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David Foster Wallace–[Week 10] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Adventure, Big Books, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Eschaton, Esquire, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gangsters, Goonies, Infinite Summer, Marriage Trouble, Meta, Oddities, Political Humor, Postmoderism, Religion, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, Toilets, Violence, Yuck! on August 29, 2009| 8 Comments »

dfw-title-pageSOUNDTRACK: GARBAGE-Garbage (1995).

garbageI was thinking about how IJ reminds me so specifically of a place and time (I instantly think of the apartment I was in when I started reading it).  And there are also some discs that I was crazy about at the time too.

I very distinctly remember when the first Garbage single “Vow” came out.  I remember seeing it in Newbury Comics [the absolute best record store chain, ever] on Newbury Street and it was plastered with stickers about how it was the new band from Butch Vig and he had produced every popular alt record in the 90s and blah blah blah.  But so I basically got Vigged out and didn’t bother listening to it.

Strangely, I don’t remember what changed my mind about them.  I assume I heard the first proper single “Queer” and instantly fell in love with the band.

It makes me laugh that the band was initially marketed as Butch Vig and two other high-profile producers got together and made this great music and they found this unknown Scottish woman to from the band.  And then, shortly there after the band was Shirley Manson and three unknown guys.  Heh, prettiness wins out.

Garbage was at a record store in downtown Boston that year.  I went down, but went to the wrong location (Doh!) and by the time I got to the right one, the line was too long and I was told I wouldn’t get in.  Alas. (Hey, I’ve still got my autographed poster from The Verve before they released “Bittersweet Symphony.”)

This album was in very heavy rotation at my house at the time.  I must’ve listened to it 1000 times.  But this is the first time I’ve listened to it in awhile.  It’s hard for me to be critical of it since I know every nook and cranny.  But listening to it today I think it is still pretty damned awesome.  The vocals are tight and creepy/sexy.  The songs are all solid rocking/catchy.  And the production is superb (obviously).

Not a bum track on the whole release, even 14 years later.

[READ: Week of August 24] Infinite Jest (to page 729)

There has been much discussion here on the forums and here between me and Infinite Tasks about the IJ timeline.  There is the pretty glaring observation that M.P. tried to kill herself  on November 7th, was in the hospital for five days and then appears in Ennet House on November 8th.

In last week’s reading, the WYYY engineer is musing about M.P.  He was told that she was hospitalized, and I considered that maybe that five day gap came BEFORE she tried to kill herself (for otherwise, how to explain that Mario missed her radio show sometime in late October?).  And yet that doesn’t seem to jibe with the fact that she’s apparently in there for an overdose.

A new timeline issue may be cropping up in this week’s reading.  A green Nunhagen-sponsored car appeared during the Escahton match.  We learn this week that Steeply is driving a Nunhagen-sponsored car.  But she arrives during the Hal/Stice tennis match, three days after Eschaton.  Has she been trying to get into E.T.A. for three days?  But, also, note that she left AZ, and Orin met the Swiss hand model (and Orin is having his second go -round with her during the match), early on the 11th (I think).  So I don’t think Helen could have been at ETA during the Escahton match.  Is there a second gunman green car?

This timeline stuff bugs me mostly because I feel like IJ is really fantastic.  And I assume that DFW spent a lot of time on it. (Certainly more time that I am spending reading it!). I imagine him with charts and graphs and circles and arrows explaining where everyone is at any given time.  Now, there are a number of conceivable explanations for the mistaken timeline:

  • Most of the stories about Madame Psychosis are second-hand, so they could be wrong.
  • There is ample evidence that people in this book are crazy and therefore not to be trusted.
  • And of course, there’s always the possibility that DFW just screwed up.

If this final option is the reality, I won’t be devastated.  I don’t think the book hinges on a few minor timeliness issues.  But I will be a bit surprised.  DFW seems like such a meticulous guy (I mean, geez, look at the detail he puts into his scenes) so it would be really surprising if he got timeline issues messed up.

