Happy America Day!

This is probably the weirdest 4th of July in my lifetime, but even so... hard to beat the Muppets.

Here's to everything being better, and more normal, next year. But still with Muppets.

It’s Christmas Eve, babe

It’s been a weird year... who knows what the boys in the NYPD choir are singing. But I hope, earnestly, that it ends on a good note for you. Sometimes that’s all we can ask.

Here’s to 2019, dear reader.

Way ahead of the curve

Many years ago, Mrs. Blog and I attended a music festival in Milwaukee. Don't worry--the story gets better from here.

The band I remember most was on a SummerFest sidestage, with the seating area half-full. "They're a Chicago band," Mrs. Blog told me. I hadn't heard of them. We sat down, beers in hand, as the band took the stage. The lead singer walked up to the mic, plugged in his guitar, waited a beat, then launched into a crunchy rock cover of "Crimson and Clover."

The band was OKGO. I bought a couple of EPs from their merch guy at that show, and their label-produced full-length CD later. It was good stuff! And, of course, you want to support your local artist.

Now, in 2016, [REDACTED] years later, they're not Beyonce famous. But they've made a name for themselves--as you probably know--by virtue of increasingly clever music videos involving stuff like treadmills, Rube Goldberg machines, marching bands and human LED displays.

Their latest video, for a (catchy) song called "Upside Down & Inside Out," takes it to another level, literally, and in a way that really appeals to the aviation nerd in me. First, watch the video:

Yeah, that's right. The entire video is shot in free-fall. Note, this is not zero gravity, although as Einstein would helpfully point out, it feels like the same thing, relatively speaking. The band is being affected by gravity just like everything else on the planet, but they are falling at the same rate as the plane they are flying in, so it feels like they aren't. This can be done in just about any plane by flying a parabolic arc:

Like a roller-coaster, but awesomer.

Neat! This is the same way astronauts train for zero-g environments. And--fun fact--when they're orbiting the Earth, they, too are being affected by gravity: they're in free fall, but are moving so fast they keep missing the ground. It's science!

Note, though, that this process only gets you a minute or so, at most, of free fall to work with at a time. So what OKGO did was do one continuous take, with pauses in the dancing and music (which were edited out later) for the times when the plane was climbing back to the top of the parabolic arc, and they were not in free fall. If you look closely you can see where free fall ends, about every 25 seconds, when all the performers are sitting or standing for a moment.

Here's what it looked like behind the scenes:

And finally, the icing on the nerd cake for me is that the whole thing is shot in a surplus Il-76, a ubiquitous ex-Soviet military transport aircraft. You can find them all over the world now, being used for i̶l̶l̶i̶c̶i̶t̶ private cargo hauling, foreign military operations and of course music videos.

I knew I liked OKGO the first time I saw them. But I never would have guessed they'd inspire an aviation blog post. To paraphrase Claude Debussy, it's not the notes, it's the nerdery between the notes.

Rollin' (20-sided) bones with Ice-T

In my youth, I dabbled in role-playing games. I'd like to pretend they were edgy or hip somehow, but... nope. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of them. Mechwarrior was another. I have no explanation other than that sentient mutant animals and giant war robots are awesome.

See? AWESOME.*

When some Friends of the Blog and I would get together to play these, it would often involve tons of soda, pizza and of course a soundtrack. Believe it or not, that soundtrack often involved Ice-T, pre-CSI but post-Body Count.

Which is why the fact that Ice-T is apparently narrating a Dungeons & Dragons audiobook even more hysterical than it already sounds. In Ice's (WARNING! STRONG LANGUAGE!) words:

“They were talking about ‘pegasuses’ and ‘pegasi.’ That’s horses with wings,” he continues. “This motherfucker got a sword that talks to him… Motherfuckers live in places that don’t exist, and it comes with a map. My God.”

