September Omnibus

Hello, my darlings. It's been a busy month, mostly for personal reasons (all good, don't you worry!), but I suppose it's time to do another quick roundup here to keep you abreast of the pop cultural goings-on in my world.

Yes, I have seen Inglourious Basterds. No, I'm not ready to write about it yet. For both your sake and mine, I want to get this one right, so you're going to have to continue to have patience with me. KTHX.

I did go on a bit of a documentary binge, though (perhaps in response to all the intellectual heavy lifting required by the Tarantino project--just needed to cleanse my palate a bit from all the intertextual references and whatnot). Over the course of three days, I saw It Might Get Loud, Paper Heart, and The September Issue. Contrary to what even I would have expected, I think The September Issue was my favorite of the bunch.

It Might Get Loud was fun but flimsy. Jimmy Page looks like this wonderful old lion, and I actually didn't realize how long he'd been a professional guitar player before the Zeppelin juggernaut, so that was super interesting to learn about. The Edge was totally the odd man out in the threesome, and he kept getting lost in his own logical contradictions as he was describing his philosophy of guitar playing--he'd start to espouse all the beauties of simplicity (modifying chords to ring more purely and openly with fewer notes), but then you'd see him hooked up this his huge rig of computerized effects pedals or standing onstage at one of U2's bloated stadium shows, both of which couldn't be more complex and elaborate. His heart is in the right place, though, I guess. His musical reference points were also fairly divergent from the blues idiom that continues to inform the playing style of both Page and Jack White, which left his contributions a bit in the cold as well. Jack White was an interesting addition to the mix, not least of which was due to the fact that there are no other comparable guitar players of his age and level of fame/success/stature who could have fit the bill (srsly, who else would you have put in there? Josh Homme? Doug Martsch? Stephen Malkmus? I love those guys, but there's not a chance in hell). He also came in with enough hunger and ego blazing to keep those elder statesmen on their toes. There's no way I'd ever want to be friends with that guy, because he just seems like such an impossible dick, but I really respect the hell out of him as a musician and pop cultural figure. I also kind of wish that the movie had gotten even wankier, though. I wanted to hear more about specific chord tunings, songwriting techniques, recording tricks, all that trainspotting nerdery. There's something always slightly hypnotic and wonderful about listening to incredibly skilled people talking about things that I have utterly no frame of reference for. For some strange reason, my dad used to subscribe to Guitar Player magazine when I was still living at home, and I grew curiously addicted to flipping through it--though all the talk about pedals and amps and whatnot could get a bit tedious, there was something incredibly fascinating about that level of detail that goes into your garden variety rock song. I suppose I'm in the minority here, and the director probably didn't want to alienate the already small target demographic for this movie, but I could have used fewer rhapsodic monologues on the theme of "when I was a young boy, the guitar just called to me..." and more hardcore information about what they're actually doing when they're playing guitar. By the end of the movie, though, I kind of started to hate white men and longed for somebody to do a ladies' rock version of the same--Joni Mitchell, Carrie Brownstein, and Annie Clark, maybe? Can somebody make that happen?

My girl crush on Charlyne Yi continues unabated. The nice thing that Paper Heart does is that it sucks you in with the idea that you get to watch her fall in love (or playact a simulacrum of what happened when she once upon a time purportedly fell in love) with Michael Cera, but it actually turns out to be a love story about friendship. The most interesting relationship in the whole movie was between her and the "director" (Nicholas Jasenovec, played onscreen by the totes adorbs Jake M. Johnson). It felt like they had the most screen time together, and it's beautiful to watch their relationship unfold as they tease each other, give each other nicknames (he endearingly calls her Chuck throughout), confess to each other their fears and ambitions in everything from life and love to their careers in Hollywood, and bicker and make up as their realize the true importance of their friendship. How can a garden variety romance with the indie-heartthrob-of-the-moment possibly stand up to something genuinely sweet like that? Luckily, the movie doesn't try too hard to force it and pretty much lets both of these "love stories" do their own thing, on their own time, with their own weight. Sure, much of it is cutesy and if stuff of this nature is inclined to bug you, there's no way anything I'm going to say will change your mind. But, there's a sweetness and a gentleness to it that I found plenty appealing.

Even though I'm not a remotely fashionable girl, I've always secretly kind of been fascinated by clothes and models and the fashion industry, almost in a scientific way, so Benji didn't have to do much convincing to get me to see The September Issue with him. And I loved it, loved it, loved it, largely due to the amazing onscreen presence of Grace Coddington. I can't even begin to summarize her list of achievements and accomplishments here, but she's the perfect complement to Anna Wintour at Vogue. The two women balance each others' strengths and idiosyncrasies so well, neither of them would probably be able to do her job as effectively without the other. It's a beautiful partnership, and of course it's hugely inspiring to see two women of such power and influence rocking their professions at the absolute top of their game. Even if you don't dig fashion, per se, it's a fascinating entry into the broadly defined "putting on a show" genre, as a bunch of creative people come together to make something beautiful out of thin air before the clock runs out. Highly recommended.

