"... - and then one night, around midnight, on the corner
of Lexington and Fifty-second, when you have come really
to the point of losing faith in the existence of such a crea-
ture as you have been imagining for yourself even unto
your thirty-second year, there she is, wearing a tan pants
suit, and trying to hail a cab - lanky, with dark and abun-
dant hair, and smallish features that give her face a kind
of  petulant expression, and an absolutely fantastic ass."

                                          - Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

 

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                                Some Time This Century

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THE JO-TEL IS:

Shark 

Hip E.

PETE

The Quail

Johnny D  

We get naked in bars way more than
you and you know what that means ...
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CURRENTLY READING:

Hip E.
 - Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67)
 - Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

Shark
 - Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
 - Kevin Star, A History of California:
1840 - 1875. 
 - Paul Celan, Breathturn

PETE
 - Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

Johnny D.
 - Jean Luc d'Emo, Reel

The Quail
- Dave Eggers, What Is the What
- James Joyce, Ulysses
- Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated 

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:

Hip E.
 - Neko Case, Blacklisted (2002)
 - Hip E., Pando Mix Rev. 0  (2007)
 - Rock Plaza Central, Are We Not Horses? (2006)

Shark
 - Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Blank
Generation  (1977)
 - The Kinks, The Village Green Preservation
Society (1968)
 - Silver Apples, Contact (1969)

PETE
 - Smashmouth, Greatest Hits vol. II (2004)

Johnny D
 - Television Personalities, And Don't the Kids
Just Love it (1980)
- The Blow, Paper Television (2006)
- The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs Vol. 1,
2, & 3 (1999)

The Quail
- Carla Bruni
- Philip Glass, Glassworks (1982)

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I'm on the trail of a chocolate soda for
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                           - Charlton Heston (1924 - )

 

The JO-TEL ... look, ma, no spam!

Happy 70th Birthday, Philip Glass

Today is Philip Glass' 70th birthday.  PG is currently involved with my company (explaining how would give away where I work, so I won't), so that's pretty cool, since it's resulted in me meeting him and getting to kick it (sort of) with him on several occasions.  This photo below was taken at our recent press conference, which took place on my birthday (Jan 22).  My department (Public Relations... natch) surprised PG with a cake for his birthday.  Unfortunately, not much consideration was given to the fact that a man about to turn 70 probably shouldn't be given the Herculean task of blowing out about 50-odd candles.  All's well that ends well, though: he didn't die or catch on fire, which means I still have a shot at him autographing my copies of The Qatsi Trilogy.  Photo credit: Kristen Loken.
 

 

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-31  12:03:16

Knock-knock. Who's there? Peeeaaaas.

Despite the guy looking like Casey Affleck's missing twin brother, this video is money.   Cash money.   Legal tender for all debts, public or private.
 

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-31  11:36:36

"Ghost" Is The New "Wolf"

In the distant past, about 15% of indie bands had "Tiger" in their names, their album titles, or the titles of their songs.  Last year, indie trendsetters discarded the flamboyant, possibly communist feline for the shadowy "Wolf," eyes glowing out of the beyond-campfire dark.  Continuing the trend towards bumpy nightenthings, the hackles stand up behind "Wolf's" ears before it bolts for its den, having tasted fear for the first time when "Ghost" brushed by on his way down to the moor.

Posted by Hip E.  2007-01-31  09:03:34

Varietals IV

Pure Being is pure abstraction and consequently absolute negation, which taken in its immediate moment is also non-being.

                                                                        -Martin Heidegger 

#11

Last Saturday was The Quail's birthday (observed).  I was having a good time and getting mightily drunk until about 20 minutes into our sojourn at the Noc Noc Tavern in Lower Haight.  After finally finding a place to sit, I proposed an intellectual pursuit that would dome-inate me for about one drunk hour: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. 

