From Brun Potatis to Choklad Papegoja: Desperately Seeking Stockholm's Sweet, Sticky Center

(Note: To read the orignal post on WFMU's Beware of the Blog, click here. )

Ed's note:

Welcome, comely and prudent reader, to the debut publication from the Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut (SAFI), our Orange Brief. SAFI is a genuine-fake-maybe-real-but-probably-phony-except-for-real-but-you-never-really-know-these-days-anyway culturobstretrical organization with a life-changing mission: to build bridges of understanding between the American and Scandinavian peoples. And in so doing, heal the universe. To achieve this we use the power of Ultramultiscience, a new way of thinking that fuses multiple disciplines—sound, embalmery, competitive eating—into a gel that, when mixed with bleeding-edge scientificalism, unleashes transformational power not seen since Nutella met Bisquick. Wielded wisely, it can fuel cars-that-go-boomlike engines toward a more pumpkinlier future.

This Orange Brief is a patent-pending hydron-condensed version of the SAFI Orange Paper*, a 200+ lb nectarine of cunt-punching erudition, bursting with scratch-n-sniff pop-ups and double coupons. The design is no laughed-so-hard-you-shat accident: Its brainfeel mirrors its subject matter—strange and familiar, wordy and unreliable, cursory, broad-brush, mythically sextronic. Loosely unarranged, it takes you on a fluid, urinelike journey into insight, contemplation and that feeling of release when the brain freeze abates. It assumes an "asymmetrically interactive" posture; you're thus encouraged to connect its themes to their oft-repeated parallels in convenience store hot dog theory. A "necessary cliché," as it were

Like an artistic masterwork or courtesan selling stew, the Brief will screw each reader individually. But a basic overview of it might help you feel less afraid: Parts I and II pop out of the brassiere of History to feel through the Experiment in blind boob Braille. Part III is your Dark Patchouli Mistress, buttplugging you into the bicycle-rich tumult of modern Stockholm straight from the scribbles of my notebooks. Part IV drives you up the mountain, forces its conclusions on you at Céline-point and grins smugly as you gaze upon the beauty below in the cupcake afterglow of the Acknowledgments.

Behold your adventure, taut and energy-conscious reader. Good reading, and may pumpkin's indecent ambrosia glide down your throat into your soul, filling you with oily orange Ecstasy.

(Click here for my "Sounds of Stockholm" mp3 that contains some of the audio research from the Experiment.)

I. ABSTRACKGROUNTRODUCTION

For millennia, the idea of Sweden has enthralled the world's imagination with shots of hardbodied Vikings, ass-chapping winters, barbaric seafood concoctions, and fuck-off-style horned headgear that's perfect for when you're hung over and cranky. In modern times all this whimsical filligriboobery has ripened into a single prevailing stereotype: Sweden is a country of well-mannered blond beauties who celebrate high taxes, addictive pop hooks, cradling regulation, hard booze and isn't-that-dangerous? rituals involving candles. Until recently, this view was universally accepted. But a look beneath the latexy surface reveals that it completely misrepresents Swedish culture—the candle thing is completely safe, apart from a miniscule number of yearly burnt hair incidents (which, notably, fall well below average BHIs in the 63 NATO countries). Since a central centerpiece of SAFI's mission is to deglistenize the myths about Scandinavia and America, while simultaneously extolling their positive realities (muppetacular languages for the former and unlimited pizza buffets for the fatter), I, Researcher Ed Shepp, braved to conduct SAFI's first transcontinental Experiment: an observational visit to Stockholm, the self-described Scandinavian City That Almost Everyone Knows Isn't In Germany. The porpoise of the Experiment: To capture Stockholm's hot cultural jizz fresh from the spout, and use it in three ways: 1) as a launchpad to inform future research, (2) as a basis to issue edicts for change (3) as raw material for another bizarre Ed Shepp-style blog entry.

To prepare for the Experiment I baked the following recipe, with half the ingredients, for half the time and at half the temperature, for consistency:

Firstly, following my Facercise® instructor's practice of finding truth through bulleted lists, I created numberless agendas catalogues outlines timetables canons indices lineups and dockets. 37,000 pages of dots and fragments about everything conceivable: foods to eat weddings to crash snakebites to fake ways to wear a fake shit-stain on my pants and bring up the topic of Hitler at inopportune times. Purselessly I listenumberumerated until my consciousness reduced to only a beating heart composed not of living cells but of spreadsheets. From the tendrils of dusk to the fists of dawn, I steeped in this moment. Then I ripped the lists to shreds like so many paternity suits and flung the vodka-soaked mess on the Denny's floor and lunged to ignite it before security showed me out. And there in that life-giving parking lot, I willed myself to absorb all the lists and recall them instinctively when needed, like the street whore recalls the car of the plainclothes cop, before shapeshifting back into rat form.

Aquitionally, I gulped down many salty loads of advice, most of which reiterated the same plan: "Get laid a LOT!!" While such advice was adequately helpful, like a rubber butthole, I needed meatier counsel. Then finally one ghastly, grim and ancient raven volunteered an instruction that scraped the eye-boogers from my consciousness: "Assemble of your mind the Void," it crowed, "and ever you are given the tender, rejoin, YES! YES! YES! 'Fancy a herring-lingonberry-reindeer popsicle?' YES! 'Escape to Skåne for a Druid ritual and return riding atop train cars drunk on herring-reindeer vodka?' YES! Come to my flat and star in my movie, Herringly Insatiable: An American Annabel Chong in Sweden?' YES! And while, frankly, his examples seemed to me properly queer, the philosophy behind them gripped me like a crackhead octopus (or maybe just a crackhead), and I vowed to live it with the same devotion I live the Holy Orangitude of Brand Ed Shepp.

Further, I endeavored to annihilate all expectations I had (keeping, of course, a respectful fear for the cuisine, as one would for God or an ugly baby) and submerged myself in galaxies of disinformation, all to avoid creating My Own Private Stockholm in the gallbladder of my brain. Every night I drank Ukrainian amounts of a Nyquil-bacon mixture to corrode any preconceptions I'd formed. I appeared nude on Slate, wearing a blank foundation. (Remember, podiatry-aware reader, that it is only possibly to eradicate ones preconceptions to an certain limit. Brainwiping is an inexact science, like anal bleaching. Residue always remains. For more on residue, see Dr. Robert Mariah Carey Olson's seminal work, Streaks on a Microscope.)

Lastly, I'd like to introduce you to my Jonah Lehrer Magic 8 Ball. (For the unaware reader, Jonah Lehrer is a modern-day oracle, who provides counsel to people in need with his books and articles, through the lens of "science." His book, How We Decide, changed my waiting-in-the-airport-for-my-flight experience forever.) Sometimes, when faced with a novel challenge and neither a night of Correctol nor a chat with the mole people brings me clarity, I consult my Jonah Lehrer-branded Magic 8 ball. This was one of these times. You see, succinct reader, my adademinicity and scollershrimp have always served as my Achilles flaw, and I wondered if it would behoove me to approach my Experiment less intalectiually. I conferred with the JL8B, and it validated my intuition: "Let your emotional brain guide you," it said, "and you will absorb what data you need. Insight will surface, and bubble out like peroxide on a scab. Allow it to percolate and unfold, and it will bless you a unifying theory. Or a cowlick." Yes, his messages are incredibly long—thankfully the ball contains only one. Well, that's Banana for you!

II. MATERIA EXPERIMENTICA

The Experiment headquartered at fellow SAFI Researcher Nils Harning's laboratory, located in the dense thicket jungle of Södermalm. The central location permitted travel by the foot to all of Stockholm and the close proximity of the public transportation (known Stateside as "the shitbox"). The laboratory itself sported a Cluttered Gothic Trailer Kitsch theme, with, like the exotic dipping sauces at Burger King, a Swedish accent. As for Researcher Nils, if I were pacing a masturbatorium in a velvet jacket, smoking into a Dictaphone, 100 years ago, I might say that he had an artistic bent and involved himself in the theater. The Experiment spread itself over five days at the outset of summer and had no itinerary, thus allowing for 1) maximum serendipity and 2) the ever-lingering spectre of diarrhea.

