Wow! That really sucked.

My Amis True

New Year's approaches, so avail yourself of some Kingsley Amis wisdom- it might do you good.

On Coping with the Physical Hangover

If your wife or other partner is beside you, and (of course) is willing, perform the sexual act as vigorously as you can. The exercise will do you good, and- on the assumption that you enjoy sex- you will feel toned up emotionally, thus delivering a hit-and-run raid on your metaphysical hangover (M.H.) before you formally declare war on it. Warnings- 1. if you are in bed with somebody you should not be in bed with, and have in the least degree a bad conscience about this, abstain. Guilt and shame are prominent constituents of the M.H., and will certainly be sharpened by indulgence on such an occasion 2. For the same generic reason, do not take the matter into your own hands if you awake by yourself.

The ideal arrangement, very much worth the trouble and expense if you are anything of a serious drinker, is a shower fixed over the bath. Run a bath as hot as you can bear and lie in it as long as you can bear. When it becomes too much, stand up and have a hot shower, then lie down again and repeat the sequence. This is time well spent. Warning- Do not do this unless you are quite sure your heart and the rest of you will stand it. I would find it most disagreeable to be accused of precipitating your death, especially in court.

On Coping with the Metaphysical Hangover
When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness, (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is, and there is no use crying over spilt milk.

The Boozing Man's Diet

The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree. Well, and it should be simple: no charts, tables, menus, recipes. None of these pages of fusspottery which normally end- end, after you have wasted minutes ploughing your way through-"and of course no alcohol" in tones of fatuous apology for laying tongue to something so pikestaff-plain. Of course? No alcohol? What kind of people do they think we are?

It's Boogata, Baby

Monday night on a cold Bay Area late-night groove and the Xmas tree still shines brightly and the fire glows its artificial light and the children sleep gently and it's time for midnight frolicking with the spirits cuz the Sharks were tied and the Warriors were clinging to a three-point lead but miraculously both teams clutched out stunningly with the W's taking down the mighty Celtics and Nabokov single-handedly stopping the now Gretsky-less Coyotes and buzz buzz buzz some chex mix and some boogata and the Giants sign Mark DeRosa and 12 million for a 35-year old with twentysomething homers and I'm 200 pages into the Gram Parsons bio and it's GP and the Byrds and Gene Clark and the International Submarine Band and Porter Wagoner and The Louvin Brothers and Lee Hazlewood and Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash and George Jones and Waylon Jennings on the turntable and it's baseball in the backyard and ping pong in the basement and cards in the dark room and chicken in the kitchen. Where is my flash of insight on the Aleksander Hemon novel? I consumed it and enjoyed it but I failed to reach that state of incantatory bliss promised by eastern tastemakers. Bosnian immigrant in Chicago doing the big existential crisis interwoven with a murdered Jew a century previous and we have quirky meditation on the dual consciousness of the refugee in search of a better life but who can never find a real home in the land of the free as he's too haunted by the ghosts of the motherland. Darkly funny and originally delivered but transcendent? I wanted to love it but honesty is a bitch. Jimmy Wood, why do you lead me astray? Far better than Netherland but it's becoming painfully clear that Mr. Wood and I live in alternative literary universes. I'm going back for chex mix, and some more Vic Chesnutt, a man on whom you can depend, if only on vinyl.

Bye Vic

Vic Chesnutt killed himself over the Xmas holidays, and while I'm getting tired of some of my favorite artists offing themselves around my own age (David Foster Wallace- I know it's chemical, but god damn), here are some lines from Vic. RIP you tortured motherfucker.

10. "Christian charity is a doily over my death boner"

9. "...even her freakish nipples were akimbo."

8. "Florida, that redneck riviera...it's a perfect place to retire from life."

7. "When I ran off and left her, she wasn't holding a baby, she was holding a bottle, and a big grudge against me."

6. "...just a general freak that is boiling in me, and I'm terrified what it is gonna dislodge...I bent over backwards to misbehave, it's a holy wonder I didn't just flip over into an early grave...I guess it's time for me to get the fuck out of Dodge."

5. "I'm so sorry you had to kick my ass, you said I ruined your life, I didn't mean to do that"

4. "Imports and altercations, my faculties on a shoe-string vacation, I settle down on a hurt as big as Robert Mitchum, and listen to Lucinda Williams."

3. "I am barely alive, ever since my daddy died, I've been searching for my own little babies, to misbehave and betray me."

2. "It's funny how I alienated those who I was trying just so-so hard to impress, now half those fuckers hate me and I'm just a fool to all the rest, why do I insist on drinking myself to the grave, why do I dream about a cozy coffin? I had all these plans of great things to accomplish but I end up purely pathetic more than often."

1. "So all you observers in your scrutiny, don't count my scars like tree rings, my jigsaw disposition, its piecemeal properties, are either smoked or honey cured, by the panic pure."

End of Decade List Hell

Ah, what the hell. Here are the best records of the last ten years, in no particular order.