At first Hip and Lisa and I were playing together.  And by 'at first', I mean for about 15 seconds.  Hip and Lisa quickly recognized the game as something that was not proper to play in a highly intoxicated state, so they quickly moved on to "talking" and "having fun."  I, on the other hand, continued to play the game repeatedly in my own head -- making up starting actors or actresses and trying to trace them back to Kevin Bacon.  My central problem was that I could only remember three Kevin Bacon movies.  The first one was Tremors, which was a blind alley because I couldn't remember the names of any of the other actors in that movie.  The second was A River Runs Through It, which was important because it gave me Meryl Streep (sweet, sweet Meryl Streep), my only connection to Kevin Bacon.  Finally, I thought of Stir of Echoes, but could not think of anyone else in that otherwise forgettable movie. 

So basically I was trying to work out from Streep and then back to Bacon.  But the problem was that I would get two movies out and then forget where I had come from: "Streep was in Adaptation with Malkovich, Malkovich was in Con Air with John Cusack, Cusack was in High Fidelity with Jack Black .... and then ... wait wait, who was in Con Air with Malkovich?"  I just sat clutching my beer and staring straight ahead or trying to snuff everything by putting my hands on my ears and facing the bar's grimey floor while I contemplated what the hell Diane Weist had to do with drinking at this bar right now.  At one point I tenuously connected Susan Sarandon with Susan Sarandon without connecting to Bacon.  That one was annoying.

P.S.: Patsy spilled about 4 beers during the course of the evening.  Good.  Deal.

#12

And now we'll talk about The Freestyle.  Before we went out to Noc Noc for The Quail's birthday, we went to Rosie's apartment and chilled, ate mini hamburgers, chilled, drank champagne, tried to fall backwards onto our hands, chilled, and freestyled.  The latter activity was unusual, especially for me.  But at one point Reid, one of Rosie's friends, and I started freestyling to some random song.  It was weird.  Afterward, people kept saying that I did well, but I really think they were lying because I was pretty terrible.  Although I do remember spitting some lines about Isaac Brock getting fat after the drugs.  Sort of a latter-day Eminem, but more indie.  Maybe I am a good freestyler. 

#13

Aaah, good old Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.  I almost forgot about him.  Here's a clip from one of his latest Hollywood Squares appearances.   It's almost as funny for Triumph as it is for how surreally-pathetic the contestant is and how lame Kathy Griffin must feel that a novelty puppet is 500% as talented as she is.

Okay, and while I'm at it, here is the Christmas Cheer episode from Robert Smigel's short-lived, brilliant Comedy Central Show "TV Funhouse". This may be the funniest 22 minutes ever committed to celluloid. 

Posted by Shark  2007-01-27   11:08:51

Review Review - Please Grammar Don't Hurt 'Em

Shark, Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
[The Jo-Tel; 2007]
Rating: 8.2

For a man who not only accomplished the mind-blowing feat of graduating from college but also made it through law school - er, I mean the "College of the Law " - Shark sure manages to make a hell of a lot of grammatical gaffes in his review of Deerhoof's latest album. 

I don't mean to make some sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, but it seems to me that if you can make it through four years at Berkeley and three more at Hastings, you should probably be able to spell "quirk", "undergird", and "Reveille".  I won't even get into mastery of the possessive!  But what do I know - I never graduated from college. 

Also, Shark utilizes the most over-used (and almost as often misused) word in the World of Music Reviewery: "opus".  Despite vehemently condemning the absurd and meaningless phrase "prog-rock opus" a week earlier on this very blog (and rightly so), he needlessly throws in "opus" to describe Deerhoof's previous release (The Runner Four). 

Why, Shark?!  Why, damn you, WHY?!  

What happened to the beautiful, less-used synonyms of sweet, sweet "opus"?  The lonely "oeuvre", the neglected "composition", even the lowly "piece" and "work"... all of them so descriptive, none of them so trite.  Perhaps you meant to use "magnum opus"... that would've been a fair statement, and you would've saved sweet "opus" from the vicious triteness of Lexical Limbo.  Whatever your reasoning may have been, it remains a (midnight bicycle) mystery to me. 

