UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

My loyal reader(s) may recall that back in May I posted a couple of new music tracks I was working on. One of them was a little too… meh… so I probably won’t be doing anything more with it, but I was really pleased with the early results of my work on a track I was tentatively calling “Mellotronic.”

Last night I put some more work into the track and I think it’s nearly complete. I just want to tweak some of the Mellotron parts a bit, and I am also thinking of re-recording the synth solo near the end. (It’s just a little too modulation and pitch bend heavy for the style of the track.)

I currently have 4 tracks I’ve been playing around with since the RPM Challenge that are complete or nearly complete, and they’re all drenched in Mellotron. (OK, I don’t own an actual Mellotron, but I do own the next best thing.) As a result, I am planning to go with Mellotronic as the name of a 4-song EP that I hope to release before the end of July.

This, of course, is the title track, which I am now calling “Mellotronic, Mk. II: Jazz Odyssey.” I hope the reference is obvious. Please enjoy this early rough mix of the nearly-finalized arrangement.

Pay attention to the sustained note at the end. That’s one of the classic traits of the Mellotron, faithfully reproduced by the M-Tron virtual instrument: Mellotron tapes were 8 seconds long, so if you held a note for longer than that, it would stop. But some of the notes are not quite the full length, and since they’re actual recordings of real people playing the real instruments, sometimes they falter a bit. So I held the final chords on the flute and violin settings until they stopped. I’ve noticed in the past that the flute recordings seem a lot more… let’s say “variable”… than some of the other instruments, and that observation certainly bears out here!

Even if you’re not familiar with the contrived acronym CAPTCHA, you’ve probably encountered the concept from time to time online. It’s a reasonably reliable way for websites that allow user comments to distinguish a human from a spambot, and thus it’s one form of Turing test. So far so good. In fact I use one such CAPTCHA service, reCAPTCHA, for comments on this site.

I like reCAPTCHA because, aside from the fact that it works (most of the time, though you may guess that one of its failings has prompted this posting, and you may be correct), it is part of a Carnegie Mellon University project to digitize books. (You see, humans completing the CAPTCHAs help to decipher words that the OCR software chokes on.)

Tonight I was going over various pages of my site, attempting to apply yet another layer of polish to everything, and I discovered the most bizarre abomination of a CAPTCHA I have ever seen. I grabbed a screenshot, and here it is. Good luck with that.

With Wimbledon underway and the Olympic Trials picking up speed, SLP and I have been watching a lot of sports on NBC this week. And the most breathless, repetitive story throughout has been the “marvel” of 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres. 41. It is impossible for an NBC sportscaster to mention Dara Torres (41) without stating that she is 41. 41.

It is impressive that she’s competing in the Olympics at the age of 41, and in fact is swimming at her peak, setting personal best and in some cases record times. But it would be nice if they could just once mention her name and her success without, at least 3 times per sentence, also emphasizing her age. Yes, she’s 41! 41!!! OMG she’s 41!!!!!!11!!41!!!!111one!!!forty-one!

We get it. She’s also a great swimmer, regardless of her age. Enough already!

41.

I distinctly remember as a kid in the early ’80s that my grandfather had a little plastic cup next to the sink in his basement that had a bird on it and said “Beep for Breakfast.” I had no idea what it meant, but I thought it was cool because I was big into Looney Tunes and I equated the bird and the “beep” to the Road Runner.

Apparently, “Beep for Breakfast” was the slogan of a Tang-wannabe drink called Beep, which is still available in Canada. But try as I might I cannot find an image of the “Beep for Breakfast” cup online, only some vague references to the slogan.

If you own one of these cups, or have seen an image of one online, please post a comment below!

I had noticed for some years that it was increasingly common to see, in the Mexican food sections of most local grocery stores, stocked in amongst the numerous flavors of Jarritos soda, a few glass bottles (the old-time returnable kind) of Coke. Mexican Coke. I never really “got it” or, frankly, cared too much to figure out what might be different about it and why it would be sold here, but lately it seems that the Cuba Libre (more commonly known simply as a Rum-and-Coke, or, if you prefer, a Rum-‘n’-Coke) is becoming trendy… for some reason. But along the way to that discovery, I also learned what’s different about Mexican Coke and why people, especially those who are used to it, would bother to buy it instead of the American version. The recipe still includes cane sugar.

Yes, although we’ve had “Coke Classic” here in the U.S. since the Coca-Cola company gave up on the insipid “New Coke” concept (although, interestingly, you can still buy it as “Coke II” in certain parts of Chicago), it’s not really the original formula, and not just because it doesn’t include cocaine. (I’m not talking that original here.) The U.S. version had the cane sugar replaced with America’s most beloved ingredient, high-fructose corn syrup, in the mid-1980s, around the same time that particular ingredient started showing up in everything. Click the link above to learn more about why Americans, or at least American corporations, love the stuff so much. It’s also worth checking out some of the commentary on the failed 1985 launch of New Coke and the reintroduction, a few months later, of Coke Classic. One almost has to wonder if the whole New Coke thing wasn’t just a risky ploy to ultimately get away with switching Coke Classic from cane sugar to corn syrup, since this was the moment when that transition occurred. Perhaps going straight to HFCS would have enraged customers, since it does taste slightly different, but the few months enduring the original drink’s miserable replacement made Coke Classic seem great, even if it was slightly different than before. But I digress… (Then again, isn’t digression the defining characteristic of this blog?)

Tonight SLP and I decided to try the “traditional” Cuba Libre, not just the college freshman’s intoxicant of choice, so although we still lamed out on the rum with Bacardi, we got a bottle of Mexican Coke, and took the extra step of including a lime wedge in the drink.

I didn’t actually try any of the Mexican Coke on its own, since I needed all of it for the mixed drinks, but even with the rum and the lime mixed in, I could tell the difference in the Coke. The drink overall lacked the cloying, slightly chemical-y taste I am now accustomed to in Coke. For a moment I had a flashback to the taste of my youth (minus the rum, of course). I look forward to trying a bottle of Mexican Coke on its own soon, preferably consumed straight from the bottle, since they’re the same shape and thickness as the old returnable bottles of yore… just slightly larger, since the Mexican bottles hold 500 mL (16.9 oz) instead of 16 oz.

I’ve noticed that Mexican Coke is getting easier and easier to find in the U.S. these days, so for those of you who, like me, are old enough to remember (though you may have long since forgotten it) the taste of pre-corn syrup Coke, I recommend picking up a bottle sometime soon!