Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Thursday, June 25, 2009

While I'm sure that some of my readers will already be sick of the media oversaturation of coverage on the death of the self-proclaimed "King of Pop", I thought I'd write some of my own personal observations as someone who was in high school when the "Thiller" album was first released. The intervening years have dulled the memory of that album for some who are my age and most of those who are too much younger than me never really understood the impact of the album. Instead they only remember the circus freak that Michael Jackson had become. To judge him on the basis of only that would be like judging Elvis only by his later years when he battled drug addiction and a music scene that had largely passed him by rather than by the revolutionary music he created.

Last night I was doing what I occasionally do and going through and giving a listen to the top ten songs on iTunes. For an older guy like me it can be an exercise in frustration, especially when I've moved from pop music into jazz, roots and folk music. Yet, as I sit here now and think back, every single song on the listen owes a huge artistic debt to Michael Jackson and his groundbreaking album, "Thiller", that was released in 1982. Prior to Thiller, African-American music was dying a sad, slow death. It had been consigned to the ghetto of disco where Donna Summer ruled and the niche of funk. Motown was no longer relevant in the American popular music scene as punk and heavy metal bands began to dominate what was the vast wasteland of "Easy-listening" pop. Jackson's first attempt to break that stranglehold, "Off the Wall", was a brilliant album but too rooted in Motown's past to make much of a difference. It sold well but failed to really make a critical mark. When he won no Grammy awards for the album, Jackson apparently went back into the studio to show the critics they had missed the boat. The new album was good but Jackson felt it was missing something. He and producer Quincy Adams knew that it would be another Off the Wall without something. Over the last weekend of recording, Jackson tapped into his anger and the sense of frustration he felt coming from black America in the early 80's and wrote three more songs; "Wanna be Startin' Somehting", "Beat It" and "Billie Jean".

I can honestly say I'll never forget the first time I heard Billie Jean. As a white kid growing up out west I had never, ever heard anything like it. I didn't understand the lyrics at first but I didn't care. It was the beat. Nothing had a beat like that. Nothing. The best word to describe it was propulsive; it propelled the song and the listener along involuntarily. As I think about it now I am still stunned by the power it had. "Beat It" caught a bit of the rage of the streets and "Wanna be..." gave a sense of a young male in a community that wasn't respected but "Billie Jean" was something else. The album saved African-American pop music in this country I think. It gave voice to a new generation of musicians who could now express the rhythm of a different experience. This rhythm hasn't always been well accepted or even well thought out but when I listen to those songs on iTunes, I know where that rhythm got its huge boost.

Too much will be said about Michael Jackson over the next couple of weeks. Some will focus on the circus life and the issues Jackson seemed to have with children and his own lack of a childhood. Some will focus on the cosmetic surgery and the indulgences and excesses of his life. My advice is for you to ignore all of that. To find the soul of the man, go back to his music. Listen to Thiller and hear where the dominant music of today began to come of age. Listen to "Billie Jean" and see if your foot doesn't start to move and you don't feel just a bit like dancing (maybe my Baptist readers should avoid this...). Listen and understand what all the fuss is about and why some feel so strongly about Michael Jackson's death. Most of all, listen and feel his music.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I wasn't going to rant again so quickly after my last rant but another thing has reared it's ugly head.

PC World has an article titled, "The iPhone OS 4.0 Wishlist". The 3.0 operating system for the durn thing has been out a week and they already have a wishlist for 4.0??? Are you kidding me? Tech journalists are like kids at Christmas who get too many toys and play with each one for about 5 minutes before going to the next. You haven't had the toy for more than a week and you already want a new, better one.

I wonder if these guys on the morning after their short honeymoon write articles like, "What we'd like to see in Wife 2.0," or on the day after they bring their first child home from the hospital, "Things we'd love to have in kid #2". Sheesh, what morons.

You have a piece of electronics that was unthinkable twenty years ago, a pipe dream ten years ago and hopeful thinking five years ago. Appreciate it for a couple of months will ya'?

That is all. You may return to what you were doing. Or you can go out and beat your local technology journalist. Whatever works better for you. OF course, I'm joking about that last bit. Mostly.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I haven't done this in a while. I've been trying to be nice and positive and insightful and the like but there comes a time when I just have to rant about something. What's gotten under my skin is what I call the nickle and diming of the American consumer.

