Not a Post About John Cusack

Jason Schwartzman is the new John Cusack, just in case you were wondering. I finally had a chance to catch up with Shopgirl this weekend, and in the process of fleshing out a character that was a tad underwritten in the novella, he proceeds to both steal the whole damn movie and create his own updated version of the sensitive, intelligent, and slightly spazzed-out girl-porn archetype that can be traced through Lloyd Dobler all the way back to Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story ("hearth-fires and holocausts!"), and probably even further. Schwartzman comes fully loaded with far more funny little bits of stage business and under-the-radar, hilarious line readings than he needed to. He's endearing as fuck.

Today on Pitchfork: in praise of rock operas. Whereas I'm always glad to see high-concept albums with sustained through-narratives given their due, it's funny to me that the tone of this article is all, "hear ye, hear ye, this is the second coming of the rock opera—you should be thankful we're pointing this out for your benefit." Um, thanks Rob. I'll be sure to get right on my thank-you note after I've stopped listening to DC's Fin de Siecle, and, uh, pretty much everything else I own.

Has anybody else ever been on the brown line with the guy who does the card tricks? I know I've seen him at least once before, but he sat next to me the whole way north to Western during rush hour on Friday, shuffling and bridging and fanning the entire time. I had my earplugs in, so I was fairly successfully able to ignore him, but he eventually got the pretty girl sitting to the other side of him to pick a card, any card. Dude, didn't you get the memo that the only time card tricks are cool are when you're not making a big deal out of them? The more attention you draw to the fact that you're doing one, the lamer it is. Just like impressions. Other humorous things I saw on the El this weekend: a guy reading Rob Gordon's all-time favorite book, Johnny Cash's autobiography Cash by Johnny Cash, and one of those iPod Nano ads vandalized so that the screen says "Fatboy Slimey" instead of "Fatboy Slim." (You totally can't bust me for referencing Cusack twice in one post. I used the character name for just that reason. Hahaha—catch me if you can, suckas! Quick like lightning!)

¿Que Onda?

This just in from the Department of Where Have I Been for the Past Ten Years:

I've finally discovered Beck.

Since I was a complete musical theater dork in high school who wasn't listening to anything remotely cool or of the era at that point in my life, I missed Odelay when it happened and have consequently spent the greater portion of my late teens and early twenties relatively Beckless. (Except for "Tropicalia," which I fell hard for when Mutations came out. I played it nearly every week on my radio show at WIUS. Good Christ, how I love that song.) I've always known, intellectually, that I would like Beck if I ever took the time to get into his stuff, so I've been happy to accept burned copies of his albums from friends of mine who want to convince me of his greatness. I just stockpiled them in my CD case, waiting for the day when I would feel like making the commitment to him.

Kittens, that day occured last weekend. I don't know what clicked, but all I want to do right now is listen to Beck. I downloaded Guero a day or two ago and it is sooo good. "Missing" will be an easy addition to my end of year CD comp. It's such a joy to listen to an album that's so confidently produced and performed and sequenced. There's no nervousness that there's going to be a clunker hiding somewhere, and there's no stress that I'm going to have to digest something new and undiscovered. It's been discovered, dammit, oh how it has been discovered, and now I just have to sit back and reap the rewards. Hell yes.

Not the Brosnan/Moore Movie; The Van Der Beek/Sossaman One

Hmm. Whereas I'm instinctively appalled when I read about these "Kill Whitey" dance parties (via Brainwashed, which itself is via Tiny Mix Tapes), I can't help but feel a bit concerned that CocoRosie is all of sudden being cast as the representatives of this new breed of so-called post-ironic racism, all based on Bianca Casady's quote in the Washington Post. I mean, yeah, that was a slightly stupid thing to say to a reporter, and, yeah, white trust-fund hipsters in Williamsburg can be just as sexually aggressive as any of the "hard-core" guys at hip-hop clubs (in part because they're protected by the equally biased assumption that white trust-fund hipsters must be safe to get freaky with because, y'know, they're white trust-fund hipsters [hello, did no one see The Rules of Attraction {kidding}]), but it's not like the Casady sisters are the ones organizing those truly abhorrent sounding gatherings. On quite the other hand, however, I find it a whole lot easier to swallow the comment that their new album is just "a collection of willful, calculated eccentricities clumsily juxtaposed with each other," even though I've heard nary a track from it. I suppose I find it easier to sleep at night with my knee-jerk judgment calls about the music as long as I'm giving the humans the benefit of the doubt. Until they give me definite reason to think otherwise. (Related: Gapers Block's post about all the campus trouble caused by U Chicago's "Straight-Thuggin' Ghetto Party." Fleh.)

