Wu-Tang Clan

(via)

"Taking Woodstock"

What I liked most about this film is how it didn't attempt to recreate the musicians on stage or splice in actual concert footage. That part of the Woodstock story--albeit a very large part--was kept literally far away from the actual storylines, and was only visualized once--through an acid trip, of course.

Black Mold - "Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz"

If you've ever listened to STS9's Live at Home, then you might have an idea of what we're dealing with here (and if you haven't, then I highly recommend you go purchase that album immediately). With Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz, Black Mold (Chad VanGaalen) has created an album that parallels the sampling, smattering, and overtly diverse narratives that STS9 basically achieved perfection with. This isn't to say that Crystal Antz approaches Live at Home in any way, shape, or form--it does not. The later was a synthetic masterpiece that relied on rich, layered textures and some of the headiest beats you've ever heard to weave together what was truly 21st century organic music. Crystal Antz, although it relies on the same principles of being different, doesn't have that layering or texture, and instead relies on the simple quirkiness of Chad VanGaalen to make it's accentuating point. In other words, instead of sounding like it was produced by serious, forward-thinking musicians, Crystal Antz sounds like it was produced by dwarves, elves, and hobbits, who although are small in stature, are very serious about creating big, mind-bending experimental electronic music.

Seriously, though, this music sounds like it was produced by bizarre little people. Just listen to all the random cymbal crashes on "No Dream Nation" and how they segue into a whiney, yellow-brick road march. Or the relaxed loops of "Wet Ferns." Or the Tolkien-ish mushroom trip of "Memes." Despite the lack of depth, there's quite a bit of imagery at stake here, and it's small and dream-like and completely expected of VanGaalen. I've always enjoyed albums that provide that sort of imaginative imagery, because they always seem to add a tinge of nostalgia to the listening experience, somehow. It grabs your attention the way a childhood-favorite cartoon might catch the attention of an adult.

Noel Gallagher quits Oasis

Oasis has sucked for years, so this doesn't come as much of a disappointment. However, it does add momentum for my theory that Phish will cover (What's the Story) Morning Glory? during their Halloween festival this year. Not that there was any momentum there to begin with; it's not like I have any evidence for this. It's really just a wild guess, something that I've always wanted them to cover for a Halloween show. But Gallagher quitting adds that carrot of contextual feeling of "tribute" that no one (except me) is expecting. They will certainly not cover Thriller--lest they want Festival 8 to be the biggest creative disappointment in Phish music festival history--but I could see something darkhorse like an Oasis album, which comes perfectly prepped with a venemous brotherly spat that could also be integrated into a "Harpua" in the preceding sets. I think about this way too much.

"The Savage Detectives"

Despite all the acclaim and the sheer amount of admiration I had for 2666, I wasn't impressed with The Savage Detectives. It certainly lived up to its name, at least in terms of shaping-while-uncovering the dark underbelly of a Latin American avant garde poetry movement, but the disjointed storyline and near-constant first-person perspectives just didn't do it for me. I can see how this mode of story-telling was perhaps necessary for constructing such a dark narrative--laying down the mundane and raunchy daily lives of these "poets" was meant more to define them as people with murky goals; a simple glimpsing over their daily acts may have invited too much interpretation, and thus, not the "visceral realism" that Bolano was trying to get across--and the lineage towards 2666 as an integration of this mode with a thousand other possibilities was crystal clear. If I'm seeing this growth correctly (and I think I am) then The Savage Detectives is more stepping stone than masterwork.

5-man hosejob

Burning Man goes digital

The Burning Man Festival is launching an API this year:

Burning Man's theme this year is evolution which is fitting as Burning Man Earth launches an online directory, API, and a beta iPhone App. The group of artists, geo-wankers, and software developers are rapidly deploying systems, both off and on the Black Rock Desert playa to help participants find each other, schedule events, find theme camps, and artwork. It is a digital project aimed at providing better maps, and an online space to describe the community and art.

And here I thought the preternatural Burning Man Festival was immune to the cold, steel-ish clutches of technology. But I suppose even the mud-dwellers must succumb to the prospect of being able to geo-track their fellow beings along their earthly journey towards a gigantic burning man.

Andelman's Yardsale

An interactive, owl-ish look into the making of "Andelman's Yard," one of many dream-inspired tunes off Mike Gordon's fantastic Green Sparrow album.

