Trinity! Help!

I can’t accept that it has been over 10 years since The Matrix was released.  Bullet time flies when . . . oh never mind.  There have been numerous Matrix-inspired creations, one of my favorites being “The Red Pill” by The Crystal Method.  “Take the red pill.  Take the blue pill.  Take the red pill.  Take the blue pill.”

But this post is about a scene (the rooftop where Trinity and Neo confront an agent, and Neo dodges bullets) filmed in stop motion entirely with Lego pieces.  This article in Gadget Lab gives the details, as well as a YouTube link to the scene.  Brilliant.  According to the article, these guys took 440 hours to film 900 frames for just 44 seconds of animation.  10 hours for each second.  Now that is dedication.

The faithfulness of their reproduction is shown in another YouTube video which places both the stop motion and movie scenes side-by-side.  Un-be-liev-able.

“Dodge this.” <BLAM>

Back In Black

With an appropriate head thrash to Brian, Angus and the boys, it’s been too long.  I’m glad to be back.  To make up for lost time, and on the off chance this is my April post, I’ve decided to treat each of my topics:  books, brewing, movies, music, personal finance, and an other if it occurs to me.  My blogging has been sparse of late, but life goes on.

I have been reading a lot.  Some personal finance stuff:  Automatic Millionaire (Bach), The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read (Solin), Wise Investing Made Simple (Swedroe) — standard Boglehead stuff.  And for what it is worth, I am following a 50/50 strategy of paying down my mortgage and socking away excess in Vanguard Total Stock Market in a taxable account.  Still, investing for the long haul is fundamentally boring, so my mind has turned to other titles like (nobody knows you’re blushing on the Internet) Goals! (Tracy), How To Get Rich (Dennis), and The 4-Hour Workweek (Ferriss).  The latter has been described as snake oil by some reviewers on Amazon, but parts of it have me intrigued.  It is a new year;  time to try something new, money-wise.  No fear;  no retreat;  nothing to lose.

On the brewing front, I haven’t been lately.  Tonight that all changes — planning a blueberry-pomegranate mead and a pyment (grape mead).  After that, as soon as my primaries clear out, it’s a few extract batches of beer, likely American brown, amber, a porter, and a stout.

I haven’t watched many new movies, except Quantum of Solace, which was excellent.  I watched Serenity (one of my faves) again last night on a new Roku Netflix player.  What a cool way to do on-demand movies and TV without paying the cable co for the privilege.  This is the wave of the future.

So music:  currently loving the latest from A Shoreline Dream and Silversun Pickups.  Also TV on the Radio and Thriving Irony.  And if listening to music weren’t enough, I bought a bass guitar.  Because, well, playing in a rock band is just plain fun, and of the three (bass, drums, guitar), it seemed to be the easiest to pick up.  Not that it’s easy.  As I get older, my patience for repetition has diminished, while my conception of how hard things are has increased.  Not a good combination.  But feh, I will persevere and regale the world (or a basement-sized part of it) with my amplified genius.  Or loud competence.  Anybody know a great guitarist in the Chandler AZ area looking for a bass player?

In personal finance, a lot of getting rich involves saving (particularly pre-tax) and living below one’s means.  There is, particularly at bogleheads.org (link at right –>), a lot of debate about which investing philosophy trumps what, and which investments belong in taxable accounts verses tax-deferred.  This is all well and good, but if one ups their savings rate from 10% to 15% or even 20% it will positively swamp those other considerations.  It is boring;  it is unsatisfying; it is not particularly fun;  BUT it is important.  Save, save, and save.  If you do, you will be rich.  Sooner or later.

There’s A Bit Of Magic In Everything

and then some loss to even things out.

-  Lou Reed, Magic & Loss

I Thought It Was Called A Herd

Brief aside:  sucks to be up late working.  On the upside I just created a kick-ass PowerPoint presentation that will get me noticed and revered for my mad explainin’ skills. As far as I know at 1:30 AM.  Natch.  Onward, my fellow early morning warriors, whatever it is you are striving for.

One thing (maybe the one thing) that makes or breaks a band for me is the vocals.  I am not into lyrics, really.  On the contrary, the lyrics can go for a walk around the block so long as the vocals are pure, melodic, and sound more or less like another instrument.  This explains why I really dig certain Icelandic bands to be named later.  Eg tala ekki islensku.

Which brings me to a new-ish discovery and one of my current favorite groups:  Band of Horses.  This band has been described as My Morning Jacket’s emotional younger brother.  They are certainly emotive and dramatic, but so what?  Subdued music makes me sleepy.  I think BoH could also be fairly characterized as progressive or art rockers, except . . . the lead singer has this wonderful twang in his voice.  And maybe there’s that hint of a little country swing.  Not that I am a big fan of country music, mind you.  Or reggae either, while I’m at it.  Ptui.  I am a sucker for a good melody, which these guys produce with amazing regularity.  Call me a name like Nancy, but every so often BoH’s combination of melody, emotion and musicianship causes a sharp intake of breath followed by an extended sigh at the sheer beauty of the moment.

