Magnolia Electric Co. (aka Jason Molina, aka Songs: Ohia) will play
Iowa City (Gabe's, of course) on 13 December. I will be there, almost
certainly.
I've been thinking that it would be really great for this page to have
alternate stylesheets, but that would mean Javascript, and I like not
having to think about Javascripts if at all possible.
I got up to 63 on Paper Toss.
It appears that the bizarre and pathetic condition of health care has come to this: Wal-Mart advocating state-sponsored health insurance, because they're too cheap to provide it themselves. Talk about the potential for politics making strange bedfellows.
At the Get Real 2004 Festival:
- Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (Fri. at Midnight)
- Los Angeles Plays Itself (Mon. at 7:30)
- Tarnation (Wed. at 7:30)
Quentin Tarantino on why he's making another martial arts movie:
"[Zhang Yimou] spent a year and a half learning to make that kind of
martial arts movie," said Tarantino. "So what does he want to do? Make
another one. That shit just made sense to me."
I watched the election coverage this evening while it was becoming clear that a Kerry victory would require massaging the votes in Ohio to come out with the right number. This led me to ponder a number of things.
One is that, if there is a positive to Bush winning the 2004 election, it's that I can't become more disillusioned with the United States government any time soon. I expect little to no progress from those in power, and will probably get it. On the other hand, had Democrats done well in the House, Senate, or the race for the presidency, I might have held federal lawmakers to a higher standard for a while. For now I can continue to wallow in my utter contempt for those in power and wonder what it might be like to be governed by people I respect.
The "mandate of the people" for the Republican party reminded me that I really wish we had some sort of power-sharing, coalition type of government in the United States, where people from many political persuasions had a say. With many big races coming down to the very last vote, it's pretty clear that there's not much of a difference in size between the majority and the minority, which makes our "to the victor go the spoils" model look foolish.
I think the people who claimed they were leaving the country if a certain candidate won probably missed the point of such an act. Becoming an expatriate because your candidate lost 50%-49% is like the Baltimore Orioles trying to get out of the AL East. They might not win very often, but at least it's fair competition. Those more deserving of a ticket on the next plane out of here (like myself, of course) are those who tend to find themselves routinely well outside the established boundaries of either of the two political parties, which are your only option for major government in most of the United States. That's more like the Baltimore Ravens asking not to have to compete in baseball's AL East division because they don't play baseball. I feel like I just don't even engage with the supposed political dialogue that occurs between political leaders in our country, like they're speaking another language or something.
Would it be possible for George Bush to maybe not smirk quite so much as he (representative of many others in power) continues to lead the country down the road toward becoming a complete anti-intellectual, trigger-happy, cronyistic theocracy? Or to not portray himself and his religious right-wing buddies as somehow trodden shamefully underfoot by the "liberal elites"? I think either would ease my discomfort, if only slightly.
Maybe in the next four years, President Bush will figure out how to raise our taxes and not start any more wars so he could at least pay for the No Child Left Behind act.
Most of all, I'm reminded of how incredibly easy it would be to not suck as much at being president as George W. Bush has. Basically, you would let advisors tell you when you're wrong, and when you do come up with good ideas, you would be honest about them and make people pay taxes to fund your good ideas, because if your ideas aren't good enough to ask people to pay for them, they probably aren't very good. Also, you would take a moment every day to try to understand that the rest of the world matters, if only because there are more of them than there are of us, and that maybe international opinion isn't always wrong, even if we really like executing retarded teenage criminals. When somebody asked you a question like, "What mistakes have you made during your time in office?," you would have not only an answer, but also plans for how to fix whatever you'd done wrong. None of this would take much work at all. You would surround yourself with more well-respected people like Colin Powell, and not with Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld. You would maybe spend less time giving nicknames to people at the press conferences you don't have because you have to hide any and every bit of information about your stupid, brutal, and backwards policies from the people you are serving, and would spend more time rectifying your implausible lack of knowledge on policy issues both foreign and domestic. You would not claim, "God is on our side," without physical evidence. You would not make up reasons to plunge the country into war, and then take the plunge anyway after the rest of the world didn't believe your made-up reasons for going to war. If you espoused "compassionate conservatism," you would practice it on, not just Thanksgiving turkeys, but people as well.
The Democratic party (and the media) needs to make people realize that government means a whole lot more than enforcing strict moral values and spouting empty platitudes. The Democrats also need to stop being soulless poll-watchers, ready to move to the political center at the first sign that it could get them a few more popularity points.