Yep, sounds about right. I have a trip to the United States of Awesome coming up this year... maybe I'll download this one for the road. Because I'm 100 percent positive that the inter-dimensional gateway between South Central ("where the Bloods and the Crips play") and... whatever land the D&D book is set in is indeed magical.

*if you got this inside joke, you probably still own some Battletech technical readouts.
Hat tip to Friend of the Blog Sid for pointing out this incredible collision of worlds.

My name is China and I'm here to say/I love infrastructure spending in a major way

My name is China and I'm here to say/I love infrastructure spending in a major way

As you know, Dear Readers of the Blog, I manage business-news-things at a major news organization in That City What Got Blowed Up in "Pacific Rim." And I felt like you deserved a quick post here to help you understand some of the major macroeconomic trends--and their consequences--of mainland China in the 20th century.

Wait, what's that? You find these things boring and don't want to discuss them? Fine. I'll let Loawai Style drop some knowledge on you.

Word.

Happy America day, America! (and the rest of the world)

In keeping with Read Ink tradition, I offer once again the most patriotic rendition of "Stars and Stripes Forever" ever recorded:

So get out there and celebrate! Blow some stuff up (safely), listen to some Bruce Springsteen and grill some meat... perhaps using one of these:

American ingenuity brings a tear to my eye.  

What's inside the box, Pandora?

As you have probably seen splashed all over the internet, Microsoft announced its Xbox One today. Here's the video that went with it:

There is a good summary of all the features here. The stuff that stands out to me--at least in terms of trying to position a product to hit as much of the market as possible--is how gaming actually seems almost like a secondary function to all the multimedia stuff it's rigged for.

It doesn't just look a little bit like a Tivo box, it's meant to BE a Tivo box, more or less. Television, music, other streamed content, Web browsing and Skype are all part of the voice-controlled package. And, of course, you can play games, although there is a little controversy about how that will work and whether there will still be a market for used games.

I have an Xbox 360 (now eight years old, somehow), but I don't play a ton. To me, video games are entertainment in the same vein of television or movies... something to do in a spare moment but not something to do all day. Mrs. Blog, who doesn't enjoy many games you can't dance to, is much less of a fan.

But she is exactly who Microsoft is taking aim at. Not only is the box sleek and unobtrusive, it is arguably more of a multimedia reciever than a gaming console. And that's an easier purchase for a non-gamer to embrace. If you can make the case to someone that they need this because they can eliminate other devices and streamline content access, then you're in good shape to expand your consumer base. There is even talk of a subsidized system, where you pay a greatly reduced price for the gear, but pay a monthly fee for Live access (and presumably streamed content therein). That, too, feels at least psychologically like a cable bill and not a means of online gaming.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Microsoft, like Apple and Google, is trying to create a device ecosystem. Whether it works depends largely on how people like Mrs. Blog react. But it should be noted that the motion-sensing Kinect is geared toward dance games.

Rockin' around the Clocken

One of the unfortunate things about life in the Middle East was the lack of a genuine local music scene. There were bands everywhere--including some truly killer cover bands--and big shows came through every couple of months, but there wasn't a lot of local musical innovation.

So it was with great pleasure that Mrs. Blog, the Sister-in-Law of the Blog and some Friends of the Blog came face to face with Chochukmo, a local band from Hong Kong. We were spending our Saturday night at an annual music festival with the unfortunate name of Clockenflap.

Note the classic "singing into the audio monitor" pose.

They put on a great show, with a lead singer whose body language could accurately be described as Jaggeresque and a broad-spectrum sound that the kids these days apparently call "math rock."

And the setting was terrific, too. It was cool and a little rainy, but the West Kowloon Cultural District is right on Victoria Harbor, meaning every performance had a spectacular, multicolored backdrop (or sidedrop, whatever).

Note the two giant Christmas trees.

Sure, the crowd made me feel slightly old at times (Hey! You kids! Quit with yer crowd-surfin', I can't see!), but it's hard to beat live, outdoor music on a Saturday night. And it's always good to hear a new band, even if I'm not totally sure how to pronounce its name.

