Work in Progress: Halloween Ventriloquist Mummy Costume

Where's the Fun in Fetishism?

A distressing new attack on my vestigial innocence is occurring via the Internet. It started a number of years ago with spam. At my old job, the abhorrent subject lines of spam were, in my view, an actionable form of harassment. I mean, you'd get to work at 8:30 am and there in your inbox would be 25 emails that you could not avoid reading if only for a nanosecond, and each one's subject was worse than the last. Really, really, really bad, violent stuff. I assume that the world has not gotten cleaner in the last few years, therefore I must credit Yahoo for doing a better job than our corporate mailserver did in blocking the most awful types of spam. Most of what goes in my spam folder today focuses on a single body part that I neither own nor envy.

Now, with my website stats (and based on the popularity of my videos on YouTube) I can see who comes to my site and why. What may seem to me to be completely innocuous search terms often end up having a dark side. A sexual side. Apparently, some of these things are (euphemistically, so as not to attract the same crowd to this post) being with child, educating one's spouse and the garment you put on a baby to catch his deposits. Yuck!

What is wrong with people? Are there no normal people left? Here's the thing, fetish-heads--isn't the whole point of your weird, pathological fixation and displacement of erotic interest (I'm quoting Webster's, not the DSM III, but still) that it's taboo and hidden? Can't anything be innocent, meaning free from guilt through lack of knowledge of evil (Webster's) or simply lacking guile or self-consciousness? Simply being what it is?

Just yesterday I read our local TV critic lamenting the same problem on prime-time TV. Apparently a recent episode of the show Bones featured a fetish that involved an animal beloved by most 11-year-old girls, making the critic, who'd never thought "censoring" the family hour of TV was a necessity, change her mind. With the CSI franchise, there has been a bit of a fetish war on, with each episode revealing some new underbelly of Vegas (or whatever city you prefer). In general, I like the intelligence of CSI, but it is most definitely not a family show. And I think we do have to get back to basics, here. I heard a song on the radio today that really shocked me. You had to listen closely but the lyrics weren't double entendres, they were pornographic--it's indefinable, perhaps, but you know it when you hear it!

It's a hard line to draw, since now everything is acceptable, or a lifestyle choice to be respected. Meanwhile, sex continues to sell. Nothing wrong with that, but what about leaving something to that most important organ, the imagination? The poor lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls (the hit song, "Dontcha Wish Your Girlfriend was a Freak Like Me") is doing all these sexy poses in Blender magazine, a snarky music mag which I assume is aimed at male readers. And yet in the interview she says she feels shocked about it all, as the (presumably male) interviewer asks "probing" (couldn't resist) questions about her sexuality. How do these girl singers know when it's sexual empowerment to do pinup shots and when it's just sexism? I feel sad when I see it happen, but is it possible to change our visual vocabulary? Is it any better if it's equal opportunity and the men do beefcake shots (although it would take a lot of beefcake to balance out the cheesecake)?

Thanks, Little Fox Theater!

Our Patois Records showcase was a fabulous event at a real gem of a venue: The Little Fox Theater in Redwood City. An intimate 200-seat Art Deco building next to the much larger Fox Theater, the Little Fox has great sound and sight lines, and a classy second level with pool tables for lounging or looking like an insouciant flapper girl. OK, there weren't any insouciant flappers there last week, but we had a full house and I met some lovely fans, including one who bought one of my autographed posters (in fact, the first person who has ever bought one, and it's all thanks to Sheryl's brilliant marketing for Patois!). He said he was my "number one fireman fan" and so of course I scrawled something about how "you can't put the fire out in my heart for latin jazz!" on the poster. He also said he liked my videos and thought I should post more of me playing my originals.

The band was smoking, with Murray Low on piano, David Belove on bass, Paul van Wageningen on drumset, Michael Spiro on percussion, Masaru Koga on flute/sax and Wayne "The Doctor" Wallace on bone. My fellow singer Kat Parra brought the house down with the tragic story of Alfonsina y el Mar as well as a gorgeous Sephardic song, and we all came together for a fun finale of El Manisero. At the end as we were improvising pregones I started urging the audience to stand up, singing "Andale, todos de pie para bailar" and "Vamos a gozar, a bailar mi gente" and moving my hands in a "stand up, everyone" gesture. A little voice in my head said "try English, Einstein." "Stand up, put your hands in the air, let's dance," I sang out and everyone got up and started boogeying.

