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Archive for the ‘Film & TV’ Category

Annie Tempest–Lord Tottering: An English Gentleman (2013)

Posted in Annie Tempest, Carla Bozulich, Comic Strips, Constellation Records, Country Life, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Funny (ha ha), Marriage (Happy), Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Snuff Box, Technology on April 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

eaveptotterSOUNDTRACK: ELIZABETH ANKA VAJAGIC-Nostalgia/Pain EP [CST035] (2005).

This album is considered an EP, probably because it runs about 33 minutes. And yet with 3 songs and one of them nearly 20 minutes long, it feels like a much bigger release.

The first song, “Nostalgia” is 17 minutes long and begins with three minutes of scratchy violin “warm up” sounds.  Around 3 minutes guitars start playing some simple chords which gives the violin some direction.  Around 4 minutes’ Vajagic voice comes in, throaty and raw like a wounded PJ Harvey crossed with Patti Smith.  The song doesn’t vary all that much in the 17 minutes, but it’s her voice that carries the anguish and pain of the song along.  The interesting touch of the scratching guitars on the edges gives more angst to the song.  Starting around 12 minutes, the song kind of devolves into a series of noises –clicking drums, scratching violins.  A kind of free-form exploration like the beginning was.

So although the song is 17 minutes, it’s really only about nine of actual song.  The rest is sort of an experimental jam, with the volume down quite low in comparison.

Song 2, “Pain” is 12 minutes and opens with a slow guitar melody.  But the real focus is Vajagic’s voice because the instrumentation is basically a guideline.  Until, that is, the 4 minute mark comes around, when the guitar turns electric and more powerful and EAV’s voice goes away for about 3 minutes.  The melody is simple but has a good yearning and building quality with an interesting slow guitar solo meandering around.  Around 8 minutes she begins singing again, repeating the original vocal melody but now with screaming guitars behind her–it’s quite a change and a cathartic introduction of new sounds.  The ending kind of drifts away without ever really letting go.

The final sing is only 4 minutes.  It opens with cracking sounds and a music box.  When the song proper starts there’s more quiet guitars and EAV’s voice and that’s all the song is–like a microcosm of the longer songs and somewhat more powerful for its condensed nature.   Although I do prefer the louder more angsty music she makes, this is a nice showcase for her restraint.

This is the last record that I’m aware of her releasing.

[READ: April 26, 2014] Lord Tottering: An English Gentleman

I saw this comic strip book at work and decided it was interesting looking and might be fun to read.  The title made me laugh as did the Registered Trademark “Tottering-By-Gently” and is a kind of compendium of Lord Tottering comic strips.

Never heard of Lord Tottering?  Me either, but it has been appearing weekly in the magazine Country Life since 1993 and is “phenomenally successful” according to the introduction.  Which also states that Annie Tempest is one of the top cartoonists working in the UK.  (I’ve never heard of her either, but again, that doesn’t mean much).

The cast consists of Daffy Tottering, who reflects “the problems facing women in their everyday life” (if you are rich and British, and live in “their stately home in the fictional county of North Pimmshire).  She also spends time (and I feel compelled to put all of this in here because it is an amusingly long list):

“reflecting on the intergenerational tensions and the differing perspectives of men and women, as well as dieting, ageing, gardening, fashion, food, field sports, convention and much more.” [She must be exhausted].

Her husband is Dicky.  He is basically a retired rich Englishman who hunts and fishes and goes to the kind of club that is mocked endlessly in Snuff Box.

I mock this cartoon a little bit because it is pretty mockable–wealthy aristocrats suffering white people’s problems.  Think of it almost like Cathy for Rich Britons.  And yet, despite all the mocking, I got a chuckle out of a lot of the strips, and I’m sure it brings a smile to many people. (more…)

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Margaret Drabble–“The Gifts of Anna Speight” (Harper’s, October 2013)

Posted in Arthur Miller, Bobby Knight Rider, Books about writers, Doris Lessing, Funny (ha ha), Ginuwine, Harper's, Jane Austen, Land Ho!, Letters to Cleo, Margaret Drabble, Mouse Rat, Parenting, Parks and Recreation, Pearl Buck, The Decemberists, Wilco, Yo La Tengo on April 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

harpoctSOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS, LAND HO!, BOBBY KNIGHT RANGER, LETTERS TO CLEO and more on PARKS AND RECREATION (April 24, 2014).

unityLast night, in the season finale of Parks and Recreation, the Pawnee/Eagleton Unity concert finally happened.  And, despite them never talking about who would be at the concert, the final show list was surprising and maybe not so surprising.

