Ceci n'est pas une pipe dream.

Going Too the Zoo

2010-11-06T16:07:00.010-04:00

Behold, my kindergarten magnum opus, the work that got me selected to attend the North Carolina Young Writers Conference (my elementary school was required to pick 2 kids from each grade). I hadn't yet mastered too vs. to, but hey, I was five.

Also had a little trouble with Z vs. S.

Clearly the beginning of a life-long fascination with language.

The tension builds...

No sugarcoated happy ending for this girl. In my writing I never shy away from the brutal truth: The zoo is scary, you guys! Yiks!

wordy-ass bitches

2010-07-17T17:38:00.001-04:00

Like, I'm so sure.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Har-de-har

2010-07-15T13:32:00.001-04:00

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

"Does it bleed? Is there joy?" An interview with Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer

2010-07-01T22:52:00.003-04:00

Thought I'd dust off the ol' blog to share a nugget of genuine interest and one of the more fun phone interviews I've ever done. The oh-so-fresh July issue of Origivation holds a shortish feature on Frog Eyes, but the conversation with Carey was so cool and (I thought) so interesting that I wanted to share the whole thing. He's a very cerebral guy, and also very funny and sensitive, I think. I stumbled over my abstract concept-describing words a little, but I'm not too embarrassed by my bits, either. (Not even my corny sign-off; I totally meant it.) Enjoy!

Alexandra Jones: It’s actually kind of been a while since I listened to Frog Eyes, until the new album came out, because for some reason I really, really hated the first Swan Lake album…I didn’t like it so much that I didn’t listen to it all the way through.

Carey Mercer: Interesting. We had a feeling when it came out that people hated it. Then we made the second record – this is our impression – the general consensus seemed that when we did the second record, people would go, ‘Oh, it’s not like the first record. The first record wasn’t logical.’

AJ: [Before] this interview, I was like ‘You know what, do I even still have it on my iTunes? I should go back to it.’ And I was like ‘Why did I dislike this?’ And I think it was because it was really in between the swooping Destroyer style and the super-jagged style that had been on some Frog Eyes records. And for some reason I didn’t know what to make of it and it didn’t compute in my mind.

CM: That’s interesting. I wish more people, myself included, would go and revisit things we had a really strong reaction against. I was just talking to the guy who runs our record label and he was talking about how much he loved Royal Trux major label releases. But when he was 21, he thought that they were the worst records he’s ever heard. So it’s kind of a similar idea, the things that you had a really strong reaction against you might in five years be like ‘What was I thinking?’ The stuff that you have a blasé reaction to, you probably never need to return to. But what you truly despise you might end up liking.

AJ: I’ve found that people, when they talk about Destroyer, a lot of times they hate Dan’s voice, or they’re like ‘What the fuck is this guy singing about,’ where Frog Eyes can be interpreted as being intentionally grating or unpleasant or dissonant to some people.

CM: Frog Eyes has been around for a long time, and that is certainly true of a specific era of Frog Eyes. Which unfortunately was maybe the point when the most people were listening to us. Being forced to listen to us. Because I think that a lot of those things are just not true of our band any more. I think that personally, if I can just speak for myself, my approach to music is a complete about-face from the jarring and grating and piss-in-your-face approach, especially to performance, that we used to have. I had a conception that the only pure performance was one that completely disregarded the audience, that if you just could do that, then the sensitive people in the audience would kind of understand it and enjoy it that much more. Which is not a bad theory, but it kinda gets tiring to throw sonic urine in peoples’ face, night after night. If I’ve had two epiphanies in my life, this would probably be one of them.

I played a show in a small town on Vancouver Island where I live. It’s a very working man’s town. I just felt a real kind of fondness for the audience. The audience was made up of kind of local kids who don’t get to see bands too much, and then drunks at the end of the bar, and people who had spent three weeks in a fish camp who had come in to just party. And the fondness kind of turned into this idea that my singing could actually – we could go somewhere together. And it completely worked. It was so scary at first, like Og my God, I’m gonna get knifed by that guy who’s 300 pounds and just wants to hear a Metallica cover. But buy the end these old guys were doing like hillbilly dancing on the tables, stompin’ and hollerin’, the kids were just in the greatest moods and I kinda felt like the singer’s role, responsibility, was not to piss in peoples’ faces but actually take the audience somewhere to kind of [an] otherworldly space. And I think that was the first moment I understood music. After playing it for eight years or whatever.

AJ: This was recent?

CM: This was really recent. About two years ago.

AJ: Because the first thing I noticed about Paul’s Tomb is that not so much your vocal style in particular is different, but the whole album is a lot more contoured, there are still lots of leaps and big transitions, but it’s a lot more…slightly smoother, or flows a bit more easily than a lot of the up and downs. Peaks and crags and stuff.

CM: The idea, the fundamental songwriting process, the idea of Frog Eyes, hasn’t changed that much. Because for me, it’s always interesting, always appealing, to try and stuff as many ideas into a song as you can. I’ve said this before, for me it makes sense to use an accordion analogy where in the past the accordion was kinda closed. And all of those ideas had to fit into a song that was two minutes long. Which was just completely exhausting for the listener, right? To have 20 different things bouncing off your headphones at one particular time. So it’s the same kind of concept, it’s just the accordion is now in its most elongated, extended form. So the two-minute song becomes the nine-minute song. Let’s allow, let’s hear a floor tom for four bars, that kind of thing. There’s more space, I guess, and I think some people like that and appreciate it. It’s made for – the idea is that you would appreciate it. It comes back to this idea of inclusiveness, like I actually want you to sit down with the record and actually get lost in it in a pleasurable way. Not in the I wanna boil your skin alive kinda way, which [it’s] not really like that, but there was a kind of oppressiveness in the more misanthropic approach, I think. I feel a little more hopeful. I don’t know why. Yeah, I watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Picard had a real influence and impact on me. And I’m kinda joking, but I think I’m kinda serious. He really believes in the potential of humans. [That’s] a beautiful thing, unparalleled in a lot of literature. [Laughs] That’ll be a nice big quote.

AJ: That’s really interesting to hear, because one of the questions I wanted to get to is when I’m listening to the new album, it does require a lot of attention. Because there’s constantly stuff happening, and it’s maybe the transitions are happening, or the songs are moving from one to another, or the sections within the song are sort of percolating around in a more subtle or nuanced way, like sometimes in the past, like you were saying. So you expect people to be invested in your work, but at the same time, so much of the listening experience is done while people are driving, or cooking, or working –

CM: Well listen. I don’t listen to music like that. When I listen to music, I put on a record, and I sit there and I listen to it. I don’t listen to music and read. And it’s wonderful. And I think that – I have a good stereo and a record player. I don’t listen to music on headphones, and I don’t listen to music in the car. And I don’t like the iPod. All of our expectations are kinda anecdotal. By that I mean they all come from our own experiences. So my expectation [of] you as listener is to do the same, is to clear even 20 minutes – that’s one thing I love about a record, you only have to listen to one side of it at a time. And it’s kind of nice. It’s only a side of a record, between 12 and 20 minutes? That’s not too long to ask of someone. I know the new media pundits will say that your average attention span is ten seconds. But I don’t care about that. I’m saying no, that leads to a very underdeveloped and boring person, the kind of person who can’t sit still for 20 minutes and just absorb someone else’s art, is essentially someone I’m not interested in. And the opposite holds true too, I feel real genuine tenderness and fondness for someone for just doing that, for clearing away 20 minutes in their day to listen to some music. So that is the ironclad expectation [laughs] that I have of the listener. And that might be Pollyanna, but God, I mean, on the other hand, then music is, at its worst, just the backdrop to a social event or the backdrop to you making your stir-fry. And if that’s the case, why do we take it so seriously? Why do we give it such a vaunted position in our culture?

AJ: I think part of it is what happens when the work leaves the artist and people are left to experience it however they can or however they choose. But also the fact that there’s music that is art, which I would say your music is definitely on that side of the scale – that’s how you[intend] it, [listeners] get the most out of it when you pay more attention to it, and you experience it more fully. But there’s also the entertainment part of music, and I think that people who listen for both things – people who listen more to the sort of artsy side of the spectrum are now like ‘Oh, it’s okay for me to like Lady Gaga too so all of this stuff is kind of in my collection.’

CM: My retort to that – I cut you off – I just want to say that on a Saturday night, I’ll invite my best friend over and we’ll drink some vodka and we’ll listen to AC/DC the exact same way that I just described listening to my record. It doesn’t have to – my theory of listening to music does not contain those traditional definitions of high and low music. It’s not like we’re only listening to atonal 20th century classical music in that way. Absolutely not. It’s so wonderful to just throw on Creedence and do the same, just like, fuckin’ listen to it. It doesn’t necessarily have to contain that high art, low art binary, I don’t think, personally. So yeah, I know what you’re trying to say. The division between that idea of music as art and music as entertainment is puzzling to me. I don’t really understand it. I just got asked to play at an art gallery in Vancouver, and there’s something kind of appealing to that to me because it’s basically what happens sometimes is – so Frog Eyes has been just pluggin’ away in a capitalist framework, meaning the only money we get comes from record sales or ticket sales. There’s kinda no support there. And sometimes what happens is the art world will pluck singers out [laughs] and say, ‘You know what? You’ve been working really hard. Here, have some grant money,’ you know? It happens occasionally.

AJ: Canada’s good for that, right?

CM: Canada’s pretty good for that but it’s getting worse and worse. And I can tell you why, if you’re interested. But anyways, that kind of thing is appealing to me but then the gallery was like ‘We want you to do something with sound. We want you to approach sound as art and not as music.’ And I know what they mean, but at the same time, I don’t really know what they mean? [Laughs] It’s like, do you just want me to stick a fork in a cello and just make a weird face at someone and run it through a delay pedal and that’s sound as art as opposed to playing a few chords on the guitar and singing a song, and that’s sound as music, and therefore sound as entertainment and therefore not valued as much? I just don’t really get it, you know? I understand it, but I don’t really get it.

AJ: If they asked me to do something like that, I would think that they meant that they would want something put in some big conceptual framework that says more than what the sound actually means, is what I would have guessed. But that’s not fun, because you want the sound to mean something.

CM: Yeah, but a big conceptual framework is its own cliché. It’s the easiest of clichés, right? My God, it couldn’t be easier to come up with some half-baked idea. Put a Council of the Arts grant stamp on it. It’s kind of much harder to work in this cutthroat capitalist framework. So I really don’t know what to do. I don’t know how we got sidetracked on that.

