30 January 2007
28 January 2007
25 January 2007
What Are You Listening to January
At the Gates-Slaughter of the Soul- I've only heard this once but it pinned my sagging ass to the ground with a bazooka staple gun. The Laughing Hyenas of the hybrid metal/hardcore crowd, and I don't throw that name around lightly. Unless someone's holding.
Vic Chesnutt- Little- this is his first, and still a huge favorite. His story about trying to pull that animal out of his childhood trap still works, and every song has its own emotional and melodic hook. For how many years am I gonna have to pimp this talent before the tin-eared fucks of cyberland take proper notice? That many more?
Thee Headcoats- Conundrum- I'm a liar in just three short moves. "garage rock" for people with murder in their hearts. But still garage rock. Garage rock. Yea.
Electric Wizard- Dopethrone- everything points towards me asking my students for dope in the near future. Can anyone save my job by sending some tasty buds post-haste? My family thanks you for all you've done to keep them off the registers.
Black Sabbath- the first four records- a real discovery for the grizzler, taking me back to the Newport days and neighbors whose hair used to fly like the tops of tornadoes on a Kansas morning of destruction. Ozzy was really something once, but Iommi, oh my... Who knew in the halcyon days of punk certainty?
Didjits- Hey Judester- how this has held up. Yea, they frontload their records, but what a frontload. Ain't those first six minutes enough to grant them the keys to the kingdom? "Oh Dad you're so gnarly, you drove a Harley..." Ya fucker...
Montrose- S/T- undeniable cheese before indie sensibility existed to call it cheesy- this just rocks- the heavy mozz, a younger Sam, just bang it up and down, and give the fuck in...
Rolling Stones- Between the Buttons- Ain't life grand? If you ain't a total completist nerdozoid you can still find nuggets in your favorite band's discographies. Here is the evidence, and I've got the stupid smile to prove it. OK, when I was 16 I could track down and analyze every release, but now I have beer to drink in my 1 1/2 hours of free time.
Steppenwolf- S/T- OK, so you're sick of Born to be Wild- I feel your pain. Get past the obvious, the immediate, and find the nuggets beneath.
At the Gates-Slaughter of the Soul- I've only heard this once but it pinned my sagging ass to the ground with a bazooka staple gun. The Laughing Hyenas of the hybrid metal/hardcore crowd, and I don't throw that name around lightly. Unless someone's holding.
Vic Chesnutt- Little- this is his first, and still a huge favorite. His story about trying to pull that animal out of his childhood trap still works, and every song has its own emotional and melodic hook. For how many years am I gonna have to pimp this talent before the tin-eared fucks of cyberland take proper notice? That many more?
Thee Headcoats- Conundrum- I'm a liar in just three short moves. "garage rock" for people with murder in their hearts. But still garage rock. Garage rock. Yea.
Electric Wizard- Dopethrone- everything points towards me asking my students for dope in the near future. Can anyone save my job by sending some tasty buds post-haste? My family thanks you for all you've done to keep them off the registers.
Black Sabbath- the first four records- a real discovery for the grizzler, taking me back to the Newport days and neighbors whose hair used to fly like the tops of tornadoes on a Kansas morning of destruction. Ozzy was really something once, but Iommi, oh my... Who knew in the halcyon days of punk certainty?
Didjits- Hey Judester- how this has held up. Yea, they frontload their records, but what a frontload. Ain't those first six minutes enough to grant them the keys to the kingdom? "Oh Dad you're so gnarly, you drove a Harley..." Ya fucker...
Montrose- S/T- undeniable cheese before indie sensibility existed to call it cheesy- this just rocks- the heavy mozz, a younger Sam, just bang it up and down, and give the fuck in...
Rolling Stones- Between the Buttons- Ain't life grand? If you ain't a total completist nerdozoid you can still find nuggets in your favorite band's discographies. Here is the evidence, and I've got the stupid smile to prove it. OK, when I was 16 I could track down and analyze every release, but now I have beer to drink in my 1 1/2 hours of free time.
Steppenwolf- S/T- OK, so you're sick of Born to be Wild- I feel your pain. Get past the obvious, the immediate, and find the nuggets beneath.