All grammar aberrations aside, it's an honest review, and it's accurate in its conclusions that Deerhoof kicks ass, that punk kicks ass, and that sending a Deerhoof pin or shirt to The Jo-Tel for Shark to rock is a kick-ass idea.

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-26  12:50:04

Must... buy... furniture

This guy is a modern day Frankie & Johnny (if you're from New Orleans and like 25 or older, you remember the old "Letta have it!" commercials F&J had back in the day...).

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-25  17:07:33

Deerhoof Insists on Continuing To Kick Ass

Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
(Kill Rock Stars; unreleased)
Rating: 8.4

Deerhoof took up the difficult task of not making a 33 minute 10-song album seem somehow lesser than their last album, a 20-song opus to kicking rock-and-roll ass.  That Friend Opportunity does so admirably at this task probably means that it's the better album, but let's not go that far just yet.  As will be inevitably said when this album when it is released tomorrow, these Deerhoof's songs resemble the band's earlier work on Revielle and Apple O': bare bones, off-kilter, quirck-rock.  The raw sound belies the intelligent arrangements.  And where The Runner Four hid that raw sound beneath 70's rock reverb and such, Friend Opp lays it out for all to see again.

But what's kept me a super-fan of Deerhoof is the punk mentality that undergirdes all of their songs.  Flash, bravado, not caring are each exemplified in songs like "The Galaxist", wherein Deerhoof build to a sublime guitar-based melody in the first 30 seconds only to let it drop and not get picked up again for the rest of the song. What's important is the fleeting, flashing idea, not constructing some elaborate song-structure around it to present to the world.  Which is fine if its done well obviously, but it's refreshing to not have it done every once in a while: to have the listener do the connecting and the remembering.  That's why I feel like punk is/was a type of music famous for the loyalty of its followers.  Sigur Ros is probably a better band than Black Flag or Bouncing Souls, but there are probably 5 dudes with Sigur Ros pins and 500,000 dudes with Black Flags pins.  (I once considered putting a NOFX sticker on my Dad's car, that's how much I liked NOFX.)  To exemplify this idea, please send a Deerhoof pin or shirt to the jo-tel and I will take a picture of myself rocking it.  Thanks!

Posted by Shark  2007-01-22   20:09:07

Top Five Combinations of Music and Literature, To Me

Quite simply these are my top five favorite instances of when an album became intertwined with a novel or book of poetry.  Usually the connection initially occurs randomly.  Then the natural synchronicity forces me to obsessively require that I listened to the album whenever I read the book.  Plus, this is another one of those posts where I show off "how smart I am."  Sorry Puma.  

P.S.: I don't think I'm smarter than anyone.  In fact, I'm quite absent-minded.  For instance, today I forgot my lunch. 

5.  Breathturn by Paul Celan    &    Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet

YOU MAY confidently
regale me with snow:
as often as I strode through summer
shoulder to shoulder with the mulberry tree,
its youngest leaf
shrieked.

begins the first cycle of Paul Celan's Breathturn, telescoping the word 'shrieked' as it jumps strangely from a 'young leaf' - like Paul Celan, whose parents were killed during WWII.  Where does the short poem go after striding through summer and passing the mulberry tree?  To a young leaf that shrieks and then to the next poem: like when you wonder where Palimpset II"'s lulling drone is heading when your iPod's imperfect programming causes a turning-of-the-page like hiccup on its transition into "Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight": just like the moon-pulled rhythm of "Palimspet II" before it: just like who's to say that

BY THE UNDEREAMT etched,
the sleeplessly wandered-through breadland
cast up the life mountain.

From its crumb
you knead anew our names,
which I, an eye
similar
to your's on each finger
probe for
a place, through which I
can wake toward you
the bright
hungercandle in mouth.

is any different than

YOU MAY confidently
regale me with snow:
as often as I strode through summer
shoulder to shoulder with the mulberry tree,
its youngest leaf
shrieked.

? 

Exactly perfect.