I also had the delightful opportunity to see Sondre Lerche play a solo set at Schubas last weekend. I hadn't seen him live in concert since April '07 at the Double Door, but it's always a treat to see him when he rolls through town. I haven't picked up his new album yet, but I plan on doing so soon. As I observed the first time I saw him play a solo show way back in November '04, hearing his songs with nothing but his own guitar accompaniment only emphasizes how cunningly wrought and durable they are. The jazz chord voicings and sweetly twisty melodies can reveal themselves more fully when you're not distracted by the noise and excitement of a full rock band set up. I suppose it's only natural that he'd keep getting better as a singer, songwriter, and guitar player as he matures, but it's almost shocking to watch someone already so laden with so much pure talent continue to grow as a musician, basically in real time. (And the fucker's still only in his mid-20s!!) After opening with a song I'm assuming came from Heartbeat Radio, he ripped into an insanely rocked out and amped up version of "Faces Down" that, in all honesty, the rest of the set almost didn't recover from--it was that good. It was really almost too much too soon in its utter brilliance. He was unfortunately beset by some technical difficulties with his guitar mic, but that just gave him a chance to unplug and give us a totally acoustic version of "Say It All." It was one of those totally unplanned moments that takes a show up a level from enjoyable to special; the room was nearly glowing with warmth. His talent really brings out the best in his audiences, too. Maybe it's just because it was the 7 pm show and, as such, was filled with folks too old (and/or too young) to want to stay up for the 10:30 pm set, but everyone stayed respectfully quiet while he was playing--until he invited us to sing along, at which point everyone busted out not only perfect recall on the lyrics, but also on the harmonies, too. Like with the Juana Molina show back in February, I left the club wanting to be a better, more creative person. It's some next level shit when a show is inspiring like that. The photoset from the evening is posted to my Flickr page here.

In other music news, I already Twittered about it here, but, man, is that American Music Club album The Golden Age good. It's been on nearly constant repeat on my iPod for the past few weeks. It's not flashy or show-offy in the slightest; it just does everything right. There are so many turns of phrase that leave me utterly breathless ("I'll be the match that holds your fire / I'll be the note that sings from your wire / if I can give you all my love" in "All My Love" and "Years ago my soul went missin' / lookin' for a life no one would mourn" from "All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco" come immediately to mind but there are dozens of others scattered throughout), and "The Dance" has to be one of the most devastating songs (outside John Darnielle's oeuvre) that I've heard in ages. I suspect the album's only going to continue to grow on me.

As far as reading material, I've been absolutely devouring And Here's the Kicker. You can find out more about the interviewees at the book's nice and simple website here; take a look at the list there and maybe you'll understand why I've been forcing myself not to rush through it in an attempt to prolong its pleasures. I probably could have dog-eared every other page, it's so full of interesting insights, but George Meyer's interview is sticking in my brain most at the moment. For instance, in talking about cultivating the state of flow in comedy writing (specifically referencing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work!), I thought this was brilliant:

The work you do in this state has grace and ease and resonance. It's the opposite of what Michael O'Donoghue used to call "sweaty" comedy, when you've laboriously squeezed out something tedious, and the effort shows. When you're "in the zone," a joke will just land on you like a butterfly, and only if you scrutinize it later do you see how it came together from disparate elements. . . .

[In other to cultivate this elusive state] You have to be prepared. You need basic writing skills, of course, but you also want to have lots of raw ingredients rattling around in your skull: vivid words, strange song lyrics, irritating euphemisms, disastrous experiences that have been bothering you for years. To feed this stockpile, you need to expose yourself to the real world and all its hailstones.

The other essential is humility. You have to be willing to look stupid, to stumble down unproductive paths, and to endure bad afternoons when all your ideas are flat and stale and derivative. If you don't take yourself too seriously, you'll bounce back from these lulls and be ready for the muse's next visit. . . .

I used to berate myself if I couldn't think of a killer joke for every spot, but I gradually eased up on that. You can't keep bitch-slapping your creativity, or it'll run away and find a new pimp.

Seriously, guys, the whole book is chockful of stuff like that. It's been an unremitting delight for me as a comedy nerd. Definitely recommended for those of you with similar interests and obsessions.

On quite the other end of the spectrum, the interview with Philip Zimbardo, the professor behind the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, in this month's issue of The Believer is not to be missed. Apparently it's an excerpt from a lengthier interview that will appear in the forthcoming McSweeney's title A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain, but the full text of The Believer's version is available online here. It's horrifying stuff, but really important reading.

So what about you, my darlings? What's been keeping you busy and fascinated this month?

Happy Leap Day

All right, former Pirates of Penzance cast members, sing it with me: "for I was born in leap year / and that birthday will not be reached by me til 1940!" "Oh, horrible!"

Do something ridiculous and indulgent today, my kittens, and enjoy your extra 24 hours.

