Aftermath

Here's Aftermath, another of the songs on Adam's Acoustic Live EP (made available for embed by his official site):



Aftermath was written by Adam, Alisan Porter and Ferras Alqaisi. Alisan and Ferras are singers themselves. Alisan sings extraordinary backing vocals for this song on the FYE album. Here's Ferras singing Hollywood's Not America. And here's Alisan singing Into the Fire in The Zodiac Show and singing Over the Rainbow on Star Search when she was 5 years old (too sweet to watch safely if you have a cavity that needs to be filled).

Update to add more Alisan info: Adam and Alisan have been friends for years. Here they both are in The Zodiac Show in September 2008 singing Led Zep's Black Dog. Adam is Singer #3 (starting at 1:26) and Alisan is #4 (starting at 1:46).


Alisan's band, The Canyons, will open for Adam at his LA shows Dec. 15 and 16.

Update 12/6/10: Adam's Acoustic Live EP is now available for download from iTunes here. Rockstar Weekly reviews it here (5 of 5 stars).

How to order at Chipotle

I love Chipotle.  Here is some excellent advice about how to maximize your burrito order.  (I say carnitas and pinto beans, though, instead of steak/barbacoa and black beans.)

On a related note, I'm spending some time with some 20-somethings for a fundraising campaign.  One of these kids used to work at a Chipotle, but refused to eat there because, he complained, Chipotle's food is very very bad for your health since they put salt in everything (in the meat, in the beans, in the sauces, etc).  His complaint seemed odd to me since he was smoking as he described this.  But it seemed all the odder when, later in the day, I watched him shake salt onto a pizza.

Adam's Grammy nomination

Adam was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the song Whataya Want From Me. To refresh your memory, here's the video for this song:



An acoustic, live version of this song is included on Adam's Acoustic Live EP that is set to be released in a few days. I like this even better.



The EP includes 4 songs from his album, performed and recorded live and acoustic, plus a live acoustic version of Mad World. The first printing of the EP is sold out, though it hasn't been released yet. An additional printing is expected, though. It'd make an excellent stocking stuffer for Adam fans or all fans of great voices.

Full list of all Grammy categories and nominees is here.

If you ever feel sorry for yourself...

Consider what has happened to a friend of mine and good man--Roger Chan. I had the pleasure of serving with him in Lions in Austin. Good guy and I'm confident he'll overcome and flourish. From the Statesman.

Adam's Glam Nation Tour winds to a close

Adam's Glam Nation Tour is over, except for two final shows in LA in mid-December. When the tour started in May, I wondered how Adam's voice would hold out. He's now been on the road for 6 months, headlining about 110 sold out shows around the world, performing typically 4 shows per week, and here's what his voice sounded like in the encore of his show last night in London. Twentieth Century Boy:



Have I mentioned I'm going to LA to see his final show on December 16?

Update moments later: Here's Soaked from last night's show in London. Adam has identified this song as the most challenging vocally in his set.

Kanye West and his band of ballerinas

Ballerinas are everywhere right now. Yay. There are ballerinas on the big screen in Black Swan with Natalie Portman, and there are ballerinas in Kanye West's video and movie for his song Runaway. Whether you like Kanye or this song, you can enjoy the beauty and grace of Kanye's band of ballerinas in this extended version (about 8 min) of his music video for Runaway. (You really should watch it at this link so you can make it full screen. Also, I recommend watching in 1080 HD.)



You can see Kanye's 34 minute movie, from which the above 8 minutes is excerpted, on Vevo here.

Update moments later: Also, there's a history of ballet in the New York Times list of Notable Books for 2010. It's APOLLO’S ANGELS: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans. "The question of classical ballet’s very survival lies at the heart of this eloquent, truly definitive history, which traces dance across four centuries of wars and revolutions, both artistic and political."

