Sasha Knows

Yes, the blogosphere is still echoing with rumbles of rumination about Kanye's live-TV outburst. But when it's S/FJ, you perk up your ears, goddamn it:

Tying the tin cans of Bush's racism to the getaway Caddy of Bush's corporate wedding? Shows you that...dipshits who wanna dismiss hip-hop as bloviation simply can't see the fire, or the water.

I eat my small-minded words. The Long Winters' song "Ultimatum" is all kinds of crazy-gorgeous. For such beauty, I ask forgiveness for my whinging impatience.

Liz Janes was fine and all, but now I'm sad we missed Laura Veirs when she opened for Sufjan the day before we went to the show. Stereogum was right to declare her the new hotness, if the lovely "Fire Snakes" (MP3 available on Aurgasm) is any indication.

P to the Oh-Lanski

Serenity isn't the only movie opening this weekend that I'm geeked about; Roman Polanski's take on Oliver Twist is high on my list of priorities as well. He gave a rare interview in the fall music issue of Entertainment Weekly and speaks, perhaps unsurprisingly, eloquently about himself, his notorious troubles, and his take on contemporary cinema. While the videogaming of American movies is not necessarily an original or even wholly accurate complaint, I nonetheless found myself deeply moved by this quote last night:

I think that most films now, you forget over dinner. Because your head does not want to go back to them. In other cases, you do go back mentally to it, and run it again. That's what I would like to be the case with my films.... Most of this stuff on the screen is not cinema anymore. It's a videogame. Any geography to a scene, it doesn't exist. You're in limbo. By showing a constant deluge of special effects and crashing sound, people are getting too used to it. One of the reasons of doing Oliver Twist for my children and for children in general is I want to teach them again what cinema is.

How Come You Dance So Good?

I've long found the actual "we'll always be your sugar" tagline to be quite funny, but this certainly does improve on it in a whole wonderfully awful new way.

From today's New York Times: NYC is getting into the act and showing some love for the migratory birds, too.

Craig Robinson, the mastermind behind Minipops and other pixel-based goodness at Flip Flop Flyin', commemorated his birthday yesterday with a list of other noteworthy events and celebrity births from the same date that he found listed on Wikipedia. Has everybody else already done this for their birthdays? I just did a search on February 18, and, while I did know most of the amusing celebrity birthdays (Adolphe Menjou, John Travolta, Vanna White, Yoko Ono, Toni Morrison, and Matt Dillon, anyone?) and that Pluto was discovered on my birthdate in 1930, I did not know that on the same day

* Martin Luther died in 1546, Michaelangelo died in 1564, and Oppenheimer died in 1967
* Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the confederacy in 1861
* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1885
* the first full-length 3D movie Bwana Devil premiered in 1953, and
* KISS released their debut album in 1974.

Rock!

Grinnellians: one of you should so post a comment to this discussion of indie wedding songs. "Idioteque" and "Love the One You're With," def! On much the same note, I'm still laughing at Shawn's story about how he attended a wedding this summer where the best man, who disapproved of the union, contributed motherfucking "Stars and Stripes Forever" to the mix CD that was compiled by the wedding party and given out as favors to all the attendees. That just kills me. The idea of some sorority sister of the bride listening to that disk in her car to remind her of the special occasion and being all "what the shit is this shit?" when the goddamn brass kicks in. Love it.

The Ocean

Finally! Someone (other than Benji Kelnardo) is with me on the whole the-ocean-scares-the-shit-out-of-me thing. To paraphrase more dialogue from Sports Night that I can't find accurately quoted anywhere online, we don't know what the hell's going on down there—it's down there. It's their home. It's where they live.

Ready? OK!

My father is fond of telling a story about the time he went to a Don Ellis concert at some point in the mid-'70s and was nearly brought to tears when the crowd spontaneously began to clap in 7/8. Ellis was renowned for his play with odd time signatures (one of his songs is titled "33 222 1 222" because that's the subdivision of one measure of that tune in 19/8), but he swung them so hard and so smooth that they felt completely funky and completely natural. I had my own version of that experience on Saturday night at the Sufjan Stevens show at the Metro when the crowd spontaneously began to clap in the 11/8 of "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders: Part I—The Great Frontier." Feeling those "one-two-three-four CLAP, six-seven-eight-nine CLAP CLAPs" rising up from the ground floor was like feeling the perfect distillation of that place in his music where the complex becomes simple and the simple becomes complex (or the universal becomes personal and the personal becomes universal or however you want to say it). It was love and it was joy and it was respect and it was understanding and it was intimacy and it was participation and it was appreciation. I feel like that's what being a fan of Sufjan is all about. Plus, as anticipated, there were Illinois-themed cheers and a human pyramid, not to mention both "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" and "Chicago" played as encores. I was a very happy kitty. (I also picked up another concert poster; check it out here. I didn't take the picture, but that's what it looks like . . . except for the fact that, unbeknownst to me, some chucklenuts stepped on it before it got rolled up and rubber-banded and handed to me, so there's a big fucking footprint in the middle of it that I discovered yesterday when I opened it up to flatten it out. Grr.)

