wood for brains

2007-02-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Jake Reimer, NC alum, has started a science webzine called Litmus, and it will make you smarter.

2006-11-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

Robert Altmans dead today, age 81. Good job Rob.

You Know

2006-07-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

I've found a very informative website, which deserves mention in both my sidebar and in its very own post. The site is called Nigga Know Technology, and is full of helpful reviews of consumer items and services. For example, a review of Garmin's new Portable FishFinder:

----

Apparently, when a white motherfucker go out in they boats they need to know where the fish at. This gadget fires out some of that radar and blows all that data up on the display. So those pasty niggas row they asses out where ever the fuck Garmin tells them to row they asses to and they throw they lines in. Must be a motherfucking blast for white people, but for serious that sounds like some boring ass shit...

*BLIP*
*BLEEP*
THE FISH TO THE RIGHT MOTHERFUCKER

To sum this shit up, we don't know a fish finder because, niggas aint trying to find no fish. We leave that shit to the sleepy heads and those country ass Huckleberry Finn niggas. If Garmin wanna boost they nigga profits on they line of Finder units then Garmin gotta help a nigga find shit a nigga looking for like white breezies or the identity of that nigga who pretending to be TUPAC on them new cuts. Any way I'm out on that shit.

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Other reviews focus on remote controls, 'jacks', and downloadable movies. All very helpful, and worth your free time.

2006-07-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

ITALIA CAMPIONI DEL MONDO

QUE BELLA QUEST' ORO

THUG

GIGI

IL RIGORE DECISIVO

Her Voice is Able

2006-05-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

The third record by Jolie Holland was released to music stores today, so they can sell it to you and you can go "coo, coo". Jolie is a much-admired singer and songwriter originally from Texas, but then she moved to San Francisco, where she lives now with 400 puppies and snakes. She's true blue, if that's important to you. I once met her after a show in St. Augustine and told her she was amazing. She said, "Precious."

A couple mp3's are around her myspace page, as long as they're around.

2006-04-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Head Check

2006-04-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

The measurement of brain volumes is a wide and imprecise science that has something in common with the type of generalist thinking that engenders sciences like phrenology or palmistry. Which aren't sciences. Because of the broad correlations between brain size, complex behavior, and evolution, a number of analyses have been applied to investigate these assumptions underlying the development of intelligence and the emergence of cognition. We begin with the assumption that bodies are ‘run’ by their brains, and that an increase in body size would lead to an increase in size of the controlling organ. Also within the background of our thinking is the idea that bigger brains equal better brains: more neurons, more processing, more developed intelligence. But how can we represent these general ideas in a more careful analysis that tells us something significant about brains and behavior?

The devil, of course, is in the details, and it is likely the constituents characteristics of a nervous system that may reveal the significant volume-dependent factors for the emergence of cognition. Cortical folding, lobe development and more extensive brain-body scales have come to describe how the brain as an organ might have anything to do with the body. Fifty years ago Von Bonin evaluated the index of cortical folding (IFC) as a ratio of the total cortical surface (unfolded) to the exposed cortical surface. The measure, however, is largely confounded as a marker of ‘intelligence’ by generalizations across cladistic orders; as a group, cetaceans have evolved extraordinarily high IFCs, larger than most mammals, yet not all whales and dolphins are seen as of the same intelligence. In order to parse apart these differences within orders, the 19^th century neuroanatomist Olaf Snell devised an equation using specific ‘scaling effects’ to find the encephalization quotient (EQ) of particular species,

E=cs^r

where E is the weight of the brain, S is the body weight, C is a constant ‘cephalization factor’, and r is an empirically determined exponential constant for a given order. The EQs for various mammalian species include:

Dolphins 5.31

Chimps 2.47

Rhesus monkeys 2.09

Elephant 1.87

Whale 1.76

Dog 1.17

Cat 1.00

Rat 0.40

Though crude, the equation does help represent a statistic that better reflects relative brain size and cognitive intelligence. Man ends up at the top of the heap with an EQ of 7.44, while dolphins and chimps follow after, supporting the large comparative literature that uses those subjects as models for ‘intelligent behavior’. I remain glibbly mum about what it says about cats.

A problem with the use of these measures, however, is that they all treat the brain as a unitary organ; cognitive neuroscience posits that component processes are driven by differential neural activity. In order to make assumptions about intelligence we must define what component processes (and component brain areas subsuming those processes) inform our notions of intelligence and awareness. Would an animal with a brain that is 20% of its body mass but 97% sensory & motor cortex be smarter than an animal with more primate-like proportions? Even regionally-based analyses of comparative neuroanatomy have their own problems. As regions in the PFC become more functionally defined (e.g., the DLPFC is a ‘working memory’ area), comparative distinctions become more difficult. Behavioral analogues of executive functions are notoriously difficult to find even in higher primates, let alone species that might share a similar IFC or EQ across cladistic orders.

And, of course, why are the measurements of relative or absolute brain sizes important, besides inflating our own species’ egos? Each species evolves a brain size to its need. In order to represent the broad taxonomic trends that follow the adaptations of these needs, measures of brain volume can inform us about the general trends of emergent cognition among species, but they say little about specific within-species variances. A biological statistician looking at a Jerison plot of brain mass/body mass (see the picture) might notice the conspicuous lack of error bars or SD units; given the variability in both brain size and body weight between members of the same species (males vs. females, zoo vs. wild animals, age differences), it may be premature to make assumptions about the amount of variability within or across species. Another problem with relative brain size is the bias introduced in measuring it. For example, take the differences in relative brain size between bats whose diet consists mainly of fruit (frugivores) or leaves (folivores). Regardless of the effects of the diet on brain anatomy, the way each of these foodstuffs are digested affects the calculation of relative brain size: folivores have big stomachs and retain their food for longer in order to digest, thus increasing the total body weight and decreasing the relative brain size.

Where the two fuzzy measures come together is even harder to evaluate. Perhaps there is both some requisite amount of absolute brain mass and some specific cladistic orders that engender cognition. Perhaps we can make a preliminary guess that absolute brain size is best represented by environmental needs (or niches) and the relative brain size by the principles of Hebbian learning. Specifically, animals who meet the requisite absolute brain size may then gone evolve to involve larger brains relative to either body size and possibly a larger intelligence, all on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis, though we shouldn’t always assume that these measures are correlated.

Look Tiny

2006-03-17T23:26:00.000-08:00

Tilt-shifting is a post-production technique of reducing the focus and increasing the contrast of an image to produce a fun effect on perspective. A demonstration of the tilt-shift technique of turns helicopter fly-over films into what looks like outtakes from Beetlejuice. A how-to for anyone with the tools or time, and an example using BBC footage of Pittsburgh, which may be of some interest to some of you.

Bands I Hate: Half-Handed Cloud

2006-03-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

Lets get something straight. If the phrase 'avant-Christian pop' scares you, run away. Personally, I have nothing wrong with pop music, and i have nothing wrong with Christians. I do, typically, have problems with Christian music, at least insomuch as it's unnessecary and disingenuous. Half-Handed Cloud (a.k.a. John Ringhofer), with his Omnichord of God, epitomizes both of these qualities. Though he's been riding along in both spirit and tour van with fellow prostheletizer Sufjan Stevens, the latter is able to get across a digestable liturgical idea (ok, ignore Seven Swans) into a musical message that's as subtle as the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Half-Handed Cloud, however, is a sacrosanct brick of condescending religiosity. Their mutual label (Asthmatic Kitty) lauds HHC as a 'dazzlingly sweet phenomenon'; 'the celestial telephone is ringing for Half-handed Cloud with a message of love and hope on the other end.' Sorry for making you barf.

When I saw HHC opening for Sufjan at Cat's Cradle a few months ago, he filled our time-of-waiting-for-the-real-talent time by playing self-righteous songs about 'the unbelievers' and those 'without the all-consuming search for God.' Now he's got a new record, Halos & Lassos, replete with his ADD-laden takes on the nature of hipster piety. The musical style compliments the juvenile ostentation; synthesizers and vochorders compete with his kid-pitched voice. Most of the songs clock in at just over 1 minute, which gives me just enough time to get pissed off but not enough time to remember to curse. Check the sample lyric from "Feed Your Sheep a Burning Lamp":

Feed you goat to feed the fire
Goats are fuels for fires burning
Goats and lambs for either hand
Lambs on hand for righteous yearning
Lambs with hands receive the crown
Royal Crown
Ooooo OOooo

Again, sorry bout the barf. Christianity Today gives it 4 stars, which is sort of your first clue; P.O.D. and Creed regularly get 4 stars, and Scott Stapp probably writes guest articles. I wouldn't be so upset but for the fact that this stuff gets passed off as innovative. And I don't mind being condescended to by a religioso--i can't prove them wrong, and i often get out of the debate on sheer drunkeness--but when the particular religioso is wearing a pink head band and talks like Emo Philips, and is also telling me to stay away from my whiskey, well, i get violent.

And as some horrible pastiche of B&S-frontman Stuart Murdoch's own habitation, he's been living rent-free in a church in Berkeley in exchange for custodial work. I bet that cleaning church toilets makes you hate sinners.

I suppose part of the fault lies in the technology that engenders this sort of technopoptwee music, the miracle of home recording and live onstage trickery. If, say, a drummer and a guitar player had to contend at regular intervals with this Ringhofer sot, i imagine a flying drumstick or electric guitar might quickly silence the holy noise. But it's the modern age: with multitrack recording, on-stage loops, and sound effects galore, every solo artist is his own five-piece. Sometimes it works and you get an Andrew Bird, or Jens Lekman. Then sometimes you get this, the B-grade indie-rock version of Benny Hinn.

Panama, Part I

2006-03-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

So, about 5 years ago I transferred into a little hippie college in florida called New College. The liberal environment and grading scheme afforded me certain liberties, one of which was doing off-campus projects in far-off countries. For credit. At the time I was really interested in zoology, and in particular primatology; I thought that a life as a monkey scientist would complement my demeanor. So I designed myself a little trip to the tropics.

I landed in Costa Rica with a fellow New College student named Maria. Maria was crazy. I didn’t really know this at the time, as like most of you, she was able to hold her shit together for a little while, long enough to get me to go on the trip to Panama with her, and buy the hotel room in San Jose the evening we landed. Then she proceeded to go nuts, locking herself in the bedroom and crying. Maria was down there, as I was, to inhabit an island off the coast of Panama, Bocas del Toro, and study roving troupes of Black Howler monkeys. Apparently this wasn’t exciting enough an idea to her. I, on the other hand, was “stoked”, to use an expression of my youth.

Predictably, the main directive for the entire trip was to avoid Maria. The secondary directive was to find monkeys. And adventure. This mean that I spent fewer nights in the thatch cabin, and more of them roving about the island, sleeping in a tent on the most level surface I could find. Armadillos and coatis were frequent night-visitors, rustling up ground for bugs. I frequently stepped on toads, which in Panama get to be about the size of a knapsack. Most of my camps were on the beach, under trees but near the water, so the small lapping waves of the Caribbean helped me sleep amongst the sound of giant frogs and nightbugs the size of my fist.

About halfway through the trip, I went on a hike with a guide named Oscar, Maria, and a couple of British eco-tourists (Nigel and Hussein, he and she), up the coast and into the densest part of the jungle. Oscar is this black Patoi native-type who can pick a berry and say, “you see dis? you make a tea outta dis and it’a cure ya’ asthma,” and “don touch dat tree, it’a make you go blind fo tree hours,” and the like. He’s about 7 feet tall and wears gymshorts and a worn polo shirt. He smells of the ocean.