Reigning Sound - Too Much Guitar
Nobunny - Love Visions
King Khan & BBQ Show - S/T
Black Lips - Let It Bloom
Strokes- Is This It?
Eddy Current Suppression Ring- S/T
Hunches- Yes. No. Shut It.
Compulsive Gamblers - Crystal Gazing, Luck Amazing
Deadly Snakes- Ode to Joy
Dirtbombs- Ultraglide in Black
Dan Melchior- O Clouds Unfold
The Duchess and the Duke- Sunrise/Sunset
Espers- II
Silkworm- Italian Platinum
Pissed Jeans- all three of those fucking records
Ray Davies- Other People’s Lives
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments- No Old Guy Lo Fi
Dead Moon- Echoes of the Past
Bantam Rooster- Fuck All Y’All

Sexy Sexy Sexy

Dear Corporate Fuckers

Are you ready for novel as corporate complaint letter? Well, after reading Jonathan Miles' Dear American Airlines, I say bury the memoir at the bottom of the sea and bring in the era of angry, self-loathing confessional missives and let's take out the failures of our lives on the impersonal global corporations that make us feel as colorless as we suspect we might be in those dark 3:00 AM bouts with that bottle of red. Our humbled narrator, Bennie, is sitting in O'Hare, having been bussed in from Peoria, his flight terminated due to inclement weather no one can see, and he's going to miss his estranged daughter's wedding, at which his only child plans to marry another woman in California. Bennie decides he has to keep the one promise he made to her as a baby, which is to walk her down the aisle, and as he sits stewing in the plastic, disc-crunching chairs the airport bought cheap from the CIA program for enhanced interrogation techniques, he begins to marinate in the cocktail fogged memory of his life, and to wonder if there are fifth chances or if the big out is the only honorable option. This is a special kind of naval-gazing, for as we wind through the vodka-soaked disaster of Bennie's life, he jumps back to the sterile confines of an airport culture that contrasts with the scenes of his past, the wannabe poet/bartender fighting the dangerous romantic illusions that make the real people in our lives so disappointing. Bennie is a drunken loser who bought the dream of life that literature promised, but it's hard not to emphathize when the drones stare up at Chris Matthews or down at the inane jottings of another text message. The novel is both an attack on that sterility and a warning about art's promises. It's also very funny, and at a tidy 192 pages, you need not wade through dark forests to find nuggets. They are there on almost every page.

Dexter Looks Back

I discovered Pete Dexter late, having scoffed at his National Book Award-winning Paris Trout in remainder bins for years. About five years ago I corrected my ignorance, and he's now among my favorite living writers. The aforementioned Trout is a monster of southern gothic menace, Train is cool LA noir with golf courses, and Deadwood is a chucklefest rendition of the last days of Wild Bill before Al Swearengen was a glimmer in David Milch's eye. I've read the others too (and his recent collection of newspaper pieces, Paper Trails, also recommended) but these are my favorites. So when the years since Train wore on and no new Pete, I got worried. The non-fiction work suggested he was stalling, buying time while the prickly problems got untangled. Seems the new one is not so thinly veiled memoir fiction, and the thing had blown over a thousand pages. Deadlines came and deadlines went, but because his name is not Bolano the gatekeepers gently suggested a pruning. So Spooner arrives at a more manageable 464 pages, and boy is it choppy. Presumably the tall tale life of one Pete Dexter, we start with the death of Spooner's father and his ill-fated burial at sea, through young Spooner's Georgia childhood, his blip as a pitching phenom, his fall into the paper business, his escapades with Tex Cobb, the rescue by second marriage, and the retreat to isolated Washington. Through it all builds the enduring relationship he has with his father-in-law, the man he believes is his real father until his dying mother spills the beans in a nine-page letter. What we have here is what you'd called an episodic life story, heavy on set pieces played mostly for laughs, but cumulatively building an appreciation for the novel's good guys, especially Calmers, the father-in-law, the most decent man Spooner says he ever knew. Spooner is the self-deprecating bumbler with the balls of steal, stepping up to power and injustice and trying to hold on to the few good things he has. Beaten brutally when he and Cobb get ambushed in a Philly bar (a true story), he takes what remains of his broken body and escapes with his wife and daughter to recuperate and to seek a separate peace. But trouble always finds our hero, and harmony is a dream and a bore shattered by the malevolence of his gay neighbor, who, along with his Russian bodybuilding boyfriend, terrorizes dogs, grandpas and fences. No worry, for a bulldozer brings comeuppance, and we leave the novel in the water, with Spooner burying Calmers at sea, fucking it up and falling in, confirming at last what we found all along: the good heart leads, the body tries to follow, and the best wills bring laughter to our failed good intentions.