To see the Decemberists play live was a huge surprise and was totally wonderful (and to see Jenny Conley on keyboards looking healthy was very nice) especially since they have been more or less on hiatus for a time.  Although maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise since Michael Schur directed a Decemberists video a few years back.

Ginuwine played a song as well (I don’t actually know him), and it shouldn’t have been a surprise because in a past episode it was revealed that character Donna is actually Ginuwine’s cousin.

Then came Letters to Cleo.  This was a surprise because they’ve been broken up for years and, aside from a hit were never really all that big (I was huge fan and saw them live once).  Although it was not a real surprise because Ben has been seen wearing an LtC shirt from time to time on the show.  Seeing him sing along to the chorus (off stage) was great.  I also just read that the drummer from LtC is the drummer in Andy’s band Mouse Rat.

Next was Bobby Knight Ranger, a hilarious visual joke of three members dressed like Bobby Knight (with really fake white wigs) who, played nothing but “Sister Christian” for their set.  At the end of their set they threw chairs.  It was a weird throwaway joke that was very funny.  It was made even funnier when during the credits it became clear that Bobby Knight Ranger was actually Yo La Tengo.  This is just surprising as I don’t know any connection there, but in my experience Yo La Tengo are game for anything.

Land Ho! finished the night.  Land Ho!, if you follow the show is Pawnee’s biggest band (fronted by Wilco dude Jeff Tweedy (!)).  They played a song and then Mouse Rate (and others) jammed with them for a holographic tribute to Li’l Sebastian (a running joke that I think is way overplayed and yet which makes me laugh every single time)..

I was so delighted to not know who was playing before hand because every band was a fun surprise.  But seriously, did these bands all fly in just to play one song?   Surely they must have done a few songs for the crowd.  And if so, I think it would behoove Parks and Rec to get a CD out of songs from the Unity Concert (including some solo Johnny Karate songs as well.

The episode itself was also quite good.  While I didn’t care too much for the Tom’s Bistro segment (most of the jokes were pretty obvious from the get go), it was nice to see so many old characters make a cameo.  In fact, with the concert and the old characters and the tidy wrap up, it felt more like a series finale than a season finale.

And, SPOILER ALERT UNTIL THE VIDEO CLIP OF LETTERS TO CLEO PASTED BELOW: I though that their meld from the scene in the office on the third floor with the sly tag of three years later was a stroke of genius.  I have been a little down on this season because I thought it was getting a bit overdone with Leslie’s failures and whatnot. I actually wanted her to get the hell out of Pawnee.  But the compromise of how she stayed made sense for the show (if she didn’t take that job I was done with the show).  I was also not looking forward to a year of Leslie being pregnant (the triplets thing was also lame to begin with).  So the fact that it was all utterly skipped over–the pregnancy, the baby problems, the sleepless nights, even the fact that we didn’t have any awkward transitions in the job and that Leslie is just settled into her new job was excellent.

I also loved that Ben and Leslie were off to do something interesting (with Ben in a tux) with no explanation–what a great cliffhanger.  Kudos for one of the best season enders I’ve seen in a long time.

[READ: April 24, 2014] “The Gifts of Anna Speight”

This was a confusing story.  Well that is because it is an excerpt from a novel and therefore doesn’t stand on its own.  But I don;t know if it was just the excerpt they chose, but I found it not very compelling at all.

The story is told in second person, with Sylvie telling “us” what she knows about the Wibletts Institution.  Sylvie knew someone whose son resided there.  He suffered from PKU, a recessive disorder associated with seizures, mental retardation and blue-green urine.

There are so many layers of storytelling involved here that I was quite confused as to just who was who when Jess was suddenly interested in the story of Bob Germen.  Germen’s son is the above mentioned resident.  She wants to know about Bob’s son.  First we learn that Jess knew a lot about literary figures with disabled or retarded siblings or children and later we learn that she has a special needs daughter, Anna.

But most of the excerpt talks about the literary figures. (more…)

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Colson Whitehead–“Loving Las Vegas: What the prudes get wrong about Sin City” (Harper’s, December 2013)

Posted in Black Swan, Colson Whitehead, Constellation Records, Excerpt, Frankie Sparo, Gambling, Harper's, Las Vegas, Poker on April 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

dec20133SOUNDTRACK: FRANKIE SPARO-Welcome Crummy Mystics [CST023] (2003).

sparo3It’s a shame that Welcome Crummy Mystics proved to be Sparo’s last album, because it is by far his best.

This album has more sounds, sounds that accentuate the simplicity that Sparo has constructed.  So there are all kinds of unexpected instruments on th opener “Hospitalville” including horns and bass, And the whole thing has a noir feel that pervades much of the disc.  It was was completely absent on the debut (intentionally obviously).  There are harmony vocals on “Sleds to Moderne” and “Akzidenz Grotesk” has electric guitar and Sparo’s voice mixed a bit louder.  There’s more rocking out on “Back on Speed.”

