Modular

Yesterday afternoon Mary Beth and I watched Blood Simple and it was really good. It being so early I thought the stuff the Cohen brothers were doing might not be fully there yet, but nope it is. It also has a similar plot kinda thing to lots of movies of that kind (probably because of it) but it manages to steer from expected directions and still feels way more original than movies in that sort of genre. And just the level of all characters misunderstanding all the other characters and not knowing what's going on outside of their own "piece" is pretty impressive (I know that part of that genre (and in a lot of their other movies) the whole point is crazy situations built on misunderstandings and all, but it's taken to a pretty nice next level here). Okay. So after that I went and played synths with strangers! Dustin had gotten a bunch of Memphis modular folks together and we had our first little Memphis modular meetup (of course Dustin didn't end up making it himself in true Dustin fashion). So it was over at this dude Dominic's house and there were also these other dudes: Ben, Nate, and Connor. Josh was able to come a little later so I wasn't totally this lone stranger. But we all had some eurorack stuff set up and made some sounds! It was, of course, lots of fun. They all seem like nice dudes. I got to stir some jealousy talking about Day for Night. One guy has the exact opposite assessment of Survive, thinking the Stranger Things soundtrack doesn't work very well without the tv show and it's kinda boring with just arpeggios that don't go anywhere and that the full band is much better (you may know that my opinion is the exact opposite, though I like Survive's albums, they don't come close to that soundtrack for me). Also that same guy (Ben) had negative to responses to dissonance (you know that's not where my feelings lie!). The only bad thing was my deodorant wore off and towards the end I was stinkin' somethin' fierce so I became self-conscious and withdrawn. Okay, now it's the last day of this fucking year, but I don't want to see it go because then there's NEXT year. Well, maybe things will be better. Maybe enough incompetence will keep things at bay. I did get a pretty sweet package in the mail today: Fela Kuti: The Complete Works of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. I'd gotten an amazon gift card for christmas so this was where the bulk of that went! Good timing because I didn't even know they were reissuing it with even more discs than it had before (going from 26 cds to 29 cds!) and it had just gotten issued. Good thing I'd held off. Hooray for more discs!