Blog of Bermanism

As many of you know, one of my favorite bands of all time is one by the name of Dream Theater. These guys are great. Their music is the pinnacle of the hard progressive rock scene. Their influences include bands like Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Queen, E.L.P, Elton John, Journey and Metallica, and their music reflects this vast wandering of influence. Technically, Dream Theater is the best I’ve ever heard. Each band member is a highly accomplished musician and can play their particular instrument with the fluidity and complexity of anyone else out there. In the spotlight are guitarist John Petrucci and keyboardist Jordan Rudess. John Petrucci has fingers so fast that you won’t believe that you are hearing a perfectly timed string of 128th notes on a perfect scale, live. The man can do things with a guitar that guitars weren’t meant to do. And, just to rub it in a little, he plays a seven string guitar! Jordan Rudess, the latest addition to DT’s quintet, is seriously one of the better piano/keyboard players I’ve ever heard. His addition to DT added a new dynamic and depth to all the music. His predecessors were also very good, but none of them had quite the skill level as Rudess. He can keep right up with John Petrucci in blazing jams of scales and 128th notes, with both players in perfect time to some unknown and incalculable time signature being maintained by the band’s front-man and drummer, Mike Portnoy (ever heard of 19/16?). Mike Portnoy has the talent and drive of all the great drummers before him. I would pay some serious bucks to see a drum dual between him and Rush’s drummer, Neal Peart. The enormously under acknowledged bassist for the group, John Myung, wields a six-string bass guitar and plays bass lines so rich, complicated, and alternate to the main melody, that each song maintains a smooth, melodic depth as the bass should always add to any song. Finally, lead signer James Labrie manages to keep time and melodic harmony with the rest of the band members sporting a vocal range from baritone to low soprano! This man can definitely sing. Portnoy and Petrucci have produced most of the DT albums and have proven with the release of their latest album, Octavarium, that they continue to reinvent themselves as musicians and that they gain their inspiration and insight from a very deep well that is far from dry.

DT has always produced a very unique and very progressive sound, which is why its fan base remains loyal and constant despite DT’s lack of mainstream appeal. The songs always feature long, complex, melodic, and avant garde riffs and dynamic and changing key and time signatures. They almost always have a good 2.5+ minute long freak-out session split by the guitar and keyboards and allow almost every member of the band to show off their talents. Well, the band has apparently become aware of the fact that they’ve been following this formula for nearly 20 years. Octavarium is a surprise, in every way. DT reinvented the way that they approach music with this album. Instead of concentrating on how much they can make each musician shine throughout the course of a song, they concentrated on the composition of the music. There aren’t any guitar solos in the entire album, all of the solos (which are very few in number) are performed by the keyboards. Also, they’ve employed a full symphony for several of the songs, something that I never thought that they’d do since DT has always prided themselves on being entirely self-sufficient to produce their sound. To top it all off, there is one track, “I Walk Beside You,” that is completely radio ready and pop-ish. Listening to it, it almost sounds like a U2 song, except that when you really listen to it, it is much more carefully composed and much more intricately played than the song appears. When any dyed in the wool DT fan first hears this song, their initial thought will be that DT has finally sold out, because the song sounds like a hit maker (something they haven’t had since their first album, Images and Words with “Pull Me Under”). But, I have to admit that I really like this song, and I listen to it all the time.

Octavarium features eight tracks:

1. The Root of All Evil
2. The Answer Lies Within
3. These Walls
4. I Walk Beside You
5. Panic Attack
6. Never Enough
7. Sacrificed Sons
8. Octavarium

There isn’t a single song on this album that I don’t like, but I’d say that my least favorite is the first song, simply because it doesn’t have the same careful layout as the rest of the album. Track two is a slow ballad that has a very positive and inspirational tone to it, and it is followed by “These Walls,” a fantastic mixed heavy/melodic progressive song. I’ve already told you about “I Walk Beside You,” and “Panic Attack” is composed as you would expect a song about panic attacks to sound, frantic, heavy, methodical, and very well put together. If you let yourself get into the song, you may actually start to feel a little panicked. “Never Enough,” is a song for every man who’s marriage isn’t quite working out or whose employer takes all and gives nothing back, and it is also very heavy and progressive. Now, “Sacrificed Sons,” will give you chills. This is the first song that I’ve heard that is so directly about 9/11. The song follows in the footsteps of previous politically motivated songs like “The Great Debate,” and “In the Name of God,” but this time deals more directly with the religious fanaticism that lead to the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/2001. This song is expertly composed and the words will bring a tear to the eye of anyone that was directly involved with that terrible disaster.

