Gateway

Gateway is a science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl, written in 1977. This is part of a five book series, called the Heechee Saga, comprised of five books altogether. However, I think I'm going to just settle for just this first one.

"Gateway won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The novel was adapted into a computer game in 1992." [wiki] As you can see this was a very important, very good book when it was released back in the '70s.

The book follows a young man with the unusually feminine name of Robinette Broadhead. He's a filthy rich bastard but he's a crybaby. He's sad and depressed even though he has sex all the time, he's filthy rich, and he has new body parts that will give him an extended human life, wow! 

Why is Robinette sad? Why's he an asshole? How did he get rich? Where's the science fiction in this? Why read it? The book unravels like a good mystery. One. Clue. At. A. Time. Just like that, the book keeps you reading by giving you little snippets of information that reveals the why of the story.

The MC [main character] is sad because he had a terrible childhood working in food mines back on Earth. His mother never told him he loved him, and he felt close to her when he was a kid when she would stick a thermometer up his ass to check his temperature when he was sick. [this is why Robinette's homophobic] His father died and he was a nobody until he won a lottery. Enter Gateway. 

Robinette won a lottery ticket that got him to Gateway. Gateway is this space station of an alien race. They left behind all these ships but humans have no idea how to control them, or where they will go, meaning that many people die just to experiment with the aliens' ships. Sometimes they go to other universes, other galaxies. The purpose of Gateway is to learn all the rules, get a crew, and take Heechee spaceships [aliens here are called Heechee, great name, sounds cute] to wherever it will take them, to somewhere where they will hopefully find Heechee artifacts. Hopefully you don't die along the way. The organization running Gateway pays top dollar for artifacts once crews come back from their trips. The thing is that most crews don't come back. Or they come back splattered all over the ship.

So we have an unsympathetic character and a myriad of other characters, most of which don't have nearly as much personality [or lack thereof] in contrast to Robinette. His girlfriend that he meets on Gateway becomes very important to the story. But eventually, Robinette finds out that she's been sleeping with a bisexual guy, which gets Robinette upset. There's a confrontation about it. Robinette responds by beating the shit out of her, knocking out some of her teeth. It's a super brutal confrontation. Domestic abuse, in a science fiction novel, blasphemy, right? Well, I've actually seen worse in other novels, it's just that this type of thing doesn't happen often in science fiction. In Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland, the main character gets raped. And in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester the main character rapes a woman who eventually becomes his wife. So science fiction has tackled these sorts of difficult issues before. I think we have to look back at the time period that it was written to understand why it would be put into the book. Also, we should look at the age of the writer when they wrote it. What were they trying to say? Of course, Robinette apologizes and things are okay, but its that's just because it's written that way. In real life, the woman would've put a restraining order against him.

There's a side story within the main plot that features Robinette having therapy sessions with a robot called Sigfrid Freud. It's all mostly psychobabble but I can understand a lot of what went into those sessions because I've read a little bit of Freud. There's all the typical stuff. It isn't that interesting but it gives you the bird's eye view of Robinette's mind. Why is he so ungrateful even though he has everything? This gives us some reasons why. 

The science fiction elements here aren't super strong but it's good enough for me. There aren't any spaceship battles, or firefights, or any space action until the very end. In fact, Robinette spends most of the book cowering in fear, deciding when and if he should go out on an expedition. After all, a lot of people don't make it back alive, as humans don't even know how any of the Heechee ships work! However, it is that penultimate ending of the book that finally gave me my science fiction fix-at least until I finish reading the Iliad. At the end of the story, we find out that our main character has survived his space expedition only by killing off nine other people, coming back alive as the sole survivor with tons of artifacts, making him one rich, lucky, son of a bitch. Technically he didn't kill them. They're stuck in a blackhole out in the middle of space. But, he's madly depressed now because, in order to be the last one to survive, he had to 'kill' off his girlfriend. Gateway is one hell of a drug. 