Dinosaur Jr.- Ear-Bleeding Country- if you did not do the 80's indie geetar drug thang and buy every Dino record and worship it with all your time and psychedelic energy, well, here is your chance to nostaligia up and K-Tel your fucking loser self. Greatest melodic hits that will never, ever match Living All Over You in a Campbell studio with one candle, two blocks of ice and three sixers of King Cobra.
23 January 2007
So I'm at home watching the kids while the wife does another Somerset din din with the girls on a night when the Black Lips and the Gris Gris and the Hank IV play their respective versions of rock music to a mostly nodding but desperately trying to boogie Tuesday night audience. I'm sure large adjectives will be posted on Internet boards and I'm sure that those words will vaguely represent the occasional emotional states and visual perspectives of the posters. And I'm sure I'd have enjoyed it, in a vacuum, but that soundless, responsibilityless tunnel is a mythological void these days, and one I best yield to the young. It's happened. I'm one of those people, at least tonight I am.
Me? I just put the buggers down and I'm listening to Electric Wizard's Dopethrone. It's supposed to be heavy. Perhaps it is. Mostly, I have gas from too much frozen pizza and microwave popcorn. It was, after all, State of the Union night. The Sharks are off for the All-Star Break and I saw enough of the SOTU to know that post-script reading analysis is unnecessary. I have maybe another hour to read or watch TV or stare out the window, so maybe I'll have some ice cream and then stare at the ceiling for awhile.
I read an article today by a professor arguing that an existential approach to the world is life-affirming, a view with which I happen to wholeheartedly agree. The author was Robert Solomon, a prof at UT-Austin, a guy who gained the briefest celebrity by appearing in Richard Linklater's Waking Life, and a man who has delivered a number of Teaching Company lecture series that I've enjoyed. At the end of the article, the brief bio said that Robert Solomon was... Turns out he dropped dead in a Swiss airport three weeks ago. I got into my car and popped in the lecture tape and there was his disembodied voice, which took on an eerie resonance in the light of his death. I felt very strange, like the time I read Fred Exley had died. I don't know what any of this means. Maybe living life up to the hilt has nothing to do with going to rock music shows on Tuesday nights. Maybe it means trying to understand our mortality and what qualitative journeys to the hilt might be. I'm going for a glass of lemonade.
Me? I just put the buggers down and I'm listening to Electric Wizard's Dopethrone. It's supposed to be heavy. Perhaps it is. Mostly, I have gas from too much frozen pizza and microwave popcorn. It was, after all, State of the Union night. The Sharks are off for the All-Star Break and I saw enough of the SOTU to know that post-script reading analysis is unnecessary. I have maybe another hour to read or watch TV or stare out the window, so maybe I'll have some ice cream and then stare at the ceiling for awhile.
I read an article today by a professor arguing that an existential approach to the world is life-affirming, a view with which I happen to wholeheartedly agree. The author was Robert Solomon, a prof at UT-Austin, a guy who gained the briefest celebrity by appearing in Richard Linklater's Waking Life, and a man who has delivered a number of Teaching Company lecture series that I've enjoyed. At the end of the article, the brief bio said that Robert Solomon was... Turns out he dropped dead in a Swiss airport three weeks ago. I got into my car and popped in the lecture tape and there was his disembodied voice, which took on an eerie resonance in the light of his death. I felt very strange, like the time I read Fred Exley had died. I don't know what any of this means. Maybe living life up to the hilt has nothing to do with going to rock music shows on Tuesday nights. Maybe it means trying to understand our mortality and what qualitative journeys to the hilt might be. I'm going for a glass of lemonade.
Why I generally walk away more than vaguely dissatisfied from most shows.
And not just cuz I'm really fucking old.
And not just cuz I'm really fucking old.
18 January 2007
15 January 2007
If you're looking for book ideas, a few minor chuckles and a breezy afternoon read, you might want to check out one of two collections of Nick Hornby's Believer columns on his monthly attempt to keep up with the books he buys. Hornby, in what many must think is a justification for his own style, is an aggressive critic of "literary fiction," which he would generally describe as having overblown prose and lacking compelling plots. I have my sympathies. That said, I'd rather wallow through William Gass's gassy, meandering genius than read a single page of Hornby's last book, which is awful. What Hornby really wants to do is attack established literary standards for greatness, in which difficulty trumps directness. He also wants reading to be fun. Of course, part of the fun of reading is ripping something after you've hated it, but he's not allowed to do that because the Believer has a "no snark" policy, which leaves him with only the running gag of tamely and harmlessly taking ping pong ball shot at the Polysyllabic Spree that is the Believer editorial board. It gets old after awhile. I think he also wants to make people feel better about the fact that they don't read all the books they buy, and they don't "get" all the books that the big boys have told him they must in order to be in the highbrow literary club.