AJ: It’s really interesting though. Since we’ve gotten talking about the different purposes that music can serve or the different ways that people view it as having purpose, when you write songs for different projects, for yourself with Blackout Beach or for Frog Eyes or in collaboration with others, do those songs all come from your same interior artist? Or do you separate them?

CM: Frog Eyes would involve me sitting in a chair playing the guitar. And if I feel the compulsion to stand up, do a little boogie, do a little shuffle, then I’m more than likely to call my wife and say ‘Get down here. I think I’ve got something.’ And then we’ll boogie around together. And if it’s really boogiein’, then we might keep chiseling away until we’ve got something. And the other band members come in and just flesh it out. Whereas my own music is really cerebral, it’s a lot of, a lot of thought goes into it. There’s a lot of, there’s a decision-making process that’s not so immediate. I mean, Frog Eyes is really fucking easy. Just get me up and out of my chair, you know? Do I feel a kind of passion for this melody? Can I picture myself singing this in front of people? Whereas the Blackout Beach stuff is more like, do I feel lost in this? So it’s very different. They work very well together because when I’m tired and my joints ache and I feel old and foolish and ridiculous and vain, I can retire to my den and be cerebral for a while. And after a while, I feel cold and distant and I want to reconnect with that kind of passion. They work really well together in terms of a long-term relationship with music which is one of the most important things for me, is the idea that 20 years from now – I’m obsessed with this idea of continuing. It’s the only important thing, to keep going. To not stop. At the same time, I’ve tried to slow down a little bit too.

AJ: I think that’s healthy, the way you’re describing it is almost like the project serve very different purposes for you, psychologically and emotionally. And they’re very much tied to who you are and to your life on an everyday basis.

CM: Yeah. Well, who I am, too. And I have a critical impulse. I read criticism of lots of various forms of art, and… [sigh] But at the same time, you know, [it’s] a kind of beast, right? [Laughs] A kind of bellowing beast. So the two extremes work well with that, I think. I’m not very critical when it comes to Frog Eyes. Just, does it have heart? Does it bleed? Is there joy? Is there pain? Something like that.

AJ: So Melanie is kind of your first collaborator with Frog Eyes tunes?

CM: Yeah. Melanie and I have always – without Mel there would be no Frog Eyes for sure. I don’t understand when people say ‘She’s my muse.’ I think that’s a lie. But it’s a poetic lie. Comfortable for people to say. But I think that I write songs…I write songs for us.

AJ: For the partnership?

CM: Yeah, so we can play them together. We really love that. It’s wonderful. It’s never not wonderful.

AJ: I’ve noticed that I’ve never met another woman who likes Frog Eyes. I’m sure they exist. I’m sure you’ve met them and you’ve seen them.

CM: It’s a weird thing, eh? The energy – it’s funny because I myself am not very masculine. There are women who like Frog Eyes [laughs]. There’s more men in the audience than there are women.

AJ: I heard about [Frog Eyes] – initially, five or six years ago – when I was the only woman on my college newspaper’s music staff. So it was cool, because I listened to a lot of stuff, got exposed to a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have found, necessarily. But at the same time, [I thought] ‘I like this, but this is obviously bro-nerd music in some way to them.’

CM: Yeah.

AJ: […] And now you have another woman in the band. So technically you’re 50 percent female –

CM: And yet still the audience is packed full of Vidi Medieval nerds.

AJ: So is that the kind of crowd you guys see at shows and who you meet?

CM: It depends. You know, it’s hard to say. In Los Angeles, we played and it was almost all guys. And then Santa Cruz we just played and the audience was split. So it’s really hard to say, I don’t know. It’s quite odd. But is it a generalization to say that there’s an obsessive quality to being really invested in music? And it’s almost akin to collecting hockey cards?

AJ: That’s something I’ve understood about people in general. But that is a generalization that is applied to men.

CM: That’s kind of what I was hinting at. I talk to more men than I do women when doing interviews. So it might just be that we live on the more extreme side of music fandom? And for whatever reason, maybe [on] that side there’s more men than women? I dunno, I don’t want to make gender generalizations.

AJ: I don’t really know what to make of it either. But it’s a thing I’ve observed.

CM: Yeah. Interesting though, isn’t it? I never really thought about it that way. ’Cause I’d always kind of thought maybe it had something to – we’re not like that. And I don’t mean this to be insulting to women, but we’re not like a hunky band. [Laughs] Frog Eyes has opened up for hunky bands, and there’s a gang of young girls at the front sitting through Frog Eyes, making puking sounds, waiting for the hunky band to come out. And then when the hunky band comes out, they start screaming. So there’s that side of music, too, right? The kind of sexual side or whatever. The Freudian, sexual side. That’s not part of what we do. Jeez, I can’t get an answer why there are more men than women. But it’s not always the case! I think that in university towns the gender divide is more equal.

AJ: That’s standard, I would hope.

CM: But what does that mean, too? I don’t know.

AJ: Maybe people are being exposed to more ideas? Maybe people are looking for more stuff to do?

CM: And maybe women, through art, feel more emboldened to launch themselves into more extreme sides of appreciating things?

AJ: Yeah, it is weird to talk about these things in generalizations.

CM: Well it’s tough because I don’t want to fucking represent women [laughs].

AJ: I don’t either! Let’s talk about the new album a bit more. As far as I know, is this the first time you’ve used a female voice, or a voice other than yours?

CM: No, actually. The band that was before Frog Eyes was called Blue Pine, and there’s lots of singing by a woman named Carolyn Mark who’s a famous country singer in Canada. I think she’s much more famous in Canada than she is in America, so I introduce her to you if you don’t know who she is. She’s a beautiful singer, so funny. She should be famous in America, too, and I have every belief that someday she will be. Lots of female singing, and I really love that counterpoint. Kind of towards the last third of the [new] record, Megan Boddy joined the band.

AJ: So it was a time-period thing?

CM: Yeah. And I met her making Skin of Evil. [She] and Carolyn are the two female singers on that record. And I think they add so much to Skin of Evil and I think Megan adds so much to Frog Eyes, too. So that’s something that’s very exciting, the idea of making that a record and employing that foil to my own beastly, boarlike voice.

AJ: Were those songs already written, or were you able to change direction with them once you had this second vocal element?

CM: So ‘A Flower in a Glove,’ ‘A Debtor’s War,’ and ‘Year in Love’ were songs that were written once Megan had joined the band, so we would just kind of go in the studio with three songs. We did like three different sessions of three songs and just go in the studio for a day and record them. So by the time that she joined the band, the record was two-thirds done. So in order to have some kind of continuity, I think we went back to some other songs and got her to do the singing. Which is a bit of trickery [laughs] but you don’t need to know that. Paul’s Tomb – the thing I’m really proud about Paul’s Tomb is that it was even made. We didn’t have a stable lineup since 2005, really. To me it really is the sound of just holding on. Holding on to the idea that Frog Eyes needs to make another record. And we did. And we’ll make another one, too. It was a very hard record to make, though, because we were always having new people come in and come out.

AJ: What was the time period that you were actually working on the new record seriously?

CM: It’s kinda weird, because like I said, the record was made in three days in the studio. There were three days spread out between 2000* and 2009. It’s kinda funny, eh? It seems like ‘They spent three years on the record,’ but it’s not as if we were working every day on it by any means. And the songs were not written in one batch. They were written in three batches. It’s kind of an interesting way to make a record. You put it together piece by piece. It’s almost like the way that people build cathedrals. You work on the cathedral, and then you die, and you never see the cathedral in its finished state. So the band would wor on three songs, and then the band would die because someone would leave. And they would never see or hear the final product until the record was actually done. We’d send it to our buddy who was playing with us at the time. That can be good and that can be bad, but it’s kind of an act of faith that in the end there will be a record. Whereas if you go in a studio with 20 songs, there’s no leap of faith. You know in the end you’re going to come out with 40 minutes of material and ten songs. But you don’t get to lavish the same amount of attention on the songs if there’s ten of them. They kinda loom over you. Whereas three is a very manageable number to really think critically about every little second.

AJ: So the break involved snatching these pieces of the next Frog Eyes record but you were also working on your other projects.

CM: I was working on Skin of Evil and Swan Lake, and it all works sequentially. So at the time that I was writing Skin of Evil, I was just writing Skin of Evil. And I wouldn’t have written a Frog Eyes song during [that], nor would I have even listened to a Frog Eyes song that we were working on. When I work on something, I just want to work on that, and the same with Swan Lake. I remember, about a month before it was time to get together, [I thought] oh my God, I have to write three songs. And so my wife and I – I got some royalty money, and we went to Hawaii. [Laughs] Sat in the cabin and wrote songs. [It was] wonderful. And then I came back. ‘I’ve got three songs!’ [Laughs] Absolutely wonderful. That’s one thing I know that I can do. If I need to write three songs in a month, I can do that. I don’t have to worry about that. The same is true of Dan [Bejar]. That’s one worry we don’t have. There will always be songs.

AJ: That’s a really good tool to have in your toolkit, just for life, I think. What is it like working with Spencer in a different project after he stopped working with Frog Eyes?

CM: Well, it’s not that he stopped working with Frog Eyes. There was never like, ‘Okay, let’s shake hands and sign this contract that says you won’t sue us.’ [laughs] He just kind of…I think the practicality of playing in eight bands – and also, we don’t make as much money as his other bands and blah blah blah, and that’s time away from his home and I dunno. I’m kinda painfully aware of that, the stress that being in a band puts on the bandmates. It’s tough, and I always feel kinda guilty about taking someone away from their loved ones. But then I remember that the act of playing of music is so wonderful that it’s worth it in the end. And then I don’t feel so bad. So it’s not as if he’s in or out of the band, or anything like that. […] To get back to your question, I guess it’s a little different. In Frog Eyes, he was always very reverential to the songs, kinda like ‘Is this okay? Am I playing too much?’ He’d sit down and come up with such a jaw-dropping arrangement in like five seconds. Spencer really is a musical genius. He’s one of the few people that I’ve ever met that I would say that about. Swan Lake is very different, because they’re his songs, and I kind of feel that reverential approach to his songs. And yet I stop all over ’em. [Laughs] I trash them to shit. It’s hard to explain. It’s very complex, having all of this history, and then having to sweep away the history and approach Swan Lake as if there is no history. It’s odd, for sure. But it’s quite fun when you’re doing it. It’s just having beers, sitting around and laughing, it’s quite fun.