III. INCOMPLETE EXPERIMENT NOTES UNORDERED IN BLANK VERSE

• Wu Tang Clan on flight! Swede from Philadelphia! Owner of purple ukulele! I'm smelling omens. The shitter's right behind me.
• Famous Swedes on airport billboards. Dolph Lundgren is an engineer?!?! Note: get MFA in 'sexiness engineering.' Matriculate at Karolinska Institutet.
• Checkmate. 7-11 victorious. Prize: ubiquity. Loss: Duh. Raise another glass for invasive species. Skål!
• Souvenir crap carts renew me. Thank you, Floridian heritage. I burp a silent blessing.
• Pistachio polymer chemasterpiece. Fashion me into tongue and pour your green sugar on me forever.
• Tree sign: "Caution: Deer Ticks" or "Gay Gnome Sex Ahead"? "Gay Gnome Sex"=verbal MSG.
• Borgerskapets änkehus: Once: "Home for Upper-Middle-Class Widows"; Today: punchline.
• Buildings that aerially resemble a hammer & sickle. Everyone's gotta rip off Disney World. Sheesh.
• Researcher Nils knows EVERYONE! ...So why hasn't he taken me to the elf underworld yet?
• Katarinahissen? I'll wait for the space elevator, tacksa meekay (Thanks Bark Maratelli for that spelling). Or taxi mocha (thanks Japanese friend of Nils!)
• Sample sale. Goo-goo-la-la-shi-shi-frou-frou-ding-dong. Pronounced: "Ock-NAYuh." Spelled: Acne.
• Gorgeous Gothik Lolita. Too nice to hate on. Stockholm Syndrome?
• Smell of Stockholm: rain, earth, white flower, crumpled up in a can of Glade Lilac Spring.
• Youths in shadows. Flickering light. Sounds of partying. Eurovision theme song. Not gay. Not gay?? NOT GAY?!???!?!?!? Not gay.
• Stockholm has enough streetlights to create artificial dawn? Or could that be REAL dawn at 2am?
• If news shows in other countries were food, they would be good Belgian waffles. Not stupendiferious ones, but delicious anyway.
• Election signs: everywhere. White tennis shoes: ditto. Starbucks: Oubliette.
• Yogurt? YES! Granola? YES! Cashews? YES! Too-thick milk! WHADAFAAAH???!!! ...Oh. "Yogurt."
• Plastic flamingo. Do they know it's Christmastime at all?
• Does oxytocin stain?
• State liquor store: great selection, always crowded, closed on Sunday. THAT's a business model I can get behind!
• Shower?? Shudder!!
• "American style"=thisiswhyyourefat.com
• Giggly girls: annoying in every language and culture.
• 40 kronor and my Big Mac is STUCK to the BOX?!?! Bitches need an exchange study program in Harlem.
• Black pudding: Apple butter if it liked horror movies.
• ---Hey guys, let's rent a Hummer stretch limo and drive around fucking in deserted parks!! Yeah, let's do it! While we're still teenagers! I've got Hummer fever!---

[ALTERNATIVELY]

• ---God, Mr. Eriksson is such an amazing boss, renting a stretch Hummer limo and driving through deserted parks. He's so classy and sophisticated. I think I'll give him a hummer later on. Oh, I feel his hand on the back of my head! Maybe sooner than I thought!---
• "It's just too good here. It's too good in Sweden." I KNEW it. I KNEW it would be said sooner or later.
• Lost! Help! Key won't work! So many ways to have a breakdown—how can I lose??! Wait! Random stranger from doorway. Lends me cell phone without eye-rolling. Explains to me how to dial locally! Valeriee, these are not people. They are angels.
• Swedish hipsters DJing on boats. ...And we're back.
• Noise music. Yawn. Wait! GIANT VIKING HORN?!? Fireworks from deep inside my bosom.
• There's a Göteborg affliction of saying "or" after everything. If anyone can pull it off in the USofA, Ed Shepp can.

IV. FINDINGS and CONCLUSION

1) Bathrooms in Sweden are wrong. Exhibit A: Researcher Nils's. Behold the showerhead hanging lonely on the wall, unprotected by any curtain, door or tub. So when anyone takes a shower, the whole room showers with him, including the toilet and the gnome. This is wrong. Showers are one of the 37 experiences in life that live up to commercials: Orgasmic explosions inspired by hair conditioner are common. Stripping its defenses from the hostile world is to devolve the shower experience from that of a private sanctuary into one of a chambre of horror, reminiscent of those rooms where people were sprayed with hoses in prison or psychward movies. Imagine, pithy reader, attempting to enjoy a shower while struggling to avoid drenching your Naughty Dentists of Prague 1987 calendar or your 2-lb bag of Cheetos or the Readers Digest with the invaluable conversation tips, to say nothing of the paintings and the Mary Lou Retton commemorative plates. My scientific conclusion is that every bathroom in Sweden urgently needs renovation, and immediately. SAFI is presently in talks with DANIEL (not Mavis!) Libeskind about this important matter.

Note: Another Swedish-bathroom abomination exists, one that scrapes against the pinkest depths of inhumanity; but we at SAFI believe that its enormity demands nothing less than a direct communiqué to the King. Thusfore, hereinly it will pass unmentioned, like Aunt Tula's heart-stopping farts at Easter dinner. You didn't hear or smell anything.

2) Coffee in Sweden is wrong. Exhibit B: At every restaurant and coffeeshop I graced with my orangeness, milk flowed copiously, like a union of menstruating hippies. But half-and-half, in unspeakable contrast, was nowhere to be seen, its absence lingering like a fat ghost's fart. If you, price-wise reader, take your coffee as I do, with enough fat to lubricate every subway car in London, you will find yourself spasming and seizing in disbelief when you realize that no half-and-half can be had in Sweden. As both scientist and saint, I feel it my duty to speak out against this inhumane condition. Everyone, no matter how goatlike his airspace or gnu-like her countenance, deserves the lardicious comfort of half-and-half, in coffee, pee or any other nutritious beverage. Further research may reveal whether the void of half-and-half plays a role in explaining why the people of Stockholm appears so skeletal and undernourished compared to Americans. (Note: The adipose deficiency of Stockholm's residents is striking. Unprecedented and impossible, like skidless Saturday panties. Consider my experience with public transportation: Over multiple trips on different types of transport, I never once encountered another passenger's flesh spilling over her seat into mine. Not one person exceeded the seats' already lean capacity. In a deeply personal place, this saddened me. How desolate to never feel the plush, unsolicited caress of a fellow commuter's muffin top! It's been said that Stockholm can be a cold place, and in some ways, this rings all too true.) SAFI vigorously recommends that anyone moving to Sweden import a live-in cow to ensure that abundant cream is always on hand. Some h8ers in the medical community may brand drinking cow cream directly from the teat unsanitary and dangerous, but we at SAFI just call it "French."

3) Despite their emaciation, the people of Stockholm exhibit a statistical supersaturation of slammin überhotness. The factors that account for this are uncertain; perhaps the city sustains an mammoth sprawl of modeling schools; perhaps the contentious link between herring and hotness may contain more validity than previously thought. Surely intensive research is warranted.

4) The thoroughness of 7-11s colonization of Stockholm is staggering and strange. The phenomenon seduces you in stages: It perplexes, overwhelms, paralyzes, then transfixes, alarms and appalls, and finally soothes inexplicably, as if some neuronal Pixie Stick broke in your crapstorian lobe, slathering it in synthetic sweetness. Compounding the oddity is the Fanta-commercial-subtle slogan trumpeted from every 7-11 in Stockholm: "Coffee. FOR REAL." Judging by its flavor, the coffee's authenticity was indeterminate, but Stockholm 7-11s' coffee experience, compared to its American counterpart, leaves much to be desired. Example: American 7-11s are required by the Church of Neon Ubiquity to offer a vast selection of flavored coffee creamers. In Stockholm these creamers were inexplicably absent. All things ill-considered, however, this researcher must concede that if being able to get a Slurpee on every corner (even if it is a green tea-peppermint-jingleberry-salmon flavored one) is not a sign of an advanced society, then I don't know what is.

CONCLUSION: Further research is vital. (Indeed, it has already begun—this researcher is presently wearing Björn Borg underwear, measuring its putative advancedness.) Five days might suffice to grasp the phenomenon of Dolly Parton, whose wigs, layed strand-to-strand, could cover the entire land mass of Scandinavia six times over. But alas, It is a sorely inadequate timeframe to attain understanding of the culture that has given us Roxette, Absolut, IKEA, and herring gelato. Multiple projects are presently in development by SAFI's think tanks, and the many targets for study ensure a bright future for SAFI, and the Universe as a whole.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank everyone who made this research voyage possible: SAS airlines, Newark and Arlanda Airports, orbitz.com, Jesus for all he does for me every day--you da man!, CandyApple Sharonta productions, L'Orilivia Shite Management, Sharon Levine, the most patient editor on earth who will wait through the longest stretch of constipation known in the Western world, Avril--guuuuurl, we gonna do spa day again soon w00t w00t!, the borough of Södermalm, repreZENT!, WFMU, Courtney L. for all the hours you spent with me on the phone when I was freaking out or not--you are my therapist, the State of Florida for bringing two so amazing people together as my Mom and Dad, so they could then have ME. Oh yeah, and those two others. I love you, Mom. Peace up, A-Town down, Dad. No, I don't know what that means. Ummmmmm, let's see. I don't want to miss anyone but don't freak out if I do cuz guys, this is like crazy, ok?! A sincere thank you to the madwoman raving on the street: you gave me new life. I choose you. The entertainment you give the world can't be measured. Maybe in minutes. I'd like to thank all the great people on the World Wide Web who talked to a little American with a big dream. Thank you V and Nena and Mount Dora and Lake Square Mall and Burger King for the solid foundation you gave for my EdSheppness. Thank you to Tallahassee. And thank you New York for being such a shithole—if you never stank like you do or were loud and crowded like you are, I may never have needed the escape to Stockholm. Peace, my Stockholmies for speaking English with me and for pretending that they way I pronounced "meat balls" sounded like I was saying "butt balls." Thank you, SAS again, for the two complimentary alcoholic beverages! Thank you, other passengers, for not getting sloshed like I did. That's so crass.