Recent Enthusiasms

"You can't go on suspending judgment forever--that would be to forgo genuinely enjoying music, since you can't enjoy what you can't like. But a more pluralistic criticism might put less stock in defending its choices and more in depicting its enjoyment, with all its messiness and private soul tremors--to show what it is like for me to like it, and invite you to compare. This kind of exchange takes place sometimes between critics on the Internet, and it would be fascinating to have more dialogic criticism: here is my story, what is yours? You might have to be ready, like Celine, to be laughed at. (Judge not, as the Bible sort of says, unless you're eager to be judged.) In these ways the embarrassment of having a taste, the reflexive disgust of distinction, the strangeness of our strangeness to one another, might get the airing they need." --Carl Wilson, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste

Yes, the book is every bit as remarkable as you've heard/read. I feel like I need to take another spin through it immediately, so I can get more into the heart of the thing rather than, as I did throughout my initial reading, just facepalming myself every page and marveling, "holy shit, he's really going to pull it off!" I have at least eight or nine other pages dog-eared on my copy marking quotes that easily could have subbed in for the one above, but it's such a strong, bold work, his arguments really deserve to be taken as a whole, not just cut-and-pasted to show off the flashier bits. Highly recommended.

I was in San Francisco this past weekend, taking a whirlwind tour of the city and the general bay area. During a quick spin through the SFMOMA, I enjoyed, despite much walking fatigue, a nearly transcendent moment in front of Andy Warhol's National Velvet. I feel kind of irrationally insecure about the fact that so much of my favorite art was made by white men in America in the mid-twentieth century, but there it is. (Talk about the embarrassment of having a taste!) It's such a heartbreakingly fragile work, an effect that's really only enforced by its large size. It made me want to cry for Elizabeth Taylor, for Andy, for film, for the march of time, for the fleetingness of youth and beauty. I saw in the repetition of the images not just the flicker of a strip of film through a projector, but a heartbeat at once worried, ecstatic, ephemeral, and very, very human. It's good to go out and wander around and open your eyes and look at things, kittens. You never know what's going to hit you and when.

As for the musics, lately I've been digging Illinois, whose official studio recordings come off with the same kind of shiny Rogue Wave/Margot & the Nuclear So & So's thing that's pleasant and catchy without being as ruthlessly hooky as, say, the New Pornographers or the Shins, but live, their energy has a much sparkier/spunkier edge, in a cute indie rock boy kind of way that makes you want to meet up with the lot of them for a beer at the local dive bar, and, if you're lucky, score a snog in the back corner with whoever's single enough and desperate enough at the moment. Likewise, White Denim's stage presence doesn't come anywhere near matching their sound, in a really fantastic brain-fuck of a way. Their EP Let's Talk About It is all attitude, attitude, attitude, but live, they're just a bunch of beautiful idiots, mumbling under their breath to each other between songs, the vocalized internal monologue bleeding through the fourth wall (if there can even be a fourth wall at a rock show like this) and becoming every bit as valuable to the overall effect as their squawking guitar and old-car-backfiring-in-an-alley bass rumbles and spastic, frantic drumming. Really addictive stuff. The jury's still out for me on Vampire Weekend, but "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is just ridiculously catchy, almost infuriatingly so. And I'm still parsing what I think about Times New Viking, being as all over the place with the "huh, reallys?" as they are, but, DS schools us on why those huhs might be more worthwhile than I would have given them credit for on my own.

Bushman on Baba

Quoth Bushman, who's been listening to the Who a lot lately: "If anyone tells you that they felt the influence of classical minimalism because of the synthesizer part in Baba O'Riley, you have my full and utter permission to KICK THEM IN THE HEAD. A repetitive ostinato over COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL POP HARMONIES does not minimalism make. :) Yes, I know the title is supposedly in reference to Terry Riley, and as such the band claims such influence. I'm just saying, the concept lost something- oh wait, EVERYTHING in the translation. Great, they used a bloody synthesizer and looped it- but its usage has no position of importance in the development of the song, and even gets transposed around to go with the riffs. Awesome tune? Certainly. Great texture? Truly. Minimal? For fucks sake, it's THE WHO. Everyone is tearing it up, and you end with a time change and a fade to a needless (but fun) violin solo."

I love having friends who know more about stuff than I do.

Superbad

I didn't go in to Superbad intending to watch it with my cranky feminist filter on, but, well...if the shoe fits. Look. A good crisis-of-masculinity story, at any age, is usually always going to appeal to me, and I'm generally a pretty easy target for some boys-will-be-boys silliness, but not when it's at the expense of saying some really shitty things about women. And, I wish that shitty were a less appropriate word in this instance, but this movie is seriously reinforcing some borderline medieval notions of vile womanhood here (the weaker/leaky vessel and all that). For all their effusively praised hotness and do-ability, the women in this movie seem constantly overwhelmed/personified by their own bodily fluids, doing nothing but menstruating all over the place, getting "so wet," and projectile vomiting. Even Evan's mom's rack is praised not just for its general lusciousness, but for how lucky baby Evan was to suck on it. And, need we even mention Seth's assertion that a vagina "all by itself" (ie, without a penis in it or at least nearby) is "not for him"? Ooh-kay. I guess, maybe, the argument can be made that these characterizations only reflect the adolescent male's confusion and ignorance about the opposite sex, but that confusion and ignorance seriously didn't have to be tinged with such disgust. Evan's line about how he wants to live in a world where girls weren't weirded out by boners and really wanted to see them was fantastically funny (helped by Michael Cera's typically impeccable delivery), but his feeling slighted by having to hide that one thing seems really petty in light of all the things girls have to hide (period blood and its accoutrements, body hair, and an aggressive sex drive, to name but a few) for fear of becoming undesirable in some dude's eyes.

