It's Life Jim, Pretty Much As We Know It

 "The reason that most virtual reality movies don't work is because movies ARE virtual reality." - Roger Ebert

In this pandemic world, I have made an investment in essential survival equipment: an Oculus Quest 2 stand-alone VR headset with nifty hand controllers. 

It's a step up from my Oculus Go - two virtual hands instead of one, and better movement tracking, plus improved graphics. Got it last night and instantly started looking for stuff to load into it, and spent as much time exploring those worlds before the motion sickness set in. 

There's not an awful lot out there for it yet, by the way. Oculus has built it but mostly they haven't yet come, the developers. The platform has limitations, among the worst is that you need an awful lot of set design when a player can look in any direction. Still something caught my eye.

One of the most popular apps (can't really call this a game) is Netflix. Like Netflix on your TV, or phone, the app is free but you have to have a subscription to see the movies. The difference in Oculus is when you boot up you are in a ski lodge, on a nice leather couch, with a HUGE screen in front of you. You start a movie (I took another crack at Enola Holmes, still didn't like it) and the lights dim. You're in a darker room, but you're still watching a big TV. 

I happen to have a nice couch with a coffee table in front, facing a TV, and I sat down and watched a movie for a few minutes there. It was fun and then I started getting distracted. Why can't I get up? Why can't I get off the couch during the slow parts and see what's in that loft upstairs? Maybe I could put an Espresso machine on that counter?

There are plenty of other games available where you CAN walk around. One is Google Earth, sorta, and you can bark out any address in the world and there you are, in street view. And you'll find an awful lot of opportunities to shoot at homicidal robots or play virtual tennis or chat with ten-year-olds in other nations. But the idea that one of the most popular apps is Netflix and the attraction is you can be alone in a nice lodge instead of surrounded roommates in your crappy apartment... I think Roger Ebert's grave spinning is up even higher now.

Walden: now on X-Box and PS3

A TPN:BOW Repost, showing that I was getting my curmudgeon on 4 whole years ago! --s

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

–Henry David Thoreau, from his book Walden, 1854

Quite honestly, I believed the line “quiet desperation” came from this source below. I still think most average English-speaking people of a certain age do as well:

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation in the English way

The time is gone, the song is over

Thought I’d something more to say

–Roger Waters, from “Time,” by Pink Floyd, 1973

Either way, the aphorism doesn’t apply anymore. Here’s why:

[Quite a while ago, apparently], as my bandmates and I tried like hell to load out of a rehearsal space to make room for the next booked band, the conversation took a philosophical turn. Not the best way to turn a conversation when you’re in a hurry, but that’s the way things go.

We were all being somewhat affected by the changes and vicissitudes of the middle years. We were tallying up various minor maladies we were suffering, recounting the ill fortunes that have befallen the friends and family of all the members of late.

Glen, the quiet, reserved rhythm guitarist, asked, perhaps not all that rhetorically, if this is what the future held for all of us—a series of increasingly unhappy tidings, the eventual closing of life’s doors of opportunity until only one remains.

David, the talented lead singer, brought up the “Quiet Desperation” quote. We all agreed.

Then I thought about it for a bit. We had all just finished damaging our hearing for three solid hours with rock.

What do people in America do to inject some distraction and excitement into their empty lives? They do something cacophanous. This is becoming the Age of Noisy.

• Movies are LOUDER than ever. Almost all multiplexes are equipped with three-thousand-watt, DTS-SDDS-Dolby Digital compatible auditoriums. The average IMAX theater is equipped with 10,000 watts of audio power.

• TV is LOUDER than ever. The HDTV broadcast standard includes 5.1 surround sound.

• Video Games are LOUDER than ever. The gentle “beep-boop” of Colecovision has long yielded to game fare like HALO in its fully 5.1 surround sound capable, subwoofer-shredding glory.

• The Internet is LOUDER than ever. Try to enjoy surfing the web sans computer speakers sometime. [actually, the advent of phone apps may have quieted things down in this area a little-- but not much.]

• The friggin’ WORLD is louder than ever. In my neighborhood, there is a 1:1 correlation between people who rent their dwellings and people who own LOUD gas-powered things. (Noticed I said “people who rent:” People in my area who OWN their dwellings are either too busy working to pay mortgages or too old to be into new-fangled whiz-bangs.) Big shiny motorcycles, just like "American Chopper:" They run them up and down the streets most weekends, not really having anywhere useful to go. They also own those little gas-powered razor scooters, hot-rodded cars, gas-powered RC cars, etc. etc. The outstanding neighborhood annoyance is a guy with a LOUD Harley-compatible bike equipped with a fairing—into which he installed a stereo. So the entire block gets to hear him rev his bike, turn up his now drowned-out stereo, rev his bike again, re-adjust his stereo, and so on and so on. It’s the most foolish thing on two wheels I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to the circus.

How are we, the citizens of consumer-culture Western society, personally reacting when faced with a quiet moment? Do we take stock, accept the silence as an introspective moment of Eternity visited to our hectic existences? Or do we drown that mother out?

Admittedly, some people do accept and even seek out quiet and solitude, and use this stillness to enrich their soul and accept their place in the Universe. But not enough, not nearly enough– and our own technology has made it far too easy to turn to entertainment to fill the void. Could Walden have been written if Thoreau had DirectTV?

The mass of men lead lives of noisy desperation.

–Skot C.

Finally, A Use For Classical Musicians

El Dia De Los Beatles

At work, I listen to streaming music via iTunes. Yes, I know that makes me part of the problem right now: I mean, I'm not even downloading any MP3s, let alone buying CDs. I'm also not playing any LPs and my Edison Wax Cylinder player is in the shop. Anyway, I usually take turns with three streams, all actually radio station feeds.

WCBS-FM from New York City is an amazing oldies station, who are capable of hauling out the deepest oldies cuts you can imagine, like "Beautiful Sunday" by Daniel Boone or "Work With Me, Annie" by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters.

K-EARTH 101 is the Los Angeles oldies station. It's not as adventurous as WCBS, but it has an indefatigable sunniness, a sort of Beach Boys/ Van Halen/ Byrds vibe that instantly reminds me of of Southern California.

The other one is Absolute Radio, a Sky-owned radio station out of London. They tend a more modern pop spectrum, ranging from The Kaiser Chiefs to The Killers to 80s cuts from The Smiths and The Stranglers. Nice DJs with plummy regional accents and strange UK ads that aren't aimed towards me at all.

Yeah, that's a lot of oldies. I have to listen to oldies. I play bass in a cover band: It's all research. Still, bopping between these streams gives me enough musical range during the workday to keep me productive, and provides enough interesting new/old material so I can regularly make recommendations my band-mates. Lots of variety.

But not today.

It's 9-09-09, which is now apparently International Beatles day. It's not quite two in the afternoon and I think I've heard everything they've ever done, including studio noise and outtakes.

London, New York, Los Angeles, all fab four all the time. When I checked into local radio when I was running an errand, guess what? More Beatles.

It's quite stunning. The synergy for the new box set and The Beatles: Rock Band is incredible and, apparently, global. Hey, I want to go out and buy the video game-- and I don't even own a video game console.