Month: October 2007

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Television & Movies

Columbus better buy us some freakin’ dinner next year

Today is Columbus Day. (Well, what’s left of today at any rate.) I thought about it a bit, and I recalled that on Columbus Day last year, my wife and I did a marathon 26-hour round trip to northern Illinois and back to pick up an Avid system that I’d won on eBay. Getting that machine home and operational was what emboldened me to escape from the TV station grind, which has something to do with why, this Columbus Day, my wife and I are again spending a great deal of time in each other’s company, taking care of Evan. It’s funny how many cycles and circles one can read into this whole thing if one wants.

We also watched some Burn Notice today, finally getting caught up with the whole show. It’s an interesting little series, that one, and hey, it’s got Bruce Campbell, so it can’t be all bad. I’m not sure I’m as googly-eyed over Gabrielle Anwar as everyone else who’s seen the show seems to be, but hey, that’s just me. In some ways, Burn Notice is also dangerously informative about…well…how to do certain things. MacGyver, it ain’t.

Evan’s doing okay; the other day while I was watching him sleep, I glanced at his hand and he had a little “live long and prosper” thing going. I thought it was pretty funny, if accidental, but there are certain members of the family who go around mumbling stuff like “don’t get him started on that geeky Star Trek shit” who probably wouldn’t be as amused. Much more interestingly, I’ve started introducing him to music. Some time back I picked up all three volumes of Raymond Scott’s Soothing Sounds For Baby, and they’ve proven to be a big hit with Evan. He’s completely mesmerized by that stuff. Most people filed Raymond Scott as a footnote under “the guy who actually composed a bunch of the stuff that Carl Stalling adapted for the Warner Bros. cartoon music”, but Scott was also a great innovator of electronic music in the early to mid 20th century. In some ways, he was paving a road that others such as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop would follow, messing around with purely electronically/electrically generated sound. Soothing Sounds is one of those experiments; it’s all very electronic, but it’s also just about hypnotic. It’s repetitive, a bit of highway hypnosis for the ears, but gradually more complexity is introduced and then phased out again to keep things interesting. Evan laid on my chest, and if he wasn’t almost asleep, I could see in his eyes a sort of mental “Processing…” progress bar – what is this? I hope this was just the first of many, many listening sessions for us. Music is simply one of the greatest things there is about being human, and I look forward to sharing more of it with him.

I’m working on a mix minidisc for him, with a random playlist, consisting of the Raymond Scott material, as well as other electronic music that I went back and listened to and found stuff in a similar vein – again, the early BBC Radiophonic Workshop music (reviewed here) and a bit of Hot Butter (reviewed here) and Famicom 20th Anniversary music for good measure, with a smattering of Bedtime With The Beatles too. A little something to stimulate and soothe at the same time. I’m sure there are folks out there screaming “Why not classical?” I’ll get around to that in due course, fear not. I can comfortably go from Radiohead to Rachmaninov in a single sitting, and eventually it’s my hope that Evan will have at least as broad a musical palette, if not more.

Oberon snuggled up next to Evan the other night when the little guy was being colicky. He rubbed all over Evan’s hands, sorta like if you don’t pet me, I’ll pet you! Evan didn’t mind; it didn’t distress him any more than he already was. I just thought that was incredibly cute. Obi’s gone from being the goofy cat to being the goofy cat who’s proving to be an incredibly loyal companion to someone he’s just met. We couldn’t have deliberately picked a better one.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

Running on empty

Sorry I haven’t been updating much lately, folks. Funny how a little bundle o’ joy can keep a guy busy. He’s been having some tummy troubles, and I’m really concerned that my genetic gift to him may have been my wonky digestive system. I hope not, because I wouldn’t wish the problems I have with that set of plumbing on anyone. He’s had a rough 24 to 36 hours here, including one little incident where he basically barfed up the entire contents of his stomach. That sort of thing wipes me out when it happens – I can’t imagine how it’s gotta feel to a two-and-a-half-week-old baby. I think there’s a reason most people don’t remember that far back in their childhood – it’s a dismal mess being a helpless little human. It’d probably drive us mad. (Says the slightly crazy guy who vividly remembers his second birthday.)

