Hush, My Darling…I Have Updates!

To paraphrase the greatest band of all time,  it’s been much more than one week since you looked at me. Or, rather, since last you read my blog. Or, better still, since last I thought that you, or someone like you, was reading my blog. Or, finally, since I even updated this thing. Thank GOD I closed down TypePad and have been cruising with my freebie WordPress account.

Some projects I’m currently working on:

1) Radiohead and Philosophy. George Reisch and I are currently in the throes of cobbling together what I hope will be the best-selling title in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series by Open Court Press. So far, the contributions are great, covering everything from Radiohead’s later politics, to the existential moments of The Bends, to the apocalyptic imagery of Thom Yorke’s The Eraser.  I’m hoping to contribute some fiery material on Levinas and the Other in Radiohead as well as a tasty treat on Marcuse and OK Computer. I’ll keep you posted (very infrequently I’m sure) on how the project develops. It’s due out next summer, but that’s closer than you think!

Many may remember my contribution to Pink Floyd and Philosophy last year. George and I have a co-authored piece up on Pop Matters this month discussing some of the ideas I wrote about concerning Barrett and capitalism. It’s a fun read! Oh yeah!

2) I’m currently almost done with the first volume of two for World Book on Living Green. The books are targeted toward a middle school audience and are called “Consumable Goods” and “Durable Goods,” respectively. Each is 64 pages long and purports to both explain how these goods affect health and the environment as well as offer alternatives and activities for living green. It’s been fun to research a topic that has always interested me. It’s funny how much of the suggestions I’m making I’m now putting in to practice on the basis of my research alone. The amount of waste our society creates is…well, beyond thunderdome.

3) Just did a piece of a trade magazine called Modern Hygienist that covers green living suggestions for every room of the house. It was definitely made better by my research for the World Book volumes. It will be in fine dentist offices everywhere in a month or two.

On the pop culture front, here’s what I’m diggin’ currently:

Film: Val Lewton horror pics from the ’40s. A precursor to Hitchcock and scarier than you think. And the genius part is: no monsters. At least you don’t see them….or do you?

TV: Slings & Arrows, Season 1. Canadian theatre dramedy started out slow, but WOW, it’s gotten good. If you’ve ever like Shakespeare, this is a must view. Can’t wait to get through the rest of the 3 seasons.

Music: The Big Sleep, The Whigs, Black Mountain, In Rainbows, Gang of Four, and Talking Heads: 77. Oh yeah, and I had a dream about Candlebox’s “Far Behind,” so I had to get it from iTunes. Classic.

“The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.”

I finally finished The Sheltering Sky on Monday. We’ve been busy over the last two weeks showing the Sieverts around Chicago and meeting up with the Forbes clan for a little Reds-bashing in Cincinnati, so my reading literally went on the shelf for a bit (hopefully I’ll update Flickr with some pics soon). But getting Harry Potter 7 in the mail on Monday (I’m already half-way through) lit a fire under me to finish Paul Bowles exquisite novel. As I mentioned in a former post, Bowles prose and dialogue are extremely compelling, but the deeper I got into the text, the deeper Bowles seemed to penetrate into his characters subconscious. This internal excavation dovetails nicely with the protagonists’ drive into the heart of the Sahara, a move mirrored by the psychological drama that unfolds. Thematically, this text would be an excellent addition to a reading list on colonialism or madness. Published in 1949, the book definitely belongs on the Time 100 list and I am proud to say that’s another one off the list. And now that I know it’s a feature film starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich, there’s a new number 1 in my Netflix queue.

Below are a few excellent excerpts from The Sheltering Sky, of which there are many:

“The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.” - description of a sick man

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five more times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

“Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth - ” She hesitated.
Port laughed abruptly. “And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And that’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.”

Forked Up

Last weekend was the third annual Pitchfork Music Festival and, as a colleague of mine wrote on Gaper’s Block, let’s hope is will go down as the worst one in history. While the lineup wasn’t terrible, it also wasn’t as good as in years past. Add this to an overall terrible sound quality for most of the festival, as well as some serious transportation hoops that patrons had to go through just to get there(granted, this was CTA’s fault), the festival was hardly what we had hoped. In fact, we only went on Saturday and gave up on returning for Sunday’s lineup. To get a little more about my criticisms of the festival, checkout this Feature on Gaper’s Block. It’s a collection of reflections from various writers on the site about their experience at the festival and, besides mine, I also highly recommend Dan Snedigar’s review.

