Baby, You've Got to Be More Discerning

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

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

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

Other music news and downloady goodness:

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

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

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

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

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

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).

I Want to Feed You Butter Rum Candy

An embarrassment of musical riches this summer: first we hear that The Divine Comedy is about to deliver a new album, and now comes word that The Long Winters' third full length, Putting the Days to Bed, will be released on July 25. Can't wait.

All right, my little Satanists, are you ready for the National Day of Slayer? (via)

I think I finally may have found a podcast worth committing myself to: Stylus magazine's Stycast (via--and, while you're there, heed his advice to visit the ridiculously great Green Pea-ness blog). I listened to #248 on my commute this morning, and I have to say it was worth it for the Coldcut feat. Roots Manuva track alone.

Just when Mimi Smartypants was starting to give me a resounding case of the mehs, she dashes off a paragraph about her small daughter's newfound reverence for skateboarding. She writes, "My kid will not be some lame-o Betty standing on the sidelines while the boys practice their bean plants and fakie tail grabs. So we each held her hands while she rolled along, and all the way home she would not shut up about it." Skate or die...from the cuteness! Loves it!

The Notorious Jimmy James

OK, if there are any pussified and whiny indie kids out there who want to start a band so they can wear cool clothes and sing about their feelings and chat up pretty emo girls with pixie haircuts and facial piercings, LISTEN UP. You are forbidden to do any of this until you study at the feet of My Morning Jacket.

Other than a vague perception of them being jammy and Southern-fried, I knew nothing about this band, and largely because of the aforementioned perceptions, didn't think I needed to know anything about them, before I saw them play on the Northwestern campus last night. Kittens, I have been touched by the power of ROCK. Those motherfuckers walked on stage looking like they'd just been released from prison somewhere and played their fucking hearts out. They could have phoned it in for this student show in the gym. They could have fooled us by hiding behind the bluster and momentum of their hair and beards. But, no. They flung their bodies across the stage and whipped that hair around and screamed and sweated and went through some kind of public musical catharsis for our benefit. It was spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. I mean, yeah, there was a fair amount of guitar wankery, but, my background in jazz being what it is, I have infinitely more patience with semi-indulgent soloing in a live setting than I do on a recording. Not to mention that the kind of music they play is best experienced like a blast from a furnace at the gates of hell: hot, loud, and overpowering, which is to say, not through the tiny plastic earbuds plugged in to your iPod. It deserves a stack of amps and groovy lighting and the reverence of a crowd of kids who were inspired to shout things like, "why don't you just play all night!" I have a better understanding now than perhaps I ever did why Pamela des Barres wrote I'm with the Band, and why she lived it before she wrote it. Oh, and they played maybe four or five songs, and then, by way of greeting and introduction, lead singer Jim James steps up to the microphone and, perfectly framed against a bastketball hoop and the gray cinder block walls of the Patten Gymnasium, drawls, "I hear you don't have a fencing team here at Grover Cleveland. Well, I'm going to do my best to start one up for you." I nearly died.

Oh, yeah, and Stephen Malkmus played a solo set (which I unfortunately missed but I'm told was chockful of older Pavement and Silver Jews material) and the New Pornographers, including Neko Case, were the second band on the bill. Did I forget to mention all that in the heat of my excitement about MMJ? Pretty much best concert ever. Thanks again for the heads up, KP and DS. (I still owe you for the ticket.)

The reason I missed Malkmus's set was because I was en route from Navy Pier to Evanston after seeing A Flea in Her Ear at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Ah, who doesn't love a good, fast French farce? GH asked me a while ago to tag along with her and her gals to their season-subscription seats, and the show, while by no means revelatory, was still a delightful, brightly colored bit of piffle. Rick Hall was so effective in his dual role as man-of-the-house Chandebise and bellboy Poche that I found myself illogically wondering how in the world they were going to stage a face-to-face confrontation between the two characters.

This just in! Christianity is repressive, men are assholes, and the U.S. government hates pornography. All this, and not much more, courtesy of The Notorious Bettie Page, the kind of biopic that gives biopics a bad name. Lots of shuttling from plot point to plot point with only the skimpiest of G-strings connecting them to a greater theme or raison d'etre. Now, I don't necessarily go to movies based on true stories or real people looking for historical accuracy or trenchant re-creations of a larger social context, but I do, at the very least, expect to be entertained. The one-note-ness of Bettie Page was not only reductive in its simplifying of the character and the era, but deeply boring as well.

