"Did he have a sense of humor about himself? Kind of. But you couldn’t quite tell..."

"... because he would start saying things like, 'I am the most beautiful. I am the king,' all that kind of stuff. It’s like [Flamboyant 1940s and Fifties wrestler] Gorgeous George. A lot of boxers and wrestlers do that. Trump does that [laughs]. But that was like stuff he said on stage. Maybe he got confused, as many of us do, about whether you’re on the stage or in real life.... When he was the biggest singer in the country and his songs were huge hits, people didn’t talk about him being gay or anything. I don’t know if he was beyond that because he was so scary. They didn’t even know what he was. He was a Martian more than being gay. It was like he was from another planet.... [H]e died completely homophobic and saying horrible things about gay people and transgender people. I would always say in my [spoken word] show that we should kidnap him and deprogram him, like what that guy Ted Patrick used to do with Moonies. Remember when parents would hire him to get their kids, and he would take you to a hotel room for a week and get you unprogrammed?...  I guess he flipped over to radical Christianity. He could have been a Christian and not a hate-Christian. He could have just quietly gone to church. A lot of people do, but they don’t say terrible things about gay people. Especially when you look like that [laughs]. Especially when you were Princess Lavonne in the carnival; he was a drag queen in the carnival and wrote about it in his book."

From an interview in Rolling Stone with the film director John Waters. Waters interviewed Little Richard for Playboy in 1987, and Little Richard tried to take the interview back after he'd given it.

Waters has long worn a mustache that he says was modeled on Little Richard:



And Waters used Little Richard's song "The Girl Can't Help It" in his movie "Pink Flamingos":



That's a parody of this sequence in the 1956 movie "The Girl Can't Help It":

"Rose Byrne’s Gloria Steinem comes off as a vacillating, shallow, vain egomaniac; Tracey Ullman’s Betty Friedan strongly suggests that her feminist anger..."

"... came out of crushed romantic dreams; Bella Abzug is only slightly more appealing — but largely because her pragmatism seems so sane in comparison with the antics of her fellows.... And what the series gets so right about left-wing identitarianism is how riddled it often is with jealousy, personal rivalry, and internal spats... The intersection, if you’ll forgive my using that word, of glamour and elite left-wing politics is pretty damning of both. The feminists completely underestimated Schlafly, because their vain self-regard could not believe that any serious pushback against the ERA could be rooted in real arguments about the difference between the sexes rather than their interchangeability.... Schlafly’s version of feminism is, in fact, less a reactionary one than a truly prescient one. She was the first feminist (though she would reject that label) to depict traditional home and family life as something not to be despised, as long as women had the choice to abandon it.... This is the first time I’ve seen a conservative woman portrayed as human, complicated, vulnerable, and also extraordinarily courageous."

Andrew Sullivan praises the Hulu movie-biography of Phyllis Schlafly (in NY Magazine).

Here's the trailer (with Cate Blanchett in the starring role):

Movies that begin with a person entering a particular place and end with him leaving.

Help me think of examples of this sequence:

In the first scene, a man (could be a woman) approaches the place (maybe a town). Then, there are many scenes of various people he encounters there and problems that arise. Doesn't matter what. The important thing is the final scene: He's walking away from the place. Could be driving or riding a horse. That's not what matters. What matters is that the only resolution of the story is just that the guy who approached this place is now leaving the place. Nothing about where he's going or what he plans to do next or how he's tied things up or any of that. The resolution is just that he's putting that place behind him.

I saw a movie like that last night. It's a fairly obscure movie, so I'm not going to mention it or encourage you to guess. What I want is to hear about other movies that fit that pattern. Please try to avoid talking about movies that don't fit that pattern.

Also, do you like stories like that? Assuming the things that happen in the place are interesting to watch, are you okay with endings that just have the guy walking out of the town?

ADDED: Here's the movie we watched:



We have big windows behind the TV and, at one point, we saw an owl fly up and land in the tree. We paused and made our own tiny movie. Visually, it's mostly darkness, but you can hear the bird's charming 8-note tune:



The David Sedaris story on which the movie is based is not the one with "owl" in the title. It's "Naked."

Death comes for Max von Sydow.

The great Swedish actor was 90. From the NYT obituary:

Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on April 10, 1929, in Lund, in southern Sweden.... He was said to have adopted the name Max from the star performer in a flea circus he saw while serving in the Swedish Quartermaster Corps....

For all his connection to the land of his birth and of Bergman, Sweden became distant to Mr. von Sydow.... "I have nowhere really to call home... I feel I have lost my Swedish roots. It’s funny because I’ve been working in so many places that now I feel at home in many locations. But Sweden is the only place I feel less and less at home."

Did he really name himself after a flea?! From a 2012 interview (in The Guardian):

Is it true he named himself after a flea? "Ha ha ha!" booms Von Sydow, his laugh filling the room. "Yes! Ha ha ha! During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max. So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought, 'Ah! Max!'"

Ah, so it was not an actual flea "in a flea circus he saw," as the New York Times put it. He himself was in a show playing a character that happened to be a flea.

A flea circus is a show on a tiny stage that has real fleas performing (or tiny imitation fleas):

The first records of flea performances were from watchmakers who were demonstrating their metalworking skills. In 1578, Mark Scaliot produced a lock and chain that were attached to a flea. The first recorded flea circus dates back to the early 1820s, when an Italian impresario called Louis Bertolotto advertised an “extraordinary exhibition of industrious fleas” on Regent Street, London. Some flea circuses persisted in very small venues in the United States as late as the 1960s....

