Made Me Cry – Neda

Whatever it means, Neda made me cry, too.

Made Me Cry – Hague

A guy called Ian Hague gave US$200,000 to The Perl Foundation to help the development of Perl 6.

Well, it didn’t make me weep like Misha or The Walkabouts. But i did shed a tear.

Maybe it’s a tax writeoff and maybe he could give the money to the victims of the bad weather in Burma.

But he gave it to one of the geekiest and weirdest causes possible—development of a programming that possibly no-one will ever use seriously. But it could also happen that it will be the best programming language ever. And for whatever reasons he gave his money to it. It is almost a religious story: At least three of the leading developers of Perl 6 have been struck by bad health problems. And then an angel came, so this undertaking won’t perish.

The world is not lost.

Almost Made Me Cry – Chicken

Driving alone on Kvish 6. Putting on I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. That’s right, the album that opened my “Made Me Cry” series.

I already expect that i’ll cry of happiness from listening to this brilliant record.

And then i see a truck of cows that are going to die. No happiness.

And then i also realized that the opening track is titled “Return to Hot Chicken”. Great. Everything is broken.

Actually i should try to suppress and forget this stupid experience.

Made Me Cry – Accordian

Someone searched for “learn to play accordian no cars go”.

For an explanation, see Hey.

Made Me Cry – Nikita

My nephew Nikita came to Israel to spend the summer with his grandparents – my parents. It was all fun, until two days before his flight back to Moscow he was hospitalized in Rambam with a bad case of peritonitis.

So his flight is postponed, of course. A week after the operation he can still hardly eat and walk. My parents sit at his bed in the hospital twenty-four seven and they are terribly tired, so i came to help them.

Today i sat with him for a few hours. He mostly slept. The TV was on with a low volume and i watched Music 24 (nonstandard¹), the Israeli music channel.

The golden age of the music video has ended in about 1996. Back then MTV was the undisputed Master of the Universe and local videos, although very low-budget, aspired to the international big brother and had a lot of character. These days, however, nearly all Israeli music videos can be grouped into three sets:

1. The singer is walking around the streets of Tel Aviv. And it’s the same couple of streets in all of them.
2. The singer is walking around his rented apartment in Tel Aviv, makes coffee, watches TV, talks on the phone or goes down to the street to buy cigarettes.
3. A huge close-up on the singer’s face. Obviously, this group is the most disgusting. I guess that too many video directors fell in love with Sinéad or – worse – with Alanis (Flash²).

By a rough count, nine out of ten videos falls into one of these, which is quite astonishing and depressing. It can ruin even good songs. But there are exceptions.

Eviatar Banai’s video for “Yesh li sikuy” (Flash) is a quiet little masterpiece of music video making. The song itself is one of the all-time masterpieces of Israeli music; It is from Banai’s debut album. It’s black and white and it shows people in a bar lip synching to the song, subtly conveying the mood of the line they are singing. (Can you spot Banai himself there?)

Somewhere in the middle of the song there are those lines:

אמא שרה לבן בלילה,
אמא כאן לידך כל הזמן.

Mummy sings to the son in the night,
Mummy’s here near you all the time.

In the video a pregnant woman is singing the last line. You can hardly notice that she’s pregnant until she touches her belly. This subtlety is pure beauty.

I guess that it would make me cry even without the unfortunate circumstances, but sitting there in the hospital near sleeping Nikita while his mother was far away in Moscow did put things into a perspective.

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I started writing this entry a few days ago. It was a pretty crazy bunch of days since then.

Nikita’s mother – my sister – Olga finally came to Israel today after fighting with travel agencies for a few days. His health became better.

Yesterday i bought him Gossip’s Standing in the Way of Control, a CD for which he was looking for months, in Moscow and in Israel. Finding it wasn’t easy. He was particularly happy to receive it, which may have contributed to his slowly improving health, too. Despite his current condition, i envy him; i don’t think that i shall ever be as touched by music as i used to be when i was his age.

Anyway, for the night he put it in a drawer next to his hospital bed and in the morning it wasn’t there. There is a slight chance that with all the fuss around him the CD was just misplaced and will be found, but everybody is sure that it was stolen.