The good: I've discovered a number of books from Hornby that I've gone on to read and enjoy. The bad: the man is just a little too folksy for my mean-spirited sensibility. Given, however, how formless and disconnected this ten minutes of morning writing has gone, perhaps I should be a little more generous.
The good: I've discovered a number of books from Hornby that I've gone on to read and enjoy. The bad: the man is just a little too folksy for my mean-spirited sensibility. Given, however, how formless and disconnected this ten minutes of morning writing has gone, perhaps I should be a little more generous.
12 January 2007
The Final Bed
If I were looking for a pithy and summary allusion for Philip Roth's latest, Everyman, I might turn to Spinal Tap ("none more black"), Macbeth ("...a tale told by an idiot...signifying nothing") or my old man ("Getting old sucks."). That's right, Roth's doing mortality this time, and when he stares into the abyss he sees nothing. No blue lights. No redemption through the lives of his children. He is "assailed by remorse not just for this mistake but for all his mistakes, all the ineradicable, stupid, inescapable mistakes- swept away by the misery of his limitations yet acting as if life's every incomprehensible contingency were of his making." Old age means only that the body deteriorates in humiliating ways and you can no longer do the things that make life worth living. As religion is a child's game, death means only to lie in dirt as the flesh disintegrates and the skeleton awaits animals or tractors. No lessons to pass on. No words of encouragement. Only the glimmering memory of a young boy in the ocean riding waves and taking his body for granted, all that energy and no appreciation for it. At the end, one only wants to have another shot at it, to seduce one more short-skirted secretary, to run off to Paris with one more fashion model. This is an existentialism that comes too late. To stare into an unblinking and uncaring universe without flinching is to know that meaning is a human construct, a necessary delusion, a mythology we repeat like a mantra to make it seem grander than it is. It reminds me of Jake Barnes giving up any pursuit of life's meaning, and focusing only on how to live best in the world. To enjoy the warm sun on your back. The taste of a good beer and the exuberance of intoxication.
Roth's man is a prick of the first order and one it's hard to find any sympathy for as he laments at the end of his life. But the title transports the particular to the universal: if you live long enough, your body will humble you. If you look honestly at the gravedigger, you know he makes the only bed you'll ever have.
If I were looking for a pithy and summary allusion for Philip Roth's latest, Everyman, I might turn to Spinal Tap ("none more black"), Macbeth ("...a tale told by an idiot...signifying nothing") or my old man ("Getting old sucks."). That's right, Roth's doing mortality this time, and when he stares into the abyss he sees nothing. No blue lights. No redemption through the lives of his children. He is "assailed by remorse not just for this mistake but for all his mistakes, all the ineradicable, stupid, inescapable mistakes- swept away by the misery of his limitations yet acting as if life's every incomprehensible contingency were of his making." Old age means only that the body deteriorates in humiliating ways and you can no longer do the things that make life worth living. As religion is a child's game, death means only to lie in dirt as the flesh disintegrates and the skeleton awaits animals or tractors. No lessons to pass on. No words of encouragement. Only the glimmering memory of a young boy in the ocean riding waves and taking his body for granted, all that energy and no appreciation for it. At the end, one only wants to have another shot at it, to seduce one more short-skirted secretary, to run off to Paris with one more fashion model. This is an existentialism that comes too late. To stare into an unblinking and uncaring universe without flinching is to know that meaning is a human construct, a necessary delusion, a mythology we repeat like a mantra to make it seem grander than it is. It reminds me of Jake Barnes giving up any pursuit of life's meaning, and focusing only on how to live best in the world. To enjoy the warm sun on your back. The taste of a good beer and the exuberance of intoxication.
Roth's man is a prick of the first order and one it's hard to find any sympathy for as he laments at the end of his life. But the title transports the particular to the universal: if you live long enough, your body will humble you. If you look honestly at the gravedigger, you know he makes the only bed you'll ever have.
