Hello, sports fans. I haven't posted much for a while, which is sad.
I was planning to tell all of you about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and what I saw there. I was planning to tell you about my trip to Ohio
and the Christmas-related times I had. I have not done so. However, it
is soon time for me to pack up the computer to drive to Minnesota, and
Ohio State is playing football on the television, so I don't think now
is the time either. But please notice the new books and music on the
sidebar. And, as always, since my content is lacking, visit the links
on the sidebar because they are almost all worthwhile.
And I think there will be an exciting new link to add in about 12 days, if all goes well.
We drove to Ohio and at the Cracker Barrel. It was like eating in a
shack filled with ugly and unpleasant (the waitress) people. The food
wasn't bad, but it was certainly bland. While in Ohio I played a lot of
Outlaw Golf for the Gamecube, which was fun, but the characters were
stupid. The courses were nice, but there were only three of them.
There was a lot of sugary food. There were babies. There were
grandparents' houses and relatives. There was shopping and discussion.
There was the rock and roll hall of fame,
about which I'd previously had a decent to say, but now I think I will
just let it lie there. You can probably guess what they had there. It
was a museum about rock and roll. The hall of fame consisted of golden
signatures on a black background of all the inductees. It was
all-in-all relatively uneventful.
I watched a goodly amount of football and basketball over break,
both professional and collegiate. I spent New Year's Eve at home, not
having heard of any place I simply had to go to, and, perhaps because
he'd taking quite a nap earlier. My dad stayed up playing Mario Golf
until three. Sadly for him, I won handily on both rounds.
I drove to the MSP airport, stopping at the Iowa City library and a
gas station/Wendy's on the way. I got there ten minutes ahead of time
for the 2:36 flight, which became the 3:15, the 4:00, the 4:30, and
finally the 5:11 flight before it finally became the wrong flight. The
6:06 flight, which had been delayed to 6:41, was ultimately the correct
flight. While there I ate trailmix and read the Kafka collection I
bought at Barnes & Noble before seeing Mystic River.
Then my window in the car stopped working so I had to drive back to
Northfield with it halfway down and now it's covered with plastic bags
(thanks in part to Colleen).
After a delightful night's rest, I got books and mail and a meal or
two and things unpacked today. Everything works (the frozen computer,
the fragile turntable, everything that had to survive an open window in
frigid weather for hours).
On books: I've recently purchased Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt, but haven't read it. I did read Nicholson Baker's The Fermata.
It was all about doing sexy things with women frozen in time. I didn't
find it to be ultimately dysfunctional, since the protagonist only
enjoys stopping time to do things sometimes involving women in addition
to his relationships with real women. You may or may not agree with his
rationalizations (he doesn't always himself) but it is an interesting
book, and since it's by Baker, one with plenty of insight and quiet
humor.
On music: I'm really glad that I chose to use gift certificate money
to buy the new Strokes album. I've recently listened to polka and
German children's folk songs in the Rumsey basement, and they are all
great. Really. That Do Make Say Think album you see on the list down
there is utterly worthwhile.
May I take this opportunity to tell you all that this mostly high-speed internet access is terrific? I guess I just did.
On movies: Colleen took me out to see The House of Sand and Fog,
which was a tragedy about two people who both want a house and how
humans self-destruct. It was remarkably well put together: everything
served a purpose and the character's motivations were as well defined
as anything I've seen recently, without making them one-dimensional.
I bought Barry Lyndon with gift certificate money and so should you. I might say more about how much I love it later, but it's amazing.
Kevin "Clair" Jackflaps
recently informed me via email that Jim James will be playing in the
Twin Cities (Pantages Theatre, Minneapolis) with M Ward and Bright Eyes
on February 20. This will be exciting. Hopefully it will also be
attended by me.
Today I saw J Maxwell Greene for the first time in just under six
months. He should mention the couch to me next time I see him (if he
sees this). I also may or may not have spotted Cristina Robins. I think
I may have. If she happens to read this she may know that I will bring
her her refrigerator any time, but it would be much appreciated if she
allowed me to first get my car window fixed, because I don't really
relish driving it before then.
I can't think of anything else right now, but if I do, I will likely let you all know.
Well, it appears as though I am going to take my car to get looked
at tomorrow and hopefully it will be a quick and painless procedure to
restore the window to full functionality.
My Macroeconomics class, which was previously to be held in stately
Scoville Hall has been moved, as we discovered at class time by
checking on the computer in Scoville, to the Chapel basement. It looks
to be a step down, and I will be disappointed by not having two
Scoville classes in one term, but I suppose that's how it's going to
have to be.
In the mail I've received Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2004, which was bought with gift certificate money, and Leave Your Name by Statistics well ahead of the release date.
Also, I've realized since seeing it on numerous year-end lists that I watched The Son
at Film Society. Thank you, Film Society. It was a great movie and
would have been somewhere on my own list, but I hadn't realized it was
a 2003 release.
Today I walked around a lot in the bitter cold but my car window is up now, care of the repair shop on Division.
Tonight or tomorrow night I get to watch television for class. Any
television as long as it contains a program change. Who'd have thought?
Speaking of television, I wasn't watching any today because I was in
the library reading a pretty good decade old article from the Atlantic
Monthly about how Americans and Britons tend to ignore any school of
economics not indebted heavily to Adam Smith. The article focused on
Friedrich List (and Alexander Hamilton somewhat) and how he argued that
protectionism was sometimes necessary for an economy and a nation to
develop strong industry, as opposed to unlimited free trade. He made a
good case for Britain, the US, and Japan having done so even though the
first two don't like to mention the boost they got from protecting
their own markets and setting prices until they were strong enough to
be the major player on the international scene.
Also, I have linked to Paul Krugman's columns on the left as a blog.
Now, they don't really comprise a blog, but they are regularly updated
online and are collected on his page in the editorial section, so let's
just pretend, okay?
What's more, the Guardian has a series of photos from and about the Mars mission.
I have checked out records from the Record Library to play on my turntable. They are Kraftwerk: The Man Machine, Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley, Ray Charles: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, and Joy Division: Closer. It's very convenient, I must say.
In other news, all of my classes interest me, which is nice. Tonight
there will be bowling. KRLX will soon get under way for the term. And
the blog is still featureless.
Paul O'Neill, former Secretary of the Treasury for George W Bush, tells all about his days in the administration.
The colors are all backward now. And this Ray Charles record skips
all over the place, which is too bad, because it's pretty good.
Last night I watched Cannibal: The Musical and it was just a
little too much for me, or too little. I knew that those in charge were
trying to be irreverent and wild and crazy, but it wasn't quite smart
enough. It had its moments, though.
I also watched a lot of football yesterday. The Panthers and the
Rams played forever and Jeff Wilkins almost had the best kicking
performance in the history of the world, but fell just shy. (He had
five field goals and had recovered his own onside kick before missing a
sixth field goal in overtime after which the Panthers eventually scored
a touchdown to in double OT to win the game. The Pats and the Titans
wasn't quite as exciting, but at least there wasn't any Tony Siragusa
logo popping up in the bottom-left corner every five minutes. There was
also some football today.
Friday night Colleen and I went to St Olaf where we saw Nashville.
Their Viking Theater is pretty nice, and it would be nice to have
something like that here, but whatever. I liked the movie, which was
long and full of characters, as might be expected from Robert Altman.
It had a lot to say about America near the bicentennial (it centered,
in some way, around an event for a presidential candidate of the
"Replacement Party") and it was funny. I think it would be worthwhile
to see it again because there was probably too much going on between
the characters to catch all of it the first time.
KRLX is selling merchandise online. You can buy some at the CafePress shop. It is currently understocked but it will grow.
Go apply for a radio show at the KRLX website. It's ready.
War on terror and war in Iraq criticized by Army War College.
German potato computer machines.
The New York Times on the Iowa caucuses.
Film Society is showing Spellbound tomorrow night.
Thanks to Kyle Yoder and Andrew Herschberger I have finally upgraded
to Windows XP Professional, which went very well. I am still having a
few problems getting Mozilla to recognize the Myrealbox email account
and old messages stored on my hard drive, but no real problems.
I have also upgraded to iTunes for Windows,
which is terrific. I haven't been able to use it for too long yet, but
maybe I will have more to say about it when I have. Well, I guess it
did remove all my songs I'd collected as non-album tracks into separate
folders which is mildly annoying. But that's okay. Now I have to do
homework.
Perhaps you should do yourself a favor and check out the newest e-zine on the web. I did.
It would seem that correlation does not imply causation.
It would also seem that room draw numbers come out in 18 days.
Finally, if anybody already has tickets to the
JimJamesMWardConorOberst extravaganza on 20 February you should leave a
comment. If you don't have tickets but are going you should also leave
a comment. If you know other people who want to go you should leave a
comment.
You may go about your business.
Brian Wilson in the Guardian on his new old album/masterpiece/disaster Smile.
I spent my weekend doing the KRLX schedule.
If I had had time to think today, I might have thought of something else to say, but no.
Guess what? For the first time in forever, I'm technically done with
my homework and stuff. The schedule has been all worked out, I have no
assignments left for the next class, I even have the bulk of a new
story for Professor Yeti.
Perhaps now I can be less neglectful of other people and whatever else
it is I might do if I wasn't doing homework and KRLX 100% of the time
I'm not asleep. I like being busy because it means, as long as I have
the energy for what I'm doing, I don't have time to think about what
else I could be doing. Then again, I don't like being busy because I
don't have time to do anything fun, so that sucks.
Jim James/Bright Eyes/M. Ward: Sold out.
Never doubt the power of the moustache.
This site is boring!!!!
I'm going to tell you what I ate today. For lunch I had a croissant,
a cup of Green Mountain coffee, and a fish sandwich with lettuce and
tomatoes. Bill was the server. He seemed nice, though that might just
have been because he was inexperienced, but he still seemed nice. At
dinner, I ate a slice of cheeseburger pizza, which is unique and
different every time, a sandwich of my own manufacture, two pretzels
with cheese, a piece of cake, and drank a glass of both Dr Pepper and
Sierra Mist, followed by hot cocoa, though I didn't get to drink very
much of that because it was in a container banned by the library, where
I went immediately afterwards. I had a granola bar just now, and am
going to drink hot cocoa made with my coffeemaker that still has coffee
grounds in the filter. I don't know if it will be good. I will update
you in the next paragraph. By the way, the coffee filter is permanent
in my coffeemaker is permanent, which is weird.
I don't really know what to say about the hot drink I am currently
consuming. It's not great but not bad. I don't mind drinking, but don't
know if I'd jump at the opportunity to drink it again.
I saw the Unicorns on Monday, they were okay. I saw Monster
last night, and it was really depressing. It was also a good movie, but
it was depressing and I already knew the story so that part didn't
excite me so much. I'm glad I saw it though.
Also, there is the SUMO movie schedule for Winter Term. (SUMO is the
student organization that shows popular movies on Friday and Saturday
nights at Carleton.) There are nineteen movies this term. They have a
mean score of 60 on RottenTomatoes.com. The best is Chasing Amy, a brilliant choice both due to the hilarious Kevin Smith dialogue and its proximity to the release of Jersey Girl. The worst is The Order
with Heath Ledger. The biggest weekend (movies are shown at a rate of
two per weekend, generally) rates an 84, while the worst gets a 27! The
schedule seemed disappointing at first, and I think that's largely
because the average score of the movies I haven't seen is 55. I am
actively excited to see only American History X and 28 Days Later,
which may have been the biggest factor in my disappointment. There are
two movies under 20, three under 30, and SEVEN under forty. That means
that 37% of the movies screening on weekends on campus this term
weren't even deemed mediocre by a broad range of critics. I can't
compare this with past terms statistically, but I can say that it makes
me sad that so many movies can provide so little entertainment.
If I were you I'd read the new Dave Eggers novel in serialized form at Salon.com. If I were me I'd be lazy and wait around for the finished product.
Today featured snow, which began last night some time and even now
continues. There has been a decent accumulation, though I've not taken
my ruler out yet to measure. Today also featured a victory for me in
the singles bracket of the badminton tournament in class. I was a
little surprised because I'm not as good at singles because those games
tend to focus on moving around the court well, and I'm better at
standing in one spot and placing the birdie in a tough spot for the
opponent. Next up is Amy Tenute, instructor. I'm not sure what sort of
chance I stand in that match.
Bob Daily of the television show Frasier spoke this afternoon to our
Television Studies class as well as numerous others. It was all very
interesting; he started by discussing the process by which an idea
becomes an actual episode of a TV show, then proceeded to answer a
number of questions. I can't think of any particular details right now,
but if I do I'll be sure to let you know.
I've reached the playoffs with the Vancouver Grizzlies in NBA Live
2000. They've been shooting poorly of late, but I'm confident that they
will win the championship.
I also made headway on completing my taxes, looking for roughly 8% of my total income to come back sometime soon as a refund.
CDs to MP3s for $$$s.
This seems like a good proposition, one I'm sure I'd take advantage of
if I were heavily employed, and didn't spend my time on things like
that in the first place. I don't know what to think about the guy who
claims to have ripped 400 CDs in one afternoon. I suppose if he just
tossed the WAV files on at a rate of one every 90 seconds, and didn't
compress the files, he could have done it. But without compression,
that's 280GB. I don't know many people with that kind of storage. Plus,
it would have taken forever to convert WAV->MP3 with good ID tags.
Now it's time for me to go do my radio show.
So I'm trying to find a TV and VCR where I can watch and record a
television program to analyze for TV class. It seems that neither VCR
in Evans works correctly, even when hooked up and configured. Maybe
I'll check out some other dorms this evening.
Grandaddy is playing the Quest with Saves the Day and Fire Theft on 6 April. $21.50, all ages.
It is demoralizing to always work late and never get work done. It
is more demoralizing to have to wake up too early and go to a class
which consists of seventy solid minutes of note-taking. It's even worse
when it feels like -30F outside, which isn't even uncommon.
Yes, I'm writing my paper on the Cosby Show, but I also remembered that today is Professor Yeti day. This week I bring you a feature and last issue, in case you missed it, there was a review.
The AOL Presidential Match below seems to be less variable than I
thought it should be. Seemingly everyone who takes the test rates 100%
with Kucinich and on down the scale in pretty much the same way I did.
I assume this is because most people taking the test are planning on
voting Democrat or liberal in the first place, and thus the test shows
the candidates general right/left stand on issues rather than anything
to do with personal preference. If I find a better quiz I will be sure
to post it here, but for now, just remember that you scored 100% with
Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich: 100%
Sharpton: 91%
Kerry: 83%
Dean: 79%
Clark: 75%
Edwards: 73%
Lieberman: 61%
Bush: 2%
Presidential Match
Bill won't get killed until 16 April, according to the latest reports on iMDB.com.
I'd previously thought it was coming out in February, but I guess we
will all have to wait a little longer for a second serving of blood,
gore, and samurai violence.
My iTunes
library is coming along nicely, though I still can't imagine what it
would be like to fill my 80Gb hard drive. I'm currently hovering around
3100 songs. They've all been tagged correctly, but I still have a lot
to rip from my collection as well as the stuff I find in the record
library. I'm really going to want an iPod once I get every converted to
AAC and MP3. I wish the iTunes Catalog worked with Windows, but it probably will someday.
I suppose the caucuses tomorrow will either solidify the race for
Kerry or open it back up to the other major contenders. I still think
I'll probably just wait until November to decide whether or not I like
the Democratic candidate enough to vote for him, rather than worry
about it now. I mean, I've already been passed by for my chance to help
decide the 2004 nominee.
There's a foot of snow outside and no melting temperatures in sight.
Now it's time to do a radio show. You should listen.
And I'm back, and I produced a great program. It occurred to me
during the show that Richard Thompson is basically always good. It also
occurred to me that I don't own a single Richard Thompson album which got me to thinking that maybe I should buy Mock Tudor with the help of the credit burning a hole in my e-pocket on Spun.com.
I also got to thinking that I really need the first My Morning Jacket
album. I suppose I really don't know, and unless it's cheap I should
wait until one of my tax refunds comes in. Oh well.
Somehow I memorized the playlist from last night, so I commented it below.
Room draw #: 1088.
Burton single, and all the avoidance of the outdoors implied therein, here I come!
I arrived at Film Society a little before 9:30, where Ivan stood
before an empty lecture hall. We waited awhile for people to show up
(no one did) and then it took a while for the VCR to start working, and
finally Belfast, Maine started. I don't really want to talk
about the film now, maybe I will tomorrow after I've seen even more of
it, I just wanted to talk about how nobody was there, except that
Madeline Gorman showed up several minutes in and this one guy walked in
the back, down the stairs, and out the other door.
Before the movie, we discussed the past and future of Film Society, the periodic lack of attendance, and The Girl Next Door.
Hopefully all the projection equipment in Olin 149 gets fixed and Film
Society at least continues its current pace throughout next year and
beyond.
Also, I've recently seen a number of movies I haven't written about on here like Truffaut's Stolen Kisses, which I enjoyed perhaps even a bit more than The 400 Blows, and Manhattan, part of which I slept during. I feel like maybe there are more but I don't really know. I'd like to see The Dreamers and Jersey Girl once they come out.
And I haven't even had time to read it yet, but I bet Paul Krugman fucking tears Bush's deficit-spiking 2004 budget to pieces.
My Amazon wishlist is as robust as it's ever been.
Do you use All Music Guide? Then this will be a good reminder.
Q: How does your rating system work?
A: Our experts use a 1 to 5 star system with 5 being
considered the best rating. It is important to note that our album
ratings are localized; we only compare a release to other releases by
the same artist. We won't compare a Britney Spears album to the latest
release by Incubus. When looking at an artist's discography, you may
see a red check mark next to the star rating of a release. That
represents the AMG Pick for the release most representative of that
artist's entire body of work. On specific release pages you may also
see smaller red checks next to two or three tracks on a recording.
Those are AMG Song Picks. These are the songs on a recording that our
experts feel are most representative of the entire release.
Digitizing memories.
This is an interesting perspective that I, as a college student, often
wonder about: What will I think of this time in my life once it has
passed?
Dirty words.
The impending death of the public cinema, for the well-to-do.
Pizza Party USA!!!
Maurice Clarett, you're free to go.
I would like to apply for this position.(Though Kevin may, by way of his comps project and tentative graduate studies, have a better chance at it.)
Belfast, Maine, yet again plagued by technical problems,
finished screening last night. It was a four hour documentary without
narration. All "action" took place at various, arbitrarily chosen
locations around the town of Belfast. The segments were about ten
minutes each, which means that we saw approximately twenty-four
different settings. The most memorable, and the funniest, was the scene
in which a guy is telling prison inmates how not to get HIV. After he
tells them how the virus functions, he proclaims: "If it's warm,
slippery, and not yours, don't touch it." To clarify: "If you see a
pile of blood or semen on the floor, don't play with it." I'm not sure
the inmates would have been inclined toward such behavior anyway, but I
was glad that the demonstration was caught on film.
The whole thing was a sort of authentic reality TV, in which we get
to see how a community works within the space of four hours. We see
places of work (taxidermist, bakery, lobster-catching), community
gatherings (city council meeting, church services), and the
surprisingly ubiquitous presence of the police, who are always cruising
around town, and who are also present in the scene at court. These
scenes together give the viewer an introduction to a community that
would take months or probably years to gain in "real life". Apart from
the HIV demonstration at the jail, laughs were few, but the almost
voyeuristic pleasure of attempting to grasp the entirety of a community
all in one (or two) several-hour viewing(s) was really something. It
wasn't an extraordinary community, not one of breathtaking beauty or
fabulous wealth or intrigue or suspense, but it was real, far more than
TV executives could ever hope for.
The Media Disappeared Howard Dean
I think it's really funny that Howard Dean was the anti-media
candidate, or at least one using new and alternate forms of media
(internet, weblogs), and now they're complaining that he didn't get the
proper support from old media (newspapers, TV). If you're really going
to show the world that you can run without help from big corporations,
blah blah blah, I think that means that you'd better, you know, run
without help from big corporations. Perhaps those looking for a
candidate who is truly committed to changing politics and government,
and not just riding a wave of new media-driven popularity ("You guys,
I'm quitting after Wisconsin because nobody likes me. :( "), should
look to Dennis Kucinich who, despite finishing well below Dean and
other candidates in the primaries and caucuses, is actually passionate
enough about his beliefs that he continues to struggle on.
Then there's this piece
in which Ralph Nader is defamed because he attempts to work outside of
the two-party system. Nader, in his more than forty years of consumer
advocacy and work promoting progressive causes, has done more for this
country and the well-being of its people than Dean's army of whining
supporters could even if he got elected.
I think those involved, invested, or just interested in presidential
politics should ask themselves whether they are doing so because they
are passionate about the beliefs they hold, or whether this all just
looks like a lot of excitement.
It seems that at least one of Europe's political fiascoes (disappearance of a Russian presidential candidate) has subsided.
The Guardian also has a good piece on Howard Dean and electoral American politics in general.
This seems to be a tumultuous time in European politics. Schröder, Chirac, and Blair
are all under fire. And then you've got Silvio Berlusconi disappearing
for a month to get plastic surgery while the courts debate whether it's
possible to prosecute him for offenses perpetrated in his media mogul
guise. Don't forget about the impossibility of the European Union's
constitution, on which the nations can't agree and, even worse, nobody
else likes either.
Schoolkids, rejoice.
The Observer on The Passion of the Christ.
Harpers.org is original,
interesting, and almost always worth your while. Not quite an online
organ of the magazine, not quite unique content, but worth looking at.
There has been some mention made of its organizational system,
which goes by the traditional date, but also by hierarchical
categories. The intra-article topical links are also something else.
But
Mr. Greenspan did say that the federal government faced big deficits
for many years to come and that those deficits posed a variety of
dangers.
It is now Wednesday, and thus there is a 50% percent chance of a new issue of Professor Yeti. This week, there is a 100% rate of success with a new department, lists, the first two of which are mine.
Urgent message to all those on the Atkins diet: he was 18 stone (252 lbs).
The Fog of War, in which Robert McNamara talks about his life
and his involvement in World War II and Vietnam, was full of insights.
At least from the slant of the movie, McNamara seems not to have been
the evil military-industrial complex ogre that I'd previously thought
him to be. Instead, he seemed like a rational, well-spoken, considerate
man who simply doesn't think he needs to protect his reputation at his
age, which I have to admire. Errol Morris used jump cuts in all the
interview scenes, though the audio seemed smooth; it made me wonder how
he might have altered the meaning of what McNamara said. It seems the
Carleton professor seated behind us was Jorge Brioso.