A longish interview with Carl Newman on Pitchfork today.

Yes, childrens, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Don't disappoint me. Or Colin Meloy. Or the good folks at 826 Valencia. Of course, the only pirate-speak that comes to my mind at the moment is Gilbert and Sullivan's, which, depending on where you're standing, is either totally weak or totally fitting. MLBO'D and CTLA, say it with me now, in the best Beard-bellow you can muster: "A keener hand at scuttling a cunarder or cutting out a P. & O. never shipped a handspike!" (Thanks, Berianne.)

I Shoulda Snagged Siskel's Chair While I Had the Chance

I have given the thumbs-up, unironically, as a genuine sign of approval, at least twice in the past 24 hours. What the hell is wrong with me?

Internet Lit Watch

On reading Faulkner; on reading Nabokov.

I am a sucker for snarky essay collections about pop culture (professional envy much, Allison?), and I've been reading about Jill Soloway's new one, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants (ack! great title, but what a horrible front cover design!), all over the place, most recently in Bookslut. I'll be eager to check it out soon.

Somewhat related: a beautiful picture of an outdoor "bookstore" in Norway (from Jonny Mo).

All You Have to Do Is Meow, Meow, Meow

How geeky is it that I want to register for this? (Link via Gapers Block.)

Let the Decemberists backlash begin.

OMG! What will Luke's answer be?! Gilmore Girls rules! (Thanks, LK.)

Despite my earlier pleas for ideas and suggestions on where to donate for hurricane relief, I've actually held out giving anything until today. But, based on a short piece I heard on NPR this morning about the disproportionate amount of Katrina donation money that has come through the Red Cross in part because of their online affiliations with Google, Amazon, iTunes, et al, I just decided to give to Oxfam America. Not because I hate the Red Cross or have any kind of compelling connection to Oxfam or feel the need to be stupidly indie as fuck when it comes to trying to do the right thing during a crisis of this magnitude, but because the underrepresented entities nobly doing the best they can in the shadow of the mainstream monoliths need a little lovin' too.

CBCM in the News

For those of you who are curious as to why I've been waking up at 5 AM on Friday mornings so that I can be downtown between 6 and 6:30, check out this article about the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors from today's Sun-Times. You can also look for the link to the main CBCM website in the sidebar at left.

The bird-related synchronicity in my life has increased to an almost comical degree this year, but, perhaps more than anything else, as I'm riding the brown line toward the Loop, watching the sun rise over the lake, I always think, with great fondness, of this quote from Salinger's Seymour: An Introduction:

I found out a good many years back practically all I need to know about my general reader; that is to say, you, I'm afraid. You'll deny it up and down, I fear, but I'm really in no position to take your word for it. You're a great bird-lover. Much like a man in a short story called "Skule Skerry" by John Buchan, which Arnold L. Sugarman, Jr., once pressed me to read during a very poorly supervised study-hall period, you're someone who took up birds in the first place because they fired your imagination; they fascinated you because "they seemed of all created beings the nearest to pure spirit--those little creatures with a normal temperature of 125°." Probably just like this John Buchan man, you thought many thrilling related thoughts; you reminded yourself, I don't doubt, that: "The goldcrest, with a stomach no bigger than a bean, flies across the North Sea! The curlew sandpiper, which breeds so far north that only about three people have ever seen its nest, goes to Tasmania for its holidays!" It would be too much of a good thing to hope, of course, that my very own general reader should turn out to be one of the three people who have actually seen the curlew sandpiper's nest, but I feel, at least, that I know him--you--quite well enough to guess what kind of well-meant gesture might be welcomed from me right now.

The Other Side of Bliss

Rufus Wainwright on opera in the New York Times (via both Stereogum and Alex Ross). Thanks to Indiana University's estimable School of Music, I've been to a handful of operas in my life, and would like to fancy that I appreciated them as much as I was capable, given my lack of point of reference. But, hearing one of my favorite musicians rhapsodize about the art form makes me really want to dive in and self-educate. Seems you could devise a pretty kick-ass beginners' course just by going through the selections he cites in the article.

