Posted in Adventure, Anarchy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Contests, Death, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Fantasy, Felicia Day, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Greed, Humiliation, LGBTQ, The Guild on June 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I’m very late to this show, I know. But then I have an excuse: I don’t like watching TV/movies/etc on my computer. So, even when I watched the awesome Dr Horrible, and the commentary told me all about Felicia Day’s online show, I didn’t investigate.
It took our friend Megan telling us that we could Instant Watch it on TiVo before we decided to check it out. And the only reason I’m glad it took so long to watch is because we were able to watch all three seasons back to back (to back). (more…)
Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Canadian Music, David Foster Wallace, Eschaton, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), History, Infinite Summer, Infinity, Language, Math, Nazis, Scholarship, Smarty Pants, The Tragically Hip on February 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Live from the Vault-Volume 4 (2009).
Faithful reader will recall that this disc got trapped in my car’s CD changer. When I had it the player replaced, they sent the old one back to mysterious Toyota offices far away. And, about a month or so after sending it out, I received a package from Toyota with my three lost discs (this one, a Black Sabbath disc and, a promo disc I took from the library to try and wedge into the player to get it to eject the other discs (that doesn’t work, by the way) which was, embarrassingly, Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne doing a duet of something or other).
Thank you random Toyota person for keeping this disc, which is not easily replaced, in good condition.
So this concert is from 1994 and was recorded in Brussels on the Day for Night Tour. I think many fans feel that this is a high point in The Hip’s recording career, and this concert attests to it. The band sounds fantastic, energetic and really tight. And the music from this era is just great: dynamic and dramatic.
This disc also adds to speculation that lead singer Gord Downie is a weird guy. His between song banter is quite peculiar, to say the least (apropos of nothing: “Do you think of your pet as a pet or a member of the family?”). Which also leads me to wonder if fans in non-English speaking countries (and yes, I know that many people in Brussels do speak English) think or care or even mind when lead singers babble in English to them. Just curious.
I don’t have any other Vault discs from The Hip, but this one is certainly great.
[READ: During an ∞ of minutes during December 2009 & January 2010] Everything and More
As part of my pledge to read all of DFW’s works, I skipped the fiction and moved straight to this. I hadn’t heard all that much about this book, except that it was pretty dense. And, yup it is.
I’m going to give a comparison for any other DFW fans who are thinking about reading this. If you have read Infinite Jest (and if you’re interested in DFW you should certainly read that before this book), and if you recall Endnote 123: Pemulis’ high tech math formula for calculating Mean Value w/r/t Eschaton, then you will have a fair idea of what you’re in for with Everything and More. So, if your eyes glazed when you started to read that endnote, you’ll likely want to skip this book altogether. However, if you plugged through with that endnote and you didn’t care that you didn’t get it, but you kind of enjoyed it because despite the math, it is very funny, well, then you might enjoy this book too.
If you’re a hard core math dude and you understand what things like: ∃ and ∈ and ∉ and ∏ and ℜ and even ∀ then you’ll have no problem with this book.
But math aside, there’s a lot of funny things in this book. And DFW is in full conversational tone, with several places where he says things like “not sure if this has been mentioned in the book yet” implying that he never proofread the thing, which we know he did. There’s even a funny observation as to the placement of a picture (“it’s not entirely clear to me why they put [this pencil sketch] here”). There’s also tons of footnotes. And most of them are labeled IYI (meaning If You’re Interested), and he totally lets you off the hook if you don’t feel compelled to read these. Although as with most things DFW does, the footnotes are always tons of fun.
He also shows his great undying affection for his math professor, Dr. Goris (Dr. G). He quotes liberally from Dr G’s classes, citing examples, funny quotes and the amusing joke that Irrational Numbers are called ‘surds. There’s also great joke about schnitt (which I’ll explain later). It even opens with a hilarious (or maybe not) section about the inability to get out of bed in the morning when you think about infinity.
As in for example in the early morning, especially if you wake up slightly before your alarm goes off, when it can suddenly and for no reason occur to you that you’ve been getting out of bed every morning without the slightest doubt that the floor would support you. Lying there now considering the matter, it appears at least theoretically possible that some flaw in the floor’s construction or its molecular integrity could make it buckle, or that even some aberrant bit of quantum flux or something could cause you to melt right through. Meaning it doesn’t seem logically impossible or anything. It’s not like you’re actually scared that the floor might give way in a moment when you really do get out of bed. It’s just that certain moods and lines of thinking are more abstract, not just focused on whatever needs or obligations you’re going to get out of bed to attend to.
