Review: Max Tundra, Parallax Error Beheads You

Of the handful of CDs I'm reviewing for Beyond Race, this one is my favorite. I still haven't heard Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be or Mastered by Guy at the Exchange yet.

Go listen to "Orphan" from PEBY.

"Oh, Ted. Don't be so conventional."

And so, we return to the Divorce Ranch. Or more accurately, movies in which Norma Shearer plays an ex-wife. The Divorcee (1930) shows her in much more glamorous and pre-Hays-code form. Nine years prior to her matronly turn in The Women, Shearer doesn't look classically beautiful so much as she looks like an art deco illustration come to life – a perfect aesthetic match to the time period.

Check out that profile!

Ok, I am going to try and restrain myself from getting too obsessive about set/costume design. Despite the lack of a technicolor fashion show, however, the turbans and dresses and furniture and flatware are AMAZING.

I can't restrain myself from getting more into Shearer's personal life, though, as it's pretty fascinating stuff. One of MGM's stable of stars since the mid-1920s, she successfully transitioned from silent to talking films, and apparently managed to overcome a lazy eye as well. She married one of MGM's top producers, “Boy Wonder” Irving Thalberg, in 1927, which had a lot to do with her ability to land plum roles. Joan Crawford hated her (who didn't Joan Crawford hate?), especially as Shearer managed to oust Crawford from the lead role in The Divorcee by sending Thalberg some racy lingerie shots; he had told her she wasn't sexy enough for the part. Crawford fanatics bemoan this fact even today, but I'm kind of glad. Love Joan and all, but she's so larger-than-life that it's hard to get past HER, you know?

Thalberg was a sickly Brooklyn-born Jew (Norma converted) who lived with his mother, and then his wife and his mother, until his death at age 37. Bum ticker. His various afflictions left Shearer a little sex-starved, and supposedly she made up for the lack while shooting love scenes. Depending on which semi-trashy Golden Age of Hollywood Tell-All you're reading, Clark Gable either said that she “kisses like a whore in heat” or that she didn't wear underwear to the set “for realism.” Also, she was Quebecois. God, don't you love her?

A quick synopsis of the movie itself: We open to a party of high-class NYC types gallivanting at a country estate. Jerry (Shearer) and Ted make out in the woods and Ted proposes. The announcement of their engagement distresses Paul, her would-be lover, so greatly that he drunkenly wrecks his car on the trip back to the city, nearly killing one of his passengers, Dorothy.

Then, three years in the future, Jerry discovers Ted is having an affair. He insists it's no biggie, totally meaningless. In despair and retaliation, she sleeps with Ted's caddish friend Don (“I'm just trying to hang on to the marvelous latitude of a man's point of view,” she tells him). Jerry confesses her infidelity to her husband, who promptly freaks out about it, leading her to utter the line serving as the title of this post. They get divorced; Jerry proceeds to have lots of vague affairs with minor European nobility. Sex: implied. “What you feel for me is not love; it is the call of the gorilla to his mate.”

Paul comes back into her life, although it turns out he married Dorothy because he felt bad about permanently disfiguring her face in the car accident. He heroically saves Jerry from some date-rapey foreign fellow on a train, and promises to leave the maimed Dorothy, whom he has never really loved, in order to wed Jerry. But then, Dorothy arrives at Jerry's apartment, shrouded in an eerie black veil, begging Jerry not to take away her husband. Jerry gets noble and realizes her folly, tells those two crazy kids to work it out, and reunites with Ted.

So: is The Divorcee any more progressive or scandalous than the divorce movies made later in the decade? Well, for starters there are some lines that wouldn't get past the focus groups today, for sure -- “I want to make love to you until you scream for help” comes to mind. That Ted, so suave! (The appropriate response to this is to clutch your throat as if you've lost your voice, coyly claim you cannot scream, and giggle.) So, yeah, it's obviously not exactly a feminist polemic. Jerry does have a career and her own money, though, and pretty directly addresses the double standard with which Ted slams her when he finds out about her infidelity.

In general, sexuality is just way nearer the surface here. For Mary of The Women, divorce means moping around, catfighting and wearing cowgirl outfits. The thought of another man never seems to enter her mind. The divorcees of The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday spend most of their time bickering with their ex-husbands and ignoring their less-charismatic new fiances. Jerry, on the other hand, sleeps the hell around. In a choice that reminds me of the “no men on screen” rule of The Women, most of her lovers don't quite make it into the frame – we hear their voices and see their hands dart in to give her jewelry but they stay largely anonymous. It's not the faux-feminist “empowering” sluttery of Sex and the City and its ilk – moral judgment gets passed, and hard. Remember, girls, being easy will get you RAPED by a EUROPEAN COUNT, and also you will become a wannabe homewrecker of poor mangled drunk driving victims. But none of that means the picture doesn't try to make her affairs titillating and glamorous – what better way to get the audience into the theater?