Then, finally, comes the title track of the album, the complete surprise, “Octavarium.” This is a 24 minute-long epic about various topics and is divided neatly into three main sections with eight subsections (probably has something to do with the title). The song starts with an extremely Pink Floyd like melody and then breaks into what I believe to be one of the greatest progressive rock songs ever written. The song is enrapturing and you won’t realize that 24 minutes have gone by when you get to the end of the song. Dan Solera reviews:

Then there’s the surprise. The 24-minute prog-rock title track. I didn’t know what to make of “Octavarium” at first as it was a complete surprise. It is a total departure from “A Change of Seasons” (the band’s other 20+ minute epic). It seems that Portnoy’s prog-rock experiences with Transatlantic have leaked out into Dream Theater. The metal is gone, replaced by a softer rock that sounds a lot like IQ and Spock’s Beard with synchronized guitars and keyboards, and a myriad of different sounds (like juxtaposing a solitary acoustic guitar for a few seconds and stomping on it with a catchy prog melody). After the first painfully long four minutes, the guitars kick in, paving the way for a truly memorable experience, headlined by acoustic guitars, soothing vocals, lots of piano, a curious flute (a surprise) and later a full symphony (a shock).

I’ve been a fan of Dream Theater since 1992, and I’m quite sure that this is my favorite of all of their albums. They’ve managed to continuously reach new heights of musicianship and out-do previous masterpieces while remaining true to their goal of being a unique band with a new sound and never ending up in the mainstream. Mike Portnoy writes:

The rock stardom thing and being on MTV and selling millions of records and being part of a trend has never been interesting to us. We’re just five musicians that like to play and write together, and luckily there’s this devoted audience that’s been behind us all this time.

This attitude and devotion has been what’s kept me a devoted fan over the years. Being an ex-musician myself, I fully appreciate the complexity and difficulty of all the music that DT plays. After this latest album, they remain to be my favorite band of all time. Give Octavarium a listen, I think you’ll like it.

It would seem that we are rapidly approaching the end of an era for modern geekdom. Those of us who love science fiction to the point of obsession are seeing classic scifi shows like Star Trek being put out of production for the first time since its inception in 1966 and the end to the production of new Star Wars movies (much to our relief recently). Other scifi greats such as Stargate SG-1 are closely approaching the state of the ashen remains of fantastic original scifi shows like Firefly and John Doe that were never allowed to mature into the types of series they had the potential to become. Many people have been writing that, with the end of production of such shows, an era of geekdom is coming to an end.

No more Star Trek (unless it gets picked up by a company other than Paramount). It seems almost unheard of. There have now been five independent series of Star Trek running for nearly 40 years, each one intercalated by motion pictures based on the series. It all started with the original series that aired from 1966 – 1969, followed by Star Trek: The Motion Picture which was released in December of 1979. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was a movie based on a few episodes from the original series, was released in June of 1982, followed closely by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in June, 1984. Next came Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986, which was the most popular of all the movies because it involved the crew going back in time to the present day, and it was a pretty humor filled movie. Then, after more than 20 years, the next Star Trek television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (STTNG) premiered and aired from 1987 – 1994. Two years later Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was released, which integrated newer visual effects and technology that had been invented during the airing of STTNG. The final movie with the full original cast, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, was released in 1991, and was far more successful of a movie than V, which sucked a bit in my opinion. Then, following the smashing success of TNG, Paramount created Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which aired from 1993 – 1999, but the show didn’t do very well. It was possibly too far off the beaten path of the Star Trek series, being that the entire basis of the story line took place on a space station that didn’t go anywhere. In 1994, just after the series finale of STTNG, Star Trek: Generations, the first movie with that cast, was released. This movie officially passed the baton from the original cast to the new cast, though it wasn’t the greatest of movies. Star Trek: Voyager promptly took its place at the headline of the Star Trek series from 1995 – 2001, ushering another success story about a lost ship in an unexplored area of the galaxy. During the run of Voyager, Star Trek: First Contact was released in 1996. This was by far the best of all the Star Trek movies from either era and featured the Next Generation’s nemesis, the Borg. In 1998, Star Trek: Insurrection was released and proved to be the lightest and wittiest of TNG’s movies. Finally, the production of the latest Star Trek series, Star Trek: Enterprise, took a step back in time to the beginning of the Star Trek era, to just before the founding of the Federation. This show, although it was very good, found itself at the mercy of policy shifts and a changing of the guard at Paramount, which ultimately caused the early cancellation of the show. Enterprise ran from 2001 – 2005. The last Star Trek movie to be made by Paramount was Star Trek: Nemesis, which was released in 2002. While the plot was a little slow, it was very entertaining, very dark, and had a few surprises that were hard to recover from if you are a hard core Star Trek fan.

