Words in Edgewise

Best Albums This Year So Far

2010-12-08T15:22:00.003-05:00

You people pine for me and my music opinions. And you smell like trees when I do so. Did you know that? Did you?

10. The National--High Violet. It's not hard to dress up melancholic torpor in midtempo, and I'm not the first person to say it. Hard is to do so in a way that feels like an invitation. (Note: these sentences make sense to me.)

9. MGMT--Congratulations. First: best album title ever. Second: I rally behind bands that mix shit up. Third: their music scares me most of the time.

8. Titus Andronicus--The Monitor. Concept album about the Civil War from a band of children who are aware of Springsteen but likely aren't aware they're aping him.

7. Das Racist--Sit Down, Man (mixtape). I hope they never sign to a major label because then they'd have to pay for their samples. Diss tracks, nonsense, psychedelia" what's not to love?

6. Tennis--Tennis. I'm convinced this band has a time machine. That they're from the 1960's or the 2060's is anyone's gambit.

5. LCD Soundsystem--This is Happening. Most of their songs take me a mile to get through, and most of the time I've barely noticed I'm mostly running.

4. Sleigh Bells--Treats. I should be very sick of their blown-out bubblegum sound by now, but I've seemed to skip that part of listening to an album too much.

3. The Walkmen--Lisbon. A band that truly cares about how far each mic is from each instrument. That's got to mean something, right?

2. Grinderman--Grinderman 2. If you've heard it, you know.

1. Wolf Parade--Expo '86. They wear their influences on their Canadian sleeve and we're all the better for it, eh? Plus: more solos!

0. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy--Kanye. I haven't heard the official album yet, but if his Friday G.O.O.D. leaks are any indication, this record will knock off my socks.

Honorable Mentions And In Order To Boot:
The Black Angels
Roky Erikson & Okkervil River (shock much?)
Beach House
The Drums
Surfer Blood
Girl Talk
Gauntlet Hair
Ariel Pink's Whatever the Fuck the Rest of that Band's Name Is
Arcade Fire
John Mellencamp
Jonsi
Sharon Van Etten
Raekwon Mef & Ghost
Erykah Badu
Harlem
Girls

Bands I gave a proper shot this year and would've put on the list but whose albums came out last year thus disqualified them from my hyper-fucking-disciplined process:

The xx
Real Estate
Smith Westerns

See How Far They Can Run

2010-07-08T08:38:00.003-04:00

Shit's been afoot. I have new work (vintage taxidermist), we have a new house (a faux Chateau). I jogged that one time and soccer's been on. Stirf refines and employs room specific carpet sunshine matrices. I made a best man speech and I read booky wooks. I'm a twat. I miss old friends and I've hung four mirrors and I can't wait for fantasy football and I don't mind landscaping when it's, you know, my yard. I like Ina better than Paula, y'all.

All well and good, but what of me now? Why, I'm strutting that ass of course.

2010-01-20T19:41:00.003-05:00

I like 'em when they pair off and make dreamy pretty depressing pop crap.

'Til Mates of State get daycare, have you some Beach House.

They're on Kimmel Friday night (the 22nd).

(By the time you've read this, they
may have already done him.

And we may be both dead.

Maybe more enlightened.)

(Prolly less.)

2010-01-14T20:29:00.002-05:00

England's Lady Gaga + Hot Chip cover + a tenori-on = Little Boots is Ready for the Floor:

A Sequence of Tubes and Roses and Tube Roses and Water Globes

2010-01-14T08:38:00.007-05:00

Everybody we saw over the holiday was happy--family, friends, family friends, all. No remember when, just hot tubs, love aids, Maine, basement floods, and pith so thick.
++++++
We're Chicago-bound again soon; with both of us working, plans to do it right are taking shape. I'll have bacon that looks like Swedish fish please.
++++++
I'm still running, but it's been a lot of treadmill lately. I get outside, but I'm trying to just put miles on. Fitness=fun.
++++++
Delillo. Knife Opera.
++++++
Teaching a 100% web-based class. Teaching 2 100% chalk and workshop classes. Both ftw.
++++++
Got my folks a netbook for Christmas. Dad was so giddy.

I set it up for him.

He's sitting in his recliner, looking over the Wal Mart reading glasses on his nose, pondering where to go on it.

"I want to see some Bigfoot videos. Or Loch Ness monsters."

He starts typing. Then says "Whoa."

He hands it back to me.

Porn everywhere.

He Googled 2 words.

"Unusual Things."

I defy you not to love that.

He now has WoT.
++++++

Dispatches from Telescope Machine

2009-12-02T09:20:00.004-05:00

I have an essay left to grade this semester. It's on Rocky III. I'm milking it.

I recently bowled a bumpers-down 178.

I had food poisoning, lost a bunch of weight, had four Thanksgivings, gained it all back.

You look great, though.

Great.

My niece called the Joker on Dark Knight "the mean clown."

Purchased:

a southern gothic called Hell at the Breech
a historical fiction called Wolf Hall
a experimental called Edisto
a nonrequired called Nonrequired
a book about the Supreme Court called The Nine
a book on Renaissance tapestries called Tapestries in the Somethingorother,

And I will devour them.

Once I.

Once you.

My fantasy football teams are strong. Playoff losses are damn near certain.

People on Facebook. Right?

My bestest, most favoritest books of the decade (so far):

A Gutwrenching Effort of Monumental Smartness by Dave Eggers
Senor Wao's Awe-Worthy Lifetales by Junot Diaz
Cooking Place--Shhh! by Anthony Bourdain
The Lengthy Domicile by William Gay
Think about This Langostino by DFW (RIP)
The Fixes by Jonathan Franzen
Very Little Country Out There for Geezers by Cormac McCarthy
Drive-Through Country by Eric Scholsser
There's No Way to Funny Up the Title Gilead by Marianne Robinson
Stronghold of Lonliness by Jonathan Lethem
El Terroro by Dan Simmons
Pointy Stuff by Gillian Flynn

I took another winner of a picture for my license.

Smirky,

salty.

Who knew running in the cold would be so invigorating.

I live a life that's never not interesting.

May you too.

Some young 'n strongvoiced TVZ:

2009-10-19T14:18:00.002-04:00

Eesh and me fittin' togoto onea themthar SwanLake hickeydo's as our Xmas presence to eachovur, and to helpma whet ma ballett pallette whirlymagig, I be watchin' vidyos with them purty dancingirls and all they whatnot. Herego lookit:

2009-10-05T20:25:00.001-04:00

Brought to You by Three Consecutive Updates Just Now that Included the Word "Exhausted": Think about That.

2009-09-29T21:17:00.004-04:00

I am on Facebook to keep track of students mostly. And to mock or feel somewhat less than people I went to school with.

The ratio's around 2.8:1. I don't take quizzes or post too many pics or encourage people to spend extra time on their computers and call it farming. I also don't mind that people do those things. But updates.

Status updates. I put up Tribe Called Quest lyrics and Spies Like Us quotes, platitudes about the Browns (or at least last year, when they were funny), cat shenanigans, and jokes most would classify "grammatical humor" and I don't really let it get more personal or vulgar than that. Still also don't mind that people do more than that with the space they're afforded to communicate with lots of people at once. But certain updaters.

Certain updaters--no, I won't block them because at this point they're interesting to science--update onto Facebook elements, factors, aspects and divinations of their personal lives I'm frankly not that cool with knowing.

Their shit.

I'm not even talking about minutiae, really, although some people violate that edict through sheer volume. If some people worked as hard as they bitched about their work, all their work would be done and they'd have all this wide open bitchless time to enjoy.

Confessions are what they are. Medical information, family turmoil, work drama, sex and money stuff, and sometimes all at once. There's a deficit of personal connection there that just makes me sad and wish there was a single person for these people to individually email or call on the telephone or talk over coffee with all that. Or parts of that spread over several people.

I refer to no students or no known readers of my personal little Internet museum here.

December's Foggy Breeze

2009-09-29T20:06:00.007-04:00

Vice is doing a very nice run-up to the premiere of Where the Wild Things Are. Why don't you read Vice? Oh right, that.

Are you aware of Madventures? Two Fins travel the world and do stuff you wouldn't. Travel Channel and awesome.

I'm running a 5k at my alma mater this weekend, and it can only be run by other almas it matered, so I want to do good. Alma mater means nourishing mother.

More exciting: Wes Anderson does Fantastic Mr. Fox or Jarvis Cocker its soundtrack?

You keep fucking that chicken.

(That catchphrase has legs.)

Aqualung.

2009-09-23T08:35:00.002-04:00

Last night I snapped off an article about "Opera's Coolest Soprano," Danielle de Niese, and I've spent all morning listening to her arias, and that's led me to you, gentle companion. We could all use the occasional pretty thing not in English, and today's my day to give it to you.

Get a handle on this Handel:

Here she is at some sort of German award show. What pipes:

She's getting notorious for overacting (in Opera!), and here's an example:

God Help Me, I May Be A Ringo Person

2009-09-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

TeeVee Tawk

2009-09-16T11:59:00.004-04:00

January Jones.
Dream sequence.
Pretty.
Pretty.

Mad Men's been pretty great this season. Better than Season 1, on pace to outpace S2. Betty Draper's one of the most interesting characters on tv these days, I love how much screentime (and plottime) is being lavished on her this season. You simply know there's more going on with her than she lets on, even to herself, and this whole journey of self-discovery she's undertaken is downright literary. Imagery and everything. I also like the path Peggy's making for herself this season. Really, which show, living or dead or not named Buffy or Alias, has spent more time trying to ponder womanhood? All the guys are great on MM--I especially like Pete's conflicted arcs, Sal's ticking mansex clock, and the be-turtlenecked return of Duck this season--but it's the women who win this show over. And all this is to say nothing of Joan and Sally, rich, if underutilized characters in their own right.

I'd to point out that the Colbert Report is a satire that operates on a level so high you need a telescope to see over it. We're coming up on years of this show on the air, and never a wink. Breathtaking.

Tomorrow (or by the time you read this, last Thursday) will bring us new Always Sunny, which makes me Always Smiley. See what I did there? It's seriously the show I'm most looking forward to this TV season, and there's even a Christmas-themed mini-movie coming out after S5, so The Gang may very well take up all your Autumn.

Soon there'll be kitten mittens:

There'll be nekkid Danny Devito emerging from something that looks too too much like a birth canal (0:12 mark):

Whatever that show portends, I will let it. Who brings zany better, or with better theme show music? Your fucking mom, that's who.

2009-08-31T23:18:00.002-04:00

Mozilla? Do ensafening Web of Trust and especially Smarter Fox--it's so good you'll never click on next page again. And it makes Googling less cumbersome. Cause...fuck even typing, right?

Here's a commercial for whatever Rhapsody is (too lazy to Google it) starring Jay-Z. He variously poses for all his album covers with panache and style and high production value.

And finally, my favorite Primus song, their cover of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar." Because Claypool has quite the bass solo in it and because you used to love them too.

You're Ready Now for Some Spacecat Play Offery

2009-08-26T09:59:00.001-04:00

Teach Much?

2009-08-25T21:32:00.003-04:00

Happened:

I made a point of embarrassing a student who brought neither pen nor pad to his first writing and college class. Like, A-game level sorta three minute rant teach everybody I don't sleep on that shit sort of shaming. By the time we came back to him for the get to know you portion of class, he shared with us that he was a semi-pro MM Artist training for a fight this weekend. So. Gulp.

We have firmly settled into the nineteen eighties as an unironic fashion statement. This makes sense, since nobody I teach was born in a year that doesn't start in 199. That doesn't make it weird; that just makes it it. Holding out for Spies Like Us love irregardless.

I have two exchange students, one from China, one from Japan. China calls it "Boring Green," and when I asked Japan what her one impression of America was one week in, she replied, "Everyone is very...big." Talk about putting the perspective in international perspective.

I definitely have a potential blank in my class. He used to be a blank blank until he got blanked, and is now here because of his blank, which he followed all the way from blank, and he has a blank look in his blank that tells me he's one blank blankblank away from blanking the blank blank. Though of course I doubt it'll get to that.

Artists (Popular): Kid Cudi, Gucci Mane, The Devil Wears Prada.

I've already promised to hold a shorter-than-usual class on the day that Modern Warfare 2 comes out. If'n they learn to respect the comma in time. For all our sakes.

