Pop-up Videos Minus The Videos R.I.P.

Well, I had originally intended my music videos on YouTube to initiate conversations about songs that I like. Instead, I received a plethora of comments using curse words that other users didn't take the time to spell correctly. A lot of the comments were mean or just plain ignorant. And the majority of the negative comments came from people who had themselves not posted a single video; their only contribution being their vitriol.

There were others who seemed to enjoy my videos and for that, I sincerely thank them.

But the problem was also the fact that services are now readily available on the internet to convert Flash video (such as YouTube) so that it may be saved. Thus, my postings of songs which I did not originally think could be used to cheat the artist out of a buck, were doing just that. The Gambler had hit around 45,000 viewings, which isn't a lot for YouTube, but it's enough when you think that half of those viewings might have been used to avoid paying to listen to the song. In other words, I cheated Kenny Rogers out of about $22,500. Sorry Kenny.

Sorry, Polyphonic Spree, The Decemberists, and Elton John. I meant no harm. My efforts were based in an honest appreciation for your art.

It's A Stereotype, Isn't It?

I mean the movie Heathers used it to paint a picture of the mental state of a character. Really, is there anything more pretentious than quoting Moby Dick?

I finally gave in and joined Facebook. Part of creating my profile was to add "favorite quotes." I started thinking about all of my favorite quotes and quickly realized just how many of them come from this book. So, I figured I'd just add them as a post.

I realize most of you won't read all of them but give a few of them a look. If you feel like investing the time, I can tell you they are even better within the context of the entire book.

"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance."

"...even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself."

"Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; he's Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"

"...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

"hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands - how to rig jury-masts - how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."

"The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through."

"But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God..."

"Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!"

"...for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

"I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."

"Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions."

"Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man."

"...he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests."

"...for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it..."

"...he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast."

"More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile."

"Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death."

"For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab."

"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up."

"He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it."

"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

"Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting!"

>"Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer;"

"Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once."

"Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown..."

"For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them."

"...it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time)..."

"...all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

"...all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad."

"Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright."

"For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it."

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

The Loft, The Loft, The Loft Is On Fire

You know, my friend Jeremy has a blog where he reviews all of the shows that he goes to. He does an excellent job and sees many more bands than his "older, married with kids" friend can (me if you needed to be told.) So I figured I might try to cover an aspect of the musical venues that he doesn't really talk about.

Becoming a firefighter years ago forever changed my thinking. I tend to want to quantify danger in any situation. A few months ago when we went to an upscale hotel bar after dinner, I couldn't help thinking what I would do if the far corner of the room caught on fire. It plays out in my head kind of like the W.O.P.R contemplated World War III, only I'm not as fast or smart.

Anyway, my career choice coupled with what happened at the Great White show at The Station Nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003 (currently the fourth most deadly nightclub fire in the US) leaves me going to shows and looking for ways out of the building. So I think I will begin to review the venues themselves from a fire safety standpoint. I'm not trying to take the place of the Fire Marshal here, I'm just theorizing on how the building itself would affect a fire. Let's start with the venue for my last show, which was covered in the previous post.

The Loft

1374 West Peachtree Street

Atlanta, GA 30309

Capacity: 800

Visited on: August 18, 2008

Reason for visit: Bands - Steel Train and The Hush Sound

What Could Burn: The Loft is located in an old office building of sorts. It's typical fire-resistive construction: concrete. This makes it really good for withstanding fires since the building won't burn readily. However, as we all learned when the "Fireproof" Winecoff Hotel burned, it's the contents, stupid! But The Loft has this covered as it is very sparsely decorated (I really can't figure out where the pictures that are on the website were taken. It doesn't look anything like that.) Almost no furniture save for the actual bar. Nothing on the walls. No drop ceiling. Except for the stage there really isn't anything that could catch on fire. So The Loft passes my construction/contents test pretty well.

