LarryC's World

In case you haven’t already seen it…

Yeah I know, I’ve been missing from the BLOG. Sorrrrryyyy!! It has been a rough 6 weeks for the TaxAide program here in Las Cruces. I won’t bore you with details. The short story is we had to find a new location in January, and I had just 2 weeks to get everything set up and open for business. Plus we’ve been busy with the usual February rush.

So, I found this news article interesting:

Delta Flight Canceled Because Of Flight Attendants Fighting

One more gaga entry and then we’ll close the topic. I was questioned about why I like Lady Gaga. So, here are 2 exhibits that I found interesting. This first one is an interview from German TV that apparently was filmed in November of 2009. The video is 8 minutes, and it starts with a 20 second introduction in German. But, the interview is in English:

All right, what other pop artist could mention in an interview the Bau-Haus school of art, the impact of Beethoven and Bach on pop music, evolution, confronting ones own fears, and the problems and challenges of digital music? And speak cogently about all of them. There are some pop stars (Britney, Jessica?) who couldn’t even carry on a conversation, let alone know what was discussed in this interview! This next video is from 2005. At that time she was still Stefani Germanotta from New York, and a student at NYU. According to the description, this video is from NYU’s annual talent show. She would have been 18 or 19.

I don’t know about you, but I liked both of those songs. Seems pretty talented to me.

A year ago, I hadn’t heard of Lady Gaga. Well, maybe I had heard of her peripherally, but I had no idea who (or what) she was. Well today, you can’t avoid her. This past week was the big CES (consumer electronics show) in Vegas. This is one of, if not the largest trade show in Vegas. And, with the demise of ComDex, it is also the premiere trade show for all things technology related. The big tech companies all show up, except for Apple, which is too good to be seen at a trade show they don’t produce and manage. Anyway, while I was watching Cnet’s (Cnet is a tech oriented news channel/publisher/web site, now owned by CBS) coverage of CES online, a major portion of the coverage was devoted to the fact that Lady Gaga was appearing at CES. As it turns out, she wasn’t performing, just pushing a brand of headphones manufactured by Monster Cable.

But, the mere fact that her appearance was treated as a major news item on a tech oriented web show, made me think it was about time to find out what this was all about. Truthfully, I had a vague idea of who Lady Gaga is, but most of my opinion of her came from those snarky celebrity sites that really hate all celebs. I knew she was a singer/performance artist, known for her outrageous and skimpy outfits. Well, to learn more, I turned to the medium that all good computer nerds would use for researching music and performances, Youtube!

There are literally thousands of Youtube videos posted of and about Lady Gaga. They range from the official music videos released by her record company, to TV performances, to live shows captured on cell phone cameras to parodies and mashups of various people lipsynching to her music. There were even a bunch of snarky vids questioning her gender. I never did find the end of the list. After searching on her name, I scrolled through at least 20 pages of results (with 20+ entries per page, many of them lists) and there were still plenty of pages I never got to. I watched quite a few videos of various quality. I saw the Barbara Walters ‘Most Fascinating people of 2009′ interview (and Bill O’Reilly’s usual uninformed criticism of Barbara’s choices), the Music videos, and lots of performance video.

So, after my exhaustive(?) research, do I have an opinion? Yes, I do, and surprisingly, I find that I like Lady Gaga. I was half expecting a Britney Spears type lip-syncher who used her costumes to mask her lack of voice or talent. Well, I was wrong. Much to my surprise, I found that she is a hard working talented song writer, and performer. Her music has a very engaging pop sound that quickly had me tapping my foot and enjoying. And, far from having no talent, she has a decent voice, writes her own songs and has written songs for (among others), Ms Spears and The Pussycat Dolls. In one interview I watched from British TV, the interviewer asked her how it felt to have her music recorded by performers who were less talented than she was (ouch!) Gaga (as her friends call her, I learned) was quite diplomatic in her reply.