The ending is the strangest part, really. It's interesting that Paul is willing to commit to Jerry, in full knowledge all her shenanigans. But spectral Dorothy steals the show. Never removing the (short) black veil, she acknowledges that Paul never wanted her but weeps that he's still her only reason for living. Like some creepy apparition of The Ghost of Shitty Marriages. When Jerry acquiesces, she announces that the only time she has ever broken her word was when she broke her marriage vow, and that she shouldn't have quit trying just because the relationship wasn't perfect. Like Dorothy, she now intends to hang on for dear life, no matter how crappy things get, because a promise is a promise, by God. It's a logical enough argument, I suppose, but it's not exactly convincing. The moral lesson seems more conditional than universal -- if Paul weren't burdened with a disfigured spouse, nothing would have been standing in their way.

After this scene, there's a brief tacked-on bit where Jerry and Ted reconcile at a New Year's Eve party, but even the filmmakers don't seem to think it's that interesting. The party noise is so loud it almost drowns out the dialogue. They embrace, fade to black, etc. Unlike the movies I wrote about last time, the reunion hasn't been set up as inevitable or expected. Perhaps because the movie was based on a scandalous book, The Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott (fabulous name!), in which the heroine does not remarry her first husband. Hollywood pictures may have been a little more unfettered in 1930, but to leave Jerry single or on a second husband was still pushing it too far.

I kind of want to get my hands on a copy of The Ex-Wife, and check out some other scandalous flicks from the early 30's. Sign of the Cross looks especially good. Claudette Colbert in a milk bath!

Review: Chairlift, Does You Inspire You

Aaaaand here's that one.

I've seen Chairlift before -- back in March, they opened for Mixel Pixel in the Special Agent Dale Cooper Basement, but I must have been upstairs getting some air or something because all I remember is the ridiculous giant '70s eyeglasses the lead singer chick was wearing. Tiana saw them at First Unitarian last week and said that her experience was kind of transcendent, but she's just now hearing the CD so her overall opinion may change.

I'd get on board if they went way experimental or made themselves into synth-heaven Jens Lekman, but I kinda doubt it.

My first Beyond Race review: Femi Kuti and Positive Force

Here's what I think of the new Femi Kuti and Positive Force album. It's pretty bangin' -- "Tension Grip Africa" might not have the same familiarity and cachet as "Paper Planes," but it'll fit perfectly on the playlist for your next "Global Clusterfuck, Let's Dance" party.

So fucking psyched for this

It's chilling in its little red envelope on the table right now. Cockneysploitation!

My Origivation debut and such

Heyo, my first reviews for Origivation, a Philly-based music mag, are out in print and pdf form! I reviewed Sexcop's new EP (witty and spry pop ballads, rather 69 Love Songs-y) and did the mini-blurb for TVOTR's Dear Science in the Top 10 of '08 list. Read them here (I'm on pages 35 and 38).

More nooz: I'm currently in the throes of reviewing a bundle of discs for Beyond Race magazine's blog, woohoo. Be on the lookout for my thoughts on Femi Kuti, Chairlift, Rio En Medio, Max Tundra, and the new Danielson 2-disc set.

THE TERRORISTS ARE RIGHT

Seriously, this entire country deserves to be firebombed, MOVE-style, all of it.

NEWSFLASH

Pitchfork.tv is showing Michael Tully's 2007 documentary Silver Jew THIS WEEK ONLY. Get on that, won't you?

There's also this video of Dave Berman's Top 10 Redneck Moments reading and a performance of "Strange Victory, Strange Defeat."

The bread from the sandwich of my dreams

I AM LEANRING SO MUCH HERE

I have not been writing, because I have been busy completing high-level assignments such as this video for my IT class.

Silver Jews in Philadelphia, 9/9/08: Preface

It's hard (for me) to write well about music with which I've developed a significant personal relationship. Not just stuff I like or love, of which I consider myself a fan or devotee, or for which I'm willing to withstand hours sweltering in a dimly-lit church basement to hear and see. It's not the music I obsessed over as a 13-year-old -- remember when "repeat" was considered a totally sweet feature?

Rather, I'm tripped up by the music that serves a desperate need. Plenty of great music has the power to seduce, creating desire for a sound and feel and then fulfilling that desire. I'm talking about the stuff that blindsides you because you'd been feeling a need for something for a long fucking time -- sure, call it an ache -- and then you hear a record that fills in the ache a little, or makes you feel a little less unhinged than you think you might be. The need at its core isn't met (no record will do this), but maybe you can fight it off more easily, or you understand the need better, or you can at least think about something else for 40 minutes.

Compared to the heavy ruminations I tend to stumble into (see above x10), describing the airy lift of an organ hook sometimes seems beside the point.