I’m amazed. What a terrible scumbag someone must be to steal a rare CD from a sick child. I mean, i would at least understand the motivation if it was something famous, but even i hardly know this band, so what kind of a low life would want to steal it? He can get – what? – 20 NIS for it in a used CD store? Fukker.

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¹ Actually, the site seems to be mostly functional, but the videos use CastUp technology, which is IE-only. I never managed to install the Firefox plugin they offer, and even if it would work, it would only work on Windows. By the way, i (still) work for the company that recently announced the acquisition of CastUp. What do you know…

² Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” is not on YouTube. Alanis’ Head over Feet video is still there…

Made Me Cry – Misha

Moscow 1980 – Farewell, Misha (Flash)

In Soviet Russia the good things were very good.

In Soviet Russia the big things were BIG.

Yesterday i saw a child walking with a big colorful balloon and imagined him flying to the sky. And it reminded me of Misha – the mascot of 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Very few of the people who grew up in the Soviet Union won’t at least shed a tear when seeing the finishing ceremony of that olympiad. Its high point was “saying goodbye to Misha”, as he was released into the sky holding onto colorful balloons to the sounds of a sad farewell song. Everybody in Russia remembers the song. More than this, this is The Great Unifying Moment of post-Stalin Russia, comparable to 9/11 and Kennedy assassination.

So watch this movie. The Misha part begins at 3:20; don’t miss Misha himself shedding a tear at 5:30.

If this movie doesn’t make you cry, then you’ll never really understand anything about Russia.

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Here’s the song. Lyrics – Nikolai Dobronravov, music – Aleksandra Pakhmutova. My translation is lousy, but i tried to make it rhyme; improvements are welcome. Website of the authors with links to music files is here: До свиданья, Москва.

На трибунах становится тише… Тает быстрое время чудес. До свиданья, наш ласковый Миша, Возвращайся в свой сказочный лес. Не грусти, улыбнись на прощанье, Вспоминай эти дни, вспоминай… Пожелай исполненья желаний, Новой встречи нам всем пожелай. Пожелаем друг другу успеха, И добра, и любви без конца… Олимпийское звонкое эхо Остаётся в стихах и в сердцах. До свиданья, Москва, до свиданья! Олимпийская сказка, прощай! Пожелай исполненья желаний, Новой встречи друзьям пожелай. припев: Расстаются друзья. Остаётся в сердце нежность… Будем песню беречь. До свиданья, до новых встреч.

The stadium stands are getting quiet… Time of miracles is melting away. Farewell to you, our tender Misha, Go back home to your wood of fairy tales. Don’t be sad, give a smile before the parting, And recall these good days, please recall… Wish us all the fulfillment of wishes, Wish a new meeting soon to us all. So let’s wish lots of luck to each other, Let’s wish kindness and love with no end, Bright and clear echo of the Olympics Will forever be cherished and sang. Farewell to you, Moscow, farewell, Farewell, the Olympic fairy tale, Wish us all the fulfillment of wishes, Wish a new meeting soon to us all. chorus: Friends are coming apart, Tenderness stays in the heart… We shall cherish the song. Farewell, we shall meet again.

Made Me Cry – Victoria Eleanor (UPDATED)

She died.

I have never heard about her, but And when i saw her user page, it made me cry. Internet people are people too.

So why not pay an Internet tribute.

Rest in peace, whoever you were. –~~~~

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Oh (edit): Crap, it seems that it was a hoax.

Made Me Cry – Madness (Kindness)

~saalmog – Swedish tourists

We are a nice bunch here in Jerusalem.

Made Me Cry – Love

There’s music that you love.

There’s music that you may call “my favorite music”. If you’re lucky, you can name at least ten of your favorite songs without thinking and if i’ll ask the same question in a month the answer will be different.

Then there’s something more special: Music that made you love music.

I know what it is for me. Eran Zur’s “Blindfold in the Middle of the Sea”; Too bad it means nothing to you if you’re not Israeli. To be more international, i’ll add Björk’s “Post”, DDT’s “Black Dog Petersburg” and Sonic Youth’s “Washing Machine”. But that’s it. So for me Eran Zur will stay the man that made me love music 11 years after i started playing piano.

But then there’s something even more special: Music that reminds you that you love music.

