Intrepid Lagan

Comic

2008-08-13T22:08:00.004-04:00

Just bought and read the blot by Tom Neely. A pretty book to behold, and the art in the first half or so is great -- kind of like an old-fashioned cartoon with the ominous, titular blot slowly creeping both up on and out our main character.

[this is the cover]

The abstract blot underscores how expressive this old style of cartooning can be, while still offering a distinct visual contrast with the rest of the characters and landscape (I'm talking about the action inside the book, but maybe you can get a little of this from the cover image). I think the story suffers some once our main character meets his "Amazing Girl" and escapes to the country, but I understand the logic of it, and besides, he gets to do battle with a pretty badass monster.

Speaking of "Amazing Girls," they apparently have a counterpart in something coming to be known as the "Quirky-Aggressive." Actually, while they may have some common ground, in their pure form they are almost nemeses, or at least on opposite ends of some kind of spectrum (though I'm sure they'd still be polite to each other at parties). (I'll also point out here that I'm talking about movies and comics and books and such, not real life women, who are, of course, more complex than mere genre-types. Even if they don't want to own up to it.)

There's a not-entirely-horrible indie flick, Dummy, that has a pretty good example of this (Milla Jovovich as a pretty strong quirky-aggressive best friend/unrequited love interest, Vera Farmiga as the "amazing girl"(well, "amazing single mother") who takes meek yet soulful aspiring ventriloquist (oh, indie) Adrien Brody under her loving wing) but after trying to write about it just now, I realized it's nowhere near fresh enough in my memory to totally unpack. But maybe in another post.

Speaking of purely hypothetical future-posts, I've decided to leave Boston for parts more or less unknown. I mean, I'm sure I'll swing through the old stomping grounds at some point, and I'll probably start off at my sister's in NJ, but I'm sort of winging it until I find somewhere next to lay my head for a while. BUT ANYWAYS, you may all get a huge summary post about Boston, my job, and my wacky adventures. It will likely just be a bunch of stuff I should have just tumbled about, all strung together in one post, but maybe I'll manage to do the right and noble thing and draw out larger meanings or something along the lines of all that jazz. Or maybe it will all be fodder for my novel. My Future-Novel!

Purely Hypothetical Future-Novel, like, boom!

Tumblr

2008-06-07T11:13:00.003-04:00

Hey, gang! I've started a Tumblr, which is the latest new-fangled repackaging of the web. You can click here, or over at the top of my links list, to visit mine. The format is supposed to be a little more off-the-cuff (referral links, snapped photos, etc.) so if you want to know the kind of stuff I've been seeing around lately, you can go check it out. It's also easy to post songs, so I think I will be doing some occasional commentary about what I've been listening to.

This Video Pretty Much Makes Me Wanna Be A Rockstar

2008-06-04T20:09:00.004-04:00

(via Pitchfork.tv)

Other People's Postings

2008-03-16T10:40:00.002-04:00

http://view.break.com/467869 - Watch more free videos

(via Fluxtumblr)

XMas Update

2007-12-25T23:32:00.000-05:00

Not my car.

Wow, so it's been a while and I thought I should update.

It got cold, it snowed a bunch, I've been working a bunch. I saw Oneida a few weeks ago and picked up a side-project album called _Marginalia_ which I've finally gotten around to listening to here recently. A good album and a couple of really, really awesome songs, some of which are close to sounding like _The Wedding_, especially the more guitar-y parts.

I've been working 50+ hours these past couple of weeks, hardly world record competing but a lot more than I'm used to. I'm handling it well enough, but I'm definitely ready for two day weekends, even if it means less pay!

Actually, the warehouse deserves a more in depth description than I'm really prepared to come up with, right now. Just wanted everyone to know I had a good Christmas! Hope yours was nice, too!

Goodreads.com

2007-11-08T18:53:00.000-05:00

So you may have noticed a little box down there underneath the links section which links to reviews and/or ratings from my Goodreads account. It's a pretty good idea, although it's a little frustrating to see people so atomized -- voicing their lone opinions with so little conversation about the books they purport to love. Not all the reviews are terribly written, but interestingly enough I find myself scanning for negative reviews of books that I like -- it's much less dispiriting to read a few crappy negative reviews than a ream of faint praise.

The flipside of that, I guess, is having to watch extremely trite, boring internet conversations take place (I swear if I have to see someone kick off their weak-ass argument with "well everything is subjective and feel free to disagree and blah blah blah suck suck suck" one more time grrrrrr), or the only slightly better trollfests that usually ensue when talking about Ayn Rand or whomever.

Okay I'm not going to go off on too big of a rant here. I think my original point was mainly to point out the irony of a website like this that promotes reading but actually seems to generate very little discussion. It's also a little ironic that I would post over there instead of blogging my opinions here, but...oh well. Books I read from now own will probably get cross posted (actually that George Saunders review from a little while back already has been) assuming that I come up with something to say. Maybe I'll cross post that The Public Burning essay I've been meaning to write for, like, forever.

Oh also this is pretty funny. (via Fluxblog)

Old News

2007-11-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

The songs on Portishead's MySpace page are kinda intense.

Hard to imagine Beth Gibbons singing over either of these as is, but they could definitely be a nice element in a track. I find myself wishing for some Daft Punk moments to come along.

BORIS ROCKS

2007-10-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

Oh, man, I would see these guys every fucking night if I could! One of the best five shows I've ever been to -- I seriously wish it could have gone on all night.

Here's some linkage:

Official Site

MySpace

Wikipedia

And what the hey here's another video.

They were unbelievably tight, something that may not come across well via the YouTube, and the more atmospheric stuff was so pretty. Honestly, that's the stuff I sometimes skip over if I'm listening to an album, so hearing it live was kind of revelatory.

I think this was the last stop on their tour, but they're, like, the hardest working "ambient / drone / doom metal / noise / rock band" in the business, so there'll probably be another album, more collaborations, and another tour just around the proverbial corner. BUY THEIR ALBUMS GO SEE THEIR SHOWS MAKE THEM HAPPY.

Okay one more video.

They played this song, too. I wish I'd grabbed some merch.

Other People's Postings

2007-10-29T17:40:00.001-04:00

Artist Brandon Bird takes a trip to Dukesfest.

One of my roomies started a blog. How come I'm not mentioned? :( I guess I should go defenestrate something.

Oh, and stealing is wrong and white people can't dance. The former maybe more true than the latter.

And here's some music from those nice, clean-cut young robots, Daft Punk. Enjoy!

Clip-Daft Punk-harder better faster stronger-live
Uploaded by stardaft

The Wonderful World of Amtrak!

2007-10-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

So my train adventure has wrapped up and I thought I would share some of my observations with you nice people. Like I mentioned before, it was pretty positive, with just a few caveats to advise you of.

First of all, and this is the main one, they kept the trains friggin' cold! Especially the overnight train I took from Atlanta to D.C. It was cold enough that it kept me from sleeping (granted it wasn't the only thing keeping me from sleeping, but it was maybe the biggest part). Most of the people on the train were better prepared and had blankets and/or hoodies, etc., to wrap up in. I was reduced to tucking my arms back through the armholes of my t-shirt, which helped a little but not enough. And are they really hot during the winter? Are the conductors just overzealous with the thermostat? I don't know, but I have a feeling this may be the case.

The seats are similar in design to your standard airplane seats, but with way more legroom and a little more lateral room. So this is more than enough, especially if the train is not very crowded and you end up with two seats to yourself (all the trains I was on had two seats on either side of the center aisle). But if the train is packed, like the ATL to WAS train was, and you end up next to a pretty big dude, and if you, like me, aren't exactly small, things end up being a little claustrophobic. Given all of that, though, if I'd just been warmer, things probably wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

So here are some perks of which you may or may not be aware: there are plug-ins all over the place, so if you want to bring a laptop or dvd player (or even if you need to plug in your cel, or something) those are easy to find. I wasn't planning on bringing my laptop -- and then it broke right before I left, anyway -- but if I'd known then what I know now I probably would have wanted to. Part of what this means is that if you're in a billable-hours type profession but need your laptop to do your work, you can take it with you and not worry about your battery tanking. And you'll have lots of time, too. Most of my trains left acceptably close to on-time, but the actual travel is slow. It's comfortable travel, though, with only a constant light jostle that makes even light airplane turbulence seem dramatic.

There's also the carbon imprint issue, which is a great point but one I'm not going to shove down anyone's throat. It's very much in line, though, with the general idea that mass transit offers both economical and environmentally friendly travel options. It's pretty cheap, too, for the most part. The Crescent Line that starts in New Orleans and ends in New York can get an individual back and forth between NOLA and Atlanta for a little less than $60, one-way. It pays to plan ahead, though, as some tickets can rise pretty dramatically in price as the trains fill and departure time looms. (The only ticket I felt like I paid too much for was the ATL to WAS leg, which is yet another reason it was kinda miserable.)