AJ: But having so many projects – like you said, it can add an element of uncertainty that requires you to have a leap of faith and maybe recommit to a project with different circumstances. But it gets more people involved who you might not have brought into that kind of working relationship before. So it can be stressful but it’s also – you wouldn’t have it any other way, right? Because that’s what you do.

CM: It’s kinda what you do, as a songwriter, unless you do it all yourself, which is a different thing. It’s much more difficult to do everything yourself and it’s really draining. You need to know how to work with people. Which I think I’m not very good at [laughs] but people tolerate me because sometimes I’m funny.

AJ: Well I’m sure the first part of that isn’t true. But the second part definitely is.

*I didn’t notice this until transcribing, but I wonder if Carey misspoke when he said “2000.” Still, that’s what I hear on the recording.

Stuff I've been writing: Reading Rainbow feature, Origivation, 3/1

2010-03-03T12:51:00.002-05:00

Hey look, it's the article I wrote about frenetic, fuzz-fueled duo Reading Rainbow! Rob and Sarah are super sweethearts who make great music that everyone should buy and go see. They're playing the Elbo room (50th and Cedar in west Philly) Saturday night with my friends Junkers, and they'll be at SXSW this year. Do read the story (on the lovely new Origivation website!) and listen to their sounds if you haven't yet.

Stuff I've been writing: Ape School profile, Origivation Magazine 2/10

2010-02-18T13:19:00.006-05:00

The primary interview for this joint took place at sunset in a grass patch behind the North Star Bar in Fairmount last July, but due to technical difficulties (publications folding, my procrastination), it wasn't published till now. It's by far one of the chillest, friendliest interviews I've ever done (another candidate for that, my chat with Reading Rainbow, will appear in the March issue), and I still think Ape School is criminally underrated in Philly and elsewhere.

In other exciting news, Origivation has a new editor with a lot of new ideas, so expect something more than long-ass profiles (not that there's anything wrong with that; I've written enough of them) in the future.

The return of Mad Men news-blogging!

2010-01-27T15:36:00.005-05:00

But it might be bad news: Bryan Batt, who plays Salvatore Romano (closeted gay former Sterling Cooper art director and one of the most compelling characters on the show), hasn't been notified as to whether or not he'll be returning for the new season.

The fourth season begins filming in March, and there's already a Facebook group dedicated to making sure Batt and his character are back in the show. As Mad Men fans know,

[spoiler alert if you haven't seen the third season]

SCDP took SC's biggest client -- Lucky Strike -- when they broke off to create their own firm. And the reason Sal was fired in the first place is because of Lucky Strike bigwig Lee Garner Jr.'s drunken, unsuccessful pass at our dear Sal.

check it out

2010-01-25T20:30:00.002-05:00

buzz buzz buzz

i am editing this thing with some friends! send us your shit.

www.theapiarycorp.com

A passage from Fitzgerald

2010-01-20T14:56:00.002-05:00

"No," interrupted Marcia emphatically. "And you're a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me."

Horace stopped quickly in front of her.

"Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently. "Do you just go round kissing people?"

"Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just going round kissing people."

"Well," replied Horace emphatically, "I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn't just that, and in the second place I won't kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can't get rid of habits. This year I've got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty."

-- "Head and Shoulders," 1920

Most Listened '09

2010-01-18T13:27:00.003-05:00

I am incapable of keeping up with music or having any clue what the Best Of anything of anything are, but here's my survival Top 10 -- the songs that helped me make it through another crap year of crap, according to my iTunes. Youtube links where applicable, mp3s forthcoming if I ever figure out how to upload them:

1. Orange Juice -- Simply Thrilled Honey (slightly different version, but they are in an OJ factory!)
2. Times New Viking -- Drop Out (live in Houston)
3. Silver Jews --Long Long Gone
4. Bob Dylan / The Band -- You Ain't Going Nowhere
5. Fleet Foxes -- White Winter in Hymnal (got me through Jan. in Pittsburgh and has not been listened to since, actually)
6. Barrett Strong -- You've Got What it Takes
7. Camera Obscura -- Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken
8. Little Iva & Her Band -- Continental Strut
9. Roy Acuff -- This World Can't Stand Long (found a live Dylan cover from 2000)
10. Al Green -- Funny How Time Slips Away

honorary most youtube'd
Grizzly Bear -- Two Weeks
Lady Gaga -- Paparazzi acoustic version

To the Ladies of 100.3 The Beat fm

2010-01-08T08:32:00.002-05:00

(which is what I listen to in the car when I absolutely cannot take NPR one second longer...)

Dear Keri Hilson,

Do you realize when you croon "Miss Keri, baby" it sounds like "Miscarry baby"? It freaks me out!

Dear Nikki Minaj,

"Bedrock" is a stupid song but you make the word "asbestos" sound sexy on your verse.

Dear Kendra G,

The fact that you manage to work "Now, I do NOT smoke weed" into your song introductions on a daily basis makes me not believe you.

so pumped for my morning commute,
Michelle

the smell of it

2009-12-25T10:57:00.006-05:00

Let us suppose that a traditional hierarchy of criticism still floats out there in the ether somewhere. You know, literature and visual arts at the top, then maybe dance and theater and instrumental music, then all those things affiliated with the grubby masses like movies and pop music and TV on the next rung (I said traditional), then food and fashion, both of which are too aesthetic to rank any higher but still employ an admirable and tangible amount of skill. Then, down in the dust at the bottom, are the provinces of the effeminate and the frivolous: wine, cigars, perfume, hotels. Writing about these is just more or less an arena for rich dilettantes to throw around made-up terms like "wet rock mouth feel" or "strident floral accords," n'est-ce-pas?

One reason often given for the fruitlessness of writing about scent is that it's too personal, too evocative of individual memories. But come the hell on -- that only makes sense if hearing a certain song doesn't call to mind how it played every half hour at your old job and the sensation of the too-high cash register drawer slamming into your rib cage after each sale (the song being "Marianne" by Leonard Cohen) or if the taste Neapolitan ice cream doesn't transport you to your grandparents' yellow kitchen on a Saturday night. In other words, I don't buy that one of the five senses is any better at evoking memories than the other four.

There's also the old chestnut that goes "Writing about ______ is like dancing about architecture." This also is b.s. The whole point of writing is that you can do it about anything, if you're good, and make it interesting to read. And I'm no modern dance expert but someone has probably choreographed an homage to Frank Gehry or Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's probably pretty cool.

Writing about writing does pose less of a challenge than writing about music or art or dance, of course. Attempting to translate the visual into the verbal was my favorite part of art history classes and essentially the reason I majored in such a useless subject.

So maybe that's why I've developed a thorough appreciation of perfume reviews lately. How does one convey the sensation of smelling something into language? And not just language for its own sake, as with some poetic turn of phrase, but into words that enable readers to mentally conjure the same fragrance and decide whether or not it's something they want their bodies to smell like.

Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are the reigning monarchs of this particular art. Their Perfumes: The Guide is an encyclopedic work from 2008 (with updates available online) that can be read from A-Z, it's so entertaining. It provides a good foundation, including several essays and a glossary, and immediately made me want to hunt down and smell every 5 start scent they describe. Take this bit, from the review of Dior's Dune:

"Dune is a strong contender for Bleakest Beauty in all of perfumery. It is clearly headed from the start for toward that peculiarly inedible cheap-chocolate drydown that made Must, Allure, and a thousand others, though Dune's is the best of the lot, dissonant but interesting. But the way it gets there is extraordinary, with a beguiling transparency, even freshness, particularly in the anisic carrot-seed top notes. It is hard to pin down what makes Dune so unsmiling from top to bottom; it's as if every perfumer accord had become a Ligeti cluster chord, drained of life, flesh-toned in the creepy way of artificial limbs, not real ones. Marvelous."

Color me fascinated. Of course, the 1 star reviews are much funnier: "A trite, canned-fruit-salad concoction of no interest except to illustrate the cynicism of its makers," Turin writes of Armani Remix for Her.

This being the age of Web 2.0 (or Web.2, as a former professor of mine would always say), the anonymous hordes have of course gotten in the perfume-reviewing game. Obtaining samples has gotten easier and cheaper thanks to the internet, too; instead of trekking to Grasse, or at least NYC, one can now purchase .5 ml samples of even highly obscure fragrances from sites like The Perfumed Court for $3-10. So that's at least a good 50 new smells a year if one were to allot a $6 weekly perfume budget.

Basenotes and Makeup Alley are the main places to find the layman's opinions, along with a fair number of amateur blogs. Like Yelp or Netflix ratings, reading between the lines is key. Sometimes it's possible to tell that a scent that one person hates is exactly the sort of thing you will love or vice versa, such as when a Makeup Alley user named fitmom2 declares Jessica Simpson's perfume, Fancy, "yummy, sweet, soft, romantic...If you love the smell of cupcakes, frosting, soft petals, and vanilla, this is superb." And although there's a whiff of mass hysteria about it, certain perfumes elicit such strong reactions that it's clear something is going on, whether it's Art or not.

Apres L'Ondee (forgive my lack of appropriate accents), a Guerlain scent first formulated in 1906, is widely held to be one such masterpiece. The name means "After the Rainstorm," and according to Turin and Sanchez it's one of the 20 best ever composed. Reading the peanut gallery reviews makes it sound even more like a magical elixer:

This makes me feel spent and hopeful, as though I'd been crying my eyes out and have just realized that things will get better. Chopin in a bottle.

Pale, impressionistic watercolor evoking the saddest damn song you ever heard, the one you keep playing over and over again because it puts you in such a good mood. Fleeting and lovely, emotional and nostalgic, this is a fragrance for a woman who doesn't really mind being a little bit sad.

Sometimes this fragrance moves me to tears of joy. When I wear it, I feel like I am being bathed in bright, bright, sunlight. I think it conjures some memory deep in my subconscious that soothes my soul. I don't wear it all the time because it is so difficult to obtain. I will never be without this.

