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Archive for the ‘NPR/PRI/PBS’ Category

Donald Antrim–“Ever Since” (New Yorker, March 12, 2012)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Arctic Monkeys, Cloud Nothings, Donald Antrim, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, The Strokes, Unlikable main character on March 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CLOUD NOTHINGS-“Stay Useless” (2012).

This was the song of the day on NPR on March 14th.  While NPR describes it as like 90s indie rock, I find it to be much more like early 2000s indie rock (think The Strokes or Arctic Monkeys).  True, those bands were playing in the spirit of 90s rock, but they had a slightly different take on things–cleaner, perhaps.

So, while the guitars are buzzy and distorted, the vocals are up front and clear (even if the words aren’t entirely understandable–a neat trick that).  The song is under three minutes and has a catchy, powerful chorus.  I’ll bet it’s a lot of fun to hear live, although honestly I don’t think it’s anything all that special.

[READ: March 9, 2012] “Ever Since”

I’ve enjoyed many of Antrim’s stories in the past.  And, I rather enjoyed this one as well.

This was a fairly simple story of a man who has not let go of the woman who broke up with him a year earlier.  And how she haunts him and his current relationship still.

The opening of the story is really quite wonderful.  It didn’t really have an impact on me at first but when I reread it, I realized it’s a wonderful precis of the story:

Ever since his wife had left him–but she wasn’t his wife, was she? he’d only thought of her that way, had begun to think of her that way, since her abrupt departure, the year before, with Richard Bishop [I’m interrupting to say wow, has he packed a lot into a dependent clause.  And then he continues with the rest of the powerful descriptor]–Jonathan had taken up a new side of his personality, and become the sort of lurking man who, say at work or at a party, mainly hovers on the outskirts of other people’s conversations, leaning close but not too close, listening in while gazing out vaguely over their heads in order to seem distracted and inattentive waiting for the conversation to wind down, so that he can weigh in gloomily and summarize whatever has just been said.

Now, THAT, dear readers, is a SENTENCE!

To make him even more pathetic, when he summarizes an idea he often claims that his ex-wife felt a certain way about it…and then explaining that she wasn’t really his ex-wife.

The crazy thing is that Jonathan has a new love in his life: Sarah, the kind of woman who  appears by his side at a party (a work party for her) and says, “Hey Buster, lets’ go fuck in the bathroom.”  It’s unclear whether she was joking, which makes it even more fun. (more…)

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Max Barry–“Wolves at the Door” (maxbarry.com, October 26, 2004) and Jeffrey Frank (New Yorker, January 23, 2012)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Canadian Music, Essays, History, Jeffrey Frank, Language, Max Barry, Mitchmatic, New Yorker, Political Humor, Politicians, Richard Nixon, War on January 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MITCHMATIC-“Why Don’t You Know” (2012).

This song reminds me in spirit of the old Fresh Prince songs–buoyant and fun, funny and a little silly.  And although it doesn’t sample I Dream of Jeannie, the mood is the same.

The track opens with a great sound of an old rotary phone.  When the music comes it, it’s completely loungey: strings and easy music propel this song to the heights of Cool.

The delivery style is gentle but fast and the lyrics are funny “I’m gonna tell you some reasons that you wanna date me.”

Mitchmatic is a Canadian rapper and his record is coming out soon on Old Ugly records.  Listen to the track at NPR and explore his stuff at his bandcamp site.

Darling I would like you so much more if you loved me back…

[READ: December 31, 2011 and January 24, 2012] “Wolves at the Door” and “Comment”

This is a blog post from Barry that deals with politics.  Although it was written in 2004 it is completely relevant to the current state of affairs in American politics.  I suppose it was ever thus, but it sure seems worse now.

He opens, “Stop me if I ‘m getting too cynical, but I think elections are won by the guy with the stupidest policies.”  He explains that it’s not because people are dumb; rather, it’s because when you are marketing to an entire country, “your best strategy is to scramble straight to the bottom of the barrel and start groping around in the muck there for the lowest common denominator.”  This is very true.

