You know you're really weird on that, right? I'd like to know more calculus (because I've forgotten so much), but there's no way I want to learn it again.
If you have a terrible memory, you can read books for the first time on the regular. I can even do this with mysteries. No way! Plot twist!
And, like you, I can never call things to mind to, say, make a list of favorites, or answer this prompt.
I wish I could see Pulp Fiction for the first time again. I can't think of another work that makes such brilliant use of plot surprises.
I didn't like that very much, I think because someone told me that Bruce Willis was a ghost before I saw it.
4: John Travolta was the ghost in that movie.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ?
But I don't suppose I would get as much of a kick out of it now, anyway.
I thought that was kind of tedious. I liked the one where she put the assholes all on the island and offed them one by one.
"What general things do experts care about that this one might they be trying to lead me towards by using that phrase?"
"Ummm....could you please rephrase that question, Senator?"
Pulp Fiction came out when I was a senior in high school, and the kids I liked looooovvvvved it. I loved the idea of it, but I kept falling asleep whenever I tried to watch it, and so it made even less sense. I faked liking Tarantino until the Kill Bill series, and then I realized I had no desire to see that much blood and guts and maybe his movies weren't a good fit for me after all.
What makes Calc III especially rereadable? Is that vector calculus? I found calc II my least favorite math class, it seemed like mostly memorizing formulae for special cases. I don't think I have any particular fondness for any math texts I've had, but I definitely remember first watching 3blue1brown's videos on fourier transforms and especially the Euler's formula with introductory group theory and want to find a text once I'm done with school.
Are there any good 'brands' or lists to find great math books? E.g. the O'Reilly books are consistanly high quality for computer topics.
I really should learn multivariable calculus. I've never taught it, and I learned it in weird ways (taught myself from a book but didn't actually do a thorough job, then took a course that included Spivak's Calculus on Manifolds but was very abstract). I always get confused that there's so many different flavors of derivative
You should try Monteverdi's Manifolds.
One of my best movie-going experiences was going to "Mad Max: Fury Road" basically knowing nothing about it. Rewatched it recently (a few months pre-pandemy) in a theater, and it was almost as good the second time.
I don't know that it's re-readable exactly, but I found it incredibly sensible and almost unsurprising, except the pictures were really cool. I just haven't taught it in a while and I particularly love teaching this class.
So much of this seems age dependent to me now, in my 50s. I wish I could recapture the rapturous feeling I had on reading LOTR the first time when I was 12 but now it wouldn't be the same. And so on for so much other art I loved at various ages, some of it I still go back to but a lot of it not so much. All the same I'd love to be able to watch Barry Lyndon for the first time. On 35mm natch.
11: Techniques of integration is truly the worst part of the math curriculum. Weird cookbook stuff that would be way easier if you just learned about complex numbers and which integrals.com can just do all of. Power series, on the other hand, are awesome. (The volume/area/arc length stuff is somewhere in between.)
One of my worst movie-going experiences was when I'd just moved to Austin, and had a weak impulse to leave my apartment, but I didn't have any friends, so I decided to go see the 1930's movie Pandora's Box play at some cool old theater. They were going to have a live piano player for the soundtrack.
I bought my ticket and went in, and there was a trailer for Trainspotting, a movie I'd never heard of, and it kept going on and on. Gradually it dawned on me that this was not a trailer, and somehow I was watching Trainspotting, and Pandora's Box had ended its run the night before. That was quite an unpleasant shock.
No wait, not Trainspotting! Some other very disturbing heroin movie. The actress was Jennifer something? I can picture her, if that helps.
RWM and my first date we were intending to see Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, but accidentally ended up in the wrong theater watching Prozac Nation. Boy was that a truly terrible film.
The other funny mixup was when we thought we were watching Lego Batman but were actually in La La Land, fortunately there we'd already seen La La Land so immediately knew what was happening and the start times were close enough that we only missed 5 minutes of Lego Batman (the best of all the Batman films).
Jennifer Connelly? Requiem for a Dream?
She's the girl from Labyrinth, if that helps you check against your mental picture.
there was a trailer for Trainspotting, a movie I'd never heard of, and it kept going on and on
That's actually how I feel about most movie trailers these days. They go on and on and on and give away the whole plot of the movie. Whey they are finally over, I tell my wife, "Well that was a pretty good movie, but it dragged in the the middle"
Also, I enjoyed Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. The Kill Bill movies were too violent for me - or maybe the proportion of fighting scenes to everything else was too high.