And if these were real acknowledgements, I'd of course thank Researcher Nils for everything. And to D (and everybody) for putting up with my lost-sleep crabbiness.

Lastly, thank you Ed Shepp. You did good, beeyotch. You had a good trip and good things to say about it in your good epistolary piece. Rock out with your good self! W00t w00t!

*An Orange Paper, which can only be issued from the Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut, can be compared, for the unfamiliar reader, to a "white paper," in which it shares many characteristics, one of which being the gravitas and "officialness-n-stuff" connoted by the concept. Moreover, like many whites paper, it is neither white nor on paper. The most salient divergence, however, between the two is the name: The Orange Paper. And of course, if printed, it would appear on orange paper. A less immediately evident aspect of the Orange Paper is that it also exudes all the unique aesthetic and genius connoted by the color orange.

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This has been an Orange Brief from Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut.

Coming Soon

Not to worry, gnooplets. Although it's been a few days since I've returned from Stockholm, a blerg entry will be forthcoming soonenly. So stop yer fretting! Sit tight, it's coming [ghost voice] soooooooonnnn......

(Dammit, I've probably just built it up too big. Quick tamp down your expectations!!!)

E

Ed Shepp Receives Medal of Kindness from Kingdom of Norway

OK, so here's a bit of news that I just can't let pass without sharing it with the wurld: I have received a Medal of Kindness. Technically it's from RJ in Norway, who sent it to me because I'm sending him the new Prince CD, because it's not yet available in Norway, but I find that it's just easier for people if I tell them that it's from the Kingdom of Norway. (Is it still a kingdom? I know more about Sweden's govt than Norway's.) I got it in the mail a couple days ago, and it was a surprise. I almost thought the medal got into the package by mistake, but when I asked RJ, he told me that he gave it to me because I deserved a medal for my kindness and to go with my crown. And when I thought about it, I couldn't help but agree.

And believe me, after today I feel that I have earned the medal. Have you ever been to the post office in SoHo? No? Well, have you ever been to a crappy post office? I'm sure you have, and let me tell you: today SoHo was the worst of the worst post offices. Not only did I wait over a half an hour to mail a $3 package (because if you're sending a package overseas you have to put a customs form and someone behind the counter has to ask you if there's anything fragile or dangerous in it; meaning, you can't just drop it in the bin), but there was a guy in front of me in line who decided that his goal for the day was to be an asshole. He kept bitching to everyone in line in front of him about the guy who was mailing 30 packages. Yeah, it was a pain in the ass, but talking loudly about him in an effort to shame him doesn't help anyone in the real world. The guy was talking so loudly I feared that fisticuffs might develop! But what I feared more was that the guy would turn around and start whingeing to me. Luckily he didn't; I was sort of hoping that I looked strange enough that he thought I was a freak. After all, I was wearing me medal. Nonetheless, while in line I was trying to think of a strategy to use to deflect this person's complaining should he try it on me. I wondered if it would work if I told him that I don't speak English. Could I conceivably look "European" enough for him to believe it? And if he did, would he then start bitching about "immigrants" or tourists? I think if he turned around, I wouldn't have pursued that strategy, because frankly, it's never worked with solicitors. And this being New York, some wipe would probably try to "interpret." I guess I'd have to pretend to speak Old Finnish or something. Odds were that there were Spanish, French, German and Swedish speakers there. But luckily I never had to suffer him.

But let me tell you: it was absolutely horrible. There were weird smells, ugly people, ugly accents, that annoying guy with all the packages, and those postal workers, who are sooooooooooooooo slllllllllloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww. Like unnecessarily slow. I've worked foodservice at theme parks and tourist traps in Florida, peeps, so I know when biatches are operating slowly. I didn't see any reason for the slowitude, but I had a theory: If the subways are a proof for the theory of evolution, then the post office is sure evidence of the persistence of lobotomies. I really think there oughtta be a sign in the post office that says something like: "Postal Service Employees Have Undergone Prefrontal Lobotomy." But enough of that.

I mentioned that I was wearing my medal. Well, you should have seen me. The picture in this entry is my rendering of what I looked like. I was wearing my red sweater with a black shirt and checkery tie, and tightass H&M pants with my medal and sneakers. The look that I was going for was "Supervillain cheerleader who is fundamentally good." Let's break it down: The sweater is a v-neck with white stripes. It feels very cheerleadery to me. If I pair it with chinos, I get the "cheerleader on a yacht" look. So it was the centerpiece. But instead of pairing it with the white shirt, I decided to pair it with a black shirt! :O That's how we get the "evil cheerleader" look. It's kind of like when you're watching a sitcom or Jem or a Mariah video: the "evil" version usually looks no different from the regular one, except ze's wearing black instead of white or has dark hair. Or cooler makeup, in the case of a cartoon. Ze's usually not very evil either, conspiring to "steal the cake" instead of something that you'd actually call evil. Anyway, so that's that. The supervillain comes in serendipitously: My glasses sit a bit crooked on my face, and it usually kinda frustrates me. But it totally works for the supervillain if you picture him as one of those who is hot-but-goofy in real life (the goofiness is supposed to connote a slight "offness" about the villain, sinister in the sense of sinister meaning left-handed) and usually becomes suave when costumed as the supervillain. I'm thinking Cillian Murphy in Batman, but I don't think he actually had crooked glasses. But think of that with crooked glasses. And, of course, the clingy pants from H&M, which fit into the look because they're not jeans, so they're more "wholesome," but they undercut the wholesome cheerleaderness by being too tight and fitting too sexylike. They're also ARGUABLY too young for me, so I bet there were people leering at me on the subway for that reason. But my thought was just like, "Yeah, biatch, I'm a 30something man rocking out a cheerleadery outfit and pants that fit tight AND a Medal of Kindness! You're just hating cuz you don't have a medal! Suck it!" And I say arguably because, while I may not have a great body overall, I've always had pretty good legs. Even for a guy. Because most men have what you might call "good legs" since men don't have cellulite and they typically don't deposit fat in the legs; but my legs are good even for a guys, if I dare say so myself. But enough of that.

So I think I'm going to be incorporating my Medal into my regular wardrobe. And if not my regular wardrobe, then definitely the "occasions to wear my Hermes tie" wardrobe. Because how can you get a Medal of Kindness and not wear it?!? I especially need to wear it because I have an unfortunate history of knowing h8ers who would go so far as to say that I am UNkind in public! Yes, the nerve! But I think my Medal of Kindness (and one from NORWAY no less, where you'd assume people are nicer because they have space and Norway has all that money, etc....) proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am in fact a kind person, even if I don't typically fawn all over people and kiss their asses. Another reason to wear it is when I do something very nice. Invariably (or maybe just with h8ers) when you do something very nice someone around you says, "What are you trying to do, get a medal???" Well, the next time someone says this, I can respond with: "I don't need a medal for kindness. I already HAVE one."

Incidentally I don't yet have a picture of the Medal, but I shall post one when I'm able to take a snapshot. I have no picturey phone, and my digital camera is on the fritz. And that's all for now.

BEEP!
E

Notes for Stockholm. 1.

OK, so I'm going to Stockholm for a few days later in the year. Thank the cods the lowest airline prices of a century coincided with a time when I could actually buy them. Thank you, codz!!!! So I've started to begin to intend to endeavour to try to make lists. Of the stuff that I need before I go and stuff I have to remember and gaga woo woo. This part is important, the having protocols and goals. Because let's face the pickles here: a trip to Stockholm isn't just something you do any day. It's not like Jones Beach. And since there's always a chance that I'll never even get to Europe's shores again, I better make this shit COUNT. So one thing I'm doing is declaring it, to myself, as my birthday, Christmas and Halloween present and Easter basket all in one. And maybe even a really good birthday, like my 50th birthday present. (That might be a good idea; so when I reach 50 and, codwilling, a coterie is fawning over me asking what I want for my 50th birthday, I can say, "I've already had it, and I had it when I was 36.") That way I'll be determined to make it fun, because it's got a lot riding on it. Some people live their lives like that, you know. They put so much cathexis into being "a good woman" that they can never let themselves believe otherwise, because it's too costly. Yeah, so yeah.