But I think the perfect summary for politics is (as Barry writes): “smart is complicated, but dumb is catchy.” (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–“Labyrinth” (New Yorker, January 23, 2012)

Posted in Biography, Books about writers, Chris Andrews, Julia Kristeva, Le Butcherettes, New Yorker, PJ Harvey, Roberto Bolaño, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on January 27, 2012| 4 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: LE BUTCHERETTES-Sin Sin Sin (2011).

I learned about Le Butcherettes from their Tiny Desk Concert.  So I thought I’d check out their album.  I’ve listened to it a few times now and it’s really quite good.

While the Tiny Desk Concert showed a subtle side of Teri Gender Bender, this album rocks really hard.  All three songs from the Tiny Desk Concert rock much harder here, and are actually better in this full band context (especially “Henry Don’t Got Love”).

It has a punk feel and reminds me of a more commercial sounding Bikini Kill or other Kill Rock Stars punk.  “Dress Off” is all Teri’s voice shouting over drums: “You take my dress off. Yeah, you take my dress off.
Yeah, You take my pretty dress off.”

In the Tiny Desk concert, Teri Gender Bender channeled PJ Harvey completely.  On the album, she has a bunch of different vocal styles that all work well for the songs.  Although “New York” is totally PJ, “The Actress That Ate Rousseau” reminds me of punkier No Doubt and”Tainted in Sin” has a simple stark keyboard melody with Teri singing a more aggressive guttural style.

Unsurprisingly for someone named Teri Gender Bender, there are some political songs as well.  “Bang!” has the lyric, “George Bush and McCain taking over Mexico.  Next thing you’ll see is their army banning seranata“

Although there’s a lot of short songs (7 are 2 and a half minutes or under), there’s a few long ones too.  “The Leibniz Language is over 5 minutes and “I’m Getting Sick of You” and “Empty Dimes” are both over 4.  There’s also an instrumental, “Rikos’ Smooth Talking Mothers” which is a simple song spurred on mostly by scratchy guitars.

The final song, “Mr. Tolstoi” is the anomaly on the album.  Teri “sings” with a fake Russian accent  over a very Soviet-style keyboard march.  The chorus:

I want Raskolnikov To be inside of me.  I want Sonya’s eyes.  I want Sonya’s eyes.

Weird.  But not outrageously crazy for this record.  It’s good noisy fun.

[READ: January 23, 2012] “Labyrinth”

It’s no secret that I love Roberto Bolaño.  And I’ve said before that one thing I love about him is the astonishing variety of subjects and styles that he comes up with.

So this short story is forthcoming from his newly translated collection of unpublished short stories called The Secret of Evil.  What I love and find so unique about this story is that the entire story is based upon a photograph.  The New Yorker includes the photograph (I wonder if the The Secret of Evil will include it also).  In the photograph, eight writers/thinkers sit around a table.  Thy are: J. Henric, J.-J. Goux, Ph. Sollers, J. Kristeva, M-Th Réveillé, P. Guyotat, C. Devade, and M. Devade.  The only person I know of this list is J. Kristeva, whose work on semiotics I have read.  [I just looked her up on Wikipedia and learned that she has also written novels, including: Murder in Byzantium, which deals with themes from orthodox Christianity and politics and has been described by Kristeva as “a kind of anti-Da Vinci Code.”  Gotta put that on my list].  But the others are (evidently) prominent in their fields as well (editor of Tel Quel, author of several novels and non-fiction, etc).

The beginning of the short story is an extensive detailing of the photograph.  Bolaño looks at each man and woman in the photo and describes them with exquisite accuracy.  Beyond that he imparts a bit of speculation about what they are wearing, where they are looking, their attractiveness and even, about the length (or lack) of necks. (more…)

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John Horgan–The End of War (2012).