A smell that makes you cry? I've cried at books, movies, songs, but never to my recollection a scent. So I bought a sample. And here I sit with the last few drops smudged into my wrist. It smells a little like sweet herbs, a little like rain, a little like powder, a bit like what I thought lavender smelled like before I had ever actually smelled lavender. I am not currently weeping. But maybe I lack a certain faculty of discernment, just as I can't tell an E flat from a B sharp by ear, or whether the baba ghanouj needs more salt or more garlic. It's a good smell, and distinctive, probably one I will be able to recognize easily if I ever smell it again.

But it dissipates almost instantly, which sort of defeats the point of perfume. Lately I've taken to wearing Bois D'Iris, a more modern variation on the theme that's a bit earthier (it smells like a flower that still has wet dirt on the roots) and lasts longer. The idea of finding The One, the single signature fragrance that somehow both expresses your worldview and locks your scent into the lizard brain of anyone whose nose gets close enough to your neck, has to abandoned if there is any hope of true connoisseurship. It'd be like trying to pick a single theme song for your whole life.

So maybe I will post some quick Turin and Sanchez style perfume reviews of the samples I've amassed, to see how I do at the scent-to-language translation. Or maybe that would be inane. In any case, I will certainly keep our audience updated the moment I find the smell that makes me cry.

Stuff I wrote in winter (so far)

2009-12-03T13:37:00.003-05:00

For your consideration: my interview with Jarrett Dougherty of Screaming Females, one of the few new bands to catch my ears in recent months.

Stuff I wrote in fall

2009-12-02T15:46:00.006-05:00

The December issue of Origivation -- in which I interview North Jersey punk powerhouse Screaming Females -- will be out very soon. In the meantime, check out their video for "Buried in the Nude."

Also, I never posted my November feature on intergenerational Philly duo Saudi Arabia, plus reviews of albums by Ola Podrida and Junk Culture. Caleb's take on the recent Feelies reissues is there, too! Behold:

Linguistics 101

2009-11-28T13:05:00.003-05:00

Every trip I take to Raleigh becomes fodder for the ongoing mental debate over moving back to N.C. The "Con" column includes the facts that all my friends are in Philadelphia and that 75% of this town is suburban sprawl hellishness anyway. In the "Pro" column: people are so much nicer here; I would get to hear words and expressions that I love but forget about when I'm away too long. Such as pine straw. I had not thought about pine straw in so long, but here it's everywhere and used to be such a fact of my daily life (often entangled in my hair). PINESTRAW. jeez.

Another expression I like a lot is the simple, all-purpose response "Do what?" I think of it written as a hyphenate or one word: "Do-what?" or "Dowhat?" or "Dowhatnow?" It can be used anytime you don't understand what someone has said to you either due to mishearing or it being rank nonsense, as demonstrated by the following T-day exchange at the appetizer table:

Great Uncle Warren: "What's this here green?"
Me: "It's salsa verde. It's made from tomatillos!"
Great Uncle Warren: "Dowhatnow?"

The "might could" and "might should" constructions are also faves. For my part, I tried to convince my cousin's wife that it's called a cheesesteak, not a "steak and cheese."

F1rst Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T00:55:00.006-05:00

My 12-pound turkey endured a near-second-death experience on Walnut Street (hanging on for dear life out of my flopped-over bike basket), a significant bounce down a flight of stairs (broken plastic bag), and a half-pound of butter, six ounces of chopped bacon, and a fistful of herbs inserted under its skin before roasting.

Taste-wise, it was brilliant.

My first independently-hosted Thanksgiving day started at 11 am, when my alarm went off. To remind me to cook. Seriously the best.

The turkey went in around 1 p.m. (dinnertime was 6, so I left a prudent finishing window). I put in laundry, basted. Watched 30 Rock (a Thanksgiving tradition for all-day kitchen marathons), basted. And on until around 3, when Shane showed up to sous with cumin-fennel-brilliance butternut soup, sweet cornbread, and green bean casserole.

I took the bird, deep brown and crispy-skinned, out of the oven at around 4. The thigh registered far above its goal temperature of 175F, but the end result still proved moist. Rivers of butter had burst through the skin steeped in the bottom of the pan with the juices of an onion, an orange, and a li'l herb bouquet. A few glugs of cider and brandy, some tedious fat-skimming, vigorous whisking, and 20 minutes of simmering=gravy.

In the meantime, Toby (along with a healthy mix of guests -- friends and once strangers -- from a few sectors of my life) showed up with his carving skills and a carrot souffle with brown sugar-pecan crumble on top. Also making appearances: a vat of mashed potatoes, improvised stuffing (from Randy and Virginia), bacon Brussels sprouts, cranberry plum sauce, pancetta macaroni and cheese (Andy), and plum galette.

I wish I had snapped some pictures, but I was way too wrapped up in the amazing bacon: Brussels sprout ratio to play photographer.

A few bottles of wine, a few helpings, one ukulele and two couches. Dishes done by many hands.

Take that, holidays 2009. You can't freak me out.

Do You Need to Buy Me a Christmas Present?

2009-11-16T21:41:00.002-05:00

This will do.

In Which I Grow Old, etc.

2009-10-29T21:50:00.003-04:00

Cintra Wilson, one of the New York Times Styles Section's dastardly critical shoppers, got mega called out for being a snotty, fat-shaming harpy as a result of her review of J.C. Penney a few weeks ago. I do have a sentimental attachment to that particular department store, especially the location within walking distance from my Raleigh home, from whence all my clothes came until I was about 11 and rebelled (and even after that, a good percentage still did -- remember the frustration of combing through the clearance racks in high school, Alex, trying to find the one lone garment that was cheap enough to purchase and also not hideous?) But last Thursday, Wilson took on Ann Taylor, and I found parts of the article a lot more wounding than anything from her diatribe against dowdy suburbanites -- despite the fact that her overall review is positive:

"My shorthand for the look was always 'capitalist burqa' or 'corporate office submissive': cubicle-wear of so-so quality for the single girl in her late 20s whose self-esteem has been almost beaten to death by the beauty industrial complex and whose decent education has been punished with a thanklessly demanding office job. She’s a can-do Cinderella who has always had to change the oil in her own pumpkin and is too overworked to have a healthy social life outside the workplace. Her outfits must therefore be corporate-respectable, yet body-conscious enough to attract a nice tax attorney husband."

What I'm saying is I broke down during the first week of my job and purchased a garment from Ann Taylor -- a green short-sleeve sweater on sale for $9.99. It's become the opposite of a good-luck outfit or talismanic accessory. I wear it a lot but but always feel vaguely defeated.

Then, today, I ended up reading "Goodbye to All That," sort of by accident. I was taking a break from another pilgrimage to adulthood: walking the three miles from my workplace to the car dealership where I was to pick up the new used vehicle I bought two days ago. This trek happened to involve a stretch of the Baltimore Pike I walked many times in college, although the chain stores are a little different than they were when I graduated in 2007 (I still can't believe the Baja Fresh shut down, or that the supermarket now has a Starbucks inside it). So I went to Borders to read trashy mags, as I was wont to do in college, with girlfriends or sometimes alone.

I got bored of the mags and pulled out a borrowed copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which has been my public transport reading for a while now. I was finally to the last essay, which is of course "Goodbye to All That." Joan Didion is obviously no corporate submissive, but it seems the same tragedy befalls confessional essayists and office drones alike:

"That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things in fact are irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it."

After that I walked the rest of the way to the dealership (next to the Babies-R-Us, across from the Kohl's), thinking about how my friends can be roughly separated into those who think about The Future and those who won't or don't or can't yet. I finished signing all the paperwork with a woman named Cheryl whose cell phone kept bursting into the chorus of "Single Ladies." She got the mechanic to take my ugly little economy car to the gas station so I'd have a full tank. I drove back down the Pike and almost took a familiar left turn, with the intention of spending the rest of my remaining free time in the college library, where I have alumni borrowing privileges and still know the guest password for the computers. But I didn't want to go in my office clothes, so I just went back to work.

Supernerd update

2009-10-21T15:22:00.002-04:00

Halfway done.

Rather chuffed.

2009-10-15T23:08:00.003-04:00

Two skeins of Cascade 220 "Sand" arrived two days ago. Progress report:

I have 16 days to knit another 9' or so; in the past two hours, I've done almost 6". I'm not worried.

New Origivation writings

2009-10-13T00:08:00.003-04:00

The October issue of Origivation is so, so out right now. I've got features in there on These United States and the Independent Music Awards. Read away.

The Wire and Doctor Who, together at last

2009-10-12T13:40:00.002-04:00

Sort of, anyway.

Clarke Peters (aka The Wire's Lester Freamon) will voice a character in a new animated Doctor Who spinoff. I have pretty much zero intention of watching this, but we came awfully close to a fave TV show 'splosion for me. Get Ian McShane as the voice of K-9 Mark XII or whatever and we'll see.

DW Scarf Nooz Update #2

2009-10-07T14:38:00.001-04:00

I have about 20 rows of the greenish color to do before I have to wait for that fucking khaki shade. DAMN YOU CASCAAAAAAADE! DAAAAAAMN YOUUUUUUUU

Important news

2009-10-06T03:45:00.002-04:00

I've just finished the first color section of the Season 14 Doctor Who scarf. I'm using Cascade 220 in the colors mapped out by Tara.

The biggest obstacle between now and Halloween (besides the 10' of 12"-wide garter stitch) is that the tan color is on back order from the website I used to buy the yarn. They're supposed to ship it on Thursday, so I'm hopeful that I'll get it by Monday. I can still do 76 rows (9.63 percent) before I need it.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

In which I appear in the paper

2009-07-19T15:12:00.001-04:00

The first time I was ever in a newspaper, I was 10 years old and wearing a black-and-red flannel shirt and a purple bike helmet. My similarly Angela Chase-ly-clad elementary school friends and I were walking our bikes across Six Forks Road on our way home from elementary school, probably about to go to the Taco Bell and get cups for water and then fill them with all the different horrible sodas. In the caption, my name was "Alex Taylor." Fact checking!

Fast forward 10 years and I have a sheaf of college newspaper blathering and a healthy sprinkle of my own electronic opinion strewn about the web. So it's kind of weird for me to be like "Look, I'm in the paper!" but here I am, a~~n expert~~ witness to tabloid feuds and contemporary ladymade music. My mom called me at the ungodly hour of 11:30 this morning to ask if I was "Philadelphia-based, feminist music writer (and former Raleigh resident) Alexandra Jones" -- "That couldn't be a coincidence, right?"

Wanna take bets on long before The Rachel Maddow Show comes callin'?

