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Who`s - Jon Brion

Amazon.com: Jon Brion: Albums, Songs, Bios, Photos

Producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion grew up in a musical family: his father was director of the Yale concert and marching bands, his mother sang in jazz bands, and his siblings, Randy (a conductor/arranger in L.A.) and Laurie (a violinist), were both avid music students.

Young Jon didn't deal with instruction or practice well, but his natural affinity for improvisation and melody more than made up for his impatience. Unwilling to conform to the conventional school system, Brion attended special education class at Hamden High School in New Haven, CT, and the day he turned 17, he left school for good.

Moving to Boston in 1987, the young musician formed many bonds that he would keep long into his professional career, including producer Mike Denneen (owner of Q Division, Boston's premier studio and record label) and Til Tuesday vocalist Aimee Mann.

Also while there, Brion tuned his improvisational musical abilities: "I used to watch TV with an unplugged electric guitar, on the couch, and commercials would come on and I'd try to play along. It was one of the prime things I concerned myself with for several years, getting to the point where if I heard it, I could play it. Then I started working on getting my brain to do multiple things at once. And having my hands translate them." This proficiency led to increasingly frequent studio work on the West Coast, eventually resulting in his move to L.A.

While in California, he and Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner formed the Grays, an underground superstar group which released the 1994 album Ro Sham Bo, before quickly fading as the other members (Falkner, Dan McCarroll, and Buddy Judge) went on to individual musical success.

Throughout the '90s, Brion found himself increasingly in demand in the studio, producing and collaborating on albums by Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, David Byrne, and the Eels and soundtracks including the Grammy-nominated Magnolia.

In addition to his prolific studio work, he also has held a long-term position as "the house band" Friday nights at the high-profile Hollywood nightclub Largo. At his live shows, the crowd can expect anything from guest appearances by Aimee Mann, Michael Stipe, Elvis Costello, T-Bone Burnett, or Grant Lee Phillips, and Brion is infamous for making up songs on the spot (often from titles shouted from the audience). He also is beloved for his quirky cover versions of songs by Cheap Trick, the Beatles, and Cole Porter, proudly likening his on-stage antics to "spraying musical Raid on the classics, until each dying song flips on its back and wiggles its little musical legs in surrender."

Whatever music he was involved in, his eclectic touch undeniably shaped the sound of many progressive alternative musicians throughout the '90s.

- Zac Johnson, All Music Guide

Overkill

Day After Day, Night After Night « The Sunjay Times

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night from overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Come back another day

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
It's just overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away

Land down under

YouTube - Men at work: Land down under!!!! (One of their best songs!!)

Travelling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Lying in a den in bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,

Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Guess Which Economy Doubled in Size Last Year

Believe it or not, the virtual economy of Second Life, a popular online computer game that lets users create a new reality for themselves, doubled in size last year. Users spent more than a billion dollars on virtual goods over the last year, compared to $360 million for the year before.

Second Life's economy is now larger than the economies of nations such as East Timor, Samoa and Dijibouti.

Memory-Editing Drugs

Did you find director Michel Gondry's argument for his "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" movie too far-fetched?

Well... read on.


The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs | Wired Science | Wired.com

The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

• By Brandon Keim
• April 10, 2009 |
• 3:10 pm |
• Categories: Brains and Behavior
• 
  

The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.

Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now.

Some think this represents an opportunity to eliminate the crippling psychic effects of past trauma. Others see an ill-advised chemical intrusion into an essential human facility that threatens to replace our ability to understand and cope with life's inevitabilities.

Oxford University neuroethicist Anders Sandberg spoke with Wired.com about the future of memory-editing drugs. In some ways, said Sandberg, our memories are already being altered. We just don't realize it.

Wired.com: Will these drugs, when they become available, work as expected?

Anders Sandberg: A lot of discussion is based on the false premise that they'll work as well as they would in a science fiction story. In practice, well-studied, well-understood drugs like aspirin have side effects that can be annoying or even dangerous. I think the same thing will go for memory editing.

Wired.com: How selective will memory editing be?

Sandberg: Current research seems to suggest that it can be pretty specific, but there will be side effects. It may not even be that you forget other memories. Small, false memories could be created. And we're probably not going to be able to predict that before we actually try them.

Wired.com: What's the right way to test the drugs?