Elevenish Minutes

2009-08-13T21:36:00.005-04:00

Ukrainian "sand artist" Kseniya Simonova makes interesting stuff, and really tells a story, given her medium. I don't have to tell you, but I will, that the Ukrainians were a part of both the Central Powers and the Triple Entendre, which could never had ended well, so cut 'em some slack. This thing she does, about WWII, the war everybody knows something about, includes a rather moving arrangement of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. It does.

This, by Bruce Nauman, was never on Ukraine's Got Talent, and that's not the only difference twixt videos. Nauman's ability to make you squeamy through language (and the odd terrifying visual juxtaposition, like Clown T0rture, an installation so creepy in the IA of Chicago that I'm still dreaming about it a little and that the phrase "on stacked tv's throughout the room, the same clown: screams no; balances a goldfish bowl on top of a broom and begs for your help; tells a dumb joke way too loudly; kicks and screams, and; yes, uses a public toliet" does it no justice) is good. This is Good Boy, Bad Boy.

Settling Thishere Hash

2009-08-05T22:37:00.006-04:00

I often get asked, "Stevereno, how do you and the missus relax after a 5k in downtown Chicago when you're crossing a bridge back to the hotel and there's a Japanese couple posing for pictures ridiculously on it just down from you?" and, in the interest of not emailing each of you individually, which would eat my time til Tuesday, I'll share these photos, which are arty, evocative, provocative, and tart.

And let's not forget

(And yes, you may use mine as your computer's wallpaper or screensaver, or of course as bait for your Have-A-Heart trap.)

Pop Culture and Crap (No [I Bet] Gurls Edition)

2009-07-29T09:50:00.010-04:00

Check it.
I watch
read
and listen
to shit.
And I'm a
dude.
I know, right?

"Sandpaper Qualities"

Saw The Promotion last night. Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly compete for a manager's job at a very WalMartish-type store. Tired premise, but where else will you get:

Lily Taylor using a Scottish accent
Ditto JCR a Canadian
Jason Bateman conducting team building exercises
Spanish from Old School and Randy from The Wire--acting
Remarkably uncomfortable racial humor
A joke about the mentally handicapped and masturbation
(several, actually)
Pam from The Office in a tank top, yelling "So long banjo fuckers!"?

It's not often a comedy pushes my buttons, but this one sure did. I won't say it's all great, but which movie is, exactly? Rent it if you're a dude, if you're not prudish, if you like it dry, if you enjoy squirming and shaking your head when you laugh.

"Ignorant bliss/Impending doom"

Mastodon is a metal band from Atlanta, and boy are they ever good to listen to during fartleks. Their newest album, Crack the Skye, is a concept album about, no shit, the ghost of Rasputin time travelling to the present day to recruit a quadripeligic in helping stop his assassination. Epic arrangements, impressive melodies, and a commitment to ornamentation, all good things. Best song today is Oblivion:

The Singing Brakeman

I have fallen very, very hard for one William Gay, writer, who has been doubly cursed: he shares a name with a Pittsburgh stupid Steeler, and his last book? He titled it Twilight. Right before the other Twilight came out. My only consolation for the poor bastid is that some daughter's mommy bought 'em this Twilight, Gay got paid, and spent it on moonshine.

Anyway, Southern gothic horror only scratches the surface of what this rural Tennesseean can do with a sentence, for starters he often will hang an independent clause at the end of another with a comman in a way that doesn't feel unnatural. (Unlike that, for instance.) His vocabulary is as deep and rich as any writer's I've read; his descriptions of weather and hollows are poetic. His well-drawn, simple-yet-literate characters are often strangers to themselves, until events make them not.

His books are about boys turning into men, reclaiming their fathers' honor from evildoers whose depravity can be truly shocking, even to me. The Long Home is my favorite novel of his, but it's his short stories that really get under my skin.

His short story collection from a few years ago (I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down) is brilliant, all interlocking characters, reprehension and menfolks at the ends of their tethers.

Let's end with opening paragraph from "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Will Not Contain You?", his most recent short story:

He lay in the back seat of the SUV and tried to sleep. Rain pounded on the roof, wind-whipped rain rendered the glass opaque and everything beyond these windows a matter of conjecture. The vodka slept on his chest like a stuffed bear from childhood. It hadn't worked anyway, it might as well have been tap water. Things would not leave him alone, old unheeded voices plagued his ears. Brightly colored images tumbled through his mind. An enormous, stained-glass serpent had shattered inside him and was moving around blindly reassembling itself. ... For here's what happened, or what happened on the surface, here's what imprinted itself on the very ether and went everywhere at once, the news the summer wind whispered in The Jeepster's sleeping ear.

Hey You...Yeah You

2009-07-27T10:08:00.003-04:00

Teachers: good article here about not leaning too heavily on Powerpoint. Like any good educator, I know that every class I teach must strike a delicate balance between (a) professional, reflective pedagogy that engages students on an idea level in order to enhance their academic discourse and (b) running up and down the rows high-fiving everybody as ELO blares from my ghetto blaster.

Facebookers: So, status updates. Song lyrics, fine. A little window into your soul. Movie quotes, even better. Show you have some breadth to go with that depth. Kid stuff, okay, so long as they're not poo related. But. You hate your work? You're having a hard day :( ? Your life didn't work out like you planned? Big whoop. Now quit bothering all the computer-owning people you went to school with. There's a Facebook Friend Purge a-coming. Smote I will.

Fellow-Travelers: We're taking the show back on the road, this time to Chicago. And this time for no reason other than to go. Taking the hipster underground railroad. Will be eating here, racing for five keelometers here, marvelling at new art here, and seeing this band here. New as in contemporary, bub--we're going to take a guided tour of the AIC's shiny new modern wing. Goes without saying I'm rooting for a hot docent.

Generals: New footage of WTWA out. I will watch a movie with Robert Downey and Zach Galafanakisalkinf just as surely as I'll watch a movie from the dude that did The Thick of It. Madden '10 demo's available today, which is why I'm stopping typing now.

On other more personals front, I'll say that I live in interesting times, friends. Maybe I'll tell you about them sometime, or maybe I'll cling that shred of dignity I found last weekend. As always, a crapshoot.

Best One Yet

2009-07-21T14:17:00.001-04:00

Very Little More American Than This

2009-07-03T21:37:00.002-04:00

bwo

Urgency and Upholstery

2009-06-17T09:14:00.004-04:00

Blogs and social networks and all that whatnot are just everso important. They let me tell you stuff that matters. They let me bitch about matters, big, small, infinitesimal; otherwise, my bitching may go unbitched, and let's all of us shudder at the thought of a complaint of any stock falling on deaf ears, blind online eyes, and recessing to, gasp, some deep, responsible place...within. Let's hear it for online life and the ways we choose to use it. And let's hear it. And hear it. And hear it.

I swear to God, if I read another post or note or post-it note where somebody (a) bitches about their work as if nobody nowhere else ever ate shit at their work ever, (b) uses the 'Net to make themselves feel better about having kids at 14 instead of pursuing an advanced degree and making something of themselves ("Little Wally pooped on my flatscreen--I love being a mom!!!"), (c) behaves as though the slightest inconvenience on their life warrants massive exhalation, encouragement to "get through this" from their cacophony of online buddies who were so not vital to them pre-technology, and the epiphany that, holy fucking shit, life doesn't give a fucking shit about your plans, I swear to Christ I'm just going to...

Know what, I finally figured out how to use my webcam and I think I uploaded this correctly. Some issues are too passionate for mere reading and writing and words. Here:

Best Minute of Your Day

2009-06-10T17:07:00.000-04:00

4 R's

2009-05-27T15:11:00.004-04:00

Running

Three 5k's in three weeks have yielded the following: increasingly faster times, decidedly stinkier socks, incredibly sorer muscles. I'm headed to an LMT soon (or she's headed to me; she does house calls not unlike Brenda Chenowith), and until then, I'm taking shit easy. No yoga, even. I've not gone three straight days without working out since Christmas, so I figure six is a nice, round number to shoot for (is we're not counting golf). We're off to a rad little running store tonight to get new gear, which is also just in time--my shoes are completely spent.

Reading

I think I graded too many papers last semester. Every book and article I've read since school's let out, I find myself critiquing the writer's writerly decisions. "Nice semicolon, fucktard." "That's a relative clause you're passing off as a sentence, dickweed." And so on. Not that I think I'm better than anybody writingwise (although I am, and you know who you are); I just can't get the teacher voice out of my head. Annoying's all.

Rapping

Or not. Lil Wayne--the single most creative creative type doing creative type things these days, who's actually earned his self-named moniker "Best Rapper Alive," whose wordplay, delivery, arrangements and knowing panache truly make him a man apart--has once again delayed Rebirth, his forthcoming rock album. I'm curious about that record, dammit, so put down the cough syrup and wrap it up already.

Real Talk

So there are only two rules of language. Two and two alone. Allow me:

Language is always changing.
Language will always suit the needs of its users.

You can get mad at emoticons and overused !'s and improper appositives all you want, but these two rules are immutable. Downright papal. That's why when someone you know Facebooks TMI and it's hilarious and later you tell your wife about it, she knows what both "Facebooks" and "TMI" mean, even if those words weren't words 5 and 15 years ago, respectively. Which brings us to real talk.

Liss and I recently caught a marathon on TruTV this weekend called Rehab, this big ole party thrown at the pool of the Vegas Hard Rock. Standard reality fare pretty much, you got your d-bags, your skanks and so on. What made this show special--and what's ruining my marriage right now--was this one drunk dude who tried to sneak into the party and instead of owning up to the bouncers that caught him and slinking away with some dignity, kept insisting he should be let back in. The phrase he used oh, I dunno, 762 times was "real talk," as in, "Real talk, my buddy's got a penthouse here. He's a high roller. Real talk. Real talk." Needless to say, I find that phrase a perfect combination of negative gravitas and positive douchebaggery, so all day long it's:

Real talk, Liss, let's eat Mexican tonight.
I finally got into Warrior 3 today. Real talk!
I'm gonna, real talk, buy Resident Evil 5 when you're at TJ Maxx.
Stirfry, real talk, attacked my knee just now.
There were so many, so many, real talk hairs on my pillow this morning.

God gives us insipid slang so we can know that he loves us. Real fucking talk.

Rihanna Nude Pics!!!!!!

2009-05-12T07:45:00.006-04:00

Long time no time, no? My summer plans do not include much blogging (do people even blog still? And for why?), so get you some while it's nice and hot.

Teaching

Semester ended well. Between the developmental students and the honors ones and the "regular" class I picked up halfway through, it was one of the weirdest semesters I've ever had, but weird isn't always bad. My kids came from all over the world--the Ivory Coast, Senegal, California, New York, Parma--and some just were townies, but in the process of getting to know them and, crucially, teaching them all the shit they shoulda learnt in high school, I learned a lot about myself too. I'm capable of patience and compassion, turns out. If that sounds too Hallmark Channel for you, fuck off, because it's true.

Booking

Of all the books I've been reading since school let out, I have to tell you about the best and the worst.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, is not what you'd expect and everything you'd expect from the strange little Japanese man. Elegant in prose and straightforward in its reflections on not just running but writing and the relationship between the two, it's breezy yet profound. Not hard to pull off. Guy started a jazz club out of college, had an ephiphany to be a novelist while sipping a beer at a baseball game, realized that being a novelist made him fat, decided to take up running, and off he went. Great stuff. Go read it.
Run the holy hell away from 39 Years of Short Term Memory Loss by Tom Davis. I so wanted to like this book (and its writer). He makes big appearances in all the books I've read on my two all-time favorite subjects: Saturday Night Live (he was Al Franken's writing partner during the nascent and less-so days) and the Grateful Dead (a longtime hanger-on, he and Garcia attempted to turn Sirens of Titan into a screenplay), so I was thrilled to learn that he'd written a book. I was much less thrilled when I opened it. Davis glosses over so many meaningful events--The Dead's appearance on SNL should've been the fucking apex of this story, but instead it's only a page and a half long--and wallows in so many minute ones, like the time he went to Easter Island with Dan Ackroyd. One paragraph on how the statues there inspired the Coneheads, six fucking pages on a girl he met at the airport and "later had a sexual encounter" with. Congrats on that sexual encounter buddy, now get off my toliet.

