If you did the right thing and uninstalled Norton or McAfee (the two antivirus programs PC manufacturers get paid big bucks to include on their machines), the Windows Security Center will be bugging you about your system being unprotected. So, first order of business is to install a new antivirus. I used to use the free AVG Antivirus, but I’ve found that at some point – in every version of AVG I’ve used – it stops updating automatically. So a few months ago I decided to try Panda’s free Cloud Antivirus, and I’ve been very happy: updates happen in the background, files and problems are quietly taken care of, and it only ever bugs me if it needs my attention to decide what to do about a detected virus. This is the antivirus I’ve installed on all my family’s PCs, too, since it runs virtually undetected.
IE8 is a big improvement over previous incarnations of Internet Explorer, but so is a husband who only beats you once a week instead of everyday. Frankly, I’ve had enough of IE. It’s still packed with the same annoyances as always, and its neat new features are so dense and obscure I don’t think anyone will make much use of them any time soon.
Firefox, on the other hand, is by now like a comfortable pair of shoes – it works well, it makes sense, and it’s getting better and better. Sure, it takes up about a Godzilla-byte of memory, but other than that, it’s Good Software. And of course, it’s vastly extensible, making it not just a browser for me but a research tool (with the addition of plugins for Evernote and Zotero) and webmastering tool (with Scribefire and FireFTP plugins). The only real downside is that every update seems to break every extension – but at least it has extensions!
I own a copy of Office 2007 Pro (I got it free at an industry event) but I still install OpenOffice.org. (The dot-org is part of the software’s name, for reasons known only to the demons who inhabit the 6th level of software marketing Hell.) The free productivity suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator, database, and graphics editor – everything just about anyone needs to get work done. Some things it does better than MS Office, like handling bibliographic citations. Most things it does just as well. And it’s some $400 less than the comparable version of MS Office.
Although Microsoft’s Outlook Express got a new name and a facelift in Vista, it remains the same piece of cr-… er, software it’s always been, with all its limitations. Outlook is great for businesses, but it’s overkill for most people – and can bog down even powerful systems. Mozilla’s Thunderbird occupies the “just right” chair, offering an interface similar to the Outlook/Outlook Express interface and plenty of power. Plus, like Firefox, you can customize its functionality with a wide range of plugins.
You might have thought I’d have said “The GIMP” for a free graphics editor, but most people don’t need that kind of power. For organizing snapshots and applying the occasional red-eye reduction, color or contrast adjustment, and novelty effect, I like Picasa. The interface is easy to use, it integrates easily with Google’s web-based Picasa Web Albums service, allowing me to easily share photos or groups of photos, and it does basic photo editing tasks well.
In class yesterday I mentioned Skype and a student asked “What’s Skype"?” Only 2 of 10 students had heard of it! Oh, man – get Skype!!! Skype is a voice-over-Internet system that works, and works well. Voice or video calls to other Skype users are free, no matter where they are and where you are. The optional SkypeIn and SkypeOut services let you accept calls from and make calls to regular phones (landlines or mobile) for very reasonable rates – I think I pay about $60 a year for the complete package, which gives me unlimited calls anywhere in the US and Canada, unlimited incoming calls at my own phone number in my area code, and of course voice mail. I use it all the time, too, to interview sources for articles – and back when I was doing Lifehack Live, I used it occasionally to record my podcasts (using the CallGraph plugin, a free Skype call recorder).
While it lacks the style and pizzazz of iTunes or Windows Media Player, VLC has those other media players beat hands-down for one good reason: it plays everything. Oddball video formats, open source audio codecs, Flash videos – whatever you have, chances are, VLC plays it. It has other features, too, but I never use them. For me, VLC is simply the must-have video player. There’s a portable version that can be run off a flash drive, too, which is handy for me since I often want to show videos in class and I’m not sure the machine provided will have the right codecs.
You want to put videos on your portable media player, you get Handbrake. It’s that simple. Handbrake is easy to use (a lot of video transcoding software forces you to deal with all sorts of questions about muxing, bitrates, and so on; handbrake has a bunch of presets, although more advanced control is there if you need it). Handbrake works with DVDs or video on your hard drive, so whatever the source, you can likely get it onto your Zune (or even iPod if you’re one of the few that owns one).