David Berman's work falls into this category. I could go on about brilliant-sad-funny lyrical moments, twangy and dark atmospherics, spooky mocking rockers, etc. But more often I find myself at a bit of a loss because his songs evoke a very specific, alienated, period of time for me. Not because the songs on American Water boast the best of the above traits but because the first time I heard it (because of and with Michelle, in Ann Arbor, and I was probably wearing hideous ankle boots and too much eyeliner) was in the grasping, chaotic early stages of a years-long period of depression. Silver Jews brought me a little bit of comfort (sure whatever let's call it that) as my mind adjusted around whatever it was that I needed, or profoundly lacked, or was hiding from. I still listen to all of their albums on a weekly-or-so basis, still derive enjoyment and comfort and artist-modulated doses of humble but wry despair. But now, parsing Berman's newer works and recent performances critically feels like analyzing depression: I do it in my head all the time, but when you break that shit to the rest of the world, you feel uncomfortable, exposed, unable to do justice to a thing that, well, if it was such a big deal, you should have a better handle on.

If I can't do justice to Berman's music in a standard 500-word review, then let the fact that this is the first thing I've written about in four months do it for me.

Next: The First Unitarian concertgoing experience, Monotonix, and the Jooz live in action.

Get Inside the Kingdom: Silver Jews in Pittsburgh

When I saw Mr. & Mrs. Berman last, it was at the Starlight Ballroom in Philly, one of the earliest shows they played. There was a little more hype, it being their first real tour (I recall an off-stage announcer introducing them in an old timey showbiz manner, and Bob Nastanovich’s guest/gimmick appearance on drums), and a lot more nerves. Berman stayed planted by his music stand, reading the lyrics, and apologized for it a few times, tapping the side of his skull as explanation. The crowd was so adoring, though, that I can only imagine this latest tour reflects a growing ease with live performance and not just continued financial hardship.

Berman definitely seemed more relaxed this time around. The venue was a lot smaller-- the William Pitt Student Union, which was essentially like a small hotel conference room where some boring seminar/convention would be held-- so maybe that helped. He dispensed with the music stand, wandering the stage and pantomiming along with the lyrics, telling corny jokes here and there. He even threw fun-size candies into the crowd! (During "Candy Jail," of course.) Cassie looked more confident on bass, too, though she did have the same indulgent, ever-so-slightly embarrassed “Aw, look at my crazy husband” expression that I remember. What other kind of face can you make, though, when your man is fixing you with a super intense stare of devotion and/or singing “I love you to the max” literally nose-to-nose with you?

I tried to get a good photo of his crazy love-stare, but fate/lighting was not cooperative. This is as close as I got:



The rest of the band didn’t really talk, and they had on matching suits, so apparently they have no qualms with being relegated to the background. The couple, singing front and center, was certainly the main focus. Actually, Berman focused more on Cassie than the audience about half the time.

That’s the thing about the Silver Jews. There’s so little separation between David Berman and any sort of artistic persona. The Silver Jews is less a band than a way of documenting his life. Roommates with Stephen Malkmus? He collaborates on your album (and you get written off as a Pavement side project for ages, although I think that’s not an issue anymore, especially among people my own age and younger who never listened to Pavement while they were actually together). Fall in love and get married? Your wife becomes a central member of the group. I’m hoping this means that as long as there’s David Berman, there will be Silver Jews albums. Also I heard a book of his cartoons is coming out in the near future, though I cannot for the life of me find corroboration of this on the internet right now.

Oh yeah…what songs did they play? I’m not the seasoned concert reviewer that Alex is, so it didn’t even occur to me to write the set list down. But as I recall, it was quite healthy in size and variety: they opened with “Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You,” then “What Was Not But Could Be If,” then…in some order or another, Smith and Jones Forever, Trains Across the Sea, Candy Jail, Horseleg Swastikas, My Pillow is the Threshold, Random Rules, Slow Education, Strange Victory Strange Defeat, Wild Kindness (I think maybe?), Aloysius Bluegrass Drummer, K-Hole, We Could Be Looking for the Same Thing, and San Francisco B.C. The encore (they did an encore this time!) was Tenneesee, Suffering Jukebox, and Punks in the Beerlight. A veritable greatest hits indeed. I’m not the biggest fan of Aloysius Bluegrass Drummer or San Francisco BC -- they’re a little too witty/wordy for me, when what I really love about Berman’s lyrics is how he can condense so much into a single line, and how the humor is more usually more subdued and weird than in either of those songs. But they worked in the set, nice bouncy numbers to bring up the energy, considering the bulk of the Jews’ catalogue is a little, uh, melancholy.

Also of note: new logo. On the drum kit and the t-shirts.