Booking (as in Running Fast)

Speaking of harriers and ineptness: we ran a 5K at the Cleveland Zoo last weekend. Sort of. The teenagers in charge of pointing runners in the right directions of the race route weren't too hep, and, long story short, Kirk ran 1.4 miles, Liss ran 3.1, and I got the special honor of running 4.3. Liss beat me by a minute and a half, which was encouraging to both of us, considering. We then zooed it up for the second of three consecutive weeks, only this time Liss and Lil were able to get their Sparkle Motion routine down pat. We're doing another 5K at another zoo this weekend, the Toledo, and here's to hoping for more hep.

So that's it for now, you unwashed masses that come here for some reason. I'm off to golf, wash the car in booty shorts, schedule a massage, go for a run, finish the laundry, cook dinner, play the new Bob Dylan album, exchange texts with my incomprehensibly-impressed with tech parents, fight WWII, chase the cat, nap with the cat, attempt some level 3, and want my film to be beautiful.

Not realistic.

And not likely in that order.

GOOD JOB

2009-04-30T10:35:00.003-04:00

The only time of year I think to check RateMyProfessors is this time of year. So yesterday I got on to see what this batch of lovelies will have to say to the batch of high school kids I'll be teaching in August. Well, a guy I taught last semester very funnily posted the following about me:

stay away if you were a john mccain person because he hates conservatives. Feed back is pointless. He will say GOOD JOB on the pre writing then say how much your final copy sucked. Great job steve!!!

Too funny, right? Cracked me up to beat the band, anyway. I wish he'd've been that funny in class.

And now, the new Remi Gaillard. This one's Pac-man themed. Funny little French fucker:

2009-04-28T15:30:00.005-04:00

I carve out a half an afternoon (hafternoon?) to blog a little, and I got nothin'. So here's the to I be up:

I don't own a Blu-Ray player, but I will, so I bought Planet Earth. It's been hard to not watch it on cable these last few years, but like so many an abstinence promise, I've assured myself it'll be worth it. So here's to deepsea dwelling transparent jellyfish that gave their word to stop at third.

We saw Rachel Getting Married and The Wrestler on consecutive weekends. One was a touchingly rendered story about tenuous redemption, the other an overwrought exercise in camera trickery and tone deaf acting. And I mean that respectively.

I had a student mention in a paper German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, George Patton's Nazi counterpart, "also known, of course, as the dessert fox." It's the of course that elevates it to poetry.

Stirfry and I had the place to ourselves last night, so we read a really good article about Nissan's Tennessee factories (buying American's easy!), watched Sex Drive, and cleaned our thick-from-winter velvety pelts. Good night.

Comment I used to hopefully stump my smartest Honors student in the margin of her essay: "Unctuous transition, Devin."

British slang I learned this week: tosh.

Best sentence I read this week, courtesy of Mike Chabon: It is not enough for a horror writer to assert, with the mainstream of literature, that in the knowledge of death our life is vain show, and to set a skull as a memento mori in the corner of his canvas.

Themes for the summer: Russian history, true crime, 2666, and, if I find my knutes in time, The Kindly Ones.

Also: the pluck and luck of Matt and Kim:

2009-04-26T17:19:00.003-04:00

This is independently hilarious of my ongoing love of Lebron James' game, my newish love of the Cavs (I mean, Larry Bird was in the league before), my newer love of the Heineken commercial parodied therein, and my eternal love of the Browns, who continually test me in ways I couldn't've imagined on my most creative day ever.

WifeBlogAlert

2009-04-21T13:24:00.003-04:00

Liss has a cooking blog.

Ch-check it out.

Apparently it takes a Dr. about 10 months to put a blog together, but who's counting?

Other than me.

Good on you, hon.

Sorry

2009-04-17T08:16:00.002-04:00

Kristen Wiig just may be the best SNL cast member in quite the while. She's got many recurring characters, but my favorite right now has to be Gilly. And a little Forte goes a long way. Sorry.

Speaking of Sports

2009-04-15T19:24:00.002-04:00

I like talking sports more than writing on them, but only usually.

Soccer--that sport I love only when there's dick else on but I wish I watched more than during its playoffs--is having its playoffs! Arsenal beat Villereal (filthy Spaniards) today to set up a match (?) with Man U in the UFEA semis, but it'll play like the Super Bowl. Liverpool and Chelsea had themselves a game yesterday also. It's such a fluid little game once you know what you're looking for, which often isn't the ball, and goals can be engaging and effective and piquant, like the words I use to describe the thesis statement of 3 out of every 50 papers I read. Too much flopping and general bitchassness you betcha, but those dudes are athletes.

The Browns got their schedule out (so did the NFL), and we got some games to look forward to--home opener to the Vikes, both Pittsburgh games national, the Lions game at Ford Field I'll decidedly be attending, and assorted other hypothetical wins. The draft is around the bend too, which it totally nifty.

The Cavs have been very good this entire season, and they're heading into the playoffs unhurt, young, with, easily, the Association's most valuable player (ask me why!) and have home court throughout. As a Cleveland fan, I'm completely qualified to say there is absolutely nothing that could go wrong with any of this. Plus: their pregame routines.

The Indians, as far as I can tell, have not begun the 2009 season.

2009-04-13T09:07:00.001-04:00

Hey, we can't all be looking at Padma Lakshmi naked all day, so just in case you missed this incredible video of sheep with LED lights attached to them, here:

Samsung Extreme Sheep LED Art
by sertanarig

Easter Marginalia

2009-04-08T11:44:00.004-04:00

Easter isn't exactly my favorite holiday:

not really a ham guy
not at all an egg guy
hate paint
don't like chocolate
Peeps? Eep.
grandmas died a week before and after Easter ( yay 2003!)
scared of bunnies
never too good at finding hid shit
it's a crucifixion holiday, folks,

but nonetheless, I anticipate an Easter weekend fun:

two unalloyed days of Dink!
2 new Offices
new 30 Rock and
Parks/Recreation (awful title)...
...on Tort's gigundous TV
running on the towpath
the lobster I assume I'll be eating at some point
Stirfry up and down stairs
Stirfry in jacuzzi tub
Stirfry vs. Daisy (who may need hip surgery; poor pup!)
The Masters (and hopefully actual golf) with Dad
Mom's bunny cake
road trip con Lissa
getting the rotten fuck outta Dodge for a weekend
hoping Mom'll sing me my favorite song she used to sing me when I'as widdle:

May the Easter holiday resurrect your compassion and joy, you smug unhappy sap.

Think about it: Jesus was a zombie.

Peep.

(If Orthodox, please read next week.)

2009-04-07T17:32:00.002-04:00

The question isn't "How'd it take some dj's this long to remix MC mastertracks over Zelda theme music?"

The question is "How badass is Team Teamwork?"

Here's some Jay-Z, a rapper, let's assume, reasonable people can tolerate.

Setting Goals

2009-04-06T09:07:00.003-04:00

Even if you don't like futbol, I think you'll like this inhumanly nimble goal by Grafite, one of those one-named soccer phenoms from Brasil. He plays for a German FC, which sounds like sitcom material to me. We'll get Ted McGinley to play the dad, cast a skinny little sister, Randy Newman'll write the theme song, and bam, we got Grafite's Feet on CBS Sundays.

Word Power...Amok!

2009-03-31T08:40:00.004-04:00

The following words were used by one C. Meloy in an interview. In one answer. To one question:

hackles
milquetoast
slavish
Morrisseyian
maudlin
fatalistic

If that doesn't rankle the haughty wafty vestibule of your left ventricle, then your aesthetic absenteeism is either truculently rapt or putrefactionally undervivisected.

Either way, he named his son Hank.

2009-03-30T09:10:00.002-04:00

Curious

Human

Behaviors

2009-03-25T19:50:00.003-04:00

The long rumored, long in gestation, long awaited by me, and anybody who ever spent a Sunday morning skipping church with Dad on midnights, Three Stooges movie is appearing to be happening. And I haven't gotten this excited about movies since I bought a Shmi Skywalker Pepsi. Seriously. Three Stooges movie. Now insert your own "Motherfuckng" between surnames and Christian names.

Jim Carrey = Curly, earnest, lumbering, eternally exasperated

Sean Penn = Larry, sly dog, violin player, my favorite

Benicio del Toro (=) Moe, he of the bad haircut and worse disposition

Farrelly Brothers = writer/directors, and slapstick descendants

Plenty to get all riled up about, yes. And now so after some research I have chosen to share the following Stooges clip. They play carpenters in this one, and if that doesn't do it for you, click away and good luck.

This, That, and Like Four Other Things

2009-03-24T17:32:00.002-04:00

So things are slow. I'm working a pretty interesting semester that keeps me busy. Er, anyway. And as such I've found myself in a semi-domestic miasma, only the good kind. Let's take a stroll 'round it then, shall we?

Is $9.00 (plus a paperback) too much to pay for 20 disposable toothbrushes? Wasteful? Non-green? Yes and yes. Am I going to pack--and keep functional--a real, human tooth toothbrush in my bag? On the reg? We both know better.
The two presentations given in my honors class today hinged on, respectively, The Secret of My Endurance and Bible. The homestretch part of this semester suggests these Honors kids are muddahs and not mothers. Which excites.
Tech Rec One: Tweetdeck, a nice app for Twitter that lets you filter feeds according to how In Your Life someone is. We all like to follow Jon Faverau and the foxtastic Olivia Munn, but they're not as important as, well, you, so TD lets you effectively organize your online relationships. If only real life relations got so simple, eh?
Tech Rec Two: Google Labs, a collection of what our future overlords are up to in their, well, labs. Google employees very famously get 20% of every work day to chase their innovation whimsies down so many rabbit holes, and while the results aren't always pretty, some end up real cool, like GOOG-411. I especially like checking out the Experimental section, even if right now there's not much of note. I'd love to take Chrome out for a spin, but my laptop's too fruity for it right now. Because it's an Apple. Get it? Barf.
I fell while running yet again yesterday. This time, it was on the corner of Poe and Main, in plain view of around 20 cars. Curbs can be tricky if you're me.
Liss and I are trying to be a bit like Bittman. But instead of being vegan until 6:00pm every day (which is a nice idea), we're trying to eat like elderly Japanese villagers, who consume mostly fish and who never seem to die, during weekdays. Last night was haddock filets, tonight's gonna be Thai salmon, and who the hell knows what tomorrow holds in store. I'm calling it the Jin Dad Diet until I think of something funny.

I'll wrap things up with the latest viral video I've found myself loving, Super Chameleon. We had a chameleon named The Dude about 6 years ago, and before we killed him with our good intentions and our extremely amateurish herptology, he was known to change colors and generally be rad. Maybe not quite as rad as a chameleon who changes colors with sunglasses, but rad nonetheless:

Publications from New York Are Good

2009-03-23T11:55:00.003-04:00

I love the New Yorker, and thanks for noticing. Once every other magazine goes under and goes online, there'll still be one publication out there, exploring evocative issues and people and cultural occurrences with erudition and a reverence for journalistic protocol. Then, eventually, JUGGS will die off too, and we'll all remember to remember the New Yorker, with its pages and pages of reportage by actual Writers, its astute team of fact checkers, and its cartoons (which I wish I read, but just...don't). To wit: Nancy Franklin's got a nice review of NBC's new drama Kings, which I dig. Enough.

I also love the New York Times. I read it daily online, and on Sundays I treat myself to the best five bucks in the world. The columns and op-ed pieces are usually pretty engaging, and the Book Review is, well, the Times Book Review (gotta get me thishere new Barthelme booky wook). But it's the Arts section I love the most; this week's topline article is about the Diablo Cody-led "Fempire" of lady screenwriters who're getting their stuff put out with refreshing regularity. I've been chewing on this article since yesterday morning. For as much as these four young, successful semi-attractive ladies want everybody to appreciate their talent and not focus on their looks, they sure are all gussied up for the photo shoot. I'm not a woman (as you may have noticed), so I may be talking out of gender turn here, but shunning the exact sort of attention you appear to be openly courting is weird to me. I'm not saying people can't be complicated (as you may have noticed in these very pages), but I just get confused about which message I'm supposed to take away from this article: female empowerment, yes!, or; my rack looks nice in this, no? Either way, good for them.

Also good: the Village Voice's debate on foie gras.

Good in a depressing way: Vice's photo essay about Detroit schools.