Saw a hell of a trio of movies this past weekend, and wouldn't you know, they all started talking to each other (I love it when that happens): A History of Violence is a brilliant companion piece to Caché (which of course I saw the week before), and the epically weird The Night of the Hunter (showing, gorgeously restored, at the Music Box) seems like a significant touchstone for History of, a connection I haven't really seen acknowledged anywhere (except for, maybe, this review in German, which my language skillz aren't polished enough to translate at the moment; schade). The wildcard movie was Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, whose flabby pomo smugness probably wouldn't have annoyed me as much if I'd not just walked out of that horrifyingly creepy dinner table scene at the end of History of and straight into what felt like a crystal punch bowl full of Robert Downey Jr.'s recently detoxed neurotransmitters. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about contemporary notions of masculinity in crisis, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the ways that Caché and History of are using deeply traditional family structures to deal with this idea of men as the keepers of secrets, men as the catalysts for the fulfillment and perpetuation of tragic destiny. The various implications for the wounds that are transferred onto and modified by the next generation break my heart when I stop to project a governmental metaphor onto them.

After all that heavy shit, I feel like I need some bouncy balls. (Which makes me suddenly remember that I've had two dreams in the past month and a half—the second one last night—about getting an uncontrollable case of the giggles in inappropriate settings. Hmm. Odd. Well, at least it usually puts me in a slightly better mood when I wake up in the morning.)

Three Thumbs Up

This is, like, already a week old at this point, but I'm still laughing about Heather Havrilesky's take on the inner lives of pop culture critics. From where I'm standing, it seems to have gone all the way around the circle of irony and met back up again with sincerity. Hits close to home in an uncomfortably good way. (A good uncomfortable way? A good way of uncomfortableness? An uncomfortable way of goodness? I'm feeling very Stoppardian right now....)

Surely this must be some kind of reality TV stunt. "Celibate indie rock frontman goes back to Harvard—wackiness ensues!" (Ed. note: Can you still call Weezer "indie"? I guess I'm referring more to the general sound and aesthetic of their music and less to the fact that they're on Geffen.)

Cookie Monster shills for Selmer. Well, at least it's not for Nabisco.

The Pimp Ninja and I were having a discussion about the hilariously terrible, awful dates we've both been on in our day (though his stories definitely take the cake for sheer weirdness), and I declared that we need to make trading cards to commemorate these whacked-out characters and situations we've encountered. The newest addition to his deck? The One with the Bear Mace. And people say romance is dead....

Jonathan Richman and Other Things That Make Me Happy to Be Alive

Kittens, can you believe it? Jonathan Richman played "Pablo Picasso" during his show at the Abbey on Saturday night! I nearly stopped breathing. It was a total 1,000 Places to See Before You Die moment for me. He was kind of making fun of it, too, while he sang, which actually made it even better. He kept mangling the pronunciation of "asshole" every time the verse came around; it was all vowelly and Italian-sounding by the end, more like AHz-ohl. Priceless. Though I can't say that the show itself was incredible (the audience didn't really seem totally, 100% there with him; he was still getting over a monthlong bout with laryngitis; he only played for about an hour and didn't come back out for an encore), I can say without reservation that he was incredible. I can only think of a few rare people I've ever seen who are that completely at home in their own skin and so genuinely in love with the world around them. I know that sounds unspeakably cheesy, but it's really true. He kept a cowbell and a sleigh bell stick off to the side of the drumset, and he would periodically set down his guitar, even in the middle of a song, just to dance around and make noise with them. It seemed like he was having just as much fun doing that as anything else. (And, for the record, he's a much better guitar player than I ever realized or gave him credit for.)

From Fluxblog, re: Franz Ferdinand's song "The Fallen": "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." Sentences like that make me so proud to be a blogger.

Flip Flop Flying skewers bird flu fears.

Hours, or at least minutes, of entertainment: Who's the Boss (via Said the Gramophone). Internet-type death matches between random crap. I thought my favorite was David Grohl (Foo Fighters Frontman) Vs. Kitt (The Knight Rider Car)...until I scrolled down and saw Halle Berry (The Monster's Ball) [sic] Vs. Black Forest Cake (Delicious Treat)...until I continued to scroll down and saw Keanu Reeves (Speed) Vs. The Plot of the Movie Speed (Speed). Brilliant.

A Subatomic-Size Flashlight

In the mood for a good, quick snark?