Neurosonics Audiomedical

I'm currently writing a proposal to include this research in my lab's neuro-studies (via):

Albums of the Decade

As the decade winds down, all sorts of Albums of the Decade lists are popping up, so I figured I'd throw in my top 12 as well (they are chronologically ordered, although Kid A still falls in it's rightful position; nothing like starting the decade (and possibly century) off with the best):

1. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
2. Tool - Lateralus (2001)
3. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
4. The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute (2005)
5. Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze (2005)
6. Subtle - for hero: for fool (2006)
7. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House (2006)
8. Battles - Mirrored (2007)
9. Deer Tick - War Elephant (2007)
10. Supersilent - 8 (2007)
11. The Walkmen - You & Me (2008)
    
12. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

Strangely, nothing stood out from 2003 or 2004, but since I based choices off of total volume of listening (and really, what other criteria are there?), this gap can probably be explained by the heavy amount of jam-heavy music I was listening to at that time, my last two years of college. Those were the days that live recordings of Phish, String Cheese Incident, and STS9 ruled the CD player.

Season 7

"Surveillance"

Fortunately, Jennifer Lynch--unlike her father--can make a movie that is watchable; I didn't feel like I was strapped in a strait jacket in a padded room while watching Surveillance (unlike Inland Empire, which was so unwatchable I became nauseous while viewing it; seriously, how many scenes of Laura Dern crying can you humanly tolerate?).

Unfortunately, J. Lynch seems a little wet behind the ears when it comes to keeping a secret that will eventually pan out to be the proverbial "twist." I was really hoping Surveillance was going to be a lot better than it was, but it's just painfully obvious what is going on after about 15 minutes. The sadistical-ness of the bum twist caught me a little off guard, but by then I was already preparing the Netflix envelope for an expedited return to the Nearest Netflix Shipping Facility.

"These Are My Twisted Words"

The live debut of "These Are My Twisted Words" at Austria's Frequency 2009 Festival. I wish the video would pan out more, but it still looks like they are using those magnificent vertical light columns.

"District 9"

I think there were a number of issues that District 9 was trying to touch on, but for me, overpopulation was the big elephant in the room. It wasn't so much the concept of overpopulation as a planetary problem, but more so the bleak hopelessness of that situation. The bottom line is that in a world of six billion people, there will inevitably be hardships and shortages of resources, no matter what the region, no matter what the race. And ultimately (and unfortunately), these scenarios will be dealt with in the same manner, no matter what the region, no matter what the race. The otherworldly District 9 simply extended these facts into ultra-hypothetical situations that in the end, don't differ one bit from the issues we actually face.

"We Enjoy Myself"

This looks cool and all, but I can't help but think that their 2009 comeback kind of dampens the heartfelt value of the emotional and physical toil that Coventry fans experienced; it almost seems all for naught, in a retrospective sort of way (via):

Medeski Martin & Wood - "Radiolarians III"

"These things come in threes"...it's a familiar, yet stupidly superstitious phrase that is often associated with bad happenings. But when it comes to improvised jazz music that is imaginatively toured upon and then recorded in studio in a reverse, non-traditional means of creating and producing music, I prefer to believe that things coming in threes are inherently good, and point to positive omens of enjoyable listening experiences. With Radiolarians III, Medeski Martin & Wood have capped off this experimental trilogy and are finally seeking the closure their fervent jazz loins have wrought.

To be absolutely frank, this is probably the weakest of the three discs in this series (II wins the championship, and I provided glimpses of greatness throughout), but it definitely carries the torch of consistency. It's as if MMW decided to take their collective foot off the gas pedal and simply idle to the finish line after gaining such an incredible lead after II. This is almost like a victory lap wrapped in the flag of free jazz. Take opener "Chantes de Femmes," for example. Try and find anything but simple satisfaction in its well-paced tinkerings. Or the playful and traditional "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down." Although the title implies some rueful battle at the gates of Hades with Lucifer's asp-tongued minions, it's really just a fun number that was probably inserted to shore up the more structural components of what has been otherwise an improvisational free-for-all over the course of three releases.

You'll probably find some favorites on III--for me, it's "Undone," and the Medeski-swirling "Walk Back"--but what is most important is to see the whole picture of the Radiolarians series: it's finished and it's a fantastic addition to the world of jazz. All three discs, no matter what order they are purchased in, are valuable, and provide different levels of introspection into what jazz music can be.

"On the Water"

I love the blue hues of this video, and the way the rabbits breath...

"Avatar"

It looks as if Avatar is going to raise the same philosophical questions of reality, self, and purpose that The Matrix did 10 years ago. Maybe those questions are even more relevant today, technologically? Regardless, it will blow just as many minds.

"Infinite Jest"

There's not really much else that can be said about this book that hasn't already been said, so I'm not going to go into any sort of plot synopsis or thematic analysis. That would be cheating future readers. However, I will say that this was one of the few books that made me laugh out loud to myself while I was reading it. Not that I'm a tough audience to entertain comedy-wise, but you have to admit that it would take quite a funny novel to make you bellow on your couch, time after time, with no one else around. That said, I think there is a lot more to be said about the physicality of the book, even more so now than when it was originally published in 1996.