I dunno. I mean, if the movie wants us to buy Evan as being genuinely respectful of women--and I think it really does, with the best of misguided intentions--then the authorial voice needed to be a little more consistently respectful, too. I know the screenplay was written when Rogen and Goldberg weren't much more than teenagers themselves (not that that's really any excuse), but I seriously don't believe Apatow or the director didn't step in to tone it down a little. Especially the menstrual blood bit. I kind of can't get over it. The situation itself was just so over-the-top and unbelievable, and then the characters' reactions to it were even worse. Of course no one wants to be bled on by a stranger at a party, but there was no such freak-out when that random guy got the bottle smashed over his head during the fight and started spurting blood everywhere. I know that gross-out humor is intrinsic to these kinds of raunchy high school comedies and that this is primarily a movie by dudes for dudes, but...doesn't that just kind of compound the problem? Do we need to be validating the average guy's secret (or not so secret) fears that women's bodies are actually kinda nasty by reflecting them on the big screen? I get that it's a slippery slope for a mainstream movie to feel true to the average person's experience but goose the situations for humor while hopefully not just catering to the lowest common denominator. But, this is the same problem I had last year with Talladega Nights trying to riff on homophobia in a movie aimed at NASCAR fans and frat boys, not the most historically (or, yes, stereotypically) tolerant people on earth. I'm all for going to unspeakable places for the sake of the laugh (I do love Borat, after all), but I just wish these movies could be a little more responsible with their power. Especially considering there's no way that Superbad was number one at the American box office for two weekends in a row thanks exclusively to XY chromosomes. Guys were assuredly bringing dates, girlfriends, and wives along with them to the theater, and it just breaks my heart to think of an insecure teenage girl going to see this movie and being expected to sit through and perhaps even laugh at all the ways her body probably makes her boyfriend or crush recoil.

Is this movie very funny at points? Yes. I definitely laughed a lot. Like I say, Cera is just an unimpeachably brilliant comic actor and I would probably watch him read the proverbial phone book. Jonah Hill's filthy foulmouthed dialogue was like nothing so much as Cartman brought to life (though Dana Stevens brings up a very, very good point in Slate's review of the movie re: the way Seth enacts a very dubious moral code even in respect to his male friends), and there cannot be enough fulsome praise for Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the instantly iconic Fogell/McLovin. And, the fact that this is actually a love story about two best friends was indeed sweet. (Though the faux-morning after scene at the end just reuses the same joke from the more winkingly homoerotic Hot Fuzz.) I just wish a lot of these sex problems (in all biological senses of the term) weren't clouding the good times. Hell, at least give us a female character one half as offbeat and memorable as Charlyne Yi as Jodi in Knocked Up!

My summer of movies set in Paris continued this weekend with Dans Paris. Diminishing returns, my bebes, diminishing returns. Though kind of sexy in places and infinitely easy on the eyes with its blindingly attractive cast, its totally unearned tortured tone, aimlessness, and arty pretensions are pretty much exactly what give "foreign film" a bad name.

Indie rock fatigue seems to set in most acutely for me during the late summer, so, in an effort to distance myself for a little while from sad boys and girls with guitars, lately I've been feasting on M.I.A.'s new one, Kala, and Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass, both of which are rich, rich, rich and totally appealing in their onslaught of noise and lyric and gauntlet-throwing.

Speaking of indie rock fatigue: "the indie rock world is too polite and likable and I feel it needs the drunken uncle to show up, uninvited, to the birthday party and vomit on the couch. Not every year of course, but at least once in a while." --Kevin Barnes (via)

And, while I'm at it: "Lil Wayne. Believe the hype and then multiply it by ten. You are going to feel dumb if you realize in five years that you were too cool to enjoy the dataflow." --Sasha Frere-Jones (via Sasha Frere-Jones)

Cintra on Anna

I love Cintra Wilson for her sublime snark, but when she occasionally tamps it down just enough to reveal sympathy for the most maligned objects of pop culture obsession, she can take my breath away. Some of the best writing I've ever read on Michael Jackson is in the essay "Jacko, the No-Nosed Man from Motown (A Morality Fable)" in her collection A Massive Swelling, and she does it again today in Salon with her brief piece on Anna Nicole Smith's death.

Bristling at the numerous obits that refer to Smith as "famous for being famous," she chides them [snip]:

What needs saying -- what it seems nobody has yet said -- is that when she was able to suppress her demons enough to pull herself together and look her best, she was fabulously gorgeous. Numerous red-carpet moments, the footage of which we now run over and over again like a televised rosary in order to understand her death, reveal this. Anna Nicole was a star because she possessed an unusually large amount of beauty.

Seriously, it's a really great piece with some really great writing. Please do check it out if all the other unavoidable, sour-tasting memorializing floating around in the ether today has left you feeling scummy.

