Obligatory Frey Post

Fuck the whole James Frey controversy. I wanna see Oprah stage an "oh no you di'int!" smack-down with Elmo and his potty pals (potty pals=best euphemism for incompetent, money-grubbing editors ever). "You betrayed millions of potty-training toddlers, Elmo! This isn't sad for me, this is embarrassing."

(Elmo link via the newly redesigned You Can't Make It Up.)

Laura Veirs

Laura Veirs is totally my new BFF.

Saw her open for Colin Meloy at the Park West last night, and she is absolutely the cutest thing evuh. There's a really beautiful childishness about her that stops just short of innocence or preciousness. She traverses a similar landscape to the one Bjork does, that place where visions of wood sprites tippling absinthe-laced oolong tea collide with horizon-size images of blood and bone and muscle and sinew. She's like Heavenly Creatures set to music, this tiny woman with an epic imagination that finds wonder in the power of nature yet also finds delight in the familiarity of the mundane. Her precise and almost affected diction, the way she would sway from side to side while she was playing the guitar, and the exuberance with which she used her looping machine to harmonize with herself all helped create the impression that she probably just does this to amuse herself when she's home alone. There's something undeniably special about her. I chatted her up a bit at the end of the night, told her how much I love Year of Meteors, and had her sign the copy of her previous album Carbon Glacier that I'd just bought at the merch table. I didn't feel too bad about spazzing out on her; I figured she'd get where I was coming from.

And then there was Colin. Ah, Colin. I so love these solo shows that he does; they make me feel like, "ah yes, I get to spend an evening with my old pal who's visiting town for the day." His music is such a huge part of my life now; I kind of got emotional a couple of times throughout the night just because hearing him sing his songs felt so comforting and made me so happy. He played a nearly perfect variety of stuff from each of the albums and the Five Songs EP, as well as one song from his tour-only disk of Shirley Collins covers, one old Tarkio tune (in honor of Kill Rock Stars rereleasing an anthology of their stuff), and two new songs. One of the songs was for Fetus Meloy, as expected, and the other was inspired by/in honor of the Shankill Butchers, whom he'd recently read about in a book of Irish history. It's another one of those hilariously grisly Struwwelpeter-type songs he does so well, full of admonitions to children to mind their mothers or else the Shankill Butchers will cut them in their sleep. The overly earnest and worshipful audience, full of chubby drama geeks who arrived as soon as the doors opened so they could line the lip of the stage in reverence, was stone-silent through the whole thing; I don't think they got that it was supposed to be funny. In addition to the Shirley Collins song, he also reached the requisite indie-cover quota by ingeniously tacking one verse of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on to the end of "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" and finishing his always-impressive solo version of "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade" with the Decemberists' wonderful funeral dirge arrangement of The Smiths' "Ask." It was a beautifully paced, emotionally satisfying show, smooth without being soulless. (Yes, that was pointed at you, Mick.)

Mille Grazie

To the best, most generous, and sneakiest friends a gal could have: thank you, thank you, and thank you again!

Tell Me "Snack Hamster" Doesn't Sound Like a B-52s Song

A weird day for weird animal behavior in urban environments: snakes and hamsters hanging out amiably in a zoo in Tokyo (thanks for the link, Nora Rocket) and a whale swimming up the Thames in London. This makes Mike O'D's joke about the dead pigeon on my backdoor staircase asking me in a Groucho Marx voice, "wha? Ya mean'ya never saw'r a dead pigeon before?" seem almost possible.

A brief but surprisingly bold defense of religion in indie rock today on Pitchfork.

I have recently taken to enhancing my hot beverages with French vanilla Coffeemate, and, boy howdy, does it make me feel a little less apathetic about my life right now. It's especially good with the Celestial Seasonings Perfectly Pear White Tea. Mwrowr.

Dear ambiguously accented, fast-talking waiter from the Wildfire last night: you get funnier the more I think about you. You were a fine waiter and all, and I mean no disrespect, but, seriously, are you part cartoon? Were the formative years of your childhood spent in an RKO comedy? Never has anyone actually said to me, in apparent earnest, "thass veruh, veruh nahce. Eggggcellent choissse." I couldn't have asked for a more perfect complement to the retro steakhouse ambiance. Bogart's Charhouse could use a few of your ilk to help class up the joint.

Can I Give Props to Ray Charles, Too? Just for Snicks?

You know what they always say: a journey of three billion miles begins with a single launch. We're going to Pluto today, kittens! Isn't that fantastic?

Blockbuster Books of the Bible, including "Deuteronomy, Where's My Car?", "Daniel Darko," "2nd Chronicles of Riddick," and "Zephaniah and Hutch."

Speaking of The Chronicles of Riddick, here are the Top Thirty Facts About Vin Diesel, including "Crop circles are Vin's way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down" (thanks, Nora Rocket).

I know I linked to the Who's the Boss website about a million years ago, but the drawing in the "featured commentary" section here just makes me unspeakably happy.

The Golden Globes, in summary:

• We like Felicity Huffman, Michelle Williams, and Cynthia Nixon.


• Geena Davis redeemed her dress by lying in her speech about her presidential role's impact on young girls.


• A History of Violence is by far the best of the movies it was nominated against in the Best Motion Picture–Drama category (and probably still the best even if you throw the Musical or Comedies in there, too), but I'm not surprised Brokeback Mountain won.


• The Desperate Housewives displayed an unacceptable amount of giggling. I'm just sayin', none of the actors giggled when Lost won.