Lolita was one of my least favorite Kubrick movies. I, like
many others, enjoyed the novel, but felt the film couldn't truly do it
justice. The book was very psychological, and some films do a good job
of getting into the psyche of the main character, but the subject
matter seemed too complex to be presented adequately on screen. I don't
think that films should try to follow the books on which they're based
to the letter, but they should present something interesting in their
own right. I don't know that this would have been made were the story
not already famous. That's not to say that it was bad, it was still
better than okay, but I just couldn't find anything in particular to
recommend it.
Monday night Max and I went to the St Paul Curling Club.
I'd seen curling on TV a couple times during the last winter olympics
(note: Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010) but never really got a hang of
it. Well, watching eight lanes at once, with stones flying and ends
beginning and ending all over the place, it started to make sense. All
except the scoring. It seems that they waited almost until they'd
finished the next end (round) before putting up the score from the one
before that. Delinquent scoring or no, it was still a great experience.
AO Scott on the New Golden Age of [Screen] Acting.
DM in danger of being knocked off by EMI due to remix record.
This weekend started off with a bang in the form of a trip to Fine
Groove Records where I picked up the four records for $1.00 each:
Chet Atkins Our Man In Nashville
The Ventures Play Telstar, Etc.
Joe Jackson I'm The Man
Something by Pete Seeger
Last night we saw American History X at SUMO. It was
appropriately devastating. The best part was the look both killers got
on their faces once they realized what they'd done. I don't know if it
was comforting that they were painted as humans rather than monsters,
or whether that confusion made what they'd done even worse.
As of this writing, Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which puts vocals from Jay Z's Black Album over music from The Beatles's White Album, is available in its entirety here.
Its as good as I'd read, and the penultimate track backmasks Jay-Z
repeating the words "murder Jesus 666" over "Revolution 9."
Below is a synopsis of The Girl Next Door, which I will see on Thursday for free at the U of M Film Society due to my membership I got last summer, from RottenTomatoes.com:
Eighteen-year-old Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch) is a
straight-arrow over-achiever who has never really lived life, until he
falls for his new neighbor, the beautiful and seemingly innocent
Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert). When Matthew discovers this perfect "girl
next door" is a one-time porn star, his sheltered existence begins to
spin out of control. Ultimately, Danielle helps Matthew emerge from his
shell and discover that sometimes you have to risk everything for the
person you love -- as he helps her rediscover her innocence.
Also, last night we saw The Dreamers at the Lagoon. It was exciting and there were a lot of naked people and references to classic films.
I think after I finish my homework and eat dinner and everything, the weekend will be over.
I am feeling exceptional because I am posting from the mouse-less computer in the Willis lab.
At first I was sad because the U Film Society said that they had
gotten confused and that no, there wasn't going to be a free screening
this Thursday. But then Colleen found an NNB ad promising two tickets
to the M Ward/Jim James/Bright Eyes show Friday night. Since she found
it and I called, we by default will be going together. Don't read the
preceding sentence if you wanted to go but can't.
Elephant screened last night at Film Society and it was
interesting. Eric Smith said he couldn't tell if he liked it, and I
sort of agree with that sentiment, but it was thought-provoking and, I
think, worthwhile.
Sub Pop's Pitchfork parody.
iTunes song #4500: The Fiery Furnaces "Inca Rag/Name Game"
Also, on Saturday Dennis Kucinich is going to speak at noon in the Chapel.
Interesting Guardian article on "Conspicuous Compassion" and its emptiness.
In three recent games of Tecmo Super Bowl, Bo Jackson has compiled the following stats:
Avg Carries: 23
Avg TDs: 8
Avg YDs: 610
High YDs: 687
Friday night was the concert, which was great. M (Matt?) Ward
displayed some prowess on his various guitars (though the electric
seemed to be malfunctioning), mostly playing songs from Transfiguration of Vincent.
Jim James joined in on a few, and Conor Oberst on one, and then James
started his solo set. I enjoyed "Bermuda Highway" a lot, it was the one
I thought he had to play solo. Some other songs sounded new or
unfamiliar, but derivative of My Morning Jacket's recent material, in
particular one could be compared closely to "Dancefloors". All three
headliners (plus pedal steel guitar) played on "At Dawn" and "Golden".
Some of the Bright Eyes songs felt overwrought, but both "One Foot in
Front of the Other" and "Waste of Paint" were just devastating. They
closed the set with "Always on My Mind", then encored with what might
have been a Bright Eyes song and then "Girl from the North Country".
I enjoyed seeing M Ward and Bright Eyes (though I'd rather see My
Morning Jacket than Jim James solo) but mostly liked the idea and
execution of three indie icons (or future icons) performing together. I
also remembered that if I ever record an album, it will without
question feature a pedal steel guitar, no matter what genre it may be.
The hockey game last night was exciting and WH@C was victorious.
Today is all homework. Dennis Kucinich was in fine form yesterday
afternoon.
This year's Spring Concert will feature Electric Six.
You can download "Danger! High Voltage", but sadly, not "Gay Bar".
Holy crap! I realized in Macroeconomics today that I have a
Statistics assignment to do, an Econ test to study for and take, and a
group TV project to complete this weekend, in addition to board
elections all afternoon on Saturday. I shouldn't have this much work to
do at once again until at least May.
Serendipity! iTunes just went right from "Pink and Blue" by the Mountain Goats to "Pink & Blue" by Outkast.
iTunes song #5000: Michael Jackson "Thriller"
Did you hear about this?
Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the national teachers union a
"terrorist" organization for opposing the No Child Left Behind act.
It appears that I may visit Pratt, Kansas for the second spring
break in a row, though this time it will be but a milemarker on my way
west.
Lilya 4-Ever was, according to the obnoxious loudmouths
behind me, about how not to sniff glue, get orphaned, or go to Sweden
with a strange man, even if he seems nice. These people are essentially
correct, at least in their broad restatement of the subject matter. I'd
prefer, however, if people would keep their doltish, obvious, and
moronic comments to themselves, especially after a film. As I learned
at a piano lesson one day, maybe in choir too, come to think of it, the
performance does not end when it stops, but rather once the time passes
in which the audience takes a breath and the performer calmly returns
to a resting position (or the credits begin to roll). While I learned
this in order to not ruin a performance by moving around too quickly
after a piece is finished, it would behoove moviegoers to realize the
same. A movie is not over when the last scene stops, because the
"spirit" of the movie hovers in the room, if you will. Granted, you can
probably start yelling at your friends as soon as Adam Sandler lands
his last one-liner or Arnold Schwarzenegger dispatches with his last
foe, but some directors actually communicate something to their
audience by the tone and pacing of their picture, and it's not quite
fair to steal that away by going on loudly about whatever it is they
don't have the self-control to keep to yourself.
I have a few theories about why people do this. One is that they
have temporarily lost the good sense to keep to themselves what no one
needs to hear, or maybe they never possessed it in the first place. Two
is that they really just don't "get" whatever it is the movie was
about, perhaps they failed to understand why it was made and want to
express that by yammering on about it, hoping that others were
similarly confused. Third is that they are unsettled by the feelings
stirred up in them by the filmmaker and, rather than entertain them and
contemplate for a while, they'd prefer to try to get rid of them by
stealing the mood and reshaping it to one in which no one has to think
about what they've seen and heard because they can just listen to the
obnoxious jerk taking over the theater (or lecture hall).
Outbursts such as those always sadden me after a movie because I
know that part of the pleasure I take in the moviegoing experience is
savoring it afterwards for as long as possible. To do away with that
seems a shame.
Mario Brothers flash movie
Wouldn't it be cool if, rather than album covers, you could get the
label from the side of the CD case that you see when they are lined up
on a shelf? Then you could copy and paste them onto a sort of virtual
bookshelf to create an image of what your digital music collection
would look like if it were, in fact, legal? I think that it would be pretty cool.
Remember high school? This list makes me sad for those who will need it.
'Thousands evicted' for Beijing Olympics
iTunes song #6000: Elvis Costello & the Attractions "Alison"
It would seem that Xiu Xiu is coming to the Triple Rock Social Club
on Thursday, 11 March, to entertain fans of all ages for eight dollars.
We are going to have an Olympics this summer, right, Athens?
Following Kevin's lead,
here are my ten songs I'd listen to on repeat for 24 hours, listed in
relative order of how old I was when it came to my attention that they
should be placed on such a list:
01 Neil Young "Heart of Gold"
02 The Clash "Lost in the Supermarket"
03 Brian Eno "The Big Ship"
04 Weezer "The Good Life" or almost anything else from Pinkerton
05 Bob Dylan "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"
06 The Smiths "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"
07 Richard Thompson "Cooksferry Queen"
08 Interpol "NYC"
09 Guided by Voices "I Am A Scientist" [EP Version]
10 My Morning Jacket "The Way That He Sings" among others
Headphones allow listeners to regain personal space.
Imminent doom!
Okay, so apparently if you click on the bar above your album artwork
in iTunes where it probably says "Selected Song", it will change to
"Now Playing" and it will always show artwork for the song that is
playing, which is good.
The Carleton DVD Fest took place this evening. It's sort of a big
advertisement for Apple and sort of a film festival, but it works
pretty well and the advertising aspect isn't too overstated. There were
some great entries (all entries are under five minutes) and some that
didn't work as well as their creators had probably wished, but it was
an enjoyable time. The two big winners were a stop motion film
consisting of thousands of photographs and a silent, black and white
film with special effects used to make it look dated.
iTunes song #7000: Joy Division "Candidate"
Song #7000 was but one of many Colleen generously shared with me last night.
The Guardian on the negative social impact of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs:
"The film's most serious consequence seemed to be an outbreak of young
men wearing black suits, calling each other Mr Orange and refusing to
tip in restaurants."
The full article about Amnesty International's attack on Kill Bill.
Way to go, abstinence!
The beginning of the universe.
Naomi Klein against outsourcing "low-wage, low-prestige jobs."
Another AFA poll backfires.
I won't have another radio show until 16 April, but this was a good
way to close out the term. Only two mistakes: allowing the second
DM/Jay-Z track to play and a pause after the end of "Cooksferry Queen"
as I realized that "Bill McCai" wasn't broadcasting, but luckily I had
"July, July!" lined up. I might try to make this one into a mix CD,
which is something I've thought might be a good idea for a while, using
Audacity to fade the tracks in and out of one another. We'll see how
that goes, attempting to subtract 10 minutes from the show to fit the
time constraints. There's also the fact that I don't have the Ill Lit
or Rapture tracks, but I won't let that stand in my way.
Today I picked up my good-as-new sandals, ready for spring break,
which I'd taken in yesterday right before preordering Iron & Wine's
new album, Our Endless Numbered Days, at Fine Groove, the proprietor of which could be the older brother of James Woods who plays the father in Virgin Suicides,
because I wanted to use my coupon and the used selection held no
treasures. Then I went and heard Xiu Xiu and two other bands at the
Triple Rock Social Club, where I felt like I was being entertained
while on board a spacecraft, due to the decor and the bizarre music.
More Professor Yeti!
US police put hip-hop under surveillance
The mix CD
has been heroically completed, clocking in at 79:59 or so, though that
includes several seconds of silence at the end. Now I will finish
studying for my Macroeconomics exam, take it, keep working on the Stats
take-home, pack, and, by Monday morning, leave.
One word: Tucson. Two words: Car repair.
...for a summary of my Spring Break activities and a slide show of
pictures. The slide show is almost done but I am too tired to get it
into presentable form tonight.
And here is what happened on my Spring Break:
Monday: I ate breakfast with Colleen and turned in my Stats
take-home exam (which seems to have gone okay). I then drove south
towards Des Moines to see my high school boys basketball team play in
the first round of the state tournament. It started snowing soon after
crossing into Iowa and got nasty for the last hour. I almost ran out of
gas, but refilled just in time and slid into the parking lot just in
time. The game was close, and IMS
gave the opposing team by far the toughest test they'd face on their
way to the state championship. The drive home afterward was not
pleasant either, but passed uneventfully. I went to bed at 8:00 pm and
slept for thirteen hours.
Tuesday: I sat around the house doing laundry and getting ready for
my trip. I also called and then picked up David Rumsey, who would
accompany me to New Mexico. After a last-minute chat on AIM to clarify
any major points about getting to New Mexico, we went to sleep.
Wednesday: We left Wayland just after seven in the morning. We had
snow and rain until Kansas. There was lunch to be had at Wendy's near
Emporia and dinner at a Subway in Dalhart, Texas around sunset, where I
turned the driving over to David. He got us to Santa Rosa, New Mexico,
where I decided I wanted to drive again, until we got to Carrizozo,
from which David guided us to Las Cruces around 1:30 am MST.
Thursday: I made the acquaintance of Arthur at the campus dining
hall (New Mexico State University), whom I believe to be the most
helpful and engaging food service employee I have ever met. I watched
Syracuse defeat BYU as Jerry McNamara scored 43 points and hit nine
three-point shots. Wow. I think I also played frisbee with David on the
springy, dead-looking grass. We drove out to the mountains near Las
Cruces and to Mesilla, the antique southwestern town sort of in the
western part of Las Cruces. We ate at La Posta, some moderately famous
restaurant there, and had frozen custard afterwards. I think it was
that evening, during "storytime", that David reminded us that Vince
Coleman, in the 1985 postseason, was practicing on the field during a
rain delay and got caught rolled up in the tarp and was so badly
bruised that he couldn't play for the rest of the series. This is the
same man who threw a firecracker at fans in LA. He deserves a very
special place in Cooperstown.
Friday: After declining to attend a radio class at 8:30 am, I ate
brunch and we then journeyed to the southwest to see Pancho Villa State
Park and grill at Rock Hound State Park. The view from the grilling
site at Rock Hound was rather impressive. At Pancho Villa State Park we
saw a proto-tank used by the army in the early twentieth century, a
lot of cacti, the Mexican border, and a man with "meaningful" tattoos,
according to the park ranger. Because of him, we had to avoid the
idyllic spot near the cacti and eat at Rock Hound, which was pretty
impressive, though not the best grilling site we'd see on the trip
(that would be Saguaro National Forest near "the building", which can
be seen in the slide show).
Saturday: We drove down to El Paso and parked the car in order to
walk across the border to Ciudad Juarez. There were many beggars and
people (mostly kids) selling trinkets. We saw a museum, a sidewalk
dancer, many street vendors, a Methodist parade, and an heladeria. We
ate near a tourist-centered market, with ferocious service. We refused
all offers to purchase doodads until somebody came around after the
meal with some bubble gum. On the way back the border guards questioned
Brian on the medication in his pocket, possibly because of the
flip-flops he was wearing, though we can't confirm that. That was the
first of three times on the trip I'd have to declare my citizenship
(also on a Greyhound bus and near White Sands National Monument). After
leaving David at the bus station to return to Iowa and school, Brian
and I went back to Las Cruces to eat pizza and watch Bones.
Sunday: After confirming that we would not be going to Los Angeles
as hoped, we decided to first go to Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, after
which we'd hike at Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon and see the Painted
Desert and Petrified Forest. On the way there, after stopping at The
Thing in eastern Arizona, which wasn't very exciting, we made a detour
into Tucson to see Biosphere 2, which we didn't feel we could pass up
without remorse. Just north of Tucson in Oro Valley, and not yet at
Biosphere, the clutch went out on the Acura Vigor we were in. After a
call to AAA and 75 minutes, we were towed to the nearest place that
could look at the car (it was Sunday). They told us to wait until
Monday, so we walked down the highway looking for an affordable motel.
After 2.5 miles of walking in the stones and brush alongside the road
(no sidewalks or shoulder), and not having found anything below $85, we
stopped at a gas station to find a phone book. By way of the clerk
inside, we figured out that we should take the bus down to Miracle
Mile, where the cheap hotels were located. We stayed at the Sunland,
which had bars on the doors and didn't allow guests at night, but was
clean enough. (The phone was kind of odd, though; listen to it. I seem to have been unhappy with it according to my tone of voice.) We watched The Raven,
which starred Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and was "suggested" by
Poe's poem. It was apparently too horrific for Great Britain at the
time of its release in the thirties. Our sensibilities were not
offended, however.
Monday: Brian called around and decided to get the car towed to
another shop in town. We checked in there, having walked another 2.5
miles from the motel, and then hit up an ice cream shop, a book store
(where I bought The Portable Voltaire and What Is Cinema? {which I'll need for Italian Neorealism, I just discovered} but didn't pick up A People's History of the United States or The Magic Lantern),
The India Oven for lunch, which was almost as good as Chapati, and then
took the bus to a cheap movie theater where we endured Cheaper by the Dozen,
which seemed to have come with a faulty last reel, exposing boom mics
and chopping off faces at the chin. It expressed heavy-handed
traditional sentiments such as: people from the country are nice,
people in the city are evil; you must choose family over career and
can't mix the two; people who don't have a lot of children are selfish;
and what not. That evening we found lodging with Tom & Cindy
Brenneman, who live in Tucson and who Brian knows from Iowa City. We
listened to jazz on NPR, a CD of This American Life, with stories about
a fiasco, Mr. Loh, David Sedaris' childhood, and other things. We also
talked to Tom about his work (border issues: what causes them, what
effects they have, what might be done to improve the situation) and
other things. He said that when Brian called him, he googled him and
got this very website, which I found amusing.
Tuesday: We were allowed to take the Brennemans' truck to the Tucson
Mountains and Saguaro National Forest, which provided a lot of good
scenery. After returning to their house, we planned to take the bus to
Hi Corbett Field to see the Rockies take on the Mariners, but we missed
the bus we wanted to take both times and ended up walking at least six
miles round trip. It was a very close game, with long lines for tickets
and concessions.
Wednesday: We started at the Hotel Congress, where we read the New
York Times, then ate at Del Taco. We decided not to go to the
University of Arizona because we'd had enough walking in the sun, so we
bussed to the Tucson Mall to see Master & Commander, which
both of us had seen, but we just had to fill the time. After that we
discovered the car wasn't ready, so we found a motel early (the
Brennemans had left town) and watched basketball, as well as Pimp My
Ride and a Behind the Music on Snoop Dogg. We dined on Blackjack Pizza
for the second time in Tucson, since they provided both dinner and
breakfast with a large and a medium pizza for a total of fifteen
dollars, including delivery and tip.
Thursday: The car was not ready, so we gathered up necessary
belongings and took the Tucson bus to the Greyhound station, where we
hopped on a bus at 1:40 pm that would get us to Las Cruces seven hours
later after having passed by the city at 6:30 but not stopping, which
meant we'd take another bus back north from El Paso. The guy across the
aisle from me was fascinated by a blimp which turned out to be a
helicopter, then turned to a Playboy Lingerie magazine to pass the
time. The bathroom smelled something awful. After arriving in Las
Cruces we paid a cabbie all we had in our pockets (a five-dollar bill
and a lot of change) to get us back to campus. We got a pretty good
discount due to his sympathy.
Friday: I started out at nine o'clock MST and had some nice driving
across New Mexico, including a fuel efficiency of over 40 MPG, which
was nice. From the Texas border on I battled storm clouds and high
winds, even a hail storm near Dalhart. After resting a short while in
southwestern Kansas, I made it to a $36 motel in Newton.
Saturday: I made it home at 4:30 pm CST and went to the Peking
Buffet in Iowa City for my brother's birthday with my family, where I
saw Matt Swanson. I also watched Red Dwarf later that evening.
Sunday: I went to church in the morning and drove to Northfield in
the late afternoon/early evening. I was assisted upon arrival by Max
and Anna. I unpacked everything, did some laundry, and removed the
carpet from my floor (it wasn't very nice carpet, and it was hard to
clean given the state of the Evans vacuums), rolling it under the bed
and sweeping the floor multiple times.
Monday: (technically post-Spring Break) I hit up Sociology class
where the professor showed up late because he'd forgotten what time 3A
classes start while on sabbatical, ripped textbook publishing companies
for their sales tactics, lambasted academics for falling into the trap
of lazily conforming to existing ideologies, and told us all how much
he hates to give out grades. Nader Saiedi is certainly one of the best
professors I've had, and I'm looking forward to this class. I then ate
lunch and went to Fine Groove records to pick up the new Iron &
Wine, which is great, and which includes the bonus CD. I bought books
(didn't have to get What Is Cinema?) while Brendon Etter played My
Morning Jacket, for which I thanked him, finished up the slide show,
went to math, and did reading, ate dinner, and watched a movie (see
update above).
I could probably go on even longer about my break if you wanted, but
that is a relatively detailed account. Hopefully this will mark a
return to consistent updates and not ones filled with mundane details
as above. I will say that I especially enjoyed Wire's Pink Flag, The Thermals' More Parts Per Million, and the Beatles Rubber Soul
on the trip, even as my front right speaker fizzled out. I need new
speakers but have no money; I suppose we'll have to wait and see what
happens.
Also, I was reminded today by Ivan that the Minneapolis/St. Paul
International Film Festival is nigh. You can see their schedule on the internet.
If there's something you really want to see, but don't have a car,
maybe you should try to get me to go to it. I'm thinking about at least
Dogville, Raja, The Return, Crimson Gold, and maybe The Tesseract, depending on what works out.
AND, I am so far only sure that I'll be attending My Morning Jacket
(w/ M Ward) at the Quest this term (May 20), though I'm also bullish on
Einstürzende Neubauten because that's midterm break. I really don't
know what my financial limitations are quite yet, so I don't want to
blow too much money on tickets I can't afford.
First of all, Sam Beam could sing a successful lullaby to an incurable insomniac.
Second of all, see below for the lengthy Spring Break update.
Third of all, I think I'll have to add Charlie Kaufman to my list of
must-see filmmakers (or writers), although such a concept may be proven
foolish by the latest Kevin Smith and Coen Brothers projects (Jersey Girl and The Ladykillers, respectively), if the reviews are anything to go by. So far, though, the three Kaufman films I've seen, first Being John Malkovich, then Adaptation, and tonight Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind have all wowed me.
Before going any further, I might want to say something about
suspension of disbelief, which was discussed this evening. It is
easier, of course, to suspend disbelief watching something set in the
year 50,000,000,000 or in "another dimension" or something, but it's
just as vital for films set in 2004, or whatever year it might be.
Unless it's "hard" science-fiction, in which the author or filmmaker
clearly attempts to concoct a believable speculative scenario, in my
opinion it is almost never advantageous to pick apart the science of a
book or a film, because at best your search for error will be
fruitless, and at worst you will devalue what might otherwise have been
a good entertainment experience. The social impact of the science or
whatever development the film or book features is what should really be
picked apart, because that should really be the focus of any
speculative fiction. In that area, I think Eternal Sunshine
succeeds: the science of memory tampering is not examined more closely
than to show its unsettling side, and the social impact (on Carrey and
Winslet) is powerfully presented.
