When I left to catch my plane to Baton Rouge this morning, the temperature near dawn was 67 degrees, which sounds relatively warm, but amounted to a huge relief.
I am still pondering if the huge rodent swimming in the huge pond beside the Louisiana Court of Appeal was a South American cavy type of thing, a beaver whose tail was obscured, or a particularly lanky muskrat.
I've been listening to the ambient musician Caul today, whose Apophasis album ascends from gentle space drone to angelic vox to deep drone to rapid-fire electronica, all tastefully rendered, and all released for free download at Dark Winter. It holds down a great place in my mp3 player. I like that the album was recorded in Garden City, Kansas. To me, the prairie is very conducive to ambient sound.
The publicity regarding Lonelygirl15 broke onto public radio today. If you don't follow youtube culture, lonelygirl15
made "first person" videos in which she supposedly was a home-schooled 16 year-old narrating her life. Each short two or three minute videos gained hundreds of thousands of views, and many loyal fans. Soon, videos pointing out the discrepancies in "her" story appeared, and now it is an established fact that the "lonelygirl15" is a New Zealand actress living in Los Angeles whose "story" was a concoction of budding film folks.
Before this earth-shattering announcement, her work came to my attention because it used a lot of music from people I "virtually know" and respect at the CCMixter Creative Commons remix site.
I am grateful to the lonelygirl15 videos for pointing out to me my favorite pop song of the summer:
Pat Chilla the Beat Gorilla, featuring Lisa DeBenedictis, "Brilliant Daze". If you have not heard it, and need a little life in your Sepetember, give it a click and let it link you to the kind of thrill you haven't felt since you heard Thin Lizzy play "The Boys are Back in Town" on the radio while you were sitting in a friend's sky-blue AMC Gremlin hatchback.
As for the lonelygirl controversy? The discerning eye did not doubt it was all a set-up, even before the grand admissions lately. But which set-up? Life is an endless story, and we are all its storytellers.
I am all for viral video, music donated to the Creative Commons in return for mere attribution, and great white herons on Louisiana ponds.