Thursday, June 03, 2004

My fifteen minutes in which to rock and roll

Holy Shit!

Wish me luck. I’m off with two friends to play a 20-minute live set which will represent my first appearance on a rock stage in almost exactly ten years. I’m on bass, we don’t know what exactly we’re going to play, and tonight and tonight only we are under the moniker “Tonight We Hunt And Kill Crispin Glover.” Our one finished song is an instrumental called “I Am Your Density.”

Accolades to the first reader who can tell me what these two titles have to do with one another.

We’re gonna rip their lungs out. It’s gonna be that good. Bad. Good. Definitely good.

[wik] ...and accolades go to the pseudonymous “Edward Van Halen” for accurately identifying “Back to the Future” as the unifying theme.

It went okay. It was definitely a fun fifteen minutes, and it was good to play in front of people. I only have two things to bitch about, which is about twelve less than usual. First: I hate, hate Hartke amplifiers. They’re the leading bass amp maker, and they suck. I play an early-’70s Fender Jazz Bass, which like its cousin the Stratocaster guitar, is a versatile, clean-sounding instrument. The trouble is, much like the Strat, getting a good sound has partly to do with what amp you pair it with. Hartkes, especially the high-end heads/cabinets like I played through last night, have a very clean, clear, even brittle sound to them that’s great for the studio but doesn’t do it for me. Even though the head had dual-channel many-frequency eq’s and high- and low- bandpass, the best I could do was a sound that was round and low, but still sort of shiny and tanky. That’s what you get from putting a clean-sounding bass with a clean-sounding amp.

Non-bass players won’t get this, but when you bear down on an electric bass, especially one of the classic models, you get a different attack to what you play that’s a bit metallic. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers makes great use of this sound. However, through a Hartke, this sound can never be more than mannered and polished. I prefer a fuzzier, less trebly sound like you can get from Fender Bassman or a Gallien-Krueger. So the sound was a bit of a drag.

Also, I’d forgotten how hard it is to hear in a live setting. Even with just three instruments and no vocals, if you don’t have a monitor system to go by, trying to get a tight groove in a room that’s new to you is like trying to drive a car blindfolded. Deeply frustrating.

But what the hell. I’ll do it again. I’m married, so I no longer have to worry about getting chicks, and I have a job so I don’t have to worry about doing it for money. I answer to a higher power now: ROCK.


Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 09:08 PM
Holy Shit! • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Failing upward

Lead Pipe Cruelty

Bernard Law, otherwise known as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, Protector of Babytouchers, has been reassigned by the Pope. I’m not Catholic, not by a long shot, so I don’t pretend to know too much of how the church works traditionally. I do know that the priesthood takes care of its own, but even so it seems wrong that a man who is largely responsible for covering up and perpetuating a widespread and decades-long child abuse crisis, who knowingly allowed children to be put in danger of abuse time and again, is now being rewarded with the “archpriest[hood] of St. Mary Major Basilica,” one of “‘the four most important basilicas’ in Rome,” with a probable “10,000 euro monthly stipend, or about $12,000,” a post which is “also likely to make Cardinal Law one of the most influential Americans in the Vatican.”

I don’t mean to malign the Catholic church. This just doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. Why give Law a Roman sinecure and the Pope’s ear, instead of putting him quietly to pasture somewhere out of the way? 


Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 04:20 PM
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What do we believe in? Ahh…. what day is it again?

Partisan Politics

Ken of Oldsmoblogger notes that the Reform Party has picked whom they will endorse this election cycle.... Drum roll.... Ralph Nader.

Ken astutely asks, “[c]an a party that will nominate Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader for the highest office in the land--in consecutive elections--possibly stand for anything? Beyond, that is, getting enough votes to preserve ballot access, get media play, and maybe qualify for federal matching funds?”

Well?


Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 03:37 PM
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The second coming… of Al Haig

Unmitigated Gall

Somebody forgot to tell John Ashcroft that he’s not in charge here. The same group he claimed was going to attack the US soon-- soon!, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, are the same defunct band of jokers who “claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London and the Madrid bombing. None of the claims was found to be credible.”

Hat tip to Norbizness. 


Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 03:29 PM
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I’m sure the job was its own reward.

Partisan Politics

Via Instapundit, I see that CIA Director George Tenet has resigned. I would rather have seen his ass fired, and about two years ago, but hey… what’s a couple dozen months when national security is at stake?

[wik] Patton is all over this like a fat boy on pie.

The internecine battle between the screwball peace-niks at the State Department and CIA, on one side, and the Pentagon and White House on the other has finally boiled over. The pivot point appears to be Chalabi, and all of the (so far unsubstantiated and prima facie silly) allegations of his being an Iranian agent. State and CIA have been leaking like sieves on the story, with the apparent intent of embarrassing the President and Pentagon.

