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It's Home, Home at the Saloon For Many Montana Residents - Bars Are Still the Hub of Vast State's Small-Town Life

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...n3?language=printer

It's Home, Home at the Saloon For Many Montana Residents - Bars Are Still the Hub of Vast State's Small-Town Life
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 4, 2004

DEWEY, Mont. -- After he shot his dog but before he murdered the jukebox, Gregory Michael Pepin explained to the bartender that he would dearly love to shoot himself. He just didn't have the nerve.

What he did have, as he sat at the bar, was a snootful of tequila and a semiautomatic rifle with 30 bullets in the clip. The bartender, his hands trembling, poured Pepin a drink and tried to talk of happy days.

It was going rather well, Roger Malmquist, the bartender, remembers thinking, when the jukebox suddenly started up. As the bartender tells the story, Pepin whirled on his barstool and fired four rounds into the jukebox. The music stopped. Moments later, the phone rang behind the bar. Pepin silenced it with five more bullets. Then the jukebox, wounded but not yet dead, erupted with another song. Pepin whirled again, fired two more rounds and finished it off. The bartender, trembling still, poured Pepin another drink.

When there's big trouble in small-town Montana, as occurred here on a cold morning in late November, it's usually at the bar. Trouble, in fact, has no place else to go. Neither does gossip, companionship or heartbreak. In Dewey, as in hundreds of dying towns and hamlets across this vast state, there is only one enterprise that is not yet boarded up, abandoned or broke.

The bar. It's an architectural and sociological artifact that in many ways defines rural Montana, with its dwarfing expanse of plains and mountains, shrinking rural population and tradition of seeking answers to life's persistent questions in a noisy, smoke-filled room with a view of grimy liquor bottles.

"People lead very isolated lives in this state, and the bar is the one place they can get together," said William Kittredge, the Montana author of "Hole in the Sky" and many other books about the modern West. "Bars take the place of churches for a lot of people."

There is a historical undertow in Montana that gives bars a quasi-religious, semi-sanctified status. It continues to pull on the state legislature, which bucks national trends and permits unaccompanied minors to hang out in bars (so long as they don't drink). State lawmakers also allow drivers to have open containers of alcohol in their cars.

Montana has a more secular, rambunctious past than most of the other Upper Plains states, which were settled mainly by churchgoing sodbusters. Lutheran and Catholic farmers, egged on by wives and burdened by children in need of moral uplift, built social lives around the local church, from Sunday services and choir practice, to hayrides with the pastor and potluck dinners.

But Montana, especially the mountainous western third, was settled by men without women -- miners, loggers, gamblers, adventurers, cowboys, opportunists.

"For all the obvious reasons, they needed to drink," writes Joan Melcher, in "Watering Hole," a history of Montana's bars. "But there were countless other reasons why they frequented the saloon."

In early Montana, she writes, weddings and wakes, baptisms and elections, town meetings and book readings were all held in the bar, usually because it was the biggest and most welcoming building in town. Newcomers to town often slept on the bar floor. Later on, reporters were given saloon expense accounts -- bars being the most reliable place to find news.

Drunkenness went hand in glove with family values in many Montana bars at the turn of the century. A sign in a bar in Helena counseled its patrons: "Don't Forget to Write dear Mother. She is thinking of you. We furnish paper and envelopes free and have the best whiskey in town."

Wholesomeness in a grimy den of liquor is an enduring quality of Montana life. James Crumley, a writer of hard-boiled detective novels who lives in Missoula, said he felt it the moment he arrived in this state.

"I grew up in south Texas, where all the white people were Baptists and going to a beer joint meant you were a bum," Crumley said. "When I moved here in the '60s, everybody was in the bars, including elementary school teachers. Nobody cared, as long as they were good with the kids at school."

The rhythms of small-town Montana bar life go something like this: Bars are often open at 8 a.m. with farmers and ranchers coming in to drink black coffee, complain about the weather and argue about things they have been arguing about for decades. Drinking usually doesn't commence until about 3 in the afternoon. Because Montanans, especially in small towns, tend to get up early, most people go home by 9.

Here in the Big Hole Valley of southwest Montana, children often come into bars after school, especially on cold winter afternoons.

"We give 'em candy and watch out for them, until their parents get off work," said Charlie Beck, owner of the H Bar J Saloon in Wise River, about five miles from Dewey.

"Bars are an extension of the front porch," said Pat Williams, a former congressman from Montana who now teaches at the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West. "With the occasional lapse, they are also islands of civility."

Occasional lapses of incivility do occur, and they are why bartenders in Montana continue to keep baseball bats and pistols under the bar.

"We do have a lot of bar fights," said Jay Hansen, a deputy sheriff in Beaverhead County, which includes the Big Hole Valley. "Some turn into deaths."

Fight management is something that every Montana bartender is forced to learn.

"You got to jump into the middle of it and try to steer them outside," said Chester Pierce, owner of the Wise River Club, another bar in the Big Hole Valley. "You get a bad bar fight, and it ruins everybody's appetite for the night."

Shootings are far from unknown.

"Almost all of these bars had a shooting in them," said Louie Rivenes, bartender for 20 years at the H Bar J.

About the time Rivenes hired on there, two carpenters got in an argument over a woman and one shot the other in the back, leaving a bullet gouge on the bar that is still visible in the H Bar J.

At the Wise River Club, a man shot his cheating wife and then himself. They both died near the pool tables. That was about 15 years ago. More recently a man was beaten to death in the parking lot outside the Wise River Club.

And here in Dewey last month, there was Gregory Pepin, his semiautomatic rifle and the bullet-riddled jukebox.

Malmquist, the bartender and co-owner of the Dewey Bar, recognized Pepin when he came in that morning looking depressed, disheveled and smelling of alcohol.

In better times, the bartender said, he had allowed Pepin to run a tab, which he always paid back.

"To be fair to him, he had behaved himself," Malmquist said. "A gal walked into the bar a few weeks ago, and she had a flat. It was dark, about 15 below. Pepin, with no gloves and just a light jacket, went out and changed the tire for her. When he came in, I gave him a couple of hot buttered rums on the house."

So, when Pepin came into the bar at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 19, a Wednesday, the bartender said he tried to reason with him. He nodded sympathetically, he said, when Pepin moaned about how he had just shot his dog and wanted to shoot himself but didn't have the guts.

"I talked him out of shooting the five televisions, the mirrored back-bar, the kegs, the windows and the doors," Malmquist said. "I reminded him of how he had changed that flat tire for the gal and how I tabbed him, and he started to calm down."

Then, that jukebox played, the phone rang and all hell broke loose. Malmquist said he watched in fear and disbelief as Pepin emptied his clip.

Pepin had several more clips of ammunition out in his car, and he was walking out to the parking lot to fetch them, Malmquist said, when he encountered Jackie Fisher, a special agent with the U.S. Forest Service. She'd heard a police-radio alert about the shooting.

She drew her gun and ordered Pepin to the ground, but he did not cooperate, according to Malmquist, who heard Pepin shout, "Shoot me. Shoot me."

Finally, a man who lived behind the Dewey bar tackled Pepin, and Fisher quickly cuffed him.

Pepin, 47, an unemployed handyman who recently had moved to the Big Hole Valley, is being held in the Beaverhead County jail in nearby Dillon in lieu of $50,000 bail. He has been charged with multiple felony counts of criminal endangerment and faces as many as 40 years in prison.

