Warrior

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Granger Meador

My July 2012 Song of the Month

Warrior by Kimbra, Mark Foster, & A-Trak

Golly, last month’s pick really drove traffic to the website. Gotye’s song overtook my Pathfinder Parkway information as the top draw, although over time that will fade. This month is a follow-up, because my favorite new song was Warrior by Kimbra, A-Trak, and Mark Foster of Foster the People. I was sufficiently interested by her duet with Gotye in last month’s pick that I sampled several of her own songs and liked this one best. As the month was consumed more by reading than listening (see a forthcoming post), Warrior became my favorite new-to-me song for July.

“Warrior” features A-Trak on the boards while Kimbra and Foster supply vocals. I love the energy in it, which reminds me of some of Beck‘s better work. The song was written as a part of the “Three Artists, One Song” annual series by shoe company Converse. The mix is potent. I especially love the powerful synthesizers in the chorus, which are highlighted when they blast you out of the breakdown and its Kimbra-esque layered harmonies.

Being sponsored by a shoe company means this song naturally has a video:

Warrior

My hands are tired
But my eyes are open
This modern denial
Has me broken

Nothing mystical
No hullabaloo
Just chemicals
And no one looking down on you

What am I thinking (if you’re so sure it’s rational)
While the world’s shrinking (but that don’t make it logical)
What am I thinking (if you say I’m just an animal)
I feel like I’m sinking (you can’t explain away the way I feel)

You’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(They tell you ‘trust your head, be like men’ but never feel like you’re good enough)
You’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(They wanna take our light, make us fight, but never cry for the ones you love)

(I’ll be your warrior, warrior)

You’re taking over
And I’m feeling small
When I was a child
I knew it all

Nothing magical
No hologram behind the door
Just a chain reaction
But I know I’m made for more!

What am I thinking (if you’re so sure it’s rational)
While the world’s shrinking (but that don’t make it logical)
What am I thinking (if you say I’m just an animal)
I feel like I’m sinking (you can’t explain away the way I feel)

And you’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(They tell you, ‘trust your head, be like men’ but never feel like you’re good enough)
You’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(They wanna take our light, make us fight, but never cry for the ones you love)

And you’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(You wanna change the world, but your girls will be seen and not be heard)
You’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
(They wanna take our light, make us fight, but never cry for the ones you love)

August 2012 Song of the Month >

< June 2012 Song of the Month

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Photos at Philbrook

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Granger Meador
July 8, 2012

Philbrook (click image for slideshow)

My least favorite month in Oklahoma is here, despite my birthday adorning its final week. July is always hot and horrible, and it has been two weeks since I took any day hike photographs. Today it was overcast and muggy, cool enough in the morning for some outdoors photography, if not a comfortable hike. So I hit US 75 in time to arrive at Tulsa’s Villa Philbrook when it opened at 10 a.m. As it was the first full weekend of the month, I could use my Bank of America card for free admission, saving myself $9.

In looking over my posted photos, I’m surprised to find nothing from Philbrook, Tulsa’s best museum of art. Oil man Waite Phillips, brother of Bartlesville’s Frank Phillips, had this 72-room Italian Renaissance villa built on 23 acres in 1926-27. The villa was designed by Edward Buehler Delk, who also designed a favorite spot of mine, the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. In 1938 Waite donated Philbrook to Tulsa for an art museum and botanical garden, endowed by two of his downtown Tulsa office buildings.

The Tempietto

The Gardens

Eros and Anteros Fighting over a Heart, by François-Joseph LeClercq in 1780, was the first work which caught my eye, set against a window looking out over the beautiful gardens with their distinctive tempietto. That drew me outdoors for a walk. From the upper bowl of the main fountain I gazed down at the gardens, with their zigzag hedges and the flower-garlanded reflecting pool in front of the tempietto. Descending past the fountain wall, I envied the sculpted children splashing through it.

Brilliant blooms paraded me down the slope, past the large Solomonic columns, to the reflecting pool, which was surrounded by colorful blooms and plantings. Turning about, I admired the garden slope, capped by the large villa. The lower garden contrasts nicely to the geometric order above. The tempietto was a suitable background for some beautiful roses. Walking around to the south, I climbed the slope past Oklahoma Autumn by Eric Baker, artificial trees with glass leaves. I reached the summerhouse and walked back to the villa.

La Nymphe Sans Bras

The Villa

I revisited some of my favorite features of the villa: the illuminated globe chandelier in the former library, the Great Dane sculptures by Anna Hyatt Huntington in the upstairs corridor (and that’s saying something, since as a rule I do not like dogs), and the Dante and Beatrice Window by Nicola D’Ascenzo, a large stained glass window adorning the landing of the grand stairs.

The hounds were guarding Erosion Series No. 2 – Mother Earth Laid Bare, by Alexandre Hogue in 1932, an appropriate work for an Oklahoma art museum. Nearby was Herman Herzog’s Sunset Glow from 1866, Thomas Moran’s An Angry Sea from 1887 and his Grand Canyon from 1907. I actually liked Phenomena Break Silk by Paul Jenkins better when it was framed through two doorways.