Update 12/2/10: Here's a screen cap of the names of the ballerinas in Kanye's video and movie:

Beautiful libraries

The relatively new Hennepin County Library in downtown Minneapolis made this list of libraries with the most beautiful facades. (Nevermind that I can't really tell WHO chose these libraries, and nevermind that the facade of a library is not really its most important quality, IMHO.) The design sports an airplane-esque wing that may seem silly but is actually kind of cool, because you can see it suspended over Hennepin Ave. from many blocks down the street. I think that it's great for reminding people that the library is there, since it resides at the edge of downtown. I'm having trouble appreciating the inside of the building, but I haven't spent much time there, so maybe it'll grow on me eventually. It has mostly glass walls and no amount of heat makes up for how cold it looks outside on a gray January day.

This library was designed by Cesar Pelli, who designed my favorite building (post-1930) in downtown Minneapolis. Built in 1989, it was originally the Norwest Bank building and will always be so to me. (Other people now call it the West Fargo Center.) It's deco. Tons of stone and brass and loveliness. At night, it's beautifully lit, though when it first opened, there was a brou-ha-ha about how much energy was wasted to light it all night, so a compromise was struck and it's now dark after a certain hour. I worked in it for a few years and it was as functional as it was beautiful.

Al Gore

is an idiot, in case you didn't already know. Here's wishing that this would be the last time the press will ever report on anything he says. (From a column by Tom Diemer - who? - at Politics Daily - what?)

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Gore said at a green energy conference in Athens, Greece, according to Reuters. First generation refers to the most basic, energy-intensive process of converting corn to ethanol for use as a motor vehicle fuel additive.

On reflection, Gore said the energy conversion ratios -- how much energy is produced in the process -- "are at best very small." "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee," he said, "and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

This ought to be a crime.

WW II Leadership

Victor Davis Hanson on the "masters and commanders" of WW II. Video here courtesy of C-Span and Hillsdale College. Lecture runs about 1:45.

The Ghailani trial did not "deliver justice"

The testimony of Hussein Abebe, the terrorist who sold Ghailani the dynamite used in the  bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, was suppressed; in a military commission, where this guy should have been tried, it wouldn't have been.  

And now for something completely different...

In support of civil trials for Gitmo prisoners

Morris Davis, a former Air Force colonel, who was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 2005 to 2007, has written this sane and perfect commentary on the recent verdict in the Ahmed Ghailani case. I echo his conclusion:

President Obama is in a no-win situation when it comes to trying detainees — any forum he chooses will set off critics on one side of the debate or the other. I hope he pauses to reflect on what he said at the National Archives in May 2009: “Some have derided our federal courts as incapable of handling the trials of terrorists. They are wrong. Our courts and our juries, our citizens, are tough enough to convict terrorists.”

The Ghailani trial delivered justice. It did so safely and securely, while upholding the values that have defined America. Now Mr. Obama should stand up to the fear-mongers who want to take us back to the wrong side of history.

Update 11/19/10: In his commentary, Col. Davis describes why it's an error to assume that a military tribunal would have allowed testimony of the witness whose testimony was thrown out in the civilian criminal trial. Read it.

It's 2010. Do you know who owns your house?

Fab.  Dan Edstrom, a man who for his profession does securitization audits and who teaches seminars on the topic, created a ridiculously complicated chart that diagrams the ownership of his own mortgage.

In recent foreclosure proceedings, we've seen that ownership of mortgages has been hard to discern and prove.  But I wonder what it means for clearing title to all our houses.

Target, the hero dog, is mistakenly euthanized; other dogs euthanized on purpose

According to the American Humane Society, 56% of dogs that enter an animal shelter are euthanized.

Target was a stray dog in Afghanistan who thwarted a terrorist attack by ferociously barking at a would-be suicide bomber, preventing the bomber from entering a building before detonating his bomb, thereby saving lives.  An American service member bonded with Target and brought her home to be his pet.  She got loose from his house and ended up in an animal shelter in Pinal County in Arizona.  Due to an error, Target was euthanized.  (NYTimes story about Target is here.)