On the day of the shooting, the regulars at the Dewey Bar helped the owners sweep up the glass and mop the floors. By 6 p.m., the bar was back in business.

Cash-Strapped States Cut Arts Funding

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...&u=/ap/arts_funding

Cash-Strapped States Cut Arts Funding
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer
December 30, 2003

Cash-strapped state governments have slashed funding for theaters, museums and performance groups by nearly one quarter, while federal spending on the arts has edged up slightly.

Congress increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts to $122.5 million, up from $115.7 million, for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

At the same time, however, state arts spending plummeted from $354.5 million to $272.4 million, a drop of 23 percent.

In some states the decline was even more precipitous: California cut spending by 90 percent and Missouri eliminated appropriations for the arts.

The $122.5 million NEA appropriation is the largest for the agency since 1995, when it came under attack in Congress for supporting what critics said was obscene art. The appropriation was slashed from $162.3 million for 1995 to $99.5 million for 1996.

Contributions from state governments have fallen from a peak of $446.8 million in 2001, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

"We know that when funding is cut, arts organizations lose jobs that directly reduce their capacity to create, which in turn affects their bottom line," Jonathan Katz, the assembly's chief executive, said in a statement.

Three states showed the biggest declines, the organization reported. California, normally one of the biggest contributors to the arts, dropped its spending from $20.3 million in 2003 to $1.9 million for 2004. Michigan's arts budget was cut nearly in half, from $22.5 million to $11.8 million. Florida, in 2003 the biggest spender on the arts after New York, went down from $30 million to $6.7 million.

New York's spending dropped from $51.5 million to $44.7 million, but it remains at the top of the list of states.

Missouri made no appropriation at all for 2004, but authorized spending $3.5 million from a state-funded cultural endowment.

Video game music gains recognition

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...sicgainsrecognition

Video game music gains recognition
By Eric Gwinn Tribune staff reporter
December 30, 2003

Once an afterthought in the production process, video game soundtracks increasingly use original music to reach new listeners who blur traditional entertainment boundaries.

"Record companies are realizing that this is the new radio," says Greg O'Connor-Read, founder of Music4Games.com and an agent for video game composers.

In addition to licensing existing tunes, record companies also are commissioning new works for games. Big names have written music for games now on the shelves for the holiday season. Hip-hop performer Snoop Dogg created three original songs for "True Crime: Streets of L.A." Rock icon Peter Gabriel contributed a track for "Uru: Ages Beyond Myst," released Nov. 11, and will write an original composition for the next, as-yet-untitled, "Myst" puzzle game.

"The acts themselves play video games, so they're a lot more willing to get their songs in the game," says Scott Lee, product manager for "Project Gotham Racing 2." That game's soundtrack uses prerecorded music and deejay banter from real radio stations, including Chicago's WPWX-FM 92.3 and WKQX-FM 101.1.

"It's no secret that the record industry is in deep trouble," said Randy Winograd of HSI, a Los Angeles production house for TV ads, music videos and game music. "Consumers would rather download than pay $15 for a CD, leaving the record industry scrambling for revenue. How do they monetize music? License to video games."

Typical music budgets for video game makers have tripled over the last three years to $150,000 from $50,000, according to Tommy Tallarico, president of Game Audio Network Guild, or G.A.N.G., an organization that focuses on improving music in interactive media.

G.A.N.G. also has persuaded U.S. musicians' unions to lower rates charged for working on video games, leading to more American musicians performing on such titles as the recently released "Medal of Honor: Rising Sun" and "Call of Duty."

Asia and Europe have recognized the power of video game soundtracks for years. Symphonic versions of video game music fill stores in Japan. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts recently added an awards category for video game music. In the United States, game soundtracks are slowly showing up on the shelves of large department stores and music stores.

As programmers push video chips to new limits -- with realistically moving humans and mood-creating, natural-looking shadows -- game companies are turning to soundtracks to further separate themselves from their competitors.

For instance, players who preordered the comic book-style spy game "XIII," from UbiSoft, received the jazzy soundtrack on a separate CD. Electronic Arts is hyping its "NBA Live" hip-hop soundtrack with a Web site devoted to playing music taken from the game. EA also is pushing its "SSX 3" snowboarding soundtrack with its own CD.

Sales aren't earth-shattering yet: Since its release in February 2002, "SSX Tricky" has sold 1,800 soundtrack units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But in a sign that buyers may be catching on, the sequel "SSX 3" already has sold 1,800 units since its release Sept. 30.

The benchmark for soundtracks is the seven-CD effort from "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," released a year ago. Tempting buyers with secret game codes and '80s tunes ranging from Ozzy Osbourne's "Bark at the Moon" to Grand Master Flash's "The Message," the "Vice City" soundtrack has found its audience.

CD sales for game tunes

Each "Vice City" CD offers real tunes from the fictional radio stations in the seminal drive-anywhere-do-anything game that has sold 10.5 million copies. The most popular CD, "V-Rock," sold 42,300 copies of music from Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Osbourne. Together, the CDs totaled 142,200 units sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Game audio has always been important, from the ominous boom-boop-boom-boop of "Asteroids" to the blippy fanfares of the "Legend of Zelda" franchise that have inspired a new wave of garage bands.

A few years back, the original next-generation consoles hit the market with improved audio chips that allowed game publishers to stick adrenaline-pumping CD-quality tunes into games. On the PlayStation, Namco quickly took advantage with "Ridge Racer" and its soundtrack of hard-core dance music that you could replace with your own CDs while you raced. But it was Psygnosis' "Wipeout" series of PlayStation games -- in which players raced sleek hovercraft to thumping dance beats of Fatboy Slim, Future Sound of London and more -- that signaled the future, said Greg O'Connor-Read, whose Web site aims to raise the profile of game-music composers, some of whom he represents as an agent.

"The `Wipeout' series wasn't about the music but the club culture crossover experience," he said. In the United Kingdom, club kids got hooked on the game after hearing that its soundtrack was studded with tracks they had heard on the dance floor.

"That was the game that made the PSOne the console of choice for casual games," said O'Connor-Read.

Led by figures such as Tallarico, who founded the Game Audio Network Guild, game music composers are working for more recognition, including an Oscars (news - web sites) category.

Third of experience

"In video games, audio is one-third of the experience -- visuals, audio and game play -- but is a third of the budget put into audio? Of course not, especially four or five years ago," Tallarico said.

Underscoring how far things seemed to have progressed, Tallarico said he is trying to produce a 2 1/2-hour symphonic concert featuring majestic game music, pyrotechnics and actors portraying video game characters rappelling from the sky.

All this descended from the humble bloops of "Pong."

Two decades ago, when composers had only scratchy audio chips to work with, some of the most memorable game music was created.

But as Tallarico put it, "If you had your choice to listen to Beethoven's 9th [Symphony] on the GameBoy or by the London Symphony Orchestra, which would you prefer? Have you ever heard the Mario Bros. theme done by a 90-piece orchestra? It's beautiful.

"As we grew up, we wanted rock, orchestras, alternative [versions of video game music]. That's what we listen to now. We don't listen to kiddie music anymore."

For More People in 20's and 30's, Home Is Where the Parents Are

How quickly the years go by ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/nyregion...nted=print&position=

For More People in 20's and 30's, Home Is Where the Parents Are
By TAMAR LEWIN
December 22, 2003

On the job, James Navarro seems to be a model of mature adulthood. At 30, he is an appellate court lawyer in Brooklyn, working 50 hours a week on research to help judges decide cases.