Village Voice article on misinformation and the election.
Me on what to do now that the election is over.
Chris Leslie-Hynan outdoes me again by reconciling his enduring love for Counting Crows with their woeful critical status by recontextualizing them as a precursor to the current popularity of emo.
Incomplete Winter Break reading list:
- How We Are Hungry Dave Eggers
- Men and Cartoons (and maybe more) Jonathan Lethem
- Checkpoint Nicholson Baker
- What's the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank
First Avenue closes. Huh. I wonder if this means the rest of the year won't be so hot for concerts in the Twin Cities.
I suppose, then, that now would be as good a time as any for you to head on over to the City Pages archives and read through their extensive oral history of First Avenue from last September.
First Avenue has their own 30-year history at their less relevant but still operative website.
"David Nash's move to commandeer Governors Island was first noticed when workers saw the pirate flag hoisted at 6:40 a.m. on the flagpole in the center of the island, cops said. A skull at the flag's center had a painted bullet hole between a set of red eyes. A police spokesman said it wasn't clear how long Nash had been on the island, or where he had landed."
Radio this week
The Guardian: One Week in the Life of the Chinese Miracle
"Of Shanghai's 4,000 100-metre-plus buildings, 2,000 are skyscrapers (ie habitable buildings higher than 152m or 500ft) - more than the total on the entire west coast of the US."
"At one point in the mid-90s, one quarter of the world's construction cranes were at work there."
"On the outskirts of Shanghai, connected by new massive motorways and rapid transit railways, 10 new cities, each of one million people and each with 10 satellite towns of 200,000 people, are being built."
Why it's easy to get confused: All Music Guide's review of the new Britney Spears Greatest Hits is one of the longest I've encountered on the site, and the album gets four and a half stars as well as AMG Album Pick status. However, the review isn't even that positive and doesn't do much to convince anyone to buy it.
The new New Yorker has a great piece about why Social Security savings accounts, and free-market fundamentalism in general, misses the entire point of a program like Social Security.
This weekend I watched two movies. One was The Bank Dick, starring W.C. Fields, from 1940. It was one of those things where I could tell it was "funny," but I didn't laugh much because the humor has aged some over the intervening six decades. That is not to say that old movies aren't funny, but I didn't really think this one was.
The other, which I watched for class, was Time Code. The screen is divided into four quadrants, and each displays a different part of the 93-minute storyline as it unfolds in Hollywood. It was filmed in 15 different 93-minute takes, one of which was best, I guess, and got made into the final product. The soundtrack would work well as an experimental album, I think, with the overlapping soundtracks and the other music composed and used for the film.
In fact, if I were really ambitious, I might record some of the soundtrack to use for my show on Thursday, but I probably won't. Whether I do or not, I plan on putting together a mixtape for this week, my final show of fall term. Hopefully I can use my recently successful strategy of mixing long, ambient pieces with shorter things. The main objective of this is to throw in bits and pieces of a lot of different songs, most of which I've enjoyed particularly this term for one reason or another. This might make DJing more boring this week, but I think if I can put together a solid mix of at least an hour with a lot of good transitions, it should be worthwhile.
This week I will almost certainly be going to see Tarnation on Wednesday evening. Since I can use it in my final project for Cyberculture class, I can pretend that it's necessary.
Every once in a while, an album comes along that you would like to broadcast to the rest of the world so they could hear it too, because it's just right. One such album would be the Futureheads' self-titled debut. Pitchfork calls them "the Greg Maddux of pop/punk." While funny, it doesn't do much to describe them. I suppose the most useful comparison might be Franz Ferdinand.
Good news from the White House: John Ashcroft resigns. More on this from the New York Times.
Bob Herbert in the New York Times: Ignorance, not values, won Bush the election. A rare (and in my view, valuable) sentiment in these post-election days when Democratic leaders are instructing the "urban and academic elites" not to assume they know better than the rural conservative voter.
I almost forgot to sign up for hours in the post office for winter term. I think they have a bad system for signing up, and one that is easily forgotten, but I haven't decided how it should be fixed.
For your pleasure: the Bill Brasky quote archive.
