Music

I'm still on hiatus from MP3 blogs, but I noticed that I'm enjoying music criticism blogs quite a bit, so I'm searching around for more of those. A brand new one is House Is Not A Feeling (about dance music), which includes at least two critics I already read, initially from their Pitchfork columns about dance music, Philip Sherburne (from Earplug, among other places) and Jess Harvell. Sasha Frere-Jones has been posting like mad recently. Michaelangelo Matos is at the Seattle Weekly. I try to avoid I Love Music, because it's mostly not worthwhile, but it still sucks me in from time to time.

One of the few MP3 blogs I am currently reading, because it has so much besides free downloads, is DJ /Rupture's Mudd Up!. I listened to his Low Income Tomorrowland mix the other day in the car and got kind of tired of it, partly because I wasn't in the mood but mostly because the speakers in there are terrible. I listened to it loud on my good headphones last night and it was much more satisfying, since I could actually hear the bass, which significantly sweetened the sound and smoothened the harsh, superfast beats that undercut the last half of the mix. Maybe I should just listen to NPR while I'm driving from now on.

Also, I just discovered that the Decibel Festival (electronic music) is taking place in my neighborhood, at various venues blocks from my house, over four days in late September. I really hope I am there and can go to at least some part of it.

Computer Machines

I've been looking at some websites, and I'm thinking about getting a 14.1" iBook G4 once I find the right non-expired deal. Apple also has some refurbished iPods for prices I might be willing to pay. Then once I get an external enclosure for my current hard drive, I think I'm mostly good to go, at least for a while.

I neglected to mention earlier that I got Oval's 94 Diskont at the Thrill Jockey table last weekend. It's great. I'd compare it to Disintegration Loops given the beautiful repetition.

Oh, and consider the list of things at Intonation amended so the item about Diplo mentions his "Staring at the Sun" remix that totally destroyed. Basically he took the 8-bar intro and looped it for a long time with vocals over top from somewhere else (I don't remember the words), so by the time Tunde Adebimpe finally came in, everybody went crazy.

And Also Books

There is a big post below this one but I wanted to mention this book that I read. I think I had some things to say about it right after I'd read it, but now I don't know. The book is Confessions of a Tax Collector by Richard Yancey. It was, ummm, really good. Maybe I will edit this post later if I can think of a better way to encourage you to read it. It's about how he becomes a tax collector, and becomes a bad person, then a good person. It is factually based, but also edited for narrative quality and coherence.

And I read Charles Bukowski's Post Office very quickly. It was a similar experience to reading Kurt Vonnegut in many ways.

Movies

It seems that I've only been watching movies by directors I know recently. Last night I watched Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You and thought it was pretty bad. The box said it was supposed to be a screwball comedy, but I think I actually failed to laugh during the entire two hours. For one, there was no focus: it was partly a love story between Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, but not really, because, like most Capra films, it was about how business is corrupt and the people are right and good. I don't really like Lionel Barrymore that much, and he was the old guy who showed the rich business magnate (Edward Arnold) how to live. It was kind of idiotic, not only because it automatically assumes that all people implicated in either business or government are corrupt or that all poor people are inherently good and friendly, but it tells us so in long, boring speeches. There are a few memorable images, but for the most part I was bored out of my mind.

True Romance both fascinated and repulsed me in the same way as Reservoir Dogs. The dialogue sparkled but I found myself unable to revel in the violence as seemed to be intended. Mainly I noticed that the main character, Clarence, is a sort of Tarantino figure, working in a little store selling pop culture and obsessed with movies (especially kung fu), which makes sense since this is Tarantino's first script, and most first major projects tend to be autobiographical in some way. There's also the moral ambiguity that really comes out in Pulp Fiction. Clarence isn't really morally defensible, since he is kind of guilty of murder, theft, and drug smuggling, but he's still our guy, kind of like Bruce Willis's down-and-out boxer. Tarantino supplies the key to understanding most of his heroes when Clarence mentions this within the movie to Alabama, his future wife, when he tells her about the main character in the kung fu movie, played by Sonny Chiba:

He ain't so much a good guy as he's just a bad motherfucker. Sonny don't be bullshittin'. He fucks dudes up for life. Hold on, a fight scene's coming up.

