Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

I love watching the recording industry squirm. They’ve just been warned by some artists that not everyone appreciates the potential death of the album that single-song sales represent.

I’m more worried as a consumer that the possible acceptance of this single-song sales method would lead to more and more “radio tracks” being released, and less truly challenging or off-beat songs. If artists are worried about creating only songs that sell, then all you’re going to get are songs like you hear on the radio today — catchy one minute, and gone the next. What a horrible way to go. I can’t think of a single artist or group whose work I’ve followed that I don’t think have fives times as many great album tracks as singles.

Billy Joel’s “Angry Young Man” was never released as a single. Nor Meat Loaf’s duet version with Patti Russo of “Is Nothing Sacred.” Was Talking Heads’ “Nothing But Flowers” ever released as a single? Barenaked Ladies’ “Wrong Man Was Convicted” or “Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel” are both off-beat songs that would never get radio play. They Might Be Giants have — well, their entire catalog, just about. Radio has always ignored them. So pick the songs that they made videos for, and look at all the better ones that wouldn’t have a chance to gain acceptane on the radio today.

The only thing that Single Song Sales might truly kill would be Greatest Hits albums. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Who wants to spend $15 for a CD filled with songs you already own so that you can get the two new songs they record for it to make you buy it. Wouldn’t you rather go to iTunes and just buy those two new songs?

The recording industry needs to adapt to the new world, true. And I do think that iTunes is a pretty decent thing to have. I don’t think it’s the answer, though, and I hope that the record companies don’t look at its early success as a harbinger of the way things have to be.

If this is what I have to do to win the lottery, then I’ll just stick to my day job.

BTW, did you know that Croatia has a national lottery? Yeah, I was surprised by that, too.

Meanwhile, my office pool didn’t win the $180 million Mega Millions lottery on Friday night. Someone else had a ticket that included the winning numbers of 01, 02, and 03. Musta been a Quick Pick.

What do you protest when the war is over? Why, the war, of course. Or the anti-war protestors. Some people just can’t let go. Up in Washington state, there are still people protesting. I know that change can be hard, but can’t these people just let go and move on to the next thing? They look like a bunch of loons right now.

I’ll never learn; this happens every time I run an auction on eBay. It runs for seven days and after six of them, there’s very little movement on the items up for sale. You can click on the link to the right to see what DVDs I’m selling right now. The auctions end on Sunday.

This is normal, though. The first auction I ran was for the WITCHBLADE/DARKNESS 1/2 comic that you got free for signing up for a WIZARD Visa card. It was going for an average of $70-$100 at the time. I put mine up and only had a $40 bid after six days. On the seventh day, it jumped up to somewhere in the $70-$80 range.

Most bids on eBay aren’t placed until the last day for a couple of reasons. The first is that people browse categories for quick buys. If they want to see such-and-such a movie this week, why would they bid on an item that wouldn’t be auctioned off until a week from now? The second is that the snipers come in on the last day, hoping to pick up a cheap deal. If everyone waits till the last minute, there’s a chance that fewer people will bid. eBay makes this easier now by giving you the chance to “watch” auctions and keep track of them.

Still, as someone selling an item, that doesn’t make this any easier. I have five items up and only four of them have bids. I don’t think any of them are past the initial bid price. I know that will all change tomorrow, but I can’t help but worry now.

Such is human nature.

This is a website devoted to no longer functioning web sites about the band Weezer.

That’s right; someone is keeping track of Weezer fan sites that haven’t lasted. In addition, there are screen shots of those sites and explanations from their webmasters.

I just find it all so very weird.

There hasn’t been an update on the front page of Weezer’s home page since February. No word on the next album there yet, although there is talk of a concert DVD that should have been announced by now, you’d think. Eventually. If you read anything anywhere, please let me know in the comments section here. Thanks.

Bob Dylan man makes a career out of doing mind-numbing amounts of drugs and singing in a most unintelligible manner. Now, he stars in a movie where his lover is played by Penelope Cruz, who has to be at least 30 years his junior. And, to top it all off, it’s a movie with an incredible list of actors, including THE RIGHT STUFF’s Fred Ward, Christian Slater, Giovanni Ribisi, Ed Harris (in black face), Bruce Dern, Angela Bassett, Luke Wilson, Jessica Lang, John Goodman, and many more. It’s ridiculous.

The movie probably won’t make much money in the theaters, though. It’s called Masked and Anonymous. You’ve been warned.