Today, of course, we have this swirling and enormous shift to electronic reading devices and digital texts, but Infinite Jest, due to its sheer size and monstrous, physical complexity, has single-handedly defied that shift. Yes, you could read Infinite Jest on a Kindle, but you would lose the excitement of paging back to reference the hundreds of essential (and wildly entertaining) footnotes. You would lose the challenge of basically having to read the book in one location (I read the entire thing on my couch; it was too big to take anywhere else without looking like a traveling monk deep in study). You would lose the epic feeling of watching your bookmark slowly travel down the binding as you chopped away at 1,100 pages and couldn't challenge yourself to see how far you could make that bookmark travel in one sitting (I don't remember a specific number of pages, but I once endured six straight hours of reading it, which must be some type of personal best for consecutive hours of reading in my lifetime). In other words, Infinite Jest is a big 'fuck you' to the Kindle, and will probably be the main reason that people still have bookshelves 100 years from now.

More on "Twisted Words"

Three days after its release, I still feel a little strange listening to "These Are My Twisted Words." Not in the sense of musical-appreciation-strange--the song is great--but just in the sense that it's one song. I keep expecting more to be built around it, but after 5 minutes, the experience is over. Do I listen to it again or move on to something else? I'm at a complete contextual loss here, and yet I'm thoroughly enjoying those 5 minutes. I wonder how this feeling will affect the sustainability of Radiohead's music from now on? It seems like there will be a certain arc of yearning in between releases that could possibly link together strings of releases, and hopefully, ideas about how their music reflects social climate, technology, and popularity.

"Kind of Blue" Turns 50

Kind of Blue was released 50 years ago this week, an album that the terms "influential," "landmark," and "timeless" have all become synonymous with. I popped it in for a long-overdue listen last night, and unsurprisingly, my perception of it has still not changed. It's like a perfectly carved rock etched in time, and will continue to be for thousands of years.

Material intertexuality

Snarkmarket on material intertexuality:

When the media landscape changes, we actually begin to SEE things differently, even (or ESPECIALLY) things that haven't changed at all.

This is the reason why the iPod didn't just change the way we listen to music - and later, look at pictures or movies or play video games. It changed the way we read. (As did movies, television, video games, and many, many other things.)

The question is - what kinds of new media, or new experiences of media, drive these changes, and make us change the way we read, think about, produce, exchange texts? Will electronic reading devices be largely a peripheral part of this change (reflecting the way we read paper books, or on computers, or on our phones), or will they be at the center of it?

I've always wondered whether it's reading environment that effects the reading device, and thus, the textual experience, or the device that introduces us to new environments. Either way, textual experiments are in order (yes, the inner-scientist is coming out for a discussion on reading and text). For example, have a group of people armed with Kindles go out into the city one day, and consume a text from a number of different perspectives (e.g., coffee shop, train, park bench). Then, have a different group armed with the same physical books or magazines go out and repeat said field experiment. Have them report back with copious notes about their impressions of the text, their attentiveness during their interaction with the text, and perhaps some basic recall exercises of what they read. Maybe this type of scientific method could begin to sort out the questions of how these new technologies are influencing the way we read texts.

3D glass paintings

3D glass paintings by Xia Xiaowan (via):

Running good for knees?

My right knee has been acting up lately, so I'm anxiously awaiting these benefits:

Instead, recent evidence suggests that running may actually shield somewhat against arthritis, in part because the knee develops a kind of motion groove. A group of engineers and doctors at Stanford published a study in the February issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery that showed that by moving and loading your knee joint, as you do when walking or running, you “condition” your cartilage to the load.

The Dead Weather - "Horehound"

When I first saw the video for "Treat Me Like Your Mother," I thought to myself: Perhaps this will be a good album. The song itself was not that strong--kind of a whiney and lurchy combination that screamed of short and thoughtless production--but the tension created by Jack White and Allison Mosshart pumping their leather-clad selves full of bullets with fully automatic assault rifles and not dying gave me some hope that whatever else lurked on Horehound might be worth listening to. I don't know exactly why, but there's something about a good tense video that leaves you searching for a way to end that tension, and the usual route is by immersing yourself in the remnants of the album. But instead of resolution, I got a bunch of garbage.

The Dead Weather tote themselves as a "Supergroup," using well-established monikers like The White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, and The Kills to woo you into thinking that the sum of those parts would equal something awesome. But, it doesn't. Instead, what you get is about 45 minutes of some of the shittiest rock music conceived since I started liking music (which was about 20 years ago). I'm not even going to get into how awful this is, other than that White's and Mosshart's vocals are at most times indistinguishable--which is creepy since they are of the opposite sex--and that White's "drumming" is so putrid and sloppy that you would think that he recorded his parts while having some sort of temporary stroke.

