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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Thomas Bernhard–“Old Masters” (Lucky Peach, No. 3: Cooks and Chefs: Spring 2012)

Posted in Art, Lambchop, Laura Cantrell, Lucky Peach, The Beautiful South, They Might Be Giants, Thomas Bernhard, Tintoretto, Zadie Smith on April 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LAURA CANTRELL-“Cowboy on the Moon” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I only know Laura Cantrell because she sang “The Guitar” with They Might Be Giants.  The original of “Cowboy on the Moon” is by Lambchop, who I also don’t really know.

Lambchop’s version is very country-sounding and the singer has a deepish voice.  Laura Cantrell has a beautiful voice and sings this song quite faithfully.  The strange thing is that her version reminds me so much of The Beautiful South’s “Don’t Marry Her” (although the original doesn’t…must be Cantrell’s voice).

It’s an enjoyable song (about watching the first space landing), even if it is a little too country for my tastes.  Once again, I like the cover version better.

[READ: April 1, 2012] “Old Masters”

Lucky Peach is a magazine about food.  And chefs.  And recipes.  And, apparently fiction.  Like most McSweeney’s publications, there can usually be found a piece of fiction inside it somewhere.  In this issue it is “Old Masters.”

Strangely, Bernhard does not get a bio in the back of the magazine–this is almost unheard of in McSweeney’sland.  Equally as strange is how much I did not like this fiction.

It’s frankly hard to even know what to do with this fiction, and it’s hard to know why it was included in this magazine.  It is not about food at all.  It is about art.  Tangentially.

What it is really is a rant.  A repetitive rant.  A repetitive rant that seems to build in anger.  A repetitive rant that seems to build in anger until it just stops.  A repetitive rant that seems to build in anger until it just stops, but which stops in a location that one might not have expected from the opening. (more…)

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Cathy Hellier–“Gentleman’s Servant” (Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Winter 2012)

Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Cathy Hellier, Colonial Williamsburg, Crooked Fingers, Essays, History, Racism, Slavery, St. Vincent, The National, War on April 14, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ST. VINCENT AND THE NATIONAL-“Sleep All Summer” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

This cover is by The National with St. Vincent singing a duet with The National’s singer.  The original, by Crooked Fingers, is also a male/female duet, so this works nicely.  Indeed, having listened to the original, there’s not a lot of difference between these two versions.

The singer from The National has a distinctively deep voice.  And I really like St Vincent, although on this song, she’s not really doing anything amazing, she’s just singing (very nicely, but she could be anyone).

It’s a perfectly nice song, in both versions.  The original is a bit more interesting musically, but I like the vocals in the new version better.

[READ: March 15, 2012] “Gentleman’s Servant”

If you have read my other three posts about articles from Colonial Williamsburg, you have seen the cover of this magazine.  And, man, does it make me uncomfortable.  About as uncomfortable as I feared this article was going to make me.  I almost didn’t read it.  In the previous article I mentioned how the photos look…wrong.  And none look more wrong to me than the series of pictures for this article.

However, this article was not about slaves exactly.  It was more about servants or valets.  The article immediately puts us at our ease by telling us that there are schools today that teach how to be a valet, primarily in England.  And they make it out to be not such a bad gig.  It puts me in mind of Jeeves and Wooster, and what a lark it must all be.

Of course in the 18th century things were quite different (although it is described as similar duties–caring for the master and the master’s clothes and horse and such).  This paragraph tucks in a key phrase as it tries to make it all seem casual: (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“Disatser Aversion: The quest to control hurricanes” (Harper’s, October 2009)

Posted in Bright Eyes, Buckminster Fuller, Essays, Harper's, Magnetic Fields, Natural Disasters, Nature, Rivka Galchen, Scientists on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BRIGHT EYES-“Papa was a Rodeo” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I don’t especially like Bright Eyes.  But, as with Ryan Adams, his covers are quite good.  The Magnetic Fields are pretty distinctive when it comes to lyric and melody.  I’ve enjoyed a lot of their recordings, and once you get into The Magnetic Field’s mindset it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing his songs (that voice!).  But if you haven’t heard a song for a while, it’s fun to hear a new interpretation.

