nonpretentious

This Week’s Recommended Reading

nonpretentious — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:00:48 +0000

Mark Millar Says Kick Ass 2 Is Greenlit
Yes! We loved Kick Ass. Now we get a second one!

The Nittany Lion has a Drinking Problem
And Big 10 rivalries get split up.

In Defense of Photoshop: Why Retouching Isn’t As Evil As Everyone Thinks
Who’s gonna foot the bill for those classes in critical media?

Rescuing “Rescue Me”

Frank Rocchi — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:08:34 +0000

I do not envy the writers of Rescue Me. For 6 seasons they’ve had a male lead whose only significant acting experience is The Thomas Crown Affair and Operation Dumbo Drop. Since season 1 the plot lines have become so intricate and tangled that it wouldn’t surprise me if Denis Leary appeared as himself during an episode, paying a visit to cheer up Tommy Gavin. And lest we forget the prompt they got the first day “Self-destructive firefighter struggles with his own demons against the backdrop of a post-9/11 New York City and FDNY.” What a dream job; write about America’s most recent national tragedy while making the flawed main character a member of our country’s most sacred civil service profession.

Understandably, the show lost its way a little bit after the first season. It became less about the job, and more about Tommy Gavin, the sarcastic alcoholic we all love despite his twin-tower size deficiencies as a human being. In seasons 3 and 4, the show devolved to a softcore porn starring Denis Leary. Every episode another gorgeous woman was inexplicably fighting for the attention of drunken, already married, Tommy Gavin. Everything Tommy did was an act of selfish gratification, only mitigated by the occasional bout of self loathing.

This season opens up with [SPOLIER ALERT] Tommy recovering from the gunshot wound he received from his Uncle Teddy during the season 5 finale. Tommy has several new pitfalls to maneuver around this year, and fortunately, none of them have involved Tommy Gavin’s withered Irish ass having sex. When he leaves the hospital he comes home to find that his oldest daughter has taken up the family pastime: drinking herself into oblivion. Franco has made himself a fixture in the family during Tommy’s absence, endearing himself to Janet. Lou is forced to deal with health problems stemming from his weight. The firehouse is threatened with the axe due to budget cuts. Oh, and did we mention that Tommy went to Hell when he died momentarily on his way to the hospital? Well, he did and it makes for some pretty interesting conversation.

Sure, some things haven’t changed at all. Tommy is still a struggling alcoholic, Janet is still a hypocritical bitch, Sheila is still bat-shit insane, and sexual relationships still provide a majority of the dramatic fodder. Peter Gallagher guest stars as a priest who provides Tommy, and the show, with some balance and good advice. With all these elements, the show should see its best season so far.

15 things I’ve wanted to say, but bit down hard on my tongue instead.

HippieGirl Interrupted — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:34:55 +0000

1. To the fat man next to me on the interminably long flight: Your gut is spilling onto my lap, you overfed hippo. Stop tilting the plane!

2. To the police-officer who gave me an outrageous fine for speeding: I may have said, Thank you sir, I won’t speed again. But what I actually meant was, is your power a penis substitute?

3. To my neighbour who tries to complete my sentences for me: The next time we converse, I’m going to break into gibberish. Let’s see you finish that!

4. To the religious zealots on my staff: I believe in reincarnation and evolution. Enjoy hell!

5. To the colleague whose depth-chargers stink up the bowels of the Ladies’ Room: Take a dump at home – you fetid, dirty girl!

6. To the lady who leaves the scent of fish hanging in the air of the toilet-cubicle: Please wash…down there! Here’s a handy tip, use soap.

7. To my boss: You’re common and unethical. Saying that, “You’re farting against thunder” or “being shat upon from a dizzy height” during a staff meeting, does not make you the exemplar of panache and class.

8. To the racist restauranteur who gives poor service to people of colour: Scale the boughs of your family-tree, love’y, and you’ll see that grand-pa did it, doggy-style, with a slave.

9. To the panel who denied me access to a laureate writing course: Saying that I should incorporate the use of rhyme more, makes you look amateur and stuffy!

10. To my friends who mock me for being vegan: I don’t pick on the decaying offal on your plates, guys. Leave my rocket and carrots the fuck alone!