But what pisses me off most is the back of the album, which shows a group photo of the "Supergroup" in which White has his head cocked to the side with his mouth hanging dementedly open as if to say "look at me, I'm being artsy and bad-ass at the same time and I know you're pissed about buying this album but I don't care because I'm an artist and haven't done anything half-way decent since Elephant and am pretty much the Dan Marino of rock and roll but I'm still rich and now have $10 more." That face staring at me is worse than the disc itself.

Organizing Radiohead

As rumored, and to an extent, expected, Radiohead released "These are My Twisted Words" today via w.a.s.t.e. It's a stellar tune, being very Radioheadically-dark and well-paced.

This seems like it will be the first in a long line of Radiohead song-only releases, and what I'm thinking about now has to do with categorization. In the past, you've always had an album to contextualize a song, but now it just kinda floats out there, available for free (will we ever pay for Radiohead music again?) at the click of a button. Will they simply use release dates? Will the artwork that comes with each single be the new method of visual organization? It just seems that once a number of songs are released in this manner, there needs to be some categorical way of accessing them. At least I think there needs to be. How else will I compulsively organize them on my iPod touch?

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 824):

The even newer new guy now that's come in to take Chandler Foss's spot's name is Dave K. and is one grim story to behold, Thrust assures him, a junior executive guy at ATHSCME Air Displacement, and upscale guy with a picket house and kids and a worried wife with tall hair, who this Dave K.'s bottom was he drank a half liter of Cuerva at some ATHSCME Interdependence Day office party and everything like that and got in some insane drunken limbo-dance challenge with a rival executive and tried to like limbo under a desk or chair or something insanely low, and got his spine all fucked up in a limbo-lock, maybe permanently: so the newest guy scuttles around the Ennet House living room like a crab, his scalp brushing the floor and his knees trembling with effort.

Phish - 8/16/09 (Saratoga Springs)

Set I: Llama, Moma Dance, Guyute, Anything But Me, Cars Trucks Buses, Chalkdust Torture, Golgi Apparatus, David Bowie, Cavern, Possum, Ocelot, Run Like an Antelope

Set II: Backwards Down the Number Line, Twenty Years Later, Halley's Comet, Rock and Roll, Harpua, I Kissed a Girl, Hold Your Head Up, Harpua, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: Grind, I Been Around, Highway to Hell

Phish - 8/15/09 (Merriweather Post Pavilion)

Set I: Crowd Control, Kill Devil Falls, The Sloth, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Axilla I, Foam, Esther, Ha Ha Ha, Party Time, Tube, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Strange Design, Time Turns Elastic

Set II: Tweezer, Taste, Alaska, Let Me Lie, 46 Days, Oh! Sweet Nuthin', Harry Hood

Encore: Good Times Bad Times, Tweezer Reprise

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 627-628):

Stice, oblivious, bites into his sandwich like it's the wrist of an assailant. The only sound at the table for the first few minutes is of forkwork and mastication and the slight gasping of sounds of people trying to breathe while they eat. You rarely speak for the first few minutes here, eating. Supper is deadly-serious. Some of the kids even start in on their trays while still in line at the milk dispenser. Now Coyle bites in. Wayne has made his entree into a sandwich and lowers and bites. Keith Freers' eyes are half-closed as his jaw muscles bulge and slacken. Some of the players' inlcined heads are hard to see over the height of their food. Struck and Schacht, side by side, bite in sync and chew. The one at the table not eating like a refugee is Trevor Axford, who as a small child in Short Beach CT once fell off his bike onto his head and received a tiny lesion-type brain injury after which all food everywhere tastes horrible to him. His clearest explanation of the way food tastes to him is that it tastes the way vomit smells. He's discouraged from speaking at meals and holds his nose while he eats and eats with the neutrual joyless expression of someody dispensing fuel into his car.

Phish - 8/14/09 (Hartford)

Set I: Punch You in the Eye, AC/DC Bag, NICU, Colonel Forbin’s Ascent, Fly Famous Mockingbird, Birds Of A Feather, Lawn Boy, Stash, I Didn’t Know, Middle Of The Road, Character Zero

Set II: Down With Disease, Wilson, Slave To The Traffic Light, Piper, Water In The Sky, Ghost, Psycho Killer, Catapult, Icculus, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

"Bleach" re-issued

On November 3rd, Sub Pop will be re-issuing Nirvana's Bleach for the 20th anniversary of the grunge progenitor disc. Bleach holds a special place in my heart because it was the first CD I ever bought. I remember opening it up for the first time and looking at the liner notes and thinking how disgusting the band looked with their stringy, greasy hair and the bleach-spotted crotches on their jeans (as if they were literally pissing bleach because they were so grungy and feral). I listened to that disc hundreds of times, and now, nearly 20 years later, it lies tattered and beaten in my CD rack, just like the tattered and beaten youth of Nirvana in 1989. I won't purchase the re-issue, because that just wouldn't be grunge-like.

