I need just the right word

Perhaps this has happened to you. You start talking to someone and then all of a sudden you realize that this person just is not able to find any pleasure in Buffy, Angel, or Firefly or Serenity whatsoever. They just don't get them at all. If this has happened to you, you must have then wondered, what is wrong with this person? I have figured it out--he or she has a serious case of anwhedonia.

A Google search for "anwhedonia" yielded only one result, and while its usage there is simply to mean "the lack of things created by Joss Whedon," it seems to me that the above definition is much better.

Godwin's Law states that

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

The idea is basically that if you continue to insist that your erroneous opinion is correct for long enough, I will eventually complain that you are as evil as Adolf Hitler.

While the following quote about the current Israel-Hizbollah strife from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually from an offline discussion (the ceremonial ribbon cutting for a traffic tunnel in Tehran, to be precise), it did cause me to think of Godwin's Law:

The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler....^[1]

Then I immediately wondered just what exactly a reductio ad Hitlerem argument means when it comes from someone who denies the Holocaust. Another quote from President Ahmadinejad:

There are still questions... maybe in your so-called Holocaust more than six million Jews were massacred (during World War II), so why do you not allow people to undertake new research?^[2]

If the Holocaust did not happen, then Hitler was in fact not evil? Therefore, if Hitler is not evil and if the Zionists are like Hitler, they are therefore not evil, or so says President Ahmadinejad?

The Dawn of a New Age of Traffic Flow in Chapel Hill

Woohoo, on Monday, construction will begin on turning our local intersection of US-15/501 and Erwin Road/Europa Drive. This bit of construction has its own special page with flashy animated graphics on the NCDOT website, and it will feature a "superstreet."

Oddly, the new superstreet appears to actually increase the number of traffic lights that one would pass through on US-15/501, which I guess does have the advantage of being counterintuitive. Though this intersection and the nearby interchange with Franklin Street together are somewhat nonstandard, I don't think they are especially confusing or difficult to use. The vast majority of my trips through this intersection have been straight through on US-15/501, and to be honest, I've never felt that this interestion is a source of traffic delay. If NCDOT wanted to improve traffic flow, I think simply timing the lights at the I-40/US-15/501 better would be a much simpler and more cost effective. That's where I always feel the delay. While not a great leap forward in roadway design theory, it would speed traffic flow from Chapel Hill to Wal*Mart with the benefit of not actively discouraging driving from Europa Drive to Ewrin Road or turning left onto either of these road or accessing the frontage roads on US-15/501. True, I have never "studied" this intersection, but I'd think that if it were broken, it would be more obvious.

The problem of early voting

How can Zinedine Zidane win the Golden Ball for the best player in the World Cup? I guess the message for the world's children is if you are going to headbutt someone in the chest, wait until after the votes for best player have been cast.

This was not really what I wanted to blog about though. I learned of the voting when I went to the BBC's website to investigate their coverage of the event. Since the headbutt is banned from movies by the British Board of Film Control, could the BBC show footage of what got Zidane run off in overtime of the World Cup final. Unfortunately the only video link that I could find that I thought would have it was only availible in the UK and so I could not examine it. Thus I am still wondering, can a headbutt of such international importance be banned? Can they say, "Well, this is the final moment of the career of the great Zidane on the pitch, but we can't show it to you because it is obscene"?

Also, thanks be to Matt for pointing me WFMU's World Cup Death Watch, which chronicles the people who have died this year as a direct result of the World Cup. On Friday they began with "With only two days remaining until the final, the World Cup Death Count stands at 63, almost as many people as have died worldwide of Avian Bird Flu."

24: Season 5

In January, I figured it was finally time to get caught up on 24. There are 5 seasons and so there are 5x24=120 episodes. On Thursday, approximately 180 days later, I got caught up. Thursday also happened to be the day that the Emmy Nominations were announced, and they were kind to 24, giving the show 12 nominations, which was more than any show that isn't a miniseries or a made-for-TV movie. I must say that I whole-heartedly agree. Jumping off to an incredibly fast start, this season never slows down and is among my favorite television seasons of any show. Among the nominations, I was epsecially glad to see nominations for:

1. Gregory Itzin for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. When Itzin shows up as President Charles Logan two-thirds of the way through season 4, the least good season really picks up. For me, it is the strength of the writing of what is happening with the president, whoever may hold the office, is really what makes the show great. The cutting back and forth between the action suspense of Jack Bauer running around and the more static tension of what's happening around with the president and his family always serves both storylines very well. Itzin's Logan is so interesting in season 4 with his incertainty, and then in season 5, he really shines.

2. Jean Smart for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She plays First Lady Martha Logan and is the perfect complement to Itzin's president. What a terrific troupled couple! However, this category is somewhat bittersweet because of the lack of a nomination for Mary Lynn Rajskub, who is wonderful as Chloe.

3. Sean Callery for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore). Callery has been nominated now for every season of 24, but it was not until season 5 that I realized that there is some great music in this show.

Part I: Self Expression in the Rhythm Section (or What I Entended to Write)

Since I heard Will Hermes today on All Things Considered review a band that I saw two weeks ago, I figured it was probably time to get around to writing what I meant to write as I entered the show.

I first heard about Tilly and the Wall on NPR's All Songs Considered, a month ago, and I have to say I was impressed. After going to their site, I discovered that they were playing here in Carrboro in two weeks, and so I thought I might check them out. When I went to the Cat's Cradle website, I realized I had already decided to go to this show because of the other headliner DeVotchKa. How fortuitous!This was the only night on their respective tours in which their paths crossed, but I saw these as an interesting pairing due to their unorthodox rhythm sections.

