it's tunesday! "rumble seat" by bobtown

Bobtown is among my favorite New-York area bands. They play a unique blend of rock, country and folk, emphasizing harmony and percussion. I pulled the following description from their website:

Drawing on field hollers, gospel music, folk songs, pop melodies and bluegrass harmonies, Bobtown reinvents American choral music for the 21st century to create a unique and compelling blend of voices and instruments that move gracefully between elegy and celebration.

I've seen Bobtown perform a few times -- not nearly enough, mind you, since life gets in the way of my seeing live music -- and enjoyed myself immensely.

I wrote about them several times in my now-defunct music blog. You can see those posts here.

I also note that, when they were crowdfunding their third album (the fourth one is coming out soon), I supported their Kickstarter. The main reward for that was that they recorded a demo of one of my songs ("Five Missing One"). There's a lyric video up on Youtube, but I don't want to include it here because this post is about the video above. Also as a reward, I got access to a bunch of early demos of songs on that album. I loved that because it gave me light peek at the creative process. Sadly, I lost my access to those demos when an old computer (with emails up to that point) died. I was hoping to make a CD of those demos for my own listening pleasure. I was going to call it "A History of A History of Ghosts," but I never got that done. Such is life.

At any rate, "Rumble Seat" is one of those songs that I like to just turn up and listen to with my eyes closed, thinking about nothing but the song.

In case you're interested, their website is here.

reviewing a premise: yesterday

First, a disclaimer: I have not seen the movie, Yesterday, which is scheduled for release later this year. So, of course, this is not a review. I just wanted to get that out of the way, before saying anything. So no one accuses me of reviewing a movie without seeing it.

So what is this? I guess this is a review of the premise.

I first heard of this movie when a Facebook friend shared the trailer and tagged me -- presumably because he knows I'm into music and movies.*

The premise? Some guy named Jack** finds himself in some kind of reality in which the Beatles never happened. But he knows their songs. Since people assume he wrote them, he manages to ride the brilliance of these masterful songs ("Yesterday," "Hey Jude," "Let It Be").

It's a clever idea, and the movie could be good. I will probably go see it when it comes out -- unless I hear really bad things. But I'm a bit put off by the implicit message that brilliant songs are enough to make a band famous.

The Beatles didn't become successful on the basis of their songwriting. It was a combination of hard work, chemistry and luck. The simple fact is that some uncharismatic schlub isn't going to become a big star simply because he  plays his songs -- no matter how good they are -- for his girlfriend and her friends. And, by the way, if you look at the early Beatles albums, you'll find a distinct lack of those enduring songs. "Please Please Me," "Love Me Do," "I Saw Her Standing There." They were really good pop songs -- I dare say that that third one I named was great. But at their core they are really just simple rock and roll songs. It was actually the band's success that allowed them to take chances with the more ambitious songs that lead to Jack's success in the movie.

Oh, yeah, also...Pete Best.

*I mean, who isn't?

**Well, that's a clever touch.

hq damn near gives me a heart attack

Fuck HQ.

Fuck HQ to hell.

Oh, and may I say, Fuck HQ.

Before I go on, I should explain (for the uninitiated) that HQ is an app for cellphones. There are daily trivia contests. It's free to play, and you can win actual money. I myself have won a total of $2.82 playing it. I wrote a little bit about it here.

Friday afternoon. I'm at work. I look at my cellphone and see that there's a message from HQ. So I open the app. The first thing I notice is that my avatar has been replaced. It used to be a cat -- Ethan's cat, Red, to be specific. Now there's a picture of some blonde woman. She's attractive, I'll admit, but what the hell is she doing on my phone, as my avatar?

The panic sets in. My heart races. I can't sit still. I'm sure that my phone has been hacked, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do.

So, of course, I check with a friend. I work with Elliot, and know that he plays HQ. I ask him if his avatar was replaced? I explain that I want to know if it's my phone, or (hopefully) some systemic glitch with the HQ app.

Elliot explained that everyone's picture was replaced with one of the stars of Sex and the City, since that was the theme of the contest Thursday night. With that information, I kind of recognize that the new avatar looks like Kim Cattrall.

