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Month: September 2004

My Plog

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/30/04

Okay, I can’t help it! I know I swore off all nuances of politics in future posts, but I can’t help it! Tonight is the first of three Presidential Debates. You really should gather a group of friends and all sit down to a pizza and some presidential hilarity. Now first of all, let’s be honest with each other: these debates are no more about true debate techniques and substance than Martha Stewart conveys a homemaker. Since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of Presidential debates, they’ve slowly been reduced to comedic fodder solely intended for fueling Saturday Night Live (and hence all other lesser comedy shows).

Now, in order to understand any of the brilliant wit that will no doubt be hurled our way in the next 3 months, I feel it my duty to advertise the debates. Friends, if you missed the debates last election, I’m afraid you completely missed out on Al Gore’s grand sighs and Locked Box routine, and you wouldn’t have understood clever Bush-like words such as “strategery” in the next weekend’s SNL skits. Don’t misunderestimate him kids, our favorite cowboy can coin up a little somethin’ in a heartbeat. You know as well as I do that he’s been informed of his mispronunciation of nuclear by various White House aides, but he’ll still look the camera dead in the eye and say, “Nukular.” Oh man! That gets me bout as good as a childhood ticking.

But let’s not leave the opponent out either; his douche-o-meter certainly hasn’t peaked yet. In one of his debates with an opponent for the Senate race, he definitely called the guy a “chickenhawk” for being tough of Defense but not serving in Vietnam. The accusation would have been true, of course, if his opponent had not been 16 when the war ended. I can’t wait to see what tonight has in store!

And now for a few absolutely astonishing quotes from the campaign trail this year:

“You bet we might have.” –Sen. John Kerry, asked if he would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein if he refused to disarm 

“I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter.) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.”–President George W. Bush in Nashville

“Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?” –Sen. John Kerry

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” –President George W. Bush

Good night

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/25/04

With all that this school year is already throwing at me, it’s good to wake up with that freeing feeling that nothing is due today. I could, if I so desired, actually remain in my jammies until it’s time to use them again. Sure, nothing would have been accomplished today, but getting things done is overrated anyway.

This week, like all the others, absolutely flew by. I engineered four sessions that went relatively well and gave me some great experience. All of them were with me as the engineer on a Studio Productions project. Basically, I was called in to be the engineer for someone from that class’s project; they’re learning to be a producer and stand back while someone else engineers the sessions. Their assignment is to take a published song and record it in a different genre. The first two sessions involved one project, taking a Bach piece and attempting to record it in a “funk” style. Well, during the process of recording, it quickly turned from funk into Ben Folds-ian rock. Ah, whatever, it sounded better than I thought it would.

Last night I engineered the other two projects from this week for two separate producers in back to back sessions. First on the docket was a blues version Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People”. Contrary to my expectations, it really sounded good (as long as you can forgive the sin of dropping the “S” bomb in a blues song). Immediately after that project, we had to strike the studio and set up for the next guy, a stressed-out, intrusive producer with an over-ambitious vision of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” in a Dixie-land style. Really, it would have been fine if I’d known ahead of time. Stuff like that takes a drastically different kind of setup than a rock band. Sheesh…

Matt the Roomie came by during the second session. He said he couldn’t find anyone to do anything and he knew where I was so he just came to the studio. Alrighty. So after the second session was over at 1:30am and we’d had a couple slices of deep-dish provided by the opinionated fiancée of my producer, we sauntered back to the apartment and wondered what we might do to enjoy the remainder of the evening (though it was 2am by this point). Ah, yes! Obviously the thing to do would be to gorge ourselves on sweet tea and BBQ baked beans while watching Family Guy commentaries! It was glorious.

Hey, don’t judge me.

I still need to find an assistant for my two sessions next Saturday. Man, this thing just snuck up on me. Anywho, my suggestion for this next week is that anyone who has a TV should, at 8pm central time on September 30th, turn it on and hit two random keys on your remote. You’ll most likely land on the Presidential debates. Remember, if you don’t watch them, you won’t get fun Saturday Night Live jokes like locked box and strategery!

