BossaNova, in the key of shame

Paradiddles

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:05:13 -0700

Last night, I was at the dinner table with Mitsuki, going over some math problems. There’s a focus on mathematics in the First Grade, we discovered. To support this, we’re been giving her extra math problems after she completes her homework. We make up these one-minute math tests (20 addition or subtraction problems), as well as some word problems (“James saw Star Wars three times. Then, he saw Up twice. Finally, he saw Madagascar 5 times. How many times did he go to the movies?”).

I gave her a visual-pattern question:

Complete the pattern.

square triangle square square triangle square triangle triangle square triangle square {blank} triangle square triangle {blank}

Hint: Break up the shapes into groups of four

Well, she didn’t get it at first. We looked at the hint together. Then I divided the shapes into groups of four:

square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle
square triangle square {blank}
triangle square triangle {blank}

As I said them aloud, she said, “Wait, I’ve heard this before.” She was remembering the bilateral move in aerobics wherein the exercise – such as a jab or tilt of the head – alternates sides, in the pattern of single single double (or, left right left left, right left right right).

Then, it clicked. “Oh!” she said and grabbed for the pencil and filled in the blanks.

square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle
square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle

It was quite gratifying to see that a) she could get her arms around this new type of problem, b) she recalled the musical/dance pattern and could related it to the math problem, and c) she (hopefully) walked away with a new technique for finding patterns.

Then, the kicker. What I was waiting for. Before she could move onto the next thing, I said, “Wait, I want to show you something” and I wrote R above the squares and L above the triangles. “This is also a drumming pattern,” and I played it for her.

RLRR LRLL RLRR LRLL

Half surprised, I watched her take it slow and tap it on the dinner table. It was easy for her.

“That,” I concluded, “is called a paradiddle.”

“A para-diddle?” she repeated and laughed.

I’d been waiting years to teach her that, and it took all but 5 minutes for her to get it.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Chris Isaak's "We've Got Tomorrow"

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:46:09 -0700

I was listening to KFOG's "New Music Thursday" last night, and at a crucial moment in the evening, Chris Isaak's "We've Got Tomorrow" popped on.

Isaak, who is a local boy and a longtime favorite of mine - long before Helena Christensen and his subsequent over-exposure - has been putting out records consistently since "Wicked Game." But I hadn't heard anything in a long while that stuck with me.

I know he's got more to him than the flaccid, cliché-heavy songs that make it to the radio, so with every new song I hear I pin hopes that he hasn't shot his bolt.

But this one, from his recently dropped "Mr. Lucky" album, sounds promising. There's still a hint of sap in his trademark croon, but we have a bonafide love song with a positive outlook for once. There are more than the usual changes. Some jaunty horns. Some tasty guitar. Things are looking up. Good job, Chris.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Top Five Songs I Can't Live Without (A Facebook Post)

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:01:09 -0700

// EDIT #2: The website Seeqpod has closed down. So, there goes my playlists, as well as access to many of the songs I picked. :-( But my Dropbox still works. // Doug, 16-JUL-2009 13:47 PST

// EDIT: I noticed the Dropbox links weren't working well, so I eliminated the spaces in the filenames and updated the links below. Let me know if you have any problems. // Doug (aka, BossaNova) 26-Mar-2009 10:32am PST

Streaming audio from my Dropbox:

Mike Viola's "So Much Better" (1:50)
Pizzicato Five's "Cleopatra 2001" (5:21)
Joshua Redman's "Chill" (7:41)

Depending on how intelligent your browser is, and yet still comes up short, you might have to right-click those links above, copy the URL and paste it into your Winamp or other media player, etc.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Mr. Children's “ムービー” (“Road Movie”)

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:35:13 -0800

After renting Mr. Children's Q album from the public library, I find myself addicted to a batch of songs (tracks 9-11), including this one.

This is yet another example of me having yawned through several (hundred) appearances of this band on Japan's "Hey Hey Hey" music program only to discover how fantastically melodic and diverse they are, hearing other songs.

There's also an English subtitled video of "Road Movie" (Youtube), for those Nihongo impaired like me. Are these guys' lyrics always so full of detailed and philosophical? That's for me to find out, I guess.

(Silly me for misreading ムービー as "ma-a-bi-i" instead of "mu-u-bi-i." That will make your Googling for translated lyrics that much harder.)

A shimmering monochrome rainbow in a sky full of crows.
A zoo where no one is smiling.