"Weird cookbook stuff that would be way easier if you just learned about complex numbers and which integrals" - is there a topic for this, or is it just complex analysis?
"Weird cookbook stuff that would be way easier if you just learned about complex numbers and which integrals" - is there a topic for this, or is it just complex analysis?
Non-fiction probably Gödel, Escher, Bach, though I suspect it wouldn't have the same impact now given everything I've read and learned since the first time, including other Hofstadter covering similar ground. Conversely, for fiction it's probably Tristram Shandy, which I think I'd appreciate much more now coming to it fresh than I did as a teen. Or, failing that, erase all my memory of the Culture novels and give me The Player of Games.
For movies (and videogames), there are more that I'd like to experience again for the first time than I can count.
I think I long for the first-time experience of albums more than books. Books are long enough that i've forgotten most of what is on any page, and good books have interesting things on most pages. My favorite albums sounded ~weird~ the first few times, and getting through that to the point they clicked is the best part. I would like to be able to mindwipe for movies with super complicated plots as the draw, like Primer.
The "trig integrals" section is easy if you just use the formulas cos x = (e^ix+e^-ix)/2 etc. to turn them into integrals of exponentials which are just easy. Partial fractions is mostly confusing because of quadratic factors which require doing trig substitutions, but if you just factor over the complex numbers then there's no quadratic factors (the tradeoff is that log for complex numbers is confusing). It's basically stuff from the first few weeks of a Complex Analysis class, but applied to calculus. Trig substitution you can just skip, it does let you do a few extra integrals but not enough to be important enough for the standard curriculum.
Integration by parts, and integration by substitution are both good and should be there.
I wish I could take pretty much all of high school math again for the first time, but with really good teachers. I had a terrible attitude, and some pretty bad teachers, and I learned nothing. I Now that I'm older, wish I could do advanced stats, and work with math-ies all the time who seem to get genuine joy out of math, I have regrets.
Kind of related, my dad took my mom to see Clerks. This still amuses me.
In reference to the post title, I would enjoy listening to Steely Dan's Can't Buy A Thrill for the first time again. -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgYuLsudaJQ
The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies. At the time, I had never read anything by him before and felt like I was learning more about more different things from that book than any other novel I had read.
11: Strang's linear algebra is one. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video-lectures/
Basically a struggle for me to keep up with rapidly changing fields, managing curiosity properly would make me much better. High-dimensional statistical methods, better understanding of tradeoffs in choosing loss functions...
Hitchikers' Guide.
I don't "hear" music well enough for the literal first time to mean much to me*, but I certainly miss when my favorite music was still new. I listen to enough new stuff to still get that experience some, but it's simply not the same having a new experience at 49 as it is at 19.
*there's a few exceptions, but for the most part, the first time just grabs me enough to go back and relisten and start to get my head around it. It's a combo of A. I'm bad at hearing unfamiliar words (this applies to names and foreign languages as well), so I rarely get any but the most obvious lyrics on first pass, and B. I am very unsophisticated musically. Frex, I know intellectually what a time signature is, but I can't tell the difference between 3/4, 4/4, or 7/4 without thinking about it. So none of that stuff--major key, minor key, motifs--makes any conscious impression on me at all during a first listen.
Yes Strang is very good. You can really feel his enthusiasm.
It's so terrible that Adams died, he'd have so much material to work with today he wouldn't even know what to do with all of it.
16- (spoilers I guess?) I ruined LOTR for myself the first time I read it because as things happened I followed along in the timeline appendix in the back of the third book and my eye wandered down to where it says how the ring is destroyed.
Also when I was on staff at the camp in the other thread they were showing Shawshank Redemption for the counsellors one night and I wandered in towards the end and said oh I guess this is some prison break movie.
I don't "hear" music well enough for the literal first time to mean much to me
That's true for me as well, actually. There are a very few songs for which I have a clear memory of, "the first time I heard" but mostly the first listen or two are just a way of learning, "what is the right emotional frame of mind for this song?"
I've often thought I'd like to be able to read LOTR again for the first time, but I think Barry is right in 16.
YES. Requiem for a dream. God, what a nightmare.
I guess I'd like to review Labyrinth, since someone mentioned it upthread. I saw it when it was age-appropriate for me, and not since then, and it's now age-appropriate for Atossa or close enough, so that could be cool.
We've reviewed half of Megamind and just have to get around to finishing it. Fun movie, although some parts of it are over the kid's head.
