Matt Marks Music

I actually watched pretty much the entire show last night – well, Bill and I did flip back and forth a bit between a quite humorous comedy on the Spanish station where the bleeped out words were scribbled out with what appeared to be marker in the subtitles – and yeah, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Oscars. They were pretty neat I guess. Hugh Jackman managed to stave off annoyance for the most part; Ben Stiller delighted people for whom the Joaquin Phoenix meme is still funny (not I, said the worm); Queen Latifah had her auto-tune solo over pictures of dead people; the Man on Wire dude momentarily thawed my cynicism; Sean Penn dissed a bunch of people’s grandkids while Mickey pretended to be happy for him; the Best Picture award was announced as my ass – who hadn’t seen one of them – stared apathetically (with a shade more scorn for Benjamin Button, for whose screenwriter needs to be further punished for giving to world Forrest Gump oh so many years ago); and Tina and Steve made me smile (seriously dude, do a movie with Tina and Tyler Durden the part of your personality that makes you do shit like The Pink Panther and that movie where you have a bunch of kids or something!).

K, I’ll attempt a little more focus (I was up late, please bless the mess that is my brain today!):

The freaking kumbaya-ass tributes to the nominated actors and actresses, WTF…
Who on earth wants to watch a bunch of rich artists get their ego’s rub-and-tugged by other rich artists in some creepy prayer circle of feigned admiration? Show me a clip of them doing their job so I can see the work for which they are nominated. These awkward masturbatory gestures took 4 times as long as the normal way of doing it and have no relevance to anyone outside of the people in that hall. They are nominated for doing something artistic, show it to us!

K, I need more coffee. Tired ranty Mafoo out!

Use your new weapon wisely my children.

What in the holy hell is this all about:

Is this what the conservatives have resorted to? That somehow, with an Obama administration, we are headed a new civil war and a Mad Max-style dystopia with roving motorcycle gangs (they actually discuss this as a very possible outcome!)? I’m sorry – and I hate to use the term irresponsible when referring to the press – but this is the kind of irresponsible fear-mongering that leads to anti-government paranoia and events like Oklahoma City. It’s rather entertaining on an ironic level, but I can easily imagine some radical, gun-loving nut somewhere taking this shit way too seriously. On one hand, it’s nice to see conservatives literally going crazy as they rack up unprecedented amounts of FAIL, but on the other, it’s kinda really creeping me the fuck out…

Hey all, my good friend James Moore is playing my piece for banjo and track – Like A Prayer REMIX – tonight at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark’s Church. James is a collaborator on several projects with me – including The Little Death, Ensemble de Sade, and the upcoming New Music Bake Sale (more on that soon!) – so I was stoked to write this piece for him. It’s a straight-up remix, chock full of chopped gabber-style Madonna samples, amen breaks nearing 200bpm, and squelchy analog synths smacking that saccharine pop tonality straight into your earholes. Now imagine that with everyone’s favorite bearded banjo player twanging his ass off over all over it. Worth checking out. He’s playing several other pieces written for him as well, including works by Wil Smith, Lainie Fefferman, Paula Matthusen, and Matthew Welch, so my ass is in esteemed company.

Also on the program is California EAR Unit’s Eric km Clark, a composer and violinist of some really cool and far-out ideas; one such is exploring the effects of forced limitations on performers (What the fuck does that mean? You’ll just have to come see!). He’ll be playing his own work, as well as pieces by Catherine Lamb, Travis Just, Tashi Wada, and Harris Wulfson.

Here’s the relevant info:

Oh yeah, and free beer.

I’m gonna go ahead and say that I don’t think the cartoon was deliberately racist – ie. portraying Obama as a monkey because he’s black – but I do think it’s kinda sick, and really dumb. I get it, the stimulus bill is stupid (just like a chimpanzee!) and there was a recent story about a chimpanzee that was killed after mauling its owner (topical!), if only we could kill the stimulus bill like they killed that chimp! Ummm… yeah. Look, Obama didn’t write the stimulus bill – and I seriously doubt the cartoonist somehow thought this to be the case – so it doesn’t really make any sense in a racist context. Unfortunately for the cartoonist and the Post, it barely makes sense in its intended context, so unsurprisingly people are looking for other meanings.

In these instances I’m torn between wanting to see the Post (News Corp) fucked in any way possible, and my own inner barometer of fairness. I’m also a fan of seeing pathetic attempts at humor being punished (and after wasting 2 minutes of my life watching this Half Hour News Hour comedic abortion, I’d especially like to get my News Corp-humor rage on…), but it’s hard to see Spike and Al’s backlash as anything but opportunistic. The Post’s apology was half-hearted at best:

“It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

“Period.

“But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

“This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

“However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

“To them, no apology is due.

“Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”

As much as I hate to say it though, I’m gonna have to take the Post’s side on this. If anything, they should have apologized for having a tacky, violent cartoon in a magazine that is readily available to children. But the enthusiasm with which many people call for censorship disturbs me more than hundreds of cartoons of this type ever could, even if it is a call for self-censorship. There are tons of reasons to boycott the Post – hell, I have an unofficial boycott on it, haven’t bought one in God knows how long – but a tacky joke should not be one of them. The problem is, it’s easier to get people riled up on one seemingly-racist cartoon then it is getting people riled up over continuous systematic right-wing jingoism spanning years. But just because I pray for the downfall of this paper (and News Corp itself) does that mean I should jump at the chance at kicking it while it’s down? I’ll admit though, it’s mighty tempting.

I’m currently spending every free moment hard at work on my new album, so there’s not too much bloggin’ going on here for the time being, but I’ll try and post some interesting videos and such as I see ’em.

Here’s an amazingly simple and helpful explanation of the Credit and Housing crisis. I think I’m starting to get it…

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I don’t care what people say, this was an awesome performance:

While sitting in a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina, I was just devastated by this song from the 1972 soul documentary Wattstax. I keep watching it over and over because I can’t believe how perfect it is.

That spoken intro is literally one of the best things I have ever heard. And the song and video is simply gorgeous. Damn… I gotta listen to more Stax albums.