Federation

In case you haven’t heard,  Village Voice Media owes the SF Bay Guardian a lot of money–as in 21 mil. A California judge ruled earlier this week that the Guardian can actually go after the dough, potentially opening the way for the Guardian to start selling VVM outlets or (among other things) forcing the chain into involuntary bankruptcy.

Empire

David vanquishes  Goliath? Hideous miscarriage of justice? No matter how you feel about the ruling, .05% wants to know. Argue your case in the comments section below. We’ll automatically enter anybody who includes contact info into our first ever “Ms. and/or Mr. Media Insight Competition!” (We’ll announce winners and prizes next week.)

One angle Ray K could potentially work for decades.

I tend to employ Ray Kurzweil the way most people use deities. Not in the sense of worship or blame–nor have I ever asked him for anything. But he’s great fot the odd prophetic attribution–”Kurzweil says everybody born now or later will live to be 1,000;” Kurzweil says we’ll be able to control household appliances with our minds starting next week”–that sort of thing.

Turns out he makes a great punching bag, too. “The sun is conscious,” Kurzweil declared in a recent h+ magazine interview. “It actually has a fair amount of structure and complexity, but probably less than a cat, so…”

Though true artificial intelligence remains off in the distance, Asimo does some awesome tricks.

As a marginal panpsychist, Eliphas Levi fan, and long-time supporter of the Gaia Hypothesis, all ll I can say to that is “bitch, please.” I happen to know for a fact that the sun is way smarter than Kurzweil and, uh, like, Alan Greenspan combined. Still, the interview–and h+ in general–easily merit an extended look.

Kurzweil’s cat–any random cat, actually–is way smarter than everybody in this video combined.

Rolling Stone‘s pick makes perfect sense, insofar as anybody’s does.

When it comes to evaluating and/or appreciating art, I’ve long felt that consensus gets way more credit than it deserves. Sure, the notion works fine through high school, when we naturally (and necessarily, for protection from evil grownups) like what our friends like.

But adults–at least those of us who care about such things–should anchor taste first, to judgement and second, to whatever qualities in a work specifically address what we are and what we want to become. Neither popularity nor the lack thereof should even factor, nor should genre, unless they somehow resonate with some element of our innermost being.*

Matos says 2009 was a lousy year for music, and I’d agree with him if I knew how to think in those terms (I’m simply not an annual guy) and last year hadn’t brought so much good-to-great music my way. He and I tend to like different things,–especially at first listen–which is exactly as matters should be. If we didn’t we’d never learn anything from each other. I don’t just respect friends’ rights to like things I don’t (and dislike things I like), I cherish the very thought.

Though Ben Frost’s By the Throat (album-length work, irreducible to songs: if you’re over 25 and unfamiliar with the concept, you’re probably sufferning from arrested development) easily stands as my favorite album of the year, I’d never shove it down anybody’s earholes–’cept maybe for diagnostic purposes.

As for songs, “Dangerous Animals” wins hands down, for both year and decade. Why? From the fleeting, Homme-enriched, a capella intro straight through to the boingy little closing sound, the track excites my appetite for complication, makes me want to go out and have interesting encounters with interesting people–exactly the qualities that made Muse’s “Cave” my favorite song of the ’90′s. As Emerson famously observed, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. But it gives us playful and adventurous ones a little something to hold onto as we gambol from vortex to sweet vortex.

*To wit: Something about the harmonic relationships in a lot of gamelan music makes me want to throw up, which immediately makes me think aboutt  the Balinese custom of eating turtles alive, which makes me even more nauseous.

During an email conversation with Southern Theater Music Program Director Kate Nordstrom, I received a gentle reminder: Nico Muhly‘s 2009 Southern performance marked his second in Minneapolis. He first played at the Southern in 2007. How I forgot is anybody’s guess, as is how I didn’t even bother to check before filing my City Pages Artist of the Year piece. Rest assured, though, I won’t be repeating any of the above mistakes when the composer returns to the Southern (with Sam Amidon) in April.