I kind of wish I had paid more attention to higher math when I was trying to do it the first time. Maybe I'll try to follow along with the kid's homework when she gets to that age, but I have no idea how realistic that is. But now, or in the past ~15 years, I have to admit I would never have applied it to anything and have both more fun and more challenging pastimes available to me.
Rather than reviewing or rereading things, there are a lot of classics or near-classics I've never seen once. I should do something about that. Go to the library more often, if nothing else.
At what age is it appropriate to be exposed to David Bowie's barely concealed genitals?
I can report that 10-year-old Jane (a Muppet fan) dug Labyrinth.
Probably not for the reason implied by 42, but you never know with the prettiest star.
How tense is it, for the very faint-hearted Geeblets sake?
It's like stretched as far as primitive 80s spandex will stretch.
I wish I understood Clifford algebras and spinors, but my brain is largely pudding these days, and the only class I took that covered them was during an extended mental breakdown so trying to recall anything from that threatens to send me spiraling down.
45: Jane runs the same way but did not seem to find it stressful/upsetting in this case, possibly because of the presence of Muppets. (Possibly because of the presence of contact juggling or Ziggy Stardust, who can say.)
I bought my ticket and went in, and there was a trailer for Trainspotting, a movie I'd never heard of, and it kept going on and on. Gradually it dawned on me that this was not a trailer, and somehow I was watching Trainspotting, and Pandora's Box had ended its run the night before. That was quite an unpleasant shock.
Oh my word. I had essentially the same experience where, well...you have to wait nine years in between Linklater's "Before" movies so when the ticket taker said "second theater on the left" I was too excited to look at the sign above the door and was, you know, pretty puzzled that the third instalment began in a Korean prison but eventually had to accept that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy were not going to show up and have pretentious but heartfelt conversations in long takes and that I was in fact watching the third movie in the "The Hangover" series. It was not a joyous moment.
49: That is a tragic tale. It would have been an interesting twist if the Ethan and Julie had wound up together in a Korean prison. Maybe in the next sequel?
49: When I saw Before Sunset (the 2nd one) in theatres, the person sitting behind me shouted out "what a fucking asshole!" as soon as the final scene ended.
I so wish I knew whether they were mad at Ethan Hawke or at Richard Linklater.
Unfortunately, both Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke have said pretty unambiguously that they're not doing a fourth one. I mean, maybe it's for the best.
I wish I could unread wherever I read a spoiler (THE spoiler, I guess) for Roger Ayckroyd so I could read that. I guess I mostly wish I could see certain movies for the first time again. I'm not as emotionally invested in most books and the ones I love, I enjoy rereading them as much as I enjoyed reading them for the first time.
I didn't even know there was a third one. I only saw the first.
I wish I had the opportunity to read Oedipus Rex without knowing the ending. I guess even if you were in the audience at the original performance, it was probably spoiled for you.
I think I was genuinely shocked when I first heard Darth Vader say, "I am your father."
56: Luckily, it turned out not to be true.
I didn't see the first "Before" movie when it came out. When I finally watched it ~5 years ago, it definitely felt a little young for me (that is, a fantasy I could imagine occupying when I was 20, not when I was 40+), but was nevertheless better than I'd expected*. And I thought the next two were much better than I expected.
*I had an unfairly bad attitude about Hawke because I didn't like his character in Reality Bites and disliked his whole vibe, but I think either I misread his vibe or his PR was a little off, making him seem like a d-bag instead of a pretentious but sincere & basically decent guy
57: Sheesh, I was going to say. Give a little warning!
(I haven't seen SW so if 57 is not a joke I can't actually tell. A few years ago, I started writing out what I understood to be the story of the original Star Wars trilogy, based solely on what I've unintentionally absorbed from the culture for the past forty years. I gave it to M to read and he laughed a lot, but then he said a lot of it was fairly accurate and refused to tell me what I had got wrong.)
I recently reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and was so shocked by the part at the end, where Katie tells her 16-year-old daughter Francie that Francie should have slept with a sailor that she had known for only a few hours and who was engaged to a woman from his home town, because "it would have been a beautiful experience."
The thing is, I reread the book about five years ago, and now I remember that I was shocked by this scene back then, too. And I'm sure it shocked me when I first read it as a kid. My point is that if your memory is as garbage as mine, you can read your most-beloved books for the first time as many times as you want.
59: You're serious? Omg -- I was thinking that the Star Wars movies were like Oedipus Rex now -- stories that were universally spoiled.
59: Well, I'm not sure if it's any of your business, but I did bring it up. My mom assures me that Darth Vader is not my father.
61. 59.1 was not serious! That scene was the only bit of my screenplay that I was fairly sure of.
