spellcaster version

Gettin' judicious at Vintage Vinyl.

Andrej Blatnik, You Do Understand
Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw
Patti Smith, Twelve
Lou Reed, Animal Serenade
Blitzen Trapper, Wild Mountain Nation
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War
Ringo Starr, Ringo

• On You Do Understand: This was a great blur of a book, devoured in the time it took my daughter to find her books at the library. It is 60-odd stories on 80-odd pages, white space taking up both a big chunk of Blatnik's prose and the book itself. A quantifiably high majority of the microstories cover this arc: you play the movie of your life, whether it's one you wrote/directed/starred in or simply rented and watched; you press pause and ponder the rictus of the characters caught in mid speech, sigh at the eternal suspended animation of a sleeping one night stand as you slip on your shoes in the dark; then you press play again and the movie is totally different, or maybe you weren't following the plot is closely as you thought. (****, x-posted at Goodreads)
  
  
• Also, I would add: I like a short book.
  
  
• Twelve is mostly great, Patti Smith as the old gal at Karaoke Nite catching your ear suddenly opening up that PBS tote bag slung on her bony shoulder to release the locusts and yr all dead, husks serrated with bug bites and she's still doing the chorus like how karaoke makes you do - see her spellcaster version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", esp. around the 3:30 mark
  
  
  
• But even Patti Smith can't save "Everybody Wants to the Rule the World" from itself. The only time I've every heard somebody transcend the syrup in which the tune's admirable sentiments are suspended was when Debbie Landry did it at the long gone Alligator Bayou Bar because it was laden with tragedy; no one here was going to rule anything. The story originally appeared in Country Roads.
  
  
• Dude, everybody plays on Ringo. A guy at the record shop gave Maya the thumbs up for her choice because all four Beatles appear on it, but Marc Bolan, James Booker, Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson too. I almost have her sold on Bowie and the Clash, if I can get her into T. Rex, my work will be complete. Also, we got word the band to which she's been assigned at the music studio/rock band lessons situation is named Black Diamond. Whooooo!
  
  
  
  
  

from which the baloney comes

The fresh country baloney at Cochon. It's like a map of the moon. A baloney moon.

Patti Smith, Easter
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
Fucked Up, David Comes to Life
WWOZ
Drive-By Truckers, Go-Go Boots


The plate from which the baloney comes.


Patti Smith, "Ghost Dance"

I am newly smitten with Patti Smith's problematic Easter, particularly the cult assimilation jam "Ghost Dance". Ive listened to it 6 times in 2 days. If she asked me to hand out flowers at the airport right now I might do it.


The manager of the Rock N Bowl is so good at hula hoop he replicates the still nucleus of a hydrogen atom encircled by a single, crucial electron, completing his nature.


Cold soba noodles at Whole Foods. Perhaps in their cold, unsalted WFM blandness can grounding be found. I might even have a green tea later to see my baloney consumer Zen process into the cloudland of enlightenment. Or I might go to the pool. Or just fall asleep right here on the couch with the rest of my family. We shall live again. xo,zz,namaste

You need a trip on the Davis ship!

This has to be the most precious office desk tableau on the Internet. Oh... I used to like to work to vinyl but now I prefer working to shellac. Do you see my book in the background? See what I did there?

Wednesday:
The Tony Williams Lifetime, Ego
tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L
Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong
Kurt Vile, Childish Prodigy
Curb Your Enthusiasm

In-between:
Matthew Barney, Cremaster 2 on YouTube

Thursday:
Giant Sand, Black Out
Jimmie Davis 78's
Dickie Landry, Solo
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Messiaen: Meditations
Wye Oak, Civilian
Louie

In between:
Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw

Friday:
James Gleick, The Information
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer
Peter Bruntnell, Black Mountain U.F.O.
More 78's
Blitzen Trapper, Destroyer of the Void
Lou Reed & John Cale, Songs For Drella: A Fiction
Patti Smith, Peace and Noise and Easter
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War

• Thursday was supposed to be a writing/errand day but it pleasantly diverted into a 78rpm appreciation of the weirdness of the Singing Governor Jimmie Davis. What you need is a trip, a trip on the Davis ship!
  
  
  Jimmie Davis, "I Got News For You"
  
  
• I don't know what the Cremaster film cycle is about, nor am I sure that they are about anything, and I have not been able to watch one all the way through, and yet, I still think they are great. The bit in C2 where they part a curtain of bees and boom! there is a vagina (1:15) being penetrated by a penis that has a beehive at the tip (4:45) is something. And the bit with the drummer from Slayer sorta being Johnny Cash is cool.
  
  
  Matthew Barney, Cremaster 2 Part (2/9)
  
  
• I did get a lot of work done on the day I took off from work so I could work on my other work. I don't know if that is the American Dream or the rude awakening from it. Made me think of this:
  
  
  Lou Reed & John Cale, "Work"
  
  
• I love smart TV sitcoms. They are like finding a Godiva truffle at the bottom of a bag of store brand iced cookies.
  
