Alert Nerd Press Spotlight: Reading Rainbow
May 20
One of our not-so-secret Ultimate Alert Nerd Press Dreams is to someday host a “Greatest of Grok“-type night of live readings, featuring the contributors giving voice to their various creations. I mean, can you imagine Ken Simon (actually trained in acting!) reenacting his childhood telephone obsession for all the world to see (Connected, issue #2)? Or Matt Springer (once commandeered the stage in a school production of Godspell!) mixing high comedy and plaintive drama to put on his best “lady in love with Cthulhu” voice (Love, Lovecraft Style, issue #3)?
Geography and other annoying factors make this Dream kind of an impossible one, but that doesn’t mean we can’t prepare for the day it might happen. I actually had the chance to do a bit of on-the-spot prep earlier this year and I will now share this tale with you.
Rekkids: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
May 19I currently have 1,884 albums on my 160GB iPod. I will listen to them all, in a random order, and write about them.
I clicked over to the Albums list on my iPod, started spinning the dial with my eyes averted, clicked twice on the center button, and this is the record that began.
In some ways, it’s a fitting choice to start this sure-to-be-abandoned-eventually project, since it’s one of those perfect pieces of pop art that are so damn appealing to me–a huge popular smash that’s part of the cultural wallpaper of the seventies, and classic rock radio ever since, but also a critical success that has held up for me well over repeated listenings.
Of course, I was about seven months old when the record was originally released, in February 1977; during the first six months of my life, the members of Fleetwood Mac were apparently enduring a personal relationship hell while recording Rumours. That’s part of the album’s mythos and it’s become intertwined with the lyrical content, to the point where Rumours is universally regarded as this big giant turmoil breakup record lathered in crisp, shiny production.
It’s the production that has kept me coming back to Rumours, though there are of course some absolutely titanic songs on here. You can go ahead and roll your eyes if you want but remove this album from the context of its era and you’re left with a stunningly personal folk-rock record crammed to bursting with gigantic hooks. It’s a pretty amazing blend, too, which is kinda rare in rock records; you don’t often hear an eleven-song set that you can honestly say represents all of the creative viewpoints of the band, but here you’ve got Lindsey Buckingham’s straight-ahead arena bile, and Christie McVie’s understated plinking, and Stevie Nicks being all weird and gypsy all over the place.
But back to the production. It’s so clean. Whether it’s warranted or not, I tend to lump in the sound of such diverse artists as the Eagles, Warren Zevon, and Fleetwood Mac into the same bucket; I think of it as a specifically west coast style. I imagine all these endless nights of debauchery at the Record Plant or A&M culminating in these pristine recordings, mixed together with each instrument just barely rubbing up against the next.
It’s got a sunny disposition at times but Rumours is a pretty dark record, especially in the final moments: “Rock on, gold dust woman…take your silver spoon and dig your grave…” The blinding light of southern California, the decadence of the seventies rock lifestyle, and the disintegration of love all collide and intermingle.
When I was in college and home on break, I found myself drawn into some kind of VH1 special about the making of Rumours. A friend of mine called while the show was on, and I asked my dad to tell him to call me back, cause I was watching this show. As I recall, my dad kinda rolled his eyes at me, and started dancing in the living room, singing, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining…players only love you when they’re playing…” Unforgettable as a sleepless dream, like the album itself.
Dear Steve Jobs
May 14To: sjobs@apple.com
From: matt@alertnerd.com
Subj: Urgent iPad Question
Hi Steve–I’m a hard-working, geeky American who has two kids (one in diapers), a mortgage, student loans–you know how it is.
I am obsessed with the iPad; I believe it truly is the future of computing and I know it will enhance my life, my hobbies, and my creative efforts.
Can you just send me an iPad? I have no reason to believe you will, nor do I honestly believe you should, but I believe there are no such things as stupid questions. (Although asking the CEO of Apple to send me a free product for no reason is as close to stupid as it gets, I admit. Good thing I’m not proud.)
Regardless, thanks for the iPhone, and the iPod, and all the other amazing products you and your company have created. I heart them.
Best,
Matt Springer
Lost 6.15 "Across The Sea"
May 14Last time on LOST:
Sawyer deduces that the Smoke Monster is weak against water, is wrong.