A Godsdamned Great Show Ends Tonight, Frakkers

2009-03-20T08:39:00.003-04:00

My brother gave me the DVD of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries a few years ago, promising this show wasn't just aliens and spaceships, that it had political allegory and morality play and top-notch acting and directing. Boy was he right: the miniseries is two of the best hours of anything I've ever seen. The trend continued--the first episode of the first season, "33," ranks as one of the best pilots ever in my book, and the second-season finale, in which the show radically altered course in gamechanging ways few shows have the balls to attempt. It's pretty much an achievement; pity those too good to watch (a) "TV," (b) sci-fi, or (c) sci-fi on TV.

It's all coming to an end tonight, and I, for one, am grateful it's gotten the run it has.

Battlestar never panders. Its storylines, intertwining and weaving in and out of larger plots, continue offscreen. Characters develop motivations and moralities that both feel natural and have the ability to shock. Through its four seasons, Battlestar's managed to be relevant, cogent, coherent and thought-provoking, doing so through outstanding acting piquant storytelling. And handheld camera-seeming space battles. They get the big moments right (rigging elections, New Caprica, killing the Quoroum, killing Callie, cancer, lost colonies, Pegasus, suicide bombers, sleeper cells, resurrection ships), but it's the small, quiet moments (in hallways, steam rooms, flight decks and raptors) that get the characters, and their plights, under your skin.

And this is to say nothing of its status of The Absolute Fucking Darkest Show Ever. Battlestar's not interested in easy answers or taut arcs. It'll take you to the darkest possible part of the human psyche, a place you're not interested in going, necessarily. Then it'll turn out ALL the lights. Dark, dark, darkdarkdark.

In terms of recruitment badges, I'm glad to have turned a few people onto BSG, and I hope they're as rewarded as I am with however this crazy little loveboat ends tonight.

Predictions:

Eddie Olmos cries, drinks, breaks shit, yells, possibly paints.
President McDonnell learns the dangers of gateway drugs.
Starbuck pouts and makes that "help me think" face.
Lee Adama re-enters the military.
Head Six stays hot.
Athena kills Boomer.
Baltar's girl hoard turns on him.
Bob Dylan appears to sing Watchtower (ask me about this theory!).
Cavil smothers Hera.
Saul and Ellen open a mom and pop Cylon liquor store.
Anders gets plugged into the Colony ship.
Chief does something noble.

And my biggest prediction for the finale: every single human dies. Seriously. That's the only way to do this bleak-ass show justice, and I'll be just a little disappointed if the darkest show in the history of shows and of darkness doesn't go out the way it's been pointing to since a retiring admiral loaned the secretary of education a book on a decommisioned museum.

So say we all, yo.

Raw Run Data

2009-03-17T14:40:00.003-04:00

Miles: 6.7
Minutes: 82 (ish)
St. Pattys parties passed: 4
Times I got called a British stick bundle: 1
Beer pong balls I picked up and threw back: 1
Number of boobs I saw (anatomical): 2
Number of boobs I saw (d-bags in sleeveless shirts, the better to display Japanese character arm ink): 17
Cops seen: 7
Monty-Monties in windows I hollered at from the sidewalk: 1
Replies I got from him: .45
Bike cops seen: 2 (hee hee)
Former students who honked at me: 2
Wordless Choruses: 4
Big Holidays: 2
A Millis: 2
Number of times it was really nothing, William: 3
Minutes I lay on the floor recovering, chest a-heaving: 22
Cats who jumped over me as part of terribly elaborate Olympic floor routines: 1
Number of jumps: 4
Score from the East German judge: 4.5

Happy St. Patty's Day!

2009-03-17T07:36:00.002-04:00

I'm gonna have a green beer later somewheres, as I plan on walking downtown later to watch the undergrad carnage. I'm also gonna eat some Lucky Charms, maybe catch a famine, invent the modern novel, and snog Sinead O'Connor. And you?

Apropos of very little Oirish-related, here's the funniest song from The Conchords yet this season: I Told You I Was Freaky.

All You Take is the Getting There

2009-03-14T21:41:00.006-04:00

Before I say a word, we both know I'm not clever enough to make this up.

Since Thursday I've been at Mom and Dad's. Ask me about the following for less truncated impressions:

me and Dad saw Watchmen. Esoteric-ish story and hot chick.
me and Dad golfed 13. Dad's always good and I putt better on stolen holes.
me and Mom went for a walk. She keeps treats in her pockets for untoward dogs.
my folks have a sweet dog. Will spoon all up on you at night.

Great stuff and others. But then today. I was doing stuff for Mom and some ceiling plaster fell in my left eye. But so what, usually. I trucked on and later there were pork cops.

I left eventually for home, and I agreed to stop on the way at Troy's to deliver Cool Whips full of chili and meatloafs and pork chops (far as he knows). I said by goodbyes and loaded up my stuff and the cat and a mostly full Aldi freezer bag. I drove off.

Much like TLC, left eye got on my nerve. Discarded tires and deer carcasses and McDonald's bags on the driver's side of the road got a little blurry. Mom gave me drops before I left, and I put some in. But I still couldn't make out the turkey vultures, so I shut it down.

I'm now winking up 77, using my right eye almost exclusively. If you've been by me when I'm on the computer all day or drinking chocolate milk all night (or both), you know that this is the eye that doesn't really stick around when shit gets thick.

Troy likes my beard and loans me Gears of War; I tell him thanks and Mom thinks I look like Joaquin Phoenix. Then traffic is four lane, which does not suit me. I'm winking and I'm merging and I'm sighing. Cars are zipping by me on my right and appearing as if out of nowhere on my left. I'm sighing every dirty word I know.

And that's when Stirfry barfs.

He'd been rooting around in the litter box. I'd assumed he'd be punishing me olfactorily for all this car riding, but when he emerged, he was hacking. He got on the middle armrest, and that's when the hacking stopped. We were in Lissa's new car, which smelled like new car still, and from which Dad refrained from Skoal. Which ain't nothing.

He yakked on all the instruments. Projectile style. He got some on me, the gear shaft, the passenger seat too. He hopped down to the seat and sniffed his business and the Passenger 2 Buckle Up light came on. I'm winking this whole time

We made it home then after some 4 hours and some 250ish miles, and as I sip this here chocolate milk, he sits on the opposite couch and cleans his nuts. I can see him with both eyes now.

"Only a rank sucker will think of taking two peeks at Dave the Dude's doll"

2009-03-09T20:14:00.006-04:00

If you only come here to Whole Foods like once every so many internet intervals, forgive all the skimming down you have to go this time. And the herbals teas, yes, are in the same aisle. I can't just spend all day sitting here staring out at Arby's scheduling due dates and working...

I've also been reading about a noir writer that I need to read, Damon Runyan. Apparently, he was the best language mechanic in that terrific His Girl Friday sense, a sportswriter turned columnist turned novelist turned dude who did Guys and Dolls, and Adam Gopnik says, "Writers with a good ear (like Salinger, John O'Hara [,Runyon]) certainly listen more acutely than the rest of us, but what they really have is a better filter for telling signal from noise, and then turning it into song," which sounds like he's up my alley.

That's all. Race you to Otis Redding!

Martin Disler Would Rather You Consider This

2009-03-09T19:13:00.008-04:00

FML

2009-03-08T09:37:00.004-04:00

If you're around the kids these days at all these days, you've been around the phrase "fuck my life." And if you haven't and you're a complainer, then start using it. One usually uses it to complain about events and circumstances and life events that don't necessarily demand rigorous intercourse with one's go-round on this mortal coil, but exasperation is the new black, so get with the times and start bitching--using life-and-death histrionics, please--about the most banal shit. Or do you already have a weblog?

Anyway, there's joy in others' suffering to be found on fmylife.com, an addictive little collection of funny/sad, sad/funny, funny/funny stories people have submitted about how "fucked" their life is. It's like Post Secret, only fewer eating disorders and infidelities. And the spectre of suicide doesn't hang over every post entry. A sample:

Today, I was going to a Harry Potter convention since I love the books so much. On my drive there I got lost, and it only got worse when my car broke down. Since I forgot my cell phone I decided to try and hitch a ride. I stood on the side of a road for two hours dressed like Ron Weasley. FML

See, funny.

Fore!

2009-03-06T16:35:00.003-05:00

So I just golfed, walking 18 holes on a windy but geeeeeeourgeous Friday first day of Spring Break. The following are facts:

I shot 51 on the front. I took a snowman on #1, a double on #2, then settled down and played more or less bogey golf from there on out.
I put three beers in my bag, and they came in handy. Waiting for these two d-bags in front of me on the par 3's required some "thoughtful contemplation."
I talk a lot to myself when I'm alone. Most of it is things I'd say in polite golf company, yelling at my ball to turn over, straighten out, ho up, sit down, come back, keep going, sit pretty, but some of it was like therapy, talking out my problems and my varying levels of woe. Such as they are.
That's not to say there weren't swearing. Ugly, ugly words out of such a pretty mouth...
I shot a 45 (!) on the back, making 4 pars (off, damnit, 3 legit birdie putts) and dealing with wind that sometimes helped but mostly hurt my slice.
I'm done with practice swings for the time being. I always like my practice swings better then my actual swings, so by the time I nutted up and just addressed the ball from the get, shit got better for Your Intrepid Narrator here. Grip it and rip it, baby.
I used Paul's woods, which I still have, and now may keep forever. I was seriously crushing his 3 wood, and I only threw his 7 wood toward the tree line once.
Okay, twice.
I'm very very happy that I got the chance to golf, but I'd've rather had one or several of you with me. It really is the best game out there, and it's only better when good friends (and more than 3 bag beers) are involved.
The title of this post is an homage to the Huey Lewis album, and not some sort of golf jargon.

Now scram.

Halftime Report Card

2009-03-05T08:20:00.004-05:00

I'm teaching a "developmental" writing class (ENG 110) this Spring, which is new. I'm used to teaching these classes in the Fall (I taught three last semester), and the opportunity to teach them back to back has taught me a few things about myself. For instance, I'm much more reflective about my "craft" this semester; I've taken to writing in my journal about my 110--much to suffering of my bad poetry and enemies' lists--about the things I'm getting better at (group work, workshops) and the things I continue to struggle with (convergent discussion questions, teaching debatibility), and it's giving me a pretty complete portrait of both the teacher I am and the teacher I hope to be. My 110 class is jam-packed as usual with great kids. They're from rural areas, urban areas, the suburbs, even 2 from Africa. They're tourism majors and wannabe teachers and kids provisionally admitted to the University because of low ACT scores, kids who ping pong between their divorced parents. They're almost all the first in their family to go to college, which always imbues what I do with a stronger sense of urgency. They each bring something unique to class--they've already lived such interesting lives--and the alchemy of our experiences never ceases to awe. I never grew up wanting to be a teacher, like Liss (who, ironically enough, doesn't teach anymore). I was more likely to tell my grade school teachers I wanted to be an astronaut novelist quarterback. But every day I walk into my 110 classroom, that I was maybe born to do this does not escape me.

I'm doing another totally-new thing this semester: teaching an honors writing class, ENG 112H. We're supposed to orient honors classes around a theme, and I chose mine to be Exploring the American Dream. This is partly because I'm interested in the myths we Americans tell ourselves. But it's mainly because I took a similar class with Kelly what feels like forever ago. And if I'm good at anything, it's self deception. I'f I'm good at two things, it's self deception and ripping Kelly off. So we've been reading about Horatio Alger and Sidney Weinberg and going off the grid and culturally situating Starbucks and banned books. This class excels at discussion. We get in a circle with our desks and have the opposite-of-cloying conversations about what it means to strive for the American Dream, about whether we should want financial stability or personal fulfillment in our lives, about the gaps in understanding created by technology, about all sorts of subjects. These students are a marvel; they make connections between ideas I'd never come up with on my own. They're also a marvel at putting off assignments until the last minute, a semi-lethal combination of being overstretched academically, outmatched socially, and extraly curricular that has yielded lots of desperate emails begging for extensions and the odd office hour tear. Since I'm a blame-myself-first kinda teacher, I've got every intention of seriously reexamining my syllabus over break and of coming up with new ways of pushing them, intellectually. Gifted and talented kids like my 112H students are special needs kids just like my 110 students, just in a different way, and I'm up to the challenge of challenging them. I think.