I would be absolutely fascinated to read 59.2 if you still have it or feel like giving it a go.
58: Have you seen First Reformed? That was one of my most powerful recent experiences in a movie theatre.
re: 35.2
That's interesting, but doesn't fit my my experience at all (or maybe we experience music in the same way but we are thinking about it differently).
I don't experience music intellectually or emotionally in a way that involves me understanding it, most of the time. It's much more of an impressionistic thing. What I'm experiencing is sound and emotion, primarily, as an almost entirely sensuous pre-intellectual thing. Sometimes, something happens in the music that makes me attend to some compositional or lyrical detail* in an intellectual way, but ordinarily, I'm not. Once i've really gotten into something, I may begin to think about it, especially if I'm talking about it with someone else and have to verbalise a lot of stuff that I might not have otherwise had in conscious thought.
* some musicians I listen to because I enjoy their lyric writing, so it's not like I never listen to words, but an awful lot of my favourite music, while I'm aware of the lyrics, it's much more just a part of the music that swims to the surface sometimes, and other times just sits in with everything else.
Here you go. It's very very dumb, but in my defense I wrote in a couple of drunk hours after dinner. Also, it looks like I never got around to the Luke I Am Your Father part.
Star Wars
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away....
Twin siblings Luke and Leia, live orphaned on a lonely planet. When they were infants, their parents were killed by Darth Vader, the ruler of the Empire.
The Empire is a vast power that rules most of the known galaxies and planets in this sector of the universe. It is engaged in constant wars of conquest. The parents of Luke and Leia were the King and Queen of a planet that had resisted annexation by the Empire. They died fighting Darth Vader. It was during that battle that Darth Vader was horribly disfigured. To hide his injuries, he now wears a helmet that completely covers his head. His vocal cords were irreparably damaged in the fight, so that he can only speak with the assistance of a voice synthesizer.
After the King and Queen were killed, their robotic servants, C3PO and R2D2, fled with the infant children to a small planet out of the realm of the Empire. There, Luke and Leia were raised by the robot maid and butler. C3PO is a golden android, who speaks with a comical British accent. R2D2 is a small, trashcan-shaped robot, who speaks in beeps and boops. Only C3PO can understand him.
The other important figure in Luke and Leia's life is Yoda, who is a Jedi Knight. The Jedi Knights are a kind of spiritual soldier. Jedi are chosen beings, who have special powers such as mind reading and telekinesis. They live and dress like monks, but they are skilled warriors, armed with light sabers, which are like swords, but with lasers instead of metal blades.
Yoda is not human, but a small humanoid creature, like a Gremlin or ET. He speaks broken English and is extremely wise. Whereas C3PO and R2D2 take care of the children's daily needs, Yoda acts as their teacher and mentor.
All of that is back story. When the first movie begins, Luke and Leia are 18. Now that they are adults, Yoda finally tells Luke his destiny - that he is a Jedi, and he is destined to overthrow the Empire and avenge his parents. There are already many in the Universe who hate the Empire and want to destroy it. They are the Rebels, a loose confederation of anti-Empire armies and peoples. They need a leader to bring them together so that they can join forces and defeat the Empire once and for all. Yoda tells Luke that he is destined to be that leader.
Luke begins to take lessons from Obi Wan Kenobi, another Jedi, who was a friend of Luke's father. Obi Wan is no longer alive, but his ghost visits Luke in the form of a hologram, and teaches him how to be a Jedi Warrior. They practice swordfighting with their light sabers daily.
Finally, after much practice, Obi Wan and Yoda agree that Luke is ready to go fight the Empire. Luke wants to leave Leia behind for her safety, but she insists on coming too. Yoda accompanies them, as do the robotic servants.
It's a long journey to the Death Star, which is the huge spaceship/planet where Darth Vader has his headquarters. On the way, they must rest and refuel. They stop at Tattooine, a desert planet. They choose this planet because they know that it is not yet conquered by the Empire, so they will be relatively safe.
But the planet is not empty. Han Solo and Chewbacca are there. Han Solo is a kind of cowboy/Lone Ranger figure. He hates the Empire, but he's not part of any Rebel Army. He's an opportunist and a mercenary. He is sometimes a bit of a thorn in the side of the Empire, but mostly just goes his own way. Han Solo's best friend is Chewbacca, a Wookie. Chewbacca is human-sized, but covered in fur. He does not speak English, but rather communicates by whining and soft barks, like a dog. Han Solo can understand him perfectly.