I am nearing the end of Mono's Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined. I was really impressed when Katie Gately played it on her show last week (or maybe two weeks ago) and she graciously burned it for me. I am still really impressed. It reminds me that, although I like the Explosions in the Sky album that I have, I want to get their earlier one, because the whole point of instrumental rock is to build to a mind-blowing crescendo (at least their particular brand of instrumental rock music), which they tend not to do so much on The Earth Is Not A Cold, Dead Place.
I'd really recommend that you listen to my radio show this week. It's going to be so good, it will surprise you, even if you already thought it might be good. I'd even listen online if I had to.
The New York Times has an enlightening article on the Japanese institution that is ramen. Also, there is an audio slide show which I can't link to directly from this page.
Lev Manovich says that cinema gave birth to the modern computer. Cinema is a read/write process, utilizing the film camera and the film projector, much like computing.
Here is a list of bands or artists that I don't like as much as I'm supposed to. This isn't to complain that they are overrated (that would be reserved for Aerosmith, Guns 'n' Roses, etc.) but to note that I'm still working on figuring out why they're so great. It's definitely taken me a while in the past to figure out some bands that I now really like (eg. Modest Mouse), so I'm hopeful that some of these will turn out that way. Most of these I like somewhat, or some of their songs (like Gram Parsons, Fugazi, or the Kinks). This list also doesn't include genres or bands I haven't listened to much.
- Pavement
- The Pixies
- Built to Spill
- The Flaming Lips
- Bruce Springsteen albums that aren't Nebraska
- Aesop Rock
- The Band
- The Rolling Stones
- Beck
- Elliott Smith
- The Fiery Furnaces
- Fog
- Fugazi
- Gram Parsons
- The Kinks
- Mirah
- My Bloody Valentine
- The New Pornographers
- Queens of the Stone Age
- Slint
- Sonic Youth
- Spoon
- Talking Heads
- Violent Femmes
- The Walkmen
- Wilco
Also, Lenny Kravitz's new single (for the video in which he is surrounded by a circle of underdressed women) is awful.
The first bit of Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values:
"I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. "It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.
She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective 'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made from a utility cable spool, bearing a the remains of a gutted catfish.
"This used to be all Ikea," she says, rocking on heels between heaved sobs. "It's too late for us. Maybe it's not to late for me to warn others."
From the AP article:
"To the public he was known as Old Dirty Bastard, but to me he was known as Rusty. The kindest most generous soul on earth," her statement said. "Russell was more than a rapper, he was a loving father, brother, uncle, and most of all, son."
From the New York Times article:
By its own count, Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, made by NCR, at its Bentonville headquarters. To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.
I've been working on a mixtape based on last week's show, which should range from 1.5 to 2.5 hours in length. Once I get that finished, I'll triumphantly complete this term's collection of playlists so you can see what you missed.
For now I should be working on my painfully uninteresting math project which is due in class tomorrow. I am trying to decide whether there may be a worse possible assignment for a class than a completely open-ended project in which you have no interest, but which counts for a major portion of your grade. I'm looking forward to the take-home final exam way more than this.
Well, I've finally plowed through the rock CD section of the record library. Actually, I need to go down in a couple of minutes and check out the Melvins and Mudhoney, but that's it. I have also been through the rock singles, in which I found very little. I hope to make my way through all of the compact discs by the end of next term. Maybe spring term I can listen to a lot of records what with no more CDs to check out.
Some notes:
I decided, rather than sleep, to walk around campus this morning. In my opinion, it was delightful. I think some people don't like dense fog and lack of sun all that much, but I sure do. I also ate breakfast, which I don't think I've done at the dining hall since March.
Now I think I'm going to try to do laundry and put together my mixtape in order to stay awake until class starts.
Audio Culture is the most urgent addition to my winter break reading list.
I don't know if I've listened to Sufjan Stevens' Greetings from Michigan... all the way through before, but I did last night and it's fantastic.
So apparently it's not okay for Arlen Specter to suggest that maybe nominating judges who would attempt to roll back Roe v. Wade isn't the best idea, but it is okay for Tom Delay to get a felony indictment and still be House Majority leader? Unbelievable.
That math project was everything I thought it would be. I don't really feel good about it, like I've done a good job or anything, but I have no desire to do anything more with it at all.
I have often wondered, as an album-oriented music consumer, what sorts of great songs I miss on albums that maybe aren't that good but that have just a few terrific songs. These are things I don't pursue.
David Moran's radio show was fantastic. He and I understand if you didn't listen, since it's a barely predawn shift, but it was very good.
