groupies

instant classic: summer jams edition

2010-05-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

Sleigh Bells, people. at least after one day.

top 10 movies of the decade (+ featured performer)

2010-01-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

The House of Mirth (Gillian Anderson)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater / Julie Delpy)
There Will Be Blood (Daniel Day-Lewis)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
O Brother Where Art Thou / No Country for Old Men (Coen Bros)
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) (** UPDATE: THIS REPLACES Superbad **)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach)
Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
TIE -- The New World (Terrence Malick) & Bad Santa (Billy Bob Thornton)

movies I need to see again: Mulholland Drive; Synecdoche, New York
movies I need to see: Grizzly Man; Syndromes and a Century
movies which I'm too lazy to look up to see if they were made in 1999 or 2000: In the Mood for Love
I wish there had been a movie by these people: Whit Stillman, Ingmar Bergman

top 6 greatest bands ever!

2009-07-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

(1) pavement
(2) the mountain goats
(3) the beatles*/the rolling stones**
(4) the magnetic fields
(5) lifter puller/the hold steady
(6) the beach boys

* this one is more of an assumption. haven't heard much of their stuff yet.
** not the same band, but they seem to have had things in common.

urgent & key gladwell/simmons dialogue

2009-05-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

in general, simmons is more right on the issues, but gladwell is more awesome on the one-liners:

I'm sure he was a nice guy and all. But this is a man who spent almost all of his boxing winnings acquiring real estate in Easton, Pa. Think about this. You have just made gazillions of dollars. You can buy houses anywhere in the world. And you chose Easton?

...

What's Faldo's favorite band? Joy Division? Or some kind of obscure Welsh thrash band too hard core for American radio?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part1

what gladwell realizes, i think, is that sports are irrelevant and one-liners are everything. he's able to talk the talk of passion but not get so wrapped-up in it that he loses sight of broader literary & policy goals. he's a generalist. you see this throughout the whole article: he makes some detailed observation about basketball, then he draws it back out to health care, moral hazard, easton real estate, etc. it's a good way to keep the reader off-balance. simmons tries but he's too obsessed with the sport to treat it as a metaphor.

***

unrelatedly, my sources inform me that this is a good primer on getting into the heady world of basketball intellectualism.

bim bimma you stole me nan's zimma

2009-04-28T06:16:00.001-07:00

Taxes

2009-04-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

I bet if tax day were in October we would have a lot more Republican elected officials.

how did i miss out on this in buenos aires?

2009-04-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

warning epileptics!

not much else to add

2009-04-01T09:41:00.001-07:00

ethic of care:

clarissa explains it all

2009-02-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

achewood > dinosuar comics > xkcd

that's correct, right? also this site is amazing: http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com. it's ultimately what flipped me around on the #2 and #3 rankings up there.

fried trout

2009-01-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

I fried up a trout for lunch today, and it was awesome.

1. Covered the fillet in salt, pepper and paprika.
2. Dipped it into beaten egg with a little milk
3. Dredged it through ground up cornflakes mixed with more salt, pepper, paprika along with some parmesan.
4. Fried each side for a few minutes on medium-low in some butter.
5. Served with some mushrooms and topped with lemon juice

I'm not really sure if the milk was necessary or if I could even taste the parmesan. Overall, tasty and easy to make. Only about 15 minutes.

holla

2008-12-22T06:49:00.000-08:00

whoooo Lilly congrats!! the groupies 7 is getting to be all like the characters that survive at the end of a shakespeare comedy!

zizek bragadoccio

2008-12-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

I feel like I haven't written enough negative things about Slavoj Zizek recently, so here's someone else who's much smarter than me and who's making lots of negative comments about Zizek!

1:

Addison is like Zizek. If Zizek is a success — and you know he is — the consequences are worrisome. The kids who flock to see him might try to write like him. In fact, if the elders present Zizek as a star speaker, then what is a kid to think? If this stuff flies, my prose — a young scholar might reasonably say — can crawl and stumble and I can become a superstar of theory, too.

Now, Mr. Zizek is about to be shut up by a whole set of people who are tired of hearing him blab his mouth. About time! But, look, it’s America: There are still a lot of snake oil salemen ready to try to convince you that up is down. Beware! As we prepare for the next thirty years we need to refind our foundations, to re-establish learning on the best foundations, and the best one of all is the sentence that the Renaissance reinvigorated. A sentence is not like a laundry line on which we pin words so they can flap in the wind. No, a sentence “is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung.”

Against the bluster and braggadocio of a Zizek and so many other boastful denizens of the Roaring Nineties, let us affect the modesty that seems to be endemic to the essay!

