Trees Whispering Passwords to Other Trees

Endorsement - PC to TV Converter

2008-11-04T08:41:00.010-06:00

This little gadget's great if you want to hook up an older VGA-output-only laptop (like my Gateway MX3560) to your TV. If your laptop's got an S-Video out, don't bother, of course (just hook it straight up). I use it for Hulu, Lost, Netflix streaming video and ZSNES emulation on a Zenith RB50M88W 50 in. rear-projection TV and it works perfectly. Just make sure your laptop's resolution is set at 800 x 600, and don't expect clear text. Full screen video (especially streaming HD), however, is near-DVD quality. Pair this with a wireless mouse with decent range to act as your remote, and you'll have no reason to leave your house, ever. I mean, who would even care or notice if you did come out of your little cave? Gregory? Ha! The shine got rubbed off that penny years ago, my friend. Let it go. The honeymoon's over, sweetheart, even if the little bedshitter never had the sac to propose. Technical specs:

Composite, S-video, YCbCr (component) and VGA-Ii and VGA-out for simultaneous TV/computer display
Inputs: VGA; Outputs: VGA, composite video, S-video, component video, RGB (separate cable req'd)
Powered by the USB port on your computer
No software necessary
Automatically saves your adjustment settings.
$99.99

At the National Park Service Christmas Party

2008-11-03T20:30:00.010-06:00

MP3: Bonnie "Prince" Billy - So Everyone

Virginia is a whore tonight, and this pond is her soul

clean only to the catfish
who’ve yet to plug ‘clean’ into a search engine.

No cat eyes in the dark tonight,

only the eye of an expensive flashlight

ordered from a catalog with captions in Cyrillic

(lighting the air around

kidnapped professor’s wives

tied to the only cigar tree in Aurora County).

Until tonight, I knew the moon best
through the anecdotes of werewolves.

My spine is a spiral staircase.

I am an ATM repairman

drinking whiskey from a silly straw.

May 2005

[Photo via]

Silver Jews on Pitchfork.tv

2008-06-16T13:58:00.006-05:00

I want to be David Berman when I grow up.

10 Songs

2008-06-12T12:31:00.009-05:00

Photo by shesaskeleton

10. Headlights: "Cherry Tulips" | First heard Headlights on WOXY while designing The Mule News like two years ago. Had them all wrong: heard "Put Us Back Together Right" and thought "a chilled-out Mates of State" but it's totally Yo La Tengo. So this would be their throwback song like YLT's "Mr. Tough."

09. Animal Collective: "Fireworks" | So this hasn't gotten old at all. Experimental psychedelia without the hippie couture and jam band dreck trappings.

08. Bonnie "Prince" Billy: "World's Greatest" | Oldham's R. Kelly obsession is endlessly fascinating to me. BONUS POINTS: (1) My wife thinks it's pretty. (2) HE SAYS 'AXE' FOR 'ASK'!

07. Buffalo Tom: "Kitchen Door" | Oh Buffalo Tom! I remembering using one of those terminals at Barnes & Noble in Independence, MO, searching for WHO THE FUCK sang that song, the song from "Self-Esteem," my favorite episode of My So-Called Life. It wasn't on the soundtrack, the name of the song ("Late at Night") isn't IN the song, and my junior high school wasn't online yet (must have been '96-'97). I don't think I was alone on this one, even though most people kind of slept on BT, and they went downhill pretty fast. NB: Chris Colbourn > Bill Janovitz; "Kitchen Door" is a fun throwaway song, but Colbourn's singing, so it's pretty great.

06. The Caribbean: "William of Orange" | Wow. Used to have this MP3 saved on my "P: Drive" at MWSC (the little bit of online storage space they gave us). Had a lot of stuff on there, actually. No Mp3 player, no home computer/ laptop, what do you do? I think I downloaded it b/c they were supposed to sound like Death Cab, but now I realize that was just lazy music journalism (is there any other kind?) and they really sound like The Sea & Cake meets, shit, I don't know -- Jim O'Rourke?

05. Deer Tick: "Beautiful Girls (Sean Kingston Cover)" [MP3] | A work in progress:

04. Desaparecidos: "Greater Omaha" | Man this song is cathartic. Y'know, internet, I feel like I'm finally at a point in my life where I really don't care what others think about the music I like/love. I had a shitty phase there for a bit where this was like a "guilty pleasure." What the fuck? Why feel guilty about enjoying anything? (Within reason). [1] And as far as the negative reviews this got: "... pop music criticism, more than any other form of art critique, is sociologically unnecessary in the internet age. Where once (in best cases) critics protected us from bad bands and/or helped us get to the good ones (and/or enlivened and possibly directed the course of the medium), interested parties can, with but little digging, access and debate music in real time—long before critics, who have to wait for release dates, buzz schedules, and other synergistic complicities demanded by their advertisers." [via] So there. | [1] Now I'm not saying everything's relative, or there's no accounting for taste -- nope. There's good art and bad art, and good taste and bad taste -- I'm just saying you shouldn't feel guilty, internet, about what you like. Full stop.

