So here it is, the completely unwanted blog that none of you have been waiting for! (Who is it by? that guy with the weird username with the “@” at the end of it?  Him?  Why?) If I ramble on in a strange fashion that’s merely because I’m fairly nervous and I’m having some trouble deciding what this blog should be about.  At any rate, I might as well just jump in and do it, and let it sort itself out as it goes along.

Now that I’ve got this whole thing off to an embarrassing start I might as well make a few observations:

1) I have become terrible at getting out to see movies.  I feel terrible because of this, and sometimes feel like a fool for reading and posting at a movie website as often as I do.  I think I’m going to take some drastic steps to rectify this fact.  Don’t worry or anything, but if you happen to turn on the news and see that some nut has passed out in a theater from exhaustion, malnourishment and dehydration, but couldn’t afford medical attention because all his money was spent on movie tickets and concessions (add caffeine overdose and salt poisoning to that list of symptoms) please send cash to which ever hospital I have been admitted to.

2)The Gold Line in Los Angeles now extends into East L.A.  This pleases me, though I don’t live in L.A. proper (East or otherwise).  Congrats Los Angeles, it’s taken you 20 years to develop half as good a mass transit system as you used to have 50 years ago (this is more GM’s fault than anything, but still) !

3)There is simply too much music.  I’ve discovered recently that I’m able to appreciate far more in the way of musical styles than many people I know.  Any sense of satisfaction I might derive from this is cancelled out by the fact that my brain is currently trying to sort between and balance interests in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Indie music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical Music (minimalist, post-minimalist, post-post-minimalist and otherwise), and a backlog of albums and artists of various genres from the past 40 years.  As I write this I’m contemplating switching from a CD of Leonard Bernstein compositions to the unreleased Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse album, or possibly the Them Crooked Vultures album (a surly part of my brain is shouting something about The Style Council).  I think I am going insane.

A few things that have been on my mind of late:

1) The relative qualities of the various cinematic takes on Batman, especially comparing The Dark Knight and Batman Returns.  I’ve made a post today mentioning this, and I imagine it might very well become a blog post at some point.

2) The musical, its relation to Opera, and its status in the world of film.

3) Mozart’s Requiem.  I recently purchased three separate completions of the Requiem (he dies before finishing it after all) at Ameoba’s classical music sale.  I think I have a problem.

4) Politics.

5) How I need to go get the new Star Trek blu-ray.  This is admittedly less of a preoccupation of my time than the other things I have listed here.

CD’s that might be worth checking out:

1) Them Crooked Vultures.  This album is pretty damned solid, and has some great rhythm section work.  John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl were born to play together.  Josh Homme isn’t too shabby either.

2) The Cribs: Ignore the Ignorant.  This one popped up on my radar mainly because of Johnny Marr.  Yes, this is yet another indie band he’s joined up with, but it’s about as far from Modest Mouse as you can get.  Real good, straight up guitar rock that has a touch of The Smiths in it courtesy of Marr.

3) John Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music.  Admittedly not everyone’s cup of tea.  John Adams is a current composer of Classical Music that might be described as post-minimalist, though that doesn’t really begin to cover it, as his sense of melody works on a higher level than most composers working off a minimalist base, still the basic rhythmic pulse is there to varying degrees, so a subset of minimalism it is.  This piece is effectively a symphony in three movements played by the LA Phil, conducted by Essa-Pekka Salonen.  It’s several years old but I’ve been listening to it recently and thought I might as well throw it up here.  For what it’s worth, Adams is probably the best American composer since Bernstein.

Well that’s all I’ve got right now.  Sorry for the rambling, but a brain dump seemed to be in order.  I promise that future entries will be more focused and concise, and less like the portrait of a man losing his mind.  If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.  Hopefully this hasn’t scared you off from reading my stuff in the future.