hung out in the ever charming Wallingford with a friend last night, going to see de-lovely with a friend at the Guild on 45th, a beautiful old theater with an awesome neighborhood-sized marque. very fancy - very approriate, though I agree with Bruno that the film took obviously liberties. Also the setting, an old theater in which the recently dead Porter watches a musical of his life, seemed unneedly macabre, the then handicapped Porter a grotesque worthy of perhaps my undergraduate creative writing classes but too ridiculous for a full blown film.
so now i'm going to PORTLAND! so exciting, to visit my friend Kate and see another fine Lucky Dragons show.
7.31.2004
7.30.2004
a ha cpr nerd
old news, but i was looking to pirate some smiths lyrics for a parody and found this:
Smiths lyrics generator, which I sincerely hope Interpol had the sense to use for this upcoming album. You can click til your finger breaks off and never get 'the subway she is a porno.'
anagrams are for word geeks
but who wouldn't love to love the elves?
when they're playin' banjos
or just being themselves
you could be a flamer
or a beefy hunk
there's money in the game
but i'm still a punk
Smiths lyrics generator, which I sincerely hope Interpol had the sense to use for this upcoming album. You can click til your finger breaks off and never get 'the subway she is a porno.'
anagrams are for word geeks
but who wouldn't love to love the elves?
when they're playin' banjos
or just being themselves
you could be a flamer
or a beefy hunk
there's money in the game
but i'm still a punk
7.29.2004
elephants on parade
Ya so I got busted having never read "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art," which you can find part of here. There's also a good Art Forum piece on Manny Farber that contains a short speech by Greil Marcus. You can't help but feel the self-reflexivity Marcus must have meant when he wrote this:
"Ideas impossible to understand because they come through a fog of stupidity." It's scary for a writer to come across a sentence that so plainly says what it means, in which the prose is so exquisitely balanced, and you take pleasure in the way the words are put together, and you worry that you've written things about which something like that could be said over and over and over again.
Walter Benjamin once said that an author who teaches a writer nothing teaches nobody anything. One thing that I think happens for many writers reading Farber is that they feel themselves on trial. They feel this same scrutiny that's brought to bear on actors, on directors, on painters, on musicians, on comic-strip artists. Maybe they feel lucky that Manny Farber has never read them and therefore doesn't have an opinion on them.
Will have to get my hands on the rest of this here termite thing...
"Ideas impossible to understand because they come through a fog of stupidity." It's scary for a writer to come across a sentence that so plainly says what it means, in which the prose is so exquisitely balanced, and you take pleasure in the way the words are put together, and you worry that you've written things about which something like that could be said over and over and over again.
Walter Benjamin once said that an author who teaches a writer nothing teaches nobody anything. One thing that I think happens for many writers reading Farber is that they feel themselves on trial. They feel this same scrutiny that's brought to bear on actors, on directors, on painters, on musicians, on comic-strip artists. Maybe they feel lucky that Manny Farber has never read them and therefore doesn't have an opinion on them.
Will have to get my hands on the rest of this here termite thing...
7.26.2004
listen to USE today!!!
Wandering thru the capitol hill block partycrowd after the most explosive mid-day day-go dance set from my new favorite band, USE, I saw one Nic Offer from apparently not everyone's favorite NYC dance band whose name can't be googled, and in that daze was thinking - 'wow, this really is the resurgence of the live dance band. where's '04's kid creole? Maybe that's where the triple chk fits into all of this.
I have to say I was horribly underwhelmed by the Pretty Girls Make Graves show. After seeing Akimbo, they sounded like tiny, rote tinker toys kids jamming post-hardcore by the numbers very far away from me - and they were boom! on the main stage. Singer Andrea Zollo moves like Jay from Panthers, which makes sense since they've toured together, with stiff robot jerks thrown passion by that Fugazi-style scream-to-melt earnest vocal that works for neither of them. Like her namesaken Moz, Zollo tries to use lyrical repitition for dramatic effect, unlike the Smiths, she doesn't have the hook to drive the point home. And, on top of all, their new material is getting more dance punk, which just seems embarrassingly reactionary and not very well executed in a band with only one guitarist, although he's pretty damn good, and a bass player more prone to pickslides than snap-funk basslines.
I have to say I was horribly underwhelmed by the Pretty Girls Make Graves show. After seeing Akimbo, they sounded like tiny, rote tinker toys kids jamming post-hardcore by the numbers very far away from me - and they were boom! on the main stage. Singer Andrea Zollo moves like Jay from Panthers, which makes sense since they've toured together, with stiff robot jerks thrown passion by that Fugazi-style scream-to-melt earnest vocal that works for neither of them. Like her namesaken Moz, Zollo tries to use lyrical repitition for dramatic effect, unlike the Smiths, she doesn't have the hook to drive the point home. And, on top of all, their new material is getting more dance punk, which just seems embarrassingly reactionary and not very well executed in a band with only one guitarist, although he's pretty damn good, and a bass player more prone to pickslides than snap-funk basslines.
