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1 Nov 2003

Last night was the Belle and Sebastian concert at the Fitzgerald Theater. I didn't really like the venue, I thought it felt too restrictive and boring and stuck-up; not the sort of place to see a rock show, even one like Belle and Sebastian. I enjoyed the openers, The Hidden Cameras, but probably not enough to buy their album. There were a lot of costumes in the crowd and onstage since it was, after all, Halloween. I managed to get myself a green 'Step Into My Office, Baby' t-shirt that I am now wearing.

It took me a little while to really get into the show, because it felt at the beginning a little like they were just going through the motions on their new stuff, but that didn't last long. The lights got going and, unfortunately, the fans started yelling more and more, but the momentum started building. I adored 'Stars of Track and Field', 'Judy and the Dream of Horses', and 'Sleep the Clock Around', especially the last one because it's the first B&S song I can recall liking. Things seemed to be going really well when they came back out for the encore, but they only played one song, and it wasn't all that climactic. It seemed like they could have played a lot more given the enthusiasm of the crowd and their large number of memorable songs, but we'll have to take what we can get. There were some new songs I'd have liked to have heard, but they did still play a pretty sizable number from Dear Catastrophe Waitress. I would have paid extra money to hear 'If You're Feeling Sinister', but sadly it was not to be. It was still very enjoyable and specifically Stuart Murdoch & co. struck me as very congenial; they were the kind of band I was happy to be entertained by and in the presence of. Also, if/when Stuart Murdoch releases a solo album, it will be stunning. Just because.

I decided to be geeky today and list what Belle & Sebastian I have and what I don't. I have 70 out of 97 songs I chose to list. Mainly, I need the Lazy Line Painter Jane box set, and maybe Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant and the I'm Waking Up To Us and the This Is Just A Modern Rock Song singles, if I want to be a completist about these sorts of things.

1 Nov 2003

As a follow-up to the earlier post about the upcoming nationally televised Cleveland Cavaliers game, I am not jumping on the LeBron bandwagon. Since I was born and raised in northeast Ohio, I have credibility as a Cavs fan, as well as an Indians fan, a Browns fan and an Ohio State Buckeyes fan, for better or worse.

3 Nov 2003

I don't think there is much of a specific topic here.

Chuck Olsen was apparently at the Belle & Sebastian show on Halloween and managed to capture video of "Like Dylan In The Movies."

I have studied for math both too much and probably not enough this weekend in preparation for two tests on Monday. Too much because my brain feels like it might fall out of my head, and not enough because I doubt that I'm well-prepared to take the tests. I still have to review Calculus for my Probability test and probably work tomorrow after lunch. I really hope to not ever have two math tests on the same day ever again.

And The Simpson's Halloween Special was not that terrific, but hopefully that doesn't bode ill for the rest of the new season.

5 Nov 2003

So today's Making A Scene show is about Manchester and it's all good, especially Magazine, who I've learned was formed by Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks. I think I might have to pick up their Where The Power Is compilation, if I ever run across it.

In other news, my Structures test seemed to go really well and I'm actually enjoying the class quite a bit. Probability was not so good and I'm going to have to study a lot for the final, but it's still interesting. I'm thinking of comparing the Neil Young and the Flaming Lips versions of "After The Gold Rush" for my final paper in History of Rock, but I might also enjoy comparing the White Stripes cover of "Jolene" with the Dolly Parton original, but I don't want to have to buy Ultimate Dolly Parton. I'll probably take a closer look at what pair of songs I own at least half of, so I can decide if I want to acquire the other.

5 Nov 2003

Registration was a breeze this term since all my classes were open and I had the synonym numbers for all of them waiting to be pasted into the browser. My schedule goes like this:

Mathematics 275: Mathematical Statistics.
Economics 110: Principles of Macroeconomics.
Media Studies 227: Open The Box: Studies in Television.
PE 106: Intermediate Badminton.

I also went to the grocery store and am now well stocked for the rest of the term.