Posted in Barack Obama, Death, Essays, History, John Horgan, Nazis, Religion, Short Books, Slavery, Tiny Desk Concert, tUnE-yArDs, Violence, War on January 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: tUnE-yArDs-Tiny Desk Concert #179 (December 1, 2011).

tUnE-yArDs perform three songs in this Tiny Desk concert.  Merrill Garbus doesn’t chat a lot between songs, but she’s clearly having a good time (witness them all jumping at the end of “You, Yes You” and how much she smiles at the end of the set.  This is a wonderful opportunity to see and hear her live sampling technique in a small setting (with close up cameras!).

Her voice sounds great–she pulls off all of those voices that she conjures on the record.  And her ability to sample herself and make it work is wonderful to witness (I never imagined that some of those “sirens” and “keyboards” are actually her voice).

The live band is also really hot.  The bassist really hold everything together and the horns sound great–duplicating the sound of the record with just enough flare to keep it original.

And to think she’s making all of  that guitar noise with a ukulele!  It’s pretty groovy.

Watch it here.

[READ: January 21, 2012] The End of War

This is a non-fiction book in which Horgan believes that in the not too distant future (his lifetime I believe), we will see the end of war.  Not the end of violence, nor anger nor aggression–he’s not crazy–but military campaigns against another country could be ended if we reversed our fatalism about war’s inevitability.

Horgan is a writer for Scientific American and in this book he uses the scientific method to show that ending war is utterly possible.  Now, although Horgan is himself kind of a pacifist (he’s not entirely one, this interview explains), his family is not–his father and grandfather are both veterans and his son is looking to enlist in the army.  Nevertheless, Horgan feels that war is not a viable way to solve problems and that the cost of human life is never worth it.

His research shows him that war should be thought of as a solvable, scientific problem—like curing cancer.  The difference is that cancer is outside of our control, while war is not.  But like cancer, war can infect any society–there is no “reason” for it, but it is like a virus–it infects all cultures, even peaceful ones.  If one culture is aggressive the peaceful neighbors need to prepare for war or move away.

Horgan anticipates skepticism, indeed, many of the sources he quotes are skeptics, and he deals with all of their arguments accordingly.  He looks at those who say that war is genetically part of humanity (as many people believe) or that the best way to prepare for peace is to prepare for war (as just about everyone seems to believe).  He looks at those who say that scarcity causes war (not necessarily true), to those who say that as long as there are guns there will be war (he disagrees).  He has a reasonable, believable argument for all of these doubts.  He even shows that the whole “alpha male, XXY chromosome” argument has been disproven and while men are more prone to violence, they are not more prone to wage war.

He also shows scientific evidence that war has not been around as long as people (or even apes) have existed.  Indeed, the first evidence for “war” (as opposed to violence) is 10,000 years ago (not much in humanity’s timeline).

He culls data from previous wars to show that the causes of wars can never be narrowed down to one thing.  And yet, rather than seeing this as a negative–that so many things cause war, he sees it as a positive–that causes of war are not monolithic and impervious to breakdown.

I was skeptical of this book when I started reading it.  I was willing to accept the various scientific answers that he showed (that war is not innate, for example) but my skepticism came because of what I guess you call the military industrial complex–that our military budget is huge and is not going to go down any time soon.  Just see how much protest is garnered by the miniscule amount that President Obama wants to reduce it.  [Everybody knows this truth but it’s worth seeing in print–our military budget is more than almost every other country combined.  China, who spends the next largest amount on their military has a budget that is 1/6 the size of ours.  That is shocking and depressing and a horrific waste of money].

But his point is that like with so many other things that we have outlawed or abolished over the years: slavery, apartheid, monarchy (as opposed to democracy), acceptance of torture; if we have enough consensus we can also abolish war.  He gives examples that it’s actually not as hard as we might think.  Germany and Japan become pacifist virtually overnight (it was forced on them, but they have taken to it with no problem) and even better, Sweden and Switzerland are pacifist voluntarily.