Another thing I'm doing is basically the same thing as the first, but more the core of the matter: I'm just promising myself that I'm going to love it no matter what--if it rains, if it snows, if it goes all Cloverfied... Anything except missing the flight or some crap like that. That you can't make fun. And another thing I'm doing--and this is turning into a list of its own--is making it into some kind of social experiment. And probably recording it all too, cux I might as well make audio magic out of it too, right? But back to the social experiment. Yes, this is definitely going to be part of it. Hmmm, maybe 'anthropological observation' would be more fitting a term. Anyway, I'm going to observe any little thing I can think of, and I'll have to think of it before I go, and notate it. This all sounds way more highfalutin and smart than it is, but go with me here. So I'm trying to think of stuff to observe. And I've come up with two thoughts so far. So this will be the beginnzing of a bunch of lists, if not here than in my mind. Especially when I'm feeling contemplative. May it birthate many more lists.

(I think my 2Q:09 resolution will be to be the kind of person that people make lists about. Then someday 40 years hence I'd like to be talking to someone who is a close friend and have hir say to me, "Do you remember the Count of Boobookabooshkoo? He must have made 60,000 lists about you, he felt so strongly about you. For a summer there he had a staff of 1600 just sitting there paid top dollar to make lists about you all day. He had the country's best poets working for him. You know, like the person who wrote Toxic. Remember they were all published a couple years later and every contributor named a co-poet laureate of the country? It almost got a Nobel.")

NOTES FOR STOCKHOLM 1

--Look at the old people. You know how old people here, even the rich ones, look just ground down and beat the shit out of? See if they look that way there. Here's a rich, developed country with a good safety net and a populace with a reputation for good behavior at home. (Wow, Sweden really does have a good reputation, doesn't it? I suppose it can only be good for me to like it, right? I could imagine someone saying, "You know Ed? I used to think he was hopelessly godless, destined to blaspheme 1,000 things before he even wakes up in the morning? Well, did you know he likes Sweden? I always thought he'd want to live in some genie bottle lounging on rugs and inhaling and exhaling nothing but pure, overpowering pleasure. But maybe I was wrong--maybe he can live in a small town and behave like the good kids. I'm gonna introduce him to my friend Jesus again.") So add all these things together and surely you'd find "a good place for the elderly" in there somewhere. It just goes with the territory. That said, if that were the only thing that mattered to me, I suppose I'd be all about Japan, because they respect their elderly there. I think. But who wants to go through all that schooling and pressure?! And isn't that where they have suicide waves? Nej, tack. But more importantly, I think if life there really is easier because of social welfare and everything else, I'd expect the older people to not look as eroded as they do here. We'll see.

--Check out the rats in the subway. Are they huge and brawny, big as cats but a little icy and reserved? (Because it's becoming a cliche that they grow 'em taller in rich parts of Western/Northern Europe. Because they really do grow taller. And there's that Swedish cliche about the guys being tall and blond and built. So if the people grow bigger, do the rats? Are they well-nourished too?) Are they blond? Is there language very musical and heavy on the 'r' phoneme?

--Make more notes later. Bloggerate this so you don't lose it.

FIN

So that's my forsta list, in progress. More to come if I think of something and am not too lazy to put it up.

GLORP! (it's not the new beep, exactly; but I end my emails with various single-syllable such words, so I'm being colloquial here. But I'll beep anyway. BEEP!)

E

Flerpglerp

Oh, cod. Blogger, look what has become of you. Not only do you have "followers" on your template page, but you also have "monetize," as in "click here to monetize your blog." Must you escort us down that road???? Antyganoo...

I have something to say! -Jerri Blank, Strangers With Candy.

I'm sure that I am a supergenius ultraexpert at something, but that this something doesn't yet have a name or definition. And since I can't pin it down exactly, I think it may be completely undiscovered, and therefore in need of invention. I have a suspicion that it's not a single trait, but rather a complex, or to coin a word, a parallex. If it were a medical condition, you might call it a syndrome. One of these days I'm going to give it a name and educate people about it. It's good when you've educated people so much that they think they've heard of it on Oprah instead of from you. Or when they say, "Did I tell you that Fularka has Glammertybork's Artstasia?" when they forget that you INVENTED G.A.! So I'm going to define this set of traits, and maybe monetize it. Of course, the existence of the syndrome prompts one to ask...

Is this a parallex that is a positive mutation in human evolution? Is it a superior genetic trait?

:O

(Yeah, I made an emoticon.) (I farted too.) (Not really, I just thought that was funny.)

You know, I don't like the word mutation in that context. It has such a bad connotation. We should think of positive genetic mutations as adaptations. Because it describes it better. I read about some study that came to the conclusion that experience can alter your genes--e.g., if you have years of musical training, your offspring may inherit a certain aptitude for music, apart from their exposure to it as infants. How's that? That experience causes your DNA to change? The article seemed to imply that was part of the study's conclusion; but I doubt it. Experience/environment can cause your gene expression to change, however, and maybe that's how things get passed on. Who knows?? I'm just flexing my Cassadega lobe here.

The point, and I don't really have one, being that perhaps this parallex is a superior genetic adaptation. We won't know the specifics of it until it's studied at length, however. First I need to name it; then people need to parse it out, describe and categorize it; finally scientists need to locate the specific genetic sequence responsible for it, and what other effects it has besides giving rise to the parallex. For example, do the genes that code for the parallex also leave one susceptible to the pleasures of pumpkin pie?? Maybe someone with one or more of the genes turned OFF is resistant to pumpkin pie. Of course, that would be silly now, wouldn't it? Because it would seem preferable in evolutionary terms to like pumpkin pie--it is calorie dense, and therefore it would be good to have in a famine. ("No bread? Well then let them eat pumpkin pie!") It is also sky high in beta carotene. It may have traces of calcium and protein. And the preservatives in canned pumpkin mean that it will always be around. AND pumpkin pie MIX is great straight-from-the-can. So clearly liking pumpkin pie is a superior genetic adaptation. But I think I'm getting ahead of myself here, because there's nothing at present to tie pumpkin pie susceptibility to my particular parallex. It may be indicative of a completely separate parallex, which is also a desirable genetic adaptation. Oh, so much to know, and only one me. Le sigh...

Glerp
E

Ed Shepp's Excellent Philadelphia Adventure

So I went to Philadelphia for the firsten time last weekend. I took the Bolt Bus down, which was less terrifying than I thought (I'm not crazy about buses; let's not get into that right now), and stayed with my former roommate, and Catner of course (who was not at her nicest). J lives in a great building--walking distance from bars, Burger King, the Liberty Bell, DeVry, the Comcast building, the "funky" part of town, Barnes & Noble, an Amish flea market where they sell dolls without faces, and a pr0n theater. And let it be said that the water pressure and volume in his building (which, by the way, has a 7-11 on the ground floor) is second-to-none. The climate control is also excellent. But let's get to da tingz I learned from my trip, numberliststyle:

1) Philly's not a shithole. Who knew?!!?! Well, Center City isn't.

2) Philadelphia's City Hall looks uncannily like City Hall at Main Street USA in The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida. Shit, that took forever to say. Anyway, I think Philly copied it.

3) The Liberty Bell (and I can't even think that phrase without picturing a certain episode of Strangers with Candy) looks like it's made of chocolate. I think they coated it with something, perhaps chocolate, to prevent further corrosion or something, because it's BROWN. And WAXY. The whole thing, not just the bell part. The funniest thing about the Liberty Bell is that it's a national treasure (like yours truly) and is surrounded by 99-cent stores and a petit craptown.

3.5) The Comcast Center is amazing. Well, the lobby is. Behind the reception desk there's a huge LCD wall that plays different animations, sync'd to music, when it's not pretending to be the same wooden paneling as the rest of the lobby. It's really unbelievable. The animations go in li'l segments, and the music changes for each. Actually, "animations" isn't the best term, since there's some filmed stuff in there. Like some great nature scenes--I wish I could look at those all day--and some cool stuff where they used actors/dancers to interact with each other "inside" the wooden panels. Or they would be carrying things across the wooden panels. And speaking of people walking, there are also sculptures of people walking across beams going up a few stories in the Center.