But it’s not all uptempo.  “Bright Angel Park” is a pretty  instrumental with lots of piano while “My Sistr” is a menacing slow piece that begins with just bass and voice.  Although as more instruments are added the menace is replaced by a kind of jazz feel.

“Camera” is sung in French and has interesting electronics throughout and “City as it Might Have Been” has beautiful strings layered on top of each other as it builds to an epic conclusion.  “This Lie” ends the disc with piano and organ an excellent accompaniment to his lyrics.  And on this album you can really hear what a great lyricist he is.

It’s amazing what a change this is from the debut and that he packs all of this great music in to a mere 37 minutes.

[READ: April 15, 2014] “Loving Las Vegas”

I felt like I had read something else from Whitehead about gambling and it turns out he wrote an article for Grantland about the World Series of Poker in Atlantic City.  This essay is an excerpt from the upcoming book that he is writing about said World Series.

This is a story about Whitehead’s appreciation for Vegas from when he was young and dumb (well, not so dumb, really).  His friend Darren got a job writing for Let’s Go, the funky travel guide.  And the assignment was Vegas.  In 1991.  They were Gen X and they were going on a great road trip.  So naturally, the first thing to do was get new speakers for the crappy car.  [I have often felt a strong connection to Whitehead, feeling that we could have been soul mates if I were a little more daring and had lived in NY instead of NJ].

They go on a great road trip (Colson hadn’t gotten a license yet so he was a navigator).  They went to Chicago and saw the Sears Tower, they went to New Orleans to visit an old friend whose frat buddies wanted to know why he was “bringing niggers and Jews” into their chill-space (yikes).  Then they got out of there and went to the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead (which they wrote about).   And then it was on to Vegas. (more…)

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Michael Robbins–“Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives: A poet’s guide to metal” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Baroness, Carcass, Charles Baudelaire, Chelsey Minnis, Christopher Logue, Converge, Cryptopsy, Deafheaven, Death, Dissection, Essays, Frederick Seidel, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Grave Miasma, Guns n' Roses, Hammers of Misfortune, Harper's, Iron Maiden, James Dickey, Jesus Christ Superstar, John Ashbery, John Milton, Kvelertak, Lord Byron, Manilla Road, Mastodon, Michael Robbins, Ozzy Osbourne, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pig Destroyer, Poetry, Poets, Poison Idea, Punks, Rainer Maria Rilke, Religion, Repulsion, Slayer, Technology, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Violence, Voivod, William Blake, Yuck! on April 19, 2014| 2 Comments »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: CRYPTOPSY-“Slit Your Guts” (1996).

cryptI had never heard of this band until I saw the song mentioned in the article.  The song is impossibly fast with speeding guitars, super fast (inhuman) drums and an indecipherable growl as vocal.  In other words, a typical cookie monster metal song.  And yet, there is a lot more to it and, indeed it took me several listens before I could even figure out what was happening here, by which time I had really fallen for the song.

There’s a middle section which is just as punishing and fast but which is basically an instrumental break–not for showing off exactly but for showcasing more than the bands pummel.  It has a short guitar solo followed by a faster more traditional solo (each for one measure, each in a different ear). Then the tempo picks up for an extended instrumental section.  The melody is slightly more sinister, but it sounds great.  There’s even a (very short) bass solo that sticks out as a totally unexpected (and fun) surprise.

Then the growls come back in, staying with the new melody.  The vocals are so low and growly that they are almost another distorted instrument rather than a voice.

After that there’s a lengthy proper guitar solo.  As the song comes to a close,  it repeats some previous sections before suddenly halting.  It’s quite a trip. And it definitely makes me want to hear more from them (whatever their name means).

[READ: April 14, 2014] “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives”

Robbins, who is a poet, but about whom I know little else, takes us on a sort of literary tour of heavy metal.  His tone is interesting–he is clearly into metal, like in a big way (at the end of the article he talks about taking his writing students to see Converge (although he doesn’t exactly say why)), but he’s also not afraid to make fun of the preposterousness of, well, most of the bands–even the ones he likes.  It’s a kind of warts and all appreciation for what metal is and isn’t.  many people have written about metal from many different angles, so there’s not a lot “new” here, but it is interesting to hear the different bands discussed in such a thoughtful (and not just in a fanboy) way.

His first footnote is interesting both for metal followers and metal disdainers: “Genre classification doesn’t interest me.  Listen to Poison Idea’s Feel the Darkness followed by Repulsion’s Horrified and tell me the main difference between hardcore punk and metal isn’t that one has a bullshit positive message and one has a bullshit negative message.”

