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October 6th, 2009
March 9th, 2009
February 1st, 2009
11:13 pm - ITUNES MEME
How many songs total: 18, 354
How many hours or days of music: 53 days, 22 hours, 43 minutes
Most recently played: Kurt Vile - classic rock in spring/freeway in mind
Most played: Department of Eagles - ghost in summer clothes, 24 plays (this comes as a surprise to me)
Most recently added: Madvillain - madvillainy 2
Sort by song title:
First Song: "a national acrobat" - Black Sabbath
Last Song: "?" by "?", or "_" by Xiu Xiu and Grouper
Sort by time:
Shortest Song: "ironman skit" Ghostface Killah (5 seconds -- not counting incompletely downloaded songs)
Longest Song: "dopesmoker" Sleep (1 hour 3 minutes 32 seconds)
Sort by album:
First album: "Abacabok" Tartit
Last album: "94 diskont" Oval
First song that comes up on Shuffle: "Hello Halo" Ricardo Villalobos
Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 107
Life - 228
Love - 743
Sex – 121
Hate – 20
You - 1463
Me - 3845
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January 12th, 2009
10:05 pm - Every day I'm tumbling
Just a reminder that I'm blogging constantly on my tumblr. I started twittering, too.
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January 5th, 2009
12:45 am - Books I read in 2008
A lot fewer than I'd hoped to! I was aiming at 52 (a book a week), but only managed 34 (a book every week-and-a-half). A couple people posted lists of their reading back in the summertime that were this long already. Embarrassing, given that I work at a bookstore, but I do work three jobs and I have writing to do, too. Plus, this doesn't count any of the magazine and blog reading that actually accounts for the bulk of my reading time.
I also lost my notebook in september when my bag got stolen, so I had to reconstruct this list from memory. I think I got all the titles up to the point where I lost the notebook, but I still don't think I have the order right (not that it really matters).
Colour coding works like this:
-literature (novels and short story collections): 16
-philosophy and art criticism: 13
-music: 3
-erotica: 3
-graphic novel: 1
-children's lit: 1
-writing reference: 1
Some are double-counted as more than one genre.
I didn't read any poetry, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery/thrillers, horror, or science books all year, or any non-fiction that wasn't art criticism, philosophy, or music. I bought and consulted a couple cookbooks, but decided not to bother including them in the list.
Slavoj Zizek was my most-read author at three books. J.M. Coetzee, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Donald Barthelme all had two in the list.
THE TOP THREE:
1. Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
One of the best contemporary novels I've read in years. All the hype I heard was true, and then some. Truly fresh and thrilling, formally inventive, almost impossibly diverse, and always painfully real and believable. Emotionally and intellectually rich. It's the kind of masterpiece that seems to contain everything.
2. Slavoj Zizek, Violence
The best book of his out of the three I read this year, and prior to this year, I'd tried reading a few other ones but was never able to finish them. Every Zizek book is a fairly rambling collection of the same ideas restated, but this is the most concise, most effective, and most relevant deployment of his thought I've found so far.
3. Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: a story of music and revolution in Brazil
My favourite musician in his own very eloquent words. The best biography (musical or otherwise) that I've ever read, hands-down.
I'll add that I enjoyed pretty much all of these books a great deal. There wasn't a single one that I ended up regretting having read. That said, Mishima's The Sound of Waves was maybe the least engaging of this year's crop, and I had some difficulty with Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Not that it was hard to read (just for being so unrelievedly bleak), but I'm just not convinced that what he was doing with the book was good. The whole ethos of it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth, and the ending left me unsatisfied. But it was still McCarthy. He's a powerful stylist and a major voice. You can't ignore the guy and it was worth reading.
Paul Virilio, Ground Zero
Boris Vian, The Foam of the Daze
Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
Carl Wilson, Let's Talk About Love: a journey to the end of taste
J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: scenes from provincial life
Donald Barthelme, Overnight to Many Distant Cities
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Martin Amis, London Fields
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Strunk, White, and Kalman, The Elements of Style
John Darnielle, Black Sabbath's Master of Reality
Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute - or why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?