03. Guided By Voices: "A Salty Salute" | Anyone remember "Off The Beaten Track"? On Kansas City's 107.3 FM, like ten years ago? No? This was the show's theme song, and fuck I feel old.

02. The Halo Benders: "Mercury Blues" [YouTube] | Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and Doug Martsch of Built to Spill. Funny anecdote about Calvin Johnson: "After separating himself from the K Records scene, Kurt Cobain famously denounced Calvin and Olympia: 'I made about five million dollars last year and I'm not giving a red cent to that elitist little fuck Calvin Johnson. I'm not gonna donate a single fucking dollar to the fucking needy indie fascist regime. They can starve. Let them eat vinyl,' wrote Cobain in an unsent letter. He dubbed Calvin's followers 'Calvinists' and portrayed them as a gang of stuck-up hipsters." [via] Ha! "I made five million dollars last year! And you can't have it!" There's your punk rock messiah, kids.

01. Kathy McKarthy: "Living Life (Daniel Johnston Cover)" [YouTube] | Played over the closing credits of Before Sunrise. Got me into Daniel Johnston. I remember staying up until 3 o'clock in the morning just so I could watch BS for the second time on cable. Made quite an impact. I wanted to talk like Ethan Hawke. Now I want to talk like an unholy amalgamation of Christopher Hitchens and David Foster Wallace (I think).

The DJ Uh Uh 'No Requests' Mix (Mux?)

2008-06-09T20:08:00.011-05:00

TWPTOT MUXTAPE #2:

The DJ Uh Uh 'No Requests' Mix (Mux?)

Muddy the Joy

2008-06-04T14:11:00.005-05:00

MP3: Titus Andronicus - No Future (Part One) "The problem with hype is that it transforms the use value of a would-be work of art into its exchange value. For in the middle (there’s no end) of the hype cycle, the important thing is no longer what a song, movie, or book does to you. The big question is its relationship to its reputation. So instead of abandoning yourself to the artifact, you try to exploit inefficiencies in the reputation market. You can get in on the IPO of a new artist, and trumpet the virtues of [Titus Andronicus] before anyone else has heard of them: this is hype. Or you issue a “sell” recommendation on the overhyped [Titus Andronicus]: this is backlash. But there are often steals to be found among recently unloaded assets: “Why’s everybody hatin’ on [Titus Andronicus]?” says the backlash-to-the-backlash. The sophisticated trader is buying, selling, and holding different reputations all at once; the trick in each case is to stay ahead of the market. And the rewards from this trade in reputations redound to your own reputation: even though the market (i.e., other people) dictates your every move, you seem to be a real individual thinking for yourself." [via]

MP3: Titus Andronicus - No Future (Part Two) "Because our taste in music is a widely and readily understood shorthand for identity, we often seek public ways to exhibit it, even though this betrays its origins in that private, inarticulate satisfaction. Why are we so quick to do this? To muddy the joy we derive in hearing music as it is, objectively, by mixing with it all the provisional, mediated characteristics that stem from how it is hyped, how other people regard it, how we’ll be regarded when we champion it? Could it be that without all that extraneous context, there isn’t much there to consume? Are we at some level secretly aware that the intrinsic qualities of the songs we profess to like for no reason other than to please ourselves are not all that deep and sophisticated?" [via]

MP3: Fourth of July - The Faint "You'll get along just fine with Brendan Hangauer. The frontman of Lawrence, Kan., septet Fourth of July, Hangauer knows what it's like to be an under-30, hopelessly romantic Midwestern kid who likes to party and address last night's regrets in fleet verses and big, grinning choruses lined with rock'n'roll guitars and handclap rhythms. After all, Hangauer is an under-30 white kid from the Midwest, and so-- on Fourth of July's endearing debut, Fourth of July on the Plains-- that's exactly how he writes, sings and arranges. Even if you don't identify with his demographic or his particular plight-- trying to balance a long-distance romance and his own vices-- you'll likely understand the feelings they bring." [via]

[Photo by Miet Van Hee]

Place Exchanging Shame

2008-05-24T18:38:00.004-05:00

MP3: Silver Jews - Strange Victory, Strange Defeat "It's a very distinct feeling that the English language does not have a good expression for. In Dutch it's called plaatsvervangende schaamte which literally means 'place exchanging shame.' Shame felt on behalf of someone else, shame you feel someone else should feel." (via)

MP3: The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer "The use of 'um' and 'uh' is a tactic of speakers who are speaking self-consciously ... They observed drinkers in bars and found that drinking alcohol reduced 'um,' though the method is somewhat impractical for everyday use: to become fully 'umless,' a drinker would need to drink nineteen beers." (via)