Note that the essay is chock full of other good ideas about how to improve academic writing, and is not just about Zizek.

making movies

2008-12-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

"Mister Squishy" is the first story in David Foster Wallace's book Oblivion. I found it eerily similar, on some levels, to the recent Charlie Kaufman movie Synecdoche, New York, in that both the story and the movie involve middle-aged white dudes trying to come to terms with the apparent blankness around them. But CK's portrait is more psychological in character -- essentially, the story is told entirely from the dude's perspective and the overriding question is: what *internal force/will* does the protagonist need to summon in order to overcome basic solipsism and appreciate the people around him? The answer seems to be, well, if he arranges things in his mind _just right_, then he might be prepared to pay attention to other people as well. (The same could be said of the most recent Hold Steady album and its bootstrapping adolescent existentialism of double whiskeys, Joe Strummer worship, trying a little harder, and above all, making 'our' 'own' movies. Like it or not, Craig, we're not always our own directors. See, e.g., The Sunset Tree.)

DFW's take on this theme is way more argumentative and places a lot more of the blame for modern solipsism on our marketing-driven consumerist culture. His story also contains a good deal more irony -- both external, between author and narrator, and internal, between theme and narrative structure -- than Kaufman's. It's for these two reasons of argumentation and irony that, somewhat counterintuitively, Mister Squishy really feels like a *story* of people (ok, one person) I care about whereas Synechdoche generally fails to become much more than the exposition of a potentially interesting idea about why people function the way they do. Wallace is better able to summon exactly what the Hold Steady is purportedly trying to summon, and which they articulated so damn well with Separation Sunday: some sense that we're all in this together.

(But this is a *really* rough sketch. And I've only seen Synecdoche once. Maybe there's something more to it than I noticed at first. But it just reminded me of a nagging annoyance I've felt with the last two Hold Steady albums.)

Happy Birthday Simha!

2008-11-24T15:21:00.001-08:00

Happy birthday to Simha!

2008-11-24T14:00:00.001-08:00

Tavalodet mobarak! Feliz cumpleanos! Can we get 40 ccs of vodka for the chief resident? (Trying to approximate medical speak for birthdays)

love,
the omega boys
(oh. wait.)

spell-checkers and fake words

2008-11-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

Attn linguistics junkies!

Stephen Fry compellingly, and more importantly, amusingly, argues why we shouldn't try to police language.

A taste: There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

so, now you own it...

2008-11-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, I lamented Kerry's loss to Bush, criticizing the Democrats for failing to assert an ideological alternative to GWB's neo-conservatism. Obviously, Obama's victory is a watershed moment: for race, campaigning, organizing, and a new era of democratic (D too) politics. (Kudos to Bramble for identifying this promise long, long ago) Too are the Bush administration's failures -- of ethics and efficacy -- substantiated into the electoral implosion of the Republican party. But Obama's victory was not the triumph of a new liberal ideology.

Rather, our economy, health care, climate, and foreign policy have been creaking toward inoperability for years. Heretofore liberal policies, which one could choose as if part of an academic exercise, are today necessary pragmatic steps. Obama didn't need to present restructured tax rates, expanded health care coverage, cap-and-trade policies, and diplomatic engagement as Democratic philosophy because not-Bush, not-conservatism -- indeed, *change* was manifestly necessary.

And this is not an overreaction to frustrations with Bush. We are in desperate straits. Only considering the economy, Americans' real wages (i.e., adjusted for inflation) have declined since 1974. Consumer demand, propped up for the last three decades by longer working hours, more women in the workplace, and easy credit, is now in decline. The 70% of economic demand that consumer spending makes up is consequently shrinking. Hello, depression. Nor will other drivers of growth -- investment (why invest in business that can't sell to consumers?) and exports (the world economy isn't so hot either) -- offset the shrinking consumer economy.

The only counter-cyclical alternative we have is government spending. Tinkering with our monetary policy has done nothing; the Fed's interest rate is effectively zero. Even if consumers have no money to spend and businesses are unwilling to invest money on projects doomed to failure without consumers, the government can spend money to put people to work, injecting money into the economy, and giving consumers some money to spend. Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary under Clinton, and nobel laureate Paul Krugman concur: the U.S. needs Keynesian economics and stat. The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch-owned and identity invested in free marketeering, balks at a new New deal; but make no mistake, the only thing we have to fear is following FDR too closely and having the government do too little.

Aside from health care and child care, which help make people more productive members of society while putting others to work, the key focus of government-led investment should be rebuilding and transforming our infrastructure. Investing in infrastructure creates jobs while providing a backbone for future economic growth because it makes many businesses cheaper to operate and more efficient. T1 lines across the country? A single, integrated electricity grid? Not only would these projects create jobs and hence facilitate consumer spending, but they would allow businesses to operate more efficiently and at a competitive advantage to those of other nations.

So, Obama, here's where the new administration fits in. The problem with infrastructure spending is that in Congress, it's often part-and-parcel with appropriations and constituent-pleasing pork barrel projects. We can't afford for this depression-salvaging infrastructure spending to be inefficient. Additionally, we should make use of the private institutions -- contractors, engineering firms, and the like -- we have to integrate the efficiencies of the free market into new infrastructure spending.