But look at the rest of his life, and the picture becomes murkier.

Mr. Navarro lives with his parents in Queens. His mother packs lunch for him a few times a week. His bedroom still has his high school baseball trophies and a giant stuffed bunny that was a present from a former girlfriend. On weekends, he plays touch football and goes drinking and clubbing with his two best friends ? both about his age, fully employed and living with their parents, too.

"When I was in college, I thought I'd be married by 24 and have a house and kids by 30," Mr. Navarro said. "Now I think the idea of being an emotionally developed male by 24 is ridiculous. I want to get married and have kids someday. But I don't feel any pressure that it has to be soon."

Mr. Navarro is no loser: he is funny, good-looking, charming ? and typical of his generation's slowed-down approach to adulthood. To some extent, the data tells the story. Nearly all the traditional markers of adulthood, including marrying, getting a college degree and moving out of the family home, are occurring later than they did a generation ago.

The shape of life for those between 18 and 34 has changed so profoundly that many social scientists now think of those years as a new life stage, "transitional adulthood" ? just as, a century ago, they recognized adolescence as a life stage separating childhood from adulthood.

"There used to be a societal expectation that people in their early 20's would have finished their schooling, set up a household, gotten married and started their careers," said Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "But now that's the exception rather than the norm. Ask most people in their 20's whether they're adults and you get a nervous laugh. They're not sure."

Sociologists say there are several indicators of this state of mind. Nationwide, the median age of first marriage, which hovered around 21 for women and 23 for men from the 1940's to the 1970's, has risen steadily since to 25 for women and 27 for men.

Education takes longer. Only about a third of those who go straight from high school to four-year residential colleges graduate four years later. With so many young people taking time out to make money or change direction, most education experts now use six-year graduation rates as their benchmarks.

Perhaps the most striking change, though, has been in the proportion of young adults nationwide who live with their parents. To be sure, the numbers remain small ? about 14 percent. Nonetheless, between 1970 and 2000, the most recent census, the percentage of 24- to 34-year-olds living with parents or grandparents increased by 50 percent. During the boom years of the 90's, the trend reversed slightly among those in their 20's but held steady among those in their 30's.

The Census Bureau's Current Population Survey shows that the numbers are on the rise again. The trend is most visible in New York ? 30 percent of the New York-Northeastern New Jersey area's 22- to 31-year-olds live with their parents ? followed by Los Angeles and other large, expensive cities. <b>

<b>The changes raise many policy concerns, chief among them that most American institutions are still built around the idea that people in their 20's are fully autonomous. Young adults coming out of the foster care system, or the juvenile justice system, get no continuing support. Health insurance cuts off, even for 20-somethings in affluent families.

Then, too, the longer transition to adulthood has striking implications for parenthood.

"Parenting used to be thought of as a life stage of about 18 years," said Robert Schoeni, a professor at the University of Michigan who works at its Institute for Social Research. "If it means continuing support for 30 or even 34 years, that's not always comfortable for parents who were raised under very different conditions and were expected to be on their own much earlier."

In part, Professor Furstenberg and others say, the longer transition to adulthood reflects an economy in which most jobs that pay enough to support middle-class life require years of advanced education. For most young people, that means years of semiautonomy, in which they piece together loans, part-time jobs and whatever money their families can provide. Many spend their 20's and early 30's shuttling between college and work, professional school and travel, community service and internships, never earning enough to settle down, marry and raise a child.

Nancy Dye, president of Oberlin College, said that whereas most graduates used to go straight on to graduate school, having chosen at least a preliminary career path, many now stick around, uncertain of their direction. A few years ago, she said, "students came up with a new term, F.T.L. ? failure to launch."

In interviews with dozens of 20-somethings, most say they share a sense that there is no right time to have completed their education, lived on their own or gotten married, that such fixed expectations have no place in their lives. And many see it as beneficial to step slowly and gradually into adult life.

"I think it's great, and really important, to take time to date and travel and hang out with your friends," said Elisabeth Levy, 28, a catering sales manager at a private club in Midtown Manhattan. "This way, when you do finally settle down, you're really ready, and you don't wake up at 33, married with two kids and a house, and trapped, like `How did this happen?' and `What did I do with my life?' "

Those living at home, even if employed in good jobs, often describe their arrangements as sensible and mature, in that instead of throwing away money on rent, they are saving money toward their future. And if, meanwhile, they are back in their childhood bedrooms, working at low-paying jobs to save enough to continue their educations or buy homes, they say, that is no tragedy.

For many, the 20's are a floating, flexible, exploratory time.

"For the last few years, my life has been so up in the air," said Jennie Schneier, 24, who works part time in public radio. "Several of my friends have started applying to grad schools. One is applying to three different types of grad school ? law, business and photography ? to see where she'll get in.

"I find grad school appealing, too, because I like the idea of settling into something. But I don't have any idea what to study."

Ms. Schneier, who has lived with her parents for three years, recently moved from an unpaid internship to a job where she is paid one day a week. "Sometimes I think it's ridiculous that I'm about to turn 25 and can't support myself," she said. "I've regressed a little since I've been back with my parents: If I'm home by 6:30, there's dinner on the table. And my dad does the laundry."

The Research Network on Adult Transitions, a team of social scientists directed by Professor Furstenberg and financed by the MacArthur Foundation, has for years been gathering data on 18- to 34-year-olds: when they reach the traditional markers (later, throughout the Western world), what they think constitutes adulthood (self-sufficiency, a full-time job and an independent household, but not necessarily marriage or children), when they feel most adult (at work), how much support they get from their parents (on average, $38,000, or $2,200 a year from 18 to 34).

The return to the nest of children in their 20's and 30's can be a jolt for parents. Several parents with newly returned children, who would not be quoted by name for fear of hurting their children's feelings, agreed that despite the pleasures of having their offspring close at hand, their return had been stressful and, in some cases, disruptive of their plans to sell a large home, retire or move.

Suddenly, they say, everything is up for grabs: Who will be home for dinner? Who will cook dinner? If a parent is wakened at 2 a.m. by the smell of cooking, and rises in the morning to find no milk for breakfast, dirty dishes in the sink and a house full of sleeping 20-somethings, what is the right response?

Many parents face not one departure and one return, but a revolving door, as one after another of their offspring leaves for college, returns, leaves for graduate school, returns, moves for a job and returns again.

At the Navarro household, in Maspeth, Queens, all four grown children are back home: James; his two brothers, 27 and 25; and their sister, 23.

"Michael, the 27-year-old, talks about moving out, but he never does it," James Navarro said. "It doesn't make me feel too much like a kid to live there. As I've gotten older, I appreciate my parents more."

Still, it is not the life Mr. Navarro envisioned. In high school, he was a star athlete, good enough, he thought, for a professional baseball career. To that end, he chose St. Thomas University in Miami. But his baseball dreams did not pan out, so after graduating he returned home and spent two years working as a security officer in Midtown Manhattan.

"I knew I wouldn't be doing that too long, but I didn't know what I would do," he said, describing a state of mind that seems to descend on many of his generation as they leave college. "I thought about teaching, social work, working for a nonprofit, but law school seemed the most challenging."

Most of Mr. Navarro's closest friends remain unmarried, he said, and not quite ready, at least financially, to set up households.

"I've only been to one wedding in the last three years, and that was because a girl I know wanted me to go as her date," he said.

But one of his best friends is in a relationship that has become increasingly serious. And hanging over their lunchtime banter is the first tinge of awareness that they may be getting a bit old for the lives they lead.