It’s not that far away. They are in the studio now. You can follow their progress on their blogger. There’s no release date scheduled yet that I can tell, but they’re on the final mixes of the songs now.

This isn’t really big news. In fact, I think it’s surprising this didn’t happen months and months ago. Still, I wanted to mark it here: Sales of DVDs beat out VHS sales a few months ago. Now, rentals are kicking butt, too.

Not back for the little format that could… Six years and it’s officially on top.

I like heist movies. I like trickery and double-crossing and people using their brains over their muscle. THE ITALIAN JOB has all of that in the proper proportion. There’s only one double-cross, and that’s done early so as to set up the movie. The rest of the movie is ‘just’ trickery and planning.

Heist movies come in two flavors — the kind you know what’s going to happen and then something big screws it all up; and the kind where you don’t know what’s going to happen and the genius is in watching them pull it all off.

This movie has elements of both, which is why I like it so much. You see the various parts being set up, but you’re not sure how they all pay off. When they do, it’s thanks to some quick thinking and the ability to adapt to changing conditions.

The third act of the movie is the best part, as opposed to most movies these days that blow their wad in the opening act and then scramble to figure out how to end things. I can’t tell you why it’s so clever without spoilers, which is a bit frustrating. Suffice it to say, there’s a clever turn of plot that pits the two lead characters against each other and results in a fast-paced, yet well thought-out, finale that’s good for some chuckles.

No, the characters aren’t terribly deep. They’re easily defined by their name and their one skill apiece. Seth Green gets a little extra screen time as comic relief. The big romantic sub-plot of the movie is always underplayed, thankfully. It’s the heists that dominate the screen time, with a lot of colorful characters and a plot that doesn’t insult the viewer. I like it a lot. It’s the biggest surprise movie of the year for me. I didn’t expect much, but I had a great time.

Congratulations! You only have to travel one exit in distance on the highway. It’s only a half mile between where you get on and where you exit.

Let me give you a tip: This doesn’t mean the minimum speed limit doesn’t apply to you. This doesn’t make it acceptable to wander down the highway at a top speed of 35 because you’re going to get off shortly, anyway. You know those cars that are beginning to ride up your back bumper? They aren’t getting off at the next exit, and they get easily frustrated by your lackadaisical driving on a major highway. They’ve got 25 more miles to go and can’t change lanes to get around you because they’d get creamed by all the traffic in those other lanes doing a respectable amount of speed.

Please: drive like you mean it. Thanks.

Coke rigs tests.

It’s time for another John Grisham movie. This time, it looks really cool, though. It stars a bunch of name actors who’ve already been in a half-dozen movies this year. OK, that’s just Rachel Weisz — and even that’s only four movies. Still, she’s everywhere, isn’t she?

It looks like a great set-up. As Gene Hackman puts it in the trailer, “Trials are too important to be left up to juries.” And so the fix is in. How do you buy a jury? How do you blackmail one? Yes, it’s horribly cynical. Yes, the trailer makes it look like the movie is going to end with another big action piece instead of a smart one. So be it. It looks cool, and it stars Gene Hackman and Jon Cusack. That’s good enough for me.

You can see the trailer right about here.

The SCO Group is suing IBM over code theft issues regarding UNIX and Linux. They don’t really have a case, but it doesn’t matter in the current justice system, does it? These lawsuits aren’t meant to win back wrongfully-taken earnings. They’re meant to harass the company being sued into paying them off to go away. Need proof of that? Take the latest from Forbes Magazine, on the history behind SCO:

In 1996, SCO’s predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft, eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO’s chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions, and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions. (IKON acknowledges the settlement but disputes the amount.)

…

As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same–so are some of the players.

That’s this company’s mode of operation. They can’t successfully sell software, so instead they buy up something else in order to create a lawsuit out of it. Wonderful. Just the kind of people I’d want to be doing business with. Welcome to the Gotcha School of Business.

Yes, it’s time for another linguistics posting. I think this article not only explains the problem and its origins fairly well, but gives a reasonable solution. In an era of politically correct speech where we can’t say, for example, “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” we also have to question the use of the general pronoun, “he.”

I went to a school that has a “Womyn’s Concerns House.” I heard about this kind of crap too much.

Why not replace “he or she” or “s/he” or the general “he” with a singular form of “they”?

P.S. The true problem with Star Trek’s opening phrase there is that it splits the infinitive, but nobody ever seems to question that. They don’t teach grammar in school anymore, anyway.