This must relate to Berman’s recently intensified/renewed interest in Israel. The video for “Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You” is just shots of him and Cassie strolling around Jerusalem. There’s a documentary coming out on this topic in a couple weeks, so I’ll wait til I see that to write about this further cause I don’t really know what the deal is.

D.C. Berman quotes for the road -- slightly paraphrased as they are from memory:

“I googled that phrase, ‘my pillow is the threshold,’ when I was writing the song, because I thought someone must have already used that metaphor. But no hits. It’s what I call google-pure.”

“It’s not sexual harassment, she’s my wife!” Rim shot. This is after pawing Cassie during a song.

[After “Smith & Jones”] “This next song, Horseleg Swastikas, we were in Germany and I wasn’t sure if we should play it. Just because, you know, it has the word swastikas. But then someone asked me if Smith and Jones was about white supremacy. So I thought we’d play those two together tonight.”

“I saw this old Italian man sitting on his stoop today. And he has this tiny grill, and he’s turning a chicken on a little rotisserie. Then this hippie walks by and says, ‘Hey man, your monkey’s on fire and the music’s stopped.’” Say what?

Also, I own the same dress as Cassie was wearing but in a different color! OMG we’re so alike!!!

Alex, I expect you to write up the Philly show. I am usurping your blog in a major way.

Resemblance?

Maybe I am trying too hard to connect two of my greatest pop culture loves, but I swear to God I see it...

The Most Important Literary Journal of Our Time

is craigslist. I've had theories about this for a while, but today they were pretty much proven.

Of course craigslist is great for all the unintentional humor of some poor soul, known to history only as fateiswithyou@aol.com, trying to sell his pet hairless rats. The Best Of section, though, is full of posts that are pure creative energy, written for no actual useful purpose. (Ok, lots of them lame jokes and rip-offs of previous entries...as with thrift shopping, one must love the hunt).

This is one of my recent favorites:

who put the dead bird in my mailbox? - w4m
Reply to:
Date: 2008-04-20, 12:56PM

a) how did you get into my mailbox in the first place, it is locked
b) did you kill the bird
c) it died horribly, that much was clear
d) you're psycho
e) do I know you
f) if I do know you I don't want to know you
g) if I don't know you, what did I do to inspire you to put a dead bird in my mailbox
h) I don't know how to disinfect a mailbox from a dead bird, I'm worried about diseases and have used five different kinds of cleaner but still feel like the bird's still in there still and like my bills and my catalogues and my coupons have dead bird on them
i) it was a hummingbird, I looked it up - they don't even live in New York - this is so f*ing psycho, I can't believe this
j) are you the mailman?
k) I'm always nice to the mailman
l) the super didn't care when I told him what happened
m) the neighbors didn't care either
n) do you have some kind of problem with birds
o) don't put anything else in my mailbox
p) unless it's an apology
q) no, I take that back, I don't even want an apology
r) what am I supposed to do with this bird - it's in bubblewrap in a bag in a shoebox in the freezer right now - am I supposed to bury it - where? how? in a construction site where they've jackhammered through the concrete - where is a person supposed to bury things in this city?
s) I could drop it in the Gowanus canal, but that seems undignified
t) I could drop it in the ocean, but the ocean is so big and it is such a small bird
u) I could drop it in the toilet but it would probably get stuck
v) I hear this whirring around my ears every time I go to the mailbox and I'm pretty sure it's ghost bird, and I'm all "it wasn't me that killed you, bird!" but still the whirring doesn't go away until I get to the stairwell
w) am I supposed to eat it - maybe you were trying to feed me - don't you know I'm a vegetarian
x) if this was Ricky, I'm gonna beat your ass, mama told you stop bothering the zoo
y) if this was Gina, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how many times I gotta say I'm sorry
z) I could drop it off the roof, maybe it will reincarnate while falling and I can start reading my mail again

It kind of breaks down at the end, but I guess the author really wanted to go with the alphabet thing. Based on the fact that the location is listed as Crown Heights in Brooklyn, let's assume that this was written by a young artsy type who accessorizes well and perhaps has ambitions. Now, back in aught-one or -two, such a person would have been submitting their cryptic short pieces to McSweeney's Internet Tendency (oh heyyy... did i just do that oh yes i did). It's an interesting trade-off between prestige, such as it is, and sheer number of people who might read the anonymous thing you wrote -- the CL fact sheet claims it's the 8th most-read English language website, with 40 million users per month. Not exactly the community forum for furries and nerds that it once was.

Today I saw something while browsing the Missed Connections that I hadn't seen before -- a bald-faced attempt to get in the Best Of, written by some Carnegie Mellon "grad student" that I highly suspect is actually a freshman or sophomore. (Then it would confirm my thesis that pretentious 18 year olds are the most direct cultural barometers.)