All in all it was a great night and a promising launch for Patois performances. And it was also a wonderful work that BeasWa Productions (Matt Beasley and Wendy Waller) is doing with their Sunday night jazz series at the Little Fox. You've got to check out the great lineup they've got booked in the next few months: "Jazz with a Feelin'," on Jan. 27, featuring the Rick Vandivier Group (CD release celebration), Wendy Waller and Primary Colors with Nate Pruitt; and on Feb. 10, they'll present "Three Divas of Jazz," featuring Roberta Donnay, Juliet Green and Waller. Read this flattering piece written about their work as event producers recently in the Palo Alto Daily News. Not an easy job, I tell you--but they're doing amazing things!

Oh, and here's a little video of me checking my name out on the marquee...

It Ain't Halloween Without Horror

I am a pacifist who generally can't handle movie violence or horror, although along with everyone else in the world I have become inured to the gore of modern films (a tangent to this that I've been meaning to write about is the increasing presence of torture in films--a sign of our government's new embrace of torture?). Anyway, I wasn't meaning to make this deep or depressing, but I just got this note from school:

"Please keep in mind that our younger students sometimes have difficulty differentiating between reality and a costume. Severed limbs and scary faces can be very frightening to these little ones, so please be sensitive. NOTE: Costume weapons such as guns, swords, lasers, daggers, scythes, etc. are not allowed at school. A child's costume at school can be different from the one they use trick-or-treating."

Now, this is one area where I think they're being too protective. The whole point of Halloween is to take our fears and parade them down the street. Costumes should be funny, scary, bloody, fantastic, and above all, creative! I don't have a problem with weapons. Of course, I won't let my son go as a soldier (not that he wants to) but if someone does, so be it. Is that really worse than 25 pink princesses in identical tutus and tiaras?

Horror is what Halloween is for! The costume industry is one of the more depressing things I've seen among today's kids. I may not make dinner every night (or at all), but I'll be damned if my kid wears a store-bought costume, however cute it might be (and yes, they are often super cute). Invariably, he is one of just a handful of kids in homemade garb. I'm not against purchasing props or masks, but the entire assemblage should be a creative expression of individuality.

It doesn't have to take weeks to make, either (we have not started and my son wants to be a zombie ventriloquist dummy!?!). Have fun and make it scary!

Rant over.

You Know It's a Hot Day in October When...

...the ice cream truck goes by blaring "'Round and 'Round the Mulberry Bush, the Monkey Chased the Weasel" at 10:30 a.m. when all the kids are locked up in school.

Digital Music News: Is Snocap Melting?

Adding a Snocap store to my MySpace page was on my to-do list for a while. As usual, I took a "wait and see" approach to dealing with the iTunes rival--in other words, I procrastinated. Now it appears I may have saved myself a headache.

On October 11, reports emerged that San Francisco-based Snocap, a music-licensing company cofounded in 2002 by Napster's Shawn Fanning, laid off 31 of its 57 employees and tacked a for-sale sign on the door (figuratively speaking). Speculation is rampant that a failed deal with online retailer CD Baby (aka savior to indie musicians everywhere) was a major factor. CD Baby had announced in February 2007 that it would facilitate Snocap stores for its artist clients and offer them a higher per-song payment than those who went directly through MySpace, with which Snocap also has a profit-sharing agreement. But there were multiple complications, duplicate accounts, few payments to clients and no customer service from Snocap over the next few months. In September, CD Baby announced that the deal was dead. Now, many artists are having trouble removing the stores; others have reported the stores simply appearing uninvited on their spaces.

And were artists making any money? Not significantly, according to posts I've read on various newsgroups to which I belong. One person claimed no payouts for five months, while many noted that their iTunes sales are far more robust. I think this missive to an artist forum on CDBaby sums it up pretty well.