7.22.2004
queen(s)reich
the thing is about all ages shows is that they always smell differently than do your regular adult rock shows - they smell like hardcore kids. in seattle, at the underage hotspot it's not unlike abc no rio for that humid accumulation of nearly threadbare decadence worn on unwashed bodies. humid, woody, and playfully but agressively male - i love that smell. it's what blue-hoodie emo love songs should be about. one place that romance goes rank, i must say, is in the more intense venues in providence, where the innocence is sometimes traded for brutal, encampment style fester -- not something i hope to have bump into me ever again.
TONIGHT - At 2nd Ave. Pizza - Iron Lung...
Two man power violence chit chat between songs weirdly alienating even though they knew the whole damn crowd. Big big muffled gut shaken guitar and spit-spazz drumming, though giving the holy terror two beat call and repsonse (you know, dun na, DUN NA, dun na DUN NA (! ! !) (the !'s being snare hits, or clicks like Nick taught you) that gets the kids rolling ball to toe. The dry erase board announcing upcoming bands was a terror too - so many bands I'll never know about, so much gloom spread around the world. I naively asked my pal Brian why everyone was wearing black (too much day-go East Coast), to which he said, "it's a west coast thing," which set me to : duh, ya, all those pesky post-hardcore bois who came eastward with their Locust-like white belts and blood-stopping tight shirts (Hopper called it in HIOQI?) set us all on the downward spiral to near mall goth MTV2 fake glam.
SPEAKING OF WHICH - at the Crocadile - the Icarus Line, Battles and the Evaporators
Ya, the Icarus Line. I hear people love their record - Joe Cardamone, lead singer slash Hanson hair double, blubbered over two songs backed by a Kulashaker-on-heroin-hey- I'll-smash-this-guitar rabble roar sadly lacking in any sort of direction other than --- onward.
Unlike the EVAPORATORS, who I thought to be a joke band because, well, they since songs about cheese and their Carrot Top looking leader does multiple costume changes, but I stood there transformed with glee as the Top got the audience in a tizzy by first getting a group to hold his keyboard, than another to body surf him over, where he promptly mounted the keys while still held aloft -then played the rest of the song - and recovered beautifully. Even the most befuddled main band waiters got into the act. I watched him bobble out of the room while Battles was on, looking defeated for having gotten the crowd roused only to watch them die of boredom at the pomp of BATTLES.
Admit it, me, Don Cab bored us. We hated the fake jazz, the shuffle drum noise burst repressed by overdone gestures. We thought it was affected. Well, now with Tyondai Braxton, who gave an excellent solo set of Fennesz type textures at Brown a while back, it's just that much more obvious to us - math rock is for 20 somethings too precious to like prog. We liked Polvo and even Roads to Space Travel, but those dudes could have some fun, we think, not just inhabit 'regions' of the stage where they toss Tortoise cast aways to one another like overprocesses bait - wait, the only improv here really seems to be Tyondai's blah blah fx box stuff? Well, we've seen that in his other incarnations, only here we get to watch him making fuck me faces and rocker 'ya ya' nods to Ian Williams for 45 minutes while the audience, 75% dudes by weight and volume, just stands their waiting for the Roundabout jam. Barhrrhghghghg!
(barghghghghg is the sound of Daphne wanting something akin to peace love and understanding, aka femininity, infused in spine-crushing hardcore and funny jangle nerd rock -- has there ever been an all woman Heroin? a femme fueled Material?)
TONIGHT - At 2nd Ave. Pizza - Iron Lung...
Two man power violence chit chat between songs weirdly alienating even though they knew the whole damn crowd. Big big muffled gut shaken guitar and spit-spazz drumming, though giving the holy terror two beat call and repsonse (you know, dun na, DUN NA, dun na DUN NA (! ! !) (the !'s being snare hits, or clicks like Nick taught you) that gets the kids rolling ball to toe. The dry erase board announcing upcoming bands was a terror too - so many bands I'll never know about, so much gloom spread around the world. I naively asked my pal Brian why everyone was wearing black (too much day-go East Coast), to which he said, "it's a west coast thing," which set me to : duh, ya, all those pesky post-hardcore bois who came eastward with their Locust-like white belts and blood-stopping tight shirts (Hopper called it in HIOQI?) set us all on the downward spiral to near mall goth MTV2 fake glam.