I found a lack of chemistry between the two leads, but for this
movie it seemed to work; their relationship had flaws, but they made it
work anyway, for reasons that may be invisible to anyone not a member
of the couple, which I thought seemed very realistic. I loved the way
that Michael Gondry used the concept and the visual special effects not
as eye candy or a ploy to draw the viewer in, but to heighten the
emotional impact of losing a loved one, in any sense of the word. I'd
probably have become annoyed with the constant surrealistic distortions
of the action onscreen were it not for the fact that it so perfectly
matched the emotional state of the protagonist to whom everything was
happening. That, more or less, is probably something Hollywood could do
a lot more of: use whiz-bang effects, futuristic settings, and massive
budgets not for their own sake, but in ways that tie in directly to the
main focus of the story. Admittedly, period pieces and blockbusters
occasionally make sense, but without focusing on the story, it's near
impossible to make a good movie (book, play, etc).
Note: I was thinking of what a good idea it would be for some rich
person or group of rich people to post a large sum of money for bands
to make an album on $10,000 or a movie on $100,000 or something with
strict spending guidelines to see what artists who usually spend their
time wasting money could do if forced back to basics, which I think
could be quite impressive and refreshing. The reward would have to be
substantial to get the biggest and brightest involved, but it could be
exciting.
iTunes song #8000: The Stills "Gender Bombs"
So, Tuesday evening I accompanied Jack McGrath, among others, to a
Sacred Harp singing in Minneapolis. It was, delightfully enough, just
what I'd hoped it to be: people sitting around singing songs in rapid
succession as raucously as they are able. It's essentially an ideal
sort of thing for me since I like to sing, but mostly enjoy reading and
learning rather than endlessly practicing to perfect a piece. Though
practice can yield good results, I much prefer singing hymns in church,
or in chapel in high school which was even better. The only problem
there is that we don't always sing hymns in church, which kind of
annoys me, but I don't really have any control over that. Hopefully I
can go again this term, it will probably depend on how much work I have
to do and when.
Sacred Harp and Shape Note website
My list of rock shows for this term is subjectively exhaustive at this point.
From the Guardian article:
It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The
typeface Tony used to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick
used for the posters and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001.
"It's Futura Extra Bold," explains Tony. "It was Stanley's favourite
typeface. It's sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean
and elegant."
"Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?" I ask.
"God, yes," says Tony. "Sometimes late into the night. I was always
trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his
sans serifs."
Jesus for sale!
Tonight marked the first of many screenings for Italian Neorealism with Rome, Open City. It featured members of the Italian resistance under the German occupation of Rome during World War II.
I must say that I was more enamored with the story of the film
(using scraps of film found anywhere, faulty electrical power,
realistic depiction of the Italian resistance) before learning that
Roberto Rosselini had made a number of Fascist-approved films during
the occupation himself. Certainly he had to make a living, and he
doesn't seem to have gone head over heels for the Fascist cause, but it
does detract a little from the heroic nature of the picture.
Saturday night I'll be attending Dogville at the Oak Street Cinema at 7:30 pm. If I get ambitious, I might go see Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
at the Riverview beforehand at 4:30, partly because it looks
interesting, partly because I'd like to see a lot of movies at the
Festival, and partly because the Riverview Theater is enormous and thus
kind of a fun place to see a movie. I also might get a pass for $50
which would be good for 10 films, but I might not because I'm not sure
I'll see that many (total, including guests).
Due to a number of factors (price, schedule, etc.), here is my ordered list:
My Morning Jacket, May 20
Savath & Savalas (Scott Herren), April 24
-or- Definitive Jux tour, April 23 (but probably not if I decide to go to Savath + Savalas the night after)
Einstürzende Neubauten, May 1
TV on the Radio, April 18
Squarepusher, April 10 (if I can somehow get KRLX programming done)
Grandaddy and DJ Shadow are looking expensive at the moment, plus
I'll be less inclined to go to shows during the MSP Film Festival,
where I'd rather be spending my time since it's only happening for two
weeks, so I may be less inclined to see BRMC, Ester Drang, or the
Distillers. Air is expensive and on Wednesday, which is about the worst
night of the week for me, so that one may also be out. MF Doom will be
at the Triple Rock on May 22, but that's Spring Concert, which is free.
I'm going to guess I'll hit three or four of these this term. I'm
99% sure I'll see My Morning Jacket, and probably Savath & Savalas
and Einstürzende Neubauten, since Saturdays and especially mid-term
break will be open. TV on the Radio will probably depend on how much
homework I have that weekend. I might try to pick up tickets for Savath
& Savalas and Einstürzende Neubauten this weekend at Electric
Fetus. Stopping by the Quest would be a little bit more of a trek into
downtown, but it's not unlikely.
And then, of course, one can't forget Dick Dale.
The first half or so of Something's Gotta Give was incredibly
light and lively, and I assumed that it was going to be a relatively
short movie with some kind of screwball ending. But then it kept going
and going. Not that the second half was bad, far from it, but the
pacing felt odd. It was kind of like there were two story arcs, but the
second one never really rose high enough to recapture my interest as
the first had. Apart from any inconsistency with the pacing, the movie
was clever, funny, and surprisingly honest for a romantic comedy. Jack
Nicholson and Diane Keaton were both in fine form, and though I can't
verify how their characters compare to actual sixty year olds, I can
say that I enjoyed both their performances.
Also, Let It Blurt just told me that Robert Christgau has apparently always been a pompous know-it-all. That's comforting, I suppose.
And, iTunes song #8500: Bright Eyes "The Big Picture"
Last night I waited in the longest movie-ticket line I've ever been
in outside the Oak Street Cinema in Minneapolis to see Lars von Trier's
Dogville. It was kind of a thrill to be seeing something that
was clearly anticipated by the audience who had arrived long before to
assure themselves a seat.
Von Trier's use of a nearly bare stage really wasn't distracting,
mostly because of the copious narration. I had a difficult time, as
with most devices in the movie, trying to figure out specifically what
the director was attempting with his lack of set. It seemed an
indicator that he was trying to lay bare his intentions and the basic
details of the movie. That would make sense with regard to the
narration, which was pretty comprehensive, as far as the psychological
processes of the characters went. Indeed, von Trier seemed much more
intent on communicating his message than with maintaining plot secrets
or driving the audience wild with suspense. For most of the film, it is
obvious that Grace's relationship with the townspeople is on a decline
that won't end happily, so the audience is never too surprised, except
for the severity of the human indignities inflicted, about what happens
to the main character.
The end, on the other hand, is entirely unsuspected. In fact, it
seems almost like a second act, because the whole dramatic perspective
changes, including the personality of the main character. There are two
points at which the narrator announces that, "There was a change of
light over Dogville," which may indicate the transition to another act,
even though the film claims to take place over a prologue and nine
chapters.
Many, many questions remain once the credits roll (to the plastic
soul of David Bowie's "Young Americans"): What is the significance of
the dog that lives in Dogville? What are we to make of Grace's
personality change toward the end? Was this destiny or just a likely
situation? Where in the film, if anywhere, is "justice" to be found,
and is there a preferred interpretation to this film? Is this a moral,
immoral, or amoral film? Is Dogville an American town or simply a town
populated by average human beings? Clearly, it would take numerous
viewings to unravel all the messages located within, which is all the
more amazing since von Trier at first seems to be very direct with his
audience. The story takes on the format of a fairytale, and one with an
ending more suited to the fierce old German stories than any recent
Disney reinterpretation. Thus we expect a direct moral resolution, yet
we aren't provided with one and are in fact more confused than we might
be after a traditional movie in which the messages are obviously
encoded and meanings hidden below the surface.
The film never struck me as specifically anti-American, though in
the last part of his review for the Village Voice, J Hoberman covers
that well. It seems to be more a critique of human nature, and I don't
think it's setting should offend viewers at all. Hoberman also had a
great piece on the film in the February 2004 Sight and Sound which
isn't available online.
J Hoberman review in the Village Voice and supplementary materials
Rolling Stone review
Onion AV Club review
Goodbye Blue Monday served me the same subpar coffee today that I've
gotten there before. Meg Pain seconded my notion that there is some
basic flaw with the coffee-making process there, but we were at a loss
as to what it might be.
iTunes song #9000: The Streets "Too Much Brandy"
Musicplasma is fun and informative to look at
Onion AV Club interviews Isaac Brock
I watched Paisan tonight but I don't have anything to say about it.
Ikea boss named richest in world
'How I stopped buying CDs and started loving music'
So you wanna fake being an indie rock expert...
So, I'm perusing All Music Guide and what do I find but an essay on white rappers. I think the last paragraph about white rappers in Europe is probably the most interesting.
Also, the new music below is on vinyl and checked out from the record library.
I watched Bicycle Thief again this evening and was too tired to pay attention, sadly.
I took a short nap before Film Society's screening of Vendredi Soir, which certain parties had described as a better depiction of urban ennui than Lost in Translation. I agree that it didn't include as many awkward or outlandish moments as LiT,
but I think Sofia Coppola's movie was a more enjoyable experience. I
enjoyed moments such as the one where the camera show the top three
letters of the "hotel" sign to foreshadow the evening to come, as well
as the portentous voice on the car radio. I also recognized Vincent
Lindon from Chaos, which I really liked when I saw it last summer.
Today's events, births, deaths, holidays
Selected other events (from on-this-day.com):
1789 - The U.S. House of Representatives held its first meeting.
1985 - Phyllis Diller underwent a surgical procedure for permanent eyeliner to eliminate the need for eyelid makeup.
1994 - Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) was found dead at the age of 27. He had committed suicide three days before.
1998 - George Michael was released on bail. The arrest was for engaging in lewd conduct in a park restroom.
Max, Anna, and
Summer delivered me a birthday pie of dubious manufacture, and managed
to entertain themselves while I talked to my parents on the phone. They
encouraged me to take this personality test,
which I did, and I scored a zero on extroversion (or 100 on
introversion). This sort of result doesn't surprise me, although the
extremity of it does. And no, I didn't falsify my responses to skew the
results.
Something else that surprised me today: the loudness of the drill
used to install a fire alarm (or something) in my room. It was
absolutely punishing. I'm glad I was just leaving for golf as they
really got enthusiastic about it.
Something that didn't really surprise me today: the relatively small
turnout at the Jack-organized Shape Note sing this evening. In fact, it
was just Jack for the first ten minutes, but we peaked at five
attendees around eight o'clock. It was still a satisfying experience,
but more people would probably make it more fun. It would be a nice
sort of thing to have in Northfield, if possible.
Morrissey has a new album and a feature in the Guardian. Morrissey on America:
He loves the weather and the landscape and "the endless
drives into nothingness". "America's such a fascinating monster that we
all think that it's just too grotesque to imagine waking up to every
single day. But there are good aspects to it, even though the awful are
truly awful. The arts are a struggle. Television's appalling. And after
all the American enlightenment we end up with George W. That's
frightening."
Thurston
Moore has an op-ed piece in the Times about Kurt Cobain, "alternative"
music, the avant-garde aesthetic of the Seattle scene, and what it all
means ten years later.
KRLX is broadcasting once again at 88.1 FM. Also, if you are out of range, get the webcast. Specifically, you should tune in between midnight and 1:30 on Thursday evenings/Friday mornings CDT.
Some comments:
Raja. An uncomfortable, awkward story about a failed romantic connection between a rich French guy and a Moroccan girl. Kevin
and I attempted to analyze the movie in the context of colonialism,
among other things, but I think we came away still a little befuddled.
Next weekend will entail both Crimson & Gold and The Tesseract on Friday, hopefully.
Party at 506 W 6th St. A pretty successful party with a
number of people I know but whom I don't know overly well. Some
interesting conversation about post-graduation plans, radio, German
toasting, shape note singing, the Carleton Singers, and, what else, Pitchfork. There was also dancing to be had in the room that wasn't the kitchen. I had some of it.
KRLX schedule. This has so far been the least stressful term
as far as programming and getting the station ready goes. Hopefully
that trend continues throughout the spring.
"Birthday party" at Allen House. I had sort of personally
designated the 506 W 6th St party my birthday party when I realized
that I wasn't going to make the one that had been planned, to some
extent, afterwards. So tonight (Saturday) we made up for it. All I can
say is that not everyone came away with the same head of hair they went
in with. Or any hair at all, for that matter. That doesn't imply me,
however, since it should be obvious to all and sundry that cutting hair
is not really my sort of thing.
Going to bed right now. An excellent idea.
This evening I went to see Surplus, preceded by a talk by anarchist/primitivist John Zerzan. He had some interesting points, but wasn't a very good speaker.
First, the film: if it succeeds at anything, Surplus is a
triumph of editing and recontextualizing both sound and images. In
fact, the entire film is a series of short pieces, often stylized to
better manipulate our opinions of what we're seeing and hearing. There
is no theorizing or ideology present in the film other than that big
corporations are scary, dehumanizing, and unstoppable. The filmmakers
interview a young Cuban woman about her visit to Europe, and she
reveals what a joy it was to eat a Big Mac with one hand while flipping
through satellite TV channels with a remote in the other. This is
preceded by an extended montage of various Cubans saying, "Rice and
beans." It was difficult to decipher just what the filmmakers thought
of Castro, Cuba, and socialism; or the anarchist movement in general.
They do suggest that capitalism engenders feelings of emptiness, but no
true alternative is offered.
I did really like one part, which was a scene at the sex doll
factory, where this grungy looking guy goes around describing the
differences between all these mannequin looking bodies hanging on hooks
waiting for heads. It was definitely a dystopian vision, though, like
with everything in the movie, probably not as awful as they made it
seem.
Which is a complaint I have about Zerzan. He seemed to deal in vague
apocalyptic warnings, which I never really go in for. I'm even on his
side as far as the deleterious effects of multi-national corporations,
but he just struck me as an alarmist, and not a coherent futurist. Much
like the filmmakers, John Zerzan was an expert at how the "system"
should be dismantled, but never clearly explained just how people would
happily return to primitive lifestyles. One of my major disputes with
what he had to say was that primitive peoples lived happily free from
war, pollution, etcetera ad nauseam. I find it hard to believe that
dismantling the global system of power (eg. corporations, nations, the
UN, the World Bank, ...) would reduce strife. Even if somehow the
anarchists could get enough people together to completely overthrow all
governments and corporations everywhere, I have no idea how they plan
to maintain any of the positive qualities of life they promise. Sure,
shit's bombed out in Afghanistan, but that leads to warlords and
disaster, not peace and tranquility.
I fail to see how setting people's cars on fire and throwing rocks
at storefront windows really gains you any sort of credibility. Zerzan
claimed that peaceful protest never got anybody anywhere, a point with
which I would beg to differ, but didn't offer any examples of how
destroying property would advance any cause other than poverty. At some
level, I understand the terrorist mentality, that in some cases it's
not possible to effect change through traditional channels or modes of
action, but the anti-globalization terrorists don't seem to be
advancing any specific point or ideology so much as a desperation. I
think that if you are going to accept the responsibility of attempting
to destroy a system on which everything runs, you'd better have a
pretty good backup plan ready, but I couldn't tell from what Zerzan
said that he or anybody he associates with does.
I think maybe the most effective plan of action for a primitivist
like Zerzan would be to attempt to act out visibly the principles he
espouses by forming a community that would succeed at living a
sustainable lifestyle. It seems to me that the average Joe, for whom
Zerzan claims to speak, would be much more excited by a visible and
viable alternative to the consumerist lifestyle than by terrorists
vandalizing the store where he buys his groceries.
For me, whatever exactly Zerzan was promoting, be it "anarchism,"
"primitivism," or whatever, offers very little in the way of hope.
Rather than creating new and better ways of living and interacting with
one another, he says, "Destroy, destroy, destroy!" Everybody can find
better things do with their time than that.
Michael Chabon has a powerful defense of teenage (and general) freedom of thought and expression in today's New York Times.
Let's see here...
Friday morning I attended a convocation featuring Barrie Osborne,
who talked about the challenges involved in making Lord of the Rings. I
got the sense that I could have learned the same stuff by renting the
special edition DVDs and watching the extra features. There was a
lunch/question-answer session afterwards: the sandwich was dry and
there were few good questions or answers.
Friday evening I tried to buy ticket(s) for My Morning Jacket at the
Quest Club. They claimed to be opening their doors at 9pm for
something, so I figured I could buy tickets. Well, the doors were
locked with no sign of opening. Jack and I navigated the treacherous
Minneapolis streets and made it across the river to Bell Auditorium. Crimson Gold
was a revealing look at urban Iran, which I tend to think of as a dusty
bowl of oppressive Islamic fundamentalism, but as with most cities, I
think, looked far more familiar in many ways to American cities than
I'd assumed. There were some clear examples of class conflict and some
other, more symbolic parts, and I thought in general the film did a
good job of communicating why, besides not having a lot of money, it's
tough to not be part of the privileged class, specifically in Teheran.
The Tesseract, on the other hand, was as bad as feared. At
heart it was a story about a shipment of drugs and how a lot of people
get killed in the process of trying to get the drugs to their
destination. Maybe it would have been okay had the director realized
this and simply focused on having his characters race through the
streets of Bangkok shooting a lot. Instead, the movie attempted to
touch on "the hip permeability of time," which was completely
irrelevant to the storyline and not useful at all. There were a lot
Matrix-like effects, eg. slow-moving bullets, guys with sunglasses and
trenchcoats defying the laws of physics and whatnot. This was also
foolish because all the effects evident in the film had been done
better elsewhere. There was also a scene of complete psycho-babble that
really didn't have anything to do with the story, but the filmmakers
attempted to use it to lend the ending some sort of significance (it
didn't).
Don't even get me started on the awful camerawork and massive abuse
of jump-cuts. Suffice it to say that the film contained about ten times
the number of shots it needed to tell the story visually. Rather than
being "cool," the jump-cuts were just stupid and distracting, though
really there wasn't much to be distracted from as far as the action
went.
Some of the translation was kind of funny, and there were a few
jokes that actually worked (or didn't but were funnier that way), but
please don't watch this movie. It's probably the worst one I've seen
since Cube. I think the worst scene was that in which the
psychologist, who is filming children talking about their dreams, goes
to this wretchedly poor place outside of Bangkok, and has this massive
grin on her face as she records the sadness around her on her digital
video camera. I have no idea why, which sort of sums up my assessment
of the movie in general.
Also, I forgot to mention that last week on Car Talk they played
Death Cab for Cutie's "Title and Registration" during an interlude. It
was kind of odd.
At the moment I am listening to the wind blowing everything down
outside and waiting for the cool weather to come back. Today was a
record temperature of 85, which means my room was less than pleasant.
Luckily, tonight we are having ice cream in the Evans lounge.
Also, thanks to Andy Wills I was reminded today that Richard
Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is one of the greatest songs
ever.
The Film Society website has been updated for the first time in two and a half years, although it's not all that exciting yet.
Kevin reminded me today that there was also a "great" scene in The Tesseract
when the director snaps from an image of an informant (or something)
who'd just gotten smashed by a car to an image of a slaughtered pig.
Poignant.
But really, the most important thing for you to know is that Kill Bill Vol. 2 does a perfect job of picking up right where Vol. 1 left off last fall.
First and foremost, I'm stunned that Quentin Tarantino filled a
two-part, four-hour movie with so much good stuff. Not only was I never
bored, I was never less than thoroughly entranced for the full length
of both parts. I enjoyed Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown (and Reservoir Dogs, though not to the same extent), but for me Kill Bill stands head and shoulders above the rest. Yes, I thought the non-linear storyline was amazing the first time I saw Pulp Fiction,
but once you realize that the movie is in essence several cinematic
short stories that overlap in time and place, it's not really
mindboggling anymore. The other two films were good but the violence
and the dialogue tended toward the brutal side, which sometimes put me
off.
Perhaps as amazing as the skill Tarantino shows in pacing his
lengthy film is the way he manages to get away with anything and
everything he wants. Roger Ebert (at least I think that's who it was)
has written of Pulp Fiction that it was an impressive
achievement not for the amount of violence or the twisting storyline,
but in the way that Tarantino can so manipulate the audience's reaction
to what he puts on the screen. As an example he points to the scene in
which Uma Thurman receives a needle to the chest in order to revive
her. In one sense it's either gross or disgusting, and would have come
off that way had Tarantino not chosen to cut away at the exact moment
the needle enters her chest. Thus, the audience gets the drama and
suspense of the situation, but not the actual event itself. I think
this skill is manifested greatly in Kill Bill.
It was obvious in the first half by the way Tarantino's incredibly
bloody violence affected the audience, which is to say positively. He
managed to take the "reality" out of the violence somehow, so that the
viewer could simply enjoy the action onscreen, removed from a sense of
social remorse or moral indignity at what was passing before their
eyes. His style enabled him to convey his love of samurai and slasher
films to the audience without having to worry about whether anybody
would be able to enjoy it. I'm not skilled enough to suggest exactly
what techniques were used for this, but they certainly worked on me.
Some of this was on display in the second half of the film as well,
but to a lesser extent. There were far fewer extended fight scenes, but
the oppressively sexist dialogue and dirtbag characters didn't go away.
The burial scene and the penultimate bit in Mexico at the brothel-type
place stand out as examples. This and the incredible violence done to
Uma Thurman have caused some critics to characterize Tarantino as
misogynistic or sadistic. I find it hard to believe these critics
watched the whole movie. It's quite clear that everyone who mistakenly
wrongs Thurman gets what's coming to them (and in a much less confusing
fashion than that in which Nicole Kidman avenges herself in Dogville).
In particular, the scene depicting Thurman's last assignment before she
stopped killing for Bill and the final sequence both argue strongly for
the superiority of women to men, but not in an overbearing way. It's
long been cliche to claim that a movie made you laugh and cry, that it
elicited differing emotions, but the two scenes that I just mentioned
were probably packed full of more conflicting emotion than anything
I've seen recently. When the Bride makes her "discovery" near the
ending, I found it as moving as the climax of any straightforward,
melodramatic feature in recent memory. Tarantino depicts such
incredibly intense action that it should come as no surprise that he
can appeal directly to your emotions as well as your bloodlust.
By the time the credits rolled, large masses of films and film
genres had been paid tribute, wrongs of all sorts had been righted, and
there hadn't been a misused moment. Thankfully, we shouldn't have to
wait as long again for another Tarantino movie, since Inglorious Bastards is set for release in 2005.
Pitchfork's review of the Fiery Furnaces' "Chris Michaels" gets me hot for the new album.
Aaron
McGruder on the Super Bowl: We gothow many?five hundred dead in
Iraq, and several thousand more wounded, and they worried about a
titty. A titty! What kind of sorry-ass nation is this?
Also, Audioscrobbler keeps track of what you listen to on your computer, and then they compile that information for all users each week by song and artist. Just download the plugin for your music player. Here's mine.