Anais Nin, Delta of Venus
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (fiction and essays)
Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of the Stepmother
Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves
Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: a story of music and revolution in Brazil
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the meaning of style
George Steiner, Nostalgia for the Absolute
Sigmund Freud, On Forgetting
Donald Barthelme, Snow White
Darren O'Donnell, Social Acupuncture
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good
Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 1
Aaron Peck, The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll
Slavoj Zizek, Violence
Started but not Finished:
Sven Lutticken, Secret Publicity
Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will
Claire Bishop (ed.), Participation
All three being collections of essays and art criticism, all very good, but I've been reading them in a scattershot, piecemeal fashion. Will definitely finish these at some point.
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December 8th, 2008
08:51 pm - So I might have a third job
I had an interview at {ie today that was really easy and casual. It looks like I've got a couple trial shifts next week.
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November 17th, 2008
08:01 pm - Pure Class
In the last 24 hours, I've managed to barf in a kitchen sink full of dishes and off of a second-storey balcony.
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November 14th, 2008
02:41 am - My Top 30 of 2008
As yet, in no particular order. I have to whittle it down to ten for my Zulu year-end list. Probably as my colleagues begin drawing up their lists, I'll remember some other things, too. there's even a chance that something will still come out this year that could wiggle its way on here, but probably not before my next-week deadline.
MORE ADDED! Now up to 41.
MY TOP 41 OF 2008 AS OF NOW
valet - naked acid
quiet village - silent movie
destroyer - trouble in dreams
portishead - third
beach house - devotion
atlas sound - let the blind lead those who see but cannot feel
deerhunter - microcastle
silver jews - lookout mountain, lookout sea
ladyhawk - shots
grouper - dragging a dead deer up a hill
chad vangaalen - soft airplane
mount eerie with julie doiron and fred squire - lost wisdom
high places - s/t
gang gang dance - saint dymphna
thee ohsees - the master's bedroom is worth spending a night in
no age - nouns
women - s/t
eden express - s/t
lykke li - youth novels
abe vigoda - skeleton
jonathan richman - because her beauty is raw and wild
department of eagles - in ear park
nite jewel - my cd
john maus - love is real
flying lotus - los angeles
fennesz - black sea
little joy - s/t
megapuss - surfing
group inerane - music of niger, guitars from agadez
skeletons - money
poolplayers - way below the surface
sian alice group - 59.59
vivian girls - s/t
studio - yearbook 2
v/a - roots of chicha: psychedelic cumbias from peru
dj/rupture - uproot
sun araw - beach head
diplo vs. santogold - top ranking mixtape
v/a - 1970's algerian proto-rai
scuba - a mutual antipathy
2562 - aerial
NOT YET OUT
Wavves - s/t
Psychic Ills - mirror eye
TECHNICALLY THIS YEAR, BUT 2007 TITLES AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED
Vampire Weekend - s/t
Black Mountain - in the future
REISSUES
Brian Eno & Robert Fripp - no pussyfooting
Gal Costa - 1969
Jorge Ben - 1969
Jorge Ben - forca bruta
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October 26th, 2008
10:32 pm - Halloween costumes for the bearded man
Sorry, no funny jokes or pictures. I just want ideas. I can never come up with a good halloween costume. My best to date was probably the year I was Karl Marx, but that was really just a fake beard, a suit, and a copy of Capital. Anybody have any clever ideas?
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October 5th, 2008
11:50 pm - The Smell of the Establishment
My fancy gala actually ended up being a fair bit of fun, though the art auction bordered on catastrophic -- the recession has apparently hit the art market. Almost nothing went for above it's estimated value, and some of the most valuable pieces recieved no bids at all. I also got a feel for the general provinciality of the Vancouver scene. Granted, a number of luminaries were at the Toronto Art Fair, but neither the art nor the guests were terribly glamorous. It's a small and isolated city we live in.
I was a silent auction guard. I ended up wearing black jeans (just couldn't find a nice pair of dress pants), but it didn't seem to matter, there was plenty of denim around, despite the high price of the event. During the live auction, I was an art walker and had to parade some large paintings around the dining hall while the auctioneer from Christie's (a pleasantly commanding British woman who looked straight out of a BBC crime drama) called out the bidding.
The volunteers got a free dinner (though not the food that the guests got) at possibly the longest table I've ever eaten at, some free drinks, and a piece of art (a Liz Magor multiple in an "unlimited edition") that was complimentary to all attendees.