What am I talking about here? I'm talking about the practice in some industries, especially the travel industry, to sell a consumer a product or service and then tacking on all sort of little expenses that never seem to be much until they're all added up. The company usually advertises some great price for their service or brags that they haven't raised their prices in tough economic times. It could be a $99 round trip airfare or a $79 room rate. But then they find a way to charge you for every little semi-essential service they can think of. The round trip airfare was $99 but then you add the $15 per bag luggage fee, the fuel surcharge of $10, the ticketing fee of $5 and all the rest and you have a $200 fare to you destination. In the hotel industry it's a internet access fee, a gym usage fee, a parking charge, a pay-up breakfast buffet and your great $79 room is now over $150 per night.

Now, I don't mind if the business decides to use a pay as you go business model. There are a number of reason that might actually benefit a certain group of consumers. What really fries me is that the business usually does everything it can to hide their way of doing things. A hotel will proudly proclaim that it has shuttle service to the airport or high-speed internet access or a gym knowing that most of it's potential customers will assume that since those services are usually provided for free they will not be charged for them at this particular place. Once the room is booked and the customer has arrived, the surprise is sprung. And don't tell me it's in the fine print. That stuff's usually in 6 pt or smaller font tucked in a corner of the ad or shown for such a brief period time that only a person with stop action TV could read it.

Can you imagine if an engineering firm did something like that? They give a presentation to a client that says that they'll create the plans for a bridge or building for a certain fee but hide the fact that they're going to charge a bunch extra for the actual blueprints of the plan on the last page of the proposal in a bunch of legalese. Or what if my college charged tuition and claimed you'd have everything you needed to earn a degree but then required textbooks that you only learned about a week into class or charged a "desk fee" for each class or required you to have an email account but then made you pay a daily fee to access it. Sometimes I worry that things are trending that way in higher education but at least we tell you up front what your fees and tuition are going to be and that your tuition only covers the cost of your classes.

The travel industry is struggling right now and I think that a lot of the anger that consumers feel towards airlines and hotels stem from these practices. I like staying at Holiday Inn Express not because the beds are supposed to be nice or because they have a great breakfast buffet but because I know that I won't be nickle and dimed there. The rate I pay includes everything that the hotel offers-breakfast, internet, gym, pool, phone, etc. Delta would do well to learn this. The more frustration people feel about using their services the less likely they are to make an impulse purchase to take a quick trip somewhere. These folks would do well to remember that it's the details that keep people coming back. Of course your room has to be clean and the flight has to arrive on time but it's the little touches that will keep customers returning. You can kill the goose trying to get the golden egg and that seems to be be what the airline and upscale travel industry don't understand.

OK...I'll be done now. Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, June 08, 2009

For those who keep up with my goings-on over at facebook you've already heard the news but I thought I'd let the other three of you know what's going on and fill in some of the details. As the picture to the right shows, I managed to make it to the top of the podium again and this time it was for a big result. For the last 18 months or so I've had my training set on one goal: to win the Georgia State Time Trial Championship for the second time and the first time in a Master's class. Last year I was coming back to racing after a lengthly lay-off and while I had some good form at times, I wasn't able to hold it all the way out to the October date for the championship. When it was announced that this year's event would be in June I knew I had a good shot at doing well.

Most of my racing this year has been to hone my form and practice the pacing and the like to get ready for the full hour long effort that would be required to win. The Georgia Cup TT series events were perfect as they were all over 18 miles in length and lent themselves for building form. Since I last wrote I had two build-up events. One was an afternoon TT up in Gillsville and the other was a hill TT near Dahlonega. I took second in Gillsville after warming up too hard in the heat and then I won in Dahlonega. The only downside was that I came down with a cold a week before the big race because I overtrained heading into the Dahlonega race.

On a side note, the Dahlonega race has to be the coolest weekend I've ever done. The TT course was epic in that it was swoopy and ran through beautiful countryside. It even beat the Nationals course a few years back out on Antelope Island in Salt Lake a few years back. The circuit course and the road race were run through the Montaluce winery property (how cool is that...we raced on the Mountain of Light) with its Tuscan architecture and short steep climbs. In fact, that was feeling I had for the whole weekend: I felt like I was racing in a sort of mini-Giro d'Italia. I'll go back every year if I can.

