Mayor Resigns; Will Move to Italy to pursue opera career

This is an advertisement from today's LA Times, page A11, whose red ink is elsewhere in the news today. This ad is part of a series on successive pages each marred by a splotch of differently colored paint. Each is related to something Italian: ruins, scooters and opera.

Can you guess what is being sold to you? It has "uninhibited flavor".


Click the picture to enlarge it. Then you can read the small print to at least find out who is selling something to you. The secret is revealed on the next page of the paper. My local branch doesn't seem to be participating in this product roll-out in favor of a different new product.

Here's another MM post featuring a musically themed beverage advertisement.

Here's another article about the Times' red ink. It has this quote:

The decline in advertising, fueled by a weak real estate market, has boosted the copy-to-ads ratio above the industry target of 50-50, giving readers more stories than they can digest

Opera Tags: Starbucks. . . opera singer. . . mayor resigns. . . LA Times. . . staff cutbacks

It's Official, Christmas Season is Open

By my own definition the Christmas season begins on the first day I notice Christmas music being played at Starbucks. So today, Thursday November 15, 2007, is the first day of the Christmas Season. Merry Christmas everyone.

Only forty days (and nights) until I can start feeling completely comfortable in Starbucks again. (If Starbucks plays just one Hannukah tune during that time all will be forgiven.)


Of course, Christmas at Starbucks also means they will probably deign to play a few tiny bits of classical music - something which the Seattle Suit who "hand picks" their tracks obstinately refuses to do during the other 46 weeks of the year.

Come on guys - I'm not expecting Cage or Mahler or Gesualdo. But how can a movement of Vivaldi or Mozart hurt us during April or July if it's okay during December? Heck, it might even make us smarter?

(Of course, I haven't actually heard any real classical music at Starbucks yet this year - although I did hear Angelique Kidjo singing Ravel's Bolero last week. That's a classic, right?)

(And they're selling little knitted Christmas Penguins at S'bucks this year too. Click here or here for that rant.)

Classic at Christmas Tags: Starbucks Music. . . Christmas Music. . . Christmas Penguins. . . Angelique Kidjo

Consuming Music - Starbucks, Apple and Old Pasadena

AWFUL STARBUCKS MUSIC DRIVES ME TO IPOD

Over the years I've had surprisingly few issues with the music selection in my local Starbucks. Except at Christmas time, of course. Here's an early MM post about that. And another. And here's my own vaguely Christmas-related music.

Recently, however, there seems to be a New Starbucks Music Selection Policy. This began about the time they played one perfectly execrable Paul McCartney album and nothing else for an entire day, Instead of playing a different artist every song for a period of time (usually in related genres) they now play a few songs by one artist in a fixed sequence. And they play the sequence over and over.

Guess what! Those very songs are on albums for sale right there in Starbucks- what a surprise! Starbucks has to make a buck.


One artist in current rotation is Willie Nelson - never one of my faves - but I can tolerate a few tracks every year or so. After several dozen hearings in just weeks I made up my mind to get an iPod of my own. I borrowed Leslie's for a few days to test the idea. I settled on a 8-gig Nano. I'm not an early adopter of tech items but iPod is entrenched enough for even non-trendy people like me.


BUYING AN IPOD in OLD PASADENA

On Monday I set out for the official Apple Store in the trendy part of town, OLD PASADENA (usually referred to by us locals as OLD TOWN).


Any capitalist would regard Old Town as a huge success. Years ago it was:

• dilapidated old buildings,
• interesting funky shops,
• cheap restaurants,
• too few parking places
  
• plus a pawn shop and an adult bookstore.

Now it has become

• elegantly refurbished old buildings,
  
• expensive, upscale shops (Tiffanys is the highest note on the scale at the moment),
• countless trendy restaurants (mostly Italian),
• too few parking places
  
• plus a pawn shop and an adult bookstore.

(Why the pawn shop and adult bookstore have survived while most other businesses have moved out is something I don't understand.)


A few doors down from Tiffany's the Apple Store was a-hoppin' on a Monday morning. There was a line at the counter and activity everywhere in the store. Of course there was a "how to use your iPhone" class in the back.

When I got to the front of the line I told the chipper young lady that I wanted an 8-gig Nano. I handed over my card, told her I preferred a red one and a paper, not email, receipt. She simply reached under the counter and produced my iPod. I declined the shopping bag because I could put the whole Nano box in my pocket. I was back on the street in minutes.


