Using Bees To Effect Vengeance |
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I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!
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Friday, August 30, 2002
Snagged 5th row center tickets for Elvis C at the Backyard in October. He was on the Today show yesterday morning with his hot little band: video footage here. | Hearty congratulations to lulu, one of four nominees for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy in this year's B. Iden Payne awards for her terrific work in last year's The Star Play. Of course, everyone in that production deserved a nom (I thought the direction was great ;-).... | The improbably named Will Self (was Ayn Rand his godmother or something?) recently went on a British radio talk show to promote his new book, which is probably as intimidatingly brilliant and frustratingly thorny as most of his other ones. Anyway, Self -- who boasts the impeccable punk rock credentials of having done heroin on Tony Blair's plane -- was joined on the show by a right-wing author (about whom I confess I know nothing) promoting his book, and the two got into a most entertaining scrap. An excellent transcript is here. [thanks to Brian Millar] Note: the BNP is a xenophobic, racist, fill-in-the-blank right wing party that has received worryingly good results in recent elections, particularly in the North. | Monday, August 26, 2002
More rampant piracy, but this one should have you running to purchase copies of Gary Giddins' Visions Of Jazz. In a piece on Charlie Haden and Hank Jones' glorious Steal Away record, Giddins opens with some remarkably insightful reflections on how African-American religious music embodies a parity between Old and New Testaments that Western Christian music doesn't. He then goes on to point out: "Go Down Moses", an obvious example, would suit any seder and, as a piece of music, beats the Passover anthem, "Da-yenu" by a country mile or a desert sea. Considering how indifferently Jews, who practically invented the modern pop song, have fared with hymns, one wonders why they haven't borrowed from other ex-slaves with a cannier ear for the pentatonic scale." I'd never thought about it, but Jewish religious music seems somewhat undernourished given the disproportionate influence Jews have had on other musical forms. Did Jews prefer to compose for the masses? Are the best Jewish composers more secular-oriented? Is it that we just don't know as much about Jewish music because of centuries of repression? I have to agree with Giddins -- any culture that can boast Mendelssohn, Berlin, Gershwin, Dylan, Bacharach, and Joey Ramone must be able to do better than "Da-yenu" -- although I can hear The Ramones taking a good shot at that one. | Sunday, August 25, 2002
You know you're in Dallas when you pass by church billboards that read: "use Son screen to avoid burning". | Friday, August 23, 2002
I don't know much about the band Nickelback -- from what I've heard, they're another one of those bands whose major musical influence is a piece of dried mucus that Eddie Vedder absent-mindedly hocked up in September 1992. Still, there's always time in one's jampacked day for a refreshing rant about how crap most music is. The NME has its problems, but it does do unadulterated vitriol quite well. Rather than make you click through, I'm going to strike a blow for brazen piracy and reproduce the review here, without permission. Have a look at nme.com if you're feeling guilty. Anyway, I present Mark Beaumont's review of the new Nickelback single, "Too Bad": "GRUNT! HEAVE! CHURN! Christ, feel the weight of this riffage! Try carrying this boulder of pain on your back a Mississippi mile! Put your shoulder to The Rock and strain-a-longa Nickelback, a band who write songs in the same way that betrayed Messiahs carry crucifixes up steep hills. ‘Too Bad’, like all their bricklaying slogrock shite, sounds like an episode of The World’s Strongest Man set to ‘music’: much teeth-gritted puffing, much painful wrenching and a lot of red faces all round. Except Nickelback don’t get the satisfaction of dragging a DC-10 seven inches with their teeth, they just drag youth culture deeper into the swamp of whining rock tedium like bricks in its pockets. Take a short pier and walk it. Fuckers." Don't you feel better, now? | Thursday, August 15, 2002
Ella Mae took the missus and I to La-La's and it lived up to its billing. A small but perfectly-formed jukebox -- you don't really need more than Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra, and Connie Francis at a place like that --, a nice little vibe, and some swell Christmas lights. A nice place to call my local. | So I had an anagnorisis today. Started thinking about the new job, what a transition it's been, blah blah blah. Went through the usual suspects. The frantic pace. Yeah, but that's not it. The steep learning curve. Yeah, but that's not it. Then it hit me: this is the first time in my life that my daily tasks primarily involve doing things rather than thinking about things. School is about thinking about things. Yes, you have homework, tests etc. but they're there primarily in order to gauge how well you've been thinking about things. Goes triple for college. In my last job, I was a Strategist (oh all right, Senior Strategist, but I'm just like you, really I am, don't be intimidated). Sure, I had "deliverables", but again, those involved analyzing situations, data, businesses, and putting my thoughts on paper when I was finished. Even when I made presentations to clients, it was in order to persuade them of the usefulness of my thoughts. My current job is not a thinking job. Sometimes I add a little bit of insight, but most of the time I don't have a lot of insight to share. In those cases where I do bring useful experience to the table, I don't have the time or the inclination to think strategically because I'm too busy worrying about the logistics of getting things done. Maybe when the daily processes I fumble with are second nature, I'll be able to do both. But for now, I don't think very much during my average day. That's deeply strange and unusual for me. Not unpleasant necessarily...but challenging. And challenging in a more profound way than I'd realized up until now. I'm not really that *good* at doing things; it's not my forte in life. But I'm really good at thinking. I'll think circles around you, boy. I'll think your freakin socks off. I've always preferred thinking to doing -- because I'm good at it. What do you prefer? (P.S -- I've even noticed a general decline in the articulateness (see?) of my postings since I started the job. A function of the shorter windows of time I have to compose my missives, you interject kindly? That's very sweet, but I don't think that's it. I think it's because my writing/analyzing brain is switched off all day. Hmmm....) | Tuesday, August 06, 2002
If there's one thing the chess world needs, it's an infusion of irreverence. Why do I think that? I don't know, but it sounds reasonably plausible, non? Anyway, enter Pawnpusher -- a site with a section dedicated to the eradication of inaccurate chess metaphors ("croquet -- it's chess on grass"), a site featuring Chess Pride t-shirts, a site willing to expose Garry Kasparov's facial similarity to Pete Sampras and Vinny Testaverde. I dedicate this post to Bud -- the student who, in deeply archetypal fashion, surpassed his teacher. Although I don't recall the archetype saying anything about surpassing within six months, but there you are. | Monday, August 05, 2002
Friday, August 02, 2002
Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau's forthcoming album is produced by none other than Jon Brion. Two White Album covers, a Radiohead song, some Jobim, and a song called "Free Willy". Should be interesting... | Thursday, August 01, 2002
I need more trousers. And more long-sleeved dress shirts -- preferably client-service-blue or one of the oh-so-daring pinstriped/checked variations. Ross hath failed me already, $10 slightly irregular dress shirts being disconcertingly thin on the ground in their Austin location. You see how life changes when you move down south? This is what I blog about now, not terrorist attacks, celebrity sightings, glamorous Lower East Side goings-on (well, there weren't that many of those before either), or escapades out on the D train. Sheesh. In other news, there are a number of charmingly authentic local bars that I keep meaning to check out. We've already sampled the pleasures of the Carousel Lounge, but right near us are the legendary La-La's and the highly promising Little Longhorn Saloon. | It was only the other day that I discovered Lulu had a weblog of her very own...I saw a link to funtimestwo on konrad's blog but it didn't work so I didn't know where it went. Anyway, I'm so pleased to hear the inimitable Lulu's voice coming through loud and clear. | All that time and energy spent trying to pick a new couch, when we could have just built one from all the mousepads we had lying around [slaps forehead]. | |
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