change:
it has a flavor.
10.27.08: culture blotter {W.}
does anyone remember what life was like before this election season (back in, what, 2006)? i shudder to think of what might rush into the media vacuum created when it's over and i stop gulping down coverage for hours every night (and bouncing around political sites for hours on top of that). there's nothing inherently wrong with following this stuff, of course, but the feedback loop gets intense (especially when i get absorbed in my current stealth craft project and don't realize i've been stuck on MSNBC for a few hours: at the end of last week, when rachel maddow sat down to talk about keith olbermann and chris matthews's coverage of brian williams's comments after his mccain/palin interview, my head nearly exploded).
so we detoxed this weekend with W., which is about totally different elections. note: the weekend before the weekend before a national election is not the best time to roll up to a theater on the upper west side sans advance tickets for an oliver stone movie. the 2:50 show sold out years before we got there, so we had to dash through the rain to times square, where liberals of a a certain age fear to tread (and a bunch of guys sitting behind us nearly got into a seat-kicking-related fistfight). the popcorn was terrible, but the movie was entertaining. josh brolin is reasonable in the title role, although he's a bit larger and more dapper than i think he should be: the real dubya is kind of chimpy, and i've never been sold on the manly-man, texas cowboy vibe he's supposed to emit. i feel a bit sorry for this fictional dubya; he's stupid and charming enough that i have a hard time blaming him for the terrible things his minions have done to our country. elizabeth banks as (parker posey as) laura is equally winning: she obviously loves her husband, and his scenes with her feel much more authentic than (most of) his scenes as commander in chief do. a brief guide to other key players:
ellen burstyn (barbara bush): formidable.
james cromwell (bush senior): not a lookalike, but effective as a chilly father figure.
richard dreyfuss (dick cheney): will get a best supporting actor nod. really, really great.
toby jones (karl rove): good, but an evil lawn gnome; the real rove is an evil baby, as we all know.
thandie newton (condoleezza rice): should've settled for looking like condi. her one-note impression stole and destroyed all of her scenes.
jeffrey wright (colin powell): should've tutored thandie newton; looked and sounded nothing like powell, nailed the character anyway.
joe appreciated how the camera followed a character as she stepped on a corncob just before introducing laura to george at a backyard barbecue; i loved it when barney hopped into the presidential bed to steal bush's warm spot (joe has similar problems). those little moments of "authenticity" kept the movie from sinking under the weight of its umpteen Bush Moments. i appreciate stone's research, to be sure, but every time a well-known phrase rolled out of brolin, we were forced to remember that we were Watching a Movie About Our Crappy President (meta phooey). i preferred forgetting that i hate bush, though i hate myself for the preference. does that make sense?
how are you counting down, internets? how are you holding up?
does anyone remember what life was like before this election season (back in, what, 2006)? i shudder to think of what might rush into the media vacuum created when it's over and i stop gulping down coverage for hours every night (and bouncing around political sites for hours on top of that). there's nothing inherently wrong with following this stuff, of course, but the feedback loop gets intense (especially when i get absorbed in my current stealth craft project and don't realize i've been stuck on MSNBC for a few hours: at the end of last week, when rachel maddow sat down to talk about keith olbermann and chris matthews's coverage of brian williams's comments after his mccain/palin interview, my head nearly exploded).
so we detoxed this weekend with W., which is about totally different elections. note: the weekend before the weekend before a national election is not the best time to roll up to a theater on the upper west side sans advance tickets for an oliver stone movie. the 2:50 show sold out years before we got there, so we had to dash through the rain to times square, where liberals of a a certain age fear to tread (and a bunch of guys sitting behind us nearly got into a seat-kicking-related fistfight). the popcorn was terrible, but the movie was entertaining. josh brolin is reasonable in the title role, although he's a bit larger and more dapper than i think he should be: the real dubya is kind of chimpy, and i've never been sold on the manly-man, texas cowboy vibe he's supposed to emit. i feel a bit sorry for this fictional dubya; he's stupid and charming enough that i have a hard time blaming him for the terrible things his minions have done to our country. elizabeth banks as (parker posey as) laura is equally winning: she obviously loves her husband, and his scenes with her feel much more authentic than (most of) his scenes as commander in chief do. a brief guide to other key players:
ellen burstyn (barbara bush): formidable.
james cromwell (bush senior): not a lookalike, but effective as a chilly father figure.
richard dreyfuss (dick cheney): will get a best supporting actor nod. really, really great.
toby jones (karl rove): good, but an evil lawn gnome; the real rove is an evil baby, as we all know.
thandie newton (condoleezza rice): should've settled for looking like condi. her one-note impression stole and destroyed all of her scenes.
jeffrey wright (colin powell): should've tutored thandie newton; looked and sounded nothing like powell, nailed the character anyway.
joe appreciated how the camera followed a character as she stepped on a corncob just before introducing laura to george at a backyard barbecue; i loved it when barney hopped into the presidential bed to steal bush's warm spot (joe has similar problems). those little moments of "authenticity" kept the movie from sinking under the weight of its umpteen Bush Moments. i appreciate stone's research, to be sure, but every time a well-known phrase rolled out of brolin, we were forced to remember that we were Watching a Movie About Our Crappy President (meta phooey). i preferred forgetting that i hate bush, though i hate myself for the preference. does that make sense?
how are you counting down, internets? how are you holding up?