In space, no one can hear you hum

Voyager 1 is on the doorstep of interstellar space; as of a few weeks ago, it probably became the first man-made object to leave the solar system. Besides instruments and a big antenna, it also carries a bunch of stuff meant to help whoever finds it understand the people who built it. In other words, humanity.

Of course, that's a tall order, summing up several billion people. But we gave it a good shot. There's a kind of dust jacket describing humanity:

Not out of place on a Pink Floyd album.

... and a gold-plated record inside that included sounds, messages and data from all corners of the world:

The hottest record in the galaxy.

The music on the disc--images were also encoded--is what I find most interesting about all the inclusions. In terms of music, it featured recordings of many genres and nationalities from throughout history (listen here). But even that turned out to be just a snapshot, not a sampling. Hip-hop, a form of music popular around the globe in 2012, barely existed in 1977, when Voyager 1 was launched (and almost certainly did not exist in the record collections of the probe's creators). Same with modern electronic music, and I'm sure many others that people more plugged in than I could tell you about.

In the end, it's all fairly academic. Even if some alien race were to come across Voyager 1 tomorrow, the civilization they would find on Earth would, culturally speaking, be in a much different place than what the record depicts. Some things about humanity are universal--basic shape, expressions, nourishment. Some aspects of culture will endure; Mozart's work, the pop music of his generation, is still moving audiences hundreds of years later. And of course, the odds that an extraterrestrial civilization not only notices Voyager but traces its footsteps are infinitesimal to begin with.

But if they do, I guess there are a lot worse problems than the aliens thinking Chuck Berry is our president.

What market forces sound like

Hong Kong, like many large Asian cities, is up to its neck in electronics and gizmos. Cell phones, for instance, are beyond ubiquitous--you can buy any model of any manufacturer in stores ranging from alleyway carts to big-box department stores. Computers, too, are sold anywhere you can tack up a piece of neon. When you ride the train, nine out of every 10 passengers are using one or the other during their commute. Even taxi dashboards are festooned with gadgets, from front-facing cameras to dueling GPS systems to DVD players... plus, of course, cell phones of assorted shapes and sizes.

It was against this backdrop that Mrs. Blog and I optimistically set out to find a new stereo system for our new Hong Kong apartment. The goal was three-fold: eliminate much-hated wiring, streamline the appearance of our A/V setup (we are currently rocking a Panasonic Dolby 5.1 system with the rear speakers and subwoofer--and their several hundred feet of wires--disconnected), and subject our surroundings to stunning sound.

A component system was out of the question; Hong Kong being Hong Kong, we needed to keep it small and simple. Shelf systems were too tall; any 5.1 system involved more thousands of feet of wires. And then we found this:

Cue the angelic choir (in simulated surround sound)

A soundbar. With a wireless subwoofer. Its multiple HDMI ports meant I could run all of our A/V stuff into the reciever, leaving just one cord running to the TV. The wireless sub meant we could hide it behind a chair. And its minimalist styling meant all the previous clutter would melt away to nothing.

Great! Solution found. For one reason or another, we put off actually getting it, though. We were out of town... we had guests... needed to do more research... and so on. And you know what the punchline here is, right? When we finally went to go buy it, there were none to be found.

Hong Kong, it seems, has a very short built-in shelf life for electronics. In Abu Dhabi, you were likely to find last year's products advertised as though they were brand new. Here, last year's products (the Sony soundbar above was released in the second quarter of 2011) are treated like rotten fruit. Why keep 'em around? No one wants to eat a mushy banana.

All the newer models from other manufacturers at the moment in Hong Kong are no good for our purposes: maybe the subwoofer is wired, maybe they use an optical port instead of HDMI for some reason, maybe the design is ugly, maybe it just sounds bad. And there is little sign of new soundbar releases on the horizon for Hong Kong; customers in the Special Administrative Region clearly prefer component or shelf systems, of which there are dozens of options in every single electronics store.