"Can anyone remember Mp3.com before they sold us all out? The $30.00 annual Snocap fee on its own is certainly a lot of cash for little known artists that rarely sell digital downloads anyway, artists can sell downloads via the Paypal shopping cart by pasting Paypal buy links into their Myspace page. The other question is the very hefty FIFTY SIX (56) percent cut for Myspace, Snocap and Paypal.
Apple Itunes only keeps like thirty three (33) percent and CDbaby.com only takes an additional NINE (9) percent cut of total income. leaving artists with about FIFTY EIGHT (58) percent. I totally trust in the direction [CD Baby founder] Derek Sivers is going with CDbaby.com, and at the moment he is completely walking away from Snocap. We all have seen many of these music download companies come and go, most of these defunct companies had questionable business models. ...
Derek Sivers is the man, remember that folks!"

Sivers promised to reveal more about the increasingly acrimonious divorce from Snocap in an October 1 post to his forum: "I'll give a public and detailed account soon. For now, just know that the ending of the relationship between CD Baby and Snocap was our idea, and done for your benefit (as well as our sanity)."

Finally: The Perfect Musician for Me!

This was on Craig's List:

Old fart guitar god wanna-be, talentless, can’t play basic chords, fat, no chops or ability to learn, acne, sing off-key, butt ugly, crappy pawn shop equipment, unable to focus, lacking rhythm, no individual playing style, bad breath, can’t fingerpick, unpersonable, short-term memory loss, deformed left wrist and hand, no musical influences, homeless, can’t remember shit from 60’s to present, uncooperative, stage fright, tire easily, alcoholic and drug dependant, unreliable, hate to practice, play out of tune and/or key, unhappy, tone deaf, can’t read music or TAB, bipolar, play only in unknown tunings, immature and childish, can’t improvise, not energetic, incompatible skills, alternate between religious zealot and atheism, terrible image, outlook on life sucks, overbearing personality, not serious, can’t harmonize, no transportation, body odor……looking for other similar minded and bodied musicians for jamming in local apartment building carport between 12:00AM and 3:00AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Pure Eurovision Brilliance

Apparently this group did not win Eurovision 2007, but it's worth a watch anyway. Thanks to my dad, professional web surfer, for this link.

First Grade Frustration

The other day I did my weekly hour of helping out in my son's classroom. I sat down on the floor with my group of six kids. It was hot as Hades in the classroom because the school turns on the bank of ancient radiators at the first sign of inclement weather, notwithstanding the fact that it's 68 degrees outside. I had to take off my sweatshirt and hat immediately, revealing my weekday hairstyle (unwashed, barely combed) and a stained workout shirt that I hadn't planned on exposing to the world.

The kids were restless so I brilliantly began to joke about the heat: "Boy, I feel like I'm trekking through the desert!" I said.

"I feel like I'm on the equator!" said a little boy. "I feel like I'm walking on the sun!" said a girl. "I wish I were in Antarctica!" called out someone else. "I wish I were naked and swimming in the Pacific Ocean!" "I feel like I'm on the sun's butt!"

"OK, OK, let's read the story," I said, trying to reign them back in. All of my group members were good readers, but two little boys were quite fluent. I was impressed, making a mental note that I need to work more on reading with my son, who was in another group. We proceeded to writing summaries about the book. Two kids got up to go to the bathroom, a diversionary ploy that drives me nuts. But what can you do? They left. Another wanted water. Then everyone began complaining about the heat.

"You know, if you focus on writing your sentences, your brain will actually cool your body down," I said. "Give it a try, you'll see." After a while, I convinced several children that this was true and they began confirming it: "Wow, I feel cooler now." "Look, my page is done and I'm not hot anymore."

But the exercises and the hour seemed interminable. I was fading, and the bathroom-goers were back and ready to cause trouble. One kid alternated between clinging to me, which sometimes is sweet but in this case was merely annoying, and saying inappropriate things like "I want to kill myself to get away from this heat." The conversation quickly escaped my control, culminating in someone pointing to my butt and said, "Look at her butt." "I can't, she's sitting on it." Etc. I was suddenly depressed. I sat in silence as they bantered a bit more and then I quietly said, "You know what, if you think this is funny, it's not. This kind of talk makes me feel like not coming back to your class again." Next thing I knew, the teacher, who like most good teachers was simultaneously monitoring every corner of the room through her invisible antennae as she conducted the lesson with her group, was sending the two infractors from my posse to their desks with stern reprimands.

I felt bad about the whole thing. In the past, I could handle any kind of interruption, usually fending it off with a joke and then a distraction. Now these kids (and my own son) drive me freaking nuts with their attitudes! And they're only in first grade!

