With all of the hyped up releases this year (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Of Montreal, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire), the album I am looking forward to most in 2007 comes from The Avalanches. It's been 7(!) years since "Since I Left You," which after first listen, left me a sweaty pile on the floor.
This group is a bottle of funk waiting to be opened, and once you pop that top, it's gonna come at you like some kind of large mass of snow detached from a mountainside.
And their first single for their upcoming album that will (hopefully) be released in late 2007 would make Hemingway put down the shotgun and shake his tushy.
Nerds around the world have long yearned for a holiday to call their own. Children often balk and whine over the injustice of cosmic imbalance caused by the existence of both a Father's and a Mother's day and lack of a Kid's day (this despite the fact that every god forsaken day of the first eighteen years of your life is Kid's day for your parents, you ungrateful whelps). It is the same with nerds. So-called “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” is probably the closest they'll ever get, though historical accuracy would demand most conversations on this day be on the subject of theft, rape, and murder and not be in English.
But today is another close contender. March 14th, when properly rendered in the American date format, is 3-14, or the approximate value of π, Archimedes' Constant. Perhaps the second most important number in all of mathematics, pi is defined as the ratio between ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle. There's no obvious reason why this should be a constant, but it is. Furthermore, pi is irrational, meaning it cannot be written as a fraction (though 22/7, 333/106, or 104348/33215 will do in a pinch). Pi is thus an endless decimal, always continuing and never repeating itself. Once more there's no obvious reason why a seemingly simple property of circles should exhibit this feature. Of course, the square root of two is also irrational, so it's not such a big deal.
Pi has an even more special property: it is a transcendental number. This peculiar trait means that pi is not the zero of any polynomial with integer coefficients. Any square root or other radical is not transcendental (for example, the polynomial x^2-2 has a zero at +/- root 2). It's pretty hard to think of a number that is obviously transcendental, and probably just as hard to think of why anyone would care about roots of polynomials (isn't this something we left behind in Algebra 2?) It is sufficient for me to say that the transcendental nature of pi is the reason for the long-known impossibility of the geometric problem of Squaring the Circle.
The world-record holder for recitation of the digits of Pi is from (take a guess) China. Over a period of 24 hours he rattled off over 60,000 digits of this beast of a number. In 2006 someone from India sped through 43,000 digits in under 5 and a half hours. That is over 2 numbers per second. Yet one of the more impressive tributes to this great number (which, by the way, the ancient Greeks would have pronounced “pee”, though the first use of the π symbol was in the eighteenth century) is a poetic invocation of Edgar Allan Poe called Near A Raven. For the more advanced, new heights of nerdiness are reached by the same author in a twisted muddle of grammar, lovelorn agony, the bygone internet, and high mathematics entitled alt.Poe.versifications.experimentalize!.AANVVVize!.do!. Read with caution.
An absurdly funny take on how impossible it is to see the biggest Indie band in New York since the American invasion of Rusted Root Joy Division. I especially like how one of the Hedge Fund guys would exchange a ticket for reservations 'next to Nobu.'
So what do you do when all your roommates think you're foul for looking at porn on someone else's computer?
First of all, let's clear something up. If I was looking at a flick where a big boobed bitch was getting double-stuffed by two greasy Italians then we wouldn't even be working through these issues right now. But of course I wasn't. I was perusing some classic homosexual pornography. Nothing too crazy, nothing too fetishy. Have I mentioned my roommate has a foot fetish? Irregardlessly, I brought my own chair into my housemate's room to surf for some gay erotica, and I didn't even touch my swim-suit area the entire time (the goal was to store mental material for later).
All of a sudden there are house meetings going on that I'm not privvy to, and I'm fucking Hester Prynn walking around with a goddamn scarlet A (for "All-about-anal") on my chest. Have I mentioned that I hooked up with a really hot Asian last night? Not that I really remember the details, but he looked good this morning, so I'm proud. Who knew that the Thai were so masculine? I always pictured Thai men as being either practically homeless or as manipulative lady-boys (and let's not kid ourselves, probably both), but somehow this asian fellow was quite attractive!
So anyways, Fuck You, roommates! My fuck-buddy from the far east came on all your toothbrushes, and I laughed while watching him do it.