Movies this week:
- Koyaanisqatsi at Film Society
- City of God 7 pm, Wed & Thur, LDC 104
- Mystic River 7 and 10 pm, Friday, Viking Theater, St Olaf
And I think this guy is my new hero.
Franz Ferdinand are the arts editors at the Guardian this week.
I must say, I'm pretty excited about the Olympic Hopefuls,
who will be playing the Cave this Friday. Mainly because that seems to
be what Camaro renamed themselves, and I really enjoyed the one Camaro
show I saw freshman year. I thought they'd stopped playing together in
that incarnation, but thankfully not. Hopefully I can buy an album to
replace the four shitty 64kbps MP3 files I have. I mean, the quality is
bad, but the music is good.
Professor Yeti has come out with issue 8, and I'm in it.
I suppose I should probably be writing my paper, so maybe I won't waste too much time here.
First of all, I have decided that a good nap is essential to a
successful moviegoing experience. I can't say how many times I've hated
movies because I'm so tired that I can't stay awake to watch them.
Conversely, I'm pretty sure that naps always enhance my enjoyment of a
movie, because it's not such a task to pay attention.
Second of all, I think the publicity for City of God was
somewhat limited, which might be okay because there's really not all
that much room in LDC 104 where it screened tonight and will tomorrow
night at 7. In short, this was as good a drug movie as The Tesseract
was a bad drug movie. It wasn't really just about drugs, but there was
a lot of crime and violence related to drug sales. Even beyond the
compelling story, the harsh realities of street life in Rio de Janeiro,
the great editing and camerawork (I especially liked how the history of
"the apartment" fit into the movie), City of God rivalled Kill Bill
in its effectiveness at using music to manipulate the audiences
reaction to on-screen violence. It's hard to say, but if you watched
this film with the sound off, you'd probably feel like vomiting or
swearing off anything more violent than golf. As it was, the filmmakers
chose to use music, specifically American pop music from the 70's, to
alleviate the crushing weight of the innumerable killings. Rather than
being utterly demoralized about poverty and human nature in general,
the soundtrack was one of the most vital elements in keeping the hope
of the audience alive until, finally, the protagonist made his way out
of the ghetto, showing that all was not lost for the residents of the
rundown neighborhood.
Third of all, I hope Max didn't suffer too much from missing the first half hour of Koyaanisqatsi.
I was overwhelmed by the images: the subjective manipulation of time
and the speed of life, especially in the city; the visual comparisons
of disparate things; the breathtaking nature shots. And there's the
music. Apart from just being incredibly good, the sound fused with the
images in a way reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's films, at least for
me. The soundtrack absolutely determined the status or value of the
what was on screen; skyscrapers, superhighways, and grand canyons here
as opposed to, say, ultraviolence, milk bars, and "reformatories" in A Clockwork Orange. I was of course reminded of Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, which I'm sure has served as inspiration for countless similar works, but, for whatever reason, I liked Koyaanisqatsi a lot better.
The Olympic Hopefuls appeared at the Cave Friday night in all their
track-suited glory. The opening band was not very excited about
playing, and their music was pretty derivative and not really that
good, so they kind of sucked. The Hopefuls played stuff from their
album, which I have now, and added a few extended jams throughout as
well as a very good and somewhat lengthy guitar solo during the last
song. I had to adjust to the changes they'd made to certain songs
they'd been playing as Camaro ("Holiday", "Pretty Bigmouth", "Whisper")
as well as to the fact that "Easier" had become a different song,
"Let's Go!"
Afterwards, I spent some time at a party on Division St. and then went home.
On Saturday I played Paperboy (much like today) and then had some wild times in Goodhue. Wild, I tell you!
Not much in the way of excitement today. Maybe next week.
"We
had a film student who wanted to film a couple performing a live sex
act in front of a class. We had students who set up a swimming pool in
their dorm room. Now we have this fellow."
I suppose if I do end up in Iowa this summer I will do my best to
see Guided by Voices in Iowa City on June 18. Also, the Decemberists
are playing the 400 Bar on June 3. And hopefully this weekend I will
figure out how to successfully procure My Morning Jacket tickets.
This week you should tune in to KRLX
on Sunday evening from 10:15 until midnight in order to hear me. That
being said, it wouldn't hurt you to listen at my regularly scheduled
time from midnight to 1:30 am Thursday evening to hear Dana and Adam.
In fact, it might even do you some good.
Five weeks til summer.
Voyage in Italy wasn't all that exciting. Maybe it would have been
terrific fifty years ago, but I'm pretty sure more subtle,
complex, and better films about married relationships have been made
since then, probably many of them.
Code Unknown was pretty good. I liked the slightly disjointed
feel, but I couldn't tell what the film might have been like with more
traditional editing, maybe just as good? Who knows.
City Pages has their Best of 2004
feature up at their website. I don't think there were many big changes from
last year, at least in the categories that I paid attention to.
This evening I will make a second attempt to get tickets for My
Morning Jacket. Apparently Marshall Field's and Mervyn's stores sell
tickets for the Quest Club, at least according to the information
available by phone from the Quest, so I might stop there.
I'm reading Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn this weekend. I have a good start on it, so hopefully I can finish before work piles up too high again.
After a layoff of some time, I've begun adding songs to my
collection again from the record library. As of this moment, 9851 and
counting.
The Observer has its own, unavoidably idiosyncratic, timeline of rock, just now reaching 50 years.
Disney blocks Michael Moore film on Bush links with leading Saudis
La Strada I'm not feeling very expressive at the moment.
Down by Law Roberto Benigni was hilarious. It seemed like the
film would have been sort of dead without him, but maybe the other two
fugitives would have gained more appeal in his absence.
Motherless Brooklyn I couldn't put it down!!! Amazing!!! Detective crime-solving action!!! Tourette's!!!
Il Posto A satirical office comedy that I thought was terrific.
The Circle Yes, it was heavy-handed in parts, like where the
women complain that you can't go anywhere without a man, even though
that has been clearly shown a number of times in the film, but it was
also a great trip through the streets of Tehran looking at the
underprivileged (women here sort of like the economic underclass was
featured in Crimson Gold). I liked how Panahi connected the
stories of his characters by bringing them together in close physical
proximity, suggesting that they formed a community even if they didn't
actually know each other. Now I have to see The White Balloon.
Also, I'm thinking that a database of literary reviews and
information in the vein of All Music Guide, All Movie Guide, iMDB, or
Rotten Tomatoes would be great. Maybe it already is great, but I
haven't found it.
Furthermore, I can't turn down Pedro the Lion at Gabe's Oasis on July 2, once again assuming I'm in Iowa this summer.
Mr. Rumsey says to read about digital information overload, and the people attempting to do something about it
Using my Spun.com credit left over from Winter Break as well as some money I hope I'm able to spend, I have ordered The Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera along with Frank Black's Teenager of the Year,
both double albums. Reading about them reminded me of the fact that
critics are simply not able to write anything about double albums
without using the term "sprawling". Seriously, it's a natural law.
Also, I'm really enjoying Mission of Burma's self-titled compilation from 1988.
I found Big Fish to be contemptible. Not only were most of
its fantastic stories pointless and ultimately uninteresting, the main
premise seemed to be that if you ignore the truth long enough it will
be replaced by a more palatable and interesting version of events. The
"real" characters were a complete waste of time. Neither the son, his
wife, nor his mother had a shred of personality. The father could have
been intriguing if once he had even once wrestled with any of his
failings as a father or husband, but the movie never even reached that
basic level of complexity.
Even worse, Burton decided that rather than add any character or
depth to the story, he'd just substitute cliche and pap. So we get the
son who is estranged from his father and needs to come to terms before
the older man's death. The understanding companion who tries to help
him see the beauty in his flawed father. The wise old black man who
helps the main character achieve a necessary insight. Perhaps Burton
knew what a weak film he'd made and thus decided to wallop the audience
with melodrama at the end, which seemed effective but only served to
prove how dishonest and disturbingly effective the cinema can be in
attempting to convey vacuous nothing as some sort of moral triumph,
especially if you're not paying close attention.
A.O. Scott hits the nail squarely on its head in the New York Times
No offense intended to anyone with an opposing viewpoint, but my
reaction was strong enough that I felt it necessary to attempt to state
my case.
Edward Scissorhands, on the other hand, was pretty good. It followed a similar pattern to Dogville:
cautious acceptance, welcoming, and exploitation of the outsider,
followed by a period of disenchantment and finally a need to eliminate
that person from the community. Oddly enough, I don't recall ever
hearing that Edward Scissorhands was an anti-American movie,
but it's startlingly similar to von Trier's film in its criticism of
closedminded and xenophobic communities. I suppose Edward's monster-like
status made it more sensible for the community to develop a dislike for
him, but it's really no more acceptable here than the townspeople's
cruel treatment of Nicole Kidman in Dogville.
I loved Tim Burton's bizarro suburban hamlet all in solid pastels,
and the Avon lady idea was a great one. I didn't get much out of the
inventor scenes, and the heart-shaped cookie bit could have been
subtler, but overall I was okay with the melodrama, even the sappy and
not entirely necessary scenes with Winona Ryder as an old crone. It's a
lot harder to argue with sentimentalism when it's so well-done and fun
to watch. Alan Arkin didn't really do a whole lot as the father, but I
still enjoyed his slightly absent-minded performance quite a bit.
I agree with Roger Ebert that the characters are pretty weak, but
that didn't bother me so much here, and I guess I can't say why, but
that's how it is.
And I must thank Nick for tipping me off to William Bowers' amazing review of the White Stripes' first two albums.
So you don't have to...
I'd really enjoy seeing The Cure, Interpol, Mogwai, and The Rapture in Chicago on August 12.
Next year I will reside in Burton 313, which means I will finally be able to spend the entire weekend inside now. Score!
Today I completely forgot my record library hours and instead finished the math homework for Wednesday. How embarrassing.
On top of My Morning Jacket/M Ward, the Decemberists, and Guided by
Voices, this summer may also include Iron & Wine, depending on
whether or not I can make it to Chicago on July 2. I'm completely
willing to skip a much closer Pedro the Lion (AMG is excited about the new album) show since I saw him/them last November and haven't seen Sam Beam & co.
iTunes song #10,000: Dolorean "The Light Behind My Head"
Also, iTunes is now up to version 4.5, which means that I can't listen to anyone's shared music if they use less than 4.5.
Thanks to a long shift in the post office and some time in the library after class, I managed to finish Martin Amis' Money.
It included an astonishingly disgusting narrator, a wild plot twist at
the end, and a lot of observations about money. Amis was also able to
write himself into the book, as a secondary character, and actually
voice some of the conflicts that arose for him while writing the book
within the text itself, which I thought was very clever. I assume that
it's impossible not to understand the author's ironic detachment from
the protagonist, but if you didn't the book would probably just be
creepy. By inserting himself into the narrative, Amis seems to make an
even more concerted effort to show that the protagonist is not him. I
wonder how long I can keep up this trend of reading books during the
term. I suppose until I have to write two research papers and take
finals at the end of the term. Probably about that long.
India elects a new government. Also, the Guardian analyzes India's democracy.
Tonight I managed the first screening of The Blackboard Jungle for Film Society. It's dated, but not irreconcilably so.
I also watched Before the Revolution for class. I didn't mind the Godard and New Wave references or techniques, and enjoyed the experience a lot more than Accattone, which was almost painful. In addition, many comparisons can be made between this film and The Dreamers, even though they were made 40 years apart.
Fog is coming to the Cave on Friday.
Tomorrow afternoon, 5/15: Distant at Bell Auditorium, 5 pm.
Let's hope that tonight is the last frost advisory for a few months.
According to All Movie Guide, Field of Dreams is the only movie set in an Iowa cornfield.
Tonight's radio show [see the playlists] is going to make a good mixtape once I replace Secret
Machines through the Buzzcocks with the Pet Shop Boys version of
"Always on My Mind." Removing that many songs should mean I won't have
to worry about staying under 80 minutes, which will be nice. Speaking
of "Which Will," I'm ambivalent about whether or not I should include
it here since it was the penultimate track on the last CD I made from a
show, which was at the end of last term. If you have an opinion, which
would be surprising, you should tell me what I should do about the Nick
Drake song.
Distant was great as expected, although the bleak skies outside and the fact that I was by myself made leaving the Bell a little eerie.
I couldn't help but feel that Fog's show last night was a little
uninspired. It's not that the music was really that divergent from
what's on his albums, but everything just felt a little dead or boring.
It could have been the crowd or the atmosphere or whatever, it's hard
to say. At any rate, I did pick up both of Andrew Broder's Modern Hits
EPs.
So today in the post office I picked up Granta magazine,
not knowing what to expect. The fiction was pretty much all terrific.
Probably my favorite was the piece by J. Robert Lennon, but "A
Religious Conversion" by Orhan Pamuk was also quite good.
Having excoriated Big Fish about a week ago, I realized that
perhaps it would be necessary to state that I am not against escapism
in general. The case in point is Heavenly Creatures, a fine
example of cinematic escapism if there ever was one. I watched it last
summer. It's about two adolescent Australian girls who create their own
fantasy world which the film's special effects allow them to inhabit,
at least part of the time. It is their way of dealing with the
realities of daily life which would otherwise depress them to no end.
That the end is horrific and brutal really has no bearing on my point,
which is that I thought Heavenly Creatures was terrific because
while it showed how useful escape and fantasy can be in dealing with
life, it didn't pretend that the mundanity of the world would disappear
if one simply refused to believe in it, which I felt was Tim Burton's
major fault in Big Fish.
Also, I have come up with what I think will be an interesting topic
for my Sociology paper due at the end of the term. I have not explored
the topic of Queueing Theory to any extent yet for Stochastic
Processes, and the test will be handed out tomorrow. Even with what
could be a large amount of work ahead, this still looks to be one of
the easiest year-end stretches in recent memory.
And you were wondering what next year is going to look like. Well, something like this:
Fall
Topics in Numerical Analysis 4A
Cyberculture: Digital Seeing and Surveillance 5A
Intro to Video Production 6A (first five weeks)
Winter
Combinatorial Theory 4A
Math Comps Presentation 6A
Media Theory and Analsyis 2,3C
Spring
Applied Regression Analysis -or- Topics in Combinatorics 2A
Math Comps Exam 6A
Hitchcock/Bergman (TBA, but hopefully not also 2A)
I just discovered the Hitchcock/Bergman class, and am quite excited
about it. I was thinking about either a class on French/German cinema
or one on the avant-garde, but I can't imagine enjoying any film class
offered at Carleton more than one on Hitchcock and Bergman (the
Kubrick/Scorsese class would not be quite as great because I'm not all
that into Scorsese). Plus it's being taught by Vern Bailey, who has
been teaching longer than film studies has existed and used to hobnob
with Jean Renoir. His Capra/Wilder class had no exams or papers longer
than a single page. Also, since he is nearly as old as Scoville, he is
free to be a cantankerous as he wants, which makes for a great time in
class.
So, it'll be 9 credits the first half of each term and 6 credits the
second, which will make midterms kind of rough (well, really about the
same as they were this year), but should make finals pretty easy.
I didn't list 8 1/2 among the best films I watched last
summer, when I made up such a list. This time through it seemed like
about the greatest thing I'd ever seen. So much of Fellini's internal
dialogue, which actually makes up most of the external dialogue in the
movie, resonated with me in a way it didn't seem to last time. Perhaps
it's because everything seems to take much longer the first time, and
so I didn't get bogged down waiting for something special to happen
this time around because I was already prepared for what was, and
wasn't, coming. I can't even really say what my favorite part was,
except for maybe the entire last hour, the cutoff point being
approximately when Guido's wife spots his mistress and he launches into
a fantasy sequence that turns against him. Hooray for awkwardly titled
movies!
Roger Ebert from Cannes:
Is it true that Billy Bob Thornton was drunk during most of
his scenes for "Bad Santa," the Terry Zwigoff film that plays Tuesday
in the festival? (It opened in the States last year.)
"Absolutely," Thornton told me as we did a Q&A session at the
American Pavilion. "There's one scene where I'm supposed to arrive late
to work as Santa Claus, with a cut face, holding a broken bottle. I get
to the top of the escalator where all the kiddies are waiting and
attack a papier-mache donkey.
"Well, I had overprepared for the scene, let's say, and I was
supposed to wait at the bottom of the escalator until the director
said, 'Action!' Then a crew member would start the escalator. I laid
down on the steps and went to sleep, the escalator started, I didn't
know a thing and I arrived upstairs, still passed out."
The actor said he rarely drinks on the job, "but this role seemed to call for it."
The new mix CD is finished. The final tracklist goes something like this:
Part I
A. Fog "Pneumonia"
B. Fog "What a Day Day"
C. Do Make Say Think "Frederica/War on Want [edit]"
D. My Morning Jacket "At Dawn"
E. Neil Young "Campaigner"
F. M. Ward "Helicopter"
Part II
A. M. Ward "Let's Dance"
B. Fog "Under a Anvil Tree"
C. The Mountain Goats "Jenny"
D. Richard Thompson "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"
E. Willie Nelson "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"
Part III
A. Willie Nelson/Pet Shop Boys "Always on My Mind"
B. Joy Division "Digital"
C. Joy Division "Atmosphere"
D. Death Cab for Cutie "Transatlanticism"
E. Nick Drake "Place to Be"
F. Cat Power "Colors and the Kids"
I spliced "Always on My Mind," reordered Part II, and switched the
Nick Drake song to something I didn't use on my last mix CD. I also did
a much better job of volume leveling, mostly because in the car it's
impossible to hear anything not mixed very loudly. I'd say there's less
ambitious crossfading here, but what does take place works pretty well.
I haven't yet decided if want to make myself a schoolyear retrospective
this June or not. I suppose time will tell.
Posted on May 20, 2004
Last Thursday's My Morning Jacket performance was a wonderfully
life-affirming event full of monster riffs, beautiful reverberating
vocals, and on-stage exuberance. They've been consistently terrific the
three times I've seen them in the past thirteen months, and losing two
members since their last performance has done nothing to diminish their
power on stage. Here is what I had to say [slightly edited] for History
of Rock class last Fall about My Morning Jacket's live performance:
The average hair length of the band is well below the shoulders,
somewhere in the middle of the back, with moustaches or beards
accompanying. The most consistent image is that of incredible masses of
hair flying around and through the air as the band, especially James,
jumps around on stage in time with the music. The vision of these big
hairy guys jumping around and playing their hearts out signifies the
utter lack of irony or emotional distance between the band and crowd.
Essentially, everybody is there to lose themselves in the music; the
band by playing and the audience by listening, but they're flip-sides
of the same coin.
The sound is, of course, the essence of the concert experience and
why everybody is here in the first place. The most notable thing about
the music is the reverb. My Morning Jacket records in silos and barns
in addition to doing all sorts of other things to create their sound.
Here is Jim James in CMJ on their signature sound: "The only way I can
explain it [the reverb] that might make sense is that it's kind of like
almost becoming a superhero or something. To me, reverb is the
difference between heaven and Earth... It just makes me feel right." He
is sort of like a superhero on stage: pulling down supernatural forces
from above and sharing them with us mortals on Earth. With the generous
amount of reverb he uses, every note James sings in falsetto sounds
magical and otherworldly. This is most notable on the acoustic numbers.
The guitar has a healthy crunch reminiscent of Neil Young and pretty
much any good, loud country-rock group of the last 10 years.
The most important thing about My Morning Jacket's songs, on record
and in performance, is dramatic swell. The use of verse and chorus, as
well as alternating instrumental sections, is vital, because that's
what creates the tension and anticipation as the guitar gets louder and
louder playing a short little figure over and over, until the full band
explodes again, as everybody knows they will, and James approaches the
microphone to climax the build-up.
I feel like an unmusical fool trying to describe the actual musical
elements of My Morning Jacket's sound, but then again, so do most
critics. Nearly every review I've seen resorts to describing them as a
genre- and decade-spanning mishmash of the best that rock, country,
alt-rock, alt-country, Southern rock and indie rock have to offer.
Their power lies so obviously not in individual instrumental
virtuosity, nor the elegant lines of the melody, nor anything but the
huge, reverberating mass of sound that envelopes the audience for the
duration of the show. As I mentioned earlier, there is a complete lack
of artifice with My Morning Jacket. At all times they seem overjoyed to
be playing this music, just as much as the audience is to be hearing
and seeing it. Rather than producing a nice little line here and there
to catch the ear of the listener, they create an alternate reality with
their sound that band and audience enter into.
Last weekend I went home for a wedding which was nice in the way weddings usually are.
I finished my exam for Stochastic Processes. Now on to the final papers and then the final exams.
I will see the Decemberists next week; Max, Summer, Kevin, Sarah
Moody, and Dana Reinoos will also be there. I also saw today that John
Vanderslice will be accompanying Pedro the Lion in Iowa City on July 2,
so that's exciting.
Last night, the light in my room dimmed appreciably, so I filled out
a work request and it is already fixed. I'm glad I didn't have to
finish the year in the dark.
I've got Funny Ha Ha on loan from Ivan since I wasn't able to
make it to Film Society on Tuesday (Stochastic Processes exam). Also,
we are meeting Monday morning with the Cinema & Media Studies
department, where maybe I will find out how they can help Film Society
be the best ever next year! Or at least maybe they will be able to help
out with funding or something some time. Speaking of movies, would
anyone like to see The Agronomist on Saturday, June 6? I know I'm going to. I will be seeing at least Barbarian Invasions and Good Bye, Lenin! this summer at the Bijou Theater at the University of Iowa. It's not quite the Oak Street, but it's better than the mall.
Also, I'm helping Jack make a movie for one of his classes. In it, I
speak German and break a bottle over someone's head. Most of the time I
am standing around with a beer bottle in my hand taking abuse from
Charles Petersen.
I haven't really done much for my final papers yet, but at least
I've outlined what it is that I will need to do, and have researched
some sources for both. I'm still feeling good about them at this point.
I got a spam-looking email about "secret shopping" today, which
would really be about the greatest thing ever if I actually made
$150-400 per week. That, or I'll have to find some sort of job this
summer. I can't wait for summer to start. I'll be able to meticulously
refine the ID tags on each of my 10,622 songs (current tally). And
maybe if I make a boatload of money I'll be able to buy an iPod and new
speakers for my car, and a hookup so I can listen to the iPod in the
car on the new speakers.
Dirty Pretty Things was about immigrants in London and it was
good because the good guys were so good and the bad guys were so bad.
Even the really obvious speech at the end where Okwe explains the
plight of London's illegal immigrants was satisfying enough that it
felt like it needed to be included. I hadn't previously suspected that
Stephen Frears was the reason why High Fidelity was so good,
given that the cast was so funny/sympathetic and it was based on
something by Nick Hornby, but after seeing this movie I'm inclined to
seek out more of Frears' work since this film didn't have as many
factors in its favor, and I usually am hard on melodramas but I came
away liking it a lot anyway.