It took a while, but I found one video from Youtube that I think is a very effective showcase of her talent. In this video she begins with an acoustic interlude where she plays the piano and sings by herself and then launches into her full electronic dance and singing performance. Her costume is not the wildest one I saw but is a part of the whole performance. So from ‘The Ellen Show’, this is Lady Gaga performing ‘Poker Face’:

If you haven’t listened to Lady Gaga, I suggest you give her a try. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. By the way, if you are as disconnected from the world as I am, you may not know that there was some controversy about the lyrics of Poker Face. I had no idea of course, but Gaga explains here on this interview that aired on BBC (warning: strong language):

I thought this was pretty cute! Always did love Buffy, even if the series did get a little boring toward the end.

Swedish actor Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander

The character to the left is my new favorite literary heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Well, actually, the picture is of Swedish actress Noomi Rapace as the character Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish film Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men who hate women”) or as it was published in English ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘. I picked up a copy of that book on a recent trip to Costco. I had heard of it, but knew little about the book. I finished reading it (all 590 pages) in 3 days. Lisbeth is an amazing character. Despite being only 4′ 10″ tall and weighing 90 pounds, she can fight off the biggest man, has a photographic memory, a chess mind to rival Bobby Fisher, sleeps with girls or boys indiscriminately and is a wizard with a computer, considered one of the 65 best ‘hackers’ in the world. Of course Lisbeth is pretty anti-social and has numerous dark secrets from her past she prefers to keep hidden. While that may sound like a bit too much, if you can suspend your disbelief this is an exciting book to read.

The author of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson. Larsson’s story is almost as fascinating as the characters in his books. A crusading journalist and activist in Sweden, he founded and worked for the Expo magazine, not unlike his fictional Millennium magazine in the books. He started writing his novels in his spare time. In 2003, with 2 completed manuscripts and a third almost done, he found a publisher in Sweden. Before the first book was published, Larsson dropped dead from a heart attack. Conspiracy theorist have had a field day with Larsson’s death. This is not too surprising considering the books deal with the darker aspects of Swedish culture and politics and have a distinctly paranoid view of them. To read more about Larsson, there is an interesting Vanity Fair article about him. And of course you can always read his Wikipedia entry. Note, take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt, but do check out the reference material.

The three books that Larsson completed before his death are called ‘The Millennium Trilogy’. They get their name from the fictional Swedish magazine that the primary character in the books, Mikael Blomkvist founded and where he is the publisher.  The first book, ‘ The girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘, is a stand-alone crime drama. It introduces us to Blomkvist and Salander as they work together to solve a 40 year old mystery about the missing niece of a famous industrialist. The book is well done, with a satisfying ending that leaves you wanting to know more about the primary characters. After reading the book, I had the opportunity to see the Swedish film of the novel. Here is the trailer for it:

The second book in the series is ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire‘. In this novel, Larsson explains much more about Lisbeth’s background and history. this book is also a crime thriller with the primary mystery the murder of three people in one night. And, Lisbeth is the main suspect. The ending of this book is a cliff-hanger, with Lisbeth’s fate very much in doubt. It leaves you wanting to immediately read the third book, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest‘. Unfortunately, this book has not been published in the US yet! Arrgggh! Fortunately, one doesn’t need Lisbeth’s hacker skills to find a copy of the book via the internet. So, I have now read all three. The final book does bring some redemption and closure to Lisbeth’s story. But after reading it, you are left with the feeling that there is much more in store for Lisbeth and Mikael.  It left me hungry to read more about them. When Larsson died, he reportedly left outlines for a total of ten books in the series. Sadly, we will have to be content with the three he finished before his death.

Movies have been made from all three of the books in Sweden. I have not seen either of the second or third in the series, but their trailers are on Youtube. Here is the trailer for ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’, and a teaser for the final movie, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest’. They are in Swedish, but you’ll get the idea.

This picture was taken over a week ago. We had some snowfall overnight on December first. Usually, we only get a light dusting of snowfall, but this time there was an accumulation of about 2 – 3 inches at our house. But, as usual, and one of the reqasons we live here, it was gone at our house by noon, and only the mountain peaks still had any significant snow.