Here's Charlie Chaplin with his flea circus in one of my all-time favorite movies — "Limelight" (which I'll put up as a meditation on death alongside "The Seventh Seal," so please make that your double feature):

How to Make a Beat Like the Top Producers

Remember when your parents told you- 'Don't be with the in-crowd... Don't follow the crowd?' Well, if you're into making beats, then, the 'crowd' is your 'promise land' or 'end all, be all', isn't it? You want that response like cooks want about their cooking!

So, how do we make beats like the top producers?

Well, we all know that anyone can beat on a table with their hands and have a distinguishing bass drum and snare going. And, with a little basic instruction of some beat making software, transfer that rhythm into an actual recording, but we also all know that's not going to deem them a top producer.

What I'm saying is that it's not making beat patterns and basic melodies that the top producers start with. They start with a feeling. Nope! Scratch that! We humans cannot have a feeling without first being inspired by a thought. And in that thought, ought to be knowledge. Thus, it's knowledge of 'feeling' that these top producers start with in order to keep coming up with hits.

What do I mean when I say 'knowledge of feeling?'

Is he feeling the crowd or is the crowd feeling his music?

You may say the latter, but I say think about the former- 'Is he feeling the crowd?'

One might ask, 'How can he feel the crowd before he makes a beat?'

This is what I mean when I say 'knowledge of feeling'. Sound shapes everything, and when it comes to us humans, music toys with our emotions day after day. Knowledge of how this works is the key to making beats like the top producers.

We've all heard people say things like, 'Ooh, that's my song!' Maybe you have a favorite song that you listen to over and over again. The music is resonating with you... and you like it!

You can make music that has that same type of affect on people! Anyone could do it if they were interested in it and had a little knowledge and understanding about the subject. One would need knowledge such as how a certain sequence of numbers work. You would need to know why when two lovers get together or even think about each other they get that 'feeling.' This knowledge can make you understand how a club DJ makes the 'air' sound when he's mixing.

If you're worrying about being able to afford the type of equipment that the top producers use... fret not! Technology has taken care of that. Not only is there very affordable software in 2012 that replicates the state-of-the-art equipment commonly used in the big studios, technology also provides a cyber display platform in the form of the internet with exposure sites such as YouTube and Facebook. Technology makes things affordable and achievable. As a matter of fact, nowadays an artist could possibly write his/her own lyrics, produce the music, and promote themselves.

You can get my free eBook, 'What The Top Producers Don't Want You To Know', wherein I discuss the above topics and also things like how to conjure different 'feelings' in your listening audience via the particular sounds and beat patterns you choose.

5 Tips To Make Your Guitar Mixes Rock!

Now I know there are thousands of variables involved as well as opinionated ways of doing this, that's why I'm going to tell you 5 tips I use to make my guitars stand out to help make my mixes sound huge!

1. Double Track Your Rhythm Guitars:

You can easily thicken up the sound of your mixes by doubling your guitar tracks. Yes I know this is not really a 'mixing' tip but when you use both guitars in the mix it can beef up your guitar tracks. PRO TIP: You can even play around with changing the tone slightly on the second track to add even more emphases on certain characteristics of the playing. Say you want one to be more beefy and use another for note clarity. Just one of many ways you can use that to your benefit.

2. Pan Those Tracks:

The next step is to pan those rhythm guitars you tracked. I like to start at hard panning them both, one left one right. If they are sounding too separate bring them more to the middle, 70-80 is a good area where I like to put my guitars, especially for the slower parts. Faster more intricate playing can benefit from going all the way left or right. Panning these guitars helps separate the sound and clear up the middle for other instruments (i.e. kick drum, bass guitar) that need to be there. Turn that pan knob and immediately hear the results.

3. High Pass Filter Your Guitars:

OK yes, I know this is situational depending on the tone/style of guitar you are tracking. But in most times I mix I like to roll off some of those lows to clear up the bottom section and help your guitars not 'fight' so much with the bass and kick drum. I like to start in the 100,200k area and roll it off accordingly to the mix. Let your ears do the work, roll it off as you listen to a section and when you hear the guitars start to'thin out' back off a hair and Voila! You now have cutting clear guitar.

4. Did Someone say Plug-ins?

Yes you read that correctly. But dude, I thought you are always preaching 'crap in crap out, get it right from the source and you wont have to fix anything come mix time??!' Yes you are correct. I do live by that, but remember music and mixing is an art form. There are rules, but there are not. Weird right? I like to look at using plug-in's like using salt when cooking. You don't want to add too much because it will taste bad, but using just enough will make whatever your eating taste much better! Don't be afraid to add a little compression, or tube saturation/distortion to give your tracks get a little more omph! Experiment, you might find something you really like!

5. EQ Subtraction

The last tip here is my all time favorite, and yes it does play off of tip number 3. Subtracting EQ in certain bands is an ideal way to let other instruments in your mix cut through in return making everything (including your guitar tracks) sound bigger, cleaner and overall better. Especially with high gain guitar tracks cutting some of the lower (or) higher mids out is a good way to tone it down and get your guitars working in cohesion with other primary instruments. Don't be afraid to get the scalpel out and start cutting EQ like your a mad surgeon. Just remember to do it while you are listening to your mix, never solo your guitars and start cutting that would not be pretty.