Sandberg: The cautious approach works. Right now, there are small clinical trials using propranolol to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a good start. We should also find better ways of doing the trials, because we don't really know what we're looking for.

When testing a cancer drug, we look at side effects in terms of toxicity. Here we might want to look at all aspects of thinking, which is really hard, because you can't test for all of them.

In the future, since we're getting more technological forms of recording and documenting our lives, those will have a bigger part in testing the drugs. We'll be able to ask, How does this help in everyday life? How often do you get "tip of the tongue" phenomena? Does it increase in relation to the drug?

Wired.com:
It seems that it would be easy to test "tip of the tongue" drug effects on the sorts of small things one recalls on an everyday basis. But what if it's old, infrequently recalled but still-important memories that are threatened by side effects?

Sandberg: It's pretty messy to determine what is an important memory to us. They quite often crop up, but without us consciously realizing that we're thinking of the memory. That's probably good news, as every time you recall a memory, you also tend to strengthen it.

Wired.com: How likely is the manipulation of these fundamental memories?

Sandberg: Big memories, with lots of connections to other things we've done, will probably be messy to deal with. But I don't think those are the memories that people want to give up. Most people would want to edit memories that impair them.

Of course, if we want to tweak memories to look better to ourselves, we might get a weird concept of self.

Wired.com: I've asked about memory removal — but should the discussion involve adding memories, too?

Sandberg: People are more worried about deletion. We have a preoccupation with amnesia, and are more fearful of losing something than adding falsehoods.

The problem is that it's the falsehoods that really mess you up. If you don't know something, you can look it up, remedy your lack of information. But if you believe something falsely, that might make you act much more erroneously.

You can imagine someone modifying their memories of war to make them look less cowardly and more brave. Now they'll think they're a brave person. At that point, you end up with the interesting question of whether, in a crisis situation, they would now be brave.

Wired.com: You use another example of memory-editing drugs for soldiers in your article with S. Matthew Liao, that if the memory of a mistaken action is erased, a soldier might not learn from his remorse.

Sandberg: To some extent, we already have to deal with this. My grandfather's story of having been in the Finnish winter war as a volunteer shifted over time. He didn't become much braver from year to year, but there was a difference between the earlier and later versions.

We can't trust our memories. But on the other hand, our memories are the basis for most of our decisions. We take it as a given that we can trust them, which is problematic.

Wired.com: But this fluidity of memory at least exists in an organic framework. Might we lose something in the transition to an abrupt, directed fluidity?

Sandberg: There's some truth to that. We have authentic fake memories, in a sense. My grandfather might have made his memories a bit more brave over time, but that was affected by his personality and his other circumstances, and tied to who he was. If he just went to the memory clinic and wanted to have won the battle, that would be more jarring.

If you do that kind of jarring change, and it doesn't connect to anything else in the personality, it's probably not going to work that well.

Wired.com: In your article, you also bring up forgiveness. If we no longer remember when someone has wronged us, we might not learn to forgive them, and that's an important social ability.

Sandberg: My co-author is more concerned than I am, but I do think there's something interesting going on with forgiveness. It's psychological, emotional and moral — a complex can of worms.

I can see problems, not from a moral standpoint, but legal. What if I hit you with my car, and to prevent PTSD you take propranolol, and afterwards in court think it wasn't too serious? A clever lawyer might argue that the victim's lack of concern means the crime should be disregarded.

I'm convinced that we're going to see a lot of interesting legal cases in the next few years, as neuroscience gets involved. People tend to believe witnesses. Suppose a witness says, "I'd just been taking my Ritalin" — should we believe him more, because we've got an enhanced memory? And if a witness has been taking a drug to impair memory, is that a reason to believe that her account is not true?

With this kind of neuroscientific evidence, it's very early to tell what we can trust. We need to do actual experiments and see measure how drugs enhance or impair memory, or more problematically, introduce a bias. Some drugs might enhance emotional memories over unemotional, or vice versa.

Wired.com: Is it paranoid to worry that someday people will be stuck drifting in a sea of shifting and unreliable memories?

Sandberg: I think we're already in this sea, but we don't notice it most of the time. Most people think, "I've got a slightly bad memory." Then they completely trust what they remember, even when it's completely unreliable.

Maybe all this is good, because it forces us to recognize that the nature of our memory is quite changeable.

The Day The Media Died

M.I.A.