MP3: Hot Chip - Wrestlers "The idea that 50% of marriages end in divorce is just an oft-repeated myth. It's a statistical flub that comes from comparing the number of marriages in a given year to the number of divorces in a given year. However, since the marriages and divorces aren't occurring in the same year, this doesn't give an accurate picture of how many marriages are failing and is notoriously susceptible to population dynamics. Your actual chances of a failed marriage are about one in four, and the 50% figure is considered to be statistical nonsense." (via)

"People see each other all the time
and they can't always figure out how to act,
so it sometimes seems as if the dandelions
growing silently behind the high school
are the only truly outstanding reaction
to existence,
and perhaps because I thought
I had no argument with the world
until the backyard mosquitoes
started penalizing my hands
and Wayne of Wayne's Hair Systems
and Jimmy Food Hill combined
to not let me near you,
it came as such a horrible shock to notice
you looked so damn beautiful
beneath Bob's silver maples
that I about shit my heart out." (via)

MP3: The Books - That Right Ain't Shit "Stop whining and start finding something to do about the men who’re dragging your ass in the mud. And y’know what’d be a great start on that? Stop letting your buddies slide when they say things that make you wince on the inside. Yeah, you know you do it. I do too. It’s a bad habit either way. Cut it out. Oh, what, you’re not willing to do that? You’re afraid you’ll lose friends over it, and you don’t feel you should have to pay that price, and it doesn’t occur to you that maybe a friend who doesn’t really see women as human isn’t really anyone you’d want to call a friend, after all?" (via)

MP3: Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I Confess "I like to fight my inherent misanthropy, not diligently cultivate it like a dark psychological bonsai tree." (via)

MP3: Japanther - Fuk Tha Prince a Pull Iz Dum "One time when I had an office job right after college a co-worker asked me if I wanted to go to a strip club for lunch one Friday, because the woman with the Guinness Book of World Records' largest breasts would be performing. I said yes, because, well, how often do you get asked that question? So we went, and I had a cheeseburger (not bad), a Budweiser and watched a woman with breasts like oblong beach balls dance to AC/DC. I won an extra bucket of beer for answering a trivia question, and I remember quite clearly sitting in the smoke and Angus Young vibrations, eating my burger and drinking my Budweiser and watching the giant breasts bounce and thinking to myself, 'goddamn it, I live in America.'" (via)

Tawny

2008-02-04T21:57:00.001-06:00

Billy + Mp3Tag = happy.

MP3: Xiu Xiu - Under Pressure Jamie Stewart as Freddie Mercury! Michael Gira as Bowie! Saxophones!

SO ALSO IN KINDERGARTEN I APPARENTLY THOUGHT THAT THE KIDS IN MY CLASS DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT COUGARS FOR SOME REASON, BECAUSE I DEFINITELY MADE A SWEET COUGAR QUIZ WHICH I INSISTED ON GIVING OUT TO THE CLASS THE NEXT DAY. WHAT COLOR IS THE COUGAR? GOLD? NO! BROWN? NO! RED? NO! THE ANSWER IS TAWNY. [Worth reading in full. Trust me.]

[Photo by Miet Van Hee]

The Tastemaker

2007-12-03T18:17:00.003-06:00

Drawing by Eden Veaudry

MP3: Cupcake - Vacation The review came out, a week earlier than expected. "Whatsitsay?" says Brewer, talking and lighting his cigarette at the same time. "She doesn't taste it," I say. "What?" says Brewer. "Well, she's the Tastemaker," I say, snapping the newspaper crisp, "and she doesn't taste it. Says she's 'had her finger on the pulse of the scene so hard for so long she's forgotten she's touching a corpse.'" Brewer scratches an eyebrow, ashes on a leaf in the swimming pool. "We have a scene?" he says.

My wife had a journalism class with the Tastemaker a few semesters ago, and said she would keep her headphones on the entire period, without a rebuke from the instructor, who would slip demo tapes into her graded portfolios. "Bitch," my wife explained.

We're considering -- my wife, Brewer, Brewer's girlfriend May and I -- a public tarring and feathering of the Tastemaker, if only we can get enough signatures and, of course, the Mayor's approval (Brewer's dad's in the tar business, and feathers aren't hard to come by -- our park is full of nervous swans and pigeons).

We all know the Tastemaker is wrong; we know this like we know our SSNs and PINs and what the cover charge will be. Like we know those black Xs they put on May's hands won't be gone until Monday. Brewer suggests duct-taping PBR cans to the Tastemaker's hands so she won't pick at the feathers. "Empty cans," I add. "Empties and I'm in," says my wife, who (bless her heart) hates to let things go to waste.

