Category: Medias

With “Lucy and Linus”, my daughter got me back into jazz last Christmas on Spotify and youtube. It’s something I’ve always felt I should study, but I hadn’t gotten around to it over the decades.

This kicked into high gear in October after discovering that the library’s Hoopla streaming app has a host of classic albums in their catalog. (And if an album isn’t on Hoopla, it’s almost certainly on the library’s other app Freegal).

Now I can listen to the music without advertisements!

I’m no good at listening to music, much less writing about it. But following my old tagline “notes on my consumption” here’s a write up.

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A Charlie Brown Christmas — The classic christmas album, Guaraldi riffs on old classics along with her favorite “Linus and Lucy”.

From All Sides — My daughter got into this collaboration between Guaraldi and Bola Sete, especially “The Ballad of Pancho Villa”. I should give the album an active listen.

Time Out — Brubeck was a favorite in college and this remains a classic. Brings me right back to studio when I wanted to feel cool.

Time Further Out — I need to give the whole album it run. I was a dancer in a piece that included “Unsquare Dance” (and “Rabbit in Your Headlights”).

Giant Steps — Grabbed me late one night and made see the light of Coltrane.

Olé Coltrane — The use of spanish / arabic scales makes the music seem otherworldly. Spiritual.

Parker With Strings — This isn’t the most representative introduction to Charlie Parker, but it’s his most popular album. I pushed past my dislike of sissy stuff to understand why. After a few listens, I was thrilled to hear him synchronize with his accompaniment while rising beyond as the soloist.

Kind of Blue — Why is this the best selling jazz album of all time? Took a few listens for the music to groove into my brain. Miles Davis’ catalog is primarily on Freegal, which is less user friendly. It may be a moment before I get deeper into his oeuvre.

Portrait in Jazz — Parker got me to accept soft jazz, so I gave Bill Evans a run when I saw he was the pianist in Kind of Blue. Started with Portrait in Jazz because I initially found the live noise sounds of the other two albums slightly off putting. It didn’t click.

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Waltz for Debby, Sunday at the Village Vanguard — On the other hand, these albums hit. In just a couple of years, these three musicians melded organically into a comprehensive sound, sacrificing individualism for a unified totality. Though fate was much too cruel to take Scott LaFaro right after these Vanguard sessions.

Ballads — Since Bill Evans cemented my appreciation of soft music, I thought I’d see how Coltrane does it. I don’t remember much.

A Love Supreme — Time to listen to Coltrane’s other Magnum Opus. It is.

Fiddler On The Roof — Loved the yellow cover with Cannonball Adderley, and gave it a whirl. Unmemorable. Would I enjoy it more, if I knew the original musical?

Somethin’ Else — It feels dominated by Miles Davis’ trumpet even Adderley is the headliner. I wonder if some folks have that ineffable extra edge that dominates a stage, even when it’s not theirs.

Way Out West — A unique trio with Sonny Rollins on saxophone accompanied by bass and drums. I dig the unique instrumentation, though the music was unmemorable after the cheeky first track.

Brilliant Corners — I’ve always held that Straight No Chaser should be the soundtrack of the sophisticated high life. Time to listen to the album that landed Thelonious in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry Listing. I dig it. Lively. Monk showcases immense range. The cover is a perfect visual representation of the album’s music.

Getz/Gilberto — Felt the urge for bossa nova over lunch so I borrowed this album. We argued about going to the park that day. Otherwise, very comfortable music. This Adam Neely video is a great breakdown of the “Girl from Ipanema”

Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus — It’s got memorable moments, but I’m still in thrall of the Bill Evans Trio borg-mind-meld, so the distinctness of the instruments in Vince Guaraldi Trio is slightly grating. But very nice once I get past my prejudice.

The Black Messiah — I borrowed this after reading best-of lists of Cannonball Adderley. After a few listens I’ve gotten used to it, but I’m not ready for the 70’s (nor electricity).

12 episodes (32 minutes) of fuzzy cutesiness in a surreal stop motion universe of guinea pig cars.
(Humans are live actors inside their cars and plastic figures outside their vehicles.)

It starts innocently with a few slice of life incidents before spinning into pure absurdity.
As usual, I preferred the life around town more than the movie references.

Then again, I love the absurd (more than the toddlers of its target audience).
Screw it, I’ll take them all!
Give me more!

Like all great children’s shows, it’s written for both adults and children.
By series end, the cars have distinct personalities, without saying a single word.

The show is a testament to the expansive potential of shear creativity.

It could be the cutest show you’ll ever watch!

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The world moves so quickly now. Asian shows took real effort to discover (much less watch) during college (I didn’t bother). Now this children’s show is distributed on the world’s largest streaming service, just a few months after airing in Japan.

If you don’t have Netflix, check out the Misato’s vimeo account.

The film had the dubious honor of winning the Oscar Animation award the year that Pixar went for the cash grab called Cars 2.

It’s an unfortunate slander against this movie, cause it’s awesome.

The story is pretty typical American fare — Wild, Wacky, and Western!