There is always the possibility that these issues will be cleared up, after all, he ties up so many loose threads, but I suspect they won’t.  And that’s okay.  I won’t turn into Steeply’s father poring over every page and keeping a journal in little notebooks (that’s what the blog is for!)

ijdot1It is incredible serendipity that I did the JOI filmography during this week as this week’s readings actually count on knowing a bit about it.  And since I had just reevaluated it, I was aware of a thing or two during Hal’s viewing scene.

ijdot1Week 10 starts off seeming like a lot of nothing is happening.  There’s a few post-Event scenarios.  Until we get to November 14th, and a whole lot goes on.  A whole lot! (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 8] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Big Books, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Gangsters, Garbage, Infinite Summer, Marriage Trouble, Meta, Paul F. Tompkins, Prison, Set at School, Sonic Youth, Sports, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, The Sound of Young America, Violence, Yuck! on August 15, 2009| 5 Comments »

ij8SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star (1994).

ejstns“Bull in the Heather” is one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs.  I love everything about it (even if I haven’t got a clue what it’s about): the simple opening, the switch to harmonics, and, my favorite part, the drum break that leads to the chorus (who ever heard of getting a drum break stuck in your head?).

There’s a lot to speak for this disc even though it seems to be overlooked (as the empty spot between Dirty and Washing Machine).  Take the absolute variety of textures, and the almost surreal mixtures of styles within (short) songs (like “Bone” which opens with super fast paced drumming and howls from Kim and then breaks into a very mellow (and catchy) chorus).

For sheer variety: the disc opens with an acoustic guitar strummer by Thurston (“Winner’s Blues”), and then, after the single “Bull in the Heather,” there’s the 2 minute noise-fest “Starfield Road.”  This is followed by the cool and catchy “Skink,” which is like Kim’s version of the slinky and cool “Self-Obsessed and Sexxee.”  This is definitely Kim’s disc, she sings about half of the songs, and shows a great variety of styles here.

“Androgynous Mind” is one of those weird songs that has a wonderfully catchy vocal line but where the music is pretty much abstract nonsense.  And speaking of catchy, this disc continues with SY’s notion of sing along choruses (even if what you’re singing doesn’t make a lot of sense (“Screaming Skull” fits that bill perfectly)).  And then “Quest for the Cup” does a 90 degree turn after the intro.  All of these shifts and changes occur in less than half an hour.

The last 20 minutes or so settle the disc down somewhat (except for the brief “In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader,” but the 7 minute closer “Sweet Shine” ends the disc on a mellow note.

This is also the last SY disc produced by Butch Vig.  Vig’s production is often described as clean. But Vig doesn’t clean up the noise that SY makes, he just makes it, I guess, crisper would be a better word.  Compare the way that Garbage’s “Vow” opens with a big grand noise and then stops dead after a few seconds.  Vig seems to be a master of controlling noise to make it stand out more.  And in that respect, his technique really shines through on this disc…it feels almost mechanical in its precision.

From this point forward, Sonic Youth would break away from this style of music into a freer and looser almost jazz feel, so even if the album title doesn’t make literal sense, it describes the disc quite well.

[READ: Week of August 10] Infinite Jest (to page 589)

Last week, showed Gately’s car speeding through Cambridge.  He runs over a discarded cup which we follow as it sails down the street and hits the Antitoi’s door.  It was very cinematic.  Discussions abound about whether IJ could (or should) be filmed.  I’m not going to add to that discussion but I did want to mention what I see as the filmic way the book written.

In many movies you are introduced almost casually to many of the protagonists, seeing them in their most typical place of employment or hang-out spot or some such thing.  And in films, it doesn’t seem that weird to get a two minute or even 30 second establishing shot of character A before jump cutting to character B.

And that’s how IJ starts, with all of these jump cuts, establishing shots, of characters.  Clenette’s scene is hard to read, but if you saw it in a movie, you’d say, okay that’s her character.  And, for the most part you would expect her to reappear later in the movie. I’m not sure what anyone expects to happen in IJ, so who knows what we think the Clenette scene is about, but realistically, the character has to come back, even if what she said didn’t make any sense at the time.

And as movies go, so does the book, cutting back and forth between scenes building the stories along as they inevitably intertwine.

It’s also not unheard of to have what seems like it may be the end of the chronological story appear first (we haven’t seen any return to the Year of Glad yet).

And so, yes I will say a thing about the filmic possibilities of  this book.  Sure the book is long, and yet so much of the book is description, stuff that in a movie can be done with an establishing shot, even a slow one.  The whole Joelle/overdose scene which covers so many pages could be filmed rather quickly.  So could Eschaton. The question of course is how much would be lost in translation.  And that I can’t answer (although I expect quite a lot).