But since Robbins is a poet, he is interested in metal’s connection to poetry.  And in the article he cites William Blake (of course), but also Rilke and John Ashbery and (naturally) Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as Shelley, Lord Byron and Charles Baudelaire.  He talks about them not because they are cool poets, but because they have also talked about because of metal’s “most familiar trope…duh, Satanism, which might be silly–okay, its’ definitely silly, but has a distinguished literary pedigree”.  Besides, he notes that Satan has the best lines in Paradise Lost (and I note that just as Judas has the best songs in Jesus Christ Superstar).

But sometimes this Satanism turns into a  form of paganism which then turns into nature worship.  From Voivod’s “Killing Technology” to black metal’s romanticism of nature (sometimes to crazy extremes–but that’s what a band needs to do to stand out sometimes).  Metal is all about the dark and primordial, a”rebuke to our soft lives.”

And yet, as a poet, Robbins has some quibbles with metal: (more…)

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Laura Miller–“A Study in Sherlock: How the detective escaped his creator” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Arthur Conan Doyle, Bob Dorough, Elementary, Harper's, LGBTQ, Mystery, Nicholas Meyer, School House Rock, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes on April 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: “Elementary, My Dear” (1973).

elemYou have to have a particularly cruel heart if you don’t love School House Rock.

All of the songs, well, most of the songs, are super catchy and by golly if you don’t learn a lot.

And they attack problems in an interesting way.  The premise of using Noah’s Ark to show how to multiply by 2 is genius.

You’ll get that “elementary, my dear” section stuck in your head.  But I’m also impressed at the way the song goes into unexpected chords for “you get an even number.” And I love the way Bob Dorough really gets into it (whooping it up at the end).

Few people would think that the 2 times table is hard, but man is it fun to sing along to.

This song is not as popular as some of the other ones, but it’s still great

[READ: April 14, 2014] “A Study in Sherlock”

A while back I wrote a post about Sherlock Holmes on TV (Sherlock and Elementary) and in the movies (Sherlock Holmes).  I had read a few stories and so I did a brief comparison of the shows.  Since then while I have continued to believe that Sherlock is the better show, I have really grown to appreciate Elementary a lot more.  They almost seem incomparable because they are so very different in structure and intent.  Elementary has actually been a little more satisfying lately because it has so many more episodes that it allows the characters to develop and fail in interesting ways–something that the three episodes of Sherlock simply won’t do.

Laura Miller has done a similar thing with this article.  Although in fairness she did a lot more research than I did and talks a lot more about the original books and stage and early film adaptations, and she talks a lot less about the TV shows.  And no she doesn’t cite my post.

This was an enjoyable piece because it goes beyond the commonly known elements of Conan Doyle–how he did not like Holmes and tried to kill him off twice, that he wanted to write more important fiction–and into what Holmes was like after Doyle was finished with him.  Holmes has entered the public domain in both England and America, and so he is basically free for everyone to use, much like a classic myth or a fairy tale.  The big difference is that we know his origins.

What I especially enjoyed was that so many things that we think of as quintessential Holmes are actually not from Doyle.  His deerstalker hat was added by a book illustrator but is never mentioned in the text.  The calabash pipe came a decade later when a stage actor used it so that the audience could still see his face.  Conan Doyle was still alive while these changes were being made.  Indeed, when a play of Sherlock Holmes was written, the playwrite called and asked if he could give the man a love interest and Conan Doyle replied, “Marry him, murder him or do what you like with him.” (more…)

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Alexander Theroux–The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (2000)

Posted in 1-Speed Bike, Barbra Striesand, Biography, Bobby Deerfield, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Constellation Records, Exhaust, Glenn Close, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Gold Diggers, John Waters, Julia Roberts, M, Matlock, Mel Brooks, Memoirs, Meryl Streep, Metropolis, Robert Altman, Sunrise, Suspiria, The Golden Girls, The Town That Dreaded Sunrise, The X Files, Women of Straw, Woody Allen on April 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

gorey SOUNDTRACK: 1-SPEED BIKE-Droopy Butt Begone [CST014] (2000).

1speed1-Speed Bike is a remix project by Adian Girt who has played in Godspeed You Black Emperor and Exhaust for Constellation Records.  This is his first release as 1-Speed Bike.  He has released several more on other labels but I haven’t heard any of them.

The most interesting thing about this disc are the titles of the songs.  And those titles are so clever that it gives one high hopes for the album.  I don’t know who Mauro and Elwy are (track 1) but the rest are certainly interesting if not confrontational.