Breaking the fourth wall is a undoubtedly a gimmick, but nicely done.

And the early 2010’s feels as good a marker as any of the time when 3D animation hit its stride. It’s a decade old but didn’t feel visually dated or technologically constrained.

I should check out the other Oscar winners and nominees. That list would keep me quite busy for a while.

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I don’t have any deep thoughts at the moment (or a year later) except to say I felt an urge to rewatch the film. Such an urge is uncommon for live action films, but Disney+ has shown that I enjoy repeat viewings of animated films.

Wow the graphics have aged.
Five minutes later, I was swept up in the story.

The kids loved it too.

My sister and I watched the VHS many times, a quarter century ago.
Turns out that cutting edge graphics wasn’t the primary draw.

This show started with a content warning, maybe for a couple stereotypes that are bit distasteful in today’s sensitive era.

I could see it being annoying but it seems overblown in today’s plethora of awful options on YouTube. To be honest, the Shang Chi’s lousy execution was more offensive to my Asian Asian American identity than ten seconds of a buck tooth Siamese Cat playing drums with chopsticks.

Aside from the content warning at the start, this was one heck of a fun animation, Siamese and all!

Like 101 Dalmations, it tells a fun short story with a few memorable scenes, especially the one of the alley cats (including Shun Gon the Siamese) are really wailing on the music.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost interest in challenging art. I might be able to handle half an hour of an avante garde jazz album while falling asleep, but movies and TV shows are too visceral. I can handle a little cringe, like that Siamese cat, but I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to focus on heavy stuff for 90 minutes (much less 10 hours!).

I just want well crafted fare that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Turns out Disney+ was a godsend for me.

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BTW I found Eva Gabor’s accent on the mother cat delightful, it made the movie feel properly European (if not exactly French). And Phil Harris’s all-American accent was perfect foil as Thomas O’Malley.

A CEO experiences a midlife crisis and attempts a bungled corporate takeover before returning to his company to their core competencies

(He also finds true love.)

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The kids loved it.

Great visuals and we’ve been playing the soundtrack on repeat for the last three weeks.

Unfortunately, this experience matches my experience in the critical theory class in grad school. Interesting ideas that entered and immediately exited my brain.

The ancients paid attention to how shall we live, but these modern philosophers were exploring the cutting edge esoteric problems of their discipline. The theories are stimulating, but it’s difficult to follow their intricacies in a cursory summary.

In all, good enough to figure out that it’s not worth pursuing further.

My philosophical interests are pedestrian. I lose interest once I see intellectual scaffolding under construction. I tried that hobby as a Calvinist teenager, but I’ve realized the beauty of Christianity is in the Beatitudes, not in its palaces of theology.

Same here for the philosophers. I should return to Greeks, their squabbles are much more enticing.

I came across the Crispin’s philosophy book last year when showing my dad all the cool things you could find on Libby, the Overdrive Library app.

It’s a quick listen as a 3 hour survey of Chinese philosophy from Confucius through the rise of the Neo-Confucianism, with sections on Daoism, Mohists, and Chan Buddhism.

As for substance, unfortunately my knowledge of Chinese philosophy is at the perfectly wrong point to judge the value of this book. I’ve read just enough that none of the info is new to me so I can’t attest if it would be difficult for a true beginner. But I’m not an expert to have an opinion on its accuracy, aside from attesting that the information was in line with I’ve read elsewhere.

The most notable aspect in the presentation was their use of voice actors with Asian accents when reading extended quotes. It was a little surprising at first but you get used to it quickly. It adds a variety to the proceedings.

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In my recent omnivorous push to gobble up reader digest summaries of the ancient philosophers, I came across Ching’s survey of Confucianism and Taoism.

Because the subject was about the broad religious traditions instead of the philosophers themselves, this book includes many comments from western observers over the centuries. It paints a richer picture of the thought and practice beyond the original conceptual ideals. (And yes, I enjoyed the mix of European and Asian accents in this presentation.)

It’s a great pairing with Crispin’s philosophy survey. I’m more drawn to the philosophical side of these traditions, but I enjoyed seeing how they have developed in history and society.

If you’re going to listen to one, I’d recommend that you listen to both.

At 1.5x speed it took less than an hour – a podcast length summary of one of the most influential thinkers in the past three millennia.

Having been on a Confucius kick for the past couple of years, I can’t say if it would be comprehensible for a pure first encounter with the sage, but the summary was inline with consensus opinion and my own impressions from reading the Analects.

The author takes a cheeky irreverent tone, which could be off putting but is in the spirit of such a quick summary. Such a tone might wear out its welcome, but again, this is third of the length of your typical Joe Rogan episode.

I’ve become a fan of Strathern’s “In 90 Minutes” series. Though short like a podcast, they have the benefit of a unified voice and have cleared a (minimal) bar for repeated publishing for profit.

As such, I suspect will make more efficient introductions to the various subjects over crawling the internet. They aren’t anything deep, but fill the niche of semi-intellectual breaks when the mind has tired of ponderous multi-hour tomes on tape.