Tomorrow I'll do more rock'n'rolling and even some Structures and it'll be a grand old time because it's like nine degrees outside. Or maybe I'll just stay in all day and play NES Open.

7 Nov 2003

Colleen is wrong and I am right. This should come as no surprise.

8 Nov 2003

Last night circumstances conspired such that I saw Elf at Lakeville. You'd assume with Jon Favreau directing and Will Ferrell starring and even Bob Newhart making an appearance that it would have something interesting to offer. But you'd pretty much be wrong. Because it's the same Christmas movie that comes out every year in which an unworldly and bubbly outsider comes to New York City to show its inhabitants how to get in the spirit of the season. You've already seen this movie fifty times, just under other names. It's got its Frank Capra moments, from both the "Mister" films (Mr Deeds Goes to Town/Meet John Doe/Mr Smith Goes To Washington) and It's A Wonderful Life, and its Hudsucker Proxy moments and its Home Alone moments. At times it seems like maybe it will be clever, especially during the early scenes in the North Pole with the ridiculous camera work they did to proportion Ferrell correctly to the elves, who must be much smaller, along with the goofy outdoor scenes (an homage to claymation Christmas classics like Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman). But once the story moves to New York, the gags start to overwhelm you with their boring sameness. There's the main character getting gored by the wild animal gag, the inevitable snowball fight, the wacky culture clash between the city dwellers and the igloo dweller, and of course the hard-hearted father figure who turns out to be a real swell guy in the end. Perhaps is this wasn't the tenth time I'd seen this formula on screen, I'd have appreciated it, but it wasn't, so for your own sake, go see something original.

9 Nov 2003

I watched one-and-a-half movies last night! Jackie Brown, which I'd rented Thursday night and started Friday night, and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer at the 3rd Annual Get Real City Pages Documentary Film Festival. It's never a good idea to watch a movie in two parts when it's meant to be watched in one, but Jackie Brown didn't really suffer for it. It was obviously a Tarantino film because of the violence and style thereof, the smart throwaway dialogue, the Uma Thurman-type actress (Bridget Fonda), the LA setting and the obsession with things that go on in cars. Toward the end we even got a little non-linear storytelling sequence. Although I think Colleen was right when she said that Pulp Fiction was still her favorite Tarantino film, this was certainly no slouch.

After that we headed up to the Oak Street Cinema to watch the documentary. The thing I liked best about this film and most low-budget documentaries, is how apparent the relationship between filmmaker, film and subject becomes. This isn't some Hollywood "invisible style" production in which you can't tell you're watching a movie; the director often appears on screen and it becomes obvious (painfully so, at times) that it can be difficult to work with subjects in order to fit them into a film. This is most present when Nick Broomfield, the director, is attempting to tell us what has happened to Dr Legal, aka Steve, a Florida lawyer who was far out of his depth when attempting to present a defense for Aileen Wuornos, the serial killer mentioned in the title. He claims that Bloomfield's previous film, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, a precursor to this one, has ruined his career, and really doesn't want to be on camera even though he needs to be. During Wuornos's trial the director has to testify against Dr Legal and it seems a little sad to be defaming this guy on screen, even if he did fail his client during her trial. Broomfield also has to decide how best to showcase Wuornos, who has been in prison for over a decade and whose mind is decaying. Interviews inevitably turn sour as Wuornos starts to rant about cop conspiracies and claims that she won't tell the truth about the murders she committed, so Broomfield is forced to resort to recording her offscreen unbeknownst to her so she will speak honestly (or so we think) about the situation surrounding her killings. The viewer can tell what a difficult film this must have been to make, but Broomfield does an admirable job, and it really pays off for the viewer in the end.

9 Nov 2003

Although I do acquire new music with some frequency, I think the list at right would be much more exciting if it held music that I'd recently listened to and been excited about. So now it does.

9 Nov 2003

Wow, was the Simpsons' season premiere ever BAD. I think I laughed twice and wished I hadn't both times. I suppose it's possible that the writers are finally running out of ideas, after more than 300 episodes, but I'd like to think not.