At the halfway point of our trek through the jungle, we were kind of disappointed because we hadn’t seen any monkeys. A few rare tree frogs, plenty of sloths, and lots of nuts that had been eaten by monkeys, but they have the tendency to scutter off before humans get close. Unless you go to surf cities in Costa Rica, where the howlers have learned that humans love to give out free food, and like it when you sit on their heads. Alpha howlers have huge balls, and placing themselves above subordinates is a typical offensive behavior, but most tourists don’t notice because they dig on the animal contact.

So we are tired and decide to stop at a small lagoon for a swim. We are walking, all five of us, in a line down to the lagoon; I am bringing up the rear because Hussein is having breathing difficulties, and Oscar wants me to make sure she doesn’t trail behind and collapse. So we’re going slow. As we walk down, there are lots of big tree trunks to walk over, and the rule here is, (remember this for your next jungle safari), you jump off the log, rather than just stepping down. I can’t remember what I did, exactly, but as I descended from a particular large fallen juju tree, I felt something slam against the back of my pants and land 5 feet in front of me. I saw X’s. Now, I grew up in Florida, where at our local Alligator Farm, we were told that X’s mean Diamondback Rattlesnake. This, apparently, was the 8-ft rattle-less version of the same.

It’s the first and only time I’ve ever screamed out ‘fuck’ without ever meaning to do so. I imagine that if I’m ever tortured with hot iron buttplugs I might make a similar sound; but at least that I’ll anticipate. Oscar walked back up and peered over to where I was staring. “Oh, dat is de famous eckees (equis = X in spanish) snake. Yeah, dat’s snake don like noise.” Or Italians, apparently. So Oscar cuts down a small tree, cuts it into a fork, because apparently he wants to catch the thing. He sneaks over, while the snake has been coiled up a few feet from me, and tries to catch it’s head in the fork. Miss. The snake runs (slithers) away, and into the lagoon, away from the tall Patoi. But Oscar follows him over, into the lagoon, and gets waist-deep before the snake turns around. I’ve got this great shot of the two of them, the snake coiled in the water, and Oscar with his stick raised high, both of them ready to strike. Oscar won. He slammed down the stick, 5 or 6 times, turning the water red with the snake’s blood.

He then takes the snakes body, lifts it up with the stick, and lays it on the bank that the four of us are standing. He says to me, “You want de skin, man?”

2006-02-20T23:17:00.000-08:00

New Gun's N' Roses track leaked from the least-released album in history. Not entirely ridiculous, which is somewhat of a let-down. Sounds like LA, kinda.

"IRS" - Listen

2006-02-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

* * *

Marika Takahashi shows you how to get right for the summer.

Concert Review: Fiery Furnances

2006-02-14T08:28:00.001-08:00

Alright, let’s get one thing off the chest: Eleanor Friedberger in white hot jeans is enough to make any red-blooded male start speaking like his tongue is five sizes too big. Which is why, after the show, when I asked her to sign a copy of Gallowsbird Bark, I mumbled out something which sounded like something else. I tried to say, “I’m a horrible fan, I’ve never asked anyone for their autograph before,” and she heard “You’re a horrible band, blaeh bluu blahjeh blah bleh.” Likewise, when I tried to pay her brother a compliment about his intricate and expansive songwriting, I just ended up saying, “Dude, you guys are gods!” I didn’t so much crack under pressure as just melt into a fanboy.

The show itself was far outside any such disappointing behavior; loud, and less strategic, the concert was a great sonic embellishment of their albums. The differences in trying to reproduce are largely supplanted by noise and power, though Matt Friedberger had a decent set of effects pedals to mimic the orchestra weirdness of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird. The Who and Led Zepplin were on the stage in spirit as much as any other influence, much moreso than on their albums. Another big difference was Eleanor taking over most of the vocals, which is no surprise given the versatility and personality of her voice, but it disappointed me not hearing the of Matt’s lines from “Chief Inspector Blancheflower”:

And said Michael is there something that you need to say to me?
Well I don’t know how to tell you.
You can tell me any
Thing that you want ‘cept I started seeing Jenny:
I started seeing Jenny.
My Jenny?
And he looked down at the floor.
You know damn well she ain’t your Jenny no more.

Selections from their newer album, Rehearsing My Choir, were reinterpreted completely, with Eleanor singing all of her grandmother’s lines, and eschewing most of the rambling complexity of the instrumentation in favor of raw chord power. Which I don’t blame them for; Busta Rhymes can’t rap as fast during a concert, but he’s still a presence and has enormous energy; likewise with the FF. Bringing the lyrical and biographical elements of Choir to a live performance is a big counterintuitive. The album has been described by multiple reviews as an experiment, a sort of oral family history in the modern mode. But the selections they played from Choir were crowd-pleasingly fun, and its tempting to think what a live version of that album might do for the original.

In any case, see them live if they’re coming by, and at the least check out the links below.

- A review of Blueberry Boat on Slate, with multiple links to song clips
- An incredible analysis of all the songs on Blueberry Boat
- Band Website

The Originalist

2006-02-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

Ok, so, after all, Simon buys a phone. Not without some reluctance, for both big, sociological issues (i really don't like the way cell phone companies are run in the states, nor the prevalent ethics underlying public cell phone use), technological issues (is a camera on your phone still a selling point, or is it ever a convenient gadget, like, say when your out-modelled tub breaks and you need to send your architect father a picture of the spout so he can call around and find a horribly rare 1" fine-thread tub spout with a catch), as well as the strictly personal ones (get off my back, ex-girlfriend).

Those around me certainly aren't surprised by the 7 months i've spent without a personal locator device. Part of the subtle reasoning is that i miss my London lifestyle, where i rode double-decker busses to work, had free incoming calls on convenient Virgin phones without contractual strings, and drank constantly like yeast was a vitamin supplement (which it was, >10 pints a week and i never got a canker sore the whole time there). I've also been months without a car, which is as necessary in North Carolina as it would be ludicrous in London. I get by, though, happily, because the busses are regular, and i am nothing if not a creature of habit. Such is the course of an academic career, always being within a half-decent transit network, and always being forced to listen to innane conversations from how-drunk-i-gots and how-hot-she's-nots.

Of course, there is always a movement towards personal destruction. I just tend to do it in more obvious ways. In Pittsburgh I did it with my thoughts (reading far too many German and Russian authors), in London i did it with my body (drinking far too many lagers instead of ales), and here i am doing it in my actions: i am rejecting the conventions of the rushing populace. Not that this is any particular feat of social triumph, or that riding a bike to catch a cross-town bus constitutes anything but a ridiculous travel schedule and a debilitating lack of sleep.

Implicit in such identification of 'deviant' or 'destructive' behavior is, however, a 'normal' life. Not necessarily the 2.5 kids variety, but at the least a pointing to what some might call the Principles of Modern Life: call back your friends, live near your work, don't be a skeez, and don't hurl pumpkins after November. I think these pricinples, or morals, whathaveyou, are fluid, and take at least a few years to get established. But when they are, the ubiquity of those principles is nearly absolute, and those happy in the orignal world are forced to change.

Example: lets say you live in a pre-cell phone world--lets say this is W1. Then cell phones come along, creating W2, and the question suddenly becomes binary: do you have a cell phone? Yes or no? If yes, great, give us your number and do what cell-phone havers do. If no, why not? And suddenly, the person who wants to live in W1 is made to feel initially insufficient. I say initially, because after 7 months of not having one, the same people who berated me for not having a cell were used to the fact, and stopped berating me (as much). I approached a world that was a little easier, something in-between, maybe W1.5.

But the principles of the new world are forever present, they don't go away if you ignore them, and they make a mark on even those that make a concerted effort at "backward living": bicycles as primary transportation, backyard farms as primary sustenance, sweaters as primary heating device. But every co-op has to live within the context of urban sprawl, and every car pool has to negotiate the gridlock of hybrid cars. I have no stomach or motivation for this sort of social action. Frankly i preffered the decade where i wasn't hyper-aware, and a little disconnection was just part of the day-to-day.
--

Fire & Bile

2006-02-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

Dale Peck. Firebrand Literary Journalist. Publishing Badboy. Critical Hatchet-Man. I find it rather difficult to speak about the contrarians that i admire. Which is not to say that my admiration extends far beyond the words they get on a page. I suppose a nasty review or an opposing view is always more fun to read than a glowing or conciliatory one.

But the reason i keep reading these assholes is because they so often make me mad by extending their to realms for which they aren't in premium form. Hitchens gets to rail on the American South, of which he sees himself as a resident (a rather dubious claim, based upon his 15-year residency in Washington, DC). He gets away with the typical nostalgia, th effect of which is like watching an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard, narrated by Shelby Foote. Not that Hitchens commands half of the authenticity of the Mississippian. And Dale Peck gets to write a children's book, which given the language of his criticism ("literature needs an enema") might be a bad parenting choice.

But what these bastards take away from the arguments they ruin by overextending they bring back in glamour. Peck, after his review of The Black Veil (with the infamous "Rick Moody is the worst author of his generation" line) is now the "current laureate of critical evisceration", and Hitchens gets on either MSNBC, Fox, or Bill Maher every week. Peck gets all sorts of glorious press, some he creates, like when he reviewed The Revenge of the Sith, or the glamour is visited upon him by force, such as getting smacked by Stanley Crouch for writing a review of his novel Always in Pursuit (titled: "American Booty"). I mean, you can't script this kind of excitement!

Choice Items:
- autobiographical essay in The New Republic.
- a review of Hatchet Jobs in Slate, focussing on Dale's paternal abuse
- a more academic analysis on the NY Review of Books
- an gosspy interview with Dale on Gawker
- another, more studious affair on The Morning News

Choice Quotes:
"Let's face it, cancer has become, in narrative terms, less a fatal disease than a gift, a learning experience, a personal triumph."

"Ulysses is nothing more than a hoax upon literature, a joint shenanigan of the author and the critical establishment."

"I have problems with Tim O’Brien’s writing. Because he lies and he tells you that he lies. And then he tells you that it doesn’t make a difference."

"I have this sense that human beings spend most of their lives with more or less of a layer of culture between them and the life they are actually living. That there is always something getting in the way. "

Don't Read

2006-01-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

Audible.com has been running these ads, lately, that read "Don't Read," right next to similarly innane spots for American Apparel and TreeHugger. They implore you to stop that horrifically visual process of looking at words and instead lace up the headphones and listen to your classic works of literature. I can't say it's an ingenious ad campaign, but its certainly the most attention i've given audiobooks since my drive across the country to BurningMan a few years ago, back when Joseph Campbell was a (demi)God. And to be honest, i'm thinking about coopting the phrase as the new headline for my blog; owing to a recent speckling of personalized criticism (emailed and uncommented) directed at many of my posts here, i'd sooner some of my readers take Audible's advice and go get their pseudoaesthetic content from a KCRW podcast.

Not that personal criticism is without its laurels or socioaesthetic history. Everybody who puts crap ideas into the collective mind gets reamed, but perhaps American literature's most notorious example of familial rejection might be Thomas Wolfe, Mr. "You Can't Go Home Again" himself. Critical reception of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel was initially quite strong, both in the north and south. John Earl Bassett wrote in the NYTimes on the event of Wolfe's early death that "four favorable articles in important New York newspapers were instrumental to the success that Look Homeward, Angel did have."

Yet, when he returned to the hometown Asheville that the novel was based upon, reaction to the book was mixed. The Wolfe family accepted the book as a necessary acheivement, yet the townsfolk were less kind, holding a grudge for nearly 7 years against their native son. The characters in the novel are based on real people with the names changed and often times the portraits painted are not flattering. Many in Asheville took the book literally. So much so that for six years the Pack Memorial Library did not have a copy of the book. Not until F. Scott Fitzgerald, after being told the Library did not have a copy, went out and bought two and brought them there himself.