All in all, after nine motion pictures and five television series, a total of 731 hours of Star Trek have been released to the public. That is an astounding 30.5 full days worth of nothing but Star Trek, a full month’s worth. With that kind of air time, it is no wonder that Star Trek developed such a devoted cult following. Admittedly, I was one of them. I love Star Trek. I’m not a total Trekkie necessarily, but I will watch any Star Trek that happens to be on TV (and with 30 days worth of content, it is almost always on somewhere in syndication). But, after careful thought, the loss of Star Trek as a source for new scifi material isn’t a great loss. I believe it was time for it to go away. The ideology of the creator of the Star Trek series, Gene Roddenberry, shined a hopeful light on the possibilities of the future of mankind and, in itself, inspired trekkies everywhere to begin trying to make those dreams a reality. Much of today’s technology was inspired by the Star Trek series. The problem though, is that the Star Trek theme was based on an extremely rigid foundation rooted in a military style drama. While this made space exploration very cut and dry, it tended to limit the creativity that could be introduced into the series. Additionally, Star Trek has been criticized by such scifi greats as Orson Scott Card for taking the attention away from the truly great works of science fiction:

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s, a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Sadly, I have to agree with one of my favorite authors. Since my inauguration into the world of Star Trek, I have been compelled to delve deeper into the world of science fiction and have subsequently read some truly great scifi writing, including books written by the aforementioned Card. It is my belief that the presence of Star Trek, and Star Wars for that matter, have been an obstacle for modern science fiction to overcome. As Card states, one of the finest scifi television shows to date is Lost. Admittedly, I’ve missed the entire first season of this new show, but, after all the hype, I’ve started DVRing the reruns for the summer repeat season. I intend to see what all the hype is about. Friends of mine that I respect and are hard core science fiction fans, have touted this show as one of the very best. So, I’ve got to watch it.

So, is this the end of an era of Geekdom? As is written by Stephen Lynch of the NY Times:

By the end of May, a golden era of geekdom will have drawn to a close. No “Star Trek.” No “Star Wars.” No “Lord of the Rings.” No “Matrix.” No Jedi. No Vulcans.

But, as Wil Wheaton says:

The end of “Star Wars” is long overdue. The new movies are an absolute abomination. It’s hard to figure out which sequel to “The Matrix” was worse, and “Star Trek: Enterprise” had little in common with “Star Trek” beyond the name. There was an explosion of geeky goodness in the last few years, and now it’s time to step back, and … well, thin the herd, I guess.

I say yes, it is the end of an era, but it is also a new beginning. Great new shows are coming out like the modern remake of Battlestar Galactica, which makes some surprising fundamental changes to the original series, giving the show a very dark and realistic feel. Shows like Stargate Atlantis are paving the way for new creative series that are based on prior successful shows. As usual, many new and great science fiction novels are being written almost weekly. The latest series from Orson Scott Card consists of a series of shadow novels based on the original Ender’s Game series, and, since you can’t have science fiction without a little fantasy, I am very much anticipating the next Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’m also very excited about Batman Begins, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Needless to say, the world of science fiction is now wide open to a new schema of creativity and exploration. Those of us who revel in these partly imaginary worlds will revel more, though a little more alone as most of the world turns their attention to the latest reality TV show, leaving us geeks in a little less of a mainstream position. We’ll be back to being shoved into lockers and given swirlies in the bathroom while the big jock boy who only watches the O.C. gives you a super wedgie that redefines the boundaries of your butt crack. We’ll have the memories, we’ll have the good times. We’ll still have other fellow geeks to geek with, but we’ll have to wait patiently for the next big wave of science fiction. Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish.