(OK, give a guy a break – it’s funny!)
What instant messaging network is everyone you would ever want to chat with on? Wait, you mean, they’re not all on the same network? Where do you live, reality?!
If you do live in reality and your friends, family, and other contacts are scattered across several different IM networks, you’ll want to install either Digsby or Pidgin, both of which are fine IM clients that hook up to most of the available IM networks. I use Digsby, because I like the way I can theme the interface (with big, chunky text for my old eyes!), and because it includes Facebook support, which Pidgin doesn’t (but Pidgin works with a lot of networks Digsby doesn’t support – it’s a question of which ones you want or need to use). In both, you can log into all your IM networks at the same time, and see all your contacts regardless of which network they’re on.
CDBurnerXP is neither limited to burning CDs not limited to systems running Windows XP. Go figure. Anyway, it burns CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, ISOs and other disc images – heck, it even supports LightScribe! A great substitute for expensive (and notoriously bug-prone) Nero and Roxio suites if neither came with your computer.
Once I’ve installed those 10 apps, I’ve got a pretty good system set up, and I’m ready to get to work. What about you? What free software is at the top of your list when you’re setting up a new system? Let us know in the comments.
BH: Good, I’m good.
TW: Are we up and runnin’?
BH: Yeah I think so. Hey, I wanted to ask you about being from Los Angeles. You grew up there…
TW: Yeah, Whittier, La Habra, Downey, that whole area. Yeah, Los Lobos, they’re from Whittier. So is Nixon. I remember Nixon’s market. He had his own family market. BH: He was? For some reason I thought he was from the Midwest.
TW: No, California, and we used to get a visit every year from the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile, which was an enormous vehicle shaped like a hot dog. The driver was a Dwarf, and the wiener mobile would broadcast music while he sang the song “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener.” He drew quite a crowd. Pretty exciting for a shopping center.
BH: That car is still driving around. I see it from time to time.
TW: You see the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile?
BH: I’ve seen it parked.
TW: They used to pass out little whistles that were about two inches long and it had three notes available. (Laughs.) Whittier lore.
BH: I was born in the McArthur park area.
TW: You remember when they drained McArthur Park, the lake?
BH: I do, yeah…
TW: They found unbelievable things: Cars, human bones, weaponry.
BH: They should have done an exhibit.
TW: I don’t know why they didn’t. I thought that’s why they drained it.
BH: I’d always heard that when they drained the Echo Park Lake they found an amateur submarine.
TW: Oh, my God.
BH: I don’t know if that was lore.
TW: You mean a homemade submarine?
BH: Yeah, I think it was older too, from the early days of “home submarine building.” I don’t know if that subculture still exists?
TW: That was the East Kids.
BH: There’s so many different versions of the city.
TW: It is pretty international. Drive over here and you’re in Russia. Here, Indonesia, the Philippines, Central America. It’s pretty wild that way.
BH: I think of the city as a sort of mirage. If you look at pictures of the city a hundred years ago it’s just a bunch of weeds and desert dust. Its not really supposed to be here. I was always fascinated by the city it was meant to be. I guess it was a place created by developers. It’s not really like a city where some people roam around and then they find a good piece of land, and then they test it out for a while and make sure there is water so they don’t die, and then they decide to make a city. I started looking at some pictures…Beverly Hills was originally supposed to be called Morocco Junction. I started thinking, if they’d gone with that name we’d be in a whole other situation. I was wondering if there were any things that you remember? It seems like it’s shed its skin so many times.
TW: Well, cars choked everything. I know originally there was a red line that ran from San Bernardino all the way to the ocean and for 35 Cents you could ride a streetcar you know from…
BH: Yeah I heard you’d get there in 20 minutes.
TW: And in one of those red car buildings, dispatch is right there where Epitaph records is right around Sunset and Silver Lake. You remember the Continental Club in Silver Lake? That big Latin Club in Silver Lake. Burned down.
BH: Yeah I remember that.
TW: It was lightning.
BH: Lighting?
TW: Yeah, a form of lightning.