I was totally loving this article on nanotechnology as I read it over lunch today. There's something utterly charming about the weird, overly bubbly tone that eventually gives way to some of the most terrifying quantum mindfucks I could never come close to dreaming up on my own. I also love the way the author's little bio paragraph at the end of the article says, curiously defensively, "The ideas stated here reflect the personal views of the author. They are in no way related to his professional affiliation with [the university he works for]." Way to ratchet up our confidence that you're in any position to be giving us the down-n-dirty facts about fourth-generation recombinant DNA bioweapons, dude.

Miss Garland, My Darlin'

Oh kittens, we had a thrilling movie moment last night at the CIFF screening of Michael Haneke's Caché, the kind that can really only happen communally, in the dark of a theater, in the assured hands of a director who has complete control of your attention with his skilled plotting and camera work. Though I generally make no bones about giving spoilers aplenty in my blog posts, I'm not inclined to talk about this major plot point, except to say that it was one of the most genuinely shocking things I've ever seen in a movie, and this is coming from someone who actually paid to sit through the entirety of Irreversible. Now that I've read a handful of short reviews this morning, I have to laugh at all the admonitions to be sure look at the bottom left corner of the screen during the final shot, because my companions received the exact same hint last night from a ticket taker before the movie started, which made us so attuned to the potential enormity of the detail that, when we actually saw what it was, it almost felt anticlimactic. It explains nothing, but certainly adds an additional layer of complexity and mystery to an already complex and mysterious film. (Also, speaking of short reviews, I don't know what movie Jonathan Rosenbaum saw before he wrote his capsule for the Reader, but it certainly wasn't the one I saw. I'm usually the first person to be on guard against a director's punitive attitude toward the audience or characters, but that charge feels nothing short of wildly inaccurate here.) This was my first viewing of a Haneke film, but I will definitely be adding more of his stuff to my Kittenflix queue. Thanks to DS and KP for convincing me to join them for the night out.

My love for John Darnielle just continues to grow. Here's his guide to whom indie boys should be crushing on now that Scarlett Johansson has gone all mainstream.

Though it's not rocking my world quite as much as I'd hoped it would based on all the superlative blogging about it, I'm still enjoying the hell out of Devin Davis's Lonely People of the World, Unite! "When I Turn Ninety-Nine" has a corking good brass line, and I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago to a noise it took me a little while to identify as the sound of "Iron Woman" playing on repeat inside my own head.

Oliver Twist

Polanski's take on Oliver Twist was, as anticipated, a worthy addition to his body of work. His almost scientifically detached eye for recording the cumulative effects of an overwhelming menace on a powerless but tenacious individual lent itself perfectly to restoring the integrity to this, by now, overly familiar story. Barney Clark (who bears a striking and almost hilarious resemblance to Mia Farrow) has a few wonderful moments (especially the interval between downing a mug of hot gin and water and then completely passing right out of his chair), but he mostly walks around like a living embodiment of the Kuleshov effect, allowing, yes, of course, Polanski to edit around his beautiful little visage, but also allowing the other characters within the world of the story to project their own assumptions about the quality of his soul onto him without much intervention on his part. Oliver is repeatedly judged by his melancholy expression and the fineness of his features and often reaps unexpected benefits. This pleases us as spectators because, yes, he is a lovely little boy, and he's our protagonist, and we wish to see him succeed. But while we accept and even emotionally endorse, for example, Mr. Brownlow's confidence that the boy is pure of heart and deserves to be elevated from the squalor he lives in, what are we to do with this mode of operation when taken in conjunction with the problems of anti-Semitism that come up around Fagin? It's been widely discussed that he's often refered to in the novel (which, admittedly, I've never read) as "the Jew," and there's a wonderfully filigreed little tap dance of ambiguity here in Ben Kingsley's performance. He spends much of his time on screen teetering at the edge of the precipice of stereotype, never quite tumbling off, but inviting us, daring us, to blow him over with our own baggage and preconceived notions. Which is why the final scene where Oliver voluntarily goes to visit Fagin in his prison cell to pray with him, and for him, and forgive him is so, so crucial. Even more important than providing a satisfactory resolution for the narrative, this moment gives us, as an audience, a final opportunity, an unflinching challenge, a hurled gauntlet, to transmute our easy, natural sympathy for a charming little boy who will finally have a chance to live surrounded by love and comfort into a genuine, hard-won sense of compassion for a horrifying, mad old man who probably has never known and, except for this gesture, will never know again before his execution, much kindness in the world save for what he stole, grasping and greedy. Behold the power of cinema, ladies and germs. Using editing and image to comment on the art itself and to jar our perceptions just enough to lead us, changed, out of the theater at the end of the night, our sense of social justice provoked.