My proposal: take the Obama campaign software and groups, change.gov, and whatever technology Google and others can muster to create a incredibly broad-ranging grant-proposal website. Allow communities, local governments, businesses, and others to suggest infrastructure projects that would be useful; then have an impartial committee select among these proposals so government money is best spent, both in terms of jobs created and infrastructure built.

Orals

2008-11-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

my orals are on tuesday. have been going a little crazy for the last few weeks. thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone! i have some awesome friends! will respond to you all once this hell is over.

P

Happy Birthday, Perry!

2008-10-26T17:26:00.001-07:00

Bingo

2008-10-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

Worth watching

2008-10-06T00:03:00.001-07:00

Charlie Rose talking to Warren Buffett about the financial crisis

Exciting Concert News!

2008-09-28T22:24:00.001-07:00

Managed to get tickets to the My Bloody Valentine show on Tuesday!

Sydow, are you seeing them in Santa Monica?

Class of 03

2008-09-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

Way to rep boccebragadoccio in the class book, Bramble! Almost as good as Nari's ROFLCOPTER.

Questions: 1) Why are all of my friends lazy/lacking in class spirit? 2) Do I regret making a page for the class book?

Answers: 1) obvious. 2) unknown.

Amazing: The number of pictures with captions like "John and I at the beach". Seriously, people.

manhunters

2008-09-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

Please tell me you guys are watching "It's always sunny in philadelphia" right now. This is the funniest cannibalism I've ever seen.

reunion 2008!!!!!

2008-09-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

who is going??? i will be there from thurs-monday i think. there used to be cheap flights from dc to sfo on virgin, and they're still kinda cheap, but they're getting less so. that being said, i'm relying on the general awesomeness of (a) seeing y'all and (b) credit card debt to justify this trip.

also did anyone go to the achewood reunion last weekend?

best 3 songs to open an album ever?

2008-07-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

from a rented room in north Albany, the answer appears to be The Natural Bridge, by the Silver Jews.

That made me want to puke

2008-07-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

I just watched the first two episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Both episodes made me deeply uncomfortable and the abortion rally one made me a little bit nauseous, except for the egg fight in episode two which was like cathartic release of the tension. It's smart, well written, and politically savvy but all the main characters are total jerks!

What thinketh yous?

racists

abortions

Everyone's a Little Bit Racist from Ave Q

This show is awesome

2008-07-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Best show since Arrested Development.

notice & comment

2008-07-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

people, for serious.. it is time to join facebook.

some mid-july thoughts

2008-07-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

- i've started to like the first half of boys & girls in america more than the second half! not sure how that happened. i blame the sabbath references in "hot soft light."

- haven't heard anything but "sequestered in memphis" from the new one yet.

- achewood. pretty great wedding montage, no? eisenstein would be hella proud. this was the first comic to make me think that the comics medium might support editing & montage in a form more complex than mere storyboards. well, third, if you include krazy kat and calvin & hobbes.

- the updated iphone lets you listen to pandora radio while walking around, which is fantastic. on my "kate bush" radio station, they pulled up a hold steady song. i guess my tastes aren't that original.

- [there was something else, too... but now i forget what it was.]

- new young adult vampire fiction by stephenie meyer... is this worth reading?

silver jews shoutout to SF

2008-06-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

"His name was Mr. Games and he owned the place
It was a lonely bar and grill in the Lower Haight"

david berman is like the eddie winslow to destroyer's urkel.

linguistic permutations

2008-06-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

i think this covers just about everything....

Group: I judge you when you use poor grammar.
Size: 266,260 members

Group: I don't just judge you when you use poor grammar, I think you're a moron.
Size: 2,228 members

Group: I judge you when you use incorrect grammar, spelling, and pronunciation.
Size: 1,472 members

Group: I judge you when you use poor grammar (II).
Size: 1,454 members

Group: I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar.
Size: 889 members

Group: I judge you when you use poor grammar's photos, part II
Size: 324 members

Group: I judge you when you judge me for judging others for using poor grammar.
Size: 179 members

Group: I judge you when you're grammar is bad.
Size: 153 members

Group: I judge you when you judge me for using bad grammar
Size: 149 members

Group: I judge you when you judge me when I use poor grammar.
Size: 96 members

Group: I make fun of the group " I judge you when you use poor grammar"
Size: 96 members

Group: I judge YOU when you judge me for using bad grammar!!
Size: 63 members

Group: I judge you when you judge people for not using grammar
Size: 60 members

Group: I judge you when you judge people for using bad grammar
Size: 58 members

Group: I don't judge you when you use poor grammar.
Size: 53 members

Group: I judge you when make grammatical mistakes while judging my grammar…
Size: 49 members

Group: I judge you when grammar is your sole claim to intellectual superiority
Size: 45 members

Group: I judge you when you judge others using poor grammar. Get a life!
Size: 39 members

Group: I judge you when you judge people who use poor grammar, you elitist wankers
Size: 26 members

Group: i judge you when you concern over grammar on the internet
Size: 26 members

throw away your calendar and saddle up your salamander

2008-05-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

hey are people aware that soul asylum used to be incredibly awesome? what is it with minneapolis and damn good bands?