10.17.08: the dirty dozen, part I {charm city}
01 maryland is serious about its crabs. i knew this before visiting baltimore, much as i know that florida is serious about its oranges and california is serious about its avocados, but the mania is more intense than i'd expected it to be. jacob and megan hooked us up with utz crab chips* in our "welcome to weddingfest!" guest bags last weekend, lexington market is like a giant dark offering to a lovecraftian crab god, the vegetarian buffet at the wedding reception featured crab cakes,** maryland drugstores sell crab-shaped cheez-its...it was incredible.
02 amtrak, in turn, is serious about its quiet cars, where passengers who chat loudly, use their phones, or play bleepy-whoopy handheld video games are killed and (quietly) eaten by other passengers. joe loves quiet cars for his work-related jaunts between new york and DC, and i love them because you can feel passive aggression crackle up and down the aisle, and people who get worked up for no reason are hilarious. i think the lady sitting across from us on the way to baltimore was fake-working just to have an excuse to sit there and hiss at people when they entered the car (she actually preempted noise). i could feel young skywalker's anger, and i basked in it.
03 baltimore's national aquarium is crowded. sure, it was silly of us to go on a sunday over a holiday weekend and expect anything other than hordes of children, but yowza! i am a tough aquarium audience, having grown up with regular access to the monterey bay aquarium and steinhart aquarium, so it took me a while to really get my fish on - though i do appreciate how maryland answers california's touchy-feely dolphin pools with a colossal, open water ray and shark pool (with one stately green sea turtle. L: "i wonder how he lost that one flipper." J: "probably living in a pool full of sharks."). we escaped the crowds in the basement frogs! exhibit, where the disapproving little tomato frogs reminded me that it's alright to be a curmudgeon.
01 maryland is serious about its crabs. i knew this before visiting baltimore, much as i know that florida is serious about its oranges and california is serious about its avocados, but the mania is more intense than i'd expected it to be. jacob and megan hooked us up with utz crab chips* in our "welcome to weddingfest!" guest bags last weekend, lexington market is like a giant dark offering to a lovecraftian crab god, the vegetarian buffet at the wedding reception featured crab cakes,** maryland drugstores sell crab-shaped cheez-its...it was incredible.
02 amtrak, in turn, is serious about its quiet cars, where passengers who chat loudly, use their phones, or play bleepy-whoopy handheld video games are killed and (quietly) eaten by other passengers. joe loves quiet cars for his work-related jaunts between new york and DC, and i love them because you can feel passive aggression crackle up and down the aisle, and people who get worked up for no reason are hilarious. i think the lady sitting across from us on the way to baltimore was fake-working just to have an excuse to sit there and hiss at people when they entered the car (she actually preempted noise). i could feel young skywalker's anger, and i basked in it.
03 baltimore's national aquarium is crowded. sure, it was silly of us to go on a sunday over a holiday weekend and expect anything other than hordes of children, but yowza! i am a tough aquarium audience, having grown up with regular access to the monterey bay aquarium and steinhart aquarium, so it took me a while to really get my fish on - though i do appreciate how maryland answers california's touchy-feely dolphin pools with a colossal, open water ray and shark pool (with one stately green sea turtle. L: "i wonder how he lost that one flipper." J: "probably living in a pool full of sharks."). we escaped the crowds in the basement frogs! exhibit, where the disapproving little tomato frogs reminded me that it's alright to be a curmudgeon.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what's the saltiest thing you've ever eaten?
02 are you, like joe biden, a fan of train travel? what about the quiet car?
03 which aquarium exhibits reign supreme? i went frog this time, but i'm normally an eel girl, as eels look like grumpy old men.
*which do not contain crab, as it happens, but are seasoned as crabs are. they are, as of this post, the saltiest thing i have ever tasted: i could feel myself dying a little more quickly for hours after i ate a bag (and i say that as an unrepentant MSG enthusiast).
**also crabless - made of zucchini, i think, and really tasty. hats off to you, gertrude's!
10.16.08: baltimore
jacob and megan get the first and only kidchamp thoughtful wedding music award: henceforth when i think of their nuptials, or of surrendering to my thirtieth birthday, or of baltimore, i'll think of their first dance. it's one thing to mist over when you hear your own song; it's quite another to react that way to someone else's. gah, that extra glenns youtube link (up in this post's title) is doing it to me again: the DJs in love, they are lethal.
i have decided that being a groomswoman is much more fun than being a bridesmaid: at one point, i thought i was going to wear a boutonnière and carry a bouquet, it was a great excuse to go out and buy a little black dress (that i would now like to wear every day), and i got to skip extended primping and watch television with joe, david, and jacob at guy prep HQ, née our room ("should we turn on sports? yeah, we should probably turn on sports."). i had to duck out to the balcony with a new yorker when the groom changed clothes, but otherwise, i think everything worked out: most male attendants don't have multiple lint rollers, and girls have much nicer tweezers and scissors. also, putting my arm around a bridesmaid during the vows wouldn't have been nearly as fun. married groomspeople, internets! the cuteness is unstoppable!