We have a meeting downtown, open to the public, where the Cub Scouts typically have their meetings. Pennants on the wall, a few walking sticks in a bucket by the door. Fifty or so in attendance. "I agree the Tastemaker must be stopped," says the Mayor, fidgeting with his many rings. "So why don't we just ride her out of town on a rail?" Someone in the back coughs. "No rail," Brewer says. "Tar and feathers we got. No rail, though." The Mayor knocks arrhythmically on the table, half-heartedly, like he's about to name that tune. "Your dad still in tar?"

Cupcake plays that night, after the meeting, at a pub down the street. The Mayor, busy with preparations, does not attend. The Tastemaker, however, to everyone's surprise, is there, and she takes notes with a little flashlight pen during "Vacation," Cupcake's opening number. "The nerve," says my wife. A steel bucket of tar sits, slowly cooling, inside Jeff's bass drum. My wife and May wear feathers in their hair like politically incorrect Cherokee princesses.

I daydream the chorus to "Vacation" literally melts the Tastemaker's face off, like Linda Hamilton in T2, or those Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and we're all too busy smiling and yelling and clapping and relieved by our good fortune to check for a pulse. I snap out of it, clap like my palms are on fire, and see, in my periphery, May and my wife dancing behind the Tastemaker, PBR cans clutched tightly in each hand, clucking and pecking at her shoulders.

The Cyclops Hates Blues Rock

2007-11-27T15:02:00.001-06:00

Odilon Redon - The Cyclops

MP3: Destroyer - I Want this Cyclops We've taken in a stray Cyclops, my wife and I. Our landlord said "nothing in a cage, nothing in a tank" but The Cyclops came to our door with beer and cigarettes, told us he knew a friend of ours, was told we might have a spare bed to crash on. So we let him in.

The Cyclops is an affable creature. He's well read, clean. Said where he came from he wasn't wanted. Said Cyclops like him aren't wanted much anywhere. My wife and I are sympathetic. We don't ask questions unless we feel prompted. We want The Cyclops above all to feel comfortable, at home.

Are we afraid of The Cyclops? No, we are not. Despite what you may have heard, they're gentle giants, grossly misrepresented in the media. There was tension at first -- The Cyclops stuck in our guest room's narrow walk-in closet; The Cyclops' stubborn libertarianism -- but we were soon relieved to discover The Cyclops, too, hates blues rock. We had a few hearty laughs at the expense of the bloated genre and its irritating excesses, and all was soon well. The Cyclops aping Stevie Ray Vaughn, his giant eye closed tight in mock concentration, his ape-like fingers strumming the air. Ha! My wife's new favorite thing.

The Cyclops will soon return home for Christmas (we do not inquire further). I dreamed last night The Cyclops left us, as tokens of his appreciation, a few hastily wrapped presents on our mantle. For my wife, he leaves a knotty war club with a giant bent nail through the center. She smashes our coffee table and smiles. "We don't even drink coffee!" For me, he leaves what appears to be circular serving tray, or maybe a mirror. I scratch at the fault line of clear tape and peel away the gold paper. Hysterics. "What?" says my wife.

"A monocle!"

MP3 Cakewalk

2007-11-26T19:50:00.000-06:00

MP3: The Weakerthans - Civil Twlight Craig Finn's favorite lyricist. I'm not entirely convinced. Need to hear more (always need to hear more).

MP3: Jets to Brazil - Sweet Avenue Finn's second favorite lyricist, supposedly. I bought this when it was new, but sold it. The only song from Orange Rhyming Dictionary that doesn't make me cringe.

MP3: Lifter Puller - Secret Santa Cruz "Cash advances, and Jenny's back on campus!" Finn himself, of course, pre-Hold Steady. The live shows must have been sublime.

MP3: The Rogers - Backpack Live at The Rendezvous, December 1, 2007. Wait -- really? Cupcake, Pompous Pilot, Holy Mother Exhaust and The Rogers are so incestuous and sporadic with their live appearances they should just merge into a local collective called Ma'am (a terrific name for a band, b/t/w) and play one huge show every month.

Abiding a Frost

2007-11-08T00:04:00.000-06:00

Photo by the amazing Jay Huster.

In ultra-local music news, Cupcake posted a new track on their MySpace (their best recorded effort yet, but Marc's voice is all Robo-Bowie and deep fried -- which is cool, but his voice deserves to be prominent in the mix -- and, of course, nothing compares to their live act): MP3: Cupcake - Autobahn 14 Todd Ward from Steel Wool Mill brings his distinctive voice (think a higher-strung Jay Farrar or Michael Gira) to a new project called The Beat Common. For the Sound's new EP is called The Saddle Maker's Son (thusly named using the patented "Iron & Wine Song Title Generator 3000").

"... imagine all the remarkable new bands, seemingly inexhaustible in supply, as dazzling marigolds, begonias, fuchsias, their palettes brilliant but their roots fragile, incapable of abiding a frost." A must-read.

"If he had kicked these lyrics in the void that existed before this universe, his wackness might have forestalled the Big Bang." From Cool'Eh Magazine's "The Ten Worst Rappers of All Time."