Fingers Crossed

2008-05-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

Coming in 2009?

one tree hill: an exegesis

2008-05-19T16:45:00.001-07:00

View Larger Map

(gmaps embedding sorta sucks.. click on the link to view this devastating critical takedown in its full glory.)

130 herbs

2008-05-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

my roommate reports that she once went to a party called "chartreuse or dare." that is all.

p.s. no word on whether the dares involved any of these:

religion and politics

2008-04-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

"Ladies and gentlemen. . . I've traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn't get away sooner because my new well was coming in at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That well is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it's paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen. . . if I say I'm an oil man you will agree. You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you're not careful."

for those about to roll

2008-04-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

live stream of roflcon available here

holla

2008-03-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

If yr flight is retraso.

P.s. Curry never should have passed, even if there were 12 defenders on him.

pathos of victory

2008-03-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

these are the approximate teams stanford must beat in order to become ncaa champions, followed by the post hoc justifications these teams will use to explain their loss:

(1) cornell (can't win away from the gorges)
..... CHECK
(2) kentucky (unpasteurized moonshine)
..... ACTUALLY PLAYING MARQUETTE NOW
..........holy cow!
(3) texas (still dealing with loss of leiter to u chicago)
.... wtf home ct adv in sweet 16? Eh, go davidson..
(4) pittsburgh (overdose on big sandwiches)
(5) ucla (fourth time's a charm)
(6) north carolina (distracted by presidential primary)

yeah, people should read this, right?

2008-03-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html

(author of the bell curve approves)

comics! not bad!

2008-03-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

common people

handling: two comments

2008-03-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

(a) mitch johnson has got to learn to be less of a showboat with his one-handed passes

(b) the lopezes have got to (b1) stop dropping the ball under the basket and (b2) figure out who they're boxing out when they're playing zone.

"stuff white people like"

2008-03-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

so, the website is pretty funny, right? also, is this what whiteness studies departments do, try to denaturalize or defamiliarize the dominant culture by providing sort of a 'rough guide to white people'?

i do get kind of an anti-altruism/activism/awareness/participation vibe, tho. (and i don't think it's 'white' to be concerned about this kind of rhetorical angle.)

tha top 10 songs of 2007

2008-03-07T19:15:00.000-08:00

after one long season of waiting, here they are! the finest singles from the year of 2007! extrapolations and reconsiderations likely forthacomin'.

(1) MIA - Paper Planes remix ft. Bun-B & Rich Boy
(1.5) MIA - Paper Planes
(2) Mountain Goats - Woke Up New*
(3) Gogol Bordello - Ultimate
(3.5) Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good
(4) White Stripes - You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You're Told)
(5) Lil Wayne - Mr. Postman OR Something You Forgot (you get to choose!)
(6) Miranda Lambert - Famous in a Small Town
(7) Cam'Ron - Calm Down
(8) Clipse - Momma I'm So Sorry (props to first marching band that does this song)
(9) LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
(10) CocoRosie - Werewolf (orig version)

Honorable mentions: Sharon Jones - Let Them Knock; Arcade Fire - Antichrist Television Blues; Feist - I Feel it All; Miranda Lambert - Guilty in Here; Animal Collective - Peacebone; Robyn - Handle Me.

* actually from 2006, but it's just a damn good song.

ROFLcon '08

2008-03-05T13:33:00.001-08:00

here it is! http://roflcon.org/schedule. all yr favorite memes, in one convenient place.

an altruistic fluke?

2008-03-03T22:47:00.000-08:00

holy cow does this little dude have a pretty awesome life cycle.

molartown kenny brown?

2008-03-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

seriously?

The comeback was fitting on a day Stanford honored its four departing players at midcourt before tipoff of the team’s final home game--three seniors and junior Kenny Brown, who is headed to dental school.

great game, tho. brook lopez is taking over.

if you're a weasel...