I’ve been spending time working on the CGE DVD, working up more demo videos for PDF and Pixel Fiction, and getting very depressed looking at stuff like job listings. I’m all about being a stay-at-home dad, but at the moment, when we have one vastly minimized paycheck coming in and we’re trying to figure out how to pay the bills, me sitting around and burping the baby and editing video is starting to feel like I’m being a dismal failure as a dad already. Don’t get me wrong, I know that the time spent with Evan is something that I could never replace for any amount of money…but I’m worried about keeping a roof over his head, that sort of thing. The job market in this area isn’t promising – basically, if you’re south of Fayetteville, you’re just about screwed. Even if you’re willing to work an assembly line, the factories are ditching this area and making a run for the border. Too many people are already out of work. I’m just in the middle of a string of days where I feel like accidentally falling into a vat of molten metal somewhere and triggering my life insurance payout would be more of a help to my wife and my son than anything I’m doing now by being here. (Don’t read too much into that – I don’t even know where to find a vat of molten metal, so the kid is stuck with me.)

As much as you think I’d be digging being at home with an Avid at my disposal and all kinds of time to work on stuff like my web site, I’m not sure there’s much that makes me happier right now than holding my son, looking into those little eyes and wondering what’s going on in that little head. I’d love to trade places with him and have not a care in the world other than poopy pants.… Read more

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Music

Random soundtrack notes

Doctor Who Series 3 soundtrackAs noted in the site’s news section today, a new CD of music from the third season of Doctor Who is due in about a month. Now, as much as I’m looking forward to that, I had to fess up that the music was yet another aspect of season 3 that just underwhelmed me a bit. It seemed to me like about 3 pieces of action music were written, and a few variations on Martha’s theme, and some other bits…and then all of the above were recycled relentlessly throughout the season. I’ll still be happy to pick up the CD, because at least all of this stuff was decent music, but on the tenth reiteration, it loses a little something. At this point, it’s almost like the more recognizable music from the original Star Trek – it’s kinda like “cue the Corbomite Maneuver cube music, there’s something sinister out there!” I love that they’ve got a whole orchestra on this show, but I am starting to wonder if perhaps Murray Gold shouldn’t rotate with someone else to do the writing. Even Dudley Simpson took a break once in a blue moon.

Speaking of TV composers who did a Ton Of Stuff, just got these the other day from the fine folks at Dennismccarthy.com:
Dennis McCarthy CDs
Nifty stuff on each one. I’m still hoping that maybe we’ll actually see some real live Trek TV music sneak out the door this way, but I’m not holding my breath. Speaking of Trek music, I’ve finally reposted the Dennis McCarthy interview in the news archives here, and as a treat – well, I don’t know if you’ll think it’s much of a treat – I’ve included the original telephone recording of the interview from 1993. Some things to keep in mind about that interview include: (A) the fact that I was 20, and (B) I was at the height of my Trek geekdom. If I had the chance to redo that interview – and don’t think that I haven’t approached him about doing a new one – I’d be a little more even-handed about it. There are some somewhat insinuating questions in there on my part – oh, so the producers tell you when to wipe your butt, do they? – that come across as someone who’d read a few Film Score Monthly editorials too many. And, call it perverse, I know so much more about the other, non-soundtrack music he’s done that I would broaden the line of questioning, though I still chuckle at catching him off guard with that Tommy Flander thing and still getting a pretty in-depth response about it. (I think that’s actually my favorite part of the whole thing, actually!) And of course, these days, there’d be questions to ask like his feelings on only getting to do one of the Trek movies (which I think was, musically, one of the best ones of the whole series, though I’m not sure anyone else will ever give it that due), the Enterprise budget cuts that forced him to “go synth” for much of the final season, and stuff like Sliders and Stargate SG-1, among others. When I first got a CD burner – the stereo component kind, mind you, not the computer drive – that interview, which I’d kept on cassette for about 6 years at the time, was one of the very first things I burned to CD-R, and that CD-R turned up during housecleaning not so long ago. So there it is, an interesting little time capsule from my past. (At the time, the interview originally appeared in a text file called “the LogBook Master Index of Soundtracks” which was bundled up with a distribution ZIP file and sent across the pre-internet BBS file-forwarding networks.)

I really wish I had the chance to do more interviews for the site. Maybe someday – for right now, the only podcasts you’re likely to get out of me anytime real soon will probably be diaper changes, which technically should really be poocasts. 😆… Read more