6 Jan 2009

I ate like a (pig, goat - insert favorite animal metaphor here) over the holidays, eating the fattiest foods in as much quantity as I wanted. Fearful of the result, I haven't yet stepped on a scale. I'm giving myself a week back on my calorie-counting regimen first, to shed some holiday weight. The last time I checked I weighed 259 on the morning of the 23rd. I like to stay between 255-260, with 255 being a target maintenance weight. We'll see where I am on the heart attack scale next week...

I found another cool old photo of "Fawkes Folly" from the Good Ol' Days in my hometown (Burbank, California). What's Fawkes' Folly? A monorail a guy named Fawles designed circa 1907 - 1910, only he called it the "Aerial Swallow." The page the describes the venture is here; the new photo is here. From the looks of it, it must have been what my mother called "big doin's" in town that day.

I get a kick out of that exposed propeller - it could shred bystanders as it rolled by. Aerial Grim Reaper, more like.

Still reading the Warriors novel... I'm enjoying it. In fact, I rather prefer it to the movie. Authenticity always appeals to me, and this book seems to be more or less a could-have-happened account of J.D.s. It'll go on my bookshelf alongside Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" and the Irving Shulman novelization of "West Side Story."

Stanley Kubrick's movie adaption of "A Clockwork Orange" came out in 1971, when I was fifteen. For my sixteenth birthday in 1972 my father took me out to see it. At the time it was an X-rated film, and the sex and nudity scenes greatly embarrassed me... I'm not sure what Dad was thinking, but giving in to the whims of a sixteen year-old is not always a great idea.

I liked the movie's music more than the film itself, actually. The score was partly orchestral - Elgar, Rossini and Beethoven - and partly synthesized on a Moog by Walter Carlos. (He is now Wendy Carlos. Click here.)

In general I liked, and still like, purely electronic music, and bought all of Carlos' Moog recordings, most of which were Bach transcriptions. (His "Switched-On Bach" Lp music was ubiquitous during the late Sixties.) A personal favorite Carlos release was a 2-Lp set entitled "Sonic Seasonings." Each album side had a sound/musical representation of a season - I don't think it was a particularly successful Lp in terms of sales, but I listened to it a lot. (Not sure I would nowadays; I'd probably find it somewhat tedious. I actually think my attention span has decreased since I was a kid.)

Interested in his musical techniques, I wrote him a letter, asked some technical questions and got a reply! Sadly, I lost the letter. (Which is odd for me - I normally stick such things in the album jackets, which I keep with the Lps.)

Wendy Carlos has an unusually erudite web page, here. In addition to music, she has an interesting hobby: She chases ecipses of the sun! This sometimes involves getting on a cruise ship which tracks the path of totality across the ocean... obviously, not a hobby for the financially-challenged.

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