And I really like what Bright Eyes does with this song–especially the backing vocals and harmonies at the end of “one night stand.”  And–personal preference–the covers is paced a little faster, which I like, too.

[READ: April 2, 2012] “Disaster Aversion”

This is the final article by Rivka Galchen in Harper’s.  One would never expect an article with that title to be as personal as this one was–but I think Harper’s has a way of bringing that aspect out of writers].  For instance, the opening line is, “Like many a girl with a long-dead father I refer to myself as a girl rather than as a woman, and I gravitate to place I suspect my father, dead fifteen years now, might haunt.”  Her father wa sa professor–which means that Rivka needed to go see the Whitney’s Buckminster Fuller Retrospective (which sounds awesome, frankly).  I love this comment, which feel so true: “My father either admired Buckminster Fuller tremendously or thought he was a tremendous fool.  I can’t remember which.”

Rivka doesn’t know all of the details of her father’s work, but she knows the basics, so when she started doing some investigation into storm and weather modification, she was right in her father’s area.  Her research led to a Project STORMFURY from the 1960s.  And she grew interested in modifying hurricanes.

The article basically details her attempts to speak to weather scientists and to ask them questions about current and future opportunities for reducing the damages done by hurricanes.  As with much non-fiction, it doesn’t seem worth it for me to summarize her research–just read the article, its quite enjoyable.

But the fun part comes from the scientist she had a really hard time interviewing.  She spends most of the article puzzling about why this renowned scientist won’t speak to her–won’t even see her.  She has many reasons at her disposal for why the man won’t speak to her–the man knew her father and maybe his eccentric and at times confrontational behavior put him off of her family. The true is far more amusing. (more…)

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James Breig–“Department of Deportment: Stances and Dances Made the Eighteenth-Century Man–and Woman” (Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Winter 2012)

Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Colonial Williamsburg, Essays, History, James Breig, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Ryan Adams, Superchunk on April 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RYAN ADAMS-“Like a Fool” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I don’t particularly like Ryan Adams’ songs, so I was surprised how much I liked this cover of a Superchunk song.  The cover has an interesting vibe, a kind of Pearl Jam (in the guitars) meets Radiohead (in the vocals) sound.  It’s not too different from the original, although, as with many of these covers, I like the recording quality better.  I know I love my lo-fi world, and I love Superchunk but these newer versions just sound better.

Adams has a good voice, and he adds just enough orchestration to make the song a wee bit more interesting than the original.

[READ: March 15, 2012] “Department of Deportment: Stances and Dances Made the Eighteenth-Century Man–and Woman”

This article was intriguing but wasn’t quite about what I wanted it to be about.  Also, what was weird about this article–not so much with the others in the magazine so far, is that the photographs look simply too modern.  Usually for period pieces there is a hint of aging done to the film.  Obviously for the magazine they want the best possible quality photo, but it just looks really…fake?  Obviously modern people in old homes and dress.

The other thing that is odd to me about this article is that it begins with the idea that the reader doesn’t know what deportment means, or  that we misunderstand its meaning.  The true meaning–upright behavior and moral uprightness–doesn’t seem that hard to grasp.

However, despite these criticisms the article has some interesting history to impart.  The idea was that Gentlemen and Ladies were educated and would act with honor.  And part of that honor was the way one stood and acted.  Thus, Gentlemen had to maintain deportment.  Etiquette books also taught how to treat people of equal–and lower–standing.  Some people tried to appear gentlemanly by quickly learning deportment–but rules were complex and fakers were easily caught.  And those who were caught were punished by being thrown out of  a party or by public ridicule. (more…)

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Jonathan Lethem–“The Porn Critic” (New Yorker, April 9, 2012)

Posted in Humiliation, Jonathan Lethem, Neutral Milk Hotel, New Yorker, Pornography, Sex, Short Story, The Apples in Stereo on April 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE APPLES IN STEREO-King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 3 from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

The Apples in Stereo have made the first song on this covers disc in which I categorically like the original better.  I don’t know that much about the Apples in Stereo, although I know they are tangentially related to Neutral Milk Hotel.  But I don’t know if their style is in general like this version–keyboardy and simplistic, or if this is a goof project for them.