Sure, Gretchen Mol (Rounders, anyone?) looked great and was sexy as hell in the title role (though I do tend to agree with Violet Blue [beware the link; NSFW] when she says Mol doesn't exactly fill out Page's "ruffle-butt panties"), but, when basically all the part required of her was the repeated furrowing of her immaculately tweezed brow in earnest consideration every time her boundaries were being pushed by the series of increasingly fetishistic photographic demands being made of her, looking good is pretty much the most a person could ask for. She does work extra hard in one of the final scenes showing her, after recommitting her life to the Church (which, after a garish and blatantly sexualized "conversion" sequence, complete with her kneeling all dewy-eyed in front of the preacher man, is mainly dramatized by showing her buttoning a white sweater up over a black brassiere), reading from the Bible to (ahem, mostly male) passersby in an autumnal-looking park somewhere. Though her leap from slightly daffy but deliriously exuberant pin-up queen to devout evangelist has, despite some heavy-handed foreshadowing, no sense of dramatic inevitability whatsoever, Mol does her absolute best to translate her radiance from the flesh to the soul. Yet despite Mol's best efforts here, this fact of Page's personal history is just one more inconvenient episode to be gotten through until director Mary Harron can show us Bettie dancing (in homage to this ridiculous yet adorable video? [she's fully clothed and completely SFW here]) over the final credits.

Though I think Bettie's pictures and persona are totally awesome, I've never been one of those leopard-print, cat-eye-glasses hipster gals who would cite her as a major hero or sexual influence or anything, so my complaints here don't really stem from any kind of proprietary sense that no one's ever gonna do my Bettie justice. But, I did want to leave the movie theater feeling like I knew even a little bit more about her and her milieu than I did when I went in; I wanted to feel like I had something to chew on, some tangled tensions to try to resolve in my own head in idle moments of pondering on the train or at lunch this week. And this isn't to say that I didn't glean a few factoids about the nature of her work with Irving and Paula Klaw and Bunny Yeager and the Kefauver hearings on juvenile delinquency. But, Harron tips her hand so strenuously in favor of Bettie's heroic place at the center of a very thin slice of 1950s female sexuality, with only the barest, Walk the Line-esque examination of the events that led her there, that, quite apart from accounts of Page's post-cheesecake life, there was no ambiguity in this version of her story at all. It's all, yay Bettie, yay sexytime, fuck anything that distracts us for a moment from images of her frisky smile and plump bum, including the messy complexities of the woman herself. Yet, as we all know, the most effective titillation requires a little something be left to the viewer's imagination.

Radioheading to the Windy City!

Radiohead is coming to town after all, kittens! (No thanks to Millennium Park and the Cultural Affairs Department.) June 19 and 20 at the Auditorium. Tickets on sale May 6. (T'anks for the heads-up, BAK.)

Unformed Thoughts on Brick, Etc.