My biggest New Thing this semester is, without qualification, taking over a "normal" section of ENG 112 midsemester. The grad student teaching this class just up and stopped, and my boss asked me to step in and take over (with overload pay: hello, new driver!). Jumping into this class is akin to straddling a treadmill, setting it to 11mph, and trying to not to fall off the back as you hop on. I've been throwing straight instruction at them, covering a month's worth of material in less than half that time. Judging from a teacherly skill I've acquired over the last decade--to see that flicker of comprehension in students' eyes as I chalk the board up or flip through Powerpoint slides or ask a leading question--I think many are getting up to speed. But I worry about the lower end kids and badly want them to succeed, as usual, so I'm also spending a lot of time conferencing with them individually to forge relationships that'd otherwise grown more organically since the beginning of the term. I don't know exactly how much I'll be able to salvage in this class. They're pretty disenfranchsised, for which I don't blame them, but they're eager. I'm not much of a rah-rah high school football coach motivator in the classroom (or in life), but I'm trying to be, because if there's a common thread to these three classes I'm teaching, it's that once you're my student, you can count on my active investment in getting you better at writing and shit.

Three Things I Am Qualified to Say:

Ohio high schools do very little, if anything at all, to adequately prepare their graduates for the rigors of academic discourse. The Scarlet Letter is a fantastic book, but reading it does NOT a rhetor make.
Ohio grade schools have done a knock-up job of diagnosing students who struggle to read or write. They do an even better job of constantly reminding these students they're no good at reading or writing, putting them in remedial ghettos, and teaching them how to read and write better with the acumen and aplomb of a pissy flight attendant speaking INCREASINGLY LOUDLY to a passenger who obviously doesn't speak English.
When an old student who works in the produce section chases me down in Kroger and tells me that he's getting straight A's in the welding school he transferred to, and that his teachers routinely praise his writing abilities, and that this praise is a pretty direct result of taking me both semesters last year, I can't help but feel a little good about myself and a lot good about Derrick. (And for once, I'm not going to worry if that sounds self-serving. It happened. It happened last month. And it made me blush. And happy.)

Things I Can Tell You This Week

2009-03-03T17:38:00.002-05:00

I am in no way qualified to even attempt trikonasana poses. I almost fell on my damn fool head today.
I believe in the frog creature.
If I don't come in the door and immediately grab the puss and put him on my chest as I lay down and pet him with both hands as he purrs, he won't talk to me.
My mug shot (2012, attempted robbery) won't approach this one in awesomeness.
I would happily take on the life of either famous Jon Favreau: the indie star darling of Swingers and director of Iron Man and the grossly underrated Made; and/or the other JF, the 28 yr old head speechwriter for President Obama who is so gifted a writer and who simply must be up to his ears in arse these days.

Shake

2009-03-03T17:32:00.002-05:00

The Monterey Pop Festival movie's been playing a lot on the Sundance Channel, and when one gets Otis Redding in one's head, one is required to share said Redding. It's in the Constitution:

Trem Two and Others

2009-02-27T11:44:00.002-05:00

Back in December (though it could've been today as far behind as my behind-ass behind has been), Pitchfork.tv posted Jumbotron footage of their eponymous festival, and I've been spending this rainy Friday watching them on fullscreen on my pretty little screen. Highlights include:

Ghostface Killah and Raekwon. They called Kwon "The Chef" for a reason, as dude has expanded exponentially. Fat or no, they're still righteous MC's...
Titus Andronicus. My boys, my lovely, pissy, long-bearded boys thrashing down. The more I get into these guys, the more I think they're gonna be around for a while.
The Hold Steady. Goddamnit, does Craig Finn annoy the fuck out of me. His stage presence is among the worst I've ever seen (and I've seen Tori Amos twice) but he writes and sings a good song regardless. His guitar also has a dancing bear on it, which I appreciate, of course.
Bon Iver. Who I bet is really sweet live. (Or so S F-J tells me.)

There are more, but I have shit to do, so I'll leave it at that. And this, Mission of Burma and their old, very expensive guitars.

Shawn Kemp, Jr.

2009-02-26T10:04:00.003-05:00

One of Shawn Kemp's dozens of children, the aptly named Shawn Jr., is all sorts of sick high school hoops hot fire. In between dunks, I think you can see his old man taking a paternity test in the bleachers.

And thanks to Youtube, a fond memory of a day spent in an arcade in the early '90s, and the fact I brought my laptop to work today, here's a video of Sr.'s best dunks, set to a live performance of Pearl Jam's Go. Makes me want to bust out my thermals and army boots and argue about Mother Lovebone.

I Won't Re-Lent

2009-02-24T06:07:00.004-05:00

My Gram raised enough of me to make me as good a bad Catholic as anybody, so, in addition to meat on Fridays, I will forswear the following until such time as the observance of the day Jesus famously resurrected himself, rolled away the rock to his tomb and revealed his true divinity to the Cadbury Bunny.

No more:

Greek mythology
monkey knife fights (or at least betting on them)
KFC
terra cotta arts and crafts
Waltzing with Bashir
aiding (but not abetting)
Steppin' Up 2 the Streets
Warrior 3
Street Fighter IV
high fives
deep sixes
unnecessary blinks
opinions on onions
mesh tank tops
judging fellow Whole Foods shoppers (with my eyes)
"funny" status updates
elaborate handshakes
trying to completely understand what's happening on Battlestar
not eating more oysters
telling people I'm something in the hopes they'll think I'm that something instead of letting them draw their own conclusions as to that thing I'm merely telling them I am instead of living a life commensurate with that thing I'd like to insist to be
making fun of Melissa's (gigantically hilarious) feet
kerfuffle
piffle
obsolescence
bitchassness

Please to Enjoy French Prankster Rémi Gaillard

2009-02-19T18:54:00.002-05:00

Oh, those silly Frogs, with their parkour and their escargot and their indoor berets...

You're F***ing Out

2009-02-17T18:39:00.006-05:00

So, six things: all facutal, most pretty pliable, some even a little probiotic.

East Bound & Down. This comedy on HBO, which ain't for everybody, is from the guys who brung us the very disagreeable, lushly strident Foot Fist Way. It stars that movie's star, Danny McBride (whom you may know from Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express or the upcoming Land of the Lost) as a fallen baseball superstar pitcher who has to slink back home and coach at his old high school. Tired premise, yes, but executed with utmost vulgarity, improv by some improv pros--including guest stars Gina Gershon and producer Will Ferrell and Craig Robinson--and a fidelity to raunch. Also stars Sol from Deadwood, if that do anything for ya, ya c-sucker.
Running. Put it this way: one of my legs is slightly shorter than the other, and now I'm putting a cork insert into my short-legged shoe so I run more evenly, which is good for my pelvis. That's how much running.
I know and am related to enough sci-fi sorts that if I didn't mention totally gifted artist Jacob Feige to them, that'd be too bad. Or at least he puts off a sci-fi vibe to me and is talented regardless. And I'm sorry for this whole art phase thing I'm still in. Heavy metal's ticket's getting called next in the hobby lobby for some reason--just ask Metallica's new album.
Smiley Face is a gem of a little stoner comedy starring Anna Faris and John Krasinski that I only just discovered by the director of the historically underappreciated Doom Generation.
I have a funny funny funny-ass story that involves me, my mom, the Internet, and Fleet Foxes. I kinda don't want to tell it, but since it involves only a little bit of me and a lotta bit of She and acting incredibly sweet, I just may make an exception. Love that gal.
I ordered 2666 last night on a halfway wifedare. And given that it was intended to be, you know, five fucking novels instead of one gigantic bastard of a book by a now-dead famous Chilean sentence elongator, I'm inclined to give myself more time than usual to get through it. Like, see you in 2012, when we're all riding bikes to work and making 401(k) jokes and learning Mandarin in our spare time, kinda leeway.

Now off my porch.

Slowly Turning into a Lost Blog

2009-02-12T08:36:00.003-05:00

Since the areas of culture, politics, food, drink, music, movies, literature and feckless introspection are pretty adequately covered on the interwebs these days, here's some thoughts I had about last night's episode of Lost. (Not that there aren't plethoras of Lost sites out there too, of course. I'm just trying to be chippy, a strategem that works ever-so often.)

Love me some Sun and Jin. They're the only couple I out-and-out root for on a regular basis.
Peace, Charlotte. Never cared too too much for you and your inconsistent accent, but you had a good death scene. And that's not nothing.
Gory-ass episode! Smokey ripping that frog's arm off? Sheesh, talk about showing and not telling...
It was cool that Juliet thanked Locke for going down that well. He's now trying to do right by everybody I think, and it's about time he got some credit for it.
There hasn't been a bad scene at the Orchid.
Is our final showdown at the (sigh) end of the show next year gonna be Jack vs. Christian in some sort of Oedipal MMA match? Is Christian Jacob? My head hurts.
Locke injuries always seem to happen to his legs. Can the island only heal him from the waist down? Is that a stupid enough thing to think while watching tv?
That other frog's reference to "The Temple" during his confrontation (with rifles!) with Rousseau in addition those hieroglyphic-y looking things has me thinking Richard's old as an Egyptian. Maybe James Spader and Kurt Russell will make an appearance later in the season...
When Ben stopped the van and yelled at everybody, I was worried they wouldn't stop for ice cream after all and Jack would start crying.
I love how Lost keeps shifting central characters. First it was Jack and Locke propelling the bigger stories, then it was Ben, and now it seems Daniel's dat dude. His ability to skip around time more or more easily or something seems like the big arc to this season so far.
A season, I have to say, that may be my favorite now, even more than S1. I didn't think the creators would have the huervos rancheros to take the show in totally sci-fi direction, but that's just what they did. And with last night's ep taking on horror overtones, well...this show has moved the frozen donkey wheel that is my heart.

The trailer for Inglorious Basterds is up, and yes, I'm ready. Are you?

"At the Moment"

2009-02-09T10:30:00.003-05:00

What's good? Good weekend? I played some board games on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday Liss and I went to see an old student of mine debut some art at an art show and then later we saw another old student give a vocal recital, with some sleeping in, some gym, a little coffee, a bit of papergrading, a tad Harperhanging, little bitta Cavs game at Fricker's and latertime dinnercooking thrown in there. Nice stew of a day overall, not least of which because there're worse ways to end this sentence.

And on Sunday night, we watched the Grammys. I'll not get into how hot Katy Perry is or weird Radiohead is or talented Lil Wayne is or any of that, though I could.

Instead, let's talk about these other things.

Harper's Island. Saw a long, atmospheric commercial for CBS' forthcoming-in-April mystery series about a group of friends and family who go to a secluded Pacific Northwest resort named after an island (guess its name) for a wedding and instead start dying one at a time. The ad I saw went for a Twin Peaksy kinda vibe, which I can appreciate, and as Liss pointed out, said ad included both the premiere date and the end date, which gives the show a close-endedness we're not usually privvy to. There's apparently to be an online component to the show, and I promise to ignore it.

I also managed to buy and read a chunk of the Sunday NY Times, and the profile they did of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard was utterly pleasant. It also included lots of consecutive letters, so if it feels a little like Sigur Ros liner notes, well, that's probably on purpose.

Sure, we all want to move to Mexico--it's sunny, the food muy delicioso, there are beaches and whatnot and it always looks so pretty in pictures. Well, if you're planning on moving soon, I'd highly suggest you steer clear of Tijuana. In addition to having its police force disarm due to staggering drug violence, more Americanos get arrested there than any other international city. Even Brussels. I've been reading about the current drug kingpin there, Fernando Sánchez Arellano, a 33 year-old who's consolidated his power by both turning rivals into feared muscle and by employing henchmen who dissolve bodies in acid. It'll all make a great movie someday, though that day might not be today.

Speaking of which, here's a Robert Berry that's pretty much got my name written all over it. Just change the date, make it less pretty and more scornful, and boom: Steve.