Phish - 8/13/09 (Darien Lake)

Set I: Sample In A Jar, Dinner and a Movie, Wolfman’s Brother, My Friend My Friend, Possum, Farmhouse, Sugar Shack, Brian And Robert, David Bowie, Bathtub Gin, How High The Moon, Golgi Apparatus

Set II: Drowned, Prince Caspian, Rift, The Horse, Silent In the Morning, Sparkle, Run Like An Antelope, Suzy Greenberg, Fluffhead

E: Joy, First Tube

Phish - Toyota Park (8/11/09)

When you're hitting up just one Phish show, in the middle of the week, it can be kind of a crap-shoot. Of course, this was not always the case back in the glory days of Phish, when practically every show on a day ending in "y" was an incendiary barn-burner, and any notion of a "weak show" was based upon the most stingy and ultra-critical of show-attending criteria (e.g., complaining that "Train Song" wasted three minutes of what could have been more "Ghost" jam). But that was then and times have certainly changed.

After a quasi-decent Red Rocks run, Phish opened the last leg of their Summer 2009 tour at Toyota Park in Chicago, a venue where spectators normally watch soccer games that end in lame scores like 1-0. Right off the bat, this didn't seem like the appropriate vessel for a Phish show. There was a sprawling, segmented sheet of metal flooring covering the entire grass field. This "lawn" section seemed somewhat artificial, and killed that natural, communal grassy-hill feeling of Alpine Valley and Deer Creek for everyone stomping along it's rigid and flattened-cigarette-filled surface. Everyone except, of course, the guy in front of us who naturally and comfortably exposed himself to urinate freely among us. This was not a show where one could even lay down a serape or tapestry to rest upon and mark territory. Unless you used urine, apparently.

Musically, the show started off decently enough--I am enjoying "Kill Devil Falls"--but quickly descended into a discombobulated two sets of short, uninspired jamming and even stranger song placement and choice. Toward the end of the second set, I simply began to lose interest, and even gained the attention-prowess to notice that the fellow standing next to me was holding his digital camera up and gazing through the view finder for nearly the last thirty minutes of the show. And he wasn't video-taping, so I hope he got the perfect shot that he was painstakingly looking for.

What's most interesting is that the entire online Phish community seemed to have similar thoughts on the show (e.g., it was discombobulated and uninspired). This type of negative consensus rarely happens, and I've never seen so many reviews start with phrases such as "Now I don't mean this to a bashing review but..." Even Mr. Miner, a cult-ish blogger who praises Phish so much that you seriously have to question his sense of reality or purpose of existing, gave a lukewarm review, and used the intriguing analogy of jigsaw puzzle pieces that didn't fit as a fitting descriptor of the show. I still had a good time, so I guess none of the opinion--theirs or mine--really matters. It's probably just part of the dice-rolling that's now involved with Phish shows.

"These are My Twisted Words"

Fairly soon after Thom Yorke hinted at Radiohead exclusively releasing songs instead of albums, Radiohead has appparently released a new song:

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 575):

All the way up the Spur's Harvard St. toward Union Square, in a barely NW vector, Lenz consumes several minutes and less than twenty breaths sharing with Green some painful Family-Of-Origin Issues about how Lenz's mother Mrs. Lence, a thrice-divorcee and Data Processor, who was so unspeakably obese she had to make her own mumus out of brocade drapes and cotton tablecloths and never once did come to Parents' Day at Bishop Anthony McDiardama Elementary School in Fall River MA because of the parents had to sit in the youngsters' little liftable-desktops during the Parents' Day presentations and skits, and the one time Mrs. L hove her way down to B.A.M.E.S. for Parents' Day she tried to seat herself at the little Randall L.'s desk between Mrs. Lamb and Mrs. Leroux she broke the desk into kindling and needed four stocky cranberry-farmers dads and a textbook-dolly to arise back up from the classroom floor, and never went back, fabricating thin excuses of busyness with Data Processing and basic disinterest in Randy L.'s schoolwork.

Phishheads battle the sun

Phish - 8/11/09 (Toyota Park)

Set I: Kill Devil Falls, Sample In A Jar, Ocelot, Paul and Silas, Windy City, The Curtain (With), Train Song, Gumbo, Heavy Things, Time Turns Elastic

Set II: Backwards Down The Number Line, Carini, Gotta Jibboo, Theme From The Bottom, Wilson, 2001, Chalk Dust Torture, Harry Hood, The Squirming Coil

Encore: Loving Cup

No more Radiohead CDs

In a recent interview Thom Yorke spoke out about his "hatred" of CDs, and hinted that in all likelihood, Radiohead will never release a full album again. Instead, they will distribute songs--and possibly EPs--under the theory that online music distribution has single-handedly brought back song-based perferences (e.g., "singles") to the forefront of music consumerism. There's without a doubt a ton of truth to this: the ability to pick and choose songs off iTunes and other digital music portals has led to less emphasis on the album as a whole. Why buy the filler when you can selectively filter at a cheaper price?