And but so, what is this thing about?
Okay, so it’s about ∞ and the history of ∞. It begins with a great section about the ancient Greeks (Zeno’s Paradox and all that) and slowly moves up through to Aristotle. I myself have always been a Platonist (yes, in fact, I have made that distinction in my life, which may say more about me than many people know), and have always been kind of anti-Aristotle. And, for the purposes of this book, that’s a great position to take. Aristotle turns out to be like the arch-nemesis of ∞. (more…)
Posted in A.M. Homes, Art, Books about music, Books about writers, BritLit, Consumerism, Contests, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Essays, Fables, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), George Saunders, Graustarkian Romance, Hollow Earth, Irish Writer, Joyce Carol Oates, Language, Legendary Saga, McSweeney's, Meta, Michael Chabon, Music, Postmoderism, Roddy Doyle, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Socratic Dialogue, Stephen King, Suicide, The Believer, The Collins Library, They Might Be Giants, Wholphin, Whore Dialogue, Word usage on November 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Many many years ago, I discovered Might magazine. It was a funny, silly magazine that spoofed everything (but had a serious backbone, too). (You can order back issues here). And so, I subscribed around issue 13. When the magazine folded (with issue 16–and you can read a little bit about that in the intro to Shiny Adidas Track Suits) it somehow morphed into McSweeney‘s, and much of the creative team behind Might went with them.
The early volumes (1-5 are reviewed in these pages, and the rest will come one of these days) are a more literary enterprise than Might was. There’s still a lot of the same humor (and a lot of silliness), but there are also lengthy non-fiction pieces. The big difference is that McSweeney’s was bound as a softcover book rather than as a magazine. And, I guess technically it is called Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern as opposed to Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (more…)
Posted in Funky Web Sites, History, Military, Research, Robots, Smarty Pants, Technology, Technology Review, The Future, Universities, War on November 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »
A patron asked for Technology Review to be added to our collection. When he said it was a technology magazine published by M.I.T. I thought it was going to be way too academic for our patrons. But when I read the sample issue, I was really delighted with it. So much so that I ordered a subscription for myself (the library has yet to decide).
The technology that the magazine covers is actually tech that is accessible to everyone: alternative fuels, cheap laptops, even technology in medicine (and how it will impact us as patients). But there’s also some super high tech stuff: robotic arms, nuclear power, genetic engineering.
It opens with an Editor’s Letter followed by Reader’s Letters. Next comes the Notebooks section. This features several very short pieces about different ideas: green energy, memory boosting drugs. (It also has oddly computer generated drawings of the writers). (more…)
Posted in A.M. Homes, Aaron Naparstek, Amy Fusselman, Ben Greenman, Books about writers, Chris Bachelder, Christopher Monks, Clay McLeod Chapman, Corporate skewering, Daniel Handler, Darin Strauss, Dave Eggers, Demons, Denis Johnson, Digression, Dip-in Books, Dreams, Ezra Pound, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, J.M. Tyree, Jake Swearingen, Jim Stallard, John Hodgman, John Moe, Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Lethem, Keith Pille, Kurt Luchs, Lawrence Krauser, Margaret Atwood, McSweeney's, Mike Bullard, Myla Goldberg, Neal Pollack, Negativland, Neil Gaiman, One Ring Zero, Paul Auster, Political Humor, Postmoderism, Rick Moody, Sci-fi, Sean Carman, Sex, Smarty Pants, Sports, Stephany Aulenback, Summer, Supernatural, Technology, They Might Be Giants, Tim Carvell, Todd Pruzan, Violence, Zev Borow on October 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
SOUNDTRACK: ONE RING ZERO-As Smart as We Are (2004).
I had this CD sitting around my house for about 4 years. I had received it as a promo disc from Soft Skull Press (along with several other books on CD) and I just never put it on. Then one day I was going through all these promos to see if any were books I wanted to listen to. It was then that I actually read the disc label and saw that it was a band with lyrics written by some of my favorite authors.
I liked the disc so much I wound up buying it because the packaging is truly cool. It’s a little booklet and it features an interview with the band and some really cool insights into how the songs came about, how they got the writers to submit lyrics, and the cool fact that One Ring Zero became McSweeney’s house band, accompanying writers during their weekly readings.