I'm not sure what the future holds for Amtrak. It's in a weird grey zone as a government agency in that it's expected to be run like a business but almost by default can't be successful or profitable. It definitely has its fair share of powerful critics, including John McCain, which may or may not explain why the entire state of Arizona is devoid of Amtrak stations. Ideally, it would be great to have Japanese/EU-style bullet trains one day, but that seems kinda unlikely to happen anytime soon. Even just an east coast one, or maybe a New York-Chicago-L.A. express would go over pretty well, I think, trading off a little bit more travel time for a lot more comfort and reliability -- maybe even productivity.

Here're some links.

Amtrak Official Site

Amtrak Wikipedia Article [includes history and discusses recent controversies]

Guest Rewards Program

Ahhhhhhh Slow, Slow Noise Is So Pretty

2007-10-19T15:18:00.000-04:00

"White Like Heaven" by Gowns, performed live.

Website

MySpace

Order CD

It Is The Twenty-First Century

2007-10-13T07:30:00.000-04:00

New Music Extravaganza!

Saw of Montreal at a very swank bar called The Roxy last night. It was a great show, despite the fact that they a) didn't play their cover of The Fiery Furnaces' "Tropical Iceland" and b) played lots of new stuff -- which is great and all, but who goes to see a band they like for songs they don't know? of Montreal is semi-famous for doing great covers, but I don't think they played any last night. And actually, if I end up with a torrent of the show, it might be interesting to hear the new stuff again.

Here's some YouTube, but be advised that they had a much cooler and more elaborate setup (multi-tiered stage, light boxes that lit up when people walked on them, winged guitarist, ninja battles).

Also procured both the new Radiohead and the new Fiery Furnaces. If you haven't heard about the new Radiohead, please crawl out from underneath your rock and check this out: it's called In Rainbows and you can download it, right now, from this website, at a price of your own choosing. Including for the completely frizzle. I coughed up seven pounds fifty cuz I'm like that, but I don't think anyone's getting the stinkeye for being supposedly cheap. Here's a clip of "Bodysnatchers"; kind of my favorite song going in, ever since I heard their Bonnaroo performance, but it's reworked just a bit on the actual album, so it's still my jam.

Last but never least: Here's a video from Widow City, the aforementioned new Fiery Furnaces. I haven't absorbed much more than the two cuts I was already familiar with ("Navy Nurse" and "Duplexes Of The Dead") but I feel okay relaying you the Pitchfork review, which seems on the money at least about the album's mixed debt to 70's era rock.

Well, take care kids! -- and if you're good, I'll tell you about the lovely young lady I met last night.

News From Boston

2007-10-11T19:54:00.000-04:00

So, I've paid some rent, signed a lease, and bought a computer -- I guess I'm officially moved in (although I am still sleeping on the futon in the living room, but hopefully that situation will be remedied soon). Now I've just got to buckle down on the job search, and it will be almost like I have a real life going on. Whee!

One thing that's nice about a pretty big city like Boston is the opportunity to find things to do that I used to do down in Mississippi. For instance, I've gone to a bar called Atwood's that has trivia on Wednesday nights. My team hasn't won yet, but we've placed two out of the three times I've gone and won some nice bar glasses. The first place team gets cash, of course, and in a neat twist the last place team gets a round of shots with the emcee -- a comely burlesque dancer who always dresses up in sexy costumes. No joke! The first time I went, she was dressed as a saucy teacher, the second time she was Princess Leia -- no, wait, let me rephrase that: Slave Outfit Princess Leia -- and this most recent trip she was Raggedy Ann. The last one's not so hot, I guess, although apparently she strips out of it during her burlesque act sometimes. It also inspired the night's best team name: So Does The Carpet Match The Yarn? As you may have suspected, plenty of people throw their own games in order to "win" last place. I've got to find out where and when she performs!

I've also been meaning to post about my experience with Amtrak. That's not going to happen now, but I hope to in a day or two. I'll go ahead and say that it was pretty positive, with just a few caveats. If anyone has any questions about train travel (or whatever!), please post them in the comments, and I'll try to make sure they get addressed in the actual post.

Ok, so here's a clip of Justice, um, "performing" a song on Jimmy Kimmel.

Fun stuff, but why have Rod Stewart on keys? I wonder if whoever they really wanted had the flu or something.

Pet Theory

2007-10-04T11:24:00.000-04:00

The Darjeeling Limited

Owen Wilson is Wes Anderson.

Jason Schwartzman is Roman Coppola.

Adrien Brody is Jason Schwartzman.

For a somewhat negative review and a discussion of the movie's class issues [in the comments box], click here.

Other People's Postings And Stuff

2007-09-25T18:05:00.000-04:00

The best article yet on Achewood, my favorite webcomic! (Also talks about free ink available in Portland, OR.)

The October Harper's has an excerpt/abstract from Naomi Klein's new book. (Links to Harper's homepage; article available on newstands and behind a paywall for subscribers.)

Just finished George Saunders' new book, The Braindead Megaphone. (Oh, snap! Saunders got David Rees on board! I've just found that out! Match made in heaven.) It's worth at least an attempt to read through cover to cover, although if you get frustrated with some of the short "experimental" pieces (which, frankly, come off like his fiction with most of the charm and warmth removed -- which arguably may be the point) please do yourself the favor of reading his appreciations of literature (Johnny Tremain, Vonnegut, Huck Finn, a Barthelme short story he workshops) and the three reportage pieces. The third of those -- about a young monk meditating for months on end in Nepal -- is really good, and I think I liked it more for having gotten through the entire book to get to it. There's a good balance between a sort of cheerful cynicism (thankfully not the other way around) and awkward optimism (especially in the face of the awe-inspiring, and even in the face of what inspires awe in the other) in his thinking, which is what I really like about him, over and above all the consumerist satire that hooked me in the first place.

One Month!

2007-09-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Yay! I've been on the road a month! And in Boston for a week, which is really too long to go without a post talking about it, but I'm afraid we might all have to wait a little longer for that to happen. The weather has been great, though, which, after this hellacious summer, is a very, very welcome respite.

Oh, and hey -- remember this?

More Richmond & Virginia Beach

2007-09-09T19:41:00.000-04:00

Have I ever said anything too negative about the Guitar Hero game franchise? Because, man, please forget it if I ever did! I've had so much fun playing it here at Devon and Anders' house. (Also I'm not nearly as good as the guy in the video, just so we're all on the level.)

We also went to the beach yesterday (Saturday). It was nice -- not too crowded, not too hot -- and we were pleasantly surprised by the Blue Angels, which is the Navy's exposition flight team, doing some practice exercises or something right over the beach where we were. It's sorta decadent, I know, but it's majorly impressive to see those guys doing their thing. And I mean, I did used to read Tom Clancy a lot, so I have some background into which I can regress.

So there's my Richmond experience in a nutshell: fake guitar playing, Top Gun, and Anders' and my own never-ending stream of internet meme-spouting and movie quoting. Oh, and drinking lots of beers. My life is like a rainbow in my eyes so nice I like it.

I'll Get Back To The Travelogue But First A Little Food For Thought

2007-09-09T12:14:00.000-04:00

A short film meant to accompany Naomi Klein's latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

(via the wonderfully redesigned BoingBoing)

Hello From Richmond, VA!

2007-09-04T14:48:00.001-04:00

Maybe it's just the breezy late summer weather, but while walking around Richmond's cute little shopping district, Carytown, it suddenly struck me how much of a beach town it seemed like -- like a more natural and lived-in Seaside. Granted, I think I had this epiphany while strolling past a rack of sale bikinis, but it really does hold up. The shops -- especially the two story, row house ones -- seemed strangely scaled (boutiqued, I guess), there's a typical overabundance of women's clothing shops, including one solely devoted to bras, some corner antique stores, and . . . well, maybe all those things are everywhere now, not just touristy beach areas.

In any case, the other parts of town I glimpsed yesterday as Anders and I went out shopping for groceries and a grill seemed far more typical of your burgeoning cityscape, if also belying the town's agri-center past: lots of old processing plants, including one that made vanilla extracts and ice cream, being chopped up into lofts and stores.

But to backpedal a little, I spent the latter part of last week and the weekend in Washington, D.C. Well, mostly in the Virginia suburbs, but I did go to the Natural History museum and saw a 3D Imax movie about sharks and other oceanic life. It was too preachy, I think, even though I basically agreed with their message. Plus they undermined that message (sharks aren't really a threat to people, we shouldn't be scared of them, we should protect their numbers and habitat, etc.) with their actual presentation of sharks like the Great White, which they soundtracked with -- you guessed it -- scary, ominous, threatening music. I mean, not that they should have used Yakkity Sax or anything, but they could have tried something a little more neutral.

