canned dragons
Nonstandard Sunflower
The election is, whether mercifully or unmercifully, in the rearview mirror. Like some others, I want to turn my attention away from the day’s news, so closely coupled as it is with political events. Before I read about Kid Rock being appointed ambassador to the U.N., I mean to spend some time with my head in books.
Standard Ebooks has inspired me by making the barrier to reading well-produced classics low and ebooks free to obtain. From the site:
Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
This week I downloaded a collection from Emerson (which includes Self Reliance) and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. I haven’t started on Emerson yet, but I’ve found much enrichment in the latter book. Its short, focused chapters are a sort of balm in times when the world feels abrasive.
In the pages of this 500-year-old book, you will find the very things that speak to the rancor and division of contemporary American society.
True it is that every man willingly followeth his own bent, and is the more inclined to those who agree with him. But if Christ is amongst us, then it is necessary that we sometimes yield up our own opinion for the sake of peace. Who is so wise as to have perfect knowledge of all things? Therefore trust not too much to thine own opinion, but be ready also to hear the opinions of others. Though thine own opinion be good, yet if for the love of God thou foregoest it, and followest that of another, thou shalt the more profit thereby.
I’m praying that I can read these words with fresh eyes. It’s easy to absorb the words at night, though, and much harder to go out into the following day and put them into practice.
My mom asked my brother where he gets his news. He listed WRAL (a local news channel/site), IGN, Kotaku and Nintendo Direct Mini. In the past, I may have scoffed at this. Now, I think he may be onto something.
On Dark Horses
Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about music. I had gone to see one of my direct reports’ bands, and they were really genre-hopping. I told her about the experience and mentioned that they blended such far-flung musical styles as punk, hip-hop, and shoegaze. She said she loved shoegaze, but when I asked her if she was going to the Slowdive show, she confessed that she hadn’t heard of them. I was a bit shocked, since I would consider them just below My Bloody Valentine in the pantheon of shoegaze progenitors. I asked her what shoegaze bands she was into and she mentioned Emma Ruth Rundle, whom she described as metal/shoegaze.
The conversation caused me to make a mental note to check out Rundle. I had heard of her playing a metal festival in Asheville (which was postponed after the devastation of Hurricane Helene). What I heard wasn’t what I had expected, since it sounded to me more like post-rock than anything. The first album I looked at, EG2: Dowsing Voice had song titles like “Brigid Wakes To Find Her Voice Anew. The Little Flowers and Birds Show Themselves.” It was like a game of how to tell me your music is post-rock without telling me your music is post-rock. Next, I came across the On Dark Horses album, which really connected with me. Rundle often seems to do more acoustic psyche-folk these days, but this album was different.
Rundle has a dark aesthetic which, at least on On A Dark Horse, pairs well with the primal post-rock rhythms. There is a bit of desert noir in the mix. “Darkhorse” is a particular favorite, its shifting, moody instrumentation serves as a vehicle for Rundle’s powerful and plaintive vocals. When I listened to the album, I was recommended Russian Circles and Mazzy Star. That is as sure a sign as any you are in the right track.
Here, Rundle performs “Darkhorse” and “Control,” two standouts from On A Dark Horse, with a full band.
Emma Ruth Rundle - Full session | Highway Holidays TV (YouTube)
Luke T. Harrington, echoing the end of Voltaire’s Candide, when writing about our current political equations.
That we can’t save the world until we all learn to tend our gardens?
I think my garden has grown a few weeds and I hope that I can tend to it.
Yvette Young - Always
Upon discovering the new single from Yvette Young (via Instagram of all places), I was immediately reminded of Sophie And Peter Johnson. The breezy sophistipop certainly merits easy comparisons. Then I realized that Young did vocals for Brothertiger’s mesmerizing cover of Sophie and Peter Johnson’s “Torn Open.”
Young is a member of the math rock outfit Covet but her solo work here is far from the tightly wound calculus and strange time signatures that are markers of that genre. Though Young’s guitar solos on “Always” have jagged edges that contrast with the shimmery polish present in the rest of the song’s components, most of the instrumentation is pure dream pop. With reverb so wet it will remind you of summer days at the pool and synthetic-sounding drums, the song calls to mind Softer Still’s Nuances LP. Like that band’s output, Young’s new track could be mistaken for an artifact of the 80s, but the preponderance of very visible tattoos in the video leaves no doubt that this is a contemporary affair.