One Ring Zero is comprised of two guys (and guests). And for this disc they split the tracks in half and one of them wrote melodies for 8 songs and the other guy wrote melodies for the other 8. I’m not sure that I could tell the song writers apart by their styles, though.
But sure, the lyrics are probably great, but what does the band sound like? Well, in the introduction, they are described as specializing “in the sort of 19th century, gypsy-klezmer, circus-flea-cartoon music you mainly hear in your dreams.” And, yep, that is a good summary of things. The band uses water pipes, claviola, slide whistle and a theremin (among other homemade instruments).
And so, as with other McSweeney’s things, I’m going to list all of the lyricists with their titles. But lyrically it’s an interesting concoction. The authors were asked to write lyrics, but not necessarily songs. So some pieces don’t have choruses. Some pieces are just silly, and some pieces work quite nicely. But most of them are really poems (and I can’t really review poems). They’re fun to read, and it is fun to see what these authors made of this assignment.
PAUL AUSTER-“Natty Man Blues”
A rollicking opening that lopes around with the nonsensical lyrics, “There ain’t no sin in Cincinnati.” This one feels like a twisted Western.
DANIEL HANDLER-“Radio”
A supremely catchy (and rather vulgar) song that gets stuck in my head for days. “Fucking good, fucking good, fucking good…”
DARIN STRAUSS-“We Both Have a Feeling That You Still Want Me”
A Dark and somewhat disturbing song that is also quite fun.
RICK MOODY-“Kiss Me, You Brat”
A delicate twinkly piece sung byguest vocalist Allysa Lamb *the first female vocalist to appear) . Once the chorus breaks in, it has an almost carnivalesque tone to it. This is the only song whose lyrics were written after the music.
LAWRENCE KRAUSER-“Deposition Disposition”
A twisted song that works as a call and response with delightful theremin sounds. It has a very noir feel.
CLAY McLEOD CHAPMAN-“Half and Half”
This is a sort of comic torchy ballad. Lyrically, it’ a bout being a hermaphrodite (and it’s dirty too). Vocals by Hanna Cheek.
DAVE EGGERS-“The Ghost of Rita Gonzalo”
This has a sort of Beach Boys-y folky sound (albeit totally underproduced). But that theremin is certainly back.
MARGARET ATWOOD-“Frankenstein Monster Song”
This song begins simply with some keyboard notes but it breaks into a very creepy middle section. It’s fun to think of Margaret Atwood working on this piece.
AARON NAPARSTEK-“Honku”
This song’s only about 20 seconds long. It is one of a series of haikus about cars, hence honku.
DENIS JOHNSON-“Blessing”
The most folk-sounding of all the tracks (acoustic guitar & tambourine). It reminds me of Negativland, somehow. It is also either religious or blasphemous. I can’t quite be sure which.
NEIL GAIMAN-“On the Wall”
A tender piano ballad. The chorus gets more sinister, although it retains that simple ballad feel throughout. It’s probably the least catchy of all the songs. But lyrically it’s quite sharp.
AMY FUSSELMAN-“All About House Plants”
An absurdist accordion-driven march. This is probably the most TMBG-like of the bunch (especially when the background vocals kick in).
MYLA GOLDBERG-“Golem”
This song opens (appropriately) with a very Jewish-sounding vibe (especially the clarinet). But once that intro is over, the song turns into a sinister, spare piece.
A.M. HOMES-“Snow”
This song opens as a sort of indie guitar rock song. It slowly builds, but just as it reached a full sound, it quickly ends. The song’s lyrics totally about twenty words.
BEN GREENMAN-“Nothing Else is Happening”
This song has more of that sinister carnivalesque feel to it (especially when the spooky background vocals and the accordion kick in). The epilogue of a sample from a carnival ride doesn’t hurt either.
JONATHAN AMES-“The Story of the Hairy Call”
This song has a great lo-fi guitar sound (accented with what sounds like who knows what: an electronic thumb piano?). It rages with a crazily catchy chorus, especially given the raging absurdity of the lyrics.
JONATHAN LETHEM-“Water”
This track is especially interesting. The two writers each wrote melodies for these lyrics. So, rather than picking one, they simply merged them. It sounds schizophrenic, but is really quite wonderful. The two melodies sound nothing alike, yet the work together quite well.