So, what do market forces here sound like? For now, they sound like an old stereo or a saleseman saying "Sorry, not in stock." But one hopes that maybe by the time the holiday shopping season rolls around, stores in these parts will be singing a happier tune.

Happy Birthday, United States of Awesome

It's the Fourth of July, and here in the UAE, we're celebrating by not shooting off fireworks, going to baseball games or grilling outside. (Actually, there has been some grilling--Thanks to Friend of the Blog Brad, I now know that springbok is delicious. But the rest is true.)

As such, in keeping with Read Ink tradition, that leaves just one way to mark the 235th anniversary of Paul Revere's gun-shootin', bell-ringin' ride: Muppets.

Happy Independence Day!

The Muppets have an answer for everything

Or at least a song. Whether you're talking about the Fourth of July or Christmas, they just have a gift for being able to express the pitch-perfect emotions of the moment.

And so I bring you--shamelessly cribbed from Friend of the Blog Craig--a Muppet St. Patrick's Day.

Animal and I know the lyrics about equally well.

Hope everyone is has a great day of eating corned beef and cabbage and dying things green!

Things that happen in Abu Dhabi

You stumble across one of Mrs Blog's favorite (or favourite, if you're British) bands playing a free concert on the beach. Yep, The Beat (or The English Beat, if you're American) landed on our shores as part of the massive F1 race festivities. We aren't exactly sure how many of the original members were actually onstage for the couple of songs we caught, but we did ID Ranking Roger.

Very-shaky-cam footage.

Between sets, the crowd got down to dance music. A bit more enthusiastically than they did to the band, actually, if we're being honest with ourselves. The kids were out, and they were waving their hands in the air in a manner that suggested they did not, in fact, care.

Laser beams make dancing fun!

There may yet be more concert footage coming. Lots of musical folks in town for the race, and we have a shiny new high-def handheld video camera thanks to some dear Friends of the Blog. I'll try to hold it more steady next time.

It's the little things

Mrs Blog will (no pressure!) do a much more thorough write-up of Womad, the latest big thing in Abu Dhabi, a three-day international music festival that we attended over the weekend. It was great, albeit a bit sandy. We saw lots of interesting acts, some of them more engaging and danceworthy than others. Here is one of the most intimidating:

Music is their only weapon. I think.

Because the festival will be covered elsewhere on the Internet, I just want to remark on one thing: The quality of the restrooms. And no, I don't have photos.

Unlike other festivals, there were not porta-potties, narrow, plastic closets that empty into a chemical tank at their base. Those smell like... well, like you'd expect them to, and unless you're the first one in after they're installed, you're going to be reluctant to touch anything without latex gloves. At Womad, on the other hand, the toilets not only were clean, they were air-conditioned. They were basically semi-trailers with stalls, urinals and running water. I mean, if I hadn't just walked in from the beach, I could have mistaken them for your average restaurant bathroom.

And that's the story. Happy Sunday....

Of Killers, shisha and 70-degree weather in December

Last night was the second concert I have attended in Abu Dhabi, stops in the lairs of various cover bands notwithstanding: The Killers, stopping by at the end of a world tour.

I wouldn't describe myself as a massive fan of the band, but let me tell you why it was a great show.

The thing about going to a concert in Abu Dhabi is that most of the crowd--say four-fifths--are there just because it's a concert in Abu Dhabi. They probably know the band's hit singles, but don't celebrate the band's entire catalog.

As a result, pretty much any band is walking uphill when it comes to getting the crowd involved. Last night was no exception. The Killers came out with a lot of energy, flashing lights and oddball background videos, but the crowd seemed content to basically sway and clap. I did my part by waving my hands in the air in a manner that suggested I had no great personal stake in the situation's outcome.