I walked to the Old Town Starbucks (the one which does not provide a rest room for customers because of, they say, historic preservation laws). My Starbucks purchase took longer and required me to answer more questions than I had encountered at Apple. But otherwise it was pretty much the same. The clerk was even happier and more upbeat.

The two purchases seemed identical in style and format even though I spent almost exactly 100 times more at Apple than at Starbucks.

I left Old Town in a sullen mood, feeling slightly dirty for doing my patriotic consumerist duty and running the corporate gauntlet. That's also sort of the same way I feel at Disneyland.

Once I was driving past auto repair garages and little shops and churches I've never been been inside of and never will, I relaxed.


POSITIVE REACTIONS TO THE IPOD and HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

As a PC user I find any product that's both elegant and functional seems quite novel. The iPod box boasts "Designed by Apple in California". I hope the design team got extra cookies. And it's so small, easy to use and sounds good. It has reinforced my hope that my next new computer will be a Mac.

The box also says "Like a fine pair of jeans, iPod nano colors may vary and change over time." So my red iPod is going to fade? Would it help if I wash it only in cold water?


Initially I picked a couple dozen favorites albums, ones I'm sure I'll enjoy repeatedly, to load into it. I'll use this music to adjust to using my new device. These albums take about one fifth of total memory. The remaining space will be for unfamiliar music.

There is an awful lot of different music out there which I haven't heard yet. I'm still curious about a huge percentage of it.

And I have Willie Nelson and some corporate music flack at Starbucks to thank for this. But I won't be buying albums at Starbucks, of course, and I probably won't be buying mp3s at iTunes. I can only survive so much of that dirty "good Consumer" feeling.


THE INITIAL FAVORITE ALBUM LIST

At the beginning of Mixed Meters I started a list of "David's Favorite Music" - there are still only two entries - Karnak and Mingus. Hopefully this iPod will prompt me to expand that list. The order of these albums means something - not sure what - but something.

1. Astor Piazzolla - La Camorra
2. Karnak - Os Piratas Do Karnak (both discs)
3. Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um (original release)
4. J.S. Bach - The Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould (1981)
5. Cicala Mvta - Ohkuma Wataru Unit - Deko boko
6. Raymond Scott - The Music of Raymond Scott
7. Frank Zappa - Studio Tan
8. Bonzo Dog Band - The Bestiality of Bonzo Dog Band
9. J.S. Bach/William Malloch - The Art of Fuguing
10. D.J. Shadow - The Private Press
11. Astor Piazzolla - Piazzolla Forever - Richard Galliano Septet
12. Domenico Scarlatti - Sonatas - Scott Ross (first 2 discs)
13. John Kirby - John Kirby
14. Spike Jones - Cocktails for Two
15. Gotan Project - La Revancha Del Tango
16. Albita - No Se Parece a Nada
17. Gloria Estefan - Mi Tierra
18. Ludwig van Beethoven/Uri Caine - Diabelli Variations
19. W.A. Mozart/various - Mozart in Egypt
20. Big J McNeeley - Big Jay in 3-D
21. Joe Newman/Rudy Schwartz Project - Don't Get Charred... Get Puffy
22. Joe Newman/Rudy Schwartz Project - Gunther Packs a Stiffy
23. Asleep at the Wheel - Greatest Hits
24. Leonard Bernstein - On the Town (selections & 3 Dance Episodes)

StarPod Pasadena Tags: iPod. . . Starbucks. . . Old Pasadena. . . consumerism. . . favorite music

Except for the stack of compact discs and Chowderhead with the iPod and coffee, all pictures were taken somewhere in Old Pasadena. Click to enlarge.

In Which David Is Caught In The Act

One of the Mixed Meters Regular Readers (MMRRs) might have noticed a few pictures posted here and there. I've taken many of them myself with my ancient Pocket Point & Shoot Camera (PPSC). The others were shamelessly ripped off from other Internet locations.

Here's one I took a few hours ago on my walk up to Starbucks.


When I saw this guitar I knew I wanted a picture of it. I'll tell you why later. The immediate problem was the guitar was positioned up the driveway of a private house.

• My second rule of photography is not to walk onto people's property to take pictures (unless there's someone I can ask).
• My first rule of photography is that I don't alter the position of the things I photograph.
• My third rule is that I never talk about the first two rules. I occasionally break all three.

In this case I didn't see anyone to ask permission from. So I quickly walked a few steps up the driveway, snapped a shot and scurried back to the sidewalk.

Then I heard a voice "Excuse me, sir." It was the owner of the house who had been standing on the small porch hidden behind a post. I hadn't seen him there at all. We recognized one another as familiar neighborhood faces.