4.  The Stand by Stephen King     &    Aerosmith's Greatest Hits (older version)

This one is wrapped up in the nostalgia (read: terrible angels!) of youth, back when, upon finishing all the Crichton novels (except Jasper Johns), I turned to Stephen King's daunting catalog.  I never got through all of them (Cujo just seemed silly), but I did respectably, including completing the uncut, 1,000 some-odd page The Stand.  I forced myself to really like it, even though I only sort of liked it because when you're that young and you've just read 1,000 some-odd pages of something, you're not jaded enough to disrespect the object of your own accomplishment. 

But every night before I began reading I would play the song "Kings and Queens", still one of my favorite Aerosmith songs -- it's Aerosmith's "'39" to Queen's ... "'39" (how should I have phrased that ...).  Often I'd let the rest of the album play too.  "Back in the Saddle" was usually a nice mix with King's bravado prose.  But the mystical nature of "Kings and Queen"'s themes, filtered through Aerosmith's bread and butter rock, matched the surreal realism of King's end-of-days novel brilliantly such that now, when I hear that song, it's impossible not think of the Trashcan Man, riding that nuke right into the heart of the devil!

3.  The Charterhouse of Parma by Stedhal     &    Brian Eno's Another Green World

I often daydream that I am a successful movie director.  The storyline of one of my recurring reveries is that I make my career doing filmic renditions of novels that no one else has the talent to convey to the screen.  (Of course, I usually don't settle for a literalist approach (e.g. Barry Lyndon), but use the material as a springboard to my own tangential artistic statement.)  At some point late in my dream career, I decide that I want to film The Charterhouse at Parma by Stendhal, but won't do it unless I can use the songs from Another Green World, which I listened to in tandem with reading Charterhouse.  I would pick up the phone and call my secretary/personal assistance and say, "Get me Eno! Tell him I want to make a picture with his music. ... No, not Music for Films, Another Green World ... I know, I know ... just make it happen!"  Of course I would not overuse "The Big Ship". 

My last movie would be The Castle, and it would end abruptly in the middle of a reel.  It will be a Kafkaesque cornerstone to a brilliant career. 

2.  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner    &    Iron and Wine's The Creek Drank the Cradle

Let me set the scene for you:

It's sunny September 2005 in San Francisco.  I had taken the California bar exam in late July.  A few weeks after, I departed on a trip to Lake Shasta in a rented PT Cruiser with Hip E, Inga, and Patsy to meet up with a massive group of Oregonians.  I was driving when the car crashed and flipped over three times on Interstate 5. 

Ten hours later, I found myself on a houseboat drinking beers with an uninjured Hip E, Inga, and Patsy and all I had to show for it was some glass cuts on my knuckles and a new appreciation for life.  Upon returning home I prepared a mix CD called "Everyone on the Raft!", whose title epitomized the casually absurd nature of our existence on this thin raft.

Also, upon returning, I commenced worrying that Hip and I would have to pay for the cost of the totaled PT Cruiser.  You see, Hip was the only listed driver on the rental form. 

So it's September, height of the Indian summer: a San Francisco so sunny that it doesn't seem real, more like a nostalgically enhanced San Francisco that only exists in memories - that place where you left your heart when you get in your car to leave San Francisco for Los Angeles on that rainy February morning.  And there I was: the sun coming in on me through my apartment window, a six pack of Rolling Rock at my feet, an assortment of highlighters and pens laying in the dented arm rest of my disgusting couch, reading The Sound and the Fury and listening to The Creek Drank the Cradle.  Occasionally I would smoke an uncharacteristic cigarette because for some reason I wanted to destroy myself.  The highlighters were to bracket shifts in time in the Benjy section. 

I had opted to let alcohol and intellectual pursuits distract me from worrying about maybe having to pay for the car.  The result was an increased tolerance for alcohol and a bitchingly annotated version of The Sound and the Fury.

