A New Beginning

In stark contrast to the morning after last time, the sun is out today, the sky is bright blue, the air is unseasonably warm, the trees are still full of glowing, fiery foliage, and, as I wrote here, TV on the Radio's "Golden Age" was the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up and opened my eyes. Let's not get ahead of ourselves or anything, but damn. This feels good. Proud of Chicago, proud of us all.

All Quick-Like

Yes, I discovered this outside my apartment building as I was on my way to work earlier this week. It gave me quite a shock--the kind of shock that can only truly be registered with the immediate involvement of my cameraphone. It's going to be a nutty year, kittens!

RIP, Bobby Fischer, you crazy-ass bastard.

"Musical theater just somehow got a whole lot gayer!"

"Unless he's using 'ironic' ironically, which is so meta it just blew the trucker cap off my mustache."

Top Ten Best Ever (via)

Eat shit and die, Doomsday. The RTA funding (fucking finally) went through.

In other local news, apparently it was first revealed way back in the fall, but I finally just saw the revised Chicago 2016 logo on the wilds of the city streets while I was out and about a few days ago. I think it's quite nice and worth noting.

Did you all watch the Tom Cruise video this week (via)? It's creepy, sure, but hardly unexpected. Gawker rightly points out that he's speechifying with "all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie," but, rather than providing that "aha!" moment for me, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the depth and vigor of his commitment to Scientology, it actually unseats it all a little bit for me. All his vague, repetitious rhetoric about helping people and "doing more" doesn't really sound devout, it sounds hollow, like he's giving the Scientologists the sound bites they want, the same way he'd give entertainment journo-parasites a few easily quotable words about how great it was to work with a certain director or actor. Obviously, this is all just performance, that's no shock. But, it makes me more curious about what it is in him (or perhaps isn't in him, alternately) that makes it so easy for him to hire his still considerable charisma out to these shadowy, monolithic entities. Is it something as predictable as the daddy issues that get rehashed in the controversial-to-exactly-no-one unauthorized biography that just came out? Is it just one more example of his shrewd business acumen, knowing how to hitch himself to the rocket power of the highest bidder? But, if that's the case, Hollywood is understandable, but why Scientology? Anyway. These are all ponderables to be pondered.

Baby Teeth!!!!!! In my brain, they're now having a sexy musical cage match with Bound Stems for the honor of being my fave-rave local band.

Next Time, Look It Up in Your Gut

[UPDATE: The link to Colbert's speech has been updated to reflect the fact that it got yanked from YouTube and subsequently reposted on Google Video. Why the censorship? BoingBoing has the scoop.]

I know these clips have been bouncing around the internet for the past day or two, but, seriously, Stephen Colbert is amazing here at the White House Correspondents' dinner this weekend. I mean, yeah, we all loved when Stewart gave it to Carlson and Begala up the pooper, but to do this shtick fifteen feet away from Dubya himself? Le sigh. He had me at "somebody shoot me in the face." Salon salutes him and his masterful use of irony here.

Ah, springtime in Bloomington. I really do miss it sometimes. The flowers are sprouting on campus, the Little Fivers are racing their hearts out, the fast food goes digital...

Lists to make you smarterer: Alex Ross posts his list of 100 key pieces of music from the twentieth century, and Ebert gives some space on his site for Jim Emerson's list of 102 movies you should see if you want to consider yourself "movie-literate" (via).

Let Us Make Our Own Choices, Please

"[Bill Napoli is] a senator in South Dakota who believes women can’t make our own decisions. So whenever I’m faced with one I call him at work: 605-348-7373. And if he’s not there, I try him at home: 605-341-2370." (Via)

Craig Robinson goes to see The Darkness in concert and waxes philosophical about an earnest devotion to rock.

Some crazy, wonderful, and ambitious folks are annotating Destroyer's Rubies, along with the rest of Destroyer's catalog, with this caveat: "However, no attempt is made at describing what a song is about. I don't know what any of them are about. Nobody does."

Based on nothing more scientific than how many people have saved and tagged the link on del.icio.us, I know I'm way late to the party here, but I've just discovered (via) the productivity/life hacks blog 43 Folders, kept by the estimable Merlin Mann (maintainer of other Wrestling Entropy fave blog 5ives). It looks like an extremely valuable resource for getting your shit together. Thanks to his fervent recommendation, I've already ordered a copy of Getting Things Done.

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."

Happy Bowieday

Two David Bowie-related links in one day? He really is omnipresent:

David Bowie's Area (thanks, Nora Rocket—you've excelled with the phallic links this week).

Bowie joins the cast of Christopher Nolan's new movie, playing Nikola Tesla (via Pink Is the New Blog)! Sounds like it has the potential for much awesomeness.


"Well, let’s just say I usually take a break from my pro-life policies on Thanksgiving day...." (Thanks for the picture, Lisa Ro.)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A Farewell to Smurfs?

I'm trying to do something with a Papa Smurf/Papa Hemingway pun here, but unfortunately coming up short. This sounds disarmingly intense, which, I guess, is the point. (Thanks again, JP.)

Sasha Knows

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

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

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

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

All You Have to Do Is Meow, Meow, Meow

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

Let the Decemberists backlash begin.

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

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

17x5

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

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

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

The Life Aquatic (on DVD)

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

Red Eye

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

2046

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

The Constant Gardener

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

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

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

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

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




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

Insert Four-Letter Word for Emphasis

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

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

READING ROUND-UP

Recently finished:

[...]

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

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

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

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

Current Events Give Me Gas

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

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

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

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