Three parties in three days, five in seven days (depending on your definition). And finals are only just starting.
Geography games. I think it is essentially impossible to place states without coastlines or international borders in Place the States Advanced, like Iowa or Wyoming, but it's still fun trying.
I will maybe probably go see Sideways at the Southdale Center 16 some time before I leave. It will be some time when I don't need to be working on my math exam. That will probably be Saturday or Sunday at 10:05, or Monday at 4:05 or 7:05. This also depends on what sort of parties and get-togethers might take place over the next few days.
This winter break, as in the past, I'm sure to be tracking all the year end lists I can get my hands on. Now that the holiday shopping season has started, certain publications have already begun to list their top tens in various categories--the video game list from the New York Times comes to mind--I figured I might as well aggregate those to which I'll pay the most attention for myself, and thus for you as well. To get this started in a spirit of procrastination since it's final exam time, I've use the advanced search function over at rogerebert.com to come up with the films from 2004 that have so far earned a rating of at least 3.5 stars from him. They are listed in chronological order by review date and, as long as I catch them, no rereleases will be counted.
Also, I'm pretty sure that I tend to listen to a lot of music during finals, more than usual anyway. Unless it turns out to be really pointless (for me, anyway) I'll probably keep a list in the sidebar for the next few days. It'll be one more thing to do when I have to stop thinking about Numerical Analysis for a while.
I've enjoyed a lot of music for the first time this term, like the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka, Junior Boys' Last Exit, and Panda Bear's Young Prayer, but I'm pretty sure the best thing I've discovered all term would have to be the Kinks' "Victoria".
More reasons for college students to feel anxious about the Republican majority in Washington.
I have come up with a new (and I hope realistic) goal. I should be fully rested some time around midnight tonight, so I will get up and work on my math exam. Hopefully I can take breaks here and there and finish up by about noon. Then I will eat lunch and go watch a matinee of Sideways. After that I will come back to campus, sleep until something exciting starts happening, and then do that. Ideally this will all work out so that I am conscious and ready to return to Iowa to tailgate with Kyle Yoder before the Arcade Fire concert.
I have completed my digital cinema project for internet class and it is beautiful! I kind of wish I could turn in all my papers like this. It's not terribly legal, considering all the copyrighted photos and stills from movies, but it sure was fun to put together.
Last night I made a visit to Allen House, where I liberally spread the gospel of Panda Bear and sustained myself by way of various baked goods. Charles indirectly got me to listen to Brighten the Corners, Skynyrd, and the first disc of Rush's Chronicles. At some point I worked for a while on my math exam, which I will do again after brunch, depending on when my body decides that it is time to sleep again. After finishing up a more or less clandestine project this morning around seven o'clock, I had a danish and coffee at Blue Monday's, and then came back to finish up that digital cinema project you've already looked at. I think I was mixing with either the early morning jogging crowd or the pre-church crowd at the coffeeshop. Also, my increasingly bizarre sleep schedule has allowed for some strange and wonderful dreams. Perhaps I will publish a diary of exactly when I've been in bed this week, because it's that interesting, even considering the fact that you already know that I'm messed up in that department.
Yes, I know the concept at the top of the page is outdated. Its expiration date has not yet passed, though. Also, you know what I just realized, and is kind of hilarious that it took me this long? None of you can see the correct font for the date. Not unless you have the Silkscreen fontface; Kottke.org made it.
Perhaps Rag P and Ollie should take note:
'My advice to anyone moving to Louisiana thinking it's a cockfighting refuge is not to unpack their bags - it's going to be a very short stay.'
I normally try not to get too worked up about Chromasia because it's just pictures, but today's stunned me. I thought it was an illustration for a long while, until I finally figured out what it was. Really, the last two weeks have mostly been great. If you have an RSS reader, I highly suggest you subscribe.
Also, I picked the longest record I have ever heard of at Fine Groove. It is called Environments: Totally New Concepts in Sound, Disc 4: Ultimate Thunderstorm/Gentle Rain in a Pink Forest. Both sides total up to 66 minutes in length on a single slab. That's 1.5 cents per minute!
I saw the movie as planned. It passed my personal test of engrossing me enough that I didn't think about anything other than the movie for most of the time, which can be tough. That might have been easier because the screens at Southdale are gigantic. Thank you, wealthy suburb of Edina.
