The Scottosphere

I’ve been frus­trated with photo labs lately. I’ve had so many color pho­tos ruined by sloppy pro­cess­ing or dig­i­tally mud­dled by mediocre machine scans. It’s dri­ven me toward shoot­ing B&W almost exclu­sively since the pro­cess­ing is less demand­ing. Almost all the com­pe­tent labs in the Boston area have gone out of busi­ness, leav­ing only Dorian Color to trust for crit­i­cal work–but they don’t do scan­ning! And what’s the use of film pro­cess­ing with­out pro-quality scan­ning in this day and age? (I do own a very nice film scan­ner, but scan­ning is hard and quite time-consuming.)

The Inter­webs enthu­si­as­ti­cally sug­gested that I try Richard Photo Lab in Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia. So I flew to Los Ange­les for DaleX’s wed­ding and took a bunch of pic­tures. I went home to Boston with the film, put it in an enve­lope… and mailed it back to Cal­i­for­nia. (So much for think­ing ahead.)

The first scans came back yes­ter­day. Here’s an unmod­i­fied image straight from the RPL scans. This is Kodak Por­tra 160 film on my Leica. The skin tones and expo­sure are basi­cally per­fect right out of the box. In some ways this is eas­ier than shoot­ing dig­i­tally. I’m happy to say that RPL is my new lab of choice! I think there is more color in my future.

A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion
Live HD Cinecast
4 Feb­ru­ary 2010

I blame Rhode for this one. I am not a reg­u­lar Prairie Home Com­pan­ion lis­tener. Nor, hav­ing just lost $15 and three hours of my life see­ing Avatar the night before, was I delighted by the idea of shelling out $20 to watch a pri­vate tele­vi­sion broad­cast at my neigh­bor­hood movie the­atre. But with a lit­tle per­sua­sion, I decided I could afford another chance to get in touch with the cul­ture of my Min­nesota heritage—the great pil­lars of which are snow, fish­ing, Lutheran churches, funny vowel sounds, and Gar­ri­son Keillor.

We arrived early and were treated to an amus­ing pre-recorded video tour of St. Paul. Keil­lor, whose unmis­tak­able bari­tone lends a cer­tain grav­i­tas to his off-handed com­edy, walked around the city ram­bling about life (win­ter is “nature try­ing to kill us”), archi­tec­ture (accus­ing a new gov­ern­ment build­ing of hav­ing the grandeur of a “fil­ing cab­i­net”), the life-size statue of F. Scott Fitzger­ald on the side­walk (“we didn’t put him on a pedestal”), and just who The Tor­na­does are (the Anoka Tor­na­does). And so on.

The show was fab­u­lous. The writ­ing is first-rate. The musi­cian­ship is superb. Watch­ing it on screen for the first time, it becomes evi­dent that the PHC crew runs a tight ship: per­form­ers appear and dis­ap­pear with­out delay, micro­phones silently come and go as needed, and musi­cians per­form dozens of num­bers right on cue. The pro­duc­tion is star-studded but laid back and unpre­ten­tious. The musi­cal guests were excel­lent. It was a treat to see Heather Masse on stage—I remem­ber her from her Pickin’ Tues­day days. The high­light of the show was prob­a­bly Keillor’s mono­logue, The News from Lake Wobe­gon. I had naively assumed from its mean­der­ing but focused nar­ra­tive and unhalt­ing pace that this seg­ment was care­fully scripted. It is not. Keillor’s prowess as a sto­ry­teller is unmatched by anyone.

For the Regal Fen­way 13 the­ater, the tech­ni­cal require­ments of host­ing this broad­cast were evi­dently too chal­leng­ing. The entire pre-show pro­gram was pre­sented with badly unsyn­chro­nized sound, which they reme­died by com­pletely shut­ting down the pro­jec­tion halfway through the open­ing num­ber of the pro­gram. The audio was glitchy through­out. Need­less to say, I will not be see­ing future cinecasts at this venue.

Will I see A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion live again, if I get the chance? Absolutely.

Nou­velle Vague
Somerville The­atre
24 Jan­u­ary 2010

The premise: a French band rein­ter­prets New Wave and punk rock songs as laid-back bossa nova tunes. Imag­ine lush, [some­times] quiet remakes of clas­sic Talk­ing Heads, Vio­lent Femmes, Dead Kennedys, and Joy Divi­sion mate­r­ial. Yes, it’s weird, but it works. It works even bet­ter live.

