Author Archives: mpomy

Concept Album

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OK – the big holiday weekend is winding down.  After entertaining family for a few days of fun, I left myself in a spot where I basically hd to crank out all sorts of legal nonsense over the past six hours.  What a way to spend the holiday!  But it was all worth it.  I’ll have more on the visit later.

Now, in honor of being done my work for the night, I’m planning the big concept album.  Ive come up with a few song titles:

  1. I Like Cold Beer
  2. Tell Someone Who Cares
  3. You Lose
  4. Stay The Fuck Away From Me
  5. The Mike Piazza
  6. Poison Claw
  7. Blown Save
  8. Peed In The House

Can you think of any others?

The Whole Freakin’ Story

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The latest Wayne Shorter installment is up over at Blogerantz.  This Artist-of-the-Week stuff is exhausting and it’s taking time away from other writing.  So it will be limited to special occasions when the spirit moves me.

But to properly document my little rants, a certain amount of research is necessary.  Relax, I’m still mostly talking out my ass.  Unlike this guy, who wrote an entire masters thesis on Wayne Shorter – Soundtrack For The Imagination – The Career And Compositions Of Wayne Shorter.  Judson Cole Ritchie, you are a badass, whoever you are! I’m looking forward to pawing my way through all 131 pages!

Other stuff (not Wayne Shorter-related)

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F1 racing – is getting ready to tear itself apart.  Teams refuse to be subject to standardized technology and budget caps.  To make matters worse, the proposed changes are voluntary, meaning that the 2010 Championship is expected to be a two tiered affair.  I’m very much in favor of some measure of fiscal control on the sport, but standardized technology takes away a key element that is really integral to the tradition and definition of F1 racing.  And a two-tiered championship is absolutely unacceptable.

Phillies – pulled out a nice squeeker tonight.  Hamels gets the win, although it seems he’s not quite as sharp and dominant as he was last year.  Same with Lidge – BIG TIME.  But he did get the save tonight and was a damned entertaining game to listen to.  Franzke is coming into his own (as Scott Graham did, a few years back) on those exciting calls at the end, particularly Lidge’s strikeout for out number two with two on in the bottom of the ninth.  Nice job.

John Scalzi – is a fine SciFi writer, a real professional.  He’s been blogging prolifically since 1998.  That’s some pretty good output for one guy.  Getting the benefit of really good writing on a daily basis is quite a treat.  But when its Scalzi’s twisted sense of humor, well then it’s priceless.  And, hey, it is priceless, totally free!  He recently featured an interview with a stick of butter, and today confronts his inner geek as he contemplates the purchase of a new computer powerful enough to play fancy new games:

As an example of this problem, note the picture above, of CyberPower PC’s “Lan Party Commander.” Leaving aside the name of the PC, which screams “I am encrusted in the residue of Cheetos and Mountain Dew,” this rig is one of the more subtly-designed of the gaming rigs CyberPower puts together, and it still looks like a cooling tower at Chernobyl. If I walk into a room and something is glowing like this thing is, my first instinct is to dive toward the lead shielding.

Read the entire post here.  I particularly like image of him encrusted in the residue of Cheetos.

WordPress – is ready to getting ready to go to 2.8 and only just installed this version (currently I’m using 2.7.1) on March 26.  That’s less than two months ago!  But it’s a dilemna because the last update (that I just installed) was terrific.  Fortunately, it’s still in beta testing, and I’m not feeling that adventurous at the moment.

Wayne’s World

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As part of my ongoing celebration of Wayne Shorter’s music this week, here is New York Times review of his 75 birthdy concert at Carnegie Hall.  He was joined by a classical wind section, but reviewer Ben Ratlif gives you a feel for what the extraordinary quartet has done during this amazing 8-year run.

They don’t stop between songs, they keep melodies obscured through harmony that’s constantly flowing, and they allow breathing room for everyone, almost rendering obsolete the old notions of jazz architecture — solos, backgrounds, vamps, bridges and so on. Why would you want anything to get in the way of that?

Read the whole article here.

Wayne Shorter – Atlantis (1985)

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The first outrageously long Wayne Shorter mediation is posted over at Blogerantz.  It occurs to me that one week is not nearly enough time to say everything I want to about this guy, but here’s a start.

I think I’m just going to focus on that troubling, yet fascinating, period of solo albums from the end of Weather Report (mid-80’s), leading up to the re-emergence of Wayne as an acoustic jazz icon (c. 2002).  The post is about all kinds of Wayne-related shit, but the album that gets the rumination started is 1985’s Atlantis.

Mpomy/Blogerantz Artist Of The Week – Wayne Shorter

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It’s a little hard to understand the gravity of this man’s achievment.  He is, without a doubt, one of the most outstanding American composers ever.  He’s up there with Zappa.  He’s that big, but simply doesn’t get the credit, most likely because he has always taken things, especially with his solo albums, in his own direction.  But, besides being singularly unique and enormously influential, he has also managed to create the most delicate, complex and achingly beautiful music I have ever heard.

I am going to try and start something new with Wayne – an ‘artist of the week’ feature.  So I’ll try to share some of my general thoughts and observations on this sight and I’ll post some music over at Blogerantz, and, hopefully, there will be conceptual continuity and rejoicing.

More to come…

Maureen Dowd should lose her job for this

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She ripped off Josh Marshall, the founder of Talking Points Memo, and one of the top two or three most influential web journalists in recent history.  This guy’s investigation of the Bush Administration’s overly politicized Justic Department actually led to the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.  Marshall is a modern day Woodward and Bernstein and he’s read by hundreds of thousands of people.  Did she think no one would notice?  How stupid can a person be?

SHE FREAKIN’ COPIED HIS STUFF AND PRINTED IT IN HER SUNDAY COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES.  That’s her saying that she’s too busy or lazy or old to do any real work on her own.  That’s her saying she doesn’t want her job anymore because it’s just too difficult – and it happens to be, like, one of the easiest jobs in the world.  AND THEN SHE LIED ABOUT!!!

Like it or not, newspapers will soon be gone forever.  This kind of insanely stupid behavior is one of the reasons why.

Finally – some ‘Game of Thrones’ news

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The good old SciFi Wire is reporting that the above-pictured Peter Dinklage has signed on to the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin‘s Game of Thrones.  This is great news for so many resons.  Lets list them, shall we?

  1. This means there actually is a project.  Up until now, there was talk, but little or nothing concrete.
  2. Dinklage is perfect to play Tyrion, a brilliant and complex character who is also a dwarf.  When I started reading this series, I was floored at how much there was to this character.  Although there are many aspects to the story which don’t concern Tyrion, the material that revolves around him and his supremely f-‘d up family is, in my opinion, the best part of the book.
  3. Director Thomas McCarthy is Dinklage’s running partner from the Station Agent.  HBO’s choice of McCarthy tells me a lot about how important Tyrion’s character will be to this adaptation and that is outstanding.

I’m not expecting anything to actually air anytime soon, but at least the thing is moving forward and there some good thinking about how to do this project.