It's lucky for Han Solo and Chewbacca that Luke and Leia have landed here, because Han's spacecraft is damaged, and he and Chewbacca were in trouble. There is little water on Tattooine, and Han Solo resorted to killing one of the camels on the planet. The camels are filled with soft cans of water, which Han took to quench his thirst.
Luke and Leia invite Han Solo and Chewbacca to go with them to fight the Empire. Han is reluctant, because he's not interested in getting involved in what he considers to be a dangerous, foolish enterprise. Also, Leia's habit of referring to herself as "Princess" gets on his nerves.
But, since his spaceship won't start, Han has no choice. And he has to admit that, although Leia is irritating, she is extremely pretty. And even though Han is sure that Luke is just going to get himself killed, you have to admire the kid's guts.
Han hopes that they'll stop at another planet, maybe a neutral one or one held by rebels, so that he and Chewbacca can go on their way. But Luke doesn't want to stop. He wants to go straight to the Death Star to kill Darth Vader.
Luke and Leia's spacecraft is extremely fast, many times faster than the speed of light. Even so, it's a long journey, but at last they reach the Death Star. Luke's plan is to sneak on board and kill Vader, and then he can take over the Death Star and free all the people who have been subjugated by the Empire. Han thinks this is idiotic. He and Chewy intend to slink away as soon as the twins' spacecraft lands.
But when they get to the Death Star, Han finds that he can't just leave. As foolhardy as Luke's plan is, it's really brave, and Han realizes that he has to help. Chewbacca eagerly agrees. Han and Chewy fight off the Storm Troopers who guard the Death Star, while Luke runs inside.
When Luke reaches the central command of the Death Star, he finds that Darth Vader is waiting for him. Luke tells him that he has come to avenge his parents and to free the people of the universe from the Empire, but Vader laughs a low, creepy Vocoder laugh. Vader knows who Luke is already.
They fight, with their light sabers.
In the meantime, Han, Chewbacca, Leia and the robots have beaten back the Storm Troopers. They take command of a control room, and find a computer screen that shows the sectors of the universe under control of the Empire. Chewy is a computer wiz, and figures out how to liberate the colonies by deactivating the energy net that imprisons them.
Back in central command, Luke is fighting valiantly, but he is overpowered by Vader, who is more experienced. In desperation, Luke calls on the ghost of his father's friend, Obi Wan Kenobi, for help. "Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!" The hologram appears. It is at this moment that the alarms sound, alerting Vader that the command room has been breached and that the colonies have been released. Vader is so shocked by the alarm and by the appearance of Obi Wan that he releases Luke, who escapes.
Luke finds his friends, who are overjoyed to see that he is okay. The rest of the Storm Troopers come after them, and they escape in their little ship.
FIN
That's amazing. I think Spaceballs influenced some of the middle parts? I barely understand the story of Star Wars myself, but that's hilarious and I now think jms is part computer learning algorithm.
68: That is so much better than the George Lucas version!
But maybe 59 was serious --
Twin siblings Luke and Leia, live orphaned on a lonely planet. When they were infants, their parents were killed by Darth Vader, the ruler of the Empire.
70. Surely at the beginning of the movie we're led to believe they're orphans, in order to give the "Luke I am your father" part its power to shock? I mean, don't tell me -- at this point I might as well preserve my state of innocence for the rest of my life.
In response to the post: I like mysteries, but I can reread mysteries and enjoy them just as much as the first time, because I don't really care about the surprise of the solution. I might even enjoy mysteries more upon rereading, because I'm not impatient to get to the end.
If I could reread a book for the first time it would be a long, messy, sprawling one. Big winding epics always have boring and unpleasant bits, which are okay the first time through, because you don't know yet how unpleasant they will be, but on rereading the urge to skim the unfun bits is irresistible. Lonesome Dove, A Suitable Boy, something like that. Books I loved the first time, but have never successfully reread all the way through without skipping.
I don't recall if Leia knew Jimmy Smits wasn't her dad but Luke knew Owen was his uncle.
I've found that only watching tv when stoned and doomscrolling allows one to watch Legends of Tomorrow repeatedly for the first time.
18, 20 etc.: One time pre-Internet my friends and I went to a John Williams concert thinking we'd be watching an orchestra perform music from Superman and Star Wars, but it was just some other guy named John Williams playing acoustic guitar. He was pretty good though.
18, 20 etc.: One time pre-Internet my friends and I went to a John Williams concert thinking we'd be watching an orchestra perform music from Superman and Star Wars, but it was just some other guy named John Williams playing acoustic guitar. He was pretty good though.
