Inspirational Project

Listening to Atmosphere's You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having, I realized I needed some practice.



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Downloading

Planet Asia Jewelry Box Sessions (2007)
Dilated Peoples Third Degree/Global Dynamics

TV Blogging

Dave and Jay seemed to be interested in pretty girls tonight, Conan spent some time talking about religion, it was so funny, the band was ultranice so I switched over to Craig Ferguson, the band was interesting, reminded me of The The. Listening to Hong Kong RTHK radio, the UK expatriate community there provides so much material on what would be called college radio in the US; it is certainly refreshing, in the same way that Colin Newman can be more refreshing than Beck.

30 Rock::Tracy Does the Conan Show

Another great episode of course. It is difficult to understand how Liz Lemon can be cohabitating with Dennis on a part time basis. I suppose for her character, she is interested in stereotypes originating from either the University of Oklahoma or from Stanford, based on her romances of Season 1.

This episode tackles the difficult subject of mental health medication. If one could imagine our technological empire of pharaceuticals as being based on caricatures of Tracy and people like the Slingblade guy saying "Yes" and "No" to doctors to whom they would say anything that sounded right, one sees that all that stock market pharaceutical money is resting on quicksand that could not be any jelloier. And that's a lot of money! The answers that constitute the studies that justify the medications to the courts and to the government grant-readers are as reliable as Lemon's answers to Jack Donaghy when he asks about his bet on the Pittsburgh Penguins game or when he wants an opinion on his wife's wig.


Practice
Mexican Studies 101::Populist Literature: translating 30 Rock into easy-to-understand, widely recognized symbols.

18 + 19 The page




20 + 21 Tina's two boyfriends from Season 1

Practice Practice Practice

In the summer of 1996 I was in San Francisco with $2100 and I was very bored. NoCal, San Fran and me, it's a really important city, if I was going to get busted for half an ounce of pot I would think about moving there permanently, but I am not about to get busted and when I was there I felt I was getting in people's way, people who needed, loved and built that city that is so important, et cetera, et cetera.

I missed downtown LA where I used to work and I decided I needed to live in Mexico City for a time. The bus ticket round trip was under $200, so off I went. I picked up a copy of the just-released Stone Temple Pilots' Tiny Songs from the Vatican Giftshop, I bought a Walkman for $29 and I got on the bus - and "Pushed Play". Tiny Songs is really good, and I got a nice feeling as we were approaching and passing through the San Diego area, I listened to it very many times over the next two months.

In Tijuana I walked to the bus station and presented my Greyhound ticket and received a computer-assigned bus seat on the Mexico City bus. The bus ride is very cool, if one has never really driven a car out west, like I hadn't, one might not know that driving in the mountains is as easy as driving on regular roads; it's the same as when one is driving to Dayton or Burlington or Queens anyway. It's the same task with a nice view. This ride was more or less extreme in that regard, in the north of Mexico after one passes through the maquiladora area and before one gets to the long straight stretch throuth saguaro country. If one doesn't like it, the trip from California to Laredo, Texas to Mexico takes about as much time, considering.

Driving through two or three hours of saguaro country, passing what must be a million giant cacti, the big bonus is the view of the transponster tower on the top of a flat mountain half way between Mexico DF and Los Angeles, it's got to be as tall as the Transamerica Building, the designers created a very pleasing look, that of some kind of Moctezuma warrior is the sense of it, it is very impressive as seen from miles away, and it is in view for a half an hour.

I stayed in the hotel next to the bus station for 6 weeks eating the nice room service food and walking and taking the subway around. Besides the rubber tires on the subway cars, which apparently is the same as Paris, the signs in the subway system there are very good. It is a little difficult to learn on the fly, it pays to bring them home, as it were, and think about it over time.

I spent so much time at the bus station itself, at the subway station "Autobuses del Norte". It is roomy, spacious and cool, the very opposite of New York's or Los Angeles' bus station, more like Boston, which is very vast, modern and has a dozen restaurants and hundreds of tables. Autobuses del Norte has a fast food restaurant, and lots of space, and I was amazed at the very many little cartoon books of gladiators and harems, they are very helpful for understanding how things worked in ancient times.