the cuteness was kind of unstoppable in general, really. joe started sniffling before the wedding coordinator gave us the cue to cross the patio, and by the time jacob and megan turned to each other under the chuppah, the whole wedding party was crying with happiness. watching those kids get hitched was rocktober in its purest form.
jacob and megan get the first and only kidchamp thoughtful wedding music award: henceforth when i think of their nuptials, or of surrendering to my thirtieth birthday, or of baltimore, i'll think of their first dance. it's one thing to mist over when you hear your own song; it's quite another to react that way to someone else's. gah, that extra glenns youtube link (up in this post's title) is doing it to me again: the DJs in love, they are lethal.
i have decided that being a groomswoman is much more fun than being a bridesmaid: at one point, i thought i was going to wear a boutonnière and carry a bouquet, it was a great excuse to go out and buy a little black dress (that i would now like to wear every day), and i got to skip extended primping and watch television with joe, david, and jacob at guy prep HQ, née our room ("should we turn on sports? yeah, we should probably turn on sports."). i had to duck out to the balcony with a new yorker when the groom changed clothes, but otherwise, i think everything worked out: most male attendants don't have multiple lint rollers, and girls have much nicer tweezers and scissors. also, putting my arm around a bridesmaid during the vows wouldn't have been nearly as fun. married groomspeople, internets! the cuteness is unstoppable!
the cuteness was kind of unstoppable in general, really. joe started sniffling before the wedding coordinator gave us the cue to cross the patio, and by the time jacob and megan turned to each other under the chuppah, the whole wedding party was crying with happiness. watching those kids get hitched was rocktober in its purest form.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 been to any weddings lately?
02 have you ever been part of ye olde jewish wedding chair-lift? i was all excited about that, but apparently it happened while i was in the bathroom.
03 are you a weeper?
10.03.08: culture blotter {echo & the bunnymen @ radio city music hall}
the 'salute to dinosaurs' portion of rocktober continued apace with last night's radio city, orchestra-backed performance of echo & the bunnymen's ocean rain, an album released when i was six. goofy glowing drinks aside, radio city's not a bad place to take in a show, and i quite liked getting to kick back in a seat like the old woman i am. i wasn't as excited about being in the third mezzanine: sure, i bought the cheapest seats, but i bought them a twelfth of a second after they went on sale. at the other end of the spectrum, due to some infernal algorithm i don't want to know about, ticketmaster failed to release a bunch of the seats near the stage until yesterday morning - and they sat empty all night. the night's lessons: cough up the extra $10 or $20 per seat when possible (as rocktober comes but once a year), and ticketmaster is still the devil.
the show began (on time!) with glasvegas, a bunch of adorable scottish feedback enthusiasts who gave us post-punk via the brill building. we heard a grand total of two of their songs, but they were both catchy (particularly the doo-wop "daddy's gone"), and i'm a sucker for self-effacing weegies. seriously: when the second depression becomes official and the ladymag goes under, i'm going to scotland to be a roadie. or to apprentice with timorous beasties. i haven't worked out the details yet, but glasgow is in there somewhere.
the main event was all over the place, mostly in a good way. rumors of ian mcculloch's ferocious egotism (he's said to have called ocean rain the greatest album of all time shortly after it was released) appear to be true: he's quite the strutter, and his many comments about how much he was enjoying himself started to seem like straight-up cues for applause. rumors of how his voice has given out seemed exaggerated, at least for the first few songs of the "greatest hits" set (about a dozen songs, played before ocean rain): "lips like sugar" was fabulous, and "rescue" was pretty great. "bring on the dancing horses," on the other hand, was a hot mess: the vocals had clearly been tweaked for ian's abbreviated range, and he sounded rough anyway. he sounded a lot like lou reed when i saw him in 1997, actually, which became ironic when the band launched into an horrific medley of "people are strange," "walk on the wild side," and "in the midnight hour" (?!). i think they were going for sinister, and joe said he liked the effect with "walk on the wild side," but as simon cowell would say, mac was like some ghastly singer in a hotel lobby. the ocean rain set, in turn, was unequivocally wonderful: hearing "silver" with the orchestra was thrilling, and "the killing moon" is devastating in any setting. sung by muppets; performed in semaphore; doesn't matter. it was the last song on our wedding playlist: wildly inappropriate, sure, but too awesome to omit. hearing it live gave me chills: take that something, my bloody valentine!
the 'salute to dinosaurs' portion of rocktober continued apace with last night's radio city, orchestra-backed performance of echo & the bunnymen's ocean rain, an album released when i was six. goofy glowing drinks aside, radio city's not a bad place to take in a show, and i quite liked getting to kick back in a seat like the old woman i am. i wasn't as excited about being in the third mezzanine: sure, i bought the cheapest seats, but i bought them a twelfth of a second after they went on sale. at the other end of the spectrum, due to some infernal algorithm i don't want to know about, ticketmaster failed to release a bunch of the seats near the stage until yesterday morning - and they sat empty all night. the night's lessons: cough up the extra $10 or $20 per seat when possible (as rocktober comes but once a year), and ticketmaster is still the devil.