In theory, Yorke is right; this is the model which most consumers would prefer, and theory has extended into practice. But there's still a large contigency of album purists out there--including myself--who prefer getting the whole package. I've always believed that the album is that sacred unit of music, meant to be listened to from beginning to end to achieve the full context of why it was made. Individual songs are great, but it's placement and positioning of songs within an LP that, for me, shift ideas, create new meanings, and displace any static notions of what music can mean to a person time and time again (think "Treefingers" off Kid A). Whether an album was meant to be conceptual or not, the listener's conceptions will be lost in a system of piecemeal consumption. It will become music for consumption, rather than listening.

Open wide

(via)

Chinese AC torture

Last night was an auditory nightmare. There is an apartment six floors above me with a window air-conditioning unit, and when the temperature becomes unbearably hot and moist, he turns that puppy on full-blast. Which is exactly what I do with mine. Unfortunately, my unit happens to be directly below his, and through some magic of physics, the tiny, dripping droplets of condensation from his unit somehow travel in a non-wind-affected, perfectly linear path down to the eight square inches of unit surface exposed through my window, creating a rhythmic and unwavering metallic snap upon impact. It was maddening to try and sleep through, and even though closing my bedroom door dampens the torturous dripping slightly, the room then becomes a hot chamber of suffocation, the only remedy being the ceiling fan, which cruelly, has a metallic ticking of its own that sounds like a baseball card in bicycle spokes. The heat must break.

The Book Seer

The Book Seer is a handy little site that will give you reading recommendations based on the last book you read. Just type in the title and author and it will unfurl a list of similar/related authors and styles. Definitely beats the quagmire of lists that Amazon throws at you.

The Green Sun

I like how the music put with this footage sounds like an extremely slow heartbeat, as if your entire physiological system has to calm down to take it in (via snarkmarket):

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 564-565):

'I'm thinking it'd be doing a favor if Staff clued in anybody new that comes in on the fact that the H-faucet in the shower that its H really stands for Holy Cow That's Cold.'

'Are you saying in a sideways way there's some trouble with the water-temp in the head, McDade?'

'Don, I'm saying just what I came in here to say. And can I say by the way nice shirt. My dad used to bowl, too, when he still had a thumb.'

Phish - 8/8/09 (The Gorge)

Set I: The Mango Song, Chalk Dust Torture, Middle of the Road, Tweezer, Driver, Twenty Years Later, Yamar, It’s Ice, Wolfman’s Brother, Character Zero, Run Like An Antelope

Set II: Rock and Roll, Makisupa Policeman, Alaska, The Wedge, You Enjoy Myself, Backwards Down the Number Line, Piper, Grind

Encore: Good Times Bad Times

Sunset Rubdown - "Dragonslayer"

Throughout Dragonslayer, there is a pervasive, nervous sense of urgency. I cannot thematically explain this album in any other way, because this feeling is suffused in every nook and cranny; it dominates in the way that nightfall dominates late winter afternoons. Melancholic runs of keys that combine with flutters of drums and marching guitar keep you happy, but at the same time tense. It's a fairly unique listening experience, because naturally, those two emotions like to keep themselves far, far apart. But here, the crux of that interplay defines the attraction, for the songs of Dragonslayer glide along pleasantly, but quiver before they are able to reach any kind of auditory absolution. It makes you want more before you even realize how good the stuff you initially heard is. This phenomenon derives itself solely from Spencer Krug's voice. If you can forget the music just for a minute--not literally, but just for the sake of isolating analysis--then you'll begin to see what effect his voice has as an additional instrument.

Krug's vocals are basically a spirited, caffienated lurching that guide you through each narrative. At times, his voice is so intertwined with the music, it can sound decievingly not there. In "Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!," there's a swath refrain, probably the most beautiful refrain on the entire album, where lyric and instrumentation are inseperable. Removing the vocals, however, would destroy it completely, a sure sign of how a seemingly nervous man can carry the weight of an entire song (and album) from his mouth. You see this in other areas as well ("Paper Lace"), little moments here and there that are defined, and completely supported by this nervous articulation and vocalization. It's superb, really. Come year-end, watch out, Merriweather Post Pavilion...

Phish - 8/7/09 (The Gorge)

Set I: Down With Disease, Ocelot, Pebbles and Marbles, Possum, Sleep, Destiny Unbound, Stash, Sneakin' Sally Thru the Alley, Cavern

Set II: Moma Dance, Light, Taste, Fluffhead, Joy, Bathtub Gin, Harry Hood

Encore: Slave to the Traffic Light

Twitter lingerers

One aspect of Twitter that really fascinates me is the news lingering by some users. For example, 2-3 days after Michael Jackson died, you could still find people tweeting such things as 'holy crap, Michael Jackson died.' Now, unless this person had just arisen from a coma, then they almost certainly knew that Michael Jackson was dead well in advance of posting that tweet, and certainly should have known that the rest of the world did as well, since the news coverage of Jackson's death seemed to exceed that of 9/11. But for some reason, the user somehow feels obligated to report on this news, despite the fact that it is already well known. I can only imagine that the reason for tweeting such a thing at that point in time would be because the user was not able to access their Twitter account for those few days, and felt obligated to throw their two cents into the community no matter how chronologically useless the information was.

