Vectorman

Just finished watching all of The Big Bang Theory last week (took us around 3 months, I think?). I had never watched the show before, and now it's one of my all-time favorites. We were moderately bummed to be out of episodes to watch.

Yes - Talk It's not an album that gets brought up a lot since it was a bit of a commercial flop compared to 90125 and Big Generator, but there was a fair bit of technological envelope pushing going on. It was, to my understanding, one of the earliest albums where the majority of the recording was done random access digital with computer-based hard disk recording. At his home studio, Trevor Rabin set up four Macintosh IIci computers running MOTU Digital Performer software that were synced together, getting four tracks of hard disk audio from each for a total of 16 tracks...which sounds incredibly primitive today, but back in 1992/93 when Talk was recorded, that was a fairly new and exciting thing. He was a bit ahead of the curve and trying to do that probably a bit before the tech was really ready. Apparently there was a lot of back and forth between Rabin and the guys from MOTU with feature requests, shaping the software into something he could actually get it done with. I remember during the Rockline premiere of the album, when talking about how it was done with hard disk recording, the host asked him, "So do you think this is the future of Yes?" He replied, "I think it's the future of the recording industry. Tape is on its way out." Indeed. So yeah, this recording an album on a home computer thing that everybody takes for granted now, Rabin was one of the first to do it with Talk.

Very sad to hear. I always liked him. The role that always comes to mind first for me is brow-beaten Henry in Creepshow's "The Crate" story (IMO the highlight of the collection). "Just tell it to call you Billie!" I was just remembering that my rather eccentric senior-year English teacher used to put on different audio tapes for us to listen to during quiet study time, and one of them was one of Hal's Mark Twain routines. Not something you'd expect a bunch of 17 and 18-year-olds to really appreciate, but I recall it got some laughs even from that tough audience.

My dad, who was constantly hearing Rush music since both my older brother and I got into the band at high school age in the '80s, would jokingly sing his versions of some lyric lines. Some of them genuinely misheard and some, I think, just Dad being Dad and poking fun at things. "New World Man" became "New Squirrel Van" The chorus from "Distant Early Warning" was interpreted as "A whirlwind on my shoulder, and whatcha gonna do!" I remember when "Force Ten" hit the radio, I thought the chorus was "Look in - to the eye of the stone/ Look out - for the voice without form". There were a few other lines I just couldn't make out. (I had no CLUE what that song was supposed to be about when I first heard it. Was it somehow based on the movie Force 10 from Navarone, a film I'd heard of but never actually seen? Maybe...some of the lines almost sounded like they were describing military manoeuvres. I don't think I'd heard of the Beaufort Scale at that point.) My most recent (non-Rush) misheard lyric was actually on Porcupine Tree's "So Called Friend". Their Arriving Somewhere DVD is one of the various concert DVD's I've been watching for the last few years while getting in my workout on the elliptical machine. And for years I've been wondering what the lyrics on that song were. It almost sounded like "She blends the snow cone send and rips my life apart." (???) Finally last week I looked it up. "She bends my so called friend and rips my life apart".Oh.

Man, what an emotional moment in television...actually made me tear up just a little bit. It was like my childhood was back for a few minutes. So satisfying to see something Star Wars related finally, really hit the bullseye. Okay, I did like Rogue One pretty well but, for me, they really nailed it this time.

Mixed feelings. I'm not entirely surprised by this direction - we got a small preview of it on "Song of I" from the last record. I recall a while back in some interview or other, Steven was praising Billie Eilish and the really minimalist production on her tracks. The songs we've heard so far make it obvious it wasn't just a passing moment of admiration, it was something he took on board in no small measure. The thing is, trying to tap into that sort of current and speak to twentysomethings in their language when you're in your fifties is a dicey thing to attempt. You may, to a degree, sort of get where their heads are at on an intellectual/philosophical level, but you can't know what it's really like to be coming of age in the current era when that phase of life was three decades ago for you. Us Gen-X'ers may have a little more in common with the kids than our parents did with us, in terms of the media we consume - we hear a lot of the same music (whether we like it or not), watch a lot of the same trending TV series, etc. But we don't fully grasp what it's like to be them, and they know it. And if he's speaking to fans who have been with him since Porcupine Tree, most of them are old enough that they don't necessarily need or want him to try to talk to them in the musical language of Generation Z. I'm definitely into some electronic music (I guess that's obvious), but I'm not big on the really minmalist, stripped-down sort that seems to have been Steven's inspiration for this record. You definitely can change your instrumental palette from being guitar-centric to more synth-based without abandoning a more complex, prog-minded approach. You don't have to discard all that's come before to strike out into new territories. He could still have had Adam Holzman come in and liven it up with some of his insane soloing and electric piano comping, for example. I think things like that might have made this shift a bit more palatable to many fans who are understandably going, "Who is this person and what happened to Steven Wilson?". Having said all that, I at least can't fault him for being self-indulgent and doing exactly what he feels driven to do at any given time. He's the antithesis of the kind of artist who locks into a groove and stays in it for the rest of their career...he takes big risks and tries things. And I also can't blame him for being a little grumpy and cynical in 2020 and feeling compelled to rail against some of the vapid, stupid, soul-destroying trends in modern society. From a selfish standpoint, I kind of hope that these experiments in semi-trendy electro minimalism are a phase that will somehow, in future work, be incorporated into a larger picture that doesn't completely ignore his past. (OMG, I feel like I just wrote a novel...but I don't feel like deleting it and trying to condense it into one paragraph, so I'll just post it, hehe.)