4) Whenever someone speaks Swedish to me, I have this brain gap that feels like about 10 seconds, where my mind processes what has just happened. When I realize that I've heard Swedish, I then have another brain gap where I see if I know what the phrase means. I saw Carl, who is from Sweden, at J's birthday dinner, and ever and anon he would say something in Swedish to me, and I noticed this brain freeze thing. It's only worked so far with real Swedes, however, so I'm not worried about it being some kind of kryptonite that people can use against me. You know, like, "Quick, say something in Swedish to him and grab the apple fritter from his hand."

5) If someone from China claims that Puerto Rico isn't really part of the United States, just mention Taiwan.

And that's the Philly blop for now, gooplers.

Beep!
Prince EQ

Beautiful Wikipedia

It's just too wonderful not to mention: I've made it. Almost. Sorta. Not really. But kinda. In my own li'l igloo way. I'm on wikipedia.

No, blossoms, not in myne own entry, but as part of an entry on the song Beautiful Stranger. Yeah, it's small, but it's something. Scroll down to the Cover versions section and you'll see the last li'l blurp about me:

"Indie artist Ed Shepp recorded a cover of the song for his EP The Madonna Within."

And no, I did not do that myself nor did I put anyone up to it. If I did, I would have had them write "The Madonna Within EP." But it's all good. :)

And since the song is on my terapad, which keeps overloading its bandwidth (hmmph. or so it says! Gud på ett hjul!!), here's a link to the song if you wants to downlerd it.

Or you can just hear it here:




Of course, you can also hear it, in remixified formulax, in any of the Blips I've done for Billy Jam, since I'm sorta using it as my theme song with those.

Oh, and one more thing, which is overdue: Click over to Dope Astrology, (for Feb 17) and who's that sexy beast in the Scorpio box???? Yup! ME!!!

And det var allt for now.

Beep!
Prince E. Quistvalden av Norwegenmark Trailer Park

Valentoonce.

OK, so my Valentine Blip dropped on Billy Jam's show the other day, and I don't at present have data to make any assumptions about whether people got what I was going for. Billy told me that he got some good comments on it, but I don't know what those were. Some of the comments on the page for the show are interesting: Someone says that the music was taking them back to the 80s, to "high-school." Yes, that's what I was going for. But then did they further get that the songs kept getting more and more recent, and the points-of-view more, erm, disillusioned? Pointing to what one assumes is the tragedy of the whole thing, the narrator who comes in periodically with "Love Tried to Welcome Me"? Let's have a listen to the blip. Hopefully you'll be able to download it from here:



So basically it's a "love story" of sorts, or rather the story of someone who failed to find love, or whatever. Listen to just the songs and I think that's what you'd get. But listen to the song that glues them all together: "Love Tried to Welcome Me." I've always connected to this song, sometimes for the melodrama but mainly because it took an unusual stance: The singer actively disavows Love. Even though he or she may lament his condition, and even admist to being "drawn to sadness," which doesn't indicate being drawn away from Love, but rather could allude to other things, a blueish temperament, perhaps----s/he may do this, but s/he still revels in the lyric, "Love tried to break me" as if it's a success or victory, which it may be. How would we know? So I think when it comes down to it, the song reveals a profound ambivalence about the idea of love, especially "modern" Love. If you look it like that, then you can see a progression in the songs: the first songs in the blip are filled with echo and are effected weirdly and are extreme examples. (Authentic ones, though: "I Love You Just the Way You Are" has a valentine connotation to me because it was on the car radio when my sister and I were so excited to open our li'l heart-shaped boxes of red hots. We must've thought valentine's day was the cat's pajamas. I think I did for a few years.) Then the songs get from middle-to-high school, and they're tinnier, with the bottom end rolled off and the pitch is higher, to make them sound bubble-gummy, and they all sound very naive. The last part of the songs are just a fast forward through disillusionment, since I didn't have time to really build the last chapter. "I Can't Make You Love Me" is the best of the series, but it didn't follow as well as I'd liked. Because who hasn't felt something like that before, really? For comic relief I ended with Creep and then burped in my "extro."

So it's sort of two narratives: an exaggerated one where all this experience with love leads to ambivalence, and an ambivalence that was always there, but manifested in certain ways until the person just eventually accepted his former emotional responses were inauthentic but it serves to elucidate the process by which they become authentic. Hmm, I'm probably not making sense and should be listening to Karpe right now, but there you go. And here's the song itself, that I stitched together from ther various parts. I call It "Love Tried to Lower My Formants" because I lowered the formants on the main voc without changing the pitch, and it's what makes it sound awesome. Click here and hopefully you'll be able to download it without registering.

Hmmm, that's all I can think of right now. Valentine's Day isn't worth discussing (cuz I mean, what would I do, right? It was Saturday: I slept in, I read, I walked around. No differnt from any other good weekend day). Nothing much else is happening. I'll hopefully be in between stuff for a while.

BLOMP!
E

My WFMU Blog Post

Go read my FMU blog post. I had it quoted here, but blogger is a piece of SHIT and screwed up some html. Anyway, go here and read it.

And to the commenter who put "tl;dr" -- I have an abbreviation for you: F.U.

Beep!
E

More Crap About What's on My iPod

You know, I think about this all the time--the music on my iPod. That, smells, a certain concept of place, and the weather. That seems to occupy a lot of my mental real estate lately. So let's have a listen to what else is on my iPod (the mini now, not the shuffle. The mini with a one-day battery life. Vad hände????). I'll just go through and yap about whatever seems yappable.

Apple Juice Kissing - DeeLite. (Hmmm, I noticed that I mentioned this one before, so I'll keep this short.) Sometimes DeeLite feels like therapy. You listen to it and you're like, "Oh, this is how chill people think." And I love how it's romantic and even cliched at parts but still sexy and laidback. I even look dreamy when I listen to this. This is what La Isla Bonita should feel like (all of them--Madonna, David Hasslehoff, me....)

Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs. Oh SHIT these are good! I have to admit, I didn't really want to life SS, because isn't he some crazyass Catholic Mormon Baptist shaman? AND he's really good looking AND talented AND young AND in this hipster community?!? But anyway, I heard I think that Illinoize album a while ago and liked it, but didn't go far with it. But this xmas album--it's absolutely transcendent! The song I have on right now, "boogie to the elf dance" or something, the lyrics are just amazing. Not flowery or complicated, but just straightforward, original and sincere. Did I say original? Because WHERE else could you hear a lyric like 'Your sister's bangs--she cut them herself"??!?! It's brilliant! Especially because it's not thrown in there clearly randomly in an attempt to seem clever. Also: "Kmart is closed..." It's not thrown in to be a smart-ass like it usually would have been. It describes this small town he's talking about (that's how I read it anyway). "What a great day..." "Tell all the neighbors there's cookies to eat..." OK are these supposed to be ironic and corny?? I don't think so, which is what makes them so great; because the way he sings them, you can totally see it, you can believe this is a real situation. The complete opposite of the trite phoniness of someone like Celine Dion. I think part of the effect of this song is that 1) SS isn't the most amazing singer there's ever been (he's not BAD, but he's not Jennifer Hudson) 2) the music is odd but it works: banjos, what sounds like a piano recorded in a living room 3) this almost smalltown music-theater quality of the arrangements; and I think there may be kids singing on some of the songs, except that here they sound natural. This almost sounds like it could have been recorded in someone's living room at Christmas. Or maybe a super-idealized family-room. Oh, and I also like how he goes, "There's a lot to shout about" but then instead of talking about Jesus, which is what you expect, he says that "Santa Claus is coming to town." Now how's that for being inclusive?!

And since I mentioned that song, let's also mention All the King's Horns. It starts out just these small delayed bells, and it sounds quite like that one all-bells song on Bjork's Vespertine. Of course, then these really cool, interesting, strange flute-like(?) sounds come in, which just sound otherworldly, but also kind of sound like an animal. It's hard to describe, but you really get the sense that "All the King's Horns" was a perfect name for the song. Moving on...

PSA, by Ed Shepp. Damn. This is the kind of thing that I listen to and think, "I did THAT???!" In a good way. It's just fantastic to look at or hear something you did a long time ago and forgot about and be amazed by how much you like it. And I like this. And I can remember doing it, with these really blunt instruments. It's still fascinating to me how you can get some of the best results in sounds and images with some of the least functional tools. Anyway, moving on still...

The Raging Swedes podcast. OK, I don't get this. I can hear some foreign-language stuff and understand why it's funny, but this is passing me by. It just sounds like a bunch of guys sitting around, eating(!!!!), talking over each other sometimes, coughing, and I'm like, "Wha??" iTunes made it seem like it was popular. Maybe I'm not getting it because it's in another language. Maybe there's a reason why they open with Kitaro. Who can solve the mystery.....