BH: I played at this benefit concert where I was about to go on stage in 45 minutes. It was a clear blue sky and a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere. I don’t know if you heard about that? It was about twelve years ago.
TW: You got struck by lightning?
BH: No, I didn’t. I was inside, but someone in the audience did. I heard this crash, and looked outside and the whole venue was streaming out with people.
TW: You lost your crowd.
BH: Yeah, they had to cancel the whole thing.
TW: That’s what I hate about playing outdoors.
BH: Yeah right? I’ve had more outdoor shows canceled from natural disasters. I was playing in Mexico once and some kind of hurricane came. Turned into chaos. One time I was in Japan. I was going to play on Mt. Fuji and a typhoon hit.
TW: A typhoon hit? Wow. I haven’t really played outdoors much. I played in Japan once; I played in an abandoned temple. The roof had been torn off. They thought it would be a cool place for a concert but it was 30 below. All I remember was my sax player making a fire out of chop sticks and holding his horn over the flame to warm it up before we went on. Everyone was dressed up in moon gear. It was pretty cold out there. It’s hard to compete with the natural elements. It’s captured better in a theater. I’m probably a little old fashioned and a little backward.
BH: I’m always interested in how the whole festival thing evolved. Those pictures from the 50’s, the early rock ‘n’ roll people playing at the state fair.
TW: Opening for super markets.
BH: Yeah, exactly.
TW: Stages that were built in a few hours out of scrap wood.
BH: I’m always curious what it sounded like?
TW: My bass player Larry Taylor toured with Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50’s. They toured all over the US in a Cadillac and all their gear was in the trunk. The amps, the bass… the speakers in the hall they played at were no bigger than an encyclopedia. But there was still wild enthusiasm and energy created out of the performances and the crowds went out of their minds. But it wasn’t done with volume. It was the odd sight of a man possessed at a keyboard, with hair hanging down. The other thing: the mics for the piano – they just used a violin pick up wrapped in a hanky and stuffed it in the hole of a baby grand. Standards were lower.
BH: But it does make you play a different way. We did this thing a couple years back, we were on a tour in the South. After the show we’d find a bar and we’d play there with little practice amps. Maybe the bar might have a PA with two little speakers. Usually we were singing through a guitar amp. I remember one time we were in El Paso. We had the day off and we were just going through town, and we found a coffee house. They didn’t have any equipment. We just had a couple of those little 15-watt practice amps. I think my guitar player found a dorm or something down the street and started knocking on the doors and people lent us the equipment. You know, when we got in there and started playing, probably 100 people crammed into this café that didn’t even have a stage; you couldn’t hear anything. So the performance had to rely on whatever kind of feeling you could put out.
TW: People had to be quiet so you could be heard then. That’s just a basic human thing I guess, right?
BH: There’s something about that awkwardness of being bereft of a sound system and that volume you’re used to. You’re stripped of that and suddenly you have to make due with almost nothing. And the people were crowded in there. They were about two inches from your face. That’s another thing. You’re singing right into people’s faces, which is another interesting thing. (Laughs.)
TW: You’d like to be raised up a little bit. I played the Roxy with Jimmy Witherspoon a long time ago, and somebody hit the telephone pole in front on Saturday. Knocked out all the power – this was like 5minutes before we went on. Place was in total darkness. People were lighting candles. Jimmy Witherspoon went and did a killer show. He just put his organist on a piano, and he has this big big, huge voice any way. Got right on the lip of this thing. I was freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. He killed. I guess you have to get reduced to that to find out the origin and basic building blocks of what you do are still in tact. Look under the building, make sure the supports are still there and haven’t been eaten through. (Laughs.) But, yeah, you can do a lot with a bullet mic and a wah-wah pedal. But before that there was changing your voice and raising your volume. I guess we’ve all gotten very lazy with all the toys that are available.
BH: I wonder, in a way, if it’s good to put yourself in those positions where you don’t have the equipment, you don’t have those crutches. But I think we’re so attuned to hearing it at that volume and having to feel that impact? There’s something maybe uncomfortable now to just hearing somebody’s voice in a room singing.