I read Jonathan Ames's most recent novel Wake Up, Sir! in the course of about two days this week. It is borderline embarrassing how much I love him. I will save you the self-indulgent quoting of my favorite passages here, but, sweet Jesus, is it funny as all get-out. It's a bit slow at the beginning, but once he finally gets to the artists' colony in New York, you will be treated to the funniest description of a seersucker suit you will undoubtedly ever read, the pure genius of the phrase "corn on the macabre," and the most accurate, if just this side of hyperbolic, representation of what happens when a bunch of neurotic, self-important artists live together in extremely close, isolated quarters. I could swear I recognize veiled references to at least three faculty members from IU's English department (Ames was artist-in-residence or somesuch there during the second semester of my senior year, which is how I was first introduced to his work), but I'm sure that anyone who's ever known a socially maladjusted painter or poet or photographer probably sees more than a passing resemblance to them in these characters, too. Just for snicks, here's an interview with Ames from Powells.com.

Giving New Meaning to the Term "Wish List"

Amazon quietly cashes in on sex toy market (via Nerve's Scanner). I love that the article was originally published in MSNBC's financial section.

17x5

It was a big weekend for movies for me, and there's no way I'm going to be able to comprehensively cover all of them. So I'm going to have to roll Kittenpants style today and set you up with some haikus (hai-reviews? [sorry]).

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Cheap ending copped out:
song-and-dance sequence went from
sweet to snarky fast.

The Life Aquatic (on DVD)

This is Anderson's
Chinese Bookie—where Owen
is Esteban, dead.

Red Eye

Well-done genre flick.
Craven gives us shocks and laughs.
Girl power ending!

2046

Memories bring pain.
Pay for sex, then disconnect.
Whisper your secret.

The Constant Gardener

No full frontal scenes
for Ralph this time—what a shame.
Rachel still bugs me.

Notable previews include Philip Seymour Hoffman's Capote project and Brokeback Mountain. (Woo! Who doesn't love gay cowboys?)

Chicagoans, be sure you make time check out the Daily Meaning audio/photo exhibit at the Peace Museum in Garfield Park. Though I didn't have any run-ins with NPR luminaries at the opening on Friday night, I was still thrilled to be there to support the Pitchman. Look for his excellent pieces on the chicken slaughterer and the lineman when you go.

Check out Bushman's blog for a host of ideas on how you can help donate your time and money in the aftermath of Katrina.

Bloggers, get your free graphic at Last Plane to Jakarta, so you too can say thanks to Kanye for speaking the truth live on NBC this weekend. (You can read an editorialized transcript of what went down here.)




Overheard in a coffee shop in Evanston on Sunday: a twentysomethingish man to a twentysomethingish woman, clearly flirting, "You are a violent person. Look at you—you're full of hate. [beat] I like that in a girl." Kittens, that was the sexiest motherfucking thing I have ever heard. I've been waiting my whole adult life for someone to say that to me.

Insert Four-Letter Word for Emphasis

Eve Corbel's Lesser-Known Editing and Proofreading Marks (thanks, GH).

Mimi Smartypants takes on The Lorax (FYI, Nora is her toddler-age daughter):

READING ROUND-UP

Recently finished:

[...]

The Lorax. Oh, shut up you fucking Lorax. I read this book to Nora every single day and she still wants more. She cluck-clucks over the glop in the Humming-Fish pond, she sighs with despair over the smoggy sky, she scolds, "No! You do not do that!" at the sight of axes felling Truffula Trees. Should I just order her Greenpeace sweatshirt now? I'm down with the environment and all, but repeated readings of The Lorax have made me want to go shoot a panda, load it in my Navigator and drive it to a national park, and then set fire to its corpse with gasoline.

Hot boys in women's clothing on Pink today (scroll down, and have a chuckle at the picture of Beyonce while you're on your way).

I'm sure you've all read Ray Nagin's interview transcript on Wonkette by now, but if you haven't, it's imperative you check it out. (Thanks, Nora Rocket.)

After the slightly demoralized tone of yesterday's post, I feel compelled to save for posterity the thoughts that were running through my mind as I walked into the office this morning: people are good! Chicago is good! seeing the sunrise is good! rescuing migrating birds is good! I hope y'all can find your own little bit of light this holiday weekend in the midst of our current national shitstorm. Cheers.

Current Events Give Me Gas

I've always liked the Handlebar, but this makes me like the place even more: behold the Inverse Petrol-O-Matic Beer Pricing Scheme (via Gapers Block).

Does this really, really, actually, for-real-this-time mark the end of the road for CBGB's? If so, I suggest you dry your eyes with a copy of From the Velvets to the Voidoids.

What the fuck is going on over at Tiny Mix Tapes?

I have absolutely nothing insightful or profound to say about the whole ridiculously horrible Katrina thing. I'm having a difficult time simply processing the magnitude of what's going on down there, much less being able to talk about it in a way that doesn't just sound cribbed from Heart of Darkness. Has anyone made any donations or gotten involved with any relief schemes of note? If you have, please share your experience with the rest of the class. I'd like to figure out how I can deal productively with my sadness and support the community in a meaningful and appropriate way.