11 Nov 2003

Let's see how many playlists I can put up here from my radio show this term. Okay. They'll be in the Comments section.

12 Nov 2003

Tonight was the final Film Society event of the term, another sponsored by the Digital Arts Festival. Information about the collection of short films can be found at New Media Scotland's website; click on the appropriate link to find the page for Desktop Icons, because when I tried to link directly, it didn't work as well.

To begin, I think I should quote Ratchet Up on avant-garde films: Yes, they're uneven. Everything in the avant-garde is uneven. Get over it.

To be sure, Desktop Icons was not a slam-bang success from start to finish, but it was worthwhile. It started off with a piece in which the only visuals were differently-colored words on a black background. The effect was produced by superimposing the visually represented words over a series of telephone conversations. Specifically, the words were, at choice moments, representative of what the speaker was thinking, and not what he was saying. Granted, this technique has been used and abused many times, but I found it effective here, moreso because of the lack of imagery.

Next was a montage of black and white shots of quiet, suburban America made to look like the fifties because of the idyllic quality of the images as well as, of course, the lack of color. The filmmaker made no attempt to hide new model vehicles (the footage was actually shot in 1991, I believe), but it was not an attempt to recreate the fifties, but more to connect with a mood and a period of time. Which was important, because the soundtrack consisted of clips from George Bush and many others (some of other nationalities) talking and making declarations about the Gulf War in Kuwait. The sound editing was vital here, since the effects on the soundbites really added to their haunting effect. In particular, the echo of the last phrase, "The war is not yet over," or some such thing, really took hold as a color image of the World Trade Center soon after being hit on 11 September faded out to end the piece. Without being too heavyhanded or obvious, the filmmaker managed to draw some great parallels between the current tension between the US and the Middle East and the Cold War, hence the visual connection between the 50s and the 90s. The sounds of war and combat layered over the peaceful, sleepy images of residential America were particularly effective.

There was also a musical piece about singing hoodlums from Germany and an (I think) intentionally stylized piece showcasing a man and a woman going on a picnic, with a voiceover from an older man with a German accent which was very quirky and which worked for me mostly because of the lilting background music, along with or in spite of the oddball tone of the dialogue and images.

I don't think I took anything special away from the experience about the new art of digital filmmaking, but I did enjoy many of the pieces, and think some of them use the tools of film to make a good point, or at least to communicate something about the human experience.

13 Nov 2003

When you either forget or don't have time to keep track of everything that goes on in the world during the week, the Economist's weekly politics newsletter really comes in handy. Register for free here.

15 Nov 2003

Last night The Shins played First Avenue, preceded not by The Aislers Set, as advertised, but instead by The Soviettes, who were chosen by First Avenue to replace The Aislers Set. This was mind-boggling, since The Aislers Set play chamber pop, and The Soviettes play punk. The result was a lot of fans who couldn't handle the loud, raucous, noise, and were thus cheering lustfully only when The Soviettes left the stage. It seemed to be more a case of mismatching band and audience rather than a bad set, because I thoroughly enjoyed every minute as they blazed through their songs at about two minutes per number, and took no time to dilly dally in between. I think they might have played "Catherine Says" to appease the upset fans, but I couldn't really tell because if they did, it sounded nothing like the original.

The Shins came on to great applause and a much fuller room than it had previously been. They seemed to start off a little slow, and the first song I can really recall getting into was "One by One All Day". There were others as well, especially those inflected with more of a country twang, which I've noticed I really enjoy live with pretty much any band. I liked "So Says I" quite a bit as far as their new songs went. The band didn't really strike me as charismatic or being able to convince the audience that they were guys who would be fun to hang around with. Not that this is vital, but it always does something for the atmosphere, as I can recall at Belle & Sebastian and My Morning Jacket. By the end of the night, I knew The Shins had played some good songs, but they left me kind of cold, as if I'd heard it all before. Also, I find it hard to listen to James Mercer because he thinks he's Ray Davies, even though he's from New Mexico. As has happened before at First Avenue, I realized as I left that I liked the opener a lot more than the main act, but since it was a free show, that was fine.