The best footage -- in the sense that the 3D stuff seemed to work the best -- was of a sea turtle gliding gently over a reef. It's size and speed allowed for a lot of slow pans, and all the coral and sea floor bric-a-brac added lots of layers in the background. The filmers wasted too much time beneath creatures, pointing the camera surface-ward. Without any real background, it hardly looked different than TV. I would also sometimes get the sensation that I wasn't far away enough to focus on whatever they were trying to get me to focus on, but maybe that's my fault. It sometimes felt like trying to decipher those Magic Eye pictures, which I was never really good at.

So I'm in the process of firming up my Boston plans, but I bet y'all will hear from me again before I leave Richmond. Anders and I will try to get into some interesting trouble for everyone to be amused by! See you then!

Three Posts In Three Days, Sucka!

2007-08-28T10:31:00.000-04:00

"Don't You Evah" video from our old friends, Spoon!

Link to Keepon the Robot's homepage.
Link to BoingBoing post.

Yikes! Also, An Affirmation

2007-08-27T12:57:00.000-04:00

You may notice a link over on the left [I mean the other left. --ed.] there to a very wonderful mp3 blog named Fluxblog, run by one Matthew Perpetua. His latest entry is something of a lament upon the current state of The Fiery Furnaces live configuration, and that configuration's appeal, and even the misguided or maybe even cynical motivations behind the nature of that appeal.

Well, I'm a long-standing fan of the Fieries, although I can't say that I've loved everything they've ever done. The albums are all strong, although I can also understand why people who so easily fall in love with Gallowsbird's Bark blanche when confronted with some of their later stuff. I don't particularly care for Rehearsing My Choir, which makes me pretty sad because I think it's the most ambitious project so far from a band whose creative ambition was always a big part of their appeal for me. It has its moments (notably the perfect melody of "Slavin' Away", the wonderful piano breakdown on "Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street", and the brilliant, imagistic tacked piano scene-setter on opener "The Garfield El"), but most of RMC's songs fall into the less dense mode of composition and arrangement which I tend to like less than their more dense sonics. It's the same difference in mode which makes me really like almost all of Bitter Tea, the Holy Ghost Language School half of Matthew Friedberger's solo double album less so than Winter Women, and why I don't really like "Big Bill Crib" off of that latter album.

On the other hand some of the mp3s available on Fluxblog are exactly the kind of stripped down, sparse versions you might think I'd be against -- but that's not true. The KEXP performance of "Teach Me Sweetheart" is as great as M. Perpetua says it is; it's worth noting, though, that it's stripped down to emphasize its wistfulness (or something), not in order to burden it with a velocity or rhythm entirely alien to every other available version. I've seen the Fieries twice, and while both were quite some time ago, I think they were already on their way to their present incarnation by the second show, which I definitely didn't like as much as the first. Songs/medleys "burdened by alien velocities" may be exactly what was different between them. Energy is one thing, but do people really want to see a show where the performers seem completely rushed to get through their material? Doesn't that seem sort of anti- the very craftsmanship that is supposed to be Matt Friedberger's strength? In the end, I think I share Fluxblog's exasperation. Or, you know, I would if I was likely to see them on this tour, which I probably won't. It's also a nice coincidence (or maybe not a coincidence?) that of Montreal get a post script (or "post post"?) mention -- their entirely awesome live cover of "Tropical Ice-Land" (which Fluxblog posted some time ago) is exactly what I would like out of The Fiery Furnaces themselves. The 9:30 Club show has plenty of moments like that. Maybe they'll swing back that way sometime soon.

Anyways, I'm still looking forward to Widow City! "Navy Nurse" is awesome!

---

Also, to fill everyone in on my travels: no, I'm not just going from strip club to strip club or anything (see last post). Before Atlanta I went through Birmingham and saw the latest addition to the family, Ian, who seemed pretty cool for someone who just eats, sleeps, cries, and poops. Kind of an infant G.G. Allin, I guess. I also saw Superbad, which I recommend. It might not have quite the date movie appeal of Knocked Up (which, um, I actually didn't see, though it seems like it was trying pretty hard to appeal to both genders), but there were plenty of young women in the theater with me, and plenty of giggles and guffaws coming from their direction. So there. Also went to an Apple Store (my first visit to one, strangely) and played with an iPhone. Pretty damn neat, I have to admit.

And Atlanta has solid appeal, even beyond geriatric strippers (if you can imagine). The Georgia Aquarium is a little on the expensive side, but well worth a visit. Decatur, which is basically where I'm staying, has a great little downtown district, including a great pub, the Brick Store. I can highly recommend Terrapin's new India Brown Ale to all of you beer lovers. Also a couple of trips to Little Five Points yielded some great music finds at Criminal Records, my first trip to an American Apparel outlet (Is wearing a brand's clothes inside of their store a bad thing, like wearing a band t-shirt to that band's concerts? Because I got one of those dismissive up-and-down looks from the one lady employee, but a much more pleasant greeting from the other.), and an unexpectedly great hamburger from a bar called The Vortex, where there were also lots of scantily clad biker chicks. So maybe scantily-cladness is sort of a running theme so far, but maybe that's just Atlanta for you.

Anyways, see you in DC and/or Richmond!

So I'm Doing Some Travelling These Days

2007-08-26T15:23:00.002-04:00

And obviously no travel record is complete these days without some photos to go along with it. My sister's blog (hey, Jane! Hope you're having funz! Please learn how to hyperlink! 'kay, bye!) is full of good stuff to look at, although that's pretty easy when you're in India, I bet; you can just sort of randomly point and shoot and you're bound to catch some local color in the frame.

But so anyway I have a pretty crummy digital camera that I elected not to bring with me. I hardly ever use it, I wasn't bringing along a laptop that would have the dedicated software it would need (probably ways around this, sure, but anyways), and, like I said, it was pretty crummy. Like sub-old-cellphone camera crummy.

On the other hand, maybe this is not such a bad thing, because last night I visited Atlanta's infamous Clermont Lounge, an establishment that has been charmingly described as "the place that strippers go to die." That is a verbatim quote, by the way, delivered by more than one person in my life, years and years apart. So the workers there are not in the prime of their life, but it's actually pretty genius. There's nothing like seeing a portly middle aged woman giving a lap dance to a terrified bachelor to lower the bar, cut the tension, and maybe get people to act a little crazy. I saw a few spontaneous amateur dances going on, one of which was girl-on-girl and kind of hot, really. And another girl who, not long after her arrival, pulled a slow-hand-to-cover-gasping-mouth expression so perfect I had to kind of convince myself that she wasn't just being ironic (and, really, I'm sure that it was sincere shock/horror/wtf-ness), was a couple of drinks later basically dry-humping her boyfriend. I mean, she didn't take any of her clothes off, but I got the idea that maybe she was going out on a personal limb, public spectacle-wise.

And so yeah my friends got me a lapdance from a sixty-one year old in Divine eyelashes and what I guess was some kind of Little Bo Peep costume (which I complimented her on). She told me I was handsome and that she'd come find me after she'd changed into a new outfit. Her (natural) bosom was way nicer than you would ever (want to) imagine. We left soon after. I never even knew her name.

Get Your Commentary On

2007-08-10T13:36:00.000-04:00

So some of you might be fans of a little clip-art based comic called "Get Your War On" which is written by a fellow named David Rees. You might not know, though, that he also blogs on the Huffington Post. ( -- a quick aside -- Is it okay to want to have sex with someone's accent? Maybe the Japanese are working on this. Anyways -- ) But now you do know, so you should check out his response to Michael Ignatieff's recent mea culpa. Hilarity ensues.

Yet Another Repost From BoingBoing

2007-08-06T22:12:00.000-04:00

But really, this is pretty neat! Kucinich knocked it out of the park for me. Go figure.

Spoon The New Stream!

2007-06-18T11:37:00.000-04:00

Wait -- reverse that. And do it here.

It's reminding me a little of Wilco's latest, although I guess Spoon hasn't the reputation for experimentation that Wilco built. Also not sure about the flamenco guitar bit, but overall I'm digging it.

At the risk of looking like a dick...

2007-05-16T11:22:00.000-04:00

I'll let this speak for itself.

via BoingBoing

A quick one...

2007-04-05T14:31:00.000-04:00

to let you know that I am still alive. My stupid hard drive died (but yay for my external! woo!) and I've yet to get around to fixing it, buying another computer, etc. But I will return! Stay alive, no matter what occurs!