SPEAKING OF WHICH - at the Crocadile - the Icarus Line, Battles and the Evaporators
Ya, the Icarus Line. I hear people love their record - Joe Cardamone, lead singer slash Hanson hair double, blubbered over two songs backed by a Kulashaker-on-heroin-hey- I'll-smash-this-guitar rabble roar sadly lacking in any sort of direction other than --- onward.
Unlike the EVAPORATORS, who I thought to be a joke band because, well, they since songs about cheese and their Carrot Top looking leader does multiple costume changes, but I stood there transformed with glee as the Top got the audience in a tizzy by first getting a group to hold his keyboard, than another to body surf him over, where he promptly mounted the keys while still held aloft -then played the rest of the song - and recovered beautifully. Even the most befuddled main band waiters got into the act. I watched him bobble out of the room while Battles was on, looking defeated for having gotten the crowd roused only to watch them die of boredom at the pomp of BATTLES.
Admit it, me, Don Cab bored us. We hated the fake jazz, the shuffle drum noise burst repressed by overdone gestures. We thought it was affected. Well, now with Tyondai Braxton, who gave an excellent solo set of Fennesz type textures at Brown a while back, it's just that much more obvious to us - math rock is for 20 somethings too precious to like prog. We liked Polvo and even Roads to Space Travel, but those dudes could have some fun, we think, not just inhabit 'regions' of the stage where they toss Tortoise cast aways to one another like overprocesses bait - wait, the only improv here really seems to be Tyondai's blah blah fx box stuff? Well, we've seen that in his other incarnations, only here we get to watch him making fuck me faces and rocker 'ya ya' nods to Ian Williams for 45 minutes while the audience, 75% dudes by weight and volume, just stands their waiting for the Roundabout jam. Barhrrhghghghg!
(barghghghghg is the sound of Daphne wanting something akin to peace love and understanding, aka femininity, infused in spine-crushing hardcore and funny jangle nerd rock -- has there ever been an all woman Heroin? a femme fueled Material?)
7.20.2004
the rusky dusky neon dust
so, out of nyc that it seems i didn't know people actually really like reading arthur, which always seemed a little out of touch and self-serving (not unlike the philly independent) but i guess when you get devendra behind it, you get nothing but gold. his 'curated'1000 only freakfolk comp feels like some kinda washed out, up close spirit of the moment thing, a document that actually stands with a multitude of great tracks (i even like the joanna newsom) in the tiny-speaker music movement. you're either on the bus, or you're off the bus.
listened ot the stiff box set today - i can't get my brain around 'pub rock' as a genre, it's somehow so depressing in its spilt pints on the floor mate sort of feeling, aren't we daft? well, let me sing you a pop ditty to take the edge off. i think i might have to listen to more madness though, as they seem like a force unmatched in contemporary music. who is the modern madness?
listened ot the stiff box set today - i can't get my brain around 'pub rock' as a genre, it's somehow so depressing in its spilt pints on the floor mate sort of feeling, aren't we daft? well, let me sing you a pop ditty to take the edge off. i think i might have to listen to more madness though, as they seem like a force unmatched in contemporary music. who is the modern madness?
7.19.2004
dear catastrophe waitress
so i had this weird sort of youngish sunday wandering experience today, buying zines and drinking iced-italian sodas in kiss kiss capitol hill. was in bauhaus, cause it's easy to tumble down to it and does indeed seem to catch everyone in the neighborhood the way a billiard table pocket catches balls. anyway, these two first date lesbians were having an ackward conversation and suddenly the way too chipper barista put on belle and sebastian, to which the butch girl said, 'yuck, i hate this kind of music,' and then i eavesdropped on their conversation about what they did like. it was embarrassing, because the femme chick didn't know anything about music and kept mispronouncing things and said she was in to 'ebm' but then couldn't remember what the letters stood for. Yow. I wanted to hug her and give her a mix CD, but then I realized I coming dangerously close to lesbian assist music evangelism, something that might actually be so needed that it should be given a name, LAME, and stopped myself short.
speaking of girls, i was in toys in babeland today (it's none of your business, really) and saw an add for sin in linen, then noticed that the woman who helped Ann and I tour Sonic Youth around is the owner/creator of the line. Cool! And she's in the Rat City Rollergirls, a new rollerderby group...Good ladies abound in this town! Sent me swirling on the pin up tip, which is always worth a peek.
speaking of girls, i was in toys in babeland today (it's none of your business, really) and saw an add for sin in linen, then noticed that the woman who helped Ann and I tour Sonic Youth around is the owner/creator of the line. Cool! And she's in the Rat City Rollergirls, a new rollerderby group...Good ladies abound in this town! Sent me swirling on the pin up tip, which is always worth a peek.