Hair, Japanese Cast. Oh, dear. Well, the funniest thing about this (it's the main song, about 'gimme a head with hair...') is the first part. The line "gimme a head with hair." You know how in English the guy takes his time with this part, because it's supposed to sound langorous and sexy? Well, this is the one time a Japanese translation lived up to the stereotype: there are like 32 syllables here, and it sounds ghastly. The rest: not much better. Is Japanese just a terminally unsexy language? The real weirdest part of the song, however is this: When you think of Japanese people, don't you think of people who work really, really hard to get shit right? Like, they all play the cello and they went through crazyass high schools and shit, right? So if you hear a Japanese song, you expect no vibrato and you expect it will be chromatically perfect on the pitch, right? Well, maybe it's supposed to be off because they're playing "American," maybe not. Whatever the case, they don't sound in tune. Maybe they are, but I expected something like When Does Cry or some crazy auto-tuned country song. (It's really disturbing when every part is tuned like that.) Anyway... the next song is the American version. I have to admit, I just love this song. Apart from the musical, which I'm not as crazy about as I thought I could be. It's a sexy song. Too bad it's from Hair. You listen to it on the subway and Abigail Dupont-Mortimer Johnson&Johnson Snickers Van-Cartier Clinton is all like, "Hmmph. He's listening to Hair. What a filthy hippie!"

Jingle Bells by the Carpenters. This song is such a masterpiece it baffles me. It's so perfect I know there was some intelligent design behind it. Brilliance like this doesn't just happen. I think the greatest thing about this song is that it comes off genuinely creepy, like it would be right at home in a horror movie. It reminds me in tone of the Jingle Bells (was it Jingle Bells) from the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest movie. It's extremely over-earnest and has a lot of instruments that were used in television or movies way way way way back in the day, so that it already sounds like a parody of itself. Then way they sort of make the strings and horns "talk" is one example of that. You sometimes hear it in Disney movies. And the vocals: It starts out with Karen Carpenter sounding like she always does, but then at the end of the first verse, at "is to ride," comes in this chorus that sounds like it was recorded on a tape player, recorded from some children's special--actually most of these vocals sound like they are from a TV special. Then a crazy chorus of women in head voice, some guys singing and doing that ghastly harmony people do, and sometimes just letting all the air out on the word "bells." Then an instrumental bit in the middle, with this high-pitched horror movie sound that is so high it sounds a little out of tune, just because the frequency is so harsh. Then the chorus takes us out, but some guy is so far forward on the mix, with this chorus effect on his voice (and of course he doesn't sound as good as the background singers), that it just adds yet more to the creepiness factor. And then it ends in a hollow crescendo.

Phantom of the Opera, Wing. Honestly, what's there to say about Wing? The concept is so straightforward: a really, really bad singer who really, really thinks she's good. But in this case the concept works. I've never been crazy about this song, but damn, this recording is GOOD! Those horns sound so real and full! And the strings so lush and, well, real. And in the second verse this HUGE timpani! But it seems like the horns really do it. They just sound so great. You can almost pretend that Wing is, like, the king of Korea's first mistress and that this is the royal orchestra playing just to humor this beeyotch. But anyway, about her singing: Yes, it's terrible, and here's why: 1) if she ever lands on a right pitch it's pure luck--she's flat here, sharp there, and oftentimes just singing different notes altogether. The end is problematic for me: she is getting higher than she was progressively, and then just parks. I wonder if in the original song, which I don't know well enough, whether the singer keeps going UP, but Wing just stops because of her lack of ability. In this sense I could see her hearing HERSELF as going up, but not in reality. 2) Her voice is tight as a drum, and she just has wretched technique all around 3) She never even approaches a vibrato, and honestly she seems to be singing in a non-western scale. Sometimes there are these really weird notes or almost-trills that she does that sound like Asian music. 4) Her accent is like sandpaper. It's weird how you can hear her accent most at the end, when she's supposed to be singing an 'ah' phoneme, but is just making a sound, and it sounds like it could be a non-Western vowel sound, but maybe it's just straining.

Carol of the Bells/What Child Is This, Point of Grace. The music: beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. And also natural-sounding. All this until they start singing. Then the music takes a back seat and isn't really interesting anymore. Of course, AFTER they finish singing, the music swells again and goes out really interesting, in this great church-bells-pealing sound. But then, these girls also are not Jennifer Hudson, so if the music had stayed interesting they whole time, they would've been drowned. I'd like to hear someone who could really, really sing perform this. But I'd prefer a good instrumental.

The Magic of Christmas Day, Celine Dion. I really can't say enough about this song, about the myriad ways that it is bad and good and could be great, but I will not say anything about it now. I will merely award it an honorable mention.

Beep!
E

The Shepp-Blumberg Audio Consortium's 2008 Holiday Message

Happy Christmas, y'all! And in the spirit of the holidays, I give you The Shepp-Blumberg Audio Consortium's 2008 Holiday Message.

Everyone clap for Christmas!!


Beep!
E

Me Wish List

Here's me wish list, in case anyone out in the ether wants to get me anything:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/34S6YM2X6Z90W/ref=wl_web

And if you still need xmas sounds, here's my Ed Shepp xmas sound page, back from last year!

BEEP!
Ed Shepp

Låt den rätte komma in

OK, so I saw that movie, Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), the other day, quite by accident. (And if you want to know how to pronounce the title in Swedish, click this to hear from forvo.com) I happened to be at the Angelika the other day, and everything looked crappy or depressing, so when I saw the movie was in Sweden, and the ticket person (who thought that new Woody Allen movie was good--WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!??!?!?!? She MUST have been kidding when she said she thought it was "complex" and said it was like "Woody Allen grew up." The movie is ridiculous) confirmed that it is in Swedish, I thought "Hey, even if it's retarded, at least it won't seem TOO stupid since it's in another language." So I saw it.

And I'm totally going to spoil it for you here, since you're not going to see it. As I understand it, there's an American version being made, due out in 2010. Make no mistake: It. Will. Suck. And it will avoid everything controversial in this version.

OK, so what happened in the movie? Well, I came in a little late, but I think I got the whole thing. As much as I could, I suppose, since there was stuff that I missed. I will say one thing before I tell the plot: There was a point where the girl in the movie was talking to someone and I thought, "This would be really cool if she ate him." How bout it got really cool! Anyway, here we go...

So it takes place in Sweden somewhere, apparently Stockholm, though I wouldn't think that even Stockholm gets so cold as to be covered in snow and freeze the lakes over and all. It starts with 12-year old blond boy, and he's talking to some girl who looks a lil unkempt. I thought it was going to be a story about a guy befriending a homeless girl, because he gave her a Rubiks cube and I thought they were in a bus station (they were outside). But she's not homeless per se--they're neighbors. Fast forward fast forward--you see an attack happen under a bridge, and you're like, "Is that that girl?" Fast forward--she's over at his house and says, "You have to invite me in." That's when you really get the inkling that she's a vampire, because everyone knows that you have to invite vampires in. (However, not everyone knows this. My friend ---- in Atlanta used to have Mexican workers living with him. They were afraid to go into his basement because they thought there were vampires down there. Uhhh, duh. There can't be, because you have to INVITE them! How uneducated!) Anyway, and this is proving to be a really short synopsis, blond boy is being bullied at school, so he tells Eli (the vampire) about it and she says she can help. More on that later. In a REALLY good plotline, Eli bites this woman but doesn't kill her, so the woman starts becoming a vampire. She goes over to someone's house, where this guy has, like, 900 cats, and they all start hissing at her and then all these computer-generated cats jump on her and start biting. That was freaking hilarious. But it's not over yet! She goes to the hospital, says she wants to die, asks someone to open the blinds on a sunny day, and when he does, a dummy version of her bursts into flames (see the picture). That was awesome. In another plotline, the man Eli lives with turns out to be a pedophile, and he gets caught having kidnapped a boy and he pours acid on his face. Then he falls out of the window at this hospital and his head brakes off. OK, back to the blond and Eli: blond wants to go steady with Eli, and she says something like, "What if I'm not a girl?" OK, you think "she's not a girl, she's a vampire." But it turns out she's both a vampire and a castrated boy. So how does blond react? He reacts like he does to everything in the movie: he doesn't. He seems nonplussed by everything. When he sees her scar, he just shrugs. When he asks her, "är du vampyr?" he might as well be asking her if she got her haircut. And later when this guy says he's going to poke his eye out with a knife, blond seems to have no reaction. Hmmm. I don't know if it's underacting or if it's a Swedish thing. It comes off like the latter. Anyway, so now that we've gotten most of it out of the way, let's finish: Blond fights back against a bully; the bully's brother comes back with a knife and, well, you know. So he's holding him underwater, and you see the blond through the pool cam. he's underwater and losing his breath and all, and then you see a pair of shoes through the water. Then you see the forearm of the guy who's holding him underwater. Yep, Eli has come to save him. Then at the end they go away together on some train. Oh wait--I forgot one thing. There's a scene after he knows she's vampyr, and she's at his house and he's like, "Why can't you just come in? Why do I have to invite you?" so she just comes in. And then starts bleeding out her orifices and her pores. Then he says he invites her in and they hug. And yeah, it's weird when you think that you're watching two twelve-year old kids covered in blood going steady and one is a vampire but is also a boy.