(A cross-country happy birthday shout-out to Giddy and her twin today.)

Strunk v. White: The Danger Mouse Remix

OK, a few last-minute tidbits before the end of the day.

A musical adaptation of The Elements of Style performed at the New York Public Library?!?! (Via Alex Ross.) Had I but world enough, and time....

In honor of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize, I would like to share my favorite Pinter quote that does not come from a Pinter play. From--wait for it--Scream 3: "They've got Usher doing Pinter off-Broadway!" (That one was for you, Benji.)

You know you want it: TomKitten conspiracy theories on Slate. Dude, there's even a link to a time line. Dude.

Crooks and Liars has the Smurfs UNICEF ad. It's a tinny recording in French, but you'll get the general idea.

Happy Anniversary!

What it is, bitches! I was too busy yesterday to post that it was my one-year anniversary of going live on Blogger. Thanks to all y'all for fanning the flames of my egotism enough to keep me tapping away at the ol' keyboard. Here's to the coming year.

Perhaps the best band name ever? Arctic Monkeys. The 'Fork showed them some love earlier this week, and Aurgasm has the MP3s you crave. It's the heavily accented vocal delivery that does it for me. For what it's worth, people who claim to know such things say they're going to be the biggest band out of Great Britain since Oasis.

Said the Gramophone introduces you to Agent Simple, who comes across as the love child that Stephin Merritt and Jonathan Richman would have had if they'd enjoyed a passionate summertime fling in Sweden some twenty years ago. Guaranteed to bring a smile.

(Am I or am I not the absolute height of web-savvy circa 2003? I'm all, "dude, does everybody know about MP3 blogs?! They're hella tight!")

For what it's worth, all the people I work with at the CBCM say (I'm paraphrasing here) everyone needs to chill the fuck out about the avian flu. Unless, of course, you're flying to Hong Kong anytime soon with the intention of having unprotected sex with infected migratory water fowl, in which case, I think you have some other issues to worry about.

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.)

The Little Boy in Me? I Call Him Doug.

Shit like this totally brings out the little boy in me. I'm absolutely delighted by the food chain gross-out drama right now. Python vs. Gator Death Match '05!!!!!!! (Thanks, JP.)

On much the same note, I've been on a real science kick these days, especially after proofreading our forthcoming kids activity book Exploring the Solar System, so I also quite enjoyed Michael Brown's geeky/goofy insouciance here regarding the discovery that our unofficial tenth planet, 2003UB313 or "Xena," has its own moon.

Mnah Mnah

Yes! Yes, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes! This is an excellently written, smartly argued close reading/review of Gimme Fiction and an eloquently conceived, passionately convincing case for Spoon as one of the premier rock bands working today (via Said the Gramophone). I narcissisticly love having my own opinions corroborated by other denizens of the blogosphere.

Will someone please explain to me why I absolutely agree with Michelle Collins's indifference toward Ricky Gervais and The Orifice? Although I haven't yet seen the Christmas special, I finally got around to watching seasons one and two within the past two weeks, and I have to say I'm also resoundingly underwhelmed. The first season beats the shit out of the second, that's fer damn sure, but I was nevertheless nowhere near as wowed as I expected to be. Maybe my expectations were too high, based on all the "BEST EVER!" chatter surrounding it, and it does certainly possess that British je ne sais quoi where the comedy can't fully blossom until you've not only watched it but also talked about it and quoted the funny bits with someone else, but I still can't help feeling that it's not actually as sociologically trenchant as popular opinion claims it is. I dunno. The second season started to go wrong for me when it actively began painting David Brent as a bigot, rather than just making him a clueless dipshit who happens to accidentally say bigoted things. It's a subtle distinction but one that, I think, the uncomfortable humor really hinges on. And, as for the uncomfortable humor, there is a tremendously fine line between what is uncomfortable because it's something that actually happens in life versus stuff that's uncomfortable because it makes you say "gosh, wouldn't that be uncomfortable if that happened?" Watching the first season, I actually felt sick to my stomach because of the devastating accuracy of some of David Brent's character tics, especially all the cross talk in situations where his power is threatened (with Jennifer, with the facilitator during training day, etc.). Whereas in the second season, especially during the unfortunately unfunny comic relief episode, you get the cruel de-pantsing of one of the anonymous drones and the whole interpretive dance sequence. Those moments are just begging to be declared "ooh, awkward!", but, both of them seem a little too over-the-top to really feel intrinsic to the office setting, and, isn't that the whole shtick this series is riding on? That, here we're shining a light on all the fleeting moments of discomfort that arise in this specific setting that most everyone has experienced yet no one really talks about? De-pantsing is cruel and awkward anywhere (and, let's face it, do people really get de-pantsed anywhere other than in a middle school locker room?), and calculatedly "wacky" and oblivious interpretive dancing...well, does that actually happen anywhere outside film and TV sets where comic actors and writers are just getting off on the idea of their comic actor and writer friends doing outrageous things to make each other laugh with the tacit assumption that the audience will automatically find anything they shit out of their gifted little comic sensibilities howlingly funny as well?