LCDremixed.com

2007-03-16T16:41:00.000-04:00

Okay I was going to embed an MP3 but the internet is not feeling cooperative today. You can go here and listen to it or here and download an album's worth of remixes of songs from an album that's not technically out yet.

It's My B-Day, Yo

2007-03-05T11:29:00.000-05:00

*cough*presents*cough*

For real though it feels okay; I am 29. (For the first time.) I think my oldest bro and his wife are fixing me something to eat tonight and then I'll probably go and have some drinks. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!

Arthur Magazine

2007-02-24T19:21:00.000-05:00

This sucks. I guess it's for real, though there's really no indication on the Arthur Website. Maybe they like the freak-folk a little too much for their own or anyone else's good, but it was still a damn interesting publication. The "Arthur Against Empire!" issue was fantastic. The guys who did the music reviews were really funny. And of course there was always great life advice from T-Model Ford ("Aint no woman gonna keep my buggy from rollin"). I guess I noticed it slacking a little over the past couple of issues, but I was still always happy to see the new one out. Oh, well.

of Montreal -- Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse

2007-02-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

I was already hooked on this song -- but now an awesome video, too?! It's a lot like if Wes Anderson redirected bits of The Big Lebowski. While high on PCP. And wearing lots of glitter.

Lots and lots of glitter.

Because Steve Jobs Reads My Blog, OBVS.

2007-02-07T04:46:00.000-05:00

Oof, heading jokes. The only obvious thing here is that I've been reading too many trolltastic stereogum comments and not been getting enough sleep.

About Jobs, his speech, and what probably constitutes the spectrum of my peers' reactions:

1) Duh, Jobs is looking out for Apple, but he's sandwiched between the "Big Four" and the consumers in such a way that his concerns and the consumer's concerns tend to merge.

2)Taking DRM off of digital downloads isn't going to save the majors, but it also won't hurt them; it might even help. They've all gotten their feet wet in this "internet" thing but they're still acting like the water is hot lava. How about getting some of your artists to put out short, cheap digital-only EPs and singles? Remix collections? Some sort of in-house mixtape?

3) Jobs failed to mention the Sony rootkit debacle.

4) I'm not so ready to call the iPod a superior product -- or at least not so ready to give its design and specs complete credit for (what is obviously) the iPod's domination of the market. Mostly they were just there first, made the smart move (eventually) to offer a subtle but significant array of products, and (most importantly) marketed the hell out of it. I would not own an iPod right now if none of them cost less than a hundred bucks. (I might have paid more eventually -- and I might still -- but I have a shuffle on right this second because they're eighty bucks. Plus the clippy thing.) Also I know plenty of people who have had lots of problems with theirs (hi, Jane!).

5) Someone pointed out that he could probably offer DRM-free music from minor labels (or whomever) alongside his current cripples. This occurred to me, too, but there are probably either contractual obligations to consider or (maybe) technical obstacles.

BONUS RANT:

How to improve my Shuffle (aka The Plan for the Shuffle+).

Make it hold a little to a lot more (but only if it makes it a little bigger and not too much more expensive). Research in solid state tech is going to continue to miniaturize the flash drives. If my Shuffle was 50% larger, stored twice or so as much (2+ gig), and only cost an extra, say, $20? Awesome! I'll leave the actual research (and fact-finding) to the professionals, but I'm pretty sure this is doable (just take a quick look at the relative sizes and costs of different jump drives).

Add a "trash" or "flag" button. The first thing I do when I get new music is decide what to take off of my Shuffle in order to put the new stuff on. Now, while actually listening to it I always find myself skipping over familiar-sounding songs and even sometimes wondering who the hell it is I'm listening to, and/or why the hell are they taking up space? Then it occurred to me that it would be great to have a button that would automatically drop something out of the playlist on the fly, and then delete it once it was hooked back up to my computer. Instant space! On the other hand, a more ambiguous "flag" button that would just pop a list out to me might be more useful. That way I could also see what songs I like, or just what songs I want to know who sings, or whatever. A time stamp might also be useful in figuring out just what I was thinking when, and adding a small external clock might be good for the joggers and whomever. I guess at this point it's getting pretty cluttered, though, so maybe nix the clock. I would probably never use it, anyway.

You might be thinking that all of this would be easier if you just added a screen, but I think a screen would be a bad idea. The cheapest Nano is only twice as big as a Shuffle but costs nearly twice as much; I can only assume it's largely because of the screen. If I want a portable HDD with a mini-monitor, it's going to need to be a lot bigger than 8 gig, anyway (that's the biggest Nano size). Plus you have its elegant design and rugged lifestyle to conserve. Lifestyle is not the best word, but you probably know what I mean. For like people who exercise and whatever.

So, Apple, whenever you would like to hire me for product design, or even just run some beta-testing my way, you'll know where to find me. That's right: in the Comments Box.

"Good People"

2007-02-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

The New Yorker has published a new David Foster Wallace short story, available online here. It deserves a response I'm not sure I'm prepared to articulate yet -- which is to say that it's sensitive and compelling and, you know, good.

Mr. Wallace's fiction keeps getting better and better while his nonfiction has kind of stagnated. Don't get me wrong -- Consider The Lobster was worth every penny I eked out for the cloth-bound, but it almost all seemed like things he could have written years ago; in a few cases they actually were things he'd written years ago, kind of like b-sides from his A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again sessions, which I guess makes CTL an Amnesiac to ASFTINDA's Kid A.

Compare that to the title story from Oblivion, which to date remains the most haunting, affecting thing I've ever put in my brain; a story so freaking good I'm a little afraid of the fact that I've read it and it's had such an impact on me; a story that more or less defines the potentials for psychological horror in contemporary American life in a way that only the best fiction writing will ever be able to conjure.

Here's a link to his wikipedia page, and here's another to a fairly comprehensive fansite.

The New Clap Clap Blog

2007-02-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

I originally stumbled across Clap Clap via the Blueberry Boat forum. Blueberry Boat is (or was, as the FF's official forum has taken over the focus) an unofficial Fiery Furnaces fansite, and someone linked to Clap Clap's very ambitious and almost completely thorough analysis of Blueberry Boat, arguably the FF's best album. So I dropped in on his site occasionally and found he had a lot of interesting things to say, many of which are indexed here. The new Clap Clap just launched, and in a bit of serendipity his first real post covers something I mentioned earlier: the weird cultural polarity between the deaths of President Ford and James Brown. He goes into much more detail about it, and despite the post's title never ties Saddam Hussein's execution into it (which I mention because I kind of did, here).

There's actually this tangled web of relations between his circle of friends and their blogs and me, a sort of whole nebulous cloud of serendipity which I would like to get into sometime, although I guess the point would just be to show how the web has made these sorts of anonymous connections possible -- which is old news at this point. Plus it makes me feel a little creepy sometimes when I think about it. I am a blog stalker.

Deaf Test: Oneida's "Changes in the City"

2007-01-26T14:41:00.000-05:00

Someone with a camera -- one that could film video of some sort, a nice one that could shoot highspeed -- recorded a movie of you as you were being surprised. You were then placed in a room, seated in a lone chair which faced a screen occupying an entire wall's worth of your surroundings. The footage of you, the footage of you being surprised, lit up the screen. The light in the frame gently strobed, and you thought you could detect minute variations, the way the light behaved like a thousand coinciding decisions to exist, a cloud of anomalies surrounded each bright centered pulse.

This is not "Changes in the City." This is "Sheets of Easter."

"Sheets of Easter" is very thoroughly iterated and very staccato. "Changes in the City" gathers force around a repeated bass line. Instead of a strobe, the light is more of a constant steady glow that the bass line's pulse gradually feeds. The bass line sounds like the opening bass line to the Twin Peaks' opening theme song, a little. Every so often there is critical mass; the song whirls, and collapses, and the intensity redoubles.

This is not "Changes in the City." This is "The Adversary."

The bass line reconfigures, slowly, across a series of diminishing climaxes. The bass line is smothered by the sounds it has nurtured. You are watching a sunset. Shrieks of data blink duskward. The iteration is tired but relaxed; resigned yet content. The light fades out.

Bill O'Reilly on The Colbert Report

2007-01-23T15:33:00.000-05:00

So this happened last Thursday and I've been meaning to say something about it. At first I was going to blog about how Colbert never mentioned Bill's sexual harassment debacle from some moons back, but after repeat viewings I noticed that he actually got that jab in quick, early, and a little nastily (if also a little obliquely, I guess).

The general vibe I've noticed on the web is that it was over-hyped -- true, probably -- but Stephen's last line is classic, and like a lot of what he does on The Report, kind of casually profound. O'Reilly is going on about how he's actually a "sensitive, effete" guy and that his tough, hard-nosed television persona is "just an act." Colbert retorts, "But if you're an act, then what am I?"