  
• I brought Maya's record player up to the office to record a thing broadcasting soon on Public Radio and now I'm gonna crackle out this Friday out with a bunch of old 78's from my grandma's house that likely haven't been played since this very day in 1877 when Thomas Edison completed his first phonograph. More than once already I've been too distracted to flip the record over,and the crackly hiss of the needle bouncing off the center label is the best white noise generator there is.

trace intersections with chaos

This is at the Bullring in Brimingham during Monday night's riots


Portugal. The Man, In the Mountain In the Cloud
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War
Margaret and the Nuclear So-and-So's, Buzzard
Malcolm Middleton, Long Dark Night
Richard Youngs, Amplifying Host
Boris, Japanese Heavy Rock Hits V.3 - "16:47:52..."
The Soft Pink Truth, So
Joe Farrell, Outback

• The riots in Birmingham UK went down right outside of my sister-in-law's apartment, where we stayed last Christmas. She is OK, but the Tesco on the opposite corner where we bought milk and hi-octane cold medicine was looted. We passed by the Bullring shopping center every time we walked to the train station. Maya and I braved the Boxing Day crowds there, right before the big VAT increase.
  
  
  Here is Maya fixin' to bite it on the ice outside Selfridges at the Bullring.
  
  
  Here's hoping the Dragon Inn made it through the night. I could go for a black and white and a sausage buddy right about now.
  
  
• It's a dissociative thing to see places you recognize on the news. "Turn on the News" came around from Zen Arcade yesterday and I remember seeing a particular street corner outside the convention center in New Orleans filled with evacuees during Katrina, or when Zeitoun rowed his boat to a drugstore I've been to a number of times. You are connected and not at all.
  
  
  Hüsker Dü, "Turn on the News"
  
  
• It's also a mark of a rather pampered life that I have the luxury of just dissociation spooling out from these trace intersections with chaos. Imagine how someone in a war-torn place feels every day. I can't. That's what made the composer story in Andrew Ervin's Extraordinary Renditions so good, you felt he did get it, or at least got at someone who did. The Liberia episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations was on last night, not the best food episode, but one where the series turned into something bigger. I wonder how people see progress in what looks like rubble when I consider the stacks of paper on my desk a somewhat hopeless situation.
  
  
• It got me thinking about the difference between perspective and focus: how much you can see vs. what you look at. War and War is a dizzying proponent of the latter, each numbered section a page-long sentence of subjects trapezing across grammatical continuity rules, each portraying one facet of an incident down to the molecule. Thing is, its actually as easy read once you submit to it, unlike Beckett's novels - probably the easiest comparison - which are Sisyphean trudges. War and War is like a repeated suspension of the air-time in a bunch of bike jumps, except with the ramps set pathetically low.
  
  But anyway, the focus of W&W's narrators are that of jewelers, free from distractions unless they should impeded on the purview of the loupe and then they become catastrophic, which again, is a perspective issue. Can we only focus when we limit perspective? Can we only gain perspective when we let go of focus? I expect my photographer friends can answer this with a well, duh, and thus this diatribe will only serve to further explain why my photos are so terrible.
  
  
• Part of my eye problems is that they don't really work in unison; they sort of flicker back and forth and thus I don't actually have real perspective, only an estimated one, so explained a doctor once. That might explain some things. Maybe I have no business even discussing perspective and should just stick to focus.
  
  

Fire ants consume a gnome

Fire ants consume a gnome.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Paul McCartney, Ram
Pink Floyd, Meddle
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer
Love, False Start
Hüsker Dü, Zen Arcade
Chapstik, Barnburner
Brandon White, Everything Is a Weapon

• I finally joined LinkedIn. Welcome, fellow architects of destiny, to a partnership in progress! The first thing I offer is this picture of fire ants consuming a gnome. Are you an ant or are you a gnome? Let's get a coffee and strategize! Your treat!
  
  
• I'm not a Paul fan, really more of a George guy as things pass, but have always liked "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".  It's where he lets his slobbering dogs off the leash to terrorize the nice people who picnic in the verdant landscaping of his usual songcraft. But I appreciate how much Robert Christgau hates it:
  
  "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is a major annoyance. I tolerated McCartney's crotchets with the Beatles because his mates balanced them out; I enjoyed them mildly on McCartney because their scale was so modest; I enjoy them actively on "Monkberry Moon Delight" because it rocks and on "Smile Away" because it's vulgar and funny. But though nothing else here approaches the willful rhythm shifts and above-it-all silliness of the single, most of the songs are so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices. If you're going to be eccentric, for goodness sake don't be pretentious about it. (Grade - C+)
  - © R. Christgau/Village Voice
  
  Y'all have seen The Ultimate Negative Christgau Review, right? I particularlu like "Expert on tenderoni".
  