11. To my father who drinks too much: I don’t blame you. You married her!

12. To my mother: Actually mum, those weren’t childhood hidings, that was abuse.

13. To my husband’s bitchy older sister: Who lit the fuse on your tampon?

14. To the stranger I met not too long ago: Married or not, I should have kissed you.

15. To my husband: Get bent.

J-Mits, Finally a Twitter We Can Understand

Jewish Mother-in-Training — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:18:28 +0000

The Grey Lady Talks Trash

Sarah Gibbons — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:06:01 +0000

Besides revealing that the AP photo staff has probably multiple people on the reality TV beat, Wednesday’s New York Times article on the genre by Television Critic Alessandra Stanley rested on the affirmation that, while sounding a bit like “a knell of civilization’s end,” the content of reality TV is nothing new and needn’t cause “panic.” It also seemed written by someone making sure her audience knew she was smarter than her subject matter.

Stanley manages to use a handful of obscure, three- and four-syllable words, reference Jacqueline Kennedy’s “cultural artifact” of a hat, draw a comparison to a Gelett Burgess poem, classify MTV as “horative,” and refer to Jersey Shore as a “Bart-Simpsonish tonic” to a more boring reality show. (One of those three-syllable words is “odalisque,” which Stanley uses to describe the figure of Kim Kardashian, who has Armenian heritage. Is that racist? Sexist? Or just another chance to prove she knows more than just this basal form of television?)

Odalisque

Odalisque?

The core of Stanley’s thesis is that reality shows are born from the same desire that the society pages once fulfilled. Celebutantes are nothing new, Stanley intimates. Those people, like Kardashian, were famous for being famous a hundred years ago.

Stanley’s foci aim at primarily two shows (or groups of shows): Jersey Shore and Kim Kardashian’s various reality ventures. Herein lies the problem. Stanley is writing about two different sub-genres of reality TV: original and extra crispy (fried twice?). The original (including: Jersey Shore, The Real World, Survivor, Bachelor) are shows that take laypeople, place them in extraordinary situations and record them, making them famous. Extra crispy (including: Keeping up with the Kardashians, Being Bobby Brown, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF)—VH1 calls this “Celebreality”—gives television shows to people who are already famous precisely because they are famous, even if they’re only famous for being famous. Follow?

But in either case, reality TV is nothing like looking in from the outside of high society—even the depths of high society. Newbie stars like Snooki are propelled to fame, putting them at the same bars and parties as Kardashian and Paris Hilton, but we still only see glimpses of that side in the tabloids and society pages. Those media, as they always have, satisfy voyeurism. That’s not what’s being satisfied when we watch reality TV—not precisely. Unlike the crimes and romantic dalliances committed by these stars when the cameras turned on them have telescopic lenses, what we see on TV is a completely new kind of performance art, one that develops in real time. One spurred by desperation and a desire to stay “relevant.” One that makes up its relevance as it goes.

The cameras that record reality TV are welcome. We like watching what people will do to keep those cameras there, not what they’re doing behind closed doors.

Why Julian Wilson might be the Greatest Athlete in the World

Christopher Garland — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:09:23 +0000

1. Have you ever been surfing? It’s a very, very difficult thing to learn to do; it’s a very, very difficult thing to do moderately well; it’s a very, very difficult thing to get better at doing. I started surfing when I was 14 years old. In regards to the regularity, I have surfed several times a day (during the summer, when I was in my mid-teens, and when I went to Costa Rica for two and a half weeks a couple of years ago); once or twice a week (three years ago, when I was last living in New Zealand); once every couple of months (now that I live in swampy, flat, hot Florida). That said, I am a resolutely average surfer. I can surf with confidence, sure, and on some days I can surf moderately well. But it’s hard, really hard, at least for me.

2. I remember when I started surfing. The physics blew my mind, warped my consciousness, and made me, like some sort of Jeff Spicoli wannabe, draw waves in the back on my math textbook. Here’s surfing: a surfer paddles a large piece of polyurethane foam covered in fibreglass cloth and resin out into a turbulent body of water. All going well, swells from the greater ocean will pulse through this body of water (perhaps a beach or a bay or a man-made harbor) and meet the shallows (most often a sandbank or a reef), breaking in a way that allows the surfer–who is paddling to gain the position and enough speed to catch this newly formed wave– to garner the velocity needed to not only be propelled by said breaking wave, but shift from a prone position to standing upright on this fiberglass coated foam (or board).

3. Doing the fore-mentioned will, hopefully, allow the surfer the opportunity to glide across the unbroken face of the wave, controlling the movement of the board with both subtle and not so subtle shifts in weight–distributed from the back foot to the front foot–while the face of the wave changes due to the contours of what the wave is breaking over (sand/rocks/coral), or because of the (often strong) wind, or perhaps another surfer paddling out trying to reach a wave coming in from further out, or just because sometimes the wave crumbles because it’s the natural world and not everything is explicable.