Then one day I got a call from my parents’ insurance rep at AAA who informed me that I would not have to pay for the car.  A few days later I remember hearing the song "Bird Stealing Bread" from The Creek Drank the Cradle and thinking immediately of Quentin wandering the streets of Cambridge with two flat irons and a sweet pastry in his bag; he would use the irons to drown himself and the pastry was for eating. 

A few months afterward I pulled the last piece of windshield glass from my knuckles.

1.  Man's Fate by Aldre Malraux     &     Radiohead's Hail to the Thief

As such, Hail to the Thief is a terrible title for an album.  Similarly, Man's Fate is a terrible translation of La Condition Humaine, the actual French title of Malraux's novel. 

But this whole music and literature combination thing is really about personal choice.  I could try to exploit the phenomenon and try to pick an album for every book I read, but that would take the serendipity away from the whole endeavor.  Why does the song "Poison Summer" remind me impossibly of Tennessee?  I won't go into the details.  How about how Pink Floyd’s "Hey You" = my grandfather's porch?  More details.  Why are you reading this?  I'm drunk right now, and I can’t think of good things to write about to describe how awesome it was when that character in Man's Fate chucked the bomb out the window during the raid of Shiaghai while the Radiohead album in my ear sang "We suck yoooooouuuuuuuunnnng blood" and I ignored various happenings in the kitchen of my apartment.  My goodness, existence is fortuitous!

As such, "Wolf at the Door" is a terrible way to end an album.  Similarly, a puff of opium smoke is a terrible last scene for La Condition Humaine, the actual French title of Malraux's novel.

Posted by Shark  2007-01-18  22:24:33

Interwebs Rediscovery of the Week: The Funny Eddie Murphy

Long before Eddie Murphy was winning awards for playing a character based on James Brown, he was impersonating the late Godfather of Soul on Saturday Night Live.  The impression was spot-on and undeniably funny.  But one of Murphy's all-time funniest skits on SNL - and one of his all-time funniest moments - was his appearance as Tyrone Green.  If you've never seen this brilliant sketch before, let me be the first to say, "Welcome to Wonderland." 

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-18  15:46:54

Overheard From The Peanut Gallery

HIP E.: Hey, that'd be a good one: peeing in the butt! 

SHARK: Hip E., you REALLY haven't watched a lot of porn.  Jesus!" 

Posted by The Quail  2007-01-15  11:03:58

Ten Overused Terms of Music Criticism

Politics has platitutes and storytelling has cliches.  And music criticism has these painfully hackneyed turns of phrase that let you know that the reviewer is on auto-pilot.  When writing about music, "just say no" to the following:

hooks

Don't get me started.  There are many types of "hooks":

arena-sized hooks
massive hooks
delicate hooks
hook-filled
hook-ridden

just to name a few.  A hook is basically a catchy change in melody.  That's my best understanding of it.  A worthy event to have a name for.  But I think we can all agree to the word 'hook' is just sort of totally annoying.

EXAMPLE: "Lovable and smart, these post-nerds make loud, gloriously hook-ridden pop." --Emusic (review of The Decemberists, Picaresque )

And the adjective 'hooky' is just about the worst word ever created in the history of the world.  I will stop reading any review the moment the word 'hooky' is used.  If you ever use the word 'hooky' in a review then it's just not going to work out between us.  We can't be friends.

EXAMPLE: "DJ Sandeep Kumar remixes "Toura Toura" into a sinuous, understatedly hooky bhangra groove: The gruff, resonant gnawa singing of Brahim Elbelkani engages in an incantatory call-and-response with a chorus of female singers from Maghreb."  --Brian Howe, Pitchfork (track review of Cheb i Sabbah, "Toura Toura: The Nav Deep Remix by DJ Sandeep Kumar")

sonic assault

If a music critic refers to any album's 'sonic assault', there is a 99% chance that the album will be really boring.  Exciting music that makes you want to smash stuff never deploys a 'sonic assult', a moniker that is inappropriately reserved for well-produced albums that sound good in headphones.