It isn't exactly comedic gold, but made me snort in the library today and half-consider sending the guy an email, out of air mattress solidarity if nothing else (though I have in fact obtained a real bed, my back has yet to fully recover). Maybe his post will make it to the Best Of, and then I will email him and ask how it feels, and why he stayed up til 2 in the morning writing such a thing, and why does anyone write anything, and why is reading craigslist more interesting than 90% of short stories I've tried to read lately...

Rancho Relaxo

It seems I am not the only one fascinated by the Divorce Ranch. On the one hand, we have an absolutely God-awful looking remake of The Women, the 1939 film that first brought the D.R. to my attention. Eva Mendes is purty an all, but she is no Joan Crawford. And then on the other hand we have this mysterious Sevigny/Deschanel vehicle, which at least will entail some interesting red carpet ensembles at the premiere, I’m sure.

Apparently Nevada had divorce laws just as lax as the marriage ones for which it is famous (google legwork courtesy of ben f). I had never considered the relative restrictiveness of such state laws, but in most places it must have been a lot harder for a woman to be granted a divorce back then. However if one were to establish Nevada residency, which took a mere 6 weeks, the state would sever one’s marital ties with no questions asked. Which is why the beleaguered wife played by Norma Shearer ends up on a Divorce Ranch in Reno during the second act of The Women, along with assorted other broads with similar intentions. Cue catfight with Rosalind Russell!

There must have been a real moral panic surrounding the Divorce Ranch, because the last three old movies I’ve seen have a common theme of Re-Marry Your Ex-Husband, No Matter What He Did To You.

All three films present divorce as the woman’s (irrational, impulsive) choice. In The Women, the unseen husband had an affair with Joan Crawford. In The Philadelphia Story (1940), Cary Grant was an alcoholic. In His Girl Friday (1940), Cary Grant…was a smartass? I forget Rosalind Russel’s reasoning for that particular trip to Reno -- oh right, too devoted to work. All three husbands accept their wives’ decisions to kick ‘em to the curb unhappily and then are ready to renew vows when the silly ladies come to their senses.

So, we’ve got 2 out of 3 that show or mention the fateful trip to the Ranch (in The Philadelphia Story all we see is Hepburn throwing Grant out of the house and breaking his golf club, and then him shoving her to the floor. Classy!). 2 out of 3 with Cary Grant smarming around as the ideal mate. 2 for 3 also feature this girl as the sassy-but-moral voice of reason (a little schmaltzier as the daughter in The Women, a little snappier as Katherine Hepburn’s kid sister in The Philadelphia Story).

Was she the only working child star that year or something? The Dakota Fanning of 1939?

The Women is the most interesting as a movie, I think. First there’s the whole all female cast thing, and also the insane, totally gratuitous Technicolor fashion show plonked down halfway through. Rosalind Russell exhibits a genius for physical comedy (whereas in HGF the laughs are more in the dialogue and the amazing speed with which she delivers it). And at the end of the day, I’ll usually take a melodrama over a romantic comedy, "screwball" though it be. But of the three, it has the most explicit and depressing message: “A woman in love can never have any pride!” cries Shearer as she walks towards the camera in a soft-focus haze, arms outstretched to receive her man. Fade to credits. I’m not really opposed to loveless marriages maintained for financial/social reasons -- whatever works, eh -- but let's call a spade a spade instead of "love and devotion."

His Girl Friday is the easiest to read as at least somewhat feminist -- Rosalind Russell’s character is actually rewarded rather than punished for her desire to have a career. She and Grant aren’t just a couple but a crack team of reporters, so their reunion actually makes sense. There’s also the whole exonerating the wrongfully accused guy on death row thing, which maybe makes the movie more engaging if you’re bored by the romantic plot. I have to admit though, this one’s supposedly filled with witty/sexy banter but they talk so damn fast I missed half of it.

I was really expecting to like The Philadelphia Story, but found it the most infuriating/befuddling of all. Part of it might be that I rented it in a fit of insta-nostalgia, thinking it would actually have something to do with the city of Philadelphia. But all the actions takes place in a mansion somewhere on the Main Line (Merion maybe?). Katherine Hepburn is awesome, true, because she’s basically awesome by definition, but Grant is not half as appealing as in HGF. He doesn’t really do much except hire Jimmy Stewart and his girlfriend (a tabloid reporter and photographer, respectively) to ruin Hepburn’s wedding, and sit back and laugh at her the whole time. Ok, so obviously she’s not going to marry her fiancé. But then she gets weirdly involved with Jimmy Stewart -- turns out he’s a novelist, she loves his book, they get drunk and kiss and “go swimming” the night before her wedding. I totally thought she would get with him, and his girlfriend and Cary Grant would run off together. But after Hepburn’s fiancé dumps her for being a lush-- and oh no there is a whole crowd of people there and "Here Comes the Bride" is playing, what to do? -- Stewart proposes and she is like, “Oh hell no, you are from the working class,” and trots down the aisle with Grant.

