Notes of a Defeatist

michael_jackson, originally uploaded by bartleby78.

Found this at work in a book.

Parents fight over which gang their toddler should join.

from DenverChannel.com

A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father’s arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.

On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays and even a computer, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval said. After he ran out of the store, police were called and the 19-year-old was arrested at his home.

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to a year of probation. The misdemeanor harassment charge was dropped.

Too Much Coffee Man Opera: The Refill, the sequel to last years sold-out Too Much Coffee Man Opera, opens April 4th, 2008 at Brunish Hall in the Portland Center of Performing Arts and runs until April 20th. Admission is $20-$25 and tickets can be purchased online atwww.ticketmaster.com.

“Last year’s performances sold out so fast, we really wanted to get the word out early so fans will have a chance to see this limited engagement,” said Shannon Wheeler, the creator behind Too Much Coffee Man.

Not only will fans get a chance to see the sequel, but those who missed out on the original will have an opportunity to experience both shows as Wheeler and his crew have brought the first show back for an encore that run before all showing of the the sequel. The first and second shows will play back to back with a short intermission between.

For many comic fans the original Too Much Coffee Man Opera was their first exposure to opera. While many opera fans saw Too Much Coffee Man for the first time. All attendees were impressed by the humor… and the music.

“This isn’t coffee-related-lyrics slipped into Wagnerian tunes. It’s original music with a personal story line about identity, love, and rejection,” said Stacey Murdock, who plays Too Much Coffee Man.

The Too Much Coffee Man Opera is the story of an idealistic hero, named Too Much Coffee Man, as he competes with rival Espresso Guy for the attention of a Barista. Unfornately, she has her own agenda, to be a super hero.

The second opera, entitled Too Much Coffee Man Opera: The Refill l, picks up two years later. The Barista has fulfilled her superhero dreamS and she’s married a Martian. Unfortunately she’s bored. She hopes caffeine will cure her ennui and calls Too Much Coffee Man for help. Antics ensue as Espresso Guy tries to win her back by pretending to be Too Much Coffee Man.

Shannon Wheeler created the comic book Too Much Coffee Man over a decade ago to parody the emerging coffee scene and to satirize the patrons (who would sit in coffee shops writing comics). Even though the comic book is humor based Wheeler and his co-creators took their opera project seriously.

Too Much Coffee Man Opera: The Refill re-unites the all star line up of creators who birthed the original This includes, Emmy award-winning Composer Daniel Crafts, award winning Canadian poet Damian Willcox, baritone Stacey Murdock performs as Too Much Coffee Man, tenor Matt Dolphin plays Espresso Guy and mezzo-soprano Jasmine Presson performs as the Barista with Meg Chamberlain producing.

Randy Rollison, a veteran of many stage productions throughout the U.S, including the world premiere of The Vagina Monologues, has taken the helm as director. He’s determined to take this show up to the next level or, at least, do something really weird.

Really though, deer piss?  

With the country swimming in primaries, campaign strategies, and of course the promise of changeone has to wonder, why does anyone really want to be President?

As would be expected, the perpetually antiquated Andy Rooney has a some insight.

Maybe this explains some of the appeal the position holds for our current leader.

I can’t wait to see how history portrays this administration. Maybe, just maybe, America may gain a sense of humility.

Yesterday, Maren Helen Walton was born in Virginia, to Becca and Forest Walton.

Congratulations to both Forest and Becca!

Earlier today, my Mom left me this message:

Having been a long time complusive music, movie, and book consumer, my new job at a used book store continues to educate on the ways of the buying public. While some of my co-workers and I enjoy the hunt, most of our customers want their copy of Eat, Pray, Love, that moment and more shockingly most don’t understand the how to go about looking for a book themselves if left to it.

They’re use to search engines¹.

We don’t even have an inventory of our stock, there’s too much volume. Knowing only that “the book’s by some guy, and has something to do with arsonists, and, like, New England writers’ houses…” only gets you a shrug unless one of us had heard of it. When none of our stores have one, or any idea of the title or author’s name, the customer’s left to their own devices.

We don’t order things. We don’t have to, and it helps business, because everybody always thinks they’ll be able to find a better deal somewhere. Who, though really wants to order from a store? It’s unnecessary. It’s a pain in the ass to order from a store. The internet allows for much more immediate gratification. Piracy is just the obvious byproduct of a generation with a short attention and enough technological knowhow to get what they want.

Hearing studios and record labels whine about losing money due to piracy only gets funnier when taken into consideration the number of critics who sell their promo swag to our store. We greet, with open arm the critics who come, loaded to the brim with advanced proofs, unopened cds, dvds, and boxed sets—some weeks before their street date.

There are no fools in these transactions.