After class, another mom said she'd had a tough time with her group as well--the heat and the rainy day had been a brutal combination. "I think I'm getting too old for this--I don't have any more patience," I said. "Well, they're getting older too. Now they really know how to push our buttons," she pointed out. That made me feel better. It also put my own son's maddening behavior in context. On the drive home I made him promise that, in the future, if he was in my group he wasn't going to ask to go to the bathroom or talk about butts!

OK Maureen, I Give You This One

Funny! Stephen Colbert squats on Maureen Dowd's spot and shows how to write a New York Times OpEd piece!

Say It Ain't So, Maksim!

I was going to try to find a cute pic of dance hottie Maksim Chmerkovskiy. I found his website, but I gotta say, uh, Maksim, do you play for the other team? Based on these ginormous glamour shots of you on your website, you are extremely in touch with your feminine side, which I applaud except that you took it slightly past the point of what I personally find attractive in a man (obviously, Fabio was a big influence). Boy, you are the prototypical, windswept, chest-waxing metrosexual male. Ladies, check it out for yourselves: http://maksimchmerkovskiy.com. Or just take it from me--he looks a lot better on the show.

Ugh, and don't go past the splash page--there's some horrible disco music with a vocoder-processed voice, and I really hope that's not Maksim singing. Because I really like you, Maksim, and I think we could dance so well together, despite the awkward height difference and my curious lack of flexibility. I hope this post is not another nail in the coffin that contains my showbiz career...

Dancing with the Stars, Please Call My Agent (aka Me)

I love the new crop of dancing TV shows: So You Think You Can Dance, and Dancing with the Stars. I obviously wouldn't qualify based on age, training or street dancing ability to be on So You Think You Can Dance, but I think I could fit right in on Dancing with the Stars.

If only I had a legitimate claim to fame... can you imagine the narrator announcing me? "And now, you may know her as former Editor in Chief of Software Development magazine, it's latin jazz singer-songwriter and blogger Alexa Weber Morales, dancing with Maksim Chmerkovskiy!" My husband enjoys watching Maksim, a Russian dance champ who is so light on his feet, he puts the other leaders to shame. Performing before a national TV audience would be incredibly daunting and stressful, but the dance training would be so much fun.

I have always wanted to be a dancer. Little girls, don't let your body type deter you from dancing! Well, that's one of my excuses, and the other is that I simply didn't believe that one could be good at many things--be a triple threat, so to speak--and I had no idea what discipline was involved in studying any sort of art. Writing came quite naturally, as did singing, and I was blessed with extensive training in both areas. But I coulda been a contender! How am I going to star on Broadway without those fancy feet? I fear if I don't get my act together I am going to fail to instill this discipline in my children, too.

Anyway, I left the TV on for the next show, although I practiced music a bit during commercial breaks. Finally, I just watched 10 minutes of The Bachelor, and what a soul-sucking production that is! It's only a shade better than Age of Love, which I actually endured for several entire episodes last season. The premise of that one was that women in their 20s were competing against women in their 40s for the "love" of a man in his 30s. My husband couldn't believe I was watching it. "Can't you see how offensive it is to those women? How degrading!" In that sense, I was rather pleased that he was more feminist than I. Then he figured it out. "You're rooting for the 40-year-olds, aren't you?"

To wrap this post up with a neat concluding paragraph: "Reality" dating shows where women compete for a man are gross. Most reality competition shows are gross. Dancing with the Stars is not gross because it involves great costumes, hard work, choreography that makes a lay dancer look like a pro, great live music played by an impressive orchestra, exercise, a witty host (Tom Bergeron is great), a hilariously loquacious Italian judge, and good old fashioned showmanship. Maksim Chmerkovskiy is hot and my husband agrees (that he's a good dancer). If the producers of Dancing with the Stars are expanding their definition of "star" to include former editors of 100,000 controlled qualified circulation trade magazines, I eagerly await their call.

A Redemption Story

Or is it perseverance? As my former colleague Rick Wayne describes in his blog, Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday morning is such a proof of quality. Here is a man who lost the presidential election through a technicality but respected the structure of our democracy so much that he conceded defeat. (This position may be eroding, but as the founders of modern democracy Americans are an example. In many countries, you need only see the frequently rewritten constitutions, recent conversions from dictatorships and military coups that abound and you have an even greater admiration for our relative stability and near pathological respect for law.)