The streetlights show me a future 2 seconds ahead.
The motorcycle races
to a pleasure of passing the darkness laid out in even intervals.
Speed up a little more now.
Racing on to the next future.

I'm pretty sure there's a goal line somewhere along this road.
I bring that vision with me.

Isn't it great when you find a band (or anything, for that matter) that gets you excited and fills you with longing for more? Simply energizing. Revives your belief that there are so many pockets of beauty out there; you just have to keep rummaging. The fun is doing it among the sales items or (as in the case of Japanese music CDs at your local library) the rentables and those available for free.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Corporate Culture

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:06:10 -0800

Motivational speaker is a title with bad connotations. That is, until you hear someone speak who moves you. And by move, I mean you palpably feel the center of your self, sitting inside your body, being pushed off its chair. And you are left empty of the words used to describe the person who moved you.

Amid recent thoughts of What makes a leader?, I was given a video of the Vice Chairman of the company I work for, NetApp. In the video, Mr. Tom Mendoza (no relation... shucks!) talks about how NetApp came through the bursting of the tech bubble in 2001 (big zoom-out level) and how each person with a little self-examination, self-accepting, and commitment to the self can set you on course (micro zoom-in personal level).

The presentation is entitled "The Power of Corporate Culture" (player embedded in the page), but don't let the big-business sound of it repel you. Neither that nor the motivational-speaker platform of it. Running time: 67 minutes.

Hosted at: Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Rewriting the business plan for America

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:00:08 -0800

Presidents-elect typically stick to naming administration appointments and otherwise staying in the background during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, but Obama has clearly made the calculation that a nation anxious about its economic outlook needs to hear from him differently and more frequently.

Speaking a day after the release of a stunning new deficit estimate — that the federal red ink will reach an unprecedented $1.2 trillion this year, nearly three times last year's record — Obama acknowledged some sympathy with those who "might be skeptical" of the stimulus. Vast sums already have been spent or committed by Washington in an attempt — largely unsuccessful so far — to get credit, the lifeblood of the American economy, flowing freely once again.

From Obama warns of dire consequences without stimulus (AP)

I just listened to President-elect Obama's speech on the economy on the radio.

Admittedly, this is the first speech I've sat through in its entirety, live. With the new feeling that we all have a great deal to lose, I was all ears.

Because I am more familiar with how business works than how governments run, I can only think that we are about to rewrite the entire business plan and Top 5 goals for the country. This is not a time to talk about a transitional roadmap. This is an emergency, come-to-Jesus meeting.

And as emphasized in his campaign, there is a hole that needs to be filled: the lack of clean, renewable energy. To fill it, we can create (or rather, blow up on a very large scale) our own market - the green energy market. That, if put in motion and roll under its own power, might be the key.

In Obama's speech, I heard talk of putting people to work - leveraging the employees (if you will) that you have onboard and retrofitting them to the tasks and problems at hand. A reallocation of resources.

Imagine creating a new business division and being able to staff it with the people, ideas, resources, and synergy of those who need work. It'd be an underdog story - making it successful - with spirit counterbalancing naïveté. But why not try?

Also, similar to how many companies are operating today, putting resources only to its essential functions, I heard a commitment to supporting the fields of police, fire departments, medical care and education. If true, this puts the welfare of the employees on the same priority as the standing of the business in the marketplace.

What I found very stirring were references to JFK, FDR and Winston Churchill in Obama's speech. The power of allusion and reference do quite a number on the emotions of listener, whether she is listening carefully or not. I am training myself to be a careful listener in all areas of my life these days. And I am keenly, worriedly listening to a president for the first time.

For a moment, I imagined what a member of Congress might feel listening to Obama's "day of reckoning" speech.

Maybe I had been thinking that living the life of an elected official was to take a seat on a fat airplane, look out the high windows, make out the landscape, understand and empathize with the problems of those outside, and call up people to execute important orders.

But now, hearing the dire news, hearing the call to act - to clean up our act - I realize that I must learn, decide, act and lead. For that's what people in the driver's seat are supposed to do.

