(0,0)

Saturday:
The Mountain Goats, All Eternals Deck
3 hours of breakdance music at Battle Royale III, Flips & Fitness, Baton Rouge, LA
Kick Ass
Exit Through the Gift Shop

Sunday:
Brigitte Fontaine, Est
Sherlock
Britney Spears, "I Wanna Go"
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

• It's like we just discovered that we have Netflix streaming and its wealth of timesuck BBC crime dramas and HBO off-hours movies.
• I've fallen asleep twice through Exit Through the Gift Shop as well as the Season 1, episode 3 of Sherlock I am ignoring right now to type this. Sherlock is brilliant for this particular sort of media enjoyment, a contemporary upgrade with a lot of reliance on smartphone culture, though I'm waiting for a crucial plot point where our cocksure fop genius' battery gives out because he leaves his charger back on Baker Street. Exit - I'm not sure I buy it, the story of Banksy being subverted into being a story about the obsessive film-maker. I mean, the whole of Banksy is manipulation of intention and authorship and carefully channeled public effect. I'm half-convinced that Banksy is not a thing unto itself but a campaign for something else, or maybe even an objective-free campaign. I feel a little it's a set-up. I do like the art, especially the post-Katrina stuff he did in New Orleans, whatever or whosever it is, which I suppose is the important part.
• I have been humming the chorus of "I Wanna Go" ever since Bravo start using it for their default eveining bumper music. The digitized tessellation of such a banal impulse, I-I-I-I-Wa-na-na-na-go-go-go-go (something unintelligible) to-night, is a sharp an encapsulation of the Britney Thing, all trajectory without a starting point (well, the Mickey Mouse Club; perhaps the two black round ears can be read as a (0,0) coordinate on all axes) or a fixed endpoint and I wanna go to. Who doesn't want to hitch a ride on a comet's tail?
• I was sent to cover a breakdancing competition on Saturday - a statement that says a lot, I think - and I consiered it a lark largely justified by the fee and my getting to try a taqueria on that side of town. I walked out 4 hours later convinced that I don't know how to use my body at all - it's like when there's a TV genius detective who has a mutation that allows him to use more than 20% of their brain or something. His thought processes manifest as lots of overlays of the person calculating pi to the 100th digit, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man spinning his arms and legs like windmills/sped-up clocks/cosmic orbits/electrons/everything. Like that, but for breakdancing. The event was sweet and generally inspiring. People care about things that no one cares about and it's not the things that bear fruit, it's the caring. I am aware of how dopey that sounds, but I mean it.
• The episode of Sherlock I am presently half-watching revolves somehow around the golem myth, the slave-monster made of clay brought to life with G-d's name scratched into his chest. Sherlock and Watson are in quite a pickle! I won't ruin it for you, but the moral is never underestimate the leverage of underestimation. Or, I think so at least. I wasn't really watching.

the lava-hot core of the planet

The sky mimics the pool mimicking the lightning bolt between AC and DC.

AC/DC, "Hell's Bells"
Louie
Lydia Davis, Break it Down (as contained in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis)
Joshua Bell, Voice of the Violin

• God, Louie is good TV. How do you tell the real story that is not enough of a "story" because it is more like a dream? That's how. Plus, it weirds me out that hot Pamela on that show is Bobby Hill. That range covers the entire Platonic spectrum, from the clouds to the dirt.
  
  
• Reading Lydia Davis because the few people not going on and on about Louie CK are going on and on about her. I see why. I don't know if the stories in Break it Down are of consistent quality; at points it reads like a highly attenuated blog, but, like a great blog, there are these glistening moments of clarity, maybe even a clarity the author did not intend to reveal or know was revealed, but the author is caught up in the revealing and we get caught up in the being revealed to.
  
  
• When I hear "Hell's Bells" at the pool, I picture the water teeming with sharks. When I hear "Creep" at the pool, I try to not make eye contact with the lifeguards. When I hear "Money For Nothing" at the pool, I wait 7 1/2 minutes for the song to start and then when it does it's just that one chorus pretty much over and over, lasting longer than did the MTV Sting wanted to so damn bad. When I hear "Radar Love" at the pool, I delight a little in how much a friend of mine hates that song so much. When I hear "Rolling in the Deep" at the pool, I think, didn't I just hear "Rolling in the Deep" a minute ago.
  
  
• Also, reading those short stories Davis does, letting them blur by like a parade of self-doubt and marriage insecurities - it makes you want to write something. Or it makes me want to write something. I'm pointing to it, declaring to no one, See? That's what I want to do! I suspect that is the lava-hot core of the planet of love the hip kids have for her.
  
  
• Sharks! They are everywhere! Swim smart, y'all!
  
  
  

throw this computer out the window

Crab-stuffed fish at Portabello's last night. Slow as Christmas but they came through in the end. Jerri's Parmigiana crusted eggplant salad was the star of the table.