Of course, all that talk about sensitivity is just his regularly back-handed attempt at framing the debate, unless it's actually a fairly pathetic attempt to either reach out to The Report's audience (in which case, good luck, but I don't think his base will increase at all from now until the end of his career) or -- more likely -- an appeal to sell books by equating himself with intelligence and sophistication. Because, you know, sensitive people are also all those things, too, right? And they write big, important books? And they totally get the humor of shows like The Colbert Report?

Bill just doesn't get it, does he? Though, you know, whatever his failings as a "journalist," at least he had the sense not to go into comedy.

One of these days I'd like to write a long post about "The Culture War" in its many guises and facets, but that will have to wait until another time. Here's a teaser, though: The Culture War both does and does not exist. Discuss.

Welcoming Myself To The 21st Century

2007-01-20T02:45:00.000-05:00

So I decided my life needed new gadgetry and decided to spring for a couple of things. It's probably my way of nursing the wound created when I realized I will never have an iPhone. Not for like three years, or something, anyway.

First of all, I got an iPod shuffle, one of the new ones with a clip. I've been wanting an iPod for awhile but could never decide if I would be able to put up with the shuffle's lack of a display and direct track choice (the other option was to go all out and get one of the really big ones -- the nano's never seemed like such a great middle road to me), but the new design pretty much sold me on it. Anyways, I've been enjoying it quite a bit. I do a fair amount of walking here in Oxford, so my Shuffle makes for a good alternative to the quaint, small town chorus of construction and traffic we Oxonians are so lucky to enjoy. Plus I went jogging with it (only once, so far, but it was earlier today) and even have ended up wearing it around the house.

I also got a portable flash drive. Sometime last year (Early fall, I think?) I visited my sister in Hattiesburg, and amongst other things we went to a Best Buy where she was going to get a flash drive for herself. A 1-gig drive cost, like, seventy bucks! I had no idea. She ended up not buying one there, which has proven to be a good thing. The 1-gig drive I just got from some random internet store cost me less than 20 bucks, and works great. I guess the moral here is to shop around for your options, and that the internet is probably the best place to buy techy gadgets.

The last thing that I bought was also my biggest purchase: an external HDD. I've been getting by on practically no free memory for quite a while. Every time I added an album to my iTunes, I was having to delete something else, which I actually liked in some ways, since it sort of forced me into making value judgements about what I really wanted to keep, which made me really listen to some stuff that I would otherwise have left to flounder in the nethermost crannies of my hard drive (if a 30-gig drive actually has nethermost crannies, which is unlikely).

Anyways, I will no longer have to put myself through such harsh cerebral rigamorale, as my new LaCie 320-gig drive will be able to store all the albums, torrents, and whatever else I'm likely to run across for the next 10 years. Or atleast the next 5. Plus it was very reasonably priced at a mere buck-fifty.

So I haven't provided links or anything but if anyone wants more details on where to get such awesome and affordable merchandise, please leave a note in the comment box. Especially with the external HDD, I learned a lot scouring the comment threads on plenty of websites, so I might have some useful information for you.

In other news, I watched a recommendable movie lately: Tristram Shandy; A Cock and Bull Story. It has Steve Coogan! What else do you need to hear?

The Power of Nightmares

2007-01-13T18:51:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to keep an eye out for an official release of this very fine documentary, and apparently it is being made available through McSweeney's Wholphin DVD magazine. For those of you who want more immediate gratification, here are some links to Google Video.

Part One -- Baby It's Cold Outside

Part Two -- The Phantom Victory

Part Three -- The Shadows In The Cave

The film focuses on the rise, convergence, and similarities between the Neoconservatives and certain Islamic fundamentalists. I just watched the first one and will probably watch the other two tomorrow.

Console/HD Format Alert!

2007-01-05T01:10:00.000-05:00

This thing is far from over, I know, but I thought that this development would make it pretty interesting.

Warner Bros to release dual-format (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) DVDs.

I also didn't know that Blu-Ray discs run cheaper, even though they haven't been on the market as long (though the actual HD-DVD drive is cheaper than the Blu-Ray drive). How much longer are we going to be using discs, anyway?

Man, if I wasn't so, like, laaaaazyyyy....

2007-01-02T23:43:00.000-05:00

Michel Gondry, eat your heart out.

Via BoingBoing, of course.

So....Nevermind that last post....

2006-12-30T01:07:00.000-05:00

The trifecta is complete, obviously. What the hell was I thinking? It seems so obvious, now.

Saddam Hussein has been executed.

Sorry Gerald Ford

2006-12-28T05:10:00.000-05:00

James Brown died. So did Gerald Ford. As a culture, we seem to organize these things into threes. People -- even famous people -- die all the time; but we tend to lump three people together and decide that there is some point or pattern to it, and the point I want to make here is that there might not be two more different celebrated cultural signifiers than The Godfather of Soul and President Klutz. What third person could possibly end up complimenting or supplementing these people's seperate and unequal symbolic properties?

I have no idea.

The man in his prime.

I wish I could post a clip of Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford (I even had a good lead-in: "The, err, man, not ready for prime time.") but of course NBC won't let YouTube carry that stuff. But I did find a clip of the Simpsons episode where he makes an "appearance". It's actually one of the kinder, gentler moments I can remember ever being on the Simpsons.

Other People's Postings

2006-12-21T17:41:00.000-05:00

Via BoingBoing.

A list of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time with YouTube/Google Video/etc. links for almost all of them. Awesome!

MySpace Trend Alert

2006-12-20T18:24:00.000-05:00

So you can take my quiz if you would like, but I'm mosty letting people know about this because coming up with the test was a lot of fun. Also, sorry about number nine, it's a little T.M.I. but I was running out of ideas.

Okay, actually I've just gone and tried to edit it and it keeps making weird changes to my quiz, so if something looks like it doesn't make sense, it's probably a problem on their end. But it really was fun to make it up.

Create your own friendquiz here

(Thanks, Kat!)

A Short And Half-Hearted Defense Of The Mash-Up

2006-12-18T11:45:00.000-05:00

Short because I don't think I have that much to say and half-hearted because I'm not going to waste too much time defending a practice that is, often -- or at least often seems to be -- indefensible.

But in its defense: The Kleptones.

Most mash-ups are just two different tracks (one of which is pretty likely to be "London Calling," I guess because it's by The Clash. Get it?) pretty carelessly thrown together but that work well enough to generate a sort of recognition-of-novelty response. And even when this is done really, really well I like it about as much as I would a mediocre conventional song. In fact, outside of The Kleptones' more ambitious undertakings (of which 24 Hours is the latest, from earlier this year) there are only a handful of mash-ups I've encountered that could really hold their own against the mainstream(s).

There's also a new DJ who goes by the name Girl Talk who has an album out which has made some waves. The general consesus seems to be that it's pretty stupid but really fun -- and if you act quickly, you can get a track and see for yourself from Fluxblog. (It includes a great Biggie sample, if that's any motivation.)

What's strange to me is that the more ambitious projects always end up sounding like turntablism or even straight hip-hop, but still get stuck with the "mash-up" label, presumably because of their origins, or maybe the label is self-applied.

O.P.P. Round-up

2006-12-12T11:29:00.001-05:00

Why are there Jews at the Tehran Holocaust Denial Conference?

I even kind of agree with these guys in my own, secular, goyim way, but: "In what many other Jews would consider the height of naivety, he commended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for wanting 'a secured future for innocent Jewish people in Europe and elsewhere'." Yeah, that seems like a bit of a stretch, Rabbi. Also not sure about the entire disintegration of the Israeli state, but sincerest kudos for reaching across the aisle and also for calling Israel out on a little B.S.

I haven't read this yet but I bet it's good.

Is "Howl" over-rated? Probably.

Telling Pitchfork that you were just telling Nike what Nike wanted to hear is also just telling Pitchfork what Pitchfork wants to hear.

Or atleast I kinda hope so, since I created an iTunes store account and then plunked down a digi-Hamilton for the track. [An aside directed toward Apple and its iTunes store: "Screw 128 kbps, even if AAC is supposedly better quality than MP3. Also, screw AAC."] All those "shame on you"'s are a little disconcerting, but some of the points he made about the music not being 110% aggressive seemed to make sense to me, especially since it was fashioned for jogging and not, like, gladitorial combat. I think I'll get a shuffle and some track clothes and start jogging again; I mean, how can I not after my ten dollar investment?

This Post Makes My Blog, Like, An Official Blog

2006-12-08T01:56:00.000-05:00

An oft-cited aspect of the blogosphere is its ability to create instant hype. I most commonly come across this sort of thing in regards to music -- up-and-coming (actually, "up-and-coming" though I have a feeling a lot of what I'm about to say might rest a little easier in ironic quotation marks; but I don't think I'll always feel like supplying them; anyways, fill them in as you see fit) indie rock bands that get a few MP3s floating around, maybe an album leak, and then get panned by Pitchfork and then that's that.