Check them out.

Boy My Shoes Sure Are Dirty

Stemming from a remark about listening to music while working, I started to think about the genre of music known as shoegazing.  The name was coined, supposedly, due to the tendency of performers to look down at their feet during performances.  This style is uniquely suited for tuning out and as a substitute for white noise when concentrating.  From a Wikipedia article on the subject:

Common musical elements in shoegaze are distortion (aka “fuzzbox”), droning riffs and a “wall of sound” from noisy guitars. Typically, two distorted rhythm guitars are played together to give an amorphous quality to the sound. . . . Vocals are typically subdued in volume and tone, but underneath the layers of guitars is generally a strong sense of melody.

Wall of sound, some distortion, subdued melodic and sometimes ethereal vocals?  Yup, that sounds about right.  A representative (and temporal) layout of some shoegazing bands also appears in the article.  My exposure started with friends as these things often do, beginning with Lush and Catherine Wheel.  Love both those bands a lot, and have most of their albums.  Over a decade later, while screwing around on iTunes, I discovered and obtained “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine, “Souvlaki” by Slowdive, and “Nowhere” by Ride to round out my collection.  Although all three of these are sonic gems, I listed them in decreasing order of preference.  If you must get just one of the three, I would go with Loveless, but you would be missing out big time on Souvlaki.  And a nod of gratitude to the reviewers on iTunes and Amazon who turned me onto these with comments like “This is one of the best albums of its type, along with <name> by <band>.”

The gazing continues.  Two of my current favorite bands Silversun Pickups and M83 were influenced by shoegazers past.  Finally, (WARNING: for those at work, music will play) A Shoreline Dream continues the tradition in distorted dreaminess with its EP “Coastal.”  Check them out.

For Those About To Rock

I was going to write about beer tonight.  I mean, the first non-introductory post — it had to be beer.  I had plans.  A rough outline.  Then I sat down to eat a nice dinner of tequila lime wings, blue cheese dressing, and a lovely Irish Red ale (ha!  managed to sneak it in there after all), and turned to Palladia, one of the HD cable channels that shows concerts, mostly.  And there they were . . .

AC/DC

And now I vividly remember 7th grade, possibly the worst time in a young boy’s life — trying to figure out who you are, who you want to be, who all these other guys are that didn’t go to your Elementary school even are, and if/why they are hipper than you.  But we ALL thought AC/DC was cool.  This is uniquely male, and limited largely, I suspect, to intermediate/middle school, but forget all the qualifiers.  It is a Shared Experience.  It is tribal.

At least then, and maybe still.  I’ll have to remember to ask my son about it next year.  I know this because not that many years ago Matt, the drummer of my ex-band, was discussing music with some teenager (our age minus about 20) during a break.  Favorite White Stripes song and why.  Favorite performace thereof.  The young lad held his own, argued his positions — it was a dude musical discussion between generations.  And then Matt asked who the better AC/DC singer was.  Poor kid couldn’t come up with a name.  Pfft, he was dismissed, and Matt turned to me.  “Bon Scott,” I stated flatly.  A satisfied nod.  Damn straight. I had, it turns out, answered a dude dicotomy correctly according to Matt.  In all dude dichotmies, however, it is more important that you have a strongly felt answer than whether it satisfies the questioner.

And they’re still going as I type this.  Good for them.  I can still remember writing down the then-current lineup on the back of my 7th grade notebook.  Never could draw a proper lightening bolt, by the way.  Brian Johnson (vocals), Angus Young (lead), Malcolm Young (rhythm), Phil Rudd (drums), and — with all apologies, I knew it then I swear, but had to look it up just now, so I’m linking — Cliff Williams (bass).  In college a guitar player friend of mine referred to Angus as the Riff Meister, explaining that Angus’s genius was in constructing songs around the same riffs that other guitarists had all played without further exploration or particular emphasis.  Maybe so.

I saw an interview with Angus Young a while ago, he a distinguished looking older gentleman stating in his Australian accent that AC/DC has always been a good party band.  Say whazzit?!  I mean sure, my now-self totally agrees — fun music, up tempo, all about the finer things.  My 7th grade-self, some of which remains, was crushed.  AC/DC were so hard.  I’m sure of it.  How could they have been a party band all along?  Don’t get me wrong — I have come across much harder rock (speed metal, industrial) since, but that first impression somehow remained.  Until Angus pointed out the obvioius.  Well, shoot.  Farewell to a lingering 7th grade impression, and along with it another bit of my youth.

I am glad I saw them on TV tonight — still(!) rocking.  AC/DC and shared experiences.  We salute you.