"When you listen you can tell that it could have only been recorded in a shit-ass meat-packing city in the Midwest where people shoot crank mixed with grape Kool-Aid and the grocery checkers don't even know what tofu is and all there is to do is get shit-faced at the bar and ask everyone how their kids are doing." Sounds familiar.

MP3: Why? - The Hollows Yoni Wolf from Why? is probably the gutsiest lyricist in indie rock: "In Berlin I saw two men fuck in a dark corner of a basketball court/ Just a slight jingle of pocket change pulsing." "The Hollows" is from their latest, Alopecia (click here for tracks from Elephant Eyelash, my favorite album of 2005).

You Gotta Know

2007-10-29T20:48:00.002-05:00

Gowns

MP3: Gowns - Cherylee I find myself listening mainly to "singles" lately, and that's not to say "Top 40" singles or actual singles w/ b-sides purchased in some brick-and-mortar record store. I mean MP3 blog "singles," and if you've ever spent any time using The Hype Machine or Skreemr you know what I mean. MP3 blogs traffic in singles, pushing the best tracks from an album (regardless of whether or not they're legal to post or actual "singles"). It's not that "THE ALBUM IS DEAD," of course, it's just that it's far easier to share one song that destroys you with your friends than it is a 64-minute opus. And, often, you're eager to share the music of a band you know nothing about, and it's easier to post a single track and focus on it than it is to go into detail about how you really don't know anything about the band but the song made your work-week tolerable and your wife or boyfriend or whatever is singing along, too, and you find yourself inventing errands just so you can drive and play the song way louder than usual b/c your apartment has paper-thin walls.

I don't know why this song is called "Cherylee" or what it's really about; I also know pretty much nothing about the band except Status Ain't Hood had a nice write-up about them, so much so that I had to track down an MP3. What's the hype? Well, vocally, Gowns' Erika Anderson sounds sort of like Amanda from The Dresden Dolls w/o the anachronistic histrionics, and the music is moody Low-level slowcore. There's no real song structure here; it's all just wiry, noisy tension and a piano coming from the basement of some house party you've been at for too long sounding oddly poignant even though it's just some underage kid trying to play "Imagine" while the "grown-ups" upstairs talk about socialism and car insurance. When Ms. Anderson sings "You gotta know" it's like

Bob Dylan singing "How does it feel?"
Buffalo Tom singing "I hope you know I would."*
Headlights singing "Put us back together right."
Guided by Voices singing "The club is open."
Daniel Johnston singing "Hold me like a mother would!"

etc.; the point being that they could just be reciting the names of Negro League outfielders the rest of the song as long as that line remains intact, selling it and making it feel like an incantation.

----

*From "Late at Night," a beautiful song every indie-rock band here to Jens Lekman's doormat should be revisiting and triumphantly covering (St. Joseph, MO's The Mistresses [my wife's band] have taken on the task, and proven it's pretty much a perfect pop song).

The Bars of St. Joseph, MO - #1

2007-10-20T13:46:00.000-05:00

619 Felix St., St. Joseph, MO

Commonly known as "The 'Vous" and often misspelled as "The Rendesvous" or "The Rendesvouz" or "The Raconteurs" on show flyers, The Rendezvous is St. Joseph, MO's premier dive bar.

It's the best place in town for live music, unless you're a Blueshammer fan, and then it's Magoon's (an otherwise incredible bar/deli).
There's no lock on the men's room door, so guys have to kick their foot back against the door for privacy.
The house DJ plays mainly shitty "alternative metal" when there's not live music, but DJ Sumo spins on Tuesdays, and he'll play Europe's "The Final Countdown" if you ask him nicely.
Only moderately threatening. Fights break out often, especially when it's getting late on a Friday or Saturday night and the mouth-breathers from Shooter's pool hall wander over and argue the $3 cover charge.
Only one tiny television in the whole bar! If you were deaf, it could be 1981! (Related: "When did banks of muted televisions become the popular design choice at every restaurant in the country?")
$1.50 PBR cans; Guinness on tap and Stella in bottles.
Used to have a "BYOCD" night (Wednesday, I think) where they'd play at least two tracks worth of pretty much any CD you brought in. It was up to the bartender's discretion when to cut it off, though, and they'd stop your CD mid-song if they felt like it. I brought in cLOUDDEAD's Ten one night and it got yanked b/c the bartender thought "Rifle Eyes" (MP3) sounded like "two songs playing at the same time."
The latrinalia in the men's room updates more than most blogs. One of the oldest "tags," in black marker on the condom machine, says "PEOPLE WHO LISTEN TO PUNK ROCK SUCK DICK EVERY DAY."