I happily caught up with Brick this weekend, and thought to myself, gee, how nice for a director to use noir's speech patterns as a point of entry into his homage rather than slipping in on another retread of gorgeous (but ultimately kinda boring) shadowy black and white cinematography. Sure, few things are as pleasurable as some really sumptuous chiaroscuro lighting, but there's also no surer or faster way to paint yourself into a style-over-substance corner. Which isn't to say that Brick is particularly substantial--it's an easy metaphor, that high school feels like life and death, like the high stakes drama of back alley shady dealings gone wrong--but at least it didn't take the easy way out with its formal conventions. I mean, as the components of the hard-boiled detective genre become more and more fetishized (which is not to say romanticized, which it obviously always has been) in contemporary film and TV, has everyone forgotten that many of the best old detective movies started out as novels? That the chewiness of the language provides the frame over which to drape the now-iconic bits of mise-en-scene? Director and screenwriter Rian Johnson deserves kudos for remembering and acting on this. The cinematography, certainly lovely in its own way, owes more of a debt to the most deconstructed, postmodern noir ever, Altman's The Long Goodbye, all pastel colors and shallow focus and squintingly uncomfortable scenes shot in full daylight.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, simply put, brilliant, again. Lukas Haas is fantastic as the suburban heroin-dealing baddie The Pin. Reviewers have cited the comic absurdity of the scene where his mother serves him and his minions milk and cookies in the kitchen, and sure it's funny, but it also feels every bit as potent as seeing any classic screen villain stroking a long-haired cat. The vaguely Oedipal kiss on the cheek he gives her provides the perfect, fleeting glimpse into the irrational soft spot that all great, completely amoral characters need. The funnier, and sadder, line that I haven't seen anyone except Andrew O'Hehir mention here is delivered during the scene on the beach where The Pin suddenly asks Gordon-Levitt's character if he's ever read any Tolkein. "You know, the Hobbit books? I really like his descriptions of things. Makes you feel like you're there." Boom. Again, another perfunctory, though weighty, reminder that, yes, these are teenage characters we're dealing with. The tender innocence of it reminded me of one of my favorite lines from Rushmore, where Max, drunk at dinner after the debut of his Serpico play, screams, "You hurt my feelings!" Just that subtle reorientation to the true place these characters are coming from does a world of good for the director's mission, no matter how stylized or over-the-top. And as someone who finds herself endlessly defending the stylized and over-the-top, I like having these little moments to be able to point to.

On quite the other end of the tonal spectrum, LK and I watched Rivers and Tides, the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, on DVD two nights ago. I remember when previews for it were being played before virtually everything I saw at our local Landmark theaters a few years ago and, thanks to LBLA reminding me about it after she saw a free screening in DC in December, I finally remembered to dump it in my Kittenflix queue. Wow. This film clung for dear life on to the right side of the razor-thin divide between being mind-bendingly fascinating and stultifyingly self-serious with art-fuckery. I mean, the first words of the movie were something like, "I'd say, art nourishes me" in Goldsworthy's precious little Scottish burr. I should have started gagging immediately. And yet. He's so endearingly earnest about the inspiration he takes from the natural world and the respect he has for it, and the footage of his pieces is so unbelievably beautiful, that I actually gasped several times when the camera would reveal whatever stunningly simple and profound project he was working on. I hadn't anticipated having that kind of reaction. It got to the point where LK and I were cheering for him to add just one. more. pebble. on to his pinecone-shaped piles of rocks and shouting, when one would collapse, with the kind of communal frustration that you usually only hear erupt around a television when an athlete bungles a key play during the championship game. (Wow, how was that for some totally non-sport-specific lingo there?) Anyway, this isn't the kind of DVD you can just throw on for kicks, but, for us, late on a rainy Sunday night, it was completely perfect.

WTF? But I love cilantro!

Recent Reading

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

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

She Is Good to Me and I Am Good to Her

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

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

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

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

Girls Don't Poop.

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

Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies!

CRP authors in the blogosphere this week: Dirk Jamison writes for Largehearted Boy and Doug Crandell gets written up for Post Road Magazine. These are two of my favorite new voices we've published recently, and both of the write-ups just make me love them even more.

Scroll down here to last week's episode, fast forward to approximately minute seven, and revel in the glory that is a This American Life piece on--wait for it--The Puppy Channel. I know, I could hardly believe it either. (Thanks for this and the Post Road link, LK.)

Has anyone anywhere ever had a relatively good/positive experience buying tickets for an event? Because I honestly don't think I have. I'm not talking about the sweet old lady who took your money at the front door of your little sister's choir concert. I'm talking about buying tickets to see a rock show or whatever. When I use Ticketmonster, I feel screwed, which makes me angry. When I make the effort to go to a box office, people are usually bitchy, which pisses me off. I hustled as fast as I could after work last night to get to the box office at the Metro before it closed at 6 to buy tickets for this weekend's Gogol Bordello show (Nora Rocket and JZ and I will be MAKING MERRY OUT OF NOTHING, LIKE IN REFUGEE CAMP! OH YEAH, WHOA NO!). My dilemma: will I make it to the box office in time if I try to hunt down one of my bank's very few cash machines in the distance between my office and the venue? But, what's this? Joy of joys: the website says they accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express! Perfection. What an epoch of convenience I'm lucky to be living in!

