Ball Golf, of course

From a Tyee article on disc golf:

The game is played much the same as traditional golf (or, as disc golfers call it, "ball golf") with tee-offs, pars, birdies and bogies. But that's about where the similarities end.

The best rock concert review I won't let you read

Wolfgang dropped a basket of semi-obscure treasures this week, possibly the first list free of any of the stalwarts you hear on classic rock. The best known is Rod Stewart with the Faces from an October 1973 show. I gave the show a listen out of curiosity, not nostalgia, and it's worth a listen. The band was undeniably talented, although not era-defining.

The show also reminded me of a review someone I know wrote on one of Rod's shows in 1977. Now maybe 21-year-olds today can be held accountable all their life for their public writings. They're grown up with the internet, alta vista, and google, and have an innate understanding that words are forever. But can you hold an ambitious 21-year-old accountable forever who was trying to get some attention by inciting an uproar with a review of a mediocre concert?

But thirty years ago no one writing for a college paper would expect their words to come back to haunt them a generation later. Who knew that one day colleges all over the place would scan their morgues and put the contents where google could find them? The article is googleable, and so memorable for me it was easy to find, but I won't quote it directly. If the writer wants to come public with it, let him. Or her. Yeah, right.

Fortunately for the writer, it's hard to find it unless you include his name in the query. The article is packed with gems, slagging Rod and his band for being predictable, and not worth the whopping eight dollars fifty the fans shelled out. But a homophobic rant runs through the first half that rarely lets up. I can't see how it would get published today. Most people would think twice before putting their name on it. Editors would cancel it. And if it did get published, there would be a national outrage in the blogosphere. In 1977, while not as accepting a time as today, straights were still hanging out at the gay bars. David Bowie, the New York Dolls, and Lou Reed had forged a path of androgynous glammy rock that had found mainstream acceptance. Rod was just jumping on yet another bandwagon with his eye shadow, hair highlights, and other metrosexual accessories. Selling tickets and vinyl. Big deal.

Could the writer have written a politically correct review of the show? Sure, but would it have had the same impact? He scored all kinds of hits that year, including interviews with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Patti Smith. I read them, and I don't recall a word of them now. Picking on Rod Stewart was journalistic low-hanging fruit. While I can understand obsessed collectors who have hundreds of Grateful Dead or Phish tapes, or Japanese imports by Dylan or Springsteen, I can't imagine what kind of person would need to own every single album of Rod Stewart's (hi grandma).

I finally read the full article. Guess what -- pull out the homophobia and it's a deveined tepid phoned-in account of an uninspiring show. Which kind of sums up how I remember most rock music of the era.

Vancouver heads-ups to start the long weekend

This Friday's Critical Mass is the big one of the year.  They're expecting 2000 riders, and finally I don't have other plans and can join them.  As usual, no one has any idea where the ride will go until it happens.

After a couple of hours of riding, time to head home, shower, and come back downtown to see former co-worker Matt's brother-in-law Joe pound the drums as Baked Potato plays the Media Club (behind the QE Theatreon Cambie).  From jambands.ca (almost an oxymoron there):

> This Friday (the 29th), Baked Potato is the first band of 3 so start time is EARLY!

> Baked Potato starts @ 9:00pm and plays 'till 10:15pm.

If you were ever wondering what the confluence of Zappa, the Allmans, and
Herbie Mann sounded like, these guys might be as close as you'll get. 

RSS: Comments are not Content

I subscribe to a few feeds I'll leave unnamed that are the product of very smart people and/or organizations, but their software gets one annoying thing wrong. Every time there's a new comment on the post, the original feed changes and my reader re-highlights previously read entries to indicate a change.

Sometimes the change is limited to a count of the number of comments on the post.

Sometimes the change is to tell me so and so commented on it.

Sometimes a timestamp changes, that's it.