  
• Is the first half of "Uncle Albert" a Pink Floyd parody? Probably not, given the timeline, but it sounds like one. I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to a Pink Floyd album, even part-way through. Not out of any particular bias against them. I went through my Floyd phase right after my Beatles one, and didn't as much burn myself on them as move onto Eno and then the rest of my life.
  
  
• To all who recoil at the Alan Parsonry of Bon Iver's "Beth/Rest" - shoo... it's a lone tapestry of sound on an album otherwise stitched together from carpet samples. I'm not offering that as a token of redemption for the record, Bon Iver is a windchime in a doldrum. Maybe he just blew his artistic wad on that Emma chick. I'm just saying that in complaining that "Beth/Rest" is too too, you are addressing the wrong problems with this record.
  
  
• I feel compelled to explain that there was a coffee break between Love and Hüsker Dü, just in case you new LinkedIn readers are concerned over continuity issues that do crop up here from time to time. If I had a crest it would have I feel compelled to explain writ in gold leaf across the bottom and you would defreind me or whatever the term is in LinkedIn. You'd link out. So good thing I don't have one! Welcome aboard!
  
  
  Hüsker Dü, "Never Talking To You Again"

The meat I've eaten

Chicken with a rub of powdered, dried chorizo concocted and executed by my buddy John. I took a bite and was subsequently mad at my entire life up to that moment which was not spent eating this.


"Mr. Wipe Me Down"


The balloon festival was largely a bust due to thunderstorms, but the brave souls of the Raisin' Canes crew fired up with their badass burners.


Some people rock their band auditions.


This was some kind of crosscut pork rib situation of John's. The meat I've eaten off this very tray... Unpictured: laser tag, beer, swimming, couples coming apart at the seams, mishearing about couples coming apart at the seams, bookstore browsing, Hex Bug village building, groceries, withering under the sun's cruelty.

David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
John's George Jones-heavy country mix
The Clash, London Calling
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War

All in all, the weekend was a splendid mélange of the classic and the ridiculous with considerable overlap. It's how I imagine Mr. Wipe Me Down conducts his leisure, or how I would were I he.

a glow coming from my heart area

Is it a kolache or an accurate picture of my heart area?

Yesterday:
Booker T. Jones, The Road from Memphis
Harlem Underground Band, Harlem Underground Band
Raphael Saddiq, Stone Rollin'
Fitz & the Tantrums, Pickin' Up the Pieces
Talib Kweli, Gutter Rainbows
Louie
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

Today:
Mia Doi Todd, Cosmic Ocean Ship
Lynn Drury, Sugar on the Floor
Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stone Flower
Tristeza, Fate Unfolds
Bon Iver, Bon Iver

• I'm sure I said this back when I was a twenty-year-old pretentious thrift-store record enthusiast, but even now at times I wonder why I listen to anything but Booker T. records. His corniest records are still infused with thick honey spun off the nipples of muses. Maya latched right onto the drumming in his remake of "Crazy" when it came on the radio coming home from the pool.
  
  
  Booker T. Jones, "Crazy"
  
  
• Get that cheeba, get through this heat wave. Not like it will make it any better, but it will make it less worser. That is Geroge "Give Me The Night" Benson on guitar up in there. "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba" has a groove so tight, an echo so cavernous, I accidentally had it playing simultaneously from two different sources, out of sync, while putting this post together and I didn't really notice. Or mind when I did.
  
  
  Harlem Underground Band, "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba"
  
  
• I like his style though find Raphael Saddiq's neo-soul comes off a little thin and dry, but, man, I wish I looked half as good in a suit as he does. I'd settle for looking as good as one of the minor Tantrums.
  
  
  Fitz & the Tantrums, "Money Grabber" = my good times fun jam of the summer.
  
  
• I talked the other day about feeling a phantom ringtone in my leg; today, I've been running around with my phone in my shirt pocket glowing like E.T.'s love and now it is sitting over on the desk, I detect a glow coming from my heart area, only in the corner of my eye, not when I look right at it. Perhaps I should eschew all electronics for the weekend and just stare at the moon, reset my gyroscope with the clock of the tides. Something. There's the balloon festival this weekend; I can look at that.
  
  Tristeza, "Manitas"
  
  
• I finished Zeitoun in the wee hours of today and walked away from it with this: I blow up at work or cast darts through my social circle or do whatever crappy thing I do in the course of my daily humanity and then bounce it up against Zeitoun's dedication and suffering and persistent great attitude and I feel like a worm, so thanks for that Mr. Eggers! Once I'm over that feeling, though, I'm inspired by this story to be a kinder and more patient person.
  
  
  Bon Iver, "Wash."