the show began (on time!) with glasvegas, a bunch of adorable scottish feedback enthusiasts who gave us post-punk via the brill building. we heard a grand total of two of their songs, but they were both catchy (particularly the doo-wop "daddy's gone"), and i'm a sucker for self-effacing weegies. seriously: when the second depression becomes official and the ladymag goes under, i'm going to scotland to be a roadie. or to apprentice with timorous beasties. i haven't worked out the details yet, but glasgow is in there somewhere.
the main event was all over the place, mostly in a good way. rumors of ian mcculloch's ferocious egotism (he's said to have called ocean rain the greatest album of all time shortly after it was released) appear to be true: he's quite the strutter, and his many comments about how much he was enjoying himself started to seem like straight-up cues for applause. rumors of how his voice has given out seemed exaggerated, at least for the first few songs of the "greatest hits" set (about a dozen songs, played before ocean rain): "lips like sugar" was fabulous, and "rescue" was pretty great. "bring on the dancing horses," on the other hand, was a hot mess: the vocals had clearly been tweaked for ian's abbreviated range, and he sounded rough anyway. he sounded a lot like lou reed when i saw him in 1997, actually, which became ironic when the band launched into an horrific medley of "people are strange," "walk on the wild side," and "in the midnight hour" (?!). i think they were going for sinister, and joe said he liked the effect with "walk on the wild side," but as simon cowell would say, mac was like some ghastly singer in a hotel lobby. the ocean rain set, in turn, was unequivocally wonderful: hearing "silver" with the orchestra was thrilling, and "the killing moon" is devastating in any setting. sung by muppets; performed in semaphore; doesn't matter. it was the last song on our wedding playlist: wildly inappropriate, sure, but too awesome to omit. hearing it live gave me chills: take that something, my bloody valentine!
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 how goes your rocktober, internets? seen anyone zesty since last we spoke?
02 what's the worst cover you've ever heard?
03 what will you do when america collapses and we all have to wear barrels with suspenders? aside from wearing a barrel with suspenders, of course.
09.27.08: mississippi mudslide
liveblogging a debate isn't nearly as fun as popping in all day to talk about a primary.* if you ever try such a thing, internets, be prepared to re-watch each exchange like four times - and maybe resist the urge to liveblog the soup you're making at the same time.
20:57 still recovering from the sarah palin beauty pageant video linked over at wonkette. swimsuit-related dry eye!
21:02 i always forget about jim lehrer's irisless muppet eyes. he seems like a nice enough guy, but they're terrifying.
21:04 ooh, barry's first shot at mccain (on deregulation)! why mccain isn't now noting that bill clinton's the one who signed the financial services modernization act in 1999...is beyond me. it wasn't bipartisan, but it was on our watch.
21:05 whoop, reducing broth volume probably means simmering without the lid. i am a great chef.
21:07 that overdone "wall street blah blah blah main street" construction could be this debate's drinking prompt. it's come up twice already.
21:09 nice eisenhower anecdote, john, but it makes you sound old. i'd steer away from coded messages to the greatest generation, as those dudes are asleep already on this coast.
21:10 multicolored heirloom tomatoes are lovely when they're intact, but this soup is totally going to look like barf.
21:11 don't remind us of the chairman of the SEC, john! we all laughed at you when you claimed you were going to fire him! fun fact: christopher cox was my congressman when i lived in the OC. less-fun fact: the OC went belly-up in 1994 (it was the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history).
21:12 "...main street" - drink! also, jim lehrer sounds like a marriage counselor.
21:14 i get that pork barrel spending plays well on the stump for mccain, but it's hardly the issue on everyone's lips.
21:15 was there a CSI joke buried in mccain's line about bear DNA in montana? palin would know. wait, touchy subject.
21:17 how do two giant bay leaves just disappear in a stock pot? fuck.
21:20 if we don't get the income tax under control, all of our jobs are going to...ireland. raise your hand if you would mind moving to ireland.
i stopped there, as i was getting soup all over my notepad, and pausing the debate every forty-five seconds got old fast. i think that though obama could've used better language when he agreed with mccain (a point rephrased is much harder for your opponent to replay in campaign ads), he was telegenic and sure-footed, which is all he really needed to be last night. i wanted him to kick mccain's deregulatin' ass across the stage, but obama's always had a long fuse; ideally, the undecideds will realize we could use a bit more of that. at the end of the day, what's said about the debate will matter more than what was said at the debate, of course: how was it with you and yours?
liveblogging a debate isn't nearly as fun as popping in all day to talk about a primary.* if you ever try such a thing, internets, be prepared to re-watch each exchange like four times - and maybe resist the urge to liveblog the soup you're making at the same time.
20:57 still recovering from the sarah palin beauty pageant video linked over at wonkette. swimsuit-related dry eye!
21:02 i always forget about jim lehrer's irisless muppet eyes. he seems like a nice enough guy, but they're terrifying.
21:04 ooh, barry's first shot at mccain (on deregulation)! why mccain isn't now noting that bill clinton's the one who signed the financial services modernization act in 1999...is beyond me. it wasn't bipartisan, but it was on our watch.
21:05 whoop, reducing broth volume probably means simmering without the lid. i am a great chef.