Luther
Jackie Mitoo, Drum Song
Alton Ellis, Mr. Soul of Jamaica
GIVERS, In Light
Can, Tago Mago
Wings, Back to the Egg
Ian Dury, Mr. Love Pants
Lou Reed, New York

• Rinky-dink instrumental reggae is one of life's simplest pleasures. It could be piped in everywhere and I'd be happy. Muzak of Jah. Elevator music for passengers directed to On High. Whatever "irie" means.
  
  
  Jackie Mitoo, "Merry Go Round"
  
  
• It took me a lot of maneuvering to get to Mr. Love Pants.
  
  
  Ian Dury, "Jack Shit George"
  
  
• From the copyeditor: If this is OK, then we're finished! It was and we are!
  
  
• I'm about to throw this computer out the window, and hope when I do, it hits another computer innocently walking by on the sidewalk, taking them both out.
  
  
• I've probably said this before, but it bears repeating love the first line of this song:
  
  Caught between the twisted stars
  The plotted lines the faulty map
  That brought columbus to new york
  
Lou Reed, "Romeo Had Juliette". And I also love He’s thinking of his lonely room The sink that by his bed gives off a stink Then smells her perfume in his eyes And her voice was like a bell

a story about a dream about a movie about the author's life

Delmore Schwarz, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
Dance Moms
Alex V. Cook, Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in South Louisiana's Juke Joints, Honky Tonks, and Dancehalls
The Black Crowes, Amorica
Sly & the Family Stone, There's a Riot Goin' On
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.
Suicide, American Supreme
The Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat
Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers

• Finished the copyediting responses on my book last night with the nightmare that is Dance Moms rattling on in the background. That's the excuse I made for the TV still being on Lifetime this morning and I'm sticking to it.
  
  
• I will concede to the general consensus that Delmore Schwartz's story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" is a work of postmodern-before-we-called-it-postmodern genius - a story about a dream about a movie about the author's life, rife with lots of time/space hooks and the terror that is causality - but "Screeno", the tale that cabooses this story collection, similarly about the movies as a social experience and how delicately the boundaries in a shared social sphere must be maintained lest the bubble burst, deserves some love. Even though it ends weird.
  
  
• Out of ideas. I put together a playlist of albums that have some sort of American flag on the cover; we'll see how that goes. According to this discussion, there is one on the back right corner of White Light/White Heat. I don't see it, but its reason enough to pull it out. To be honest, I'll probably only listen to "Downbound Train" off Born in the U.S.A. and wish it was the Smithereens version. 
  
  
  
  BitUSA is one of those omnipresent albums of my youth like Purple Rain that I can't listen to without instinctively reaching for the radio dial. "Family Affair" might be the best song ever no matter how many times I hear it.
  
  
• My lil' preview of the August 11 Gillian Welch show in New Orleans is up in the current issue of OffBeat. Also in that issue is Brian Boyles' excellent account of when in 1986 Wynton Marsalis called Miles Davis out on some shit. On Miles' stage. Wynton's got a pair.
  
  
• OK, I love stupid old "I'm Goin' Down" too. Maya just said, "This sounds a whole lot like Ringo."
  
  
  

60¢

Edouard Levé, Suicide
Adele, 21
Richard Buckner, Our Blood (streaming at NPR)
Delmore Schwartz, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
Kronos Quartet, Feldman: Piano & String Quartet
Kreutzer Quartet, Coates: String Quartet No. 9 - Sonata for Violin Solo - Lyric Suite

• Lately, I'm finding more satisfaction with reviews over at Goodreads than on any of the other social media platforms. I'm on Google+; feel free to plus me or circle me or whatever it is, but I haven't been moved to really put myself out there yet. I'm not LinkedIn or Quora-ed or Formsprung in any appreciable degree. Come March when the new book comes out (launch date is looking like March 9 or 10, 2011) I'll get on the promotional edge of things. Until then, I did get loquacious on Suicide last night, if you are feeling deprived.
  
  
• Re Adele: I've heard "Rolling in the Deep" at least three times every time I've been to the pool this summer and I'm still not sick of it. The whole of 21 is a little syrupy for me, but I could not get sick of "I'll Be Waiting" when it gets its turn.
  
  
• I was rolling through the drizzle - not a Snoop Doggesque malaprop; it was lightly raining - cutting through Coates Hall after checking out Delmore Schwartz's In Dreams Begin Responsibilities from the library, prompted by a discussion at this weekend's pool party when I came across...
  
  
• A WOLFGANG PUCK-THEMED OLD-SCHOOL COFFEE MACHINE!
  
  
  
• The kind from which Larry Tate would get his coffee. Or George Jetson. Or WOLFGANG PUCK. Besides the Mad Men wow factor of it, I'm particularly stoked because I think this might be the self-same coffee machine from twenty years ago where as a student, in the Era Before Coffeeshops, I'd get coffee when coming back from the computer labs. It was in this same spot, next to the pay phone I'd have to make a collect call from because I used my last quarters on coffee. It is still 60¢, a price so archaically low that it is not directly bloggable by modern keyboards for the lack of a ¢ key. I needed exact change; machines in the past didn't make change! I had to buy some Mentos from the union to get change, because people in the present don't make change either! It was worth the effort. In dreams begin responsibilities, or so the mad poet of Lou Reed's undergraduate years would offer. I shot footage!
  
