The Listening Room

John Salmon notes that René Magritte‘s 110th Birthday was last Friday. Coincidentally, one of the LPs I recently recently transferred to CD was the first Dreams album, the cover of which is based on a Magritte painting. I posted one of the tunes here. ((Beck Ola, another album with a Magritte cover, will probably be in the next batch that I digitize.))

Those are the Brecker brothers, Billy Cobham and their bandmates floating in the air.

Below the fold are a few more of the albums that I pulled out to digitize recently. CDs have a lot of advantages over vinyl — they’re far more convenient; they don’t skip or get stuck (usually); there are no pops, clicks, hisses or rumbles — but for cover art, they can’t compare to LPs.

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Hammers, strings and keys

I’ve got about fifteen CDs of music freshly digitized from my ancient vinyl, or about thirty LPs’ worth. That’s enough for now. Here’s one last batch of old favorites that I haven’t heard in years.

Pentangle, “Sally Go Round the Roses”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Sally Go Round the Roses.mp3[/mp3]

Metamora, “Bicycling to Sassor/Rhubarb”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Bicycling.mp3[/mp3]

Argent, “Lothlorien”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Lothlorien.mp3[/mp3]

Colosseum, “Bring Out Your Dead”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Bring Out Your Dead.mp3[/mp3]

Update: Here’s the original version of “Sally Go Round the Roses” from 1963.

Word games

Here’a a curiosity I came across: a 2002 interview with Hiroyuki Morioka, the author of the Crest/Banner of the Stars novels. One disappointing revelation: in its genesis, the Abh language has more in common with Pig Latin than Quenya:

Question: How was the Abh language developed?

Answer: It’s based on Japanese Actually I just changed the sounds of the words. First write it down using the alphabet, using consonants and sounds. Then mark the same vowels first. The basic idea is to group similar sounding vowels then shorten the syllables. Randomize the consonants. I’m sure no one will understand this explanation.

***

Question: Could you translate a word into the Abh language?

There was a demonstration next. He started with the Japanese word Takamagahara. He then changed it to TAKMGAHAR by reducing the number of vowels. One feature of Abh language is a consonant before a vowel changes. It finally became LAKMHAKAR. He doesn’t recommend anyone memorizing this.

Nevertheless, this has hasn’t stopped fans from compiling Baronh dictionaries.

Small-scale needlework

Not anime, but worth a look for anyone with an interest in Neil Gaiman or knitting. (The key is “sweaterxxs.”)

Update: Here are some more keys. “moustachio,” an example of live-action stop-motion animation, is my favorite of the bunch, though it has nothing directly to do with the movie.

buttoneyes
stopmotion
moustachio
puppetlove
armpithair

And now for something almost, but not quite, completely unrelated: Snape paper dolls.

Update II: And now for something that is completely different: a WordPress plugin that I might install late in the evening next March 31.

Update III: Here’s the trailer for Coraline.

Horns and harps

Here are some more tunes rescued from ancient vinyl. Let’s see how heterogenous a collection I can assemble.

The Klezmorim, “‘Papirosn”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Papirosn.mp3[/mp3]

Ann Heymann, “Baltiorum/Charlie’s Fancy”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/BaltiorumCharliesFancy.mp3[/mp3]

Back Door, “Vienna Breakdown”
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Vienna Breakdown.mp3[/mp3]

The list of lists, etc.

40 Signs of the Mike World Order:

27. New TV show: Pundit Deathmatch! Reigning champion – Ann Coulter!

How to identfy the Antichrist.

The upsides to an event earlier this month (you may need to scroll down a bit):

#7: Conservatism is inherently a tradition of complicity, satire, internal conflict, and cynicism. So with the Messiah as our next president, we’re in like Patricia Quinn!

A couple of jokes, one mathematical, one theological (the latter via René’s Apple).

Snape paper dolls to download and print. You can play with them while you read Joseph Bottum’s suggestions for revising the canon of children’s literature.

