I was all set to see "Next Stop Wonderland" today, but then I recalled this new documentary "Modulations" about electronic music. Checking the schedule, since it was one week only, I changed plans and this film was great! I had to drive down to San Jose to catch it. Rapid edits, weird music, and enlightenment - I now know where the term "House" comes from - seems a DJ was spinning records at a club in Chicago called the Warehouse, and as shorthand people were requesting the music played at the 'House. Conflicting definitions for Jungle - one talking head said it was "sped up Hip-Hop without the Rap," another said "not Hip-Hop but an authentic British urban music." Yet another said that "all music was inherently psychedelic," and the oddly androgynous member of Throbbing Gristle gave us the abbreviation du jour: PMT. "It's all Pre-Millennial Tension - PMT." Among the historical clips were John Cage, Stockausen, and Robert Moog in his lab (which I think was the same footage seen in the "Theremin" movie.

Now I'm watching a rare at-home video: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and Shelley Winters in "The Night of the Hunter". The label says it's color but my references say this noir film is in the requisite black & white (so it musta been colorized) - I'm watching it in monochrome anyway (on my green monitor, the only one I have).

Great "This American Life" last night - all about Mappings by the various senses. Had a feature about an electronic nose under development in Pasadena, and another about a guy who's mapping out various odd things in his NC neighborhood - for example, a map of the cable and power delivery systems, as well as a map of all its street signs. (For a little while, at least, you can see these at the program's web site. The best map he's made, however, was the Halloween edition where he depicted the face of each house's jack o'lantern.