The great thing about this book is that you look at the cover and expect some grand space opera adventure. Or a pulp science fiction novel. What you actually get is a psychoanalytical story that involves alien technology. The writing isn't amazing but writing a science fiction story about psychology and alien tech can take you places if you're Frederik Pohl. It's not as good as Man Plus but its worth the read. I haven't completely given up the idea of reading the series, you never know what the future has in store. The novel was short enough for me to read in a few days, definitely worth the read if you're on a science fiction book hunt. I don't think it's necessary to read the full series, as I think this first book works well as a standalone novel.

Player Piano

Player Piano is Kurt Vonnegut's first novel. Released in 1952, the book tells a story of a brave new world [Nytimes back in the 50s, book reviewer compared it to Huxley's Brave New World], where machines have taken over society, a dystopia. This is a book about automation and humans, how they co-exist in a dystopian society ruled by an oligarchy but the interesting thing is that the oligarchs are engineers rather than kings or presidents.

Player Piano's universe is ruled by engineers who build, fix, and keep the machines running. Everyone else with low IQ's [IQ's are known in the public sphere, thru testings] are either in the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks, which is the low-level grunt work of the society. Paul's father helped build the machines that helped win the war, and that currently helps society. He made the engineers the most important class and his son is high up in the company. Paul's father is now deceased and Paul is struggling to find himself, that is, he has an existential crisis. 

Paul thinks that there's more to life than fixing machines and being an engineer, even if he's rich, has a beautiful wife, and a nice house and car. Paul tries to find a way out. He starts reading novels about burly men that do extravagant things in life. He wants to become like Thoreau. He plans on quitting his Engineering managerial position at the factory, one of the most important jobs in the world. He even goes so far as to buy a farm, thinking he's going to get his wife to quit living the high life and work as a farmer with him. She doesn't like his surprise when she sees the farm.

The book hits a high note once Paul goes on an Engineer's retreat, in the woods with all the managers and young engineers from factories all over the country. You get a sense that these engineers are being brainwashed into thinking their job is the most important and everyone else is below them. It's at the retreat that Paul is asked by factory management to infiltrate this organization called the Ghost Shirts. The Ghost Shirts are disgruntled engineers and low-level workers that have had enough of machines taking all the jobs. They want life to go back to the good 'old days when people washed laundry with their hands and jobs were done by people rather than machines. If Paul does this he gets a higher level job at another factory. Big whoop.

Paul plays along quite nicely, and says, "I quit! I quit! I quit!", with so much enthusiasm that his managers think he's playing along too well. The fact of the matter is that his managers had to fire him so he could infiltrate the Ghost Shirts. But Paul really meant that he was really quitting for real, which they interpreted as him playing along. It's very funny. 

Paul goes back home from the retreat and is treated like a second-class citizen by the police, who is notified that he's lost his job, status, and position in society as one of the Engineering Class, the highest social class. 

Once Paul's in the Ghost Shirt Society they make him their leader, almost a Messianic figure because he's the son of the "Father of all Machines, the Father of Engineers", oh how he's fallen from grace. A revolution takes place, and people go ballistic, destroying machines and burning buildings. But when the destruction is over, Paul and the Ghost Shirt Leaders find out that people are finding all the scraps of machines they can find only to rebuild machines! It's very ironic, satire. It turned out that people actually wanted the machines to work for them, and that all this time Paul might have been wrong about society, machines, everything. Or maybe not.
 
Player Piano isn't such much a tirade against technology, machines, or automation so much as it is a critique of progress, within society and politics. Vonnegut may be a Luddite in the sense that he rejects society's unhealthy relationship to technology. But today that could be most people as most people think the young folk shouldn't be so consumed with the tech of the day-social media, online gaming, spending all their time in front of a screen, be it a smartphone, tablet, TV, laptop, or computer. Most adults in the room would say our young people need to stop being consumed by these things, go back to a simpler time-spend more time outdoors with nature or reading books at libraries. Vonnegut perhaps might be saying that a nation that innovates technologically but not socially is not truly progressing. 