16 Nov 2003

Yesterday I ventured up to Macalester where I met Kyle. We sat around for a while trying to wait out the opening acts but at eight o'clock I decided it was time to go.

It wasn't immediately apparent where the BEC Auditorium was on the St Thomas campus, but it wasn't that hard to find either. And I guess because we showed up seventy-five minutes after the show started, we didn't have to pay, which was nice. The first band we saw (and the second overall) was Halo Effect, who was much more interesting than I'd anticipated. They started out with a violin among their numbers and sounded a little like Low or Sigur Ros, but the violin left after the first number. They continued to play slowly building, thoughtful rock music, which was nice, but the singer kind of sucked, because he wanted to sing with aggression like he was in some sort of "alternative" band with a lot of angst, when he should have just been trying to sound as nice as possible. But they were definitely all right.

Shadow Box was next. They suck. They're essentially a bad ripoff of early 90s alternative guitar rock, especially like a not-very-talented band trying to play poorly written songs based on Pablo Honey. The chatter between songs was also execrable. At some point I think the singer claimed that he was angry that, "We're not being told the truth about some stuff." Yeah! Way to stick it to the man. He also attempted to tell the story of the genesis of one of their songs that went like, "One day we were warming up in rehearsal, just playing some songs, and the drummer started playing some beats. Then we just started jamming and that's how we came up with this song." What a waste of time. But at least the first opening act was good.

Pedro the Lion was on last and for that we moved up from our seats about twelve rows back to stand up front near the stage, as some others had begun to do. The band consisted of David Bazan and, from what I can find on the Jade Tree website, Trey Many on drums. There was also some sort of mechanism for producing bass sounds, but I couldn't see it. Anyway, he played everything on an electric guitar, which made for an interesting but differently good version of "Slow and Steady Wins the Race". He played "Never Leave A Job Half Done" from Winners Never Quit as well. I think he also played "Of Minor Prophets and Their Prostitute Wives", "Big Trucks", "When They Really Get To Know You They Will Run", "Criticism as Inspiration", "Diamond Ring" and "Rapture". Some of them I don't remember or didn't know. He finished off with "Backwoods Nation", which I didn't realize was a protest song, but I guess it is now that I've heard it. And as he faded out he threw in a sliver from Radiohead's "2+2=5", the part about how you have not been paying attention, paying attention, ... I think the best way to describe the performance was, as Kyle put it, heartfelt. I got the same feeling from watching him play as I did watching Ira Kaplan play guitar early this summer at the Yo La Tengo show at First Avenue; a sense that he genuinely cared about the sounds he was producing and was working hard to make sure everything was the way it should be.

He also took questions, as I guess he is wont to do. He told me that his favorite album this year has been The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow. He also said that a new EP should be coming out this spring and the next full-length should be out next September. He played a number of new songs, but I don't know what their titles might be. Afterwards, I bought The Only Reason I Feel Secure and a shirt. It was a delightful performance and I'd have gladly paid many dollars to see it, but it was nice that it was free.

Afterward Kyle and I discussed this and that and I met a number of Macalester freshmen. I also got a copy of Windows XP which I will have to install as soon as I get home.

18 Nov 2003

I'm really enjoying the fact that it stopped raining and it's relatively very warm outside right now. That makes walking to and from the 3:30am radio show a lot better. So does taking a nice big evening nap. I also really enjoy that I managed to get all the way through my Structures take-home test, so tomorrow I'll just write it up nicely and get it ready to turn in on Wednesday. After I work for another couple hours on my History of Rock paper, it should be ready to revise briefly tomorrow. And oh, there will definitely be some celebration in order once that's out of the way (hint, hint).