As common (or "common," see what I mean?) as these bands may be, the biggest example of the phenomena probably came from film: Snakes On A Plane. Its presence as a meme/joke/whatever was huge. Even before Samuel Jackson started making personal phonecalls to people there were internet contests and script rewrites and general gossip mongering all over the internet about the movie. Mongering to such a ridiculous extent, in fact, that plenty of people thought the whole thing was a put on, which might partially explain why it released to entirely unextraordinary numbers. It didn't flop, but it wasn't the huge hit the studio was expecting it to be, either. No wonder Big Media hates the internet.

ANYWAYS, one of the most talked about & hyped blogo-bands from the past couple of years is an outfit named Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. So I'm a fan of this band, which I bring up rather bluntly because a lot of the blogs I visit, both MP3 and otherwise, not only think that this band is bad but that the band is bad for music, and the scene, or whatever. It's not backlash either -- at least not in the typical sense -- because these are the same blogs that enthusiastically endorse all kinds of stuff before it really hits. I remember hearing about CYHSY through our (sadly, now defunct) local record store's email newsletter, which made sure to point out the fact that these guys had self-released and -distributed their debut album and that Oxford, MS, was pretty damned lucky to be getting any. I think I rounded up a few MP3s from somewhere and as soon as I heard "Over And Over Again"'s David Byrne jitter, I was pretty much sold. They get compared to The Talking Heads more than they should, but it would be even more ridiculous to avoid the obvious, especially on this song. His voice may drift from Byrne to Gordon Gano to elsewhere in the surprising-melodic-yelp-verse, but the music only rarely sounds this Heads-ish.

ANYWAYS AGAIN, the only negative thing I've heard about them that stuck to me is from this past summer's Bonnaroo, where they were apparently the only holdouts in what was otherwise some kind of Hippie/Hipster peace accord. On the other hand, we probably need a couple of hardliners around, so maybe that's a good thing. They're like the Sharons of Brooklyn. This might be why they aren't liked [note to reader: most of the blogs I read are NYC based] as a band -- for purely personal reasons rather than their music. I don't have to worry about that in regards to them, but Lord knows there're plenty of local acts I would not give a fair shot based entirely on the personnel involved.

ANYWAYS AGAIN AGAIN, they have a new album coming out in January, supposedly, which will also be available for download in user-friendly MP3 format from Insound.com, after which purchase the band will eventually send you the actual CD in the mail. I've listened to a couple of tracks and currently have "Satan Said Dance" as my MySpace profile's song. It's pretty tight.

p.s. This blog would be more official if there were hyperlinks but ya ain't gettin em.

Alt.Country Alert!

2006-12-06T17:18:00.000-05:00

I know some of you guys must really be chomping at the bit for a new Wilco record, so I thought I'd share this post that I discovered via Pitchfork.

Of course, we all know how much Wilco likes to alter songs, so who knows how much the final album will sound like what they've been playing live. So far, though, a lot of the songs sound a little throwback-y and somewhat somber.

Happiness Intersection

2006-12-03T17:10:00.000-05:00

MC Frontalot, purveyor of such nerdcore fare as "I Heart Fags" and "Mountain Kind" has just created a song about my favorite webcomic, Achewood!

It's called "Livin' At The Corner Of Dude & Catastrophe" and can be downloaded here.

It was part of a contest held by Song Fight. I haven't listened to any of the other entries, but Front won by a huge margin.

I.L. @ The Movies

2006-11-29T22:47:00.000-05:00

The Fountain

I liked this movie quite a bit, but I should be honest about my willingness to give a pass to a movie that presents me a lot of visual splendor (in lieu of coherent and down-to-earth plots, which seems to be some people's major beef with the film), which this movie has in spades (except for the bark that Bald Wolverine eats, which I swear looks like a cling-on).

The director, Darren Aronofsky, found these dudes living in an ancient (well, like, 400 year old) cow shed in England who built a device they dubbed the "Microzoom Optical Bench" which can take a tiny drop of water and -- through a system of Victorian prisms and some digital cameras -- magnify it up to 500,000 times. Most of the f/x he got these guys to make are in the futuristic third of the movie's timeframes, and they look fantastic.

Reading about the Bench immediately reminded me of something I'd read in an interview with Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was making Brazil and needed some convincing clouds during a scene in which one of the characters is flying through the air. They ended up shooting some high speed footage of some smoke wisps that Gilliam was really pleased with, and he made the point in the interview that it was the random and unplanned for results that made it so pretty -- and realistic. You just can't really get that with CGI; it limits you to only your imagination and takes out the role that chance plays in our experience of reality (and movies).

So I say kudos to this trend in Hollywood, and maybe those British guys will get some more work, too.

Oooooh, Aaaaaaah!

2006-11-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

gimmegimmegimmegimmegimmegimmeimmegimmegimmegimmegimmegimme

Lost Post Alert!

2006-11-27T19:42:00.000-05:00

For anyone interested in what my favorite album of the year is, please check out this post.

Blogger posts things in an order based on when they were started, not when they are finished, so my long-ass review of some Brooklynite Noise-a-mancers got buried underneath a pile of referral posts. Please enjoy and check out some of their music if you're so inclined.

Other People's Postings

2006-11-26T06:46:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know, I lied. But if this post saves even one kid's Christmas this year, it will have been worth it.

Awesome Internet Hyperlink!

Oh, Irony, thy name is BoingBoing

Too much of that gangsta music...

2006-11-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

via Status Ain't Hood

Other People's Postings

2006-11-20T22:33:00.000-05:00

Look, I know this is getting out of hand a little. If I could turn my blog into BoingBoing, I would, but I can't. But I will stop just doing referral links one of these days -- soon -- I promise.

Slate.com

Go for the hilarious illustration; stay for the astute political commentary.

But what's a "hipster?"

2006-11-16T07:14:00.000-05:00

Oneida -- Happy New Year

It's probably too early for this nonsense, but I'm giving HNY official Best Album of 2006 status. I first heard Oneida via a cut from their Nice./Splittin' Peaches EP (2005) that I think I culled from Pitchfork's pay-for-play download section. That track was called "Inside My Head" and has since appeared on as many mix cd's as I could shoehorn it into. (Refrain: "I'll tell you 'bout living inside my head / It's all fucked up now living inside my head.") "Inside" is the kind of blissed-out damage I perenially find appealing -- the sort of driven fuzzy freakout I talked about a little in this post.

There's much to like about Oneida's sound, and they indulge a lot of different modes. Even on the afore-mentioned four-song EP they manage to hit four (or maybe three and a half) different sounds. The first track, "Summerland," caps its anxious folk primitivism with a great abstract sax explosion. Then "Inside." Then "Song Y;" which I now recognize exists in one of Oneida's main plays: computer funkery lead-in is joined by plucked acoustics and then gradually loops around itself until its interior tensions are exhausted. While all of that is going on we're treated to a nice falsetto soar of vocals, not unlike TV On The Radio's. There're key changes and other nice surprises, but it's the relentless staccato repetition that defines the song more so than anything else. Actually, this song probably wraps up a little early, as far as exhausting its tension goes. The last track, "Hakuna Matata," is more the kind of endurance rally that used to characterize Oneida's sound.

And by "used to" I'm mostly pointing towards the first two tracks on disc one of Each One Teach One (2002), which together constitute thirty minutes of throttled sonic assault, especially the first, slightly shorter one, "Sheets of Easter." I don't really know what Oneida's stance on religion is. They have a split EP with Liars called Athiests, Reconsider, but I don't know how exactly they mean that title. There certainly is an ecstatic quality to their music, though. Disc two of EOTO is more varied and uneven, though there are some standout tracks. The opening title track is a relatively relaxed groove accented with some nice beeps and boops. It sounds a little like older Flaming Lips mixed with, oh, say, Sonic Youth. "Number Nine" stretches back to some classic psyche-rock postures (sitar figures, swirling backwards vocals) but adds a fresh veneer of noise. Later on there's also the whimsical "Rugaru," which always gives me the mental image of a smallish, drunken man navigating (or trying to navigate) a bicycle through an urban market in southeast Asia.

There's an album apiece between Nice./Splittin' Peaches and both Each One Teach One and Happy New Year, both of which I will one day invest lucre towards; but it's not so hard to track their development with the evidence I have at hand and come to a judgement -- which is that Oneida have managed to stay very interesting experimentally while producing increasingly inviting songs. That they've primarily achieved this on HNY by embracing some folk signifiers shouldn't really be read as bandwagoning: their sticky-fingered approach has always been original and varied enough to allow them all the genre-morphing they could dream up. And besides, paying homage to the current fashions is just something all creatively successful bands are capable of. On the other hand, the now somewhat maligned term "freak-folk" could just as easily been coined to describe Oneida as it did Devendra Banhart, if not exactly in the same way.

