Disconnection Noticed

The other night I got Ableton Live set up on the Mac and attempted to put together some kind of mix, but it just wouldn't happen. In part this is probably because of all the scattered listening done in 2008. Not so much haphazard as listening to something for a few weeks and then discarding it, perhaps before its time. Even with stuff like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver that I listened to death, after putting them away for a few months I'm not able to recall specific moments without re-listening, which makes the mixing process long and tedious.

I'm not sure what the remedy is, because I'm not sure this really qualifies as a problem. It feels like this ought to be related to Slow Listening Movement-type issues, but theoretically that's just what I've done. It does at least call into question the idea of a month of post-punk, or really a month of anything at all specific. Since I won't remember it all that well, at best it would slightly influence my listening habits.

There has to be some brilliant way to fuse concentrated bursts of listening and prolonged recognition. Hmm...

Alert!

Due to the apocalyptic air travel situation, I will be in Seattle all this week and next, with refund money burning a serious hole in my pocket.

So if you want to do something, let me know.

NYR'08

So far my New Year's resolutions include: not obsessively spending hours on iMDB trying to figure out what good movies are coming out six or twelve months from now; renaming this blog; ...

My 2008 Lists

New Films
Number Ones: Ballast, Still Orangutans, Loos Ornamental, Wendy & Lucy, Still Life, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, Summer Hours, Pineapple Express
Right Up There: Momma's Man, Flight of the Red Balloon, Chop Shop, The Juche Idea, Synecdoche, New York, Let the Right One In, Milk, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, The Last Mistress, The Edge of Heaven, Paranoid Park, Captain Ahab, Shotgun Stories, Role Models, Hamlet 2, I've Loved You So Long
Satisfying: Pierre Rissient, Ashes of Time Redux, Profit Motive & The Whispering Wind, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Son of Rambow, Timecrimes, Kung Fu Panda, Reprise, Sparrow, Christopher Columbus: The Enigma, Cthulhu, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Boarding Gate, Yella, Days in Between
Oddly Appealing: Opera Jawa, Eat for This Is My Body, Great Speeches from a Dying World, In the City of Sylvia, La France
There Were Moments: Rachel Getting Married, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Blind Mountain, Be Kind Rewind
Others: Alexandra, Chelsea on the Rocks, The Pool, Continental

Old Films
Solid Gold: Young Mr. Lincoln, Sunrise, Le Cercle Rouge, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Dead Man, Pulp Fiction
Hal Ashby at Northwest Film Forum: The Landlord, Being There, Bound For Glory, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Harold & Maude
Otto Preminger at Film Forum: Anatomy of a Murder, Laura, Daisy Kenyon
Charlie Chaplin: Monsieur Verdoux
(Post-)Modernism: Muriel, Last Year at Marienbad, The Immortal Woman, La Chinoise, Masculine Feminine, Vivre sa vie
Recently Neglected: Tropical Malady, La Promesse, Clerks II, Worldly Desires, My Neighbor Totoro
Ridley Scott at the Egyptian: Alien, Blade Runner

Recorded Music
Growing, Antony, Foals, Junior Boys, TV on the Radio (Tunde Adebimpe singing Neil Young in Rachel Getting Married), Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, "Happy House," Los Campesinos!, harmony, Bradford Cox, Jan Jelinek, Four Tet, Gang Gang Dance, "Graveyard Girl" live, Caribou, "wonky," Fuck Buttons, "Supreme Balloon," Truckasauras, The Clientele, Vampire Weekend, Villalobos, The Dodos, "Street Flash"/Water Curses, Hamilton Leithauser, "The Good Old Days," Shocking Pinks, James Pants' Stones Throw podcast

Live Music
Atlas Sound & co., Caribou & Fuck Buttons, Simian Mobile Disco, Truckasauras, Sera Cahoone, Los Campesinos, Beachwood Sparks, Iron & Wine, Comets on Fire, The Dodos, Man Man, Gang Gang Dance, Deerhunter, M83

Stuff I Obviously Need To Hear
Portishead, Flying Lotus, MGMT, Advisory Circle, Santogold, Nico Muhly, ...

