflux of people from N.O. While some of them may move back, many of them will not. Since none of them have jobs right now, the unemployment in Houston has just shot through the (Astrodome) roof. Indeed, unemployment all over the South will be at all-time highs. The most significantly impacted will be the lower and lower-middle-classes - those who couldn't afford to move somewhere else or get relocated to a different headquarters. Conservatively, there are 50,000-100,000 additional people out of work, mostly in Houston, but spread all over the South - where are they going to get jobs?

In any event, over the next few months we will begin to see the true impact to the US economy - and it probably will not be good.