Mexico City is very nice to see, I almost tried another hotel that was in the Lonely Planet book, at Salto de Agua. This is a good concept; if we as people decide to turn the oceans into fresh water through desalination, because we would save a lot of money on the food budget, what would we exactly do with all the sodium metal and chlorine gas that would result from this process?

La Zona Rosa of course is every expat's favorite, all the streets have names of cities like Londres, Madrid, etc. There was a Burger King there, and I think the Zona Rosa is near the financial district. There are record stores and it is a walking distance area, in and of itself and in relation to the rest of the city. I got the impression while I was there that the financial planners of Mexico know what they are doing in regards to creating what seems to be some kind of socialist economy for people to live in. That's just the feeling I get, it seems like a very sound place. From the many Pemex trucks on the highways, to the people sitting outside at dusk selling little pyramids of chiclets, which reminded me of people selling small amounts of garlic in Korea, money is there, and the livelihood of the people has a permanent-type feeling. I haven't been to Madrid, but it feels like Madrid.

Eating Mexican food every day is good for one. I got a bottle of tequila at the liquor store in the bus station the day before I left. The big hotel had so many American movies on their cable system, I watched and watched for 6 weeks when I was tired from seeing the city. I mainly just followed the Lonely Planet guide and was real careful all the time, no sense in worrying about something dumb happening, just because my eyes were wide open and I had never been there before. I am sure my hosts appreciated that.

For some reason, to me, all photos of Mexico City look really good.



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How does one learn Spanish? Or Mexican? Practice. One isn't sure how accurate these translational efforts are; all one knows is that one is getting some time in working with the material. The basis of this exercise is NBC's ensemble show 30 Rock.


1 + 2 Tina Fey



3 + 4 Jane Krakowski




5 + 6 Tracy Morgan




7 + 8 Alec Baldwin



9 + 10 + 11 Lorne Michaels




12 + 13 the Michael Moore looking writer




14 + 15 + 16 African American writer



17 + 17A 30 Rock itself



It's not quite the way to say your goodbyes,
it's not quite the way to behave.
I suppose that's the disadvantage
Of speaking a second language.

"French Film Blurred" - Chairs Missing - Wire

E Commerce

E Commerce consists of

Talib Kweli, Right About Now (The Original Sucka-Free Mix CD)
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Blood For Blood, Serenity - A Boston hard core outfit.

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At the Drive-In, In-Casino-Out - Wikipedia says: Influenced primarily by.................At the Drive-In crafted epic, musically complex songs laced with cryptic and strongly metaphoric lyrics. Founded in 1993 by guitarist Jim Ward and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, ATD-I's first studio recording was Hell Paso (Western Breed), an EP issued in 1994. ............Not only notoriously energetic and wild at shows, At the Drive-In were noted by the music press for the afros of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. ...........

30 Rock::Corporate Crush

Tracy Morgan's movie trailer for Jefferson is really funny; if he could do that for 1 1/2 hours I would put that straight to the top of my Netflix queue. Next up could be something involving drinking lots of liquor and making up an hour and a half of Shakespeare stuff.

30 Rock::Cleveland

In this episode, Tina says something like "Bluurg" at the end of the episode; Bluurg is a music label of The Subhumans; the music of this band sort of fits the sense of the woman who wants to marry her boss, and of the story. "No no no it's too shitty, don't want to live in the big big city." The story line of Tracy visiting Cleveland is really good, I have started to emulate Tracy's life skills; cliche is not my game, but is Tracy the best thing about the show? Cliches don't work for me; I will have to toil to find a way to say what I am thinking about the show.

TV::30 Rock::The Fighting Irish

This episode is really good, very funny, especially Liz when she is trying to fire the other Liz at the show. The Irish family part of it was good, I assume the sister Margaret is wishing she had brought her Yeah Yeah Yeahs on her cd walkman for the family get together at the show's offices.

TV Blogging

I watched Dave Letterman tonight, it was pretty good. Usually I watch Jay Leno at 11:35 but I was a little tired of it. Jeanine Garafalo and They Might Be Giants are on Conan; Jeanine was pretty good, I am sure TMBG will also be pretty good. It's like the Triple Witching Hour of white bread liberal empowerment. Excellent. I saw They Might Be Giants in Boston at The Paradise theatre in 1987; there were only a few people there as the show began and three songs in, a woman experienced a bout of syncope. She fainted and left with a friend. 8 months later the band was back, and I walked down to the theatre to go to the show, and for some reason their super brighly colored plastic sound was changed to a more natural sound, more like Busta Rhymes or Guided by Voices' Vampire On Titus, like changing from white bread to wheat bread.