2008-02-29T23:31:00.001-08:00

and you're watching your equally vicious and vile cousin, the sea otter, get all the glory -- all the monterey aquarium love, all the postage stamp commemoration, all the adoring fans young and old, all the ability to convince otherwise disgruntled people who are in the middle of filing their california state taxes to donate a portion of their refund to habitat preservation efforts... what are you thinking? what do you do to out-evolve those sea-dwelling bastards, and show them who's boss of the weasel family?

so community-minded

2008-02-19T22:45:00.000-08:00

i don't usually get excited about politics (note: not true), but i sure as heck am excited about this (note: true).

some context.

update: to be sure, jackie speier (lessig's dem opponent) does have an amazing personal biography.. this gives me some pause.

oh man

2008-02-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

no better valentines day than one spent at the Somerville theatre watching the magnetic fields... open thread: what did you do on 14 feb?

so much text

2008-02-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

as groupies moves towards 2000 posts, i've been thinking more about memoirs. here's the thing: we all have written A TON of text over the course of the last decade (or so) which will be preserved as long as our hard drives are functional. chat transcripts, blog posts, emails... i'm mostly talking about personal, non-work-based communication, although certainly you could include work stuff as well.

google is good at developing tools to make all our text 'searchable,' but what about developing our textual output into some kind of narrative? sure, this output is excruciatingly multilinear and heavily context-dependent (and there are obviously lots of gaps in it), but that's not to say it's not worth trying to draw it all together.

are there sufficiently sophisticated auto-summarizing tools out there that can sort through reams of categorized information and pull some kind of *story* out of it? based on my experience with MS word, i would hypothesize the current answer to this question is 'no,' but i think as our lives become more complex and our memories become fuzzier it is crucial for ethical purposes to have at least pocket narratives of where we're coming/calling from.

vampire slayer weekend

2008-02-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

i've only heard 3 songs so far -- M79, ladies of cambridge, and i stand corrected -- but these dudes are fast becoming my favorite band. if they co-headline coachella with the re-up gang, i will consider flying out.

regarding the executive branch

2008-02-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

these are approximately 40% endorsement, 60% prediction. and should not be construed as evidence of disaffection for any candidates not listed...

for the dems:
Barack Obama (Pres) / Jim Webb OR Kathleen Sebelius (VP)

for the repubs:
John McCain (Pres) / Bobby Jindal OR Mike Huckabee (VP)

instant classic

2008-02-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

new clipse, we got it for cheap vol 3 (streaming)

the blueprint (v1 obv) is the only immediate comparison. and they call it out about 3 mins in.

2008-02-01T18:02:00.000-08:00

dude is basically what the beautiful south dream to be... almost the exact same tone, with a *bit* more energy...

update from the orpheum

2008-02-01T17:26:00.000-08:00

not too bad so far. Opening band was
middle
state or mates of state or something. Songs btwn acts: country house; keep the car running; sweet dreams (not britney version)...
I'm cautiously optimistic after reading ny times review comparing mica to f mercury.

more later.

indie cred.. rising...

2008-02-01T15:12:00.001-08:00

i am about to see a group, or possibly an individual, called Mika. i have never heard a song by this entity, but my roommates swear by their listening experiences that a good time will be had. (to give an indication of context for their enthusiasm, they also swear by the spice girls reunion tour.) i am skeptical so perhaps there will be live-blogging, or lamentations later, or both.

groupies: on the indie front lines so you don't have to be. since 2003. (/branding)

the movie i'm most looking forward to since ernest goes to camp

2008-01-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

the trailer
the trailer, sweded
how to swede

i'll go out on a limb and say that "sweding" is a reference to "sweden," the country that does not respect copyright law.

loyal to the bank of america

2008-01-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

it has come to my attention that blogs are generally a force of good in the western world and should be contributed to more than once every other month. also whatever, i'm sick of fb & del.icio.us and have to re-begin speaking in more than decontextualized monosyllables eventually.

this is groupies post #1301. i hereby propose a goal of 2000 posts by 2010. or 2020. my limbic memories'll be happy, just so it's a round number.

Best ever comment on a youtube video

2007-12-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

I'm onto you, Nolan!

Campari Lounge

2007-11-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

I went to a bar that only serves Campari!

this is a pretty good dinosaur comic

2007-11-14T23:41:00.001-08:00

i don't know if lipitor works (and i hope it does)..

2007-10-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

..but robert jarvik seems like a total hack, no? the jogging outfit, the "i wanted to go to architecture school," etc. i mean, come on, dude. did you insist upon tv appearances in your contract, or is this pfizer's brilliant idea?

liveblogging wedding 07!!

2007-10-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

at the 'rehearsal dinner.' simha's relatives are hella dancing to indian music that i hope timbaland will one day sample. It is awesome!!!!

UPSET OF THE CENTURY

2007-10-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

ALL IS FORGIVEN, STANFORD SPORTS!!!!!

i don't want to jinx anything...