Embarrassed, I hastily explained that

• I have a blog and
• I post pictures of found objects on my blog and
• I had earlier posted a picture of identical guitars for sale by a street vendor just two blocks up the hill and
• I wanted a picture of this guitar so I could reference the earlier post (which only one person had bothered to read back then).
  

Here's that picture again.


Obviously the guitars are the same model but on that day in January the blue one had already been sold.

I had a pleasant and interesting chat with him. He had found the blue guitar that morning in the middle of the street. It still seemed functional if a bit worse for wear so he retrieved it and left it in the driveway.

I gave him my card and asked him to check Mixed Meters out. On the way home I decided that I would post this story quickly so he might find it here.

Want to See More MMPs? (Mixed Meters Pictures)

All three columns of Mixed Meters are festooned with photographs. In the right hand column the pictures change every time the page loads.

MMPs can also be found at three other locations:

• 
  
• Mixed Messages - I try to make every other post an original picture. Scroll down and when you get to the bottom click to previous pages. Repeat. Through the magic of RSS recent pictures from Mixed Messages load into the left column of Mixed Meters and a random string of them can be found at the bottom on the right.
• 
  
• The Mixed Meters Flickr Page - these are all my own pictures. Some of them are randomly inserted into the right-hand column.
  
• 
  
• Picassa Gallery. Blogger, the host site of Mixed Meters, is owned by Google. Picassa, an online picture gallery site, is owned by Google. Every MM picture uploaded since Google owned both sites is available at Picassa. It was their idea.
  

The earlier MM post with the guitar picture is entitled Buying A Guitar In Pasadena (Mahler's Seventh)

The otherwise anonymous Addison left a comment asking me to explain my seeming put-down of Mahler. I actually wrote a long response doing just that. I should post it someday along with pictures from Sioux City Iowa. (Makes sense to me.)

Here's another picture of another somewhat-the-worse-for-wear blue thing leaning against a wall photographed the same way I shot the guitar. What an old racket.


Blue Guitar Tags: Mixed Meters. . . pictures. . . guitars. . . Starbucks. . . Pasadena. . . caught in the act. . . Flickr. . . Picassa. . . found objects

Other Mixed Meters "found object" posts
Buckets for Babies in Pasadena
In a Pissy Mood
Graffiti Animals of California

Lifestyles of the Wet and Spineless

This is Spark. He's an artist. He draws and paints things both real and imagined. He's very good. I met him because we both hang out at our neighborhood Starbucks.

I took this picture of him as a kind of a challenge: he had said that only a great artist could take a good picture of an empty Starbucks cup. So I whipped my point & shoot out of my pocket and fired one shot. Lucky click. Maybe I'm not a great artist but the picture came out pretty well. I think.

Next is a portrait of Leslie done by Spark in acrylics . Leslie had seen a painting of a woman with an octopus crawling out of her backpack. She wanted a painting of herself with worms instead of an octopus. You see, marine worms are Leslie's biggest passion. The best I can hope for is to come in second after the worms. I'm okay with that. Really. (Click on the painting for an enlargement.)


The third picture is a pen & ink "snapshot" of me done by Spark on a Starbucks napkin. Spark has an ongoing project of drawing people on Starbucks napkins. He shows me sitting with my laptop, in my favorite Starbucks chair. (click on the drawing for a large enlargement.)

As this drawing was taken I was working on the fourth movement of my piece Wagner and Schubert Have Intercourse. I've been working on it for months as time allows; it's now scheduled for uploading beginning in July.

The fourth movement of Wagner and Schubert Have Intercourse has since changed into the third and fifth movements, which are entitled "Endless Symphony" and "Endless Opera". These things happen.


This Saturday, July 23, 2007, beginning at 11:45 A.M. at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, located in Exposition Park - Leslie will be giving a lecture and slide show, showing many of her fascinating pictures of bizarre marine invertibrates and describing their strange behavior.

This lecture is entitled:

Lifestyles of the Wet and Spineless.

If you're in the neighborhood, please attend. (Directions to NHMLAC, down near USC and the Colliseum)

Links for this post:

Some of Leslie's worm photographs. Highly recommended!!

Weekend Activities at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (this weekend only, starring Leslie Harris - check back next week for something entirely different.)

More about one of the world's largest marine worm collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Leslie Harris, collection manager.

Spark's MySpace Space It says he's 8' 11" tall. Check out his pictures, see what he does for a living.

Spark's ComicSpace Space Check out more of his pictures and an entire comic book he did called Helix.