10 January 2007
River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny
If I read one more title like this I'm gonna spray the next publisher's party I'm not invited to with my new uzi. Gee, let's drop a coin on a topographical map and where it lands, well, there I'll go, all khaki and waterproof notepad laden, and I'll wrap my harrowing tale around my own conquered fears and the lessons I learned from the charming primitives, nobly detached from soul-crushing iPhones and the prison of rational thought. Watch me dribble out 18 pages on the nutritional value of the goochie fly, another 14 on the spiritual lessons of Papa Okiedo-key, mystical seer whose special bird is the crow, and yet another 27 on the river as life, destiny, journey, mystery, wet. Hey you mister, the one behind the desk with that wistful look of missing-out-on-it-all, longingly conjuring up middle-age plans for your VISIONQUEST dropout adventure that you'll turn into a bestselling meaning-of-life self help hardback that'll take you away from all of this and bring you the 14 splayed virgins your uniqueness and specialhood deserve but the bitch injustice of life has failed to deliver- GO FUCK YOURSELF!
If I read one more title like this I'm gonna spray the next publisher's party I'm not invited to with my new uzi. Gee, let's drop a coin on a topographical map and where it lands, well, there I'll go, all khaki and waterproof notepad laden, and I'll wrap my harrowing tale around my own conquered fears and the lessons I learned from the charming primitives, nobly detached from soul-crushing iPhones and the prison of rational thought. Watch me dribble out 18 pages on the nutritional value of the goochie fly, another 14 on the spiritual lessons of Papa Okiedo-key, mystical seer whose special bird is the crow, and yet another 27 on the river as life, destiny, journey, mystery, wet. Hey you mister, the one behind the desk with that wistful look of missing-out-on-it-all, longingly conjuring up middle-age plans for your VISIONQUEST dropout adventure that you'll turn into a bestselling meaning-of-life self help hardback that'll take you away from all of this and bring you the 14 splayed virgins your uniqueness and specialhood deserve but the bitch injustice of life has failed to deliver- GO FUCK YOURSELF!
06 January 2007
Fuck the Academy
Cormac got robbed. Just finished Richard Powers' National Book Award winning novel, The Echo Maker, and it was very much a Richard Powers novel- lotsa ideas, plenty of character exploration and zero plot. We have several characters swirling around a mysterious premise, but we have little narrative movement. When Mark Schluter rolls his truck and suffers brain damage, Powers takes off: what does it mean when our understanding of brain chemistry exceeds our own brain's capacities to best serve our knowledge? What if we discover that consciousness can be reduced to biology? What if we can scientifically show through brain research that, in the pithy words of religious types who like to battle such reduction, "Sorry, but your soul just died"?
It's the book's question, and Powers delves deep, digging into all the memory and identity issues like the good excavator that he is. Sadly, I cared little about the characters, and a few catalyzed my short-twitch violence muscles as if I were trying to buy sausage in North Berkeley. Cutsey dialogue is an ongoing curse with this brainiac, especially when smart people are trying to be whimsical. Otherwise, Powers is as he always is- fascinatingly intelligent, psychologically penetrating and poetically illuminating- he just can't plot. To award this above The Road in the fiction category is to reward philosophy above story. I was intrigued and annoyed and provoked by it, as I am by most Powers books, but it has none of the narrative power of McCarthy's miracle. The more I read novels, the more convinced I am that Dostoyevsky and Faulkner were freaks. What those two managed with language, character development, ideas and, say it loud and strong, STORY, is extraordinary given the failure of just about everybody since to approach their best. Light in August or The Idiot or, for a wild card, Bruce Duffy's The World As I Found It, the greatest debut of the last twenty-five years, are filled with wonderfully engaging big ideas, but they also grip you with rich and luscious stories.
This ain't no Powers bash, because it is a fine book, but as a novel, the lack of narrative drive gnaws. If you're interested in the revolutionary discoveries of neurochemistry and the potentialities that maybe there ain't no self there, no fixed identity, no soul or spirit, just a multitude of synaptic explosions with no grey matter captain, battling anarchically for control of a mythical will, then Powers is a helpful guide. But don't expect a lot of things to actually happen. Most of the novel takes place inside folks' troubled minds. Tuna would call it navel-gazing. I'll just call it normal life with a heavy dose of psychopharmacology, neurochemical philosophy, and cranes. Enter forewarned.
