A Plethora of Good Music; Dr. Sowell Explains it All; Plus, thank you, Mr. Janitor

So my sister Jamie and I have both shared for many years the sentiment that the Japanese are a very peculiar people. That said, they have made some great animation, or anime. In particular I love the Hayao Miyazaki-directed films "Castle in the Sky," "Princess Mononoke," "Spirited Away," and "Howl's Moving Castle." However, I have also been tempted at times by their anime tv series. The cool thing that the Japanese peopled do is that they actually do long-form story telling with their cartoon series, with complex story lines that stretch across a season. They also do not relegate animation to just children-targeted stories or comedy. They do any genre, and I mean ANY genre, in their animation, and not just for kids but plenty of stuff for adults. On the bad side though, besides the sometimes bizarre, so-far-over-the-top-you-no-longer-even-know-what-the-word-"top"-means humor, they also may include not-so-Mormon-friendly stuff in their toons, such as nudity, swearing, or graphic violence.

The anime that now most tempts me (but which I shall probably never watch in its entirety) is an (intentionally) one-season anime from 1998 called "Cowboy Bebop." I remember a specific friend in high school really loving the series, but I never looked at it at the time (this was a common situation for me at high school; a number of my friends were big-time anime fans, but I never really got into it). Since then, though, I've looked up some clips from the show, and recently got on a kick of watching tons of clips from it after reading a recent Orson Scott Card-penned column that recommended the show.

It's a cool sci-fi show following a group of bounty hunters as they track down bounties and deal with other problems across the solar system in the late 21st century. It's real genre-bender, with sci-fi, film noir, western, and martial-arts action influences all rolled together. From the pieces I've watched of it, it seems like one of the most artistically impressive shows ever put on TV: the plots, the characters, the animation, and the action are all engrossing and extremely well-executed. However, it does contain some swearing, some very revealing costumes on the main female character (though no nudity), and the violence can be pretty graphic. So I don't know that I'll ever pick up the DVDs and watch it all. There is one element from the show about which I have no guilt indulging in: the music.

The show has "Bebop" (a kind of jazz) in the title, and the music does indeed play a huge part in the show, lending a unique mood and atmosphere to the proceedings. And while the soundtrack does contain a lot of jazz, it also does music of lots of other genres, like blues, rock and roll songs, and even classical-influenced choral pieces. What is so impressive to me about all this is that I think it's all composed and written by one composer: the Japanese female composer Yoko Kanno. It blows my mind at how well she's able to write music in so many different genres. So I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite pieces of music from the show and demonstrate the variety that is on display.

Tank!
This is an expanded version of the opening theme of the show. Pretty dang awesome, if you ask me. I've listened to this over and over.

Goodnight, Julia
Here's another sweet jazz piece, though of a much more somber mood.

Rain
A cool organ-dominated rock ballad from the show. It plays during a lead-up to a showdown between the main protagonist, super-awesome Spike, and a bunch of baddies led by his arch-nemisis, Vicious, in a big cathedral.

Spokey Dokey
Epic country-blues harmonica.

Call Me, Call Me
Just a nice, well-written rock song.

Green Bird
For me, this is such an amazingly beautiful choral-piano piece. It got stuck in my head for quite a while. As an example of how the show likes to juxtapose the actual onscreen events with music, this serene piece of music plays right after a wounded Spike is violently thrown through a stained-glass window. The music plays as he falls in slow-mo, surrounded by shards of broken glass, with random visions of his past flashing before his eyes and as the cathedral-level he was just thrown out of explodes (Spike left the man who chucked him out the window a nice gift in the form of an about-to-detonate grenade).

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Also, Paul Simon just came out with a new album this past Tuesday: "So Beautiful or So What." Paul Simon is one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, certainly in my top-5. I already had two of his albums, "Graceland" and "Rhythm of the Saints," and I intend over the course of my life to purchase several others. I think there are not may songwriters out there that so consistently write songs, from their famous singles to their lesser-known tracks, that I like so much.

I'd been eagerly anticipating this album ever since hearing about it some time towards the end of last year. So I broke down and purchased this one online off amazon, and...at 69 the master's still got it! His songs remain very lyrically and musically creative and interesting. His voice still sounds great, too. I read an interview where he said he's given up smoking, dairy, and caffeine to protect his vocal cords. As such, I think it is time we have some Mormon missionaries ambush this guy. C'mon, he's prime material for baptism now. This album even includes a lot of mentions of God in these songs (though often in kind of a humorous way). Here's two of the singles he released from the album.