Stewart’s girlfriend, Ruth Hussey (who also has a bit part in...The Women!), has been standing aside, smoking cigarettes and looking kinda pissed this whole time. Presumably she takes him back.



Sucks to be you, lady.


Obviously the topic of Divorce Ranches On Film requires more research. I haven't even begun to explore Norma Shearer's pre-Code career of playing a more adventurous sort of divorced woman. (Hysterical trivia fact from Wikipedia: Joan Crawford used to bitchily call her "Miss Lotta Miles," referring to her stint as the spokesmodel for Springfield Tires.) If nothing else, hopefully putting all these older movies in my Netflix queue will make them stop listing "Erotic Foreign Films" as my preferred genre. I rent one Catherine Breillat movie and look what happens, jeez.

A Very Long Book

Last night around 1 a.m., I joined the small and pedantic club of People Who Finished In Search of Lost Time. Alex suggested I share my thoughts. Would I recommend this feat of endurance to others?

Well, only if you enjoy feats of endurance. I myself have been known to watch an entire Ken Burns documentary in a sitting and attend bikram yoga classes in the hideous Philadelphia summer (not to mention personal quests of the "I will drink this whole bottle of wine and NO ONE CAN STOP ME" variety). For what it's worth, yoga classes are a much, much bigger waste of time and money than Proust. Seriously, let this stand as my public vow not to spend money on yoga ever again. It's just stretching. Christ.

So assuming you like to set long-term goals: Yeah. Do it. Read the book. It's kind of...awesome.

For starters, it is gay as hell. It's so fascinating to me that this book isn't ghettoized in some Special Interest section in Borders, you know? I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that not so many people make it past the first couple sections, and homosexuality doesn't become a major theme until Sodom and Gomorrah. Sure, everyone knows the author was gay, and there are all those theories that Albertine = Albert, gasp, whatever. But seriously: it's kind of incredible that the work is considered a major pillar of modernism first and of queer literature second. Nearly every male character besides the narrator turns out to be a homosexual (or "invert" in the book's lingo) sooner or later; Marcel's whole obsession with keeping Albertine captive is based on his fear that she sleeps with women -- a fear which turns out to be thoroughly justified. Proust's meditations on the life of a gay man in pre-war Paris high society are interesting enough on their own to merit a stab at reading.

But interest in that theme -- or any other particular theme that strikes your fancy, like the study of aristocratic society and its fluctuations, or French anti-semitism, or the nature of art -- isn't gonna get you through several thousand pages, because there are bound to be huge sections about nothing but precisely what doesn't interest you (for me: reallllly long dinner party conversations about contemporary political/academic affairs, the Dreyfus stuff sometimes excepted). I advocate skimming. You have to be willing to go with it though; as a friend of mine who somehow read the whole thing in high school and several times since has put it, it's sort of like living an entire life along with someone. Life is boring sometimes, and doesn't that just really mean we are sometimes conscious of time passing?

Proust doesn't really spell it out til the end (and when he does, it's a bit strange, to have read so many many pages and then have his views on literature laid out so succinctly and the whole story wrapped up in an and-then-I-wrote-the-book-that-you-now-hold-in-your-hands sort of convention), but in a way the characters are the least important part. As he puts it, "in a book which tried to tell the story of a life it would be necessary to use not the two-dimensional psychology which we normally use but a quite different sort of three-dimensional psychology...the mighty dimension of Time which is the dimension in which life is lived."

So yeah, according to the Internet there are over 2,000 characters in In Search of Lost Time, but you only need to bother remembering the names of a dozen or so. And it's only how they change over time in relation to each other that really matters. And Albertine -- the more you read about her the less you know. She only becomes increasingly fragmented and increasingly internal to the narrator, until she's not a person at all but an infinitely multiplying memory: "In order to be consoled I would have to forget not one, but innumerable Albertines. When I had succeeded in bearing the grief of losing this Albertine, I must begin again with another, with a hundred others."

It's the exact opposite of what any self-respecting fiction teacher would say -- they want characters to emerge slowly, to become whole through your masterful writerly observations. But here the characters disintigrate! This book is crazy!


Well. Goodness I've been prattling on, although long-windedness is appropriate enough here. And it's not like I can exactly bring this stuff up in casual conversations with all the new Pittsburgh friends I hope to make. It'd be like tattooing I AM AN ASS on my forehead. Let me just say, as soon as I finished, the first thing I thought -- and I realize this may be some form of literary Stockholm Syndrome -- was "I want to read it again."


next time: DIVORCE RANCHES!!

Update!

The illustrious Michelle, freshly relocated to Pittsburgh, will soon be guest/co-blogging in this space. So GET READY.