It's horrifying, of course, to imagine a beloved pet being euthanized accidentally.  But I'm sorry, too, for the dog who was supposed to have been euthanized, the one whose death would not have made headlines.

During giving season, think about helping the ASPCA or your local shelters or rescue organizations so that they can save lives.  If allowed to live long enough to be found and adopted, more dogs can have happier endings.

My Antonia, Willa Cather

My Antonia was a book club pick.  (We'd read One of Ours by Cather a couple years ago and liked it.)  I'm betting that my dad never read this; otherwise it definitely would have made his reading list.

My Antonia tells the story of immigrants who settled and farmed the Plains. It is narrated by Jim Burden and begins when Jim moves to his grandparents' Nebraska farm when his parents die.  Jim meets and befriends Antonia Shimerda whose family, Bohemian immigrants, lives on a farm nearby.  I love the details of farm life.  My own great great grandparents were immigrant farmers on the Minnesota and North Dakota Plains, so I imagine that this describes their lives to some degree.

In the middle section of the novel, Jim and his grandparents move to Black Hawk, a nearby city, while teen-aged Antonia and other teen immigrant girls are hired by city families to help as housekeepers and nannies to earn money to help pay off family debt and send younger siblings to school.  Cather has a romantic view of the immigrant girls and contrasts them with the city girls. (I'll quote a big section behind the cut, for your sampling pleasure. Copyright has expired and the whole book is available free online.)

My Antonia follows Jim and Antonia into their middle-aged years. Antonia remains an object of Jim's great admiration throughout. Because he narrates, we only see her as Jim sees her; we never get inside her head. She's an iconic character in American lit. She's spirited, hard-working, resilient and good-natured and Cather offers her as a worthy tribute to immigrants who settled the Plains.

Toys

Took a rifle class yesterday...basically a baby steps program for beginners. Learned a lot and the instructor made me feel very comfortable both with his personality and emphasis on safety.



Got to shoot a Remington 700 rifle (essentially a tricked out sniper rifle in .308) and there were no mishaps. Not sure what CNBC has on that rifle...worked fine for me.



Also an M-4 (the dreaded black or "assault rifle" but really a carbine) in 5.56 mm and a little lever-action (cowboy gun) in .22.



Last gun to shoot was something called a Steyr AUG. That was fun but got my worst groups with that one because I shot it off-hand (standing with no supports) as opposed to seated, kneeling or prone. Looks a little like the Star Gate gun (Fabrique Nationale, I think) because of its "bull pup" configuration.

I need more toys.

O'Donnell explains socialism

He's right that it's important to recognize that every modern economy is a blend of capitalist and socialist practices. I appreciate his characterization of unbridled capitalism as inhumane. Labeling something or someone "socialist" shouldn't be akin to calling them evil.

If there are any politicians calling for complete repeal of Medicare and Medicaid and progressive taxation schemes, I want to hear them acknowledge the inhumane consequences of such repeals.

20th Century Boy again

I just saw Velvet Goldmine for the first time. In the film, Placebo performs the song 20th Century Boy as a fictitous band, the Flaming Creatures. Adam has been covering 2CB during encores for several weeks. I posted one video of it earlier. Here's one with good audio and gorgeous video from September 15, 2010, in Atlanta. (Adam and the band are wearing dreadlock wigs in honor of this being the last night that Longinue Parsons, their dreadlocked drummer, was with them on this tour before leaving to return to his band Yellowcard.)



Adam has cited Bowie as an influence many times and has talked about his love for the film Velvet Goldmine. Adam has paid homage to both in several ways in his first year of his career. As I mentioned before, the album cover for FYE nods to the Hunky Dory cover. There's a favorite image of Adam, taken by Lee Cherry, that you'll see in the beginning of the video, in a feather collar thing that nods to the feather collar that Brian Slade wears in VG. He may have borrowed some tongue action and homoerotic stage antics from Slade, though maybe that's just Adam being Adam.

