Sunday, April 23, 2006

Can I get a hell yeah...

For Fiesta in San Antonio?

There's this one incident that will stick with me forever about Fiesta, and King Antonio. It happened when I was probably in 2nd or 3rd grade. We were all sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch, and for those unfamiliar with the SMH cafeteria, it was glass all the way around so that you could see everything that was happening around the campus. Anyways, we were eating, and all of a sudden three police cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing come driving into the campus and out towards the back where the dorms were. Now, having survived 4 years of SMH, there was only one thing that I corellated with police, and that was the arrival of King Antonio.

See, King Antonio visited all the schools around San Antonio during Fiesta. He was usally some rich white guy, and more often than not he was the father or grandfather of some kid at SMH. When he entered a school, he was precceded by SA Police, with their lights flashing etc...like he was some big dignitary. It was sweet because he would give out little plastic coins that had his name on it, and if you were lucky you could score a sweet pin that had some sort of Fiesta symbol on it. It was also cool because we got to waste a lot of time waiting for him to arrive, and then waste more time as he presented the school library with a book. It also meant that we were going to get out of school for the Fiesta parades. All in all, it was a good time.

Anyways, what actually happened that day was some psycho stole a police car and was being chased by actual police and drove it into our campus, which unfortunately for the psycho, did not have any other exits besides the front gate. So the guy gets stuck somewhere in the back and then attempts to flee on foot, only to be captured by the police in what I'm assuming was a pretty epic foot chase. All I'm saying is that I was pretty pissed when I didn't get a King Antonio coin that day.

Like I said, King Antonio is for the rich white guys. For the Mexicans, we have El Rey Feo, or in English, The Ugly King. Here's this years Rey Feo, Ronnie Gabriel:



El Rey Feo was always so much more awesome than King Antonio because they were Mexican and saw the whole fake royalty as what it was; a huge, retarded joke, and had a load of fun with it. Here's to you, El Rey Feo.

-ed

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Strange...

I saw this:



...on my way to work tonight. There were actually two of them. Apparently, they are called "Tall Bikes," because that's what I searched for and I came up with these pictures. I really don't understand them. Wouldn't it hurt like hell to fall off one of these things? Do you just jump off? I would think it would be a pain to dismount or even get on. Is this like the anti-low rider? Weird.

-ed

Friday, April 21, 2006

Disturbing News...

Admittedly, I haven't been to a San Antonio Missions game since 2002, but apparently they now have another mascot to go along with Henry The Puffy Taco. His name is Ballapeno, and he looks like this:



I really don't remember this guy being at the games. It was all about Henry and how he would get tackled by the kids before he could reach home plate between innings. Henry was f*cking awesome. Ballapeno? Lame. Check this picture out:



What's this shit? The Ballapeno beating up Henry? That has got to stop. San Antonio Missions front office, please, get rid of the Ballapeno.

-ed

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

I don't believe...

that there is any worse collection of sympathetic frequencies masquarading as musical expression than that damn James Blunt song.

-ed

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Now gather around, and check this shit out...

So I'm at this position where I sort of know what I want my senior thesis to be about, but not exactly what it is. In the broad sense, it is about mastering, but what about mastering? My original idea was to do a study of the rising "loudness" of masters in the past 2 decades, starting with vinyl releases, comparing them to original CD remasters in the laste 80's-early 90's, and then newer remasters from recent years. I would focus on the diminishing dynamic range of today's recordings, and look at how it affects the consumer at home (or how it doesn't affect, if that's the case). I would also look at factors that led to where we are now, and if there are harmful things that occur when pushing everything to 0dBfs.

However, I'm worried that this isn't sufficient enough. I'm going to try to broaden it out to include interviews with mastering engineers from across the board and eras, firsthand experiments, random tests to see what sounds better to people (i.e. playing a classically mastered recording versus a newer one at the same volume level and see which one they find more pleasing, or musically interesting). For all these examples, I would take it upon myself to record a band, mix it, and then do various types of mastering. Then I would make a DVD of it. Or something. Until I put it in front of the Honors Council, I really don't know if this will fly. I'm hoping that because Belmont offers nothing about mastering, that they will see that this is going beyond the average student here and beyond what the program here can give me. I really think that will be a selling point. Hmmmm. Let's hope this thing works.

-ed