Catholic Row

This doesn't end well for anybody.

I'm scared for the future of the Catholic church - the dark ages where the church could make these decisions FOR people are over. The church has essentially thrown the gaunlet down: 'You're IN or you're OUT. What'll it be?'

I'm worried that most people will realize that it isn't a question. In between the lines, the church seems to be saying, "We've already kicked you out - you just keep coming on Sunday for some reason."

The Dead Weather

Jack White's 3rd band - is pretty freaking awesome.

*And has anyone else noticed its like a Gretsch commercial in there? And I am totally okay with that. Catch the cutom BillyBo on the stand sporting the custom III pickguard? I'm betting it has three pickups in it soon.

Good things/Bad things

Whats Good:

Seeing RENT for the first time. It was killer! Much better than the movie, I thought. Made more sense. I really dug the way the whole thing was staged - as a single static backdrop setup with rotating pieces of focus in the foreground. It made for some cool subtleties, like when Roger refuses to come out of the apartment. He's on stage the whole time in the "apt" area, always sitting on the table or around the table and fire barrel with a guitar. He's there almost the entire first act, even if not lit up. RENT is now #2 in my musical list just behind Les Miserable.

While leaving the show at the Civic Center, we walked right by a guy on a knee proposing to a girl as they came out of just seeing RENT. He took the message of the play: 'No day but today,' to heart, apparently. There was a crowd and a guy getting it on a small camera. She said yes. So that's cool. Good luck, guys.

Got two SWEET jackets @ the Mall: One black peacoat from the Gap for a winter work coat. Staying classy. One hipster sweater in blue. (Most people--> shoes, Me--> jackets) I love jackets.

Finally signed up for NetFlicks. Free trial period! w00t! I've been meaning to get my own account for some time. I enjoy Middleson's movie picks, too - the Baliwood, the Independent films, etc. But now I don't have to feel bad about getting movies like Resident Evil: Extinction.

(Not Good:)

Had a pretty jaw-droppingly bad experience at a GPB, an allegedly upscale local restaurant. Great food. Crazy good food. Had a bad waiter. We come in as 5 and get two tiny tables put together. There's two other tables of people in this place. There's about 20 tables, plus bar. Its 6:15. The 5th of our party ended up not being able to come for legitimate reasons. The waiter asked us to get up, and separate the tables again so as not to take up and extra table. Presumably when the restaurant was... busier than 15 people. It was awkard getting up and rearranging. Plus the resulting table was crammed so that the girls couldn't fit their wine glasses on the table with their plates at the same time. One asked for ketchup, and he brought out a 6-condiment dispenser of relishes, pulling up a spare chair to the table and sitting it on that.

........I'm gonna let that sink in. Pulled a chair up to our too full table to set the thing on. The words, "was that your 2nd dropped piece of silverware tonight?" "no - that was... the other table." were spoken. Ben Folds - stick to playing piano. Thanks for making a fun night start awkward.

Vintage Amp Aquisition

I've come into possession of a new amplifier. (Sorry Mom)

Its a cheap amp from 1966, a Sears Silvertone 1484. Most people have no idea what it is or how good it sounds. It looks cheap, it was cheap, and gets beat up easily. So most people write it off as a crap amp.

That is - until Jack White started using Silvertone 1485s in the White Stripes to get his gigantic, crunchy, blow-the-top-of-your-head-off sound. Suddenly, the market for Silvertone amps exploded and more than just the amp junkies realized that the Silvertone amps WERE cheap, but also had KILLER tone. They just don't look like much. Now - its tough to find a Sears Silvertone in decent condition. I've wanted one for a few years now - been looking at craigslist about once a week. A long story very short - a friend of mine found one and then realized he didn't really need it.

It also gave me a good reason to finally sell off all the random guitars and parts of guitars I had laying around not getting used which would more than pay for the amp. (Yes mother, I'll put the extra $$ left over into savings.) I'd like to end up with just two eletrics - a strat and a my epiphone - and one acoustic.

Anyways - I don't have any good pictures of it yet, but here's what a Sears Silvertone 1484 "Twin Twelve" looks like. This one is a little bit cleaner than mine, but I'll eventually get mine cleaned up and checked out by an amp tech.

Getting the message across

I guess the Governator is getting fed up with the bills coming to his desk. His posisition is that there are SERIOUS problems in California that the legislature can't seem to come to a consensus on and fix. They send him bills to fund more projects on the San Fransico waterfront. Apparently the author of this bill had shouted some obscene things at Arnold once, and the Governor's veto statement sounded innocuous when read aloud, but when seen on paper, an entirely different (read: more blunt) message appears.

Here's the .pdf of the veto statement.

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much...

I love Obama. And the Obama administration. Not just for their policy, but for not beating around the bush.

They haven't minced words about FOXnooze, refusing to give interviews and the like. Somebody finally came out this weekend and stated the obvious - something that even FOXnews viewers who call themselves 'independent' or 'impartial' don't seem to understand. That FOXnews is just a shill for the republican party.

The best part is how FOX came back with, "whaaaaat?!?!?" Please, FOX - don't. Don't even.