EXAMPLE: "The album places heartfelt, building, and graceful songs between their moments of sheer sonic assault – resulting in a breathing, dramatic album that pulls at the heart-strings them blows them all away."  --Chris Andrews, Stylus (review of Spaceman 3, Playing with Fire)

stunning debut

No real problems with this except its rampant overuse.  Just find a different adjective to modify a good debut.  And not 'competant'.

EXAMPLE: "We sit down with half of North America's best new indie rock band to discuss their stunning debut LP and being constantly bracketed with Modest Mouse and the Arcade Fire."  --Pitchfork, preamble to Wolf Parade interview. 

sophmore slump

This term is now 100% meaningless because it is used just as often to describe bands that have "avoided the sophmore slump" as it is for bands that have "fallen pray to the sophmore slump."  Can we just start calling them bad second albums?  Thx.

EXAMPLE:  "Keane avoids sophomore slump with Under the Iron Sea." --Jenna Wright, University of Rhode Island, Opinions

tricky third album

The way people talk about second and third albums, you'd think that most bands would want to Super-Mario-Brothers-warp to the fourth album.  I mean, after Everything Is, Neutral Milk Hotel would have been better off to avoid the sophmore slump album (On Avery Island) and bypass that tricking third album (IAAOTS) and just skip right to the promised lands of the fourth album ("[This album does not exist.]")

EXAMPLE: "Chalee really started to hit her stride with her last album "This Woman's Heart", which included the fantastic "Go Back" single and I was a bit worried about the "traditionally tricky" third album that has appeared as "Parading In The Rain".  [P] Well - I can now rest easy!!" --funkiboi34, Amazon.com (review of Chalee Tennison, Parading in the Rain)

loose concept album

I admire the meaning here, but when you get right down to it, it's hard to find an album that doesn't have a few loose themes floating around.  Using this word is like that annoying part of any high school English class where the professor lists all the themes in Hamlet, including a "garden theme" because gardens are mentioned twice.  Silly. 

EXAMPLE: It's a loose concept album -- often inscrutable, but still playful -- about espionage, the Chinese Communist revolution, and dream associations, with the more stream-of-consciousness lyrics beginning to resemble the sorts of random connections made in dream states.  --Allmusic (review of Brian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy)

alt-rock

This term means nothing.  Think about it.

EXAMPLE: "There is more ‘90s manly-man alt-rock here than anything else.... But it’s really strong ‘90s manly-man alt-rock."  --Aaron Newell, Cokemachineglow (review of Wintersleep, Untitled)

prog-rock opus

The crux of my hatred for this term is the over-use of the root term 'prog-rock' of late.  Basically every song that has some sort of brisque, repetitive keyboard is called prog-rock.  And thanks to the Fiery Furnaces, the very specific "prog-rock opus" tag is now deployed for basically every song of this type that is long.

EXAMPLE: "Though by no means a prog-rock opus, the album indulges in pedals, loops, and yes, keyboards and synths, to brilliant effect, while retaining all of the pop immediacy, compositional integrity and acute lyricism of its predecessor." --Chris Ott, Pitchfork (Top Albums of the 70s blurb for Wire, Chairs Missing)

tuneful melodies

This redundant phrase attempts to distinquish tuneful melondies for tuneless melodies.  Bring me my dictionary!

MELODY (n.): a sweet or agreeable succession or arrangement of sounds : TUNEFULNESS

Oh the superfluity!  Strunk and White would be so upset!

EXAMPLE: "It's hard to believe that singer/songwriter Freddie Long had already found local fame with his tuneful melodies and introspective lyrics even before he walked across the stage to graduate from high school." --iSound (review of some crap by a band called The Freddie Long Band)

EXAMPLE: "Also featuring Tom Carter of Charalambides, Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans, and Rob Fisk of 7 Year Rabbit Cycle (who was Chasny’s partner on the last Badgerlore album), Stories for Owls percussion-less jams are far more ethereal and mercurial than Six Organs’ John Fahey-inspired roots ragas, and they miss Comets on Fire’s electric boogaloo by a country mile." --Andrew Goering, Stylus Magazine (review of Badgerlore, Stories for Owls)