7.18.2004
vacationing in portmeirion
for whatever reason, i've been reading the six of one, Prisoner appreciation society newslist a lot again lately, and am currently listening to this charming little BBC docu on the impact of the show on british society...found here at Britian in a Box.
finished Charles Cross's "Heavier than Heaven" this afternoon - what a frustrating read, especially after the photo section, aka, in comes Courtney, when I just felt like I had lost the character, just as everyone else had, i suppose. the psychological reading into his childhood, constructed through interviews with the Cobains, seems overinflated -- reading the signs in splayed innards -- and reminds me of solomon's bio of mozart (hey, haven't read beethoven bc i wasn't forced to TA it for four months) in its attempt to reconstruct the inner life of the artist through writing (solomon was trained in psychology, and was a better writer - so even working on legends long dead, his words seem more plausible and less cliched). regardless, a great fast summer read in my little foray into seattle.
finished Charles Cross's "Heavier than Heaven" this afternoon - what a frustrating read, especially after the photo section, aka, in comes Courtney, when I just felt like I had lost the character, just as everyone else had, i suppose. the psychological reading into his childhood, constructed through interviews with the Cobains, seems overinflated -- reading the signs in splayed innards -- and reminds me of solomon's bio of mozart (hey, haven't read beethoven bc i wasn't forced to TA it for four months) in its attempt to reconstruct the inner life of the artist through writing (solomon was trained in psychology, and was a better writer - so even working on legends long dead, his words seem more plausible and less cliched). regardless, a great fast summer read in my little foray into seattle.
7.17.2004
distopia repurposed
world's fair nut that i am, i've never been to the miserable ruins of the 1964 world's fair, that clownish sci-fi spectacle on your left in queens as you pile to the airport . new york city's suburban outcropping of utopia -- the fair and the twa terminal -- two means of escape, imagined and real --- both abandoned by their cities for the grim functional. now the parks department (are they like the phone company in 'the presidents analyst or what?) wants to redevelop the space into some queens-ready lincoln center job. well, you can get them to ps1, maybe, but good luck with flushing.
SPEAKING OF miserable futures, this is the most absurd bs rock star bullshit i've seen in a while. i mean, if anything we should be mad that their inflated, career-clinging psychobabble is going to infect our heads three months longer than we'd previously thought.
SPEAKING OF miserable futures, this is the most absurd bs rock star bullshit i've seen in a while. i mean, if anything we should be mad that their inflated, career-clinging psychobabble is going to infect our heads three months longer than we'd previously thought.
7.15.2004
anarchy on the catwalk
deep in new wave and sheffield drops this vv longpiece ff piece right on me, making all think the guy could be like the disembodied voice of the whole movement. Fifteen pounds of fuck puppy indeed.
Less sexy but more bizarre is this Yazoo video, which starts with superbutch Alison Moyet in the trenchcoat and wee one Vince Clarke dancing like rejects from a John Huges slowdance until Moyet's aggro-commando knocks Clarke cold, only to emerge from the stupor in, what else, a new wave party with animal costumes! not unlike mill space parties back in provi. Ann and I have been talking about 'new wave and gender' and if every video I stumble on to is like this, I will be so up on conversation by Homo-A-Go-Go it will be sick.
i find mary quant's website more boring and self-obsessed than i would have even imagined, but the Barbie paint a face feature is somehow alluring. Let's dress up!
IN OTHER NEWS: Just finished transcribing the "women writers in hip hop" panel from EMP (ya, from April, leave me alone) and want to send it to the ladies for corrections et al then will be posting on Girl Group and around. EMP might want to use part in Popular Music tho, so...
Less sexy but more bizarre is this Yazoo video, which starts with superbutch Alison Moyet in the trenchcoat and wee one Vince Clarke dancing like rejects from a John Huges slowdance until Moyet's aggro-commando knocks Clarke cold, only to emerge from the stupor in, what else, a new wave party with animal costumes! not unlike mill space parties back in provi. Ann and I have been talking about 'new wave and gender' and if every video I stumble on to is like this, I will be so up on conversation by Homo-A-Go-Go it will be sick.
i find mary quant's website more boring and self-obsessed than i would have even imagined, but the Barbie paint a face feature is somehow alluring. Let's dress up!
IN OTHER NEWS: Just finished transcribing the "women writers in hip hop" panel from EMP (ya, from April, leave me alone) and want to send it to the ladies for corrections et al then will be posting on Girl Group and around. EMP might want to use part in Popular Music tho, so...
7.14.2004
the tao of kerry
From the Observer, the analogies run free as everyone begins to go into Kerry poetic overdrive. Hopefully no one will parlez-vous francais or mention the civil union ofcrab-people lest they alienate the subliterate prols trolling Walmarts countrywide. Oh no, do I smell a book:
Andrew Stengel, the former Miramax exec and screenwriter, tried to explain the inner Kerry. "If Clinton was Elvis, Kerry is Dylan," he said. "You like that? Let me think of a good one-hit wonder for Bush. Bush is Gerardo. And the administration? Men at Work. More like men not at work."