Dead Butterflies

2007-10-15T21:52:00.001-05:00

Air Mail Butterflies via The Rag & Bone Blog

MP3: St. Vincent - These Days A lovely Nico cover. The original was used in the now-famous Green Line bus scene in The Royal Tenenbaums, of course, the one with Gwyneth Paltrow in slow motion. I still get the happy-chills whenever I watch this scene, and feel no need to apologize for this, but apparently there are many critics reevaluating Anderson's films and discovering he's actually a vaguely racist sham, interested more in aesthetics and mise en scène than flesh-and-blood human relationships. Salon's Jonah Weiner puts it best: "[H]e pins actors into the centers of fastidiously composed tableaux like so many dead butterflies."

And? I don't watch Anderson films for their plots or dramatic arcs, or to learn more about myself and the world. I watch Wes Anderson films because they're basically the cinematic equivalent of grown-up Richard Scarry books come-to-life, with Woody Allen kvetching and David Bowie strumming in the margins. It appears to be en vogue, however, to shit on Anderson's most recent films, whining about how he's the ultimate Peter Pan hipster crybaby who needs to grow up and put away his toys. Have these naysayers seen his series of American Express commercials? The man is comfortable in this mode. He loves his toys. He's nobody's savior or cultural spokesperson. There's no easily discernible message or moral in his films. He's simply a so-so writer but gifted set dresser and director with a quirky sense of humor and great taste in music. His stories are simple ones, and better for their brevity and airiness. And I agree with Ross Douthat that he's certainly not a racist (as Douthat puts it, he's sort of the "white Tyler Perry" in that his films are "highly ethnic movies about highly distinctive white subcultures.").

So, when Paltrow's character gets off that bus, and "These Days" starts to play, it feels like a transcendent cinematic moment not because of her silly quasi-incestuous relationship with Luke Wilson's character, or because the story thus far has built to this orgasmic climax, but because Anderson, like fellow butterfly-pinner Vladimir Nabokov, is interested primarily in "aesthetic bliss," and knows how to bring it to his core audience of overeducated media gluttons strung out on nostalgia like no generation heretofore.

The Darjeeling Limited in Anderson's latest, of course.

Related, sort of: Indie rock has lost its soul? Sasha Frere-Jones makes a few interesting yet dubious claims, e.g.: "Hip-hop became music for driving; it was designed to soothe. (The heavy bass frequencies cause car seats to vibrate, literally massaging the passengers.)"

"You forget that half these blogs are outsiders in shitty apartments in Pensacola or Indianapolis, who likely started their little blogs because they loved music. Worse, they forget."

There is a Boy and He Never Goes Out

2007-10-14T22:15:00.002-05:00

Beer Light, from here.

MP3: Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - Toby, Take a Bow The source of this post's title. It's also a Smiths reference, but you knew that, right?

In case you're having trouble choosing your Halloween costumes, ladies: "Just another unpleasant reminder that people think it's cute and funny that so many men hold women in bondage to be raped repeatedly for money."

MP3: Old Time Relijun - Indestructible Life "NO BURIAL MOUND CAN HOLD ME!"

My apartment's "WALK SCORE": 72. Not bad.

Never Meant

2007-10-08T21:02:00.000-05:00

Mike Kinsella of American Football/Owen

I first discovered the now-defunct American Football in Spin in 1999, back when I relied on a half dozen music magazines for info (with the concept of the "web log" or "web 'zine" still in infancy, and me without reliable web access anyway). In Spin's estimation, American Football was akin to The Get Up Kids, and paired their review of the s/t American Football album with The Get Up Kids's Something to Write Home About. The American Football album got an 8 rating and Something to Write Home About got a 6, and I distinctly remember actually giving a fuck about this, so I bought the American Football album first.

Spin comparing the two albums and reviewing the two in tandem was misguided, motivated I think by the need to (1) save space for Skechers ads and (2) boost their "tastemaker" status by being the first national journalistic organ to profile the up-and-coming midwestern "emo" scene. American Football's music is, of course, closer in spirit to The Sea and Cake or Gastr Del Sol than Superchunk (The Get Up Kids' obvious stylistic forebearers), and Spin did everyone a great disservice by muddying the waters more w/r/t the "emo" question -- i.e., what the fuck the twerpy little word even means.

To be fair, some of this might have been covered in the original review, but I recall only the ratings and the reviewer's accurate observation that Mike Kinsella of American Football makes every syllable he sings a whole note, plus the feeling after listening to both records that it's basically apples/oranges.

St. Joseph, MO's mainly instrumental Sylvan Lane sound a little like American Football and a lot like Owen (Mike Kinsella's current project). In "Ficus," Brandon Bone and David Hawk sing something about fissures and wakes and pressure, and it's all vague and pretty and it really works, breaking up the twinkly monotony. It's almost overwhelmingly tasteful, but, like Kinsella's projects and a lot of the Jim O'Rourke-influenced post-rock stuff coming out of Chicago in the past decade or so, it's tempered with this genuine melancholy that keeps it from sounding like the score to some Pilates workout video.

