Elephant Talk

I actually clicked on a banner ad yesterday. The advertising intrigued me: “Which presidential candidate thinks like you do?” And that’s really it, that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Which one thinks like me? So, rewarding good copywriting, I clicked. There was a test, with a series of really stupid and very pointed questions. But I went through with it anyway. Who thinks like me? Apparently Dennis Kucinich, although he has a big diagonal ‘dropped out’ embossed across his face.

Being so far removed from stateside culture, I haven’t paid much attention to the election. Before I left, I was a Joe Biden supporter. He’s one of the few politicians who, when he speaks, actually says something. And he knows what’s happening in the world. But he was an impossibility, so I became an unenthusiastic Hilary Clinton supporter, which I guess is aligned with many democrats. We’re fairly romantic people, and let’s face it, we miss Bill. And on her own merits, she’s super smart and highly capable, and I think she’d be an outstanding decision maker. It would be great to have a female president, and I think it might lead to some global forgiveness of the ‘ol US of A. But there’s a quality about her that I can’t pin down.

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I went to six countries in all: Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria. By far, the prettiest girls from that bunch live in the Czech Republic. It’s one of several areas where I think the Czechs have a distinct advantage over their former Slovak partners.

Here’s the pattern that I loved: jet black hair, beautiful pale grey or hazel eyes, gobs of black eye makeup, and a confident presence. Usually, I’m not a big fan of makeup, but it was something about the contrast of black hair/makeup with pale eyes that got to me. Sure, the hair color may be fake and Czech women aren’t the most approachable in the world, but the aesthetic still worked for me.

The problem with Czech women is that they’re too tall. Someone told me it’s because of all the hormones in the milk. Whatever the cause, I’m more fond of short women. But they’re still nice to look at.

Here’s something only an audio geek can appreciate, but it’s not often that a film sound team becomes the focus of a Hollywood scandal.

There seems to be some controversy about whether Heath Ledger finished his ADR for Dark Knight before he died.  ADR is dialogue replacement, wherein an actor re-records his lines in sync with the film. Most of the dialogue you hear in a film is actually reconstructed in a recording studio.

This quote made me giggle: “EW placed a call to Oscar-winning sound designer and sound editor Richard King, who’s handling the Dark Knight audio work, but he declined to comment.” The sound guy getting calls from an entertainment mag. And having to decline comment. That’s funny.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the dialogue is not up to par. They’ll have to either do some artful cleaning of the production tracks or get someone else to do his lines, then blend Ledger’s tracks with the other actor’s. It brings up a lot of interesting questions, especially if Ledger gets nominated for some awards. How much of a performance is in the delivery of the lines? Does it matter if what we’re hearing isn’t him, but some sort of collage of him and someone else?

Sound can now accomplish incredible acts of wizardry. In this age of technology, you can lift a syllable or a breath and re-purpose it elsewhere. Maybe they’ll just reconstruct whole words for him. So is it still him?

It’ll be interesting to see… and hear… what happens.

I’ve been too kind to Europe. Time for some criticism.

The thing I didn’t care for in Europe was its soundscape. The countries I visited did a fantastic job of presenting these wonderful old town centers, with beautiful architecture and lighting, and twisting cobblestone streets. But on top of this, they had a tendency to layer the most atrocious aural violations that would taint the overall experience.

The problem with Europe is its music and the way they assault you with it. They’re either stuck in the ‘80s or embracing the cheesiest of modern pop. This happened everywhere, but it was particularly apparent in Ljubljana and Bratislava.

It’s a manifestation of a visually oriented world. Europe is proud of its age, its history. Attempts toward preserving that in city planning are based on old drawings of sculptures and buildings, and language in text that described such locations. But we have no such sonic documents. Europe is something to be seen; it is presented. At the same time, tourism is a very lucrative thing. There is money to be had. They can’t cover up all this history with endless posters, wall paintings and billboards. So merchants and barkers use sound. They blast popular music in an effort to get attention. I don’t even think it’s given a second thought. Pop music to them means there’s something groovy going on here.

What people don’t realize is that sounds are what provide an inner psychology to any kind of visual experience. Hearing a culture, while not so literal, is important to a sense of immediate place and eventual memory. One could argue that the music and noise is part of the culture, but I don’t buy this. It’s not a reflection of culture, it is entirely a device of tourism. It morphs a location into a 21st century theme park.

I found it everywhere – walking around a city center, inside a café, pub or bar, in restaurants and hostels and hotels, even at museum ticket counters. I would be so disappointed to walk into a fantastic underground pub, with heavy iron doors and low ceilings and a fireplace, and hear KISS or Britany Spears or something equally horrific.