Right Back Up the Arsehole

"I pay tribute to John Peel. It is to John Peel that I pay tribute. The guy that kicked shit. And not only did he kick shit, but he kicked it right back up the arsehole, where it fucking belonged . . . and he made sure it fucking stayed there." —Harold Pinter

Lazy Friday All Link Edition

Deadwood auteur David Milch (from an old interview on Salon): "Well, I think we all are vessels of God, you know. As Saint Paul says, if the hand doesn't know, that doesn't mean it's not part of the body, that just means it doesn't know. And that's why, when I'm able to be of service to the characters, I experience God's presence more acutely than I do when I'm not working. So I try to work as much as I can."

John Roderick: "My friends and tour mates influence me a lot, so I'm writing songs in part to impress other musicians. I hope that Matthew from Nada Surf, or Charles from The Wrens, or Colin from The Decemberists, or the boys in Centro-Matic or Death Cab hear my songs and dig them, and when they congratulate me I feel gratified. Chris Walla has apparently been playing and singing the song 'Honest' during his soundchecks, which is the best kind of compliment." (via) I am sooo ready for Putting the Days to Bed to come out.

A buncha little French kids sing Laura Veirs songs. Most perfect musical match evah! (via)

From BBC News: "'Fossil' rock rat pictured alive: Images have been obtained of a live Laotian rock rat, the animal science now believes to be the sole survivor of an ancient group of rodents." I knew a fossil rock rat once; his hair was receding in front but greasy and long in the back, and he was really, really into Deep Purple.

OMG, seriously? Five amazing high-hat parts? Five thumbs up! Loves it! Esp. the Steely Dan (and Ted Leo/Rx, too).

Ah yes, I'm a sucker for the unexpected, slightly gimmicky cover song. (Awesome fodder for mix CDs.) That Boy Least Likely To cover of "Faith" sounds like a loose tooth—wiggly and gummy and delicate yet reckless. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. I love it. (She's my sister. My daughter. My daughter, my sister.) It also makes me long for Craig Robinson to pull Pete & Bob out of retirement to shimmy and flap to it.

Music from '06 and Movies from '95

"It's quite possible that if you're not interested in creating cathartic moments for the audience, both you and your audience are fucked, to which I say, 'Oh well.' No one appreciates a professional anymore. Everyone's a mystic."
Pitchfork interviews Dan Bejar.

"He [Mike Skinner] has written about his dad's death on the new album. Skinner spent months trying to get right what he wanted to say about it. 'Months. On one three-minute song. It was very, very, very constipated, very difficult to write because of what I'm talking about.' The song that eventually emerged, Never Went To Church, has been the most highly praised of the album, particularly the last line, which Skinner addresses to his father, 'You left me behind to remind me of you.' He wanted to make it good, he says, because 'I wasn't going to say it again. And I already feel a bit like... it's a bit cheesy.'"
Mike Skinner talks shop with the Guardian (via) and reinforces the point I was trying to make last week. I fuckin' love this geezer.

Thanks to all of you who've been sending me links about Rufus's Judy Garland homage at Carnegie Hall tonight. (Sayeth Trent at PItNB: "Just when you thought that Rufus couldn't get any gayer he goes and attempts to out-gay himself.") It's going to be exquisite. Wish I could be there. I'm really hoping they make a DVD or CD available at some point.

JWard (not Jay Ward) and I caught Elvis Costello on his River in Reverse tour at Ravinia on Sunday night. I was thrilled to get to see him live. (Um, OK, mostly hear him live; we were on the lawn and couldn't see a damn thing except a parade of Crocs, little kids dancing like maniacs, high-school aged ushers swishing their white skirts to the beat, and drunk folks grabbing each other's asses.) The band was fucking amazing. They played straight through for about three hours, including two extremely generous encores. Elvis even intimated that they'd run out of prepared material and simply couldn't play any more. His voice is currently enjoying the best of both worlds; he's still got most of his full range of notes, but they're only getting richer and more resonant with middle age. In addition to all Allen Toussaint's arrangements and material, the set included both "Alison" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," so I'd say we got way more than our money's worth.

At Nikola's incredulous behest, I sat down and watched Clueless for the first time ever with him last weekend. Ah, high-waisted jeans and ska music. Mid-90s culture, we hardly knew ye. It holds up as respectably as it can, considering what a time capsule it is, and, I gotta say, only reconfirms how much I like Brittany Murphy in spite of myself. Call it presence, call it charisma, call it what you will, but she blindingly outshines everyone she's on screen with at any given moment. Though, yeah, you ultimately want to get to a point where you can control that shit and use it to your advantage without making your fellow actors look bad, there's something undeniably appealing about her and her ability to just plow through her scenes balls-out.

Happy birthday to Nora Rocket today!