As the con­cept is not entirely unique, Nou­velle Vague owes a large part of its suc­cess to solid musi­cian­ship. The breathy, seduc­tive vocals, stun­ning out­fits, and some­times over-the-top stage pres­ence of vocal­ists Helena Noguerra and Karina Zeviani were the carefully-crafted cen­ter­pieces of the per­for­mance. The gui­tar, key­boards, and bass were right on, but in some ways drum­mer Spencer Cohen stealth­ily stole the show, charg­ing pre­cisely through very com­plex rhythms with a relaxed bear­ing and goofy grin that effused under­stated simplicity.

Open­ing act Clare and The Rea­sons was a delight­ful dis­cov­ery. Her voice is great. Her hus­band plays gui­tar, vio­lin, pen­ny­whis­tle, kazoo, and the saw. Their song about Pluto was funny. They closed their part of the show on a high note by sum­mon­ing a guest tuba player to sup­ply the bouncy bass line for their hilar­i­ous cover (with vio­lin and clar­inet) of Gen­e­sis’ “That’s All.”

Ver­dict: awesome!

For my run­ning pro­gram, this has been a year of firsts: In Jan­u­ary, I bought my first MP3 player since 1999 and started run­ning with music. Music! But music doesn’t make you faster. My inner engi­neer decided that more data was needed. A few months ago, Garmin released the FR60, the first prod­uct that cor­re­lates foot-pod accelerom­e­ter and heart rate data in an agreeable-looking dig­i­tal watch. I know sev­eral peo­ple who are fans of the sim­i­lar Nike+ sys­tem, and I’ve often won­dered about these foot pods—are they at all accu­rate? Garmin’s lit­er­a­ture promised “98% accu­racy,” which is good enough for me, so I bought one.

Turns out, Garmin lies. My first run with the watch was a huge let­down: the instan­ta­neous pace read­out, the main fea­ture that led me to pur­chase the prod­uct, was indi­cat­ing more than 1 minute slower (per mile) than I believed I was run­ning based on old-fashioned esti­ma­tion. That would rep­re­sent an error of more than 12%. To check my san­ity, I bor­rowed a fancier watch that uses GPS, not accelerom­e­ter data, to cal­cu­late speed. I did a quick jog/walk with both prod­ucts and cor­re­lated the data shown here: GPS speed (Fore­run­ner 305) in blue, foot-pod speed (FR60) in red. Sure enough, my speed esti­mates were more accu­rate than the watch read­out! But I was sur­prised to see the cor­re­la­tion improve dra­mat­i­cally dur­ing walking.

While Garmin makes no effort to call out its neces­sity, the FR60 offers a cal­i­bra­tion pro­ce­dure to improve the foot-pod accu­racy. Will cal­i­bra­tion improve running-speed accu­racy at the expense of walk­ing? We’ll find out in part two.

Last week I bought a Silca Super Pista bicy­cle pump. I felt the $20 pre­mium it com­mands over other well-regarded floor pumps was justifiable—the steel cylin­der, the pol­ished beech han­dle, the “Made in Italy” label, and its rep­u­ta­tion for being a repairable hand-me-down kind of prod­uct sold me. How dis­ap­pointed I was!

Out of the box, I dis­cov­ered two prob­lems. First, the ris­ing han­dle and droop­ing pres­sure read­ing told me that air was leak­ing back­wards through the pump seal. I dis­as­sem­bled the one-way valve and dis­cov­ered a loose shred of plas­tic which pre­vented the valve from seat­ing. So I fixed it. Once I got the pump work­ing, the hybrid Schrader/Presta chuck proved to be too tight: I destroyed two tubes try­ing to remove it. (There goes another $12.) So I loos­ened up the chuck’s rub­ber washer and greased it—two things the man­ual says noth­ing about—and now it works fine.

The qual­ity of the clo­sure cap also leaves much to be desired. This plas­tic part is attached to the tube with an ill-fitting self-tapping screw, and was prob­a­bly the source of the debris which jammed the one-way valve. On a pos­i­tive note, I liked the low-impact pack­ag­ing (a printed mesh bag).

In sum­mary, the Silca Super Pista can be made into a nice pump, but due to poor man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices and cost reduc­tion attempts, it is no longer the kind of qual­ity tool you’ll pass on to your kids. Don’t buy it.