My feedreader isn't so smart that it can tell substantive changes from inconsequential ones. Readers of the future will be able to do this, or at least let users configure them to ignore certain tags. After all RSS (and Atom) is just XML. Meanwhile my reader is smart enough to find when one blog I subscribe to is commenting on another item in my list.

We're still in early days in this technology, still in the first decade, depending on whom you listen to. We'll get it right eventually.

Could be the most sublime hour of live rock music ever...

Never one to be the first to find something, yesterday I stumbled on Wolfgang's Vault, the web-based repository of the memorabilia from Bill Graham's estate (one story here), and stayed up way too late listening to recordings of live concerts by a pre-Born-to-Run Springsteen, a 20-minute "Time" by the Chambers Brothers, an early performance of Tommy, even checking out minor worthies like Erma Franklin. But the best is from the Allman's New Year's Eve 1973 performance, set 2. "Les Brers in A Minor", in 3 parts, with walk-ons from Garcia and Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, and then a "who knew" bluesy contribution by Boz Scaggs. You can buy some of these shows on MP3, but the streams are free.

Time for some more baconizers?

One obvious network is of musicians who've performed with other musicians. Then we could find out how many links it is from Robert Johnson to, say, Kenny Wayne Shepard. Or from the MC5 to Hayley Duff. Inquiring minds need to know. Call this an M number. Since lots of professional musicans also appear in movies, many would have an M-B number.

Everyone's had roommates at some time. Everyone you've ever shared an address with has an R-number of 1 with respect to you, but let's not count motels on road trips. Just places that have a mailbox. I might be three links from Neil Young. Back in the early 80s we had a law-school dropout of a housemate who claimed he once shared a place with Dewey Martin, who played with Buffalo Springfield and CSN&Y. Odds are pretty good that he roomed for a while with Neil. Which means I could have an R-link of 3 with sportswriter great Scott Young.

I just found out that Canadian indie favorites Feist and Peaches also have been roommates. So now M-R numbers are common too. Do music videos count towards Bacon numbers? If they do M-R-B numbers are out there to be catalogued and bragged about.

Let's turn to real estate now. Most transactions involve two parties, an agent representing the vendor, and one for the buyer. Now I'm wondering if most agents in North America are all linked together. How many hops from an agent in Anchorage to one in Miami? Is there a correlation between a low Haslam number (named after a ubiquitous Vancouver agent) and income? Vancouver definitely has its share of real estate agents who also act. So there must be a few people with B-H numbers.

Anyone out there with a defined B-E-H-M-R number?

Help me with my Erdos-Bacon Number

The Erdos part is easy -- Jim Cordy's is 4, so mine is at most 5. There's a researcher in China who graciously gave me a co-authorship for my baconizer data, but I can't think he'd be lower.

The Bacon part is harder. Documentaries count, but it seems shows like local TV newscasts and game shows don't. I was in an actual feature film shot at the about-to-be-decommisioned North Vancouver Secondary School. The filmmaker's first name was Laszlo, the year was most likely 1979, I was in one scene with a local actress named Joey, and I remember little else. Somewhere in there lies my Bacon component, probably around 5 or 6. I know that one of the people on the crew, Barbara Tranter, worked on Porky's. If assistants counted, that would give me a Bacon # of at most 3, for a B-E # of 8. But I think they don't.

The current record B-E # is 5, but that's easily lowered. All it takes is for someone with an Erdos # of 1 to offer to co-author a paper with an actor with a Bacon # of 1 (or even Mr. B himself), in exchange for a role in that actor's next film. Say a former grad student of Ronald Graham's were to form this dual-collaboration with Kevin Bacon, they'd each have a B-E# of 3 afterwards. It would be acceptable if the screenplay was about the thrills of writing a paper for publication, while the paper itself dealt with a topic like black-scholes approaches to financing dubious movies. In the film the mathematician character (the Erdos guy) should give the author character (the Bacon guy) a failing grade at some point. The movie should be called "3".

Ref: http://www.google.com/search?q=erdos-bacon+numbers