These are ideas Vonnegut used for his first novel because they were real and close to him. He had been a prisoner of war after being captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. You can sort of see how he got some of his ideas. Germany thought that all their problems would go away once factories were built but it turned out that Germany was actually on the wrong side of history socially and politically. Factories and jobs didn't end up helping them. Likewise, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, SnapChat, Discord, Instagram, and YouTube haven't helped us to progress socially or politically either. 

At the end of the novel when the people are grabbing scraps of machines to rebuild their beloved machines, one of the Ghost Shirt leaders says to Paul, “This isn’t the end, you know… Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be – not even Judgment Day.”

"After all, there’s always a step backward, and a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction." [vonnegutreview.com] 

Interesting tidbit-one edition for Player Piano was titled Utopia 14, just to give it a more science fiction name, "whereby Vonnegut gained the repute of a science fiction writer, a genre held in disdain by writers at that time. He defended the genre and deplored a perceived sentiment that "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works" [wiki] Also, it should be noted that Player Piano is more conventional storytelling, especially with the slow narrative. His other novels would go on to more grandiose ideas, more science fiction, and much more satire. If he kept writing in this plain style that is Player Piano he wouldn't have become such a famous name.
 
The original cover pictured above, Utopia 14 cover pictured below

Nocturnal Poisoning

Black metal, Dark Ambient 

Nocturnal Poisoning is the debut release by the American black metal one-man band Xasthur, released in 2002. The CD version of the album was limited to only 2,000 copies, making it a novelty. In my last post, which can be read here, I talked about how I got into black metal and a review for the first black metal record I listened to, Leviathan's debut release. It's ironic how I got into black metal on Holy Week and the week Notre Dame Cathedral got burned. I'll remember this week in 2019 for sure. 

Xasthur's first record Nocturnal Poisoning is a nightmarish beast. I first heard of Scott "Malefic" Conners when I saw the Noisey documentary on one-man black metal bands. Scott seemed like quite the troubled guy, much more messed up, and depressed than Wrest from Leviathan, who was also featured in the documentary. He seemed autistic, although I'm not quite sure if he is or not. One thing for sure is that he's an excellent musician. That's what got me interested in listening to Xasthur, Leviathan, and Striborg, all three one-man black metal projects. 

The guitars on this record are extremely distorted, fuzzed out walls of sound. Its as if he had two or more guitar tracks at all times, like a hurricane of guitar noise. The whole atmospheric walls of guitar distortion is a black metal staple, something I learned about from listening to Darkthrone, a 90's secondwave black metal group from Norway. Its that stereotypical high pitched, distorted tremolo guitar riffing that is so characteristic of black metal. It sounds great, especially with aggresive, fast blast beats on the drums. 

The drums used here are nothing all that impressive. In fact, I believe it to be a drum machine based on reviews I've read but they work. They aren't exceptional, and if Conners got a real drummer, or played real drums himself, the sound of the drums would've been much heavier. With drum machines, you always have a sense of something missing. The beats could sound great technically and fit all the songs but it's missing that human soul, to beat the living shit outta drum heads. You need real drums for metal, especially black metal, a genre that thrives off the raw visceral feel of rock and roll. The bass sound on this record is almost nonexistent, not good! 

The vocals are okay. They weren't exceptional. The lyrics are your typical post-1990's black metal fanfare-hate,  souls, hateful souls, yeah we get the idea. The vocals have a lot of fuzz and distortion attached, something that sounds quite good on King Crimson's first album, on the tune 21st Century Schizoid Man. However, the way fuzz is used on these black metal vocals are extreme, like the fuzz is at eleven and the vocals are at seven. The vocals are used sparingly and you can't understand any of them without a print off. Go figure.

The best thing musically about this record other than guitar [I love black metal guitar] is the keyboards. I would say Conners is best at guitars and keyboards, that's where he shines. The keyboards add a sense of dark ambiance that I haven't heard in most metal. Most metal uses keyboards as a cringe operatic and classical thing, not so here. The keyboards add more layers and layers of sound walls, adding to the guitars and overall atmosphere. 