Be a hell of a film, though.

ijdot

So, in a few places, especially on Infinite Tasks, people have been mentioning some crucial information that happens on Page 17.   I felt bad that I didn’t recall anything that happened on page 17, so I went back and re-read this section (and how weird is it to re-read parts of a book that you haven’t even finished yet?)

And so Page 17 feels like a major spoiler!  It feels like so much is given away!  It feels like such an essential part of the story that it’s amazing how it’s sort of tossed off in a hallucinatory sequence.

I think of John N.R. Wayne who would have won this year’s WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father’s head.  There’s very little doubt that Wayne would have won.

Wow.  So much packed into those two sentences!  Holy cow.

And, the end of that sequence has an orderly ask Hal, “so, yo, then man what’s your story?”

Is that the device that sets up that Hal is telling this whole book?  I just blew my mind.

ijdot

This week’s reading begins with the aftermath of The Escahton debacle.  Or the precursor to the aftermath, anyway.  And it features the color blue. A lot.

It also gets to a question I’ve been puzzling about for sometime: why isclouds every IJ book jacket/promotional material designed in a sort of cloud motif. Well, in the section we lean that Uncle Charles’ office is decked out in an unsettling cloud wallpaper (which is coincidentally the same wallpaper as Hal’s dentist).  It has only appeared briefly so far, so it seems odd that it would take on such an iconic feel.  But we’ll see if it comes back.

(more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 6] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Andrew Womack, Big Books, Boredom, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Digression, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Holidays, Humiliation, Infinite Summer, Meta, NASA, Neurotics, Politicians, Postmoderism, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, TiVo, Violence, Yuck! on July 29, 2009| 5 Comments »

ij4SOUNDTRACK: The Best Albums of the Year

morningAndrew Womack, fellow Infinite Summer player and founder of The Morning News has begun retroactively listing The Best Albums of the Year for each year since 1978.  This is a project that I have often thought about doing myself, yet never had the time to sift through all the music I have.

I was delighted to see how much I not only knew, but also agreed with his decisions.  Although if I’m honest, my list would have more metal and less new wave in it.  But the overall tenor is pretty on par with my feelings.

But, imagine my surprise to see that on the 2004 list I barely knew any of the discs at all!  I wonder what happened to make us diverge so much in that one year.

Anyhow, it’s a noble, well, not noble so much as worthwhile pursuit.  One that we can all enjoy.

[READ: Week of July 27] Infinite Jest (to page 434)

In the August 2009 issue of Wired, they have a little scroll across the bottom of one of the pages that lists  “Word Counts”.  King James Bible: 784,806; Where the Wild Things Are: 338; Infinite Jest: 483,994.  So, at almost halfway done we’ve read over 240,000 words!

Also, I haven’t sufficiently acknowledged some of my fellow Infinite Summer bloggers.  So I want to send a shout out to Infinite Tasks.  I especially enjoyed this post which takes a decidedly more philosophical approach than I did about a section that I found really enjoyable.  And Chris Forster, who gives a lovely discussion about Eschaton.  And I would be remiss if I did not mention Infinite Zombies, just because he may have written a letter here but his posts always get sucked up into spam, so I’ll never know.  (And because the posts are really thoughtful and worth reading too).

But enough back patting, onto the book.

solIt was a fun place to pick up reading.  At the small paragraph where I left off, we learn that the Statue of Liberty’s book now advertises that year’s Subsidizer.

On a couple of occasions there is the suggestion that the year 2000 is the first year of Subsidization, as they talk about things being different in the new millennium.  Although Matthew Baldwin’s argument here is very convincing which would make Subsidization begin in 2002.

And then we return to A.A.

(more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 4] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Big Books, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Colin Meloy, Consumerism, David Foster Wallace, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, Ivan Goncharov, Postmoderism, Set at School, Sonic Youth, Sports, Suicide, Technology, Threats on July 18, 2009| 4 Comments »

ij autographedSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Daydream Nation (1988).

daydreamNormally I like to review a band’s albums chronologically.  But because in this post [which I just stumbled upon] on Infinite Summer, Colin Meloy mentions that he bought a copy of Daydream Nation at the same time as Infinite Jest, and since I was talking about Sonic Youth anyway, well, it seemed like an easy fit.