21:07 that overdone "wall street blah blah blah main street" construction could be this debate's drinking prompt. it's come up twice already.
21:09 nice eisenhower anecdote, john, but it makes you sound old. i'd steer away from coded messages to the greatest generation, as those dudes are asleep already on this coast.
21:10 multicolored heirloom tomatoes are lovely when they're intact, but this soup is totally going to look like barf.
21:11 don't remind us of the chairman of the SEC, john! we all laughed at you when you claimed you were going to fire him! fun fact: christopher cox was my congressman when i lived in the OC. less-fun fact: the OC went belly-up in 1994 (it was the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history).
21:12 "...main street" - drink! also, jim lehrer sounds like a marriage counselor.
21:14 i get that pork barrel spending plays well on the stump for mccain, but it's hardly the issue on everyone's lips.
21:15 was there a CSI joke buried in mccain's line about bear DNA in montana? palin would know. wait, touchy subject.
21:17 how do two giant bay leaves just disappear in a stock pot? fuck.
21:20 if we don't get the income tax under control, all of our jobs are going to...ireland. raise your hand if you would mind moving to ireland.
i stopped there, as i was getting soup all over my notepad, and pausing the debate every forty-five seconds got old fast. i think that though obama could've used better language when he agreed with mccain (a point rephrased is much harder for your opponent to replay in campaign ads), he was telegenic and sure-footed, which is all he really needed to be last night. i wanted him to kick mccain's deregulatin' ass across the stage, but obama's always had a long fuse; ideally, the undecideds will realize we could use a bit more of that. at the end of the day, what's said about the debate will matter more than what was said at the debate, of course: how was it with you and yours?
*which i attempted back in early february (apologies for the lack of a specific post link - i ripped that code out of the 'champ's template years ago and never figured how to reinsert it).
09.23.08: culture blotter {my bloody valentine @ roseland ballroom}
rocktober, the month or so in which joe and i do most of our concertgoing for the year, began not with a bang but a...something, at the first of my bloody valentine's two NYC shows at roseland ballroom last night. locals who caught their sunday show in the catskills warned that the complimentary ear plugs were a must-have rather than a suggestion ("you're gonna fucking need 'em to endure their noisy 20-odd minute climax"), and they weren't kidding: i actually needed one of the spare pairs i'd brought along, as the...something jiggled my first set right out of my ears and down to the grotty venue floor.
but i'm getting ahead of myself. my bloody valentine: a shoegazer band famous for using every pedal ever made and spending something like £250,000 (nearly bankrupting their record label) to create loveless (1991), their second album, which tops all sorts of critics' lists and sounds like seraphim snagged in a garbage disposal. they're genius if you're fond of a certain kind of brown noise and insufferable if you don't (poor jen had a rough time with my shoegazer phase when we lived in england; as a brooklynvegan commenter put it, "the only band that inspired more shitty bands than MBV, is Pavement." [sic]). i fall somewhere in the middle and vastly prefer a few of MBV's contemporaries (slowdive and ride); i turned london upside down to find the you made me realise EP back in the day, but loveless only joined my CD pile when The Man With 42 Blue Coats, my abrasive ex, made it my twentieth birthday present (right after we broke up, as i recall - very emo). joe discovered that copy and loves it (and is hipster-mean's polar opposite), so hey hey circle of life!
we squidged in our MBV-approved plugs and settled in for the main act at about ten last night, and as soon as the band kicked into "i only said"'s siren loops, joe lit up like a boardwalk carnival. it's a real pleasure to see the missus bliss out that way: having to wait for two hours as rude beer-fetchers knocked us across the floor was less than cool, but his holy shit that's kevin shields right there! face made up for it. i...don't have the best hearing anyway, and between the sonic assault (MBV show recaps - positive ones! - are full of superviolent descriptors, which is sort of weird when one isn't talking about metal) and the foam, i couldn't always tell which song i was hearing. i just barely heard the "thorn" chorus, but i'd known it was coming: i'd seen the set list for the previous show.
then, most of the way through "you made me realise" at the end of the set, came the something, a feedback apocalypse that's apparently closed all of this year's shows. it lasted roughly twelve minutes, came in at about 130 decibels (that is, above the threshold of pain and right around jet takeoff), and was loud enough to break up a kidney stone, as joe put it (as someone twittered, "my bloody valentine is shattering my bones"). forget feeling the crunch of the reverb in your sternum: this twisted around in my guts (i'd be willing to bet that a few of the people who left early went to throw up), got my skin buzzing, and made it hard to breathe. some people loved the effect and flung their arms out to absorb the waves, at least at first. me, i'm kind of shocked, strongly suggested ear plugs or no: sitting through the end of that show without them would have blown our eardrums.kids irish fortysomethings today!
rocktober, the month or so in which joe and i do most of our concertgoing for the year, began not with a bang but a...something, at the first of my bloody valentine's two NYC shows at roseland ballroom last night. locals who caught their sunday show in the catskills warned that the complimentary ear plugs were a must-have rather than a suggestion ("you're gonna fucking need 'em to endure their noisy 20-odd minute climax"), and they weren't kidding: i actually needed one of the spare pairs i'd brought along, as the...something jiggled my first set right out of my ears and down to the grotty venue floor.