In the arms of Ivangard

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/16/04

Are you joking me? I mean, sure, it’s been downgraded to a tropical storm since this morning, but since when has Tennessee been in the arms of a Hurricane? I mean, the eye of this monster was sitting just a little west of Montgomery last I checked. Attaway said that we’re supposed to have 40 mph winds here tomorrow. That’s just insane. I’m glad I don’t live on the coast. The mountains are for me anyway.

Studio Times

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/15/04

Alright, I understand this little post has a very narrow target audience, but bear with me. I have my studio times for my Audio Engineering II projects this fall, and here’s the details. I need an assistant (must be in or have completed Audio I, or be in Audio II) for any of the sessions, and I need an artist for the second project. Let me know if you can do it! Thanks!

Project 1
Artist: Nathan Crandall
Times:     Tracking: Oct. 2, 1:30-5:30p
		Asst- (_______________)
	   Overdubs: Oct. 2, 5:30-9:30p
		Asst- (_______________)
	   Mixing:   Oct. 7, 9:30-1:30a
		Asst- (_______________)

Project 2
Artist: _______________
Times:     Tracking: Oct. 31, 1:30-5:30p
		Asst- (_______________)
	   Overdubs: Oct. 31, 5:30-9:30p
		Asst- (_______________)
	   Mixing:   Nov. 8, 5:30-9:30p
		Asst- (_______________)

Politick

Posted by Kevin Smith – 9/5/04

I really shouldn’t write so much on politics. The other night, I had some friends over and an interview with Dick Cheney was on the TV in the background. I made some comment about the news media catching our Vice President in a flip-flop snafu of his own, and my roommate exclaims, “Oh, so that’s who that is!”

“You really don’t pay attention to politics, do you?” And my comment was followed by all those present in the room admitting their own lack of attention to this year’s election. If this is the case with all my peers, then perhaps my readership has gone down; besides, I’m sure politics isn’t nearly funny at all.

That said, I wanted to mention this overly verbose point: I’m growing dreadfully weary of the cliché Democratic counterstrikes that are in constant assail this hunting season. Whereas before November 2000 most people were perfectly content with the current elections process, the Electoral College, mere mention of it now makes the ABB (anyone but Bush) supporter blow their fuse. Apparently, when the Electoral College provides the function is was intended to perform it is cause for the losing team to throw their ball caps in the dirt and pitch a good ole fashioned hissy. Without the Electoral College, when would candidates ever leave California, Texas, or New York to campaign in the smaller states like Iowa or New Hampshire? With the Electoral College, the voices of residents of smaller states are amplified. Besides, if the Electoral College were really as big a quagmire as the whiners claim, why hasn’t any serious legislation on doing away with it even been considered?

“Well I’d just rather have it so that I’m electing the President, not so the Supreme Court picks him. You know who most people voted for!” Sorry sweetheart, it’s never been like that in the U.S. You’ve never picked the President, all you did was tell the elector who you’d like him to vote for (and he’s legally bound to vote as the populous requests in Tennessee, but that’s not the case in all states). Oh, and there’s the tired, sour grapes complaint about the Supreme Court choosing the President. You must have seen Moore’s film. It seems that he forgot to mention that it was Gore, not Bush, who filed repeated lawsuits for a recount. The only way Gore was going to pull through with a ‘W’ in his column for that election was by re-assigning votes for Buchanan to himself by ‘guessing’ the intention of the voter, which a slightly more than illegal. The Supreme Court simply did not allow the re-recounts to continue past the legal deadline. I suppose that obviously means they’re in bed with the Bushes.

“BUSH LIED TO AMERICA!” Geez, lady, a breathmint offered should always be accepted. So all the best intelligence from 4 major world intelligence agencies suggested one thing, and the President is not supposed to act on it? Isn’t that what he’s being accused of doing before September 11? What was he supposed to do? If Bush lied, then so did Kerry and the rest of our congressmen who voted for the war in Iraq. They were all privy to a wealth of intelligence, and the majority came to the same conclusion as Bush. I would assume, therefore, that Kerry would’ve arrived at the same decision as he did as a senator were he to have been leading the country at that time. The obvious difference would be that Kerry would see no other path than to kick the Saddam Grovelometer up a couple more notches.