2007-10-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

but stanford's defense is looking really damn good. of course, it helps that usc is a joke of a team that never deserved a top 5 ranking.

the three best albums in the world, right now

2007-10-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

1. cocorosie - the adventures of ghosthorse and stillborn
2. yo la tengo - and then nothing turned itself inside out
3. the mountain goats - various songs that involve either minimal or no yelping

internal rhyme scheme

2007-09-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

no one does this better than jay-z:

If you could catch Jay right, on the late night
Without the eight right, maybe you could test my weight (right)
I dip, speak quicker than you ever seen
Administer pain--next, the minister's screamin your name
At your wake as I peak in, look in your casket
Feelin sarcastic: "Look at him, still sleepin!"
You're never ready, forever petty minds stay petty
Mine's thinkin longevity until I'm seventy.

par for the [rhymes with course]

2007-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

i'm still processing this. the golf course in northeast PA that I played at every single day during high school was temporarily turned into a strip golf course. read the story, complete with amateur video of lap dances on the 7th hole: http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070626/NEWS/706260335

take that, pinole & modesto.

more on this huge, triple-X breaking story as it develops.

who is unreasonably excited

2007-09-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

about futuresex/loveshow? not me, obv. but it'll be a good way to break in the new couches. at first i thought i was gonna miss it but then i got back to hbo-friendly territory in time. close call, too close really. next time i will remember never to travel. emerson would be proud of this post, i think.

publicity!

2007-08-24T09:38:00.001-07:00

the second issue of my sister's magazine circumvents philly area newsstands and hits the free magazine boxes today! get one while it's still a collector's item!

more hbo

2007-08-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

it's pretty damn hard not to like flight of the conchords, despite the fact that when described, it sounds suspiciously like a 26 minute long take on lazy sunday. i guess it's redeemed by its rushmoreian framing, its tossed-off conversational tone, and the way it earnestly literalizes and thereby ironizes our worst and most favored metaphors.

update: way downhill in episodes 5 & 6..

update 2: the lord of the rings episode was slightly better, probably because it more effectively juxtaposed the likable, funny characters (the manager, and the longer-haired band member) with everyone else.

video of the week

2007-08-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

kanye ft. daft punk - stronger

basically, just like a dud video can sometimes injure the reputation of the finest song of the year (umbrella), an awesome video can restore the reputation of an ehhh song (stronger).

p.s. holy mother of god, Pink by Boris is the platonic metallic ideal that blood brothers and lightning bolt have been striving for. is this j-pop?

if you feel like dancing

2007-08-01T23:49:00.001-07:00

.. sway gently along to the vaguely waltzlike rhythm.

But the thing about rock concerts is that even when the band is not amazing, rock concerts are still awesome. Just throw in one credence cover & i'll be happy.

Unrelated: is there any reason that check cashing & payday loan shops should have to exist?

"objections constitute dialogue"

2007-07-25T21:20:00.001-07:00

Surprise surprise, when it comes to the new coco rosie album, I am mad camping out in darnielle-town, and staying far away from pitchforkville and the nu-vi11age voic3 metropolitan area. What a nice and amusical album, of the sort that true indie patriots are supposed to champion! Yet instead we get lines like these from the once-mighty Voice, lines which the author intends as withering critiques:

"They splash in the gutter, then play in the nursery. They're lascivious, they're juvenilely chaste; they're musicians, they're defiantly a-musical."

True, the album gave me oddly vivid nightmares last night (e.g., waking up at H. Wayne Huizenga's mansion surrounded by wildebeests), and it's going to take quite awhile to understand why it frequently sounds so out of tune. But these aren't reasons to shun the album or to level sexist anti-Northern State style criticisms at the band (god can you imagine kogan or xgau asking these "why can't them girls make up their pretty little minds"-style questions?); they're reasons to figure out how to retune yr own aesthetic compass.

who's excited about the...

2007-07-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

..youtube debate today (monday)?!?!

update, 10pm: i thought the debate was awesome, probably the best presidential forum i've seen, at least structurally. obviously that's not saying much, but still. and it would have been even better if there were 5 rather than 9 contenders, and if that gravel dude wasn't there. although sometimes i am against the democratization of music and television production (kelly clarkson aside), i fully support democratization when it comes to the political process! two cheers for things that are fun.

top 7 summer jams!

2007-07-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

what's that, fictional long-time reader A.K.? you want a top 7 summer jams list? glad to oblige. more detailed descriptions forthcoming.

(1) the white stripes - "you don't know what love is (you just do what you're told)"
..number one by several country miles.. for some reason i am now associating this with "fortunate son" by credence.

(2) clipse - "momma i'm so sorry"
..a different kind of cultural indictment. i've played this song every morning for the past month. ambitious flow, crazy rhyme pattern, lyrical breadth, and all on top of a great polish dancehall beat.

(3) lcd soundsystem - "all my friends"
..would have chosen the franz ferdinand cover, but it kinda trails off at the end.

(4) amy winehouse - "you know i'm no good"
..if roast beef went r&b, it wouldn't sound like this, because chris onstad doesn't properly appreciate hiphop. also check out the ghostface mix and the arctic monkeys cover.

(5) ciara - "like a boy"
..awesome video. her voice is quite misleading.