The villa has a work by Auguste Rodin which I admire far more than his better known The Thinker. Eternal Springtime, which was inspired by his love for Camille Claudel and Beethoven’s Second Symphony, shows a man and woman in a passionate embrace, and is fun to view from all angles. Also quite fun is Joy of the Waters, by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth in 1917. That pre-dates the Hollywood starlets the figure’s face brings to mind. Frishmuth’s Call of the Sea from 1924 is nearby. I wrapped up sculpture with La Nymphe Sans Bras, by Aristide Maillol in 1930, which looked like it was imprisoned when viewed through the rails from the lower level stairway.

I ended my visit with Al Mac’s Diner, a realistic oil by John Baeder in 1991, which was on its final day of a temporary exhibition. This morning of snapshots around the beautiful Villa Philbrook recharged my batteries; thanks, Waite!

Click here for a slideshow from this trip

Posted in art, photos, travel | 2 Comments

Google and TANSTAAFL

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Granger Meador
July 4, 2012

Robert Heinlein popularized TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. In another form: you get what you pay for. That is a lesson Google keeps teaching me as they have repeatedly invented useful free tools which they then snatch away. The latest victim is iGoogle, which has been my desktop browser homepage for many years. I like being able to instantly see a summary of items from Google Reader, GMail, and my Google Calendar (do you sense my vulnerability yet?), as well as the weather, CNN, Boing Boing, etc. instead of having a bunch of always-open tabs as some people evidently do.

But this morning Google interrupted me with a notice that they would be “spring cleaning” by killing off iGoogle in November 2013. “Spring” cleaning? Announced in summer and implemented in late fall over a year later? Sure, you’re giving folks lots of time to adjust, but that simply is NOT spring cleaning.

I’ve been stung by Google’s treachery before, such as when they killed off Google Notebook or when they would make a change to iGoogle with no advance notice. Google’s excuse this time is that device-specific browsers make iGoogle less necessary, whatever the $#!! that is supposed to mean. Their real reason for killing it off is no doubt to put more emphasis on Google+, their social service. I briefly joined it and then killed it off as something truly unnecessary to my life, and continue to refuse to use Google+ despite their constant promotion of it. Facebook is already more than I need, annoying me with invites from idiotic time-wasting applications, which I promptly block. I find most television a painful waste of time, but Facebook’s junk applications take that to a whole…’nother…level.

So what to do about the loss of iGoogle? I don’t intend to change my behavior on desktop browsers by switching to using a bunch of open tabs, nor some page of static bookmarks, nor wasting my time trying to recreate iGoogle in Google Chrome through some extensions which will just break when Chrome is updated with zero notice. Instead, I consulted the internet and found Netvibes, which was easy to set up, but although at first I liked it, after a week of using it I went back to iGoogle.

There are several online petitions to save iGoogle. I signed the ones here and here.

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Posted in technology, web link | 1 Comment

Somebody That I Used to Know

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Granger Meador

My June 2012 Song of the Month

Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye

I was on the road for half of June, so I didn’t purchase much new music, which could have been a problem for my project to select a favorite song, entirely new to me, which I discover each month. But the other day I stumbled onto a find, once again through a parody video, as occurred in April. Since I don’t watch TV nor listen to the radio, I have to stumble onto new music.

One of my former students, who is a Facebook friend, had posted a link to a Star Wars parody. I was intrigued by the music as well as the video concept. It turned out that it was based on Somebody That I Used to Know by the Belgian/Australian singer/songwriter Gotye. The song was released as a single in this country at the start of 2012 and has hit #1 in many countries, including the U.S. at the end of April.

Once again, the song is even better when accompanied by its intriguing video.

Here is an interview with Gotye where he discussing recording the album in a barn and the challenges of shooting the video. In another interview he discusses how he came to write a duet, strengthening the song greatly by illustrating the other person’s viewpoint and, of course, the welcome contrast of his singing with that of Kimbra. She is a great presence, both vocally and in the video.

Some of my favorite songs are story songs, with another favored category being duets. What jumps to mind in the pop category is Don’t You Want Me by The Human League, while in country there is You’re The Reason God Made Oklahoma by David Frizzell and Shelly West, although I actually prefer the remake with Coni Le singing. And combining a story song with a duet is the incredibly long and quite funny piece Paradise By the Dashboard Light, composed by Jim Steinman and sung by Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley.

Somebody That I Used to Know

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
But I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Somebody
(I used to know)
Somebody
(Now you’re just somebody that I used to know)

Somebody
(I used to know)
Somebody
(Now you’re just somebody that I used to know)
(I used to know)
(That I used to know)
(I used to know)
Somebody

July 2012 Song of the Month >

< May 2012 Song of the Month

Posted in music, video | 7 Comments

Operation Junebug

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Granger Meador

Operation Junebug

Each summer I take an extended vacation to a cooler clime, to escape the oppressive summer heat in Joklahoma. For 2012 it was Operation Junebug to Colorado and New Mexico:

OPERATION JUNEBUG

Previous summer trips with online photos, and several with blog entries, include:

And of course I’m in my fourth year of documenting 150+ day hikes, which are organized in an online spreadsheet and an interactive map.

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