But. The Killers are from Las Vegas, the home of showmanship, and frontman Brandon Flowers is a showman. Over the course of the evening--they played for at least an hour and a half--he cajoled more and more energy out of the crowd with sing-alongs and general onstage bounciness.

Somewhere between "quiet crowd" and "rocking crowd."

By the time the encore came around, everyone's hands were in the air. And they cared. The three-song extra set concluded with "When You Were Young," a fine song by itself, which was amplified by some serious pyrotechnics. Contrast that to Kings of Leon, who I like better as a band, but who, despite playing to a much bigger audience, basically just came out, strummed an hour of music and walked offstage.

So last night's show was beautiful. And then we walked through the extremely manicured and extremely enormous grounds of the Emirates Palace Hotel to its beach bar for shisha and post-concert cocktails...

... and were joined a half-hour later by the band, who sat at the next cabana over.

I have been struggling through this entire post not to make a pun on the band's name, and I'm not going to blow it now. Let's just say it was a ki... great night.

Things that have nothing to do with Abu Dhabi

I will say, this would be a nice change from the cavalcade of Filipino cover bands here:

I would settle for being able to play the flute OR beatbox.

I don't think I could pull this off with a trumpet. So for the time being I'll just stick to furniture construction and amateur electricianship.

How about something happy and interesting

I'm sitting here at my desk at work accompanied by a five-gallon drum (that was the smallest they had!) of primer. I also am drenched in approximately five gallons of sweat from carrying it to work. Why work? Because I already had carried four gallons of paint home and work was a lot closer to the store. Now I have a few hours to cool off and figure out how to fix the Internet at home, which somewhat mysteriously stopped working for my roommate's computer but hums along just fine on mine.

And speaking of Australia,

There you go. Happy? Yes. Interesting? Yes. And in the time it took me to type this post, I think I've cooled off by at least 10 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course).

[Help] tha police

You know what's hard to find in Abu Dhabi? Gangsta rap.

Sure, sure--there are mohawked Filipinos singing Rage Against the Machine and the occasional Cypress Hill song at the gym. But I will bet my bottom dirham that NWA has never made a public appearance in the UAE.

Maybe this will help.

There you go. A way for the whole family to enjoy the musical stylings of Eazy-E.

Horror movies

You know, I was considering some nice, harmless post about the oddly alien architecture here (which I may still do), the relative merits of real bacon vs. beef bacon (ditto) or even just how excited I am about the prospect of a leisurely weekend.

Instead I was exposed to something so horrific, I have to share it with you.

Thanks, Karl.

Yes. Canada's queen of pop is trying to not just cover but imitate a guy who, at least during the "Bad" era, sweated more panache changing a light bulb than Celine Dion has mustered up in her entire career. The whole performance, really, is summed up by her hair, which I pray to the follicle gods is a wig.

None of this, by the way, should serve as commentary on the Jackson-fest that we witnessed a few days ago. It was a little embarrassing how over the top everyone, including, perhaps most offensively, the media, went in mourning (celebrating?) the death of a guy who wrote some good songs and got weird when he was older.*

I guess you can count this as my contribution. Now... off to go contemplate bacon.

*And speaking of embarrassing, that was quite a comma-tastic sentence. Sorry.

This is how they do it

I loves me some of the rap music. And I had figured that in the UAE, where someone as innocuous as Busta Rhymes can get himself banned, I would have to import my own. Which I did, in the form of a boatload (stretch Hummer-load?) of MP3s.

But as it turns out, the UAE has some homegrown talent.

Desert Heat.

Not bad. Not great, but not terrible. It lacks the hard edge of good hip-hop, and in an article about these guys, you can see it's deliberate. But the production is decent. So you could say I am lukewarm to Desert Heat. But perhaps after the UAE develops a properly oppressed underclass in need of artistic expression, there can be a proper musical backlash against the establishment. Or at least a few swear words here and there.