First, there was the solo accustic guitar player whose name I can't recall. He has been with Tilly for this whole tour. As a solo accustic guitar player, he started with no rhythm section; however eventually he was joined by first a bass player and then a drummer. For the most part though, these sidemen were just to accompany the guitarist, laying down a grove as it were. However, I'm sure the guitarist would not be pleased to learn that I kept being distracted by the annoying way the bass player rotated back and forth at his waist while he played. This was the only joint in his body that moved, so that the head of his electric bass swept out a perfect 180 degree arc as he played. It was independent of the tempo of the song, which I found somewhat impressive even as it was distracting.

In contrast to this though were the other two bands of the night. For DeVotchKa, it's Jeannie, who splits her time evenly between upright bass and sousaphone, and for Tilly, it's Jamie, whose tap dancing provides the band's percussion.

For a "normal" band, the bassline comes from a plucked string that excites some magnets that pull a paper cone back and forth. But with a sousaphone, it comes from the human voice which circles 'round its player a few times to build up greater momemtum through tubes dented by years of touring before working it's way across the room. It hugs its player. It's round, not a stick. Even the upright bass, without those pesky frets and often bowed, it gives such a fluid sound. What would cause a band fill that register with an electric base played by someone who only knows four notes?

Tap dancing, while perhaps not as versitile as the sousaphone, also provides a much more expressive sound that the average drum kit. The five members of Tilly stand in a row at the front of the stage so that no one is behind a band mate. This is tough to pull off with a drummer. Jamie stands beside her singing friends (The band has three signers.) and even though her voice is not micced, she sings allow with them.

Jeannie helps her band's stage presence too by filling the bell of her sousaphone with Christmas lights. On the night I saw them, they were red, which perfectly matched the flower in her hair and her silky Chinese dress, but I think she uses other colors too.

So, if you're out there planning a band, don't just think you can pick up a drummer or bass player like their a dime a dozen. Seek out someone who does something different and integrate him or her into your sound.

Part II: What I Actually Wrote

At some point during the night, I don't remember exactly when--well, no, it was a thrid of the way through Tilly and the Wall's set--my blogging plan changed from compare mode to contrast.

I'll start with the opening act. The guitarist is the regular opening act for Tilly. After a mid tempo opening song, he started the intro of his second song with "Do you know the artist Mark Rothko? He made a lot of paintings that are just large black canvases that you are just supposed to stare into the blackness. i felt this perfectly discribed the heart of a girl I once knew." He then described the Rothko Chapel, which is also the title of the song. Argh. I left the TV at the back of the club in the 9th inning of the College Baseball World Series for this? He introduced a later song with something about how he was at a party full of English majors when he said that he was thinking about committing suicide. They stopped him by complaining about how trite suicide was. I think it was after this that some guy near me who was obviously there for DeVotchKa yelled out "Bright Eyes has entered the room." That guy got a couple of angry looks from some Tilly fans--they hail from Omaha and are on Conor Oberst's label.

Now, I'll skip ahead to Tilly. I must preface this review with the fact that I did kinda like the songs that I heard from their website, the more the show went along, the less I enjoyed them. There were some mitigating circumstances at work here. First, two of them were sick. After the first song, a couple of fans gave them two cartons of orange juice because they had heard they were sick. (They had lots of fans who knew all their lyrics. Mostly female college sophomores, it seemed.) To make matters worse, this display of affection came during the ten minute break after the first song. For some reason, the mics on the tap dancer were just not working, and while they tried to fix them, the mic of the singer who was talking to fill time died. It had to be replaced. Then the mic for the other singer died and had to be replaced. I have never seen anything like that. They never really got the problem with the tap dancer mics fixed, and I'm pretty sure this caused them to not do a couple of songs. I have to think I saw what was by far the worst show on their tour.

That said, I started out with the feeling that they were good, but not great. However, as it went a long, I began to like them even less. It wasn't so much their music, it was more their stage presence, especially the singer who occasionally played bass. She did most of the between song banter, and the word "poseur" came to mind every time. If you don't love us with all your heart and soul, there is clearly something wrong with you, they seem to tell me. They had the feeling of the "cool people" on a TV high school drama that centers on the outcasts who are the actual cool ones.

There is of course on more very large mitigating circumstance--For this show only, they had to follow not the solo guitar player but DeVotchKa. I mean, with them on one song, you've got drums, violin, sousaphone, and frontman Nick Urata using the neck of his bouzouki to excite his theremin. Then on the next song the violin player switches to accordion, the sousaphonist to a bowed upright bass, and the drummer pulls out his trumptet. Plus, they play in 3:4 and 2:4 time signatures with dramatic changes in tempo. The sound of Tilly and the Wall is this light pop ephemera with one accoustic rhythm guitar, a guy playing keyboards, three people singing most of the time, and a tap dancer, whereas DeVotchKa feel like the resistance fighters who barely had time to grab their accordion and sousaphone before catching the last boat to Casablanca. They have such a strong connection to the earth, but they ache because it's been taken away. They rock, but they still get upset when you use the word gyspy to discribe their Roma influences in their cover of "Venus in Furs." Tilly and the Wall didn't really stand a chance.

There was another telling contrast. Most of the members of Tilly had a bottle of beer on stage with them, but the keyboardist didn't. At one point he said that was really thirsty and hoped that someone in the audience would buy him a beer. He'd pay them back, of course. In perfect contrast, the lead singer of DeVotchKa came on stage with a bottle of wine. On a couple of occassions, he briefly held it above his bowed head soluting us before taking a swig without saying a word. It was very much cool adults vs. kids who think they're cool.