He also points out that war is already on the wane–although the United States was in two wars very recently, the warlike nature of the world is much less than it was even as recently as the first half of the 20th century.  The number of casualties from war has dropped dramatically compared to World War I.  We simply need to find ways to solve crises that do not involve killing people.

All of the chapters were interesting in this book (the book is more or less set up to deal with an issue per chapter).  Some of the chapters were a little long but at 186 pages (plus a bunch of citation pages) this book is short overall.  I appreciate all of his scientific rigor and his ability to show the arguments and then knock them down.

For me, the most interesting and satisfying chapter was the one that found that preparing for war, despite claims that it is necessary, actually does not keep a people safe. That the allocation of resources towards war removes resources from things that actually make people’s lives  better: art, culture, medicine, health.  Preparing for war doesn’t keep us safe, it actually harms us.

Similarly, he shows that competition for resources is not necessarily a cause for war.  To the contrary they have found that in some cultures scarcity brings out altruism.

In short, he says that the only thing that prevents us from abolishing wars is our fatalism that war is inevitable.  The more fatalistic we are about war the more we accept hawkish ideas which perpetuates more war. Once we stop believing that and we try to work towards the end, he believes that we war can end very quickly.

Horgan doesn’t really calm my fears about the military industrial complex–but who knows with enough popular opinion, maybe voters can change things.  It’s a wonderful thought.  And here’s hoping that this post can spread the good word.

And here’s an interview with Horgan that addresses a lot of these questions.

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Gregory Battcock–“Notes on The Chelsea Girls: A Film by Andy Warhol” (Art Journal, Vol 26, No. 4, Summer 1967)

Posted in Andy Warhol, Decadence, Gregory Battcock, Le Butcherettes, Meta, Sex, The Art Journal, Tiny Desk Concert on January 25, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LE BUTCHERETTES-Tiny Desk Concert #185 (January 9, 2012).

The write up for this Tiny Desk show implies that I should know who Le Butcherettes, and leader Teri Gender Bender, are.  I don’t.  But that doesn’t matter.

In this set, it’s just Teri Gender Bender and her acoustic guitar.  And she is channeling early PJ Harvey like nobody’s business.  If you like PJ’s new album but miss the less than subtle aspects of her earlier  records (and who doesn’t, honestly), this is a very enjoyable set.  Teri is angry and it shows.  But it’s all done on an acoustic guitar, so the anger is modified by the music.  It’s a neat trick.  But it’s also a little disconcerting.  Not least because she seems so nakedly honest when she sings (when she coughs aggressively during “Henry Don’t Got No Love” it’s not entirely clear if that’s part of the song or not.  But also because Teri is not afraid to look right at the camera (or, indeed, the audience) when she sings the songs.  Teri is very pretty but there is something haunting about her, which makes these songs of loss and love all the more effective.

See for yourself here.

[READ: January 22, 2012] “Notes on The Chelsea Girls”

I’m not going to start reviewing films, or, worse yet, reviewing reviews of films.  But since I like to try to read all of the academic articles that get recommended to me, I wanted to mention this one too (I admit I will not be subjecting myself or readers to a thirty plus page article about Charles Darwin and pigeon fanciers (which seemed interesting, especially the pictures, until I saw that it was over thirty dense pages).

It’s childish to laugh that a reviewer of Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls is named Battcock, but I’m not above that sort of joke.  What is amazing, to me, is how intellectual this review is.  I’m used to reading reviews in Entertainment Weekly or even The New Yorker, which talk about the plot of the film and the quality of the direction and what not.  And The New Yorker often trashes mainstream film on highfalutin grounds.  But even that doesn’t come anywhere close to:

Warhol still questions the very nature of the medium and its relationship with the cultural matrix and the contemporary value structure–for which he clearly holds no brief.  He is determined to prove that only vital institutions can provide vital art statements; his challenges to the medium serve ultimately to assure its legitimacy.  If in his earlier movies he attempted to redefine the nature of film and to clarify its limitations, the new works may be said to check out the remaining restrictions of the art form.  These include such physical aspects as the two distinct types of images (the retinal-visual and the cerebro-visual), as well as the nature of the auditorium, projection and screen.