But i'm no Thomas Wolfe, and this is no piece of literature. Blogs are, i suppose, the most humble (and pathetic) version of the paradigm. Despite the vast randomness of the web, the percentage of people likely to read your writing who would be personally offended is at its highest, perhaps even moreso than the highschool literary magazine in which you placed thinly-veiled breakup poems about dragons and maidens. (Not really, so don't ask me for them) The length and breadth of the typical post is usually greater than friends are willing to endure. Best of all, the current form of a blog is a discussion that is at once singular and multiple; the tone is conversational while the form is a monologue. And there is also something to be said for pretty pictures and the trappings of technology enriching your less-than-complete arguments. After all, i can't hyperlink my words in a simple coffeeshop debate.

-

"And it was this that awed him--the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time." --Look Homeward, Angel

No Gentleman: Part I

2006-01-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

Before I started reading Tristram Shandy, I decided that the best way to do so would be to write it. The initial drive, the reason that I sought out the book to begin with, was because of a movie about the book that opened this week, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, starring Steve Coogan and directed by Michael Windterbottom, who also directed 9 Songs and 24-hr Party People. I, precedingly, had heard about the movie from reviews—reviews are inescapable in this era, they are ceded through all medias and avenues for those willing to give a fourth of a damn—and these reviews were on the whole positive. “Wonderfully absurd,” “mind-tickling” or “surprisingly unpretentious.” Everyone seemed to agree that Michael Winterbottom’s interpretation of the novel was at the least charming. Which is, I believe, a rare accolade for a movie with central metafictional elements: stories outside stories that are about the stories both, well, they tend to get the critical shaft.

And so, if I was to do the experience any justice, I had best write the story myself. I situated myself by the window of a local café (one that necessarily serves a decent array of liquors), and propped up a laptop and a used copy of Lawrence Stern’s most famous work. And, of course, I musn’t start at the beginning, so I flipped open to an arbitrary page and began typing the beginning of chapter 38 from Book III:

O Slawkenbergius! Thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias—though sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which in one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause that I am conscious of.

How fortuitous, right? What language, right off! Well, I suppose that it might have been luckier, or more apt, to come upon some passage about the beginning of something, or about the copying of something, or about some grad student in a Carolina café typing out a novel 200 years hence, but really, how much better can you get than Slawkenbergius? I didn’t even know what it meant! Who does?

Apparently not Microsoft Word. The mechanics of typing a novel have their own quirks, in comparison to the just the usual, lazy practice of reading it. The word processing program I was using to type the book out (good thing it was doing the processing, because I was doing less and less) was having problems with names like Slawkenbergius, or Prignitz, or 19^th century conventions like heard’st and sensorium and makind—oops, that last one was just an unfortunate misspelling of mine. It did, however, redress my incorrect ‘cooly’ as ‘coolly.’ Give and take, my friends, give and take.

And so, as the typing and the drinking ran on in concert, the book and the experience flowed together in an every more lucid and shallow café experience. The this’ turned into his’, my ‘collusions’ turned into ‘collisions,’ and I was no longer able to guess the smudged words of my 2^nd-hand text. Oddly, the spelling of Slawkenbergius became easier as time progressed. Perhaps, or perhaps not, I lost the narrative thread. Perhaps, because I found myself being distracted by nearly every moving object in my periphery, yet perhaps not, because when I was done staring at the perpetual motion alloy rims and looked back at the book, I started noticing the metafictional elements sentence-by-sentence, word-by-word. Not only references to the work under discussion, but questions of method, of binding, of production and post-production, and commentaries from also-fictional literary colleagues and critics. And reviewers.

After such a stunning luck with the invectives at the beginning of the chapter, the machinations underway in the story quickly made apparent that this was a disastrous way to begin this particular book. Already I’m in the middle of the career of the author’s literary alter-ego, well past the trappings of his youth and his introduction to the age of discernment. Suddenly I’m reading about the main opus of this fictional author Slawkenbergius, a book described by Sterne as ‘a thorough-stitched digest…comprehending in it all that is or can be needful.’ I was face first with the same elements and themes that were in my head before i opened the book: the completeness of literature, the potentials of such, and the examination of such by others post-production. Which, in some way, is great: I’ve never got exactly what I wanted out of a book so quickly. Given the stated aims of this here experience (ok, unnecessary confession, the first sentence of this entry was written before the book was open), I only had to read a few sentences to get reference to a nonexistent digest which contained so prodigious a source of knowledge.

Of course, when I found out what that great compendium was actually about—actual noses—my lucidity and my understanding began a slow decent back to earth, and I decided to hold off on the ale and opt for caffeine. For the best, I am sure. One of the main trappings of a metafictional book is its lack of concreteness, and so it was a relief to know that I might learn a bit more than my own awareness of reading (and, of course, writing) Tristram Shandy.

2005-12-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

it's things like this that may help extinguish my irrational distaste for Germans.

Graphic Waste of Time

2005-12-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure both of you are looking for interesting diversions during your time of academic rigoridute, here's a list of what i look for when i'm not analyzing brains. Comics on the web, in various forms and purposes. I generally like non-fiction comics

SixGun - chainsaw-toting Abraham Lincoln
E-merl - a hypercomic is neither hyper, nor really comic, but interesting nonetheless.
The Formalist - pretend philosophy
Ellen Linder - check out the Houellebecq comic.
Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoon Index - like reading an NPR coloring book. Updated daily, to your infinite demise.
Electric Sheep - Home of Apokamon!, a retelling of the Book of Revelation with...
Scott McCloud - He who must be linked.
Larry Gonick - King of Non-fiction Comics. Number of sample pages on hit site, everyone of the books is worth your lunch money.

Don't blame me.

...............................

2005-11-30T20:01:00.000-08:00

MMmmm.....BRAAAIINS!!!

On Being An Asshole

2005-11-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

I was driving to work today and I noticed a sticker on the back of a beat-up green pickup. The sticker said "ASSHOLE", superimposed on something like the Underground symbol. There wasn't a line through it or anything; the dude in the pickup, wearing a white baseballcap and toting a decent amount of yard equipment in his truckbed. He was simple declaring his affection for his affectation: declaring himself a proud asshole. Or maybe just the vicitim of some grassroots sticker-defamation campaign.

There are, it seems, two broad classes of people who call themselves assholes. People who consciously say, "I'm an asshole." I believe the larger group is composed of those who see it as a character flaw, a troubled mood amongst a relatively well-adjusted persona. "I know, I know, I'm an asshole" after they miss their sister's birthday, or even after waking up after a raucus night of drinking, "Man, I was such an asshole last night." This version isn't far from verbal abuse, the only difference is that instead of your girlfriend telling you, "Mitch, don't be such an asshole, Paint My House!" the agent instead decides to self-apply the title. Now that, friends, is a name no one would self-apply where I come from.

Unless of course you belong to the second group. People who call themselves assholes, believe themselves to be assholes, and who don't really have a problem with that. As always, there's a historical precedent. I could trot out whatever Shakespearean character, maybe Iago, who is aware of not only his foul intentions but his foul nature as well, and given the course of events in Othello, he's fine with that. But I know shit about Shakespeare and I'm not about to start talking about it in a blog. The more modern progenitor of calling yourself a proud asshole is Denis Leary, the recently roasted Irish comic. He sings in "I'm an Asshole":

Sometimes I park in the handicapped spaces
While handicapped people
Make handicapped faces

The song is ostesibly about "some guy" who's an asshole and pees on toilet seats, but really the whole smoking-cynical-eat-my-shorts attitude is sort of his whole act, and we can see he enjoys identifying with the mindset and "is an asshole and proud of it." So we can see Denis as the first guy to make calling yourself an asshole, if not acceptable, at least part of the vernacular. And just in case you thought Denis was just talking about smoking in a restaurant or not helping old ladies, he puts his asshole-perspective within a historical context:

I'm gonna get "The Duke"
And John Cassavetes
And Lee Marvin
And Sam Peckinpah
And a case of whiskey
And drive down to Texas
And-
(Hey, Hey! You know you really are an asshole)
Why don't you just shut-up and sing the song, pal?

The mid-song rant is really a call-to-arms. Everyone he's talking about is either buried or frozen, but their personas were the strongest "asshole" personalities we had before it was OK to say "asshole" in a movie (or even in conversation). The slack-jawed Lee Marvin was usually a great example of brash action without consequence, such as in his late-noir film The Big Heat, as the hood who scars his girlfriend's face with hot coffee because she talks too much. Or Cassavettes as the racecar driver in The Killers (or as the director who put trashy-fabulous women on the screen), who goes against his woman and his friend as soon as his career goes sour, and only comes around to the dame when she offers him a big pay-off. She betrays him, and so with nothing left, no money no woman no friends, he resigns himself to his own murder.

Hollywood has always loved assholes: ruthless characters with few manners and a disregard for the fellow man. The difference now is that they survive till the end of the picture. Take Mel Gibson in Payback, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs or Tom Cruise in Collateral. Why stick to action flicks? Royal Tenenbaum, Ed Crane (The Man Who Wasn't There), or Johnny Knoxville in The Ringer are all terrific asshole characters, and get celebrated in the movies they star in. And not that men have to be the only celebrated assholes; Basic Instinct, Sunset Blvd, or Sex and the City, anyone?

So how does this showbiz acceptance of being (or being called) an asshole filter down to the common man? In little stickers, aparently, though i guarantee anyone of you know someone (besides me) that's willing to profess their less-than-conciliatory nature. Movies and TV have helped, at the least, make the nom-de-guerre of asshole acceptable as self-applied moniker. I'd say that it still has the punch and force the derrogatory statement it used to be before Denis Leary, but it now seems in a middle ground between insult and nickname.

2005-11-02T12:48:00.000-08:00

sweet.

My Brain Doing WHAT?

2005-10-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

The brain does some wonderful things. It lets you see colors, it processes time and space, it organizes your motions, and it often remembers your name. All important and necessary functions in the world of today, and all with their own unique characteristics that help make our experience as humans so vivid. Science and psychology has sought to ask many questions about how the brain does these things, and in the process has answered many important questions and bettered many lives. Take Parkinson’s Disease, a complex brain disorder ameliorated by the use of L-DOPA, or surgical cures for epilepsy, over 75% effective in alleviating debilitating seizures. Or even new Alzheimer’s drugs which may stem the ebb of memory loss occurring in that affliction. One of the major tools for investigating brain diseases and brain functions is the functional magnetic resonance image scanner (fMRI for short). An fMRI scanner is a large, loud magnetic device that allows researchers to peer inside the living brain and look at what lights up inside during complex and vital functions.

Or, sometimes, not-so complex or vital functions. Since the scanner requires a subject to lay flat and relatively motionless during the scan, there are some definite physical constraints on what sorts of real-life behaviors you can look at. Outside of that, you can look at the brain doing any number of oddball activities. Since scanners usually have headphones and a TV screen (or a projection of one) inside the scanner, scientists can show you anything from Monet to pictures of butternut squash, and provide a soundtrack, no less. A number of recent studies have taken to the weirder possibilities of brain science. Steven Quartz and his team at CalTech sought to look for the “neural correlates of cool” by showing subjects inside the scanner pictures of 140 different products and celebrities; Quartz then classified subjects into High Cool (trendsetters), High Uncool (critics), and Low Cool (losers), based upon their biological responses to those pictures—not their actual vocal responses. Evidently, there’s no hiding behind your secret Lawrence Welk obsession; the scanner sees all.

If that’s not weird enough for you, then how about a study of male ejaculation? Researchers in the Netherlands interested in the brain’s response during orgasm placed 11 grown men inside the scanner and prepared them for what can only be described as a unique scientific experience. Manual stimulation was performed by female partners, under controlled conditions—relaxed, perhaps even kinky, but controlled—while the men underwent the scan. Three of their eleven volunteers “did not succeed,” demonstrating with a bit less than 30% certainty that a troupe of lab-coated observers and a highly magnetic force-field do not make for the most romantic of environments.