TW: I guess it’s like when you make dinner at home. You shove the bowl across the table and you throw a fork and you drop the napkin.(Laughs.) You make due. I don’t know if it’s all cosmetic. I guess you can tell when something is primarily cosmetic and lacks the structural integrity. I think we all have an instinct about that. Where does this “Best” thing come from? Is that human? Is that American? Is it all over the world? Everyone wants the best eye surgeon, the best babysitter, the best vehicle, the best prosthetic arm, and the best hat. There’s also the worst of all those things available and they’re doing rather well. (Laughs.) Denny’s is doing great. It’s always crowded. You have to wait for a table.
BH: Also this obsession with ranking. All the “Best of” lists. I get asked to write “Best of” lists occasionally. An emphasis on ranking things. Having a hierarchy and having it be written in granite, written in stone.
TW: It’s economic. So you can charge more.
BH: Yeah, it must be. But maybe it’s just a need to have some order that’s been established, and that everybody has been notified. I don’t know.
TW: There’s too much of everything.
BH: Maybe it’s a millennial thing. It started around the millennium. “What are the best movies? What are the best songs?”
TW: Well, then there’s the pressure of feeling that you need to have what has been already rated the best. A lot of people are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear – that it would be uncool. Just like when you’re a teenager you don’t want to be caught with the wrong sports shirt, the wrong socks.
BH: I think there’s a bit of that. Certain things haven’t made it to the “List,” so then they go into the category of guilty pleasure or something.
TW: My theory is that the innovators are the ones that open the door to things, and then behind them there’s a huge crowd and they are trampled by the crowd behind them. And then you have to peel the innovators off the ground like in the movie, The Mask. Like a Colorform.
BH: I was thinking about influences and people who jump on a train or a trend, follow something. I was reading about the Greek playwright, Euripides, and a few others. He had written 105 plays and two of the plays survived from antiquity. I was thinking, “Can you imagine writing 105 plays, and you had to write 105 for one or two of them to survive?” I was thinking maybe in a way that the people who were influenced by the lost plays are the ones who are going to help them survive in some way. It’s not really about what you’re doing originally, it’s about the transmitting of the thing to the next person. It mutates along the way and turns into other things.
TW: You leave a little map for somebody. Maybe the others were lesser works. Or maybe the two that survived were lesser works.
BH: Maybe they were the throwaways? You never know. Maybe there’s things in there that were lost that would’ve changed everything?
TW: That’s very possible.
BH: The throwaway ones that he wrote to make the deadline are the ones we have.
TW: It’s like they found one of those van Gogh’s at a garage sale. This woman bought it and she was using it to block out the sun in her kitchen. She was using it as a window shade, so it was getting all faded from the sun. And she cut it because it didn’t fit the window. When they finally discovered she had a van Gogh as a window shade, they brought in all these experts from the museum and they were all filling in her living room and they said, “How can you cut off the top off this painting?” And she said, “It was just a little piece of the sky.” Sometimes it’s the value you attach to things. It’s subjective. And we record on stuff that’s going to disintegrate. Just like films are made on celluloid that’s going to vanish, it’s going to be gone. It’s like drawing on wax paper or something.
BH: Yeah, I think I read that only twenty percent of the films made before 1930 have survived.
TW: It’s the way of all flesh. Even in the world we’re down to the last of 20 percent of all animals that were originally here on earth are left. There were millions of other species that vanished. You really have to fight. Only the strong survive. Whose song was that? “Only the Strong Survive”? Your songs have to wind up being used as soundtracks to jump rope. Tapes will go, but people will still be jumping rope. They’ll need tunes for jump rope.
BH: It’s true. I think the last song standing will probably be “Happy Birthday.”
TW: I’m sure it will be. It’s terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.
BH: There’s sort of a planned obsolescence or something. That’s just part of it.
TW: Yeah and we have every generation making a whole bunch of new ones. Even though the generation before says, “What’s wrong with these tunes? We’ve got plenty of good tunes lying around here. What are you making new songs for? We’ve got cool songs about everything you’re writing about. We’ve got plenty of songs about girls.” “No, no. That’s all right, Dad. We’re doing something else, something cooler over here. You go ahead.” And the dad says, “Do you know Jimmy DURANTE? Have you ever heard of Jimmy Durante?”