Preemptive Lost Thoughts

2009-02-04T11:52:00.006-05:00

I am love love loving this season of Lost so far. Like old times, I find myself thinking about it when it's not around, and I really didn't do too much of that last season or really in Season 3. As a result, I have four theories and three questions. They're probably all dumb, but they're all mine (though I'm certain other similarily stoopid people online hath spake them somewhere). So here:

Theories:

Marvin Candle (he of the orientation videos) is the father of Miles (he of the stepping over graves). I say this because I think Daniel, Claire and Miles have a deeper connection to the island than we're privvy to yet. The baby Marv's caring for at the beginning of this season is, ergo, Miles.
Richard Alpert is like George Carlin in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: the dude who has to make sure history goes the way it's supposed to. I don't see a time-travelling phonebooth anywhere on the island yet, but nonetheless, be excellent to each other.
Everything's happening in the mind of Faraday's girlfriend. Remember in Season 3 when Locke has that vision of Boone? Pretty boy says to manboobs "Teresa falls up the stairs. Teresa falls down the stairs." The girl Desmond visited last ep? Her name was Teresa, brutha, and she seems to be skipping around in her mind.
Jughead's under the Hatch. Sayid say-ed (heh) he'd never seen so much concrete before when he was exploring Des' Swan Station, so given Daniel's "bury it" advice, it's not a huge leap to assume the bomb's down there. Does the island derive any energy from it?

Questions:

Does Walt have to go back to the island too, or are we supposed to forget he ever existed? Follow up: did anyone else notice Malcolm David Kelly in that Tyson chicken commercial during Lost last week? Stupid puberty...
The only OffIsland scene we have (I think) with Faraday was from last season, when he's crying about 815 crashing, and a woman's comforting him. Given that Danny's skipping around time quite a bit, was this scene a flashback to when the plane crashed, or is it a flashforward, and (once again?) Faraday has failed to "right" the future?
What's up with Ms. Hawkins and Ben?

2009-01-29T08:11:00.004-05:00

Peace and love, peace and love.

My brother and his fiance visited last weekend, and besides getting schooled on Hugo Award winners (Troy's in the process of reading them all; and you think YOU'RE a nerd?) and politely and refreshingly avoiding the lowest form of conversation ("Remember when?" accomplishes exactly jack shit, fyi), he told me about a few websites I hadn't heard of before and thought I'd share:

Silverlight (formerly Photosynth) is a software app that compiles all the available digital photos of a place or event and using, er, science, creates a 3-D rendering of such. It's almost as stunning as my explanation of it! You can cruise the Vatican, relive Obama's inauguration, or see just which parts of your hometown have been uploaded (which, in my case, is none). You can only get demos on Macs since Microsoft owns this puppy, but I've enjoyed playing around with it.

Cooliris is an absoultely glorious way to browse for media. It turns your entire screen into a museum, pictures "hanging" on the "wall" for you to browse. Or if you search for a video, it'll give you the chance to watch several very easily. I've taken to giving my laptop a new wallpaper about every 20 minutes, and in my searches for Carvarggios and Turners and Dalis and Jonas Brothers, Cooliris has been indispensible. Hell, I even used it to find the pic to your right, which was kinda mindblowing, if not a little meta. Liss has used it to shop for sweeper bags, and even that mundane act was rendered relatively transcendent, prices floating on a wall and all that. It's available on any platform (including iPhones) and you should check it out. It was invented by a Stanford student, if that does anything for ya.

I have to grade some final drafts and prepare my teaching portfolio and write not one but, count 'em, two book reviews extremely soonly, so though I'd love to spend more time with you and, I don't know, bitch about the weather or praise Eight O'Clock Coffee, I'll instead head on out, but before: a Bob Hicok poem about teachers. Or at least I think it's about teachers. One can never be too too sure what's gonna happen when poetry and Steve collide. 'Cept sumthin' dumb. That'll definitely happen.


In Michael Robins's class, minus one

At the desk where the boy sat, he sees the Chicago River.
It raises its hand.
It asks if metaphor should burn.
He says fire is the basis for all forms of the mouth.
He asks, why did you fill the boy with your going?
I didn't know a boy had been added to me, the river says.
Would you have given him back if you knew?
I think so, the river says, I have so many boys in me,
 I'm worn out stroking eyes looking up at the day.
Have you written a poem for us? he asks the river,
 and the river reads its poem,
 and the other students tell the river
 it sounds like a poem the boy would have written,
 that they smell the boy's cigarettes
in the poem, they feel his teeth
biting the page.
And the river asks, did this boy dream of horses?
 because I suddenly dream of horses, I suddenly dream.
They're in a circle and the river says, I've never understood
 round things, why would leaving come back
 to itself?
And a girl makes a kiss with her mouth and leans it
 against the river, and the kiss flows away
 but the river wants it back, the river makes sounds
 to go after the kiss.
And they all make sounds for the river to carry to the boy.
And the river promises to never surrender the boy's shape
 to the ocean.

2009-01-27T09:19:00.003-05:00

Hey, if my honors students have to be subjected to this shitty playlist while they workshop essays today, why not you too, as you go about your various daily tasks, working and eating and polishing the porcelain pachyderm tusks your grandfather gave you?

Time to Get Lost

2009-01-21T09:08:00.003-05:00

Get it? "Time"? As in, "time travel," the hopefully-dominant theme of the new season of my favorite show, maybe of all time (apologies Buffy). Below is a pretty effective fanmade trailer for the upcoming season; it's fairly comprehensive in its "remember this storyline?" scope, and thus I share. I'll try not to text you or tweet, but I try not to do stuff all the time, and not all of it takes.

Grab Some Hot Cocoa, Pull on Up to the Fireplace, and Delve into the Miasma that Is My Day-to-Day

2009-01-15T08:29:00.005-05:00

Like nothing going on. Like, nothing. No affable stories from the first week of class. No oversweetened reminiscences of days of yore. No bands I've heard of that you must love. Just the following, and that ain't much:

I'm in the laundry black--every stitch is clean and hung. Sounds minor, but it's nice to see an empty basket. My domestic role has increased due to Lissa' long hours and my, oh, let's say relaxed teaching sched, and it turns out I rock the apron and bubushka. It's to the point where I don't want to wear any clothes so I don't have to wash them, but it's a bit brisk and I'm a bit brusque for that sort of thought. Or is it?
The laptop officially died. We said some nice words and then flushed it down the toilet. Hopefully this weekend will yield a new one (Macbook? Pro? Viao? Leapfrog?), as it's not exactly prudent to look at...nature photography...on my work computer...
My iPod refuses to hold a charge now, so the days of hitting the Next button for 15 minutes on the treadmill are behind me. I guess I'll just have to weather the poor judgment of my playlist-making skillz. Maybe if I get a MacLap they'll throw in a Touch. Which sounds like an overly ambitious plan for a strip club. But still.
Liss got a new car to replace her old car that didn't have a heater, so now I'm back to rocking a heated car that has 2/4 good brakes. Her Altima is exactly a Lissish car: it's got heated leather seats and nice speakers and Bluetooth phone shit and XM and a the cutest little blankety blank engine. You see her, you honk.
My parents have ruined Stirfry. We dropped him off pre-Florida to spend about 3 weeks with Mom and Dad and Daisy, and between Dad getting up at 4am on dayturn and feeding/petting him and Mom giving him constant eventingtime attention and Daisy been sweet to the extent that she never stopped trying to befriend him, Stirf is now: a lap cat, one who will sit on me as I eat cereal; a purring machine; a constantly hungry, constantly vocal bitcher-for-food; willing to whore out his most previously-laudable abilities (jumping over my legs for treats, chasing the laser into the tub, et al) for the tiniest bit of attention and encouragment; a fucking housecat. Where's the stray we took in 3 years ago?
Okay, one teaching story: I got a couple in my one class--let's hope they fight!--and yesterday was their one year anniversary, and they asked me for a good place to celebrate. I told them all about the restaraunts here in town and ultimately suggested one, and they stared at each other for a second and then asked, "Where's the closest Olive Garden?" Oh, to be young...
Below is newly posted footage for the upcoming (and droolworthy) Resident Evil 5. In this installment, Chris Redman(!) travels the world to combat Umbrella, and that includes going to Africa and killing a bunch of African zombies. The imagery involved--a white dude firing into a crowd of black (zombified, but still) zombies--is disturbing in ways I'd like to discuss but know better than to blogingly. Still, this mofo looks scary and intense and several other highly esteemed adjectives.

2009-01-09T14:59:00.002-05:00

I am alive, and I remain awesome. Since I've had dick-all to blog about and even less time to do so, I'll just put up "Samuel Beckett: Breath" by Damien Hirst and we'll let that count until I think of better ways to waste your time. He's overrated but good.

Be well.

Be you.

Be,

well,

you.

Happy 2009

2009-01-01T07:58:00.003-05:00

So I hope you had a good NYE, whooping it up and wearing funny hats and high fiving each other and such. I hope we were missed, but I also hope you had a rad time. We had a wild night ourselves--Liss and I were in bed for the ball drop, and managed to fall asleep at 11:57 and wake up at 12:04, so I can only assume the New Year happened.

I hate to say it, but I think I had a Dick Clark nightmare last night.

Today, I swim with the fishes, which, if you know me, will be a great test of my water-based nature hysteria and histrionics. Oh sure, I plan on screaming at the fish and whatnot to keep them at bay, but will they listen. As I get in the water, before the fish deskeletonize me like so many piranha in a Far Side cartoon, know that my last thoughts were of you. And of January Jones.

(Aside: I told each of my parents separately on the phone that I'd be going to an aquarium and swimming with wildlife, and their advice--given in separate rooms and without consultation with one another--was the same, verbatim: "Steer clear of the stingray, they'll heart-stab you." God love ya and keep ya, Steve and She.)

(Last picture, pre-water-based nature.)

Year-End Wrap-Up

2008-12-31T09:09:00.005-05:00

Phrase I wish I used less:
"That's wild." (Is it, Steve-0? Is that wild?)

Adverbs I wish everyone else used less:
"Absolutely," "Literally," "Honestly." (Psst, you mean the opposite of these words...)

Best Books I Read:
A World Undone by GJ Meyer (subtitle: WWI for Slightly More Than Dummies)
Twilight by William Gay (necrophiliac undertakers, not vampires), and
Bright Shiny Morning by Jimmy Frey (I know, me too)

Worst Book I Read:
The Man Who Heard Voices, a completely worthless book about M. Night

Best Meal I Ate:
Revolver: I ate a bison, y'all!

TV Show I Wished I Watched:
True Blood

TV Show I Wished I Didn't Watch:
Celebrity Rehab

Best Concert:
MMJ (durrr)

Worst Concert:
N/A, they were all pretty good this year

Best Football Game I Watched:
MNF, Browns vs. Giants

Worst Football Game I Watched:
Every single other one (and let me apologize once more if you were around for any of my diatribes, thrown materials, curses, swears, sighs, tears, wails, or overdoses)

Best Action Sequence:
The 18 wheeler in The Dark Knight

Grossest Sequence:
The bus terminal in Nick and Nora

Most Surprisingly Affecting Love Story:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Best Male Movie Character:
Kirk "You Can't Go Full Retard" Lazarus

Best Female:
EVE (what a plucky little lass!)

Best Album of Guys I Bet're Douches:
MGMT, Oracular Spectacular

Runner Up:
Vampire Weekend

Best Line of Poetry I Read:
Dan Chiasson: "Knowing me never made anyone a needle."

Worst Poetry I Read:
May I loan you my journal?

Best Facebook Friend:
Old student named Alex who, at least twice a day (a) reminds us he lives in Brooklyn and (b) ends each status update with "Sent from my Iphone," except sometimes it reads "sent from my iphone" or "sent from my iPhone," which clearly indicates that he manually types in a constant reminder that he, indeed, owns an iPhone. Love that dude.

Worst Facebook Friend:
Guy who lived on my floor freshman year who not only constantly updates his Ironman training regimen while admonishing the rest of us ("22 miles on the trail today, pussies!") but also brags about hunting, skinning and eating deer and voting Republican (election night: "Obama? Really America? We're so fucked!!!!!"). If he weren't such a specimen, I'd delete him.

Best Resolution:
Be nicer, or at least quieter.

Worst Resolution:
Try to like Thai food. Again.

Worst Advice I Got:
"Watch Two and a Half Men--I think you'll like it!"

Best Advice I Got:
"Shit don't get easier, you just get more used to it."

Best Thing Melissa Said I Wish I'd Come Up With First:
"The whole evening, everybody knew where [this person] was, and what s/he was thinking."

Best Prediction:
2009's the year I finally (finally!) put this deviation of truth and moral rectitude of a blog out of its goddamn misery.

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!

Dance Dance Convolution

2008-12-30T08:50:00.003-05:00

Today's LeBron's birthday, and I think that's why I dreamt last night that I took him to an upscale strip club. That, or I just like dreaming about strippers. Or stripping. Or LeBron. Any rate, here's some dancing highlights from 2008.