I remember where I was when JFK was assassinated. As a senior at West Aurora High school in Aurora, IL, it was right about lunch time when rumors started to swirl through the school that something had happened. Finally, it got to the point where classes were dominated by talk of the shooting and the school principal made an announcement over the PA about the shooting. By the time I got home from school the news that he was dead was everywhere.

The JFK assassination was not ‘life changing’ for me. More like a loss of innocence. In any event, I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the news.

This is the opening sequence from the 1991 Oliver Stone film ‘JFK’. I thought it was interesting as it includes excerpts from President Eisenhower’s 1961 ‘military-industrial complex’ speech. In addition, there are a couple of excerpts from JFK speeches that show the two presidents were not that far apart ideologically.

It’s pretty obvious today that Eisenhower was absolutely correct. Too bad we failed to heed his warning. And JFK’s dream for a peaceful world, and not a ‘Pax Americana’, seem farther away than ever. You have to wonder if there would be a place in today’s GOP for Eisenhower. I don’t think so.

Just in case you were wondering how I felt about Pumpkin pie:

Ahhh, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Steppenwolf, what could be more reminiscent of the end of the 60’s? To tell the truth, Easy Rider is not one of my favorite films. I find it overlong and self-indulgent. But 40 years after its release, it seems to be finding new respectability.  A good chunk of the movie was filmed and took place in New Mexico. The town of Taos had a 40 year anniversary celebration for the film this year. Kind of odd when you consider that Taos wasn’t very happy about the film in 1969, and the New Buffalo commune, near Taos where some of the action was supposed to take place, wouldn’t let them film there. But these days Taos is no longer an artist colony or hippie magnet but a tourist destination. And anything that might draw a few free-spending tourists is considered good business.

That opening credit sequence, where we watch Billy and Wyatt (Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda) ride out of Death Valley,  across the Colorado river through Needles and Kingman on their way to Flagstaff  with the Steppenwolf song ‘Born to be Wild‘ playing is pretty powerful. Even though the song and sequence has become an ironic cliche (see Albert Brooks’ Lost in America) it still is a great piece of film. The credit for the beauty and power of that sequence belongs to cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. I still get a little shiver when I watch that sequence. Forty years on, I still don’t think I’ll add Easy Rider to my favorites list, but this sour, downbeat road film is worth watching and has aged better than a lot of the films of its generation..

When you watched the opening credits did you notice the third name of the ’starring’ actors? Of course Fonda and Hopper got ‘above the title’ billing, but then the other principal actors were listed in alphabetical order. They included Karen Black and Jack Nicholson in his ‘breakout’ role. But that third name is Toni Basil. You remember her don’t you?? If you don’t, watch this!

There is an interesting article on Salon.com by Keith Phipps, who recreated the road trip of Easy Rider this year. It has a lot of trivia about the film. You might also be interested in checking out Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders Raging Bulls. There was also a documentary film made from the book that screened on some cable channel recently. I thought it was on IFC, but couldn’t find it there.

Wow… It’s been a while since I posted. Part of the reason is I just didn’t have anything worthwhile to say. Part of the reason is that I am overwhelmed by the sheer … oh what’s the word?… stupidity…  of our country. Watching the news is an exercise in agony. How much coverage did ‘Balloon Boy’ get?

But, there are issues that are not getting any (or very little) attention. One of them is the item known as ‘Net Neutrality’. I have read so much bunk about this lately, so here is a simple easy to understand explanation:

Now go visit this site for more information. Save the Internet

You may only have one more night of Moon watching. Tomorrow morning (7:31 AM EDT), NASA plans to bomb the Moon with the upper stage of an Atlas-Centaur rocket. Presumably this is a scientific experiment to examine the amount of water is on the Moon. I think it could be the end of our beloved satellite.  Read all about it here. Or go to the NASA web site, or watch it on NASA TV, if you get that channel.