• The only thing going through the audience's heads while John Williams was walking to the stage to accept his Best Original Score award was "DUN. DUN. DUN. DUN DA-DUN. DUN DA-DUN!" I hereby nominate him to be put out to pasture already!


• Do you think Mel Brooks was sad about being at the ceremony alone this year?


• Props to Zach Braff for drinking a fucking bottle of Bud in the midst of all that Moet.

I'm only scratching the surface here. For those of you who crave the snark, Defamer has some of the best Globes wrap-up on the blogs (with pictures!).

Soul Meets Body

In case there's anyone left among my readership who doubts that librarians are, in fact, superheroes, I submit, for your consideration, my roommate, who saved our apartment building from burning down on Friday afternoon (yes, Friday the 13th) because she gets home from work a good two hours before all us other 9-to-5ers and was thus able to call the fire department before the nascent blaze in the basement did too much damage. One of the firemen even told her, "if this had gone another half an hour, you wouldn't have had a home to come home to." Since we're not anticipating any actual thanks or appreciation from our landlady, I would like to ask you all to join me in thanking her for keeping those books shelved and for keeping a roof over our heads. Thanks, LK!

There's an outstanding article in last week's issue of The New Yorker called "Prairie Fire." It's written by Eric Konigsberg and it's about a fourteen year old genius from Nebraska who somewhat recently committed suicide under mysterious circumstances and how his parents, his friends, and the "gifted educators" who studied him under a microscope his whole life are dealing with his death in their own slightly self-deluded ways. It's fascinating stuff, and extraordinarily insightful and well written. Be sure to check it out if you have the means.

OK, how disappointingly bad was the hotly anticipated Scarlett Johansson/Death Cab SNL? The skits were horrible, Ben's voice was uncomfortably shaky, and Scarlett loves herself way too much. But, I did like the Swedish Chef ringtone bit, the "Daddy, why won't Shakira wrestle an alligator?!" punchline to the My Super Sweet 16 sketch, and Tina Fey's joke about Alito's wife being so upset during the hearings that she had to leave the room to get an abortion. I, somewhat sheepishly, also find myself being won over by the shaggy haired charms of Andy Samberg. Here's hoping next week's Peter Sarsgaard/Strokes pairing will fare better.

RIP, Shelley Winters. Alas, her final death scene!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, everyone. Salon provides a valuable public service and posts recordings of a few of his interviews and speeches (incl. "I Have a Dream") to ignite your ears, and your soul.

Woody? No, He Would Not

I know what you're thinking, and, no, the oatmeal latte at Cafe Descartes isn't as good as you'd think it would be.

Neither is Match Point.

"I worked for a book publisher, and actually attempted to turn down Harry Potter. The first Harry Potter title came in, and we had an editorial meeting about it, and I said, 'This is just absolute rubbish. There are so many better children's books that aren't being published.' And I was overruled": an interview with The Clientele, a recent "discovery," whose album Strange Geometry (#17 on Pitchfork's year-end top 50 list!) is aces.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, kittens!

I went down to the Hilton with BAK and JP during the lunch hour today and protested W's appearance in Chicago. It felt good.

Beg, borrow, steal, forge a loved one's death certificate so you can take a bereavement day off from work, do whatever you have to do to go see this man live.

This is the best, most hopeful, interesting, and thoughtful analysis of celebrity worship I've ever read. (I gotta go check Pink now.... It's the noble thing to do for humankind, right?)

CTLA and I used to joke about how much we wished we could CGI Alan Rickman into the Keanu Reeves role in the movie version of Much Ado About Nothing just so the film would be rounded out with a genuinely satisfying bad guy and, y'know, someone who's actually able to deliver the language. Well, going to see Rumor Has It... with my sister last weekend was one of the only times I can remember wanting to CGI an entire movie into and on top of another entire movie. God, it was execrable. I love pop culture in all its guises, and I like to keep my finger on the pulse of the middlebrow in general, and the practice of going to the movies is just inherently thrilling to me anyway, so it wasn't like I was dragged kicking and screaming, against my will to the theater. If it's something a family member expresses a desire to see, I'm usually inclined to tag along and will absolutely feel I've gotten my money's worth if I can spot an interesting performance or a savvy little bit of writing or an unexpected moment of humor or emotion between characters. But, bzzzzzt. Came up short this time around. Which is unfortunate, because there's actually a neat little movie hidden, deep, in the concept, somewhere. It could have been a melancholy, twisted Michel Gondry-ian take on a woman's journey to discover the hidden truths about her family and thus about herself, refracted through the prism of a classic film, with the potential for some surreal imagery commenting on how we inevitably fictionalize and/or mythologize our families' backstories to deal with them more handily or fill in gaps that we've never quite been able to have sufficiently explained to us. But instead, we had the Team Aniston mascot waffling prettily about how confused she is about everything (dude, if I had to constantly peer out at the world through that thick curtain of hair, I'm sure everything would look a little skewed to me, too), a not-quite-ironic-enough-to-be-
cool-again-yet Kevin Costner sleaze-a-thon, Shirley MacLaine phoning it in with a few bitchy lines and soused double entendres, a minor incest subplot inexplicably played for laughs, and a cheery-bright mainstream commercial movie sheen slopped all over both the lighting and the general tone. Mark Ruffalo, at least, did his part to put everyone to shame, infusing the token "nice guy gets screwed over but eventually wins the girl in the end" mensch role with that beautifully dark rage and indignation he does so well. ::sigh:: What's that Buddy Fiddler line from City of Angels (the musical)? "I saw the whole movie in my head. It's a pity we can't sell tickets to my head; we'd save a fortune."