"On New Year's Eve, sometimes, we have these motivational talks," Mr. Navarro said. "We'll say, we're getting older, we can't go to these places with teeny-boppers anymore."

They laugh and begin talking about the weekend football team. They are asked about the age range of the other players.

Mr. Navarro gets a look of mock alarm: "Who's the oldest? Oh, no, is it me?"

Playing Mogul - Vide Games as Art - Bruno of Atari

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/magazine...nted=print&position=

Playing Mogul - Vide Games as Art - Bruno of Atari
By JONATHAN DEE
December 21, 2003

No appointment with Bruno Bonnell ever begins on time, and here's why. Our first meeting takes place just after Bonnell, the French C.E.O. of Atari , has returned from a 15-city, cross-country ''road show'' designed to rally skeptical investors behind a new issue of Atari stock. The company founded in 1972 (and bankrupt in 1998) was scooped up by Bonnell three years ago as part of an acquisition binge. There was a great deal at stake for him -- and for the company that once was to video games what Ford was to cars -- and so the first question posed to him is, simply, How did it go?

''Before I go into your question,'' he replies, ''can I just go back a little?'' And I think, Fine, he wants to contextualize his answer with a quick overview of Atari's checkered history -- or perhaps of the booming video-game industry as a whole -- but no. He means to go back to the age of the caveman.

''At that time,'' Bonnell says, ''they had two ways of entertainment. One was the chief of the tribe telling about the hunting of the day -- how big the tiger's teeth were, how brave this guy was when he went to hit the mammoth with the stick or whatever. And that was to impress the crowd. The fun, the thrills, were coming from this impression that you got from outside. Then they moved into painting on the cave walls, then writing stories, then the stories started moving, like cinema, and the cinema went to television. Still the same system. The media of impression.''

Born 45 years ago in Algeria, Bonnell now divides his time between New York and France. He speaks an excellent but heavily accented English. Transcription cannot do justice to his idiosyncratic pronunciation of a word like ''gratuitous,'' or ''ethical,'' or ''Xbox.''

''The second way of entertainment they had was to take two sticks, beat them together and dance around the fire,'' he continues. ''And here the thrill was not about being impressed but about expressing yourself. That moves into the invention of musical instruments, getting different emotions from different styles of music, growing the music experience into opera or whatever. And that really leads into the video game. Playing with a joystick is basically the same move as playing a piano; the thrill is not what you get from outside, but what you express from inside. Whether it's a piano or a chessboard or a joypad, that's your technology, and you express yourself through it.

''Very often, people talk about the video-game business from a pure financial point of view. Numbers, percentages, market share, all those subjects -- we don't care. And the mass market, they don't care either. What they want is to see if, at the end of the day, this form of entertainment is going to be a part of their life or not. The answer is yes. Big time.''

As he gets rolling, Bonnell twists around in his seat, as if barely able to contain his energy. Compact, round-shouldered, with a clean-shaven head and tiny wire-rim glasses, he resembles a human bullet.

''The golden age of movies is gone. That's it. It's a fact. What they do today to survive is they multiply the special effects to catch up with what the kids want, because they've seen it in the incredible universes of these video games. It used to be, 'Well, let's make a movie and then make a video game version as a licensed product.' The next step to this will be the collaboration between the stories, between the complexity of their stories and the personal expression of the video game. This product doesn't exist yet, but it will. Think about this kind of game, where you'll be in a kind of Star Wars environment, you'll have X thousand people playing together at the same time; you could just spend your day watching the screen and waiting for the stories to happen, or else you can decide to enter the game and take your own little path, all in real time. Or let's say you see a movie and your character is in the jungle, there's a snake there, you see the snake but he hasn't seen it, he's smoking a cigarette, talking to his girlfriend. You're like: 'The snake! The snake!' And the character on the screen says: 'A snake? Where?' But if you choose not to say anything, then he just goes on doing what he's doing. The movie people don't anticipate this revolution. They better watch their back. We're right there. Big time.

''Wake up! Something is happening there! I was trying to convince my boy to learn Chinese. You know what his answer was? 'Why do I care about learning Chinese? By the time I master Chinese, we'll have computer phones where you'll be able to talk in French or English and it will be translated into Chinese in real time.' And he is right! I am wrong! I mean, who cares about speaking in Chinese, because we'll be able to communicate like in 'Star Trek.' We'll have automatic translation, and we'll be able to talk. And you know the wonder of this? This is all video games. This is why it's so interesting. And we haven't even touched the depth of all the education that you can derive from there. But just in terms of fun, that's where we're going. So all this is a big loop to get back to your question.''

Question? Oh, right: the road show. Turns out it was a big success; Atari recapitalized to the tune of $200 million, wiped out all its toxic long-term debt practically overnight and lives to fight for market share another day. It's difficult to imagine even those roomfuls of analysts and number-crunchers not bending at least a little bit beneath the charismatic intensity of Bonnell's vision. (''You can't send him out there with a script,'' says Nancy Bushkin, director of corporate communications for Atari, ''because that's just not Bruno.'') As with anyone who sees the future, you might start out listening with a little smile on your face, but in the end it's awfully hard not to pay attention.

as there ever been a cultural sea change as stealthy as the one represented by the rise of interactive entertainment? To anyone who came of age after, say, the introduction of the first Sony Playstation in 1995, video gaming is every bit as central to the pop-entertainment universe as movies or music, while to anyone older than that, it seems like one of those strange customs indigenous to the country of the young, in which the revenge fantasies of lonely teenage geeks are harmlessly siphoned off in some vaguely Dungeons-and-Dragons-like fantasy setting. No one would think of denying that video games are big, but few grown-ups outside the business have an understanding of just how big they've become.

Globally, the industry earned $28 billion in 2002, and in the United States, it's growing at around 20 percent a year. According to Fortune magazine, Americans will spend more time playing video games this year -- about 75 hours on average -- than watching rented videos and DVD's. A nationwide survey found that the percentage of last year's college students who had ever played video games was 100. Two games from the industry leader Electronic Arts, Madden NFL Football and FIFA Soccer, have each earned in excess of a billion dollars. (This year's Madden edition made more than $200 million alone.) For new and established musicians alike, games are the new radio; landing a spot on a video-game soundtrack is arguably more prestigious than landing a similar spot in a movie, a function not just of sales figures but also of the fact that the average Madden NFL 2004 buyer, for instance, will spend 100 hours in front of the game. Each statistic is more mind-boggling than the last, and together they certainly pose a challenge to conventional wisdom about which of these media is the tail and which is the dog.

For the completely uninitiated, a primer: There are games made to be installed and played on your personal computer, and then there are games that require a separate machine, or ''platform.'' The best known and most widely used platform is Sony's Playstation 2, and Sony has sold about 60 million units worldwide. In 2001, Microsoft, seeing which way the wind was blowing, introduced its own game platform, known as Xbox. Because it contains its own hard drive (thus cutting down on a game's ''loading'' time, and also making it more easily adaptable to online play), it's considered the superior machine -- at least until Playstation 3 debuts, probably in 2005 or 2006, to be followed thereafter by Xbox 2. Sony is also poised to introduce a portable version, the PSP (''the interactive Walkman,'' Bonnell calls it), to compete with Nintendo's ubiquitous GameBoy hand-held system and Nokia's new, hacker-bedeviled N-Gage.