Are these pointless arguments? Are these the kind of arguments that I scoff at when other people launch "but that would never happen in real life!" critiques at me about movies I love? I don't think so...the "that would never happen in real life" defense absolutely does hold water when the piece in question is rolling mockumentary style. If you're going for veracity, you can't be selective about it. You can't decide it only applies to some of the characters, but not the ones being played by the writer/director/creator/mastermind/mouthpiece.

OK. Enough with eviscerating Gervais. There are plenty of things I did adore about the show. The Tim/Dawn arc was incredibly satisfying (not to mention that I might have a little crush on Martin Freeman) and I think Gareth might actually be the most funny, interesting, and accurate caricature/character in the whole series. And I have to say that the two line outro at the end of the third episode in season two--"My knees hurt."/"No they don't."--made me laugh way harder and way longer than I thought it would.

Has everybody already seen this faux-preview that makes The Shining look like it was directed by Cameron Crowe? A friend forwarded it to me this weekend, and Nerve highlighted it as their favorite pic of the week. As I've stated in this forum before, I totally love previews, and I think this is a brilliant way of exposing how you can manipulate anything to look like anything given the right editing and music.

Sasha Knows

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

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

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

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

P to the Oh-Lanski

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

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

How Come You Dance So Good?

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

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

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

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

Rock!

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

The Ocean

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

Ready? OK!

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

A longish interview with Carl Newman on Pitchfork today.

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

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

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

Internet Lit Watch

On reading Faulkner; on reading Nabokov.

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

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

All You Have to Do Is Meow, Meow, Meow

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

Let the Decemberists backlash begin.

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

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

CBCM in the News

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

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

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

The Other Side of Bliss

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

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

Giving New Meaning to the Term "Wish List"

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

17x5

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

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

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

The Life Aquatic (on DVD)

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

Red Eye

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

2046

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

The Constant Gardener

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

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

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

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

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




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

Insert Four-Letter Word for Emphasis

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

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

READING ROUND-UP

Recently finished:

[...]

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

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

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

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

Current Events Give Me Gas

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

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

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

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

Year of the Indie Rock Guitar Solo

I'm so glad John Darnielle pointed out in this (hilarious) recent post what a great year this has been for indie rock guitar solos. I haven't gotten around to sampling The Woods yet (shame on me, I know, A & O), but I've been thinking much the same thing about Face the Truth (OMG—"No More Shoes," motherfuckers!!!) and Peyton Pinkerton's expert work on Discover a Lovelier You. Anybody have any other favorites from this year that I may have missed?

Just like Dan Rydell not wanting anyone to tell him the outcome of Orlando Rojas's big game pitching for the Orioles until he has a chance to watch the videotape of it with Rebecca later that night (that reference was for you, Giddy), please, no one tell me anything about the new Death Cab album until I have a chance to listen to it myself. I know it's been available to stream online for a week or two now, but I'd like to do the whole "buy the CD and read the liner notes and listen to it in one sitting with my headphones on" ritual before I start reading other opinions and reviews. (I'm afraid to even look at the numerical rating Pitchfork gave it.) In my mind, it's going to be hard to top the intricate, breathtaking complexity of the masterpiece that is Transatlanticism, but I'm still looking forward to seeing what the boys have done with their newly increased budget and resources.

G.B. and A.C.

