90th Anniversary Book of Cartoons from the New Yorker

The New Yorker celebrated it’s 90^th anniversary in 2015, so this is a little outdated but not much. It’s interesting to see the editors perspective on the past 90 years and them distill out the cartoons that they feel represent said 90 years the best.

And then, of course, there’s the cartoons themselves. The New Yorker is known for their clever cartoons, and these are ones that they picked themselves. That doesn’t mean that they are the funniest or political or whatever, but they are all here for a reason. You also get to see the different styles of art that they use, and watch it change over time. Reflected in here is how America has changed over time, as clothing styles and jobs portrayed change and grow.

I mean don’t bother with this unless you like New Yorker comics, but hey if you’re into it this is pretty good and funny. Even if you just like comics, not necessarily of the New Yorker variety, check it out, it’s got some good ones in here.

“Silence” lectures and writings by John Cage

Picked this one up at a quirky bookstore a while ago. You probably know John Cage as that guy who wrote 4’33” that song that only consists of silence. It’s a little more than that, it forces you to listen to all of the unintentional sounds around you instead of something prepared by the musician. And of course the end result is that all sounds become music of some sort. Go ahead, try it out, take all the time you need. I’ll wait right here.

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Anyways, whether you agree or not, you have to admit that sitting on stage for 4 minutes and 33 seconds without playing a single note is pretty balsy for a musician. So I thought that this book would help to get into his head a little more. Turns out that Cage is a pretty great storyteller. Most of them are very short, but they are quite clever and do usually give some insight, rather like a Zen koan.

The layout of the book is really cleverly done, the writings that are in a more typical format are put at the beginning to present this philosophy and train of thought, and the stranger ones are closer to the end. What I mean by the stranger or less typical ones are ones where elements of chance come into play. Such as this entire lecture where the spacing of words on the page are based on random imperfections                            so the                                                             entire lecture                   is written out                                 kind of like                  this. Makes it kind of                                                                hard to follow. There’s also another lecture where he set up 4 recordings of different lectures to play at once, so all of those lectures are printed out on top of each other. That one was impossible to follow, which was the point of course. Then often there are ones with less crazy formatting, but the content is largely this refrain about how we are discussing nothing at all, and anyone who feels sleepy should go to sleep. It can get annoying if you aren’t in the mood.

Anyways, if that doesn’t throw you off, the lectures do show his thoughts on several subjects. They can also get pretty repetitive, the story of him going into an anechoic chamber (a room with absolutely no sound in it) and discovering that he could in fact hear two noises, is repeated quite frequently. (The two noises were his nervous system and respiratory system, therefore we are never in complete silence and there are constantly unintentional noises going on. See kind of where the idea for 4’33” came from?)

Besides that though there’s also frequent demonstrations of his reliance on chance operations (like the imperfections in the paper) and training in Zen Buddhism. It’s quite an interesting read, as long as you keep your mind open to learning things in unconventional ways. Whether you hate or love his work, you have to admit that he had an incredible effect on music today and how we think about music and sounds.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a postmodern piece

I only started playing the latest Zelda game recently, but it sure does align with quite a few postmodern ideas and techniques. Since I’ve only just started it, this will be a general overview, but I’m sure that the parallels carry deeper than this.

Nintendo takes the formula that they have been recycling over and over again for Zelda games and throws out at least half of it with this one. Weapons no longer last forever, they take on damage and eventually break (usually in the middle of a battle of course) causing Link to need to stock up and get ready to swap others in if necessary. Link himself is also more susceptible to the elements, if it gets too cold or hot he will start to take on damage fairly frequently. This can be combatted with clothes, as usual, or food, which is new. Link can now forage trees for apples or shoot wild game for meat, which can then be cooked or roasted over a fire. Elixirs can also be made, which give special power ups such as speed or stealth.

All of these various aspects present a hero whose main obstacle is the environment itself. Not to mention the fact that the world of this game is so freaking huge you’re going to spend half the time lost anyways. This is a video game where you need to learn the basics of survival if you want to get anywhere, and fast since you also have a kingdom to save. Postmodernism often seeks to find a new way to conceptualize the world, one that is not so human-centric. Humans are the ones destroying the world, so how can we view this world in light of our damage? How can we let nature reclaim what was rightfully theirs to begin with? Breath of the Wild answers this by turning the environment into a foe. Now the player must fight against decay, cold, and hunger as they travel through the world. Nature can still has some fight left in her.

Then there is the fact that Breath of the Wild takes place 100 years after Link failed to save Hyrule. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic land that we are presented with, one where evil has already won. Postmodernism frequently uses the apocalypse to make a similar point, that man is not eternal and eventually the world will rebel against us. This is a fairly new concept for a Zelda game, most of them start out in a happy setting, but then it all goes wrong somehow. Here everything has already gone wrong, nowhere is safe, Link has already messed up big time. I don’t know what the ending is, but this is one hell of a way to start.

All of these various aspects make Breath of the Wild distinct, both as a new kind of Zelda game and as a postmodern work. I imagine the message it will send the player will be quite different, because the method of playing through it already feels quite different. I’m excited to see how this game progresses.

50th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper!

Plot twist: I'm sick so this is going to be short.

LET'S PARTY LIKE IT'S 1967!!!

The Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" came out this week, 50 years ago! I'm celebrating (or trying to).

This album has been dubbed the best of all time by Rolling Stones, and has won numerous other awards. Whether you're a longtime Beatles fan or not, give it a listen, it deserves that much. :)