[READ: Some time in 2004 & Summer 2009] Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans
This was the first collection of McSweeney’s humorous stories/pieces/lists whatever you call them. Some of the pieces came from McSweeney’s issues, but most of them came from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
The humor spans a great deal of categories, there’s some literary, some absurd, some nonsensical and, most amusingly, lists. The back of the book has an entire selection of lists, but there are also some scattered throughout the book as well (I don’t know what criteria was used to allow some lists to be in the “main” part).
As with the other McSweeney’s collections, I’m only writing a line or two about each piece. For the lists, I’m including a representative sample (not necessarily the best one, though!)
Overall, I enjoyed the book quite a lot (which is why I re-read it this year). There are puns, there are twisted takes on pop culture, there are literary amusements (Ezra Pound features prominently, which seems odd). It spans the spectrum of humor. You may not like every piece, but there’s bound to be many things that make you laugh. (more…)
Posted in Boredom, Broken Social Scene, Canadian Music, Children's Books, Dreams, Fantasy, Feist, Fiona Apple, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jeff Smith, Jimmy Gownley, Marriage Trouble, Set at School on October 12, 2009| 2 Comments »
SOUNDTRACK: FEIST-Let It Die (2004).
I’ve recently discovered Feist through Broken Social Scene. I know that she is huge (and “1,2,3,4” is a really great song that we used for our son’s 4th birthday video), but it took me a while to catch on.
This first album (technically her second, but her first was released only on tour in 1999 and is out of print) is, to me, shocking that it catapulted her into fame. Not because it’s bad, but because of what a strange amalgam of songs, none of which are indie rock, are on this “indie rock” record. The opening songs are sort of mellow rock, but really they strike me as more of a mellow jazz or maybe torch singer-style. And then there’s all that disco!
The exception is “Mushaboom” which is an amazingly catchy song that defies categorization, at least on this record. It’s sort of folky but dancey and has an absurd but defiantly fun chorus. After some folky bits and some jazzy torch songs, the disc morphs into something of a disco album. Not modern R&B but actual 70’s disco. I mean “Leisure Suite” sounds like it could be played in the background while men with thick mustaches lie in front of the fireplace with their woman of choice. And then there’s the genuine disco song: a cover of the Bee Gees’ “Inside and Out.”
I was really taken aback by the disc because it was nothing like what I expected. But once I got used to what the style actually was, I found the album really compelling. Feist has a great voice. 
It’s seductive and very pretty. In many ways the disc reminds me of Fiona Apple (although I think Fiona has a stronger more interesting voice and a better selection of background instrumentation).
But comparisons aside, this is a really solid record, one that I have enjoyed many times. Oh, and once again, the British cover is more interesting.
[READ: January 2007 (and earlier)] Amelia Rules
I first discovered the Amelia Rules comic at The Joker’s Child in Fairlawn, NJ, (one of my favorite comic book shops). There was something about the art work…a weird amalgam of simple lines and computerized coloring that really grabbed my attention. But it’s the story that kept me coming back.
Amelia is a young girl whose parents are getting a divorce. Amelia and her mom move to a new town in the country, away from the city where she grew up. She winds up spending time with her Aunt Tanner, a former rock goddess (and there’s a cool subplot about that later on) turned country recluse.
Amelia tries to make friends in the new neighborhood. And the boys she hangs out with are Reggie (whose goal is to become a superhero) and Pajamaman (the one unrealistic character in the story, although he does achieve more depth than just the “weirdo who wears pajamas all the time” as the comic continues). Amelia also gains a nemesis, Rhonda, who has a thing for Reggie but who is generally too cranky to do anything but snark about everything). (more…)
Posted in Canadian Content, Douglas Coupland, Funky Web Sites on September 19, 2009| 1 Comment »
I am very excited about Douglas Coupland’s new book Generation A. It’s a sequel to his first book, Generation X, which I loved, and reviews have been quite positive.
I’ve been a fan of Coupland’s basically since Gen X, having read all of his books, including his weird Canada-only nonfiction pieces.
So, imagine how excited I was to see Generation A available now from amazon.ca. And amazon.co.uk has not only the regular edition but also a Special Slipcased Edition. And all of these books came out around September 1st.
So why does Amazon.com list the American edition as being released on NOVEMBER 10th?