IN OTHER NEWS: Ann and I just toured Sonic Youth + guests thru the EMP. Was strange to watch the early footage of Nirvana with them. I still get creeped out that I know so much about two people's lives (plus Coco), so many bizarre public face details and thoughts, that lyrics have I Ching-like effects on my personal decisions (example: NYU or USC decision - "We're gonna kill the California Girls"/ "I'm from New York City/Breathe it out and let it in") and that Kim has had this enigmatic presence as a figure in my life and in others (esp. when I was in the riot grrrl zine culture). Blah blah, access. What to do when you find yrself by chance meeting at a place you think you'd never see punk idols - a big institutionalized rock museum? Give them a tour, of course.
Andrew Stengel, the former Miramax exec and screenwriter, tried to explain the inner Kerry. "If Clinton was Elvis, Kerry is Dylan," he said. "You like that? Let me think of a good one-hit wonder for Bush. Bush is Gerardo. And the administration? Men at Work. More like men not at work."
IN OTHER NEWS: Ann and I just toured Sonic Youth + guests thru the EMP. Was strange to watch the early footage of Nirvana with them. I still get creeped out that I know so much about two people's lives (plus Coco), so many bizarre public face details and thoughts, that lyrics have I Ching-like effects on my personal decisions (example: NYU or USC decision - "We're gonna kill the California Girls"/ "I'm from New York City/Breathe it out and let it in") and that Kim has had this enigmatic presence as a figure in my life and in others (esp. when I was in the riot grrrl zine culture). Blah blah, access. What to do when you find yrself by chance meeting at a place you think you'd never see punk idols - a big institutionalized rock museum? Give them a tour, of course.
7.12.2004
istanbul, constantinople
clearing up some text panels at emp and stumbled upon this factoid:
1623 Avedis I, an alchemist living in Constantinople discovers the still secret process for treating alloys and applies it to the art of making cymbals of extraordinary clarity and power. He is given the name "Zildjian" by the Sultan, which means "Cymbalsmith".
so, all those losers that heckle opening bands at punk revival shows, you know, the dudes with the black zildjian hats on, are actually part of an ancient craftsman's guild.
1623 Avedis I, an alchemist living in Constantinople discovers the still secret process for treating alloys and applies it to the art of making cymbals of extraordinary clarity and power. He is given the name "Zildjian" by the Sultan, which means "Cymbalsmith".
so, all those losers that heckle opening bands at punk revival shows, you know, the dudes with the black zildjian hats on, are actually part of an ancient craftsman's guild.
7.09.2004
i myself prefer the number 3
just reading the aquarius records post about the Conet Project reissue. usually the sheer bulk of aquarious mailings freaks me out - how much music can you think about in one day? i mean, i'm not in the other music mail order room, ferchristsakes - but this one struck me cause really, it's fucking crazy that people would be that interested in some spy-numbers exotica. from the list:
After several years in out of print limbo, the Irdial label has finally done a repress, in part we guess thanks to the $30,000+ settlement they recieved from Wilco's record label, who Irdial sued for the unauthorized use of a Conet Project sample on their breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, whose title itself comes from that Conet sample. (Read more about that here http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63952,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7.) We're not sure if we understand or agree with the legalities behind Irdial's lawsuit, but we're happy at least that the outcome resulted in more Conets to go around (if that's where Irdial got the money to repress, as we suspect). There was also the use of a Conet track in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky...
maybe that 30k is what sent tweedy to the crackhouse...oh wait, he went to the crackhouse so he'd have an angle for npr. ouch! i AM trying to break your heart.
After several years in out of print limbo, the Irdial label has finally done a repress, in part we guess thanks to the $30,000+ settlement they recieved from Wilco's record label, who Irdial sued for the unauthorized use of a Conet Project sample on their breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, whose title itself comes from that Conet sample. (Read more about that here http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63952,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7.) We're not sure if we understand or agree with the legalities behind Irdial's lawsuit, but we're happy at least that the outcome resulted in more Conets to go around (if that's where Irdial got the money to repress, as we suspect). There was also the use of a Conet track in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky...
maybe that 30k is what sent tweedy to the crackhouse...oh wait, he went to the crackhouse so he'd have an angle for npr. ouch! i AM trying to break your heart.