Post-BEA Reading Material Glut

"If I were free to choose from everybody alive, just snap my fingers and say come here you, I wouldn't pick Jose. Nehru, he's nearer the mark. Wendell Willkie. I'd settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, I'd respect your feeling. No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is." --Breakfast at Tiffany's

"I had this whole history with [David] Byrne. In New York, I used to get mistaken for him all the time....Then at some point I saw 'Burning Down the House' and I remember something in me just twitched when I saw Byrne because he was this fully realized version of myself. We're both these uptight white guys trying to stumble into grace....
"You know, there are two kinds of singers: those who sing about who they are, like Townes Van Zandt, and those who sing about who they wish they are, like me. But I'll tell you, what happens sometimes is that, incrementally, you become that person you're singing about. What people see in my songs is me in my deep-focus mode. That's when I get to tear away the veil of my anxiety. If I'm holding out for anything, I guess, it's that: to become the 'me' in my songs." --Jim White, interviewed in The Believer, May 2006

"Even the pictures that show the downtime, by the very virtue of being photos, inject a sense of import, or at least worthiness, by drawing attention to the subject. They fail to capture the outright depression and malevolence that can settle in on a homesick and hungover band stranded, for example, at a truck stop buffet on an interstate somewhere in the middle of Iowa. I mean, look at what I just wrote: even those words make it seem way more romantic than it is!" --Bill Janovitz, Exile on Main Street, excerpted in the 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Volume 1 sampler

I'm Getting Tired Of...The Banjo

"When you are listening to a rock & roll song the way you listen to 'Jumping Jack Flash,' or something similar, that's the way you should really spend your whole life. That's how you should be all the time: just grooving to something simple, something basically good, something effective and something not too big. That's what life is. Rock & roll is one of the keys of the many, many keys to a very complex life. Don't get fucked up with all the many keys. Groove to rock & roll and then you'll probably find one of the best keys of all." --Pete Townshend

I grew up reading Rolling Stone thanks to my father's general addiction to periodicals and inability to throw anything away, and, though its cultural relevance is only a cold, pale shadow of what it once was, I recently opted to receive a few free issues through a special deal that came with my subscription to Salon. Lucky me, I was just in time to receive the big 1000th issue, which you may or may not have seen screaming at you on newsstands in lurid, holographic 3D. I feared that its bulk and overly glossy packaging would make me want to puke with its self-importance and self-referentiality, but it's actually really stellar. I spent a good portion of the weekend devouring it. There are the predictable contributions from Jann Wenner, Cameron Crowe, and Greil Marcus (who cites the above Pete Townshend quote from the eighteenth issue of the magazine in 1968 in his longish piece on RS's early years), but there's also some extremely enjoyable guest essays, perhaps my favorite of which is Bret Easton Ellis's meditation on Tom Cruise's appearance on the cover in 1990 (Days of Thunder era). Referencing the scene in American Psycho when Patrick Bateman shares an elevator ride with Cruise, Ellis writes, hilariously, "I keep thinking about that scene in the elevator in American Psycho and how different it would be played today. Would Bateman, the man also obsessed with appearances, either see a kindred soul or--after witnessing the couch-jumping, the hectoring on the Today show, Scientology, the thing called Vanilla Sky--quietly back away and hope to go unnoticed?"

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a beautiful essay about the famous photograph of John and Yoko taken on the day of his death (writer Scott Spencer ruminates, "Remembering Lennon's boyish boast about the Beatles' being more popular than Jesus, and seeing again the profound artistic sympathy with which Leibovitz composed this last portrait of him, we realize: Here is our Pietà") and many in-their-prime photos of some of the sexiest motherfuckers ever to have worked in popular music. I'm thinking here specifically of this shot of Mick & Keith and this shot of Bowie paying intentional homage to James Dean. Yes, yes. As Giddy once famously said of me, in jest (somewhat), on her Friendster page, I like magazines.

In Eddie Izzard voice: We've got suits of babies! We've got babies on suits!

Did everybody read the Fork's looong interview with Sufjan today? I nearly fell out of my chair when I read that part about his "small obsession with birds" ("I think I might have gone a little overboard, because I have three field guides, I'm saving up for a pair of binoculars, and I want to buy the elephant folio book of Audubon prints of birds of North America. So I've probably invested a little too much time in this"). Sure, sure, on the surface it looks like it can just be chalked up to all the research he did to write the "Lord God Bird" song for NPR, but the Wrestling Entropy family knows better--there must have been some weird voodoo going on with the avian-themed packaging Chris conceived for my 2005 year-end mix and the inclusion of "Chicago" thereon. (Just like when Ben Folds and Neil Hannon went on tour together a few years ago, and CTLA claimed I magically made it happen by rubbing their albums together in my big CD binder.)

And a big ol' happy birthday to BAK today!!

Baby, You've Got to Be More Discerning

"When somebody's like 'I'm going to get a rock band, and there's going to be eight people in it and there's going to be a violin and a cello and an accordion' then I'm kinda like, it's got to be f*cking mind-blowing because I'm not going to have the patience for your process because your process is kind of obvious. But when somebody says 'I'm going to only use broken instruments to try to arrange a beautiful symphony' then if there's even one moment of beautiful clarity then I'm totally satisfied."

So says Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) in conversation with You Ain't No Picasso (via), and so splits my own brain in two. There's the part of me that's cheering along with the truth of locating the one moment of beauty in the big mess of artistic honesty, and there's the other part of me that instinctively bristles at the snobby insiderness of statements like that. The whole broken instruments aesthetic can be just as obvious as the kind of indie band with precious orchestration he's maligning. (And, ahem, isn't the Arcade Fire, with whom he's most famously worked, pretty much the very definition of obvious and boring indie band with strings and accordion? I mean, even if you're the Arcade Fire's biggest fan and grant that their process is one of the "fucking mind-blowing" exceptions, it's nevertheless gotta be pretty difficult to deny.) I fall down a little bit harder on the side of bristling in this particular instance, mostly because he has the temerity to talk trash about Bjork's string arrangements in the same interview. This guy is clearly way too smart for his own good, but whether that turns out to be too smart for our own good still remains to be seen. For what it's worth, his cover of Bloc Party's This Modern Love is so gorgeous it nearly brought me to tears. Final Fantasy's much-blogged about He Poos Clouds is being released this summer, though I haven't been able to successfully determine if it's May 9 or June 13 (I've seen both dates listed variously around the intarweb).

Did anyone have any luck scoring Radiohead tickets this weekend? I felt pretty rotten about striking out until I read that even the proprietor of Stereogum got screwed.

Other music news and downloady goodness:

*Check out the jangly adrenaline rush of Fire Island, AK, a leaked track from the new Long Winters album (via)

*Neil Hannon's lush orchestrations and tea-dappled melodies sound more effortless than ever on these two leaked Divine Comedy tunes, "To Die a Virgin" and "Lady Diva," both from his forthcoming album. It's also good to hear him get back to using, in "To Die a Virgin," one of those archly British dialogue samples from some obscure English movie (provenance unknown) over the song's introductory notes

*Yeah, Beirut's Postcards from Italy really is that good

*If the Rappers Delight Club (via) doesn't string a crooked and twinkling smile across your face like a strand of dollar-store lights on a snow-encrusted Christmas tree, then you've probably grown up a little too much

Happy birthday to Mikow (5-5), my sister (5-6), and Nick (today!). Wish y'all could have made it out to celebrate with me and my little choir of amber-colored prescription bottles this weekend.

Recent Reading

"Ed says, 'So are you going to tell me a story?'
"Starlight says, 'That's what I'm here for. But usually the guy wants to know what I'm wearing.'
"Ed says, 'I want to hear a story about a cheerleader and the Devil.'
"Bones says, 'So what's she wearing?'
"Pete says, 'Make it a story that goes backwards.'
"Jeff says, 'Put something scary in it.'
"Alibi says, 'Sexy.'
"Brenner says, 'I want it to be about good and evil and true love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much fooling around with narrative structure. The ending should be happy but still realistic, believable, you know, and there shouldn't be a moral although we should be able to think back later and have some sort of revelation. No and suddenly they woke up and discovered that it was all a dream. Got that?'
"Starlight says, 'Okay. The Devil and a cheerleader. Got it. Okay.'"
--Kelly Link, "Lull," Magic for Beginners

"And weirdly, [Mötley Crüe's autobiography] The Dirt isn't a bad book. For a start, it's definitive, if you're looking for the definitive book on vile, abusive, misogynistic behavior: if there are any worse stories than this in rock and roll, they aren't worth telling, because the human mind would not be capable of comprehending them without the aid of expert gynecological and pharmaceutical assistance....
"Oh, but what do any of these things matter? Is it really possible that Mötley Crüe have destroyed all the literature in the world, everything that came before them, and everything written since? I rather fear it is."
--Nick Hornby, "Stuff I've Been Reading," The Believer, April 2006

She Is Good to Me and I Am Good to Her

Moses Martin? Gwyneth and Chris named their new baby Moses Martin? Are you kidding me? Oh my, that is just too fucking delightful. What's with their baby names' Old Testament theme? First Apple, then Moses. Ooh, if the next one isn't a minor prophet, I'll eat my hat. (Sing it with me, Benji.)

Speaking of which, how's about that Gospel of Judas that's just recently been verified as being authentic? (The announcement was ever so nicely timed for Holy Week. I guess the Church can't be begrudged their version of sweeps. Stay tuned for sexy guest stars, dangerous stunts, and never-before-seen ancient Coptic manuscripts!) I think the more we know about the early days of Christianity and the formation of the canon, the better off everyone's going to be. I mean, yeah, I'm a big religious studies nerd, but when it comes to uncovering the shady dealings and fractious infighting and marginal belief systems that were considered so dangerous they had to be repressed at all costs, I can hardly stand how exciting it is! (And now it's time for a commercial break plugging Elaine Pagels's fantastic book on the Gospel of Thomas, Beyond Belief. I would loan it to you if I hadn't given my copy out to someone else already.)

Malcolm Gladwell-watch! "My mandate is to convince people that [psychological science] is exciting and to use the discipline in making us think in different ways about social problems or political issues, and that requires taking some liberties — not liberties, that's too strong a word — that requires having fun with it." A wonderful, lengthy article about him in the Association for Psychological Science's journal, Observer (via).

"You'll hear a little bit of auto tune and you're like, 'You're too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don't you know what that means?' It's not an effect like people try to say, it's for people like Shania Twain who can't sing. Yet there they are, all over the radio, jizzing saccharine all over you": Neko Case talks to Pitchfork about songwriting, singing, and Celine Dion's horrifying Anne Geddes baby photo book.

Girls Don't Poop.

Oh man, seeing a show like the one Gogol Bordello put on Saturday is pretty much the whole reason I go to rock concerts. To have experiences like that, plain and simple. Every time I buy a ticket to anything, I'm always chasing down that ideal, secretly hoping I'm going to come out at the end of the night feeling like I just went through a major catharsis. Hoping there will be deafening noise and sweating and jumping and screaming and fist-pumping and emotional electricity and pure fucking joy. To stand in a surging crowd that feels so wild and yet so happy and so safe. Eugene Hutz and his band of merrymakers bring all that and some goddamn wicked facial hair to boot. Not to be missed. Thanks for being there with me, Nora Rocket and JZ. Hoptza!

Lanky Brunettes with Wicked Jaws

The boys at Coke Machine Glow can bark and chase each other around the rec room all they want, nattering earnestly but ultimately pointlessly about whether music criticism should be objective or whether it's an inherently subjective pursuit. Meanwhile, Robert Christgau just gets shit done. Yes, I know it's not exactly fair to hold a couple of young turks up to the Dean's standards (and, hey, at least they're attempting to really wrestle with some big ideas, right?), but it's nice for everyone to be reminded occasionally of the thrilling places pop music criticism is capable of going. A stunning article for anyone who's ever had a passing interest in the Marshall Mathers / Eminem / Slim Shady phenomenon.

"I'm a Ukrainian-Russian-Lithuanian-Roma mix, and I can identify with any other spirit, but the Roma aspect is important because it brings you straight to the intersection of art and human rights, and all music and art that always interested me had that element of . . . reaching out through borders": Carl Wilson interviews Eugene Hutz.

Has anybody watched The Thin Man recently? This movie is 72 years old and it doesn't show its age at all. It's one of those classics that I'd somehow never caught up with, and after reading both the formidable Amy Sherman-Palladino and Mimi Smartypants make references to it as a favored and influential movie, I put it in my Kittenflix queue and watched it this weekend. I could give a shit about the mystery plot. It's all about the oft cited chemistry and sparkling dialogue between William Powell and Myrna Loy. Delightful company to spend a Sunday afternoon with.

My feelings about Natalie Portman usually fall somewhere between complete indifference and exasperated skepticism, but when I saw her on the cover of this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly I had about ten years' worth of awe and reverence instantly downloaded into my brain, Matrix-"whoa, I know kung-fu"-style. Holy hell, what a beautiful human.

People fucking delight me. I was in the grocery store yesterday, wandering around in the state of bewilderment that that chore always induces in me. Studying my hastily scribbled list and drifting to a stop in front of one of those wall-length coolers, I heard a gentleman standing nearby quietly mutter in my direction, "you buy some eggs, girl." Ha! When did my Saturday morning errands turn into an R. Kelly song?

Big thanks to JWard for burning me a copy of Neko Case's stunning Blacklisted. It was about time I started catching up with her non-Pornos work, and this was a perfect place to start.

Lovely and Excellent

Ah, the internets can be quite a lovely place when nice people say such nice things.

Sayeth John Darnielle: "Suffrage gave woman the vote; Betty Friedan gave them hope, and the power to dream, and in so doing she brought us all a step closer to liberation. For if we tolerate a world in which our mothers — and our sisters; and our daughters, and our wives; our closest friends and dearest companions — are not free to follow their dreams and to chase down their passions, in short to seek out their true selves, then that world is a paltry thing, and our own lives within it are greatly diminished."

Sayeth Alex Ross: "Mozart did not come from nowhere. He was the product of a society that was avid for music on every level, that believed in the possibility of an all-encompassing musical genius. The society we live in now believes otherwise; we divide music into subcultures and subgenres, we separate classical music from popular music, we locate genius in the past. Today, a young man with Mozart's abilities would very likely labor in obscurity, and perhaps give up in frustration. As I once wrote, if Mozart were alive today, he'd be dead. If you really want to celebrate Mozart's world, Mozart's culture, Mozart's life, you would ignore the man himself and listen to music by a living composer. . . . Celebrate Mozart another time, when he's not being rammed down your throat."

Sayeth the rabbit: "You see what's out there, the stupid messages, the dumb comments, the countless people who don't get it, who want to tell you how you've failed, how they're better than you because they've been locked into the same rigid concepts and followed the same prescribed path from the time they were infants. You see all of that and you say, 'That's the way it is. Fine. Whatever.' And then you move on to what you are - separate from all of that. None of that shit has anything to do with you. Fuck the statistics. You have a great job, you look good, you're pretty happy. . . . [G]et out, open up, own how great you are, stop apologizing. Fuck the statistics. Fuck the sad stories. Nothing is standing in your way."

Excellent food on Friday at Pizza D.O.C, excellent lexicographical silliness on Friday night with the birthday boys and crew, excellent Matthew Kerstein / Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin / Catfish Haven show at the Subterranean Saturday night, excellent drinking and carousing even later Saturday night at Club Foot. Most excellent indeed.