Holiday Nostalgia

http://www.thetyser.com/

Why I love college football

Cry baby Jesus freak jerk gets smoked on national TV and cries. Where's your God now, Mr. Missionary? Meanwhile Cincy pulls out a thriller against Pitt in the last seconds during a snow storm and their coach tells Notre Dame, "I'm not interested in your coaching job." The Oregon and Oregon State game was frickin classic Thursday night. I'm praying Texas loses tonight which will totally screw up the BCS and Obama will force a playoff system by Presidential decree. Oh yeah!

Rein, What Does It Mean?

World Cup Draw
OK, now somebody tell me what it all means. It looks like the US and Holland have relatively good draws, but I need Uncle Rein to explain it all me.

Group A
South Africa
Mexico
Uruguay
France

Group B
Argentina
Nigeria
South Korea
Greece

Group C
England
United States
Algeria
Slovenia

Group D
Germany
Australia
Serbia
Ghana

Group E
Netherlands
Denmark
Japan
Cameroon

Group F
Italy
Paraguay
New Zealand
Slovakia

Group G
Brazil
North Korea
Ivory Coast
Portugal

Group H
Spain
Switzerland
Honduras
Chile

Old Guys Strike Back

Last year, it seemed like East Bay upstarts ruled the roost. This year, it's old faithfuls. Maybe I don't get out enough, and who can blame me. Nothing really blew the top of my head off, so numbering these is crazy. But hey, I still love a list, so...

13. Snakeflower 2- to be honest, I'm not sure if it came out this year, but it's the same guy who did the Bare Wires, and I like this one better.

12. Strange Boys- And Girls Club- I hear more Dylan than Black Lips ripoff, no matter what the peanut gallery spew. Sounds more like lethargic stoners sitting around a high school camping trip fire, pulling out the geetarz after burning a few and miraculously pumping out the goods.

11. The Mantles- S/T- this one took me awhile, but the echo-laden 60s pop in a tunnel grows slowly in the deep memory recesses that determine what you think is your next freely chosen record.

10. Dan Melchior und Das Menace- Thank You Very Much- my least favorite of his for quite awhile still makes the top ten because the man is aggressively interesting on each release. It's no O Clouds Unfold, but then what is?

9. The Hunches- Exit Dreams- this should probably be higher, but it's hard to play the Hunches regularly in a house full of small children, and if I'm really honest with myself, I just don't enjoy this as much as the first one or the singles. I love the way they went out, though, taking chances and leaving names. What a great fucking band.

8. The Fresh and Onlys- S/T- what a kooky brood of locals-I'll leave it to more creative minds to categorize these fellas, but I frolic through pastel fields of flame every time I put this on. Let your flashbacks take you back to that Newport jetty where God once existed and all the hairy girls breathed fire.

7. Dex Romweber Duo- Ruins of Berlin- if I had made this in June, Dex would reign, but a strong second half of releases dropped him down. Is there anyone else who can move a middle-aged man to salty puddles quite like Dexter live? Don't answer that, ya bastard, and buy the damn record. He's earned that much, at least.

6. Girls- Album- In the year of 2009 it's silly to use the word 'derivative' to describe a rock n roll band. Yes, these guys rape the Beach Boys and the JAMC and pick your third to make the list. This is still one of the catchiest records of the year, and the one I played the most over the last several months. Opening track may be the single of the year, in your feyest moments.

5. Jack-O and the Tennessee Tearjerkers- The Disco Outlaw- I love everything about this guy, and this record delivers some of his greatest songs. He still, sadly, has not delivered an entire record of winners, but this gets closer. "Walk of Shame" gets a little too close to home, but every time I listen to Jack I feel my own crimes somehow pale in comparison, and that is a public service worth noting.

4. Reigning Sound- Love and Curses- this might be his least immediate, but once you get past the knee-jerk huh, it's pretty clear the songwriting is there and the man has delivered again. I root for Jack more, but Greg remains the more consistent songwriter. That said, ain't it great to have both of them making records? And how many four-record runs would you put up against Reigning Sound's? Really, I'm asking.

3. Dinosaur Jr.- Farm- I doubt in five years I'll think this is better than "Love and Curses," but I listened to this more, so there it is. Rock's greatest second act of the last 25 years continues with what is pure pleasure from start to finish. Nothing reaches the heights of Living All Over Me, but 50 minutes of singalong don't suck. I'm still holding out for J v. Lou UFC pay per view, though, and tell me I'm not alone.

2. The Dutchess and the Duke- Sunset/Sunrise- if this were a horse race, these guys lose by a nose(OK, I went to the track on Sunday and lost badly, even on Dollar Sunday where everyone is a winner- even my 6-year old did better than I did- fuck). This may be even better than the shockingly good first album, and I'm not sure I've even digested it fully. The songwriting is extraordinary, and the arrangements are wonderfully complex with the subtle hand of Greg Ashley at the controls. Is this the most successful transition from one style of music to another? Really, I'm asking.

1. Pissed Jeans- King of Jeans- I didn't really like AmRep all that much when they were around, but these guys just hit the right places. I've loved all their records, but this one goes harder and longer and deeper, Cartman, to win the big prize. Congratulations, boys!