Ernest Alba's Blog

NYC and the best band in the world

I woke up on Wednesday morning at five. I took a shower and got dressed by five forty-five. I met up with Andrea and Hugo in the hallway at six. We left Spanish House and made our way to the Kendall T-stop. We took the T down to South Station where all the buses and trains stop in Boston. After stopping quickly at the McDonald's in the terminal, we hurried to the wing of the station where the buses were being boarded.

At the back of the wing, behind the Greyhounds and the Peter Pans, is a single, small gate where a Chinese woman hurriedly asks for 15 dollars in exchange for a ticket. We came up to the lady and gave her our money. In broken English, she told us to hurry to the bus. The bus she was talking about is the Chinatown Lucky Star Bus. It goes only from the Boston bus terminal to Chinatown in New York City and back - 15 dollars each way, each bus leaving every hour. It fit my needs perfectly. I was going for the day to visit one of the most influential and the most widely recognized Latin rock band in the world.

After four hours on the bus, we finally arrived in Chinatown. Immediately, we could smell raw fish in the air. Amid the din of city noise, as we walked down Chrystie Street to the subway, we could hear snatches of conversations in Chinese, and I marveled at the thought that someone could live her entire life in America without having to learn English. We reached the stairs leading to the underground, and descended into the tunnels of New York. The tunnels throughout NYC are pretty much the same - brick and concrete walls marked with purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, or red paint. Above ground, however, New York can change completely in a matter of blocks. Chinatown is right next to Little Italy and it's odd seeing a bunch of Chinese characters all over billboard, signs, and stores on one side of the street and Italian words written all over the place on the other side of the street. One minute you're considering a Dim Sum, the next a bistro.

Upon emerging again from the tunnels, the scenery had changed. The small Chinese shops and markets were replaced with scrolling text on large screens, enormous advertisements, and flashing lights reaching up to the top of enormous buildings. When I had come here in Spring Break, I couldn't stop staring. Now, I barely paid attention as I slipped through the crowd, walking as fast as I could to the Virgin Megastore. There was something much more important on my mind. I was going to meet them...meet the men that had changed my life with their music and their words.

At first, when I saw the line, I thought there was a mistake. It was incredibly short. To be sure, they weren't going to get there until 2:30, but it was already 10:30. If I were crazy enough, I would have camped out all night. I figured the line would be longer. I put it behind me and went inside to buy my CD and guarantee my place in line. I came out a few minutes later with my translucent Virgin bag and the precious album within. I got in the back of the line to wait, but almost immediately, the person in front of me turned around and said, "The end of the line is around the corner." I thanked him, and breathed a sigh of relief. Ok, I wasn't the only faithful fan. I rounded the corner...and couldn't see the back of the line. It stretched back, back, back until who knows where. I finally found my spot behind three dark-skinned girls, all probably under the age of 15. Almost as soon as I got in the line,  two older women got in line behind me. Then began the interminable wait. I passed the time by listening to the new album on my iPod. I had downloaded it the night before, and had spent the night acquainting myself with the new songs.

At about 2, they started moving the line into the store. We took the escalators quickly down to the bottom floor, where the aisles had been transformed into line partitions. There we waited for another forty minutes until finally, finally! they arrived. A great cheer rose from the crowd as they took the stage and sat down. First they were asked questions from reporters, and then we got our turn. One by one, each person in line got his album cover signed and got a couple of minutes to say something to them. I impatiently waited for my turn. Finally, I made it to the front of the line. I shook their hands, looked them in the eyes, and spoke each of their names to them. Then, instead of saying how big a fan I was, I asked them something my friend had wanted to know. They seemed surprised by the question, but took it in stride, giving kosher but seemingly honest answers. Fher asked me the same question, and I responded with an enthusaistic, "Alot." In a matter of minutes, it was over. But the black ink on my cd booklet was real, the memory was real, and our mental and physical contact was real. They had met Ernest Alba and I had met Mana.

Corsicana - The Documentary

For the past two weeks, I have been promoting this documentary on Youtube, Facebook, and Myspace. I completely forgot about my blog. I guess I picture my blog as a documentary itself - a documentary of my opinions, experiences,and perceptions. But there's no reason not to meld different modes of self-expression.

My friend Josh and I are making a documentary about our hometown. It's primarily a way for him to practice before entering into the film school at UT, but it's also a way for us to illuminate, in our own informal way, some of the problems that face small towns and Corsicana, in particular.

We are still working furiously, editing the last scenes, so this must be brief. We will post our documentary on Youtube tonight by midnite. Just search for "corsicana documentary."

To those of you who read my blog, thank you for your support.

Film Review: The Descent

My God. I haven't been this scared since Saw II. My stomach is still weak, and I can't stop shaking my head in amazement. Why ANYBODY would want to go into a previously unexplored cave hundreds of feet below ground where towering crags of rocks and deep crevasses lie in darkness is BEYOND ME. No good can come from tempting Mother Nature to kick your ass.

The Descent is a story of six young women who go spelunking in the Appalachian Mountains. Before they actually go into the caves, we get some nice backstory about who they are and their relation to one another. The events that happen in the cave are very much influenced by their relationships. The events in the cave are also very much influenced by flesh-eating creatures.

The brilliance of the movie lies in its ability to create monumental suspense. It seems to drag on for an eternity before we get the reason for the suspense. Consider a scene where one of the women wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to the window of the log cabin in which they are staying the weekend. As she looks out the window, the music abruptly stops. The camera pans very slowly into her face as she stares intently out the window. The next shot comes from behind her as she's looking out the window, almost like it's creeping up on her. So we think something is maybe watching her from behind and we wait for it... then, suddenly, something unexpected happens from somewhere we weren't paying attention to.

