Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est

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Friday, June 10, 2005
23:39 - Meaningless Trivia for a Better Tomorrow http://www.striderweb.com/blog/128	(top)
Steve Rider has one of those meme things they've been going on about in the newsreels, and I'm supposed to submit my scintillating contribution to the general discourse surrounding iTunes and music in general. Never having done one of these before, I don't know how likely it'll be to be entertaining, but hey, I don't recall guaranteeing anything to begin with, so here goes: Total size of music files on my computer: 14.02 GB. Not even enough to make my 20GB iPod really stretch its legs. Pity. Note that this amount includes 2.1 GB of FreePlay Music, which would be great to use in iMovie projects if I ever did any of those anymore. The last CD I bought was: I honestly don't know if I can remember which of my recently acquired physical CDs I bought myself, rather than were given to me as gifts. I've certainly had a lot more of the latter than the former in recent years; my purchases have been almost 100% digital since the iTMS opened. (Though I'm going to have to break down and slink into a Tower Records or something if I ever want to get some Beatles music, or even the odd guilty Zeppelin tune, as those groups appear to have no plans to join the digital age in our lifetimes.) So I think, for myself, I'll have to point back at late 2002 when I bought The Essential Leonard Cohen and the Spirited Away soundtrack while I and some friends were mooching around a mall after attending the Bay Street Apple Store opening. Oh, and I think I also got Rufus Wainwright's eponymous debut album at that same time. And a copy of William Orbit's Strange Cargo, not realizing that it would sound nothing like his later stuff that I enjoyed a whole lot more. Song playing right now in iTunes: Right now? I don't actually listen to music while I'm typing; I find it too distracting. The only times I ever fire up the tunes is when I'm puttering about the room doing some mindless thing that requires no cognitive interaction, like drawing or folding laundry or peeling a pomegranate. If I were to arbitrarily hit Play right now, though, Party Shuffle would serve up "The Big Chair" by Da Vinci's Notebook, followed by Trevor Jones' main title theme from Last of the Mohicans. Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me: Just five? Oh, very well: "Don't Touch Me" by Andy Merrill as Brak. Perhaps the most quintessential auditory morsel from the Cartoon Planet glory days. It's got everything: Brak incoherently yelling, Space Ghost beatboxing... uh... Brak incoherently yelling... yeah, like I said, everything. "This Land", the essential instrumental theme by Hans Zimmer on the Lion King soundtrack. Probably no other piece of music has anything like the same ability to transport me to a specific date, time, and place: when I first listened to this soundtrack on the Fourth of July 1994, lights off, watching the fireworks in Ukiah�ten miles away over the southern horizon�out my bedroom window. I'd graduated from high school about a week before, the same weekend when I saw the movie for the first time; and I tend to mark the days of my adult life more or less from that moment. Yeah, shut up. Like you don't have a maudlin fetishized indulgence like that. "One Man Guy" by Rufus Wainwright. When his father sang it, it was about morose firelit self-reliance; but given Rufus' all-pervasive homoeroticism in lyrics and delivery, it takes on several weird extra meanings, and it becomes�in Cartman's words�all about gay cowboys eating pudding. "Prince Ali" from the Aladdin soundtrack. Howard Ashman's last hurrah (one of the last lyrics he wrote before he died), and one of the most finely textured, elegantly structured Broadway-style songs Disney has ever produced, with a logical progression in theme from verse to verse that's downright exhilarating, and counterpointed patter with intricate harmony that you're still finding new nuances in the fiftieth time you hear it. Robin Williams is at his finest, Alan Menken's music is crashing and rollicking like it simply enjoys being alive, and the whole thing comes cascading down in a frenetic finale that's somehow all the more satisfying without even the visuals to go with it. Stephen Schwartz gave us a couple of game attempts in later films, but this song really was the peak of the craft. "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" by XTC. Yeah, sure, politically speaking it's matchlessly vapid and shallow: Peter Pumpkinhead put to shame Governments who would slur his name Plots and sex scandals failed outright Peter merely said, "Any kind of love is all right" Hearing this stuff in high school, though, was like shoving a candy cane right into the cerebral cortex: Fed the starving and housed the poor; showed the Vatican what gold's for! Hallelujah! Preach it! And as insipid as I find it today, as full of misdirected recrimination and useless platitudes and bored persecution fantasies, I still gotta admit that the tune is damn catchy and the texture is sublime, especially the soft final verse with the distant bells. And it still makes the heart catch in the throat, just a little. Five people to whom I�m passing the baton: Oh, great. You know this is by far the hardest part, don't you? CapLion, which I guess goes without saying. Paul Denton, because that simply oughtta be a fun read. Mike Silverman, if he's still blogging. (Wait, he is!) Mike Hendrix. I'm sure he has some tricks up his sleeve for us. Damien Del Russo, likewise. And I'd say Lileks too, but I don't know if his format would allow for it or his interest would encompass it; besides, he gives us plenty of this same kind of insight on a daily basis anyway. Be cool to see, though. Well, that was fun...