So you can see how they're going to change everything in the American version. More love story, more "defeating the vampires." The girl will probably be caught, and if not, there will be crappy sequels. More good vs. bad. I can't even imagine. The color will probably be richer in the US version--in this version, it was this washed-out wintry palette. It works considering where it's set, but I always prefer bold, rich, splash-right-off-the-screen color.

And that's the movie. Quite strange. But entertaining.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Community Service

OK at the moment I would like to do some community service. Because I care about people. For this lecture I will be discussing some of the contents of my (crappy) iPod shuffle. Read on, and learn.

1. Hidden Place, Bjork. song#4
This song is interesting because it shows us very clearly a certain geocultural internal genre: The Cold Weather music genre. When you hear a song like this, you have to imagine that you're in some huge, icy, dim, snowy scene. Bjork is from Iceland, for the cave dwellers who may be reading. In Iceland it's always cold, even in July. So this is where Bjork lives, physically and mentally. This is the sonic equivalent of the song's mindset. Think of the second verse, (if you can call it that): "He is the beautifulest, fragilest, still strong, dark and divine. And the littleness of his movements hides himself. He invents a charm that makes him invisible, hides in the hair..." Now, does that say "Nordic myth" or what? Yesh. So this is what cold weather sounds like: lush orchestrations, "soft" sounds, especially with a mythic lift to them, higher instruments, lots of chorusing and thickening; lots of reverb. It's definitely NOT the quick-cut, silence-punctuated with futurism like some electronic music.

2. Piece of Me, Britney #5
This is an unfinished song, but it points to what's ahead. It's unfinished because, clearly, it is. It's too spare; it needs more flourishes. I had a feeling the vocoders were supposed to be more front and center; this sounds like a scratch track. Also, the instrumentation: you can tell listening to the end that it was going to have more flourishes, maybe "17th century" style flourishes, but the album got leaked before they added them and it was released thus. But it is a good groove, isn't it?

3. She Bop (remix) #7
Probably the best remix ever done. The sounds, separated, sound so fresh here. And the new sounds! I remember when I was younger, hearing this and thinking there was something seriously salacious about it, but not knowing why. Well, it's the percussion that sounds like toilet seats slamming and the bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bop metallic sounding thing (it would work well with a 70s vocoder), and maybe more. But I remember I would blush listening to it, and this was before I know what "she bop" meant. But in terms of the sexiness, I have to say: the breath thing, probably going for sexy, doesn't do much. It's just another rhtyhm, and you end up wondering why the breath is so short. But seriously, for too many reasons to get into, this is the best remix ever made.

4. Apple Juice Kissing, DeeeLite. #9
I just love the naturalness of the rapped part, and the casualness of the music that really makes it sound like summer. I swear, they must've recorded this album in Tahiti. This represents an almost subtropical genre, in contrast to Bjork's frozen landscape. It's so casual. It really feels like a summer day. I do have to say, though, I'm not entirely sure what "apple juice kissing makes me roll my hips" means, but it's cool. I have another song from that album on here, and it has the line, "No interruptions, we're all alone. Cuz I don't have a cellular phone"--talk about a casual summer, even almost hippielike, lyric! Love it!

5. Unemployed in Summertime (can't remember) #13
I really like this song. It's by someone in Iceland, but she manages to, for the most part, make it sound like a lazy day in summer. Examples of lyrics: "Let's get drunk on Saturday, walk up Primrose Hill until we lose our way.... Sorry, don't get mad at me--I just did the sex quiz in your magazine. You're my best friend in the world.... Unemployed in Summertime, only just turned 21. It'll be OK. Unemployed in Summertime, we don't need money cuz we're young..." Ah, just listening to those, you feel like you're 21 again and don't have a care in the world.

6. Christmas in Hell. Some Holy Roller Prodigy. #21. I downloaded this from soundclick. It's some child prodigy's interp of Carol of the Bells. He's also from a holy roller family. The song starts out OK, with a weird inversion of the melody, but with pretty much the same baseline, of Carol of the Bells. Unfortunately, it never really moves on from this. It just builds and gets louder and more aggressive and then fizzles, without exploring more territory, so it ends up basically in the realm of Really Good New Age song, but nothing better. It could have been more, but the idea, of dubious nature to begin with, isn't developed. Furthermore, what exactly does the song mean? Is it that Hell is torment? If so, you're using YOUR OWN composition to signify torment? And it's not dissonant? What does the Bolero-type build mean? That Hell's agonies constantly increase? But you're using your composition to illustrate those agonies. And moreover, the only thing agonizing about the piece as written is that the part is in a minor key. What's so menacing about that? The original song is in a minor key. But it's most important that it doesn't go anywhere, and that's, apart from some very minor misses, is what keeps it from being great.

14. Zombie Jamboree/Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Rockapella. #22/23
I love this choir shit. Just love it. And damn, those Rockapella beeyotches got skills. They MIGHT be good enough to sing on Broadway. But we can't really know, because the particular rules their songs follow don't allow for much original emotional interpretation. One thing I like about the HYaMLC is the occasional Perry Como Special quality that every now and then comes in. Love it! I'm not sure of the very discernible delay effect they have on it--it's pretty, if a bit thick, but why not just hear them the way they sound? Which reminds me--Christina Aguilera: what you really should do? Put out an acapella album with no filtering on the vox. That way we can really hear you sing.

15. "The Magic of Christmas Day" (?), Celine Dion #24
I think I can truly say that this is the only song I know that I like "ironically." Of course I also like it straight, but not all of it. It's amazing to feel this way about a song. First of all, the irony part: Cod, these lyrics are insipid, in so many parts and so many ways. I should say this, though: the character in the song, I wish I liked ANYTHING as much as this bitch likes Christmas. DAMN! eg: "Christmastime is here, our waiting is done." WHO is sitting around WAITING for Christmas, plucking out her leg hair and biting her nails to the bone?! Crazy. And: "...that everyone feels, it's the magic of Christmas Day." What?!??! The MAGIC--what exactly IS this "magic of Christmas Day"??? Really, it's just another day. Sometimes there's magic to Halloween, but not Christmas.

The refrain: God bless us, everyone. The good and the bad, the happy the sad. God bless us, everyone. Here's to family and friends, it's good to be here again. OK, the happy/sad thing is lazy writing. But the 'here's to family and friends...' actually succintly wraps up what we really think about Christmas in a way that's not cheap or maudlin or altogether too cliched, even though it's a little bit beer-commercial.

The bridge: That woman's voice! It gets so WEIRD!!! She goes into an upper register here, and it just sounds freaky, like an alien duck. Especially on "it's easy to do." Crazy. The bridge, OF COURSE, unfolds into an instrumental part with, you guessed it, a saxophone. The biggest Christmas cliche ever (in a huge nest of cliche upon cliche, which is the style of every Celine Dion song), and it doesn't even fit the rest of the song. Like, you expect it in Merry Christmas, Baby, but not in this song which is trying to be soaring.

After the bridge, a repeat of the chorus, then another repeat. But with the second repeat, her lead vocal starts the chorus and full volume and then fades WAY into the background while another line continues as the lead at the lead volume, but it's just the most ghastly thing you've ever heard. It's supposed to be her riffing a bit and getting emotional or somehting, but we all know that the Dion does NOT do this well. This is Dion at her duck best, because she says 'God bless us all,' which ALMOST sounds like she got overwhelmed emotional and just said it, but falls short. Then she just makes sounds in the scale but seriously sounds like a duck. Is that a French thing? And then the lyrics she chooses to repeat as the song fades? "good and the bad, happy, the sad.." Sheesh, how did you choose the most banal lyric when there actually were other better ones, or ones you could have improvised, Celine?!? Uck, it's failings like these that make me certain that Celine Dion will NEVER be able to strike a genuine emotional chord for a sophisticated audience. But then she's so wealthy now, what does it matter to her? Celine, please retire so we can remake your songs in a few years? And while we probably won't match your level of technical who's-it-what's-it, we will sure as hell put more emotional movement into your songs!

