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

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

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

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!

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.

A new poem by David Berman, via Jeff Johnson.

Late-night bitterness

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.