Still, I'm cutting it close (thank you, rush hour brown line delays!), and I blow in to the Metro store windswept and out of breath at about 5:55. There are maybe four or five people standing behind various counters, some setting up merch for that night's show, others tapping on laptops and flipping through magazines. No eye contact whatsoever is made with the frantic, disheveled Polish tornado that has just tumbled through the door. I stagger around the room, trying to deduce if any of these clearly superior specimens of humanity have any interest in helping a sister out. I finally point-blank ask a petite blond woman, "can I buy tickets for a show on Saturday?" "Oh, you'll have to talk to her," she says, pointing to a woman standing about eight feet to her right. For fuck's sake. "Hi, can I buy three tickets for the Gogol Bordello show on Saturday?" I ask the woman standing eight feet to my left. She barely says a word to me, makes minimal eye contact, and starts processing the order. I reach into my bag for my wallet, and, just to be sure, I ask, "I can use a card to pay, right?" This query is met with eyeballs of steel. "There's a 4% surcharge on the total ticket price if you want to use a card." I temporarily die for a moment, standing right there on my own two little feet as I hear this, because OMG, WTF, not being surcharged was the whole reason I elected to make the journey to the box office in the first place and being able to use my card was the whole reason I didn't stop for cash on the way! (Bitch.) But, as politely as I can muster (read: not very politely at this point), I ask if there are any cash machines in the vicinity. "There's one on the front of the building, there's one across the street, there's one on the corner, but I'm closin' in five minutes." This is the point at which, in all exchanges like this, I am always tempted to begin weeping and rending my garmets as I deliver a soliloquy on the theme of Am I Not Pure of Heart? Am I not pure of heart? Did I not try as hard as I could to get here as quickly as I could? Was I not met with transportation challenges on the way? Did I not initially consider withdrawing cash from my checking account to make this transaction easier on you, the customer service representative? Is it not spring in Chicago and was I not struggling to walk against the wind off the lake with my very short skirt threatening to become my very short belt every step of the way? Regardless, I would like to believe that that exceptionally moving performance was subtextually obvious when I, instead, said, "um, OK, then here ya go," and handed over my debit card.

I mean, whatevs. I got the tickets, I'm going to the show, I'm looking forward to it, all is well in the kingdom of Entropy. But, is it just me, or are these hoops that must inevitably be jumped through just not very rock 'n' roll? I mean, how do the corduroy-clad hipsterati deal with these sorts of indignities when they're making plans to go see Art Brut or whoeverthefuck? Or is it just me? Do these box office workers smell the square on me when I walk in the door and then proceed to treat me like the guy from High Fidelity who was looking for a copy of "I Just Called to Say I Love You"? But, I mean, I usually walk among them fairly well disguised--hello, little camouflage skirt, bright red lipstick, black plastic frame glasses, black messenger bag festooned with band pins? What else do they want from me? People, people, people--there has got to be a better way!

New Divine Comedy

Not that I'm usually the model of restraint or anything, but allow me to FLIP THE FUCK OUT for a moment as I announce with fist-pumping anticipation that a NEW DIVINE COMEDY ALBUM will be released this summer. It's called Victory for the Comic Muse, the title a cheeky play on Neil's ultra-rare debut disk, Fanfare for the Comic Muse, which predates Liberation by a few years and which I have never heard. The DC website says the new one is out June 19 in the U.K., which I hope, but doubt, will mean June 20 in the U.S. Even if not, ah, well, that's what we have Amazon.co.uk for, eh kids?

Poetry in an Empty Coke Can

I absolutely can. not. wait. for Brick to open here. Everything I've read about it sounds right up my alley, and the fact that I'm totally gaga for Joseph Gordon-Levitt after loving the fuck out of Mysterious Skin last year (it's funny that that's the second time I've linked to that old post within the past week and a half) is only fluffy bunny frosting on the kitten whiskers cake. According to the official site, Chicago is included in this coming weekend's limited release roll-out. Rawk. Chickety check Salon's brief interview with director Rian Johnson here.

Mr. Green Pea-Ness writes with passionate, breathless, furious intensity about Nelly Furtado's unstoppable new single "Maneater" (which similarly blew me away when I got around to downloading it this weekend), about what it means when Voxtrot covers the Talking Heads, and about seeing the Guillemots live.