I think there's a certain robot mentality at play here--a mentality that is already rampant throughout social networks--but now it has morphed into something else: people are becoming automated in their thought processes, and the technology--as well as the desire to be a part of that technology--is driving it. Rather than be an independent, creative part of that herd, users are becoming more and more content to linger and robotically feed on repeatable content based on the current trending topics or what is deemed important by the Twitter community. Technology is influencing, maybe even dictating, the autonomy of our choices. And it's making a lot of people look really dumb. Michael Jackson died three days ago? No shit, Sherlock.

Crappy Taxidermy

crappytaxidermy.com delivers what it promises: crappy taxidermy.

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 444):

The Tough-Shit-But-You-Still-Can't-Drink-Group seems to be over 50% bikers and biker-chicks, meaning your standard leather vests and 10 cm. boot heels, belt-buckles with little spade-shaped knives that come out of a slot in the side, tattoos that are more like murals, serious tits in cotton halters, big beards, Harleywear, wooden matches in mouth-corners and so forth. After the Our Father, as Gately and the other White Flag speakers are clustered smoking outside the door to the church basement, the sound of high-cc. hawgs being kick-started is enough to rattle your fillings. Gately can't even start to guess what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool.

Chlorophyll Skin

It's very reptilian, especially with the Fever Ray soundtrack (via t&t):

"Periodically Double or Triple"

Always nice to watch people enjoying fruit...

Phish - 8/5/09 (Shoreline)

Set I: Golgi Apparatus, Halley's Comet, Chalkdust Torture, Divided Sky, When The Circus Comes to Town, Time Turns Elastic, Ya Mar, Stealing Time From The Faulty Plan, Suzy Greenberg, David Bowie

Set II: Backwards Down The Number Line, Down with Disease, Limb by Limb, Oh Sweet Nothin, Cities, Maze, Mike's, Simple, Weekapaug Groove

Encore: Let Me Lie, Bold As Love

20-foot tall vandals tag Marquette interchange

"Unrest"

As a former gross anatomy teaching assistant, I applaud the producers of Unrest for their accurate portrayal of medical student life within a cadaver lab. From the professor's opening speech on respect and gratitude towards the graciously donated bodies, to that first vertical, thoracic cut, it was all pretty dead-on, no pun intended. They even included the misting spray bottles used to keep the cadavers moist between classes, and of course, perfectly captured the scene of that one student who goes down in a fainting heap when the formaldehyde-soiled cover is first whisked off their cadaver (although in this student's defense, the body's eyes and mouth are never open in a frozen, arching scream; a little bit dramatized there). Scholarly and medical accuracy aside, Unrest wasn't that bad of a flick. Nothing really happens until the horrifying ending scene in the formaldehyde tank--which is full of cadavers, obviously--but somehow I think that prevented the movie from ruining itself throughout the first half like so many cheap scary movies do.

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 433):

People in the competitive jr. tennis community somehow regarded it as healthy that Mario Incandenza's perfectly even smile never faltered even through tears at Clipperton's funeral. The funeral was poorly attended. It turned out Eric Clipperton had hailed from Crawfordsville, Indiana, where his Ma was a late-stage Valium addict and his ex-soybean-farmer Pa, blinded in the infamous hailstorms of B.S. '94, now spent all day every day playing with one of those little wooden paddles with a red rubber ball attached by elastic string, paddle-ball, with an understandable lack of success; and the tranqulized and sightless Clippertons had had no clue about where Eric had disappeared off to on weekends, and bought his explanantion that all the tall trophies came from an after-school job as a freelance tennis-trophy designer, the parents apparently being not exactly the two brightest bulbs in the great U.S. parental light-show.

How we spend our days

An interesting, interactive breakdown of how we spend our time during the day. For example, on average, at 12:20 p.m., 3% of men are shopping (via kottke).

Delicious

"New Liberal Arts"

Rachel Leow on "Translation":

Perhaps in no other age has cultural and linguistic insularity been more perilous. We can't afford not to speak to people whom we can't speak to. We can't afford not to read writings that we can't read. We can't, in other words, afford not to understand people whom we do not understand.

I therefore propose that translation should be one of the new liberal arts: translation in its literal sense of transmitting texts from one language to another, but also in a metaphorical sense of a sustained, collective effort towards genuine intercultural understanding.