MP3: Sylvan Lane - Ficus
MP3: Owen - The Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi
MP3: American Football - Never Meant

Tricks of the Trade

2007-09-30T20:10:00.000-05:00

MP3: I Will Strike You - Oregon "Most people sigh conspicuously deep a few times before they faint. The medical reason is pretty simple: the brain is being deprived of oxygen (which is why the person is fainting in the first place) and the urge to 'sigh' is actually the urge to oxygenate. No matter how many times a person insists 'No, I'm okay,' force that person to sit or lie down as quickly as you can, before they get to the ground a faster way. Additionally, it takes the body an average of 20 minutes to recover from a faint; attempting to move the person earlier risks another faint. People often insist they are feeling better out of embarrassment, but, unless they're a superhero, they probably have the same physical requirements that everyone else has." [MySpace]

MP3: Steel Wool Mill - Evil "Want to know if it's going to storm? Watch the birds. If they're flying around or singing, you're fine. When the birds take shelter, you should do likewise." [MySpace]

MP3: The Format - Dog Problems "When taking family portraits that include a dog, don’t use the dog’s name or say 'doggie, doggie' to get its attention, because it might trot over to you. Instead, call out 'kitty, kitty, kitty.' The dog will perk up and look around for a cat, and you can get a great shot if you time it right."

MP3: Black Kids - I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You "If you need a ride home after a wild night out, walk into a pizza parlor that delivers and order a pie to be sent to your house. Then ask if you can get a lift to your house -- hey, they're going there anyway!"

MP3: This is My Condition - Ready to Go "If you are part of a protest march that gets out of control and the mounted police are called in, position yourself with a wall or other large immovable object directly behind you. This protects you from a possible charge. Mounted authorities won't charge a wall, for fear of injuring the horse."

MP3: Silkworm - Bar Ice "It's nearly impossible to find cold wine or beer in the stores of Europe. So when you go to the supermarket, select your alcoholic beverages, put them in the store's freezer, gather your other items, and collect your nicely chilled grog on the way to checkout"

[Photo by Grace Weston; tricks via tradetricks.org.]

Chocolate and Liquor

2007-09-27T15:24:00.000-05:00

MP3: Antarctica Takes It! - I'm No Lover "I have come here to destroy everything that you held dear." You listen to this loud, on repeat.

"Chocolate martini: Both chocolate and liquor are good in bars, but ordering them together announces that you don't like or appreciate either. Anyone who requests this drink should also get a T-shirt that says 'I am an asshole, please take my money.'"

The adorable gargoyle pictured above is across the street from The Rendezvous in St. Joseph, MO, where Holy Mother Exhaust is playing this Saturday with Steel Wool Mill and The Cock Blockers. HME lead singer Bobby Floyd is drumming for Alice at The Brick in Kansas City this Saturday, as well. See them both and win a prize.

MP3: Spoon - The Underdog "He's got a great rock-star voice, but it's not the sort of rock-star voice you hear often anymore: a Southern accent doing a fake British accent doing a fake Southern accent." --Status Ain't Hood

[Photo by Tara Duckworth]

When Stupor Was Mistaken For Buddha

2007-09-25T20:28:00.000-05:00

MP3: The Mountain Goats - Pinklon My favorite song of the year (so far) that isn't a Hood Internet R. Kelly mash-up. John Darnielle should be our Poet Laureate.

People use the word "artsy" when describing something they don't understand, can't afford or are afraid of.

"... if there is one thing we are missing in the USA that they do have in Europe, it’s CHEAP wine that doesn’t make you ralph." [Winking Owl is at ALDI (3608 Faroan in St. Joseph) for $2.99/bottle.]

Having never read Kerouac, I don't know quite what to make of Cynthia Ozick's assessment of On The Road (but it does make me want to read more Cynthia Ozick): "At the acme of his celebrity, I thought Kerouac a purveyor of frenzied fakery, of pseudo-mystical junk; and I do not depart now from the intelligent judgment of my youth. Nowadays, On the Road can perhaps count as a document of a sentimental overwrought underdone subliterate zonked-out shamanistic onanistic fool-ridden era, when saccharine blockheads posed as transcendent Blake-heads, when stupor was mistaken for Buddha . . . but what the hell, let it count for any old thing! -- as long as you don't call it literature."

[Photo by Miet van Hee]

Tough and Fighty

2007-09-24T15:25:00.000-05:00

Zale Bledsoe, aka For the Sound

MP3: For the Sound - Bleed Blue Zale doesn't sell merch at his shows, so you'll have to go to the dismal LOCAL section of Hastings to find For the Sound's Home Recordings Vols. 1 & 2. They're the ones with the neat homemade sleeves collecting dust behind some old Pig Farmer CDs from like 1998. [See For the Sound at Cafe Acoustic Saturday, October 6.]