Also, and to their credit, it's not like they just decided to folk it up for the entire album. True, lead track "Distress" does start with some stilted, melancholic Simon & Garfunkel harmonies laid over some fragile shakes of noise, but that track ultimately reads as a prologue to the album proper: "Happy New Year," track two, which jars awake with jittery computer squonks mixed with what I think is a steadily plinked synth of some sort. It's a refiguring of the mood of the first track into a more propulsive beat and hardy tone. Next is album highlight "The Adversary," which might be another obtuse religious reference (or not, though "The Adversary" is, I think, one of Lucifer's titles in some Christian myths). Some of the lyrics say things like "No adversary you" and "No adversary I," so maybe it's more of a retooled appropriation. It's also apparently a term in cryptography.

Up next is promo-ed mp3 "Up With People" which, along with the following "Pointing Fingers," hearkens back to Oneida's own past work, namely disc 2 of EOTO. I'm not so sure "Up With People" was the best way to promote this album since it's bereft of the touches of folk that crop up everywhere else, but it's a good song in and of itself and arguably has some of the folkiest lyrics of the album: "Sunlight shines on the top of the trees/the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/you've got to get up to get free." But lyrics aren't really why I listen to Oneida; the kind of ecstatic confusion they want to create can't support much narrative, and with that out of the equation the lyrics' literal importance bows to instrumental import of the vocals, which mostly seem to exist to either reiterate or subtly twist the moods of the songs. It's true that a band like The Fiery Furnaces manages to incorporate a lot of narrative into some pretty confusing songs, but their whole musical tack seems wildly different than Oneida's, and besides, most of the Furnace's songs are literally about confusion, so they get a pass.

After "Pointing Fingers" ends (note: probable least favorite song on the album; also the one most reminiscent of TV On The Radio, though that's just a coincidence, really), the album gradually turns back towards the folky sounds laid down in the first three tracks. The hypnotic, insistent "History's Great Navigators" cuts the difference pretty evenly, though the next track, "Busy Little Bee" hits the Scarborough Fairgrounds running with a strummed mandolin announcing the start of a suite of tracks which indulges the lion's share of Happy New Year's folk experiments. "Reckoning" pits shimmery flute-synth washes and vocals against the album's most fronted acoustic figures; "You Can Never Tell" chants lovers' apocalyptic secrets; "The Misfit" rounds off the set with an international paranoia of latin rhythmns, spy-movie organ, and air travel unease.

Epilogue "Thank Your Parents" is the album's second longest cut (after "Up With People") and starts rather unassumingly with four bars of trap to which are gradually added a piano, the vocals, and then a very subtle drone organ figure that eventually dominates the soundscape. It's a great closer because it gathers up as much of the album's various forms as possible before sending them off on a wave both lulling and, somehow, triumphant -- which is a good a way to describe Oneida's disparate and conflicted sound as any I've read.

An underlying (but important) reason that I've so fallen for Happy New Year is the excitement of discovering Oneida. It's entirely possible that I wouldn't be enamored of it if I hadn't also been so blown away by "Sheets of Easter," or charmed by "Rugaru." This is my justification for having gone through each of the cd's that I own for this post, which seems kinda excessive and is indeed the reason it's taken so long to write. Another reason is having listened to Grizzly Bear's Yellow House and Happy New Year back to back and, after hearing a ton of hype about Grizzly Bear, thinking that Oneida obviously had a better album that worked in much the same vein. This isn't any beef with Grizzly Bear, but thinking that an album you really like is being overlooked tends to stoke some passion (or it happens to me, at least). For the record, Happy New Year came out months before Yellow House.

Other People's Postings

2006-11-13T13:10:00.000-05:00

How much should the Cons blame Rove? How much will they blame him, anyway?

Slate.com

The writer never comes out and says it, but what I gathered from this article (and honestly would have thought anyways, I guess I should admit) is that the Republicans probably should be blaming Rove quite a bit (or really Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al; basically the PNAC presence within the Bush administration or the realized synecdochic Bush), but that they probably won't -- the unrealized synecdochic Bush still offers the rest of his administration too much symbolic protection.

Other People's Postings

2006-11-09T11:57:00.000-05:00

Is Sacha Baron Cohen the Democrat's Karl Rove?

Clap Clap Blog

Laughlaughlaughlaughlaugh

2006-11-08T12:22:00.000-05:00

Watching the Democrats kick hell out of the Grand Oil Party makes for fantastic late-night viewing. The House is locked down. The Senate is very, very likely to fall one vote over into Blue Territory (a slightly Yellowish Blue, but still). Butt-juice got axed. Ford didn't win, but he was maybe the most conservative of all the conservative Dems to revolt. I still would have voted for him, though.

So mostly I switched back and forth between CNN's and FoxNews' coverage of the whole thing, which was like night and day. CNN had Lou Dobbs playing overseer and a dynamic Anderson Cooper jumping between and ring-leading two different desks. The first had three senior correspondents providing a lot of overall information in a fairly non-partial way. The second had two Dems (Cryptkeeper James Carville and someone from Clinton's admin whose name I should probably know) and two Reps (Radio shlock-jock Bill Bennet and some black Con who is not Alan Keyes whose name I should probably know). Cooper, who is not my favorite, hurricane-boy or not, did a good job of getting these big personalities to play off of each other without things getting out of his control.

On top of that, they had Wolf Blitzer in front of a huge screen which the cameras could pan over for a myriad of different result displays. His partner (whose name I don't remember; I'm really going to have to get some pen and paper out the next time I do this) had his own gadget to play with down on one end; a touch-screen job that gave graphical overviews of the House and Senate that was as cool in its own way as the huge pan-screen, although often the information provided seemed a little redundant. I'd say the two had no chemistry, but maybe they did in a kind of odd couple sort of way: Wolf, the macho one with the expansive screen giving a lot of small, specific results; glasses-guy with the overall analysis on the small screen that he could manipulate directly. They spent a lot of time stepping on each other's shoes, especially Wolf having to deal with the nerdy guy's bad habits in Wolf's "territory." But all the reportage was done and maybe it was even a little endearing.

And, so, FoxNews. Look, at this point maybe these guys are easy targets. Maybe they wanted to downplay their coverage because everyone associates them with the party against which the current winds are blowing. But their coverage was pathetic (or at least the presentation was). I've seen better from third-rate sports coverage. And the people interacting with each other kept making stupid partisan jokes with absolutely no one there to reign them in (like Cooper) or display some detached authority (like Dobbs). It was pretty pathetic. The graphics looked like something an 8 year old made in MSPaint. Maybe Rupe Murdoch needed to buy a couple of new yachts. Maybe the Simpson's movie is way over budget. Maybe this is their ass-backwards and cynical attempt at downplaying the Dems victory (I just noticed on the newswire that the Dems are claiming Montana. Woo-hoo!). All I know is that it paled in comparison to CNN's coverage.

Which is probably another reason to not take FoxNews seriously, if you haven't already figured that out.

The only cynical thing I have to say is that maybe Rove et al dropped this ball because they wanted a stronger run at the '08 presidency. (They may have even been testing out strategies with Arnold's CA Governor race; a comment was made that a team of White House staffers moved into his camp to resuscitate his numbers, which were about the same as Bush's.) If the Dems don't jump on this opportunity and get things done they'll be handing the momentum back across the aisle, sure enough. But I think Pelosi knows what it's going to take to get consensus out of her newly big-tented party, and I think her constituents back in San Fransisco are sophisticated enough to let her do what she needs to do. So I have high hopes. As long as those fuckers don't steal Virginia back from us.

Other People's Postings

2006-11-08T00:39:00.000-05:00

Naughty by another's nature (I liked this post from another blog).

Good Hodgkins

But what's a "hipster?"

2006-11-07T00:15:00.000-05:00

So this will be a running column of sorts, hopefully, and in it I will talk about albums I like, or music in general, or other music blogs. Or whatever.

So I got the newest Yo La Tengo recently, and let me be not the first to say that it kicks much ass. In fact, it's called I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, so I guess technically it beats much ass. YLT is a pretty quintessential OG indie/hipster outfit, but for whatever reason this is only the second album of theirs I've actually procured. The first, The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science, I got based on how much I liked heavy-duty guitar freakout "Lovelife of the Octopus," which I downloaded from and then purchased from YLT's website, not long after I first got my laptop and some dial-up action going. But I never even loaded the whole thing into iTunes, which shows how much I actually listened to it (there were some other good songs, but still).