Tracks from Lists
Mala "Alicia" (from Fact Magazine)

Books
The Extra Man (Jonathan Ames)
The Somnambulist (Jonathan Barnes)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)
Personal Days (Ed Park)
Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
Shortcomings (Adrian Tomine)
The Broom of the System (David Foster Wallace)
---
The Physics of Baseball (Robert K. Adair)
The Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman)
Born Standing Up (Steve Martin)
Consider the Lobster (David Foster Wallace)
Black Postcards (Dean Wareham)
---
Let's Talk About Love (Carl Wilson) [33 1/3]
Master of Reality (John Darnielle) [33 1/3]
If You're Feeling Sinister (Scott Plagenhoef) [33 1/3]

Having made this a year-zero of sorts for beer, this is a list culled from everything I had this year (2009 will be just "new" stuff). It doesn't include tasting samples or your truly obvious local year-round standbys, but basically everything else better than good. Besides alphabetization, higher is better than lower.

Alaskan Smoked Porter
Deschutes Black Butte XX
Dogfish Head 90-Minute Imperial IPA
Duvel
Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout
New Belgium Giddy Up!
New Belgium Le Fleur Messeur
New Belgium Lips of Faith: Eric's Sour Peach Ale
Russian River Pliny the Elder
Russian River Salvation
St. Bernardus Abt 12

Aktien St. Martin
Anchor Porter
Chimay Grande Reserve
Corsendonk Christmas Ale
Delirium Noel
Deschutes Abyss '08
Deschutes Cinder Cone Red Ale
Deschutes Hop Fest Pale Ale
Elysian The Great Pumpkin
Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale
Elysian Dragonstooth Stout
Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale
Elysian Prometheus IPA
Hale's Cerberus Tripel
Hitachino Nest Espresso Stout
Hoegaarden
Lindemans Peche Lambic
Lindemans Framboise Lambic
New Belgium Abbey Grand Cru
New Belgium Old Cherry
New Belgium Frambozen
North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
Ommegang Abbey Dubbel
Ommegang Rouge
Oskar Blues Gordon
Pike XXXXX Stout
Port Wipeout IPA
Rogue Chocolate Stout
Rogue Mocha Porter
Russian River Damnation
Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat
Stone Ruination IPA
Duchesse de Bourgogne

2008 Year-End Lists

Music
Textura: Ten Favorite Labels
Textura: 2008 Top 10s and 20s
Fact Magazine: 20 Best Mixes
Fact Magazine: 20 Best Albums
Fact Magazine: 100 Best Tracks
Fact Magazine: Lists from DJ /rupture and K-punk
Rough Trade: Albums of the Year
eMusic: Best Albums of 2008
eMusic: Philip Sherburne's 12 Electronic Albums
XLR8R: Top 25
The Wire: The Office Dissonance
*I've also posted The Wire's top 50 as an alphabetized artist list in comments.
The AV Club: 30 Best Albums
Resident Advisor: Top 15 Remixes
Resident Advisor: Top 20 Albums
Resident Advisor: Top 30 Tracks
Pitchfork: 100 Best Tracks
Pitchfork: 50 Best Albums
Blissblog: Lists of 8
Philip Sherburne: Comprehensive Blog Post

Books
Amazon: Best Books
Publishers Weekly: Best Books of the Year
NY Times: 100 Notable Books
The Millions: The Year in Reading

Film
Artforum: James Quandt (via Girish)
Roger Ebert: Best Films
New York Film Critics: Awards
indieWIRE: Critics Poll
NYTimes: Manohla Dargis' Top Ten List
NYTimes: AO Scott's Top Ten List
Film Comment: 20 Best Films (Released & Unreleased)

Etc.
Lifehacker: Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do
Planetizen: Top 10 Websites
New York Magazine: The Year in Culture

Transfusion #5: Three Burials

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is thoughtfully engaging on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. On the most basic level, it's a Western, a tale of both redemption and revenge, depending on point-of-view. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones, who stars and directs) hears that his friend and immigrant ranch hand, Melquiades Estrada, has been killed by the Border Patrol, and kidnaps the guilty patrolman, Mike Norton, enlisting him for the gruntwork of giving Melquiades a proper burial in Mexico as Melquiades had requested.

For Pete, it's a story of vengeance/closure as he seeks solace by carrying out the last wish of his ill-fated friend, specifically by forcing his killer to do the work and eventually ask forgiveness of the much-traveled corpse. Though it wouldn't seemingly be the primarily intended reading of the film, it's also possible to view it as a redemption story for patrolman Norton, who becomes a mensch only after enduring some truly horrific discipline at the hands of Pete, serving as some sort of divine figure for this reading of the film.