And, for those less inclined to participate in a sex act within large supermagnetic scientific devices, there are more passive tasks. Like watching a movie. Scientists at Tel Aviv University had subjects watch 30 minutes of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly while their brains were being looked at through an fMRI machine. This technique of allowing a subject to “free view” a stimulus was an effort to get away from the controlled designs of most studies and attempt a more “real-world” experience. While the experience of watching monochrome words flashing on a screen is common to psychology studies and rather uncommon to daily life, plenty of us have relaxed to watch a film in a dark room. The study, however, was not without its carefully analyzed results: the data showed that different brains showed the same response to the same scenes in the movie. When Tuco assembled his new gun and carefully used his fingers to test the revolver’s cylinder, everyone in the study showed the same activity in brain regions responsible for hand movements; a comforting notion that perhaps we are more alike than we know.

Interesting results from a scientific premise that might have seemed more like a Blockbuster night than a report worthy of the journal Science. Which brings to mind an interesting point: what do these studies mean? How do we interpret them? Scientists argue that knowing the individual variations in response to pictures and movies, helps to aid in the proper diagnosis and treatment of certain visual brain disorders, and even how well those diagnoses can be generalized. The Dutch study mentioned above even claims important implications for the growing (apologies) industry of male sexual function. However the most common—and perhaps most valid—justification for these studies may be the same thing these scientists tell their grant committees; that this information can be helpful to understanding the brain as a whole and that any task, no matter how weird, may give us a better picture of what’s happening inside.

Woods at Night

2005-10-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a hobby. Well, i'm a label snob, and i collect honeybuns from the vending machine downstairs like i was diabetic. But my favorite activity, besides writing, is walking in the woods at night. I've been living in cities for a few years now, so the experiences have been limited to parks--big urban parks, like Hyde Park in London or Frick Park in Pittsburgh. And often i have to climb a gate to get in or out of it; that's never really been a barrier to me, and the notion that i might get trapped in sometimes helps the aesthetic of the experience.

But that's what i like to do. Park at the edge of the forest, and start walking into the mix until i start getting that eerie feeling in my shorts. Its not exactly that i'm looking to scare myself; being scared usually only lasts a few minutes, even if you're watching a movie. Part of it is the lack of city-sounds, partly the solitude of it, but i think what attracts me most about my "hobby" is how much it forces myself to listen to my own thoughts. Not in any faggy self-reflective way, but in a real-time examination of how sporatic thought actually is. When you're in the woods at night, you forget about the memory of the things you love and hate, the things you're supposed to remember to worry about. The things that--for better or worse--have consistentcy in your own 10-year personal narrative.

I do think there's a soundtrack for this sort of thing, like any running narrative. Plenty of songs are evocative of the nocturnal hikes, whether its Rachel's Egon Schiele alubm, "Hutterite Mile" by 16 Horsepower, or most anything off Calla's Scavengers. Often what is most affecting about these songs is their spareness, as if they were trying to reflect the experience of walking in the woods at night. There can be the even sound of your footsteps, and , but its only the rustling armadillo that catches your attention.

The recent preponderance of albums written in barns and sheds demonstrates the desire to capture this musical emptiness. Admittedly, the acoustics provided by big hollow barns filled with hay are optimum for certain acoustic sounds, but the best examples of barn-music, Andrew Bird's Weather Systems, M. Ward's The Transfiguration of Vincent, Great Lake Swimmer's self titled album, and Mum's Summer Make Good (ok, it was recorded in a lighthouse, but its still creaky) all try to incorporate the rust and squeak of their natural setting as elements of the album.

Which means that if you're already in the woods (or a barn) the experience of listening to these albums places you in the context in which they're created, which makes the music itself more present, and sometimes off-putting. Kind of like when there's a police siren sample in some crunk rap and you look in your rearview mirror with no uncertain amount of fear. But beyond that, in the woods, there is a certain synchrony of mood and feeling that happens when and all you've got is the sound of a slide guitar, brushed drums, and an errant raccoon.

King Leer

2005-10-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

At the risk of being labeled/teased as a breast fetishist (and gaining a massive upsurge in webtraffic). The links are obviously NSFW.

I have almost never laughed at a porn film. The enforced roles, the expectance romance, the predictable climaxes; it's all so pathetic, and isn't even pathetic enough for pity-based humor. And i haven't really been combing the galaxy for funny porn; i've seen my fairy-tale remakes and held my porn parties (which do NOT go over well in the UK), but i've by no means seen all 4 versions of Debbie Does Dallas. Only the original and the 1993 sequel. Both of which were laughable, but not really funny. I've heard the Broadway play is crap.

The one exception to this trend is the work of one late California movieman, Russ Meyer. Russ Meyer died a year ago last week, and its safe to say that his legacy will be preserved among the cult following of sexploitation fans and breast-idolaters he was quite successful at creating. Wikipedia actually classifies Russ's work not as pornography so much as ribaldry; its aims are centered around humor and satire. The archetypal example of the form is The Miller's Tale, or any of the more sordid bits of The Cantebury Tales, while Barbarella or Bettie Balhaus might be better modern examples. In perhaps his greatest example of the form, Meyer was able to parody both a mainstream Hollywood flic (Valley of the Dolls) with his own creation (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) and then parody that film in Beyond the Valley of the UltraVixens, his funniest (and last) film, in which cock-punching, big black mechanics, and ravenous homosexual dentists are all running themes.

The most provocative of Russ's films came in 1976, with the release of Up! In some sense, this is where he started losing it. The film opens with Hitler getting gang raped by a gigalo in a Pilgrim outfit and his cadre of geishas and gimps. He is then eaten alive by a "piranafish" (actually a black angelfish) while reading his German newspaper in a Bavarian castle somewhere in small-town central California. The rest of the film focusses on a buxom L.A. cop Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix) who, well, investigates the case in spandex tops and her best Mae West coo. People start saying stuff like, "I'd really like to strap you on," and "Oooh, you're red. You been screwing an Indian?"

I won't ruin it for you, but they're a lot of humping and the Nazi's get their dishes. But it's a romp, the whole way through. Russ wasn't a fan of intercourse on film (Up! is the only one of his films to show extended representations of coitus), so most of the action is simulated (ridiculously) or implied. The sex acts and rhythms are parodies of themselves. There are homage shots to Bergman and Houston, historical references to Dresden and Austwitz, and a greek chorus consisting of one Kitten Navidad jaunting around the woods naked and excited, reciting plot points in Shakespearen pentameter and undulating more fiercely as the story draws closer to its climactic...oh you get the idea.

With such a ridiculous premise/plot/dialogue/delivery, Up! (like most of Russ' films) is never really played for eroticsm. Sure, Mondo Topless is the 2hr jiggle concept film, Motorpsycho is an excuse to put huge boobs on a Harley, and Wild Gals of the Naked West consists almost exclusively of a cowboy's dream of a bordertown run by oversexed women. But for every Europe in the Raw there is a Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, for every Blacksnake! there is a Cherry, Harry and Raquel! There's also probably an exclamation point for every buxom starlet.

While the first half of his oevre ran the sexploitation gamut, Russ in the later half of his career was clearly after more than just putting tits on screen in new and interesting ways. He wanted fun, and the only way he could rationalize fun with his obssesion for busty women was to place them in increasingly ridiculous situations of power or oddity. He is no feminist--to be sure, there's a decent string of good-ole-boy misogyny running through a fair number of the pictures--but he had respect enough for the women he filmed to give them unique roles. Who else can boast a Japanese Hilter-killing gimp?

(To actually see this raucus LoonyBoobs spectacle, your only options are either a fiercly independent video rental store, or purchasing online. US region 1 dvds go for over $40, but if you can manage multi-region dvds (try VLC!), almost ALL of Russ' films have been released in the UK, for relatively cheap ~£10. Roger Ebert remembers Russ in the Guardian on the event of their release.)

Nuts on Toast

2005-10-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

For some reason, most all of my friends are beginner to pro bike fiends. This has occured in absentia of my own interest in bicycles, and frankly i've always considered the trend a little spooky. But, now AH-HA! the upper hand!

Not that i care about reproducing, but i suspect they do.

Sweetest Contribution to Science Ever

2005-09-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

This is totally sweet!

Two Japanese scientists just caught the first footage of a giant squid on camera. Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori captured over 500 photographs of the animal by baiting a hook at 2000 ft in the deep sea off the Ogasawara Islands. The animal, approxiametely 25 ft long, lost a tentacle on the hook, which is unfortunate for him but sweet for science. The researchers even report that the tentacle repeatedly gripped the deck and crew after it was hauled aboard. Sweet!

National Geographic has some of the advance photos, and a more thorough output will be published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B(iology). All of you are academics anyway, you can pull the article off of PubMed.

(update) Or you can read it here.

Gypsy Music for Everyone

2005-09-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

The new favorite band of the week is Devotchka, a four-piece outfit from Denver. They are not Ukrainian. They are, however, good friends with Gogol Bordello, who are. The sound of the band is dramatic in the Kensington Gore sense of the word: sometimes they sound like a more dramatic Calexico, sometimes a more dramatic version of Wilco, sometimes a...well...less dramatic Morrissey.

Confession: came upon this band by searching for the song at the end of the Everything is Illuminated trailer. I will resolutely avoid actually seeing the film, given its apparent European sentimentalism and my enduring aversion to Jonathan Safran Foer, the latter of which is another post entirely.

That being said, the (unsigned) band is an excellent fusion of eastern European, Western, and cabaret styles. They're fond of guitars, pianos, marimbas, strings, trumpets, sousaphones, and the occaisional bazouiki. Live they're fantastic, apparently, already having completed a tour in which Marylin Manson honey Dita Von Teese was a backup burlesque dancer. They're currently touring with the Dresden Dolls. See them.

Pre-review: Kayne West

2005-09-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Late Registration, by Kayne West, is an album that I will, inevitably buy or rip from one of my black friends. I thoroughly enjoyed his last effort, The College Dropout, as it provided a great fuel-for-the-fire moment when I got rejected from Cambridge University and decided that academia is a load of bollocks. I also enjoyed it in ways that most everyone else did: the beats were catchy, the lyrics were sly, and the overreaching concept was holistic. Dope.

So it's with some trepidation that I approach the sophomore effort. In the two years since, my appreciation of pop-rap has waned a bit in favor of the London gutterpunks and American Indie acts. Such is the fate of a subscriber to emusic. Not that i don't follow a trend every once in a while, but i typically wait for the buzz to get killed. And before the buzz dies down--and before I actually hear the album--I'd like to review what's been said so far, and how this might play into my future experience.

Where to start? Well, I usually start with whatever Pitchfork tells me. Their review of Late Registration is typical of the scene, and begins by discussing what almost every review I've read (and even a meta-review like this one) leads off with: The Ego. "Contrary to public opinion, hubris does have a righteous appeal." Judging from the 9.5 score on the meter, it doesn't sound as if PF has problem with arrogance. As many reviewers pointed out, bragging is an important element of the rap game. Rolling Stone has similar praises for the egoism: "If anything, Kanye is too modest." Some reviews are a bit broader with their praise; the LA Times focusses on the album itself, and goes through a laundry list of the highlights, from the 1st single, "Diamonds of Sierra Leone" to the more personal "Hey Mama." Some reviews suggest that perhaps the ego effect is a little more subtle, as Jon Pareles in the NYT writes that Kanye "tries not to gloat, but he can't resist. He's no longer the underdog."