Funny Ha Ha felt strikingly true to life due the painfully
realistic dialogue and perhaps even more because of the awkward
personalities of the characters themselves. I'd cite the phone call
between Marnie and Alex as the point where I became completely
enthralled by the banality of the movie. I thought Ivan was just
bullshitting when he called it the "independent" film of the year, but
I have to say it was pretty great and the production values were
solidly low-budget all the way through. Not low-budget in an edgy way
or anything, but more in a way to remind viewers that films can be made
very well without a lot of extraneous stuff getting in the way. I'm
glad I managed to see it via special delivery.
That's right, I actually sat down and did some homework this
afternoon. According to my research, there is a pretty clear
correlation across a number of variables between level of education and
quality of life/outlook on life, even when taking race and income into
account. I'll do a minimal amount of research (I successfully
S/CR/NC'ed the class last week) and cook up some tables and statistics
to toss in there, and it'll be done in no time. Then I can get started
on researching queueing theory for math class. I'm still hoping I can
somehow do a simulation in which I go to McDonald's and attempt to
model the process of customers coming in and getting served using a
probabilistic model.
Also, Kevin is currently
going out in a blaze of glory on KRLX, and seems to have found the
Architecture in Helsinki album in the record libe. I think "Sleep the
Clock Around" is a solid choice for the final song; it was the first
Belle and Sebastian song I can recall getting stuck in my head.
I better come up with something clever by the time the end of spring
term comes around next year. Last year I ended with the last few tracks
from Source Tags & Codes, which was pretty terrific. Last
term I finished up with a pretty nice sequence with some crossmixing:
Interpol, Pedro the Lion, Nick Drake, and Sigur Ros.
Then this term I had a Do Make Say Think segment flow into my
favorite Brian Eno track followed immediately by a strikingly
similar-sounding track from Ratatat. I also put together a clever
little sequence which started with Jason Forrest's "10 Amazing Years"
(Ringo Starr drum sample), followed by the final chord from "A Day in
the Life" and "Her Majesty", then a track from DJ Danger Mouse's
Jay-Z/Beatles mashup, but the finale was VU's "Heroin" segueing into
most of a Keith Fullerton Whitman drone-fest. There really isn't
anything like the freakout/climax of "Heroin" for cathartic noise, in
my opinion, really anywhere in pop music. So anyway, hopefully next
year will be ten times better.
I've got Lou Reed & John Cale's collaboration Songs for Drella
on vinyl out from the record library at the moment and am really
enjoying it. It's got a ton of beautiful songs ("Hello It's Me" sounds
just like Reed's "Xmas in February" from New York, but it's so
haunting and perfect that it doesn't matter) and you can palpably sense
the loss and mourning these two feel for Andy Warhol, on whose memory
the album is based. I might have to make it a priority when browsing
used record stores in the near future.
Also, I finished The Great Gatsby today, so I'll need
something new on hand for dead time which is bound to arise during
finals week. My "books to read" list is at 154 and growing (smaller
than both my "albums to buy" and "movies to watch" lists), but you
should suggest something out of the blue anyway.
Speaking of the "books to read" list, I've had an impossible time
attempting to find a reliable online source for date of first
publication on books in general. Library catalogs (even the Library of
Congress) and Amazon.com will list the date of publication for the
particular item they have in stock, but not the original date, which I
would like to have for my list(s). You don't happen to know of such a
source, do you?
So I finally beat Tennis for NES. At least, I beat the level 5
opponent, who is the hardest, so I guess that's tantamount to beating
the game.
Also, the High Fidelity soundtrack has introduced me to Love's "Always See Your Face" which definitely makes me want to get their album Forever Changes, even though that song isn't actually on the album.
Issue 11
Last night was, as they say, a character-building experience. It
seemed as if I was making up for all the times I didn't have to fill in
at the radio station this past term. But, hopefully tonight I will get
a lot of sleep in preparation for writing my paper about Queueing
Theory tomorrow. Perhaps when things quiet down next week I will
attempt to summarize it here.
The concert tonight was a good time. I think the Places might be a
good band, but since they had only a fraction of their normal group
there, and they played quiet music to a talkative crowd, it was for me
hard to come to any conclusion about them. The Long Winters played a
rousing set and reinvigorated my interest in them, which has been
intermittent. The Decemberists, who were attempting to sell their
latest EP for $10 (no sale for me), were as good as you might expect if
you've heard their albums. No, they didn't play all their good songs
(they have too many), not even "July, July!", which I think is my
favorite, but they did play their new EP in its entirety (The Tain EP),
a version of "The Chimbley Sweep" that featured duelling guitar and
accordion solos, and, as a closer, Echo & the Bunnymen's "Bring on
the Dancing Horses," which first appeared on their 1985 compilation, Songs to Learn & Sing, and also on the Pretty in Pink
soundtrack. All I could tell about it at the show was that the guitar
sounded like The Replacements, but the information superhighway helped
me figure out exactly what song it was. Thank you information
superhighway.
From The Onion A.V. Club:
For those who love John Mayer but find him too raw and
daring, there's Donavon Frankenreiter, an acolyte of the Jack Johnson
school of unbelievably boring, knockabout surf-pop. Possessing all the
flavor and personality of a stack of waterlogged newspapers, Donavon
Frankenreiter (Brushfire) is so inoffensive, it's strangely appalling.
A rabid cult following exists for ultra-lightweight '70s-pop throwbacks
like Frankenreiter, but their stuff is so flimsy, it's hard to prove
its existence, let alone justify it...
The band formerly known as The Microphones will be playing Monday night at the Triple Rock. Just thought you should know.
iTunes song #11,000: RJD2 "Iced Lightning"
Also, the iTunes for Windows Audioscrobbler plugin has stopped working for me, so that kind of sucks.
Total time elapsed from the beginning of the sociology exam to me finishing this entry: 22 minutes.
Tom Carson debunks the Reagan myth in the Village Voice
I have returned home. My room, I must say, is one exciting place. I
can watch television or movies (VHS, DVD, or DivX), listen to MP3s,
CDs, or vinyl LPs and use the internet all on my computer without
getting out of bed (remote control). I managed to move all of my stuff
to the side of the room so I can enter and exit and didn't actually
have to unpack it all at once. Tomorrow I will probably do more
unpacking, laundry, and maybe look through the classifieds for a job or
something. A job would be nice.
I will be listening to KUNI this
summer in the hopes that they can help me hear some new music even
though I will be poor (probably) and not on campus. I've heard it said
that Thursday night is the best night to listen. Last Thursday featured
Calexico, Mission of Burma, Guided by Voices, Jesse Sykes, Roxy Music,
The Cure, Iggy Pop, The Von Bondies, Secret Machines, The Replacements,
Bob Dylan, and Pavement.
Should I sign up for Netflix or be really hardcore (read: cheap) and
only get movies from the Iowa City Public Library, which has an
interesting collection? I can't decide.
Also, Ted Leo is coming to Iowa City on July 15. This is turning
into a pretty decent summer of rock shows in Iowa City, if I do say so
myself.
I watched a wretched Game 3 wherein the Pistons held the Lakers to
their lowest playoff score in 560 games. It looked more like a college
basketball game between conference rivals who were having a bad year. I
also watched the Cubs, who scored 10 runs in the fourth inning, which
made that game about as exciting.
Really, the most sports drama I've seen on TV in the past two days
is Larry Bird telling the world that the NBA needs more white American
superstars. (The best part was where he lamented the fact that
sometimes opposing coaches would put a white guy on the court to defend
him.) He seems to not have figured out that, for the most part, the
type of stars a sport generates is related to where the sport is most
popular for kids. There are tons of great Latin American baseball
players because there are tons of Latin American kids playing baseball.
The same goes for the Minnesotan, Canadian, and Russian hockey players
who dominate that sport. It's not hard to figure out why the PGA tour
is dominated by middle- and upper-class white guys: they're the ones
who spent their youth at the country club on the golf course. Larry
Bird should probably be spending more time supporting youth basketball
around the country and less time wondering aloud on national TV why
white Americans can't play basketball as well as other sorts of people.
I read Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian because the local library didn't have The Left Hand of Darkness; it was short and pleasant. I will now watch 21 Grams, which was another item acquired from the local library.
Yesterday I enjoyed a track from the new Magnetic Fields album as
well as Tiny Grimes' "Romance Without Finance" on the way to Iowa City.
I can't tell you more because the station failed to post the playlist,
which is weird. On the way home, KRUI
played a hilarious track in between Atmosphere and The Streets on one
of their hip hop shows, but they don't show playlists at all and I couldn't
call them because I didn't know their number.
My DVD player (Windows Media Player) stopped working, so I have to
find a new free DVD player for Windows XP and download it on a dialup
connection. I didn't get to watch 21 Grams because it was due before I could remedy the situation. I will update you as developments arise.
I went to the local library and, besides what you see to the right in the sidebar, picked up two movies. Top Hat,
with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, was fun to watch and funny, even
though the mistaken identity gag got a little stale after overuse. I
will watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly later this weekend.
I was, for a while, along with the rest of my family, disconnected
from the internet and the rest of the telephonicized world. It seems
that when my brother plugged in his modem, somehow the line to our
house went dead. This is confusing because I had no idea that modems
could do that and am still uncertain that they can, but the events
coincide almost perfectly, and it's difficult to say what else might
have caused the outage. Either way, I am once again interfacing with
the online universe at roughly 44.0 kbps.
I liked The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but perhaps not as much as Quentin Tarantino likes it (I think I saw an ad in Sight and Sound or Film Comment claiming it is his favorite film). I was, however, unprepared for how impressive Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line
was. More than anything else in watching movies, I love to be
overwhelmed by something after either not having read enough about it
or having read the wrong critics. I think in this case it was that I
knew Terrence Malick was supposed to be a good director and that this
was that other war movie that came out the same year as Saving Private Ryan, which I remember seeing in the theater. Now I have to say that I think The Thin Red Line was unfairly overshadowed by the Spielberg blockbuster. Personally, I
preferred the philosophizing and rambling narrative of Malick's film; I
don't think it's necessarily better, but I am very glad I decided to
watch that other World War II movie from 1998.
Rather than attempting to write about it here, I'll link to a review with which I agree: Janet
Maslin captures the best parts in the New York Times, though I approved
of the meandering and plotlessness of the movie a lot more than she does
Well, I watched some of Game 5 tonight; I watched less because it
was such a blowout. I enjoyed watching the Pistons a lot more than I
ever enjoyed the star-studded Lakers because they play well together.
However, I don't really have that much to say about the game itself.
What I did note is that in the past 21 years, only six teams have won
NBA championships, and slightly more impressive statistically, only
seven teams have won championships in the past quarter-century. That
comes out to 3.57 championships per organization. (They've also only
had four commissioners in the past sixty years, but that's slightly
less glamorous.) Now, in baseball, over the period (plus one for the
strike), there were 17 world champions; in football, there were 14; and
12 different teams won the Stanley Cup since 1979.
Hockey is the only sport that even comes close in terms of
domination by, not even dynasties, but by organizations. The odd thing
about these statistics is that they don't measure "teams" in terms of a
specific group of players, or even in terms of management, but they
measure the protracted success of organizations. I haven't checked, but
I doubt many of the personnel from the Lakers' 1980 team were around
for the 2002 finals. In the NBA's 58 year history, the Lakers (both
Minnesota and LA) have won 14 championships, and the Celtics have 15.
That's exactly half the championships to only two teams. The recent
numbers, from 1980 to 2004, come after the ABA folded, so that makes no
difference.
The Boston Celtics won the NBA championship 8 times in a row; think
about that. That's more than any team ever in the four major team
sports here. The Los Angeles Lakers lost a staggering seven
championships in the 1960's; they've been in 28 of 58 championship
series.
The only reason I can come up with is that basketball has the
smallest roster of the sports, with only five players on the court, who
don't change from offense to defense. Hockey has the second fewest.
Baseball has pitchers who rotate in groups of four or five, not to
mention relievers, and football teams have as many as thirty different
players on the field in various starting positions. So, losing Bill
Russell or Michael Jordan means you've lost twenty percent of your
starting lineup, but losing Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Sandy Koufax,
or Mariano Rivera, for example, just isn't the same. Even so, that
still doesn't explain why the same basketball teams would continue to
win year after year, decade after decade.
Also, researching this has led me to the discovery of possibly the
most mellifluous name ever for a sports team: the Ottawa Silver Seven.
Of course I used Wikipedia for most of the stats.
The people of Mongolia have to choose surnames by the end of the month, or else!
It became obvious within the first few moments that Cinema Paradiso
was going to be a sappy story: the music is so completely saccharine
that it would not be possible for this film to be anything but a
tearjerker. Thankfully, though, the music is not a defining
characteristic. Mainly, love for cinema is the focus of Cinema Paradiso,
manifested through the townspeople who have nothing else to do and by
the young boy, Toto, who takes over the projection booth of the local
cinema at age 10. The story is filled with vignettes from his memory
(the story is told in flashback), but there is a certain quality to
many of them that makes it clear that the director knows that the
audience knows that the scenes have some kind of extra-cinematic
quality that makes it obvious that the moments are images on screen and
not attempts at total realism. It's hard not to smile at the
cinemagoers or the amusing situations they get into. Also, everything
happens in the Cinema Paradiso: we see people who look like they're
having sex, a nursing baby, customers of all ages, newlyweds who
eventually bring their first child along, and even an old man who seems
to die of a heart attack after a particularly upsetting scene.
I might have liked this movie just a little bit more than I would
have otherwise because I just finished Italian Neorealism. Then again,
that also made it all the less believable that anybody, especially
schoolkids, would or could have sat through a double feature that
included La Terra Trema. But that's not the point; the
melodramatic scenes are many, but they work because it's so impossible
to dislike this movie. It made me sad that I was never around for the
golden age of the cinema, back before television.
His Girl Friday, on the other hand, was not very sentimental,
dealing as it did with a failed engagement, capital punishment, and
dirty politicians and newspapermen. I was constantly stunned at how
fast the actors continually delivered their dialogue, even with the
knowledge that this was a screwball comedy and that's what I should
expect. The journalists were all terrifically bitter and the
politicians wonderfully crooked, ready to exchange nearly anything for
a chance at re-election. I suppose it's a tribute to the frenetic
pacing of the film that a suicide attempt, an upcoming execution,
repeated criminal acts, and, dare I say it, a refreshingly
mean-spirited tone don't dampen the hilarity at all. I think I've only
seen three Howard Hawks movies, but I need to see a lot more.
I went golfing for the second time this summer and did slightly
worse, though the course was a tougher one. Hopefully I will have at
least one outstanding round to remember by the time September 10 rolls
around. (That's the end of the summer for me, I think.)
I'm still searching for a job. I will start it up again on Monday, at Syngenta Seeds.
I made another visit to the library, which you will note by the changes at left. I read Spin, which was as shamelessly unhelpful as always at critiquing actual new music (maybe slightly better than Rolling Stone),
but the issue was in a small way by the intriguing Jeff Tweedy
interview and in a big way by Dave Eggers' piece on grand-scale rock
albums and the Scottish band Big Country in particular. I think when a
non-music writer writes better about music than the actual staff of
your magazine, maybe that should tell you something about the quality
of your publication. That is, it's not very good.
I went to the Guided by Voices concert, and it was SOLD OUT! (Looks
like I'll be coming up with something else to review for Professor
Yeti.) I kind of figured that with Iowa City being a kind of small
town, and with many of the university students gone home for the
summer, and this being an indie rock show, that probably it wouldn't
sell out. Also, until today I knew of no way to pick up advance tickets
for the show, because they weren't selling on the internet and the
venue must have just announced where and how to get tickets in the past
few days. So I drove home with seventeen dollars burning a hole in my
pocket, cursing the fact that I probably won't ever get to see Guided
by Voices play since they're supposedly retiring in the near future.
Hopefully they'll come through MSP supporting their last album, because
that would be terrific. Sure, they tend to get too drunk to play and I
probably wouldn't get to hear "I Am a Scientist" anyway, but it would
still be a shame.
I contemplated trying to see a movie, but it was ten o'clock, so
everything had already started, so I just came home and made what
little money is available to me by preparing the bulletin for our
church. $22.50 per week is a lot better than $0.00 per week. However, I
believe the evening was somewhat salvaged by the fact that I got to
listen to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska for the first and second
times. I'd never been excited enough by what I'd heard of the Boss on
the radio to actually purchase anything by him, or even seek MP3s out
on the internet, but I knew Nebraska was legendary as an album
based on demos rather than studio versions. Plus, it gets mentioned by
reviewers all the time (Mark Richardson from Pitchfork: "the indie rock
favorite in Springsteen's catalog") and Travis Morrison namechecks it
in "Ellen and Ben," so I decided that I had to check it out for free at
the library. It turned out to be everything I hoped it would be,
perhaps magnified by the fact that I was sitting depressed by myself at
night, but wow. Maybe you already know/own this album, but if you don't
you should go and get it right now. I think I like it a little better
than Lou Reed's Songs for Drella, which I mentioned a while
ago, and probably better than anything I've heard (all the way through
for the first time) since Mission of Burma's self-titled career
retrospective (which they're now making less-than-complete by reforming
and recording new music). It's kind of sad that this is supposed to be
such a curiosity in Springsteen's catalog since I'd love to hear five
more albums just like it.
Sad beats both angry and happy.
Popular etymologies are often wrong.
Agree or disagree, this is an interesting and potentially very useful idea.
Offshoring the [cinematic] Audience.
The above come from Arts & Letters Daily which I just happened to look at for the first time today.
No concert review this week, but I will be spreading the joy of
lo-fi indie rock as embodied by the Thermals in the next issue of Professor Yeti,
due out on June 30. Somehow, even though it's summertime and I'm
completely free of commitment, I was unable to start writing until
after 2 am this morning.
I've been enjoying Zookeeper, which was linked to in this faux-LiveJournal story on The Morning News.
Also, there is Dusted Magazine which I got from this guy's senior CS project at the University of Chicago, linked to by, once again, The Morning
News. I'm enjoying the focus on experimental and obscure music, but I
have no idea when I'll get my hands on it considering that I'll
probably be living the simple and cheap life for quite a while.
However, it's inane to complain about crap like that so I vow not to do
so again for, say, the next six months.
For the first time this summer I paid to see a movie, The Barbarian Invasions. In a small way it was like a far better alternative to Big Fish:
a dying man attempts to deal with mortality in part by reminiscing with
family and friends about the life he has lived. Except here they don't
lie the entire time. They discuss waning libidos, family, and then some
more about sex. They also spend a lot of time trying to decide whether
the current lack of intellectual curiosity they notice around them
signals the beginning of another dark age, hence the title. The father
believes his son, a financier, never reads books and survives on
technology alone. Many scenes and characters reinforce this, but it's
not really the focus of the movie. The focus is the relationship of the
old man with his son, his absent daughter, his wife, his friends, his
heroin provider, and the nurse who helps take care of him. It's not
sentimental or weepy, but it is really a terrific look at, as Kevin once put it, the poignancy of humanity.
I guess Clinic will be playing the Fine Line on October 29.
Issue 13 of Professor Yeti with a review by me!
---
The Village Voice tells me what I already assumed, from last time, about the upcoming Pedro the Lion show on Friday.
Legitimizing prison torture.
Hooray for the Patriot Act!
Except for the early transfer of power, Iraq is behind schedule.
"Note that none of the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11
are in dispute. What ABC and NBC called into question is Moore's
extrapolation and interpretation of information; in other words, his
slant. But by using loaded phrases like 'truth squad' and 'fact or
fiction,' and by omitting Moore's answers to key questions, these
networks did the very thing they accuse him of doing. I would argue
that this sort of distortion is far more dangerous in the context of a
news broadcast than in a clearly opinionated film."
"When Iraqis speak to Iraqis - and not to western journalists - they say different things."
Barbara Ehrenreich echoes what I was thinking today when I read the Declaration of Independence today. (It was in the Friday edition of the Washington Evening Journal.)
NY Times Editorial on independence
"With
an open, rolling countryside and fairways cut by roughly 30 million
grazing animals, Mongolia is ideal for the casual backyard duffer." The intrepid travel-golfer also has his own website.
Amazon is being stupid so I won't display the covers of all the
albums I picked up on Friday, instead I've posted my favorite Pedro the
Lion album. At the Iowa City Public Library, I got Neu! by Neu!, Tangerine Dream's Rubycon, and Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air. At the Record Collector I got The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place from Explosions in the Sky, the Kinski/Acid Mothers Temple split LP, and the third disc of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops.
I asked the cashier if he'd heard any of the four discs in the set, and
he said he thought the third disc was the best while his co-worker
claimed that number four was better. I went with number three, and am
enjoying it even as I type this. I'm hoping Katie Gately can burn disc
one for me this fall, and then I will have to figure out how to obtain
the other two without actually paying for all of them.
I bought The Histories by Herodotus at Barnes & Noble, where I'd
decided to spend my dead time between record shopping and the rock
show. I enjoyed the first thirty pages or so, and it was pretty cheap
so I figured I'd pick it up. Besides, I don't have that many books on
my shelf written more than, say, one thousand years ago.
As to the show, I thought John Vanderslice was good but for some
reason failed to really get into the music. It was partly because my
ears were too close to the speaker on the left, but it seemed like more
of an existential dilemma to me at the time.
Pedro the Lion was solid musically, but what struck me more was his
respect for the audience. [Note: the Radiohead cover, "Let Down" from OK Computer
was good but the Randy Newman cover, "Political Science," was even
better.] This was one of those obnoxious crowds that's clearly more
about the drinking than about the listening, and even the real fans
were a little boisterous, but he still fielded questions from the
audience in as honest a fashion as he could. He even came out for a
clearly unplanned solo encore because the people toward the front
shouted enthusiastically enough for one.
The greatest thing, though, was when he attempted to get across his
feelings toward the current political situation. I think what he
actually said was that current policy is favorable toward only the rich
and that that, among other reasons, should encourage young and mostly
impoverished college student-types to vote this year; also, the
internet is the greatest alternative information source ever and the
only way to save ourselves from the domination of media giants.
However, as he apparently has a lot to say on these sorts of issues and
didn't want to use his presence on stage as a bully pulpit, you could
see him attempting to find a way to say what he wanted without being a
boorish Bush-hating blowhard. He wanted to motivate people to take an
interest in their lives politically, but didn't know how to navigate
the polarized state of two-party American politics, which he also
criticized. For me, the moment just crystallized the current widespread
frustration at the Bush administration as well as the lack of real
discourse between the two political factions and the bizarrely high
number of unaffected young people who seem either to not notice or not
care that, for example, the Patriot Act is currently on the books as
law or that, on its current course, the Federal government is set for
financial catastrophe, not to mention ethics or morality.