1. The Day That Mauro Ran Over Elwy Yost
2. Seattle/Washington/Prague 00/68 Chicago/Nixon/Reagan Circle-Fighting Machine
3. Yuppie Restaurant-Goers Beware Because This Song Is For The Dishwasher
4. Just Another Jive-Assed White Colonial Theft
5. Why Are All The Dogs Dying Of Cancer?
6. My Kitchen Is Tiananmen Square
7. Any Movement That Forgets About Class Is A Bowel Movement

But what’s disappointing is that the album is comprised almost entirely of a drum machine and some other sounds.  The drums are very very loud in the mix, and there’s very little variation in each song (which befits a remix, I suppose).  And yet, the “musical” section is largely nonexistent.  There’s a lot of spoken word stuff, which is fun, but it also seems randomly thrown on there. The disc opens with him asking someone to be quiet because he has to flush the toilet.  There’s a lengthy declaration of love for his family and war against capitalism.  And that everyone else can fuck off if they don’t want to hear him talk politics.

There are samples sprinkled around the disc, but most of them are inaudible or played with so much that it renders them hard to figure out.  There are some interesting sounds in “My Kitchen is Tienanmen Square,” but the rest is kind of dull.  The end of the last song offers a voice mail message that gives you the title of the album.

Overall, not an exciting debut for 1-Speed Bike.

[READ: April 12, 2014] The Strange Case of Edward Gorey

I bought this book many years ago when I was on an Alexander Theroux kick (which actually means I wanted to read some of his books but did not, although I do hope to).  Anyhow, this book has been staring at me for some time so I decided to just dive in.  I actually know precious little about Theroux except that his novel are supposed to be weird or difficult or something.  I know slightly more about Edward Gorey, although little more than his drawing style (which I love) and his sense of humor (which I share).

So this book is a sort of a biography of Gorey by Theroux.  Theroux was one of Gorey’s close friends.  This is saying something because as a rule Gorey was rather a recluse and didn’t much like people (he did like cats, though).  The book is not a proper biography–a biography of his works or even of his life.  It is more of a biography of the man and his quirks.  There’s very little about his childhood, and not a lot about his books (except for Theroux’s admiration).  But mostly its about what it was like to hang out with Gorey–and to delight in the baroque and fun turns of phrase that Gorey used.

We learn a lot about what he liked (soap operas, classic movies [Metropolis, M, Sunrise, Gold Digger series], obscure horror films [The Town That Dreaded Sunrise, Women of Straw, Suspiria (at least I’ve heard of that one)], TV shows [The X-Files, The Golden Girls, Matlock, Buffy the Vampire Slayer] and of course, classic literature [he was well versed in many original languages].  We also learn what he most assuredly did not like.  He did not like Star Wars, he did not like Mel Brooks, he did not like Robert Altman or Woody Allen [Gorey was a film critic for a time].  And as for our foremost actress, Meryl Streep, he has this to say:

“Oh please!” said he, every time she opens her mouth, the critics insist Dostoevsky’s speaking!” He paused. “And who’s even dippier is Glenn Close. Sexless as a teabag. Neither man, not woman, nor in-between! Julia Roberts’s face looks like it’s made of rubber — remember those Snap, Crackle and Pop cartoon faces? And of course Streisand. God help us, I won’t even go to see.”  Gorey loathed her with a passion, even more than John Waters does.  I once heard him fulminate for a good half-hour on the impossible stupidity of her 1962 hit, “People,” a song that, with its mawkish, politically correct soul-sharing, shrinkingly embodies to a T everything that Edward Gorey utterly loathed:  “Pee-pull, pee-pull who need pee-pull are the luuu-kiest pee-pull in the wooooooorld!.”  I cannot honestly think of a single sentiment that would have driven Edward Gorey battier faster than the flaccid lyrics of that song with its, to him, canasta-closeness, hideous interconnectedness, and ultimate meaninglessness.

He also hated Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Marquis de Sade’s writing, right-wing talk show hosts, every movie Al Pacino ever made [Of Bobby Deerfield he cried out during the movie, “oh for Christ’s sake…what is this in aid of?”] and Martha Stewart.  And while he had great disdain for Barbra Walters and Maya Angelou, he was especially appalled by “the invincible vulgarity of the preposterous Kathie Lee Gifford and the host of miniature faces she was constantly pulling” (20) saying: “her facial contortions would be excessive on Daffy Duck” (44).

One thing to note about the book.  As you can see form the page numbers above, similar sentiments about Gifford are on page 20 and 44.  Theroux tends to circle back onto the same topics a number of times.  So the same names tend to pop up three or four times (Buffy comes up at least 3).  It feels like Theroux (who published this soon after Gorey died) wrote it in fits and just needed to get down as much as possible.  And while the book feels repetitive, it never feels flaccid or like it’s full of padding.  It just feels like a huge outpouring of information.  Or like an essay collections by a person who tends to revisit similar material.

