mh-z web-log

The Spruce Goose was in fact the plane discussed in The Aviator, and which flew only once. It’s no longer on display in Long Beach near the Queen Mary, having been moved in recent years to Oregon, so a field trip is a little more involved than just a drive down the 405. But if I’m ever touring Oregon one day, the museum that houses it would be a worthwhile stop.

Here’s a slightly silly sounding song segment. (I really wasn’t trying hard to alliterate that, I solemnly swear, it’s just that so many words start with ’s’…) So anyway, as long as we’re on the parenthetically aforementioned subject, let’s take a little tangent. When I was little I used to have a Webster’s “Children’s Dictionary” in full color with photos and drawings illustrating the definitions of many words. It was by no means complete, but the section of the dictionary for words starting with each letter had a box that bled to the right edge of the page, in a slightly different vertical position moving down the edge. When the book was closed and viewed from the right, edge-on, the relative size of each letter’s section could clearly be seen. I remember the ’s’ section being much larger than all the rest, and that’s how I happen to know that random fact.

I can also recite the alphabet very quickly backwards, but that’s because I was bored, one day, while taking a shower, and memorized it that way. Anyway, back to the original subject at hand, that synthesized song segment (sans singing): It’s part of a file I saved as “Videogame 2″, because the beginning (not included in this clip) sounded like old background music from a Nintendo game. Much higher fidelity, but the same style.

<Sound clip>

It’s silly, yes. If I won the lottery and didn’t have to work, I would spend my time drawing and composing and getting better at each.

I believe writing has a great deal to do with music, actually. Good writing has ebbs and flows and a certain balance to it which makes the experience of reading easier on the brain. Although I don’t claim to be a master of written communication, I observe that I’m continually faced with minute and seemingly unimportant choices such as whether or not to use a comma in a certain place, whether to use a contraction rather than a compound phrase, whether to break apart a long phrase (since as you observe, as is exemplified by the current sentence, I tend to use long phrases which grow longer as I seek a way to back out in a smoothly-flowing manner) and so on. (There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?) The choice between comma, colon, semicolon, or other standard punctuation often comes down to the length of the pause which I mentally insert when I read a passage under my breath and think about how it would sound were I to actually speak it aloud. That’s the close-up view of writing. Each sentence finely crafted, each sentence flowing into the next. Taking a look at the bigger picture, though, we have an arrangement of ideas and images, a paragraph or a chapter or an essay or a paper or a book (or a blog post) as a whole. My weakness in writing, as well as in music, is that I’m not good at orchestrating the whole out of the parts. I jump around and introduce new thoughts as they occur to me, because I tend to look at details, not big pictures. Yet both are important. Modern popular songs have a certain structure having to do with an introduction, a chorus, an in-between part that’s not as sweet-sounding as the chorus, a bridge that leads into the chorus, and a couple other parts. I don’t know the terminology or even how many different segments are present, because I’ve never thought closely about this or made a study of it. What I notice, though, is just that when I try to arrange these parts into a song, I don’t end up with something that sounds particularly self contained. Think of a circle or some other regular polygon. It starts in one place, goes around following a pattern, and comes back to where it started. What I end up with, however, is a jagged line that starts in one place, follows no particular direction, and ends up randomly somewhere else. When I proofread something I’ve written or rearrange a song, I smooth out the rough edges a little, but I’m still left with a randomly-curvy line that meanders off of its own accord. On one level, though, I like that freeform style. On another level, I see it as somewhat of a shortcoming; a manifestation of not being able to hold too many thoughts in my head at the same time.

But I’m busy being a programmer now, which is something different from writing or music. That’s why I can listen to music while I program, but I can’t listen to music while I write or read (while being able to hold much attention to the latter).

This post does end abruptly, doesn’t it?

I’ll write about this while it’s still fresh in my mind; this review will consist of a collection of random thoughts on The Aviator. This was a long movie. It was hard to sit through, but ultimately rewarding. It reminded me of Requiem for a Dream in how it portrayed mental sickness, and the uncomfortable feeling which that created in the audience.

Either times haven’t changed much, or the movie, set in the 1940’s, didn’t accurately reflect the character of that era (since so much seemed similar to the world of today). That wasn’t the point of it, though, and perhaps this movie, as a look back in time, can be thought of more as a reflection of the way our memories actually work. After all, it’s the people that matter, and if hairstyles and clothing are the only elements in need of change (relative to the present day) to successfully transport us back in time, then those elements as filmed in this movie did the trick superbly.

A number of shots seemed to be computer animated, such as the takeoff of the Hercules, also referred to disparagingly in the movie as the Spruce Goose. Is this the same plane permanently on display near the Queen Mary in Long Beach? I believe so; fodder for future ‘festigation and maybe even a field trip.

In one shot the lenses of Senator Someone’s (but I know it started with a ‘B’) (played by Alan Alda) glasses reflected light in a particular shade of green consistent with a modern anti-glare coating. I don’t think they had that treatment for eyeglass lenses back in the 1940’s.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes was convincing and consistent throughout the movie, and we do see a lot of him.