Yvette Young - Always (YouTube)
The Mouse House Redux
Some of my fondest memories are of times at the Disney World theme park. In fact, some of the first memories I’ve retained are from my first trip to the amusement park. I was four, and sitting in between my parents in a car on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, filled with a mixture of excitement, fear and familial comfort. I also remember the thrill of going on Space Mountain over and over again later at night as a teenager, the unfettered access to the ride that was so elusive earlier in the day becoming manifest. I can’t forget the luxurious dining experiences my wife and I had on our honeymoon, the kind of which we continue to talk and joke about. I still get a twinge of panic when I think about buying several Lego Star Wars sets and then almost feeling them slip out from underneath my legs on the lurching, fast-paced Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster.
Steamboat Willie, 1928
Of course, these memories, and many others were from before a time when I even had children of my own that I could bring to the parks. Taking a child to Disney World is a fresh experience (particularly if they are in that period of what child development experts call “magical thinking”). Seeing things through their eyes, their imaginative lenses, you gain an insight into their sense of wonder and awe. You can’t wait to introduce them to new experiences that you think they will enjoy.1 Pirates of the Caribbean is a different kind of adventure when you remove all the insouciance that one accumulates on the path to adulthood.
I’ve always marveled in general at the Disney experience. Almost everything in their parks is fine-tuned to give you the best impression possible. The attention to detail at Disney World reminds me of those workspace profiles where you can explore someone’s desk and nothing is out of place. No cables anywhere to spoil the aesthetics, and everything is positioned so deliberately. Cast members travel from place to place via secret tunnels. Care is taken in even the tiniest of details to ensure that when you are in Frontierland, you feel like you are on the American frontier (soft drinks and the availability of other anachronistic food items aside).
Some of that magic may be fading, though, as Disney pushes aside the continuity of themes to make way for the considerations of their commercial intellectual property. Disney is changing its flagship park at Disney World, The Magic Kingdom. They are shortening the Rivers of America, which anchor the early American history and Frontierland areas of the park, to make room for a ride that capitalizes on the popularity of the movie Cars. Garrett Martin notes the impact for Paste Magazine.
Theme parks aren’t just about rides and attractions. When done well, all design elements of a park—its architecture, its interior design, its soundscapes, its natural beauty, and, yes, its attractions—work together to further the theme and, most importantly, create the unique identity and charm of a park. The Rivers of America is so fundamental to what Disney’s so-called “castle parks”—of which the Magic Kingdom is one—are trying to do that one without a river wouldn’t even feel like part of the same tradition. It wouldn’t just lose an invaluable feature that makes the park more pleasurable, it would lose a fundamental part of its identity.
There are other alterations afoot, including closing Muppet Vision 3D, a favorite attraction when we last visited. The Muppet hijinks in 3D present themselves as exactly what is needed to make the technology enjoyable. The Great Movie Ride, which was another favorite, and had a unique concept, has already closed.
Another big concern that may diminish the overall value of the Disney pilgrimage is the rising cost of visiting the parks (NYT gift article). The costs haven’t just gone up, as commensurate with inflation, but many services that were traditionally free now come with a charge. For some, like the FastPass ride reservations system, the amount charged is difficult to predict.
For years, Disney offered visitors FastPass, a free service that allowed them to effectively hold a reserved time slot to ride an attraction without having to wait in long, winding lines. The park replaced it with a paid version in the fall of 2021. The cost of a FastPass can vary depending on the ride, theme park and time of year.
Some services, such as shuttles for transportation, have gone from a flat fee to a surge-pricing model, instead. Good luck budgeting around that sort of variability. Some aspirational park visitors have looked at the expense relative to trips to national parks or even Europe and decided that Disney just wasn’t worth it.
Then, of course, there are the shameless add-ons in the parks (some of which have been around since I can remember). Graeme Wood recounts some of these as a Disney neophyte traveling to the park during peak-Covid.
A cast member offered to take my photo in front of the castle, and she extended to me an electronic device on which I could tap my MagicBand, so copies would automatically upload to my Disney account. “Smile,” she commanded, and before I could ask her how she could tell through my mask whether I was smiling, she added, “With your eyes. Smile with your eyes.” She was referring to the “Duchenne smile,” named for the 19th-century French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne, who discovered that if you electrocute someone’s face just right, you can jolt him into smiling, but you can still tell the smile is a fake because a real one makes crow’s feet beside your eyes. I crinkled my eyes hard. The results look somewhat convincing, but I can’t say for sure because Disney has watermarked the photos, and will charge my MagicBand $69.99 for clean copies. In one photo, to increase the fun, Disney digitally added a snowman named Olaf, a bucktoothed simpleton from the Frozen franchise, to prance next to me.