Velvet Goldmine explores the issue of artifice in the pop/rock world. Every artist has to find the right blend (for them) of artifice versus authenticity in their work and their image. I think this is a tricky thing for Adam to navigate. He's happy adopting a character and wearing costumes and being all artifice, but it's difficult when you've established a fan base via American Idol to suddenly hide yourself behind a character. He's also personally charismatic and plenty talented enough to not need to rely on gimmicky artifice, but he can't compete with singer/songwriter types for angsty authenticity. At present, he sort of comes in and out of character based on a song's mood or lyric. Fans get this about him, but it may be confusing for non-fans and that may make it difficult to grow fandom.

This video is compelling to me because it's apparent that by this point in the tour he's so much more comfortable and skilled at being a rock star on stage than he was at the beginning of this tour. He knows, by this point, exactly what his audience enjoys from him. As skilled a singer as he is and as comfortable as he has always looked performing, he had some stagecraft to master when he started the tour, and now he's developed that.

I also find the video compelling because of the blend of masculine and feminine that I've mentioned before. The wig is supposed to read as dreadlocked rasta. But it doesn't. He looks like he's in drag. The lipstick probably contributes to that. And he's gorgeous. But then his performance is sprinkled with masculine, aggressive, body language.

Yeah, the "Indian giver" reference is reprehensible. He heard about it from fans.

Update: I should note that for the encore songs (like 20th Century Boy and Whole Lotta Love), Adam is just Adam - no character.

Extending "All" the tax cuts (politically speaking)

Not getting into the merits of of the extensions for the richest few (or even the rest of us), it seems to me that politically the Rethugs simply can't bend on this if they really believe that that it is good for the economy that all the cuts be extended. If they make "permanent" the cuts for say everybody making less than $1M, $500K, $250K, or whatever the compromise figure turns out to be and then just extend for a couple of years the cuts for the remainder, they'll lose the issue mightily at the end of the extension period.

Assuming they are right and that the economy needs these cuts, it seems that if the economy is turning around at the end of the extension period then they will not find very sympathetic voters at that time like they did this election cycle. If I were the Rethug king and had to compromise, I'd probably choose to make all the extensions "temporary."

Gee...election day was yesterday? Guess I missed it.

Just a few observations....

1) I was really torn about the Nevada Senate race. Did I want the waste of a Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or the absolute wacko Sharron Angle to win? For comedic value, I was sorta rooting for Angle; at least when she spoke, she wouldn't put me to sleep. Sadly, for my insomnia issues, Reid somehow won.

2) In the same vein, I was also torn about the Delaware Senate race, where again, for comedic value, I was really torn about perhaps wanting a witch being a member of the hallowed Senate. Alas, Christine O' Donnell couldn't pull out the victory. The question I have is....was that because of her poor campaign skills, her poor debate skills, or her poor witch-craft skills?

3) I tried, really tried, to watch CNN last night. Wolf would get all excited around the top and bottom of the hours about polls closing and how "I think we'll have some projections, so stayed tuned, you might be surprised". They would have this little countdown clock and when it would hit 0:00, they would announce some races....here are the ones I saw...

With 0% of precincts reporting, CNN projects John McCain
With 0% of precincts reporting, CNN projects Chuck Grassley
With 0% of precincts reporting, CNN projects David Vitter
With 0% of precincts reporting, CNN projects Roy Blunt

Wow, way to go out on a limb there CNN. Exactly which one of these was a surprise? This is when I tuned off election coverage.

4) And finally, Dallas re-elected our version of Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson. She has recently been found to have been awarding Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Scholarship money to relatives and children of aides, some of which don't even live in her district. Of course, she won re-election in a land-slide. When this all came out, she of course blamed the media and of course, the vast majority of her supporters sided with her and also blamed the media. I'm not exactly sure what the media had to do with it but when in doubt, blame them.