So how do i interpret these reviews into something that i'm ready for. My only personal experience with this album, besides the reviewing and the writing about reviewing, was in a subway station. The last week i was in London, before my trip back to the states, i decided to buy a week-long Tube pass. I don't normally ride the tube, mostly because it's too expensive, but also because i don't like the idea of being underground for extended periods of time. This had obvious advantages.

Anyway, on my last day in London I rode home to the Kensington tube station, which exists out right in front of Harrod's, the department store of the gods. I don't need to tell about how living near there helped me develop a rich and caustic anger at the overly affluent, suffice it to say that I'm a communist now. After exiting the tube carriage, and walking up the escalator, I see a poster for Kanye's new album: cudly bear in a dinner jacket, huge eyes looking out, against a black background. I didn't see this poster anywhere else, though i'm sure it was plastered in every Shoreditch fence and phonepost. But for me, seeing the poster at the entrance to the center of affluent comerce in a city driven by the idea of money, well it sort of lets me know that this is a Production, musically, commercially, and aethetically. The Product is the New Rap. All the glamour, five times the beats, and no cheese.

Then again, i haven't even heard it.

All Smith's are Finks

2005-09-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

Why am i so reluctant to celebrate Zadie Smith? Here is a woman of the world, versed in my two favorite cultures, releasing novels, short stories, and essays. Who am i to snark? , yet she poses for half-page spreads in a dashiki and the latest from Harvey Nichols. She writes articles for the Guardian about Greta Garbo and gives talks and readings in academic theatres. She explains the cultural devide. She's pretty! So why am I so reluctant to grant her my fandom, which i typically relish on any modern author under 40 worth his snuff?

Zadie needs no lessons in public humility. She has consistently derided her first book as expansive, overambitious drivel, her second as seriously flawed. How better to shun criticism than to welcome it honestly and dispose of its target? Yet seems to me that within her self-criticism lies a very strong conviction that, regardless of what reviewers may have to say for her immature novels, she will be getting better. But she just can't get to it now because that pesky literary establishment keeps making her a celebrity, and pouring on adulation about her ridiculous little novels. A recent article in Slate asks the Man Booker committee to take Zadie at her word and pass her by for the prize. On Beauty is by most reviews an admirable work, yet not a work deserving of the prize because of the approach she has taken upon her own work; she "has mistaken her admirable pooh-poohing of a lot of foolish publicity for a free pass to get by as an overcelebrated mediocrity."

Admittedly, Julian Barnes is the favorite, but for reasons of stature more than merit. His recent "Arthur & George" has been reviewed as , in line but not exeplary of other exhumings of the literary dick. Zadie's book has it's own roots in the Canon, being a very forthright reinterpretation of the story and circumstances in E.M. Forester's Howard's End. When the Slate article gets around to picking apart the book, Joon finds fault with Zadie's somewhat typified description of American liberal professors. Admittedly this is in line with an article who's stated purpose is to explain why Zadie isn't right for the prize, but still the criticism comes out seeming a little small. Was that the point?

Further evidence of the humble hubris that Zadie seems to calmly exhude is an interview she did with Ian McEwan in the August edition of The Believer. The exchange is admittedly aware of it's double punch: while Jim Roll interviews Bjork, Zadie Smith is 'in conversation with' Ian McEwan. In one particularly revealing exchange, Zadie asks Ian about canabalization of personal life for representation in literature:

i wondered how you felt about [your progression as a writer] yourself...I mean, you're working life has been a writing one. And this is a subject which honestly concerns me, not a little, because it's my life and it's likely to be my life for a really long time.

Never mind the willingness to make us aware that this is an interview between two writers. Zadie is placing herself no higher than something of an intelligent apprentice, albeit one that will be able to write for the rest of her natural life. Not that i doubt that prospect; given the size of her advances, and the quality of her short and long fiction, Zadie makes a fair assement of her possible future as an author in the world. It is nevertheless presumptive.

Perhaps the most interesting for me is what Zadie seems to have learned from her experience in America. As i attempt to integrate myself within British culture, one of the most distinct elements underlying where you go and what you do with your life is your assumed (or delivered) social status among the unseen stratum that dictates vocation, address, and recreation.

Patti Smith is a Fink

2005-09-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

Patti Smith (punk rocker) is a fink. I tell you this because i thought she was just a punk, but last night i found out she is also a fink. Patti Smith decides to hold a tribute to William S. Burroughs at the Royal Festival Hall on the Thames. She starts it off with an anecdote about her and Burroughs, how she would hail cabs for him outside the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Then she goes nuts on a bassoon, and then up comes the supporting cast. Iain Sinclair (London personality) and Alan Moore (comic book writer) read their little homages to Burroughs, which are part biographies and part pastiche, with background noise supplied by a few instrumentalists, Marc Ribot (Tom Waits collaborator), Matthew Shipp (nu-jazz pianist), and Jason Spaceman (from Spiritualized).

There is, of course, no real 'form' to the thing, they just read or play at the whims of The Great Magnet. Sinclair, who represents the proper English side of things, gives anecdotes about Burroughs living on Duke St. (about 20 min walk from my place), waxes about the battle of poetry and politics. Meanwhile Alan Moore (wrote From Hell, League of Extrordinary Gentleman), who looks like Rob Zombie's older brother, flexes his skull rings around a book by Burroughs and reads in a grovelly Northhampton voice about mugwumps and junk.

Patti reappears later, playing the bassoon, but this time in the middle of the audience, slinking around. I'm filled with the desire to hug her, mostly because she's fuckin Patti Smith, punk god, but it doesn't really matter because she's in a trance and slinks off anyway, up to the stage and back into the spotlight. She then goes into another anecdote, about an ageing Burroughs leading her down some steep staircase to hail her a cab, and that was the last time she saw him. Seeing her shed tears at the memory is no small performance, i suppose, but Patti Smith and everything she's been doing for decades has been performance anyway. And then i realize that Patti Smith has had a boner for Burroughs and that's why i'm sitting in this theatre. Patti Smith is a fink.

Concert Review: Fun House

2005-09-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

Iggy and the Stooges :
Funhouse

Man, fuck this review. It's just bragging really. I went to the greatest show on earth. A performance. From minute one, i was jumping flailing, reaching for what was a temporary god. Iggy Pop and the Stooges played the Hammersmith Apollo last Wednesday, and my life is different for having been there. And there's no way to describe the concert in a fucking blog without sounding like a teenage fanboy.

Like mad, Iggy rushed out on stage. Instantly we were moving. No moshing, no real thrashing, but a collective heave-ho came out of everyone within 30 ft of the stage. He never stopped. Humping the speakers, stage-diving mid song, and running around like an ostrich. During "I Wanna Be Your Dog" Iggy motioned to the audience and screamed, "Any of you fuckers with the balls to get on this stage, come on!" Anyone that knows me is well aware of my inability to resist a dare, least of all from one Iggy Pop. After a karate-flip over the security area and onto the stage, i was coke-dancing around like Iggy on the cover of The Idiot, out of my head like a zombie plugged into an electrical socket. As i meandered around the stage, pulsing incoherently and hugging large rock chicks, i moved towards Iggy, crouched down at center stage. I reached around his back and gave his Iggy-tits a good shake, then fell backwards in a swoon, content to have grabbed "the greatest body in rock & roll." The rest of the concert was a sustained, yet primal, denoument to that moment.

See that blood on his chest? That's from my fingernails digging into the King of Punk.

The concert is part of the Don't Look Back series, which brings a successful band and a successful album back to a live audience for a complete run-through of every track. Dinosaur Jr. played "x", and Belle & Sebastian are coming in October to play through "If You're Feeling Sinister".

Setlist:
Down On Street
Loose
TV Eye
Dirt
1970
FunHouse
LA Blues

Skullring
---------
1969
Dog
Real Cool Time
No Fun
---------
Little Doll
Not Right
Dead Rockstar

Reviews of the concert:
The Guardian
The Independent
The Times
Gigwise

Timewaster, Inc.

2005-09-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you that 'don't believe in television', but love to profess their affection for Jon Stewart the site onegoodmove provides extended clips of US commentary shows like Bill Maher and The Daily Show. As one living abroad, it has been useful.

The Rock Music is Tonight

2005-08-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

The Ravonettes are playing a 'secret gig' tonight at Lock 17 in Camden, free of charge.

Info here. You owe me.

Track review: Tim McGraw (part 2 of 3)

2005-08-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

After a while I settled into the theme of the summer, the daily wake and the schedule of breaks, the afternoon naps after a day on the jackhammer, the evening boozer on the beach. These things became my routine. One day wasn't much discernable from the other, barring of course the workman's appreciation for the weekend. Woo-hoo! And as things got normalized, coming into work early in the morning became a communal sentence. I mean, everyone is groggy at 6 in the morning, until someone decides to take upon themselves something physically strenuous. Then everyone else refuses to be out done, and the workday starts itself.

Every our of this day, the heigh-ho, is helped along by radio. Sometimes, if most of the guys on the site are black, someone would put on a soul station, or the foreman would cycle to his oldies station. But usually it was country. Ninety percent of the time. Contemporary country. 2004 was the summer of Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, and "Live Like You Were Dying". The latter song, written by the Goatee in Black Tim McGraw, is a great example of the kind of fatalistic melodrama that takes over half the country market. The other half, of course, belongs to ruckus tunes; good old boy music (or more recently bad little girl music, aka GW) about how good we do it down here. Friends in low places sort of thing.

All of that is well and good, and actually makes the workday go by faster than the grave tunes. Even if you don't agree with the ridiculous or rawcous lyrics, you can at least resign your brain to the standardized beat. Hammer bang bang. Drum machine bang bang. And who's to say you need to like the lyrics anyway. Singing along with a song with words like "save a horse, ride a cowboy" is actually kind of fun, despite the innanity of the sentiment. Who can be worried about banging a hammer when you can do it to the chorus from "Redneck Woman". The innanity works for most. But I can't really sing along to that kind of stuff. I'm a crooner. Perhaps it was hearing Randy Travis' "For Ever and Ever" at too young an age, I just like the slow and dramatic melody.

"Drugs or Jesus", by the same Tim McGraw, lays the drama pretty thick. The song begins with some pretty foreboding piano progression, the sort of thing that used to lead off a rock ballad in the 80s, and then a few taps of the high hat, just to let you know that things are going to get serious. A few poiniant vibrato notes on the guitar, and then you're ready. "In my hometown" McGraw begins, you're either lost or you're found." So begins the stark realities that reflect most everyone's experience with "coming home." You return and find the failed and the found haunting the same places you saw since you were 7 (the successful ones probably aren't around). One of the best songs about the subject, "Left and Leaving" by The Weakerthans, provides a similar sentiment:

i'm back with scars to show,
back with the streets i know,
will never take me anywhere but here.

McGraw is young enough to get away with a song about coming back home. He's been around a little, seen the big city and had his showbiz moment, and has returned to his hometown of Rayville, Louisiana to see two camps of people. Those that look for Jesus, and those that are looking for the next fix.

we follow the roads that lead us
...[dramatic pause]... to drugs or Jesus.

Of course, he's not going to get anywhere without any conflict. McGraw knows his audience. (in fact, you could say he knows Nelly's audience, too, given their recent collaboration) And he knows his audience would love to hear a story about spritual movement. And since a story about the Glory of God goes on the gospel channel, its important that McGraw sings about a time when he wasn't so holy, when he had to struggle through his faith. And then he has to tell us about it (it's just part of the salvation).

The music, however, doesn't endure the same kind of progression. The lyrical arrangement is a pretty standard chorus-verse affair, including even the recent rap trick of having the chorus fill in the last words of a verse (think Common's "Go" or Usher's "Burn"). The pianos and guitars crescendo when you expect them to, a solo sneaks in behind the crucial born-again moment, and after McGraw comes down on the side of God the outro uses perhaps the oldest trick in the Book ("Hallelujah, hallelujah, ...").