Speaking of the Guillemots, their From the Cliffs EP compilation disk doesn't quite live up, back-to-front, to the promise of "Trains to Brazil" (then again, what could?), but their "Made Up Lovesong #43" has to be one of the silliest, happiest, swooniest things I've heard in ages. It's not just a song about love, it's a song that makes you feel like you're falling in love. If you see me walking around town with a goofy grin on my usually scowl-marked face and a bounce in my otherwise leaden step, I'm probably just listening to that song on my Nano. Approach with caution; I might huuuug you!

The Hype Machine recently pointed me in the direction of Joanna Newsom's predictably stunning cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel." I've never been able to figure out exactly why Jimi's music in general, and this song in particular, touches me so deeply. The reaction he elicits in me is a totally distinct beast from the respect I have for the rest of his contemporaries in the rock canon. I mean, I was putting "Angel" on mix tapes in high school when I thought "classic rock" meant those cheesy recordings of guitar shredders interpreting Mozart sonatas and shit (kidding; I wasn't that bad off), and I remember getting emotional at the EMP in Seattle with Holla Mossick and LBLA a few summers ago as we strolled through a room that reverently displayed the first draft of his lyrics for "Angel" scribbled on the back of an envelope or napkin or similar scrap of paper. Anyway, all of this is to say that, despite the shoddy quality of the live recording, for me, this MP3 provides a potent and irresistible combination of Joanna's otherworldly harp, her gift for singing way more than just the notes, and Jimi's divinely inspired (haha, not a pun, you bastards) composition.

I forgot to post this last week: Liza Minnelli losing her mind on Larry King.

Her almost-spit take when that guy calls up and says he's a musical theater major in Arizona is classic. Whatever demented asshole edited this thing together deserves an Emmy. Also, I love that some bastard on YouTube has tagged the clip with "trainwrecks." (Thanks, Benji.)

Had the chance to support some local art this weekend. LK and I popped by the Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts on Friday night for the opening of Columbia's Interdisciplinary Arts & Media Thesis Show, featuring Liz Wuerffle's lovely series of pieces combining maps, pictures, and other memories of a life spent on the move. Dan Schwarzlose's synesthesia installation was also really cool, though I'm not sure how the interactive portion of it will be handled when he's not there behind the bar taking orders for stuff like hearing Yellow and touching Buddha Nature. On Sunday, I saw Seanachai's production of A Whistle in the Dark (at the Victory Gardens until May 14), which is certainly worth a look for the slowly burning, quietly seething rage that Coby Goss does so well and for Dan Waller's tour de force performance of tightly coiled menace shot through with scrappy, wounded pride.

Steely Dan Fans of the World Unite!

I was expecting the haters to come out in droves when I began quietly, tentatively admitting that I've been on a Steely Dan kick of late. But no! Everyone I've mentioned it to is either fully in support of the kick or on one of their own. (Well, except for GH, who suggested I need some Zeppelin therapy, which, all things considered, I'm not really in a position to deny.) So c'mon, all the rest of y'all--who's harboring some secret love for the Dan? Even the hipsters at Stereogum were showing some love for Aja (my current album of choice) this week, and a few simple Google searches will reveal that some of my favorite indie dudes, namely John Darnielle, Chris Walla, and Travis Morrison, don't hesitate to cite Becker and Fagen's influential awesomeosity.

Not that I mean to mention them in the same breath or anything, but as for other bands that sometimes get unfairly hated on, I'm glad to see that, with the impending release of their sophomore disk Without Feathers, the Stills are getting some positive blog write-ups and some retroactive "but, their first album is way better than a buncha people gave it credit for!" love. I've been a fan of the band since Giddy and I saw them blow the roof off the Riv opening for Interpol in the fall of '03, and I was actually just listening to Logic Will Break Your Heart on the train this morning. I never fail to be impressed by how very good it is.

Sufjan, despite his recent New Pantheon win for Illinois, still wasn't man enough to tackle the motherfucking Dan Ryan in song, although there are some offensively feeble attempts at poetics over here. ("There is a way out. Reroute!" Are you fucking kidding me?) (Via.) Commuters, it was nice knowin' ya.

AMF Returns to the Movies!