2010: The Year We Make Contact Had just watched 2001 the previous day and like to watch them back-to-back once every few years. I've been on a bit of an '80s movie kick in general, lately. Especially films I used to watch repeatedly when I was around 12 to 17 years old and my family had one of those enormous 10-foot satellite dishes (the only option then for decent television selection living in the sticks with no cable available). Movies like Poltergeist, Twilight Zone - The Movie, Tootsie, The Terminator, The Last Starfighter, Star Trek II & III, The Money Pit, Blade Runner, Aliens, etc.

The Expanse...actually just have one episode left to watch tonight and we're all caught up. Always hate to see the episodes run out when you've found a new series you like that already has multiple seasons, eh?

Poltergeist The Fog The Thing (1982) Alien/Aliens Creepshow Pumpkinhead The Ring Insidious Dark City (well, sci-fi/horror) I'm sure there are many others I'm just not thinking of now that would be favorites. Obviously many would disagree, but to me, Insidious was the first horror film I'd seen in quite a while that actually captured some of the flavor of a classic movie like the original Poltergeist...where we're drawn into the at-first-ordinary world of a typical family as terrible things lurk around the corners of their lives and gradually reveal themselves. I wouldn't quite put it up there with the classics...it felt like they got almost there but a little something was still missing...I don't know that I could articulate exactly what. I don't know that I'd put Gerald's Game in my top list, but apparently it made an impression. Over a year ago I experienced a night terror about an hour after going to bed (very unusual - haven't had one since and don't recall having any prior). Woke up screaming bloody murder, scared the heck out of my better half and the dog. I had a hard time going back to sleep because I thought the Moonlight Man was in our house. Weird, since night terrors are not the result of actual nightmares so I couldn't have been dreaming about him, but somehow after I woke up, that's what the fear fixated on. For a while, I just laid there afraid to open my eyes because I was sure I'd find him leaning over the bed staring me in the face if I did. And naturally things like that seem so embarrassingly silly the next day. (But then, most things are scarier at night...aren't they?)

I couldn't agree more. It was like coming back home after a very long time away. Particularly after that episode, I was left with a "why did it take so long for this to happen" feeling. It does feel unfortunate that those characters were shelved for nearly two decades, thinking of all the additional stories that could have been told with them during that time. It seems like, for whatever reasons, ST offerings since TNG went away have had a hard time capturing our hearts to the same degree - and then these actors come back and, seemingly effortlessly, remind everyone how it's done.

Too late, I already did, hehe. Dark Phoenix is a frustrating movie. Starts off like it might have potential and there are some moments here and there I liked, but sadly, yes, falls short of hopes. With Jean's line from the previous film, "At least we can all agree the third one is always the worst," they were taunting us with the promise that they were determined to get it right this time...and then managed to fumble it AGAIN. One set of Marvel characters I wouldn't mind seeing show up in the films eventually is Alpha Flight. Maybe, given Wolverine's connection to the Hudsons and Alpha Flight in the comics, Marvel Studios was holding off until they had the X-Men rights as well (not to mention the rights to use the word "mutant", since some members of Alpha Flight are, although I guess they could have just referred to Northstar and Aurora as "enhanced" or "gifted" or some other alternative they've used before).

I could look it up for the exact text, but from memory, in a 1984 Keyboard magazine interview, the interviewer said, "You don't sing as high as you used to." And Geddy's response was basically, "No, and that's a conscious decision. It's hard to sing when you're using up all your energy to stay two octaves above mortal man. It takes a lot of work to keep punching your voice up. And I think my voice has a more pleasing sound in my natural speaking register. I can just relax and use my voice and sing." That was the gist of it, anyway. He really sounded great on the VT tour after the long break. But he was entering his 50's and one's anatomy isn't as forgiving at that age as it is when you're younger. IMO it would have behooved them, for the sake of Geddy's vocal longevity, to drop the keys on a lot of their material in concert going forward from that point, not just one or two songs. I know some didn't like hearing Rush tune down a whole step on material like "2112" and "Circumstances," but I think the change in sonic texture hearing something in a different key just makes it a fresh and interestingly different take on it. To me, there's nothing sacred about the original key in which a song was recorded - that just happened to be the key they landed on at the time. If they had written and recorded "The Big Money" starting off in A instead of B, for example, people would just hear that as "how it's supposed to sound."

Nothing I could say that probably hasn't already been said. Just dumbfounded at the moment. A decade from now, news of a Rush member's passing wouldn't have come as quite so much of a shock, but this was such completely unexpected and almost surreal news to receive today. So many icons have passed at around the same age in recent years - Chris Squire, John Wetton, Greg Lake, and now Neil. Sad times, indeed.

I'm watching S12 because, well, I've always watched the show...it's one of those threads spanning across the decades of life that is sort of comforting in a way. I admit I'm having some difficulty embracing Jodie's incarnation, just because I feel like there are some markedly more powerful actresses who could be making the first female Doctor into a bigger deal, Tilda Swinton being the one I most often find myself imagining. We just watched Constantine when company was up for the holidays, and the scene where we first see Tilda as Gabriel in the library, in that elegant suit with that self-possessed, otherworldly, quietly smoldering look of someone who has been around a very long time and seen things ordinary people can't imagine. For a second there, I could almost imagine that as The Doctor, and a formidable version it would be. Btw, it's hard not to mention...What was up with that business at the beginning of E1 with The Doctor working on the TARDIS in an auto garage by poking around the bottom of it with hoses seemingly extending out of its inner dimensions right through its outer plasmic shell through the bottom of the police box? So now stuff can poke out of the interior dimensions anywhere a writer pleases? Strange.

Oh HECK, my apologies. I'm usually conscious of that sort of thing when talking about these films in person but this time it completely slipped my mind!

It looks potentially entertaining. It might have been better if Marvel had somehow managed to fit in a Black Widow film or two before we arrived at Endgame, rather than doing things out of sequence.