Then there is the holy grail of gaming, the target at which the arrow of technology is squarely aimed: competition online, in real time, against friends or total strangers in remote locations. Known by the unwieldy abbreviation M.M.O.R.P.G. (''massively multiplayer online role-playing game''), this experience is available but has yet to catch fire; Xbox Live suffers from a dearth of game offerings, and even EA's phenomenal Sims franchise has sold poorly in its online version. Bonnell is more cautious than most about committing too many resources to this future too early; you can have the fanciest software in the world, he says, but until broadband access has really saturated the market, information will travel back and forth too slowly to make the customer's massively multiplayer experience satisfying enough to pay for. Still, the most popular current M.M.O.R.P.G., Lineage, has four million subscribers worldwide, primarily in South Korea, where the game is an outright phenomenon. In the long term, the revenue potential of online role-playing games is generally viewed as bottomless.

It's a gold rush, in which the very prosperity of the landscape is what makes it treacherous to inhabit; and so, over the past five years, Bonnell's unapologetic, Amazon.com-like survival strategy has been to get huge quickly and at virtually any cost. ''It's been a turbulent few years for Atari,'' says Edward Williams, an interactive-entertainment analyst with the investment firm Harris Nesbitt Gerard. ''But the critical piece for them was to reduce the debt burden'' -- which the new stock-issue accomplished -- ''and so I would say at this point they're in a pretty good position.''

Bonnell naturally agrees. ''If you look at the structure of our business today,'' he says, ''you have Electronic Arts running the pack, like 20 percent market share, and then you have a pack of five companies -- Activision, Atari, Take-Two, THQ, Konami -- which are all fighting in the range of 5 to 7 percent market share. At the end of the day, you'll end up with probably four to five players each controlling something between 15 and 20 percent market share, and probably a significant number of smaller players around. To be there, to be in this league, is critical. Because I believe that the big will be bigger and then the small will be smaller. And mechanically, if you're not in the right league -- it's like winning the Tour de France, right? You have to be in the first pack to have a chance. If you are too far behind, you can't really come back.''

It's a credo he reiterated earlier this fall at a yearly New York gathering known as the Playtime Conference, in which various new-media entities mount a series of sober pep rallies in front of an audience of institutional investors. As always, he spoke off the cuff, with a minimum of PowerPoint-ish bells and whistles, and in the end he charmed the room.

''We like the stock,'' whispered an analyst sitting next to me in the Grand Hyatt ballroom. ''It's a great story. We just started coverage yesterday.''

A half-hour earlier, in the standing-room-only ballroom next door, the chief financial officer of the mighty Electronic Arts offered his own vision of the future; globalization was its major theme. The atmosphere was like a war room; the numbers may not have been news to this audience, but they command respect just the same, and as the C.F.O. spoke in his quiet, even voice, the hush in the room was awesome. Bar graphs flashed across the video screen -- Return on Invested Capital, Profit Growth Rate -- and the surprising thing was not how EA dominated its competition in all these categories, but who, at this point, they consider their ''competition'' to be. Those little, squat bars next to EA's great big towers weren't representing Atari, Sega or Take-Two. Instead they symbolized Walt Disney, Time Warner and Viacom. That's the new playground that the self-styled ''Yankees of the industry'' are sizing up. ''We're not trying to win a championship,'' EA worldwide Studios president Don Mattrick tells me later. ''We're trying to build a dynasty.''


Anyone who thinks that just getting into the video-game business is a license to print money need only consider the history of Atari, and of how Bonnell came to own the name. An electrical engineer named Nolan Bushnell founded Atari (a Japanese word that approximates the chess term ''check'') in 1972, in Santa Clara, Calif., with two partners. Bushnell's initial investment was $250. The company's first full-time employee was a 17-year-old receptionist who used to baby-sit for Bushnell's kids, and its second was a young engineer named Al Alcorn, who, later that same year, invented what would become the primordial mother of video games, Pong. (One of Alcorn's own subsequent hires was a scruffy teenage dropout named Steve Jobs.) Four years later, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million. Two years after that, he was forced out of the company.

Despite its early leadership not just in the field of games but also in home computers themselves, Atari was, over the next two decades, mismanaged right into the ground. It was sold off in 1984, and again in 1996, until finally the Atari Corporation became the property of Hasbro Interactive after its parent company at the time, a disk-drive manufacturer called JTS, filed for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, back in France around 1983, Bonnell and a high-school classmate wrote a primitive but seminal video game called Autoroute, in which a player guides a frog across a busy highway (similar to another popular game called Frogger). He parlayed that success into a gaming company called Infogrames, which over the next 15 years mushroomed into Europe's largest electronic-games publisher. As it grew, so, too, did Bonnell's ambitions for it as a global force; the biggest market, though, was still across the ocean in the U.S. So Infogrames began buying up American gaming concerns, including, in 2000, Hasbro Interactive -- primarily, it seems, because owning HI meant owning the rights to the Atari name. With that, Bonnell's company had an American pedigree. He went right on buying up game studios throughout the U.S. and bringing them under the new Atari umbrella. Has it worked? Infogrames still has some vultures circling it -- less than a year ago it laid off 280 of its 460 employees in France -- but Atari's market share has risen by 77 percent since 2001.

Unquestionably, Atari's boldest and most controversial venture under Bonnell was Enter the Matrix, the video-game version of the three-volume sci-fi juggernaut directed by the brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski. Released in 2003 on the same day as the second movie in the trilogy, the game worked off a 244-page script written by the Wachowskis themselves, and included scenes shot on the movie's sets and with the movie's actors, but exclusive to the game. It came closer than any game ever has to realizing Bonnell's own vision of the equivalent interplay of a story you passively watch and a story you choose to enter; it was also one of the best-selling games of the year. The controversy has to do with what Bonnell reportedly paid for it. Not only were other game publishers shocked by his agreement with the Wachowskis (considered so shamefully generous that it was posted on the Smoking Gun Web site), but in his single-minded pursuit of the game, Bonnell spent some $50 million to buy the entire studio, Shiny Entertainment, that already held the Matrix license.

To top it all off, Enter the Matrix received generally poor reviews from hard-core gamers. Still, Williams says that ''in general it probably helped them. It gave them a higher-profile property. It remains to be seen how beneficial it was economically. The acquisition of the studio was more than just the one game, so you have to see how that pans out over time.''

Mattrick offers a more interesting, if less sanguine, prediction for Atari's immediate future. ''Bruno is definitely provocative, incredibly passionate, an adventurer at heart,'' he says. ''The biggest challenge he's facing is that there's only one Bruno inside that company.''

hen Atari acquires a new company, it generally tries to keep the talent happy by not forcing anyone to relocate. So a significant part of Bonnell's schedule consists of traveling to these offices and development studios -- in Dallas, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Newcastle, in northern England -- to get updates and offer input. The largest studio, employing about 120 people, is in Beverly, a suburb of Boston; the office building itself, deep in the woods off Route 128, came as part of the Hasbro Interactive acquisition. Bonnell visits there every six weeks or so.

When I arrive at the Beverly office (Bonnell has been in Boston for a few days already, holed up with his son, who is preparing to take the SAT), the first thing I see is a kind of vindication of Bonnell's scrupulous hyping of the reborn Atari brand: the sign at the end of the driveway, with its distinctively retro logo, has been stolen. The office is as unprepossessing inside as out: on each of its three floors, offices run around the perimeter, enclosing a warren of small, low-walled cubicles festooned with personal photos and company advertising. The days when scruffy dropouts could show up and be hired are long gone.