Of course, the original of this song, by Neutral Milk Hotel is an indie classic, so you’d be hard pressed to try to do a respectful version and make it sound better.  It’s nice they did something different, I just don’t like it as much.

[READ: April 6, 2012] “The Porn Critic”

This is a story that is superficially facile–it confirms the age-old belief that women just do not like porn.  And yet there’s some interesting dynamics at work that I found really enjoyable.

The story is about Kromer.  Kromer was believed to be a hedonistic satyr–that a life of partying, drugs and sex followed him wherever he went.  But that was not exactly true–he was around a lot of it, just never in the middle of it.  The debauchery in his life was all thanks to his friend Greta.

Greta has a trust fund that will not mature until she reaches 30.  She was so outraged at not having the trust fund that (and I love this phrasing) it “drove her mad with the determination to die squalorously before she became wealthy.”  Despite her lack of access to the fund, she did have at her disposal  her father’s “man.”  He would cater to her every whim at any hour of the day.

And so she lived the hedonistic lifestyle–drugs and drinking, closing out parties and hanging with wild transsexuals (and calling for deliveries from delis across town to the bar she was currently in).  And she also hung out with Kromer–who was terrified of her debauched friends, but loved the access to her father’s servant.

Kromer’s reputation was also helped because he worked in a porn shop called Sex Machines.  He worked for a local real estate maven who owned all kinds of stores–from coffee to video to adult marital aids.  I love the details of Sex Machines, and that its “interior and stock had been painstakingly derived from that of a famous San Francisco shop, founded by a sex-positive lesbian collective. In lieu of such a collective, the owner had installed Kromer,”  So instead of Toys in Babeland Manhattan got Sex Machine.

Sex Machine also published a newsletter which included reviews of the latest porn movies.  And Kromer was the sole reviewer–he watches dozens of films (the output is tremendous!) and tried to simplify their content for the clientele.

As a result, he had tons of porn movies lying around his house.  And as a result of that, very few people, women especially, had visited his apartment. (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Train” (Harper’s, April 2012)

Posted in Alice Munro, Canadian Content, Cancer as plot device, Destroyer, Harper's, Lavender Diamond, Mennonites, Religion, Short Story, The Decemberists, Trains on April 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LAVENDER DIAMOND-“New Ways of Living” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

This song plays around with the Destroyer original a little bit more than some of the other covers have.  Lavender Diamond’s lead vocalist is a woman, Becky Stark, so her voice is different from Dan Bejar’s.  Of course, Bejar’s voice is kind of high-pitched so it’s not that different.  The original also has a female backing vocal on all of the Lie-Dee-Dies, which Lavender Diamond supplies by herself.

The Destroyer version is softer, a bit more delicate (especially the ending section which is washes of strings and gentle keyboards).  Lavender Diamond’s version is primarily piano, and that starkness somehow makes the song more intense.  So yes,  I find myself enjoying the Lavender Diamond version a wee bit more.  I hadn’t heard much by Lavender Diamond before (I knew that Becky Stark was on the Decemeberists’ Hazards of Love album).  But I think it’s time to investigate her stuff a little bit more.

[READ: April 5, 2012] “Train”

I had put off reading this story for a little while because it was pretty long (12 pages in Harper’s which is quite long for a Harper’s story).  Not only was it justifiably long, it was thoroughly enjoyable.

The story was set up in an unexpected way (especially for Munro whose stories tend to be pretty straightforward).  It opens with a man jumping off a train (I also tend to think of Munro as writing about women, so a male protagonist is also something of a surprise).

So Jackson hops off of a train.  It was going slow, but it hurt more than he expected.  After he gets his bearings, he realizes that he is closer to civilization than he realized–indeed, there’s a woman out milking a cow.  The woman turns out to be Belle (the cow is Margaret Rose).

After years of reading different kinds of stories, there were so many different ways this meeting could have gone (most of them badly).  But Munro tends to not write about physical violence, so this meeting goes pretty well–it’s not even all that awkward because Belle is a sweet, almost naive, woman.

Belle lives by herself, although that is a recently development.  Her mother passed away a few months ago after decades of needing a lot of physical help.  Her father has been dead for many years–he was hit by a train.  He used to take care of Belle’s mother, but once he died, the responsibility was all hers.

