11.15.05
11.1.05
The new issue of Pool is out and two poems keep demanding my attention, the first one being Jeff Chang's "Things to Forget," which begins: "Under the skin is another layer. / We call this baby skin. // Under a baby's skin, / snowflakes. // We might name a cat snowflake / but never a baby." The poem continues to unfold from there, each couplet a new surprise. And then there's Mark DeCarteret's "(If This is the ) New World," which also uses that element of surprise from line to line: "Then I must be the little boy / awoken by the panda's breath. / Must be the dazed chick, the eggplant. / The wood as it swallowed the first of the nails. / I must be the meteor. The radish having fits." You have no idea where the poem is going, do you? I'll tell you: mysterious places.
Lots of good tunes have been released over the past few weeks, and at the top of the heap is Deerhoof's sprawling The Runners Four, a punk rock jazz-a-thon with enough melodies and guitar riffs to keep your ears guessing. You can stream the album in its entirety here. Broken Social Scene's self-titled album isn't as engaging as You Forgot It in People, but it's still worth checking out (especially the upbeat "Windsurfing Nation" and the last track, "It's All Gonna Break," with all its tempo changes and the glorious four-minute finish). And if you like Guided by Voices, Death Cab for Cutie, and homemade Belgian waffles glistening with maple syrup, then you'll love Rogue Wave's Descended Like Vultures. Click here to listen to the GBV-esque "10:1".
Remember that photo I posted back in April of Alex Lemon wearing a bear costume? As you probably know already, that's not Alex inside that bear costume. That was just me goofing around with Photoshop. Now that you're all up to speed, check out this email exchange. Innocent fun, right? Wrong. Now my friend is distraught because he desperately wants that snow tiger costume and has nothing to trade for it. If you have a snow tiger costume (maybe there's one boxed up in your attic?) and have no use for it, please contact Alex. It will make his day.
10.15.05
10.1.05
Why are there so many good bands coming out of Canada? Is there something in the water? Is there something in the moose burgers? Is it the anxiety of sharing a border with a nation run by an inept cowboy? Just look at their roll sheet: Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Death from Above 1979,
Barenaked Ladies, The New Pornographers, Black Mountain, Stars. And now you can add Wolf Parade to the impressive list. Their debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, simply, beautifully, blissfully, rocks. My favorite album of the year so far. Check out "Shine a Light" and "You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son."So now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. He can write a horrific scene like no one else (I'm surprised I haven't had any scalping nightmares yet). But between these grisly scenes, McCarthy describes a landscape with the most poetic lines I've come across in literature, like this one: "The crumpled butcher paper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium."
Best insult from Ben Marcus' essay on Jonathan Franzen in the October issue of Harper's: "He seems desperately frustrated by writers who don't actively court their audiences, who do not strive for his specific kind of clarity, and who take a little too much pleasure in language. It's a little bit like Britney Spears complaining that the Silver Jews aren't more melodic."
You can now stream the interview Lisa and I did on Pinky's Paperhaus back in July: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Lots of good tunes and Lisa giving good writing advice and me saying "right, right, right" a hundred times like a parrot.
9.15.05
So I read my first Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men. My God he can write one good sentence after another, that Cormac. His prose is so direct and elegant, so clear and unsentimental: "The moon up. A blue world. Visible shadows of clouds crossing the floodplain. Hurrying on the slopes. He sat in the scabrock with his boots crossed before him. No coyotes. Nothing. For a Mexican dopedealer. Yeah. Well. Everybody is somethin." The ending, like every great novel, was a swift kick to the gut. Now I have to go out and read all his other books. Shame on me for not reading him before. Shame. I will now stand in the naughty corner and think about what I've done.
So many good albums to listen to, so few ears sticking out of my head. My favorite record this week is The Spinto Band's debut album, Nice and Nicely Done. Take Pavement, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Grandaddy, Franz Ferdinand, the Flaming Lips, and mash them all up together and you'll get an idea what they sounds like. Or you can check out the mandolin-laced "Oh Mandy". Also diggin' on CocoRosie's Noah's Ark (click here for the video to the dreamy title song) and Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow (click here for the 4-song album sampler).
It's a miracle: Georgie took responsibility for the Katrina debacle. According to the latest Newsweek poll, his approval rating is the lowest it's ever been at 38%. With the mountain of mistakes this administration has made over the past five years, isn't it safe to say by now that he's the worst president this country has ever had? I think it is.
You won't believe who I had lunch with this past weekend in L.A. It was all good fun until we were mobbed by the paparazzi. Here are a few photos.
9.1.05
I've got The New Pornographers' latest, Twin Cinema, on heavy rotation here. It took a few spins, but it finally grabbed me. Wait, grab is not the right verb. It was more like a drunken bear-hug. Check out "Use It," one of the more infectious songs on the record. The cover art, however, will never grab me. Since when did aqua green and Grey Poupon yellow go together? Click here to go blind.
Speaking of covers...it looks like Larry Flynt is the new editor of Fence magazine. Oh no, wait, it was just a marketing ploy. Hell, if they just wanted to sell more copies they should've done something like this.
It took me all of Sunday to recover from our housewarming. Here are some photos.
Still thinking about the final 10 minutes of Six Feet Under, weeks later. Here is a great essay about the finale (and an ad you have to watch in order to read the essay) on Salon.com.
I have to stop watching CNN. Here are some ways that you can help.
8.15.05
This will be another brief journal entry. You see, my hard drive crashed last week and I'm still picking up the pieces. Thankfully, the tech-savvy people at PC Power Computer were able to recover 95% of my files. Good things, good things: The new Jim Jarmusch film, the latest Tin House (especially Rebecca Aronson's poems), Songs We Sing by Matt Costa, and photographs by Thomas Allen. Click here to see what I did with that replica I bought (text from Flannery O'Conner).
8.1.05
I'm feeling lazy, so this will be short. Reading an advance copy of Cheryl Strayed's first novel Torch. Cheryl's going to be a star next year when her book hits the shelves. Loving the new Sufjan Stevens record Illinois. Still listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah obsessively (here is "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood" in which the lead singer borrows David Byrne's voice). Here is an Antoine Blanchard replica that I will paint over soon. Denise Duhamel and Nick Carbó visited us for a few days. Here is Denise reading at Beyond Baroque. Here is Lisa reading at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Here is a woman reading while driving on our way to the Beyond Baroque reading. Here is the Defensive Driving Car Crash Game.
Previous Journal Entries
4/14/05 - 7/19/05
1/15/05 - 4/4/05
9/28/04 - 1/1/05
8/17/04 - 9/15/04
5/2/04 - 7/31/04
1/30/04 - 4/15/04
10/17/03 - 1/15/04
7/2/03 - 9/30/03
4/21/03 - 6/15/03
1/7/03 - 4/18/03
9/24/02 - 12/24/02