Winning the Peace Prize (and the Academy Award) shows Al Gore's focus was never on power, it was on progress. Instead of beating an introspective retreat, he took a circuitous route, defined by tireless work, to changing the world's environmental agenda. If you've ever been to a professional conference and seen a million dull PowerPoint slide presentations, you know that An Inconvenient Truth was the best talk ever given. Last night I began to argue that the talk itself was an example of how Gore had applied his money and position to designing the most effective dialectic possible, and my husband pointed out that power had nothing to do with it--imagine if "their guy" (as Rick put it) had put together a presentation. Actually, don't bother imagining it, it's too depressing.

Video: I Think of You

This is a song I wrote in 2000 and perform frequently. This is how I did it recently on a live studio appearance at KXJZ in Sacramento, cheesy keyboard and all. On the show, I explained that this provides some insight into how a songwriter composes at home with simple tools, and that someday when I have the song arranged and recorded the evolution from demo to finished product will be obvious.

Video: Let's Not Ruin This Affair

Here it is, the song I wrote today! Well, I started it yesterday, slept on it and revised a bit and then to my amazement the chords came pretty easily. I started writing the bridge between the last two verses but kept messing it up on the video so I left it out.

Here are the lyrics:

Let’s Not Ruin This Affair
By Alexandra L. Weber Morales © 2007

Let’s not ruin this affair
Charged with unlimited potential
Can’t you see the mystery is essential?
Screw domestic devastation
Show me eccentric motivation

Please don’t say how great we’d be
Let’s rewind to our pleasant repartee
If you want me in your arms take me dancing, you fool!
Let’s make music together
No morning guilt as a tether

Let’s not ruin this affair
Go ahead and shop for another bed
Don’t hold my hand, I’m not hoping to be led
I’m a woman in her prime
Play my piano, it’s divine

Let’s not ruin this affair
Sublimation suits you so well
Give me your best shot, your truest laugh
Give me your finest thought, your choicest word
When all your flings have piled up in the past
When you see how far I’ve come undeterred
You’ll remember me
You’ll remember me
…and how I made us last

Edits

Gah! I just noticed I have sublime ending one verse and sublimation appearing shortly thereafter. Maybe I'll change sublimation to infatuation. But there's the alliteration between sublimation and suits. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Did I mention I have two paying articles to write, a show to rehearse for and a house to clean? At least in my efforts to live simply I have eliminated the thankless chores of cooking and eating. The entire family has been reduced to grazing. "I miss vegetables," Emilio said last week. So do I.

Let’s Not Ruin This Affair

I have to say I am pretty excited about this one. I have some great chords and melody, as Brazilian as I can make it, although the finish is rather American, and if I can get the ending right maybe I'll post a recording or a video since that's easier.

Let’s not ruin this affair
Charged with unlimited potential
Can’t you see the mystery is essential?
Screw domestic devastation
Show me eccentric motivation

Please don’t say how great we’d be
Let’s rewind to our pleasant repartee
If you want me in your arms take me dancing, you fool!
Let’s make music together
No morning guilt as a tether

Let’s not ruin this affair
Go ahead and shop for another bed
Don’t hold my hand, I’m not hoping to be led
I’m a woman in her prime
Play my piano, it’s sublime

Let’s not ruin this affair
Sublimation suits you so well
Give me your best shot, your truest laugh
Give me your finest thought, your choicest word
When all your flings have piled up in the past
When you see how far I’ve come undeterred
You’ll remember me
You’ll remember me
…and how I made us last

By Alexa Weber Morales © 2007

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Yesterday my son said, "Mommy, when I was a baby in your tummy, you know what I was thinking?" "What?" "I was wondering, do dogs have laws?"

So That's Who Wrote the Song

Thanks to Matt for this tip on the song I heard Madeleine Peyroux sing earlier today on the radio. According to Wikipedia, Harry Nilsson released an album in 1968 called "Aerial Ballet, an album that included Nilsson's rendition of Fred Neil's song Everybody's Talkin'. A minor US hit at the time of release (and a top 40 hit in Canada), the song would become extremely popular a year later when it was featured in the film Midnight Cowboy, and it would earn Nilsson his first Grammy Award. It would also become Nilsson's first US top 10 hit, reaching #6, and his first Canadian #1."