FWIW, there was a recent-ish recording of John Williams with the Vienna Philharmonic and it's well done, has a very nice mood, and is just fun
Unrelatedly to 75, I found out recently that background art and cels from Pink Panther cartoons cost almost nothing.
Unrelatedly to 75, I found out recently that background art and cels from Pink Panther cartoons cost almost nothing.
67: I'm not sure I exactly explained myself. What I was getting at with the stuff about time signatures wasn't that I think most people recognize that on first listen, but I think that more musically attuned people respond to it on, as you say, a pre-conscious level, but I don't hear it at all. Like, I was probably in my 30s before I understood the concept of a key change, or even what it meant, aurally, for a key to be major or minor. Again, I don't mean in a music theory sense--I mean that I was/am so unperceptive of it that I didn't even think I needed a term for it.
One thing that occurs to me is that what I respond to most often is distinctive sounds--sort of production-level choices, or vocal timbres, or particular instruments. I tend to like one artist in a genre very much, but the rest only passingly. For instance, I like just about all of Nick Cave (one of my top 3 artists), but I really don't care for anything ostensibly associated with him--not Einstürzende, not Dirty Three, not whatever bands Apple Music sometimes suggests. Something about what he does appeals to me very much, and did from the first time I ever heard him, but it doesn't generalize. Same deal with Jethro Tull, really--try as I might, I can't get past the "hits" of any other prog band (or, for that matter, any English folk revival/rock bands).
I certainly have mainstream classic rock tastes, but I grew up with that stuff. Things I've chosen on my own tend to be sort of one-off. I've long meant to suggest to Heebie a thread about acts where you adore one song but not anything else in the catalogue (for me the #1 example is "Librarian" by My Morning Jacket, practically a desert island song for me, and they don't have a single other song I've ever cared two shits for).
Plot summaries of iconic movies unseen should be a genre.
Alternative: "Drunken plot summaries"
I always found drunken history kind of annoying, but the drunk woman cooking was good.
Re: Labyrinth, which I adored as a child, I'm delighted Jane found it at (I think) the perfect age. I watched it a few years ago with AJ, who likes Muppets AND David Bowie, and he did not for one moment see the charm. When I was a kid, for some reason, the scariest part for me was the fireys. The dismemberment was just really disconcerting. I don't think anything else was too rough - most tension resolves pretty fast.
Delighted by 68.
I read and reread and reread LOTR, and I tried to live vicariously by giving that and other childhood favorites to friends' kids, but so far it's been pretty unsatisfying. I mean, I'm going to keep doing it, but nothing seems to speak to them,
85: I don't remember any of them being especially good except the William Henry Harrison episode, which is immortal. In the longue duree, the franchise also provided the setup for describing Putin's eve-of-war speech as "an hourlong episode of Drunk History" which made me literally laugh out loud at an impending mass-murdering reign of terror, so... win?
Jimmy Smits was a born leader, wasn't he president after Martin Sheen?
I've never actually watched Labyrinth (I was kind of old for it when it was released), but I feel sufficiently informed because I read the literature.
I thought that link was going to be: http://id34111.securedata.net/areaology/area.html
That's amazing. It's like distilled pre-evil internet.
I had an unfairly bad attitude about Hawke because I didn't like his character in Reality Bites and disliked his whole vibe, but I think either I misread his vibe or his PR was a little off, making him seem like a d-bag instead of a pretentious but sincere & basically decent guy
This is fairly common and always fairly baffling to me. I don't mean to be a certain way but you know he was playing a fictional character in Reality Bites, right?
I get that. But, for example, if Rowan Atkinson is eating at your house, do you seat him near the shelf with all your nice dishes?
68 is truly extraordinary and, yes, in several ways better than the ur-text.
And this definitely needs to become a genre. I would love to read "The plot of 'The Godfather" as written by someone who has never seen "The Godfather'."
Now I think of it, a friend of mine has also never seen "Star Wars". I must ask her to produce her version of 68.
Two Geeblets just told me about that Bon Jovi song, "Living on a Prairie".
_There is little water on Tattooine, and Han Solo resorted to killing one of the camels on the planet._
In the cold open of _The Mandalorian_ he gets arrested for this.
Oh look I forgot how to do markup. Anyway 68 is wonderful
re: 81
Ah, yeah. I do understand.