Though I am lamentably not at all well versed in Spike Lee's body of work, I nevertheless felt compelled to seek out Inside Man this weekend. I'm glad I did; it is fantastic and highly recommended. Taut, funny, scary, thrilling, and, as it's practically being billed, a showcase for some truly bravura performances. Of course all bank heist movies are, in the end, more about power than about money, but that's way more true of Inside Man than most. This is thanks to both the political subtext here that, for once, doesn't make me want to puke inside my own mouth a little (which is saying something considering Lee has the audacity to set up a momentary tableau in the middle of the film that casts shadows in a way that make it look like an Abu Ghraib torture image) and thanks to the fireworks generated by all these freaking huge actors getting up in each other's grills. Folks everywhere are talking about how this is Jodie Foster's best performance in years, and it's probably true, but, of course, it's really Denzel's movie. The flirtatious hatred that swells up between him and Ms. Foster in their handful of scenes together is infinitely hotter than any of the "did you bring the gun?" pseudo-dirty banter between him and his on-screen girlfriend, and the non-linear scenes of him interrogating witnesses with his partner (the ridiculously beautiful Chiwetel Ejiofor, known to Joss Whedon fans as the baddie from Serenity) take Eddie Izzard's "but he's dead now/no he's not" bit from Dress to Kill to its thrilling, nerve-jangling, Method-acting extreme. This is all not to mention that the film explodes out of the gate with one of the most instantly gripping opening sequences in recent memory. You've got Clive Owen talking directly into the camera, telling us in no uncertain terms what a badass he is (as if we could doubt it for a minute), perfectly paired with the sounds of the sexy, stealthy, Bollywood-cool "Chaiyya Chaiyya." Bra-fucking-vo. The movie does lose a bit of steam toward the end as we're waiting for Denzel's character to catch up with what we, as the audience, already know, but it in no way diminishes the overall effectiveness. A grade-A B-movie.

Thank You for Smoking yields its own pleasures, though it's nowhere near as interesting as it could have been. It's great fun to see Aaron Eckhart chew up the motherfucking scenery and make us, yet again, forget every other role he's ever played, but it's nowhere near as subversive as the filmmakers think it is to give us a tobacco lobbyist full of rakish charm, superhero good looks, and "well, wouldja get'a loada that sonuvabitch!" attitude. A satire actually worth its salt would have made that character a complete, unlikable bastard yet still demanded us to sympathize with him. And, as something of a sidenote, maybe it's just because I think he's unspeakably adorable, but it's entirely possible that Adam Brody has actually realized the potential that everyone once expected of Topher Grace's career. He's skillfully balanced his lead role on The O.C. with sparkling supporting work in movies like this one and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which I've praised previously) and manages to play smarm with gangly dorkiness instead of smothering irony and self-awareness.

Finally also caught up with Shaun of the Dead on DVD, which, as expected, was an absolute delight and should be mandatory viewing in those professional prep/resume-writing courses you take during your senior year in college. "Students, take note here: you need to shoot your zombie parents in the face if you ever want to make anything of your life, and, if you must maintain contact with your fat, slobby, videogame-obsessed childhood friend, you're best advised to chain him up in your garden shed." (Thanks again for the recommendation, Mikow.)

Chicago love this morning from Gapers Block: the 10 CTA Commandments, and we've got the #2 skyline in the world, bitches!

Your Attention Please

Since I've been having spectacularly bad luck lately getting tickets to shows before they sell out (I'm crushed to be missing both The National and Neko Case in Chicago this month because I refuse to use Ticketbastard yet am too slow to get to the box offices on time), I decided, for once, to plan ahead: I just bought my two-day pass to the July 29-30 Pitchfork Music Festival. Who else is in?

Gapers Block dug up a website that reveals how Chicago's public transportation announcements compare with others around the world: "A very friendly, pre-recorded male voice is somewhat verbose and talks almost permanently to the passengers." I love this: "somewhat verbose and talks almost permanently." So funny. And, kind of an apt description of me, in my more hyper moments, too. Is this like when people start to look like their pets? Single city gals without cars start to sound like their public transportation?

Mighty Girl dreams up impromptu (code for "drunk"?) Trivial Pursuit questions such as "What the fuck was that one movie, the one where the guy had the sled?" and "Shit, who wrote that thing about...?"

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.

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.