Love is Always Sacred

2005-08-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

For anyone that hasn't already crashed at my fabulously located flat in London (in other words the 2 people that visit this blog), I live within a stone's throw of Harrod's, the world's finest and most opulent department store, in the world's highest per capita earning district. Not that the residents of Knightsbridge actually work, mind you. Really they just buy expensive things from Harrod's and try to run you over.

Apologies. I'll eat the rich later. What is perhaps more repulsive, at least outside the class war, is a recent scuplture commissioned for the basement (re: lower ground floor) memorial to Dodi al Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. Visitors to the store will be familiar with the fountain and engagement ring encased in polyeurethane, a loving tribute to the heir to the world's most glorified mall and his royal girlfriend. Now we get to fawn our affections on this:

That being a life-sized bronze of Dodi, Diana, and a seagull. That fire you see in the background isn't so much a foundry as an English Mount Doom. And i believe we're all familiar how that story ends. The statue will be grafted into the already borderline kitch in the Egyptian Room of the store, the section where you can buy makeup that costs a few hundred quid and is made from the ground bones of Somali children.

See more pictures of the sculpture here.

...And in this corner a barking lunatic

2005-08-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

George Galloway is going to debate Christopher Hitchens in NYC, and God Bless Us all if the world doesn't implode on that September day. The event is happening as part of Galloway's US speaking tour, though it might more accurately start another round in a proper shit-tip, if their past interactions are any indication.

Witness the end of political discourse as we know it. Tickets to this event are worth their weight in GOLD.

Hippomaster

2005-08-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Got my first scientific publication, a product of work done through long, cold winters at the University of Pittsburgh. The article, Patterns of Hippocampal Atrophy in MCI, will be published by The Journal of Neurology in the fall. I am second author. Let me know if you'd like a copy.

Suck it.

Walken 2008

2005-08-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

If you want to learn how to build a house,

build a house. Don't ask anyone, just build a house.

-Christopher Walken

Gimme Some Blo'

2005-08-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

The subheading has been answered: Bret Easton Ellis has come out of his Prada-leather-lined hole in the ground to publish a book called Lunar Park. It is apparently an autobiographical novel. The gut reaction to that style is a swift kick to the shins, but eschew for a moment your vision of an autobiographical novel, the endless parade of personal memoir that seem to need their own section in Borders (headlined "Wine about Life"). Consider that this is written by the man who has written of supermodeling anarchists, cork-snorting teens, and found the most despicable way to feed rats.

The most public aspect of this book's press junket is that Bret is gay. This wasn't exactly revelation. More surprising was the context of Bret's relationship with Kaplan died in January 2004, prompting a long mourning spent completely out of the limelight. He did not attend the funeral in Michigan, he said, because he could not even bring himself to leave his room - the room in his mother's house in the San Fernando Valley, where he grew up. And he stayed in Los Angeles for 19 months, shuffling from mother to sister to friend and finally a series of hotels, suffering what he calls "a midlife crisis."

So, perhaps we won't be expecting the same noncommittal slash-and-burn, choose your poison version of literature. How the personal events in Bret's life will effect his new direction remains to be seen; Lunar Park was largely finished at the time of Kaplan's death, though he has admitted to the death being the catalyst for finishing the book. Ellis seems to be working hard to distance himself from his bad-boy party-boy image:

"My worry is that people will want to know what's true and what's not," he said recently. "All these things that are in the book - my quote-unquote autobiography - I just don't want to answer any of those questions. I don't like demystifying the text."

- Read excerpts of Lunar Park
- Audio interview on Bookworm (realplayer)

to do

2005-08-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

langhorne slim tonight @ The Social. free

))<>(( forever

2005-08-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

miranda july
is the prettiest girl in the world right now. Go see her movie.

Then read her blog.

Track Review: 'Drugs or Jesus' by Tim McGraw (Part 1 of 3)

2005-08-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

Last summer, from late May until the first week of September, I worked as a foreman on one of my father's construction sites. The building was the former location of my hometown's newspaper, The St. Augustine Record, which had moved across town to a bigger building next to a shopping center and a hospital, off of US1. Anytime I drive down the section of a town where all the Chili's and Barnes&Noble's and Blockbusters and Home Depots are congregated, I always refer to it as the, "you know, the US1-part of town", regardless of where they grew up, or if they even know that US1 runs up the east coast and harbors its fair share of traffic from the Chili-going public.

Anyway, I'm not being completely truthful by saying I was a foreman for the summer. At least, the whole summer. My dad hired me as foreman, because the building was a small project for his office and the fewer checks you sign the better. See, a foreman shows up early, opens the locks, gets out the tools, and then tells everyone what to do, and makes sure that they keep doing it until break. Sometimes he goes and buys doughnuts for everybody. Well, i got most of those done, except for the showing up early bit, and the locks, and the tools. But all the crews had their own tools, and their own keys to the place, anyway. Actually, I don't think we had doors at that point. The place had been gutted by the demolition crew by the time I got there.

So, perhaps, I was not the best decision for the job of foreman. He is, in many ways, The Boss, but only in that he takes orders from the contractor, or the architect, and delegates. Delegate and maintain. Crews come in (Demo crews, Roof crews, Plumbing crews), and you tell them where to go to do what they do. You also have to be something of a handyman, as there are always sidejobs to be completed; actually, all the jobs that you don't hire a specialized crew for, you and a couple of day-laborers punch it out in between the delegating and maintaining.

There's a fun bunch. Laborers are often viewed through broken glass, (if anything's ever stolen on a site it's usually the day-laborers that get fired first) and in plenty of cities in the nation they get blamed for racism even murder. The laborers in St. Augustine are a more humble bunch, at least the ones that came through the services we used. The overwhelming percentage are fellas looking for enough cash to fuel a weekend bender, but there are a few really good workers in the mix, who may have a rap sheet they aren't proud of, or just haven't found the right employer. I met a guy who weighs 250 pounds and has 3 DUIs, but could build (and demolish) a house in a week.

Anyway, I get fired as foreman. By my dad. I was staying at a little house on the beach that summer, with a couple of friends my age who lifeguarded full-time. They were always out of the door by 7, into the big yellow pickup and onto the sand. I always kind of prided myself at not getting up till 8, and showing up at work only after a big fuckin bowl of some highly sugared cereal. It's the only thing that gets me up. Well, pops wasn't keen on this. He's always been the one pushing me out of bed in the morning, for work or surf, and one morning, after the Count Chocula, I get a bell asking me why I'm not on the site. Then i get fired, then he asks if I want to be the assistant foreman, and then he asks me to remember to bring back his surfboard to the house.

So I stay on the job, but now i have to get up and be there at 6 (construction workdays: 6-3:30, with half-hour for break and two fivers at 10 and 2. Clockwork.). I won't say that i didn't die a little everytime i woke up late and had to rush out the door in wet sock without my sugar-soup, but i won't say that i didn't benefit physically from lifting bricks and 2x4s for eight hours. Builds character, too, apparently. But I would never say as such. Officially i was a carpenter, but I was put on any job that needed doing. I remember the spackling, the carpentry, the jackhammering, loved it after a while. But I'd be amiss to not say that everyone didn't consider me a bit odd being there. Not being the architect's son; nepotism on a site is standard, and if anything that got me more respect.

Throw the R Away

2005-08-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a short essay on Christopher Hitchens, not because I have anything interesting to say about him, but just because I am so tormented by his journalistic existence, his means and his ways, his...well, anyway, in the meantime here's of gallery of media on George Galloway, politician noted for his rhetorical ability and his left-wing views, and who famously (in Britain anyway) called Hitchens a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay. He is currently the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bethnal Green. My mom loves him. And he deserves a bit of attention (don't send me hate mail) at least for being the biggest mouth in the highest office to critize so directly.

- Galloway believes that Londoner's are "paying the price" for Iraq
- A fun interview ( /arguement/shouting match ) with the BBC4.
- A video of Galloway appearing before the US senate sub-committee
- Hitchens' attack on Galloway in (ack!) the Weekly Standard. I can't believe I'm linking to that stone rag.

Insigniarrrrrs

2005-08-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Know your pirates, bitches.

HA

2005-08-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the age of fear, London. Where a broken down bus closes a section of the city. The police is starting to use its public statements in the same way they did in the US; even though all of the failed-bombers are in custody, MPs are steamrolling in new 'anti-terror' laws to combat the new extremism. Racial profiling, passport checks, and ID cards.

Donnie Darko is getting big here. Related?

Musichole

2005-08-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Today I thought i would give you a few interesting links for music. My interests generally lie in the "indie" domain, and most music on the internet lends itself to music uncorrupted by the hands of the EMISonyBMG boheomouth. Independent labels are alive and well in the age of the internet. And the nice thing about indie music is that it is often free.

First the basics: any decent hipster is going to visit Pitchfork at least daily. Forget Rollingstone stars, NME ratings, or the 'now playing' rack at your local used store. Pitchfork delivers daily: 4-5 new record reviews (reviewed 1-10, with decimals!), 3 singles (admittedly only useful for those living in cities where singles make in to stores), news from the like, a daily featue covering a live performance or a celebrity list, and a weekly feature.

Tiny Mix Tapes is in the same vien, but with significant differences; to say that they get sloppy seconds might be a big crude, as reviews actually differ quite a bit between the two sites. TMT do 2 reviews a day (shorter and terse-er than PF) and quite a few features, from 'The Dolorean' (reviews of old records) to interviews with artists, movie reviews, and original essays on topics like how much you should pay for a Brangelina sex tape.

Then there are the music blogs; people doing the same thing i'm doing here, but with more adverts and in a different time zone. A couple of my favorite:

Audiofile
Poplicks
Lacunae
Sixeyes

Audiofile is done by Thomas Bartlett (lead for Doveman) and is hosted on Salon, so go through the rigamarole in getting the Daypass. You can kind of lose your head downloading tracks off of Sixeyes, they have consistently good compilations of music (called 'sixpacks').

Which brings me to actually downloading/buying music. Everyone knows about iTunes, but fewer know about emusic, which features an amazing amount of music from independent labels. And not just new stuff (like the last Bad Religion, Xiu Xiu, or Decemberists album); I've gotten a decent education on British punk (The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, Buzzcocks), post-rock (The Sea and Cake, Tortoise, Laika), and even good goth (This Mortal Coil, Bauhaus, Young God Records). Admittedly, there is less for you if you're into techno or mainstream rap, but plenty if you're willing to search the underground roots of each. Plus you get a trial period with 50 free tracks! If you want to join, email me, as there are incentives for getting someone to join. Fuck yeah i'm selfish.

I also have hacks for select few of you. Email me for details.

Courage Fades, Like a Boner

2005-07-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

British television is no safer from the plague of reality shows in the US, save for the fact that we only have 5 channels (well, 3 really, BBC1 and BBC2 would never go for it) on which to broad cast such fare. In fact, ITV (The People's Channel) actually reverts to live coverage of a communal house during it's night-owl Big Brother block. There's this show, Bad Boys, where delinquent young yobs are sent off to military training. One of the exercises i saw them forced to perform was to hold a red pencil in between their nose and upper lip, no hands. Hence, the expression, "stiff upper lip." I don't know the history of this practice, but i suspect it plays on the conception to reap something humiliating to the cadets. Stiff upper whatever.

So London endures it's second bombing and the world watches the upper lips of the Brits. These particular rucksacks went off with a bit of a pbbhht, the detonators not setting off the rest of the homemade explosives they had left behind for their fellow commuters. Two weeks ago 4 bombs on public transport killing 50-some folks seemed to evoke "Blitz Mentality", i.e. "stiff upper lip", i.e. keep it moving. But these more recent attacks, despite their weakness, have not produced the same sentiment. Editorials are going off in all the papers, from The Guardian on the left to the Financial Times on the right, that "the captiol's mood is less sure", and that "the defiance has begun to fade."