BH: I think its gold panning. You know? They’re just holding out. They’re just gonna get some little piece of something. Some little piece, even if it’s just a crumb.
TW: Yeah, that’s what every body does. That’s what Alfred Hitchcock said when he saw Ginger Rogers in a gold lame dress at a movie opening on Hollywood Boulevard: “There are hills in them gold.”(Laughs).
BH: There is probably an alternate endeavor that can be engaged in and everyone can take a hiatus from “The Song.”
TW: Look. There were heavy metal bands whose music was being used to torture prisoners in Iraq. They played it real loud to get information. Well, they deprive you of sleep and they play these bands. And that’s all you get to listen to. It’s one particular song from this band. In the same way that they use it now in the parking lot of 7-11 when they play classical music. It keeps all the hoods away. They blast Beethoven. No one hangs out now, drinks beer in the parking lot. Changed everything.
BH: Yeah, so you may be an unwitting instrument.
TW: You don’t know how you’re going to be used. You could be a doorstop or paperweight or maybe a national anthem. There’s no way of telling. Once we’re gone, the whole promotion thing is over. Now we’ll see if it can fly on its own now. Like some tunes do, you know?
BH: I think they are also some kind of ephemera or reminder to give some impression of what it was like. You know, if we just had pictures of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s; it would be one thing. But some how, when you can hear the music?
TW: Yeah, people really did listen to the song and it really captured their imagination. You could hear a song about “California, Here I Come” and you would actually decide based on that song to move to California. That’s what people did to San Francisco.
BH: There weren’t really many songs about moving to Northern Finland.
TW: Yeah, or even Needles or look at Lodi. Not a good advertisement for Lodi, ’cause you say, “Stuck in Lodi Again.” Who’s gonna move to a place that this guy told the whole world he felt “stuck in”? Not every town gets their song. Actually, Sinatra tried to do a song about Los Angeles. It was really lame. Really lame. It embarrassed the shit out of me.
BH: That was in the 80’s right?
TW: “LA, You’re a Lady.” It was one of those lame, awful… Maybe it’s the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.
BH: Yeah I don’t think anyone has written a definitive LA song.
TW: Maybe it’s the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.
BH: Yeah, I don’t think you can…
TW: But Chicago or St Louis, such cool sounding names. New Orleans. So many songs about New Orleans.
BH: I’m trying to think, I don’t know if I’ve written any place-name songs? Oh no, that’s not true. I wrote one called “Modesto”.
TW: The city itself was named because the two guys who founded the town didn’t let them use their names in the name of the town. They were too modest and they didn’t let them use their names, so they called the town Modesto.
BH: So how long ago did you leave Los Angeles?
TW: Oh god, 20 years ago. I haven’t been there in a long time. Like I was telling you my dad taught school at Belmont. We lived on Union Ave.
BH: Oh, that’s down in McArthur Park. Pico Union?
TW: Yeah this was Union between Temple and Beverly. Like, seven churches on this street. Parades.
BH: What kind of neighborhood was it then?
TW: Well, split. Latino, Central American, Korean and…
BH: Yeah I was born near Union, couple blocks from Union. Near 8th or 9th street down on Burlington.
TW: Yeah, I remember Burlington. Yeah, well you’re still there. You must be getting something out of being there. It’s a tremendous amount of energy. It’s like a battery. It’s always plugged in. When you move away, when you go to a small town, the first thing you experience is being an unplugged appliance. You think of the town, you know. I used to go back to LA just to get a charge, but after a while…It’s an exciting place for me to go now, just because its so alive. In your windshield, everywhere you look there’s a word. At all times, in every direction. Advertising is everywhere. Everywhere you would think to look, someone would put “Buy This!”
BH: Yeah, they turned them into TV’s now. Don’t know if you’ve seen that? The billboards are TV’s.
TW: No I haven’t.
BH: Yeah. So you’re looking up and it’s a billboard and about 3 seconds later it’s a different billboard. So you’re driving down the street and all these billboards are changing.
TW: Oh, I’m out of it.
BH: Yeah they just started doing that in the last year or two. I was wondering when you come back now, is it more dramatic, the change? Or does it seem the same old place?
