Month / November 2005
Holidays
…in limn of existential meanderings and peripatetic journeys to urban locales (extra-SF), all concerning the inevitable turkey-stuffing grandcentralstat point, as presented on an X-Y axis shakily scrawled upon a napkin (not unlike certain economic theories), placebo effect and drool req. for gorging and collapse and otherwise mature adults transfixed by cartoons (thank you dvd manufacturers for this nostalgia) that form a narcotic which is simultaneously return to childhood and recontextualization of original viewing. Some things to figure out:
1. Is Bugs Bunny the first animated transvestite and why do I find him mildly attractive?
2. Why are animations so enjoyable to watch shortly before gorging on a large meal?
3. Why does my itinerary resemble some third-rate lounge singer’s? And why am I not opening for some glockenspiel player in a dive bar?
4. They’ve jumped the gun again on Xmas. Again. Why do these atrocious carolers with their trumpets and drums sound as if they are playing nationalist anthems from Communist Yugoslavia? Who knew that “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” played at a middling and painfully slow timbre, conjured up a certain martial ode to Tito (not to be confused with this Tito, who I would not expect to consort with the Soviet Red Army)?
…the like.
Anyway, happy Turkey Day and all to Reluctant readers. Will return sometime next week.
Roundup
- Birnbaum Alert (x2): He talks with Rick Moody and pulls a Glenn Gould and interviews himself.
- Novelist Philip Hensher is not happy with the British Royal Opera’s staging of Ballo in Maschera. It seems that the performers were rehearsing in blackface. Hensher’s full thoughts can be found here. The Royal Opera has stopped wearing blackface. (On a somewhat related note, Harold Ramis has turned dark.)
- I didn’t know this, but apparently Anne Rice’s sudden conversion was because of a diabetic coma.
- Kurt Anderson + Catherine Zeta-Jones = Recipe for Disaster?
- Some recent words on Republicans from Z.Z. Packer.
- Utopian literature: a dying breed?
- This season’s hot motif: deaths of the rich and famous?
- The latest angle for a blogging article: bloggers as major political players. What next? A Masonic handshake?
- Jeremy Mercer gets the Newsweek treatment.
- Lynn Johnson’s “For Better or For Worse,” the only comic strip that has featured characters growing up in real time (and dared to tackle homosexuality) , is ending next year. (via Komickcast)
- Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood (via Splinters)
- The George Plimpton Project: Click George to Enter.
- Romeo and Juliet: told in emoticons.
RIP Link Wray
Link Wray, the father of the power chord, has died. The man who launched a million punk and metal bands through a staggeringly simple concept: top string at set fret, second to top string two frets down. Slide finger formation up and down with sharp strikes of plectrum, feed through loud Marshall amp. Repeat until you stumble upon wonderful noisy song.
Had not Wray come up with this magical concept, I would never have enjoyed so many hours in garages and basements with other like-minded goofballs as a teenager. (Some of the songs I penned during that period include “The Last of My Kind” and “The Cat Must Die.”) Thank you, Mr. Wray, for democratizing rock and roll for those of us whose grasp of pentatonic scales were shaky at best.
The Head Cheese
It’s criminal that it’s taken me this long to stumble across the covers of the appropriately named Richard Cheese. Anyone audacious enough to record a cheery lounge version of Nirvana’s “Rape Me” (“This one’s for the ladies!”) has my immediate respect. That cover (along with covers of Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains,” the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ “Suck My Kiss,” and even the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia”) appears on Cheese’s first album Lounge Against the Machine. It’s difficult to say whether Cheese is reacting to the doom and gloom embedded within indie pop or he’s celebrating the declasse environment of lounge. Either way, Cheese’s music is cheery, unapologetically politically incorrect and genuinely goofy — provided you can live with own ethical conscience while enjoying his music.
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