Egress: A couple of years ago I met someone who was staying in the Winecoff Hotel the night of the fire (It's still the deadliest hotel fire in US history with 119 dead, most of them teenagers.) This person related the events of that night and then added that from that night on, every time he stayed in a hotel he would get to his room and then count the number of doorways to the nearest exit. He said he did this so that he could find the exit in the dark and smoke by feeling the doors. That's experience talking. How many of us blow off the lecture that the flight attendants give about the emergency exits on the plane? It's the same thing, really. I know I don't want to die in a hotel, at least not the ones I can afford to stay in.

The Loft is located on the second floor so it's not out of reach of ladders (most nightclubs aren't.) But unlike most other nightclubs The Loft has many large floor to ceiling windows that happen to overlook West Peachtree. Don't let this fool you. Most windows in mid-rise and hi-rise office buildings aren't regular glass. They're impregnated with plastics and other materials to make them strong enough to stand up to the stresses that large buildings encounter. You aren't just going to throw a chair through the window like in the movies (unless you're thinking of Die Hard when he tries in vain to break the window with the chair, in which case: EXACTLY!)

But windows aren't really how you want to leave a structure if given a choice. No, you want to go out the regular exits. There were only two marked that I could see from in front of the stage. I didn't check out the second one since it was behind a pair of double doors guarded by security, but the other one was the main entrance to the establishment. This is the way most people leave in an emergency; they go out the way they came in (precisely why so many people died in the Station fire.) The only problem with the way we came in is that it included a flight of stairs. In a panic people are likely to bottleneck in the stairwell and then trampling and crushing starts, which only makes things worse and more desperate. Me? I've got my eye on that second exit behind the double doors. I venture to say that only 5% of the people in the bar would exit that way so it's probably going to be much safer. So from an egress point of view The Loft doesn't really pass the test for Joe and Jane bar/club patron who aren't paying attention to that kind of thing.

Fire Protection: The Loft has fire sprinkler coverage everywhere that I could see. This is really good. The idea is that the sprinklers put the fire out before it gets to be a big fire. (Nobody burns up but we do still have a stampede in the stairwell like we talked about.) That's all provided that the system is maintained as it should be. But there's nothing to suggest it isn't so...

Miscellaneous: The only other real problem I have with The Loft is how dark it is. In between bands the only lights in the joint were from the stage and the dimly lit bar. It was enough to get around but I really couldn't see people's faces or my feet. I know that bars aren't supposed to be brightly lit, but in this post we're talking about safety not ambience. Take that dark and add some really nasty black smoke from a fire and you have a situation in which people won't be able to see those two exit signs marking the way out. Just another reason to familiarize yourself with their location.

There isn't any smoking allowed in the main area of the bar or near the stage. Since it's the only real thing that could catch on fire in the place that's a plus.

Overall: When you consider all of the smaller venues in Atlanta, The Loft is one of the safer places to see a band that I have been in. I still recommend checking the place out and noting the locations of the exits and anything that might block your path to them, but overall, you should relax and enjoy the show. I did.

Steel Train and The Hush Sound

That title almost sounds like a book title, but it's really the names of two of the four bands that played at the Loft in Atlanta last night. We didn't arrive in time to see the first band of the night but just in time for Steel Train (who were the reason we were there.)

Now, I briefly reviewed the Steel Train album previously but I didn't speak much about anything else. It goes like this: a fellow Cub Scout Leader from my son's pack recommended Steel Train after his nanny said that's what she was listening to. Please understand that this isn't how it worked in my musical life before. For a long, long time I walked into the record store and asked Michael and Jeremy what was out that was good. They'd pile me up some cd's (sometimes a real stack) and I'd buy them without listening. So it's a little odd to get some of my current favorite music the way I did.

I love Steel Train's live show as much as I love their album. They take the stage and own it. Even though they were the second band in a four band line-up, even though they took the stage at 7:50 they took the stage like everyone was there to see them. I said it before, they just bleed confidence. They play as though you were there to see them exclusively (which I was) and judging by crowd reaction, they may have made a few converts last night

They approach the audience as though their acceptance is a foregone conclusion, at one point moving seamlessly from one song to the next without waiting for applause, and at another encircling one mic and singing together as though they were in a bar. It could easily come off as cocky, pretentious, or self-indulgent, but instead it makes you feel like you're being let into their circle a little. It's something that a band with twice their time together might do, but, like I said, it works amazingly for them. They even went as far as to cover ABBA's Mamma Mia which was a little daring considering the average age of the audience (I have always loved ABBA.)