but i'm getting ahead of myself. my bloody valentine: a shoegazer band famous for using every pedal ever made and spending something like £250,000 (nearly bankrupting their record label) to create loveless (1991), their second album, which tops all sorts of critics' lists and sounds like seraphim snagged in a garbage disposal. they're genius if you're fond of a certain kind of brown noise and insufferable if you don't (poor jen had a rough time with my shoegazer phase when we lived in england; as a brooklynvegan commenter put it, "the only band that inspired more shitty bands than MBV, is Pavement." [sic]). i fall somewhere in the middle and vastly prefer a few of MBV's contemporaries (slowdive and ride); i turned london upside down to find the you made me realise EP back in the day, but loveless only joined my CD pile when The Man With 42 Blue Coats, my abrasive ex, made it my twentieth birthday present (right after we broke up, as i recall - very emo). joe discovered that copy and loves it (and is hipster-mean's polar opposite), so hey hey circle of life!
we squidged in our MBV-approved plugs and settled in for the main act at about ten last night, and as soon as the band kicked into "i only said"'s siren loops, joe lit up like a boardwalk carnival. it's a real pleasure to see the missus bliss out that way: having to wait for two hours as rude beer-fetchers knocked us across the floor was less than cool, but his holy shit that's kevin shields right there! face made up for it. i...don't have the best hearing anyway, and between the sonic assault (MBV show recaps - positive ones! - are full of superviolent descriptors, which is sort of weird when one isn't talking about metal) and the foam, i couldn't always tell which song i was hearing. i just barely heard the "thorn" chorus, but i'd known it was coming: i'd seen the set list for the previous show.
then, most of the way through "you made me realise" at the end of the set, came the something, a feedback apocalypse that's apparently closed all of this year's shows. it lasted roughly twelve minutes, came in at about 130 decibels (that is, above the threshold of pain and right around jet takeoff), and was loud enough to break up a kidney stone, as joe put it (as someone twittered, "my bloody valentine is shattering my bones"). forget feeling the crunch of the reverb in your sternum: this twisted around in my guts (i'd be willing to bet that a few of the people who left early went to throw up), got my skin buzzing, and made it hard to breathe. some people loved the effect and flung their arms out to absorb the waves, at least at first. me, i'm kind of shocked, strongly suggested ear plugs or no: sitting through the end of that show without them would have blown our eardrums.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 is tinnitis a performer's fault or a fan's? should MBV be liable if someone went deaf last night?
02 loudest show you've ever seen? was it worth the ringing ears?
09.19.08: international talk like a pirate day
Q: what's a pirate's favorite sarah palin* hobby?
A: arrrial wolf hunting.
Q: what's a pirate's favorite sarah palin* hobby?
A: arrrial wolf hunting.
*per the baby name generator, palin would have called me soup landmine. joe, in turn, works out to speck backfire, which makes me glad i'm vegetarian.
09.15.08: everything is green
it's just as well that our wireless was down for the weekend. on saturday night i got a call from paul, who did me the kindness of telling me my favorite author was dead. he thought it would be better to hear of it from him than to hear of it from the media, and i think he was right. one's best friend is usually right about things like that.
david foster wallace was supposed to become the sleek old seal of postmodern literature. he'd metamorphosed from the cockeyed, scarecrow-haired punk on infinite jest's dust jacket (though it was hard to imagine him breaking a sweat over prose, that photo always made me think his tongue would stick out of the corner of his mouth as he wrote something especially excellent) to a heavier, ponytailed grownup, like the big lebowski's Dude after a makeover. i always imagined that, when i finally met DFW at a book signing, he'd be a bit like The Dude. plus paul, plus my favorite high school teacher. i would tell him the story of how someone in oxford once asked if the infinite jest quote on my wall was something i'd written, giving me the biggest, most ludicrous compliment of my life.
i miss you sounds much better in french (tu me manques) than it does in english, both literally and figuratively: se manquer is a reflexive verb, and is closer to to lack. it's visceral in a useful way. i lack david foster wallace. we lack him.
it's just as well that our wireless was down for the weekend. on saturday night i got a call from paul, who did me the kindness of telling me my favorite author was dead. he thought it would be better to hear of it from him than to hear of it from the media, and i think he was right. one's best friend is usually right about things like that.
david foster wallace was supposed to become the sleek old seal of postmodern literature. he'd metamorphosed from the cockeyed, scarecrow-haired punk on infinite jest's dust jacket (though it was hard to imagine him breaking a sweat over prose, that photo always made me think his tongue would stick out of the corner of his mouth as he wrote something especially excellent) to a heavier, ponytailed grownup, like the big lebowski's Dude after a makeover. i always imagined that, when i finally met DFW at a book signing, he'd be a bit like The Dude. plus paul, plus my favorite high school teacher. i would tell him the story of how someone in oxford once asked if the infinite jest quote on my wall was something i'd written, giving me the biggest, most ludicrous compliment of my life.
i miss you sounds much better in french (tu me manques) than it does in english, both literally and figuratively: se manquer is a reflexive verb, and is closer to to lack. it's visceral in a useful way. i lack david foster wallace. we lack him.