Other bands on stage, not to mention other people in general, would
do well to exhibit even half as much genuine humanity as David Bazan.
Also, this recent review from Pitchfork struck me as very enjoyable.
Today I watched the first ten minutes of WWE Raw on the Spike
Channel ("The First Network for Men!") and I thought to myself, this
reminds me a lot of the bawdy physical comedy typical of vaudeville and
other "lowbrow" traveling stage acts of decades past. The exaggerated
gestures, the rigid character/type roles each person played, the
physicality of it, the appeal to the baser instincts and desires, the
way they attempt to rile the audience up with their antics, it all made
sense in that context. I think if I were an American Studies major I
would definitely try to do my comps on that.
I watched Tarkovsky's The Mirror recently. I thought the
images were beautiful, but had to spend most of my time reading the
Russian at the bottom. I liked bits and pieces but overall wasn't able
to get past how personal and idiosyncratic it was.
My favorite part of Fahrenheit 9/11 was where the military
recruiters were trying to con poor kids into joining the military, soon
followed (or maybe preceded by) awful images of the disaster of a war
the US got itself into in Iraq.
Tonight I saw Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, and really liked
the use of black & white versus color. The movie entails an angel
who decides to become human, and the black and white scenes depict the
world through the eyes of the angels, and color is used for human
perspectives. It seemed to me a good parallel because black & white
films, to me, have a timeless (angels--eternal) sort of aura about
them, whereas color films can usually be dated within a few years by
the quality of the coloration; to be human is to be enslaved to time.
The first part of this post is not angry. It's about how at work on
Saturday, I was riding in a truck out to the cornfield where I spend
most of my time, when the driver looked in the mirror in utter dismay.
The portable toilet in the rear of the truck had somehow fallen out
onto the road. It was quite a sight. We managed to get the thing back
on the truck, and drove very carefully out to the field. This was funny
because my supervisor is a very painstaking sort of guy, yet he tends
to forget things, like strapping down the toilet in the truck. He also
doesn't have a personality, so it's always a great time when he has to
deal with something out of the ordinary. Now for the second, angry part
of the post.
Have you seen the Wal-Mart commercial where this guy is talking
about how great his employer is because they paid for his son to be
treated for some awful ailment, and you don't know it's Wal-Mart until
the end when the corporate logo flashes on the screen? Is this the same
Wal-Mart that refuses to allow employees to unionize, just got nailed
with a sex-discrimination suit, and besides their ALWAYS low wages
refuses to provide health insurance? Because that would be really
confusing.
Also, at my church today, two people decided to tell the rest of the
church that we ought to be really worried about homosexual people
getting married and should contact our senators immediately. The one
guy was actually very tactful: he only mentioned that he thought it was
important and that perhaps we should contact said congresspeople to let
them know "how you feel." See how neatly he avoided coming right out
and being homophobic? Relative to the other person who decided to
hammer the issue home, I felt like applauding activist #1 for his care
and precision.
Activist #2 felt the need to warn us all about the terrible
consequences that could and would arise if the Federal Marriage
Amendment didn't pass. She even went so far as to proclaim that it
would be a financial crisis because of the increased pressure to
support gay married couples with regard to insurance coverage, etc.
This annoys me for a whole lot of reasons. The first is simply that
you can't argue in favor of this amendment with a point that doesn't
boil down to gay bashing. However, what annoys me here is not even
particularly the politics of the issue. My second reason for being
annoyed is that my church isn't supposed to be a fundamentalist
institution; I could maybe expect and understand it if I were, say, a
Southern Baptist or some crap like that, but I'm not, so I feel more
justified in taking issue with the ignorant, provincial blowhards
there. It's not even like the Mennonite church sent down a message from
headquarters that this was "Stop the Homos" Sunday, because they
wouldn't do something like that. If the people in my community want to
be fanatical right-wing evangelicals, I guess they're going to do so,
but they could at least find the proper place and time to vent their
spleen. We don't hang the American flag, we don't vote as some sort of
monolithic theocratic bloc, and we're even pacifists, although some of
the people here tend to ignore that when they get all excited about
blowing stuff up and capturing Saddam Hussein. I don't want to get up
and dispute what they have to say because that would simply be sinking
to their level, but if anybody even so much as hints at votemongering
for George W. Bush on Sunday morning, I might just have to up and leave.
I've mostly written up a feature for next week's Professor Yeti. I
enjoyed Chris Leslie-Hynan's piece about lyrics this week, and felt it
necessary to mention that, on a less literary level, I've lately
enjoyed the lyrics to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and Drive-By Truckers' Decoration Day.
I have been working in the cornfields a lot. I ordered some new
shoes on the internet because my other shoes are real dirty from
working in the cornfields.
I watched Ted Leo perform in Iowa City. I thought his new songs
sounded kind of like his last album, but not in a bad way. I couldn't
figure out why the bassist had a microphone, because Leo sang both lead
and backup vocals.
I finally canceled Movieline. Luckily I will not get charged for
auto-renewal. That has to be about the worst magazine in existence. I
sort of want to order Film Comment, because it's so good, but then I
also want to read it at the library and spend that twenty-five dollars
on something else.
I also can't remember exactly why I thought it would be fun to pay
for this website. I mean, it's pretty nice and all, but I can do
everything except comments at my Carleton site. I could do the images
for books, music, and even movies. I can't really figure much out from
the Stats and Referrers part of the site, except that sometimes people
search for things and click here mistakenly. I suppose I have about
three weeks to decide whether to cancel or not, since that's the next
time I'll get billed.
Also, it's really hot out in the cornfields. Accuweather says it
felt like 116 degrees out there this afternoon. I believe it. Tomorrow
it will luckily feel thirteen degrees cooler at the hottest part of the
day.
The good news is that RJD2 and Explosions in the Sky are both coming
to the Twin Cities area this fall. The bad news is that both shows are
on the same day. The good news is that Explosions in the Sky will be
free at the Cave, so it's not that hard a decision to make.
The Beach Boys played the Great Jones County (Iowa) Fair last night
and boy, are they old! Mike Love made "jokes" about how they were old
all night long; the "jokes" weren't really that funny, though. He also
managed to put down people too young to have purchased popular new
music on vinyl in their prime, and offhandedly dismissed hip hop as a
musical form. It was probably all great fun for the fiftysomethings who
made up the majority of the crowd, but that and Love's moronic pointing
and winking at random spots in the crowd all night were really annoying
to me. The music was good, because it was the Beach Boys, even though
they were more of a cover band than anything else since I think only
two original members were there. In the end, I think I'd prefer
listening to the mono and stereo versions of Pet Sounds to
another evening with the geriatric and unfunny reality that is the
Beach Boys circa 2004. Afterward we promptly ran out of money while
staring a half-mile strip of fair food vendors in the face, so we had
to wait another hour and a half for Taco Bell. I also received one of
those special moments I am afforded every once in a while by the hairy
disguise I wear around nowadays where somebody I know at first ignores
me, then stares at me for about ten seconds when the dawn of
recognition finally hits them and they figure out who I am. So that was
enjoyable.
Tonight I watched Life Is Beautiful on TV, and liked it a
lot. I considered writing an extended analysis of how the film depicts
a man mediating a difficult experience for his son as he
simultaneously, in his guise as actor and filmmaker, mediates the
experience for the audience, and about how this is representative of
the cinema in general. This is encapsulated in the scene where his kid
is hiding in a box with a viewing slot and the camera takes his point
of view, thus treating the viewer to an extreme widescreen view of
Roberto Benigni cavorting with his concentration camp captors, making
life more palatable through his elaborate ruse. But it won't be an
extended analysis, because a short analysis will suffice.
I helped my brother plastic wrap his driver's side door today
because his power window motor quit, much like mine did six months ago.
It's a lot classier than mine was, with stronger tape and no shopping
bags involved.
You lucky people may get treated to a list of my favorite albums in
the near future, since I went through and rated all that I have on a 1
to 4 scale, with 0 being undecided. Most are zeroes, and I will list
just the fours and then proceed to narrow them down to what will
hopefully be an exciting final winner. Once I decide on the best way to
put my databased lists into HTML, you will have an ungodly information
overload to deal with.
Other notes: there is no need for me to spend time figuring out who
my favorite band is. No one has been able to unseat My Morning Jacket
for about 14 months, but good luck to the rest of the music industry.
I hope the music directors do a good job of getting terrific new
music in the record library this year, because I'm going to have about
seven dollars and forty-three cents to spend on non-necessities this
coming year. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to come up with a theme
or an idea or something for my show one of these terms, but it will
most likely just be the same old stuff.
This weekend was a momentous one, as one notorious 1981 Volkswagen
Vanagon was camped in for the first time since its purchase more than
one and a half years ago. Pictures may come later. George drank plenty,
we ate marshmallows and natural casing weiners, and threw a pathetic
frisbee by flashlight and moonlight. Racoons spoiled the Funyuns,
cupcakes for breakfast, the Vanagon finally started and we headed back
to civilization.
I just re-discovered John Darnielle's Last Plane to Jakarta (at least I think it's Darnielle) and remembered that it is pretty good. It also reminded by that I'm tempted to purchase Last Exit by Junior Boys, and will probably do so in the next month unless something else tempts me more.
I got all excited thinking about radio (KRLX, mainly) last night and
some other time when I was thinking about it, because it's a lot more
fun to think about than cornfields or whatever else it is I think about
during the summer months.
Oh yes, John Darnielle is the mostly lo-fi, spare, indie rock Mountain Goats, who are terrific.
Poker has been a good time recently, even if I haven't exactly won anything.
The Wig and Pen in Coralville is also a good time.
Since Before Sunset is out, I figured I ought to at least see Before Sunrise,
so I got that at the video store and liked it a lot. Going into it I
thought it might seem like lazy filmmaking since it's mostly just two
people talking, but no, it was really great, and the long takes that
let the actors do their thing showed restraint rather than a lack of
creative editing. Maybe I will talk about it more when it isn't so
late. Suffice it to say that it's the best movie I've seen since I last
said I saw a real good movie, so probably better than everything back
to Barbarian Invasions a month ago.
After I copy all of my posts from this site, I think I'm going to cancel it and transfer all that stuff to my Carleton website,
where I will put it up with the other junk that's there. I'll take a
look at the comments, but probably won't try to fit them all in along
with the main posts. Maybe I won't post for a really, really long time,
unless I can come up with something worthwhile to say. I think that
would be fun.
Last night the local public library showed The Rage in Placid Lake. It was an Australian independent starring Ben Lee and distributed by Film Movement, who sell indie DVDs by subscription. The movie was good and funny, and reminded me in places of The Ruling Class, Il Posto, and Office Space.
Ben Lee acted pretty well and even restrained himself from breaking
into song until the closing credits. The script was really clever (in a
good way) and, besides, I can't dislike a movie about a young man
choosing between a career in film or insurance.
I also enjoyed the screening because it was an all ages sort of crowd,
which I enjoy more than the constant 18 to 22 demographic at Carleton.
A lot of older people I know (and people who aren't older as well, I
guess) don't seem to really have any interests, which makes me nervous
that all people become that way at a certain age. These are probably
the same people who can't see any reason to retire until they are
bedridden. That's why I enjoy it when I see old folks doing something
more than putting together another crossword puzzle: hope for the
distant future.
I've been getting really annoyed with our dial-up internet (42.6 kbps
last time!), so I'll happy to do away with that when I return to
Northfield. I may have as few as seven days left of summer vacation at
home since our family is embarking on a monstrous road-trip this
Saturday, August 21. I'm ready to not work at Syngenta anymore, not
least because a number of my close co-workers are incredibly boring.
Next summer I'll probably get to look forward to working even less if I
don't want to spend all my time looking at corn. For some reason I was
thinking that I wouldn't need a temporary job next summer, but I'm not
really sure why I'd thought that, because I will. At the end of summer
2005 I will probably start some stint in voluntary service, perhaps in
Washington D.C. Details will be forthcoming as they become known.
I've been trying to figure out how I want to display album and book covers, or if I want to. I'm re-reading William Gibson's Neuromancer, and I think I'm getting more out of it than the first time I'd read it a few years ago. I've recently enjoyed Loscil's First Narrows,
both albums by the Thermals, and most all of the new music I got from
the record library last year. The radio was disappointing me this
evening, so I put iTunes on a shuffled and comprehensive list of music
from 2004 that I have. It's all pretty good and a lot of it is really
good.
I watched An American In Paris with Gene Kelly this
evening, but I think I'd have to watch it again to really enjoy it. I
think All Movie Guide puts it pretty well: "The overall film
(especially the non-musical elements) hasn't worn quite so well over
the years." However, many of the dance sequences were impressive and
the ballet near the end was completely psychedelic. The story, the
dialogue, and the acting were not so good, which sort of put me off,
but I did find it interesting that the filmmakers employed such lavish
yet obviously fake sets. It seems that most of the time extensive
detail is used to make the experience seem real, but here the costumes,
sets, and props were just to create a really good fake stage in the
studio.
So Nicholson Baker wrote another book, and I'd really like to read it.
The Guardian on international populations half a century from now.
I was going to have a message up here that said: "I'm gone until Labor
Day." But then the Carleton network didn't let me do that before I left.
The Shortlist prize committee has a longlist of albums to choose from for the Shortlist 2004 prize. It's kind of too long to look at very closely.
I'll write more about my lengthy trip west later, but tonight I'm
working on the concert list, which is bigger than I can imagine. There
are at least 33 worthwhile shows in the Twin Cities this fall. The
worst day is Saturday 16 October with four simultaneous concerts I'd like to go
to. There are five nights with at least two listed. This is insane.
This one's not going to make to my concert calendar, but wow, Dennis
DeYoung (of Styx) and Symphony Orchestra sounds like a lot of
excitement!
I have summarized my trip out west. Don't feel pressured to read it, though, if that's not really your thing:
* * *
My Trip Out West. No Pictures Because I Don't Feel Like It.
First, there was Mount Rushmore, which didn't impress me as much as it might have had I not been to Stone Mountain, Georgia about four years earlier. Stone Mountain has the advantage of being a geologic oddity as well as an enormous stone carving memorializing US history.
Wyoming offered the first of hundreds of miles of scenic mountainous switchback roads. We drove through Yellowstone National Park for a couple of days, and found a pizza place in Gardiner, Montana that was staffed solely by really attractive French-Canadian waitresses. Yellowstone was awe-inspiring as well.
After van-trouble in Idaho, we made it out to my aunt and uncle's place in the mountains southeast of Medford, Oregon. Eastern Oregon was kind of desolate, but I had a really good pastrami sandwich on rye bread there. In Ashland, Oregon, where there are trees and greenery in bountiful supply, I bought Graham Greene's End of the Affair at a used bookstore while waiting for our time at the laundromat to be over. I am not yet finished with it.
My relatives live in a 150 square-foot building while they methodically proceed toward completion of the real house they're building on the property they have. It was all very rustic, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. They're probably at least twice as interesting as any of my other sets of relatives.
Our van had problems again, so we got new tires, and then drove to the California coast. We saw redwoods, sequoias, and signs that said "Maximum Speed" in addition to the more common "Speed Limit" signs. I was unable to figure out the purpose of the max-speed signs.
We spent a day in San Francisco. Luckily on our walk around the city we hit City Lights bookstore, where I would have preferred to stay until closing, and then probably to go back again the next day. I tried taking pictures from Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill toward the end of the day, but I couldn't figure out how to switch off the flash on our borrowed digital camera.
Yosemite National Park was less thrilling because of the fact that we'd already seen Yellowstone, miles of mountains and trees, and Crater Lake in Oregon. The park still provided some impressive views.
Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles was interesting but not as great as I'd have liked. Later on I made a pilgrimage to Grauman's Chinese Theatre, which is awe-inspiring. I could have sat and stared at the patterns on the quite high ceiling for hours, and that might have been better than watching Anacondas, which was the only thing showing at the time. The screen was, according to my estimation, 75-80 feet wide and there were probably 1100-1300 seats, with more legroom than I knew what to do with. It'd be nice to see a good movie there sometime.
After that, I drove around in the hills and took some video which wasn't very impressive afterwards.
The next night was spent in Las Vegas, which was fairly boring. It was pretty much the same thing repeated fifty times with surface variations. Enormous hotels with giant casinos, multiple buffets and restaurants, and a lot of people looking to blow their wads of cash. My brother claims we walked by the top current poker player in the world, but I haven't seen him on TV yet to confirm it. I don't plan on returning to Las Vegas, unless it's to play the penny slots, which with up to 100,000 credits, could provide some extended entertainment. But then, what kind of payout do you get with penny slots? Not much I'd bet.
I failed to care much about the Grand Canyon after having my senses dulled by two weeks of seeing natural wonders and spending every last minute with my family.
We drove back from Flagstaff in one, unbroken, twenty-five hour stretch. It was kind of long.
The tourist-type places imbued me with some sense of national unity, seeing all the various license plates gathered at whatever legendary attraction we might have been visiting. Also, the German speaking tourists outnumbered all other non-English people by far. Maybe it was German vacation month, I don't know.
My dad and my brother like to be jerks to each other, and also seem to share the habit of complaining loudly about things they don't understand. Also, they, along with my mom, like to make pointless observations that contain no insight nor potential for change, but then few share my penchant for silence. I did read something a while ago, maybe in The Oregonian, about how peace is much more possible when people talk less, which I heartily agree with. I'm sure I'll feel much more positive about my immediate family after a few weeks or months back at college.
When we got back my car wouldn't start, but it seems something had gone wrong in the fuel system between the tank and the engine, so hopefully it was something random that was the simple result of sitting for such a long time. I'll be driving it to Northfield in two-and-a-half days.
While in San Francisco, I think I read something about the Pacific Film Archive, which made me want to study film at Berkeley when I resume my schooling at some point after graduation.
Trail of Dead just bumped up the tally of great shows in the Cities (plus the Cave) this fall to thirty-four.
* * *
Tonight after finishing The End of the Affair, which lived
up to the tortured brilliance of its last line that inspired me to buy
it in the first place (you have to find it for yourself), I took a walk
around town; not quite around the whole thing, but a fair amount of it.
I did this because I can't really do anything else after finishing a
book for at least fifteen minutes. My mind always starts spinning and I
invariably end up staring at the clock on the wall until I've calmed
down enough to concentrate on something else. Wayland was not very
interesting, although there was an owl hooting and the stars were quite
visible thanks to the cloudless weather we've had since returning from
the trip. The sidewalks are kind of uneven, though; I'm glad I didn't trip on anything.
I came into possession of a headphone extension cord, so I can now sit
up to 26 feet away from my computer and listen to loud music at night.
I think this should pretty easily cover my Burton single, although I
haven't actually seen it yet.
I enjoyed this article about college and workload from the brand new issue of Professor Yeti.
I can't seem to figure out if the Thermals ever tour, but I want to see
them a lot. I would also like to see Keith Fullerton Whitman play live,
probably because I just listened to Antithesis for the first time in its entirety. Oh man, now I'm listening to Terry Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air.
The nighttime is the right time for
experimental/electronic/minimalist/ambient freakouts, for sure. [Note:
Have you played Pinbot for NES? Because it kind of sounds like this.]
Speaking of the nighttime, I'm trying to get back on a college schedule
after getting to sleep in approximately four times in the past two
months. That means it's definitely after 2 am right now. Since my first
class doesn't start until 12:30, I just can't afford to waste time
waking up bright and early or anything like that.
I moved to Northfield again and I think the annoying cold I had for the
past few days is over. It wasn't a real convenient time to get sick,
but I seem to have gotten past it.
I reserved a refrigerator, which I managed not to do for three years,
but it makes sense this since I can't access one and we don't even have
water fountains to provide cold water.
I made a list of all the radio stations I can get this evening, which should interest at least Kevin. It's not official, since I need to check some of the information by listening for station IDs, but this website was pretty helpful. I'm having a hard time with 107.5, since it's a Spanish language station.
Before the radio, I went to Minneapolis to Let It Be Records. I got
tickets to Interpol and Drive-By Truckers for myself (First Avenue
shows), the savings on which paid for my gas, parking, and maybe even
the album I bought. That album would be Wiley's Treddin' On Thin Ice. Wiley, you may not remember, was one of John Darnielle's alternate presidential candidates on Last Plane To Jakarta,
which has gotten kind of messed up during their move to a Movable
Type-based system. The album is pretty good, with rapid-fire lyrics and
some pleasing beats and production underneath.
I only had to buy one book this term, which was for my math class. I feel a little unfulfilled by my trip to the bookstore.
After the radio stations,
I sorted the iTunes shared playlists available to me into "interesting"
and "not interesting" categories. The "interesting" playlists make up
18% of the total playlists, according to my interests. Just now I'm
listening to A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder c/o Becky's Music.
Speaking of iTunes, did you know that if you right-click on a playlist
and choose "Open," it appears in its own iTunes player window? That's
kind of interesting.
Whoever owns "Classic Rock" on the Carleton network deserves a lot of
credit. The songs are all meticulously tagged and the selection is
fantastic. It looks like they had a lot of time this summer to read
Pitchfork and a fast internet connection to fileshare with, but even
so, it's kind of stunning to behold. I just wish the connection was
working. I can't figure out who the person is by any particular
predilection for an artist or genre, but I guess that makes it all the
more mysterious.
I'm moving surprisingly quickly through Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. I had wanted to get Vile Bodies, which, in his review of the new film Bright Young Things, A.O. Scott suggested is one of the funniest English language novels ever written. But the Carleton library didn't have it.
Wow, my homework for Cyberculture: The New Digital Image was the best ever. The first part was a blog post that included a picture. The second part was a short outline-based analysis of The Face of Tomorrow; specifically, how it differs from pre-internet art and photography.
Also, John Schott mentioned in class that either students in the class
or all Carleton students are going to get free TypePad accounts, which
could mean an imminent switch back to that service for this very
weblog-type thing you're reading right now. He also linked to this site
on his main blog that ranks the most used words in the English
language. I discovered that "about" is the most used two-syllable word
in the language, but I didn't feel like trying for three syllables.
The Internet is going to explode
I've sort of fixed up an alternative to that thing on my blog where I displayed albums and books.
My intranet works just fine, but my internet connection has slowed down
to something worse than dial-up. I hope this will clear up in a while,
but if not I suppose I'll have to ask for help from ITS.
I guess my internet is working at full Carleton speed again; that is,
something less than desirable but better than what I'd had for a while
there.