Their official response was that people are confusing their news coverage with their opinion pieces. To which I respond: Bullshit. FOXnews deliberately splices parts of their incendiary commentors (opinion) into parts of the news (fact?) coverage in an attempt to make the conservative opinions sound more grounded and commonplace than they really are. FOX's ticker (the text at the bottom of the screen) is enough to make me sick to my stomach sometimes. Only FOX can stir up a tea-party protest (organized by affliates of FOXnews) then organize a rally for their 'news' program where they call the protesters "patriots." These patriots just happen to be carrying signs showing Obama as Hitler, and others with signs morphing Obama into Iran's president and text saying, "Death to the Dictator." But that didn't make it on TV, of course.

Smart conservatives everywhere are using this attack to compare Obama's administration with Nixon's - complaining that ONE network doesn't like him. Oh wait - did you just OPENLY ADMIT THAT YOU DON'T LIKE HIM?!? THEN STOP PRETENDING THAT YOU'RE NOT BIASED. Nobody is saying you should close your doors, FOXnews - its just people saying, "you're not fooling us into thinking you're a non-biased news source so we're not going to treat you like one." Quit acting like you've just been wronged. You chose your format - now live with it.

Headphones

I recently had a discussion about what made good headphones good headphones. Then I came across these two articles today, breaking down exactly that. These are specific to "in-ear" headphones, not the bulkier over-the-ear headphones.

This one talks about why there is such a difference between $20 and $100 headphones.

This one has a great table display of what one reviewer thought after testing several brands, models, and price ranges.

Still - I tried Dr. Dre's new over the ear headphones (basically DJ headphones) at the Apple store and they were pretty damn fantastic.

"...this is the only guitar the band owns"

If you read my blog, you already know how excited I was to see "It Might Get Loud." I won't repost everything I've already posted - but I wanted to talk about a few of the cooler points of the movie.

-The movie starts out with Jack White on a farm, pounding two nails into a 2x4. He then nails a single guitar pickup to the wood. Then he wraps a piece of steel wire around the nails, making it taut. He inserts a glass bottle on one side to act as a bridge and then plugs the rig into one of his Silvertone amps sitting on the porch. Then starts ripping out a slide guitar riff on his homemade 'guitar.' The whole thing took about 4mins. No words. Ends with Jack taking a drag off a cigarette, "...ya know? Who says you need to buy a guitar?"

-Watching Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page all sitting in THEIR music rooms, listening to THEIR records, talking about what THEIR influences were. It was a surreal experience to watch Jimmy Page listening to music. The guy on the top of most "Greatest Living Guitarist" lists, the guitarist for Led Zeppelin - even HE plays air guitar when listening to his favorite guitarists. Turns out its not just me. Really brought home the fact that these guys are just normal dudes.

-There's actually clips of the lutheire making the 2nd of Jack White's custom "Triple Jet" Gretsches. Not the copper one I blogged about 2 posts below, but the one with the Green Bullet microphone on the body. That was pretty sweet.

-The drastically different approaches of each player. Page was a session guitarist playing other people's music before deciding to go a completely different direction and change the way electric guitar was played forever. The Edge is very into effects processing and getting the most out of dozens of pedals and amps in his chain, getting the most precise sound to match whats in his head. Jack White is a minimalist guitarist - cheap plastic guitars, 3 effects, and straight blues riffs backed by as much energy and raw power as he can muster.

-There was a funny quote from The Edge talking about their first serious recording session w/ Steve Lillywhite. After they'd recorded all the main parts, Steve wanted to overdub different guitar parts on top of Edge's original riffs with a different guitar (to make the tone fuller, a common trick). This was so early in U2's career, The Edge looks at Bono, looks at his brown Explorer and says, "...this is all I have. This is the only guitar the band owns."

-There's a clip of Jack White talking about the blues and while he's talking there is a clip of him playing "Blue Veins" with the Raconteurs. He's playing so hard that his hand is bleeding all over his guitar body. He sets the Gretsch down, the camera zooms in, and there's red smears all over the finish.

"Liber Novus"

There's something about the the occult that interests me. Physical manifestations of heaven and hell, good and evil, angels and demons - if you throw that stuff in a book or movie... there's a pretty good chance I'll get it.

Which is why when I came across this link about a secret book written by Carl Jung while he was... well... going out of his way to allow his phychosis / schizophrenia to get stronger, I proceded to read the entire article. And its not a small article.

Something about special books with pictures and biblical allusions containing information important enough to get hidden and locked away - just seems to interest me.

Examples:
-The grail diary in The Last Crusade
-The crazy artwork in Dante's Divine Comedy (but mainly just Inferno)
-The three texts in the movie The Ninth Gate

The 'Triple Jet'

Jack White has been using Gretsch guitars for a while now, but there's two SWEET ones he's been using for Raconteurs gigs.

One started off as a single cut-away, but he sent it to a luthier in Seattle to have it turned into a double cut-away. And install a theremin near the bigsby. And install a green bullet microphone on a retractable cable on the body of the guitar. Hard to explain.

The other one is a custom made guitar, based on the Duo Jet, that has a copper finish and a 3rd pickup wired to an internal MXR Micro Amp effect inside the guitar. He dubbed this guitar the Gretsch "Triple Jet." He added the three stripes seen on lots of White Stripes posters and on his Silvertone amps grill cloth. Its a sweet sweet sweet guitar.