She was also more or less supported by the Mennonites who live up the road.  The introduction of them is wonderful, as it is how Jackson sees them: “Over the hill came a box on wheels, being pulled by two quiet small horses….  And in the box sat half a dozen or so little men.   All dressed in black with proper black hats on their heads.”

Of course, these little men are the Mennonite children who look after her.  Jackson pities Belle, although she neither seeks it nor really deserves it.  She seems quite content with her situation.  He decides to stick around and fix up her house for her (which is in bad need of repair).  He imagines that he can work for her for a few months and then maybe help the Mennonites a bit and then continue on his way. (more…)

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Science News Letter for Febraury 2, 1952

Posted in Essays, History, Nature, Nostalgia, Rafflles Bulletin of Zoology, Research, Science News Letter, Tokyo Police Club on April 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TOKYO POLICE CLUB “Cheer It On (Trey Told Em Remix)” and “Cut Cut Paste” from Viva Piñata! (2008).

Tokyo Police Club released one of the best LPs of short blasts of rock in a long time.  “Cheer It On” is a great song that name-checks the band and which I could listen to over and over.  It’s a hot punk blast.  This remix totally changes the song (which is better than just tweaking it or repeating the chorus over and over).  Trey makes it a discoey song (with the wah hoo! from “Celebration,” I believe) and big rubber disco bass lines over the music.  It really changes the sound. I like the original a lot better, but I enjoy a remix that actually remixes.

“Cut Cut Paste” is a studio release and it shows TPC in their element–a short fast song.  I love the way it starts out with a shifting guitar sound.  It has a great manic intensity.  Tokyo Police Club is definitely one of my favorite new bands.

[READ: March 20, 2012] Science News Letter

I’ve mentioned before when my company sends out links to articles that are interesting or cool.  Most of the time they are highly academic (that’s the kind of work I’m in), but they also do more general information as well.

So this particular page was sent to us because of the article “Marriages Are Seldom Higher in Leap Year” (since this is a leap year).  There was a tradition in Britain and Ireland that on a leap year, women could propose to men (see the postcard below).

But this article (really only three paragraphs) which is addressed to “Marriage Shy Bachelors” says that only twice since the Civil War has the marriage rate been higher in a leap year (1896 and 1920) in America. And that in 1952 the supply of available unmarried persons has been depleted by the spurt in marriages following World War II.  Rest easy single guys! (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“Once an Empire” (Harper’s, February 2010)

Posted in Broken Social Scene, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Funny (strange), Harper's, King Missile, Rivka Galchen, Short Story, The Clean on April 6, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE-“Complications” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I liked Broken Social Scene’s first album quite a lot.  This is their cover of a song by The Clean.  I know of The Clean from the Topless Women Talk about Their Lives soundtrack although not this particular song.  (What’s with all these New Zealand bands being on Merge?)  I found the original song online.  Interestingly, the original version is only 2 minutes long.  But Broken Social Scene always does things by double, so their version is 4 minutes long.

The cover version opens with a young person saying “This song was written before ‘Born to Run,'” although as far as I can tell “Complications” was written in 2001. So who knows.

The cover is a fuzzy, ramshackle mess of a song, which is not to say that it isn’t good (the original is kind of ramshackle, too).  The prominent melody doesn’t exactly remind me of “Born to Run” but I can see the connection.  The big question is, what does BSS do with the extra two minutes?  Well, mostly they jam, with some wild soloing–but it’s all mixed just under the fuzz of the noise.

This is another strangely faithful cover (5 in a row so far) for this covers album.  And once again, I think I like the cover a little better.

[READ: April 1, 2012] “Once an Empire”

Clearly I wasn’t reading every story that came in Harper’s back in 2010, because I know I skipped this one.  But now that I’m quite fond of Rivka Galchen, I decided it was time to go back and check it out.

How can you not like a story that starts out: “I’m a pretty normal woman, maybe even an extremely normal one.”  You know that normal things will not be afoot by the end of the story, right?  And so it is, by the second paragraph: “I never thought I’d be the victim of an especially unusual crime.  Or of any crime, really.”

You’re totally hooked, right? Me too!