What was most interesting was how Clarence and his call-girl wife act out their fantasies by going to Hollywood, the "dream factory", act like "bad motherfuckers" and generally do and survive things that can clearly only be done and survived on screen. Also, Brad Pitt's commentary on his scenes was really smart, especially compared to some of the others.

I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today and thought it was pretty okay. I would agree with some critics that Johnny Depp's Wonka is perhaps less than perfect, but he has his moments. The father-son backstory for Willy Wonka is pretty annoying when you realize it's just Tim Burton doing the same thing he did in Big Fish. I liked the use of technology on the Oompa Loompas and especially the self-reference to the technique in the Television Room. I feel like I caught more references in the theater than I can remember now, but the way Mike Teavee walked out of the factory reminded me of Nightmare Before Christmas. The first time Depp appears in the foreground onscreen he's holding a pair of scissors so that his hand is hidden within the sleeve of his coat. The employment of the Oompa Loompa's seems like a discussion of globalization and outsourcing, fairly positive except that Charlie's grandpa lost his job.

I could swear Augustus was computer-generated, maybe because of the way his skin shone or the unnatural smoothness of it or something, but I can't find any mention of it. I also kept seeing in Depp's Wonka both a lot of Jim Carrey and some female figure, either Frances McDormand or Jane Kaczmarek, although Roger Ebert suggests Carol Burnett, which I think is closer to the mark even though she looks less like this Wonka. I can see some of the Michael Jackson connections, but overall I don't feel they're all that strong. So, I guess Edward Scissorhands is still the only Tim Burton movie I've REALLY liked, but this one was pretty much okay.

Weekend

So I went to Intonation this weekend. I had my camera one day and took some pictures but I haven't looked at them yet and, as I suspected, there's a big group of Intonation pictures up at Flickr, so you can look at them.

It was hot and dusty and definitely a long two days, but it was also pretty great and the most fun I'll have this summer. I'm guessing Pitchfork will have some extensive post-event coverage of some kind, so I won't bother with anything comprehensive. The best things included:

• Diplo's DJ set before the soundsystem died and I left for the Decemberists
• The Go! Team's last song with the kids dancing (they'd previously been dancing near the swimming pool in the non-festival part of the park)
• The breakdancers during the James McNew/El-P DJ set
• Getting really excited about Four Tet, whom I should have been liking more for a long time now
• My new earplugs
• When this big, burly guy approached me in a bar and introduced himself as a Carleton graduate from the class of 1991

The least best things included:

• The sun
• The sometimes poor sound
• Becoming desensitized by the duration and intensity of it all

It's one of the few things that makes me kind of sad I won't be in the midwest next summer.

Grist

I think I told you I was probably going to Seattle this fall, but I probably did not tell you that I will be working for Grist Magazine, which is an online endeavor providing news and commentary about the environment. So there you have it.

On a less important front, I'm now giving the movies at right five stars instead of four, because I didn't like the half-star deal. Dangerous Liaisons was another one of the those that was better than "good" but not quite "great" and it seemed dumb to give so many movies an in-between rating. I thought it sagged a little during maybe the second half hour, but once the pace of events escalated that got fixed. My problem was that I failed to find the cruelty of the main characters either humorous or saddening, it just seemed dumb. Somehow that was no longer a problem once there was more sex. Also I thought John Malkovich sounded a lot like Philip Seymour Hoffman at the beginning when he's talking quietly to the marquise about how they're going to be sinister.