7.07.2004
coming round to franz ferdinand
Best songwriting advice from an ex: never use the word say in a lyric. Much like in 'real' writing, it's telling not showing in the worst way. FF did just that in the banal but catchy uk-dance-punk-telephone-vocal-will-never-die pre-summer jam 'take me out,' with a chorus so vacant that it seems impossible to remember when You and I are saying what. The queenie dancefloor singalong is rendered useless:
I say don't you know
You say you don't know
I say... take me out
I stay, you don't show
Don't move, time is slow
I say... take me out
Toemaytoes and toemAAtoes, you say say say? Ya, well it doesn't get much better on Darts of Pleasure, though whatever he says about salmon at the end is a nice little turn to an otherwise tarted up deathdisco uk garage type thing. My Jarvis award for post-teen teasing, slightly sleazy boho fetish goes more to "The Dark of the Matinee," which manages to escape the confines of the DFA-cliche to have that uneasy feeling of being made by actual humans with difficult, maybe pathetic lives living out singular experiences in middlebrow England – fabulous while it lasts. Hmm...and like good pop, I guess, FF is just that, half empty calories, half half decent songy filler. If only Pulp would give us that much, right?
IN OTHER NEWS: I think I managed to get a comments section going, so flame away.
I say don't you know
You say you don't know
I say... take me out
I stay, you don't show
Don't move, time is slow
I say... take me out
Toemaytoes and toemAAtoes, you say say say? Ya, well it doesn't get much better on Darts of Pleasure, though whatever he says about salmon at the end is a nice little turn to an otherwise tarted up deathdisco uk garage type thing. My Jarvis award for post-teen teasing, slightly sleazy boho fetish goes more to "The Dark of the Matinee," which manages to escape the confines of the DFA-cliche to have that uneasy feeling of being made by actual humans with difficult, maybe pathetic lives living out singular experiences in middlebrow England – fabulous while it lasts. Hmm...and like good pop, I guess, FF is just that, half empty calories, half half decent songy filler. If only Pulp would give us that much, right?
IN OTHER NEWS: I think I managed to get a comments section going, so flame away.
7.06.2004
being from ohio was never so useful
as a plea to all that is good and sane, former ohio-living friends, go home! click here to read the rules for eligibility to vote in the charmed buckeye state. At the bottom is a link to the registration card PDF.
The part that pertains to me, floating grad student who stows treasures and blood in the state with eight great presidents, follows:
How is residence determined?
By law your residence is the place to which, whenever you are absent, you have the intent to return. If you continuously reside outside of Ohio for a period of four years or more, you are not a resident of this state for voter registration purposes, except if you are absent from Ohio because of federal government employment, including military service. Leaving for temporary purposes, such as school attendance, does not result in a change of residence for voting purposes, unless you register in the area where you are currently residing.
Can a student vote from his/her school address?
Yes, if the student regards that place as his/her residence and registers to vote. Otherwise, the student must vote in his/her home community if registered.
The part that pertains to me, floating grad student who stows treasures and blood in the state with eight great presidents, follows:
How is residence determined?
By law your residence is the place to which, whenever you are absent, you have the intent to return. If you continuously reside outside of Ohio for a period of four years or more, you are not a resident of this state for voter registration purposes, except if you are absent from Ohio because of federal government employment, including military service. Leaving for temporary purposes, such as school attendance, does not result in a change of residence for voting purposes, unless you register in the area where you are currently residing.
Can a student vote from his/her school address?
Yes, if the student regards that place as his/her residence and registers to vote. Otherwise, the student must vote in his/her home community if registered.
Locating Margaritaville: the Strange Rise of Parrotheads in America
You can tell things get bad when you stop making up imaginary band names and instead make up imaginary conference paper titles. Anyway, think about it. How much do you REALLY know about Jimmy Buffett? A few songs? A location? But how DID he become the king of the beautiful losers? Hmm ...
7.04.2004
red hot bottle rockets
It starts off with a beautiful church hymn, giving no indication of the fury to come. In high school, I was four seats away from being part of that quartet, and though by the time we played the piece I had all but given up the quest for first chair, I wanted to play that elegy. The English horn breaks the reverie, the orchestra picks up and it begins, really begins.
Tchaikovsky, or Chaikovsky if you're PC, hated the piece because it was too noisy – ahead of its time in picking up on Russolo's fascination of the musical war machine. My orchestra used digital cannon fire triggered by a midi-keyboard, and I'll never forget the saddened face of the bass drum player when he was relieved of his duties with the big beater. Public castration is never pretty.
In Wildwood, the city I'm writing a book about, everyone says, "On Memorial Day I'm happy to see them come, and by Labor Day all I want is for everyone to go home." Some things are best if only had for a short while, and I can only hear 1812 now on one day. This one.