The primary reading includes all the most obvious themes of the story, namely the mistreatment of migrant laborers from Mexico, and the related issues that arise for both natives and Mexicans. What we get here that we don't get in Crash, for example, is a more complex, though not necessarily robust, characterization of the hard-working chicano than we're used to. We also see a continuum of attitudes by the white authorities toward foreign Spanish-speakers rather than a bifurcation of extreme caricatures. At this level I think the film works fairly well, but it's probably not great.

Mike Norton and his wife serve as a way for Jones and Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter, to discuss the underlying cultural values that may help fuel the clash between white Texans and Mexicans. Norton and his wife, Lou Ann, are callow mallrats from Cincinnati, recent transplants to the west Texas desert, and naively hopeful about their prospects. Their utter cluelessness serves over and over again as an indictment of the artificiality and disconnection from reality of consumer culture.

Lou Ann's relationship with Rachel, waitress at the local diner, reveals to us the shallowness of her point of view throughout her development, from naif to disenchanted (and neglected) spouse to the worn-out and defeated easterner who finally gives up and quits both the town and her lost husband. Her comment that Mike is "beyond redemption" seems both true and, ultimately, false, both shortsighted and immediately perceptive. Within the world she knows, her husband is indeed a sad and worthless deadbeat, but that also exposes the narrowness of her experience.

We get an early hint that Norton's unintentional act of manslaughter has changed him when he refuses to go shopping with Lou Ann after driving into Odessa, even as she reminds him, "You used to love the mall." He seems oddly resigned to his fate throughout his abduction and labor-intensive rite of passage, as if he knows innately that the world he is leaving behind is not one to be mourned or regretted.

Jones expresses his distaste for consumer culture visually and symbolically, as he forces Norton out of his regular clothes and into Melquiades' work shirt and pants. Memorable scenes include Norton slipping around in flip-flops recovering Melquiades' body from the freshly re-dug grave as the Friday night Midland high-school football game glows and rumbles in the background; Melquiades' confusion in the hotel room during a sexual liaison, arranged for him by Pete, with palm trees painted on the walls and porn on the TV, liberated finally by some south-of-the-border dance music from the clock radio; and the at-once obvious and poignant, and hilarious, moment when exhausted ex-bigot Norton, who began the film as a brutal enforcer of the border with the demented enthusiasm of an Abu Ghraib guard, sharing a bottle of whiskey with some friendly Mexican gauchos, and abruptly bursts into tears at a ridiculous soap opera his wife used to watch.

All this is to say nothing of the sheriff, the pickup truck-as-horse or the design of the dusty town filled with mobile homes and trailers and its visual link to the old cowtowns of Ford and Wayne, or even Leone and Eastwood. I've also mentioned very little about the powerful, quasi-religious transformation of Mike Norton as a biblical sort of figure (think Moses, Jonah, or Paul), wandering through the desert and put through severe trial, emerging as a fully human man of God, or, in this case, a real cowboy, neither American nor Mexican, simply and honorably Southwestern, in the mold of Jones's Pete Perkins character.

Jonathan Rosenbaum review

Transfusion #4: A Few of My Favorite Things

First, this essay/manifesto, by David Bordwell on the absence of great film writing, is for Charles to read. I've been meaning to read On the History of Film Style for a while now, but this was engaging enough that I might really do it. I'm sure I must have read him in Media Theory class somewhere.

Two pictures: Older people dancing and younger people dancing.

The New York Times had an article today on beards and their return to fashion.

Quotes:

Mr. Martin's idea of a style symbol, seriously, is Ulysses S. Grant.

For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp.

Do beards that call to mind Charles Manson suggest dissatisfaction with "the system"?

"I wonder if beards can have the oomph they once had when it feels like someone will ask you: 'Where did you get that beard? Is that beard from Dolce & Gabbana?'" - Tim Harrington, Les Savy Fav

No survey ever conducted about women's attitudes toward beards, even those not underwritten by the Gillette Company, has indicated that more than 2 or 3 percent of women would describe a full beard as sexy.

Also, this site makes me laugh every time I think about it, no matter what: "GiganticURL.com: Make Any URL Gigantic!"