Young, adult.

2009-07-12T18:21:00.003-04:00

You may have seen the recent Facebook meme sweeping the newsfeeds of the over-educated/underemployed set: 15 Books in 15 minutes. Basically, one names the first 15 books that spring to mind, with the idea that those are the most influential and important to the individual in question.

After mentally scrolling through the recently-read (like 2666, which is every bit as good as all the slavering reviews would have you believe) and the big name (Proust, Joyce, Nabokov), I realized that a lot of the books that I remember best and think about most often are the ones I read between ages 8 to 14. I know there’s a whole cult of grown-up YA enthusiasts out there, and blogger Lizzie Skurnick has a book coming out about rereading preteen girl classics. But worried that revisiting my childhood novels would ruin my foggy memories, I generally avoided the kids’ section at the Carnegie Public in favor of trying, yet again, to slog through Infinite Jest.

My particular poison was always of the historical-fantasy-adventure variety. First came the Narnia books (the Christian overtones of which totally escaped me as a child), then an intense devotion to Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. I didn’t just like them; I believed them. Eventually I knew I would be able to figure out some sort of spell or portal to get myself into those magical kingdoms. Life in the suburbs of Raleigh (which was all I knew existed) was just too unbearably boring. I was in a constant state of anticipation, just waiting until Aslan showed up to offer me a lift on his big golden haunches. Reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy last winter, I was actually glad they hadn’t been published yet when I was 12 because I know I would have been obsessed with them to the point of despair – a fated and passionate-yet-chaste romance always sealed the deal for me; I would have been in love with Will 4-eva.

After Alex posted her 15 books (which are pretty similar to mine anyway – all through middle and high school we would trade books or read them at the same time so as to have someone intelligent to discuss them with), and I became lost in my reverie of YA favorites, one title in particular drifted into my brain and wouldn’t let go until I marched into the brightly-painted children’s area of the library, checked it out, and read it nonstop that night.

I remember seeing the eerie black cover in the Douglas Elementary library and being too scared to check it out in second grade; I don’t think I worked up the nerve until probably fourth (sadly I can't find an image of the spooky original cover). I read it so many times those last two years that I considered stealing it when I left for middle school. Even though I hadn’t thought of it in ages, as soon as the idea hit me I remembered the author’s name and oddly-spelled title down to the letter: The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.

Pope was of that particularly well-heeled variety of children’s authors; she was in the class of 1940 at Bryn Mawr and went on to get a Ph.D. in English Literature from Johns Hopkins. The Perilous Gard is set in 1558, just before Elizabeth I came to power, and full of the nerdy sort of historical detail only a particularly scholarly author would include. I thought I had caught an error at one point; a character refers to the “fields of corn” behind the castle. Ha, thought I, they totally did not know about maize in England until the 1600s! Of course a minimal amount of research proved me wrong; corn is a generic term for any grain in British English (our corn, maize, is called sweetcorn).

Much like Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (whom Pope presumably knew to some extent, as they were both founding members of the Society for Creative Anachronism), The Perilous Gard concerns the conflict between Christianity and older pagan belief. Kate, the main character, is a smart and practical girl who regards the old stories as superstition at first. Unlike MZB’s hippied-out Powerful Mystic Moon Womyn vision, though, in Pope’s book the Christians are the good guys. The narrative is based on the Scottish ballad Tam Lin, and the Fairy People are scary as hell.

Not that you are going to rush out and purchase this book or anything, but I still don’t want to spoil all the plot details – suffice it to say that the main character, Kate, is trying to save her friend Christopher from the Fairy People, who are going to burn him alive as a sacrifice on All Hallow’s Eve. She ends up living among them as a servant in their lair of tunnels deep underground while scheming how to free them both.

So this is where I get to my actual point: what makes this book a kids’ book? Because it is fucking dark – literally, too, ha! When Kate first joins the other human servants, she is led to a pitch-black cave chamber and thinks the snorting and flopping sounds she hears are made by sleeping pigs. It turns out the three other women are just drugged into a complete stupor 24/7. The Green Lady (the Fairy Queen, basically) tries to get Kate to accept the narcotic potion, too, warning her ominously that it will make “the weight” easier to bear.

Later, looking up at the rock ceiling of the servants’ chamber (which “hung in great laps and folds and waves and pendulous bulges of stone”), Kate experiences her first attack of the weight:

And then suddenly all she knew of the place as it really was came rushing over her. The earth and the stone; the blind passages worming their way under the ground; the slippery paths with the slime under foot; the cold air and the darkness; and always, everywhere, pressing about pit and cavern and passage, the incalculable weight of the rock. Her breath was coming quickly now, in light shallow gasps, as if she had no room to draw it. The fear that the cave roof was bulging and collapsing had been a fear of appearances, something she could argue away. The agonized horror she felt now was of the reality of the Hill itself – the tons and tons of actual earth and stone lying above her, closing down on her, shutting her in. It was like some suffocating dream of being buried alive; or rather it was like the moment of awakening from that dream to find that it was true.

I don’t know about you but that’s one of the best descriptions of intense depression I think I’ve ever read (except instead of rock, of course, it’s Life in general that’s the weight). Her fairy-boss is somewhat sympathetic and entreats her again to let the Lady take away the weight. “ ‘It will return…at its own time.’”

Yet this book is considered appropriate for children despite its heavy themes (don’t forget that whole human sacrifice element). What then are the requirements of YA lit compared to grown up books? No sex, nothing too violent, clear language with no stylistic trickery a la our dear departed DFW. Protagonists who are children or adolescents (although certainly “real” books can have young central characters). Most importantly, perhaps, is an unambiguous moral tone, Good vs. Evil. We can’t be confusing our young ‘uns with mixed messages about right and wrong, and that sort of reductiveness is the real reason (in my view) that most kids’ books don’t qualify as Great Literature, no matter how classic.

But reading this book as an adult, I think the Good vs. Evil battle is more complex and subtle than I grasped in fourth grade, although I apparently grasped something that made me latch on to the memory of reading it for over ten years. The struggle is, on the surface, that whole pagan vs. Christian thing. But Christianity only ever helps Kate in the most practical, least spiritual ways possible. At a crucial moment, the Green Lady tries one final time to lull her into senselessness with an incantation. Kate maintains her presence of mind by squeezing a metal cross necklace so tightly that her clenched hand fills with blood. The real victory is her intelligence and logic prevailing over the mysticism and eerie beauty of the Fairy Folk. In the end, the Fairy Folk even become slightly sympathetic; there’s a sense that they are doomed to retreat further into the mythical realm and eventually die out altogether. It’s really kind of sad, especially since some of them actually had begun to show her kindness. But there’s an air of historical inevitability to the conclusion. Logic just wins out in the end.

I guess that’s sort of what happened to me, too. At some point, probably much later than is normal or healthy, I realized that no closet door was going to transport me to Narnia, and that Taran and Eilonwy were just characters invented by some old dude. Around the same time I realized that reading fantasy books was totally lame, socially speaking. After that it was all Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 and etc (although I do have to wonder why dystopian novels like 1984 and Brave New World get a free pass instead of being tarred with the genre brush). And I’m pretty fine with that, although if I am missing out on some awesome fantasy books for grownups, by all means let me know. I kind of doubt it-- though I have recently discovered that fantasy art calendars are hilariously amazing. For some reason, fantasy stories just seem to work better when they have the streamlined language and morals (and no tacky sex, ugh) of children’s books. I’m not necessarily sure I’m any smarter now than I was at age 12 anyway. It’s hard to say whether I would have enjoyed The Perilous Gard as much if I didn’t already have that strong nostalgic pull. I do know that if I have kids, this will definitely be on their bookshelf.

EXCHANGE: A one-act

2009-07-07T02:34:00.005-04:00

CAST
Schultz, a neurotic
Michelle, a dark pragmatist
Alex, a wizard's baker
Rich, a cheesemonger
Firestone, a firestone

Setting: Int. my living room, post beer-buying and Con Air-watching and pie-eating.

[EVERYONE discusses the question of whether one would rather be able to pause reality or fast-forward reality. MICHELLE proclaims her affinity for one or the other.]

MICHELLE: I would choose fast-forward. Then you could just skip all this bullshit in your twenties and wake up when you're 50.

[GENERAL verbal scuffle about the viability of this option; it is stated that 50 is not the new 20, probably, if I remember correctly.]

ALEX: Yeah, 50 is the prime of your life -- IF YOU'RE A TIME LORD.

[GENERAL giggles and neutral reactions to this statement.]

FIRESTONE: Yeah. If you're a GAYLORD.

[ALL PRESENT guffaw heartily at this bon mot.]

END

WOOOOOOO!

2009-06-10T15:19:00.003-04:00

The third season of Mad Men finally has a debut date: August 16. Only 67 days to go!

New Origivation Magazine feature

2009-06-10T13:52:00.003-04:00

I wrote another feature for Philly music rag Origivation on acoustic/rock artist Kevin McQuiston. Check me out!

If you don't want to download a pdf (although there are other cool pieces in the issue too), here's the text.

Emerging
with Alexandra Jones

Kevin McQuiston is probably happier than you. Not because Sway, the first EP from his latest project, Refurb, blends slick-as- hell rock with heartrending, emotional lyrics. Not because he gives the impression of being the hardest-working musician in Philadelphia, burning out his BlackBerry to promote his projects. Not because the way he’s selling Sway is a new platform that could change how bands market their music online.

He’s happy, it seems, because he wants to be.

Among other faiths, McQuiston identifies as a Buddhist, and applies a beatific, live-and-let-live philosophy to daily life and relationships. “[Being happy]’s not easy, but it’s really pretty simple,” he explains – to passengers in the cab he drives for his day job. “You do this, you do this, and if that doesn’t work, you try that.”
As chill as he can be in person, however, McQuiston is dedicated to his art, his band and its marketing. He’s gone beyond the independent musician’s typical marketing toolkit with “Karma Currency,” an online platform that gives potential listeners a few different ways to pay for music. Would-be listeners can choose between four options to acquire digital downloads of individual tracks: Pay “market value,” the iTunes standard of 99 cents; pay what you want, à la Radiohead’s In Rainbows; accept the track for free as a gift from the artist; or pledge to do a good deed – helping others, animals or the environment, perhaps – in exchange for the download. The last option requires users to type in how they’ll pay it forward, which might seem like more of a guilt trip than it’s worth. McQuiston, of course, sees the good in the system.

