Last night was my 3rd time seeing SY on tour in support of Rather Ripped this year. Maybe because of that or because I was behind tall people the whole show, I wasn’t entirely blown away.

The openers were way out there. The Skaters played one song for 20 minutes. It seemed like guitar fuzz only to me, but I actually enjoyed it. 16 Bitch Pile-Up was a bit different. They played mostly tape loops and effects boxes. Jeff (a fellow MLIS student that went with me) said he thought they sounded amateurish. He’s a fan of experimental music like I am, but I do see his point. Some of the clicks and pops and scratchy noises didn’t seem like there was much thought put in to them. They did have some really great sounds toward the end of their set though, mostly when the music became full and loud.

The crowd absolutely hated this band. I’ve never heard nastier things being shouted at people on stage before. I wish Sonic Youth knew how the crowd reacted to the noise and then threw the same stuff at them. I’m always up for a half an hour or more of feedback from them. They actually seemed to do a little less of that this time. “Teenage Riot” had a long outro of guitar drones, but there wasn’t much else in the set.

The set with a few annotations:

Candle (great surprise as an opener)
Incinerate
Reena
Eric’s Trip (I would’ve liked to see another Lee song since I’ve seen this 3 times)
Do You Believe in Rapture?
What a Waste
The World Looks Red (what a treat!)
The Neutral
Rats
Jams Run Free
Pink Steam (the best of the new songs played, this song rocks)
Or
———
Turquoise Boy
Teenage Riot (the crowd went wild, it was great to hear)
———
Lights Out
Shaking Hell

technorati tags:sonicyouth, wiltern, losangeles, liveshows, music

Blogged with Flock

Today I found one benefit to living in Los Angeles: The Reason Foundation is nearby. Last week I got an email inviting me to a lunchtime colloquium at their office. Adrian Moore spoke about the initiatives and propositions on the upcoming California ballot.
His analysis for this time around found that the proposed borrowing in this year’s ballot would lead to something like an extraordinary $88 billion in debt and interest for the state. Considering that most state budgets are less than half of that amount in their entirety, the amount should shock even citizens of New York and Texas.

Another disturbing finding about the bond proposals is that only a small fraction of the money would be spent on infrastructure–the only legitimate expense to be funded by debt. Most of the money would be allocated just to carry on existing programs, which should obviously be allocated for in the annual budget of the state.

It frustrates me to realize that even people who manage to get things on the ballot do not understand the wasteful and unaccountable nature of government and have no concept of economics whatsoever. The most obvious example of that is Prop 87 which would make it illegal for oil companies to pass a drilling tax on to consumers.

Even if there were detailed scrutinizing of the companies’ financial statements by government, Californians would end up paying higher prices at the pump because of the added costs of importing more oil. Oil would have to be imported because no company would keep low-producing wells online that would become unprofitable because of the added tax and therefore the supply being generated locally within California would need to be offset by oil from somewhere else.

I’m not sticking up for the oil companies; they are certainly involved in plenty of unsavory back room deals and receive for too many subsidies for me to be their cheerleader. I’m just laying out simply what will happen economically.

Anyway, the Reason Foundation consolidated much of its analysis on a great site at http://reason.org/californiaballot/ and if you look at anything read over the handy Pocket Guide to Propositions (.pdf).

technorati tags:california, election2006, propositions, initiatives, prop87, reason

Blogged with Flock

This is a bit old by now, but I’ve been quite busy this weekend.

The front page headline of Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle read: Silence means prison, Judge tells reporters. Apparently two Chronicle reporters are being threatened with jail time for not revealing court sources in their ongoing coverage of the BALCO story.

I know very little about the story. I don’t follow sports at all and I don’t care about steroid use in sports. What I do follow with interest are cases of First Amendment disputes, overarching government authority, and the Drug War. Regardless of the reporters’ opinions on how the whole steroids in baseball controversy should be solved (I’m not aware of what their opinions actually are), the whole issue stems from the War on Drugs.

Were the use of steroids among the general population not a matter of illegality but of personal choice, the issue could have been resolved within Major League Baseball itself. If baseball players had the choice of whether or not to use steroids without the threat of legal action, the only consequences they would face would be the rules of the league or of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball as a private, voluntary organization is perfectly capable of setting its own rules with regard to its members’ behavior. If they wanted to keep steroids against the rules of the game, they could easily bar any player who infringes upon that rule. (There are those who say let them be permitted.) Also, as a voluntary organization, testing could be mandated in any fashion and players who disagreed with the policy could leave by choice. The Chronicle reporters would still have been covering a fantastic controversy whether or not steroid use was considered illegal by the government.

The fact that this scandal has now resulted in the very real threat of prison for journalists simply doing their jobs is rather shocking. The drug warriors (which include many prosecutors and judges) apparently regard the trampling of rights as insignificant as long as high profile users get busted. That the matter of steroid use among athletes is a higher priority among government prosecutors than the abuses perpetrated by government upon citizens every day appalls me.

technorati tags: baseball, balco, steroids, drugwar, freespeech, freepress

It is Sunday in Los Angeles. I have been here since Thursday night; in my apartment since Friday morning. I met my roommate, Patrick, when he came in Friday afternoon. He seems like a real reasonable guy. This next year (or two) will not be one of those scary roommate experiences from what I can tell so far.

We were at dinner yesterday (Patrick and I) when the specter of loneliness hit me. It had been only a couple of days, and I’d been in IM and text messaging contact with friends, but I missed them greatly. Knowing that opportunities to see them would be rare I got a little sad.

So far it has been very boring. Aquiring furnishings is a priority, but finding deals seems tricky, especially when having to consider the LA traffic.

I will be returning to San Jose soon. I don’t think I can handle a week of sitting here when my job nor my classes have started. I’ll definitely be attending Ming & Ping on Saturday and a birthday party on Sunday.

I need to phase myself in to the fact that I have relocated.

technorati tags:loneliness, Los Angeles

Blogged with Flock

My roommated turned on the TV yesterday and there was all this reporting going on about the Pope offending Muslims or something. It showed a whole bunch of pissed off people marching in the streets and firebombing churches in the Middle East. I wondered what the Pope could have said to make people so mad, but no one was reporting on that at all. It actually seemed to me that the news reporters were taking it as a given that what the Pope said was offensive.

Luckily I stumbled upon this post by Tim Cavanaugh over at Hit & Run where he gives the entire context of what the Pope actually said. He also concudes:

The content is really unimportant. You can be sure none of the lunatics torching churches or burning the pope in effigy have any idea what he actually said. People who are more interested in this stuff than I am can debate whether Islam actually added anything to religion that wasn’t already in Judaism and/or Christianity—beyond teetotaling, which is undoubtedly evil and inhuman.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

technorati tags:pope, islam, christianity, violence

Blogged with Flock