Interestingly, the book isn’t necessarily for fans of Gorey.  I honestly haven’t read any of his works in years, but I found this book funny and strangely cathartic (if you like bitchy, opinionated scholar-types).  If any of the above appeals, you’ll get a kick of out Gorey, whether you like his drawings or not.  The book is also full of Gorey’s drawings (although nothing new), from his books and from some of his posters.

I was also intrigued by the fact that Gorey, clearly no friend of people, did not shy away from the outside world.  He lived on Cape Cod and New York City where his number was in the phone book the whole time.  He walked around Manhattan in a big beard and fur coat (until he gave up the coat for animal rights reasons).  When he moved full time to Cape Cod, he lived in a residential area and did not turn away any fans (he always had manners even if he knew the whole thing was kind of silly).  And apparently his house was simply chock full of fascinating geegaws and gimcracks.

For all of his proclamations about others, he did not have a large ego about his own work.  And the book gives the impression that he was just an opinionated guy who knew what he liked and was happy to share his thoughts with others (or his cats).

I just found out that Theroux reissued this book in 2011 and updated it from 68 pages (my version) to 168 pages.  I don’t know how much has changed.  In looking online it seems like maybe all he has done is make the original pictures larger, but there may be other textual changes as well.

 

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Christopher Ford–Stickman Odyssey, Book 2: The Wrath of Zozimos (2012)

Posted in Adventure, Alternate Reality, C., Children's Books, Christopher Ford, Fables, Funny (ha ha), Golems, Graphic Novel, Homer, Justin Roberts, Kids Corner, Phineas and Ferb, YA Books on April 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: stickman2JUSTIN ROBERTS-“Pop Fly” (2008).

popflyThis is a wonderful pop song from Justin Roberts.  Roberts is regarded as a top-notch children’s song writer.  I hadn’t heard him before, but i was totally sold by this one.

It’s a poppy almost dancey song–it certainly makes you want to move around, anyway.  There’s a catchy acoustic guitar and a fast beat and Roberts’ voice is really solid and warm.  Interestingly I didn’t even realize this song was about baseball when I heard it on the radio (I missed the song title).  I was totally hooked by the pa pa pa pa pa pa chorus.

And there’s a great third section of the song that changes the mood but not the tempo.  This reminds me a bit of Ralph’s World, but a bit…more full, perhaps?  Or maybe like something from Phineas and Ferb.  I’m going to have to check out more from him.

Oh, and the video, while cheaply made, is quite funny when the chorus kicks in.

[READ: April 8, 2014] Stickman Odyssey, Book 2

I enjoyed Book 2 of this series more than Book 1. It felt like it had a little more plot and was a little less slavish to the original myths.  or maybe I just like quests.

The story starts in the middle, with Nestor having captured Zozimos and having tied him up for failing to avenge Sticatha (which was Nestor’s plan all along).  He says that Zozimos has been doing nothing all this time. But Zozimos says no, he has been on an epic adventure.

Which brings us to where book one left off.

Praxis (the strongest man in the world) Atrukos (a guy who looks like a frog) and Zozimos set off to find a piece of the sky.  In book one, Praxis had knocked a piece of the sky out when he hurled a cyclops at it.  He wanted to retrieve it to prove to his love that he was actually a worthwhile person.  This story is left all of a sudden (in a very funny way) so they can help Atrukos with the witch who cursed him before Book 1 even started.  That’s when Nestor captured Zozimos, as he was on his way to help Atrukos. (more…)

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Grantland Quarterly, Number 9 (2014)

Posted in Advice, Alex Pappademas, Andrew Sharp, Andy Greenwald, Andy Kaufman, Baseball, Basketball, Bill Simmons, Books about music, Books about writers, Breaking Bad, Brian Phillips, Chris Ryan, Counting Crows, Daniel Kellison, Dave McKenna, David Shoemaker, Emily Yoshida, Essays, Football, Fruitvale, Grand Theft Auto V, Grantland, Harris Wittels, Hockey, Jay Caspian Kang, Jonathan Abrams, Jordan Conn, Mark Harris, Mark Lisanti, McSweeney's, Miley Cyrus, Molly Lambert, Myst, Nirvana, Nostalgia, Rany Jazayerli, Rembert Browne, Sean McIndoe, Shane Ryan, Shea Serrano, Soccer, Surfing, Tennis, The Eagles, The O.C., The Office, The X Files, Tom Bissell, Tom Carson, Univore, Violence, Wesley Morris, Wrestling, Zach Lowe on April 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

  9SOUNDTRACK: UNIVORE-“Vampire” (2013).

univoreI never watch the ads that come before Youtube videos.  But this came on as an ad and I was utterly mesmerized by it.