At a conference table shaped like a giant staple, framed by windows looking out into a wall of past-peak foliage, Bonnell receives a daylong parade of game designers and marketing executives. The designers themselves conform only vestigially to the computer-age stereotype of the socially unskilled, Cheetos-eating genius, although they are all male, and at least one of them (who demonstrates, on a giant video screen, his in-progress game about global warfare) looks young enough to trigger a child-labor investigation. But theirs is no longer some marginalized culture of renegades. Some of the industry's best-known, name-above-the-title game designers (like Sid Meier, creator of the classic Civilization series) get a movie star's reception at trade shows and conventions. Perhaps their status as the technocultural advance guard is more widely acknowledged now, or perhaps it's just the fact that this is the one day every six weeks when they have to shine themselves up and impress the C.E.O.; but in a roomful of corporate honchos, the code writers don't stick out the way they used to. Still, when a bug appears in another in-progress game (a character walks past his airplane's control panel and his legs disappear), the glazed, deep-focus expression on the young designer's unlined face clearly says that he can't wait to get away from all of us and figure out where the error is.

Meanwhile, the mostly female marketing executives talk about how to further saturate the preschool market (a sample PowerPoint exhortation: ''Emphasize: PC Games Are Good for Your Kids'') and how to promote a new title called Kya: Dark Lineage, considered ground-breaking in that it CREATED=1072164417

Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/arts/mus...nted=print&position=

Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please? - The "Virtual" "Real" Singer in the Box
By BILL WERDE
Bill Werde writes about the arts and technology.
November 23, 2003

Imagine having a singer with a world-class voice at your disposal, any hour of any day. She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu.

Close friends of Madonna or Mariah may already have had that pleasure, but for everyone else a new technology called Vocaloid may offer the next best thing. Developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as a synthesizer might be programmed to play a series of notes like a violin one time and then like a tuba the next, a computer equipped with Vocaloid will be able to "sing" whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. But its arrival raises the prospect of a time when anyone with a laptop will be able to repurpose any singer's voice or even bring long-gone virtuosos back to life. In an era when our most popular singers are marketed in every conceivable way ? dolls, T-shirts, notebooks, make-up lines ? the voice may become one more extension of a pop-star brand.

The human voice has proven the most difficult of all sounds to synthesize. Digital technology can produce something clear enough to convey meaning, but only in a clipped monotone that sounds more like a robot than a real live person. A convincing human voice, spoken or sung, with all its complex, flowing articulations and quivering uncertainties has been unattainable. Yamaha has not yet made Vocaloid available for scrutiny, but judging by some early samples and demonstrations, the company seem to have made that quantum leap.

You can think of the software as a kind of audio font: musical notation and lyrics can be translated into the chosen voice, then saved for replay, just as a word processor might translate a text into Helvetica or Times New Roman and print it out as many times as you like.

These fonts are made up of a database of phonemes, the basic sounds that make up any language. To create the database, technicians record a singer performing as many as 60 pages of scripted articulations (like "epp, pep, lep"). Assorted pitches and techniques like glissandos and legatos are also thrown in the mix; with all the combinations, the process takes a week of five-hour singing days. The resultant font is "reminiscent" of the singer's voice, says Ed Stratton, the managing director of Zero-G Limited, a London-based company that has licensed the Vocaloid technology.

Zero-G is using Vocaloid to create the first of these fonts: Leon, described as a "Virtual Soul Vocalist," and Lola, his female counterpart. The digitized duo will make their debut in January at the International Music Products Association conference in Anaheim, Calif.

The technology first attracted attention in March at Musikmesse, an annual music technology conference in Germany. Paul White, the editor of the British audio gear magazine Sound on Sound, was there for the demonstration. "A few simple tools were used to adjust inflection, tone, vibrato and so on," wrote Mr. White. "Within minutes, the computer was singing like a professional!" A Vocaloid version of the song "Amazing Grace" ? recorded with prototype technology, yet still more human sounding than any previous vocal synthesis ? was released on Yamaha's Web site shortly after the conference. Quickly, that sample drew links from sites in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan, Russia and the United States, setting Internet message boards and chat rooms buzzing.

In the case of Leon and Lola, session singers were hired to record what Mr. Stratton calls "generic soul-singing voices." The decision to start with soul was purely a marketing calculation: Mr. Stratton figured that the most common use of Vocaloid, at least in its early stages, would be to serve as background singers. With a soulful sound, the company could target a commercial market that ranges from Justin Timberlake to Jay-Z.

But Mr. Stratton has many more plans. Soon, he said: "You'll buy new fonts and then any song you write, you can hear it sung a number of ways. You might hear what it sounds like sung by a soul singer, and then an operatic voice or a choir boy."

Hit music producers like Dan (The Automator) Takemura (a creator of the Gorillaz, a band that appeared only in an animated form, but sold several million albums anyway) and the Matrix (the trio of Scott Spock, Graham Edwards and his wife, Lauren Christy, that produced the three No. 1 hits from Avril Lavigne's last album) say they are likely at least to try recording with Vocaloid instead of backup singers. "As producers, you run into some artists and oh god, it's so hard to get the right vocal," Mr. Spock said. "It's intriguing, this idea of `O.K., just give me all your vowels and all your consonants and I'll see you later.' "

Mr. Takemura says he would want to use the software to create sounds that human voices could not. "The first producers to work with this are probably going to have a hit just based on the novelty factor," he said. But, he warns, "it's the imperfections in a voice, the happy accidents, the human-ness that are often what's best in a song."

The market for synthesized voices extends well beyond recorded music. For example, cell phone ring tones ? a rapidly expanding field ? already use synthesized voices to personalize incoming calls. The DA Group, a Scottish company, uses patented technologies to animate several popular virtual stars, including Ananova, the British newscaster who exists solely online as a lifelike, digital countenance, and Maddy, the bank teller avatar who is being tested on ATM's in several markets around the United States. After listening to some Vocaloid samples online, Mike Antliff, the company's chief executive, said, "I'm going to have my research team look into this as soon as I get off the phone."

Vocaloid's next application will be Miriam, a third font that Zero-G expects to release later in 2004. (A Japanese company, Crypton, expects to release its own font ? "Japanese Pops," a bubbly female voice ? in March.) Miriam is based on recordings of Miriam Stockley, a singer for the new age group Adiemus, which has worldwide album sales in excess of several million. "At first I was quiet horrified by the idea," Ms. Stockley said. "People tend to pay a lot of money to get my sound, and here I am putting it on a font."

She changed her mind, she said, because "you can't fight progress, no matter how strange it sounds." She also negotiated an undisclosed percentage for each copy of Miriam that sells. But once Miriam the vocal font is out there in the public, Ms. Stockley the actual singer has little control of how it will be used. Anyone who legally purchases the font is entitled to use it to write songs for commercial purposes, though they're not allowed to market them as Ms. Stockley's own recordings.

Mr. Stratton reiterated the point, "when vocal fonts are used, the performer is the user and Vocaloid is an instrument."

In the long term, Mr. Stratton is aware that the true killer application will be recognizable celebrity fonts ? the Elton, say, or the Aretha. But so far, none of the world's most famous voices have volunteered.

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. heard a Vocaloid version of "Amazing Grace" online, and he said he was impressed. (The Yamaha Corporation includes samples with a recent press release at www.global.yamaha.com/news/20030304b.html.) But he wasn't prepared to rush out and have a font created. "I would hate to think that 250 years from now Altria would use the Michael Stipe voice to sell organic soy to a Mars landing," he said. "It's intriguing in 2003. I'm not sure about 2303."