“You’re not responsible for what other people think, say and do, just what you think, say and do,” he says of the honor code implicit in Karma Currency. “You can actually ask for it [as] a gift. If they’re so harried that they can’t find a kind moment, we’ll give it as a gift. We’ll do the kind moment for them.”

While McQuiston’s ostensible goal is to gain exposure for his music, the Karma Currency model fits him in particular. When his last band, acoustic-pop outfit KMB missed out on a record deal when their A&R man left his record label, McQuiston
turned away from rock ‘n’ roll fun and entered an interfaith seminary in New York City.
But hold that thought – McQuiston is no Scott Stapp. “I don’t think I’ve ever written a non-secular song,” he says. “And yet everything I write, because I write about love - love is my religion. I might wrap it in Buddhism and Taoism and Quaker Unitarianism, but to me, really, everything’s about love. Love and fear, [those are] the only two things in the universe. Everything’s based in one or the other, and I base mine in love.”

True enough - although the songs on Sway evoke the longing, bitterness, and loneliness that can accompany unrequited love more than its warm, fuzzy counterpart. Despite McQuiston’s cloud-nine disposition, his muses are lost loves, or loves that
never were.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What’s the harder part, writing the words or writing the melody?’” the singer explains. “And I said the hard part is living through it. Having that thing mean enough to you that you need to express it. I have to cough this shit up on a regular basis, so, to me, it’s gotta kinda mean something.”

What made McQuiston transition from acoustic music to electrified rock? “It could have been like a midlife crisis, I suppose,” he says. “I bought a Les Paul and a Marshall [amplifier], and I’d always kinda had this sorta Ani DiFranco-meets-Chris-
Isaak-on-crack kinda [thing].”

Refurb, however, is a four-piece outfit that sets McQuiston’s songs, from cool brush-off tunes to gritty breakup missives to straightforward rock ‘n’ roll. They’re billed as “indie-tinged alt-rock,” but the music doesn’t bristle with quirky-as-hell instrumentation or sound like it was recorded in a bedroom closet. What defines Refurb is the combination of McQuiston’s deeply felt poetry and his band’s ultra-tight but soulful vibe – a solid formula that would benefit from neither bells nor whistles. “Everybody Likes You” is the badass riff-rocker of the EP, while the bittersweet “Too Much For You” boasts a vibrant, voicelike guitar melody.

The band is McQuiston’s project, but he gives even more credit to the other three members of Refurb as he does himself. Darnell Hillary plays drums, Ron Telfor (who was also involved with KMB) is on bass, and Kirk Abernathy rocks keyboards and guitar. “People just go ‘You’re so lucky,’ and I just let them be themselves,” McQuiston says of Refurb’s sweet skills. Although he has to be his own street team, the setup works for him. “On those nights when I’ve been online for like eight hours promoting a show, or sending out MySpace bulletins or flyering or press releasing or whatever, and I’m
like ‘[I wish] I had a regular band where the people help me out.’ And then I remember, these guys, they show up and they kill, and they’re so underpaid by me compared to the other people that they play for,” he says. “They play with me because they like my music, and they like what they do, and it works out pretty good.”

McQuiston has also been working with Sway’s producer, Mike McCarthy, in yet another project. “Don’t Miss You Like I Used To,” available on McQuiston’s personal MySpace, is a smoldering, “Sexy Sadie”-esque ballad boosted by McCarthy’s near-jazz flugelhorn melodies.

He’s not yet sure what will happen with Refurb – a soul project next, maybe? “I know I’m changing styles,” he says. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse…”

Wherever he goes, McQuiston seems to have it – whatever “it” is – figured out.

“When I was younger, I wanted a deal,” he says. “I wanted a record deal and a limo deal and an actress girlfriend deal, and now all I want is to make a living from my craft.”

Relevant

2009-05-25T13:12:00.004-04:00

As you probably don't know, I am slightly enamoured with David Mitchell, the less conventionally attractive (and much nerdier, neurotic, and black-humoured) half of the Mitchell & Webb comedy duo. He and Robert Webb (voted 88th sexiest man in the world, as I learned watching Would I Lie to You?) star in The Mitchell & Webb Situation, That Mitchell & Webb Look, and Peep Show, which are all awesome and worth watching right this very moment.

Despite the similarities and heavy borrowing between US and UK television, they've got one sort of programming over there that's no longer around over here: panel shows. These are part game show, part chat show -- basically, a game show with no prizes whose contestants are minor celebrities, TV personalities, and comedians. The entertainment lies in the competition and the contestants saying funny and ostensibly off-the-cuff stuff. Would I Lie to You? is one, along with my favorite, QI, which is hosted by Stephen Fry and would never take off in the US because of its emphasis on knowledge and wit. David is a regular on WILTY? and frequently appears on QI -- there are more, god knows. While most of the TV comedians here (Mencia, Larry the Cable Guy, Colin fucking Quinn) totally suck, many of those on these shows are actually funny and quick witted (plus they can swear): Jimmy Carr, Rob Brydon, etc.

ANYWAY. In my hunting around for more of Mitchell's work, I found this, even though it's sponsored by some eco-friendly Euro equivalent of Axe body spray or something:

Go watch all of them right now.

PBR never raped anybody

2009-03-13T13:47:00.001-04:00

So the American Psychological Association publishes a journal called Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, which recently published the results of a study on college women's drinking habits. Specifically, the study asked hetero female students how many drinks they thought their male peers preferred them to drink in social situations. Hetero male students were asked how many drinks they wanted female friends, potential sex partners, and dates to drink. (Prior studies have determined that college students in general overestimate how much their peers drink/find acceptable for others to drink, and that female students may be more susceptible to the influence of their peer groups' normative behaviors.)

The study found that women greatly overestimated how many drinks they thought their male peers wanted them to have. The journal article concludes that this discrepancy between what women think men want them to do and what men actually want can be exploited to get female students to drink less.

Here's what's fucked up: That alcohol abuse educators, however well-intentioned, still base efforts to curb binge drinking among women by invoking what men will think of them. I remember a pretty offensive anti-drinking ad campaign at Michigan that strongly implied that getting drunk would lead to women -- only women -- to (regrettable, of course) whorish behavior. If they're not invoking the spectre of sexual assault (which the APA article does in a section of statistics on women and drinking), they're warning you about stepping outside the bounds of male-defined femininity. Never mind trying to educate men on the consequences of binge drinking, and god forbid we recognize and address that what causes rape and sexual assault is the action of the rapist or attacker, period.

I can't judge the women in the study for the reasons they decide to drink, but it's really fucking depressing that this kind of thing still factors into the thinking of so many women in just about any area of life from clothes to careers to everyday behaviors like this.

Grrr. The super-short version of the study's findings is here. The 6-page peer-reviewed article is here.

2009-01-17T19:13:00.003-05:00

YAY Lionsgate has finally acquiesced to Mad Men creator dude Matthew Weiner's probably outlandish (and totally deserved) contract demands for TWO more seasons.

Let us celebrate:

Mad Men: No News, Not Good News

2009-01-13T20:15:00.003-05:00

God DAMN it, Matt Weiner, get it together!

How much money can you possibly want? Haven't you heard about this thing called THE ECONOMY and how we should all be happy that we have jobs at all?

I know there's gonna be a third season either way, but if anyone except Weiner takes the reins, I will always believe that really Betty Draper put her head in an oven sometime in early 1963.

Review: Max Tundra, Parallax Error Beheads You

2008-12-21T15:38:00.003-05:00

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."

2008-12-17T01:01:00.008-05:00

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

2008-12-13T03:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-08T16:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-05T12:55:00.001-05:00

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

My Origivation debut and such

2008-12-03T17:38:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-29T10:39:00.001-05:00

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

NEWSFLASH

2008-11-17T13:51:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-15T17:49:00.001-05:00

I AM LEANRING SO MUCH HERE

2008-10-05T00:11:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-21T22:20:00.007-04:00

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

2008-09-01T22:49:00.008-04:00

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?

2008-08-31T00:43:00.003-04:00

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

2008-08-27T21:32:00.005-04:00

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

2008-08-13T14:57:00.008-04:00

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

2008-08-11T21:03:00.007-04:00

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!

2008-08-11T13:21:00.001-04:00

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

2008-05-06T13:58:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-29T23:17:00.004-04:00

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

2008-04-07T15:19:00.004-04:00

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

2008-03-20T01:48:00.003-04:00

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

2008-02-08T00:19:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-23T21:33:00.000-05:00

Lekha made an Office-themed lolbunn!

(starring Catilla and Komissar)

2008-01-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-16T11:37:00.000-05:00

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!

2008-01-11T23:44:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

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).

Really, It's Absolutely Asinine

2007-12-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

In another one of its spurious litigations against file-sharers, the RIAA has shown just how extraordinary backwards it really is. Not that doubts existed before, but this shit is just too much.

From the Washington Post :

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

Baffling. This strategy was out of date when I was in middle school ten years ago -- hell, individuals making copies of copyrighted material like this has existed since effing cassette tapes.

I pay for all my music nowadays, but I'm definitely not above burning mix CDs for friends -- and I'm more scrupulous than most of the listeners I know. As if going after individual downloaders as a deterrent wasn't already an exercise in futility -- there's no way in hell this can possibly work. An attempt to restrict uploading onto personal computers without fine sharing -- something anyone with an mp3 player has to do -- has zero chance of effectively reducing file sharing. If people are in danger of being prosecuted for uploading music they've paid for, why not Soulseek that stuff for free?

The Washington Post article pretty much sums it up:

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," Beckerman says. "Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started."

Party in the TARDIS, sweetie dahling

2007-12-19T09:33:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Saunders -- that's right, motherfucking Edina from AbFab -- could be playing the Doctor in a one-off Doctor Who special sometime in the future.

I was kinda bummed when I heard that the adorable David Tennant would be moving on after Season 4, but this almost makes up for it.

So. Freaking. Cute. And Scottish.

The Daily Mail article mentions two actors supposedly being considered to play the next Doctor full time. They are:

Irish actor James Nesbitt.

I could totally live with that. As it were.

And Rhys Ifans, who...well, not so much. Although he used to be in Super Furry Animals, so.

UPDATE: David Tennant denies rumors that he'll leave after the next series. To celebrate, here's one more pic.