I didn’t even know what it was for.  Turns out that Univore is a band and “Vampire” is one of their songs.  The 1 minute ad video was actually the whole thing.

It’s got a simple buzzy synthesized riff, backing vocalists singing “Oh yea” when appropriate and an occasional deep voiced man saying “vampire.”  The video is of an older gentleman (who a little research suggests is Marco Casale) dressed like a vampire running around a small green space on a campus.  The whole video looks like it took 15 minutes to film.  It is weird and wonderful.

I still know nothing about Univore, which may be for the better, but I did enjoy this video.

[READ: April 6, 2014] Grantland #9

I’m surprised that there aren’t better cover images online for these books.  For #8 i had to use one with a big flash in the middle of it and this one is the illustration from the Grantland website.  The books are quite pretty so why uses these pale imitations?

So this issue proved to be a lot better about weird typos and “we just took this from the web and pasted it and never bothered to check to see if there was anything weird” problems.  So thanks for at least running it through Spellcheck.  The only other thing left is to either remove the lines that talk about attached links/images if they are not there or to include the url or make up a tiny url (but that would be actual work!).  Oh, and please make sure all of the footnotes are included.

I have given up on ever finding out how these things turned out several months after the fact–I’ll just happily live in ignorance of reality there.

This issue was taken from during basketball’s downtime which was a nice change (even though the still managed to talk about basketball).  There was more pop culture and some wonderful articles about team nicknames and mascots–something I absolutely love.  So this is one of my favorite issues overall.  (more…)

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Norman Rush–“On Nudity” & Barbara Ehrenreich–“The Trees Step Out of the Forest” (Harper’s, March 2014)

Posted in A Zed and Two Naughts, Alternate Reality, Barbara Ehrenreich, Carrington, Drowning By Numbers, Essays, Funny (strange), Gattaca, Harper's, Man with a Movie Camera, Memoirs, Michael Nyman, Morality, Norman Rush, Poker, Sunshine and Health, The Claim, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Draughtman's Contract, The End of The, The Piano, Valentina Lisitsa on April 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

march2014SOUNDTRACK: VALENTINA LISITSA-Chasing Pianos: The Piano Music of Michael Nyman (2014).

Inym,an don’t listen to a lot of classical music, but I do like it. I also enjoy some modern composers, in particular I have a strong fondness for Michael Nyman. Yes, yes, he’s a soundtrack composer, blah blah, but I find his music to be very pretty and often delightfully eccentric.   His music reminds me of Phillip Glass, in its repetitive nature, but he goes beyond the minimalism that Glass was trying to create by implementing inventive melodies and expansive sounds.

 Valentina Lisitsa is a 44 year old Ukrainian pianist and she tackles music from throughout Nymans’ soundtrack career.  Nyman came to prominence with The Piano, which is a beautiful score.  And this is where this album starts out.

I’m not going to talk about each piece.  Rather, the album overall has a consistent feel–piano versions of Nyman’s music.  Nyman isn’t the most difficult composer, but he has his own style and so the entire album has a nice flow (although it does get a little slow by the end).

She plays songs from eleven of his soundtracks (which I’ve listed at the end).  Many of them get only one track, but Wonderland gets two and The Diary of Anne Frank gets 5 cuts.  I actually don’t know either of those two scores.  The bulk of the disc is, unsurprisingly, from The Piano which has ten cuts here.

I actually know his older soundtracks a lot better, so it was interesting to hear these piano versions of many of these familiar tracks.  Like “Time Lapse” from A Zed & Two Naughts and “Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds” (ne of my favorite pieces by him) from The Draughtman’s Contract.

Stripping down Nyman has an interesting effect because you can really hear how pretty the melodies are.  Although the real pleasure I get from his songs is the weird embellishments he puts on them, like the interesting sounds (horn and didgeridoo?) in “Here to There” from the Piano (which are absent here).

Although it has the feeling of a piano concerto the end (with several songs from The Piano in a row) is a bit samey.  It was smart to end the disc with a reprise of the opening.

There’s also songs from Drowning By Numbers, Carrington, The End of The, Man with a Movie Camera, The Claim and Gattaca

[READ: April 3, 2014] “On Nudity” and “The Trees Step Out of the Forest”

I am linking these two essays because I read them very close to each other and they are almost diametrically opposed in their content. And I thought it would be an interesting contrast.

