Freedom!

Happy Friday

You will feel SO much better about pictures of yourself after this:

http://www.fluideffect.com/

Look in the portfolio, particularly the before/after sections.

Re-upped

I renewed my KQED membership some weeks back, entitling me to a whole other year of snooty, self-righteous indignation for the low, low price of $11 a month. I waited for them to do the New Yorker DVD-ROM offer, which should contain everything that magazine has ever printed since its inception. New Yorker's been a tad spotty for me, but the beauty of a searchable DVD-ROM is that if any particular writer catches my attention off-line, I can look 'em up directly on that there disc. This was in addition to my choice of the standard gift, which ended up being that emergency crank radio again. I really don't need any more umbrellas or mugs, but I do find some appeal in having one of those crank radios on every single vehicle and at every location I spend my time in.

I also take it as an opportunity to bitch about KQED programming some more. There's isn't much to gripe about, actually. They've picked up two terrific shows right when I'm paying attention, during the 11pm-2am weekday slot. "Day to Day" targets the busy 20/30-somethings with slicker production and younger hosts. "News & Notes" brings the Black perspective to current events. (Yes, their show description says 'Black', not 'African-American'. Very refreshing.) It's pointed without coming off like some SNL skit spoofing cable-access 'Black Power' shows. While the uninitiated would mark the show as colloquial after hearing a few slang terms tossed around, the more astute would realize that similar terms are thrown around by your McLaughlins and Lehrers all the time. It's just that your 20/30-something years of experience with the American media have acclimated you to the latter and not the ones that perfectly intelligent people from different backgrounds use.

And then there's the third hour.

I had once tried setting an alarm on my radio to send me to bed at 1 am. But now simply keeping it tuned to KQED until that hour has the similar effect of making it the most loud and obnoxious thing in my room. That's when the breathy voice of pompous gasbag Christopher Lydon introduces us to "Open Source", a show which as a goal attempts to reproduce the level of discourse on Internet blogs. In many ways it meets its goal. Like most blogs, the show is inflated, recklessly opinionated, biased, and tragically uninformed, squandering the resources of a valuable medium through a crippling lack of craft.

I actually remember Lydon from a long drive back up the grapevine some years ago surfing Central Valley radio stations (furiousg was there). It was memorable for me because of some bit he was doing where he had some historian/actor on pretending to be (I kid you not) the ghost of Thomas Jefferson. Besides the hubris and sheer hokeyness of the concept, I just saw absolutely no need for it. It did nothing an informed interview on Jefferson wouldn't have accomplished, and only served to muddle things by speculating on issues that Jefferson couldn't have possibly imagined. This was apparently a different show that Lydon was doing, but as I heard a few weeks ago, he's brought the bit over to Open Source as well.

If you, like me, never really had any notion of the difference between good and bad interviewing and discussion moderation, you will after Open Source. Listen as Lydon astounds you with an impressive lack of understanding of both his guests and their arguments. He'll make spurious assumptions, ask disgracefully leading questions, interrupt guests, goad them into speculation, take quotations radically out of context, and phrase queries like pompous high school essay topics. At times I really wonder if he's actually listening to his guests all. Compare and contrast this tripe with the damned near symphonic orchestration of interviews, debates, and listener call-ins by the likes of 'local' talents like Michael Krasny (or even his many understudies), to say nothing of other NPR interview/call-ins like "Talk of the Nation".

The irony, of course, is that I'm writing this all in a blog entry as somebody who does not study media as a career. Which kind of is the point -- it's great that there's this resource for expression and talk-back, but unless proven otherwise, it's really no more than listener call-in. Shows like Open Source would have you thinking otherwise if you're not careful.

Turkey Free

Some thoughts on turkey:

• It's the form of meat that's closest to vegetable. So often it seems to serve as a kind of meat substitute, replacing beloved beef, chicken, or pork in recipes for chili, burgers, sausages, etc. Anecdotal evidence confirms that the bird itself lacks its own actual flavor, and like tofu, rice, or white bread, serves mainly as a base for items having actual flavor. In terms of sheer quantity after the fourth Thursday of November, it may as well be the staple of one's diet. Indeed, turkey becomes much more appetizing when one pictures two slices of it wrapped around steaming hot slices of pastrami and the sharpest of cheddars with crisp iceberg lettuce, tomato slices, and a dollop of mayo.
• If people really loved it so much, it'd be all over the place. We'd have it every single day. You'd be having it animal-style in your double-double from In-n-out. You'd be ordering it rare from the Black Angus. It'd be done asada-style in your super burrito. I'm not sure what the resource requirements are to farm/ranch/whatever turkey in mass, but science would find a way to do it, IF THE DEMAND WAS THERE.
• It's amazing the lengths people have gone to in recent years to make the bird more interesting to eat. Roasting no longer sufficient, people soak it in various briney concoctions for days before roasting it or plunge it into vats of hot oil at tremendous risk to life and property. All to make eating the damned thing that much more tolerable.

I got a bird this year, but decided to delay cooking it until after we come back from Brazil. Then, free from the trappings of holiday tradition, I'd like to try the deep fry in a ceremony that will be like something of a cross between an ICBM test launch and a holiday feast.

As for this Thanksgiving dinner, it was spent turkey-free with the family over at a cousin's place in the south bay. The cousin's wife had whipped up an odd cider of sorts from the tangerines in the backyard which went well with a shot of Johnny Walker Black.

There are many like it

... but this one's mine.


Um... the arrow's missing 'cause Starbuck took it.

So I like figure sculpting and all, but it was getting frustrating because I really didn't know WTF I was doing. Earlier in the fall I finally signed on for an instructional course that a friend of mine from work was teaching. Approaches vary, as always. He tended to be pretty technical and went in-depth into muscle groups and how they layer on top of each other. Free sculpting classes will be starting back up at work and we'll have a guy from the model shop running those. He's much less technical, but by all accounts is terrific.

My friend's class was open to the public, which produced an odd mix. You'd have your art students on the one hand. On the other you'd have your retirees and desperate housewives. Watching my friend deal with this latter group was damned entertaining. Oh God, the WHINING. "Well I DID what you SAID!!!" usually barked with a nasal shrill, was often heard.

Anyway, I got a lot out of it. I didn't really produce anything worth mentioning from that class because we were building up and tearing down a lot. But I finally finished off another studio session with all that knowledge fresh in mind, and I think my product isn't entirely disgraceful.

People are often curious how these studio sessions run. Well, typically you meet 3 hours once a week for 6-8 weeks. The first one we all agree on a pose, and that's what the model does for the whole session. Once that's settled, you just do your thing. Some people do what's there. Some stylize it. Usually you exaggerate the pose a lot for drama. I ended up bulking the guy up a lot and giving a higher angle to his aim. I actually did some archery back in high school, so I made a lot of adjustments to form and hand positions.

Yes, the model is stark nekkid the whole time. And no, it isn't awkward. After a while you're cracking jokes like you would with a co-worker. Quite often we end up having dinner with them after the session.

It was a great pose in general, but I think I had more affinity for it since it is more martial than the typical poses we pick. I actually had to do this particular one across 4 sessions. Work was too busy to make the earlier parts of this session.

Just Browsing

I'm just looking around checking out different blog sites. My current active site is at Rotten Tomatoes:

Kai's Blog