After the 7th of July, Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, comes out and cries an invective against the bombers: "Londoners will not be divided by the cowardly attack," he said, his voice angry and raw. "They will stand together in solidarity ... and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city." Of course, Livingstone isn't terribly popular, but that's beside the point in a crisis.

I said that most "can't be bothered" to worry about the national mood or how the occurence of terrorism affects London life. And those people will, largely, continue to be unbothered. The people who would be bothered by this sort of thing, well, now they will.

Blitz Mentality

2005-07-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

Did something fairly stupid today. I left my apartment in South Kensington and walked towards my university in central London. Being an overseas student with a cheap apartment means you are connected to the world only through your email, your chat box, or your online personality. The desire to reply to emergency emails outweighed the desire to avoid the possible aftershocks. The bombs had gone off at the tube stop i get off to go to work, and on a bus i use when i can't afford the tube. Ah. Who am i kidding, I wanted to see the whole mess of it.

I woke the same way I woke up on a morning in September, by a phone call from a hysteric mother ensuring my uniform bodily constituency in the face of militant Islamic fundamentalism. I remember feeling kind of excited when she first told me. I think i might have even voiced, "Wow, that's amazing." I got off the phone to call my mates, all three of them, and got the requisite responses. Wow, man, yeah.

I made a couple eggs and left the apartment. Everything in Kensington looked quite normal. Harrods was open, restaurants, shops, about half of them were still operational. As i got to Hyde Park Corner i noticed the sidewalks filling up with suits. I walked along Piccadilly, where 5 days ago a Pride Parade made its way away from the Live8 concert. Green Park was full of people that don't usually walk through Green Park, or who bother walking anywhere, besides to the curb to hail a cab. It occured to me there that at any hour in the London workday, maybe 15% of the population is underground. I walked past a few of the major stores, the Virgin Megastore and the Waterstones Bookstore. A group of men seem miffed that the bookstore was closed. Nobody was open in Piccadilly Circus besides the Pizza/Souvenier joint below an Adam's Rib restaurant. That's the worst pizza i've ever tasted.

Nothing was open from there to Bloomsbury besides a Subway and a video rental place. Everyone was walking in the other direction, and no one seemed particularly distraught. Most people were either walking in groups of three or four (laughing, joking), or else talking on their mobile. People were a little inconvenienced, maybe a little shocked, but no particular distress. Granted these weren't the people who had felt the heat of the blasts, or broken tube windows with their fists, but they did have to endure "heightened circumstances."

But they weren't doing it right! The were just walking home as if the boss had called in sick, or a The men and women in business attire seemed less worried about terrorism, and more upset that they couldn't pick up a novel on the way home. One of the most common expressions to insignificant events in London is, "can't be bothered." Terrorism seemed to rise to the top of no one's agenda.

Perhaps i wanted to see fear, I wanted to see recently dried cheeks and loosened ties. I wanted to see them get nuts, because if they could get nuts, this country, then maybe my country wasn't melodramatic for having done so. Maybe i could see some of the sorrow, or the militancy, or even the glint of revenge sparking in the eye. But there was no such reaction. Yes, yes, the IRA and all that. British resilience. Stiff upper lip. Whatever. I know there's a completely different, news-worthy story to be told about those stuck in a smoky tube carriage, or on the top floor of the double decker bus. But i don't know any of those people yet.

Things are running smoothly. The pubs are full of people getting pissed, as they (and I) normally would. All busses are running. The tube is back on tomorrow, mostly. There are a few lines cut, and a few diversions. There will be inconveniences. But its quite traditional in London to moan about such things. About the rest they can't be bothered.

You will never live here

2005-07-06T04:40:00.000-07:00

A list of particularly literary books for those that wish an approxiamate The London Experience:

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier - A collection of fantastical short stories which will supplant in you with the proper definition of "wry."

What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe - There are about 3 dozen "Thatcher" novels (most recently The Line of Beauty), each with its own brand of invective against the steamroll of PM of the 80s. This is an exposition on those years which is most excessible and personified deliciously by a ruthless family of Leeds.

Lud Heat and London Orbital by Iain Sinclair - This man is amazing. He's a compendium of London esoterica, a purveuor of the nefarious and occult influences on London culture. Lud Heat is a collection of prose poems, most notable a survey of the Hawksmoor churches that were constructed alond astral lines and reference much Egyptian architecture and mythology. Orbital is Sinclair's travelogue of follwing the M25, the giant ring-road that encircles London, and finding various and sundry adventures in the abandoned regions therein.

Collected Letters of Julian McClaren-Ross - The prototypical dandy. Ross wrote a few novels, short stories, but the real adventure was his own life, which goes from origins in Havana and Saudi to becoming a notorious London personality and denizen of the pubs of Fitzrovia. The British would never condone the adjective "gonzo" for extensive use, but Ross most approximates the quirks and intrepid attitude of the word, albeit in a more refined way.

Brighton Bombs

2005-06-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

i had a "day" recently, where some series of miscellaneous events occurred in relative succession, such that not one of them is notorious or even very interesting, but all together they gave me a bit of vertigo and i had to lie down and sleep for about 12 hours.

Saturday i got up to go to my friend Ainsley's birthday party. Ainsley is one half of the Canadian Super-Couple Adam&Ainsley, from Toronto and Alberta, respectively, the city-mouse/country-mouse duo you can't resist. Of course, i am a lazy bastard, and i hardly got out of bed, early on a Saturday, so i could share my praise.

Ainsley decided she wanted to go to Brighton, the beachside community about an hour from London that is the denizen of the kind of 20-year-olds that wear clear sunglasses and spend more money on hair product than food. There is a collective thump-thump beat that's pumped into the seaside clubs and bars at the same monthly rate as electricity or water. But i am able to rise because we're making a DAY-trip, not some nightclubbing ecstacy flush. Despite my trip to San Francisco and LA in March, i haven't seen the sea in about 10 months, and this feels like a bit of a natural defect, like i'm some Dracula who needs a coffin of sand to replenish. (I keep a small dish of St. Augustine sand in my cupboard, but it's just not enough)

*Tangential But Necessary Aside: last summer i went to Burning Man; i'm not really going to recount the experience here (some would argue it is impossible to do so), suffice it to say that i am constantly finding events which in some way pale in comparison to BM. Also, suffice it to say i'll never go back to that flaming hellhole. But my favorite story (and personal sensory experience) of BM was Critical Tits. Your are likely familiar with the activist collective known as Critical Mass, which overtakes city streets on the first Friday of the month to proclaim our possible independence from the automobile. Critical Tits, however, is the yearly parade of about 5,000 women around the lake bed to proclaim independence from bras. I got back from the exhibition and collapsed when i told Davina (Rhodes, class of '01, wife of Jake Byrnes) that i'd collapse if i saw another pair of tits and then she flashed me.

So Brighton basically turned into the British version of that event. Which is to say, older, pastier, and better accents. The weather was actually fantastic. The sun was shining, and getting out of the train station actually gave me a feeling that there is such a thing as 'cool ocean breeze.' The seagulls make me think about being home. The rampant plastic makes me think about Ocean City Maryland. The leathery old men make me think about used wallets.

Walking to the beach Adam gets shat on by a seagull. In Etruscan Rome this was seen as a sign of good luck, but Adam just got upset and stopped our Sherman march to the sea. I told him about the tradition, but he just kept saying, 'damn bird.' When we finally did make it to the sea, i was surprised by two things: the beach was entirely covered in both small to large round pebbles of varying colors and shapes, and small to large round boobs of roughly equally variations.

It's not really fair for me to paint a picture of some ocean of boobs without end (save that for my BM acid flashbacks). There were plenty of runts, geezers and blokes messing about, but i tend not to notice these. I'm no fag. And there are plenty of dazzling things about Brighton Beach. There are 2 giant piers in Brighton: The Palace Pier and The West Pier. The Palace Pier has bumper cars, a roller coaster, a log ride, and plenty of hot dogs. Even an exhibit based on the new Doctor Who television series. The other pier, the The West Pier, had the same sort of thing going for it until it closed down in 1975, laid dormant for 25 years, and then was burned down to pilings and steel framework a couple years ago. It's widely acknowledged that the owner of The Palace Pier had The West Pier burned, but no arrests were made. The beautiful terrible structure is actually a lot more fun to look at than the carnival monstrosity to the east, but kids aren't allowed to play on The West Pier, at least not without a tetnus suit.

But the BOOBS! I hadn't really expected British women to be so forthcoming with their nipples. The pleasant weather probably drew out the pups, as if every resident in the greater London area wanted to save money on holiday by getting a £10 ticket to Brighton instead of a £300 weekend to Oz. The generalizations about English weather are pretty spot on, so it was no surprise to see the pebble beach fully stocked with raw, pale London flesh. And i might corrupt the fantasy a bit further by mentioning that the age of the boobs laid out before me reflected the normal age distribution of England, many of them hanging lower than the fold of their bellybutton. Saggage abound. Once i was in an Eckerd and my friend Julie taught me what the toilet seat extension is for. I imagine women have the same fears.

A couple of the girls in our party took off their tops and then we all preceeded to have a conversation about the shapes of breasts. It's a conversation i soon find myself dominating, which doesn't really bother anyone except the two girls with their tops off, who seem to think themselves the experts for the fact we can all look at their nips. We ended on some vague disagreement on the uniqueness of each set of breasts; not something i'm exactly sure of, given me research in the public and private sector. It's a cute idea, but i'm too much of a generalist not to see things in certain categories.

The rest of the day is lost in a haze of lager, sunsets, and bead shops, though you've lived in cheap seaside towns so you know. I'm the only one that didn't get burned or eat fried foods during the trip, so i don't have any particular scars from the adventure. I got off the train a couple stops too early, and so i had to walk across greater london to get home. I was pretty exhausted, given the sun and the booze, until i get a few blocks from home and see my road blocked off by police cars. Usually this means the Queen's on her way home, but sometimes it happens for fancy (once i was woken up by a police van playing the A-Team theme out of their loudspeaker and driving in circles on Brompton Road).

And then again, i am confronted with The Other. A vast pink parade of women strutting out of Hyde Park wearing nothing but bras and spandex leggings. The Playtex Moonwalk is, ostensibly, a midnight parade of 15,000 bra-clad women powerwalking to raise awareness and money for charity, but for me it was just a punctuation mark on The Day of The Breast. Granted, the mean age rose significantly, but i think i was somewhat vindicated, as the bras these women were wearing were built for comfort, as well as speed, and there was no attempt to push-up to the round ideal. There were no gravity-defying porno globes, just lots of sweaty swelled chests, and more giggle than i am prepared to describe. Sizes, complextions, and sagginess varied, but overwhelming was the mundanity of it all, the averageness of the unprepared tit, and the uncomfort at my at standing for 5 minuntes to watch it. Pert breasts are few and rare and unhappy breasts hang all the same.