If Napster and other online file-trading programs have taught the world anything, it's that once a technological cat is out of the bag, it can be difficult to control. What's to stop dilettantes from creating their own fonts? Could it be long before falsified but entirely convincing clips of Britney Spears begging for Justin's forgiveness circulate on the Web ? to say nothing of George Bush conspiring with Tony Blair about weapons of mass destruction?

"It is a matter of time before Yamaha makes this technology available for consumers to make their own fonts," Mr. Stratton said. But at present, the process, which requires a deep knowledge of phonetics and audio engineering, is too complex for ordinary consumers. Even if an ingenious audiophile were to untangle the process, however, he would still need a database of thousands of articulations ? more than someone would be likely to cobble together from available recordings. As for famous voices now lost to time, if they left behind a substantial enough catalog, it might be possible to produce at least a portion of the required phoneme database. The rest of the required vocals could come from a sound-alike singer.

Elvis seems like an obvious candidate for vocal reanimation. Recently (and for the first time), his estate licensed a couple of his songs for dance-floor remixes; one of them became a No. 1 single in England. Licensing Elvis for Vocaloid would be a different matter, though, says Gary Hovey, vice-president of entertainment for Elvis Presley Enterprises. "If someone came to us and said, `We want Elvis to sing this new song,' we'd have a lot to contemplate," he said. "We tried to retain the integrity of his original song with the remixes. Now you're talking about a whole new vocal performance of a song he never sang or knew? How do we know he'd want to sing it?"

"Believe me, that would go all the way to Lisa," he added, referring to Elvis's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who owns Elvis's estate.

Still, there is the potential for enormous money to be made, even by Elvis standards. How much would an advertiser pay to have Elvis sing a new jingle? How easily would a new "Elvis" song climb the pop charts ? if only for the novelty value? Mr. Stratton is optimistic about the prospect. "No font comes out of the box with a singer's timing and expressions," he said. "It's just the tone of his voice and his pronunciations. The finer bits of expression ? timing, pitch bend, the sorts of things that add real character ? would have to be added by the user working with the font. It would take a great deal of effort to make it sound just like Elvis. But you could do it."

Once a full palette of vocal fonts is available (or once Yamaha allows users to create their own), the possibilities become mind-boggling: a chorus of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra; Marilyn Manson singing show tunes and Barbra Streisand covering Iron Maiden. And how long before a band takes the stage with no human at the mike, but boasting an amazing voice, regardless?

In fact, in today's world of computer-produced music, who needs humans at all? Vocaloid could be used as part of an integrated music-generating machine. Start with any number of existing programs that randomly generate music. Run those files through Hit Song Science, the software that has analyzed 3.5 million songs to determine mathematic patterns in hit music. (Major labels are already taking suggestions from it ? "Slower tempo, please, and a little more melody at the bridge.") Throw in a lyric-generating program, several of which can be found free online, and then route the notes and lyrics through Vocaloid to give the song a voice. It might not be a hit, but the process could provide inspiration for a lot of lonely songwriters.

At this early stage of its development, the future life of this technology is as much fun to think about as the almost-human voices could be to play with. At the very least, Vocaloid promises to bring a whole new copyright-infringing definition to the phrase "losing one's voice." We may soon know if an unmanned computer could produce hit singles or the voice of tomorrow's virtual pop hero. Lisa Marie, any thing to say about that? And really, can we even be certain it's you?

Mr. Phoenix Turns Tumbledown Into Taj - Rennovating Historic Homes

I know Bobby and Adam would love this ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/garden/2...nted=print&position=

Mr. Phoenix Turns Tumbledown Into Taj
By MITCHELL OWENS
November 20, 2003

THE PLAINS, Va. THE three-story house here owned by Christopher Ohrstrom appears pretty much as it might have in the 1830's, all pearl-white clapboard and window glass so wavy it always looks as if it's raining outside. Nearby stands a barn that dates from before the Civil War. And clustered around the two buildings are several modest white structures, including a privy where one of Robert E. Lee's sons is said to have hidden from Union soldiers.

From the looks of things, it's just another of the prosperous farms on the outskirts of this town of 266 people, within an hour's drive of Washington. The Plains is deep in manicured horse country out of a Constable painting, a place where old-money millionaires like Bunny Mellon cultivate anonymity.

But think again. Here at Lee Hall, where Mr. Ohrstrom, 47, an expert on early American decorative arts, lives with his wife, Lilla, 38, a sculptor, and their four children, everything old has been built again.

Since 1996, when they moved from upstate New York to this town, where both grew up, the Ohrstroms have been living a home-improvement project that puts "This Old House" to shame. Seven buildings on the 160-acre farm are Southern ruins dismantled like jigsaw puzzles and brought to the site by Mr. Ohrstrom and a team of craftsmen. Each building has been reconstructed and restored, one hand-forged nail at a time, to become part of the Ohrstrom family compound.

Up next is a condemned 1840's squab house, or pigeon coop, from a plantation in Hanover County, Va. (A curator at Colonial Williamsburg, part of what Mr. Ohrstrom jokingly called an information food chain "that knows which brand of heroin you like," alerted him to its scheduled destruction.) Destined to become a playhouse, it will be the last rehabilitation project at Lee Hall.

That is, if nobody tries to reclaim one of the buildings. "If somebody wants it back when I'm done, they can have it," Mr. Ohrstrom said, peering inside a circa-1830 one-room kitchen that will become his home office. It sounds crazy, but Mr. Ohrstrom insisted that it was true. He can absorb the loss: his mother was an oil heiress from Texas, and his father was an investor. But, he added, "I'd rather lose a building to someone who thinks it should return to its original site" than lose money on something like horse breeding.

Lilla Ohrstrom flashed a tolerant grin. "Chris has turned this place into the S.P.C.A. of abandoned buildings," she said. She has accepted his passion for restoring old buildings since meeting him 17 years ago at a ball in Newport, R.I. ("I was hunting for debs and got a keeper," he said.)

Take note: The buildings at the Ohrstrom spread are not name-brand architectural triumphs. Rather, they are vernacular survivors of a kind that can be encountered across the United States, from outhouses rendered useless by modern plumbing to farmhouses so rotted that no insurance company will touch them. But saving one can be prohibitively expensive. Mr. Ohrstrom's barn, which combines old-fashioned post-and-beam construction with more modern balloon-frame technology, cost a bargain price of $2,000. Restoring it, however, cost $100,000, a sum that included conservation materials like an Abatron epoxy that helps solidify deteriorated wood.

"The point is to use as little new material as possible," said Doug Vickers, a master carpenter and house dismantler in Ancaster, Ontario. He has helped Mr. Ohrstrom salvage numerous buildings over the years, including a Federal house that now stands at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. "You don't want to put all that struggle and effort into a building unless you're going to be authentic," Mr. Vickers said.

At the main residence in the compound, an L-shaped, 5,400-square-foot house moved from Mecklenburg County, Va., called Lee Hall, history doesn't just live, it crackles, thanks in part to Mr. Ohrstrom's spirited décor. The dining room's woodwork is painted eye-popping Prussian blue, a color that was all the rage in the early 19th century. Across the hall in the living room, two dozen exotic 1790's views of the Orient by Thomas and William Daniell are glued onto the walls in the manner of a Georgian print room. (Stay calm: they are digital reproductions.)