Battcock is kind of hash on the film–which is actually several short films–two of which are projected side by side at the same time.  He says the individual shorts, which run about 30 minutes each, are “a little bland.”  Although, as he points out above, the actual films themselves are kind of beside the point.

Indeed, he criticizes other critics for missing the “point” of these films, which is that Warhol is “stripping the cinematic medium of its pretension and decorations.”  Rather, he complains, “Nearly all the other critics writing in the popular press dwelt with the lugubrious insistence on the squalidness, sordidness, perversion, etc of the lives depicted in the film” (more…)

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Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld–The Influencing Machine (2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Brooke Gladstone, Consumerism, Douglas Adams, Essays, Free Speech, Gore Vidal, Graphic Novel, Greed, Harvey Pekar, History, Josh Neufeld, Law, Newspapers, Noam Chomsky, On the Media, Research, Richard Nixon, Scholarship, Technology, Violence, War, Wild Flag on January 20, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WILD FLAG-Live at the Black Cat, October 20, 2011 (2011).

It’s interesting to compare this show by Wild Flag with their SXSW show.  This set is longer, but they retain the same raw energy and intensity.  It also sounds as though the tour has been rough on Carrie’s voice, which sounds a bit strained and hoarse (even when she talks!).

They play most of their debut album, but they also throw in a couple of new songs and even a few covers.  Perhaps the most fascinating part is the 15 minute (!) version of “Racehorse.”  There’s a lengthy noodling section as well as a cool part where Carrie goes a little crazy asking about money.

Janet Weiss is absolutely amazing here too.  And the keyboards, definitely complement everything well, but they are always the most notable flubs, and there’s the same one as in the SXSW show (not as bad, but noticeable).

Without a doubt the most interesting thing is the hearing that Mary Timony gives guitar lessons in Washington DC.  She lives there and evidently earns extra cash by doing guitar lessons.  Wow.  How cool would that be?

Check out the show here.

[READ: January 15, 2012] The Influencing Machine

Brooke Gladstone is one of two reporters who works on NPR’s On the Media.  On the Media is an awesome show which dissects things that happen in the world and examines the way the media portrays the events.  They work pretty hard to see who is reporting bias, who is exposing bias and how things are getting out to the average media consumer.  It’s worth anyone’s time to read (it doesn’t take very long).  And it’s also fun and enjoyable.  As anyone who has heard the ending of On the Media: “and edited [dramatic pause] by Brooke” knows, there’s always a smirking grin attached to the program.

When I heard that this book came out I was pretty excited to read it.  And then I promptly forgot all about it.  Lucky for me, my wife can take a hint, and she got it for me for Christmas.

The first surprise of the book is that it is written as a graphic novel–illustrations by Josh Neufeld (who has drawn for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor).  The funny thing about the illustrations is that I have no idea what Brooke Gladstone looks like (which I rather prefer about my NPR announcers), but I really like the cartoony style of her avatar (which reminds me of Elaine from Seinfeld and which inspired me to draw a kind of similar version on my drawing site.

On to the book.

This book works as a primer for understanding media ownership, media consolidation and media power.  The opening few chapters are going to be nothing new for anyone who has read Chomsky or Vidal on the media.  But since most people haven’t, it’s a wonderful way into some of these thorny issues of who tells us what and why. (more…)

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Yoko Ogawa–“Old Mrs. J” (Harper’s, February 2012)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Death, Funny (strange), Harper's, Helium, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, Sleater-Kinney, Stephen Snyder, Translation, Wild Flag, Yoko Ogawa on January 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WILD FLAG-SXSW April 1, 2011 (2011).