4. Here’s surfing: it’s about waiting–for waves, for the tide to turn, for the swell to come, for the tide to come in, for the tide to go out, for the wind to switch offshore, for a car to take you to the beach, for a plane to take you to the best waves (non-surfers: the best waves are in Indonesia). Here’s surfing: it’s discomfort, being held down on a big set of waves, losing your breath, silly thoughts of losing your life; it’s cutting your foot on the side fin of your board; it’s losing your footing while walking across a reef, your foot sliding down into a hole in the reef, standing on a sea urchin and (this happened to me) having poisonous spikes from the bastard blow your foot up like a fiendish, fleshy balloon;it’s westerly winds chilling you to the bone as the dawn light ebbs weakly over the horizon; it’s your arms being so tired from paddling that the thought of lifting anything–a damp wetsuit, a sandwich–just seems like too much work, which, after going surfing, it all is, all of it (I call this the early evening, strong gin and tonic effect).

5. Here’s surfing: it’s fear (sometimes, at least for me); of sharks; of big waves; of hurting myself with my board (though I did put put my elbow through the rail/side of a board and smash the tail of the board on a single, very good, and very fast wave in Costa Rica. . . And I didn’t hurt myself at all).

6. Here’s surfing: feeling small in the natural world, which is always healthy for the individualistic humanoid; feeling awe, which is tied into feeling small but with the kind of reverence that the atheist can’t find in churches and shouldn’t find in vague notions of “Eastern mysticism”; or it’s a reaffirmation for the believer, in the majesty of an omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent Creator, in the design of this world; it pulls one away from the idea of competition, a hard thing to do when one has been raised in a particular way in a particular place, and makes you truly appreciate a truly alternative sport.

7. On good writing, tennis, and surfing: I recently re-read the late David Foster Wallace’s essay on Roger Federer. Evidenced by his gigantic novel, Infinite Jest, Mr. Wallace understood the value of detailed description. In addressing the beauty of Federer’s game, however, I feel he may have underplayed one thing: just how difficult it is to play against a very good tennis player. DFW probably grasped this all too well, because he himself was a very good tennis player, and therefore had played other great players, tennis players who could whip their rackets into serves with the aggression and accuracy of a medieval torturer. And he certainly conveys Federer’s breathtaking artistry, style, panache. But does he explain how hard it is for us mere mortals to serve a tennis ball with speed, and how the connection between the average weekend tennis warrior and Roger Federer is, well, very little. They are both human, I guess.

8 (a). This brings me to Julian Wilson, a 22 year-old Australian who surfs in the Quicksilver and Red Bull teams. After explaining just how difficult it is to fathom conceptually the idea of riding a wave (let alone catch a breaking wave in the material world), then get the right balance and actually stand up on that blasted piece of foam and ride across the face of the wave, I will try and give an idea of what Julian Wilson can do. Of course, the best thing you could do know is watch Julian Wilson on YouTube. There you will see that he treats a wave in the way that a snowboarder treats a half-pipe or a skateboarder treats a ramp: at times, even though I know this is not true (can’t be true), he makes you think that his imagination is the only limit.

8 (b). Dropping in, Wilson will speed down and then drive off the bottom of the wave, somehow generating speed at a time where you might think he might slow down, pushing the board as if it’s a skateboard on concrete. Except for it’s not: it’s water, and it’s moving, unpredictable, and Wilson is playing with it, trying acute angles, driving his bottom turn tight, and in a second he flies up the face of the wave, flicking his board across the feathering lip of the breaking wave, sending a shock of spray skywards, sliding the board, fins out, and dropping back into the wave, only to be faced with a wall of foam because the wave is starting to break towards him, so Wilson pumps the board to gain speed, hits the whitewash, and takes to the air, easily, as if the board is attached to his feet, sometimes he will spin in the air, taking the board with him, or he’ll grab the board, push it out from him in a superman stretch (this is a move he invented at crumbly beach in Japan). . . I watch this and I think of all the sports I love dearly–and the ones I don’t, like baseball–and I ask myself this: is there anything more difficult than this? Is there anything more impossible? Is there anything more impressive?

This Weeks Recommended Reading

nonpretentious — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:00:55 +0000

We read a lot. Here’s what we think you should be reading this week.

What do you do all day? Literary Agent.
Ever wonder what you should have done with your English Degree and Law degree? Read on.

How The Vampire Boom Really Began: A Totally Fictional Flight Of Fancy
Cute. Though the Vampire PR Team may not like that we called it cute. You know, ’cause they’ve got a sense of menace to uphold.