After I finish my homework tomorrow, I will just have to study for my two finals which will include reading some stuff for History of Rock and reviewing terms and maybe listening to some music and then doing a lot of problems for Probability so I'm ready to take that. And then I'll clean my room and pack and go home and eat a lot and sleep a lot and read a lot.

This is a monumentally boring post, but I feel a need to validate my academic progress by seeing it written up on the internet. I'm sure those in similar situations can understand.

And I have 83 stars in Super Mario 64! Again!

18 Nov 2003

I feel so much better now: Sendthemback.org

21 Nov 2003

Well, I am done with Structures, and I am essentially done with History of Rock. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 I will fly through the final exam and return the stupid CD that was in the wrong case and didn't have the Randy Newman songs I wanted. I'd somehow managed to delete "Sail Away" and "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" and was going to put them back, but I decided to give up since I got the wrong CD and the Listening Room was closed when I tried to return it and they're stupid. History of Rock, however, is not stupid and fulfilled all my expectations as far as being my best class at Carleton. I think I might post a list of my classes at Carleton in order of enjoyment as a comment to this here very post.

So, anyway, now I have to study for my Probability exam and do a cursory clean-up of the bathroom and this room. I was going to see Wet Hot American Summer tomorrow night, but apparently the listing was incorrect and it's actually Scarface that's showing and I'm much less inclined to drive that far to see it at midnight.

I will also have to decide what to take home, which probably include some clothes and my computer and all of its accessories and any other little thing I might need. Oh, and I will stop at the library on the way home to check out some books. I think I already have some ideas, but if you have any suggestions as to what I should fill my head with this December, you should leave a comment.

Once I get home, I will try to not do much. It will be great, just like it always is.

Also, I finished Super Mario 64 today.

Now I am waiting for the snow...

22 Nov 2003

Thanks to Kevin Jackflaps for linking me to Rolling Stone's newest list: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. I wish my year-long subscription had started and ended a little later so I wouldn't have to buy this at the store, but that's not terribly important. This will be very helpful while I compile my exhaustive list of albums I want to own, which is sitting between 150 and 200 right now, just getting started. I may have more to say after looking at the list a bit more.

24 Nov 2003

Here are more exciting lists! Pitchfork is recompiling their Top 100 Albums of the 1990s. It's currently the home page, and I'll update the link later. Insound.com has their 100 bestsellers of 2003 up here. And Amazon.com's Top 100 is getting old already. They have a customers' list too.

I think the comparison of the two Amazon.com lists probably says all that needs to be said about the difference between critical and popular lists. I mention this because Rolling Stone's latest list, as with most of theirs, tilts toward the popular side, and thus I think it might have been better entitled, "The 500 Best-Loved Albums" rather than "The 500 Greatest." Essentially, their list is based on quality but also how well-known an album is and how broad its appeal is. Critics tend to ignore the last two, though they tend to stay away from completely alienating records on their top-10, -50, -100 lists. I could say more about why I prefer the critics lists and not even because I think people are dumb, but now I have to study more for Probability.

28 Nov 2003

I think The Virgin Suicides is a film I will watch again. I say this partly because I enjoyed it and wouldn't mind experiencing it again, but also because it presents itself as a film that deserves to be seen more than once; it asks many more questions than it answers and leaves a lot of territory open for further exploration.

Toward the end of the film, the narrator (Giovanni Ribisi) claims that it doesn't matter that they (the sisters mentioned in the title) were girls, along with other specifics. I have to wonder about that, though, because whenever I see a film centered at least in part on gender-specific roles, I have to wonder what I get out of it differently from, you know, girls. I expect that most of the sympathy I felt with the main group of characters was due to the adolescence I recently emerged from, at least age-wise, and not any pre-existing assumptions I had about teenage girls. Then again, during his ruminations, the narrator says that he and his friends learned a lot about girls from their observations of the Lisbon sisters, and in so doing, he suggests that there is something peculiarly female about their predicament. I also empathized much more with James Woods' father than with Kathleen Turner's mother figure, but again that could have more to do with their personalities than with their sex.