The Vancouver Club is pleasantly non-glitzy. It's too old-money for any kind of glitz. The level of comfort and quality in the furnishings was pretty astounding, actually. The whole place smelled wonderful, like old things very well-maintained, like generations spent in the pursuit of improvements in the material conditions of living. I seem to have been doing a good deal of venturing out of my usual social sphere, lately. It's been enlightening.
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October 2nd, 2008
11:58 pm - Etiquette
While volunteering as a functionary at a high-priced ($250/ticket) gala, is it permissible to:
- pretend that high-quality black jeans are actually dress pants?
- wear a blue pinstripe shirt instead of a white shirt?
- wear a black tie with a blue shirt?
- not wear a blazer?
- roll up my sleeves?
Please help me gauge the severity of these gaffes and determine how many I'm allowed to make.
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September 18th, 2008
11:23 pm - Oh, fine, I'll do this photo meme
What's a livejournal for if not crap like this?
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
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02:37 pm - More yakking about hipsters and fashion blogs
Actual discursive content x-posted from Tumblr:
That thing about The Sartorialist that always bugged me but couldn't quite figure out...
standardgrey:
…then Marxy at Neojaponisme nailed it.
I constantly hear little grumbles about The Sartorialist: Most can be attributed to the expected knee-jerk backlash from Schuman’s commendable DIY success in an extremely snobby field. But the one thing I hear over and over from people generally sympathetic to the Schuman’s site: the men and women featured on The Sartorialist appear at first glance to be “people on the street” but they are all models or work in the fashion industry
True, but I think the larger point is that sites like, say, Face Hunter, show you (for the most part, anyway) hipsters doing a lot of DIY mix-and-matching. Some of them might be wearing expensive clothes, but the majority are also working in thrift pieces or making wholly improvised outfits out of budget sources, and the results ran be pretty zany, and Hipster Runoff basically exists to make fun of that zaniness. The Sartorialist is, as Marxy says, pictures of professionals. In other words, rich people. So there's a natural conservatism and elitism to the Sartorialist that's openly class-based. "Style" for him is putting individual touches into mostly very expensive and quite traditional clothes, outfits suitable for conducting business and mingling with the wealthy. It's aspirational in that you might like something you see on there and consider how you could replicate it with less money, but at the end of the day, my response to it is usually, "Well, we might all look that nice if we had that much money." The fact that this isn't strictly true (lots of rich people dress tastelessly) is, I guess, the point of the Sartorialist: "Hey rich people, let's dress according to our status so as to not be mistaken for nouveau-riche or, god forbid, commoners."
It's still great eye candy, though, and I think the attraction of hipsters and non-rich people to the Sartorialist is part of a larger aspirational turn in fashion now that the idea of an actually transgressive subculture has lost all credibility. If mainstream = alt now and hipness isn't based in any idea larger than staying a step ahead of the mainstream*, why not ditch the oppositional chic and get on board the traditional fashion train?**
* Hence the reluctance of anyone to be called a "hipster". "Hip" isn't a real (sub)culture with values or ideals, it's just a position in a very fluid status game, the terms of which change every day. In the first place, no one wants to admit that they're actually participating a competition for distinction, and in the second place, calling someone a "hipster" means accusing them of not being adequately ahead of the curve.
** The answer, of course, being that while hipsterdom may not be transgressive in the way that punks (or even hippies) were (it doesn’t involve any utopian idea of a radical transformation or negation of society), if it does constitute a (sub)culture in any way, it’s as a grassroots community of mostly middle-class creatives whose political values may not be strident or even well-articulated, but at least gesture towards a liberal ideal of an equal and participatory society — there are still “scenes”, after all, and considered in the best light, they constitute what cultural theorists might call a “micro-economy” or a “counter-public”. This is why people get so excited about The Smell in LA, or the K/Marraige records/Portland scene, or Torontopia…maybe even about Vancouver’s “weird punk” scene, though Sam had a few things to say about negativity in Vancity.
This is basically an excerpt from the long form of my Adbusters "Hipster article" response that I keep alternately working on and shelving.
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September 16th, 2008
06:11 pm - Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks
Since I lost my old bag, I've been using an even older army surplus one that I dug out of my closet. Just now I managed to forget it at Budgie's. Thankfully, it was recovered when a friend called my phone and the staff answered.
I am an idiot.
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12:22 am - PSA
I know that I have not been blogging here at all, but I have blogging like a maniac on my tumblr. The tools make it super easy and the feed (and occasional reblogs) make it feel obscurely rewarding.