Save the Words!
Thank you for pointing us to savethewords.org, Geek Dad. We could never live without quibbleism. We’ve made sure it’s adopted.

Three Proven Decision-Making Tips for Project-Based Work
Because we’re trying to be more decisive.

Adventures in Channel Surfing

Sarah Gibbons — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:21:26 +0000

I’ve been flipping back and forth between PBS, “Hoarders” , and something called “Hardcore Pawn” for about 20 minutes now. On PBS, Joan Baez is talking about some really heavy, sad stuff she remembers from the Vietnam/Cold War era. Every time I stop on her, I giggle. Sorry Joan.

Here are a few choice Baez-isms.

“I could feel my nightgown flutter…”

“It was the biggest carpet bombing that took place…”

“I couldn’t get enough of it. I couldn’t stop screaming.”

“It went so deep.”

That’s. What. She. Said.

Channel surfing is a lot like falling asleep reading Kafka (or Jedediah Berry); you don’t really know if what you just experienced was read or dreamed.

Between commercials, conflicting plot lines mashed together, genres separated by chasms, wits by the same, it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of listening to a really sweet, uplifting, culturally-important woman when you’re also in the middle of listening to this guy scream at his security team:

"What is this, Candy Land?!"

And then argue with his kids about whether or not to buy a Jagermeister dispensing machine (Jagermeister dispensing machine owner’s pitch: “Yeah, you put a little Jagermeister in and you get a little bit of nice Jagermeister out.”).

If Joan Baez is culturally-important, this is culturally-impotent. When you hop from the latter to the former and hear a middle-aged woman talk about fluttering nightgowns and carpet bombings, it’s nearly impossible for the reaction to be anything other than, “ohmigod, did she just say what I think she said?”

And then you realize she’s talking about the wind from explosions and explosions.

No related posts.

Matt Erickson’s Top 100 Songs. #60-56.

Matt Erickson — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:34:08 +0000

60. The Delgados / Get Action!

I really have no idea what this song is about. But I’d been thinking about the same girl for three years, obsessed over the track listing on CDs I’d make for her, thinking I could cue an emotional epiphany, like in those lying fucking movies, where the main characters lock eyes in cinematic crescendo. Instead, she just moved away, and I was condemned to supporting-character status (the Bill Pullman or Cary Elwes of her life). The day her U-Haul droned off, I noticed this song for the first time, and played it over and over. It was like tonguing a sore tooth to see if it still hurts. The singer sounds like he’s taken similar boots to the jaw, but he gets up and staggers forward anyway, ready for the next beat-down, much to the chagrin of the bland leading men who simply want him out of the picture. From Universal Audio (2004).

59. Dr. Dre / Let Me Ride

As you might have guessed from the last caption, gangsta rap never described any reality I’ve ever lived in. Soul mates? Dre has bigger fish to fry:

“I make a phone call my niggaz comin’ like the Gotti boys
bodies bein’ found on Greenleaf
with their fuckin heads cut off, motherfucker i’m Dre”

Yes, we know you are all very tough and scary; as my dad would say, “oh, we’re ALL very impressed.” While the words are interchangeable generic boasting, words aren’t the way some things are best expressed – lust, swagger, and territorial threats need something more inarticulate, primal, muscular. Bypassing the brain, going straight for the gut. No, further down. Love those snaky keyboards too. From The Chronic (1992).

58. Led Zeppelin / In My Time of Dying

I recorded this song off the radio when I was nine or so, not knowing what it was except that it was Led Zeppelin – my first favorite band – and that was all I needed to know. While it was playing, my mom called me down to the basement to help me kill a mouse. A trap had pinned one of its hind legs and the mouse, in a frantic escape attempt, pulled its own leg off and left it in the trap. Crippled, it was easy to corner, and we were able to gobble it up with a paper Meijer bag, dump it in the toilet, and flush it. With unbelievable tenacity, the little mouse and it’s three limbs swam like Michael Phelps against the toilet’s current. It took three or four flushes before the little thing finally tuckered out and was swallowed away forever. Whew.

Shit! I left the tape recording! I run back upstairs to my room, ready to dive for the ‘STOP’ button – only to realize the song was still fucking going. That’s right, King Zeppelin will take as much time as they please. A long, slow death, with lots of amazing drumming. A properly epic eulogy for a Rasputin-like creature who endured the torture of losing a limb in our basement, then his life in our bathroom; wait, I never watched it, but isn’t that the movie Saw? From Physical Graffiti (1975).