Today The Walkabouts reminded me that i love music. They did it with a song called “Cul-de-sac” from their 2001 album “Ended Up a Stranger”. It is a non-hit song from a non-hit album, though some established critics and at least one blogger liked it, and yet it brings together so many of the good things in rock n’ roll. A female singer that has voice and talent and soul (looks good too). A male singer that can write songs and deliver them without a great voice; A Man, OK? And guitars. And a great string arrangement. And superb contrast between a menacing verse and the beautiful melody of the chorus. The songwriter doubled the effect of the chorus by beginning it one bar later than its expected time.

That has to be the best album i listened to in a while – six years too late.

Ah, that band also had a hit song in mid-nineties on MTV Europe – the folkish “The Light Will Stay On”, thanks to which i know them. It is a wonderful song, it still makes me cry and it also reminded me that i love music, but that could be the nostalgia effect.

Made Me Cry – Hey

Arcade Fire live at Rock en Seine (Flash)

Arcade Fire released two albums. Everybody agrees that both are growers—you need to listen to them for a few times before you can really love them. The first one may have been called manipulative—several band members lost their family members during the recording, so they called the record “Funeral” and dedicated several songs to their families, most notably the unbelievable closer “In the Backseat”. The record went on to top a lot of critics’ best-of-2005 list. And no, it’s not manipulative—it is really good and all the praise was well deserved.

A week ago they released their new record Neon Bible (Flash). With such a title (taken from a novel) and a booklet with lyrics typeset like bible verses and a black-and-white photograph of a girl reading a book on every page it may look like an overblown and overambitious attempt at a sophomore album. And on the first listen it really sounded like an album full of opening tracks, big-sounding but not too engaging. After a few more listens, though, it took a shape. The next-to-last track, No Cars Go, is my favorite, and probably everyone else’s. The music reminds a little of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight Tonight”, but far better. The lyrics are unusual for the band, which often employs wordiness, retro imagery and lines in French—here the lyrics are very simple, short and repetitive. The result is the best rock anthem of the decade so far. And it comes from a bunch of Canadian Québécois geeks.

Watch the video closely. I would really like to learn to play accordion now.

Made Me Cry – Russian Hero

A Russian man died in Utah, trying to save the life of a girl falling from a cliff: in English, по-Русски.

“Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.”

May God have mercy on his soul and reward his selfless courage.

Made Me Cry – Firefox Again

And more about Firefox – i keep reading about it and i can’t stop getting fascinated by it. It’s a proof that free software works and that it can be used by regular people. It’s a proof of Microsoft’s lies, dirty tricks and incompetence.

There are many astonishing things about Firefox. The dedication of the programmers who developed Firefox to do The Right Thing – to write a free browser which will support the best technical standards and will be not just usable, but cool too. The dedication of the user community, of which i am proud to be a part to using and promoting, even with the worthy alternatives around (Safari, Opera, Konqueror and well, IE). Even it’s logo makes me shed tears. Free software done right changes the world. It actually does.

Firefox has been downloaded 200 million times. This number probably includes previous versions. It means little about actual market share. But why not celebrate?

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My older Firefox-related entries:

• Now I Got Worry
• Sakhr
• Public Service – Smooth Transition to Firefox
• Beta Rant
• The Not-So-Fat Lady

Made Me Cry – Leaving on a jet plane

Fucking Armageddon is on loop in the labs here.

Buscemi in a space suit. Affleck and Buscemi in a space suit singing “leaving on a jet plane.” Owen Wilson complaining about people who think that Jethro Tull is a person in a band.

Liv talking Japanese (i heard that she had trouble with Quenya, and Japanese is harder as far as i know. Whatever.) Liv making Aharoni cry:

— “Promise me you’ll come back!

— “OK.”

— “Say it!”

— “I promise.”

Boo-hoo.

The President of the United States of America making Aharoni cry:

— “I address you tonight not as the President of the United States, not as a leader of a country, but as a citizen of humanity. … And yet, for the first time in the history of the planet, a species has the technology to prevent its own extinction.”

Yeah, now that Aharoni is submitting patches to Perl 6, it should better have. Ya mama.

— “Ahh! Ahh! The door’s gonna blow!”

Repeat.

Made Me Cry – Bianca

Bianca Ryan

This is the cheesiest entry ever. You’ve been warned.

I hope that it’s natural too.

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Oh (edit): I suddenly realized that Bianca is the Italian word for “white”. Coincidence?