Well folks, it seems that I’ve been posting fewer and fewer entries in the last few weeks. I’ve been so busy with grad school, that I simply don’t have any time to write in the blog. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I don’t have enough energy left to write in the blog. Needless to say, I’ve got about six topics backed up that I’d love to get down and write about. But, I’ve got to keep riding the wave of productivity that I’m on. I’ve got nearly half of my primary manuscript written and I hope to complete the majority of the first rough draft tomorrow. My goal is to have an entire rough done by the end of the week, and then it is edit edit edit! I really would like to have a final rough by the end of next week so that I can call my final committee meeting, finally. Anyway, to all you readers, thanks for your patience and please keep checking back. I have a geek article, a music review, a rowing experience, and a social gripe to write about. Maybe I’ll get inspired tomorrow afternoon and crank out a few of those. BTW, I really want to see Batman Begins. *sigh*

My wife and I celebrated our four year anniversary last Friday. It is seriously hard to believe that we have been married for four years, let alone that we started dating nearly 12 years ago. We have been together for so long and from such a young age, that we had the unique opportunity to grow up together, to learn to change and adapt to the other’s experiences and needs, and to communicate with each other as best friends would, all before we got married. These last four years have gone by very quickly and it really seems that we got married only last week. As with all types of relationships, our marriage has had its ups and downs, but overall, it has been spectacular. I’ve got one of the greatest, most intelligent, most beautiful, down-to-earth, independent women on earth. Plus, she’s a lot of fun. I’m very lucky to be a part of her life.

Normally, I plan something very elaborate, and wholly extravagant for our anniversary or for Valentine’s day or days of that kind. I have been unable to plan anything elaborate for the past two years because friends of ours were getting married on our anniversary. Apparently, we picked a very common wedding date. Anyway, with an impending move, the amount of work I have to do right now, and the crazy schedule that we’re keeping, we decided to keep it low key this year and just go out to a nice dinner. So, for once, that is exactly what we did. Some of our friends had recommended this restaurant in central Austin called Zin Bistro. It is a lovely little restaurant that is nestled right next to Kerbey Lane Cafe, an Austin favorite. Zin has a classic, contemporary American atmosphere complete with the softened industrial feel of finished concrete on the floor, brushed metal track lighting, and splashes of finished wood throughout the restaurant. The walls were decorated with large plasma screens that were showing a rotating display of photos from Webshots, probably from the Scenery and Nature category. Needless to say, being an ultra geek, I loved the touch of the plasma screens. Why buy one, stagnant painting or a framed photograph when you can have an endless supply of art and photos that change every 30 seconds? Rachel enjoyed them also. We spent a lot of time identifying various shots that popped up and wondering whether we had been there before.

Anyway, the menu was replete with contemporary American cuisine, definitely gourmet. We ended up not getting any appetizers because most of them had fish in them, and Rachel doesn’t like fish. Besides, we wanted to save room for dessert. So, we each started off with a drink and a Caesar salad. The salads were very good. They featured a very large amount of shaved Parmesan (nothing bad can come of putting more cheese on anything) along with polenta croutons, which were a surprisingly nice touch. For dinner, Rachel had chicken (she was in a safe mood) that was fabulous. Her chicken was topped with a portabella mushroom, a mound of warm goat cheese, and finished with a balsamic vinegar, olive oil drizzle. It was served with fantastic mashed potatoes and asparagus spears. For a standard chicken dish, this was extremely good. Since Rachel had ordered the least expensive thing on the menu, I, of course, had to order the most expensive thing off of the menu. I ordered their veal special. This dish consisted of a veal chop, done medium, topped with a black truffle butter sauce and surrounded by a veal demi-glace. The veal was served with asparagus spears and potato fingers. This dish was to die for! It was so good you almost couldn’t believe that you were eating a veal chop. For those that don’t know, veal chops are incredibly difficult to cook correctly. They either end up being over or under done leaving them chewy and stale in either case. This chop was cooked to perfection, which allowed by butter knife to cut through it as if it were butter. The veal melted in your mouth. It was phenomenal and worth every penny.