Getting Ready for Christmas Day

The Afterlife

So there's some cool music for y'all to check out. Your welcome, America.

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Here's a dead-on quote from one of my favorite political commentators/economists/philosophers, Thomas Sowell: "Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected."

The whole column that that quote is from is a great read, laying out why increasing taxes on those evil, greedy rich people actually decreases tax revenue, and why the class warriors still want to do it anyway.

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Also, I should give a shout-out to the really awesome janitor (whose name I sadly never got) who found the labtop that I had stupidly forgotten and left under my desk during my evening Wednesday class, and Fernando, who stored it in his office. For a time I seriously feared my labtop had been lost forever, but these two wonderful members of the human race preserved my labtop in safe keeping till I could come to reclaim it. Perhaps I shall write an ode to them sometime.

In which I discuss actor advocay, anguish, and alcohol

So while I was surfing the web recently I saw a video about some actress I didn’t know talking about saving whales or some such other world problem (it wasn’t about saving whales, but that’s the cliché so I’m using it to represent whatever). Now, the use of a famous (or not-so-famous) actor or actress to help raise awareness over some social, political, or health issue is by now a well-worn tradition in American media. I remember hearing recently about a pro-Obamacare ad starring the great who-knows-how-old-he-must-be-by-now Andy Griffith.

Now many people have commented on the ridiculousness of Hollywood celebrities trying to sound authoritative on different social issues, so what I’m saying isn’t really anything new, but I still find it ridiculous to see an online ad that says “Actor [insert name] talks about [insert topic that’s not acting].” Do we have plumbers do ads to raise awareness about good dental hygiene? Do we have astronauts do ads about preventing forest fires? Why in the world are we having people whose only real job is being attractive and entertainingly saying lines that screenwriters put into their mouths the ones that we have speak about anything outside of acting?

Now, I think at the same time I’m probably being a little unfair about this. After all, if you’re a wealthy, famous person with plenty of free time, it’s entirely possible for you to do real research on an issue and then to go and try to raise awareness about something you care about. And, sadly, we humans do have a tendency to listen more to a person with good looks and charisma than an uncharismatic guy who actually knows what he’s talking about, so if you’re an organization trying to get public support for something, it is the shrewd move to get some gorgeous spokesperson for your cause (Andy Griffith is pretty easy on the eyes, after all).
An awesome parody of this sort of thing is Neil Patrick Harris’ Old Spice ad. Check it out on youtube. Classic.

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So I’ve been off-and-on in a bit of a depressed, lonely, heartbroken funk lately, and there’s nothing that depressed, lonely, heartbroken people like to do more than listen to songs about being depressed and lonely and heartbroken (well, ok, for non-Mormons it’s probably getting drunk out of your mind but as for me I like music). So, I’ve been doing a lot of listening to melancholy songs lately and here are a few of my favorites for those times when you’re feeling down and want to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in you (brownie points to whoever knows what song I just referenced there):

The Script- Breakeven (very catchy and does a real good job talking about how insane one feels when they’re totally heartbroken over someone and the other person ain’t; for some reason I just love the line, “Her best days are some of my worst”)

Frou Frou- It’s Good to Be in Love, The Dumbing Down of Love (actually, the whole album by Frou Frou [“Details”] makes for a wonderful 40 minutes or so of beautifully crafted melancholia, but these two in particular I think pack the biggest emotional punch for those that are feeling lonely or heartbroken)

Porcupine Tree- So Low (WOW, this is such a simple, beautiful, terrible slow song about a relationship where one person is far more emotionally invested than another [at least that’s how I interpret it, anyways])

John Mayer- Dreaming with a Broken Heart (whatever you think of his personality and behavior, John Mayer is a terrific songwriter and in this song he nails the topic of, well, dreaming with a broken heart)

Brandi Carlile- Dreams (a bit more energetic and rock and roll sounding than the others, but I think this one’s good if the frustration and tension is really building up inside you and you want a loud, driving chorus to wail along with).

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Going back to the comment I made earlier about getting drunk out of your mind, yesterday I was again very grateful for the fact that I was raised in a good Mormon household and am a teetotaler. Because, if I was somebody with no aversion to consuming liquors, I have the feeling that given my mood I would have gone and gotten really drunk and then probably would have done or said some really stupid things that I would later regret. Which makes me wonder how a person with any kind of pride would want to allow their self-control to vanish into the haze of drunkenness? Because if you’re feeling really emotionally vulnerable I’m pretty sure alcohol just sets you up for some epic self-humiliation.