Coming attractions/intent to distribute/Philly klezmer

So I'm still gonna post a recap of some of the badass concerts I've seen lately -- especially since Zoilus has had a debate about Destroyer's relationship to rock, and I have a few thoughts on the issue after seeing them (most recently) in Philly. Also, my photos of some of the more intimate (ie, in the Hazel basement) performances!

Inbetweentimes, an update on my favorite corporate tool shenanigans of late. There are stirrings in the university community in the face of a recent inundation of complaints from record companies, who are still targeting college students and their sinister high-speed internet connections.

University officials suspect that record companies are working from a newly expanded criteria that includes what's basically "intent to distribute." Although this regulation has been struck down in some court cases, the record industry is still pushing their desperate allegation that the mere act of putting mp3s in a shared folder is tantamount to sharing, regardless of whether anyone downloaded from you or not. Odious. [via Machinist]

In ethnomusicological news, I'm volunteering at the Philadelphia Folklore Project's mother-daughter Ukrainian klezmer performance on Sunday, May 11. 6 p.m. at World Cafe!

Post-absentee ballot Obama rationalizing

The way this woman seems to feel toward Obama, I think, mirrors how I think about him: He hasn't won me over the way he has most of his supporters, and I'm pretty tough on him. Then again, the thought that he really could restore dignity to the White House while simultaneously repairing our fucked-up policy situations is really freaking exciting, and I'm actually counting on him to pull it out.



[via Wonkette]

The second half perfectly showcases the Obama charm -- easy banter, loudly enthusiastic supporters, jokes, a sliver of youthful edge. He can hype my mom into writing "Yes We Can!" in the margins of letters to me.

Still, I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. 2004 was devastating; 2006 was awesome and I honestly celebrated -- congressional scales slightly tipped in our favor, Macaca, Rahm Emmanuel, Rumsfeld resigning -- but that hasn't lived up to the hype. And now it's hard to trust even the politicians we like with our hopes.

i think some things about some other things

My first music reviews at the Feminist Review blog are up! Not sure what albums I'll be reviewing for next month, but one of them might be Mixel Pixel's Let's Be Friends, which I picked up at their seriously awesome performance at Special Agent Dale Cooper last week (more on that in my upcoming Recent Live Music roundup).

Otherwise occupying my time: re-learning to ride a bike, re-watching The Wire, reading 33 1/3 books, listening to the Kinks all damn day, experimenting with frittatas, and pointing shoppers in the direction of the nonpariel capers.

Experience has taught me

If you're looking in vain for desktop wallpaper featuring The Band, make sure you turn SafeSearch ON before doing a Google image search for "Big Pink."

Status report

The last time I posted, I lived in North Carolina.

Now I live in Philadelphia.

Before, I was self-exiled from real adult life (or what passes for it at age 23, anyway). Never did I picture myself moving back in with my parents for any reason, ever. In school, I loved running my own damn life, cooking, catching buses. Even the detestable act of paying a bill would bring on a little surge of pride. I stayed on top of that shit this month. For a time, I was schoolin', cohabiting with what I thought (with increasing doubts) was a pretty decent boyfriend, enjoying not fast-tracking myself to grad school. I was in Ann Arbor, and if you don't think about it too much and the weather is nice, Ann Arbor is just the right size to make you feel like you're in control and getting stuff done while the big shit, like money and self-worth and the future, nuzzle up on the edges of your easy, yuppie-lite life.

I knew I was not okay when I found myself crying uncontrollably in the middle of my course on Dada & Surrealism. And walking home from the student newspaper. And any time I'd visit a favorite teacher at office hours, trying to get some kind of affirmation that I wasn't going crazy or throwing my life away.

But I kind of did, and I kind of was.

I went on antidepressants, started counseling (I've had three great counselors and one awful one since), and broke up with my live-in boyfriend right after graduation. He smashed a guitar when I told him, but we rode out the rest of the summer together. (Now he's engaged to some girl four years his junior and working in a chicken restaurant outside Detroit.)

I moved back home and spend most of my time in my pjs or working at either of two mediocre part-time jobs, blowing my money on CDs and student loan payments and generally moping. I got more and more miserable over the summer, saw the opportunity to move away to Philly (a 4-month lease; it's a start) and spent September through January anxious as hell about the move and completely head-in-the-sand about job prospects. I managed to save a few months rent, packed a few bags, got on the train, and now I'm here.

It's kind of scary and very intimidating and I like the city but it can make you feel, well, transparent. Still trying to find jobs, hoping to find some more freelance work, ready to leave behind the aftermath of the mindfuck that was my last relationship and that rudderless post-graduation feeling.

Okay, so that's what's going on. Now maybe I can post something deeper and more interesting than personal life bullshit without making excuses to myself.