Your comment about distinctive timbres or sounds is something I feel quite strongly about, too, when listening to music. That's sort of what I was trying to express with talking about experiencing "sound and emotion". Very often there's people I like just because I like something about the sound that they make, either with their voice, or with an instrument, and there are other people playing ostensibly the same or very similar music who do almost nothing for me. It's also why there's some music that hits me, sitting at home, listening to what is by most standards, quite a nice hi-fi, because a lot of what I like about it is something specific about the timbre or sound design, and which would do almost nothing for me coming from some titchy smart speaker. Other music, of course, that can break my heart coming out of a phone 40ft away.
I've never seen The Godfather but I'm aware of some cultural bits and have probably confused it with other mob flicks I've seen. If you send me enough alcohol I'll do a version of 68 for it.
I would TOTALLY love to take "Calc III" (Math 53 at Cal) again, for the first time. Especially without all the stressors I was experiencing the year I took it, and more knowledge about how to deal with my ADHD. That class was the bomb. That was the first time I enjoyed math again after a long, long time.
It's fascinating trying to reconstruct the process that led to things like 98. (Perhaps the whole "I thought these things smelled bad on the outside" scene?)
102: please go ahead anyway, and some day - and that day may never come - you may call on me for a favour.
vocal timbres
There are several artists that I'm supposed to like--and I've tried and I recognize the songwriting ability and understand why they're influential and enjoy hearing other people cover their songs--but find their singing actively unpleasant. (Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell are two of the main culprits here.) And I like *tons* of music with people who literally can't sing for shit, so.
I like Cohen. I don't think I like Joni Mitchell, but I might just hate that parking lot song.
re: 105
Joni Mitchell is one of those ones where I only like some stuff. Everyone goes on about Blue but I don't like her singing on that at all. On the other hand, I really like Hejira (once she started singing in a lower register).
Similarly, I really like PJ Harvey, but the stuff she's done where she sings in that higher register, e.g. most of the Let England Shake or White Chalk albums, I don't like. I want to hear her rocking the fuck out, which is she singularly good at.
I would hate the parking lot song no matter who was singing it, true.
I feel like I should know more than one of her songs, but apparently I don't.
Speaking of voices, I've been listening to Arooj Aftab's Vulture Prince album a lot recently, and while I can't understand most of what's she's singing about, apart from the odd place where she sings in English, her voice is unbelievable, and the whole sonic feel of the album is great, too.
Not singing in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPyG9WEe1vk
Singing in English*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX1ResoIGc8
* and reggae/ska/dub influenced without being rubbish
109: You have probably heard the Crosby Still Nash & Young song, "Woodstock". Joni Mitchell wrote that. Here she is singing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0 One of my favorite things.
There are several artists that I'm supposed to like--and I've tried and I recognize the songwriting ability and understand why they're influential and enjoy hearing other people cover their songs--but find their singing actively unpleasant.
Joanna Newsom, the Mountain Goats guy, the Decembrists guy, I have lots of these though fewer central figures like Joni Mitchell and more just "stuff people thought of as very high quality perhaps when I was in college that I couldn't take." Flaming Lips, Kate Bush. An unpleasant voice wrecks the whole thing for me. Anoni. The only time I like ugly voice is in opera, come to think of it.
112: I guess for me that artist is Bjork. Maybe it's just her Icelandic accent that bugs me.
re: 112
Oh, Christ. Anohni. I hate her voice. In fact, I generally can't listen to anyone who uses fast vibrato like that. Karen Dalton, for example.
I think I like both Kate Bush and the Decemberist guy, but I might have them confused with other people.
Because I have a terrible memory for names, I could do a version of 68 for "Michael Clayton", "Barry Lyndon", and "Barton Fink" but I think people would quickly catch on that I'm confusing those movies with "Glengarry Glen Ross".
I can't tell if I dislike The Decemberists or if I just dislike the voice. I suspect that I'm meh on the band/songs and hate the voice.
The Kate Bush cover of "Rocket Man" is . . .certainly worth watching. I can't decide whether it's good or bad, but I like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b6dO2wouhQ
I do like the Decembrists, but have an abiding bafflement about Magnetic Fields, which all sounds exactly the same to me and wasn't interesting the first time.
Idle question: Is that Greg Gumbels's actual hair? It looks real.
I'd really enjoy reading again for the first time a bunch of the math and philosophy books that had the biggest impact on me. Spivak's Calculus, Dummit and Foote's Abstract Algebra, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Kant's first critique, Parfit's Reasons and Persons. As for literature, Frankenstein, King Lear, Heart of Darkness, and any short work by Kafka, Borges, or Henry James.
I have this vague memory of feeling like learning multivariable calculus made calculus make more sense, which was a nice feeling to go out on given that I immediately stopped taking math classes after that.
