The Basement Slideshow Jam

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2010-10-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

Nathan Williams of Wavves.
See my article + photos HERE (Nuvo Music Blog)

FLICKR:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sararrr

TUMBLR:
http://thebasementjam.tumblr.com/

Watching vintage Zero Boys footage at Can O Worms Rock N Roll Weekend, The Bishop Bar, Bloomington, IN. Article to follow.

It Looks Like They're Lying But They're Actually Not!

2009-12-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

by Sara Baldwin

Just as the debate over climate change was moving from the first steps of the Scientific Method – defining the problem, gathering information and forming a hypothesis – to the latter steps where we interpret data and draw conclusions that begin to lead us toward the actual problem solving, questionable behavior on the behalf of a few prominent figures in the scientific education field has derailed the climate change caboose.

Before hackers retrieved e-mails outing the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, located in the United Kingdom, of having lost data important to completing their climate change research, the world was beginning to recognize global warming as a definite problem and debate more on our planet’s possible future and what our actions should be. However, Fox was the only major news organization to repeatedly report on this topic using rhetoric that made it sound like a giant scandal that debunked “global warming” altogether.1 This is simply just not the case. If raw data vital to global well-being were only backed up in one university in one country in the entire world, there would be plenty more controversy to go around. This same data can be found at several other universities and research centers around the world, including The Global Historical Climatology Network2 and The National Climatic Data Center3, to name a few. This data was lost from one place, therefore weakening the ability to cross-reference and double-check information important in an ongoing debate. It was not, however, forged or faked. It is an undeniable fact that our climate will forever be changing.

In the same way, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth used graphs that started at 200, rather than zero, to hone in on climate change.6 Focusing on the part of the graph that highlights this change makes the problem seem more menacing, yes, but the points on the graph are still valid truths. Data can be manipulated and presented to the public in a way that suits the researcher – in this case making it look more threatening and urgent – but it cannot be changed to make the rise in C02 levels become nonexistent. While many would understandably jump at the chance to deflate a scientific argument that causes everyone in the world to eventually take action in some way or another, it is time to concentrate on accepting the fact that there will more than likely be a change in our world that causes us to modify our behavior. The true debate lies in what that change will be, and how we should act accordingly.

We can not necessarily take effective preventative action, as we can only speculate the precise changes that will take place. In the case of the Maldives, an archipelago averaging four feet above sea level, action may be necessary sooner than in other locations.4 Yet it still makes sense to wait until these levels rise to even a quarter of what would be considered dangerous. If actions would be too rash, an entire people could be forced to abandon the graves of their ancestors and the earth that cultured their people.

Even if we do take action now, it has to be as a global whole. One nation cannot save the planet. It would be pointless to act preventatively without enough participation to make a difference. The Kyoto Protocol, singed in 2001, was meant to be an agreement to act as a whole. Without the participation of developed industrial nations like America and China, such an agreement held little value, and without the agreement of China, America saw no point in signing.5 It is now up to the United Nations to mull over climate change during the Copenhagen Conference and resolve this quandary by December 18, 2009. Literally, we need the strength of a globally united force comprised of many individual nations to come to some sort of conclusion on this issue. If we cannot act together, we may as well not act at all and hold out in hopes of an adaptive solution.

Resources:

1. Koprowski, Gene. "Global Warming Scandal Makes Scientific Progress More Difficult, Experts Say." FOXNews. Web.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/02/global-warming-scandal-makes-scientific-progress-difficult-experts-say.html

2. "1753-1990." Global Historical Climatology Network. 21 Oct. 2008. Web. http://daac.ornl.gov/climate/guides/ghcn.html

3. National Climatic Data Center. Web.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/res40.pl?page=ghcn.html.

4. Schmidle, Nicholas. "Wanted: A New Home for My Country." New York Times [New York] 10 May 2009. Print.

5. Duncan, Emma. "Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen?" The Economist (2008): 103-04. Print.

6. An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore. 2006. Film.

Nana Grizol Plays Basement Show in Bloomington

2009-06-16T02:22:00.000-07:00

As the sun went down last Saturday night, a crowded, dusty basement on the west side of Bloomington played host to three tastefully jarring bands.

Local three-piece Pink Houses opened the show, fronted by Defiance Ohio’s upright bassist and vocalist Ryan Woods, who also founded Bloomington’s volunteer-run art and record shop Sweet Hickory. For a fairly upstart band, Pink Houses has it together. Their sound mixes fast, steady drums and discordant vocals with grungy guitar riffs, creating an old-school punk sound with biting lyrical sensibility.