After it was brought up in class, I decided I might as well get myself a Gmail account. It was pretty easy, considering all I had to do was reload this page a couple of times until there were invites available and then get myself invited.
Also, I got this terrific email today, the full text of which read: "I
just thought you should know, in case you didn't, that you have a lot
of
music AND that you should be very proud." You really can't beat that, I
suppose.
I think I'll be getting back on board with Audioscrobbler once I restart iTunes, which will be fun.
Scratch that part about me getting back with Audioscrobbler. Their
plug-in still has issues with my computer, so I'll just have to wait
till that's resolved.
It looks like I've also fixed how the site looks in Internet Explorer,
by going with a style sheet rather than just a header in each file.
Hopefully this will be one of the busiest weekends I'll have for a
while. Today I had class, two hours of tabling for Film Society,
setting up the email list and the website
for Film Society (better than it looked yesterday), and getting ready
for programming (we might have the correct number of applicants to fill
the schedule, which would be terrific). Tomorrow I'll probably be
working until I watch Kill Bill 2 at 11:30, even if everything goes
well. Sunday I get to start on my three homework assignments. I'm glad
there weren't any concerts I absolutely had to go to this weekend, although I'm strongly considering seeing the Black Keys on Tuesday, time permitting of course.
Also, it is 5/8 of a mile from Burton to my car in the parking lot.
It's so late I'm embarrassed to send out emails.
But, why go to bed when I can be listening to M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts c/o the "Arcade Fire" playlist, formerly the "Classic Rock" playlist. [Pitchfork review and interview.]
I've really got to get this album. It reminds of the Ratatat debut what
with the dance/electronic synthesizers making more rock-oriented music,
which seems to be a pretty fearsome combination. It also makes me hope
that M83 go on another North American tour soon. I'll be seeing Ratatat
this Sunday at the Quest, in perhaps my most anticipated show of the term.
I was thinking today that Pitchfork needs some RSS action, because it
would work really well for them and for me, the reader. I was thinking
this because our assignment for Cyberculture: New Digital Image is to
start using a newsreader. I had a number of abortive attempts for
various reasons before settling on a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox. From
what I saw with the other free Windows newsreaders, the plug-in, called
Sage, is pretty terrific. It looks nicer, is far more functional, and
it's conveniently located inside the browser without a clunky web
interface. I was going to post a comment on our class weblog (which I'm
tempted to call a "clog") about how great Sage is, but then I realized
how incredibly geeky that would look at the current hour. I mean geeky
is good to a certain point, but after that point you start getting
weird looks.
Also, I think I'm going to turn those colorbars into links back to the
homepage, when I have more time. It'll be great, I tell you. I'm also
going to start a WordPress blog using Carleton webspace, so watch for that link in the near future.
I attended the Black Keys concert as planned this evening, along with
Betsy Pfeiffer '05, Sinda Nichols '05, Colin Browne '04, Tracy Hruska
'04, and the inimitable Travis Lund '04.
First, they were showing Touch of Evil on the screen that
First Avenue pulls down in front of the stage before and between sets.
That reminded me that I need to finish watching that; I don't remember
how long ago I got it from the library and just watched the first part.
Then they switched to an animated history of aviation, which was some
wartime propaganda from the 1940's, and a ton of Disney shorts with the
same theme from the same time period.
The Cuts were kind of pathetic. Their performance was lackluster, their
frontman was a jerk, and their songs weren't very good. [Note: these
often seem to occur together.] Mostly I noticed a lack of good hooks
with which they could have drawn the audience in. I'm not convinced
they would be a bad band if they could find themselves a good
songwriter, but that's about all I can say for them.
The Black Keys tore the place up, and inspired the most appreciative
audience I can remember being a willing part of in a long, long time.
After the first encore, they were pounding on the stage and shouting,
"Thank you!" Naturally, the Keys obliged with another encore.
Though this may be an overused and obvious comparison, their
performance reminded me a lot of the White Stripes last summer. The
enormous sound they produced just from drums and guitar was surprising
and terrific. Patrick Carney pummelled the hell out of his minimal
drumset, and Dan Auerbach wrung a beautiful, scorched buzz from his
guitar all night long.
One could fault the Black Keys for not being entirely original, but
then one would have to discount a lot of really good bands. The Keys
clearly have enough talent that can carefully choose traditional blues
and other riffs and sounds to combine with their own great stuff
without using other people's ideas as a crutch. I'm definitely putting
them on my shortlist of bands to see wherever, whenever possible. I'm
also putting the way cool Aesthetic Apparatus poster on my wall that I got for five bucks.
The first Film Society of the term went pretty well this evening. As
Andrew Biliter noted, attendance was at its normal substandard for what
you'd expect with the number of people on campus who seem like they'd
be interested in such things.
Eric Smith and I managed to use Zoom, Focus, the Gamma setting, and
other things on the projector to make the picture much larger and more
attractive than normal. Next week I might even figure out how to use
the anamorphic option on both the DVD player and the projector so we
don't have to mess with the lens so much. If I get it down to a simple
process, maybe SUMO will try it as well.
Also, I have Gmail invites, as might be expected after a period of using the service. I'll probably send them all to the Gmailomatic, unless someone else wants one.
Finally, I've previously neglected to share this thought which occurred
to me on the trolley back to the parking garage in San Francisco: If
Steve Perry had been backed by a speed metal band, Journey would have
been the greatest rock group of all time. At least, I'm pretty sure of
this without having actually heard it happen.
On Tuesday, St Olaf is showing Outfoxed at their Viking Theater at 7 pm.
Radio.
I've been meaning to post forever, it seems like.
The first installment of my radio show for this term went pretty well. I played a lot of Galaxie 500's Today, as you may have noticed if you listened or looked at the playlist.
Saturday night is pretty tough to beat as far as weekend nights go. First, after my regular late nap, I watched Mean Girls at SUMO, which was outstanding. Some important criteria for a great SUMO screening were met:
- there was a big crowd,
- the movie was slightly funnier and better than I think most of the audience had expected,
- and, most importantly, during at least one point in the movie, you could hear a glass bottle of alcohol rolling on the floor
This final element is key. I'm not suggesting that correlation implies
causation here by any means, but I'm just saying that almost every
really great SUMO I've ever been to (except maybe the Kill Bills) has
included an alcoholic glass bottle falling to the non-carpeted floor
and rolling around for a while. It's even better if the audience kind
of laughs, but not so much as to distract them from the movie.
After SUMO, I attended the party at 506 E. 6th St. The live bluegrass
band around the fire in the backyard was pretty amazing, and in
addition to potential footage for Charles Petersen Dance Party, there was surprise in-home potential footage for Nick Ver Steegh Dance Party, which I'm thinking would outsell the previous title. Also, there were drinks and great non-live music as well.
Sunday night, I went to the Ascot Room. I only heard the last couple
songs of the Junior Boys, because the Quest put the worst band, Macha,
at the second-to-last spot, and not the early spot I'd been expecting.
Ratatat was pretty great, but didn't diverge much from what's on their
album. Macha was too loud and not very fun to listen to. I had to keep
myself from leaving due to time and ear-fatigue in order to see Mouse
on Mars. Mouse on Mars turned out to be a crazy electronic act with
live drums and bass. It was kind of like an exciting dance party for
misprogrammed, semi-functional robots who may be hard of hearing. The
sounds were rough and not very pleasing, but the tempo and especially
the spiritedness of the drummer kept things from getting depressingly
atonal, as with Macha's set.
Sarah Moody did indeed burn me a copy of Interpol's new album, so I'm
listening to that at the moment. I also noticed that the AAC files I
imported sound less than satisfactory on headphones. I've never noticed
it to this extent before, so I think I'm going to have to go through
the albums I actually own and re-rip them with a higher bit rate. I'll
also have to calculate how much space that'll take up. That'll not be a
lot of fun, even for me.
Part of the point of my hard-drive full of music is that I don't want
perfect-quality copies of albums I don't own, because I plan to either
delete them or buy them some day in the future, so theoretically any
digital artifacting in the thousands of illegal files I have fits my
particular ethical demands, but I suppose there is a difference with
the stuff I own and then rip to the computer.
I started going back through my History of Rock journal this evening
and noted a few things. One is that the journal is at points revealing
of how late I must have made an entry in it, perhaps best exposed by a
131-word sentence. In my defense, it did include a semi-colon. Another
thing is that I felt the need to call one author, with whom I
vehemently disagreed, a "fuck-up." I must have been feeling
refreshingly mean-spirited at the time.
Surfing a big wave
In keeping with kottke.org's Voters Information Guide for the 2004 US Election, I thought I'd post my (unfinished) Listeners Guide to the Best iTunes Playlists on the West Carleton Campus.
- 326 TO THE
- Andrew Little's
- Becky's Music
- Ben Otopalik's
- Carisa Skretch
- Dave - that's me
- Dr. Cool's
- Jonathan's
- Mathias
- MKB's
- Natalie's
- Simba's Pride
- terpi sicmu
iTunes song #12,000: This Mortal Coil's cover of Tim Buckley's "I Must Have Been Blind"
No calls this week, but I can't imagine anyone even trying to make it through the harrowing stylistic transitions I threw at them. I suppose Max made a sort of super-call by stopping by, so that was good.
I've been kind of annoyed by the fact that iTunes doesn't include an
"Always on Top" option, so I could see what's playing while using
another application. Fortunately, Firefox has an extension, FoxyTunes,
that allows you to control iTunes, or any other player, from the
Firefox window. Even better, it will display the artist and track title
at the bottom of the window, next to the controls.
I'm in the process of appropriating CSS from this site, and considering a links strategy similar to his "B-Sides," which I like a lot.
Friday night Brian and I watched Being There with Peter Sellers. It was offbeat and, at times, wildly funny. It reminded me of Network
in its portrayal of network TV and the news media. I've rarely seen a
comedy so well photographed and paced in such a stately manner; maybe
there should be more of them.
Saturday we saw Moog at the Oak Street Cinema, part of the
Sound Unseen Festival. It wasn't that funny, except for the part with
Rick Wakeman, who seemed to have modeled his appearance after something
from Spinal Tap. It was very interesting though, both learning about the genesis of the synthesizer and Bob Moog's metaphysical theorizing.
I picked up Pete Townshend's Scooped at the record store
for a very special price. I've heard most of the first disc so far (of
the two-disc set) and it sounds just like what it should be: Pete
Townshend's demos, mostly from the Who era. These two discs consist of
tracks from two or three of his other Scoop double-disc sets. I don't know that I'm able to point out any highlights yet.
Also, these two links are hilarious:
- Car Porn: A Look at a Growing Epidemic
- Excretion, a Human Endeavor (from Harpers.org)
Well, Kevin will be
mortified to know that Tuesday afternoon, the KRLX DJs in the studio at
the time credited "The State I Am In" to: "British duo Belle &
Sebastian," although they suspected that there might be an additional
third member, not named Belle or Sebastian, might be involved because
it sounded like "there's a lot going on there." His mortification may
be ameliorated by the fact that I've taken to reading Achewood, and have made it through the first year of archives.
Let us add Sufjan Stevens to our list of shows to see this term, since he is playing the 400 Bar on 21 November.
So, Max was here and I decided to make a top 10 list, except 10
couldn't contain my favorite albums, so I extended it to 20 with seven
honorable mentions.
* As usual, the word "best" doesn't really apply; the list consists of
albums that I've thought, at one time or another, to be the greatest
thing ever, except for a few. You'll note that I haven't included
artists, because I'm like that sometimes.
* Those with +'s beside them stand in for an artist's greater body of work.
* I'm not sure I've ever been in love with Quadrophenia quite like most
of the others, but it's really great, it's a double album rock opera
with some outstanding moments, and the Who are one of the best bands to
ever pick up rock instruments.
* Also, I'd say that Joe Jackson's Look Sharp! is not my favorite album
ever, but I've thought it is really good for a long, long time, and
nobody else I know really likes it, so I'm standing up for it, as I've
actually done before. (Which reminds me that you should read my latest column.)
Mostly, the difference between the top 20 and the honorable mentions is
that I've noticed that I don't listen to the honorable mentions as much
anymore, or they have sections that noticeably aren't as great as their
highlights. Condensing this list any further was just foolish, I
discovered.
Top 20 Albums:
Selected Ambient Works 85-92
If You're Feeling Sinister
Emergency & I
Endtroducing...
Pink Moon+
Highway 61 Revisited+
Turn On The Bright Lights
The Creek Drank The Cradle
Look Sharp!
Substance (Joy Division)
The Lonesome Crowded West+
It Still Moves+
Winners Never Quit
Kid A
Ágĉtis Byrjun
Nebraska
Loaded+
Quadrophenia
Pink Flag
Decade
Honorable Mention:
Source Tags & Codes
Singles Going Steady
Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn
Decoration Day
All Hail West Texas
Give Up
Pinkerton
#1 New Contender:
Junior Boys: Last Exit (especially "Teach Me How To Fight")
Tonight was the best show
since last year, easily, and may not be topped this term, in my
opinion. I'd scripted out the first two-thirds of the show or so, up to
the Interpol. You might not think to look at it, but Aphex Twin and
Belle & Sebastian worked great together, at least they did for me
in the studio. The calls were sparse (one, unrelated to the show), but
I did get an appreciative email from Andrew Ullman, currently studying
in Australia.
I've managed to implement my planned reforms to the look of this page.
I know everything is working in Mozilla, and everything is pretty much
working in IE. I'm still working on what should be included in the
sidebar menu.
Well, my last experiments with extra CSS for a more complex layout
didn't work so well, but I did a pretty good job with my WordPress blog for class. I think I might implement that sort of setup for this page when it's not so late at night.
Last night's show at the Triple Rock was pretty great. Fog was weird.
Kid Dakota played as a four-piece with the sound guy from their recent
album, so the instruments all sounded perfect, especially the drums.
Low impressed me by seeming more varied than their albums led me to
believe, though I don't think their sustained quiet mood on record is a
bad thing.
The steak dinner at Brooks House was also great; the debate was not
really. I didn't feel George Bush did a very good job of composing
coherent or well-constructed responses to John Kerry's claims, but
thought Kerry didn't do as well as someone in his position could have.
This afternoon Max and I (and later, Charles) relaxed on the Culinary
House lawn after the cheese party for a couple of hours. It was, yes,
pretty great.
The fourth pretty great thing I have to mention is the party I went to
at Sarah Moody's apartment. The collection of sophomores was somewhat
surprising but quite interesting. Also, I learned that the CLAP Chicken* was not built specifically for CLAP use, which I'd suspected but not previously verified.
Ollie and I discussed the death of rock and roll, or more accurately
the end of progress in rock and roll, and agreed that we didn't care.
I'd noticed that this afternoon while listening to Of Montreal. It's
not new, the basic style has been around for over thirty years, yet
it's still good new music that deserves to be played and heard. Sure, I
like bleeps, bloops, and postmodern bells and whistles as much as
anybody, but I don't think that's really rock music, so I don't think
you can really complain that rock bands aren't innovating, because they
can't. All they can do is recombine the basic elements of the music
along with other influences and hope for the best.
Finally, Paloma and Atley have done a fine job with the late, late Saturday night radio show.
* The CLAP Chicken is a human-size model of
a chicken with a shelf or cubby located beneath its tail, constructed
by Peter Sowinski. The editors of the CLAP stood next to it outside
Sayles on Friday, and tempted passersby to reach inside the chicken and
get the CLAP. A good gimmick never hurts, I guess.
I'm thinking strongly about going to see Primer, which won
big at the Sundance festival this year, at the Lagoon on Wednesday. I
got an email saying I get two free admissions by being a Minnesota Film
Arts member. I'm not a member anymore, technically, but I did get the
email, and apparently that's what's required for admission. Do you want
to go?
---
Village Voice Review
NY Times Review
It seems like the KRLX board is moving really slowly this term, most
notably the production, which isn't happening at all. New music is not
getting played and put into circulation, which is a bad thing. We did
get some money, so that's exciting, but attendance at meetings has been
poor. I suppose I will doing as little as possible next term during
Comps. The DJs are all pretty good, though.
It looks like this week's radio show will feature a special guest. I'm
not sure whether that means any of these songs will be played, but one
can never say. Maybe if dancing becomes a priority.
1. Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours
2. Belle and Sebastian - If She Wants Me
3. Camera Obscura - Let Me Go Home
4. Sly and the Family Stone - Everybody is a Star
5. Junior Senior - Rhythm Bandits
6. Stevie Wonder - Superstition
7. Outkast - Hey Ya!
8. Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man
9. Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage!
10. The Temptations - Ain't Too Proud to Beg
Luna is playing at the Fine Line Music Cafe on Sunday 14 November.
Since that's the end of ninth week, I'll probably wait a while before
purchasing tickets.
First, tonight's radio show:
It was really good. Not really good like last week where I nailed all
the transitions and played a really good set of music, but really good
in the sense that Kevin co-DJ'ed. I suppose the listener didn't get to
hear all of our smart comments, especially about how Pitchfork needs a
broader base of advertising clients, but you did get to hear our bets
for who will and won't release a concept album next. I probably should
have picked Hilary Duff for the "Won't" category, but we can't have
everything we want.
Also, he tipped me off to the Radio Nationals show at Lee's Liquor
Lounge in Minneapolis next Friday. I can't say for sure whether I'll be
going, but it will be a factor in my non-SYR plans.
Then he mentioned SXSW 2005, which I'd forgotten about drooling over
last year. It would be really great, but it would also be four hundred
damn dollars plus transportation and food/lodging, which kind of makes
me wonder how much money I'm going to have in my bank account at that
point. It also takes place the same week as the Iowa high school state
basketball tournament, which should involve IMS pretty heavily this
year, so that's is another thing that makes me less than 100%
enthusiastic about taking the plunge. But South by Southwest would be a
fantastic way to forget about comps.
Alright then. Yesterday Teague and I saw Primer, for free! Think of an indie, down-to-earth Back to the Future (or maybe a more hip Groundhog Day),
with more subtlety and a greater air of mystery. The mood was really
enhanced by the camerawork, which kept jumping slightly and tended to
not reveal everything all at once. In fact, the film never really
provided a satisfactory conclusion to the time-traveling exploits of
the two main characters, but that choice might have allowed the
filmmaker to leave the audience with a more convincing sense of dread
than would have been possible with an attempt at actually explaining
their plans (probably malevolent) for the time machine they'd invented.
I'd go see it if I were you, but you won't die if you don't get the
chance.
That brings me to plans for the weekend. I'll probably see both shows
at the Cave (Friday, Saturday), and I'll be at Interpol Tuesday night
(the end of my mid-term break), but that leaves Sunday and Monday. I'd
really like to see I ♥ Huckabees, and probably will one of those two days. If I get the urge and am around at the right time, I might have to go watch The Seventh Seal at the Oak Street, just because. However, Shaun of the Dead, Sky Captain..., and Spider-Man 2 in IMAX, are tempting as well.
Finally, friends, that brings us to the topic of digital music. I'm
blazing toward 13,000 songs at a pretty good clip. I'm not sure how
long it will keep revealing treasures, but I've got a lot of the record
library to comb over before I lose my record libe key in March or April.
I sometimes get annoyed at my song-hoarding behavior, which means I
spend more time finding and ripping music than actually listening to
it, but that's because I want to get my hands on as much good music as
possible before it's no longer available to me. Mostly I'm imagining it
will be really nice next year to have when I'm dirt poor with
potentially little access to free, good new music; I'll be able to
"discover" things for years even if I don't buy any albums.
Also, we've been talking a lot about information in Cyberculture: The
New Digital Image class, and it got me to thinking about how I can
spend even more time working on my digital record collection. One thing
is that I want to find and note all cover songs or songs not performed
by the original artist. I'm not sure how long this would take, probably
a while, but it would be quicker than it seems. I'd like to add a
"Label" field somehow, in order to make not of what record label an
album was released by, but I guess I have that capability in the other
database I keep, so that's not really necessary.
More ambitiously, I want a range of tags to apply to songs and albums.
Tagging is an idea that's in vogue right now as a way to sort and find
files or other pieces of information. Instead of putting songs in
playlists like "Study Music" or "Loud and Exciting Music," or what have
you, you apply tags like "study" or "loud" but you don't have to place
the file in a single folder or playlist. With really good tags, I'd be
able to use smart playlists to listen to, say, slow ambient electronic
music released between 1994 and 1998, but also I could combine that
list with, say, this year's underground hip hop that I haven't listened
to in the past six months, then use only the loud or soft tracks, or
whatever else I wanted. I could use the "Genre" field for broad
categories and use other tags for finer distinctions, plus, I could
have multiple genres for a particular song, which is impossible now. I
think I'll put the tags with a + or something, like "+loud" or
"+shoegaze" in the "Grouping" field and leave the "Comments" field open.
That was enough updating for the rest of the term, I think.
This transcript
of Jon Stewart sabotaging CNN's Crossfire is enough to make me wish I
watched television more. It looks even better than when CNBC had Paul
Krugman "debating" the woefully overmatched Bill O'Reilly.
I guess it also makes me wish the media weren't such a circus of
disinformation and purposeful misdirection when it comes to things like
the presidential election.
I finally got around to reading the Village Voice's Fall Film forecast and saw that Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic, with Bill Murray, comes out December 10.
From the NY Times Magazine piece on the President's ignorance of reason, logic, and nuance:
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few
ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and
Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United
States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would
be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part,
about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The
problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like
France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the
Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom
Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in
Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more
positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the
Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping
force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained
force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly,
several people in the room recall.
''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr.
President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the
ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos
mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national
guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with
administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House
Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the
shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does
have an army.''
I am listening to and enjoying Now Here Is Nowhere by the
Secret Machines, in preparation for tomorrow night, when they will open
for Interpol. I think I'd listened to the album this summer some time,
but it's been awhile. Though I've been pretty enthusiastic about
Interpol's half of the show since finding out about it, now I'm more
enthusiastic about Secret Machines.
I will have to remember to listen to Hearts of Space on KSUI when I'm in Iowa, after seeing it mentioned on Last Plane to Jakarta, which I'm sure you're tired of my mentioning by now. The radio show, in concept at least, kind of reminds me of Echoes, which used to come on at midnight on certain days of the week after the World Cafe.
Now that I think about it, I would have to credit Echoes with
introducing me to oddball ambient/experimental music, which I
appreciate more and more as time passes. Thank you, Echoes.
It's late and I shouldn't say much, because I have to get up tomorrow and study for a math exam.
But, I did get to see Interpol tonight, which was a great achievement.