Kate gets shot; the bullet is the most character development she has had to date.
Jack – really bad at keeping an eye on his stuff.
Sayid: “I’ve decided I’m good toda-” BOOM!
Jin and Sun – Reunited and the pressure at this depth is uncomfortable.
I’ve been wracking my brain trying to reconcile CJ Cregg’s role in LOST with her history on The Island. As best as I can figure, she crashed on the Island en route to Africa to oversee her charitable work with Hollis. This happened during the crazy time travel period chronicled in Season 5, and while the 815ers were bouncing to the 50s and the 70s and the whenevers, CJ wound up hundreds of years ago. Like people do.
All that Latin that she’s talking? Ronny Jordan lyrics.
Or maybe it happened another way.
Let’s talk about answers.
Any answer that we get about LOST, as the Woman so succinctly points out, will only lead to more questions. Ultimately, any answers that we’ll accept are going to be the ones we discover for ourselves. The theorizing and the scrutinizing is as much of a part of the experience of the show as the watching of it. In fact, there’s something to be said for the metacontext of lies, fakeouts and unanswered questions slowly turning a man bitter and evil, yes? Maybe? Is that reaching too far?
But in lieu of such ruminating, let’s turn our laser focus to the real mystery at the heart of the island – bad parenting, and maybe, in a macro sense, poor sharing/people skills in general (I mean, the Woman does just up and bash Claudia’s head in, and I’ve always been led to believe that that’s a bad behavior). Do any of these people have a good relationship with their parents? No? Is that why Jacob chose them, in an effort to work through his ‘I know you’re an evil witch lady who murdered my mom but I love you anyway because I’m codependent and a bit of a douchebag and I will gladly commend my twin brother to a fate worse than death for killing you after you slaughtered a whole mess of innocent people and wow it’s all like what is good and what is evil really because he just wanted to see the world and now he’s like some murderous fucking fog monster bro and I’m ridiculously smug about it when you’d think that maybe just maybe I’d be like a little guilty or have some kind of remorse instead of sitting on a log and talking about magic wine and shit but hey I’m Jacob what did you expect want to hang out in my magic lighthouse or play Othello in my secret wonder cave’ thing?’ Fuck you, Jacob.
World's Most Forgetful
May 13
Like Tony Stark as the events of “World’s Most Wanted” unfold, I have a terrible memory.
It sucks. What sucks worse is KNOWING I have a terrible memory. I’m not talking about forgetting phone numbers or the birthdays of my kids. I’m talking about life events, big and small, that just pass through my brain like emotional dialysis. I have two kids, a great wife, all of whom I adore; they’re constantly doing amazing things, and I can hang onto so few of them. I don’t know why; maybe it’s the complete lyrics of Elvis Costello eating up valuable brain cells.
I videotape and photograph, but it’s a double-edged sword. Half the time, I feel bad because I’m not “living the moment” when I’m behind the video camera. The other half of the time, I feel desperate because I’m convinced that if I’m NOT filming or snapping, I’ll never really recall these moments at all.
I read through Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca’s “World’s Most Wanted” arc in the Invincible Iron Man Omnibus hardcover and it snapped me up and yanked me to the ending. I got a little swept away, the way you do with any smart action-adventure story. I tapped my feet to the beats of the plot until the last chorus was sung and I closed the book and I was sated.
A day or two later, I found myself thinking back to the key emotional beats. Especially that heartbreaking “who’s Happy?” Watching the world’s smartest man become stupid was tough because it was the kind of sci-fi plot twist that any writer would kill to create–a clever-as-hell concept that also bites hard into an emotional truth.
None of us want to lose our memories; they are our idenitites, our friends and family, our selves. But we do lose them, even if we don’t want to. In some ways, we can’t help it. Time and whiskey kill brain cells; people shuffle off the stage and others take their place. You may even have watched a friend or family member succumb to diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s that literally dismantle your memories against your will.
Tony Stark’s plight tapped into my own fear of losing memories; when he couldn’t remember one of his best friends or even how to operate a screwdriver, I felt a pang of recognition and fear. For me, it elevated a fun action-adventure romp into deep, insightful science fiction.