“On Nudity” is a very simple essay about nudity. When Norman Rush was a kid–9 or 10–his father was really into nudism. He always wanted to go to nude beaches, he was very lax with nudity around the house and he tried to get his wife to join him. She was reluctant. Indeed, she didn’t really seem to like her husband very much and it seems they only got married because she was pregnant (and he may not have thought that was a good enough reason, to be honest).  She tried her best to make him unhappy because of this, and that seemed to involve declining his nudity bug.

So there were copies of Sunshine and Health (the premiere nudist magazine) hidden in the house (although Norman knew where they were), and yet, despite this access, he couldn’t get enough.  Rather than sating his needs, he was more obsessed than ever.  He wanted the real thing, whether it was getting his cousin to play strip poker or trying to spy on women in changing rooms.  He talks about the various hings he did just to get a peek of flesh.  And as the essay comes to close he apologizes to the two women whose privacy he invaded by spying on them.  The guilt about what he did to these women made him stop, although the women likely never knew what had happened to them. (more…)

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Douglas Coupland–Shopping in Jail: Ideas, Essays, and Stories for the Increasingly Real 21st Century (2014)

Posted in Alternate Reality, Art, Beck, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Danger Mouse, Deep Purple, Douglas Coupland, Ed Ruscha, Essays, Hari Kunzru, Looking for Mr Goodbar, Short Books, Technology, The Future on April 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

shoppingSOUNDTRACK: BECK-Modern Guilt (2008).

modern guil;As I mentioned, I missed Modern Guilt when it came out.  I guess I had burnt out on Beck after The Information.  But man, I have recently gotten into it big time.  It may be my favorite Beck album of all.  It is brief and simple but with enough going on to keep iot more than just interesting.  The feel is consistently retro by Beck but Danger Mouse throws in enough modern elements to keep it totally fresh (at least six years after the fact).

“Orphans” opens with a hyper drum beat and keyboards, but once the chords and Beck’s vocals come in it has a very sixties folk/psychedelic vibe.  But those drums keep coming it, making it sound very modern.  This has one of the catchiest verses that Beck has sung in addition to a great unexpectedly poppy bridge.  The song is unmistakably Beck, but the flourishes are very Danger Mouse.  “Gamma Ray” opens with a surf rock sound and backwards backing vocals.  It sounds very “future”, but future from the 60s.  This song ends abruptly just under 3 minutes, it’s especially abrupt after the length of some of his more recent albums.  “Chemtrails” opens like mid 70s Pink Floyd–synths and falsetto vocals.  But when the drums come crashing in it totally changes the song to a more modern sound–and yet that bass is still very Pink Floyd.  “Modern Guilt” has a very simple beat and seems like a simple catchy song.  Then the keyboards come along top and it feels kind of spacey.  Then the second guitar riff comes in underneath the song and it’s grounded again.  There’s so much going on in this little poppy gem.

“Youthless” is another straight ahead simple rocker, this one has disco synth lines over the top.  It reminds me of “Cellphone’s Dead” from The Information (I keep waiting to hear “One by One, gonna knock you out”).  It’s the only song on here that reminds me of another of his songs. “Walls” has a cool vocal melody that plays off of the music very well.  It also ends abruptly–a very cool two and a half-minute song.  “Replica” has very contemporary chaotic drumming that pins this floating song.  “Soul of a Man” makes me think of Deep Purple’s “Hush” for some reason.  But I love the way the guitars and noises just seems to come and go leaving the classic rock rhythm pulsing underneath it all.  “Profanity Prayers” has a very punk feel–buzzy guitars and a fast beat, and yet it’s also smoothed over somewhat with an interesting backing vocal line.  “Volcano” is a slow song that anchors the album nicely.  It runs a little long, but this brief album earns a longer coda like that.

I just can’t stop playing this.

[READ: April 2, 2014] “Shopping in Jail”

Just when I thought I had caught up with everything that Douglas Coupland had published, I came across this book, a collection of his recent essays.  I enjoy the very unartistic cover that Sternberg Press has put on this.  It looks extremely slapdash–look at the size of the print and that the contents are on the inside front cover.  But the essays contained within are pure Coupland and are really enjoyable.

I have read a number of his older essays in recent years.  And here’s the thing: reading old Coupland essays just makes you think, ho hum, he knew some things.  But you don’t really think that he was on the forefront of whatever he was thinking.  So to read these essays almost concurrently is really fascinating.

His thoughts are science fiction, but just on the cusp of being very possible, even probable.  He also looks at things in ways that the average person does not–he notices that on 9/11 people didn’t have picture phones–imagine how more highly documented it would have been.  These essays are largely about technology, but they’re also about the maturation and development of people and how they relate to things.  Coupland can often seem very ponderous, and yet with these essays he seems prescient without actually trying to predict anything.  I enjoyed this collection very much. (more…)

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