Street Fight

Iowa Public Television showed this independent political documentary last night, Street Fight, that was really good. It was about the campaign for mayor of Newark, New Jersey in 2002. The director claims it's just a look at the race, but as he's denied access to the incumbent's camp, he focuses on the campaign of Cory Booker, who is 32, Stanford- and Yale-educated, and considered a lightskinned carpetbagger (think of a somewhat younger Barack Obama). We also see the heavyhanded tactics of Sharpe James, who is running for his fifth four-year term, such as intimidating potential Booker supporters who may have business contracts with the city and creating slanderous and blatantly false mass-mailings.

What struck me most, though, was that this was completely ghettoized on the schedule; Sunday night at 11 is basically the death slot. I don't really know why PBS (at least the Iowa network) would do this considering it was really a terrific film. Wouldn't you rather see this than, say, Antiques Roadshow or Ed Sullivan reruns? IPTV hardly ever shows films anyway, so when they do I wish they'd make more out of it, because this, more than bland BBC sitcoms and home improvement shows, is what makes public broadcasting worthwhile.

Jaga Jazzist, etc.

Brian and I both just sort of forgot about the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson concert, so we did not go.

I am going through my collection of loose MP3s not on albums or compilations or what have you. I have about 200 that I'm keeping and 150 more to sift through. I mention this mainly because the playlist just got to the few Jaga Jazzist songs I haven't listened to much, and they're all really good.

Also, I heard from the top brass at Professor Yeti that someone clicked through to one of my columns from the search query "andy slabaugh sex". Thank you, whoever you are. That bit of information made my day in a most hilarious way.

Other Stuff

The aforementioned trip to the library took place after we went golfing, which was the first nice course I've been to this year. I had a Best Buy gift card sitting around, so I used it to buy 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats. I forgot how hard it is to find music at Best Buy. I thought they might have the second M83 album or the last Pedro the Lion album or maybe the Juan Maclean album if that's out yet (which upon further review it isn't), but they didn't so I finally got the Fall compilation, which I've wanted for a while but just never gotten around to purchasing.

There were lots of awesome movies at the library, and I didn't have to wait several days for them like if they'd been on Netflix. Last night we watched Strangers on a Train. I liked the beginning, but the plot devices seemed too obvious near the end and somehow didn't work for me, like we were at the middle and needed to get to the climax, but there wasn't any truly compelling way to do so. What really struck me, though, is that it looks like Hitchcock basically cast two of the actors because they could be body doubles for Cary Grant (Robert Walker) and Ingrid Bergman (Ruth Roman). I think he probably wanted Farley Granger, since they'd worked together before, but both Walker and Roman struck me as playing their roles as they might be played by Grant and Bergman. They might have been cast due to age, since both "replacements" were about a decade younger than the icons they imitated. Roman's character was fairly boring, but Walker was exciting at times as the bizarre and murder-obsessed guy with both strong gay and oedipal overtones (he seems to be in love with both Granger's character and with his mother, and plans to kill his father and Granger's wife).

Also, I'm not sure when exactly I'll be settled enough in Seattle to start going to rock shows (probably closer to October), but I'll throw a few up on the side just for fun.

Baseball Statistics

I got The New Bill James Baseball Abstract from the library on Thursday, and I've been looking through it. It would make pretty interesting listening as a book-on-tape for a road trip if summarized well, and if there were other baseball fans in the car. There are sections on baseball in each decade and annotated lists of the best 100 players at each position. James uses Win Shares, which he only partially explains in the book since apparently he has written a whole other book about them, to rate the players; a Win Share is credit (each team gets three for each win) for a player either creating runs offensively or "saving" runs by fielding or pitching. He has a lot of offhand anecdotes within the structured sections, like the fact that Rafael Palmeiro won a Gold Glove at first base in 1994 even though he only played 28 games at the position.

The use of statistics makes for perhaps less interesting arguments than in Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema, which is a similar undertaking, but ultimately this is a more interesting kind of book. Although James clearly has a massive amount of knowledge about baseball players throughout history anyway, the reliance on statistics makes the reader consider the numbers rather than complain if a player seems unfairly ranked.

I probably won't read the whole thing, since it's 1000 pages long, but it'll be fun to look through for a while.