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

* * *

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

Concert Review: Fiery Furnances

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Graphic Waste of Time

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.

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

MMmmm.....BRAAAIINS!!!

On Being An Asshole

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.

sweet.

My Brain Doing WHAT?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.