So, back to the point. I babied my cold and medicated it into submission while I tapered into race day. We actually raced just over the South Carolina border in order to combine our event with the South Carolina TT Championship. I've raced the course once before but I had forgotten that the roads were pretty "heavy". That means they were rough and sticky in a sense. Not helping things was that it was warm and humid making the air heavy too. In my warm-up I felt good, best in over a month and I did a couple of harder intervals without much suffering.

One thing about a time trial is that it's a mental effort in some ways in as much as it's a physical effort. It takes a certain focus to tell your body to suffer just a certain amount without either letting up or pushing too hard. It's funny how the body will want to do that sometimes; just go really hard and then blow up after about five minutes. This focus is especially hard when you're physically tired or haven't had enough sleep. For me it was an issue because I never sleep really well the night before a big race. So when I got to the start line I tried to keep the butterflies down and focus on the task at hand. At the countdown came I took a big breath and shot out of the start house with a burst. After 100 meters I throttled back to catch my breath and settled into a rhythm. What bothered me at first was that I couldn't get my heart rate up over 160 which meant that my body wasn't going to put out the effort I needed. However, about a mile into the route I hit a highway overpass and that climb took me up to 172 beats per minute which is where it stayed for the next 55 minutes.

Six minutes into the ride I caught the rider who went of thirty seconds before me and I caught my 90 second man at 15 minutes. My minute man was a good rider and it took me almost to the turnaround at 29 minutes to pass him and I caught my 2 minute man almost immediately afterwards. The last rider I caught was my 2:30 man who wasn't going to let me pass without a fight. We dueled back and forth for about 4 miles and 10 minutes. I knew he couldn't keep up with me for the entire trip back as I had already put a lot of time into him just by catching him. Still, by racing me pedal stroke for pedal stroke, he kept me from letting up and forced me to stay focused on being just on my limit through what is traditionally a hard part of the race for me. When he finally blew up and dropped off I was in the last 12 km of the ride and I could smell the barn. I was ticking off 1:27 kilometers at this point and at 5 km to go I started to push myself harder. I had lost an overall podium spot in Gillsville by five seconds and I was determined that I wasn't going to lose something here by that much. At 3 km I went into VO2Max territory and started seeing dead relatives. As I crossed the line I was ready to yak and was completely spent.

Back at my warm-up tent I was sure I hadn't done well enough to win. My time was right around 58:30 and I had expected that I would need to better that by at least two minutes to win. When the results were posted I was shocked to see that not only had I won the 40-44 age group but that I beat all the 35-39 riders and took second overall in the entire Master's field with only Shawn Tyrrell beating my by a mere 12 seconds. Lucky for me he was racing in the 45-49 group which he won.

So I'm this year's state champion for Master's 35-44 which is a huge accomplishment for me. It's what I set out to do 18 months ago and while there were both setbacks and accomplishments along the way, to be here now is still settling in. As I've written before, I never saw myself as an athletic person growing up and through my young adult years. For some reason I bought into that brains vs. brawn thing. To do this is, in some ways, just as big an achievement as earning my doctorate or having a successful marriage after 15 years. It doesn't affect the rest of the world as much or as positively as the other two but it changes who I am in the way I see myself and that's important.

To wrap up I need to thank some people who helped me get here. First of all my wife has put up with a lot of travel and hotel rooms and race tents and training rides to be with me and support me in this part of the journey. She went to Yemassee with me even though she had the cold I gave her and celebrated my win with me. Second I want to thank my Security Bank teammates for encouraging me, being great examples and kicking my ass on the bike over and over so that I could get faster. Maybe now Bill will cut me a little slack. Also, DHo provided good conversation and the pain cave as I was searching to get some good early data. Finally, I want to give a shout out to all my students past and present who cheered and prayed for me throughout the parts of this journey. It was easier because of the community and I hope my victory will inspire all of them to go out and take hold of the opportunities in front of them.

Thanks for Reading. Grace and Peace!

The Physicist   Link Me    |