If the next personnel action is a high-level departure at State, I’ll claim victory here. And if no other high-level departures occur at either CIA or State, I’ll likely have been incorrect.


Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 03:12 PM
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All Hail the God of Walks

Entertainment

If you’ve read Michael Lewis’ modern baseball classic, “Moneyball,” you will remember a kid named Kevin Youkilis, a beefy, slowfooted John Kruk-type “ballplayer not athelete” third baseman with an unnatural ability to draw walks. If you haven’t read Michael Lewis’ modern baseball classic, “Moneyball,” well, you should, and do please reread the previous sentence because it contains information you need to know.

Youkilis appears in Lewis’ book because he doesn’t fit the mold of the sterotypical great ballplayer, the Alex Rodriguez five-tool wonder. Instead, he is a slow, slap-hitting tub of lard. The clincher is that despite his average abilities and physique, he’s a preternaturally patient hitter, a Sabremetrician’s dream. His on-base percentage in the minor leagues has been astronomical, mainly due to his ability to work pitchers deep in the count to draw walks-- indeed, in “Moneyball” he is dubbed “Euclis, the Greek God of Walks.” In the newfangled thinkery of the Boston Red Sox’ management, the tubby God of Walks is more valuable than a hacker who swings for power and strikes out frequently. After all, a player on base can score a run, and a player who strikes out has wasted one of only twenty-seven chances per game the team has to score that same run.

With Boston Red Sox third baseman Bill Mueller injured, Youkilis has finally made his major league debut. In twelve games with the Sox, he has posted an OBP of .442 and walked 9 times. Although he has also struck out twelve times in that same span, a period of adjustment to major league pitching is to be expected. Even given Youk’s need to adjust to the majors, his .442 OBP compares favorably to such marquee on-base generators as Todd Helton (career .427, first year .337), Barry Bonds (career .436, first year .330), and model leadoff man Rickey Henderson (career .401, first year .338). Put another way, Kevin Youkilis in his first year is getting on base more often than Barry Bonds, one of the all-time elite offensive players, has done in 11 out of his 17 seasons. Not bad.

Can we expect Bonds-like numbers all around from the God of Walks? No. Like I said, he’s a beefy, slowfooted heir to John Kruk’s mantle. But the God of Walks is an eternal journeyman of a type I always have a lot of fun watching. Now that Krukker’s out of the game, Rickey Henderson is playing minor-league ball in Newark, and Joe Randa is in exile in Kansas City, we need Youk. Welcome to the show, kid.

Glossary for non-baseball types:

Walk: A hitter earns a free walk to first base if a pitcher throws four “balls,” or pitches outside the strike zone (defined by the left and right edges of home plate, the player’s knees, and the midpoint between the belt and the top of the shoulders) that the hitter does not swing at.
Batting Average: Actually a ratio, of the number of successful at-bats producing a hit to the total number of at-bats the player sees. A BA of .300 is considered good, meaning that a good baseball player will fail more than two-thirds of the time. Baseball is a hard game.
At-bat: From Wikipedia: An at-bat (AB) is used to calculate other data such as batting average. A player has an at bat every time he comes to bat except under the following circumstances:

  • He receives a base on balls (BB).
  • He is hit by pitch (HBP).
  • He hits a sacrifice fly or a sacrifice bunt (a “sacrifice” meaning the batter allows himself to be put out, advancing other baserunners one base).
  • He is awarded first base due to interference or obstruction.
  • The inning ends while he is still at bat (due to the third out being made by a runner caught stealing, for example)
    OBP: On-base percentage. Describes how often a player reaches base, derived by adding a player’s batting average to the number of times he walks, and dividing both by overall plate appearances. An OBP of about .330 is average.
    OPS: On-base percentage plus slugging. Considered by some the most useful shorthand measure of offensive merit. Derived by adding a player’s OBP to his Slugging Percentage. Slugging Percentage is a ratio describing how frequently a player hits for extra bases (doubles, triples, or home runs). Elite players have an OPS of at least .750. Barry Bonds’ OPS since 2000 has been 1.366.
    Five-tool player: The proverbial everything man. A player who can hit for power, hit for percentage, steal bases, field well, and throw hard and accurately. Traditionally considered the perfect player. New-school managers such as Billy Beane of Oakland and Theo Epstein of Boston put less value on five-tool players, choosing to emphasize other traits that are currently undervalued in the player salary market.
    Sabremetrics: A statistical method for analyzing baseball. Name derived from SABR, for the Society for American Baseball Research. See the Wikipedia definition.
    Baseball: The most perfect of all possible games, set free of time, history, and space, in this, the most perfect of all possible worlds. You can keeps your nasssssty rounders and cricket, preciousss!


    Posted by Johno on 06/03/04 at 02:06 PM
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