09.08.08: frosting shot $1.50
understated civic engagement has been our unofficial theme for the past several days. on thursday we had tickets to the colbert report: i expected an all-palin show, as i'd seen something on colbert's website about endorsing her for president and she'd given her speech to the RNC on wednesday night, but our half hour was equal parts convention criticism, palin material (an interview with the remarkably game creator of draft sarah palin for vice president), and ron paul interview. such a winning kook, that ron paul! like jon stewart, colbert is charming in person - more so, perhaps, since his character compels him to amuse the audience at all times (he groomed his makeup artists as they walloped him with concealer between takes and made eyes at us as he studied cue cards). the production assistants were very aggressive about making the distinction between Colbert in Character and pre-show colbert - those few minutes before the cameras rolled were our only chance to rap with The Real Stephen, man, and we were not to forget it. i suppose that means that our interstitial entertainment was ironic, but i like to tell myself he's a coy man either way. the audience was small - about 100 of us, compared to the 200 or so who see the daily show - which was nice and intimate, though there was less collective body warmth to compete with the arctic conditions in the studio (seriously, are the lights really that hot?). i would go again, though joe feels that we should try to see other shows for the first time before repeating. conan o'brien? saturday night live? contemplating my next move.
on saturday evening we thumbed our noses at the hanna-related storm and headed out to sound fix records in williamsburg for the burg for barack, a bake sale / silent auction / miniconcert to raise funds for obama. it's sort of weird to watch a group reclaim their stereotypes:* as the ethereal songstress who came on first noted, "we're all doing what we can to get this man elected! we can bake cupcakes, and...there are a lot of good-looking people here tonight...and we can listen to indie rock!" we (read: joe), in turn, can eat baked goods like nobody's business, and the lemon bar i took down for obama was excellent. it was also oddly pleasurable to dig around in my pockets on the way out, discover that we had money left after cookie-buying, and dump said money in the collection box on the way out. "merf merf crowdnoise," said the woman at the food table when we passed her in the silent auction." "what?" i replied." "you two are just the happiest people," she repeated. "you smile all the time." that's a first for me, internets (like generations of women in my family, i am famous for looking angry): apparently this election is good for my soul.
sunday was the broome street block party, an event our friend melissa organized with sponsorship from transportation alternatives. she worked her ass off putting the afternoon together, and it turned out wonderfully: the street was covered with chalk drawings by the time we got there, ice cream-covered kids were ricocheting around the block like sticky little superballs, and a decent crowd gathered when the musical acts (including melissa's band, last year's model) got going. as is customary, i refused to dance, but i had an excuse: i donated blood at the health fair down the street (the poor van people only had four other donors all day; they tried to get me to take a sack of the surplus snacks they'd brought, but i couldn't inflict reduced fat cheez-its** on an unsuspecting public with a clear conscience). by the time i got back from the blood van, joe had patronized most of the nearby eateries (the roasting plant, doughnut plant, babycakes). i accused him of being pregnant and then made him queue with me at gus's pickles; he retaliated by going back to babycakes. so dancing would have been difficult for a couple of reasons.
now joe is covering for his counterpart down in washington DC, and i have switched to salad and salon. how was your weekend?
understated civic engagement has been our unofficial theme for the past several days. on thursday we had tickets to the colbert report: i expected an all-palin show, as i'd seen something on colbert's website about endorsing her for president and she'd given her speech to the RNC on wednesday night, but our half hour was equal parts convention criticism, palin material (an interview with the remarkably game creator of draft sarah palin for vice president), and ron paul interview. such a winning kook, that ron paul! like jon stewart, colbert is charming in person - more so, perhaps, since his character compels him to amuse the audience at all times (he groomed his makeup artists as they walloped him with concealer between takes and made eyes at us as he studied cue cards). the production assistants were very aggressive about making the distinction between Colbert in Character and pre-show colbert - those few minutes before the cameras rolled were our only chance to rap with The Real Stephen, man, and we were not to forget it. i suppose that means that our interstitial entertainment was ironic, but i like to tell myself he's a coy man either way. the audience was small - about 100 of us, compared to the 200 or so who see the daily show - which was nice and intimate, though there was less collective body warmth to compete with the arctic conditions in the studio (seriously, are the lights really that hot?). i would go again, though joe feels that we should try to see other shows for the first time before repeating. conan o'brien? saturday night live? contemplating my next move.
on saturday evening we thumbed our noses at the hanna-related storm and headed out to sound fix records in williamsburg for the burg for barack, a bake sale / silent auction / miniconcert to raise funds for obama. it's sort of weird to watch a group reclaim their stereotypes:* as the ethereal songstress who came on first noted, "we're all doing what we can to get this man elected! we can bake cupcakes, and...there are a lot of good-looking people here tonight...and we can listen to indie rock!" we (read: joe), in turn, can eat baked goods like nobody's business, and the lemon bar i took down for obama was excellent. it was also oddly pleasurable to dig around in my pockets on the way out, discover that we had money left after cookie-buying, and dump said money in the collection box on the way out. "merf merf crowdnoise," said the woman at the food table when we passed her in the silent auction." "what?" i replied." "you two are just the happiest people," she repeated. "you smile all the time." that's a first for me, internets (like generations of women in my family, i am famous for looking angry): apparently this election is good for my soul.