As for 'funereal', I have no problem with this word being used to descibe a song that has the quality of a dirge or requiem.  But when it's used to describe an album that have the word funeral in it? --- then using 'funereal' is just a low-life's way of showing that they know the adjective form of 'funeral':

EXAMPLE: "Montreal's big buzz band did a sweet set on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday, reworking some of their more bombastic funereal anthems into gentle, chugging ballads." --Stereogum (news blurb on The Arcade Fire's NPR set)

This is like calling The Wall, "wall-esque" or Metal Machine Music, "metal machine music-y."

(UPDATE: I found this after I wrote the above satirical examples: "That said, it's quite possible that Rock 'n' Roll might just be a giant Metal Machine Music-esque 'fuck you' to Lost Highway." -Josh Love, Stylus Magazine (review of Ryan Adams, Rock N Roll))

Posted by Shark  2007-01-13  13:32:30

V-Day: Storming the South Beach

JULES: My girlfriend's a vegetarian. Which pretty much makes me a vegetarian.
                                                                                                                           - Pulp Fiction

When I first met Patsy, a large segment of her diet consisted of foods like "candy" and "the worst foods ever".  After a lunch of Sour-Patch kids and Abba Zabbas Patsy might compensate with a healthy dinner of ramon noodles, followed by the rewarded of two servings of cookies and cream ice cream.  Or after a nutritious lunch of "peanut butter and jelly sandwich", she might splurge with a dinner of pizza, bud light, Jack Daniels, and squirt.  Plus, no breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuts, hash browns, and gravy is compete without an icey Coca-Cola. 

Somehow, despite these dietary habits, Patsy was not fat.  Yet, I still insisted on fastidiously critiquing (siqa-siqa-siqa) slim Patsy's choice of foods.  As a result, her friends began to cast tacit aspersions upon my character (a curt comment here, an eyebrow raised there), misconstruing my concern with Patsy's diet for a pure and unadulterated interest in goading Patsy to lose weight - a message that they believed was causing her to acquire the dreaded "complex." 

Not to belittle the idea of psychological eating disorders, but if a "complex" is a mental reflex that lashes out against eating unhealthy food like "Flaming-Hot Cheetos", then I think a "complex" is a good thing to have.  We could re-term this "complex" as: "good eating habits" or "healthy self-restraint". 

The actual impetus behind my push toward healthy eating does not directly associate with a desire to foster thinness in myself or anyone else whose eating habits I take an interest in.  I firmly believe that eating healthier, more protein-rich food improves one's energy, stamina, and mental state.  That all sounds very new-agey but it's application is actually quite awesome and cool.  Just think about how grimy and bloated you feel after eating a fast-food meal.  By eating less greasy, fattening, empty-carb-filled food, you can eradicate that feeling in all of its manifestations, even those that you can't feel at the moment. 

Now, don't get me wrong, the desire to maintain a healthy weight is also a factor.  The most common weight pattern for people is this: (1) you are thin when you are young despite what you eat because you have a super-high metabolism; as a result, you (2) become accustom to eating unhealthy foods because they don't make you fat; then you (3) continue to eat the same unhealthy food and start to get pudgy by the time you're 33.  So a thin person eating healthy is not just about being thinner NOW, but about implementing habits that will stave off mild to serious obesity later on. 

Finally, full disclosure: I obviously eat poorly too. All the time.  But I'm trying to get better (South Beach diet is actually pretty solid).  But let it be known, that reducing alcohol intake is never, NEVER an acceptable form of dieting. 

Posted by Shark  2007-01-12  16:07:32

Hip E.'s Top Five Shark's Top 20 Songs of 2006 Pinturas

Click on the picture to hear some kind of version of each track.  But this post is about the pictures. 

5. 
     #11  Peter, Bjorn and John  "The Chills"  by Patsy

4. 
     #5  Man Man  "Van Helsing Boombox"  by Johnny D.