17. Sternfall (two songs) #25 and 26
I know someone in the band, but I gotta say: they're amazing. They really hit the note of what they're going for, which is, I'm not sure: I think polka/yiddish/germanic type music. They sing in Swedish, Yiddish and cod knows what else, and you can't hear a song withou thinking they really hit the mark: They seem to use natural instruments, but they're processed a little, it seems, to make them richer. The vox have little processing evident on them: On Goldene Pave, you can hear some echo, and you can hear some pitch correction on the English song, but mostly it's like hearing really well-recorded acoustic music recorded at someone's party or something.

18. Sveriges Radio #28-34
These are selections from Radio Sweden. Godmorjon Varld is first, and while RS said it was comedy, it doesn't sound like it. It sounds like a Swedish "Morning Edition"; it could be all fake. If it is, that's pretty amazing. The second, can't remember the name: Funny. Song parodies, "cooler" sounding Swedish, and a part about drive-bys that's really funny but I don't feel like explaining now. Then a couple documentaries. I like the beginning, with the dramatic music and the thickened voice going "Du lyssna pa sveriges radio. Det har ar P3." You can totally understand it, and when you hear it, you're like, "oh THAT's how 'har' is really said!" Then: Mammas Nya Kille, which is just hilarious for so many reasons, partly because every now and then you catch some Swedish; then cuz of the guy who goes into English sentences all the time and you're wondering if he's supposed to be an American cuz he sounds all cocky; then the voices that they put on for the characters, which you laugh at even though you don't know what they're saying, but you do catch that they frequently address the host by name and pause before speaking. "Bengt..... Ja blah blah blah"

21. Winter Wonderland, hellogoodbye #40
I love this song. I love how it's sparsely and straightforwardly arranged, with the natural instruments playing counterpoint to the overdistorted voice we hear, and the natural, toy-sounding keyboard, with the very, very clear jingle bells. I like the vocal, but I don't believe for a moment that he's as sweet and innocent as his vocal. That said, he does do VERY well with the word nose in "though your nose gets a chilling." It really sounds like a little boy. That said, while his vocal is interesting, he's really not that GOOD, per se, as a singer. But then we need more singers that aren't tuned to death out there.

22. [speaking of tuned to death] Come Clean Rain, Hilary Duff #41
I like this song, it's like the songs I would listen to in high school. Pure candyfloss. It has its moments--at the beginning and in the bridge, when it does that beat speeding up thing and has some pitch variation in the echo of "rain fall." And the vocal is interesting, because you KNOW it's tuned to death but largely don't hear it. EXCEPT at the conjunction of the last two syllables of the song, where it's EXTREMELY evident, at begiiii----ning. Right at ning. I heard it the other day, and I can't believe I'd never noticed it before.

23. Karpe Diem, Swedish/Danish/or something Nordic rappers. two songs #42 & 42
From the very limited exposure I've had to Swedish rap, these guys sound so good. they seriously sound like a couple of young, tanned, golden haired guys you hope that Sweden is populated with. Admittedly, Swedish rap sounds really forking weird to Americans, just because it sounds strange, but these peeps do some cool production stuff with their songs. In the beginning of one, they sing a line from a Beyonce song, mentioning Beyonce by name. It's also kinda strange how they put these chorus effects on their voices. I just wonder if they'll still sound so good after their voices change.

And that's the community service beep for now!

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Blip!

Well, I had a little blip on Billy Jam's show the other day, so since it's done aired, I figured it would put it her for downloadage. Here's the link to a 1280kbps mp3 of the blip:

Ed Shepp Blip - Outsiders

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Bgornce

I'm pretty sure my mom is the only one who even sees this page anymore (hi Mom!), but just in case anyone lands on it serendipitously, here's the latest bgornce:

If you're by a computer tomorrow on Election Day between 9 & 10am Eastern Standard Time, pop on over to wfmu.org and hear my special Election Day episode of The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment, starring a bunch of people and me. And if you were in the show, no, I won't send you a copy. But here's that link again: http://www.wfmu.org/ed-08.html

And remember, Vote or Don't. (And don't let anyone tell you that you can't complain if you didn't vote. You can always complain. Some people do nothing but complain. That's intelligent design for you.)

Glomp.
Ed Shepp

Dead Computers, Greyhound Duchesses and a Fund for Destiny's Ed

What a weekend. While the grönt is pretty much gone from mitt hår, and the mold in the bathroom is as under control as it will get (I suppose), my computer died. I MIGHT be able to grab some of the files from it to restore, but I'm not at all hopeful. The lesson: NEVER ever ever ever ever buy a Dell. I reiterate: Never buy a Dell. I reiterate once again for the search engines: Dells are crap---NEVER buy one. I'll extend that to all PCs, as a matter of fact, since I'm sure that the computer died solely because it was perhaps 1 hour over warranty (which means it lasted probably 50 minutes longer than it usually would have). So now I'm planning to replace it with a Mac. (Did I mention never buy a Dell? Because if you're googling Dell and see this, take heed. DO. NOT. BUY.) Olyckligtvis, shelling out all the money for a Mac will obliterate any plans I had of visiting the land not of my ancestors: Scandinavia, specifically Stockholm or Copenhagen. Sigh. :( So I've created, "Save Karen"-style, a donation link where anyone can plop in donations for me to buy a plane ticket. If not in November, then in February, as a birthday present. If everyone just puts 10 cents into the fund, I'll have enough to buy half a donut. But if everyone puts in 20 dollars, or 100 dollars, or 800 dollars, then I'll have my flight. And if everyone puts in $60,000, I could actually fly first-class. Anyway, here's the button link. Go on, click it! Go on, click it! And if you donate a goodly amount, you can receive one of the following gifts: $50: a copy of my CD Five, since I have about a jillion left over, and a DVD with all the Ed Shepp mp3s I can scrounge up, including all the separate mixes from The Madonna Within EP and my cover of Umbrella. $100: The same discs, with a small home perfume oil sample with notes of caramel and spiced pear. $200: The CDs/DVDs, the home fragrance, and Ed Shepp T-shirt, and I'll hang out with you for 3 hours and inspire you with zillions of ideas and bombast you with personality. (This is really only available to people in the New York area, but it's transferable and won't expire for a long time. Of course, said hanging out must occur in a public place, and not one of those crowded bars that I hate. And you can video/audtiotape it, but you cannot use the footage commercially.) $600: Everything mentioned before, and I'll put you in an Ed Shepp Radio Experiment podcast. $900: Everything mentioned before, and I'll record a song about you. So there we have them. Donate now! Donate now!! Click the button below:

Ok, so that's the fund. Now back to just a mention of more things mundane. I saw that movie The Duchess last week. It stars Keira Knightley's face and a metric ton of $7000/yard fabric. I think I found it good. I say "I think" because it seemed like a good movie, but something about it left me a little empty; it felt a little incomplete. It may have been the pacing--at times I felt like I'd been watching it for 14 years, in some weird Groundhog Day-like accident of timespace. At other times I actually felt moved. And at other times, I actually felt like.... (wait for it...) ....I felt like I could believe in Love. Interestingly, one of the main things you take from the movie is that you can't believe in Love-with-a-capital-L. Love does not conquer all. Sorry, Virginia. The movie is a BBC production, by the way, so you don't see any gratuitous T&A, which I suppose is all well and good, because Keira Knightly doesn't seem to have much of either to offer. Someone i Sverige said that she needs to engage in a cake-eating marathon. and while I couldn't ever really not endorse such a thing, she just has such a pretty face.... Why ruin it so soon? Time will have its due soonly enough. And speaking of her face, one of the people I saw the movie with, who, it turned out, was fond of using archaic language and making arcane references that no one who was in our party got, kept marveling at it, saying that she looked "like a greyhound." Uhhhhh..... what exactly does that mean??? Greyhounds are beautiful, to be sure, but it's not exactly, er, "customary" to compare a beautiful woman's face to... a dog. I think he meant she looked beautiful; but it's just an odd reference. I wish I'd countered with something like, "Actually, I think she looked quite like the Weimeraners that one photographer does--you know, the ones posed like people.... with human hands." Oh yes, and another thing about the BBC-ness of it: one thing you can say about most Hollywood movies is that the post-production people know their way around color correction. Have you ever seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for instance? Those colors POP!! Like BLAO in your face!!!! I don't think I've ever seen orange so.... ORANGE. So Hollywood does a great job with bold, amazing color. This movie does not offer that. Yes, it's beautiful, and you can see the gorgeous colors in the expensive fabrics, but the color doesn't leap off the screen and whack you in the face with a metaphorical frying pan.

All things considered, it was a good movie. I don't know if I'd see it again, though. Mark Baratelli thought it stunk, but I never felt like I got out of him his reasoning for why he hated it.

Anyway, that's the gzoomce for now. More beeping coming at ya laters. And don't forget to donate, you cheap pigeonhead!! (LOVE ME!!!!!!)

Beep!
Ed Shepp