Hitting on a more alternative sound, Bloomington’s Landlord played second. Landlord consists of Chris Mott and Matte Cathcart, members of The Door-Keys, and Will Staler, who plays drums and harmonica for Defiance Ohio. Landlord rages with the fortitude of a punk band, but sounds more like Midwest rock-n-roll with a sprinkling of pop punk vocals and power chords. Pop sensibility and dark, heady riffage make this band worth watching.

To complete the trifecta of bands who share members with Defiance Ohio, Theo Hilton (drummer for Defiance Ohio) was an exuberantfront man in Nana Grizol.

Matte Cathcart, drummer for the Door-Keys and Landlord, rearranged his drums and played his second set of the night in Nana Grizol.

Laura Carter also played along with Cathcart on another set of drums in some songs. She and Robbie Cucciaro, both former members of Neutral Milk Hotel, accounted for the eclectic array of brass and winds instruments that give nana Grizol its jazzy, DIY sound. The energetic, heartfelt lyrics that pour from Hilton’s throat are the crux of every song on their last album, “Love It Love It”, released on Orange Twin.

Bloomington was the band’s third stop on their six-day tour. They played the previous day at Idapalooza in Dowelltown, TN. They will be making pit stops in Chicago, Detroit, and Lexington before ending up back at home in Athens, GA, where the band then plans to begin recording a new album. The album is not yet titled but Nana Grizol’s songsmith Hilton said, “It’s called – ‘we’re really excited about making it’.”

On Sarah Palin:

2008-08-31T01:04:00.000-07:00

Aside from the obvious perks of running side-by-side with an Alaskan MILF, what does Senator Palin have to offer McCain and the national GOP ticket? Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain has certainly beguiled the American public by forcing us to choose between the consummation of either white or male supremacy, should we wish to prove our "political" (haha) correctness to the rest of the world.

Idealism is not the point. Sarah Palin, whether male, female, black, white or Muslim, is the current Senator of Alaska, which, with 683,478 inhabitants, makes up only 0.22% of the total U.S. populace. It is currently ranked as U.S. state number 47 in population, only above North Dakota and Vermont. While it is more important to choose the right VP candidate for the presidential nominee than to search for a Senator with benefits like a vagina, it might help to choose someone who has the political support of a state with more than one House seat and three Electoral College votes.

Let us not deprive Sen. Palin of her monumental accomplishments. She did manage to sell the former governor's private jet and fly around in her float plane while hunting moose in Alaska. She also installed a tanning bed in the Governor's Mansion.

GOODBYE FROM COLUMBO

2008-03-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

After suffering from post-Polio syndrome since 1988 and being confined to a wheelchair for the majority of that time,
Arthur C. Clarke Died Today, Wednesday, March 19
He died in Columbo, Sri Lanka, his home since 1956 (when it was still called Ceylon and was under British rule).
Author of more than 100 novels including Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, "Loophole", Earthlight, The City and the Stars, Dolphin Island, "The Star", Imperial Earth and is most known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which began as a short story, "The Sentinel".

Stanley Kubrick wanted to adapt this short story to film, but after meeting with Clarke in 1964 decided it would be best to write a novel first. The two agreed to make the "proverbial really good science fiction movie".
As Clarke finished 2001: A Space Odyssey, the screenplay for the film was being written simultaneously.

His idea for geostationary satellite communication, proposed in 1945, was probably the inspiration for the modern telecommunications satellite, though Clarke admitted in his book Profiles of the Future that this concept had first been described by Hermann Oberth in 1923.

Clarke recieved an Order of the British Empire in 1989 and was knighted in 2000. An asteroid and species of Ceratopsian dinosaur were both named in his honor. The asteroid, 4923 Clarke, was named by Schelte John "Bobby" Bus, the same man who discovered 5020 Asimov.

Clarke bid the world a premature goodbye in December 2007 by recording this message..

RUDYARD KIPLING:
“If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.”

Clarke's Three Laws..

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

2008-03-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Adeptive Radiation and Children of Scare-Midget

Tomorrow night (March 15).

At the Hotti Biscotti

3545 W. Fullerton, Chicago, IL

starts at 10:30.

Adeptive Radiation is a tribute to a Bloomington "free-form" noise band, Belgian Waffles!.