Not that I really have much by way of point of reference, but the Gurlesque Burlesque show at the Abbey on Saturday night was amazing. Aside from being sweaty, drunken, hilarious, rowdy, political, inclusive, and sexy as hell (um, and did I mention sweaty?), it served as a potent reminder that we so often overlook imagination as a key component of sexuality and eroticism. The unbelievable creativity on display in the performers' choice of music, motif, and message turned the night into this anything-goes party where everybody was desirable, everybody was a star. The room felt united in this friendly, communal, participatory celebration of the place where the delights of the body and mind intersect, rather than being a slimy, leering, onanistic spectacle to be consumed solely for pornographic titillation. This allowed for a two-way street of maturity and respect between the performers and the audience, which, oddly enough, generated a vibe that felt almost innocent. (Which was enhanced, of course, by the reverence with which many of the performers held all things World War II– and Cold War–era.) We cheered as they shed their clothes, not solely because we were turned on (though these fine specimens were most definitely hawt, in their splendid array of sizes, shapes, colors, ages, experience levels, and attitudes), but also because we were so thankful—thankful for their sharing their talents with us, thankful to be hanging out together for the night, thankful that this wonderful art form has been revived with such a genuine passion for the lessons it can teach us about gender and sexuality in an engaging and non-militant way. And, aside from only a handful of cheap jokes, which seemed to be all in good fun, there wasn't an overabundance of hatin' on the straights in the crowd, which is always nice. Highlights for me included the amazing song stylings of Nomy Lamm, a performance by the Hellcat Hussies that I'll bet damali ayo would have approved of, the smokin' hot Michelle L'Amour and her award-winning Snow White dance, the thrillingly bizarro Lady Ace, and the inspiring grande dame and headliner Satan's Angel.

I've been loving the New Pornographers' new album Twin Cinema. I can't fully support this theory yet, but I think it might make an excellent companion piece to Spoon's Gimme Fiction in the way they both use, uh, cinema, as jumping-off points for these rangy, jangly sonic treasure maps of texture and emotion. Neko Case nearly brings me to tears on "These Are the Fables."

A big welcome back to LBLA and CTLA and a shout-out to the cutest baby in the world, whom I finally got to meet this weekend.

Three Thousand, Six Hundred and Fifty-Odd Days

This is dedicated to all my home fries who live (or used to live) in Rogers Park: the Morse Ave. Is Great! blog (via Gapers Block). "That's way too blue to be safe, mister sky. How'd you get so blue? You stop that right now!"

The El-Dubs have an EP coming out in October, called Ultimatum, whetting our collective appetite for the full-length slated to drop in early '06. I'm glad they're getting some stuff out there, and lord knows John could always use a few extra pennies for new notebooks and #2 pencils and whatnot, but aside from "Everything Is Talking," all of the others songs have been made available (granted, in different versions, yes) elsewhere: "The Commander Thinks Aloud" was featured on last year's Future Soundtrack for America, "Bride and Bridle" is from When I Pretend to Fall, "Delicate Hands" is included on a sampler that comes in the new issue of Spin with Death Cab on the cover, and "Ultimatum" has been posted as an MP3 on the Barsuk web site.

For those of you who are into mash-ups and Kanye West, Stereogum has the goods you crave: Sufjan and Kanye become "Zombies Walk" and the Beach Boys and Kanye become West Sounds. I can't vouch for the quality of either, as I haven't listened to them yet, but thought they looked promising enough to post anyway.

Jonathan Rosenbaum in this week's Chicago Reader on Terry Gilliam's new movie The Brothers Grimm: "With Lena Headey, Monica Bellucci, Peter Stormare, and Jonathan Pryce, the latter two giving some of their broadest turns as comic grotesques." Hummina-huh? If those bitches got any broader than they usually are, they'd have to start showing that shit in IMAX!

I just bought my tickets for tomorrow night's big Gurlesque Burlesque show at the Abbey. Our girl Nora Rocket, who is running tech, tells me Lady Ace is not to be missed. It's gonna be a fab time—Chicagoans with a taste for the bawdy should be sure to check it out.

To all of my wonderful and faithful readers, you'll notice that I've enabled the word verification step in the "post a comment" pop-up window. I've been getting some annoying comment spam in the past few weeks, and Blogger has made this safety function available to prevent it. This makes me a tremendously happy kitty and will help keep the playground clean for everyone. But be careful on the tire swing, for fuck's sake! I don't want to have to drag your ass to the emergency room with a concussion and projectile vomit streaked down your shirt. Heavens.

Freddy

Far be it from me to toot my own horn, but—

Fuck that. I'm the motherfuckin' Doc Severinsen of tooting my own horn over here.

(Doc Severinsen? Doc Severinsen, anyone? I mean, Miles would have been way too obvious, Chet Baker leaves that unfortunate heroin aftertaste, few people except the kids I went to high school with would have laughed at an Allen Vizzutti reference, and I wouldn't even want to try to compete with the Wynton Marsalis comedy here, so it seemed like Doc was the right way to go.)

