Look Tiny

Tilt-shifting is a post-production technique of reducing the focus and increasing the contrast of an image to produce a fun effect on perspective. A demonstration of the tilt-shift technique of turns helicopter fly-over films into what looks like outtakes from Beetlejuice. A how-to for anyone with the tools or time, and an example using BBC footage of Pittsburgh, which may be of some interest to some of you.

Bands I Hate: Half-Handed Cloud

Lets get something straight. If the phrase 'avant-Christian pop' scares you, run away. Personally, I have nothing wrong with pop music, and i have nothing wrong with Christians. I do, typically, have problems with Christian music, at least insomuch as it's unnessecary and disingenuous. Half-Handed Cloud (a.k.a. John Ringhofer), with his Omnichord of God, epitomizes both of these qualities. Though he's been riding along in both spirit and tour van with fellow prostheletizer Sufjan Stevens, the latter is able to get across a digestable liturgical idea (ok, ignore Seven Swans) into a musical message that's as subtle as the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Half-Handed Cloud, however, is a sacrosanct brick of condescending religiosity. Their mutual label (Asthmatic Kitty) lauds HHC as a 'dazzlingly sweet phenomenon'; 'the celestial telephone is ringing for Half-handed Cloud with a message of love and hope on the other end.' Sorry for making you barf.

When I saw HHC opening for Sufjan at Cat's Cradle a few months ago, he filled our time-of-waiting-for-the-real-talent time by playing self-righteous songs about 'the unbelievers' and those 'without the all-consuming search for God.' Now he's got a new record, Halos & Lassos, replete with his ADD-laden takes on the nature of hipster piety. The musical style compliments the juvenile ostentation; synthesizers and vochorders compete with his kid-pitched voice. Most of the songs clock in at just over 1 minute, which gives me just enough time to get pissed off but not enough time to remember to curse. Check the sample lyric from "Feed Your Sheep a Burning Lamp":

Feed you goat to feed the fire
Goats are fuels for fires burning
Goats and lambs for either hand
Lambs on hand for righteous yearning
Lambs with hands receive the crown
Royal Crown
Ooooo OOooo

Again, sorry bout the barf. Christianity Today gives it 4 stars, which is sort of your first clue; P.O.D. and Creed regularly get 4 stars, and Scott Stapp probably writes guest articles. I wouldn't be so upset but for the fact that this stuff gets passed off as innovative. And I don't mind being condescended to by a religioso--i can't prove them wrong, and i often get out of the debate on sheer drunkeness--but when the particular religioso is wearing a pink head band and talks like Emo Philips, and is also telling me to stay away from my whiskey, well, i get violent.

And as some horrible pastiche of B&S-frontman Stuart Murdoch's own habitation, he's been living rent-free in a church in Berkeley in exchange for custodial work. I bet that cleaning church toilets makes you hate sinners.

I suppose part of the fault lies in the technology that engenders this sort of technopoptwee music, the miracle of home recording and live onstage trickery. If, say, a drummer and a guitar player had to contend at regular intervals with this Ringhofer sot, i imagine a flying drumstick or electric guitar might quickly silence the holy noise. But it's the modern age: with multitrack recording, on-stage loops, and sound effects galore, every solo artist is his own five-piece. Sometimes it works and you get an Andrew Bird, or Jens Lekman. Then sometimes you get this, the B-grade indie-rock version of Benny Hinn.

Panama, Part I

So, about 5 years ago I transferred into a little hippie college in florida called New College. The liberal environment and grading scheme afforded me certain liberties, one of which was doing off-campus projects in far-off countries. For credit. At the time I was really interested in zoology, and in particular primatology; I thought that a life as a monkey scientist would complement my demeanor. So I designed myself a little trip to the tropics.

I landed in Costa Rica with a fellow New College student named Maria. Maria was crazy. I didn’t really know this at the time, as like most of you, she was able to hold her shit together for a little while, long enough to get me to go on the trip to Panama with her, and buy the hotel room in San Jose the evening we landed. Then she proceeded to go nuts, locking herself in the bedroom and crying. Maria was down there, as I was, to inhabit an island off the coast of Panama, Bocas del Toro, and study roving troupes of Black Howler monkeys. Apparently this wasn’t exciting enough an idea to her. I, on the other hand, was “stoked”, to use an expression of my youth.

Predictably, the main directive for the entire trip was to avoid Maria. The secondary directive was to find monkeys. And adventure. This mean that I spent fewer nights in the thatch cabin, and more of them roving about the island, sleeping in a tent on the most level surface I could find. Armadillos and coatis were frequent night-visitors, rustling up ground for bugs. I frequently stepped on toads, which in Panama get to be about the size of a knapsack. Most of my camps were on the beach, under trees but near the water, so the small lapping waves of the Caribbean helped me sleep amongst the sound of giant frogs and nightbugs the size of my fist.

About halfway through the trip, I went on a hike with a guide named Oscar, Maria, and a couple of British eco-tourists (Nigel and Hussein, he and she), up the coast and into the densest part of the jungle. Oscar is this black Patoi native-type who can pick a berry and say, “you see dis? you make a tea outta dis and it’a cure ya’ asthma,” and “don touch dat tree, it’a make you go blind fo tree hours,” and the like. He’s about 7 feet tall and wears gymshorts and a worn polo shirt. He smells of the ocean.

At the halfway point of our trek through the jungle, we were kind of disappointed because we hadn’t seen any monkeys. A few rare tree frogs, plenty of sloths, and lots of nuts that had been eaten by monkeys, but they have the tendency to scutter off before humans get close. Unless you go to surf cities in Costa Rica, where the howlers have learned that humans love to give out free food, and like it when you sit on their heads. Alpha howlers have huge balls, and placing themselves above subordinates is a typical offensive behavior, but most tourists don’t notice because they dig on the animal contact.

So we are tired and decide to stop at a small lagoon for a swim. We are walking, all five of us, in a line down to the lagoon; I am bringing up the rear because Hussein is having breathing difficulties, and Oscar wants me to make sure she doesn’t trail behind and collapse. So we’re going slow. As we walk down, there are lots of big tree trunks to walk over, and the rule here is, (remember this for your next jungle safari), you jump off the log, rather than just stepping down. I can’t remember what I did, exactly, but as I descended from a particular large fallen juju tree, I felt something slam against the back of my pants and land 5 feet in front of me. I saw X’s. Now, I grew up in Florida, where at our local Alligator Farm, we were told that X’s mean Diamondback Rattlesnake. This, apparently, was the 8-ft rattle-less version of the same.

It’s the first and only time I’ve ever screamed out ‘fuck’ without ever meaning to do so. I imagine that if I’m ever tortured with hot iron buttplugs I might make a similar sound; but at least that I’ll anticipate. Oscar walked back up and peered over to where I was staring. “Oh, dat is de famous eckees (equis = X in spanish) snake. Yeah, dat’s snake don like noise.” Or Italians, apparently. So Oscar cuts down a small tree, cuts it into a fork, because apparently he wants to catch the thing. He sneaks over, while the snake has been coiled up a few feet from me, and tries to catch it’s head in the fork. Miss. The snake runs (slithers) away, and into the lagoon, away from the tall Patoi. But Oscar follows him over, into the lagoon, and gets waist-deep before the snake turns around. I’ve got this great shot of the two of them, the snake coiled in the water, and Oscar with his stick raised high, both of them ready to strike. Oscar won. He slammed down the stick, 5 or 6 times, turning the water red with the snake’s blood.

He then takes the snakes body, lifts it up with the stick, and lays it on the bank that the four of us are standing. He says to me, “You want de skin, man?”