Cormac got robbed. Just finished Richard Powers' National Book Award winning novel, The Echo Maker, and it was very much a Richard Powers novel- lotsa ideas, plenty of character exploration and zero plot. We have several characters swirling around a mysterious premise, but we have little narrative movement. When Mark Schluter rolls his truck and suffers brain damage, Powers takes off: what does it mean when our understanding of brain chemistry exceeds our own brain's capacities to best serve our knowledge? What if we discover that consciousness can be reduced to biology? What if we can scientifically show through brain research that, in the pithy words of religious types who like to battle such reduction, "Sorry, but your soul just died"?
It's the book's question, and Powers delves deep, digging into all the memory and identity issues like the good excavator that he is. Sadly, I cared little about the characters, and a few catalyzed my short-twitch violence muscles as if I were trying to buy sausage in North Berkeley. Cutsey dialogue is an ongoing curse with this brainiac, especially when smart people are trying to be whimsical. Otherwise, Powers is as he always is- fascinatingly intelligent, psychologically penetrating and poetically illuminating- he just can't plot. To award this above The Road in the fiction category is to reward philosophy above story. I was intrigued and annoyed and provoked by it, as I am by most Powers books, but it has none of the narrative power of McCarthy's miracle. The more I read novels, the more convinced I am that Dostoyevsky and Faulkner were freaks. What those two managed with language, character development, ideas and, say it loud and strong, STORY, is extraordinary given the failure of just about everybody since to approach their best. Light in August or The Idiot or, for a wild card, Bruce Duffy's The World As I Found It, the greatest debut of the last twenty-five years, are filled with wonderfully engaging big ideas, but they also grip you with rich and luscious stories.
This ain't no Powers bash, because it is a fine book, but as a novel, the lack of narrative drive gnaws. If you're interested in the revolutionary discoveries of neurochemistry and the potentialities that maybe there ain't no self there, no fixed identity, no soul or spirit, just a multitude of synaptic explosions with no grey matter captain, battling anarchically for control of a mythical will, then Powers is a helpful guide. But don't expect a lot of things to actually happen. Most of the novel takes place inside folks' troubled minds. Tuna would call it navel-gazing. I'll just call it normal life with a heavy dose of psychopharmacology, neurochemical philosophy, and cranes. Enter forewarned.
04 January 2007
On Lucas's 6th birthday, let me give a hearty cheer to those who made the party a whopping success-
The good folks at Cybelle's, who never fail to undercook a pizza in dangerous ways.
Sam Cooke, who breeds smiles every time he opens his mouth.
The Sharks, for wiping that teary-eyed look off Lucas's face when they went down 3-0 by coming up big with a 9-4 win over the mighty Red Wings. Lucas remarks at the end of the second period: "See, that's what happens when you never give up."
The Rolling Stones, for surprising me again with the occasional greatness of Between the Buttons. "My Obsession" is gold.
South Park, for providing solid between-period chuckles. Cartman, for god's sake.
Steppenwolf, for existing. Don't deny the power, hater.
Jonathan Cheechoo, for being who he is, my oldest son's hero, the bearer of the number on his Sharks shirt, and a goal scorer tonight. The families that watch hockey together, stay together. It's in the Bible, so burn, hater, burn.
Chocolate cake. Straight up. No frills. Winna.
Teel.
Good night.
The good folks at Cybelle's, who never fail to undercook a pizza in dangerous ways.
Sam Cooke, who breeds smiles every time he opens his mouth.
The Sharks, for wiping that teary-eyed look off Lucas's face when they went down 3-0 by coming up big with a 9-4 win over the mighty Red Wings. Lucas remarks at the end of the second period: "See, that's what happens when you never give up."
The Rolling Stones, for surprising me again with the occasional greatness of Between the Buttons. "My Obsession" is gold.
South Park, for providing solid between-period chuckles. Cartman, for god's sake.
Steppenwolf, for existing. Don't deny the power, hater.
Jonathan Cheechoo, for being who he is, my oldest son's hero, the bearer of the number on his Sharks shirt, and a goal scorer tonight. The families that watch hockey together, stay together. It's in the Bible, so burn, hater, burn.
Chocolate cake. Straight up. No frills. Winna.
Teel.
Good night.
01 January 2007
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