120 is heartbreaking. The lyrics are so clever and sad in their best songs. Stephin Merritt has a peculiar voice (as does Claudia Gonson) but I once had a brief conversation with him I think maybe about opera at an event called Runt Nite at Nowhere Bar in NYC.
...and "Barton Fink" but I think people would quickly catch on that I'm confusing those movies with "Glengarry Glen Ross".
The life of the mind is for closers.
124: Yes, there is a sharp divide within Unfogged on Magnetic Fields. But then I wonder if there is any artist we could all agree on. David Bowie? Stevie Wonder? Beyonce?
I once had a brief conversation with him I think maybe about opera at an event called Runt Nite at Nowhere Bar in NYC.
Cool! Does he like opera?
I would like to reread Chimera by John Barth for the first time.
re: 124 / 128
Yeah, I remember when 69 Love Songs came out, and the reviews made it sound amazing, and then I listened and I was profoundly disappointed. I should give it another go, just in case my mind has changed in the past 20 years. Whereas, the Divine Comedy's "A Short Album about Love ..", which has something of the same conceit (only it's 7 songs, not 69) and also wears various influences on its sleeve (Scott Walker, etc), and which I imagine could also be really annoying to a lot of people ... works for me.
69 Love Songs is one of the most lyric-forward projects I can think of in my adult lifetime. AB, who is ALL about the lyrics, loved it; I thought it was fine. But it's necessarily musically slight--the tunes are essentially sketches, vehicles for the lyrics and gestures at genres. Obviously some of them are more than that, but if you don't like the essential idea, there's way too much of it to get past.
It's funny, I feel like the most obvious thing in the world would have been doing selected playlists--13 Love Songs, or however many--that would let people choose their favorite 10 or 20 or 30 minutes, but I don't recall that being a thing. Maybe it wasn't quite the right moment relative to the internet.
130, 131: When I first listened to it, there were a few songs I loved right away (Come Back to San Francisco, Book of Love, Busby Berkeley Dreams, maybe 2 or 3 others) but overall it kind of annoyed me. I came to like more and more of it over time, but I still hardly ever listen to the 2nd CD, and when I do I always skip "Love is like jazz"
Agree with 132, I truly love around a third of 69 Love Songs. All My Little Words is an all-timer. I'm also especially fond of My Only Friend, Reno Dakota, Kiss Me Like You Mean It, Papa Was A Rodeo, and all the ones mentioned in 132. The worst third is bad.
128. I can't even agree with me about those three.
I've read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon about five times, and each time has felt like the first. Not because of the history- even I probably know as much about late antiquity as Gibbon did- but the personality, the prose, the humour, the general sense of being in the presence of genius, comes fresh every time, and I expect it will next time. I don't get that from any work of fiction, be it book or movie.
re: 131
Yeah, that might be it for me. While I love the lyrics to some songs, and can appreciate great lyric writing, it's about the music for me. Pre-electric Dylan* does almost nothing for me, too, because the music sounds like shit. Give me Motown*** any day of the week.
* and skiffle, for that matter, which was massively influential in the UK in the same sort of way, and which almost all sounds like total shit despite inspiring the Beatles and all the rest.**
** and most other singer songwriters, unless they are also great melody writers and composers
*** which, of course, often _also_ has great lyrics, but it doesn't matter half the time what the lyrics are.
David Bowie? Stevie Wonder? Beyonce?
Yes to Bowie, yes to Stevie Wonder, although I get off the Stevie Wonder train before Songs in the Key of Life, which is one of those scared cow albums that everyone sticks on best of lists and which I think is pretty bad. But mostly everything he did before then, including Innervisions and Talking Book, is amazing.
Beyonce is a pop cultural phenomenon, and I can admire the artifice, the vision, etc but I would never choose to listen to her.
134: I can't even agree with me about those three.
Are you saying you are divided internally, or did you misword this?
136: "scared cow albums" is a great typo.
"Talking Book" is my favorite Stevie Wonder. I don't think I would go as far as to call Songs in the Key of Life bad, but I don't love it.
136.3: No insult to Beyonce-stans, but knowing this crowd, I included Beyonce as a bit of a joke.
I probably should have had Aretha Franklin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ioGgZhgNI Two thumbs up from Tina.
People who like the song "Reno Dakota" may or may not be aware that Reno Dakota is (presumably the fake name of) a real person and that there's a story there including a response in song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_BMu1ljwiM
141: Wow! That went in an unexpected direction.
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