Though I give the good folks at The Onion A.V. Club massive, massive props for mentioning it at all in their list of 10 Notorious Flops Worth Seeing, I'd like to point out that I was all over Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered way back when it first came out in 2001.

Apropos of crawling inside a dead deer:

"'CD burning is a problem that is really undermining sales,' stated [RIAA chief executive Mitch] Bainwol in an interview prior to mercilessly beating a dead horse. In an attempt to form a solid counter-point to this argument, I contacted Steve Jobs (Apple CEO), who stated 'I'm sorry, but I can't hear your question over the sweet sound of my money waterfall, which I had installed after 20 million iPods were sold.'" (from yesterday's Tiny Mix Tapes)

The Apologist

Meme of the month? Reconsidering previously maligned art. DS gave it up so beautifully and convincingly for The Life Aquatic; I revisited Closer just last week; and watching The Village with LK and NB on Friday night really made me revise my thoughts on where it belongs in Shyamalan's body of work. I was proud to have been one of the few people who actually liked the movie when I saw it the first time around with CTLA last year, but I wasn't exactly immune to the effects of the critical whipping it took and, as such, considered it a lesser effort. But, seeing it again with the benefit of some distance made me appreciate a lot of the really subtle, really weird ways he's dealing with the issues he's interrogating here. In addition to being a nifty little commentary on American isolationism (as The Onion AV Club, in their estimable quest to be one of Shyamalan's few hip, credible defenders, was right to point out), the movie builds on that idea to explore the rather uncomfortable place where privilege and survival intersect (cf my thoughts on The Pianist—is it mere coincidence that Adrien Brody features prominently in both films?).

Because of his father's money and influence, William Hurt's character, Edward Walker, is able to provide the means for the physical establishment of the village in question. Though the lifestyle and the reasons for living it might appear creepy and reactionary to us as an audience (ahem, that's a big part of the point), it is nevertheless rooted in the pursuit of what the small, self-appointed community feels is good and true and noble. Things get a bit more murky, however, when, about halfway through the film, Edward allows his daughter to venture out into "the towns" to get medicine for her mortally wounded fiance, the only person in about 20 years who's been granted permission to do so, despite other deaths and illnesses (incl. those of young children). Is this decision really as compassionate as he claims? Is it really a valiant attempt to ensure the perpetuation of their way of life through the children that will result from his daughter's marriage? Or is it simply that he feels unique in his grief for his future son-in-law, that it's somehow a different, exceptional situation this time because it's happening to him? Does his fear of death (his own death, and the deaths of his loved ones) cause him to bend the rules of his own creation because he so desperately wants his DNA to flourish? And what does any/all of that say about the human impulse to jettison previously cherished principles when the going gets tough? Is it a sign of fundamental weakness of character or a sign of hard-won maturity? The moral/ethical spectrum being explored here is fascinatingly complex and should provide a stinging corrective for those tempted to dismiss Shyamalan out of hand for...whatever myriad things the haters are tempted to dismiss him out of hand for: his hubris as an artist (grandiosely, "AN M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN FILM!"), the minimalism he paints with, his Christian sympathies, his indebtedness to (early) Spielberg with respect to genre tweaking and heartstring pulling, etc. (None of which, for the record, I happen to have a problem with.) Um, and the monsters are still scary, too, even though I knew they were coming.

Also caught up with Junebug this weekend, which is up to its ears in indie cred, thanks to the appearance of Will Oldham in a small walk-on role and a score by Yo La Tengo.

I ran by the Metro this weekend to pick up tickets for the upcoming Sufjan Stevens show, and, oh brutha, if this is what we have to look forward to, now I really can't wait!

Natasha Lyonne—WTF? (Via the IMDB.)

RIP, Bob Moog.

Ever true to form, I'm a day late and a dollar short: happy birthday, DS! Hope you had a grand celebration. (When I say it, the phrase "a dollar short" ends up sounding like some kind of British colloquialism for measuring height: "I'm a dollar short so I should probably lose two stone, eh?")

Condolences to the Taize Community

I spoke on the phone last night with a friend of mine who's about to enter the novitiate at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. After some general catching-up, he told me about the horrible news that Brother Roger, the 90-year-old founder of the Taize Community, had been fatally stabbed during a prayer service in front of a 2,000+ person congregation on Tuesday. I don't think this story has been widely covered in the American media, but, even for those of you who aren't especially religious, it shouldn't be too difficult to grasp the shock and sadness of this news. I'm not terribly familiar with the Taize Community and their style of worship myself, but, based on the little I do know, their unflagging commitment to peace, even after this direct attack against them, is just one of the most radical stances that can be held by any group of people right now. Condolences and admiration.