I like what Leow is getting at here, because it makes taking a language class so much more exciting (and important). However, why stop at a class in translation? Why not translation majors? The way I see it, students could study a different language/culture every year, and at the end of their program, could spend a year abroad in their country--or in this case, specialization--of choice developing a true thesis of transcultural studies and communication. In this way, I think Leow's vision of filling the world with "deeply sympathetic people who would be nodes between cultures" could be more fully realized and utilized.

Phish - 8/2/09 (Red Rocks)

Set I: Roses Are Free, Wilson, NICU, Prince Caspian, Get Back on the Train, Reba, Grind, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Sample in a Jar, Sugar Shack, Waste, Kill Devil Falls

Set II: Boogie on Reggae Woman, You Enjoy Myself, Undermind*, Drums*, Seven Below*, 2001*, Waves*, Character Zero*

Encore: Bittersweet Motel, Bouncing Around The Room, Slave to the Traffic Light

* with Billy Kreutzmann

Phish - 8/1/09 (Red Rocks)

Set I: AC/DC Bag, The Curtain With, Mound, Gotta Jibboo, Guyute, Punch You In the Eye, Tube, Alaska, Run Like an Antelope

Set II: Rock and Roll, Down with Disease, Free, Esther, Dirt, Harry Hood

Encore: Sleeping Monkey, First Tube

Phish - 7/31/09 (Red Rocks)

Set I: Runaway Jim, Chalkdust Torture, Bathtub Gin, Time Turns Elastic, Lawn Boy, Water in the Sky, Stealing Time From The Faulty Plan, Split Open and Melt

Set II: Drowned, Crosseyed and Painless, Joy, Tweezer, Backwards Down The Number Line, Fluffhead, Piper, A Day in the Life

Encore: Suzy Greenberg, Tweezer Reprise

Phish - 7/30/09 (Red Rocks)

Set I. The Divided Sky, Ocelot, The Wedge, Poor Heart, The Moma Dance, Horn, Stash, The Horse, Silent in the Morning, Possum

Set II. Mike’s Song, I Am Hydrogen, Weekapaug Groove, Ghost, Wolfman’s Brother, Limb By Limb, Billy Breathes, The Squirming Coil, David Bowie

Encore: Loving Cup

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 403-404):

Sec. Transp: We foresee a whole lot of people moving south really really fast. We foresee cars, light trucks, heavier trucks, buses, Winnebagos--Winnebaga?--commandeered vans and buses, and possibly commandeered Winnebagos or Winnebaga. We foresee 4-wheel-drive vehicles, motorcycles, Jeeps, boats, mopeds, bicycles, canoes and the odd makeshift raft. Snowmobiles and cross-country skiers and roller-skaters on those strange looking roller-skates with only one line of wheels down each skate. We foresee backpack-type folks speed-walking in walking shorts and boots and Tyrolean hats and a stick. We foresee some folks just outright running like hell, possibly, Rod. We foresee homeade wagons piled high with worldly goods. We foresee BMW war-surplus motorcycles with sidecars and guys in goggles and leather helmets. We foresee the occasional skateboard. We foresee a strictly temporary breakdown in the thin veneer of civilization over the souls of essentially frightened stampeding animals. We foresee looting, shooting, price-gouging, ethnic tensions, promiscuous sex, and births in transit.

Sec. H.E.W.: Rollerblades. I think you mean, Marty.

Tortoise - "Beacons of Ancestorship"

The first, second, third, and fourth time I listened to Beacons of Ancestorship, I didn't care for it. On the fifth listen, I thought it might be pretty cool, but on the subsequent sixth and seventh inquiry, I was back to square one. Further down the line on this listening excursion, I'm still being faced with Beacons' enigmatic qualities, at times wanting to light myself on fire with frustration, and at others truly digging this wide palate of musical ideas. I'm hoping the latter emotion will eventually win out, but as with most Tortoise albums, the density and sheer girth of forced conceptual headiness requires a truly patient ear to unravel.

What I'm perhaps most torn about is how Beacons seems to inadvertently shift from sounding cheap and synthetic to deep and precisely crafted. Songs like "Northern Something" and "Penumbra" are filler-like in quality and quantity, whereas "The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One" projects back to when quantum mathematical formulas were deemed necessary to explain Tortoise's post-rock trajectories and song vectors. It seems to be equal parts of both strewn throughout, like pop quizzes separating cephalic-shattering exams.

So what to make of all this? Honestly, I don't know, but maybe that's the whole point. Part of the Tortal-allure is the challenge of the music, and here the difficulty is determining when to turn on and when to turn off. Can you keep your guard up during the intervals of mindless cacophony and even more mindless song titling ("Yinxianghechengqi") to preserve your wits for some seriously composed, mind-retracting material? Best of luck, because I've lost count of the number of listens, and still haven't figured it out yet.