Secret Machines weren't so good (too loud, too boring), and First
Avenue was more crowded than I've ever seen it, or felt it (so crowded
that Chloe, who went off to get a Red Bull, couldn't actually make it
back to where we were standing). But then Interpol came on and launched
into "Next Exit," which was fantastic. The first part of their set
focused more on Antics, but by the end they'd played seven or eight of the eleven tracks from Turn on the Bright Lights, which is currently tied for album of the millennium with Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun,
in case you didn't know. They didn't appease Sarah Moody by playing
"Stella," but they played "NYC," just for me, and that was worth half
the price of admission right there. "Roland" was also one of the more
memorable numbers, in my opinion. The double encore set-up was kind of
weird, and after the show there was broken glass and bottles rolling
all over the floor, plus I just got home at 2:30, but the point is that
Interpol played songs from Turn on the Bright Lights, played them live, and played them quite well, and that's pretty tough to beat.
I don't know if it's just a result of my having listened so many times
to their first album, but Paul Banks' voice, which isn't really that
melodious or naturally beautiful, just did me in. I wouldn't put him on
par with Jim James, quite, but when he came out over top of the
organ-synth with "We ain't goin' to the town...," from their first
song, it was just golden.
The November issue of Scientific American says that when listening to
music, "The same kinds of pleasure centers of the brain light up as
they do when eating chocolate, having sex or taking cocaine." I'm
inclined to agree, personally.
Also, we stopped at Cheapo and I picked up Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon. It won out over Galaxie 500's Copenhagen and Echo and the Bunnymen's Songs to Learn and Sing.
I'm going to see the Arcade Fire at Gabe's in Iowa City the day I go home at the end of the term!
Tonight was a pretty solid show,
not too fast, not too loud. The record library didn't have a few of the
discs I needed for what I'd planned, so I improvised a little. Except
for the end, which got messed up. Next term I'll attempt to segue into
a show that knows what's going on and doesn't bring in at least one
laptop every time, because that ends up being a big mess.
Also, I got a show-related call for the first time since show #1. Not a
request, but a thanks for playing "Two-Headed Boy." I got an
appreciative call from someone last time I played "In the Aeroplane
Over the Sea" on my show. I kind of wish someone would appreciate a
band other than Neutral Milk Hotel.
A reminder to myself:
Monday afternoon I am meeting with my advisor. I will state my
intention to sign up for Math Comps, Combinatorial Theory (taking place
in Laird, not the CMC) with Tina Garrett, and Media Theory and Analysis
with Carol Donelan.
Hopefully I can squeeze comps between programming and elections for the
radio station, because overlap would be deadly. I will also have one
class each day of the week, which I like better than only having
classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Spring Term will bring Hitchcock/Bergman with Vern Bailey, the Math
Comps Exam, and either Applied Regression Analysis with Laura Chihara
or Topics in Combinatorics with Tina Garrett. It depends on whether I
want more of statistics or combinatorics, which I will have decided by
then, I guess.
Also, it seems that there has been confusion in some quarters regarding
my stance on ripping, "borrowing," or "stealing" music. This might be
because I said that I plan to either delete or buy all of the music on
my hard drive. The timetable for this extends throughout the next
decade, and probably beyond, so I don't plan to stop importing music I
don't own any time soon.
I estimate that I currently have 800 albums on my computer that I don't
legally own. I've been pretty careful with what I put on there (which
may be hard to believe), so let's assume that I'll want to keep 300 of
them permanently. If I wanted to purchase all of those, it would
probably end up costing me between three and five thousand dollars,
which isn't feasible at the moment.
Admittedly, I think many people have a less-than-constructive attitude
toward copyright in this case, because most artists aren't all that
wealthy and do need some form of income to keep playing music. There
are problems with the current distribution model, yes, but not paying
for something you enjoy, at least in the sense of an album that a band
puts out, doesn't seem ethical to me, in the long run. It's kind of
like a vote for a political candidate: you can talk all you want, but
without actual support (buying albums, voting on election day), you
haven't done much to encourage their continued existence, which doesn't
make sense.
However, I also believe that by not ripping a CD onto my hard drive, I
would be far less likely to discover that I like the artist in question
and support them in the future by purchasing albums, concert tickets,
etc. Thus, the initial act of theft is not intended as such, and
should, in the end, be economically productive and supportive of
musicians in general, rather than just ripping them off.
I just finished Empire Falls and absolutely loved it. That
could be in part because I've spent the majority of my life in small,
rural towns on the decline, but not necessarily. The family
relationships, the characters, Russo's method of telling his story, all
were great. One chapter in particular, a flashback to a boy's vacation
with his mother to Martha's Vineyard when he was nine, was so tightly
packed and well-written that it seemed like it could have been a
terrific short story on its own. I've still got to finish Sartre's Nausea, but I suppose I'll be picking up another book at the library soon. Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint is due back to the Northfield library tomorrow, so I'll probably try for that first.
Pitchfork interview, 1996: Modest Mouse loves them some drunk driving.
The median year in my iTunes library is 1999; the first and third
quartiles are 1993 and 2003. The mode is 2003 (even if I use only the
CDs in my case). The range is, effectively, 51 years (1954-2004). The
median song length is 3:42.
100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration (from The Nation)
I feel like there's a lot I should update about, but I don't know
exactly what. Perhaps most interesting is that when I went in for my
advising meeting on Monday, my advisor was browsing my grades online
like normal, and he saw that I was listed as having earned a "D" in
Intro to Computer Science (a class he taught), when we both knew I'd
gotten a "B" (which was mostly salvaged by writing that terrific
text-based adventure game I'm sure you all remember fondly). I had to
wonder why this happened; I have no idea yet.
I watched Notorious tonight, and it was really great. I'm
not sure how it couldn't have been great, since it starred Ingrid
Bergman and Cary Grant (plus Claude Rains), and was directed by Alfred
Hitchcock. Probably it was great mostly because it was so suspenseful
without anybody ever raising their voices or pulling a gun or even
throwing any punches. It was all done with plot and dialogue and subtle
gestures.
Monday night I watched Beat the Devil, which I didn't
think was so great. Apparently, audiences didn't understand that it was
a comedy when it was originally released, because it was so dry. I
understood it, and it was kind of funny, but not really all that funny
in the grand scheme of things. It was enjoyable but not something I
really care if I watch again. (Note: I picked up the DVD in Crack House
after it had been left behind in my room. I picked up a number of
things that way.)
Also, last weekend's SUMO was pretty good. Spiderman 2 was
everything I'd hoped it could be and more. I don't recall the first
installment being anywhere near as humorously self-aware as in the
scene where Peter gives up being Spiderman and wears the dork glasses.
How many blockbuster directors are smart enough to do something like
that, for as long as Sam Raimi did, especially without being foolish?
Not very many. And I liked The Bourne Supremacy was pretty good, but not great. It made me want to watch The Bourne Identity.
Tonight I went and got my brains smashed in by the Drive-By Truckers.
They played for 165 minutes, much of which was so loud that the vocals
started to get garbled and it became apparent that anything much louder
would probably cause technical problems. I realized that I'm not able
to tell Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell apart very well when they sing.
I'd say the definite highlights were "Let There Be Rock," from Southern Rock Opera,
which was the penultimate song, and a medley toward the end of the
first part of the set which started off with "Daddy's Cup" and "The Day
John Henry Died," both of which are new. It was too much to take in all
at once (this was the show that finally got me to buy some earplugs
[afterwards] so I don't need a hearing aid BEFORE graduation), and
their live show lacked the subtlety and gravity of Decoration Day
that really make that album work for me (they focused more on grinning
crazily while swigging Jack Daniels out of the bottle, etc.), but it
was a good time nonetheless. [This addendum may get removed depending
on if I stop liking it. Songs I wanted them to play that they didn't
(to be expected and not complained about): "The Deeper In," "Marry Me,"
"My Sweet Annette." This is because the first half of Decoration Day
is essentially perfect. Other songs they did play: "Sink Hole,"
"Outfit," "Heathens," "Careless," "Do It Yourself," "Decoration Day,"
"Carl Perkins Cadillac," "Lookout Mountain," "Zip City," "Road Cases,"
"Bulldozers and Dirt," "Uncle Frank," "The Living Bubba,"]
I'm thinking that this Saturday's Trail of Dead show will probably be my last concert of the term, but I guess you never know.
Have you seen the new Eminem video? You probably should even if you don't like him or dislike rap music in general. [Link 1, Link 2]
I am listening to and enjoying Panda Bear's Young Prayer, thanks to my conversation with Mathias today in the post office. In his characteristically well-written review
on Pitchfork, Mark Richardson notes that, "It's the kind of record that
will have a profound impact on a small number of people, be ridiculed
by many more, and never be heard at all by almost everybody." I fit
into the first category, it seems. This definitely makes me want to
check out the Animal Collective's Sung Tongs.
This thing is kind of cool. It makes for an easy and useful way to learn about different genres of electronic music, which are legion.
My radio show
went pretty well this evening. I got to play some tracks from the Panda
Bear album I've mentioned, and a lot of Brian Eno's "Thursday
Afternoon." I'd say the first half was excellent, and the second half
pretty good.
Another reminder to myself:
Remember to order Kompilations
from Kranky on Monday (assuming I have enough money in my x.com
account), when it becomes available for pre-order. I imagine it will
receive heavy play on my radio show. I also wouldn't be surprised if we
get it in the record library, but I would rather buy this myself.
"You can't do that to President Oden; he's a man of letters!"
Thanks to Charles for biting the bullet and organizing an enjoyable
literary reading/party/gathering at 506 N 6th St. Perhaps most
momentously, it featured a screening of Auf der grossen Wiese, attended by most of the cast.
Also, I'm happy to report that my room is feeling quite pleasant
(finally!) due to the line of thunderstorms that so spectacularly broke
the warm air mass hovering over Northfield. Good job, line of
thunderstorms.
I'm thinking that the last track on the new Beastie Boys album, "We Got
The," sounds a lot like Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," but not in a
totally derivative way.
Echoes of Technopeace's Kickoff: Paper Toss. My current high is 26.
Maybe I should mention that Eminem's Mosh video isn't just a good music
video, it's one of the most effective and moving pleas for change in
the White House since Fahrenheit 911. [Again: Link 1, Link 2]
I watched Open Range this evening and liked it a lot. I
hear that some have found it to be slow and meaningless, at least
before the gunfight, but I thought the characters were extraordinarily
developed and thoughtfully expressive for a Western. Although the
editing was kind of weird (short shots and scenes fading in and out
through the first hour or so), the mode of presentation really got me
into the characters and their plight. Also, the scene where Robert
Duvall shoots a guy from through a wall is incredible. Sight and Sound
magazine has a really great piece on the movie; I think it's in their
September or October issue but isn't online at the moment.
Max and I went to see ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead this
evening. Iqu and Forget Cassettes opened. Iqu (turntable, synths,
theremin) were pretty good, and Forget Cassettes were...forgettable?
That might be too harsh, but I wasn't convinced that I should check out
any of their albums.
I'd heard that Trail of Dead can be great or terrible live, but luckily
tonight they were great. At least three of the songs from their new
album (January 2005) were terrific, as were most songs from Source Tags & Codes and Madonna.
They tossed bottles into the crowd, gave somebody a cymbal and stick
for the last song, strummed guitars with microphones, included a cheesy
electro dance number, but it all worked because they weren't very drunk
and they clearly have a sense of drama (unlike some bands who act crazy
but just wind up looking like morons). They had two drumsets, which was
pretty terrific. The vocals weren't as good as on the albums, but they
played ferociously.
Also, I enjoyed my earplugs quite a bit. I could hardly even notice any
ringing in my ears afterward, unlike the days of annoyance I endured
after Drive-By Truckers. There were times when I wanted things a little
louder, but in the end I think I succeeded in enjoying myself more than
I would have otherwise.
Max pointed out to me that the New Republic seems to be having an identity crisis. Editor-in-chief Martin Peretz is writing things like this,
nonsensically supporting President Bush and the war in Iraq (he fails
to acknowledge the reason we gave for going to war), when this weeks
cover is an endorsement of John Kerry for president. For Peretz, from a
traditionally (mostly) liberal publication, to be questioning Kerry on
such an issue as this on the eve of the election is unconscionable.
What a counterproductive moron.
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.
I watched Before Sunset, and I think it was even better than Before Sunrise, but that might just be because it's been a while since I saw the latter. One thing that I don't think was present in the earlier movie was a sort of voyeuristic interest in the lives of the characters. The whole experience was, for me, more like eavesdropping on a conversation between two people I know than watching a sequel to a movie I liked when I watched it several months ago. Either way, I'm glad I've seen both.
I've also seen all of Alexander Payne's films now, since I got Citizen Ruth from the video store. It was a lot funnier that I thought it would be when I read about it in Film Comment or somewhere. It's about abortion and how people tend to consider it more as an ideological issue than as something that really affects real potential mothers, except that it's not as stuffy as that sounds.
It's one of those slightly older movies that the video store still has but probably wants to get rid of. I'm glad they had it, but it was sitting in the 50 cent section where many of the display boxes had signs reading "Buy it for $2.95!" which reminded me of what a limited selection you're really getting when you go the rental store. That's why I'm glad that Netflix and its ilk seem ready to replace the brick-and-mortar video stores as the most viable option for watching movies without buying them.
I think this website is not working right now, but I don't know why.
I do know that I read The Corrections, under monstrous coercion from Lauren. I liked it, for a lot of different reasons, but it stopped just short of me wanting to make friends with Jonathan Franzen.
I'm not sure if that's exactly what I mean, but it's close. I would probably enjoy reading another book by Jonathan Franzen, given the opportunity. But, for example, I know he had a piece in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago about something to do with his family, but I don't care quite enough to go back and find it. If, however, Jonathan Lethem or Dave Eggers or Nicholson Baker or Kurt Vonnegut had written something in the New Yorker a couple weeks ago that I'd missed, I'd do whatever it took to find it. I'm not sure if I can say why, but I don't think it's because Franzen is less obviously autobiographical than the others I've listed, at least in some of their books. I don't know if this says something about the book(s) or the author, or just about how I'm feeling at the time when I read them. Maybe I'm being oblique about something that should be really obvious.
Anyway, I finished the book very quickly, which is surprising since it's 570 pages, and it usually takes me a long time before I start reading much of any novel in one sitting. So that's to its credit. I'd give it 9 out of 10, if I were ranking it like that. My favorite parts were the excitement in and relating to Lithuania, and most, but not all, of the sex parts. Those are always fun.
I have read Checkpoint, and it took less time than it did to do a load of laundry. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that some people paid for it. It had all sorts of interesting perspectives on the failings of the Bush administration with respect to the war in Iraq, in the guise of the pre-confessions of a potential assassin, but maybe it should have been serialized in a magazine or something. I didn't really get that feeling after A Box of Matches. I'll choose to blame Nicholson Baker's publisher and not him though, because he is blameless and faultless and just too nice to take people's money that way.
Also, I bought Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space yesterday for cheap, but didn't manage to get what I'd gone to the record store for in the first place, which was a ticket to Magnolia Electric Co.'s show next Monday. This was on the way to Iowa State, where I watched them narrowly beat Virginia in quite a barnburner of a game.
Then tonight I videotaped a local high school game for scouting purposes for IMS. The teams were both bad, but they were of equal talent, so the game was close enough that it lasted to the very end of the second overtime. A basketball-filled winter break is by definition a good winter break.
Also, it appears that winter term will be the antidote to fall term as far as concerts go. The only thing I see on the calendar that I'm really considering going to is Low w/ Pedro the Lion, both of whom I've already seen in 2004. Maybe I'll see more movies next term. Or do comps.
Lately I've been watching a lot of movies. Tomorrow I will be seeing The Triplets of Belleville, but today I saw Love Liza, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and directed by Todd Louiso, whom you may remember as Dick from High Fidelity. It was, in a phrase, soul-crushing. Things start off right after Wilson, played by Hoffman, returns from the funeral for his wife who gassed herself to death in the garage. He becomes disconnected from people around him and develops a gasoline fetish wherein he sniffs fumes a lot and spends most of the movie in a sad daze. He gets into radio-control airplanes as a diversion while his life spirals out of control. At the end he is left with no prospects or future of any sort and ambles away pathetically from his house which he has turned into a funereal pyre for everything that reminds him of his late wife.
Roger Dodger was also a little downbeat, but not as harrowing. It's kind of dark, but not completely dark, comedy about a teenage boy who goes out for a night on the twon in New York with his uncle, who is a jerk and attempts to fit the mold of a "ladies man." I knew it was supposed to be funny and a coming-of-age story of sorts about the kid, but I didn't realize the bleak and disenchanted outlook of the uncle would be such a downer. At first it's funny as the kid tries to emulate the worldly-wise mannerisms and strategies of his elder as they go on the prowl, but the kid's idealism is ruthlessly stripped away until he ultimately burns out, unsuccessful in his quest to lose his virginity, in a garbage-strewn back alley.
I've now seen two Wim Wenders movies, both recently, and both had a lot of quirky humor and strong emotional climaxes. Wings of Desire, which I watched a few months ago, was about two angels who watch over Berlin, but then one becomes human and falls in love. Peter Falk steals every scene he's in and provides most of the comic relief.
Paris, Texas, which I'd gotten along with Citizen Ruth and Before Sunset, was about this mysterious guy, Travis, who appears in a mostly deserted town somewhere in south Texas. He's been wandering for four years, apparently, and his brother picks him up to take to Los Angeles, where he and his wife, Anne, have been taking care of Travis' kid, Hunter. When Travis disappeared, so did his wife, after she left Hunter on the doorstep of their relatives. Travis and Hunter take off to Houston to find the wife, which they do, but their search winds up to be a little less than satisfying to the viewer, since it doesn't wrap up as nicely as it might in the end, probably to avoid seeming trite. Back in the day it won the Palme d'Or. The music is by Ry Cooder, which is all terrific, and the scene where Travis and his estranged wife are reunited is just amazing, not only in the delivery, but also in the set-up and the way Travis develops from a seemingly mentally incompetent mute into a much more complex, but still sympathetic, character, maximizing the impact of the reunion.
I hope to see House of Flying Daggers before 2005 and maybe I'll even head up to Iowa City to meet fellow Film Society director, Eric Smith, and see either the new Bukowski documentary or Goodbye, Dragon Inn, both of which are currently playing at the U of I's Bijou Theater.
On the non-movie front, I listened to Wolf Eyes' Burned Mind last night. It's a sort of industrial, experimental (mostly) electronic noise album. I thought I was the one coming up with that description, but as I check All Music Guide, those are the exact four descriptors they use. Pitchfork's Sam Ubl says he likes "Stabbed in the Face" best, but I agree with AMG's Heather Phares that the best part is the end, which consists of the title track, "Ancient Delay," "Black Vomit," and the untitled track 13. I find it easiest to enjoy the bits that sound like things on Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, but I hope that I will also grow to love the other, more abrasive and brutal sounds as well.
I hope you catch the visual reference with the new images at the top and bottom of the page. But if I have to tell you, you probably won't care that much anyway.
I rented Todd Haynes' Safe from the video store and I liked some things about it, but didn't feel it quite added up to a feature-length film. His static shots centered symmetrically on the huge rooms in the suburban offices and houses where Julianne Moore's character spends most of her time were great and gave the impression that the people were subservient to their surroundings, which is also implied by the themes of the movie. But the movie wasn't much except themes. There really wasn't much in the way of a satisfying storyline, and the characters weren't very strong. It was, in fact, very reminiscent of Antonioni's Red Desert, but not as well made, I didn't think. Red Desert's protagonist, played by Monica Vitti, at least thrashes around and gets frustrated at her failure to thrive in the modern environment. Moore's character just coughs timidly and passes out because she is "allergic to the twentieth century." Janet Maslin in the New York Times said she is "more a specimen than a heroine." I thought it was great how certain things stayed unresolved in Before Sunset, but here so little happens that an ending seems necessary to provide any interest at all in the characters. I have Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, Godard's Les Carabiniers, and A Brief Encounter here, and hopefully they will all provide more enjoyment than Safe.
Tonight I saw and heard Magnolia Electric Co. (aka Songs: Ohia, Jason Molina). They played a relatively short set, but did two covers. Bob Seger's "Still the Same" was good and Willie Nelson's "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" was great with plenty of guitar pyrotechnics thrown in and a singalong-heavy final chorus. They played a couple of songs from their now self-titled album, the only one of theirs I own, but the rest was all enjoyable. Winter Blanket, who covered Neil Young's "Roll Another Number (For the Road)," actually suited my mood a little better. They played a lot of slowcore and had a female vocalist (as well as a male vocalist), so I heard a lot of Galaxie 500 and Cat Power in their music. All their stuff was good, although I think I prefer their more sedate songs, which sounded like they are on their first record, more than the louder ones. They have a website with MP3s. They're from Minnesota, so maybe someday they'll play the Cave.
I watched those movies. I tried to get Dancer in the Dark when I returned Breaking the Waves, but no luck. I suppose I could just listen to Selmasongs, but that wouldn't really do the trick. So I don't have any more movies to watch until John Cassavetes' Five Films box set arrives (hooray, Christmas!), but that will probably be while I am gone: 22 Dec-29 Dec.
I've watched more high school basketball recently, and will probably get to see one more game before I go back to Carleton and forget about organized sports for another ten weeks. I've got The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford and Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem for the remainder of the break. I've been collecting ever more top ten lists for myself to pore over to see what I missed in 2004. I will probably make a list of the things I especially appreciated from 2004 for myself, and maybe as a result it will constitute a post to this website. Along with highlights, if there are any, from the aforementioned upcoming trip, that should be the next update to this space, so do yourself a favor and don't check for anything new until at least early December 30.
Although this list has been dwindling, there is a lot of music from 2004 that I've hoarded but not yet gotten around to listening to. If I had an iPod, a lot of this would get heard in the next week, but I don't, so it will wait for winter term.
Arto Lindsay: Salt
Beastie Boys: To the 5 Boroughs
Books on Tape: The Business End
Camera Obscura: Underachievers Please Try Harder
Castanets: Cathedral
The Cure: s/t
Death from Above 1979: You're a Woman, I'm a Robot
Destroyer: Your Blues
DJ Shadow: Live Album
Friends of Dean Martinez: Random Harvest
The Icarus Line: Penance Soiree
Jim White: Drill a Hole in That Substrate...
K-Os: Joyful Rebellion
Kid Dakota: The West Is the Future
Les Savy Fav: Inches
Liars: They Were Wrong So We Drowned
Luna: Rendezvous
Mouse on Mars: Radical Connector
The New Year: The End Is Near
Richard Buckner: Dents and Shells
RJD2: Since We Last Spoke
Rogue Wave: Out of the Shadow
Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse
Tom Carter: Monument
Troy Gregory: Laura
Two Lone Swordsmen: From the Double Gone Chapel
Wilco: A Ghost Is Born
Will Johnson: Vultures Await