Quartz City

Can we hear a hallelujah?! The Center For Visual Music is finally releasing a Oskar Fischinger DVD with ten of his films and some bonuses. Pre-orders are being accepted now…

Another AppleScript problem that was vexing me this morning. Again, you would think that this would be easy… I wanted to rename a file to append the name of the enclosing folder onto it.

For example, the file “Testfile.txt” inside a folder called “Folderstuff” would be renamed to “Folderstuff Testfile.txt.” Here’s the (drawn out) AppleScript code:

(*
Renames the selected file to append the enclosing folder name to the front.
*)
tell application "Finder"
activate
set theFile to selection as text
set TheName to name of (theFile as alias)
set SourceFolder to name of (folder of the front window as alias)
set NewName to (SourceFolder & " " & TheName)
set name of file theFile to NewName
end tell

I know it’s faster to do this with a shell script, but I want to keep it in AS for now.

Some video from The Lovetones show at SXSW has shown up on YouTube…

From the Tee Pee Records showcase on March 17:

And a day later with Anton from BJM:

I can’t recommend their new album highly enough!

Recently retired host of CBS’ In The News Christopher Glenn and sinister Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner.

In The News was part of my daily diet of Sunday morning television throughout the 1970s. Glenn’s voice was a natural, but what I liked even more was the then-state-of-the art computer graphic globe and the greatest “bleepy bloopy” electronic theme ever (mp3 of it here).

In The News’ Jump The Shark entry

There is a total solar eclipse over much of the world today and along with the requisite warnings about not looking directly at the sun it has become necessary to warn that an eclipse is not punishment from the gods.

More than 60 percent of Nigerians are uneducated, and eclipses in some parts of the country in the past have caused chaos in which people have been killed and property destroyed. Some Nigerians believe an eclipse is punishment from the gods for evil doing. Professor Turner Isoun of the Ministery of Science and Technology says this year’s eclipse”calls for early preparation. Fortunately, through our scientific analysis, we can predict. So we have at least two months’ notice.”

Reading between the lines on the 2001 lunar eclipse rioting, I wonder just how much of the chaos is a result of people honestly believing that an eclipse is a sign from a god(s) or if it’s just an excuse for more lethal combinations of religious-inspired violence and youth pyromania.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) — Rampaging Muslims burned down scores of hotels and bars in a northern Nigerian city in reaction to the lunar eclipse which they blamed on sinners, residents said on Wednesday.

Paramilitary police battled gangs of Muslim youths in the streets of the largely Islamic city of Maiduguri for hours on Tuesday night.

Residents said at least 40 hotels or drinking houses were set ablaze. Similar violence was reported in Barma town 50 miles (80 kilometers) away where youths chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Great) took to the streets.

“The immoral acts committed in these places are responsible for this eclipse,” police quoted a youth leader as saying.

Police chief Uba Bala Ringim told Reuters in Maiduguri that five people had been detained and more arrests were expected.

Religious violence has been a major problem in the largely Islamic north over the past year. Hundreds of people were killed in two bouts of Muslim-Christian bloodletting in the northern city of Kaduna over plans to introduce Islamic sharia law in the area.

It’s a cheap shot to pick on the third world though, especially when the most recent case of disturbing religious violence is occurring in the next state over.

Tarby and a team of doctors from Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson began researching the disease and soon discovered that fumarase deficiency was occurring in at least two other families living in the same isolated community that practiced an unusual custom.

Nearly everyone in Colorado City, Arizona, and the adjacent town of Hildale, Utah, was a member of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practices polygamy and had long encouraged multiple marriages between close relatives.

By the late 1990s, Tarby and his team had discovered fumarase deficiency was occurring in the greatest concentration in the world among the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding.

Fast-forward to the present: About half of the 8,000 people living in the towns are blood relatives of two of the founding families that settled in the 1930s on the desolate high desert plateau against the base of the Vermillion Cliffs.

Religious leaders control all marriages in the community, and many of these relatives have married or likely will marry in the future. Some of these marriages will include parents who both are carriers of the fumarase deficiency gene, making it certain that more children will be afflicted with the disease.

“We have and will have a continual output of children with this condition,” Tarby says.

In this isolated religious society north of the Grand Canyon, few secrets have been more closely guarded than the presence of fumarase deficiency. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints elders, who control the community, have labored to keep the public from finding out why the disorder is manifesting. Many members of the fundamentalist community don’t even know it’s occurring.

The state of Arizona is contributing to the secrecy. The state Department of Health Services and the Department of Economic Security have been quietly providing services to assist the children and families of fumarase victims for more than 15 years. Both DHS and DES officials refused repeated requests from New Times to document the type and cost of services the state is providing to treat fumarase deficiency. The agencies claim that federal health laws prohibit them from releasing records or allowing their authorities to comment on the situation.

Doctors and family members interviewed by New Times say up to 20 children from families in the polygamist community are currently afflicted with the condition that requires full-time attention from caregivers. Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities.

The Feds have never had a problem with sending in the FBI/BATF/Forces Of The New World Order to religious cults before, especially when there are veiled rumors of child abuse and/or endangerment. So why are they stalling here? Mainstream LDS renounced the fundamentalist strain awhile back so political ties couldn’t be involved. Or could they…

Meanwhile, apparently it’s open season on hassling SubGenii.

My del.icio.us “eschatology” tag.

Squid blog. Cephalopodcast. Angry squid. Giant squid grabs London. Giant squid in Chile. The Loch Ness Imposter. CephBase.

A couple of weekends ago I went on Charles Phoenix’s “Disneyland Tour of Downtown.” Oddly enough, with all this food and LA history obsessions I have I’ve never been in Clifton’s Cafeteria before. I’m not sure if my eyes survived all the retinal damage.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater was a complete riot. I seem to recall that Baker was a semi-regular feature on Hobo Kelly’s KCOP television show in the early 1970s, but I can’t quite recall for sure.

See the complete Flickr set.

The LA Times was along on the tour too.

Every so often you’ll hear a story about an old car in a barn that turns out to be some impossibly rare sports car that’s been sitting there for thirty years. What blows my mind about this story is that it isn’t a car but a entire record store that’s been sitting in Miamisburg, Ohio - closed for thirty-five years and with all of it’s contents intact.

You can imagine the excitement as we drove down Main Street in the small town south of Dayton, then there it was just like we expected it, a old building with Popular, Rock, Solid Soul, Bluegrass and Golden Oldies, written in old print on the windows, and they truly were as you can see. When we walked into the shop it was like stepping into the Time Machine, all the LPs on display were from the late ’60s and the bins were full of vintage ’50s and ’60s LPs. Sealed Beatle LPs, all the Rolling Stones, both mono and stereo, Pink Floyd on Tower, also all the Standells on Tower, the Hollies, the Animals, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, it was all there! And from the earlier era, Eddie Cochran’s “Singin To My Baby” on Liberty, the Duals “Stick Shift”, Link Wray and the Rockin Rebels on Swan. Obscure soul Lps, lots of James Brown King Lps, and hundreds of Starday and King country LPS, all sealed or mint.

My sister Pam was interviewed for the March 2006 issue of Coast magazine. Check it out here:

page 1
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Rock & Roll Geek Report tracks down certifiably super-genius music producer Mike Chapman for an hour-long interview that’s well worth the download. Chapman mentions that he would love to work with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and I gotta admit that would be the best team-up ever.