In a recent email, Teague said that he'd seen the movie and that Alexander Payne is one of his favorite directors. I thought that seemed silly since this is only his fourth movie. I'm inclined to agree, though, after the fact. Paul Giamatti, along with the rest of the cast, probably have something to do with the beautiful bittersweetness of the picture, but clearly Payne is greatly talented. The montage sequences were all really effective, and during the drunken phone call the camera wobbled and went out of focus to capture the Miles's emotional and physical in a way most cinematographers only dream of. There were incredibly tight close-ups when they were most effective, the emotions never seemed pandering or pathetic. I don't think many filmmakers could do much with a lead character whose main assets are self-loathing, depression, and an inordinate amount of knowledge about wine, but this worked out great.
My main worry, though, is that this is a movie that nobody is going to remember a few months after the DVD comes out. No big stars, no truly iconic scenes, no groundbreaking special effects. At least About Schmidt had Jack Nicholson. Let's just hope that doesn't happen.
Also, now that finals are over, here is my sleep diary of the last week. Enjoy.
Tuesday
~5:30am-12:30pm
4:30pm-6:30pm
Wednesday
9:00am-10:45am
3:30pm-7:30pm
Thursday
5:00am-11:00am
7:00pm-9:00pm
Friday
3:30am-6:00pm
Saturday
6:45am-8:45am
2:45pm-6:45pm
10:00pm-11:55pm
Sunday
3:30pm-6:55pm
7:30pm-12:30am
Monday
5:15am-6:00am
Finished at 5:37pm.
I have fallen deeply and madly in love with every single member of the Arcade Fire. They played one of the greatest shows of all time at Gabe's last night. If you live anywhere near a stop on their tour, please do yourself a huge favor and go see them. I would write more, but there is no time.
The Arcade Fire tour as reported at Pitchfork
The Arcade Fire itinerary @ Pollstar
I have returned to Iowa for the holidays. We went to Ames for Thanksgiving as we have done since time immemorial (or at least 1999). The food was, of course, terrific. I watched Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man after Thanksgiving dinner. I also played videogames with my cousin. I walked around their neighborhood for a while, as well as along the South Skunk River. During the walk I listened to Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister, and picked up a lot of things in the lyrics that I don't think I'd gotten before. During car time I enjoyed John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, which I think I've only listened to twice. The final one-two punch of "God" and "My Mummy's Dead" is pretty powerful, even if "God" gets heard a lot elsewhere. But before that I listened to Funeral by the Arcade Fire.
Let's talk a bit more about the Arcade Fire than we had a chance to on Wednesday. In the past week they have gone, in my personal opinion, from being this band that I'd heard pretty good things about to one of the most amazing bands of the year. In that time I've listened to Funeral, which has really grown on me, several times and been totally blown away by a concert that I had no idea would be as good as it was.
There is really no need to talk about the concert and the album separately. The Arcade Fire have only released one full-length album, mentioned already, and an EP, which will be available again in January, I think (it's being re-pressed). For the most part, the live show consisted of songs from the album and a Talking Heads cover, which I don't feel compelled to talk about. Essentially, the show at Gabe's was like the album re-sequenced, much more intense, with people to look at.
And what people! For some reason, the Arcade Fire is the most visually fascinating band I have seen in some time. The guy in geeky glasses and a tie looked a whole lot like somebody I went to high school with (Mark Gingerich), which might have been a point in his favor, but he also was very animated and played the ceiling and the walls with drumsticks for at least one song in their set. The main singer looked like he sounds, except bigger. The one who sounds like Bjork when she sings and plays the accordion a lot did impossibly fascinating things with her arms while she sang. The violinist just stood there but looked bewitching the whole time. Also, they all have French-Canadian accents, which is a plus in my book.
I suppose I should also talk about the music, which is harder but so much more important. It would probably be easier if you'd heard the album, but I'd guess you haven't, at least not much. Probably the most basic thing is that the guy who sings most of the songs sounds like Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes but more musical. The Bjork-like singer has probably a better and more beautiful voice, but is better suited to slower songs.
Somehow, I think a lot of the people knew most of their songs really well. This is surprising for a brand new band whose album has only been on sale for two months. What this meant was that the crowd was really excited, though, and responded wildly to the music.