OK...heart attack averted. But, dang...what ever made them think it was a good idea to make it look like all their users' phones had been hacked?

cinema history class: the haunting

Session: Get Your Haunted House On, Week 1
Movie: The Haunting (1963)
Directed by Robert Wise

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A small group of paranormal investigators are trying learn the secret of thea notorious haunted mansion. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
I have this perception that haunted house stories usually involve spirits that have taken up residence in a house. In The Haunting, it seems that the house itself has a consciousness. I don't know if my perception is wrong, but it did strike me as interesting. Another movie that I recall as featuring a living house is the 2006 animated children's feature, Monster House.* Now, this might not be worth mentioning, except that a lot of the way the house was portrayed reminded me of that animated film. I have to wonder if the creative team behind Monster House was familiar with The Haunting.

This movie also reminded me of Carnival of Souls (1962) because of the use of odd camera angles that put the viewer on edge. And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn;t note the way this played like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. At the very end, I almost expected Rod Serling to step out and say something along the lines of "For Eleanor Lance, the nightmare is over. She is now living her dreams in a house in the twilight zone."

Putting aside the comparisons to other movies, this thing stands very well on its own terms. Dave from class put it well when he noted that the movie felt claustrophobic yet expansive at the same time**. That has to do with the fact that most of the film takes place within "Hill House" -- which is really the true star of the movie. The hallways give the feel of being trapped, but the large rooms -- especially the library -- serve to give the feeling of space. Adding to the disconcerting effect is the use of what Sean called (though he credited the term to HP Lovecraft) "alien geometries." The angles don't seem quite right. And the distorted perspectives throw the audience off.

Notably, the movie doesn't really offer much explanation for why the house is alive and (arguably) evil. The closest is that the house is said to have been "born bad." But in a sense that explanation is really all that's needed. I suspect that, if they had tried too hard to provide a real explanation, it would probably have proven to be distracting and annoying.

Ratings:

Me: 9

Dave: 10

Ethan: 9

Joe: 10
Sean: 3 out of 4

*Admittedly, Monster House can be viewed as a hybrid of these types. If I recall correctly, the house is alive, but it's alive because it somehow absorbed the spirit of the wife of the man who lives in it. It's been a while, but I think it has something to do with her tragically falling into the cement foundation as it was drying, and becoming part of the house. How very Poe.

**Those weren't his exact words, but close enough.

in which my name races my sister's name to the presidency

With the national prominence of Senator Amy Klobuchar, and her entrance as an A-list candidate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, I have come to the realization that we are now more likely than not to have a president named Amy (i.e., one who shares my sister's first name) before we have a president named Marc (i.e., one who shares my first name).

For whatever that matters.

If you had asked me when I was a kid, which we'd have first -- a president named Marc or a president named Amy -- I probably would have said Marc. While we knew that women could be president, it never seemed like an imminent possibility. Things are different now. Hillary Clinton almost won in 2016, and there are several women with credible chances of getting the Democratic party nomination next year -- Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand come to mind (aside from Klobuchar), and they're not the only ones. But more to the point, there is actually a serious candidate named Amy running for the nomination. I can't think of any contender named Marc. I guess there's Mark Zuckerberg, but he's not a serious candidate -- and his name is not the same as mine (even though it's pronounced the same*)

If Klobuchar wins the nomination and then wins the general, then that's it. The name Amy beats the name Marc to the presidency. Game over.

If Klobuchar doesn't get the nomination, then she remains a credible candidate for  2024 or 2028 (depending on how 2020 goes), and "Amy" has to remain favored to get to the presidency before "Marc."

But if Klobuchar gets the 2020 nomination and loses? Then she is no longer a credible candidate for the future. So in that event, which name is more likely to get to the white house first?

Short answer: I have no friggin' clue. To figure that out, I'd probably need the following:

• How many boys and girls were born each of those years
• Number of boys named Marc and girls named Amy born each of those years
• Relevant sex-distinct mortality tables
• Some model of the relative likelihood of a male or female being elected
• A probability distribution of age at election
• Some way of projecting these statistics in the future

And that's just to start. To refine the estimate, you'd probably want to have those numbers refined by certain demographic groups -- and estimate prospective likelihoods of members of those demographic groups getting elected. Yeah, I think I'll pass on that project.

*That has long been one of my big bugaboos.