The music is crushingly depressing. You could call this genre depressive suicidal black metal [DSBM for short], and after listening to the whole record you get a sense of uneasiness. "What am I listening to? Is this any good? Who would enjoy this?" That being said, this music is one hell of an acquired taste, as is black metal in general. This album doesn't really have riffs I can remember, its just drones and endless drum loops. I believe the album would get better after multiple listenings but the first one left me puzzled. The production on this record is better than your typical lo-fi black metal, that's one of the record's redeeming qualities. In fact, the production is so good that it sounds like a movie. 

All that being said, this record shows you how dark black metal gets. It's depressing. The vocals are painful to hear, painful in the sense that they are like cries of agony, screams of agony actually. I was inspired to listen to Xasthur because I found Conners to be the non-stereotypical black metal musician. He wasn't over the top, he doesn't write satanic lyrics or wear corpsepaint, and when he was interviewed in the Noisey documentary, he seemed like a genuine person-not fake. I realized from that interview that he was a troubled person and that shows in his music. I think I'd be down to check out more of his album releases and/or demo tapes. I've come to find that a lot of the really great black metal music comes from demos and EP's, as well as album releases. I'd be interested to see where Conners would go musically from here. I would definitely put him on my list of third wave American black metal, and one man black metal projects. It's impressive that he recorded all this on his own. Although I find the music arrangements to be not totally awe-inspiring, he is doing something unique, of his own here, that stands apart from his peers, other black metal musicians.

The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide

Black metal, dark ambient genre 


Here's an album review for the heavy metal music fans. I got into black metal the other day. I was at my friends' house watching a rockumentary about the glam/hair metal band Motley Crue. I saw a documentary about black metal and we watched it. I had already known about the 1st wave of black metal, even some second wave but I didn't know much about the third wave black metal bands of today. Then we watched a music documentary that was specifically about one man black metal bands. That's how I found out about Leviathan. 

Leviathan is a one-man black metal project under the direction of Wrest. He plays all the instruments and does the vocals as well. His main instrument is drums and it definitely shows, as the drums on this record are brutal. Levithan's debut release was this record I'm discussing, The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide, released in 2003. 

1.	"Introit"	1:14
2.	"Fucking Your Ghost in Chains of Ice"	5:40
3.	"Sardoniscorn"	9:54
4.	"The Bitter Emblem of Dissolve"	5:55
5.	"Scenic Solitude and Leprosy"	6:45
6.	"He Whom Shadows Move Towards"	6:38
7.	"Submersed"	3:15
8.	"Mine Molten Armor"	7:03
9.	"The Idiot Sun"	9:33
10.	"At the Door to the Tenth Sub Level of Suicide"	15:02
Total length:		71:05

As you can see from the song titles above this is could be described as depressive suicidal black metal. It sounds like a joke until you hear the music. Then you realize it makes perfect sense. All the songs except for one deal with suicide. Art is supposed to represent something. This album is true horror. The music screams at you, takes you by force, shouting fire in the dark pits. Images from Dante's Inferno comes to mind, although that is to cliche and trite to truly describe this record. This record is more.

The guitar riffs are fast, loud, and heavily distorted. The drum tempos vary from slow to batshit crazy blast beats. There's ambient use of keyboards that appears throughout the album. The bass has euphoric moments where it's very loud in the mix.

The vocals are what makes this album so heavy, heady, horrific, and euphoric. The vocals at first sound like your typical high pitched black metal screams, something like Mayhem or Burzum. However, at some point, you realize that Wrest is doing his own style, but he knows the black metal tradition so well that he still screams along with the black metal ballpark. Some of the screams here are haunting. Wrest sounds inhuman, like humans trapped in hell, impaled on stakes. That sounds so terribly brutal but its also very metal. These kind of vocals are very hard to get used to at first. In fact, the main reason why I didn't get into black metal for such a long time is that I couldn't stand the vocals. The vocals in black metal take some time getting used to. But once you're accustomed to these raw, primal screams, you get into it. It doesn't stay jokey. Sometimes I used to laugh at black metal vocals. Now I find something emotional in it.