Floors are covered with boldly patterned ingrain carpeting, the wall-to-wall of the 1800's, and archaic push-button light switches give the impression that Lee Hall was last rewired around 1900. It's an artifice that conforms to Mr. Ohrstrom's belief that alterations to an old house should follow what he called "a plausible chronology."

He and Alexandra di Valmarana, a historic buildings conservator, also made the new stacked back porches look like 1910 Colonial Revival additions.

Initially, Mr. Ohrstrom wanted a Mount Vernon-style piazza, but Mr. Vickers balked, telling him, "If you build that, I don't want anything to do with this place. You'll ruin it." (Ms. di Valmarana saved the day with an alternative design.) Mr. Vickers even had some reservations about the décor. "The colors were outlandish and the carpets absolutely gaudy," he said last week by telephone from his home in Canada. "But I was really surprised how wonderful it looked when it all came together."

Respect for old-fashioned décor aside, Mr. Ohrstrom is no Luddite. (His children would not mind if he proved it by buying the family a television set.) The antique buildings serve modern purposes. The air-conditioning system is tucked inside the 1840's dairy, and a freezer resides in an 1835 smokehouse. Still, "The kids say it's like living in a museum," Mr. Ohrstrom said.

His son Elias, 14, responded with an exaggerated eye roll and said, "That's because it is a museum" before heading down an arsenic-green staircase to the sunny raised basement. There Elias, his sister Delilah, 12, and younger brother, Finley, 7, live in an environment more to their liking. (The baby of the family, Georgina, 15 months, has a bedroom upstairs.) Anchoring Elias's room, for example, is a mirrored platform bed he designed himself. "This is what happens when you don't have television," Mr. Ohrstrom said, just slightly defensively. "If the kids think of it, they can do it."

Later, he went outside to work on a project of his own: painting a 19th-century window with a historically correct reproduction sash brush and hand-mixed white paint. "I don't like modern life very much," he conceded. "Excellence is out of fashion, and convenience is king."

The children may not entirely appreciate what their father has wrought, but in historic decorative-arts circles, Mr. Ohrstrom is a star. He lectures across the country on early wallcoverings, a passion sparked the day he pried up a molding in upstate New York and found a fragment of an important 19th-century French scenic paper called Cupid and Psyche. (He and a business partner, Steve Larson, own Adelphi Paper Hangings, based in The Plains. It makes meticulous hand-blocked reproductions of more than 40 wallpapers and 17 borders good enough for Colonial Williamsburg and the Smithsonian to hang in some of their period rooms. Prices start at $325 for an 11-yard roll; information www.adelphipaperhangings.com or 540-253-5367.)

The curators of Monticello hired Mr. Ohrstrom and Mr. Larson to repaint its famous dome room, a coup they described as akin to winning the Super Bowl. And in recent years, Mr. Ohrstrom has begun restoring buildings in Falmouth, Jamaica, a depressed port with a collection of 18th- and 19th-century British Colonial architecture. "We've saved 18 buildings so far," he said. He envisions a renewed Falmouth as a place that could support restaurants, hotels and a slavery museum.

Not every business venture has been an unalloyed success. His line of 18th-century-style linseed oil paint bombed. "I was dead wrong about that one," he said cheerfully. "It was not a mass-market product."

Historic preservation is not necessarily the career path his parents would have chosen for him. After a hard-drinking period at the University of Virginia, which he laughingly called "very Dylan Thomas," he spent 18 dispiriting months in Strasbourg, France, working for an electronics business owned by his family. "I hated every minute of it," Mr. Ohrstrom said.

Perhaps because he had already spent his formative years in a sort of Brideshead of architecture and design. After his parents divorced, his mother married the Second Viscount Rothermere, a British newspaper magnate who owned The Daily Mail. For him, the downside of moving to England at the age of 10 was the class-consciousness. "It was bad enough that I was American, but it was considered far worse that my mother was Texan," he said.

The upside was Daylesford, his stepfather's 18th-century Anglo-Indian house in Gloucestershire, decorated in the late 1950's and early 60's by the London designer John Fowler, an inspired historicist.

Eight years ago, Mr. Ohrstrom's father died, spurring his decision to build a home in Virginia on land he inherited. Its centerpiece would be Lee Hall, an 1818 house that had been abandoned since the 1940's. Every window was smashed, the columned portico had collapsed into a heap, and thick woods hid it from view in Mecklenburg County in southwest Virginia, about 150 miles from The Plains.

"I lived an eighth of a mile away but never knew it was there," said Randy Snowten, 37. But Mr. Snowten was looking for extra money, and when he heard that Mr. Vickers and Mr. Ohrstrom were dismantling the house, he and his brothers came to help. Then Mr. Snowten came here and spent months chipping old mortar from thousands of chimney bricks. Today, he is Mr. Ohrstrom's farm manager and lives on the property with his wife, Portia, and their four boys.

"I wish restoration was chic, like Buddhism," Mr. Ohrstrom said. "It really should be a movement, with a Dalai Lama to get people interested."

Mr. Ohrstrom might just be that man. Seeing the home he has assembled on this once-barren hilltop, friends have urged him to find orphan buildings for them too. As for Mr. Snowten, he knows what he is going to do when he retires. "I will not build a new house," he said. "I'm going to go in the woods and find me an old one and fix it up."

The Muse Is in the Software - Kurzweil patents a Dada Poetry Generator

Hey Greg, this sounds very much like the Dada Poetry Generator that you had about 12 years ago - and this got patented ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/technology/24patent.html

The Muse Is in the Software - Kurzweil patents a Dada Poetry Generator
By TERESA RIORDAN
 November 24, 2003

INVENTING is about catching the wave," said Ray Kurzweil, who addressed a national convention of inventors in Philadelphia last Monday. "Most inventions fail not because the inventor can't get them to work but because the invention comes at the wrong time."

Mr. Kurzweil should know. An inventor in the field of artificial intelligence, he has started and sold several companies for millions of dollars.

On Nov. 11, Mr. Kurzweil and John Keklak, an engineer, received patent No. 6,647,395, covering what Mr. Kurzweil calls a cybernetic poet. Essentially, it is software that allows a computer to create poetry by imitating but not plagiarizing the styles and vocabularies of human poets.

It works something like a cyberblender. The poetically challenged (or those with temporary writer's block) can toss in rhymes and rhythms and alliterations from already written poems. These whir around a bit, then out pours a new poem.

Here is a poem the cybernetic poet wrote after "reading" poems by Wendy Dennis, a poet employed by Mr. Kurzweil:

Sashay down the page

through the lioness

nestled in my soul.

While other poetry-generating software exists, Mr. Kurzweil said, it is less sophisticated.

"Those are fixed, fill-in-the-blank approaches that resemble the Mad Libs game," he said. "They are not really trying to create new patterns based on a more flexible pattern structure."

Many of Mr. Kurzweil's inventions, including the cybernetic poet, are based on pattern recognition. "The real power of human thinking is based on recognizing patterns," he said. The better computers get at pattern recognition, the more humanlike they will become.

So does Mr. Kurzweil predict that his cybernetic poet will "catch the wave"?

"This is a useful aid to real-life poets looking for inspiration or for help with alliteration or rhyming," he said. "But I am not intending for it to be a huge money maker."

A version of the cybernetic poet can be downloaded free from www.kurzweilcyberart.com. The deluxe version is $29.95.