Wild Flag has released one of the best albums of 2011.  I can’t stop listening to it.  So, it’s funny that this show has been sitting on NPR’s download page for months without me checking it out because I didn’t know who the band was until the album came out.  Wild Flag is Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony and Janet Weiss (and a keyboardist who I will never remember because I never heard of the band she was originally in). 

This show at SXSW is one of their earlier shows.  It’s so early that one of the songs in the setlist appears on the album with a different title.  And the band is full of raw energy and passion. 

Although research shows that they’d been touring since November, Mary Timony seems somewhat hesitant in a few songs.  But Carrie Brownstein seems fired up to be playing again, and she rages and jumps around the stage, her voice as aggressive and fun as it was in Sleater-Kinney.  Janet Weiss, as ever, kicks massive ass on the drum kit.  man can she wail–she is a vastly underrated drummer. 

The band has great cohesion and they seem like they’re really enjoying themselves. 

 In many respects this band sounds like Sleater-Kinney (2/3 of the band are here).  But the addition of Timony’s lyrics and more gentle voice bring a cool change.  And the keyboards flesh out the songs in wonderful ways as well–for a band with no bassist, it’s funny that the most pronounced keyboards riffs are at the high end of the register.

There’s a few flubs during the set, in one of the more pronounced keyboard riffs, there’s a pretty major gaffe.  And sometimes it seems like they don’t know exactly how they should be harmonizing with each other (not true on the record at all).  And during the extended soloing of “Glass Tambourine” (6 minutes), I’m not really sure what Mary is up to.  But that’s okay.  The band is all about rawness, so that can be forgiven. 

While the album is better, this live show is a good introduction to the band. 

Since Carrie Brownstein worked for NPR I almost expect all of their shows to be available here.  But for now, watch the whole show here.

[READ: January 17, 2012] “Old Mrs. J”

Stephen Snyder translated this story that was originally written in Japanese.  It’s interesting to me when a work is translated from another culture.  Does the translator intend to keep the other culture obvious or does the translator try to make the story, in this case, more European or American.  There’s some inevitability in that, since the language is changed, and yet the sensibility of the original often remains.

I bring this up because I tend to think of Japanese writing as being very distinctive.  And yet this story didn’t really “read” very Japanese to me (Kiwi fruit aside).  It did read a little bizarre, but that was the fun part.

The story starts out simply enough: a young writer (who is a woman, although you don’t find that out until very late in the story unless, unlike me, you assume the main character is a woman because the author’s name is Yoko).  The author works late and sleeps in til noon or so.  It’s a quiet, peaceful place.  The landlady is older and somewhat feeble.  Until, that is, she gets into her garden and then she seems possessed by a fire. 

The landlady hasn’t really talked to the writer.  Then one day the writer hears the landlady in the garden cursing at a stray cat.  The landlady hates cats and curses them up and down.  Finally the writer tells her to put pine needles down, that cats hate prickly things on their feet.  This I did not know.

And they strike up a friendship.  The landlady reveals that her husband was no good and that he left her.  She also reveals that she gives massages.  And she begins leaving the writer vegetables from her garden.  Then one day, the landlady brings her a strange carrot with 5 “fingers” coming off of the central stalk.  The carrots are quite special.  And she keeps them a secret until sure enough, she begins growing lots and lots of them.  Even the newspaper comes to take a picture.

This idyllic story is interrupted in the last few paragraphs.  First by what seems like metaphorical scariness and then, ultimately, with reality.  It is a wonderfully realized story, wonderfully told and with enough hints of magical realism throughout that the ending isn’t totally unbelievable–even if it is quite unexpected.

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Saïd Sayrafiezadeh–“A Brief Encounter with the Enemy” (New Yorker, January 16, 2012)

Posted in Adele, Boredom, Culture Shock, Death, Five Dials, Futility, Military, New Yorker, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Video Games, Violence on January 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ADELE-Tiny Desk Concert #112 (February 17, 2011).