Finally, we ordered dessert. For Rachel, there was only one dessert listed on the menu, and that was creme brulee. Their creme brulee was perfectly done. It was slightly fluffy and tasted light, while the sugar coating was cracked nice and thin on top. The dessert was served with very fresh and perfectly ripened raspberries. This dessert was gone very quickly in Rachel’s hands. I ordered the dessert named The Zin Sin. This dessert consisted of a slab of chocolate torte that must have had a mass equivalent to a small moon. It was so think and so rich that you almost felt that you were eating a giant, slightly melted chocolate bar. The torte was surrounded in a raspberry sauce, topped with fresh raspberries, and finished with a chocolate shaving. It was to die for, but it was definitely enough for two people. The dessert hit your stomach like a ton of bricks. I could have eaten only this dessert for my entire meal and been full afterward. Needless to say, I couldn’t finish it, but it was fantastic.

Overall, Zin bistro was a great dining experience and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a romantic dinner. The prices are not outrageous and the wait staff and host were fantastic. This place was a perfect way for us to spend our fourth anniversary. The simple, small, and intimate setting (only 11 tables inside), made it very easy for us to talk to each other and reminisce about the last four years. It was a great experience.

We finished off the night by coming back to our house and keeping up with our tradition of watching our wedding video. It was fun to see again. Both Rachel and I have lost a lot of weight since then, and it was interesting to see that. It was also good to see some of the people that were in our wedding and who came to it. For all you married couples out there, I highly recommend that you adopt this tradition. It tends to bring you back to your roots and to help you remember how it all began. By the end of the video, we were both very happy and felt very warmly towards each other. It is a renewing experience, which is what an anniversary is supposed to be anyhow. So, here’s to another year, one that is destined to be filled with adventure and change and I’m looking forward to every minute of it. Thanks to Rachel for being you!

I recently stumbled across this guy’s blog who goes be the name of Maddox. He has been around for ages, but he writes some of the funniest stuff I’ve read in a long time. Mostly, his writings remind me of some of the many conversations that I often have with one of my other friends, but a little more on the ridiculous side of things. Anyway, I stumbled across the website when I was bored and browsing through Fark. The article I was reading was about the whales that had beached themselves in Australia. One of the posters placed this lovely on the posting board:

Once again Maddox says it best.

http://maddox.xmission.com/whales_suck.html

So, I naturally went to the link and proceeded to laugh my ass off! The article outlined the various ways in which whales suck and stupid people are for always trying to save them. He even stated that whales don’t do anything for us that is positive, so why should we care about them? It was so ridiculous that I had to keep laughing (I highly recommend you give it a good read). At the bottom of the article was a link that stated simply, “Back to how much I rule…” Well, I couldn’t leave that link alone, so I was sent to his main page. At the top of the page was his latest article entitled, “Star Wars Episode III: a steaming pile of Sith.”

Be careful: if you haven’t seen Star Wars, and want to, don’t read that article as it will spoil the movie for you, not that you don’t know what happens anyway.

So, I read this review of Star Wars and was laughing so hard by the end of it, that my stomach and face muscles hurt and I just couldn’t laugh anymore. As much as I was telling everyone that I enjoyed watching the movie, as stated in my previous post, this guy totally nailed the problems with the movie, in a style that will have you in stitches. Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed the review and I proceeded to read more of the site. Among my other favorites (that I’ve had time to go through) was, “How to kill yourself like a man.” Needless to say, I assume that Maddox is being satirical in this article, but it is quite a funny read. Anyway, just wanted to share my latest source of entertainment on the web with the rest of you. Please be aware that if you are offended by strong and explicit language or are simply easily offended, don’t click on any of the links because you will be offended. Enjoy!