Things I Like Today

Rebecca Traister's body-image poem on Salon (written in homage to Nike's recently launched What Story Does Your Body Tell? campaign):

My belly is protuberant
A preview
Of what I will look like pregnant
If I ever get pregnant
Which might have to be on my own
Because I am a crappy dater
And cannot seem to sustain a relationship.
Just do it.

Hey, Ho! Lascaux!, one of Slate's consistently delightful, unapologetically punny headlines. This one is for a compilation of highlights from their readers' forum discussion of evolutionary psychology.

The promotional poster for The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Love me some Carell, love me some Keener—potentially the best movie ever?

Incrementally Nearer

OK. So, I don't want you people to think that I've turned over a new leaf or anything. All the same overarching formal problems are still there and I still think it was horribly miscast, but. After the Cubs game preempted our weekly Gilmore Girls fix, and after the local Blockbuster ended up not carrying any of the complete seasons on DVD, LK rented Closer for us to watch, not realizing I'd already seen it and, um, y'know, formed an opinion about it. I said I'd watch it with her until I got too disgusted to take any more. Well, I was actually able to make it through the whole thing, mostly thanks to my newfound appreciation for Clive Owen's performance. I still think he's way too suave and good-looking for the role (as is everyone else in the film, except Natalie Portman, who should have been more hot but less pretty), but, without him, the movie likely would have suffered irreparable damage. Everyone is discernably better in their scenes with him. Somehow, magically, he turns these movie stars into actors when they're on screen together. Suddenly, there are multiple layers in the emotional subtext, and the dialogue sounds like actual language, and there is an undercurrent of genuine eroticism infusing everything (rather than just being assumed because of the natural attractiveness of the cast). I really couldn't believe the marked difference that his presence made. Which is, of course, to say nothing of his own performance, which is magnetic and unpredictable and filled with way more interesting rage and intensity and intelligence than I'd remembered. He's really the only reason to see this movie.

It's been an outstanding couple days of music for me. Following in the footsteps (and thanks to the CD-loaning generosity) of the inhabitants of Casa de Ziesball, I have been dipping into Elvis Costello's back catalog, and, fuck me, I have become obsessed with Armed Forces. This sentiment should probably be filed under "unsurprising revelations" (as John Darnielle has occasionally said of comparable discoveries), but damn. Where has this album been all my life? (Literally, all my life. I'm pretty sure it came out the year I was born.) I've also been enjoying the Pernice Brothers' new one, and yesterday I received the oustanding finished version of a collaborative mix CD that I contributed to, complete with custom-made packaging created by the unbelievably awesome kids behind Pin Monkey Press. And then last night, before I went to bed, I discovered that my apartment building had been bulldozed and an amusement park made entirely out of pixie sticks, tinsel, and number two pencils had been erected in its place, and as I stood marveling at this feat of ramshackle engineering, a dangerously inept amateur lion tamer who'd been awake for 72 hours on a cross-country bender walked up and offered me a cup of strong lemon-flavored tea to drink and a lit pair of Roman candles to wear as earrings. No, wait, I mean, I listened to the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album. Christ, it's beautiful. The hipsters were right again.

Samuel L. Jackson on Snakes on a Plane (via Salon's gossip column The Fix). This absolutely destroyed me with laughter when I read it today. Pure genius.

A colleague of mine recently introduced the Mimi Smartypants blog to me, which I am loving already. I totally want to take a cue from this post and start telling all my female friends how brave and strong they are.

I can't remember whom I may or may not have told about this blog post written by a local musician critiquing Chicago's mainstream press coverage of Intonation (via Gapers Block), so I thought I'd just post it here for everyone. My favorite sentence: "As for the Sun-Times, Dero calls Four Tet 'laptronica' in quotes, in much the same way that I call music played in a small combo setting with guitars, bass, and drums 'rockonica' or 'bandalicious' to make them seem foreign and silly to my readers."

B, I had a major breakthrough yesterday with the PDF/font problem I'd been having at work. More on this later with you via e or cell.

EDIT: I'm a fairly huge fan of Liev Schreiber, and I've been very happy with the recent uptick in his exposure due to his work on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Ross and his forthcoming film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated. Here's a nice lengthy interview with him from this week's Onion.