"Sexist alterna-guys have this stupid fantasy about the perfect girl: She’s 'alternative' and poetically sad inside about, well, the sadness of sad things; she’s all feisty and spunky and shit but always somehow does what alterna-guy wants; and she’s all tough and fighty yet tiny and cute." --from a comment at Bitch Ph.D.

You know those "dspbl" stickers and tags you see all over downtown St. Joseph? It means "disposable," and the artist has a Flickr page. So, on a tangentially related note, what's with this widespread vowel genocide? Are we not supposed to like vowels anymore? Is this the latest thing? Did Ron Paul give some sort of decree? [RELATED: Fuck Ron Paul.]

Make an Artificial Light Shine

2007-09-22T15:42:00.001-05:00

The Melismatics tonight at The Rendezvous. Does anyone else think this band should be a cartoon? I mean this in the nicest way possible.

MP3: Fionn Regan - Put a Penny in the Slot I've heard a lot of "yupster" hype about this guy, so his CD will probably be sold in Starbucks gift baskets by Christmas, or they'll name a blend or a roast after him or whatever they're doing for Thurston Moore and Beck and James Blunt. Whatever. I like the way he sings the line "The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow was all I had for company."

"This commercial would be more accurate if, instead of soft photographs floating in a mysterious breeze, Gwen Stefani's ideas were depicted as a trail of daggers in the shape of dollar signs aimed directly at our eyes." --The Hater

MP3: Hot Chip - Shake a Fist New! "If you have a pair of headphones, you'd better get 'em out and get 'em cranked up." Or else.

Does Your Hometown Care?

2007-09-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

N. Belt Hwy., St. Joseph, MO

Imagine the following dull scenario: you’re an employee of the Rolling Hills Library on N. Belt Hwy, and you’ve just finished cataloging a stack of paperbacks -- the ones with those stress lines fluting their spines -- and you’re all set to take your lunch break. You’re craving Mexican food, and you’re fortunate enough to work within walking distance of one such establishment -- El Maguey’s. Its terra cotta roof is practically a stone’s throw away, and yet you’re faced with a dilemma: crossing the Belt Hwy at lunch hour is nearly impossible. The SUV-dominated traffic is fast and relentless. And, adding to your anxiety, navigating five lanes on foot would make you seem to most like a second-class citizen -- an illegal immigrant, a drifter, a whore, a hippie, a democrat. And so you hop in your gas-guzzler and spend 5 minutes piloting the damned thing .45 miles just to find you’ll end up nearly walking that distance from your parking spot at the restaurant’s parking lot’s perimeter. Why do we live in this absurd world dominated by the automobile? Why are most new developments built with cars, not people, in mind? What to make of this theme park fantasy city, where giant ice cream cone-shaped buildings and mismatched architecture -- Spanish tile neighboring Blockbuster Video’s neon and fluorescent boxy nowhere -- seem to suggest we live everywhere and nowhere all at once?

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MP3: Superchunk - Does Your Hometown Care?

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[Originally published as part of "A Modern Subdivision is an Instrument For Making People Stupid," The Mule News, 8/24/06]

Boneface!

2007-09-20T21:54:00.000-05:00

Animal Collective - Peacebone

Ingredients:
1 part Donnie Darko
1 part Alien
1 part John Hughes
1 part Fargo
1 part Fairuza Balk
1 part Amelie
1 part Ed Wood

Place ingredients in a plastic bag labeled BONEFACE! Shake the shit out of it. Leave no shit behind. Serve, chilled, to a creeped-out, unsuspecting public. Serves 250,000 or so weirdos.

MP3: Animal Collective - Peacebone
MP3: Animal Collective - For Reverend Green

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BONUS VIDEO: "The Bird Man" - Felix St. Square, St. Joseph, MO.

One or Another Kind of Pornography

2007-09-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

Don DeLillo

"It's the nature and pleasure of townspeople to distrust the city. All the guiding principles that might flow from a center of ideas and cultural energies are regarded as corrupt, one or another kind of pornography. This is how it is with towns."

"But [St. Joseph, MO]* is nowhere near a large city. We don't feel threatened and aggrieved in quite the same way other towns do. We're not smack in the path of history and its contaminations. If our complaints have a focal point, it would have to be the TV set, where the outer torment lurks, causing fears and secret desires. Certainly little or no resentment attaches to [Missouri Western State University]** as an emblem of ruinous influence. The school occupies an ever serene edge of the townscape, semidetached, more or less scenic, suspended in political calm. Not a place designed to aggravate suspicions."
--White Noise***

MP3: The Airborne Toxic Event**** - DTMYMO?

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*"Blacksmith"
**"College-on-the-Hill"
***More DeLillo and WN info here and here.
****Chapter 21: "He spoke these words in a clipped and foreboding manner, syllable by syllable, as if he sensed the threat in state-created terminology."

[DeLillo portrait by Tina Merandon]