Funny to me is that the Boston Pops started playing this battle ax to pick up attendance in 1929, and 75 years later there's nary a fireworks display without this ode to the class of titans, the clash best illustrated to me in Woody Allen's pre-Annie Hall Keaton sidesplitter, Love and Death. Big, bulky, full of 'earthy peasant dances' as was the vogue at the time, and gargantuan melodies belched from the military corps while bells clang and the orchestra saws along, it typifies that so called populist turn in classical programming that the Pops was created to serve. Give them the whistles, then woo them with Mozart. Ahh, how the mighty err without change.
The 1812 Overture was a staple at my family's parties, if only because my grandfather refused to ever come onto the back porch to watch the festivities because HE was watching them broadcast from Boston. "Look at all the boats," he'd say as we walked out of the kitchen, past him, and out the sliding door to the patio. His t.v. was like eight feet wide and its image was made by red, green and blue separations projected on a mirror then cast to the screen. It was gigantic, and the sound was gigantic like when he'd play Amazing Grace on the stereo and the whole place, every nook and cranny, would get filled with bagpipe. Simply inescapable yet stationary, much like him.
The battle analogy, played out in the Marseillaise and Russian national anthems, has a somewhat facile connection to the movement of the piece, woven throughout with a few modulated phrases repeated for tension, but really a lot of the piece is floating, hinting at triumph. These parts are hard to choreograph with the simple oom-pah of fireworks, which are really in 3/4 if you consider the launch load, often in the silvery cracklers seen as a white streak, as a one, the burst as two and the report and fade as three. It would be a slow three, and the retardando would be clipped by the one of some other waltz.
My new love fears fireworks, and I wonder why, but think that a lot of people may feel the same. Perhaps that's why they come so close on the tail of one another, because given time to contemplate the one as an isolated incident, a full event, it would seem like nothing but a horrible time-lapse image of decay. This supposes you believe, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, that our lives have only one arcing moment, and indeed, many do. At least with fireworks, everyone agrees what moment that is – and it is beautiful for everyone on all sides. Maybe the cataclysm, the public display, the wastefulness and bravado make some uncomfortable too – it is a function of the military after all.
Still, I love smelling the powder as it hangs under the clouds and hearing a crowd left fourth oohs to something so simple yet infrequent that it counts as our only public moment of mutual suspended admiration in an otherwise frenzied and unnoticed year. Here we stand, together watching the fireworks, listening to the sounds of war triumph long faded, a little fearful of death and hoping for a long time before the finale. At least during that part, with all the clamor, I'd be playing along too.
Today I'm in Seattle and will be spending the fourth with my good friend Tanky, who attended quite of few of those rousing occasions back in Ohio – many of which are legendary among my friends. I've lived to tell the tale of my dad's foray into illegal, silent fuse mortar shells and punked quite a few big ones into the night sky to the discomfort of my mom and the envy of competing neighbors. This is the day I miss my family the most, and wish for the time when we all lived close and could hold it together enough to eat hot dogs and have fun without sickness, anger or distance getting in the way.
Tchaikovsky, or Chaikovsky if you're PC, hated the piece because it was too noisy – ahead of its time in picking up on Russolo's fascination of the musical war machine. My orchestra used digital cannon fire triggered by a midi-keyboard, and I'll never forget the saddened face of the bass drum player when he was relieved of his duties with the big beater. Public castration is never pretty.
In Wildwood, the city I'm writing a book about, everyone says, "On Memorial Day I'm happy to see them come, and by Labor Day all I want is for everyone to go home." Some things are best if only had for a short while, and I can only hear 1812 now on one day. This one.
Funny to me is that the Boston Pops started playing this battle ax to pick up attendance in 1929, and 75 years later there's nary a fireworks display without this ode to the class of titans, the clash best illustrated to me in Woody Allen's pre-Annie Hall Keaton sidesplitter, Love and Death. Big, bulky, full of 'earthy peasant dances' as was the vogue at the time, and gargantuan melodies belched from the military corps while bells clang and the orchestra saws along, it typifies that so called populist turn in classical programming that the Pops was created to serve. Give them the whistles, then woo them with Mozart. Ahh, how the mighty err without change.
The 1812 Overture was a staple at my family's parties, if only because my grandfather refused to ever come onto the back porch to watch the festivities because HE was watching them broadcast from Boston. "Look at all the boats," he'd say as we walked out of the kitchen, past him, and out the sliding door to the patio. His t.v. was like eight feet wide and its image was made by red, green and blue separations projected on a mirror then cast to the screen. It was gigantic, and the sound was gigantic like when he'd play Amazing Grace on the stereo and the whole place, every nook and cranny, would get filled with bagpipe. Simply inescapable yet stationary, much like him.