Let's hope our Congress had a clear signal, and the message cut through the noise of bad habits, partisanship, selfishness, ego and fixations on self-preservation.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

RIAA to Stop Suing Music Fans, Cut Them Off Instead (Wired.com)

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:00:54 -0800

RIAA to Stop Suing Music Fans, Cut Them Off Instead from Wired.com

By Eliot Van Buskirk | December 19, 2008 | 10:26:17 AM | Categories: Music

"After suing more than 35,000 people for illegally sharing music since 2003, the RIAA has reached agreements with several ISPs to cut off subscribers' internet connections if they ignore warnings to stop, Wired.com has confirmed.

"The RIAA is planning to replace its "subpoena, settle or sue" process that has been expensive for the music industry. It requires the RIAA to go through the courts in order to pressure those it suspects of sharing music without permission..." Read the story.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Whew!

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:41:57 -0800

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Election Day Jitters: Don't Steal My Vote

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:21:10 -0800

In just a couple of hours, the polls will open on the East Coast. Many have already voted. But tomorrow is the official day, one with the big turnout - record-setting and historic - with the winner decided by nighttime. Hopefully. We've heard the news polls. Double digits. We feel the sway. Young voters coming out in support of Obama.

But goddamn if I don't feel anxious.

I've been on edge all day. No doubt, you too have heard the general worry. Mass purging. Caging. Vote stealing. Computerized flipping. This time, (some of) the general public knows what has been done to it. Like in 2000. Again in 2004. Why didn't Democrats cry foul? What's wrong with you? Now we have to steal back our vote.

To call into question the sacred method by which individuals make their voices heard pulls the pins from the braces of democracy. Truth hurts, but silence is more deadly here, Mister Congressman. Look where this war for oil and its imperialist agenda has led us, Mrs. Speaker of the House. Instead of salvaging ideas from this shattered heap of democracy, you've even let them sweep that away.

Why did they* do this to us? Who made them the Kings?

Mark Crispin Miller, author of "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election," laid it bare. In 2004, the big heist had three things that made it distinct from all the countless frauds of the past. 1) Scale. 2) Technology used. And 3) Motive. The third is the most sinister. Miller posits that they* did not do it for greed or power. Instead, they did it out of contempt for the American public. Yes, deep hatred for those regular peoples. We know nothing and they know what's the Holy Good for America. They are doing justice for their cause by leading us away to a different room - the complaint department - while the real work continues in the main building. The War Room.

They* built up the boogie man in order to drum up a cause, which is: to fight it. The nation defined itself in a similar cause once before in the Fifties through the Eighties, under an iron chill, and the nation will reclaim its identify once again. The cause is big, like a blue whale, and by the way there's fertile ground along the flanks for free market friends. It's there for the taking. Just blood suck it. Here, we'll underwrite it for you. Pay no mind to the million dead.

The world protested and still protests. Some of whom live here.

I hope we still have that power to protest. I hope we haven't had our bullhorns taken away.

* The shot-callers

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

You can't dress like Zorro on Facebook, don't you know?

nobody@vox.com(BossaNova) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:08:58 -0700

What's more dangerous: the sword or the stache?

So I'd been holding off joining Facebook for a number of reasons, none of them particularly clear. But they all boiled down to: It's so popular and popular doesn't mean it's cool, right? (see MySpace) and I'm late to the party, so should I bother coming?

When I finally did join, and got in contact with a whole bunch of high school and band friends, I realized my real apprehension was about network-socializing as myself, and not behind some username. Being behind a username gives you certain space, of course, which includes distance and a position of non-commitment. But the f-ing ironic thing is, after living behind usernames for so long, I started to worrying about others' perceptions of those usernames!

And how much of a waste of energy is that? It's like wearing a Zorro mask, thinking it's cool and effective. And then you start thinking, is it cool enough? You start doubting yourself and worrying about if other people think it's dumb and pretentious and overly stylized and didn't you know that black was so last season?

Add the fact that I don't write a whole lot and I have about 3 readers, I trapped myself in my own anxiety.

With Facebook, I am myself for the first time and strangely all worry is elsewhere. All that anxiety has for now dropped off because I am in direct (electronic) contact with people. And when you're that immediate and dare-I-say that intimate, you're doing what you are supposed to: which is giving your attention to your friends. And not, let it be said, worrying about what dozens of anonymous surfers might be thinking of your comments.

So anyway, I'm enjoying Facebook for now. The downside is I am spending all my precious Me Time on it and then some. A perfect example of how the internet is bad for addiction-prone people like myself.

There's something about this inter-freckin'-net that is exaggerating all my idiosyncrysies. You'd think a series of tubes would be harmless.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend