Better Than Weasels on a Train or Musk Oxen on a Cruise

This week in Snakes on a Plane-watch: viddy the trailer (via; thanks, JP). Also, why do I not own this t-shirt yet?

Dr. Robert Sapolsky's hour-long lectures on the physiology of stress linked here are definitely worth seeking out.

Though the ginormous Fosters oilcans LK and I snuck in to the theater as part of our drunken St. Patrick's Day rampage might have ever so slightly affected my critical faculties (ya think?), I still will not hesitate to say that Mrs. Henderson Presents is really not all that great. It's fun for about the first half hour when it's all light and carefree with the familiar but always welcome "putting on a show" tropes, but when it starts getting overly grave and self-serious about the Function of Art and Entertainment During Wartime, it just bored the hell out of me. Frears, my man, what is up? If you're in the mood for a movie about the London theater scene in the early-to-mid-twentieth century that follows the tragicomic misadventures of a saucy, sexy, spoiled older woman, skip Mrs. Henderson and rent Being Julia instead.

I'm only three or four stories in to Kelly Link's new-ish collection Magic for Beginners, but it's already lived up to most of its hype. "Stone Animals" contains the best written evocation of nightmare I've maybe ever read. Check out the first story from the collection, "The Faery Handbag," an early contender for my favorite piece from the book, here.

I highly recommend getting a cute English boy to try to explain the rules of cricket to you over pizza sometime. He will use a napkin as the cricket pitch and the salt and pepper shakers as the batsmen and a grated cheese shaker as the bowler, and you will not understand a word of it, but it will not matter. Thanks for trying, RW, and good luck with the interview.

Organs, Tapes, and Drums

From the "I fell asleep watching hyperviolent Korean exploitation flicks then found, upon waking the next morning, that fiction had unexpectedly and disturbingly merged with reality" file (via Gapers Block): "[Jakub] Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage Wednesday morning. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers." [link] I am so delighted by the sheer gross-out weirdness of this.

Having only just turned 27, I think it's patently obvious I did not write this letter. Unless, consistent with the fiction-merging-with-reality theme of the day, I wrote it next year and sent it back through time to be published online to warn me, Donnie Darko-style, off the future that certainly awaits me.

Tapes 'n Tapes? How do we feel about Tapes 'n Tapes, eh, geeks? I like what I've heard so far.

If any of you musicians need, or know of anyone who needs, a high quality, barely used drum kit, GH is getting rid of one. I don't have any digital pics to share, but contact me at wrestlingentropy at yahoo dot com if you're interested and I'll connect you guys, all LEGOs-like.

Band...or Panda?

< Strong Bad voice > Oh holy craaaaaaaap!< /Strong Bad voice > Best ever: from the Academy Awards wrap-up issue of Entertainment Weekly, behold the "Band...or Panda?" quiz! I nearly peed on myself when I saw this. So funny.

Seriously, what gives (or doesn't give, for that matter), Tennessee? (Via)

OMG, MySpace is sooo dunzo! Sign me up for Isolatr. (Via) Definitely the new hotness. (That was for you, Mac, the only person who appreciates my busted four-year-old slang!)

Belle and Sebastian

After hearing Giddy talk about how amazing it was to see Belle and Sebastian play at Coachella two years ago, I always sort of secretly suspected that her experience was way more about the situation than the performance. I mean, how much fun could it be to see Belle and Sebastian--a band that, no matter how much they grow musically and stylistically, will likely forever be defined as sad bastard music--play live anyway? Well, I'm happy to report that once again I was merely being a snarky, doubting bitch--a Belle and Sebastian show really is that much fun.

Was able to wrangle myself a ticket for the concert at the Riv on Friday night (thanks, Patrick), and it was bloody fantastic. Stuart Murdoch is sooo cute, all little and spazzed out and tentative about playing rock star. His attempt at crowd surfing was nothing short of pathetic ("erm, OK, put me back now") and when he got up to dance on the stack of speakers, he really just looked more like a kid dancing on the kitchen counter than a proper rock 'n' roll front man. And, as is the case with so much of what touches me most these days, it was precisely because he was willing to look foolish while clearly, genuinely having fun that something really beautiful and honest was able to be born on stage. There was such liveliness and joy in everything they did that ran totally opposite to the kind of dour, Glaswegian self-seriousness I would have expected. For Christ's sake, when they kicked in to "Another Sunny Day," the back projection turned into a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds and all the lights on stage glowed golden yellow; I just started laughing out loud. I couldn't help it. It was too perfect.

The fact that I recognized a lot of the songs in the set list means they went heavy on the tunes from The Life Pursuit (in addition to a few from If You're Feeling Sinister and, of course, the massively awesome "Your Cover's Blown"), which, not exactly being well versed in the whole of their output, obviously didn't bother me in the least. With their energy and tighter pop songcraft, these songs lend themselves extraordinarily well to live performance. I was even tempted to throw up the horns during the sweet little guitar solo in "We Are the Sleepyheads." But, perhaps the greatest thing to come out of the show is the fact that the first thing I did on Saturday morning (after eating a banana and gulping some water--sooo hungover) was turn on The Life Pursuit. I feel like I'm finally ready to give this band my full attention, rather than keeping them compartmentalized as being good but too twee and precious for me, or whatever excuses I used to give to keep them at arm's length.

What about the New Pornographers? Because of the uncertainties of actually getting a ticket, I missed pretty much the entirety of their set. Uh, what I heard of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" sounded pretty great, though. Go Carl Newman!

LK and I watched Grizzly Man last night. Holy fuck, what a movie. It's a testament to the strength and conviction with which Herzog conveys his worldview that, even after a brilliant concert the night before and a gorgeous spring day spent shoe shopping and gabbing with my best pals, I felt overwhelmed by the meaninglessness, chaos, and isolation of human existence.

It's Raining Today

Scott Walker announces details of his first album in over a decade. I don't know too much about his work, but what I do know, I adore. But even for a casual fan like myself, this is a very big deal.

Seriously, Pope jokes are never not funny. Stereogum has the lowdown on Benedict XVI's iPod Nano. The line about The Joshua Tree cracked me up. Is it too much to hope for a hacked Sidekick scandal from the Vatican, too? ::shudder::

Do all you people know about the current political situation in Turkmenistan? This is news to me because I live in a cave and roar at people when they attempt to approach with fire, but apparently, the country is ruled over by a crazy dictator who has erected a massive gold statue of himself on a rotating base so that it always faces the sun, schoolchildren are forced to read the two books that he has written, all the clock faces in the country have to have his profile on them, and he has renamed the days of the week after himself and members of his family (among other offenses). This is awful, an egregious abuse of power, etc., of course, but--ha! Fuck me, this is the funniest thing I've read about all day. I feel so horrible being amused by this, but, Christ, what a wacko. Love it.

Lovin' and Lobsters

Oh holy shit, the indie rock sex lyrics contest. Best ever.

Hottt Eames lounge chair ink.

Dedicated readers of Wrestling Entropy know all about my fear of and perverse fascination with the ocean, so with that in mind, I say to you, with all the bone-shattering terror I can muster: are they fucking kidding us with this newly discovered furry lobster shit? Horrifying. And yet quite cool. (Thanks, JP.)

Crash Bang Boom!

Hollywood's acceptance of non-mainstream sexualities this year was really surprisingly progressive. I mean, just look at last night's best picture winner. For one thing, it's a Canadian movie, which, in itself, shows a more cosmopolitan view of the world than they've been able to muster in recent years. Beyond that, I mean, the beauty of the gritty, steamy car wrecks and anal sex innuendos were like a series of thrown gauntlets to complacent viewers, a challenge to connect with our baser instincts in an increasingly cold, modern world. And, I'm always a fan of the typically audacious and sexually deviant roles James Spader takes on.... Hmm? What's that? Oh, that's not the Crash that won best picture last night? It was the other Crash? Uhh, nevermind then.

(OMG, that joke's so May '05.)

Honestly, with Cronenberg and A History of Violence barely nominated for anything, the only thing I had left to get mildly riled up about was Dolly Parton being robbed of the Best Original Song award. Yeah, I've talked about how much I loved Hustle & Flow, and I don't begrudge the Three 6 Mafia an ounce of their success in bringing some rap into the consciousness of the old, white squares who were voting in that category, but. Dolly's song was by far the best thing about the surprisingly disappointing Transamerica--and it only played over the closing credits (ouch)--so I was keen to see it given its due. Ah, it's so good. It's the only thing that choked me up during the whole movie. When she rips it up around minute 3:30, forget it. In fact, it's gotten so that I can't even listen to it on the train in the morning. (Check it--looks like iTunes is still giving the MP3 away free for the time being, or you can snag it here.) Not to mention I was especially keen to see her win the award after she revivalized the clearly moved Academy audience with pure joy, unlike the eminently snooze-worthy "In the Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepzzzzzzzzz" (man, those four whole notes she sang during the song sure were, um, uh, ethereal!) or (if I'm going to be honest) the ridiculous desecration of everything "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" stood for in the context of its film. Mais, c'est la guerre, n'est-ce pas?

Elsewhere, new Flickr pics, ranging from New Year's Eve to my birthday party to this weekend's fourteenth annual (?!?!!) Nick Movie Awards. Enjoy.

A Child's History of Bombing

I know no one really wants to go out on a Friday night and pay $15 to feel bad about the state of the world, but. I would encourage all you Chicagoans to check out A Child's History of Bombing at the Neo-Futurarium. Word on the street (and by street, I mean box office) is that not many reservations have been made for Friday, March 3, so if you're at all inclined to attend, I would strongly recommend that you consider doing so tomorrow night. Regardless, please try to make it out before it closes on the 11th. It's a vital and truth-seeking piece, filled with great humility and curiosity about some of the most epic tragedies of the past century. Kudos to DS and co-creator Greg Allen for compiling and presenting this information with a perfect balance of personal horror and statistical magnitude, buoyed by the very best of what experimental/
multimedia theater can do. And, if you go, just be thankful you won't have to sit behind the Curtis LeMay fanclub like I did.

Room for Rhombuses, Too

OK, I give up. There's no way I can even pretend that I'm not geeked about seeing this movie. Behold, Nacho Libre (via), starring Jack Black, directed by Jared Hess, and written by Mike White. I think my inner twelve year old boy just had an asthma attack of unadulterated giddiness. (Maybe these links will be of some interest to the good folks who occasionally stumble upon my blog while looking for actual wrestling information?)

As long as I'm admitting embarrassing things this week, I might as well admit that I have a real soft spot for John Mayer. (So does ?uestlove.) Um, does this Radiohead cover (via) earn him any cred at all? Or does it just make things worse? I think it's tits.

Go nominate a blogger you love for one of the Best Sentences of 2005 (via). The deadline to submit is tomorrow. Seriously, this isn't a boomerang-style hint to nominate me or anything; I would just love to see some deserving alterna-media folks get the credit they're due outside of something as relatively insular as the Bloggies. I know I've quoted it before, but this sentence about Franz Ferdinand from Matthew Perpetua's Fluxblog was the first thing to come to mind. It still makes me smile and is worthy of commendation (as is most of the rest of his blog, both the writing and the music he highlights).

Though twitchy funk is their bread and butter, I definitely prefer them with their Franz-o-meter set to Ultra-Jaunt, which makes them sound vaguely like late period Grant Lee Buffalo decked out in Dior.

Destroyer's Rubies

This album has got its hooks into me and hard.

The music snob in me hates to have to admit this in a public forum, but it occurs to me that I, mostly, listen to music for comfort, which is as much a function of where I listen to music as why. (Who wants to be additionally challenged on the El in the morning? Not me. This is probably why I resent the level of commitment the Fiery Furnaces are asking of me and why I remain basically content to ignore them.) Dan Bejar's voice is not comfortable. But, where it jars on a New Pornos album, because most of the rest of the thing can be listened to for comfort (c'mon, those of you who have a copy of my best of '05 liner notes have read all my bullshit about climaxing "hey las" and whatnot--what is that other than feel-good comfort in the guise of some kind of passive catharsis?), it is essential to the experience of listening to Destroyer's Rubies, inextricable from it, no matter what kind of contortions I have to do to be able to deal with it. Destroyer's Rubies cannot be listened to comfortably, no matter how much the music perfectly resembles the kind of thing I usually go in for--which is exactly what has seduced me right into it. But, that voice. It's like I'm listening to two albums while I'm listening to Destroyer's Rubies. Or maybe even three. I'm letting the music groove and bubble under me, while I'm holding Bejar's voice at arm's length in front of me like a frying pan full of sparking, boiling oil pricking at my skin and I'm holding the lyrics like a pail full of milk, sloshing, overflowing, propped against my right hip bone. Listening to this album is an event. I feel part of an artistic moment listening to it.

All the trainspotting discussions of intertextuality I've encountered on the Interslice (which are themselves becoming more and more twistily and twistedly self-referential; witness the 'Glow's convention of capping BEJAR and the endless linking to Zoilus, which of course I am flagrantly guilty of as well [but, cheers to this review for referring to Bejar as "the New Pornographers' elusive beardo"]) bore me more than a little. Yeah, it's because I've pretty much shrugged off my former English major tendencies and have come to grips with the fact that my temperament is not at all suited to that kind of analysis, but it's also probably because I'm a Destroyer neophyte and wouldn't get any of the references to his previous albums anyway. It rankles because I don't want my experience of this album as a self-contained object taken away from me. Obviously, of course, duh, I know no album is ever a self-contained object, but you dig where I'm coming from. I don't want to feel like I'm being implicitly told that the relationship I'm beginning to forge with this album is somehow compromised because I don't have the requisite mental hyperlinks to the Destroyer back catalog. That pesky snob in me got a little sad when I read that Carl Wilson wrote of the album back in December, "...All of which helps make the album 'accessible' to those who don't necessarily have the preoccupations shared by Dan and, I suspect, many core Destroyer fans up till now. But the real reason this album is going to be embraced by many, many people outside that inner circle is that it's so luxuriantly musical." Oh my poor little inner snob! I've just been called out onto the mat: I'm late to the party, and, in the end, I'm only there for the music. Recipe for l-a-m-e. But, fuck it. What am I gonna do about it? This is obviously the kind of treatment Bejar courts with his whole approach, and if I can't roll with it, I'm just going to have to grab at what I can. Oh, but even for a neophyte, there's so much to grab! This is a delicious, irresistible album and it will not be denied. Approach at your own risk, but for heaven's sake, I have to keep reminding myself, approach with complete abandon.

My Instant Reaction? Pure Glee

Remember my series of posts last summer about how much I love Malcolm Gladwell? Those of you who occasionally visit my MySpace page may also remember the period of time when my "who I'd like to meet" paragraph ended in a swoon with Señor Gladwell's name. Well, be still my heart: he's blogging now (via). Maybe he'll see my blog linked to his through Technorati and he'll send me an e-mail thanking me for my support and we'll fall in love (at first site, natch) and get married and have whip-smart little babies with big hair and endlessly excitable intellects capable of processing complex ideas into wonderfully digestable yet memorable and thought-provoking nuggets of information.... Nerd crushes rule!

You've Got What They Call Bad Equilibrium

I don't know when this turned into a hip-hop blog, but: for those of you who, like me, were somewhat disappointed with 8 Mile when it came out a few years ago, please be sure to check out Hustle & Flow. (::sigh:: It seems like all I've been doing for the past month and a half is catching up with movies and music I missed in '05. I've yet to see or buy anything that's legitimately been released in '06.) LK and I watched it last night, and it's really pretty great. It's everything 8 Mile wanted to be. It took all that dusty, street intelligence and went one step beyond to infuse it with genuine passion. (The relative bloodlessness of Hanson's approach was my main criticism of 8 Mile way back when.) It would have been absurdly easy to hate Hustle & Flow (and a good handful of people did; scroll down through Metacritic), considering how it leans pretty cornily on the redemptive power of music and populates its landscape with some broad stereotypes of pregnant, abused, and otherwise put-upon ho's, then has the temerity to make its theme song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." (Which, following again in 8 Mile's footsteps, is, in fact, nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar this year.) But, I kind of think that's exactly the point. It's reminding us that everyone is worthy of our sympathy, that there are no easy choices in life, that feelings of disenfranchisement or confusion don't necessarily break down along rigidly prescribed gender (or even racial) lines, that anyone who struggles to do the Right Thing can help inspire (oh, that word) those around him/her to also try to integrate the messy aspects of their lives into a more seamless whole. It loosely bats around blaxploitations tropes, thwarting our expectations in all the right places, and thrills us with the power of creation. It's really no cheap accident that the main female love interest spends the whole movie walking around, like, seventeen months pregnant and that the most exciting scenes take place in the cushy, womb-like comfort of the jerry-rigged home studio where DJay and his two co-producers sweat and struggle and strain to birth a demo with the potential to become a radio hit. (Um, hello, how much like placenta is that lava lamp on the mixing board?) Anyway, it's a great little movie that will make you care about hip-hop at the same time that it assures you that if you think hip-hop is all it's about, you're totally missing the point.

Are all you other music-heads keeping up with the great quantity of pixels being spilled about Destroyer's Rubies? (Stream it from the Merge Records website here and download the first of three free MP3s from Salon's Audiofile here.) From the little of the album I've listened to, I think the melodies are outstanding and the arrangements gorgeous, and I'm sure the lyrics will reveal themselves as wonderfully intricate and thoughtful when I have a chance to really sit down and ponder them, but I just don't care for Bejar's voice. And, I don't think it's just a knee-jerk reaction. I've never really warmed to his tunes on Twin Cinema, even for as awesomely rocking as "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras," et al., are. He's just slightly more nasal and yelpy than my ears can comfortably or willingly handle. However, if anyone is going to get me to stay patient with and probably purchase this album, it's Carl Wilson over at Zoilus. He says, "it's getting to the point where all I want to do is argue for the richness of Dan's comedy, but the reviews are making it clear that lots of people don't share this sense of humour, and I honestly do not get how it's possible to enjoy it otherwise, and certainly to feel the sense of tragedy. Which is (?) maybe why folks feel it's all about some preoccupation with intellect?" Shit, man, if there's anything I'm a sucker for in criticism, it's an insistence on allowing the richness of comedy to pull you into the art of the thing.

More on comedy? I couldn't agree more with Said the Gramophone's assessment that the Flaming Lips' leaked "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is "exactly the sort of thing for people...who don't have much time for Lips albums but who love their best singles." I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I feel about the Lips, but I've been listening to this song incessantly on my Nano, and the screechy, annoying, completely nutty "ah-ah-ah" bit in the third minute cracks me up every time. (The inherent humor of people singing gloriously out of tune would always send MLBO'D and I into seizures of delight during high school choir concerts and community theater productions.) And, despite the fact that I was about to rave on about the greatness of the Ricky Gervais podcast after listening to one belatedly downloaded episode a week or so ago, now I'm not so sure. After listening to the new one that was just released this weekend, something about hearing Gervais mercilessly goad cohost Karl Pilkington into giving his opinions on increasingly bizarre "what if" scenarios just so he (Gervais) can laugh at the outlandishly odd things he (Karl) says made me supremely uncomfortable. Comedy doesn't come from asking someone with a slightly offbeat sensibility "well...what about this?"; it comes from creating an atmosphere where the conversation can wander to those what if places so that the wacky opinions and observations can arise naturally. Gervais's set-ups feel about two steps removed from the bullies in primary school asking the handicapped kid to explain where babies come from. I love British comedy, and I want to like Ricky Gervais, but I somehow always run up against stuff like this that grates on me enough to keep me at a distance. I suspect Stephen Merchant is the actual comic mastermind at work here.

The Brown Line Shall Rise Again

As I was exiting the Rockwell station for the last time in its current incarnation yesterday evening, I saw that someone had tied a bunch of black balloons to the bike rack right outside Lake Claremont Press. A bit overdramatic perhaps, but it felt right. Not counting the months I lived in London, this (admittedly, temporary) station closure will mark the longest distance I have ever had to walk to/from my own home in order to access public transportation during my commute. Is it 2009 yet?

Love Love Love

"Some things you'll do for money / and some you'll do for fun / but the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one."

Lyrics from one of the most healing songs I can think of. And yet, they're only as true as we allow them to be, kittens. I invite you to join me in trying to make them a little more true today than they were yesterday.

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.

Songs

I'm having trouble thinking of a song that has made me laugh out loud as often as, or has made me smile one of those stupid, smirky, "I'm trying hard not to smile so I don't look like a maniac, but I'm not exactly succeeding, am I?" public transportation smiles as often as, the RETARDED BRILLIANCE of The Kevins' "My First Glass of Champagne." That part where they laugh, and then sigh, and then muse, "you're a funny girl" is one of the most motherfucking charming things to have hit my ears in recent memory. "Is that real leather?" Golden. Please listen to it.

I was also going to fawn about The Guillemots' "Trains to Brazil" (which I originally found here), but it turns out the proprietor of Green Pea-Ness (link via StG) has already said it all for me, about a month and a half ago to boot. (Bonus points for one of the more interesting discussions of the Arcade Fire phenomenon I've read.) Sometime I'm going to have to make a mix of great songs to play first thing in the morning; this would definitely be on the list, and not just because of the sublimely cheesy alarm clock sound effect. In addition to the "Come on Eileen" comparisons, I would add that it also feels like a less obnoxious relative of "Walking on Sunshine," especially with those joyfully honking horns.

Jens Lekman's "Maple Leaves" is a low-fi stunner. (I prefer the 7" version, but the EP version is good, too.) The churning drums that morph into a shrugging and shucking beat that massages the aching shoulders of the Scott-Walker-o-Maticized strings that tickle the clever "make believe" / "maple leaves" wordplay all just serve to keep you swooning long enough not to realize how vulnerable you are to being suckerpunched by the lines "so we talked for hours / and you cried into my sheets / and you said you hated your body / that it was just a piece of meat / I disagree / I think you're beautiful / but it's impossible to make you understand / that if you don't take my hand I'll lose my mind completely / madness will finally defeat me." This is epically compact songwriting at its finest, kittens.

This is all a very elaborate and somewhat pretentious apology to those of you who were hoping for some snark about the Grammys. I wasn't home last night and totally missed them. Defamer, maybe? Pink Is the New Blog (even though he hasn't posted as of this writing yet today)? (UPDATE: and here's Pink's recap.)

(BTW, HB JRM, if you get around to reading this. I hear it's a perfect day to chase tornados.)

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.

Scattered Thoughts

Here's a fun game to play the next time you're hanging out in the Borders cafe in Evanston: homeless guy or Northwestern professor?

I'd forgotten how much I like David Foster Wallace's essays. Sometimes thinking too much about David Foster Wallace's David Foster Wallaceness obscures the really appealing reasons why David Foster Wallace is David Foster Wallace. Reading the first few pages of "Big Red Son" in Consider the Lobster last night brought me back into the fold. (Mimi Smartypants agrees, or, I should say, I agree with her.)

I can't decide if I should make a snarky comment dismissing this survey or print out a hard copy of it and use the sheet to slowly papercut myself to death. (Via the Rabbit Blog.)

Oh the digital, futuristic isolation of it all! Listening to OK Computer on my iPod yesterday made me actually feel my thoughts start turning into 1s and 0s.

Best band name ever (revised and updated edition): The Kevins! BAK thinks the website is creepy; I say it's like a panda bear made out of marshmallows: twee, self-conscious, and fucking adorable. (Via Said the Gramophone.)

The more I think about Freygate, the more it genuinely upsets me. Not so much his role in any of this, but Oprah's appalling behavior. I suppose it's her prerogative to whip the whole thing into a frenzy in the service of "good television," but it completely invalidates any of the earth mother lovey-doveyness she fancies herself to be the living embodiment of. Her spectacular failure to treat this man, who is clearly in need of some genuine forgiveness for his admittedly shady behavior, with any semblance of grace is, in its own way, just as damning an example of misplaced American indignation as any of Dubya's fucked-up revenge politics. When will our collective national "me, me, me" temper tantrum finally die down?

I was all set to write a big post praising Soderbergh's Bubble the other day, but I kept getting tangled up in my own thoughts about it. I hope to gain some clarity soon, even if it's just some clarity about my own mutated ambivalence.

DS has a new show opening this weekend. It's called A Child's History of Bombing and will be playing at the Neo-Futurarium weekends through March 11. I plan on checking it out soon.

A big happy birthday shout-out to my beany brother today. Too bad he never reads this blog.

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."

Race to the Finish Line

OK, I've been playing media catch-up over the past week or so, consuming (mainly) music and movies as fast as I possibly can before the end of the year, while still attempting to give them their due.

I'm finally taking time to digest Extraordinary Machine, which grows on me, almost despite myself, with every listen (does anyone have a download of the Jon Brion version I can borrow or copy? I'd be curious to hear it and compare). I just got around to picking up Late Registration, which, at this early stage in my appreciation of it, I think might actually be better than The College Dropout (can it possibly be true?). And, I recently bought The National's album Alligator, which, if you squint, is about one flugelhorn away from being Cousteau, except for the fact that it's totally not cheesy at all, doesn't flaunt its sterilizing-your-bullet-hole-with-bourbon lyrics like "Karen, put me in a chair / Fuck me and make me a drink," and has way more than mood going for it. Plus, I loves me some world-weary baritone.

Went out to see Good Night, and Good Luck on Tuesday night, at long last. Yeah, it's kind of a glorified PBS special, and the plot, such as it is, is really just a vehicle for the archival footage and the commentary on the state of journalistic integrity in this country, but it's gripping as all get-out and rabble-rousing in just the right way. The evocative black and white visuals, though perhaps a predictable stylistic choice (really, though, what the hell else are you going to do with it?), are absolutely gorgeous. Clooney's turning into quite the little director, isn't he? I've heard folks make comparisons to Clint Eastwood, but I think between Clooney's leading man persona and his occasionally smarmy self-satisfied, self-righteous attitude, the more apt comparison might be to—wait for it—the Golden Boy, Robert Redford. There's a very Quiz Show vibe in the 1950s / loss of innocence / TV-insiderness of Good Night.

King Kong is nothing short of spectacular, in both the connotational and denotational sense of the word. As CTLA has often been known to say, I laughed, I cried, I took notes. Peter Jackson can do no wrong. He's one of the rare directors I can think of who possesses the ability not only to ratchet up the thrills way beyond anything you've ever seen on screen before, but also to then use and build on that visceral response he's just elicited from you in service of deepening your emotional reaction to the story. In one of the most brilliant edits I've ever seen, the movie cuts from the heart-pounding dinosaur stampede on the island to a shot of Ann Darrow getting dropped from Kong's palm when he returns safely to his lair. Far from being just an ADD-induced switch to the next scene, Jackson and his editor knew it was imperative to harness our exhausted, breathless, terrified, ecstatic excitement and transfer those feelings, seamlessly, over to Ann. When you literally feel like you've spent a couple hours in her shoes on this grand, confusing adventure, the heartbreak at the end is all the more potent. Highly recommended. Bonus points for catching the Sumatran Rat Monkey inside joke when they're taking a tour of the boat.

And then, of course, there's Brokeback Mountain. Ah, disappointment is such a loaded word, isn't it? Now, I know I'm going to sound like a pretentious wanker for saying this, and I'm totally, 100% willing to be proven wrong, but I just can't shake my suspicion that the medium of film itself is fundamentally unsuited to tell the story this story is telling. "Brokeback Mountain," the story, is a masterpiece. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Annie Proulx devotee, and I only just read it two or three weeks ago, but I was so immediately taken with its power that I knew it was going to be (no pun intended) an uphill battle for a movie to do it justice. The translation from page to screen is admirable; it gets everything from plot points and main characters to, in a general sense, the spare, stoic tone pretty much right. But, not to get all film schooly here, I don't think Fang Lee (yeah, I know it's Ang Lee, but I heard Hugh Grant once call him "Fang Lee" and I thought it was the funniest thing ever) sufficiently accounted for the way the sexualizing gaze of the camera would transform it from a love story that happens to get tangled up in homosexuality into a homosexual story that happens to get tangled up in love.

Maybe I'm just being immature, but considering how rife the tropes of the traditional movie Western are with homosexual undertones (as Stephen Holden aptly points out), it took everything in me not to want to snicker like a madman each time, pre-consummation, the two characters so much as glanced at one other, not to mention anytime anyone said anything about "fishing," "hunting," or "horseback riding." There's even a latent giggle in my tendency to, however affectionately, refer to the movie as The Gay Cowboys. I shouldn't have wanted to do that. I would never even be tempted to give the short story that nickname. I could stick a pen in my eye for temporarily reinforcing the unbelievably still-lingering, century-old fallacy that cinema can't summon the psychological richness that literature can, but, goddamn it, the visuals kind of trivialize what Proulx was trying to do here. Even without nudity or explicit sex scenes, film invites us as viewers to voyeuristically consider bodies in motion and when those bodies belong to two beautiful men kissing rapturously on the mountainside, then, by golly, you've got yourself a gay cowboy pitcha, no matter how much dialogue and how much Method is expended in service of the idea of it being about greater social issues or, yes, even capital-L Love.

The way I see it, this story is not about sex. It's not about homosexuality. It's about love. I know it's a slippery slope to talk about love in the context of gay rights, or, hell, even just general societal acceptance, but that's exactly what's so fascinating, to me, about Proulx's story. She posits this situation where two people who are the loves of each other's lives, and use their sexuality as a means of expressing it, don't know what to with themselves or the intensity of their feelings because they live in a culture that hasn't built room for the possibility of romantic/erotic same-sex relationships. In a variation on the drum that Dan Savage has been beating in this repressive, reactionary Bush era, our collective ability to deal with the reality that men will want to have sex with other men and women will want to have sex with other women should have fuck-all to do with notions of love or fidelity precisely so that when love does enter the equation, as it so clearly does in the case of these two characters, it doesn't result in the large-scale destruction of a person's family, other relationships, and sense of self. Of course, what better way to dramatize this conflict than in the context of stereotypically rigid gender roles carved out of the myth of the West. (Paging Dr. Higgins, ABD.) This place where public pressures collide with private certainties is the crossroads of heartbreak and tragedy. The last line of the story says it all: "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."

My point being, did I get any of that out of the movie? I don't think so. (Please, by all means, let me know if you did.) I got a sense of heartbreak, a sense of "that sucks," and even a sense of poignancy in that final shot, but the fact of its being filmed added nothing to what was already present in the story. It just shifted it to another medium that leans a little more heavily on our heartstrings and robs some of the interesting tension that comes from what Nick Hornby described in this April's Believer as literary fiction's "ability to be smart about people who aren't themselves smart, or at least don't necessarily have the resources to describe their own emotional states."

Are all you other filmies keeping up with Slate's annual Movie Club? (Thanks to Mike O'D for reminding me the exchange had begun.) It's an awful lot to take in one go, but fun to rub your own opinions against. One of my favorite turns of phrase this season, courtesy of A.O. Scott: "I of course am pro-evil, anti-Christmas, and in favor of Brokeback Mountain being taught alongside Darwin (and, for that matter, Darwin's Nightmare) to schoolchildren." Also, Rosenbaum gives a very cool shout-out to his "friend and favorite film academic" Jim Naremore, whom I would probably describe with those two terms as well.

Happy fourth anniversary to the O'Ds today! And happy new year to the rest of all y'all, as I doubt I'll be posting again until we flip to '06. Cheers.

Viva Harvestime!

Attention denizens of Lincoln Square: the Harvestime grocery store has been remodeled! And not just remodeled, but expanded! I hadn't been shopping in a week or two, so imagine my surprise when I stopped in last night and saw that the wall behind the former produce section had been completely knocked out so that the store could take over the entire adjacent building. My sister didn't quite understand why I was reeling for the first five minutes or so as we explored the newly spacious floor plan, but I assured her that, to those of us who live in the 'hood and shop there regularly, this is a very big deal. Check it out.

I'm glad to see that so many other bloggers on Ye Olde Internette have been providing links to this weekend's "Lazy Sunday" Narnia rap from Saturday Night Live, because it's incredibly funny, but my sister and I have been in continual hysterics about a different sketch that appeared later in the show, "Two A-Holes Buying a Christmas Tree." For the past two days, during pregnant pauses in conversation, we've taken to saying to each other, "you look like a rabbit."

Pitchfork lists their Top Fifty Albums for 2005 today. As suspected, Sufjan's Illinois is tops.

And, speaking of best-of 2005 lists, big, big love goes out to the Real Slim Chaney for his gorgeous work on the packaging and liner notes for my CD compilation. That's right, kids, pin.monkey.press will make all your craft dreams come true! Out of towners, I'm going to try to put the packages in the mail today. In towners, if I haven't called you personally yet, be sure to get in touch with me before you leave for the holiday if you want yours for the road. There's only a limited number of schmancy packages available, so if you snooze you lose. (Though, I'll of course be happy to burn you a copy of the disk itself.)

Best of 2005
Originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

Track list:

1. Swimmers—Broken Social Scene (Broken Social Scene)
2. The Bleeding Heart Show—The New Pornographers (Twin Cinema)
3. Fire Snakes—Laura Veirs (Year of Meteors)
4. Ultimatum—The Long Winters (Ultimatum EP)
5. Fake Palindromes—Andrew Bird (The Mysterious Production of Eggs)
6. This Year—The Mountain Goats (The Sunset Tree)
7. Is This Love?—Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
8. When I Turn Ninety-Nine—Devin Davis (Lonely People of the World, Unite!)
9. Dogs Were Barking—Gogol Bordello (Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike)
10. Scripts—Stratageme (Mis Amis)
11. Tippin Toxic—Mike Jones vs. Britney Spears (Hollertronix—Vol. 2, EP)
12. No More Shoes—Stephen Malkmus (Face the Truth)
13. Missing—Beck (Guero)
14. My Mathematical Mind—Spoon (Gimme Fiction)
15. Chicago—Sufjan Stevens (Illinois)
16. Brothers on a Hotel Bed—Death Cab for Cutie (Plans)
17. The Engine Driver—The Decemberists (Picaresque)
18. Sadie—Joanna Newsom (The Milk-Eyed Mender)

Up Jumps Da Button

Who knew I was such a freakish anomaly? I've recently discovered that, apparently, I am the only person I know who buttons her shirts from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. The vigorous indignation that this admission has aroused in the past three days when I have questioned a series of friends and loved ones about it seems even more heated than the ire provoked by other perennial favorite us-versus-them chestnuts like "pop or soda" and "toilet paper unrolling over the top or from underneath." I try to reason with these sartorial Stalins by likening my directional preference to the zipping up of a zipper, but that logic has been roundly met with dismissive snorts and/or eye rolls preceding the supposedly irrefutable proof, "it's called a button-down shirt, Allison." For the love of God, are there any other button-uppers out there? Should we start a support group? I just want to be loved for who I am! Dare to proudly come out of the closet* with me!

*You know you were waiting for me to say it

I've Got Music to Keep Me Warm

Hilarious: "Now That's What I Call Blogging!" (via Stereogum). Downloadable Christmas mixes at The Test Pilot (also via Stereogum) as well as Gorilla vs. Bear and Good Weather for Air Strikes (the latter two via the Test Pilot post). If you're looking to snag the lot, be forewarned that they do overlap on a number of tunes. Matthew Perpetua outdoes himself on Fluxblog today, writing about the GENIUS that is Mike Jones. (Mike Jones's "Tippin' Toxic" will appear on my year-end best-of mix and I can thank Fluxblog for introducing me to it.) Giddy sent me a link to this Pandora web site yesterday, and though I haven't had a chance to play with it as extensively as I'd like, it looks like it might be useful for learning about new music in the future. Dig the weird, overly specific yet somehow still vague descriptions of the musical style you choose to explore.

She Used to Have a Carefree Mind of Her Own

Oh my God, my heart almost seized up this morning in a contraction of pure delight when I read this: Britt Daniel will cover Elvis Costello's "Veronica" on an upcoming episode of Veronica Mars. It's a real Christmas miracle! (I love saying that anytime something even mildly pleasant happens during December. The cuffs of my pants didn't get soaked in the snow and slush? It's a real Christmas miracle! My tom yum soup came to the table spiced just right? It's a real Christmas miracle!) Somebody better rip an MP3 off their TiVo and make it available online after it airs.

I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that Gimme Fiction is the number one album on my personal top ten list this year. How'd it sneak past Sufjan and Laura Veirs and the Decemberists? Hell if I know. But, as much as I've tried to look at it from every possible angle, there's no denying it at this point. It's just the right length, it's creepy and cryptic and somehow optimistic (the Addams fam-i-ly ::snap, snap::), it's an incredibly earnest meditation on the role of artiface artifice in our lives, and, of course, it's a magnificent vehicle for Daniel's voice. I would probably love any band that featured a vocalist as charismatic and precisely balanced on the edge of chaos and razor-sharp control as he is, so it's just a massive, massive bonus that Spoon is also so interesting musically. Gimme Fiction, ladies and germs, Gimme Fiction. Me and Steven King, man, we're riding this one into the sunset. (Ed. note: ::gag::)

Speaking of top ten lists, the Onion A.V. Club covers the year in music in this week's issue. Essential reading, as always.

Has anybody else been watching House on Tuesday nights? It doesn't really have any of the traits that are usually prerequisites for me to get into a television show (cumulative emotional attachment to richly drawn characters, intricately layered storylines that build on each other over weeks and months and years, supernatural events and/or sports writers), but I nonetheless have come to genuinely look forward to flipping over to Fox after Gilmore Girls is over. Oh, how I do love Hugh Laurie, and it's always good to see the once and future Bobbi Bernstein getting steady work. A killer Cynthia Nixon guest spot last night, too.

You Can Read My Dorky Summaries or Just Click on the Links

Though I have a fairly healthy appreciation for the surge in esteem comics and comic artists are garnering in mainstream culture (what with my natural affinity for geekiness of all stripes), I've yet to take the time to actually educate myself about any of the major players and their work (recommendations, DS, or anyone?). However, I do know the hotness when I see it: Chris Ware illustrates the cover for a new edition of Candide, as the first in a new series of classic works from Penguin Books featuring fresh, sexy covers by contemporary comic artists. Drool-worthy stuff indeed.

The Decemberists sign to Capitol. I officially have no opinion about this. Colin Meloy's lady Carson Ellis is also expecting a baby, which is cool. I just hope that the inevitable song for the baby that will no doubt appear on a future album isn't annoying and/or lame. However, I am thrilled beyond belief that Tucker Martine is helping Chris Walla with producing duties when the Decemberists go back into the studio. I think he has the potential to be huge on the indie scene, based on the lusciousness of his work with both the Long Winters and Laura Veirs this year.

Richard Pryor

It's not exactly like no one saw this coming, but it's still a bit of a punch in the gut to hear that Richard Pryor passed away today. I will be forever thankful to CTLA for loaning me his rented DVD of Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (which appears on Jonathan Rosenbaum's list of his 1,000 favorite films in Essential Cinema). It's an astonishing bit of stand-up comedy, one that is based in extraordinarily sophisticated storytelling way more than it is in cheap joke-telling. Anyone who wants to talk about the "honesty" of a performer, be it musician, actor, or comedian, needs to calibrate her yardstick to the naked, raw personal exposure offered up by Pryor here. My other treasured cinematic memory of him is, of course, his appearance as the eponymous fraud in The Wiz. The film hasn't exactly aged well or anything, but the final, maybe, twenty minutes are still absolutely emotionally scorching. The fear of being found out that you see in his eyes when Dorothy finally confronts him in the cold, echoing hangar where he sleeps on a ratty old cot, hiding away from the eyes of everyone who expects him to be the grandest of the grand when he's really just a quivering mess of insecurity and failure himself, is so private and so potent, it's almost difficult to watch, and even more difficult not to interpret as an utterly truthful representation of the clammy fear his own fame and success forced him into. He will be missed.

I'm One Step Away from Glow Sticks and Pop Rocks

My lovely houseguest (the third, for those of you keeping score at home) was in town this past weekend to complete the second four-day portion of her Thai yoga massage workshop at the River West branch of the Moksha Yoga Center. She invited me to come along with her to a holiday potluck/talent show gathering at the studio on Saturday night. I went mostly as a gesture of good faith, since she'd come with me to a party with my friends the night before. (Which was all kinds of fun, by the way, C&LLA. Thanks for hosting.) But, what with leaving my cozy, recently Christmas-ized apartment in the sleety snow and anticipating feeling awkward standing around in a room full of sexy yoga practitioners, I'd pretty much already made up my mind that I wasn't going to have a good time. (That doesn't sound like me at all, does it?) Let me tell you, though, all the awkwardness was TOTALLY WORTH IT when the final act of the night took the stage. They were two guys from Chicago's Spunn dance company (yeah, I'd never heard of them either), and all the pent-up anxiety I was feeling about being there came out in a cathartic rush of sudden, unexpected tears because of the pure beauty of what they were doing. I know it sounds kind of ravey and lame to describe; they were basically just spinning around with some fluorescent tie-dyed flags under a black light. But, in that moment, it was the most wondrous thing I'd ever seen. (Shut it, haters—I was totally sober and un-chemically altered.) I was electric with thankfulness to be alive and there to see it. I felt like Dana Whitaker after going to The Lion King on Broadway: "It was really quite something. It was exactly where I was meant to be at that moment. It was like church. I didn't know we could do that; did you know we could do that?" (Why does everything in my life have to come back to Sports Night?)

(Speaking of my being electric: I shocked myself in the ears last night. No joke. I was wearing my headphones, which were plugged in to my portable CD player, which was zippered in to the front flap pocket of my messenger bag, which was sitting on my lap as I was on my way home on the El. I wanted to transfer my plastic H&M shopping bag from my right hand to my left, but as I passed it across the front of my body, the static electricity leapt off the bag and traveled through the zipper, up the wire, and straight into my skull. It was one of the most ridiculous and ingenious ways I've ever mildly injured myself.)

I don't think there's ever been a contest I'd be more capable of winning: Said the Gramophone is asking folks to make their top ten album list for 2005, then write a haiku about it.

If the time ever comes when the whole husband and baby thing becomes a viable option for me, I want my marriage to look like this. BAK recently turned me on to Dooce, which is my new favorite blog. She's the mimi smartypants of Utah.

A Perfect Day for Banana Phones, and Other Stories

Banana phone,
originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

OK, so this is just the most recent in a long line of photos I've taken of my sister in ridiculous situations (e.g. posing with the fuzzy purple tire monster in the kids' corner at the auto parts store [?], sitting on the edge of the fountain in front of the garbage dump in Northwest Indiana, etc.). I was trying to kill the roll of film and insisted she needed a funny prop. (Bananas in your ears? Always funny; am I right?) She's stopped protesting as much when I tell her to do these things; I suspect she's actually beginning to enjoy it. (More random new, semi-recent photos here.)

Wow. Somebody found some old, undiscovered Jeff Mangum demos in a house in Louisiana. It's been a resoundingly good year for NMH fans between the release of Kim Cooper's 33.33 book on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Mangum's surprise guest appearances onstage with Olivia Tremor Control and Elf Power in New York, and Pitchfork enshrining In the Aeroplane as a classic 10.0 album.

Monkeys with accents, also always funny.