As our faithfull readers will recall, I first alerted the Hive to the impending threat of a tentacled doom rising from the deep to throttle mankind one by one in an entry I posted last month. My sincere thanks to fellow drone buggiebee for keeping us abreast of the situation in an article he sent to me today.
Commonly known in educated circles, these demons of the deep have acquired a taste for man-flesh. Fortunately, a ray of hope has twinkled on our otherwise dark horizon. Doctor and Military Chief of Aquatic Monster Operations Steve O'Shea has found evidence to indicate that these "collosal squid" are not intelligent. Sneaky, conniving, ruthless - yes, but not cognitively gifted. Apparently you can expect a 275 kilogram specimen to have a doughnut shaped brain weighing 20 grams. All the better to trap them, right my pretties?
Let the vast onslaught begin! Remember, we are dealing with creatures that can grow to more than a full ton in weight and longer than 40 feet. Creatures that would like nothing more than to sink their insidiously hooked tentacles into you and everyone you love.
Well I, for one, will not stand for it! I want these feeble-minded hell spawn torn from their watery lairs, and I want truck-tire sized calamari on my plate by dinner time!
I know that I gave a less-than-heartfelt send-off when ANS shuffled off her mortal coil, but today I think it's important to recognize the passing of a true role-model.
That's right, in the copy of Captain America that hit stands today, he is leveled by a sniper's bullet. Now, I don't consider myself a huge fan per se, but I'm a comic book devotee, and of the Marvel persuasion at that. When any main character is tragically retired it pulls on a few heart strings. Who but the good ol' Cap could have fought Hitler, rallied the Justice League, or fought Hitler when he faked his own death and put his brain in a new and horribly enhanced body?
I'm not saying that it's unlikely he be somehow resurrected, but the whole fake death thing is way more DC Comics than Marvel (except in the case of Spiderman, I suppose). I think it would be a mistake in this case, though. The only thing worse than killing off a super hero with a long distinguished history of action, service, and near-cloying patriotism would be an awkward and undignified rise from the dead. Let's all say thank you and farewell to one of the strongest embodiements of true patriotism that our country has had.
-Chris
P.S. - Did you see what Cap is packing in that picture? My oh my.
You may be wondering why it has been so long since I have last visited the hive. Alas, I have no excuse for my truancy; although, I did tell my fellow drone (Chris) that I had developed a case of the clap...your hands and say yeah. I don't think he believed me though, which is a pity, because this uptown vag has to go downtown sometimes. Let's not trouble ourselves with past my dear friends. Let's instead rejoice in the strange delight of watching primary school children sing along to 'This Charming Man'. Marcelo and I enjoy serenading each-other with Smiths' songs whenever we go out and about. However, since he is living this enchanted land for a more political one, I decided to wish him off with an interview of the infamous and yet-to-be reunited Morrissey and Marr. By the by, they spelled Morrissey's name wrong and dubbed him 'Paul' (oh, you brits, I have to forgive your journalistic mishaps and your dirty teeth too). I didn't get a chance to welcome the mysterious new member of our little collective either, so let me make amends, sweet chigby. I hope you will enjoy your stay here with us, in our cavern of collected pollen. May your honey be as sweet as the homoerotic lust between Spock and James T. Kirk.
Till we meet again, I leave you with...The Smiths, who are by no means ordinary people.
In the annals of science fiction cinema, there is no case study more mystifying than that of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Even the subtitle itself is a bit of a mystery: what and where exactly is the frontier most final? The opening credits of every Star Trek show to date feature the famous phrase: “Space—the final frontier.” Star Trek V would have us believe otherwise. Its blithely casual invocation of that august apothegm seems to say “space was a pretty nice frontier, but here's the real deal.” Our appetites are thus whetted for a grand adventure on the highest of scales, scales whose balances and counterweights are hung with nebulae, galaxies, and, though here we reach the limits of mortal measurability, Captain Kirk's ego.
Those readers not familiar with this piece of work should peruse the cinematic trailer to familiarize oneself with the premise.