Wow. Their new song "I'm Impressed" sounds more like their first album than most anything I've heard in a long time.

Clicking to NBC.com, one finds that 30 Rock episodes are all available there. Excellent, I will watch them all before The Rule of Law returns to the website.

Carson Daly is very good for one's music appreciation. The show goes good with bands like Gas Huffer and other West Coast stuff. There is some kind of difference in the demographics of European-Americans and Asian-Americans, including people who walked here to this continent 11,000 years ago from Northeast Asia.

These Mexico City subway station icons may help express some figures in the blog entry:

1 Carson Daly
2 Jeanine Garafalo
3 30 Rock
4 My coffee maker

The Mexican government has assembled a set of pictures for their subway system, so very thoughtfully, as thoughtfully presented as the words on an Asian map or subway system. Asian can express every emotion in a word or two; there are many idiosyncracies and conventionalizations involved, making this language useful for news stories, science textbooks, advertising, fashion, novels, history, government, et cetera; "reading" the Mexican government's subway sign system gives one a new appetite for homework and study; the two actually have something to do with each other.








More talk about Paris Hilton tongight. Putting together the real picture, from Jay Leno's commentary expecially, one supposes she is a woman who jacks guys professionally and then screams joyfully. Great. The crime pages are full of this crap, dudes and their ladies at the end of the line, slogging hypnotized through apartments and rented rooms, alcohol is involved, the non-violent nature of the struggle between the pair grows boring and then there is a fight, the guy normally wins these fights. Dudes need to avoid this kind of situation absolutely in the first place, bands like Black Flag, The Motards, and of course the Dead Boys definitely satisfy the appetite for crappy experience in a clever, fun, non-painful way. If my rap collection was as well-developed as my punk rock collection, I could drop a few rap names here as well. She's Sophisticated!

Poker After Dark, I watch 3 or 4 times a week if my schedule permits it. It is very reassuring to see the professionalism, sportmanship and conversation that goes on on this show. Baseball players, football players et cetera are as experienced in organizing their thoughts as are the poker players; the nature of the game of poker makes it obvious how game discipline can lead to personal excellence. Some of the conversations going on at these tables go far past interesting. What a great show.

The Shopaholics

I'm going to the desert, the dirty dusty desert, there are things there worth avoiding....The Meat Puppets from Too High To Die

Nelson Muntz: ....just like they have in Candyland!
Lisa Simpson: Nelson, theres no such thing as Candyland!
Nelson Muntz: Sniff. There isn't? But I was going to move to Cuckoo Corners!

Unlike The World, which was made in Beijing and is set in a Disneyland-like context, The Shopaholics, which is made in Hong Kong and is set in shopping malls full of Gucci and Prada, doesn't really change course midway through the movie. The Shopaholics is a very Imelda Marcos movie, in American terms it would have something to do with both Paris Hilton and Leona Helmsley. Its star, Cecelia Chung, is a Chinese Shelley Long. It just doesn't stop, until halfway through, when one starts hitting the time bar to move it along, and then it is over in less than a minute.

The Shopaholics is about mental illness (shopaholism); The World is about improving oneself by reading. Maybe it's true that people in the north really do think about things more seriously. Or, maybe it's true that in the south, there are more things worth avoiding, and frothy plastic colorful warning signs are pleasing to the eye. I don't know. Buddha bless you. Both movies are available at Netflix.

E Commerce

E Commerce consists of Alternative Rap. Music downloaded from eMusic includes:

Pharcyde - Cydeways:The Best of Pharcyde
Pharcyde - Labcabincalifornia
Epitaph Records Hip Hop Sampler - Amongst others, Talib Kweli has been working at Epitaph Records.
Atmosphere - You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having - A Minneapolis area rap group. Related artists include MC Lars, I am looking forward to getting that.

Saved for later: Planet Asia, Erykah Badu, Arrested Development, more De La Soul.