The critics only have so much time and their periodicals or television or radio station gigs only give them so much space to discuss their views on this stuff. It’s not like they’re renting the products. We on the other hand are more than happy to buy the unopened Family Ties Third Season, that for whatever fucking reason Paramount thought this needed a critic’s attention². Any attention it might receive is probably cheaper than creating an advertising campaign, but money is money and they’re they’re giving their product away. Should it make a difference if it’s Family Ties or an Arcade Fire album?Studios and labels exchange the chance at free publicity for the risk that their cherished product might get passed along to many people’s hands for free.

If someone was really that concerned about policing piracy and leakage why would screeners of There Will Be Blood be floating around and it would take nothing more than entering a few words into a Google to access it?

Also consider, as a critic, you’ve already sat through a press screening of say, Gone Baby Gone. You liked it enough. You wrote the review. Job done. Three months later it’s scheduled to be released on dvd. Padded envelope arrives, unsolicited, in your mail from the studio. Your media outlet doesn’t care to spare the space to revisit it or review the dvd. What do you do with it?  Might as well make some money or gift it.

Mashable.com provides one of the most ration reason why piracy does work. 

  ”The albums and videos and movies come quickly; they’re thoroughly checked by the community, they’re well organized, they have standards of quality, and they’re free. To beat that, you need to offer content that’s just as fast, just as good, just as organized, and then give something extra to compensate for the “free” part: higher quality bitrates, extra digital content, extra physical content (shirts, concert tickets, coupons). You can’t miss out any of these elements because your content will ultimately be worse than the stuff on Mininova or The Pirate Bay.

  

 The industry stabs itself in the foot. They add those annoying “piracy is a crime” trailers to DVDs which you can’t skip and which just make you go and download the XviD version. They add DRM and rootkits to their media which makes pirated content, well, a 100 times better than theirs simply because it’s annoyance-free. They often have crappy online shops and support some weird media formats instead of using what most people use. Their content, simply put, sucks compared to pirated content.” 

If studios and label wanted to put a dent into piracy they would be more accountable with their marketing and they’d take more attempts to secure their product.

If that was really what they wanted.

tags technorati : internet, media, piracy, download, new media, music, free, something-for-nothing=nothing

1. This is more of an optimistic assertion than a gut feeling.[back]
2. and, without any bonus features beyond a gag reel and episodic promos who among us, who isn’t a M.J.F Fan or a Family Ties completist doesn’t feel cheated?[back]

Louis C.K. and  Todd Barry have found their way into Milwaukee and someone convinced them to perform. The last time Todd Barry was set to take the stage here a few years back, a huge ass snow storm hit and made the travel a dicey proposition. This may be Louis C.K.’s first ever performance in Milwaukee, we’re not really venue that a lot of comics are drawn to despite our proximity to Chicago, Minnesota, and Madison.  The lack of strong venues for stand-ups doesn’t help. Jokerz tends to book mostly comics starting out or who have faded fast. But, what can you expect when the place is in the basement of a strip club next to the freeway? The Milwaukee area really lacks much in the way of a welcoming venue for the mid-range comic.

Tonight’s show is at the Pabst Theater, which is a nice venue for the show—if you’re in the lower level. The problem with the Pabst tends to be the price. Lately, the Pabst Theater’s calender has featured a more diverse selection of entertainment and ticket prices for their weeknight show’s can be in the $20 range.

That, however is the deceptive part.

The tickets for tonight’s show are $25 for any of the three levels. Totally acceptable. I would’ve even considered $30 sorta reasonable. What I don’t find remotely acceptable is the additional fees tacked on. Old, tired complaint, I know. Still though.

There’s a service and tax and an order processing fee of which a holding fee is apart. This brings the cost up to $34.57 for one ticket. Who or what is doing the holding? A computer database will be doing that heavy lifting. The very same computer, which will print the two tickets I bought when I arrive. There’s no holding being done. Paper and ink, that’s it. And a printer. You don’t even need a ticket person to slide them through the window the same machine could just spit them out at me.

I’d gladly hand Louis C.K. and Todd Barry the $15.64 extra. They’re working for it. If they’re holding my tickets, I’ll be glad to hand them $3.50, but this is why I go to the Pabst maybe once every three years. Beautiful building, but fucked up prices. I expect though, that Louis C.K. and Todd Barry will give me my moneys worth.

Call me petty, sure, but I’m not a high roller. If the Pabst really wants a diverse crowd to fill their seats they should reconsider their prices. 

We love to fly and it shows

Transportation Security Administration’s Week At A Glance (January  14-20, 2008)

•  14 firearms found at checkpoints¹
• 3 artfully concealed prohibited items found at checkpoints
• 11 incidents that involved a checkpoint closure, terminal evacuation or sterile area breach
• 23 disruptive passengers on flights

1. as of 2007 only Wisconsin and Illinois prohibit carrying concealed firing arms.[back]