Fun fact

2007-12-13T18:43:00.001-05:00

What Bill Murray says to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation.

birthday card for my sister's 18th

2007-11-29T19:28:00.001-05:00

Thought-Purge: Caetano Veloso, 11/7

2007-11-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

So I saw Caetano Veloso in Chapel Hill last night. His performance was part of the Carolina Performing Arts series, the UNC version of UMS (for y'all Michiganders) except with (presumably) no sleeping outdoors. I've enjoyed the stuff they've brought to Memorial Auditorium so far, despite the deplorable lack of legroom in their seats.

I have to admit that while I cover any sequence of world-music-ish events for CVNC, by no means do I possess encyclopedic knowledge of the sounds of foreign lands. I have a cursory knowledge of West African and Indian music thanks to some exposure in school, and I can only hope my enthusiasm and curiosity will carry me through to some kind of non-hack insight into whatever I'm listening to. This results a lot of illegible-in-the-harsh-light-of-day scribbling about each piece, embarrassing phonetic interpretations of lyrics, hastily transcribed basslines that all end up looking like large-type braille.

And although I knew more about him than the likes of the griots, cimbalists, oud players I wrote up this year, I was totally unprepared for the sexy, weird, magnetic sexagenarian who's been called the Brazilian Bob Dylan. I guess that, from the fact that I had seen him headlining at the likes of Hill Auditorium (I think I bought tickets for his show one year at UM and couldn't go for some reason), looking all serious-like in the posters -- eyes downcast, face shown in profile, forehead against guitar neck -- he'd be, I dunno, boring.*

I could not have been more egregiously wrong.

To my credit, I didn't have a whole ton of notice before I signed up to review the gig (unlike my unsuccessful lobby to review a NC Symphony pops concert featuring Elvis Costello), and I even bought his most recent disc, Cê, which was released earlier this year. I only listened to it once before the show, and my impression was that it was a little toothless -- catchy enough for me to be able to pick out four or five songs from the disc he (and his band of hot young Brazilian rockers) played during the UNC set, but waaaay too easy on the ears. It deserves further analysis, but before the show, Cê sounded like an overprocessed reworking of the Cars' clean, catchy pop formula.

I was transfixed by the following during the show:

-Caetano looking unbearably hot, even from the back row, in contrasting denim and a beat-up polo that came off as more slacker/dorm room floor than lame old dude. The voice, which delivers a rippling stream of delectable Portuguese most of the time, doesn't hurt. Add to this bright-orange shoelaces and he was seriously adorable.

-His, um, quirkiness? Which manifested itself in a variety of ways, like his goofy-as-hell, coltish jogging/dancing across the stage during particularly rockin' instrumental interludes; baring his midriff during one of these treks to the edge of the stage (to which the small but vocal home crowd reacted quite positively); the RIDICULOUS overuse of strobe effects/blinding lights of the caliber usually confined to gigantic sports stadiums.

-The guitar he used during full-band numbers, which was some kind of curious wireless git-outline with no strings and a truncated neck (since it needed no pegs). It was brought out and taken back (so his arms were free to gesticulate spastically, of course) after every other tune.

I might sound put off, but I really think I just lack context; this thought-purge is an attempt to get my colloquial thoughts and first impressions out of my system before I write my review tomorrow. I'll follow up with thoughts on his larger body of work, but for now, I leave you with the translated lyrics to "Homem" ("Man") from Cê.

I'm not jealous of maternity
or of lactation
I'm not jealous of adiposity
or of menstruation

I only envy longevity
and multiple orgasms
and multiple orgasms

Damn, I wish I knew Portuguese.

*This atrocious sentence originally had no ending. I was kinda drunk.

Classical Review Roundup: Computers and Cambodia

2007-10-22T22:09:00.000-04:00

A ferrealz update coming soon -- I've been busy shilling coffee for interminable hours each day and traversing the mid-Atlantic coast to see rock shows (thoughts on Spoon, Philly's Electric Factory, and the nature of the concertgoing experience coming soon).

My 60x60 review (the project is so worth checking out, whether you're into listening, composing, or coding)

and my review of the Chapel Hill performance of Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute.

Jugalbandi Fever; In Way Over My Head Re: Jazz

2007-10-09T01:21:00.000-04:00

Two more CVNC reviews up after last weekend's triple crown of concerts.

My attempt to evaluate and describe a really cool performance of ragas by santoor master Tarun Bhattacharya and Hindustani vocalist Anurag Harsh (and there was a harmonium! Squee!).

And making my jazz-related ignorance work for me at a genre-nebulous performance by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones at Duke University's Following Monk festival.

Look for reviews of the 60x60 2007 International Mix's NC State debut and totally freaking sweet Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Classical Review: Dennis AsKew, UNC-Greensboro, 9/16

2007-09-24T01:30:00.001-04:00

My review of UNCG tuba/euph prof Dennis AsKew's latest recital is up at CVNC. Take a look, won't you?

This song won't change your life

2007-09-23T00:29:00.000-04:00

I hate lots and lots of things. An average day is peppered with quick, passionate bursts of loathing, disgust, and frustration for myriad aspects of the world around me: 24-hour news, people who don't use their turn signals, a sequence of workplace frustrations baffling in their simultaneous mundanity and magnitude, Michelle Norris' vocal delivery, women's magazines, the Lexus-SUV-driving aging yuppies who have encroached on my tacky but otherwise decent suburban neighborhood. And those are just everyday ire-raisers; my ever-pissy nature gets a lot worse when I chance upon stuff like this or this or this.

There are greater and more pressing problems with the world than the existence of Nancy Grace, Target's continued foisting of smocked garments upon the nation's young female demographic, or the insistence of my area college radio station on playing naught but snooze-inducing electronica after 8 p.m. four nights a week. But the really bad stuff can feel so overwhelming that reacting with more than an exhausted sigh would probably reduce me to tears. This way, I can exorcise my frustration with the immutably shitty state of most of the world by screaming at the grotesquerie of Pat Buchanan when he pops up on MSNBC, or bitch about the schlubby, middlebrow music of Billy Joel.

The flipside of this aspect of my eerily Gemini-esque nature occurs when I encounter a book, news item, previously unheard band, much-lauded but never-seen TV show, or, you know, actual person that's incontrovertibly awesome/genuine/entertaining/life-affirming/giggle-inducing: I fall hard.

I'll curl up on the futon for hours with my cat and three seasons of the new Doctor Who, or fuck up my sleep schedule because I was mainlining The Wire until dawn (I was particularly susceptible to this during the stevedore-tastic second season). I'll spend all of the driving I do for two weeks practically getting high off the mind-blowing sonic and ideological scope of the new M.I.A. album. I'll commence online stalking of objay d'crush and suddenly deem it necessary to be made up to maximum hotness whenever I venture outside on the off-chance of an encounter.

Next comes the proselytizing (a&e-wise, anyway; I tend to keep mum when I'm enamored with a particular person). Since I've clearly just seen or heard the light, I commence assaulting everybody I know with phrases like "Oh. Mah. Gahd. I canNOT stop listening to this album, you HAVE to hear it," or "Okay, so there's this thing called a TARDIS? And also David Tennant is really adorable? And, like, you don't have to give a crap about sci-fi to get into it?" whenever I've had a few beers.

Strong opinions are generally a good thing when you want to make a living as a critic, but even among amateur arbiters of taste, there's a stigma of mild uncoolness associated with getting a little gushy about your latest media crush in conversation. I risk coming off sounding like Comic Book Guy (er, more than I already do) or Natalie Portman's insufferably quirky epileptic from Garden State (thanks for ruining the Shins for anyone with discriminatin' tastes, Zach Braff), but spreading the word a little when you've found something that cheers or finspires of ascinates you just makes sense. Occasionally effusive friends and associates have turned me on to such rays of sunshine as the Pixies (I have lovely slo-mo memories of hearing "Debaser" for the first time the day after I returned home from Governor's School), Lynda Barry's Cruddy, Television Without Pity, early Woody Allen films, the Constantines, the post-glam work of David Bowie, dada, and countless others. If anyone digs a band or book or whatever that I recommend anywhere near as much as I've come to adore some recommended gems, increasing my potential to annoy too-cool types with vocalized enthusiasm has been so freaking worth it.

I'm all for those transcendent and private moments when it's just you and whatever's coming out of your headphones. But it's only natural, in the afterglow of finding a new fave, to try to spread the good vibrations around. This song won't change your life, but if you're like me, it might make you feel a little better about the way things are.

The Dude Culture of Music Criticism

2007-09-19T23:50:00.000-04:00

Pandagon's Amanda posted a few pointed truths about women in and around the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of music criticism (not to mention music itself) and the Insufferable Music Snobbery that has a lock on music and, increasingly, pop culture in general. Her post was spurred by an intrepid Gawker intern's recent analysis of Pitchfork articles affirmed that fewer women write their douchey reviews than do guys named Mark.

I don't have much to say about this in the short time I've got to post--gotta finish writing a review of a tuba recital I saw this weekend (it's not Austin City Limits, but it'll do). Except: The more I think about this, even though I've known it was true and lived it for years, the more I'm determined to put some of the ideas I've had for this blog (and my fledgling career) into action.

So I'm going to rework this blahg to serve its intended purpose--giving me someplace to write about music while I'm unattached to any pop-review-publishing publications.

this is just to say

2007-09-04T01:45:00.000-04:00

http://www.doctorwhoscarf.com/

2007-08-11T03:27:00.000-04:00

Just a morbidly late-night post about something awesome. I'm not as into The Believer as I used to be -- it feels like their fascinating articles about topics you didn't know were fascinating credit has begun to run out in the face of boring reviews of contemporary novels by up-and-comers and a disappointingly dull CD companion to their recent music issue -- but I've spent my last three hours of insomnia catching up on the aforementioned music issue and their August issue. In it, okay but kinda dad-lit author Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, the erstwhile Baltimore reporter and current co-creator of HBO's supposedly unparalleled The Wire.

I've been putting off Netflixing The Wire, simply because the likes of grimy, cuss-happy Deadwood and blinky, shiny, sexy Doctor Who have been occupying my TV-on-DVD devotion of late. An excerpt from the interview is here; the whole thing is really enlightening and inspiring, that there are some people working in Hollywood's idiom who are actually fucking real and principled about what they do.