Nilsson was an enigmatic and somewhat tragic figure. I recall reading about him in a music magazine. He was a great friend to John Lennon, a creative and sometimes silly songwriter himself ("I sang my balls off for you" is a choice line). Later in life he suffered total financial devastation due to an embezzling associate, worked to ban guns after Lennon was assassinated and died of a heart attack at age 53.

Gorgeous Tune

I was just listening to KCSM and a beautiful song came on, with piano playing open octaves and mallets on drums giving a timpani effect. The singer was reminscent of Billy Holiday or Shirley Horn in spots, but she had a modern feel too. Turns out it was Madeleine Peyroux, singing "Everybody's Talking." I can't seem to find who wrote it (did she?), but I loved the lyric (this is a snippet):

People stopping, staring
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes

I'm going where the sun keeps shining
Through the pouring rain
Going where the weather suits my clothes
Backing off the north east wind
Sailing on a summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone

Celebrating the Jazzschool at Yoshi's

The gig tonight at Yoshi's celebrating 10 years of the Jazzschool went well. I danced a lot. Samba, mostly, to pianist Marcos Silva's group, which was really tight (Mary Fettig floating on flute/sax, her son Scott Thompson having the best time on bass, and Phil Thompson sounding absolutely Brazilian on drumset). Two of the tunes were in odd meters though, so that made it a bit harder to samba to. But I stood back in a corner of the club and danced--I like to get in the groove before I get on stage. Mark Levine's group was up first, and great too, with some wonderful trading between piano and percussion solos, so I danced to that too. Before the gig I talked with Mark Levine briefly and he asked me who my favorite latin jazz singer was and I drew a blank and named Marc Anthony based on pipes alone. That probably doomed me for any future work with Mark Levine. He said Isaac (Delgado) was his fave.

Had a great conversation about cat shit with Matt Beasley, a promoter/booker we're working with at Patois Records. You never know who will read your blog (must remember this)--turns out my entry on my cat's viscous fecal protest on my down comforter hit a nerve. He made the observation that the cat not only chooses the most upsetting location, she also waits until she's got a really disgusting poop lined up. That's some serious bodily function control.

OK, back to the music.

I met Randy Porter, a pianist from Portland, Oregon whom I'd like to keep in mind if I ever play up there. I mentioned David Valdez, the Portland saxman whose jazz blog I read, and Randy said he's a great player. My cousins are in Portland, too. Hmm, that sounds like a gig and a place to stay (yeah, nothing like crashing in a college dorm).

Madeline Eastman was marvelous, with masterful styling and perfect pitch, which was especially noteworthy given that she later told me she couldn't hear herself on stage. Loved her arrangements, too (Randy was on piano, John Wittala on bass and Akira Tana on drumset--gotta work with all of them someday). As always, she was so funny: "What Susan Muscarella has done, starting a jazz school, is amazing, especially when you think about it. I mean, starting a jazz school pretty much sounds like a recipe for failure, or at least for losing a lot of cash. But look at what she's achieved in 10 years." The Jazzschool is now in a beautiful building, hosting concerts most nights and packed with students. And I realized that I have personally learned from every one of the bandleaders who performed tonight.

We were up last, and I knew the sound was going to be an issue (the band has five horns, three percussionists, four singers, etc). So I stood in the corner and danced my butt off for the two tunes that weren't vocal. I figured if nothing else my dancing will stand out, right? And sure enough, several people told me they thought it was great that I danced, that the lighting was perfect--they even wondered if I had specified the lighting (ha! Can you imagine?). Anyway, the first two vocal tunes were tough--couldn't hear at all, and despite a few hand signs to the sound booth no vocal sound ever made it to my monitor mix. But the last song, Use Me, I nailed (even though I had to crane my neck to hear the house sound)!

Anyway, I wasn't sure it was going to be a good gig (for me) but perhaps I earned a few new fans. Oh, and I did sell two CDs, and that's not shabby given the gauntlet of impressive CDs that was out on the table.

Better Lyrics Department

Coming home from school today my son came up with some improvements on that song that goes "Don't you wish your girlfriend was HOT like me, don't you wish your girlfriend was a FREAK like me, dontchahhhh, dontchahhhh" (the song was best used in a scene from the Eddie Murphy movie Norbit):

"Don't you wish your girlfriend was smart like me
Don't you wish your girlfriend liked to garden like me
Dontchah....