Coupland’s star may not be as bright as it once was, and I’m sure his last few books didn’t fly off American shelves like Gen X did, but COME ON. A two month wait? (more…)
Posted in Adventure, Books about music, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Cibo Matto, Contests, Death, Drinking, Fantasy, Free Kitten, Funky Web Sites, Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, Ikue Mori, LGBTQ, Magic, Oni Press, Robots, Romance, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Sex, Sex Bob-omb, Short Books, Sonic Youth, Supernatural, Threats, Video Games, Violence, YA Books on August 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »
SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 5: Sonic Youth Featuring Kim Gordon/DJ Olive/Ikue Mori (2000).
The fifth SYR disc is rather different from the others in that the only SY member is Kim. This is a sort of side project for Kim, Ikue Mori and DJ Olive. They’ve played shows together as well.
This disc is also different because it features a number of short songs rather than a couple of long ones. It also features a lot of different instrumentation: turntables, keyboards, that sort of thing. Most of the tracks are instrumental (more or less) although a few have Kim’s vocals on it. And Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto does vocals on one track.
Kim’s side projects (like Free Kitten) are usually pretty abrasive. She lets her freak flag fly with her vocals. And that in a nutshell will determine whether you like this or not. Kim is playing mostly guitar, so the other instruments tend to take over a bit.
It’s always interesting when SY mixes it up with another band or solo artist. But it doesn’t really make it a SY record, proper.
Oh, and all of the writing on the disc is in Japanese.
[READ: August 25, 2009] Scott Pilgrim vs the Universe
There’s a new Scott Pilgrim website which lets us know that Volume 6 will be out in 2010. I can’t wait that long!
This 5th volume seemed a bit different from the other four. The lines were crisper, it seemed like Ramona looked a little bit different (her eyes were bigger or something) and overall, the volume was a lot darker (in tone).
Today is Scott’s 24th birthday (he’s now the same age as Ramona, yup he finally asked her).
But at a party Steven Stills tells Knives that Scott had cheated on Knives with Ramona and on Ramona with Knives (which wasn’t true exactly), which sets Knives off again. She violently confronts Ramona and when she says why, Ramona gets pissed too.
At this same party, Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends (the twins Kyle and Ken Katayanagi) show up. Scott prepares to fight them, but they send their robot after him instead. The fight continues downstairs while everyone pretty much goes to other rooms, kind of bored with the whole escapade.
We also see a bit of Ramona and Scott’s domestic life (Ramona runs errands all day and Scott does, well, nothing). (more…)
Posted in Books about music, Britney Spears, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Drinking, Drugs, Funky Web Sites, Political Humor, Radar, Technology, The Future on August 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Radar Magazine has folded. Yet again. They launched the magazine a few years ago, and I subscribed. And it folded. Then they relaunched it a second time, and they continued my subscription (wasn’t that nice). And now it folded again. They still have an online presence, but I’ve never looked at it.
Whatever you say about the magazine itself, they sure had fun with their covers! (more…)
Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Consumerism, Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul, David Lynch, Esquire, Funky Web Sites, Guillermo del Toro, Hive, Oddities, Outer Space, Sci-fi, Slaughterhouse Five, Sparklehorse, Stephen Colbert, Technology, The Future, The Hobbit, Tiny Masters of Today, Video Games, Wired on July 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Many many years ago (1995), while I was in Boston, I bought my first copy of Wired magazine (how could I forget the absurd cover to the right (yes, there IS a picture there) [And I’m very impressed that you can easily link to all of their back issues, just as I did with the link above]. I’m not sure how long it had been in print , but I think it was still young and buzzworthy. [Research shows that this was its 3rd year]. I remember thinking the magazine was very difficult to read. Literally. Text ran across pages, the colors were all wild. The ads blurred completely with the content (by design). And it was very “techie.” I don’t remember if I subscribed exactly then, but I did subscribe eventually. And then I stopped (sometime in 1999).
Recently I got an offer to re-subscribe, for a dollar an issue. (This is where my idea that I will cancel a magazine once I stop getting a dollar’s worth from it). I wasn’t sure if I should subscribe, but I figured what the hell.
Not a resounding chorus of cheers for this publication, huh?
Well, since I’ve subscribed I have been pleasantly surprised by the magazine. And interestingly, the cover story almost never interests me. In fact, and my brother in law Tim first pointed this out: the cover stories and the big articles take themselves very seriously. Everything is always The Future Of This. The New That. Don’t Be Left Behind! It’s over the top in its wanting you to take them seriously. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 