This is the part of the interview that made me jump to queue up the show and trumpet a little of its creator's awesomeness:

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Ha! So maybe David Simon's a little more David Milch than I thought. This is also, by the way, my intellectual objection to spending my life churning out articles about fucking dog parks or property taxes or "Midtown Raleigh" at the likes of The News & Observer. (ETA: Although the seeming drudgery of straight news reporting doesn't appeal to me, their arts/entertainment/lifestyles coverage is pretty damn good for the Triangle's sadly undersized cultural scene.)

Thoughts on The Wire forthcoming. It's gonna be intense.

David Berman, Rebel Jew

2007-08-02T02:02:00.000-04:00

An hourlong documentary about Silver Jews hombre David Berman's relationship to Judaism was screened at film festivals this spring and is coming to DVD; for some reason Blogger won't let me link when I'm using Safari, so info at http://www.silverjewmovie.com. Understandably, I'm a little wary about big religious epiphanies (see, "Dylan, Bob in Popemode") in my musical idols. But hey, if it keeps him off the smack, you know? Also news of a new SJ album being recorded AS I TYPE. Can't remember where I read all this crap or I'd link.

Okay, this isn't where I read it, but Pitchfork (jayzus) posted a bunch of SJ-related info a few weeks back:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/44039-silver-jews-work-on-new-lp-berman-seeks-intern

Also, DCB was apparently looking for an INTERN???? Good god. The mind reels. Sour grapes: it would probably suck, and I couldn't do it anyway, since one of the requirements is "musician/writer types need not apply." But he was looking for an arts admin person, which I kinda sorta wanna be one day, so...Maybe I'll look into this. Hell, just this afternoon I was thinking of going to the ANTM 10 casting call at NC State. Perverse social experiment, anyone?

Slightly related: Janet Weiss is now a Jick!

Thriftstravaganza No. 2

2007-07-29T19:05:00.000-04:00

I haven't been able to do this for a while because I just wasn't finding any good stuff--and not for lack of trying, 'kay? This collection of random stuff is culled from multiple trips to three different Raleigh thrifts over the past coupla weeks.

Item: Awesomely patterned ruffle-collar blouse
Cost: $4.99 + tax
Location: American Way, Raleigh

Even though this doesn't button over my boobs (like 99.9% of shirts, dammit) I bought it anyway because I so loved the colors and the jellybeans-and-paperclips pattern. Any of my more reasonably-proportioned pals are welcome to it.

Item: Fat plastic white hoop earrings
Cost: $1.99 + tax
Location: American Way, Raleigh

As a rule, I don't usually pay more than a dollar for a used hunk of cheap plastic, but I really liked the shape of these earrings. I tend to be picky about wacky old earrings, eschewing the Jackie Collins-esque hunks of primary-colored gold-rimmed metal that so many obnoxious stick-necked chicks can pull off okay, so I'm willing to splurge a little when I find some I deem acceptable.

Item: Royal purple negligible negligee
Cost: $4.99 - 25% = $3.75 + tax
Location: Cause for Paws on S. Saunders St., Raleigh

I bought this as what I thought was some kind of hilariously businesslike piece of sleepwear that I'd tool around the house in reading romance novels and eating bonbons and swooning over daybeds in. When I tried it on at home, my mom thought it was meant to be worn outside. It's got goddamn sheer pinstripes, but a slip or two underneath would fix that. Let's examine the evidence, shall we?

Businesslike pinstripe pattern. Score one for outside wear. Ditto the cuff-like buttons at the end of the sleeves. These clues notwithstanding, I must point to three features of this garment that condemn it to indoor use only: Its stringy, satiny "belt," brothel-chic collar ruffle, and scandalous wrap neckline. Did I also mention it's see-through?

Verdict: Power garment for the mistress of a lushly-appointed whorehouse with an antique gimmick. And even then, you're not gonna be going outside all that much.

Item: John Lee Hooker, Mississippi River Delta Blues
Cost: $2.98 - 50% = $1.49 + tax
Location: Tryon Hills Thrift Store, Raleigh

Only like eight tracks on this one, and at least two of them are pretty misogynistic. I mostly just jumped at the chance to buy a disc by a half-decent artist from a thrift store.

Item: Faux sun print framed fabric panel
Cost: $4.99 + tax
Location: Cause for Paws on Crabtree Blvd., Raleigh

This one was found under a flukey stroke of luck. I knocked off a bit early from temping, simply because I COULD NOT copy and paste one more column into another column in Excel without going insane and blinding myself with a staple remover, and checked out The Neighbourstore (fancy Euro spelling theirs), a church-run thrift in the Crabtree Thrift Alley that's sometimes good for hilarious old-man clothes. Nothing of interest there, but I couldn't help popping into Cause for Paws. I hit their furniture room first and found this fetching cotton print.

No price on the frame, so I got it for cheap. The fabric is just flimsy cotton, but I dig the nautical theme. I haven't decided where to hang it yet.

I think I might try to venture out to Garner and Durham some this week if I have time. Seriously, where's all the good crap?

I still like John Hodgman way more than that kid from Die Hard 4

2007-07-26T00:47:00.000-04:00

I am now officially a Mac owner. Yes, I feel like a major fucking snob. And yes, it is awesome.

Onion Fake Columnist Breaking News!

2007-07-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

Oh. Mygod.

The worlds of Smoove B and Jim Anchower have collided!

This has cheered me up more than anything else this week 'cept for the heady anticipation for the arrival of Hugh Laurie's novel to my mailbox and Freaks and Geeks iron-ons.

Now: Back to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and fixing this DAMN article.

2007-07-12T03:15:00.000-04:00

A new poem by David Berman, via Jeff Johnson.

Late-night bitterness

2007-07-10T00:46:00.000-04:00

I'm about ready to puke with cold dread after stumbling across this book review on Salon. The book, Daniel Brooks' Trapped, bitterly stares down yet another way in which the 21st century's first wave of twenty- and thirtysomethings are being royally screwed out of another intangible privilege their middle-class parents had. The opportunity to pursue creative careers, work for the public good, or devote time and energy to political activism is trumped in so many situations by "selling out" merely to make ends meet.

The book looks mostly at Ivy grads' having to, say, take a corporate gig after trying to make it as a journalist or at a nonprofit in order to be able to afford a metro DC-area home -- boo effing hoo, right? What's more compelling, at least based on the review, is Brooks' detailing of how post-'60s conservative backlash effected ridiculous tuitions at historically cheap or free public Ivies, drove up costs at genuine Ivies astronomically, and boosted the ranks of millionaires and billionaires with tax cuts for those already reeking with wealth. According to Brooks, forty years ago, teachers, journalists, and social justice types were able to send their kids to prestigious universities without difficulty, live off of the fee for a single article for a month, or raise hell marching on Washington. Their contemporary analogues--that is, my friends and me and our ilk--are barely scraping by with nothing to show for it but exhaustion from overwork, guilt and self-loathing for making the appalling decision to choose to survive within the system than to starve outside it, and that ready-to-vomit feeling when we contemplate where we went wrong with our good grades and supportive parents and the notion, obviously idiotic now, that we could become whatever we wanted when we grew up.

The end of the review points out two groups at even worse disadvantage, veterans and illegal immigrants, who run risks far more dire (cessation of government benefits and firing or deportation) for giving the government well-deserved shit about the policies that affect them. I know I'm way more fortunate than some people and could be doing a lot more than I have been. I should be more optimistic, more defiant, but I already know that the fields I want to work in (creative journalism, music academia, arts administration) are going to be hell to break into, let alone live off of even in the childless, thrift-store-furnished future I see for myself. And some wonk Yalie adding to the dishearteningly long list of books telling me how utterly fucked I am financially and career-wise doesn't necessarily make it so. It's just such a letdown that after slogging through the muck of four years at Michigan, these are the prospects that lay before me and my fellow would-be creative warriors. Best? Maybe. Leaders? Fat fucking chance.

I can't help thinking, what a fucking lovely ideological cap to the day I applied for my first credit card -- in order to buy the computer I'm hoping to be able to use in conjunction with writing articles and designing programs.

Thriftstravaganza No. 1

2007-07-04T02:06:00.000-04:00

Location: Cause for Paws on Crabtree Blvd., Raleigh

Total cost: about $7.50

Item: Mini Lucite chest of drawers
Cost: $0.59

So far, it's adorable. Jewelry? Stamps? Change? Hamster dresser? The possibilities are without end.

Item: Wodehouse Playhouse Volume 1 DVD
Cost: $3.98 ($1.99 per disc)

Watched a few episodes. Hoped it might be on par with Jeeves and Wooster, but so far, not that great. Thought I might see other Britcom luminaries pop up, but it appears as though the two pictured on the cover portray the principles in each story (Mulliner and Ukridge are covered) and I've yet to recognize any of the bit players. Not as funny as the books, nor as Jeeves and Wooster, but such expectations are unrealistic. By the by: Wooster himself, my displaced-by-time-and-space alternate reality soulmate Hugh Laurie, has a cute little essay on his relationship with Wodehouse's work and what it was like to turn stories that rely so heavily on wordplay into a (great) TV series.

Item: Bag o' yarn

Cost: $1.99

Eight 50-gram skeins of sport weight green-yellow (or is it yellow-green) Sabrina acrylic yarn. Too pretty to pass up. The Crabtree Cause for Paws always has great bags of enough yarn for a large project (like a sweater or afghan), but I have reason to suspect that the people who originally aspired to completing such projects are now dead--that these are the product of an estate sale or perennially raiding a nursing home closet.

Item: Sirdar Relaxed Knit pattern
Cost: $0.50

I dig the detailing on the front of this sweater. Cardigans are nice and all, but pullovers are generally a touch classier. We're about to get tacky as hell in a second, though.

Item: Columbia-Minerva afghan patterns, MCMLXX
Cost: $0.50

This blindingly awesome booklet contains patterns for four of the most hideous patterns I've ever beheld. Hilarity: The tableaux pictured above (front and back cover) are captioned with the Dickinsonian phrase "In the mood of yesterday, today and tomorrow-- / in colors to blend with a mood-- / to accent a quiet scene--". The "quiet scene" that would match this kaleidoscopic vomit of colors is "drug-fueled macrame bee-turned-orgy." Feel free to use that as a retro-porn premise. I'm on board for set design--I'm SO making the Granny Stars one (the green one on the pink cover).

Let me know if you'd like pdfs of either pattern. I know you're all dying to turn your sofa into a veritable time machine with one of these babies.