So Daydream Nation is generally rated as Sonic Youth’s best album, with most people calling it a masterpiece.  I actually came to Daydream Nation pretty late in my SY appreciation.  I had gotten EVOL but really got into them with Goo. And as I worked my way around their catalog, Daydream Nation was always the big double album that I put off getting.  All of this is to say that I’ve never loved Daydream Nation as much as every one else.

But I’ve been listening to it a lot recently, and my opinion is definitely changing about it.  The thing that always got me about Daydream Nation was that the first two songs are fantastic, in fact, “Teen Age Riot” has always been one of my favorite songs.  And even “The Sprawl,” Kim’s cool, nasty song is great.  But somewhere in the middle of the noisy instrumental section of that song, I always sort of faded out, and couldn’t really get into it.

What I have since learned is that if you actually focus on the disc, you know, not just as an interesting listen but as something to really get into, it’s quite intense.  Like “Providence,” a song that I never really listened to before is a very interesting piece.  (I also didn’t know that that Mike Watt was the voice on the answering machine).  And “‘Cross the Breeze” is a noisy ramshackle song that when you really listen is pretty darn amazing.

One of the things that I didn’t really like about the disc was that the songs themselves were very pretty, and the noisy instrumental sections of the songs always felt sort of tacked on, like they need to keep the songs from being commercially viable. It was never like an organic fit.

Indeed, the main sections of many of the songs are commercial and catchy.  The general image of Sonic Youth is of guys with screwdrivers wrenched into their broken guitars, strangling every last note out of them.   And yet, the opening guitar riff of “Teen Age Riot” is beautiful. And, of Course, “Eric’s Trip” is supremely catchy.  Once again, the guitar riff for “Total Trash” could easily be a pop song were it not 7 minutes long.  And the opening of “Candle” is quite pretty as well.  “Kissability” is another song that could be a pop single, if it were ever so slightly less twisted (of course it wouldn’t be as good, but that’s not the point).

But with each subsequent listen, I’m appreciating more and more of it.   I still feel that Goo has a more organic use of noise, with the crazy feedback sections seeming to stem from the songs quite naturally.  Nevertheless, since Daydream Nation came first, it certainly gets  kudos for originating the style.

[READ: Week of July 13] Infinite Jest (to page 283)

That’s not my copy of IJ autographed, it comes from this flickr stream.  I do have an autographed copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing… which has a similar smiley face.

I feel the need to apologize to Infinite Summer readers in that somehow I missed the page with the Spoiler Line Pages listed.  Okay, this is ingenuous, I didn’t read all of the website, and so I just never saw that listing.  I was more or less going on a 75 +/- page count, so I may not have been right on time with the Spoiler Line.  Now that I actually printed a copy, I’ll be keeping to a more proper schedule.  So, apologies if I messed up anyone’s read!

Also, I feel I have erred egregiously in my first three posts by referring to the Endnotes as Footnotes, which they clearly are not.  And I will be going back and amending that in the previous posts.  I also get  a swift rap on the knuckles for such a grade-school error.

I recently saw on InfiniteTasks, this hilarious link to a DFW/NASCAR article on the Onion, and while it is of course, very funny, I found this Onion link to be far more Infinite Summer appropriate:

Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter at Page 20

The whole piece is very funny, and there’s an “excerpted photo” which I’m attaching at the bottom of this post.

But on to the book.

This week’s reading was much more focused in terms of who we’re talking about: lengthy sections regarding select groups, rather than a few pages of random or unknown characters. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 3] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Allstonians, Big Books, Books about writers, Boredom, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, James Joyce, Morrissey, Pearl Jam, Postmoderism, Prison, R.E.M., Racism, Religion, Russell Brand, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, The Smiths, WYYY 109 FM: The Largest Whole Prime on the FM Band on July 10, 2009| 2 Comments »

jesySOUNDTRACK: MORRISSEY-Years of Refusal (2009).

years ofI’ve been a fan of The Smiths for years.  And I think that Morrissey’s debut, Viva Hate, is on par with much of the Smiths’ catalogue.  Over the years his output has been mixed, but with Years of Refusal he comes fighting back with a really solid disc.  The disc is so good that if one had no idea of who he was, one could easily get into it with no preconceived notions of Morrissey, The Smiths or any of that glorious past.