According to Bloomingpedia, Belgian Waffles! played mostly midwest shows and many members later moved to Louisville, KY, keeping the band together until 2006.

Core members of Belgian Waffles! include Matt Whitaker-Bass, Flute; Tony Woollard-Guitar, Trumpet, Vocals; Bill Zink-Guitar; Heather Floyd-Drums; Trumpet; Soprano Saxophone; Chris Willems-Tenor Saxophone;Dan Willems-Alto and Baritone Saxophones, Guitar, and former members, among several others, include Bill Weaver, Alex Cosby and my manager's dad, Jim Manion, who was also one of the original WFHB crew and is still the Program Director at WFHB Community Radio in Bloomington.

As a free-form noise & free jazz cover band started by John Knight, Adeptive Radiation

has a lot of freedom... they aren't just doing Belgian Waffles! covers, but rather are sticking to a very loose structure laid out by their mentors and creating music of their own by this format.

Along with my friend John Hardwick(drums), the Bloomington sector of this band includes these two sweet

looking twins, Candice(violin) and Nicole(upright bass) Beck. The rest of the people are from Chicago -Toru Hironaka, Kurt Forney,and Nate Fremont.

John Hardwick's personal project,

Alcorine of the Alps

You Are What You Google, America.

2008-03-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to Google Trends, one of Google's many

strange perks.

You can compare any two things, by region, over any period of time

(within the last four years), and it will give you two graphs -

the top representing the number of people who have searched this topic

on Google within the designated time frame and region and the bottom

representing the news coverage of this topic within the designated

region/time frame.

As sex remains a Google search to be reckoned with,

I just tried comparing it with different broad subjects that

I thought were of note to society and should be researched by

American people.

U.S. Trends in News & Internet Searches... April 2007 - March 2008

(SEXUAL EVENTS OF NOTE)

	Judge strikes down Iowa’s same-sex marriage ban Jackson Clarion Ledger - Aug 31 2007
	Predatory sex offender accused of having sex with young teen KTVZ - Sep 26 2007
	American detained on child sex charges SunHerald.com - Feb 14 2008
	NY Gov. Spitzer resigns amid sex scandal Bellingham Herald - Mar 12 2008

SEX

POLITICS

SEX

PRESIDENT BUSH

SEX

PREGNANCY

SEX

OIL

SEX

CELEBRITIES

LKentucky is the top U.S. state searching "sex" on the internet.

So, in conclusion..

Should American news coverage differ so greatly from society's interests? As the "watchdog" of not only the government and big business but the people as well, the press tries to cover important issues and put them on the dinner table for Americans, so that all we ever have to do is push a button and zone out in our La-Z-Boys while nightly news tells us what to care about.

Is it so hard? Why do we still care more about porn than Hilary's health care plan?

Or is it just that the internet may not yet be as great a news reference as is publicized, but instead still a larger resource for jacking off on a 2-D image of Lindsey Lohan's freckled tits?

I don't know...

Maybe print media isn't as dead as I thought.

Surprise Yaz Reunion Tour Extension to the US!

2008-03-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

More on this later, but I forgot to mention that The Village Voice announced the extension of Yazoo(Yaz)'s reunion tour. The duo formed in 1981. Vince Clarke, former songwriter of Depeche Mode, left the group to form Yazoo and later Erasure.

My favorite ablum: released in the U.S. by "Yaz" and in the U.K. as "Yazoo"

Disambiguations;

Yaz is NOT the same band as Yazz & the Plastic Population, another 80s performance artist named Yasmina who had one hit single, "The Only Way Is Up" in 1988, the year I was born. Not the same thing, however.... Yazz and Vince Clarke do have the really similar 'dos.

YAZ

YAZZ

1988

1982 - 1983

ALSO - Neither Yazz & The Plastic Population nor Yazoo are the same thing as the Yaz birth control pill, which somehow happened to come up with the same font for their logo as on the cover of "The Only Way Is Up" single, which I have on tape and in the orange color. It was also released with a blue cover. Weird.

YAZZ

YAZ BC

2008-02-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

Sydney Goldberg's Me

There Will Be..

2008-02-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

..MILKSHAKES.

(Thanks, Mary.)

.. & OSCARS.

Daniel Day Lewis - Best Leading Actor

Best Cinematography - (Robert Elswit)

A lot of hoes give me they burgers & I ate them all.