3. 
     #1  Girl Talk   "Night Ripper" (entire album)  by Shark

2. 
     #17  The Mountain Goats  "Woke Up New"  by Hip E.

1. 
     #13  The Envelopes  "It Is the Law"  by Patso

Posted by Hip E.  2007-01-08   08:02:55

P.S.  I added the rare and highly sought-after picture of the pizza box representing Tapes 'N Tapes's "Ten Gallon Ascot" in Shark's Top 20 Songs of 2006 post.  Scroll down. 

Cheating in the Great War

     In February she had an experience of quite a different sort.  Tudor Baird, an ancient flame, a young man whom at one time she had fully intended to marry, came to New York by way of the Aviation Corps, and called upon her.  They went several times to the theatre, and within a week, to her great enjoyment, he was as much in love with her as ever.  Quite deliberately she brought it about, realizing too late that she had done a mischief.  He reached the point of sitting with her in miserable silence whenever they went out together.  

     A Scroll and Keys man at Yale, he possessed the correct reticences of a "good egg," the correct notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige - and, of course, but unfortunately, the correct biases and the correct lack of ideas - all those traits which Anthony had taught her to despise, but which, nevertheless, she rather admired.  Unlike the majority of his type, she found that he was not a bore.  He was handsome, witty in a light way, and when she was with him she felt that because of some quality he possessed - call it stupidity, loyalty, sentimentality, or something not quite as definite as any of the three - he would have done anything in his power to please her.

     He told her this among other things, very correctly and with a ponderous manliness that masked a real suffering.  Loving him not at all she grew sorry for him and kissed him sentimentally one night because he was so charming, a relic of a vanishing generation which lived a priggish and graceful illusion and was being replaced by less gallant fools.  Afterward she was glad she had kissed him, for next day when his plane fell fifteen hundred feet at Mineola a piece of a gasolene engine smashed through his heart.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Posted by Hip E.  2007-01-04  12:55:07

Some People are Totally Retarded: Joanna Newsom Concert Review, pt. 2

Next to me at the concert was this couple. The guy - tall and with a pronounced mustache - looked like an indie Borat and the girl - sinewy brunnette with an aquiline nose - looked like a double indie Eleanor Freidberger. 

Before the show, I took advantage of my being alone to eavesdrop with all of my attention on their conversation.  And, by the way, for someone who hates most reality TV, I do love me some real-life eavesdropping.  I adduced from the nature of the conversation that they were on their second or third-ish date.  Probably made out before, maybe some prior heavy petting. Things were going well enough, but the guy was laying it on thick with regard to the petting.  During the conversation he was sort of caressing her arm.  They when the show started he commenced his full-throttle love grappling, grasping her around the waist and restricting her movements to gentle swaying.  At the same time, he engaged in ceaseless attempts to caress various parts of her body: hair, arm, waist, and more.  About two minutes into "Bridges & Balloons" he oh-so-lovingly kissed her on the check from behind.  It was revolting.  He attempted another kiss during "Sadie" and probably many more that I was fortunate enough to not witness.  Double indie Eleanor was starting to get visibly perturbed once Newsom started in on Ys, plainly choosing to not return any of indie Borat's affectionate affectations.  By "Only Skin" things had gone horribly wrong for indie Borat, as double indie Eleanor made a forced break from his clutches.  Distanced indie Borat was left to lean against the pillar and gaze longing at double indie Eleanor, his addled mind perhaps thinking, "If only I could have caressed her more vigorously. Then she'd be mine right now." 

Perhaps he did attempt to reconnect via carressing because by the culmination of the show double indie Eleanor had managed to carve out a more extensive buffer between her and indie Borat.  And this is where I left them before making my way to the merch booth to purchase what, in the darkness of the music hall, looked like a grayish Joanna Newsom concert T-Shirt for Patsy's brother (the shirt ended up actually being urine yellow). 

Posted by Shark  2007-01-03  17:49:47

Comments:

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