Status report


Astro Fighter Sunred

These past ten days or so I’ve spent most of my spare time digitizing old vinyl. ((Once you get a CD player, getting up every twenty minutes to turn an LP over seems unreasonably laborious. Even though I have one of the larger vinyl collections that I know of, I don’t often listen to records anymore.)) It’s been productive: I’ve got over ten CDs’ worth of newly-convenient music to listen to. I have a few more LPs I want to get into the computer before I move on to the next project. Watching videos is not high-priority right now.

Nevertheless, I have watched some anime — not a lot, but some. Here are a few very brief notes.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea — discussed below.

Macademi Wasshoi #5 — Just plain icky ….

… and #6 — More watchable than #5, but the show is still not back on track. I hope we don’t have another Kamichu! here, a wildly erratic series that starts strongly but goes nowhere.

Ghost Hound through #12 — My lunchtime project. With Ryutaro Nakamura and Chiaki J. Konaka involved, it ought to be good, but the plodding pace is frustrating. The eventual payoff had better be outstanding. My impression of the series the first time I tried watching it was that it was a taut twelve-episode show padded out to a draggy twenty-two, and I still think so.

Natsume Yuujinchou through #4 — A show from the summer that got relatively little attention in the otakusphere while it was airing. Another example of Shinto 101, it reminds me strongly of Mokke, both in its subject matter and in its tone. It occasionally gets dangerously sentimental, but it probably is one of the better series of the year.

Astro Fighter Sunred #1 — A very silly gag series, featuring short, absurd skits and very minimal animation. You probably need to be drinking with friends to properly enjoy the show.

I may write more about these later. Or maybe not.

Think thank thunk

I was startled today to find myself listed between Dale Price and TSO in Irish Elk‘s choices for the Best Blog Darts Thinker Award. Thank you, Mark.

Here we go:

This award acknowledges the values that every blogger shows in his/her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values every day.

The rules to follow are:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person that has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to other 15 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment.

And here are my choices:

Aliens in This World
Apologia
Charlotte Was Both
Darwin Catholic
Deep Furrows
Erik’s Rants and Recipes
Eve Tushnet
Flos Carmeli
The Fredösphere
Jelly-Pinched Theatre
more last than star
René’s Apple
Rightwing Film Geek
Sun and Shield
TexasBestGrok

Fish story

Someone smuggled a video camera into a showing of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, and thus I was able to take a look at it last night. It’s not first-rate Miyazaki, but it is much better than Howl’s Moving Castle. ((The book, Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, is excellent. Give copies to all the youngsters on your Christmas present list, and grab one for yourself. But don’t waste your time on the movie, Miyazaki’s worst.)) It will be worth seeing on the big screen when it’s released in the USA.

The good news: the core story, about the fish who wants to be a human, is something Miyazaki is good at. Ponyo, the magic goldfish, Sosuke, the boy who finds her, and Lisa (or Risa), Sosuke’s mother, are believeable, sympathetic characters. Some of the scenes reminded me of Totoro ((There is a significant parallel to Totoro in that Sosuke’s other parent is absent and, in the latter half of the movie, at risk.)) and Kiki. Ponyo’s first evening as a human in Sosuke’s home is as charming a sequence as Miyazaki’s ever done.

The bad new: the outer story is a mess. It’s a mixture of fairy tale, science fiction, paleontology, celestial mechanics, fantasy and deep ecology that doesn’t immediately add up to anything coherent. (I suppose I should be grateful that there isn’t a war going on.) Perhaps the symbolism will click after several more viewings and all will be clear and logical, but I doubt it.

Ponyo is not prime Miyazaki, but half of it is very good, and all of it is pleasing to the eyes, if not to the mind.

Incidentally, I was surprised by the quality of the video, both image and sound. There were very few clues that this was a surreptitious recording.

Screen captures below the fold.

Continue reading “Fish story”