From the start, the disc rocks out. That’s right, Morrissey totally rocks, with a real attitude.  “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” in addition to being quite funny, has one of Moz’s most loudly sung choruses in like, forever.  The martial beat of “Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed” showcases Moz’s “political” songwriting without ever losing its catchiness.  “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris” is a pretty classic Morrissey song, complete with a simple picking guitar riff.

“All You Need Is Me” has some great squeaky guitars and recalls Morrissey’s own “I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me”), while “When Last I Spoke to Carol” has a Mexican feel, which is different for him.  And “That’s How People Grow Up,” the single, has one of those classic Morrissey lines in which he subverts expectations with a left-field word choice: “So yes there are things worse in life than never being someone’s sweetie.”

The end of the album is full of longer songs which tends to skew the rollicking feel of the disc. (In the first 8 songs only 3 are over 3 minutes while the last 4 songs are each over 4 minutes).  Nevertheless, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore” is a wonderfully caustic song and the album closer, “I’m OK By Myself” is just fantastic, and I find myself singing “I don’t need you, or your morality” because they way he sings it gets stuck in my head for days.

There’s also a bonus disc which includes an interview with Russel Brand which is very funny indeed.

Welcome back Morrissey.  Well done, sir.

[READ: Week of July 6, 2009]  Infinite Jest (to page 227).

While looking for this cover of Infinite Jest (the one that I most associate with the book even though I never owned a copy with this cover), I noticed that Powell’s Books is selling a first edition hardcover copy of IJ for $450. The copy that I am currently reading is also a first edition hardcover.  If anyone wants to send me like $400 for it, just let me know!

On my Week Two post, I had a comment that criticized me for giving out spoilers.  While I disagree, I will preface this and future posts by saying that I will certainly be discussing what has happened in the week’s read (including footnotes endnotes and future footnotes endnotes if they are referred to in current footnotes endnotes), I will not intentionally reveal any spoilers.

On to Week 3 of Infinite Summer.  And at this point I not only feel good about the book, I feel somewhat refreshed. This whole week’s worth of reading has been fairly easy and often very funny.  We’re past the initial shock that you’re running a marathon, and are into that 3rd or 4th mile where you just start to feel good and enjoy the scenery.  I also hate to admit this, but I really want to peek ahead into the next week’s reading.  But no, I am going to pace myself!

I also have a question for faithful readers who are actually trying to map the location of the book.  I lived in Brighton, MA, very close to Boston College as well as in a location nearer to Allston, MA.  I have a vague sense of exactly where Enfield is supposed to be located, but if anyone has used the details in the book to map out where Enfield would be, do pass it along (someone has probably created a Google Map for it, but I haven’t actually checked).

This week’s reading had a lot of lengthy sections that focused on one person/issue for multiple pages which is either great or terrible depending on how you like this book broken up.  And TA DA!  The Chronology is spelled out very clearly! (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 1] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Big Books, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Drugs, Dystopia, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Hüsker Dü, Infinite Summer, Minnesota, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Unreliable narrator on June 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

jestSOUNDTRACK: HÜSKER DÜ-Land Speed Record (1982).

landspeedMentioning Hüsker Dü during the Replacements reviews made me bust out their records too.  Land Speed Record was their first release, and it always amazed me that their first record was a live record.

It is an amazing blast of hardcore punk.

It is poorly recorded, stupidly fast and impossible to follow.  The CD is divided into two track (sides one and two) despite the 17 songs.  Most of the songs are simple, balls-out screaming punk.  In fact, it’s surprising how much you can tell it is Hüsker Dü given how shouty Bob Mould sounds.

In truth, it’s not entirely impossible to follow one song to the next (there are times when you can hear the choruses (“Guns at My School” and “Do the Bee” stand out).  But really it’s a pretty shocking discovery for anyone familiar with their alterna-pop that would come later.

The one real highlight is the final song, “Data Control.” It slows the pace and adds some mood (although it’s not that easy to discern).  But it contains a great deal of depth (for this album) and suggests that maybe the Hüskers were going to be more than a simple hardcore band.

The funniest part is that after the 25 minutes or so of noise, Bob Mould says, “we’ll be back for another set.”

[READ: Week of June 22, 2009] Infinite Jest [78 pages + endnotes]

So as I said, I’m going to be doing this Infinite Summer thing, reading 75 or so pages every week.  I haven’t figured out what I’m going to say each week, just some observations and characters to help keep things straight.  But there will be spoilers, so be warned.