Anyways, besides that I only occasionally heard YLT via roommates, parties, etc., some of which I liked (a track near the end of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, one of their droney motorik songs but way more mellow than "Lovelife of the Octopus"; it probably sounds a lot like "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind," the opener on the newest) and some of which I didn't (pretty much all of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, which struck me as solid and accomplished but ultimately too polite (or something like that; however I indicted it at the time now seems more like an indictment of who I was at the time)).

And perhaps I'm understating my point by having made that last bit (extra) parenthetical, because it's I Am Not Afraid...'s more fragile and atmospheric tracks that have really wowed me. True, "Pass The Hatchet" is and will probably remain my favorite, and sometimes their softness veers deep into what I consider Sufjan territory (I realize the chronology is off). Shit, basically I'm trying to say I think "Daphnia" is really, really wonderful -- a track I might not have liked four or five years ago but that I think is breathtaking in the here and now. There's plenty more to like, too; YLT's experience really comes across and they nail lots of moods: jangly throwback punk, shorter and poppier '60s psychers, still others that are hard to tie down to one genre.

So you should all go out and buy it and love it, and play "Daphnia" on a cold and wet day. Trust me.

Picture of Making of Costume for Halloween Entertainments

2006-11-03T19:25:00.000-05:00

eeeeeees niiiiiiice!!!

Halloween!

2006-11-01T09:46:00.000-05:00

BORAT: Making of Costume for Halloween Entertainments was pretty much a success. I figure if random strangers point at me on the street and yell "Borat! Woooo!" then I must be recognizable enough. Hopefully I can post pics soon, too! Also: rocking mustache-strong-like-Stalin is pretty fun, although so many people thought it improved my looks that it became a little disconcerting; outside of Borat costume it mostly makes me look like a gay cop, like I should be clapping my hands onstage next to some dude in leather chaps or a construction worker or whatever. But it will last for a week or so, anyways, and I'll get to say things like "moustache rides five cents lol" whenever I might venture a little too deeply into my cups. See you there!

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

2006-10-30T11:53:00.000-05:00

grumble grumble Tigers grumble baseball grumble grumble

In all honesty, they didn't play like they wanted to win, and the Cards basically walked away with it. I can't even be mad at the winners (I don't have weird issues with St. Louis -- that's Cubs fans (but of course they tend to have weird issues with just about everything)), Detroit simply did not show up for hardly any of these games. Oh, well.

For the record:

2006-10-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

I know that pitchers don't/shouldn't play consecuitive games. The Tigers lost again, though for the superstitious out there, perhaps this is a good sign. I'm not so superstitious, but I do hope they turn this around. Tigers in 7, anyone? Oh, shit, I guess the game's on...

Tiger Grumbles

2006-10-25T16:30:00.000-04:00

I gave up trivia for this shit?! Looks like we'll win every game that Rogers pitches and none of the ones that he doesn't. The solution is pretty obvious: play Kenny every game. Also Marcus Thames should play more. Did he bat last night? I got, um, distracted. And, um, a little drunk.

Back from D-Town

2006-10-23T20:30:00.000-04:00

So I'll try to post more about the game and trip soon, but for now I would like to direct your attention to one of the Tigers' players, a very nice young man named Marcus Thames, whose life is talked about in this NY Times article.

I went to high school with the dude and had no idea that's why they called him "Slick." He should play more, or at least pinch hit for that bum Rodriguez! Get off the field yah bum! [Please imagine that last sentence in a whiny yankee accent. Thanks. --ed]

Jeff Tweedy, Pugilist

2006-10-19T14:32:00.000-04:00

The action starts at about 1:10.

Detroit Rock City

2006-10-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

Welp, looks like I'm going to see a little baseball this weekend! I kind of wish we were flying, but hey -- a vacation is a vacation is a vacation. Kindly let me know if there's anything shakin' down in the Motor City that might require my attention.

In unrelated bitchings...

2006-10-18T13:06:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to torrent Wilco's Oxford show, but something's amiss. I'm pretty sure the entire swarm is firewalled or something because the whole thing is going at a snail's pace. I don't know, maybe it's on my end. I'm not the tech-savviest person -- though I did figure out how to put alt.text over my links!

Anyhaps, I really want a boot of the Wilco show to fully digest what I thought about it. What I'm feeling now is that the Meridian show was way better, but part of how much I like that show comes from the fact that I have a really good boot of it. So we'll see, I guess. Somebody I know will have gotten it downloaded, if I don't, and I'm sure I can get it from them (*hint-hint*).

Also, in case you were wondering, Tweedy didn't punch anybody at either show. How come there's no YouTube of that? Where were the camera phones, people? Hmph.

Trivia Grumbles

2006-10-18T11:37:00.000-04:00

People, when I say NYU is a top five law school, I know what I'm talking about. It should have been -- well, could have been a cakewalk for more reasons than that, but whatever. We did well enough to get me back next week, which after my hiatus is I guess what I needed.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon...uh and through Wednesday morning...

2006-10-15T17:23:00.000-04:00

No, no NBC hackles-raising YouTube (GooTube? Scratch that, SueTube? SueRube?) videos; I just am, in fact, having a lazy Sunday afternoon. So let's talk about some things, yes/no?

First of all more about my favorite pet concept over at Wikipedia. I actually only ever thought that flotsam and jetsam were things like driftwood and shreds of seaweed, so that's something I learned. I also, coincidentally, have some things to say about Beck vis a vis his usage of the image and identity of the "derelict" (so academic, I know, I'm sorry) -- which maybe I'll get around to really figuring out while his latest album is still fresh.

But I think what I'm going to try to sink my teeth into today is television's Lost. I watched the first season regularly, if not entirely religiously, but mostly missed out on the second season, save the occasional updates from one of my many friends who were and are (understandably) addicted. But I have friends, too, who think the show's absolute trash. This latter group's main argument is that the show's ever deepening and multiplying mysteries are just a smoke and mirrors scheme to hide the fact that the show actually lacks any creative content, meaning, appeal, etc.

Well, I'll go on record as saying that, in the final analysis, I'm more of a fan of the show than I am a detractor, but also that I not only understand our naysayers' point of view, it actually all struck me scant episodes into the opening season as well. Part of that is that the show's influences and precursors are pretty obvious, one of the most often cited of which is David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks. There are other, maybe even stronger, influences and precursors, but I think the point I want to make centers around TP's dissolution over the course of the second season (accompanied by nose-diving ratings) and how Lost has successfully entered its third.

David Foster Wallace's essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head" probably sums up that dissolution best when he writes "Like most storytellers who use mystery as a structural device and not a thematic device, Lynch is way better at deepening and complicating mysteries than he is at wrapping them up." And here maybe is the key difference, because I think Lost uses mystery as both a structural and thematic device, which has to do mainly with there being no central mystery (a la "Who killed Laura Palmer?"). The mystery has been figuring out what the mystery is (a perfect conceit for our paranoid times, no wonder the show's a hit); just imagine if we'd spent two-plus seasons wondering just why Agent Cooper had shown up in town. If the next episode (of Lost) revealed something completely new about the French Lady or some other character, people would be surprised -- but not shocked. Has she really been working with the Others all along (perhaps unknowingly)? Lost's more open-ended structuring means alliances between the different characters and groups are bound to be ever-shifting, as we can see from the constant betrayals and mistrust. Mystery is identified with the locale of the island itself, establishing a sort of exotic and unknowable sense of place Lynch never really sought to establish in his Pacific NW (though it's worth noting that both the island and Lynch's PNW have the same duplicitous over/under type of revelatory dichotomy. Twin Peaks is All-American but corrupt; the island is lush and beautiful but also full of threats both natural and manmade -- and maybe even supernatural).

All of which, I think, is okay. Seeing how many balls the juggler can get into the air and back down again has been part of the pleasure of serialized narrative since Dickens (if not longer) -- but the balls are supposed to come back down again. If, years from now, the show is still dragging through the same mysteries, I will have to admit to have been mistaken about the show's worth, because it is finality that seperates Dickens from, say, your typical day-time soap. I doubt it will descend into that kind of silliness, but one or two more seasons past this one will probably be enough.

Take Two

2006-10-14T23:39:00.000-04:00

So I'm going to try this again. My last blog lasted two posts and about as many days before I had some sort of buyer's remorse and deleted the poor thing. Hopefully this time will be better. Oh, and just in case you were wondering...

lag·an
Pronunciation: 'la-g&n
Variant(s): also lag·end /-g&nd/
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French lagan or Medieval Latin laganum debris washed up from the sea
: goods thrown into the sea with a buoy attached so that they may be found again

Pretentious though it may be, I still think that it's a neat word and concept.