The narrator takes her wonderfully sweet time getting to the crime: dithering over whether or not it was Tuesday night (“Every Tuesday night I go and see whatever is playing at the movie theater nearby.  I’m not choosy.  I’m happy to see what everyone else is going to see.”) or Wednesday morning. Talking about the giant clock/thermometer on the Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower that keeps her company.  And then describing her walk home.

She notices that her windows are dark–she always leaves her lights on.  And then, she notices that some thing–not something, some thing–is emerging from one of her windows.  And as she focuses, she realizes it is her ironing board. (more…)

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Antonya Nelson–“Chapter Two” (New Yorker, March 26, 2012)

Posted in Antonya Nelson, Death, Drinking, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Tenement Halls, The Shins on April 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE SHINS-“Plenty is Never Enough” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

The Shins have taken this song and completely turned it into a Shins song.

It is bouncy and poppy with some nice tempo changes.  It could easily fit onto any Shins album.

The original (I’d never heard of Tenement Halls) is very similar to The Shins’ version.  The big difference is that it doesn’t have The Shins’ vocals and musical sensibilities.  The original feels kind of flat, the highs just aren’t as high.  But it serves as a good stepping off point for the cover.

[READ: March 30, 2012] “Chapter Two”

This story is about A.A.  But, amusingly, Hil is tired of telling her own stories at A.A., so she starts telling the story of her fifty-something alcoholic neighbor (with the wonderful name of), Bergeron Love (the story is set in Houston).

Interestingly, no one at A.A. complains that she is talking about someone else (in fact the blind guy just seems to smile politely).  This is just as well because Bergeron’s story is pretty funny.  Bergeron arrives at Hil’s door, stark naked and invites herself in.  This is not atypical for Bergeron who crashes neighborhood parties and plays ridiculous pranks.  But not everything she does is funny: she also reports overgrown lawns and loose dogs.

Hil lives with her son and a roommate, Janine.  Janine is a very fat woman (see my diatribe about fat characters yesterday).  But Janine is not the victim or the pity-case in this story (well, maybe a little).  Hil figures Janine must eat all day to be as big as she is, but she has never seen her eat.  But then Hil’s son, Jeremy, a shy teenager enjoys playing video games with Janine more than going out with his peers (and more than being with his mom, I believe). (more…)

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Victor Lodato–“P.E.” (New Yorker, April 2, 2012)

Posted in Drinking, Drugs, Les Savy Fav, Neurotics, New Yorker, Short Story, Superchunk, Unreliable narrator, Victor Lodato on April 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LES SAVY FAV-“Precision Auto” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

This is a cover of a Superchunk song.  The Superchunk song is fast and furious with screamed vocals.  The Les Savy Fav version is faster and more furious with screamed vocals.  It doesn’t sound very different from the original except that they use a high guitar playing a repeating motif which seems to increase the pace and intensity of the song.  They even keep it up through the moody instrumental break

Usually I don’t like a cover that sounds so much like the original, but it’s a great cover.  It basically just intensifies the song, and that’s a good thing.

I don’t know much about Les Savy Fav, so I don’t know if this is why they normally sound like, but it’s pretty darn good.

[READ: April 3, 2012] “P.E.”

Sometimes a title can impact ones desire to read a story.  This title is, well, it’s not bad, it’s just…uninspired.  I can’t see myself saying, “I really want to read, “P.E.”  What’s surprising is that the title is so blah, when the story is so interesting.

I like my short stories to be light and fluffy (even if I read heavy duty novels).  So this one was kind of fun.  In the beginning.  It starts with Freddy waiting for his dad at the airport.

Freddy is fat.  I have to admit right off the start that whenever a character is described as really fat (like really fat, as Freddy is), it irks me.  First off, I always assume that writers are not fat (not really a fair assumption but author photos are often glamorous, right?) so they aren’t writing from a location of truth.  Second, whenever a character is really fat, it always signals that something bad has or will happen to him.  And so it is with this story.

But before we get to that point, we have some more amusing scenarios.

Or, well, really not amusing so much as disturbing (but funny).  Freddy’s mother hanged herself when he was seven.  And his father took it badly (not unusual).  He even took to wearing the noose around his neck like an article of clothing (unusual!). (more…)

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