Adele is one of the few pop superstars who I not only like but who I like quite a lot.  21 is a really great album.  And what this Tiny Desk Concert proves is that, whatever she is marketed as, she is not just a pop singer.

Adele sings three songs here (and she has a cold or something).  She does the biggie, “Someone Like You” which sounds even more naked and unprotected in this version, because the piano is mixed quite low.  Next is “Chasing Pavements,” a song I knew from when it was first released two years ago.  It’s got a straightforward adult alternative vibe and sounds great here.

The final track is “Rolling in the Deep” which is one of my favorite songs lately, even if I don’t quite understand what the lyrics mean.  But this is where you know that Adele’s voice is amazing.  She belts this song out like she’s in a massive concert hall, not a tiny office.  And she sounds incredible.  It’s a wonderful version of the song.

The funniest thing about this Tiny Desk Concert is hearing Adele talk.  I don’t know a thing about her.  And I had no idea that her speaking voice was so heavily accented. She sounds like some crazy teen from a British sitcom.  Especially when she cackles.  To hear her prattling on about something and then shift in a second to that amazing singing voice is a moment of mystery to behold.

Check it out here.

[READ: January 13, 2012] “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy”

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh has written some very cool stories (and some cool pieces for Five Dials).  But I have to admit I was a little concerned when I saw that this was going to be a military story.

Lately I’ve been reading outside of my comfort zone quite a bit.  And this is another one.  I just don’t like military stories.  I’m not a war guy, I don’t really like guns, and in my limited experience, military stories are about little more than degradation, death and violence, glorious violence.

But as I said, I’ve enjoyed Sayrafiezadeh’s varied stories quite a lot, so I wondered what his take on the issue would be.  And I was pleasantly surprised by the story.  Even though, really, the story (the bulk of it anyway) is kind of a downer.  (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–Third Reich (1989) [translated 2011]

Posted in All Songs Considered, Boredom, Death, Drinking, Drugs, Foreign Books, Games (Non Video), History, Natasha Wimmer, Nazis, Once, Roberto Bolaño, Short Books, The Swell Season, Threats, Translation, Unreliable narrator on December 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE SWELL SEASON-Strict Joy (2009).

I bought this disc for Sarah after it came out.  I didn’t think that I would enjoy it that much because while I loved the movie Once, I wasn’t sure if I needed more from Glen and Marketa.  But then I found a whole slew of free concerts from NPR and I became hooked on the band.

The disc opens with “Low Rising” (what I think of as the “Van Morrison” song).  It gets better with each listen.  It’s a slow ballad which is followed by “Feeling the Pull,” a more up-tempo song that really highlights Marketa’s beautiful harmonies.  “In These Arms” is a gorgeous song.  The verses are downbeat and somber “if you stay…with that asshole…it will only lead to harm” but again the harmonies are gorgeous.  “The Rain” is a more rocking tune (within reason, of course).  It has an interesting middle section that quiets down, but it’s a solid folk rocking song.

“Fantasy Man” is Marketa’s first lead vocal song on the disc.  I like her voice but sometimes I find her lead songs to be a bit too wispy, too quiet.  I like this song, but it feels long (and at 5 minutes, it is).  “Paper Cup” is one of Glen’s quiet ballads.  It’s a pretty song.  “High Horses” is one that I didn’t know from the live sets, I guess it’s not too popular with the band, but I think it’s strong.  It runs a little long but that’s because it has a cool middle section that keeps building and building with more instruments and voices.  “The Verb” is another song that I didn’t know.  It has a cool intensity to it and while it doesn’t stand out as a hit, it’s certainly an enjoyable song.

“I Have Loved You Wrong” is another pretty Marketa song, but again it’s very slow and very long.  I don’t think I could buy her solo album because although her voice is lovely and her melodies are nice, they’re just so ephemeral I can’t really get into them.  “Love That Conquers” is an interesting song.  It sounds nothing like The Swell Season (must be the banjo).  It’s a nice addition to the album and should maybe have been placed a little earlier to break up the sound style a bit more.  “Back Broke” ends the disc very strongly.  Although I think the song works better live (with audience participation), the melody and tone of the song are somberly beautiful.