There are two places where you can escape, and they are two of the more enjoyable places to be in Europe: inside a train or inside a church or palace. The train experience was magnificent. It was silent and beautiful. I could read a book in peace and then look over at the landscape and just stare and stare. In churches and palaces, I came to really enjoy the sound of my footsteps reverberating in these great halls. I’m thinking now of the Old Royal Palace in Prague. I walked through that hall and the wooden floor would creak and ache with age and send the sound bouncing along its walls and ceiling. I could hear its history.

At other times and in other locations I would too often turn to my iPod. It’s sad to have to cancel out the world in order to appreciate it, but it’s the only way I could give myself a feeling of presence.

I did a fair share of writing on my laptop while I was zipping around Europe. So I thought I’d start a little theme here for the next few entries — just a few admittedly self-indulgent observations. This first one is simply about travel itself…

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I got 150 hits on my site yesterday. I’m not deserving of such traffic, not by a long shot. So I did some research and it seems people were coming here for news about the fourth planet from the sun. (I’ll avoid naming it so as to not further confuse the misguided Google bots.)

This is news I don’t have. But the whole thing got me intrigued, so I did my own search. Seems as though a photo was released recently that appeared to show a human form on the planet.

Turns out it’s just a rock. It is a pretty cool photo though.

Around the time I was getting ready to leave, I knew that once I got back it would be just about time to plug back into my televisual obsession — ABC’s Lost. It starts up again on 31 January. Like every fan, I’ve got theories as to what’s going on. I’m going to blog about that now, so if you eventually want to get into the greatest show ever but haven’t yet, don’t click on this little “read the rest of this entry” thing right here:

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OK, this is weird. Just flat out weird. I just now walked into my apartment in Busan, and it was the freakiest sensation. Maybe it’s the massive sleep deprivation I’m under. But this feels like some kind of psychedelic experience, or a dream. I feel right now like I’m not myself, but some alternate version of myself.

I got out of the elevator on my floor and my apartment door looked different. I punched in the code, turned the key, and walked in. And there’s my apartment, but it feels like a displaced, previous hallucination of some parallel, bizarro world. Everything seems very clean and… white. and yet, hyper-normal. There are my books, there’s my cell phone, my day pack right where I left it… some shirts folded on the couch. And odd bits of normalcy like the shampoo samples my hair cut lady gave to me. That’s right, I cut my hair the day before I left…

I must be dreaming right now. I’m actually in the hostel in Stuttgart, hoping the alarm goes off so I don’t miss my flight. But no, I’m here… I think.

This shouldn’t be this strange. This didn’t happen when I came back from America over the summer. This was a longer stay away, and maybe it’s all the travel that extended time (and my brain) that much further. That must be it. I was so far removed that I totally forgot about this space that I live in. When I left it was a different world, a rush of activity: grades, parties, goodbyes.

Okay, calm down. I’ll adjust in time. Take a shower, sleep for a while. But I feel as if I could sit down in this moment and write a philosophical treatise on the nature of “home” and “space.” They’ve always been ephemeral things for me anyway, but this little moment here… this is just… weird.

OK, I really shouldn’t be posting about — let alone reading about — Tom Cruise, but I’ve got time to kill and free wifi while waiting for my train to Stuttgart. This bit in the Washington Post made me laugh…

In the video, still posted yesterday on Gawker, The Tom is wearing a black turtleneck and talking to an interviewer just off camera — for nine minutes! — about how he wants to help and how he’s met with “leaders” all over the world and how they want his help, and how Scientology is “wild and woolly” and how he doesn’t like people sitting on the sidelines of life, and how he’s “canceled that in my area.” And he keeps laughing really LOUD and it really doesn’t make any sense and he keeps showing all his teeth and barely blinking and I got really scared but I watched the whole thing even if I didn’t want to, and now I can’t sleep without the light on.

I guess Tom is the new Michael Jackson, a human being morphing into a freak of nature while cameras capture the whole process.

I’m drunk. Not really drunk drunk, but nicely floating.

I’ve been avoiding organized tours all trip, but I finally gave in this time. I simply didn’t have any Munich plans today, since I did everything (kind of) that I planned yesterday. In retrospect I should have left for Stuttgart today, but that’s another, highly unexciting, story.

So I did the walking tour. Most of the knowledge I gained was about beer, Hitler, and more beer. Beer is everything in Bavaria, thanks to the monks, who drank it while fasting. The pope let them do it because he tasted some rotten beer once and figured it was good for their suffering.

As part of the tour, our guide said to avoid the highly touristy, yet highly Hitlerific Hoffbraü House and instead go to the Augustiner. So at the conclusion of the tour at about 3 pm, I did just that. I sat in the Bierhalle and had some marvelously satisfying dunkelbiers and weißbiers. Now it’s around 6 pm and I don’t know what else to do with myself.

I leave tomorrow to see my friend’s exhibit in Stuttgart, and to catch up and festivate and say final goodbyes. I don’t have a hotel for the final night. I thought I could stay with him, but apparently his room is a box. So I may just stay up drinking all night and head straight for the airport for my early AM flight.