  
  
  The controls feel like those of your pod at Space Mountain. The clamor in the background is a talking video Coke machine that plays that Drake Sprite commercial over and over, like a robot from the future coming to annoy us all to death. I'm waiting for the day a grumpy Intro to Philosophy prof from lecture hall around the corner smashes it into silence with the last wooden upright chair in the whole higher education system.
  
  
  The modern corrective to this gush of nostalgia: you don't get a lot of coffee for 60¢. Still, I'm so enamored with the old Coates hall coffee machine that I'm gonna listen to Gloria Coates bend time around a string quartet for the rest of the afternoon.
  

The apostrophes make it quick!

The sausage section inside the Poche's mini-mart inside Boutin's. It's like a turducken of Cajun food providers! That sells turducken!

Saturday:
Edouard Levé, Suicide
David Bowie, Scary Monsters
Echo & the Bunnymen, Ocean Rain
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black

Sunday:
Yes, The Yes Album
The Byrds, Fifth Dimension
Aldubáran, Glód
Lou Reed, The Blue Mask
Bruce Springsteen, Lucky Town


Monday:
Tortoise, It's All Around You
Tommy Guerrero, Lifeboats and Follies
The Lounge Lizards, Voice of Chunk
Audience, The House on the Hill
Fitz & the Tantrums, Pickin' Up the Pieces
The Whitefield Brothers, Earthology

Finalizing book edits, so I'll make this quick:  mowin' the back yard, wonderin' how I never noticed the orchestra on Ocean Rain before, Amy Winehouse listenin', swimmin', grillin', hamburger eatin',boudin-in', Lou Reedin', Bruce Springsteenin', comic book academics outclassin' me as a nerd, story-tellin', prog rock-evangelizin', wafflin', coffee, mowin' the front yard, more hamburger eatin', Suicide, more swimmin', snoozin' through Breaking Bad, snoozin' through True Blood, snoozin' through Suicide, Raisin Bran CRUNCH!in', horse camp, editin', meetings, havin' lunch where there was a deli lunch counter for a different business inside the restaurant where you can get a plate lunch instead of what's on the restaurant's menu and really, who wouldn't automatically opt for a plate lunch even though it's a bit awkward with the waiter who is just filling your ice tea the whole time but I'm not a total asshole and therefore tippin' as if he did the whole thing himself, more editin', resistin' the urge to do some Mick Jagger prancin' around the office to Fitz & the Tantrums, editin'.

The apostrophes make it quick!

n-thousandth

The butterfly habitat at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

White Stripes, White Blood Cells
The Who, Who Are You and Face Dances
Pavement, Terror Twilight
Crushed Stars, The Refracted Light of Crushed Stars

• My buddy Dave wins the day with his story  "F.I.N.E." It breaks new ground in the description of bare feet in fiction. It drove me to the White Stripes and their dead leaves and dirty ground but truthfully, it's not that far of a drive. In the imagined garage rock band my daughter and I have, we play the crap out of "Dead Leaves" in that little corner of the farmer's market and then go into any AC/DC song then back in to "Fell in Love with a Girl" and a food fight of mixed greens and pricy tomatoes breaks out and then things get rull when the guy from the shrimp stand gets involved.
  
• Terror Twilight is not The Pavement Album, the definer or the smart start for the novice, but it's really the only one I want to listen to anymore. It is a graceful bow-out for such an egregiously and preciously ungainly band. Same could be said for the Jones-era Who in Who Are You except the Who (whoever is the Who at any given moment) never quits. The Who is the dog forever stretching its tether tight, barking at just the right moment when you walk by the yard to give you a chill in your spine. Every time, even when you see them coming from down the street.
  
• I generally love Face Dances. Does "The Quiet One" get the credit for inventing hair metal?
  
• I totally love "Let My Love Open the Door." Pete Townshend's controversies might make this an inappropriate song for mine and Maya's imaginary farmers' market rock band.
  
  
  
  
• OK, now that I've listened to the whole thing, I might backtrack a little on Who Are You. "Trick of the Light" and "Guitar and Pen" are cracked-open geodes of rock glory and the title song is the kind of excess which with is paved the road to the palace of wisdom, even on the n-thousandth listen (see last night's Louie) but otherwise, there is little dignity to be found here. Roger Daltrey's brand of over-doing it vs. the lite-prog-ish numbers reminds me of the time some friends talked me into doing Tom Jones song at karaoke and there is no way to not belt out a Tom Jones song and so I did and it was uncomfortable for everyone - "Delilah" goes on a lot longer than you think - and it's why I don't do karaoke anymore. I got enough problems.