There are moments of this disc when it turns out to be what I feared the whole disc would be–bland folkiness. But overall this is an enjoyable album for a rainy day.  And Hansard really has an amazing voice.  However, I really like them better live.

[READ: December 26, 2011] Third Reich

I was pretty excited when I heard about this book, although I must admit I was a little concerned by the title.  Bolaño has a kind of weird Nazi fascination.  There is Nazi Literature in America and then a whole section of 2666 is given over to Nazi Germany.  He doesn’t like Nazis or anything but he writes about them a lot and it can be a little exhausting.  So it was with some relief that I learned that Third Reich is the name of a game that the main character plays.  It is a kind of historical reimagining kind of game (I guess like Risk but more specific and with more at stake).  It is set during the time of the Third Reich and the players represent various countries (or perhaps even powers).

I am giving up on explaining the game from here on because a) there’s a lot about the game in the book and b) I’m not sure if it wasn’t explained very thoroughly or if I just missed out on exactly what was happening.  During the book he talks about Hexes 65 through 68 and so on.  So I assume the map of the world is a hex grid.  But he never gives any context (or even a picture!–and this makes sense as it’s written as the diary of a well-regarded player who is not trying to teach us the game).  So while I understand the general tenets and play of the game (there’s a die (or dice) and tokens that reside on the board), the specifics are completely nebulous.  But that’s okay.  Because the game specifics don’t impact the book, but the game overall is at the heart of the book.  I think it’s neat that Bolaño invented a game (and several others games are named, but no details are given).  He is clearly very gifted at inventing people, games, things.

But as I said, the game is only a part of the book and in fact, the game details don’t enter into the book until about half way through. (more…)

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John G. Richardson and Carl H. Simpson–“Children, Gender, and Social Structure: An Analysis of the Contents of Letters to Santa Clause” (Child Development, 1982, Issue 53)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Carl H. Simpson, Child Development, Essays, Holidays, John G. Richardson, John Zorn, Scholarship, Toys on December 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN ZORN-“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (2011).

Wild skronking horns, screamed vocals, chaos chaos cha–.  No.

Piano and vibraphones with some gentle guitars thrown on top.  This is a beautiful, gentle jazz rendition of this song.  What makes this so strange is well, frist, because John Zorn loves death metal and all things noise.  But also because John Zorn revels in Jewish culture.  So what’s up with this holiday album?

Evidently he always wanted to make a holiday album.  And he’s using most of the same guys who have played with him for years. 

That’s a real Christmas miracle! Read more about it here.

[READ: December 16, 2011] Children, Gender, and Social Structure

Our director sent us a link to this article to get us in the holiday spirit (you have to subscribe to JSTOR to read it).  Although he spoiled it in his email (boys and girls are different), I still enjoyed reading the contents here.  At least somewhat.  The article was really quite dry and relied on some scientific terminology which I found confounding.  Nevertheless, the results were easy enough to follow, and that’s what really matters.

The most interesting thing was the setup.  They read all of the letters mailed to Santa that were received in the Seattle post office in 1978.  (I wondered why it was so long ago before I confirmed that this was written in 1982, so that makes sense).  They received 855 letters that year.  And I found this breakdown as interesting (if not moreso) than the rest of the article: 63% were from within the state; 29% were from out of state (how did they get there??); and 8% were from out of the country (what?? how, why?–no answer is given, sadly).  31 letters were illegible, so they were out.  The rest were assessed by gender of the names based on a baby naming book (from 1966!).  This yielded 359 from boys, 391 from girls, 46 gender ambiguous (what percentage would there be today??) and 28 with no name. 

I was also fascinated by  the age breakdown: 24%: 5 or under; 41% 6 or 7; 29% 8 or 9 and 7% were ten or older! (more…)

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