57. Elliott Smith / Angeles

Some people are suckers for any sensitive soul with disheveled hair whispering over an acoustic guitar. Not me. Rather, I’m a sucker for the organ or keyboard chord that adds texture – or in this case, a scorching laser that burns a hole in its target. The lyrics here forgo postmodern ambiguity, and instead locate a clear villain – and they aren’t whispered, but spat out. It’s even creepier now, knowing that L.A. is where he died. Wasn’t it supposed to kill Anthony Kiedis instead? From Either/Or (1997).

56. The Treasures / Hold Me Tight

The Treasures don’t even have a Wikipedia page, which means the group members themselves probably forgot they were in the band. The real artist here is Phil Spector, who took a sunny-day early Beatles song (ironically, he’d later be charged with ruining their final album) and whisked it away in a hot air balloon. The thing feels completely weightless, with strings reaching higher and higher and the rhythm section exploding like fresh popcorn. These days, anything regarding Spector’s influence prompts a near-moral dilemma (see: Phil Spector link above); do you save the old lady from the burning building, or the Back to Mono master tapes? But this song has no traces of the wormy psychosis we’d witness later. Like the best things in life, it’s beautiful and uncomplicated. From the Back to Mono (1958-1969) collection. (Only available for download from The Phil Spector Collection).

Honorable Mention

Darlene Love / Strange Love

Looking for something a little more thorny and twisty? Porcelain dolls, lined on a bookshelf, mouths moving but eyes unblinking, provide the background sha-la-las. The chorus occasionally wrestles its way out of a muck of strings, horns, and ghostly choirs, the apparition of these voices in the wall of sound. From perhaps the greatest collection of music ever released, Back to Mono (1958-1969) collection. (Only available for download from The Phil Spector Collection).

List so far ~

100. Elton John ~ Funeral for a Friend
99. Dave Schramm ~ Hammer and Nails
98. The Bob Seger System ~ 2 + 2 = ?
97. The Young Generation ~ The Hideaway
96. Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie ~ Belle and Sebastian
95. The Cars ~ Drive
94. Moose ~ The Only Man in Town
93. Wire ~ French Film Blurred
92. King Crimson ~ Starless
91. The Only Ones ~ The Whole of the Law
90. Daniel Johnston ~ Grievances
89. The Rolling Stones ~ Rocks Off
88. Wipers ~ Youth of America
87. Heart ~ Alone
86. The Stone Roses ~ Sugar Spun Sister
85. Joe Pernice ~ Bum Leg
84. My Bloody Valentine ~ To Here Knows When
83. Gene Clark ~ Some Misunderstanding
82. Electric Light Orchestra ~ Can’t Get it Out of my Head
81. Ride ~ Vapour Trail
80. Rush ~ 2112
79. Pere Ubu ~ Final Solution
78. Gary Wright ~ Dream Weaver
77. John Hiatt ~ Cry Love
76. The Go-Betweens ~ Clouds
75. Asia ~ Only Time Will Tell
74. The House of Love ~ Man to Child
73. Talk Talk ~ After the Flood
72. Seal ~ Prayer for the Dying
71. Brian Eno ~ Spider and I
70. Red House Painters ~ Mistress
69. Boy Meets Girl ~ Waiting for a Star to Fall
68. Metallica ~ Fade to Black
67. Chris Bell ~ Speed of Sound
66. The Soft Boys ~ Queen of Eyes
65. Head East ~ Never Been Any Reason
64. The Chameleons UK ~ Second Skin
63. Big Star ~ The Ballad of El Goodo
62. Guns ‘n’ Roses ~ November Rain
61. Queensryche ~ Silent Lucidity
60. The Delgados ~ Get Action!
59. Dr. Dre ~ Let Me Ride
58. Led Zeppelin ~ In my Time of Dying
57. Elliott Smith ~ Angeles
56. The Treasures ~ Hold Me Tight

Honorable Mentions
Laura Cantrell ~ Hammer and Nails
King Missile ~ Sensitive Artist
Eric Carmen ~ Make Me Lose Control
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony ~ Tha Crossroads
Coldplay ~ Speed of Sound
Big Star ~ Kangaroo
Darlene Love ~ Strange Love

2 Sentence Review: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Lonnie — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:15:32 +0000

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that teaches you as much about Dominican history and the human condition as it does comic books and funny Spanish swear words.

Meant especially for anyone who gravitates towards the rhythms of spoken word or who likes there to be so little aesthetic distance between reader and character that you can smell the narrator’s body odor.