Apart from any possible gender elements, there were a number of lasting images in this film. Obviously those of the girls after their respective suicides were powerful, but maybe even more that of the football field of the morning after, when Lux wakes up alone in her homecoming dress, utterly ashamed and alone after what to her had seemed like the greatest night of her life. That sequence, along with the comments by the older Trip Fontaine, suggests so much about humans, both male and female, that it would be impossible to resolve it all within the confines of a movie, and thus presents itself as worthy of repeated viewings, as something to ponder and to wonder at as much as an experience to enjoy. Similarly, the girls huddled together in their room, or the father talking to the plants at the high school; each image suggests more about what might be going on beneath the skin as the characters attempt to deal with tremendous tragedy they can't have been properly equipped to deal with than could be said in words.

As in her second film, Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola focuses on emotional undercurrents and the overall tone rather than the story itself, and it pays off. Good storytelling is always appreciated, but the ability to translate emotion and a slice of the human experience through images and looks on the faces of the actors on screen is perhaps a more powerful use and probably a fuller realization of cinema.

29 Nov 2003

I've discovered that I left my Windows XP CD in Northfield. This is disappointing because I'd planned to install it over break, but it doesn't seem to be a total loss. I mainly wanted it so I could buy music online from Apple and/or Napster and so I could access my network folders better, and also so I could use iTunes. I suppose I will just make a backup copy of everything I have and get ready so when I return to Carleton in January I can install it quickly and easily. I was sure I had put in one of my CD cases or something, but I suppose it's just sitting there on the shelf. I can still put in a new hard drive and more RAM and that will be exciting. Ah well.

I think tonight I might try to go and see Master and Commander, Bad Santa, or maybe Mystic River, since those are the movies playing in Iowa City right now that I would enjoy. At the moment I have my CDs spread out all over my room, trying to better organize them, as I do every once in a while. Carnage is playing 11-17 December at the Bijou at the University, and maybe I will see that as well.

30 Nov 2003

I watched Barbershop tonight, and it was funny. Yes, it had "lessons" or "a message" which can get tiresome, but weren't here. Cedric the Entertainer was outrageous, and a number of the other actors played great roles. Ice Cube, as the struggling protagonist, wasn't all that great, but then his part didn't lend itself to his humorous side, which he's shown in Three Kings, for example.

I noticed that the colors in the barbershop, the central location in the film, were very warm, enhanced by the lighting and the wood paneling, and compared to the cold and drab street scenes, or even most of the other interiors, the barbershop was imbued with a glow that elevated it in its role as gathering place and community-strengthening center.

The thing that stood out most to me about the film was the way it played much more like television than a feature film. There are probably reasons for this that I can't quite define, but I did notice the way relationships were set up, and they worked more like those in television, which are less intimate, at least on-screen, than those in the movies. The large number of characters required that any specific relationships be downplayed to a few lines and a few shots, and the side roles were as important as that of the main character, Calvin (Ice Cube), who disappears for a sizeable chunk of the second half of the movie. Also, the way the action kept cutting to crazy guys entrapped in an impossibly crazy situation (two bumbling would-be burglars who steal an unwieldy ATM then can't extract any cash) reminded me of an episode of an hour-long television series than a stand-alone movie, perhaps because of the seeming irrelevance of it. All the elements of plot and characterization fit together in the end, but it seemed less final, I suppose, than most films do. Whereas television shows often cause the viewer to feel as if they'd spent time in a community of people they know the names of, movies tend to intimately introduce a few, if not just one, characters who will experience a life-changing transformation, or who will go on a journey, or get out of some serious situation. I think that was probably the reason Barbershop felt more like a television pilot than a movie: it introduced a whole community of likable characters who could have been reused again and again, whom I expected to come back with more zany and lovable antics next week. This was obviously not a failing, because the movie was funny and enjoyable, but it just struck me as odd.

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Also, I've also noticed that the MP3s of Tigermilk that I'm listening to are disgraceful, so I guess I'll need to buy that sometime soon.