The other brilliant strategy employed follows from the fact that they are in a cave. There are many shots of closed spaces, small crevasses that must be crawled through, creating an unbearable feeling of claustrophobia. The additional fact that caves are dark as night only serves to enhance that feeling. The women must use lighters, flares, flashlights, and even the night vision feature on their camcorder to see in the caves. This adds to that horrible claustrophobic feeling and adds to the creeping suspicion that something is waiting just outside the reach of the women's field of vision.

This is a well-paced, extremely suspenseful, and entertaining horror flick.

10 Songs to Hear Before You Die

Following this brief outlay of my thoughts on classical music is a list of songs I believe are earth-shattering expressions of human emotion. Not only do they make the world a better place in which to live, but life could be worth living just to hear these songs. In this age, however, classical music is not as popular as it once was. I don't know why, but I can speculate.

Classical music is really hard to get into. I only got into it because my dad listened to it, and my mom was an amateur pianist herself. But their influence only extended to popular classical tunes like Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Overture, Bach's Blue Danube Waltz, or Pachelbel's Canon in D. I didn't really get down n' dirty with classical until my senior year in high school, probably as a way to take my mind off of Sarah.

It's quite easy to get lost in classical music because the melodies can be seemingly endless. Tchaikovsky's famous 1812 Overture (most recently used in excellent fashion in V for Vendetta) goes through four or five different melodies in its 19 minute length. I once dozed off to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 only to wake up and see that it was still playing. The damn thing is 30 minutes long. Beethoven's symphonies are even longer. His Ninth Symphony is about an hour long.

The other thing about classical music is that if you aren't accustomed to it, it's hard to tell what part of the song you are listening to. With modern music, songs are pretty much broken down into a couple of verses broken up by refrains, followed by some sort of instrumental solo or variation on the music, and finished with a heightened rendition of the refrain. It's pretty easy to pick out the individual parts. With classical music, it's not so. The first time I heard the third movement of Mozart's Posthorn Serenade I thought the song ended two minutes before it actually did because of a complete change in melody. I mean, the two parts sounded completely dissimilar. Fifty seconds later, the melody changed again.

While it has been hard to learn to listen to classical music, it's an effort that has yielded many worthy results. Not only can you act like an insufferable elitist, but you can bring down other insufferable elitists who think they know more than you do. That's just the least of your reward. The most beautiful sounds you hear in life will probably be your loved one saying "Yes, I will marry you" or your baby crying as she breathes for the first time in her life. Other than those, the most beautiful sounds you ever hear could quite possibly be the thin, quavering notes of a serenade, the soft melancholy notes of a sonata, or the heraldic bleating of a horn in a march. Classical music brings out human emotion better than any music, coaxing the soul into a state of vulnerability and letting it bleed out its anger and sorrow or radiate its happiness. At the same time, it speaks to the mind, pleasuring it with its intricacy of design, variety in instrumentation, and richness in melody. Once you've decided to delve into classical music, you will have established a source of joy for life.

I've often wondered how, after my death, I could express myself and my life to those who knew me. If I were to consider requesting anything after my death, it would be for the "Kyrie Eleison" from Mozart's Great Mass to play at my funeral so that others would not only know but feel the torture that death lent to my life. The lyrics are a prayer from the angels for the Lord to have mercy on man. At the same time, the music reveals the bittersweet nature of an existence always shadowed and eventually eclipsed by its inevitable cessation.

Without further ado, my list:

1. Mozart - Symphony No. 41: Final movement
   
2. Mozart - Great Mass: Kyrie Eleison
3. Beethoven - Symphony No. 9: Choral
   
4. Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 20: First movement
5. Bach - Foccata and Fugue in D minor
6. Mozart - Symphony No. 40: First movement
   
7. Donizetti - Una Furtiva Lacrima
   
8. Beethoven - Egmont Overture
   
9. Dvorak - Serenade for Strings: Tempo
10. Mozart - Requiem Mass: Confutatis Maledictus
    

How large is the Death Star?

In Star Wars lore, there is one object of fantasy that instills dread and wonder simultaneously in even the least knowledgeable of fans. That object is the dreaded Death Star, the ultimate weapon of destruction built by the Galactic Empire. It has more power than the entire Imperial fleet, with enough power to destroy an entire planet. In Episode 4, as the Millenium Falcon drops out of light speed and lands in the middle of the asteroid field that used to be Alderaan, Han Solo spots a small moon nearby. But Obi-wan warns him, "That is no moon." Indeed, it is not a moon - it is the Death Star. So, the Death Star is the size of a small moon...but what does small mean in that galaxy compared to this galaxy? Exactly how large is this colossal metal orb?

This is a picture of the Executor, a Star Dreadnaught, surrounded by smaller Star Destroyers. Each of those "small" Star Destroyers is a mile long. So imagine how long that Star Dreadnaught is....

Now, this is a picture of the same Star Dreadnaught Executor crashing into the side of the Death Star. Remember, the Death Star is a perfect sphere. Look at how nearly flat the arc forming the side of the Death Star is. And this is the Executor, the Dreadnaught that dwarfed mile-long Destroyers, crashing into it. That should give you a picture of how large the Death Star is.

Estimates using advanced measuring techniques put the actual size at more than 900km in diameter.

Note: 900km is the measurement for the second Death Star. The first one was much smaller, about 160 km in diameter. The "small moon" comparison was made with the first Death Star, so the second one might be the size of a large moon or a small planet.