"Paper Planes"

I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name
If you come around here, I make 'em all day
I get one down in a second if you wait

Sometimes I think sitting on trains
Every stop I get to I'm clocking that game
Everyone's a winner, we're making our fame
Bonafide hustler making my name

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bongs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system

No one on the corner has swagger like us
Hit me on my Burner prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
Already going hell just pumping that gas

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

M.I.A.
Third world democracy
Yeah, I got more records than the K.G.B.
So, uh, no funny business

Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go

"A large raptor attacks my remote controlled eagle"

http://vimeo.com/5051228

Que c'est triste Venise

Que c'est triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
Que c'est triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

On cherche encore des mots
Mais l'ennui les emporte
On voudrais bien pleurer
Mais on ne le peut plus

Que c'est triste Venise
Lorsque les barcarolles
Ne viennent souligner
Que des silences creux

Et que le cœur se serre
En voyant les gondoles
Abriter le bonheur
Des couples amoureux

Que c'est triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
Que c'est triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

Les musées, les églises
Ouvrent en vain leurs portes
Inutile beauté
Devant nos yeux déçus

Que c'est triste Venise
Le soir sur la lagune
Quand on cherche une main
Que l'on ne vous tend pas

Et que l'on ironise
Devant le clair de lune
Pour tenter d'oublier
Ce qu'on ne se dit pas

Adieu tout les pigeons
Qui nous ont fait escorte
Adieu Pont des Soupirs
Adieu rêves perdus

C'est trop triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
C'est trop triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

Bucintoro

2008 February « Venice from beyond the bridge

BUCINTORO

The Bucintoro was the Doge's big parade boat. It was used the Ascension day, when a gold ring where dropped in to the sea as sign of the Republic power over the sea (Sposalizio del mare).

The fist Bucintoro was build by the Republic in 1311, since then it was rebuilt 3 times. It was 35 meters long, 7 meters large and 9 meters high, with 42 oars and 168 oarsmen. The last one was destroyed by the French in 1789.

Now there is a foundation that is trying to rebuilt it, they are looking sponsors for 15.000.000,00 euro.

E lucevan le stelle

YouTube - Beniamino Gigli - E lucevan le stelle 1934

Tosca
Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa

E lucevan le stelle...
e olezzava la terra...
stridea l'uscio dell'orto
e un passo sfiorava l'arena...
entrava ella, fragrante,
mi cadea fra le braccia...
Oh, dolci baci, o languide carezze,
mentr'io fremente
le belle forme disciogliea dai veli!
Svanì per sempre il sogno mio d'amore...
L'ora è fuggita e muoio disperato,
e muoio disperato!
E non ho amato mai tanto la vita...
Tanto la vita!

-------------

The stars were shining...
and the earth was bathed in fragrance...
I heard the garden gate quietly open
and a footstep brush the sandy path...
she entered, softly perfumed,
and fell into my arms...
Such sweet kisses and soft caresses,
while I with trembling hands
removed the veils from her exquisite form!
My dream of love has gone forever...
the hour has fled and I die in despair.
I die in despair!
And never have I so loved life...
Never!

Tiresome Suction

LivingSocial on Facebook

Sartrean Naosicaa

Ibn Adaam

Ninette de Valois

"Young Dancer" by Enzo Plazzotta represents Ninette de Valois

To Dame Ninette de Valois, the Royal Ballet owes its place in the dance world's pecking order, and Covent Garden its role in the cultural merry-go-round.

Born Edris Stannus (6 June 1898, in Baltiboys, County Wicklow, Ireland), her tenacity in pursuit of an original vision, undertaken often in the face of chronic ill health, enabled her to accomplish what many at the time considered impossible.

She founded the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School. During early 1950s, she also helped establishing the first ballet school of Turkish State Opera and Ballet in İstanbul.

She modelled her company, the Sadler Wells Ballet, after the Imperial Ballet of Russia, and emphasized dancing a mix of classical ballets and contemporary works. She cultivated talents slowly. Eventually, her company became one of the starriest in the world, with dancers like Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, and Michael Somes.

In 1949 the Sadler Wells Ballet was a sensation when they toured the United States. Margot Fonteyn instantly became an international celebrity.

The statue of the young dancer, facing the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, created by Enzo Plazzotta, represents Ninette de Valois.