Having read this before certainly helps put some context on things, even if I don’t remember a lot of the book.  But, for instance, it helps to know ahead of time that the “Year” chapter headings have been subsidized.  However, I don’t remember the chronology of them at this point.  See below, footnote endnote for more on the chronology.

The characters:   (as of page 78): (more…)

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Infinite Summer!

Posted in Adventure, Big Books, Boston Phoenix, Boston, MA, Contests, David Foster Wallace, Funky Web Sites, Infinite Summer on June 25, 2009| 3 Comments »

jestI’m a fan of David Foster Wallace. I read Infinite Jest when it came out (1996) and loved it.  I still vividly recall scenes from the book even 13 years later.  However, I’m a very different person and a very different reader now.  And I wondered if I would get more out of the book reading it as an older, hopefully [DFW would hate that usage] wiser person (and certainly a second read could only help with this incredibly dense book).

But who wants to undertake the immense work involved in reading this 1100 page book?

Enter Infinite Summer.

The Challenge

Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd.

A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat.

1. Plus endnotesa.
a. A lot of them.

The Rules

There ain’t none. Read Infinite Jest, start around June 21st (if you want), finish around September 22nd (if you want), gloat about having completed the novel afterward (required).

If you wish to read ahead, feel free. Think of us as a pacecar: you can leave us in the dust, but it’s probably best not to fall behind.

If you are ahead of the pack you should feel free to join the conversation. All we ask is that you adhere to the Inficratic Oath: First, Reveal No Spoilers. So, apparently, there is at least one rule.

So I’m on board.  This is TOTALLY going to screw with my plans of reading lots of other books this summer.  And this especially hurts because I have two summer reading contests that I was hoping to enter a couple of entries every two weeks.  I know this book.  75 pages can take a long time.  I hope I can squeeze in some other books as well.

Like on Infinite Summer, I’m going to post weekly updates, mostly to keep notes for myself, but also to comment when it’s warranted. (more…)

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John Hodgman–More Information Than You Require (2008)

Posted in 19th Century, Boston, MA, Corporate skewering, Dip-in Books, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), History, Jennifer Toth, John Hodgman, Jon Stewart, Political Humor, Sigur Rós, Smarty Pants, Swedish Music, Technology, The Daily Show, The Sound of Young America, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, Time Travel, Unreliable narrator on March 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

more-infoSOUNDTRACK: Dungen-4 (2008).

4Vill du tala svensk?

Even if you don’t speak or understand Swedish, Dungen plays music that is pretty universally understood.  The album feels more or less like an all instrumental affair.  There are some songs with words, but they are all sung in Swedish. So, no, I have no idea what he’s singing about, and in that respect it feels all instrumental.

Like the previous discs, 4 feels like a blast from the psychedelic days.  It is trippy, at times loud and raucous, (with some amazing guitar workouts) and even has flutes on a few tracks.

The big difference between this disc and the previous releases is that there’s a lot more piano.  This has an overall calming effect on the music.  And in some ways, I think I don’t like this disc as much as previous ones.

The piano really comes to the fore on track 2 “Målerås Finest” which to me sounds like a a tribute to one Zappa’s instrumentals (it reminds me of “Peaches en Regalia,” although I don’t mean to suggest it’s a rip off at all). “Samtidigt 1 an 2” are the major instrumentals of the disc.  They also remind me of Zappa in that they feels like a snippet from some crazy guitar jam session.  (Zappa releases a lot of  “songs” like this on his …Guitar… albums. On this disc, we’re privy to about 3 minutes of wild guitar solo but since they fade in and then fade out at the end we have no idea how long the jam went on.  The final track “Bandhagen” also feels Zappaeque, but maybe it’s just the staccato notes that Zappa also uses to such good effect.

“Fredag” has a feeling like some of the more otherworldly Flaming Lips songs.  And “Mina Damer Och Fasaner” has a choppy heavy metal sound that really stands out from the disc.

Really there isn’t a bad song on the disc, but for some reason it doesn’t move me quite as much as the others.  I don’t want to bring a negative vibe to the review.  I’m sure if this was the first Dungen CD I had, I’d think it was amazing, I just got spoiled by them.