TW: In some ways. ‘Cause you see the stuff you remember. But it feels like a hundred cups of coffee. You look for certain landmarks and you say stuff like “Hey! That used to be a barber shop, and before that it was a coffee shop and before that it was a bank.” You remember everything the way it used to be.
BH: Yeah, someone gave me a book Ed Ruscha did in the 60’s where he drove down Hollywood Boulevard and took pictures of the entire street and connected them. And then he did it again a few years ago. The pictures were side by side.
TW: What streets?
BH: It’s all Hollywood Blvd. I think it was from Silver Lake up through Beverly Hills.
TW: You know Western Ave is one of the longest streets in the world?
BH: I’ve always heard that. I’ve wanted to take a trip from one end to the other, see what’s on the other side.
TW: Yeah, I never did that, but I’ve seen pictures of Western Ave when it was just a dirt street. Looked like a street out of an old western town. With horses, a delivery stable, a saloon. A guy standing around on a wooden sidewalk.
BH: Yeah I have a few books with pictures. There’s no trees. Very few Trees. Just all flat. Just dirt.
TW: Yeah, all dirt. You must get charged being there as far as song ideas. Driving around, do you get stimulated by the environment.?
BH: I do. I guess there’s always been a plastic quality to LA. But it’s always had something underneath it. I find myself writing songs questioning where this is all going? Songs about everything turning into the ‘faux Mediterranean stucco retail living unit.’
TW: Yeah, it’s amazing we’re all responsible for its being built. The whole town is kind of like a folk song. It’s like public domain. You do have a hand in the building of it. It didn’t get built by one guy. This is what I envisioned, we all work together. Even in your house, the things you do to your house, well, someone will be living in it, and its what you did to it. And someone after them will be living in it. I get bothered by all the people you see every day that I’ll never see again. We’re surrounded by strangers. Millions and millions of people you see every day that are just like fish. They’re just extras in the movie starring you and you’re an extra in the movie starring them. It’s just peculiar. Then you’re really aware of it in a city ’cause there’s so many people and you’re just pushing through. You’re just like a sperm flipping your flagellum around, you know, trying to make your way through the city.
BH: Who you know and whatever situations you find yourself in with whatever people—it’s all sort of arbitrary. There are an infinite amount of doors you could’ve opened.
TW: And walk right out and walk right into another door and start another life six blocks away.
BH: I wonder if you could really do that anymore? I just went to Japan and they scan your eyes when you come into the country now. They have a computer that reads your finger print.
TW: At the airport?
BH: Yeah, when you’re going through customs.
TW: They read your eye? Oh, man!
BH: Yeah they read your eyeball.
TW: Japan is the home of the $700 orange.
BH: It’s the best orange you’ve ever had. It’s gonna be a religious orange experience. (Laughs)
TW: It’s supposed to be. Yeah, you…you’d want a room. Just with you and the orange, I think. (laughs) They take all the blossoms off the tree except for one, and that’s the one that becomes the orange. All the nutrients are going to one orange. And they have a square watermelon, you know? It matures inside a wooden box, then they cut the wood off and they have this square fruit. Slice it like bread and stack it in a warehouse.
BH: Have you been to Japan many times?
TW: I haven’t been there in a long time. I remember being able to buy underwear in a vending machine. That was pretty exciting.
BH: When they name their cars, they have names like the Toyota President or the Nissan Cedric.
TW: Oh, I like that.
BH: I don’t know if when you were there – all the taxis have doilies. The doily industry dried up out here probably a good 70-80 years ago, but it’s still alive there.
TW: Where have all the doilies gone, long time passing.
BH: They’re all in Japan. And the taxi doors open by themselves.
TW: You’re joking? Yeah, in Mexico they found out the only Chevy that was doing the worst business was the Nova. In Spanish Nova means it doesn’t go. So they weren’t buying it. No one wants a car that doesn’t go.
BH: But I thought maybe there was some reverse psychology they could do, you know? Like use some different car names, like the Dodge Apocalypse or the…
TW: The Sleep Walker. The Viking, or The Zipper. I don’t know. Yeah, Dodge Neon. I couldn’t drive the Neon.
BH: The Aspire, the Aspire is another one. You’re not quite there… You’re making the effort. (laughs)
TW: The Aspire! Yeah. It’s better than No Va.