Wood’s observations should elicit a knowing, if not rueful, smile from those who have been regulars at Disney World.
Disney Existentialism
Another aspect of the Disney experience that Wood writes about in his piece is the pseudo-religious framework in which the entire operation resides. To put it charitably, I have always been a bit suspicious about religious conservatives’ disdain of Disney, but there is some aspect of the fervor that the brand evokes and its messaging that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Wood refers to Disney as a religion and trips to Disney World as a pilgrimage.
Of course, few visitors to the park describe it that way, and I am confident that the family with cross tattoos believe that Jesus and not Donald Duck is their redeemer. But if you ask them about love, they will tell you about Beauty and the Beast. If you ask them about growing old, they will tell you about Up. If you want to know about overcoming adversity, they will ask if you have heard the good news about Aladdin. If enough of your imagination consists of stories like these, authored by (or filtered through) the Disney corporation, then what else is Disney World—where these narratives are ubiquitous and glorified—but a place to nourish your soul in a time of famine?
It’s certainly not that I have a problem with the feel-good narratives that the company produces so much as I shudder to think of them taking a place of primacy in the hearts of the faithful. Their simplicity and ties to crass commercialism make me reticent to spend too much time and mental energy in the shallow embrace of their comfort.
This doesn’t always work out, though. Sometimes you neglect to take into account the potential fear factor that some of these new encounters entail.↩︎
Triple Seven
Wishy from Indianapolis, IN
I had been reading a lot of buzz around the Indianapolis band, Wishy, and their seamless blend of shoegaze and indie pop lately. Their debut album Triple Seven was stashed in my queue for later listening. Thursday morning, I browsed through the bands playing in clubs downtown for the free Day Parties, a staple of the annual Hopscotch Music Festival. The schedule app revealed Wishy was playing at a fairly small venue later in the afternoon. I quickly cranked up the streaming and fast-tracked listening to Triple Seven with just enough time to garner an appreciation for the recording before my trek downtown to see them play.
Wishy stays true to their description: “Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together.” When I shared this assessment with my son, he remarked that was how most indie bands today could be described. I’m wondering when my 18-yr.-old became so wizened and cynical, but I’m also not sure he’s wrong. For my part, the description reminded me of a band like Hotline TNT. Indeed, at the Wishy show, I spotted someone wearing a Hotline TNT shirt.
My son had class in the afternoon, so we couldn’t get to the Wishy show until just after it started. The venue was packed and the guy at the door let us know he could only let one of us in (fire codes being what they are and all that). Since I was the one pushing to go to that show, I did what any good father would… I asked my son if he would wait outside while I enjoyed the band that I had only earlier that day discoverd I was really into. He questioned what he was supposed to do while I was at the show. I didn’t have the heart to ask him to go to the open-air hip-hop show across the street where you could plainly hear the curses and racial epithets that are such a staple of the genre. Fortunately, our dilemma was quickly solved when someone left the club and the door guy permitted us to go inside.
Wishy’s set seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye. When the band’s Kevin Krauter introduced a song with “this is the song that has the same name as the name of the album,” I found myself yelling, “Title track!” in a hasty attempt to help him articulate. Krauter responded, “Yeah, the title track,” and the band kicked off “Triple Seven,” a slice of Sundays-esque indie pop as dreamy as it is nostalgic.
Following the title track in the album sequence is “Persuasion,” no less glistening in its approach and even more careful in controlling the chaos underneath that could threaten the saccharine sweetness of the song.
“Game” sounds like something from Love Tara by Eric’s Trip, an up-tempo fuzzed-out rocker that features a striking lead guitar line and hushed boy/girl vocal harmonies.
Hopefully, there is enough there to sample and find yourself convinced to check out the whole album. It’s always fun to find a band like this at the beginning of their musical journey.
I’m eager to check out the Devo Tiny Desk Concert, which draws me in the same way the Cypress Hill one did. There is some incongruity there, and though it’s difficult to picture, it could turn out to be interesting (like Cypress Hill).