[READ: February 14, 2009] More Information Than You Require

John Hodgman is a man you will no doubt recognize from the Mac Vs PC ads (he’s the PC). He’s also a contributor and guest on The Daily Show. When this book was released he promoted it on The Daily Show, and on the Sound of Young America. It sounded really funny. And I was delighted that Sarah got it for me for Christmas. (more…)

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David Bergen–“Saved” (The Walrus, March 2009)

Posted in Boston, MA, David Bergen, Drinking, Sex, Short Story, The Walrus, Violence on March 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

walrus1SOUNDTRACK: MORPHINE-Like Swimming (1997).

morphineMorphine was always a pretty weird band.  They were very different even in a climate when alternative was the norm.

Their difference began with their instruments: Mark Sandman played a 2 string electric bass, Dana Colley played a tenor or bass sax and Billy Conway played minimal drums.  In fact almost everything they did was minimal.

Their sound was smooth and sexy; dirty, almost skanky, and yet they were so cool.  I got to see them live once in the Hatch Shell in Boston and it was great experience.

While their first couple of records, Cure for Pain and Yes were amazing, this record, their first major label release, seems to disappoint some.  And yet I find it endlessly rewarding.  You take that bass heavy, smooth, near-jazz and you throw tales of sex (“Early to Bed”)  “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man or woman miss our on the night life”  or just elliptical stories “Eleven O’ Clock”: (The whole lyrics are “Every night about eleven o’clock I go out” or just weird choruses ” Oooooh French Fries with Pepper.”

And through it all, that glorious slinky bass.

I could listen to Morphine all day.

[READ: March 3, 3009] “Saved”

The Walrus got something of a makeover for this issue.  I rather like the new logo, and it seems easier to read overall too.  I’m bummed however that they’ve gotten rid of the puzzles pages as that was always a favorite for me.

Anyhow, this story was okay.  The content itself wasn’t that exciting, but it was the telling that was pretty enjoyable.  In Vietnam, a teenaged boy is being questioned in the death of a 19 year-old American girl.  The first section shows his in custody of the police; the second section shows his encounter with the girl; the third shows the boy’s life before meeting the girl and the fourth shows his very first encounter with her.

I wasn’t particulalrly blown away by this piece.

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Jeff Kinney–Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2007) & Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules [#2] (2008)

Posted in Boston, MA, Children's Books, Dropkick Murphys, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jeff Kinney, Set at School, Short Books, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones on June 21, 2008| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: DROPKICK MURPHYS-The Meanest of Times (2007).

Ever since The Pogues, traditional Irish music has been matched to a punkish attitude. The Dropkick Murphys take this one step further in that they are pretty much a hardcore band, and yet they throw in heaps of Irish attitude, channeled through growing up in Boston, Ma. I got their first album when it came out because I was living in Boston at the time. Then I more or less forgot about them. But The Meanest of Times made some noise, so I checked them out again. Despite their ever changing lineup, the band hasn’t changed that much in all these years. They still write great, fast, beer-swilling sing-alongs. Their vocalist sounds like the gruff, ass-kicking younger brother of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ Dicky Barrett. There’s a second vocalist on this record too who is less gruff, but, I feel, less effective. He sings one or two songs, but he’s primarily background in nature. And they still throw in the occasional bagpipe, accordion and mandolin. They have diversified their sound a little bit now. There are a few slower (but no less raucous) songs and even a ballad.

Lyrically, they touch on a lot of “political” issues. Not as in day-to-day politics, but more as in a general outrage at injustice (priest sex scandals, children’s services in the state of Ma, violence and war etc). They also reinvent some traditional style songs. “(F)Lanigan’s Ball,” a remake sort of of “Lanigan’s Ball” and old trad song. And “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” is an update of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” done as more of a sea shanty–a punk sea shanty.

I’m not sure why hardcore punk matches so well with traditional Irish jigs, but it really does. If you like your music fast and loud, The Dropkick Murphys throw in a few extra ingredients to diversify your portfolio.

[READ: May 28, 2008] Diary of a Wimpy Kid & Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.

A lot of kids come into the library looking for these books. When I finally looked at it, it looked pretty funny, so I picked it up. I’m going to review the two books together because the second one is basically a continuation of the first one, there’s not a lot of differences, but, since the books are pretty short, that’s not a problem. (more…)

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