The Chelsea Flower Show is Decadent and Depraved

2005-06-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

you should keep in mind, you stupid people outside the realm of the brain, that you only see things because your eyes keep moving. if your eyes stopped making tiny movements inside your skull you would cease to see, and cease to make visual memories. the visual system, like the rest of you, is dynamic and thrives on change. like einstein says, the only way to ride a bike is to...but what happens when the moving stops? how do you record an event in your life if the tiny saccades of your eyeballs are forced to standstill because of unnatural factors and nefarious intents. You don't forget, you bastard, you just don't remember.
so this is what is was like to amble through the chelsea flower show. stasis, as best represented by an outdoor/indoor $10million salute to plants. all you could expect, i guess. these factors, i should point out, weren't nefarious so much as inertial: 200,000 people on pensions shuffling through a crowded tent, with only roughly half of them observing the one-way signs directing them from the black orchilds to the strawberry towers, and about half of them sticking to the small picket fences guarding the exhibits. it didn't help that my fellow flower-gazer, the old bastard that got me into the show, was in the beginning stages of Parkinson's, developing his shuffle in an appropriate venue for such a motion.
i never really knew what the lower-upper class looks like till i went to the show, but now i know. Tweed coats and a bamboo cane, or a double brested suit with some meaningless crest sewed onto it, and a wife that looks like Camilla. And horrible teeth, which seemed to me more a mark of priveledge than unruly dentition. the phrase "can't be bothered", emitted at a regular frequency of about 5 times an hour (admittedly, this is a catch phrase common to most of the British, and a goo number of the americans who come get sorted here).
And, of course, rampant rudeness. but i realized about halfway through it, after shuffling past one too many english garden exibits, perhaps after i whiffed too much Miracle-Gro, that the only experience the Show was willing to engender was one of abject boffishness or class submission. I, the American, have no experience with either, and so of course decided to make a complete fool of myself.
It starts, i suppose, when you ask the john deere rep if you can take a lap around the Show in his 30-hp Gator. When he does not capitulate, you make a fuss with British words like finkle and preposterous, but in an annoying American accent ('oh my god, look at the liine'). With that display you've probably earned enough guff to walk into the Champagne and Oysters Tent, run by Perrier-Jouett. Ch. n' O. are apparently the only foods the residents of Knightsbridge are willing to eat in public, outside the confines of four-star restaurants and gastropubs.
You perform the duties of the waiter, i.e. clearing the table of unconsumed Ch. n' O.'s. Men in tweed jackets and golden walking sticks and women with birds on their heads both notice you and scoff. As if you noticed. As if you noticed security, even.
It ends, apparently, with two men in red coats, pensioners who laid down the old limbs for god, queen and country, old enough to be my medieval ancestors, escorting you to the Gate. For "being a nuisance". Nothing for free in this district, mate.

what i do

2005-02-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

so, many people have asked me to explain what i do, professionally, academically, whathaveyou, and i till this point have typically provided circuitous answers and evasions. it's not that i don't love you, it's just that eyes tend to gloss over when you mention words like "cortex" and "semantic encoding." but this hurts me, deep, like a knife. The short answer is that i study the biological basis of memory. glaze. What i do is interesting, at least to me, and though i have given short answers, i shy away from explanation because, frankly, who likes to talk shop?

But it is important, or at least interesting to discuss this sort of thing. These are things we use everyday, and i personally might benefit from you thinking about it and telling me what you think.

So, imagine that when you think about boobs, something in your brain happens. Whether you are thinking about what boobs look like, what boobs feel like, the last time you saw boobs, or the last time you felt (your own or someone else's) boobs, something in your brain is active and helping you think about those particular boobs. Keep thinking about that particular pair. Please.

So, let's say that you are thinking about the last time you touched the aforementioned boobs. Do you remember their softness? Do you remember how they looked? Do you remember that they made you feel grrrreat? There are lots of components to your memoryboobs, whether you are a more visual person, or a more emotional person, or you just slobber. These different qualities of your memoryboobs are things that i'm not really interested in. (Well, of course i am, but we're speaking academically.)

What i go after is what happens in your brain when you did what you just did. You brought up a thought of boobs. You had to use some sort of quality to get there, whether it was touch, taste, smell or emotion, but once you were thinking of your memoryboobs, you didn't rely just on those qualities. You could answer any number of questions about those boobs, desipite the most memorable feature. In otherwords, the qualities of a memory (of boobs and other things) have to come together somewhere. I study that coming together.

don't bomb when you're the bomb

2005-01-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

What is obvious to me at this point in time is that i face almostcertain death from the Finnish Mob (no pun intended). The drunkenness of the night has finally wornoff, and i started remembering details that warrented me writing this out in full. So. In narrative form.
Last week I went with my friend Tom, who is the most affable andknowledgeable British dandy you could hope for, to a dinner his girlfriend Liz was hosting for her work. She is, currently, a junior marketing analyst for Forbes Magazine; remember Steve Forbes, the dork that ran for president (twice), under the guise of a "flat tax", and then bowed out (twice) only to make fun of himself by appearing on SNL as ... himself? Well, these people all have Steve on their speed-dials, they all wear tailored suits and trendy Italian eyewear, and they all get drink like fish when the bell rings.
We started at a pub, something slightly posh but still loud and dark, and i started drinking Guiness (on the tab, of course) becauseeven though i usually drink bitters, i hadn't eaten in a while (coupledays, actually). I earned a bit of respect from the American editorfor drinking the Guiness as fast as a normal beer, which goes to showyou how little Americans know about drinking in the first place. Then i started hitting on the Finnish editor's daughter (why he brought her, i have no idea, maybe he uses it to test for assholes), which was met with quite a few looks askance, and Tom pulling me aside, telling me "You tosser, she's pledged to Finnish royalty!" After 3 rounds (3?), we stumbled over to Brick Lane, which is this street that Brits go to if they want to feel colonial again; it's just rows of Indian restaurants, and the streets are full of Indian guys either trying to sell you hash or get you to come in their restaurants. You actually bargain with them outside before you come in, and typically you can get a couple nice bottles of wine and a 10%discount out of the deal before you step into the restaurant.
So asone of the junior executives is argueing his way into a bottle of Scotch, I'm outside fucking with the Finnish editor (who was, by theway, named "Finn"), in some ridiculous attempt to win over the dad.He's trying to ignore me, but he's also a bit dusted, so when herealizes i'm cooler than he is he humors me. Then he trips on thestreet. We get inside, and i by this time have turned the charm on to 11, cracking crude jokes and wearing tableflowers in my hair. I'm fuckingwith Finn's food, pouring onions in to his chicken korma, but he'ssort of beyond doing anything but whining, which is funny, given thathe's the spitting image of George Plimpton. Funnier because at somepoint everyone at the table starts comparing chesthair, and I with myItalian rug take the cake (Finn's chest, i remember, was bald asSavales, though i remember more some failed demands on his daughter)They goad me, because they get drunk easy, and they like theentertainment, and before i know it i'm eating a vindaloo that wouldburn a child if she sat next to it. I breathe fire on everyone, theyeat it up. At this point both the Finn and his daughter are rolling on thefloor, along with everyone else, and so i try and direct the madnesstheir way. What follows can only be described as a showstopper, but not really in the conventional, "positive" sense. I was getting readyto give Finn this great dare about putting his baby blue sweater overhis head and guessing who at the table is flicking him in the nose,but I open the sentence with, "So Finn, as one former Nazi sympathizerto another..." and the table goes silent (everyone forgets thoseFinnish were Axis), for about 3 seconds, after which Finn turns thecolor of the spicy food in my belly, and makes a grab for my face, to which to be done to torn asunder. I sprint from the table, as Finn isheld down by the burly London chief editor (Bob), and head down to the loo, which was, I remembered, quite posh, and had a nice couch i could cower on until Finn cooled off.
I was down there about 5 minutes until Tom came down, laughing hysterically, asking me what I was doing? When I said Hiding, he said "Yeah I know you're hiding, you'd better get used to it. Liz says Finn's got mob ties and you'rescrewed." I don't know if they were kidding, I haven't really talked to them since, and frankly I'm surprised I can remember this much. I remembercoming back up, and half the table gone (Scandinavian contingentincluded), the other half laughing and drunk and unrecognizable. Liz has a pretty grave face on, and she puts me in a cab while she stays and "does a bit of damage control," though, again, i have no idea ifthey're still fuckin with me. I just get in the cab, because I've got The Fear, and in my state i'm in no mood to exacerbate.

i missed the bus

2004-11-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

I miss busses every day. I have to take two separate busses to getfrom my place to my school--the bus trips aren't long, it's just that London is a mess of streets and it's rare you take one to get to whereyou want. And the busses are the old double decker style, and usuallyfun to ride unless you've had too much to drink. Nonetheless, bussesmust be caught, and i am an expert and how not to catch busses. Part of it is inattention, part of it is obsessiveness. I would sit at abus stop and record every time and bus number if i didn't have ahundred things to do. Usually, one of those things is actuallycatching the bus. Missing a bus uually makes you feel like you are losing time. Time out of a schedule that is crafted, not by you, and not necessarily by a higher power, but by the world as a whole. In the complex system ofthe world, you had a place, and it was on that number 29 bus that just whisked past you. You can usually even watch them pass by. A visual marker of your inability to flow with your own program.

And this sort of thing happens all the time, not just with busses. Meetings, mail calls, TV shows, trains, dates, friends' parties, salesat H&M, double features at the cheap theatre, late night exhibitionsand due dates for presentations. Sometimes i get it right, and iremember to unlock my cell phone before i get the bus to the train tothe plane to Italy for the weekend, to see my parents and to give themimportant mail. But sometimes i miss. I think it's inevitable. Ithink anyone living in a city will only get 60% of it right. At best. I never really felt this way in St. Augustine. I never felt therewas a bus passing me by that i was missing. I don't mean thismetaphorically. I mean, there is nothing operating, really, to tell you if you're on time or not. My life there was, show up for work,leave work, relax myself until i was feeling unstressed, and then work on a project. Do it again. It wasn't so much that it wasn't a busylife; it was more that i never had to feel like i was/wasn't doing theright thing. Anything was ok, because "nothing" was so pervasive. I realize this is starting to sound like gibberish, but it's late and there are loud girls saying "Oi" next to me, and they won't fucking shut up.

I got a Chinese girl drunk today. I'm proud of that. Me and my greek friend, Demitrius, took out Mai Cheun and ordered her beers. It's officially a secret, but Chinese people are fucking hilarious drunks. Not on purpose, of course.

how are you doing in London?

2004-11-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

short answer is that i am fine. If you took a statistical average of my moods over the past 3 months, running the gamut from urban wonder to gutter depression, the average, with a high degree of variability, would be "just fine." Of course, i don't think that i have been "just fine" since i got here, owing basically to the fact that London is both the perfect and the worst city for someone like me. Somedays i am working crazy, devising psych experiments and reading papers, writing on consciousness and what memory might look like in the brain, and then i come home and stay up all night with Greeks and Indians (london is full of greeks and indians), drinking and telling stories in ways that only cross-cultural groups can enjoy. Like a benetton commercial.

Some days are not so good, and they typically involve money, because most anything in this city involves money. London is, by far, the most expensive city on this earth. Never mind the crappy (and getting crappier) exchange rate with the dollar, just getting across the city can cost you $2 (bus), $4 (tube), or $10 (taxi), and that's just from my apartment to school. And i havent even mentioned my program, which is sort of a great example of why i have been sticking to neuroscience rather than psychology; my program is in the psych dept, and it's no surprise to tell you that psychologists are roughly 95% of the time full of horseshit. I don't know if it's a mark on the greatness of my New College education, but i learn little in the classes. The saving grace is the project i'm doing, which is good and is with good people, who are neuroscientists and not psychologists and like facts and socially relevant information.

What keeps me happy, what keeps me delighted and amused, is the details of history and the people around that i cannot help but become audience to. I live in an apartment within stone's throw of Harrod's, the hugest department store in the world, and also the poshest. Right now i sit in a hall 10 feet from the preserved body of Jeremy Bentham, the original Libertarian. People here speak in British accents ALL DAY LONG. How could i not be constantly amused?

The key is not to be lonely. Scratch that, the key is not even to be alone. I used to think there was significance in the difference between the two, but living in London is all or none, you're in or you're out, right now, join the party or suffer. So i'm trying to join the party, trying to date Finnish girls and Swiss girls, trying to drink half as many pints as my British friends and still be able to walk home.