I can only sometimes catch what the lyrics are within the screams but I would be down to read the lyrics sometimes online on my next listen to this record. Knowing that I can't understand most of the lyrics makes the vocals that much more intense and surprisingly, more important. The fact that this is a record about suicide shows you a little bit about what Wrest had to struggle and deal with in his life. 

Wrest grew up with abusive parents. He was in and out of group homes in California, sometimes going homeless when not sleeping on friends' couches. Unsurprisingly, he tried to take his own life sometime after the making of this record. He also has controversy surrounding his personal life, as his ex-girlfriend accused him of assault. He's a troubled guy that doesn't own a computer, makes records, but works a regular job in California to support himself.  

What attracted me to Leviathan in the documentary I saw on YouTube about one man black metal bands is the fact that he's a good musician, he wasn't an edgelord black metal musician [not stereotypical, not wearing corpsepaint and hoods] and there are few great American black metal bands out there, let alone one man band American black metal. He's a fucking unicorn. I liked his personality in the interview for the documentary. I realized things about myself from that. I saw that I don't need validation from others for my music or art. That was huge. 

Wrest's guitar riffs are very good. Sometimes he reminds me of Black Sabbath but then he gets into more typical black metal riffs, not unlike Dark Throne. Some of the best moments on TTSLOS are the slow tempos, filled with doom metal guitar riffs and keyboards. This is something that an American black metal band would do a lot better than say Norweigian or Scandinavian black metal bands simply because Americans groove more.

Lastly, I can't state enough how nihilistic and brutal this record is. However, there is beauty in the darkness. The power of choice in our actions, whether to or not do, to be or not to be. This might be the darkest black metal album I'll hear for a long time. There's tons of chaotic ugliness here but the little bit of beauty goes a long way, I can feel that my own darker emotions have value, but I don't have to wallow in it. As one of the first black metal albums that I actually sat through the entire way, I'd say this is some damn good black metal. It isn't for everyone, but there is a release of feelings and emotions after listening to something like this. You're free when you're done. Free in the sense that this music will bring out different emotions in you, and its a release. In short, it makes me feel good.

I used to work with Martin Arevalo, a Mexican black metal drummer I met through open jams. After hearing this I'm ready to get back into playing metal music, focusing on a more doom and black metal sound, slow, and fast tempos. I plan on recording the guitar, bass, and vocal parts at my house, and having Martin record drums at his place. We're going to continue our metal project, called Mass, check us out on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Z7vL-Ccr8. That's the sound we're going for. I plan on writing more songs and putting together a super lo-fi recording. Maybe we could put it out for sale on Bandcamp when we're done. I've learned from black metal to keep my metal riffs simple and to play more rhythm. I've been able to come up with more catchy, doomy riffs that way. I've been playing straight-ahead jazz with a saxophone player but after listening to Levithan I realized I shouldn't give up on metal. I'll still be listening to tons of classical and jazz music but I still got heavy rock and roll in the mix too.

The Sirens of Titan

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is a satire science fiction novel from '59. The story is about a guy named Malachi Constant, who is told by a man-playing-God figure stuck in space via something called 'chrono-synclastic infundibulum', that he's going to marry his wife Beatrice, have a kid with her, and end up living [and dying] on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Malachi, the richest man on Earth does everything in his power to make sure none of that happens. He responds by throwing the best damn party ever and loses all his money.

The first Vonnegut book I read was Slaughterhouse-Five, check out my review for that book here.  I liked The Sirens of Titan much more than Slaughterhouse-Five. And that's because Sirens is much more of a science fiction novel, with grandiose ideas about life, sprinkled with tons of satire, with what I call dark humor or black comedy. Siren's has a very breezy, easy reading style just like Slaughterhouse. The ideas are many but are rooted more in science fiction here than in Slaughter-house, which is why I liked it much better. After all, I'm a science fiction guy. 