The battle analogy, played out in the Marseillaise and Russian national anthems, has a somewhat facile connection to the movement of the piece, woven throughout with a few modulated phrases repeated for tension, but really a lot of the piece is floating, hinting at triumph. These parts are hard to choreograph with the simple oom-pah of fireworks, which are really in 3/4 if you consider the launch load, often in the silvery cracklers seen as a white streak, as a one, the burst as two and the report and fade as three. It would be a slow three, and the retardando would be clipped by the one of some other waltz.
My new love fears fireworks, and I wonder why, but think that a lot of people may feel the same. Perhaps that's why they come so close on the tail of one another, because given time to contemplate the one as an isolated incident, a full event, it would seem like nothing but a horrible time-lapse image of decay. This supposes you believe, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, that our lives have only one arcing moment, and indeed, many do. At least with fireworks, everyone agrees what moment that is – and it is beautiful for everyone on all sides. Maybe the cataclysm, the public display, the wastefulness and bravado make some uncomfortable too – it is a function of the military after all.
Still, I love smelling the powder as it hangs under the clouds and hearing a crowd left fourth oohs to something so simple yet infrequent that it counts as our only public moment of mutual suspended admiration in an otherwise frenzied and unnoticed year. Here we stand, together watching the fireworks, listening to the sounds of war triumph long faded, a little fearful of death and hoping for a long time before the finale. At least during that part, with all the clamor, I'd be playing along too.
Today I'm in Seattle and will be spending the fourth with my good friend Tanky, who attended quite of few of those rousing occasions back in Ohio – many of which are legendary among my friends. I've lived to tell the tale of my dad's foray into illegal, silent fuse mortar shells and punked quite a few big ones into the night sky to the discomfort of my mom and the envy of competing neighbors. This is the day I miss my family the most, and wish for the time when we all lived close and could hold it together enough to eat hot dogs and have fun without sickness, anger or distance getting in the way.
7.03.2004
pop fights pop art! pop will win!
(line lifted from the ARTROCKER list , a mad, long rant on the UK pop scene as only it should be - lower case, full of slang half digested and reeking of intrigue.
holy espresso machine, batman, i'm living in seattle! totally lovely first few days spent with tanky, my sweet friend from high school, munching with his french baker friend at some yuppie restaurant on broadway, then on to EMP to peruse the new exhibits - one on song craft where the bruce/nj highway exhibit stood and the Sci-Fi museum, which stands lovely and proud in spite of all the hate thrown on it.
I had a 'magic moment' when a middle aged dad, while looking at the gun exhibit, said 'oh tank girl, that's the worst movie ever made.' and an adjacent mom offered, 'my daughter watched that hundreds of times in high school. she owned it on vhs,' to which i couldn't help but offer, 'so did i. i loved that movie, it changed my life.' wanted to find a good tank girl image, but it's 'worth it' for you to do a google image seach on the term, because there are a healthy number of be-costumed girls ready to prove my point. oh reception, how i love thee.
and now am sitting in my jammies just chillin before the summer storm of doing/dancing/thinking/writing gets going. ya, it's july, ya, i said get started. it happens. anywayz, i just drove across the country, took a million pix of neon signs, reaffirmed my faith in the integrity of american kitsch culture, and am now maxin' in the most wonderful place i've managed to live in quite some time...gimme a moment.
was glad that my new grooves review pack was in the mail when i got here, tho - will be reading the mad woodpaneled issue 2nite in my new spectacular dorm-like digs. dry erase boards galore!
holy espresso machine, batman, i'm living in seattle! totally lovely first few days spent with tanky, my sweet friend from high school, munching with his french baker friend at some yuppie restaurant on broadway, then on to EMP to peruse the new exhibits - one on song craft where the bruce/nj highway exhibit stood and the Sci-Fi museum, which stands lovely and proud in spite of all the hate thrown on it.
I had a 'magic moment' when a middle aged dad, while looking at the gun exhibit, said 'oh tank girl, that's the worst movie ever made.' and an adjacent mom offered, 'my daughter watched that hundreds of times in high school. she owned it on vhs,' to which i couldn't help but offer, 'so did i. i loved that movie, it changed my life.' wanted to find a good tank girl image, but it's 'worth it' for you to do a google image seach on the term, because there are a healthy number of be-costumed girls ready to prove my point. oh reception, how i love thee.
and now am sitting in my jammies just chillin before the summer storm of doing/dancing/thinking/writing gets going. ya, it's july, ya, i said get started. it happens. anywayz, i just drove across the country, took a million pix of neon signs, reaffirmed my faith in the integrity of american kitsch culture, and am now maxin' in the most wonderful place i've managed to live in quite some time...gimme a moment.
was glad that my new grooves review pack was in the mail when i got here, tho - will be reading the mad woodpaneled issue 2nite in my new spectacular dorm-like digs. dry erase boards galore!
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