Ideology, transform!

So I finally saw Michael Bay’s Transformers this afternoon. And no, it wasn’t a disasterpiece. In fact, it was a highly enjoyable action adventure with some downright funny moments. Shia LaBeouf was fantastic playing the awkward, yet brave human protagonist, and the special effects were, no pun intended, otherworldly. Most of the classic Transformer characters made an appearance, though, sadly, this one was missing.

Two main points bothered me the most about the film: 1) it’s egregiously obvious product placement and 2) it’s glorification of US militarism (shocker from the guy who brought you Pearl Harbor and Armageddon). While both are neither surprising, it was still disappointing to be subjected to them. Also, Optimus Prime’s incessant neoliberal rhetoric, exuding that “freedom” is more important than anything else, fit in easily with the notion that violence must be used to protect it at any cost. And while that seems to be a good sentiment in and of itself, the current state of the world and US hegemony means that such rhetoric easily becomes an ideological idol on which current injustices can continue to reign such as US pre-emptive strikes, wars, and the corporate control of politics.

As fantasy, it was fun. As the product of our contemporary political and cultural situation, it was disturbing. I’ll take the former. Let’s hope most viewers do as well.

Urbane Hymns

Many of you might know that a group of friends and I have been working on counting down our “Top 25 Albums of All Time” on a little site called Urbane Hymns. Most everyone in the group has gotten deep into their countdown, despite a recent lull of activity over the last few months. Luckily, Sean B has seen to it to light a fire under me to finish my countdown, which is currently stuck at number 4, with his excellent final 4 countdown posted yesterday. You can see my total list so far here.

Jesus, the Mexican boy

So last night after polishing off a couple sushi rolls in honor of out 8th wedding anniversary, Sarah and I decided, in a drunken haze I might add, to get ice cream treats from the Notorious M.C.D. on the walk home. And who waited on us at the register? None other than a young Latino boy whose name tag read “Jesus B.” You can see the potential for hilarity. While he was making our shakes, Sarah kept threatening to ask him if he could save her and I busied myself with creating possible nicknames for the guy. “Jesus B Real.” “Jesus B Awesome.” “Jesus B Nimble, Jesus B Quick.” My favorite didn’t come to me until this morning: “Jesus B. Anthony.”

In honor of this hard-working, awesomely-named youth, I link you to this track from Jesus look-a-like Iron & Wine:

Iron & Wine - Jesus the Mexican Boy

Let down…and hanging around

Mega mp3 blog Stereogum has a nice treat up for those jonesing for some Radiohead. With this year being the 10th anniversary of the only album that has ever unnerved me on first listen, Stereogum has gathered covers of every track off of OK Computer by some of today’s hottest indie stars! No, wait, this isn’t a promo for NOW Music. Instead of Fergie or R.Kelly taking on Yorke and co.’s opus (though I would pay good money to hear what that would sound like), you can rely on some good ‘ole John Vanderslice, David Bazan, Cold War Kids, My Brightest Diamond, and The Twilight Sad among others. Take a listen to a few below, and go here for all of them:

David Bazan’s Black Cloud - Let Down*
John Vanderslice - Karma Police
My Brightest Diamond - Lucky

*Note: For the Pedro connoisseur, Bazan’s “Let Down” is not the guitar-based cover he released on his Tour EP a few years back. It’s actually synth-based and, in my opinion, much more compelling than his first take.

Foo You

Dave Grohl and his rotating cast of bandmates have recently announced that the sixth LP from the Foo Fighters is due out in September. Melodramatically entitled Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace, what by its title sounds to be a mix between Pink Floyd and GnR will, unfortunately, not be so. Grohl has been quoted as saying it will be a mixture of “Steely Dan with No Means No.” Hm, that sounds terrible.

But noticing the announcement got me thinking - when was the last time I really was in to the Foo Fighters? I would probably say it was in ‘99, during my senior year of college, when Nothing Left to Lose came out. I distinctly remember watching a piss-poor Foo performance of “Learn to Fly” on Letterman with Sarah in our downtown loft apartment gallery in Bristol.