She died 8 March 2001, aged 102, in Barnes, London, England.

photo by Mo, http://aglimpseoflondon.blogspot.com/

Holmes sweet Holmes

Love Me Do, Dr. No

Random House : Book extract from The Beatles At No. 1:

"Many UK pop musicians have since recalled sensing something epochal in LOVE ME DO when it first appeared. Crude as it was compared to The Beatles' later achievements, it blew a stimulating autumn breeze through an enervated pop scene, heralding a change in the tone of post-war British life matched by the contemporary appearances of the first James Bond film, Dr No, and BBC TV's live satirical programme That Was The Week That Was. From now on, social influence in Britain was to swing away from the old class-based order of deference to 'elders and betters' and succumb to the frank and fearless energy of 'the younger generation'. The first faint chime of a revolutionary bell, LOVE ME DO represented far more than the sum of its simple parts. A new spirit was abroad: artless yet unabashed - and awed by nothing."

Coraline - Metaphor of the child of a narcisistic mother

"Neurotics are furnaces that devour everything around them.
When they are done, and nothing around is left,
they devour themselves."
Rubens Fonseca

“Why does she want me?” Coraline asked the cat. “Why does she want me to stay here with her?”

“She wants something to love, I think,” said the cat. “Something that isn’t her. She might want something to eat as well. It’s hard to tell with creatures like that”.

“Flee! (…) Flee, while there’s still air in your lungs [i.e.: ‘your own voice’] and blood in your veins [i.e.: ‘self-esteem’] and warmth in your heart [i.e.: ‘capacity to truly love other people’]. Flee while you still have your mind and your soul. (…)

She kept us, and she fed on us, until now we’ve nothing left of ourselves, only snakeskins and spider husks. (…)

She will take your life and all you are and all you care’st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She will take your joy. And one day you’ll awake and your heart and your soul will have gone. A husk you’ll be, a wisp you’ll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten."

“Hollow,” whispered the third voice. “Hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow.” (…)

“Now we belong to the dark and to the empty places. The light [i.e.: ‘the unbearable lightness of being’] woud shrivel us, and burn.”

“The expression on the Other Mother’s face did not change. She might not have heard what Coraline said. (…)

“Thank you, Coraline,” said the Other Mother coldly, and her voice did not just come from her mouth. It came from the mist, and the fog, and the house, and the sky. She said, “You know that I love you.”

And despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the Other Mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves gold. In the Other Mother’s eyes, Coraline knew that she was a possession, nothing more. A tolerated pet, whose behavior was no longer amusing.

“I don’t want your love,” said Coraline. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“There is nothing down here,” said the pale thing indistinctly. “Nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.” The thing was white, and huge, and swollen. Monstrous, thought Coraline, but also miserable. (…)

“Poor thing,” she said. (…) Coraline wondered how she could ever have imagined that this grublike thing resembled her father.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“She’s not best pleased,” said the thing that was once the Other Father. “Not best pleased at all. You’ve put her quite out of sorts. And when she gets out of sorts, she takes it out on everybody else. It’s her way.”

Coraline patted its hairless head. Its skin was tacky, like warm bread dough. “Poor thing,” she said. “You’re just a thing that she made and then threw away.”

The thing nodded vigorously (…) and, as if making a great effort, it opened its mouth once more and said in a wet, urgent voice, “Run, child. Leave this place. She wants me to hurt you, to keep you here forever (…). She is pushing me so hard to hurt you, I cannot fight her.”

“You can,” said Coraline. “Be brave.” (…)

“Alas,” it said, “I cannot.”

“So you’re back,” said the Other Mother. She did not sound pleased. “And you brought vermin with you.”

“No,” said Coraline. “I brought a friend.” (…)

“You know I love you,” said the Other Mother flatly.

“You have a very funny way of showing it.” said Coraline.

“My governess,” said the boy, “used to say that nobody is ever given more to shouder than he or she can bear.” He shrugged as he said this, as if he had not yet made his own mind up whether or not it was true.

“We wish you luck,” said the winged girl. “Good fortune and wisdom and courage – although you have already shown that you have all these blessings, and in abundance.”

“She hates you,” blurted out the boy. “She hasn’t lost anything for so long. Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky.”

“But it’s not fair,” said Coraline, angrily. “It’s just not fair. It should be over.”

The boy with the dirty face stood up and hugged Coraline tightly. “Take comfort in this,” he whispered. “Th’art alive. Thou livest.”

Matt Harding mata a cobra e mostra o pau