Let me say right off that there is virtually nothing in this preview that lives up to the epic expectations set by the title. The final frontier itself—the planet Sha Ka Ree at the center of the galaxy—is slightly exciting. For the Vulcans it is a mystic place of pure idyll, analogous to Eden or Heaven. It is surrounded on all sides by a force called the great barrier, which has heretofore resisted all attempted incursions. Sha Ka Ree is a trans-cultural ideal. All races in the galaxy believe in a heaven and are awed by the prospect of finding it. Within may be found enlightenment, the meaning of existence, and perhaps the True Creator: God. It is easy to see why the mythical conduit from our universe to heaven might well be considered “the final frontier”
Yet even looking at the preview we can see that these ideas are, at best, not treated with the respect they deserve, or at worst badly shoehorned into a slapstick comedy ride through space. Please observe this scene from the opening of the film:
I was unable to locate any additional scenes, but from the trailer I think it is clear what kind of film we're dealing with. Star Trek V is nominally about a group of people trying to realize the impossible dream of transcending the physical world and entering the presence of a deity, yet most of it spent falling down mountains, sand-dunes, or turbolift shafts. There's lots of getting hit with stuff and one-liners. This worked pretty well in Star Trek IV but sometimes I want drama in my sci-fi.
The real conundrum of the film, though, comes at the end. That is where we witness what happens when this shenanigan of a movie is forced to confront its own premise.
At the end, Enterprise inexplicably penetrates the great barrier (I'm not really sure what stopped everyone else) and comes face-to-face with Sha Ka Ree.
Already, we may be getting a bad feeling about this. Everyone on board is awed by this glowing blue jellyfish of a planet. Clearly human, Klingon, and Romulan minds are too ill-equipped to perceive the omnifaceted glory of True Heaven and instead interpret it as the above. Still, they press on and Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok, the slightly-off-his-rocker, Sha Ka Ree-obsessed Vulcan who has charmed the crew via a weird power to “show people their pain”, visit God's own dwelling in a shuttle craft. If I recall this correctly, the planet's surface looked like a barren, rocky desert. The intrepid team runs into this fellow who states, fairly unequivocally, that it is God: It certainly looks like God well enough, but its first request as the King of Kings, Progenitor of Time and Reality, Omnipotent and Possessed of Infinite Perfection, is that Kirk order the Enterprise closer so it can “join” with it. Sybok, who at this point is on the verge of ecstasy, is all ready to give the command but Kirk then utters the apt yet weird statement “what does God want with a starship?”
At this point it's pretty clear to everyone except for McCoy and Sybok that this giant head, despite its somewhat grandiose appearance, is not God. To the viewer it was clear about half an hour ago when he looked at the clock and realize there were only thirty minutes left in the movie and there was no way that even science fiction writers could handle an encounter with divinity in so short a timespan. God tries to blow Kirk off and the Captain becomes even more adamant. You get the feeling that this is how Kirk would behave around the real God, too, though his belligerence is warranted in this case. Kirk shoos everyone else out of there while Sybok, crestfallen, uses his pain-showing ability on God to distract him while the Enterprise comes down and shoots it, destroying the impostor.
There are two ways to interpret this ending. Interpretation the first is that of profound atheism and disillusionment with religion. In this view, Sybok is the protagonist of the film. He is a reveler in the midst of deniers. Unlike other Vulcans, he rejoices in his emotions rather than denying them. The rest of his species has replaced the divinely given feelings and joys with mechanical, profane logic. Sybok is the Christian amid the unbelievers. He converts people, including the crew of the Enterprise to his own belief, and succeeds in the ultimate goal of the proselytizer: pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden. Through his faith he has led even the ultimate apostates, Kirk and Spock, to Heaven. Yet when he arrives there he finds it throned by an pretender, a deity whose magnificence is illusory and insubstantial. God is a fake. He is consumed with sadness and loses his life to the malevolent entity that masqueraded as the Holy Father while Kirk and the rest are reaffirmed in their atheism and lay waste to the King of Heaven with corporeal weapons. The entire film is a parable for the emptiness that is God, and the futility and, in the end, perniciousness in the pursuit thereof.
Interpretation the second is that of profound lack of ideas. I imagine the writers sitting around saying to each other something like this. “Okay, we've gotten to the big part where the crew meets God . . . what next?” “Well, it can't actually be the real God, that'd be too weird. Let's have it be a fake and just get blown up. What does everyone want for lunch?”
Which interpretation is correct I leave as an exercise to the reader.