There are two obvious themes of the novel. Free will is one of them. Vonnegut suggests that we are victims of a series of accidents, as its quoted from the story. Malachi Constant, Unk, Beatrice, Chrono, the Tralfamore robot [the reason why all this is happening is so the robot can get a part to go home], and Winston Niles Rumford don't have free will. Random events put them in the positions they were in and there's nothing they could say or do that could influence the unpredictable. 

The other theme is the philosophical one. The meaning of life. Vonnegut suggests that everyone knows how to find the meaning of life by themselves. Although there's no free will we can find meaning and purpose in life. And the purpose of life, no matter who's controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. If I wasn't single this would be more meaningful. :D

Life is meaningless but we should be happy. No matter what happens we have the option to make life meaningful. That's what makes us different from the music organisms on Titan, what makes us human.  

Going forward, this isn't your typical 50's pulp science fiction novel, although technically it is a 'pulp 50's science fiction novel'. What I mean is that if you're into Heinlein, Asimov, and Alfred Bester, you'll notice that this is an entirely different animal. Although there are spaceships, a war between Martians and Earth, and Universal Will To Become [metaphysics perhaps] to power spaceships, Vonnegut is using science fiction to tell an allegorical story about life. With ideas and philosophy that is anti-war, anti-religion, and anti-Bio-Mass [anti-society]. 

The science fiction element stems from the character Winston Niles Rumfoord, who, with his dog Kazak, accidentally becomes “chrono-synclastic infundibulated” during a space voyage. They're spread through space and time, appearing on planets sometimes. Vonnegut explains the phenomenon in his own inimitable way. Being spread through space and time allows Rumfoord to know everything that is past, present, and future. This allows Rumfoord to play God with the human race, with emphasis on Malachi Constant, and Rumfoord's wife, Beatrice. Rumfoord stages a war between the Martians [there's Martians living on Mars in this story too] and Earth just to make a point, to teach mankind a lesson. 

There are enough great ideas in this novel to be two or three novels. The characters are unpredictable, the humor is dark at times, and satirical, and philosophical themes make this a terrific science fiction treatise. 

To conclude, you don't have to look into grandiose ideas for what this story is really about. As a matter of fact its very simple. Vonnegut's satire ends with this conceit: All of mankind's purpose, past, present, and future is for this alien robot [the Tralfmadorian] to find this one little metal part [the size of a can opening lid], that will take him home.

I'm already reading more Vonnegut. I'm currently reading his first published novel Player Piano, which is much different from this style and voice-wise. Stay tuned to the page, as I will write my Player Piano review sometime soon.   

[original book cover art by Richard Power pictured above] 

Us

Us is a 2019 science fiction horror film produced and directed by comedian, actor, and writer Jordan Peele. The movie starts with a chilling introduction where we see a young black girl at a pier out with her parents. Her parents don't like each other much, the father is drinking too much, and the mother is telling him no more beer. At some point the girl wanders off on her own, getting lost in a hall of mirrors, some sort of 'ride' at the pier. She was lost for fifteen minutes before her parents found her. When they were reunited, the girl was mute.

The next part of the film starts with a well-to-do black family on vacation at a vacation home. The same girl who got lost at the pier is now an adult, with two children. A boy who is slightly awkward, and a well-adjusted girl. Her husband is a jokey fatherly type with glasses. Things take a turn for the worst when a family wearing red jumpsuits appear on their lawn. They don't say anything. The father goes out to scare them off with a baseball bat but it doesn't work. It turns out that the family is actually them-doppelgangers. This is where the horror element comes from. 

It turned out that the family on the lawn were actually doppelgangers, an apparition or double of a living person. This is where the science fiction element comes in. Later in the film, after some exposition, we find out that there are doppelgangers of Americans living underground, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed. Meanwhile, the privileged, well-to-do people that have it easy in life are living above ground, getting their vitamin D from sunlight and livin' easy.