This is not to say that I haven’t kept up with Grohl’s exploits, however. I do own (out of a sense of loyalty to the legacy of Nirvana, I guess) all 5 of their full lengths, including the double trouble disc In Your Honor, the main single of which Prince homaged during the half-time show of this year’s Super Bowl. I will have to say, though, that my loyalty has probably run its course - unless I hear otherwise, I don’t have plans to pick up a “Steely Dan with No Meets No” piece of stadium rock tripe.

That said, Dave Grohl has kicked out some sweet jams over the years. Here are my Top 10 Foo Fighters tracks in descending order:

10. “Best of You,” In Your Honor. Yes, Prince covered it at the Super Bowl the Bears lost. Yes, it’s stadium rock. Yes it’s straight-up cock-rockery. But of all of these things do not necessarily mean “suck.” They just usually do. This is the strongest track on a double-disc album that is generally not very compelling, despite the Norah Jones cameo. Or, rather, in spite of the Norah Jones cameo.

9. “Times Like These,” One By One. Another “picking-yourself-back-up-by-the-Fender-straps” tale of overcoming trouble in the vein of “Best of You.” The testosterone-driven to quiet strum outro is particularly nice.

8. “Breakout,” Nothing Left To Lose. Despite the teenage complexion issues alluded to in the song’s lyrics, this is one of Grohl’s better radio hits. The filtered guitar/vocal intro builds anticipation and Grohl’s screaming post-chorus is vintage Foo.

7. “This is A Call,” Foo Fighters. This is the first Foo Fighters song I ever heard and, naturally, it’s stuck with me. The bright, quiet strum of “Visiting is pretty, visiting is good” is iconic. And if there is one thing that the Foo’s first album does well, it’s build parts of songs one rock and roll hook at a time, and that kind of rock quality starts here.

6. “Generator,” Nothing Left to Lose. This was a Bristol favorite. It made my “post-graduation drive to Sprint telemarketing center every evening” mixtape that got worn the freak out. The Peter Frampton-esque vocal hook is nice, and the chord changes are even better on the verses. In fact, the verse melody is much better than the chorus.

5. “Walking After You,” The Colour and the Shape. The only quiet Foo Fighters song in my Top 10. A version of this song was a single from the X-Files movie soundtrack, but I always liked the album version better. It seems sacrilege to call a Foo Fighters song touching, but that’s exactly what this song is.

4. “Monkey Wrench,” The Colour and the Shape. A tantalizing big chorus, post-grunge anthem. No doubt Grohl’s exhaustion of being in Nirvana’s shadow helped inspire this harsh critique of youth looking to rock to solve their problems. One can’t help but see this as a response, if not a refutation, of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

3. “Big Me,” Foo Fighters. A happy ditty with inscrutable lyrics and a great Mentos take-off video.

2. “I’ll Stick Around,” Foo Fighters. I made a list in high school of my favorite songs ever (this obsession started young) and “I’ll Stick Around” was #2, right behind “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Also included on the list were songs by Green Day, No Doubt, and the Smashing Pumpkins. Predictable, I guess, for high school in 1995. Anyway, this song is the ideal example of Grohl’s excellent ability to build a rock song out of so many great parts - the “I don’t owe you anything” vs. “I’ll stick around” dueling choruses is absolute rock genius.

1. “Everlong,” The Colour and the Shape. Not much to say about this song except that it’s the perfect emotive rock song. And Michel Gondry’s video is classic.

“Unavoidable damage caused by protecting freedom for all sentient beings.”

I haven’t seen Michael Bay’s Transformers yet for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that going to the cinema is now a $30 affair. Plus, as excited as I am, I know it could be a disasterpiece. So, I’ll just wait until it hits our $3 theater next month. In the meantime, you can check out Apropos’ on the film here. And please enjoy this wonderful short from McSweeney’s: “A Letter to Optimus Prime From His Geico Auto Insurance Agent.” (Thanks to S Witmer for the link).

Rick & Mr. Freckles…and ninjas

My good friend Josh Hathaway has birthed a new comic blog from the ashes of Saucerocket.  Called Reluctant Robot, the site features great sketches, drawings, and a new comic strip called “Rick & Mr. Freckles.”  Drop by and get a laugh with your morning cup of coffee.

And yes, he drew this bad-ass ninja.  Petite bad-ass ninja, that is.