Beyonce's got enough fluid movement in her body to bailout GM (I don't know what that means either), and though I generally loathe her music, I generally opposite-of-loathe watching her dance. Single Ladies, as if you ain't seen it, has inspired many homemade versions, of which my favorite are:

This one of some girls in a hotel. Their description reads "For all da people dat said we weren't hype," of which I'm not. Bad ass!

This one, featuring an adorable little girl. Too cute:

Cyd Charisse died this year, and though most of my exposure to her dancing was through my dentist's office as a kid and through my ironic boredom as a college student, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate (a) the legs on that broad, and (b) the following routines. First, from Singing in the Rain with Gene Kelly:

Here she is with Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings. Sheesh this be pretty:

And if you're still hanging around, your bonus dance is from Nathaniel, the best Yo Gabba Gabba dancer evah:

Stop back here tomorrow for my favorite quiche recipes and girdle brands of the year.

How Hip Hop Spent Its Summer

2008-12-29T21:46:00.005-05:00

Solid, solid year for below-radar hip hop, and that ain't always the case, as mixtapes, beefs, and my not meeting up with my cooler former students can sometimes slow the output of that street shit. So if you got the time, I got a song or six for you to peruse.

Firstly, we got the Cool Kids. Two MC's, one from Chicago and the other from Detroit, used some old school beats and rather superfluous (or ironic, I can't tell) lyrics about throwing parties and owning material possessions to craft one hell of an infectious little album. To wit: Black Mags, my first favorite track.

If the first time you heard of The Knux, a "hipster"/alt rap duo from LA by way of NO, on Entourage this season, congrats: not only are you the last douche bag on Eart watching Entourage, you, in fact, are me. Regardless of provenance, these dudes were a good find and worth your time. To wit: Bang Bang

Scarface has been around since Moses got his first hando, and him and Too $hort comprise in my mind the two realest rappers ever--neither have ever shot a video aired on MTV or BET, and both still have sold bajillions of records while both maintaining their street cred and enhancing their deliveries. To wit: Emeritus, the title track from what is purported to be Scar's swan song. Hope it isn't though, 'cause dude's only like 50.

Detroit's best MC, Elzhi (maybe you know him from Slum Village), is a rhyme master, and even though he's still a bit raw for my taste, there's no denying he's got stage presence; if that's as reliable an indicator of future talent as it's been in the past, remember where you heard of him first. To wit: Motown 25.

I'm obviously trying to steer clear of the more obvious albums that came out this year, completely stellar efforts by

Nas (funniest serious album you'll hear about race, including a song about Obama that's thoughtfully pensive),
GZA (whose Pro Tools is like a great Wu Tang album minus the 5 percenter bullshit and plus better soul samples), and
Q-Tip (who's, you know, Q-Tip)

but before I close the door on hip hop for the year (or at least until Cuban Linxx II fucking comes out, which could be never), here's my #1 hip hop performance of the year, a performance that's getting exactly no love but one that keeps on flooring me. In fact, here it twice y, because I'm bad at embedding code, yo. I said I'm too, too bad at code, yo. You better teach me how to do code, yo. Do do code do do code yo:

The Day After No Future

2008-12-29T08:31:00.011-05:00

One of my favorite albums of the year is from a band of extremely upset gentlemen from New Jersey named Titus Andronicus. I dig their full-length The Airing of Grievances for some of the following reasons:

They're named after my favorite Shakespeare play (which is also his earliest and his bloodiest),
their sound can only be described as the opposite of twee,
they're great at naming their songs: "Fear and Loathing Outside Mahwah, NJ," "Arms Against Atrophy," "My Time Outside the Womb,"
they sound great live, a point I pointed out in a post before that I could link to,
The last track, "Albert Camus," includes a dramatic reading of the ending of The Stranger, where our Arab-killing narrator eggs on his executioners and the throng of people who've come to see him executed, and
their best song, also titled Titus Andronicus, includes the one-two punch of lyrics "Your life is over" (repeated about 200 times) and the irascible "Fuck everything/Fuuuuuuuuuuck me!"

But what really appeals to me about this album is just how goddamned seriously it takes itself. It just takes me back to when I was 18 or so, when it was my turn to read Dostoyevsky/Kierkegaard/whoever and realize that, end of the day, you're all alone in this world and people just don't give a rat's ass about anything past their own nose. And instead of doing what the rest of us did when (or if) we realize folks ain't much past their puckish self-interests--you know, huff Glade or put out too much or write shitty poetry or (and this is my favorite) change your name to Fakey McFakefake III, move to You're My BFF Fo'evahville and buy a ;)-so-you-know-you're-special-mobile to drive to your job at How Interesting I'm Really Not Listening Inc.*--they went ahead and made a pissy little album about the pointlessness and artifice of caring for others. Love it, not least of which because it puts to music what is so often true: people suck.

These guys've taken Sartre's maxim "Hell is other people" and made an incredibly angsty, highly listenable, awful self-important album out of it. I think his French ass'd be proud.
(*I'm being 97% tongue in cheek here, but thanks for an incredibly meaty 3% nonetheless, fakeholes. (; Love you too!)

Three Things Worth Not Missing for their Fun Fun Fun Use of Language

2008-12-26T09:50:00.003-05:00

Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III.

THIII is not just the most popular album of the year, it's the best. My contention is this: Lil Wayne is a genius. In the DF Wallace, Stephen Hawking, beautiful mind sense of the word, he's smarter than the rest of us on a whole 'nother level. He claims he makes up all his rhymes in freestyle--off the top of his cough syrup-induced head--and even if that's only a little true, it still should make him eligible for a MacArthur Grant. His wordplay rivals whoever your favorite poet is, and his production is top-notch, but what truly elevates this album to capital A Art is Weezy's delivery, which moves around the beat like no one I've ever heard (except maybe Q-Tip), sometimes sludgily dragging behind it, sometimes playfully anticipating it, always making the most of it, making rhymes in spots nobody else could. Listen to Let the Beat Build, which is my current favorite track, and listen to how he dances all around Kanye's soul sample. Or check out A Milli, the best music video of the year, and marvel at how he (a) can rhyme Viagra with Adam Sandler, (b) avoid having a chorus and (c) use the sparsest beat (a marching drum's all, really) to craft a relatively perfect song. Genius.

The King of Sentences, Jonathan Lethem.

Okay, so this short story came out last December, but it's still one of the best pieces of writing I've come across the past year or so. It's about two bookstore employees who meet their idol, the eponymous, and it's also about just loving how certain combinations of words are just better off than others, and it's written in a way that suggests to me that Lethem took his everloving time in crafting every one of his sentences, which makes me feel all warm and meta inside. I kind of see this as a sort of companion piece to Tha Carter III, in that it's revelatory about language, it's linguistically peacocky, and it's got a highly danceable rhythm. Seriously, if I could find an audio version of this story, I'd put it on my iPod and run to it.

Encounters at the End of the World, dir. Werner Herzog

How I love Werner. If all you've seen of his is Grizzly Man and/or Rescue Dawn, that's fine, but you're really missing out on a visionary in the truest sense of the word. While I'd love to tell you about his Nosferatu remake or Agguire or Fitzcarraldo and how that's a real fucking boat, I'll focus on Encounters, his documenatary about the loony birds--scientists, dreamers, outcasts, et cetera, as well as the creatures above and below water--that choose to spend their time and energy in Antartica. Gorgeously shot (of course), wonderfully immersed in its subjects (naturally) and continuously engaging its viewers (duh), Encounters has all the familiar tropes of a Herzog joint. And its relationship to the Wayne and Lethem? The narration! Werner's got a voice you want to hear everywhere: on your GPS, play-by-play guy for the Browns, dude in BG who reads the paper on 88.1 every morning, everywhere. German-inflected and unbridled in its enthusiasm for everything all the time, the narration of Encounters is reason enough to rent.

Your Daily Dose of Hip Hop from Angola

2008-12-10T10:13:00.002-05:00

Buraka Som Sistema's Sound of Kuduro

The Best Season Finales of 2008

2008-12-09T10:46:00.006-05:00

5. Lost, "There's No Place Like Home." Lost, to my mind, has been uneven since its first season, when Jack and Locke--those exquisitely polar opposites, Science and Faith, Reason and Passion, Heaven and Earth--peered down that ultimately-disappointing hatch. But any complaints I might've had about the show's lack of narrative focus or character fidelity was well-allayed by the Season 4 finale, when the Oceanic Six got off the island, Michael (really) and Jin (not really) got blowed up, and Ben spun the coolest looking donkey wheel sequence I've ever seen (below). I liked this season as much as any--I dig the team of scientists, physicists and psychics now Island-bound, and I thought the freighter folk added some much-needed black-hat bad guy-isim--and as the new season makes a little glint on the tv horizon, I find myself with as many theories and questions as ever (did Ben move the island to the 70's, as has been conjectured? Are Ben and Widmore immortals playing the same Highlanderesque chess game over the island over and over [I think so]? Is Locke really dead? Will Kate get them horseteeth fixed? Will Hurley continue to enjoy ranch dressing?). Which is just how I like Lost to lose me.

4. The Wire, "-30-." The fifth season wasn't nearly its best (I have it at 4th, behind [in order] 2, 3, and 1, but slightly ahead of 4), but bad Wire is still excellent television. David Simon worked too hard to grind too many axes at the Sun for S5 to meet the potential of past seasons, but in sheer terms of bang-for-your-series-finale-buck, The Wire ended just as it began: a novelistic, sprawling, convincingly vocabularic exploration of how American cities live and, more often than not, die. Seeing Michael take up the dearly departed Omar's reigns was my personal highlight from "-30-", but Dukwon plunging the needle and Marlo reclaiming his corner were pretty goddamned stellar too. And this is to say nothing of McNulty, Daniels, or Greggs. It wouldn't surprise you that I abhor montages of nearly any ilk, but with The Wire, I make this one concession, because a show that's this much show deserves to see each of its characters off:

3. Mad Men, "Meditations in an Emergency." Mad Men is no doubt my favorite show of the year. Its acting, direction, writing, and (especially) set design are marvels of execution and, for that matter, elocution. We watched the entire first season On Demand in the run-up to season 2, so in some ways, I view both rather seamlessly. Don, much like the Nuclear Age he's living (and thriving) in, faced an uncertain future for much of S2, and since he doesn't have our luxury of future knowledge, the dovetailing of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his uneasy homecoming impacts him doubly (note: that sentence doesn't make sense, but I still like looking at it, so zip it, skippy). What really distinguished MM in this episode--and this season--are its supporting characters. Duck gets blindsided, Pete shows some unexpected loyalty, Ken/Sal/Harry/etc. fret about the merger, Joan refines TV's greatest ass-hitch, and best of all, Betty Draper (the immeasurably gorgeous January Jones) retains her independence and her dignity, despite having some way way hot sex inside a bar and outside the marriage. My favorite part of Mediations? Don reading Frank O'Hara:

2. Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations." We all pretty much thought of Earth as the endpoint of BSG, didn't we? The happy ending that these beleaguered soldiers, politicians, lawyers, civilians and (why not?) allied Cylons so richly deserve after 70+ episodes of what is easily the bleakest fucking show on television? We believed that, right? How wrong we were. So when we see those wordless, poetical last 15 or so seconds of "Revelations," showing Earth not to be the paradisal haven they--and we--wanted it to be, but instead a nuclear (right?) wasteland, barely inhabitable, a new New Caprica, BSG reminded us all that there's no finite number of ways to make these characters suffer. In a show that mixes space balletics, religious fervor, contemporary questions about morality and justice and interpersonal relationships with equal acumen, Battlestar is a show I already miss even if there are a dozen episodes yet unseen.

1. The Shield, "Family Meeting." If you've been watching Shawn Ryan's bad cop/worse cop drama since its chilling first moments, when Vic Mackey, that one of a kind irrepressible force of nature, shoots a fellow officer in cold blood, then you know that The Sheild's never, ever been one to allow you anything approaching expectations. This fear of the unknown--would Vic ever get his comeuppance, will Shane ever be able to unentangle himself from his amoral mentor, will Dutch or Claudette get the chance to do some tangible good, will Acedevda compromise his soul for power?--made each episode whatever a tense, terse, shaky territory. Whatever the opposite of terra firma is. We never knew what we were getting into, and never was this more the case than in the series finale, an hour of television so intense and so rewarding that once we get to that final image of the bulldog Mackey chained to a desk, we realize that there are indeed fates worse than death. Though there was plenty of death to go around, too:

2008-12-08T11:10:00.002-05:00

If I see something approaching acquiesce from my classes today,

I'm'a make they ass some cookies.