(6) D.B.'z ft. E-40 - "stewy"
..i can't believe the lyrics for this aren't available online anywhere! sample: "manny coocoo silly bananas / you must be 51-50,000-30-30 / put in a cold rock socks but i'm still dirty"

(7) animal collective - "peacebone"
..they've gone pop, just like the dixie chicks.

honorable mention for obvious all-time 2007 hit: rihanna ft. jay-z - "umbrella"

update: glad no one caught my ccr mis-attribution!

i'm only doing this because some people didn't know what lolcats was

2007-07-11T23:05:00.000-07:00

here is philolosophers...

2007-07-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

classic entourage tonight.

update, 9:31pm: turns out i was watching last week's entourage on dvr. verdict is still out on tonight's episode.

update #2: events have now transpired to lead me to believe that the episode actually shown at 10pm last night was a repeat of last week's episode. so the original post is still valid.

non-emo architecture dancing

2007-07-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

hey, some of the best music-related writing (not to mention music) i've read recently seems to be at this moistworks blog.

let's be honest for a second

2007-06-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

just for simple, wholesome, tasty goodness, there's no better cereal out there than cap'n crunch. for many a year i appreciated the complexity of honey bunches of oats, but as one gets older and the brain starts to slow down, the variety of textures in hb of o becomes overwhelming. one turns, then, from the waltz of oats and honey towards the quarter notes of sweetened corn.

scientology, anyone?

2007-06-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

from the faith in chemistry files:

Aside from the potential to transform clinical psychiatric practice, these new developments will surely change the relationship between doctors and the drug industry and between the industry and the public. Direct-to-consumer advertising will become nearly irrelevant because the drugs will no longer be interchangeable, but will be prescribed based on an individual’s biological profile. Likewise, doctors will have little reason to meet with drug company representatives because they won’t be able to give doctors the single most important piece of information: which drug for which patient.

These are big claims, considering the power of the drug industry. Now, I am definitely under-informed in the arena of prescription drug efficacy and industry structure, and I am arguing from common sense (which means i'm probably wrong), but it seems like:

unregulated and monopolistic drug companies spend (a) more (much more?) money on marketing than on innovation, (b) more on marketing to doctors (through continuing medical education courses, sponsorships, endowments, free samples, etc) than on marketing to consumers, (c) more on lobbying Congress than on safety trials, (d) more on vanity drugs (erectile dysfunction, sleep, hair loss, skin care) than on potential life-saving drugs, (e) more on drugs that slightly help wealthier people than on drugs like malaria medication that could save the lives of millions of poor people, (f) more on clinical trials involving healthy people than on trials involving sick people, (g) more on pre-release trials than on post-release evaluations, and (h) very little on studying the complex ways multiple drugs interact with one another.

If half of my description is true, and assuming that the FDA will remain underfunded and under-fanged, what evidence is there for the claim that the era of personalized drugs will weaken rather than strengthen the relationships between the drug industry and doctors/consumers?

Direct-to-consumer advertising as we know it *will* disappear, but only because most advertising as we know it is bound to disappear in an age of personally targeted ads. Instead, drug companies will know our personal genetic and consumer profiles and send us more persuasive, more individually tailored ads--all designed to draw us into a dependent relationship upon their drugs. Makes more sense that those who come up with the drugs will be those who come up with and administer the genetic tests that help us figure out which drugs to take.

Perhaps "doctors will have little reason to meet with drug company representatives" because doctors will be cut out of the industry-consumer relationship altogether. This is already sorta happening, as I just saw a really well-produced ad which told me to "exercise my freedom of choice and ask my doctor to give me levitra." How dare my doctor try to interfere with my freedom of choice?!

Obviously this post contains a lot of incoherent kvetching from someone who doesn't know much about biology, but I'd be intrigued to hear a better and more hopeful description of the future of medicine from someone who is slightly more cynical than the author of the NY Times article.

This is what it is like to live in my house

2007-06-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

Last Month

From: Patrick
Subject: The ceiling is falling
Date: May 23, 2007 6:31:42 AM PDT
To: Landlords

Hi Landlords,

There has been a little bit of a disaster in the bathroom. I'm not sure when it happened, but I awoke this morning to find that part of the ceiling above the shower is falling down. There is some thin paneling above the shower that looks like poster board, and it has gotten partially detached. Basically, the shower is not usable right now.

Could you guys please get this fixed as soon as possible?

Thanks,

Patrick

This month (different situation)

From: Patrick
Subject: OMG DISASTER!
Date: June 17, 2007 10:14:14 PM PDT
To: Landlords

There is a huge leak coming from the ceiling above the laundry room. I'm not sure what's going on but water is dripping everywhere.

Patrick

Phone call to landlord #1:

OPERATOR: This phone number has been disconnected.

Phone call to landlord #2:

VOICE MAIL: Hi, this is landlord #2, please leave a message.