Transfusion #3: Bird's Eye View

Opening day approaches and I just read Moneyball. Thus, here are overhead views of all Major League ballparks. As a psychedelic bonus, you'll want to check out the carnival to the east of Tropicana Field in Tampa. Also, the area around Dodger Stadium is pretty cool.

American League

AL West
Seattle Mariners
Oakland A's
Los Angeles Angels
Texas Rangers

AL Central
Kansas City Royals
Minnesota Twins
Chicago White Sox
Detroit Tigers
Cleveland Indians

AL East
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Baltimore Orioles
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox

National League

NL West
San Francisco Giants
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies

NL Central
Houston Astros
St. Louis Cardinals
Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh Pirates

NL East
Atlanta Braves
Florida Marlins
Philadelphia Phillies
Washington Nationals
New York Mets

Transfusion #2: April 2006 Chart

Since list-making is about all I can manage in terms of writing/blogging sometimes, I figured I'd follow the pattern I've seen at group blogs such as Tape and House Is A Feeling, among other places.

So, six things I've been listening to and enjoying a lot lately, not in any strict order.

1. DJ Copy "Emotions"
I said what I wanted to about this when I posted the MP3 at my blog a few weeks ago. If you, too, would like to hear it (it's the old Mariah Carey chestnut with a new electro backing track), I can post it again. Just leave a comment.

2. Three 6 Mafia "Stay Fly"
I'm getting to this a little late as it was a big single in 2005, but I only got around to hearing it by paying attention to year-end lists. It may or may not frustrate you to learn that the lyrics are entirely about getting and staying high, but this track is much more about the means than the ends, as content goes. That is, there's not much content but the presentation (strings, backup singers, mildly clever rhymes delivered in an addictive fashion) is fabulous.

3. Dead Prez "Hell Yeah (Pimp the System)"
Via Diplo's DJ Shadow mixtape and the Emynd and Bo Bliz mix at Lemon Red.

4. The Decemberists The Tain EP
I've been really feeling this along with other heavier stuff (Dinosaur Jr., Black Mountain, Black Sabbath, Death from Above 1979) lately.

5. Band of Horses "Funeral"
Duh.

6. Tiga "Far from Home (DFA Instrumental Remix Edit)"
As Geeta Dayal says, "That bassline! The shimmering harmonics! I swooned!" She and other bloggers have also gotten me really excited to hear Carl Craig's remix of Delia and Gavin's "Revelee," which I don't have yet, so maybe that'll be on the next chart.

Transfusion #1: L'enfant

The other day I remembered that I had some posts sitting at another blog which isn't even Google-able, it's been dead so long. Rather than link to it, I'm going to freshly repost several items here.

---

Directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (The Son), this reminded me of Bresson's Pickpocket. We follow a young man around an urban environment as he performs petty (for the most part) criminal acts, mostly thievery. Eventually, though, there is a reckoning, in which the young man winds up in jail. The film ends with his girlfriend crying as she visits him there. Here, though, the thief himself is weeping, as he seemed, after an overwhelming series of consequences, to finally comprehend how destructive his irresponsible behavior had been, and perhaps what it means to own up to his actions, both criminal and paternal.

Early parts also recalled scenes from several Godard films, as the handheld camera follows the young couple frolicking recklessly. Similar to Band of Outsiders and Pierrot le fou, the early scenes of levity here counterbalance the grim stuff to follow. L'enfant, though, is much more grounded than those films. Very tightly framed, though not claustrophobically so, there are few establishing shots, really not much other than close-ups and medium shots except through a character's point of view. The style and form serve to create a sense of immediacy that is at times intense and even uncomfortable. See it for yourself.

Numbers One and Two

It's not often two bits of bathroom-related trivia occur to me in the same day, so I figure the coincidence is good enough for a post.

1. I remembered today out of the blue that my last place of work at one point hired a private detective to figure out who was repeatedly plugging one of the toilets in the mens restroom by using an inhuman amount of paper. And that frequently felt like some kind of encapsulation of my whole experience there.


2. Kottke's "Short Digital Ramble," in which he mentions paruresis, reminded me not only of Nicholson Baker's mention of the phenomenon in The Mezzanine, but also that it was the main topic of our brief conversation (initiated by me) when I got Baker to sign one of his books after a reading at Carleton. Less awkward than might be expected.