2008-02-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

My first blog, Excellent Italian Humanist, was devoted to the works of Federico Fellini, based on films watched in a class taught by Peter Bondanella, a scholar of Fellini's works and the author of The Cinema of Federico Fellini. I used this blog as an extension of my learnings, as well as to fulfill the requirements of the discussion section of the class.

Though I feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of irate morons swarming the web with bad grammar, poor punctuation and passive voice, I enjoy reading individual outlooks on certain things, namely news, photos and videos. I've decided to use this blog as an outlet for my journalistic ideas - to sort of organize everything and keep it in one place. I've been working on a 'zine for over a year now, and I just don't seem to have quite enough technical knowledge of the software I need to use or graphic design in general to actually finish.

Anyway, I do not want to read (or write) about college girls getting drunk, personalized accounts of emotional trauma, celebrity crap or fag-hag hipster bullshit.
SO... I..
will post my comics and photos,

sweet videos and shit I find,

(This kid knows how to hang! ..And utilize the digital revolution to full advantage?)

(This song gets really old if you're hanging out with me on a Friday. Leisl and I spent a good 45 minutes playing the trucker "titty touch" games at The Vid and yelling "THROW SUM CHEEZE ON THEM TITS!" every time we won.)
lyrics here.

...and respond to news and world events like Prince's new hip and Cuba's new President, as well as maybe post some shit about whatever album I'm currently most fond of.

Right now it's this;

Homework #103 CD: American "D.I.Y."/punkwave V-to-Z, '79-84

.....indie punkwave, post-punk & experimental from the letters V-to-Z, 1979-84. More cool tracks from the usual assortment of the underrated, unhinged, undisciplined and unknown. Zoomers, X-X, Velvet Monkeys, Yo, Vores, Voodoo Idols, XXOO, Y Pants, Wild Stares, WKGB, V:-, Xmas Eve, Zoo Types, Zyklon and Blake Xolton 23 tunes. Includes a never- released Zoomers track from 1979.

Buy it/ Check it out on HYPED TO DEATH.COM!

There are like 105 of these things, all alphabetical. I bought this one because it has a track by one of my favorite No Wave bands, Y Pants, founded by Barbara Ess - my idol of sorts. She was a filmmaker in London in the early 70s but made it back to her hometown of NYC for the postpunk scene of the late 70s and early 80s. She was married to Glenn Branca of Theoretical Girls and played in Theoretical Girls, Y Pants & The Static.

Pinhole Photo from I AM NOT THIS BODY

She's been a photographer since the early 80s and shoots almost everything with pinhole cameras that she builds. She concentrates on IMAGE, rather than technique - something I can relate to. However, the process itself is something that completes the aesthetic of the image.

My FAVORITE Photo from I AM NOT THIS BODY

A teacher I had in high school (The Miss Rachel Geesa) loaned me one of Ess's books, I AM NOT THIS BODY, to read and observe, without even knowing that I was already wrapped up in finding out everything I could about the No Wave scene.

Ess’s writings and photos were so easy for me to relate to as a dark, boyish teenage girl. I could totally empathize with her disregard for technical things, and her writing style – a prose-ish, wordy, one-liner style of paragraph writing about feelings, ideas and occurrences – was something I had already begun to see in my own writing.
I ended up starting a pinhole project inspired by her work, but getting off track and making a bunch of medium-format triple exposures.

Pinhole Photo from I AM NOT THIS BODY

Anyway, my boyfriend bought I AM NOT THIS BODY for me for my birthday last year.... without even knowing how influential the very same book had been to me years earlier.

Pinhole Photo from I AM NOT THIS BODY

Ess's photographs are distorted and weird, but this in a sense reveals meaning behind simplistic images...alllows us to see things for what they really are - at least in part. And isn't the whole of something defined by an addition of parts?

Pinhole Photo from I AM NOT THIS BODY

The world exists (for us) at this intersection between external, physical things and our own perception. While any photograph is a captured moment of disappearance AND occurrence, Ess’s photographs seem to bring to light this moment of disappearance… the idea that things will never be seen in this exact way again. Her simplistic, distorted figures make one feel that this is only a small part of a larger vision – and yet this magnified, singular occurrence illuminates so much about the rest of the world, and the surroundings of that particular moment.

Here is a photograph that Ess created for a gallery opening called "The Disappearance of the Mind/Body Problem". It is two contact prints on 8 x 10 UNFIXED photo paper. They are on the inside of a hinged box which was made to view the images for a few seconds at a time. Each viewing exposes the paper and makes the image disappear a bit more. By the end of the show, the images were gone.