Let's stage a dramatic reading of Gil Thorp

Despite my interest in current events and the inner workings of print media, I read my local newspaper -- The News & Observer -- primarily for entertainment, not information. Each morning (or late afternoon, or whenever the hell) I grab the A section (which has the always ludicrous Opinion section in the back), Life, etc. (the lamely named weekday features section), and occasionally metro (whenever Barry Saunders has a column). On Fridays, I always grab the North Raleigh News supplement, brainkillingly boring except for the restaurant inspections.

But my attention is truly devoted to the comics, which until a few years ago (I think? it's so not worth looking up) proffered moldy three-panel shitshows Cathy, Drabble, Gil Thorp, Wizard of Id, and Hagar the Horrible. Until they got dumped for some kinda half-decent strips (like the cute Pearls Before Swine and Calvin & Hobbes semi-homage Frazz). I have this weird thing where I have to read all the comics, in order, every day. I'd dive into the inevitably shallow, inane, and misogynistic Cathy; turn a glazed-over gaze on Drabble and Wizard of Id, and marvel at how the fuck the Browne could sustain a semiliterate readership over multiple generations. But I honest to God couldn't stomach the seven seconds it took to read Gil Thorp six days a week.

Now, years later, I find myself compulsively reading This Week in Milford. Under such scrutiny, Gil Thorp is even more inscrutable and bizarrely drawn than I remember. It is also hilarious. Viz:



ETA: In the nanoseconds I spent researching this post, I discovered that Lois of Hi and Lois is supposed to be Beetle Bailey's sister! I know! I mean, it's obvious that nepotism runs wild on the comics page, but I didn't realize that shit extended to characters. This explains so much.

lolbunn

Lekha made an Office-themed lolbunn!



(starring Catilla and Komissar)

One of the many reasons I freaking love Amanda Marcotte:

"In a battle between what is still technically a feeling-free parasite on a woman’s body and a living, breathing, feeling woman, the latter wins hands down, and there’s no complexity or shades of gray there."

Check her out at RH Reality Check and Pandagon.

14 NC Central University sousaphones stolen

From this morning's News & Observer:
Thieves steal band's thunder

That's some shameful shit.

What kind of master criminal made off with 14 sousaphones without their cases? Seriously, this would require significant preparation and sleight of hand. If someone sees a sousaphone occupying the entire backseat of your car, you can't just be like "Um, cashed in some Best Buy giftcards" the way you could for fancy electronics or something. And, you know, times 14. Christ.

At the same time, I can't imagine these assholes won't get far -- fencing that stuff has got to be difficult. Then again, the article states that the thefts occurred on at least two incidents at least through December. Lame that we're only hearing about it now. I can only imagine how Central's bassline must feel. Boo.

This guy might have more details. Updates TK!

Film execs, take note: Who needs screenwriters when Drumline II pretty much just wrote itself?

<3!

I didn't realize how much I'd missed the incendiary sexiness of John Oliver until he proved to be the high point of Wednesday night's Daily Show.

The RIAA: Still obfuscatory jerks

Forgot to post about this last week. My fave newsy NPR show, Talk of the Nation, hosted Washington Post writer Marc Fisher, who authored the article on the most recent audacity in the RIAA's file-sharing lawsuits, and RIAA president Cary Sherman to discuss the whole crazy thing.

Sherman refuses to firmly state whether or not the RIAA considers simple uploading to a computer or music player legal, but he calls Fisher out for misquoting the section of the brief upon which the article hinged. At the end of the segment, the RIAA's policy remains murky as ever, but it turns out that Sherman was right: The RIAA maintains in the brief that the mp3s in this case were located in a shared folder and therefore illegal -- not just because they were uploaded in the first place. The Post has since copped to the mistake and corrected the story.

But Ryan Singel at Wired's Threat Level blog makes the case that the RIAA's legal campaign against file-sharers has presumed uploading to be illegal since their ultimately victorious case against Jammie Thomas this past year.

...the RIAA's lawyer used that argument -- that individuals don't even have the right to make MP3s - to persuade a jury to levy exorbitant fines on file sharer Jammie Thomas. The judge told the jury to consider that simply offering files for download constituted copyright infringement -- the RIAA didn't have to prove anyone actually downloaded the files.

But it wasn't clear until after the testimony whether the judge would require proof that someone actually downloaded the songs she made available on Kazaa. So the RIAA''s lawyer engaged in a scorched earth campaign, argumentatively asking Thomas if she had gotten permission to simply rip the songs.

Before knowing whether the judge would enforce a burden of proof the RIAA couldn't meet -- they had no proof anyone actually downloaded songs from Thomas, the RIAA's lawyer was building a case to have Thomas found liable for simply ripping songs without permission. That's why the Sony executive said ripping a song was the same as stealing one, though now the RIAA finds it convenient to say she didn't understand the question.

Same as it ever was (ineffective and preposterous, that is).