Spark's previous Starbucks-Napkin-Drawing of me is featured in THIS Mixed Meters post from antiquity.




Painting Worm Tags: Spark. . . painting. . . drawing. . . marine worms. . . polychaete. . . Starbucks. . . Natural History Museum. . . Los Angeles. . . Richard Wagner. . . intercourse. . . Franz Schubert

30 Second Spots - The Gray Song

click here to hear The Gray Song. I remember thinking how easy it would be to turn this into a never ending piece of electronica. But I resisted the urge and now you will waste less than one minute listening to it.

The title of this piece was chosen by Spark, an artist who hangs out at my local Starbucks. He's never heard the music.



Copyright © June 22 & 23, 2006 by David Ocker - 54 seconds


While in Starbucks Spark often draws cartoons of unsuspecting people using genuine Starbucks napkins as his canvas. For a while he posted them on the bulletin board. But people would steal them and this upset Spark. So he stopped.

Here are two shots of the drawing he did of unsuspecting me this Spring. Click on the pictures for larger versions. Here's a link to Spark's website.

"Mommy, Why Does He Always Have to Post A Video Link?"

Gracie Allen is the solo pianist in her Concerto for Index Finger and Orchestra. The composer says "Chords are on their way out." (It's from a 1944 movie called "Two Girls and a Sailor".)

If you're a fan of Spike Jones, Gerard Hoffnung or P.D.Q.Bach (as I am), you'll like this. Otherwise it's merely wartime entertainment for the troops. Like Lindsay wants to be.

Explanation of 30 second spots

30 Second Spots
Music Video

30 Second Spots - And Pretend That It's a Circus Clown

click here to hear And Pretend That It's a Circus Clown - This afternoon the muzak in Starbucks was turned down low. I happily wrote the first half of this spot.

Then six young women, attired in variously-hued red sweaters, with a boom box and a way-too-loud overly-orchestrated Christmas karaoke tape, began to sing, redefining the term polytonality. I finished writing the spot while enduring this 7th level of Christmas music hell.

Can you tell at which moment they started singing?

The title is from their lyrics to Winter Wonderland - the G-rated 2nd verse:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the alligators knock him down.

Christmas Alligators !! Very Cool.

Copyright © December 22, 2005 by David Ocker - 36 seconds

Explanation of 30 second spots

30 Second Spots

In which David has Two Strange Conversations & a Coincidental Horoscope

On most of my trips to Starbucks I never talk to anyone beyond pleasantries. It's a coffee shop, not a coffee house.

But Saturday I found myself in two simultaneous inexplicable discussions, both with twenty-somethings - probably college students - half my age at most. Conversations One and Two overlapped; I'll tell about them separately.

Conversation One: a young man sat next to me and started asking questions out of the blue. "Are you from Pasadena?" "Married or Single?"

He kept it up "Where's your wife?" (My answer: "In front of a computer.") "Is she at home?" "What kind of car do you drive?"

"What country are you from?" I found this really surprising, even disconcerting. When I told him that I was Born in the USA he asked "Where are your parents from?"

Conversation Two: another young man had been walking about. At one point he was standing 10 feet away. I was looking off into space. He said to me "Are you okay?" I was worried by this. "Do I look like I'm having a problem?" Just his way of saying "Hello, how are you?" he explained. He wandered off.

At one point I remember sitting between these two, taking a deep breath and thinking "This is very weird."

Conversation Two returned and started into a long, fast monologue about students learning to do jobs "like becoming a medical doctor or something lower" and then going for a job interview and answering all the questions but not having any idea what was expected of them. I wondered if he was on drugs. When he left again I turned to Conversation One "Did you understand that?" "Yes." he said. But I was baffled.

At home I told the story to Leslie. For some reason I wondered "Can my horoscope explain this?" I almost never read them. Here it is, from the L.A.Times: Virgo Saturday 11/12/05:

"There's much to process as the world swirls around you. You're not sure what to think. If you don't immediately see the lesson or allow yourself to feel the emotions involved, don't worry. Everything in its time."

Of course I don't believe a word of it. No wait. The horoscope was good advice. Oh, I don't know what to think. There's a reason the Astrological Forecast is on the Comics Page. If I eventually figure out what those two guys were talking about do I have to keep reading my horoscopes?

Stories
California

In which David finds fauna at Starbucks

I removed the sanitary wrapping from my straw and a bit of paper was left, attached by static..

Looks like an animal - if you use your imagination. (No imagination? Please borrow mine.)