BH: When I first got my license, you could get a car second hand from an ad in the Recycler [classified ads]. Nobody wanted them; maybe because it was in the early 80’s. You could get a car from the 50’s or 60’s for $200 – $250.
TW: It’s still a new car. They don’t say ‘used,’ they say ‘previously owned.’ I can’t remember when I last saw a car pulled over on the side of the road with the hood up and a guy with his head under there. You just don’t see it any more. It was very common. Underneath, you know, with a wrench. Now it’s all computers. People don’t know what to do when their car stops.
BH: I bought a car once– I didn’t know the battery was under the driver’s seat. I had taken it in to get an oil change. When I showed up, the mechanic…his pants were burned off. The metal in the seat, it hit the battery and it went up in flames.
TW: Burnt his pants off?
BH: Yeah. He had been a master mechanic in Germany. But when he came to America he didn’t have the same credentials and was working out of a Salvadorian tire shop. He was a genius mechanic. I showed up one time and said I only had $15 and the car was on its last leg. We had become friends, so he said he would see what he could do. I came back later and he had taken a piece of string and a matchstick and re-rigged the stick shift. It would have another good month in it. But when it burned his pants that was the end, he wasn’t having it. I called the car Jaws because the front of the hood had been smashed in so the hood was slightly open. It was a station wagon so it kind of looked like a shark. I painted some teeth on it at one point.
TW: That could catch on…that’s what Einstein said, if it has a flaw and its irreparable turn it into a feature. If you’re always burning the pancakes, put it on the marquee. Burnt Pancakes, 99 Cents. People who can fix anything with string are disappearing. I think most things can be fixed with string, but we need to be reminded of that. Except if you pour a fresca into your computer, I don’t think that will work. Or if you pour a coke in the back of your television the string won’t work. It’ll turn into a coffee table immediately.
BH: There is a photographer, Chris Jordan, I did a video with. He takes pictures of landfills. One that has tires valves, one that’s just plastic bottles, one that’s just cell phones. He some how figured out how to take the picture and alter it to where it’s the same exact number of that object that’s being thrown out every day. They’re beautiful photos. Gigantic. When you stand back you don’t know what it is, it’s kind of abstract. When you get closer you see what it is. I don’t remember the numbers. 350,000 soda cans a minute. This was just in America, too. One that was amazing was like 400,000 cell phones thrown out a day.
TW: Well you know space is already getting crowded. They’re planning on blasting up all the trash up in space. There’s things in contracts about that already. Disposing of certain materials. You have to promise, in order to get rid of it, you’ll put it on a rocket and blast it into space.
BH: Won’t it be more expensive to put it in space than what it costs originally? I guess you’ll have to buy space on the rocket for the thing you buy. It’ll be in the cost of the microwave.
TW: It’ll be on the spaceship…
BH: Space cartage fee… So how long have you been doing photographs?
TW: Oh, a couple of years. Some of them are pretty wild. I don’t know if anyone is as interested in them as I am. The shapes are just bizarre. [Photos of oil stains found on the ground]. I don’t think they’re going to be the next big thing. “Look Honey, Look, there’s Jackie Gleason; he’s got a Horse coming out of his head. It looks like a bird is eating his chin. There’s a camel, see the camel? The camel is disappearing into the pond right here and now there’s a fountain coming and Richard Benjamin is launching.” I see stuff that nobody else sees. I think they’re just for the home. Just for my own peculiar amusement.
BH: Thank you for doing this. It was a good excuse to call you up and bug you, pull your ear for a while
TW: You only live once, this is good. I would like to continue this. This is very interesting to me. Maybe I’ll make some notes next time. You know, the yo-yo is a sixteenth century Philippine weapon. It weighed 4 pounds and had twenty feet of cord and only came to the US in 1929.
BH: I’m wondering what’s going to show up in 2029 from the fourteenth century? Maybe there are other possibilities in the wings.
Interview Originally Appeared at http://beck.com/irrelevant_topics
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blow up video and turn volume to 11 on all posted videos!
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sigur ros dl ^^
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hmmm columbia fair looks rather weak compared to this venue.
what do you think?
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