sunday was the broome street block party, an event our friend melissa organized with sponsorship from transportation alternatives. she worked her ass off putting the afternoon together, and it turned out wonderfully: the street was covered with chalk drawings by the time we got there, ice cream-covered kids were ricocheting around the block like sticky little superballs, and a decent crowd gathered when the musical acts (including melissa's band, last year's model) got going. as is customary, i refused to dance, but i had an excuse: i donated blood at the health fair down the street (the poor van people only had four other donors all day; they tried to get me to take a sack of the surplus snacks they'd brought, but i couldn't inflict reduced fat cheez-its** on an unsuspecting public with a clear conscience). by the time i got back from the blood van, joe had patronized most of the nearby eateries (the roasting plant, doughnut plant, babycakes). i accused him of being pregnant and then made him queue with me at gus's pickles; he retaliated by going back to babycakes. so dancing would have been difficult for a couple of reasons.
now joe is covering for his counterpart down in washington DC, and i have switched to salad and salon. how was your weekend?
*very 2001: a space odyssey, really.
**dear blood banks of america: if you're going to give the people fruit punch and regular old cookies, you might as well give them the real cheez-its. even mayor mike eats them.
09.04.08: the dirty dozen, part III {lipstick}
10 i had to sign for a very heavy, very serious looking inter-office envelope from human resources the other day. "i'm handing out a bunch of these today," my mail guy said, his voice full of doom. alas, i thought, i'm getting fired. it's a ladymag dirty bomb (i imagined some forcible retirement in an explosion of tainted lip gloss; we've been watching a lot of the last season of the wire and the first season of the x-files*). actually, it was a box from a fifth avenue jeweler: it's my five year anniversary with the company. have i really spent a sixth of my life working for Big Media? i spent a few months freelancing after the unceremonious end of my career as their PR lackey (thank god; that was a dark year, to put it mildly), but i interned in '03, so - yeah, i guess that's right. weird.
11 our stable of print subscriptions is getting crowded: we puttered along with just the new yorker until last year, then a year's worth of free esquire jumped in, and now we're getting new york (not bad, but hard to keep up with on a weekly basis), readymade (cool, but it's getting auto-archived until i can put a stake in a few ongoing craft projects), iceland review, and now one story. per their "about" page,
12 hey, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? pits are adorable. i admit that i've been avoiding political conversations with non-liberals for the past few weeks (not cool to yell at friends, and i'm too far in the tank for obama to debate politely at this point); after sarah palin's faux-populist, condescending, phonetically teleprompted "there is no spoon" performance last night, i might have to start avoiding television, too. at the very least, i'm starting the election season equivalent of a swear jar: every time that woman's bullshit turns my knuckles white,** i'm dropping in more funds for the democrats. anger management. baby steps.
10 i had to sign for a very heavy, very serious looking inter-office envelope from human resources the other day. "i'm handing out a bunch of these today," my mail guy said, his voice full of doom. alas, i thought, i'm getting fired. it's a ladymag dirty bomb (i imagined some forcible retirement in an explosion of tainted lip gloss; we've been watching a lot of the last season of the wire and the first season of the x-files*). actually, it was a box from a fifth avenue jeweler: it's my five year anniversary with the company. have i really spent a sixth of my life working for Big Media? i spent a few months freelancing after the unceremonious end of my career as their PR lackey (thank god; that was a dark year, to put it mildly), but i interned in '03, so - yeah, i guess that's right. weird.
11 our stable of print subscriptions is getting crowded: we puttered along with just the new yorker until last year, then a year's worth of free esquire jumped in, and now we're getting new york (not bad, but hard to keep up with on a weekly basis), readymade (cool, but it's getting auto-archived until i can put a stake in a few ongoing craft projects), iceland review, and now one story. per their "about" page,
One Story is a non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks. Our mission is to save the short story by publishing in a friendly format that allows readers to experience each story as a stand-alone work of art and a simple form of entertainment. One Story is designed to fit into your purse or pocket, and into your life.i just read my first story, thomas grattan's "foreign girls," and loved it; this newest mail-friend doesn't come cheap, but it's most welcome. i might start keeping a little fan of stories on my coffee table, provided that i can convince the cat to leave off puking on it (everyone's a critic).
12 hey, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? pits are adorable. i admit that i've been avoiding political conversations with non-liberals for the past few weeks (not cool to yell at friends, and i'm too far in the tank for obama to debate politely at this point); after sarah palin's faux-populist, condescending, phonetically teleprompted "there is no spoon" performance last night, i might have to start avoiding television, too. at the very least, i'm starting the election season equivalent of a swear jar: every time that woman's bullshit turns my knuckles white,** i'm dropping in more funds for the democrats. anger management. baby steps.
*it is horrifying, by the way, to go from the unstoppable pulchritude of smooth-cheeked young david duchovny on our tv at home to jowly sex addict david duchovny on californication billboards now in times square. he was only a few years older than i am in his early days as fox mulder; is that the sort of decline i can expect in the next decade? turning thirty sounds worse all the time.
**the safest option. a palin-themed drinking game would end badly.
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