The next band on the stage was The Cab. I didn't really care for the songwriting or maybe it's their style. I definitely didn't care for the hair. I know I sound old but it wasn't the length of the hair that was the problem. It was the fact that it played such a large part in this band's stage presence. The keyboardist swirled his head to the right every ten seconds to reset his hair so that it was covering his face. The drummer's excessively long hair flew around his head; a most certain distraction to anyone serious about seeing his kit, quickly remedied with a rubber band. The guitarist's locks are too messed up; the kind of hair that took a long time to get to look like you don't care how it looks.

Anyway, we stayed for the Hush Sound based on some of what we had heard on their MySpace page (which is about all MySpace is useful for at this point in my opinion.) I was very impressed with their show. The singing duties are passed between a pretty blonde keyboardist and the guitarist who looks kind of like Carl Newman but sounds like Ben Folds.

I really dug their set even though I hadn't heard 95% of it more than once. They eventually called members from all of the other bands up to help out on songs, but the highlight was inviting all of Steel Train on stage to perform The Jackson 5's I Want You Back. The stage was packed and it was a load of fun.



The band also performed a very respectable cover of Back In The USSR. It struck me while they were performing that it was entirely possible that many in the audience didn't know it wasn't "one of their new songs."

If you couldn't tell I had a really great time. Thanks to Keith and Helen for coming into town and getting me the tickets (for my birthday.) Steel Train will be returning to Atlanta this fall and I hope you all can come out if you're in the area.

See, They've Got A Name For It

I've written on this very subject for some time, even comparing the feeling to the same movie that this article does. Which I suppose only bolsters my argument about my life being a television show. I mean what better plot development than for me to read an article that confirms what I've been thinking all along. Click on the "Truman" label at the bottom of the article to see my other posts on the subject.

The following is an article which appeared in the Newsweek that just arrived in my mailbox:

When LIfe Is Like a TV Show
-Jesse Ellison

As a director of psychiatrics at New York's Bellevue Hospital Center, Joel Gold has seen thousands of delusional patients. But a few years ago, he began noticing a different sort of paranoia: young white men who believed they were the subjects of their own reality-TV shows. Some, says Gold, who with his brother has written a preliminary paper and hopes to author a larger study, seemed pleased by their roles—excited by the anticipated million-dollar payout. Others were tormented. One came to New York to check whether the World Trade Center had actually fallen—believing 9/11 to be an elaborate plot twist in his personal storyline. Another came to climb the Statue of Liberty, believing that he'd be reunited with his high-school girlfriend at the top, and finally be released from the "show."

Grandiose, paranoid delusions are a staple among schizophrenics and psychopaths. Typically, they apply to one aspect of a patient's life—say, irrationally believing a spouse is cheating. But these patients, much like Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 film "The Truman Show," believe their entire lives are being broadcast, and that everyone is in on the joke. The numbers are small—Gold has observed only five firsthand and has heard from or about more than a dozen since—but he and others think "The Truman Show Delusion," as Gold now calls it, is the pathological product of our insatiable appetite for self-exposure. Delusions are often related to the larger cultural and political climate: during the cold war some people thought they were being monitored by the KGB. Today, some might think Al Qaeda is after them. When all it takes is a Webcam and the click of a mouse to be seen and heard by millions, and with hundreds of surveillance cameras capturing our movements each day, it's not necessary to go on "Big Brother" to feel like you're in the public eye. "If you have a predisposition to paranoia, going on YouTube and seeing some guy doing something can really shake you up," says Gold. You could think, "Is the world watching me?" Perhaps the key to sanity is knowing that while the whole world isn't watching, someone probably is.