Today's Phrase of the Day: LIBIDINAL ECONOMY.
I also changed my tumblr layout so it looks a little nicer.
Don't worry, I'm still reading your lj. I'm just abandoning my own.
Goodbye, lj. It was a good run. Four years!
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September 1st, 2008
12:46 am - Tumbling Dice
I don't expect that I'll keep putting too much up on this thing. I don't blog often enough to justify more than having a tumblr.
Here's some things I've been up to:
- Saw Radiohead and got totally soaked. It was a good show, but a brutal ordeal getting home.
- Great friends came to visit from Chicago and Japan. Excellent times.
- Finally saw Westworld. The dude in it does look kinda like me.
- Saw the new Woody Allen movie. It's great! Super simple with a classic structure and a warm but very up-front sense of irony about how troped its characters and situations were. It's like the movie itself was amused about how well its tricks work. Carried off with an almost musical sense of timing and great acting. Good Woody Allen is one of the few great art forms by and about affluent white people. Yes, "Woody Allen" is a art form in itself. It's a minor but important genre.
- I feel like a fool for not going to Prospect Point last night after seeing pictures of how much fun everybody had. Oh well. I'll see Basketball tomorrow. Coming to Victory Square?
- Went to the Stanley Park Singing Exhibition tonight and saw Andrew Bird, Destroyer, and Neko Case (missed Deerhoof, unfortunately). Destroyer played a wicked set, super solid and not too drunk, with a great setlist, and Neko (who I've never taken an active interest in) kind of bowled me over. Her voice is OBSCENELY emotive. Like, indecently. She also had some pretty earthy stage banter, like (as it was getting really unseasonably cold):
"Tonight, everyone's nickname is 'Nipples'."
and then she got into a long, meandering discussion with one of her backup singers about how much the backup girl is into Wayne Osmond. He dug being an Osmond more than all the other Osmonds, apparently.
"I'll never get a date again," the lady lamented. "Except maybe at an Osmonds convention." Then, after a moments pause, she said,
"My niche is narrow....but warm, and velvety." I'm not sure if she intended the double-entendre or not.
- Heads up! This wednesday they're showing Metropolis at the Cinematheque, and next monday, they're showing Hiroshi Teshigahara's AMAZING Antoni Gaudi documentary, which has no narration (or dialogue at all aside from a few scenes with architects that are restoring or finishing Gaudi buildings), but it has a mind-boggling soundtrack by famed Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu that's pretty much worth the price of admission by itself.
- I'm going to the Battles on tuesday. You?
- SWARM is this weekend.
- Most of the music in my life is just a brief distraction from my ongoing love affair with Caetano Veloso and Funkadelic.
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August 23rd, 2008
06:33 pm - Tumblr!
I got a Tumblr. Lazy as I am, it's been sucking up what feeble blog-energy I've been able to muster. While I oppose Tumblring in theory as the next symptom of degenerating attention spans on the internet, the logical end of which is the dissappearance of actual content in a mise-en-abyme of endless linking, I do admittedly enjoy the drive-by feeling of single images, songs, and inormation nuggets whizzing by in the constantly-updated Tumblr -feed.
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August 19th, 2008
02:53 pm - Converging in the Quiet
Total silence on the blog for the last while as I've been out partying recklessly, indiscriminately, and without interruption. I'm seizing this summer by the throat, goddamit.
Mark, however, has been busy as hell, and has a particularly trenchant post about the closure of Vancouver's A&B Sound locations and the probable future of indie record stores.
Tonight I'm going to see Radiohead, rain or no rain, so I'll let you know how that goes. Maybe I'll see you there?
Wednesday (tomorrow, that is), I'd recommend checking out Animal Names with Secret Mommy, No Gold, and Hermetic at the Media Club. That's probably one of the best bills of local bands that you could hope for.
Current Music: Crystal Stilts
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August 11th, 2008
12:37 am - Rogerio Duprat: Style Icon
Rogerio Duprat was an avant-garde Brazilian composer (he was a devotee of Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez) and intimate of the tropicalista circle. He did the string and orchestra arrangements for almost every 60's and early-70's release by a tropicalia artist, including Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, and Gal Costa, as well as Chico Buarque, Alceu Valença, Geraldo Azevedo, and others.
I really dig his style and recently got a haircut that, coincidentally, makes me look rather a lot like him.
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