Not only that but the film makes a reference to the 1980's Reagan era with this event that actually happened, called Hands Across America. These doppelgangers have come up from underground to exact revenge across their doubles, holding hands across vast areas of land in America, after killing people. Does that make sense?  Does it have to?

We see underground that the doppelgangers live with these white rabbits in the corridors. That was an interesting visual. The idea that there are underground places across America reminded me of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, where slaves find their way to freedom using these underground passages. The movie is somewhat similar and referential a lot of other horror movies, such as A Nightmare on Elmstreet, The Shining [b/c of the white family's twins], and even has some similar aspects to Get Out, Peele's first film.

The movie is filled with too many references, metaphors, and so much symbolism that its all to much to write about here. The main takeaway I got from Us is the idea of the have nots coming to take their revenge on the bourgeois. This goes back to Marx and Hegel's philosophy about the rise of the proletariat, meanwhile, the bourgeois does everything in their power to keep the working class in the gutter. This is what the Communist Manifesto is all about. It's a very overt philosophical overtone. 

Many writers online have been speculating about what this film means. I'm not sure that it particularly means anything, other than that it is a damn good black horror movie. It's great to look at visually too. The fact that the main actors are black people is a plus [and a negative, see below] because its 'the first black horror movie', other than Get Out,  however, that movie works better than Us in the sense that Get Out is simpler in form and not overstocked with 'too much syndrome'. In short, it's less messy, thus works better as a movie that can be enjoyed as well as reviewed. 

I didn't come to the conclusion that Us was too cluttered until I read reviews. After viewing the movie with my friend, we got sidetracked by the clutter: symbolism, metaphors, references, and subtext. But now that I've seen what good movie reviewers think I've come to realize that the movie was still great, although probably not as great as I first thought. This isn't going to be Jordan Peele's best film but it will definitely be one of his most referenced and most talked about, probably for years to come. 

Lastly, I want to mention another thing that is personal to me regarding the movie. I don't think Jordan Peele did black people a favor making a movie like this. Yes, its a black horror movie but in a metaphorical way, I think it works as entertainment for white people to enjoy watching black people get scared, complete with vaudeville big eyes, tears falling down their faces and animalistic noises instead of speech from the doppelgangers. I don't think this is a movie my mother would like or any older, serious, black person. In short, its a young black persons thing, if they're into it at all. Older black folk would scoff at the way black people are portrayed in this movie. This is a personal criticism yet I think it is crucial to the film as a whole culturally. Of course, you could speculate until you turn black and blue and say, "Yeah, Peele is trying to say something important regarding class and race in America." And I would respond with, "Yes, we understand that. But at what cost?"

Despite that I still enjoyed the movie. You can see the ending coming a mile away yet it is still satisfying. Jordan Peele is a young film director and he was trying to do too much, not unlike a great author's sophomore slump. Yet somehow the movie still works, although probably not as effectively as Peele intended. Still, this was probably the best movie I've seen in 2019. You should definitely see this movie.

Purple Haze [Live]

Here's a live rendition of Purple Haze, played and sung by yours truly. With the Petie's Place open mic house band. Petie's Place is a bar in Tarzana, CA that hosts open mic sessions every Wednesday night. This is the first time I've ever done Purple Haze live. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/purple-haze

Orlando Figueroa-guitar, vocals
Art-bass
Jim X-drums 
?-keyboard

Jazz duo recordings [4/1]

Back again with more jazz duo recordings. I have two recordings that turned out sounding good. One thing to note is that on both of these cuts, my demenor was a somber one. The day before didn't go so well for me, and it shows in my playing. I think the attitude and/or spirit of the jazz musician isn't discussed as much as the music. It plays a big role.

As a result we ended up sounding not unlike something off the ECM, European jazz label. You hear these lush guitar arpeggios, and Jason [alto sax] is improvising over the top of it. I didn't really get into my typical straight ahead jazz guitar comping style. Instead I was rather subdued, and played back. 

Enjoy the tracks. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/going-home 
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/tune-up