Cirkestra
The Isabella Stew­art Gard­ner Museum (Boston)
Feb­ru­ary 19, 2009

The breadth and diver­sity of cul­tural expe­ri­ences avail­able here in Boston is amaz­ing. So per­haps it should not sur­prise me that I could walk four min­utes beyond my front door to find myself trans­ported to another world in the sumptuously-appointed Tapes­try Room of the Isabella Stew­art Gard­ner museum, lis­ten­ing to a haunt­ingly anachro­nis­tic yet infec­tiously lively per­for­mance of… cir­cus music. (But sur­prise me it does!)

One must clar­ify what we mean by cir­cus music. “What makes it cir­cus music,” writes band­leader, accor­dion­ist, and for­mer clown Peter Bufano in the con­cert pro­gram, “is that I wrote it for the cir­cus.” What he means is that their music has noth­ing in com­mon with Thun­der and Blazes or Wurl­itzer band organs. It is a study of cir­cus music from mul­ti­far­i­ous regions and tra­di­tions. Mid­dle east­ern grooves give way to strains of jazz. Klezmer becomes Turk­ish. The waltzes are dark and creepy but swinging—minor-key reminders of the fes­tive and more inti­mate cir­cuses of the past.

Bufano’s expres­sive accor­dion pairs nicely with the com­ple­men­tary tim­bre of Käthe Louise Hostetter’s five-string fid­dle. Michael Dobson’s drum­ming is sub­tle but com­plex and pep­pered with occa­sional nov­elty sounds. Michael Mil­narik holds things together on the tuba while Sammy Lett lets loose with sweet stac­cato sax solos. Sublime.

Cirkestra, like the cir­cus, is meant to be enjoyed live, but their records are pretty impres­sive too. Check them out.

Win­ters as cold and snowy as this one cry out for a long and thought-provoking win­ter book. I fin­ished re-reading Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale the other day, and only today’s 40-degree heat wave has man­aged to break the con­tem­pla­tive spell in which it left me.

The book may be a paean to New York, a moral­ity tale, or a trea­tise on beauty and jus­tice, but it’s also a window—a win­dow through which we can see not just the strug­gles of another time, but the way in which human­ity strug­gles against every­thing which it can­not know or con­trol in blind pur­suit of ideals, prin­ci­ples, hap­pi­ness, and survival.

Liv­ing as I do in an engineer’s world of speci­ficity and detail, it is hum­bling to con­sider the city on such a scale. But Helprin’s gift is to make it seem mag­i­cal and effort­less, like the pass­ing of the seasons.

Photo: Self-portrait at Mt. Auburn Ceme­tery, 2008.

Andrew Bird
Orpheum The­atre (Boston)
30 Jan­u­ary 2009

After a luke­warm but warmly-received open­ing by the Swedish indie-folk group Lonely Dear, amidst a con­stant shuf­fle of activ­ity to and from the bath­room (blame the $10 cups of Har­poon IPA!), Andrew Bird appeared alone on stage wear­ing a dark suit. He played a few notes on the vio­lin, or per­haps even a whole tune—I don’t remember—but he earned his sec­ond round of applause when he leaned down to untie his shoes. Those bright red socks must be the source of his musi­cal powers.

Boston was stop num­ber two on the Noble Beast tour. Some of the num­bers were a lit­tle rough around the edges, with sev­eral false starts, tun­ing prob­lems, and fre­quent on-stage appear­ances by a tracksuit-clad gui­tar tech. Bird, ever the per­fec­tion­ist, apol­o­gized if it seemed that the band was “play­ing stick­ball in a sand­lot,” but nobody minded at all. The show sim­ply rocked.

The con­cert cli­maxed at the first encore, when Bird re-appeared alone to pluck, bow, and wail his way through a com­plex and dra­matic live ver­sion of “Why?” The muse had clearly pos­sessed him: his vio­lin exuded vir­tu­os­ity and his pipes became inex­plic­a­bly cal­i­brated to deliver a max­i­mum of raw emo­tion. The audi­ence was on their feet and the air was electric—boisterous men stood mostly silent, lan­guid women swayed, and a few girls near the front of the house inter­jected screams like they were on the brink of rip­ping their clothes off.

Ver­dict: see it if you can.