Don't you wish your girlfriend rode a scooter like me
Don't you wish your girlfriend had a house like me
Dontchah...."

Productivity: A Clarification

It occurs to me that someone (a managing editor or editorial director type, for example) who read a recent post in my blog bragging about writing two articles in one day might assume that I had left everything to the last minute, necessitating such heroics.

I want to assure any current or potential editorial clients that I was forced to such extremes because I am having a heck of a time finding anyone who wants to talk on the record about their experiences with concurrency in software development. For that last pair of articles, I had already pursued three leads that did not pan out, including Celera Genomics, Bayer Pharmaceuticals and another small IT company. And for future articles, if you want to tell the world about how you have mastered parallel programming for apps running on multicore chips, write me at song (at) alexawebermorales.com.

Radiohead's Sales Gambit

There are two threads here: One is the growing rebellion against iTunes' fixed pricing model and copy-restricted audio codec by bands and record labels. The other is the search for effective online sales channels to replace diminishing CD sales. See "An Album That Costs What You Want It To" in the New York Times:

The members of Radiohead, the respected British rock act, said that the band would sell its new album, at least initially, exclusively as a digital download and allow fans to decide how much to pay for it, if anything. In a statement yesterday, the band said it had begun taking orders for the album, “In Rainbows,” which will be available beginning Oct. 10.

Sounds like a great marketing gambit. Of course, buyers will pay what they consider a reasonable price for a good or service. Consider what constitutes the consumer's perception of musical value, however: popularity or scarcity, quality, media mentions/press, word of mouth, radio play, fan activity, concert experience. There are plenty of intangibles that affect what you'll pay, as evidenced by the posts on the New York Times page. Every band's experience will be different.

All media are affected by the Internet and the information/entertainment explosion. There is so much competition for our attention these days. It makes sense to try any and all new models (see the New York Times' failed two-year experiment with paid subscriptions to the website).

Heck, I might try it myself. I have a distribution deal with KOCH, but I also sell records at gigs, and frankly that's the quickest way for me to get money in my pocket so I can feed my kids.

This industry is changing, and the fact that heavyweights like Radiohead are opting out of traditional sales channels (or creating new ones) shows how massive the shakeup is.

Now That's an Extreme Home Makeover

We love watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (although we missed most of last night's season premiere). My son is always trying to figure out how he can get them to come to our house and build him a theme bedroom of one kind or another. He also likes that it shows people doing his Daddy's job, building. Once he asked if having our dog die would qualify us for the show, and I said it would have to be something more traumatic than that. Last night he said, "I wish Extreme Makeover would come and make me a GUN room!" Dream on, buddy!

Oakland, My Sweet Home

Yesterday I took my older son with me to San Francisco to a salsa dance class. We took the train to the Mission district, got off and got our bearings, and started walking. We passed a street bible meeting conducted in Spanish by hoarse men in suits, a Latina midget hooker, a phalanx of jittery drug addicts of all colors and some muscular teenagers. Halfway down the block, the man in front of us was knocked to the ground as a bottle materialized out of nowhere and loudly exploded against his head. Time to cross the street! We got to the other side, looking back to see if the man was OK. He slowly wobbled up, rubbing his head, and limped away (he looked homeless).

We kept walking, and passed a toothless young pregnant woman begging. "Mommy, did you see that?" my son asked. In Spanish, I told him to save his comments until we got home. But then at the next block, a man took off from the gas station on his Harley Davidson wearing assless chaps and nothing underneath. "Oh my God, did you see that?" I laughed. "His booty is naked!" my son said. "Gross!" "Looks kind of uncomfortable," I said.

Once we arrived, we saw that the class is actually in a gorgeous renovated building with vast wood-floored studios, skylights and a comfortable sitting area for congregating.

When we got off the train later that afternoon at our own little barrio station, I couldn't help but say to my son, "Isn't Oakland beautiful?" Sometimes I tire of the street scene where I live, and my brother likes to make it seem so dirty and urban compared to his McMansion development in what used to be farm country. But yesterday, my lovely overgrown bungalow in a quiet neighborhood was downright idyllic.