Fittingly, and I can proudly say that because of the following I’m in a small minority of all people throughout the world who will watch this movie, I saw it in an outdoor mall near LAX called Howard Hughes Plaza. That, among other things, sparked my interest in finding out more about the great airlines and aircraft companies of the past and present. I know Pan-Am went bankrupt when I was very young. I’ve flown on TWA several times. I know Hughes Aircraft and McDonnell-Douglas are the two big passenjer jet builders nowadays, though lately I’ve been on a number of other manufacturers’ planes. As someone who’s flown a bit, I’m interested in learning more than the very limited amount I know from reading those brief pieces of airline history they have in the onboard magazine. And that interest having been generated is one measure of the quality of a movie. This being the Internet and all, I could get started right away, but it’s late.

Anyway, I’ll let you know eventually what I find out.

“If you like horses, see this show. If you don’t like horses, see this show anyway.” That’s homage to the most memorable set of videogame instructions I’ve encountered: “If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, shoot it anyway,” which is also a phrase I feel will be making a repeat appearance in a future piece of writing of mine. Maybe I can work it into a grad school application essay, along with the gem, “Consider the lotus blossom… Okay now that’s enough, we don’t have time to sit around considering flowers all day, let’s get on with it.”

So we have this show, Cavalia. At first I thought it was put on by Cirque du Soleil, but it’s not, though a similar type of production. Not as polished, more freeform, less acrobatic. As with any kind of art the words I write here do little to communicate an actual experience but rather just describe my reaction to it, but that’s a given, and you knew that already. Suffice it to say that this show was very artistically done, a feast for the eyes, and very up-to-date technologically speaking. (We go through the seasons with fog machines, loads of confetti/cotton/leaves falling from the ceiling to simulate snow and, uh, leaves, and images projected into a screen made of a shower of water.) I remember seeing a Cirque production in Santa Monica ages ago (back when I was in high school) which wasn’t that memorable, for some reason. The main thing I remember was an extraordinarily flexible girl performer and lights surrounded by orange fabric being blown upwards by inset fans, simulating torch flames. I next saw a Cirque production (Mystere) in Las Vegas, which was incredible: I chalked up the difference to the fact that the Las Vegas show was a permanent fixture (I forget in which hotel), and so the troupe could go all out and set up the auditorium with much more elaborate lighting systems, sound systems, rigging, and other fixtures. I expected that Cavalia, being a travelling show, would suffer from some of the same sort of inadequacies of set as the old travelling Cirque show I saw, long, long ago, because it was also in a tent (far, far away) near the Santa Monica pier. But that wasn’t the case, in the least. Fine, still not as elaborate and “bolted down” as Las Vegas, but this wasn’t the same kind of show anyway, and it worked very well as it was. More friendly, conveying the spirit of having to work with the horses and their whims. Such as the decision of a fine white steed to unexpectedly let go of a nice clump of fertilizer right in the center of the stage, which subsequently became trampled all over the place. But that’s horses for you, and of course no one batted an eye.

In another sequence, one of the trainers tried to get three stallions to lie down simultaneously. When he finally got the third to lie down, though, the first stood up. When he got that one to lie down again, the second stood up. And so on. Eventually he “gave up” and tried to get them to all stand so he could lead them from the stage, but at that point the third had decided to lie there and refuse to budge. I thought this was an unscripted part of the show, a sort of freeform part where the trainer playfully tried to deal with some ’stremely stubborn steeds, but in reality, per other reviews, that’s exactly how the sequence was supposed to play out, supposedly also being one of the hardest segments in the show to pull off.

It was cold, that night, outside. Almost freezing, I would bet. And although that’s nothing compared to most of the rest of the country, it’s been a cold year for Los Angeles, so far. Anyway, let’s return from that tangent and go back to considering the lotus blossom, after I state that I greatly enjoyed this show. And let me also thank my friend Stella, who found out about this and invited me along. Thank you, Stella.

Now, lotus blossoms. Let us contemplate. Ahh…

Another raytraced image showing a grid of spheres reflecting each other. Why is this posted here? Why, just to take up space, of course. And break up the monotony of the text. So enjoy it before I decide it’s taking up too much space and take it down!

Because a picture is worth a thousand words. And because that way, I don’t have to write any words at all. Seriously, I like playing with the POV-Ray textures and various parameters each one can contain. For example, the spheres and donut rings have an “iridescence” value, which creates the rainbowy colors. They’re also transparent with a very low refractivity value (as if one was inside water (or maybe even a much denser material), looking into glass spheres containing air). That creates the illusion that there are two spheres (one inside the other) when really there’s only one, which is a rather strange effect. Maybe more like being encased inside diamond (very dense) looking into air. The wall in back is both transparent and reflective.

I don’t think this is a great image in terms of appearance or composition or colors or anything like that, but it was fun to jump back into graphics after not doing that for a while. My old office wants more artwork for their walls, and I’d like to create something worthy of the excellent framing job we had done last time. So here’s a little bit of a warm-up.