If I don't, no cookie for them.

Instead: pissy face.

Bad pissy face.

Bad.

Daisy Girl

2008-12-02T15:43:00.004-05:00

Mom and Dad hit the dog jackpot.
In addition to being this cute,
she's well behaved,
affectionate,
in short,
a very
good
girl
!

(They Stand for John Mallord William)

2008-12-01T13:49:00.011-05:00

Has it been rough, me not blogging for like a whole week? Are you walking into walls, tripping over furniture, wandering the dark streets with your hands in your pockets and a pensive face, worried that you don't know what I've been watching on tv, or what my favorite albums of the year are, or how I feeeeeeeeel? Are you managing? Are your days vapid, empty, limp and devoid of list, drifting seamlessly, pointlessly from one to the next, great, dissonant cognitive fogs with no discernible beginning or end, evacuated little glimpses of The Real, with nary a purpose until I tell you about one of the books I'm reading? Are you managing to manage? Are you?

JMW Turner has been a favorite artist of mine since I stared at his Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish in Chicago for what felt like hours. He's, to my mind, the father of Impressionism, accomplishing such by painting landscapes and shipwrecks and other disasters with not so much a commitment to sharing what happened, but--and this made him controversial in his day--how these places and events made him feel. His paintings have a depth--literally, the communication of depth--unmatched to my untrained eye, and when I look at his work, it just absorbs me. (It also doesn't hurt that he was, even for a British artist in the 17th c., an immensely, immensely weird dude.)

Using my always-appreciated Amazon birthday $ from Jame, I went ahead and bought me a book about Turner, Turner and His Time. I've been getting into it in between essays and meals and Vinyasas and cursing my fantasy football "teams." It's a bit of a hulker, but utterly engrossing, and, since Liss is getting more than her shrift of "Jesus, look at how fucking cool this one is," I thought I'd share a few of my favorite pieces from it, starting with his incredibly intense self-portrait:

He sees you, and he knows what you're up to.

Check out The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Over the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), from 1840:

This painting was the subject of a great PBS piece by the great Simon Schama, and is so busy you half expect it to be Liss. Look at those bodies, writhing in the breach. Wow.

And how about The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons:

Turner was actually in London when Westminster Palace went up, and, luck for us, it left an, ahem, impression on him (up top!).

And finally (for now), Glaucus and Scylla, an oil painting so nice the Nazis didn't destroy it, a subject brought up on a great documentary about post WWII art reclamation on, yep, PBS:

Nothin' quite like a wood nymph and a sea-god getting it on, now is there?

Or is there?

Fake Band Names

2008-11-25T13:12:00.003-05:00

The AV Club has a funny list of fake band names up (my favorites: Sex Cymbal and The Judith Light), and since I've been working on a list of same in my tiny little birthday journal, written in illegible (even for me) chickenscratch due to the tininess of my pen, here are some of mine.

"Enjoy."

The Hickory Dicks
Just Offal
Manmade Monkeys
The Uninterrupted Corrupted
Dick Headband (or Dickneck Cleavage)
Selfish Status Updates
Fonetic Frases
Your Alabaster Master
Swiss Hits (as opposed to Swiss Misses)
My Goddamned Feet
Sprawl, Bawl
Enfeebled!
Mom, There's No Easy Way to Say This...
The Scallion Batillion
Megabega

2008-11-24T18:47:00.003-05:00

Back in 1973, a bearded, ponytailed dude parked his motorcycle outside the Big Boy in Martins Ferry, Ohio, and got seated in the section waitressed by a recent high school graduate. He flirted with her, she took his order, and by the time the check came they decided to go on a date.

When he drove his Camaro to her house that weekend, he realized that although they only grew up about four miles apart, those four miles might as well have been a million.

He grew up without indoor plumbing and an icebox in the basement. An outhouse in the backyard, with two holes for him and his five siblings and parents and a calvacade of live-in relatives and hangers-on, uphill from an actual slopditch. A real icebox, not a fridge, that he filled with a 20lb block of ice he walked two miles into to town to buy and carry back every two days. His dad was a miner, his mom stayed at home to raise everybody. Long on love (often of the late-night screaming match sort, which, in its way, is the best sort), short on dough. He started working in the mine before he graduated. He took his senior picture out of its frame and replaced it with the letter Bobby Knight sent him, inviting him to work out for IU and try out for the team with Isiah Thomas.

When he walked into her house that night, he might as well have been walking into a mansion.

Her house was nice, so near the mill her parents both worked at that he could smell the steel being smelted, replete with not only an upstairs bathroom but two, count 'em two sinks. She was the youngest of four, 40 years younger than her mom and 20 younger than her oldest sister. Though she lived in relative splendor--a garage, little dogs, church clothes--her parents, who eloped when they were 16 and learned the lessons of the Depression all too well, imbued in her an appreciation of all she had. She learned her mom's recipes and was doted on by her dad, a sucker for the baby of the family. She was ready to start nursing school that fall.

Their first date--to The Exorcist, of all things--turned into a second date.

The second date turned into a third.

And so on.

I'm very thankful for my mom and dad.

2008-11-24T10:45:00.002-05:00

wist

2008-11-20T19:09:00.002-05:00

Hey Nathan, who I'm fairly certain checks blogs more than emails,

Hey dude.

Check out this little humor piece called The Plan from Jack Handey that's in my new New Yorker (a magazine I read). I like it so much I'd dress up in it for Halloween.

So I'm going to the Browns-Texans game on Sunday. Hear about Brady's broken pinkie? How about Phil Savage emailing a mad fan some version of the fuck word? And how about them Lions? Two games in seven days, right? The Pistons, and the Cavs? Let's discuss at the sweatpant portion of Friends Thanksgiving.

Dispatches From the Whump

2008-11-19T14:09:00.003-05:00

Did'ja like the beginning of the second season of The West Wing, where you learned through flashbacks how Toby, Josh, Leo, CJ, Sam and the gang took an unproven candidate and through sheer force of will (and polling data) got that dude elected Prez? Would you like to read a New Yorker article about how a bunch of actual people did that exact same thing--'cept in reality and not in Aaron Sorkin's mushroom-addled brain--to our soon-to-be-President Coolguy? Of course you would.

Would you like some scientists to explain how your brain fails to process magic? Naturally.

Had'ja taped the new Robot Chicken Star Wars episode that debuted Sunday night? I'm sure you did, but just in case it's available online for your enjoyment, especially the second sketch about the Emperor and his hairdresser. Been playing that bad boy on my DVR on a friggin' loop.

Think you can handle a single video, Get Your Shine On (by Birdman, ft. a very lil Lil Wayne), the contents of which accomplish every single wonderful cliche hip hop is capable of? Of course you can't:

2008-11-18T10:42:00.005-05:00

2008-11-17T13:57:00.002-05:00

So Dad and me are in line to see The Phantom Menace, and a golf cart goes by, and by force of pomp some semblance that hithertofore left languid announces. Cartwheel blows right off and--midair now, here's the thing--lands on a rank blanca slopditch itch I'd once known as an awl but that now's less bleak, rife, even, with hollow boasts of postcard regard for Doyle's. Between it and tock I wrote a pardon for all the wiggle pig rigs; they didn't even have to ask, what with my penchant for pedantry and their topwise guises, their temple rot, my barren harem, them, me, we. Dad asks if that's really a reconnoiter in the corner, like in silent movies--he knows I don't throw no prone prose. The backrash I told myself was chilly guilt spun out my Alabama muscle (the whelmed part on the most part) and doncha know there it go watch that nuthatch scratch.

2008-11-13T11:07:00.002-05:00

Once I got my hamhock in a headlock I took a dramatic pause and decided it was time to revive the dreams of so many alphabets--utility, mobility, multimodal disposal--that I relented my grip and instead started schlepping, where it struck me again that pan is the best policy once in the throes of tape measured antibacterial clipses especially once she said it could all fall through your brain if you're dripping underside down the trestle hill where feral bakers ply their sprink and bellow.

Dos Horizons

2008-11-12T13:47:00.005-05:00

I'll get back to much less germane posts soon, so don't fret that pretty little head of yours. Just thought I'd take a sec and tell you about two tings in the future:

Death with Interruptions comes to us from Nobel Prize winning Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. Therein, on New Year's Day of an unknown year in an unknown country, Death announces that He's taking a holiday. Nobody within that country's borders will die for the foreseeable future, and at first, there is much rejoicing. Yay. After bit, though, adults get sick of caring for their forever-sick elderly parents and ship them across the border (in a sort of Underground Underground Railroad) and the Catholic Church realizes that without the threat of death, religion loses a good bit of its wallop. Yay. Saramago's way with sentences is truly astounding (they can go on for so long that I've often caught myself holding my breath waiting too long waiting for a period), and I look forward to diving into homeboy's slim novel.

Day Watch is the sequel to Night Watch, Russia's highest grossing movie. I watched NW last night, and even though the dubbing was distracting (what, we can't handle subtitles, Netflix?), I found it to be an utterly engrossing sci-fi adventure about: vampires (called Dark Others) and those that regulate them (Light Others); the centuries-long truce these groups have honored, whereby DO's can't feed or practice dark arts without a license; the seemingly ending of said truth when a Chosen One must choose between Light and Dark and in doing so tip the balance one way or the other. In addition to being jampacked with action setpieces, Night Watch deals with some pretty sweet existential issues in a way that would make, well, Jose Saramago happy. The third installment and end of the trilogy, Twilight Watch, comes out next year, so for now, get here Day Watch get here.

2008-11-11T20:07:00.003-05:00

jive

shuck

huck

finn

win

lose

clues

hints

splints

braces

faces

mugs

bugs

bothers

fathers

dads

lads

guys

flies

soars

sores

boils

foils

tins

bins

boxes

foxes

tail

wail

bellow

mellow

calm

balm

salve

valve

dial

trial

test

vest

attire

aspire

goal

foal

young

stung

welt

belt

pull

wool

2008-11-10T15:19:00.001-05:00

Self-important

Sel

elf

important

s
e
l
f

i
m
port
ant

GonzObama

2008-11-05T19:22:00.003-05:00

I've had some fun today imagining Dr. Thompson's reaction to all this, you know, monumental stuff happening. We'll never know, but his long lost brother James Carville does a pretty good job expressing his. Relatedly, ain't this all somethin' else?

(Constituting "monumental" on a regular week: Brady Quinn!)

Yes.

2008-11-05T09:46:00.004-05:00

1996: I voted for Clinton. I liked how things were going, and I thought they should continue to.

2000: I voted for Gore. I got into a million arguments with my college friends about why a vote for Nader was stupid. I watched the Supreme Court appoint the Shrub to the Presidency, using tactics we'd all decry were they used in a third-world country.

2004: I voted for Kerry, assuming we had got our national shit together. Boy was I wrong.

2008: I voted for Obama. It was barely 60 years ago that there were many many parts of this country where if you weren't white, you had to drink from a separate drinking fountain, and now, now, once again, we showed the world why we're truly the best country around.

I've always loved America. I'll always love America. But today, I'm deeply, truly, profoundly proud of America.

Spectacular feeling, that.

Scary Mary Poppins

2008-10-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

Scary Mary Poppins - Watch more free videos

Scary Videos--The Omen

2008-10-28T10:53:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--I Put a Spell on You (Nina Simone)

2008-10-28T10:52:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--Roseanne Halloween Episode

2008-10-28T10:51:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--Halloween is Grinch Night

2008-10-28T10:47:00.000-04:00

Scary Videos--"They're Coming to Get You, Barbara"

2008-10-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

Scary Videos--Jonny Greenwood's TWBB score

2008-10-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

Scary Videos--The End of Wicker Man (1973)

2008-10-28T10:43:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--Silent Hill: Homecoming (trailer)

2008-10-28T10:42:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--Bela Lugosi's Dead

2008-10-28T10:41:00.001-04:00

Scary Videos--Bela Lugosi's Alive and...Acting

2008-10-28T10:40:00.001-04:00