About half of the songs on the album have an insistent beat (guitar, bass, drums) and other, less rhythmic pretty-sounding instruments like accordion, synthesizer (or piano), violin, to go along with the like-Bright-Eyes-but-rhythmically-stable-and-more-melodic vocals. This would "Tunnels," "Laika," "Power Out," "Wake Up," "Haiti," and "Rebellion (Lies)," along with the second half of "In the Backseat." The slower songs tend to have some, less-pronounced beat, and no background vocals (I think). These would be "Une Annee Sans Lumiere," "7 Kettles," "Crown of Love," and the first half of "In the Backseat." Yes, it is simplistic to put these songs into only two categories, but it's probably the best way to describe them to you. Also, the lyrics deserve to be listened to and deal with dying, maturing, children, and other various emotional issues, but not petty or self-involved like some "emo".
I don't know how to describe the individual songs any further other than to say that they were great and, while some diverged a little from the recorded versions, were mostly like what you get on the album. The voices were more intense in some way, especially the background vocals. And yes, they were probably the key to why this was such a great show.
On the album, the vocals really hold no greater place than the other instruments. In concert, though, it was somehow obvious that the band recognized that the voice is the subtlest and most emotionally evocative of all instruments. The lead vocals hit with a force I hadn't encountered when just listening to the album, but I think the background vocals gained the most strength. The crowd was able to sing along for many of the simpler call-and-response sections, which did a lot to increase the bond between band and audience.
Most of the songs were really, really good, and many I remember well enough that they make listening to the songs on the album a much more emotionally charged experience because I can remember what they were like in concert. However, probably the single best moment was in "Wake Up," during which the whole band wordlessly sings this recurring theme from time to time. On record, the song progresses and then ends kind of differently so as to move smoothly into the next song, but live and in person, this was the closer, so the band kept repeating the main melodic sort of non-verbal chorus, first over the instruments, then closed the show by singing acapella with the audience.
For a lot of bands this is better in theory than in practice. Most rock bands don't have the vocal talent to get each member on a microphone unaccompanied by a plugged-in instrument, but the Arcade Fire are a talented bunch of musicians and their voices without instruments were even more powerful than in the song itself.
It's kind of pointless me writing this since all it serves to do is remind me of what the Arcade Fire sound like, which isn't necessary since I can just click on the playlist in iTunes. It doesn't really tell you what the concert was like, but hopefully the fact that I've spilled so much [electronic] ink will encourage you to either see the show or listen to the album a lot and at a loud volume.
It looks like, so far, there are 70 albums from 2004 that I'd like to pick up this holiday season. Assuming I won't, how about I narrow that down some. My year-appropriate-gift-certificate-music-shopping-list will probably look something like this:
- The Fall: 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats
- Fennesz: Venice
- Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand [Expanded Edition]
- Madvillain: Madvillainy
- The Mountain Goats: We Shall All Be Healed
- Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
- The Streets: A Grand Don't Come for Free
- Various Artists: DFA Records Presents Compilation #2
That's not to say there aren't albums from other years or other sorts of items I'd like, but if you were that devoted you could always just visit my Amazon wishlist. Perhaps I will list these on the sidebar some time, but it is a little more difficult from home than at Carleton.
No, I haven't been doing much here at home. I read some Kafka, finishing the short book I have with some of his stories (I think I might read The Trial or The Castle if the other books on my list are not readily available) and have now gotten some way into The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. Incidentally, I really loved Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," but not in an entirely definable way.
I finished up the mixtape of that radio show I've been working on forever, and then the files became corrupted for a reason which I've not yet completely pinned down. Now I am reconstructing them in a safer manner. Considering that no one but me is waiting for this project to be finished, I suppose there won't be any very harsh consequences. Also, I have now carefully selected the genre for all songs in my iTunes library and have started to try to find all cover songs and their original performers/composers.
Today I walked around Wayland (yes, pretty much all the way around) but didn't quite finish listening to the Band's self-titled second album before returning home. Before that I watched Sneakers on television: it had some clever parts and a lot of stuff that felt recycled from other suspense/spy films.
Finally, in case you didn't notice the picture on the sidebar (and all the album covers have "titles" so that when you hover over them with your mouse pointer, you see the artist and album title; you knew that, right?) Something Wicked This Way Comes by The Herbaliser is a lot of fun. The main thing is that most of the music and samples (it's experimental hip hop) sound like cartoon horror a la Scooby Doo or something similar. Then there are raps on top of many of the tracks, for added fun.