Phone call to landlord's friend:

ME: Hey, what's up? There is a huge leak in the ceiling. Do you know where the landlords are?

FRIEND: The landlords are in Japan.

ME: (goes outside to knock on upstairs neighbor's door)

ME: (sees upstairs neighbor drive away really fast)

scrabble... from hell

2007-06-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

(reykjavik style)

down the carpeted stairs

2007-06-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

:( :( :(

as someone put it here, Rorty's in ur futures criteekin ur foundashunlisms.

and i'm not sure i see what's wrong with lines like these:

If there is a connection between artistic freedom and creativity and the spirit of democracy, it is that the former provide examples of the kind of courageous self-transformation of which we hope democratic societies will become increasingly capable – transformation which is conscious and willed, rather than semiconsciously endured.

posner, eno, dennett, and berubé: here.

gumbrecht.

the buffyverse vs. the universe

2007-06-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

yo this is a cheesy thing to say and all, but joss whedon is the moral voice of a generation.

i thought about watching the movie awards

2007-06-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

but then 300 somehow beat borat for best fight!!

update: and then they made the best r&b song of the year ("umbrella") into a freaking horrible poorly produced rock song.

zakaria stuntin y'all

2007-06-03T11:59:00.003-07:00

fantastic forward-looking piece in newsweek. "Some of foreign policy is what we do, but some of it is also who we are." this is exactly how policy should be embodied in national greatness rhetoric. dude must be working for barack.

2007-06-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

If only Roast Beef had been around when they decided invading Iraq was the best way to fight terrorism.

a heuristic

2007-06-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

Is it advisable to write by selecting each word individually, considering word choice at each instance, even mechanistically? More broadly, how closely should one's writing process align with one's thought process? Should writing serve to express thought or should writing channel, control, and contest thought?

Does it matter if writing is intended to communicate or record? Is there any difference between recording ideas for a future self and communicating with others?

reality tv rebuttal

2007-05-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Plenty of good stuff out there - including the filmmaker show Bramble laments below, Fox's On the Lot, which is quite enjoyable, at least if you like watching short films. The judge casting was reasonably successful - Carrie Fisher does her best Paula Abdul impression, Brett Ratner (of Entourage and tabloid fame) was absent for the first episode, but is supposed to be a regular, and Garry Marshall actually knows a bit and plays the wise-cracking grandpa role.

And, this Thursday, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader returns, alongside the premiere of (ok, maybe competing with) the survivor-pirate spinoff. No new dramas and comedies until the fall, so unless you plan on a picnic or something, here's your recommended summer entertainment.

i believe in a thing called justice

2007-05-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

just listen to the rhythm of my pancreas.

This is crazy

2007-05-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

Someone pretended to be a Stanford student for eight months, and no one caught her until now.

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/5/24/imposterCaught

this blake dude

2007-05-22T20:43:00.001-07:00

is an embarrassment to popular music. where did the sanjaya character go?

update: i'm through with reality tv. this, the 'i write for rolling stone' show (which i didn't see), the show about becoming a film director (cue sophisticated artistes staring slackjawed at the same backlot tour of universal studios that any tourist can pay 20 bucks for) (cue implicit inane comments about what it takes to succeed in the business) (cue commentary about how it's ironic that the winning director is going to work in a world where scripts & cinematography are irrelevant and editing is everything).. it's all too much. it's like a one-joke life. everything is unplanned, poorly scripted, and then when it ends up looking like shit the joke is on us for paying attention. reality culture needs some work.

on the other hand, reality culture has given rise to arrested development and the office, so maybe it's redeemable after all, so long as you start off with the idea that reality is more conventional than it looks.

psychological drama kills the imagination

2007-05-19T14:30:00.001-07:00

I've been plenty down on modern literature recently, and am still pretty convinced modern music (not to mention Buffy and The Office) has it beat by a landslide and a half. But there's one modern literary voice that stands out against all this dull, defanged, psychological buzzing; and I'd bet that if your fiction reading started with Homer and ended in 1969 with Nabokov, you'd be in good shape (maybe include the first two thirds of The Corrections for good measure). Seriously, this is just a passage chosen at random from Ada (1969):

Poor Aqua, whose fancies were apt to fall for all the fangles of cranks and Christians, envisaged vividly a minor hymnist's paradise, a future America of alabaster buildings one hundred stories high, resembling a beautiful furniture store crammed with tall white-washed wardrobes and shorter fridges; she saw giant flying sharks with lateral eyes taking barely one night to carry pilgrims through black ether across an entire continent from dark to shining sea, before booming back to Seattle or Wark.

And incidentally, in the remainder of the paragraph, here's Nabokov predicting the burial of literature in the subordination of imagination to reason:

She heard magic-music boxes talking and singing, drowning the terror of thought, uplifting the lift girl, riding down with the miner, praising beauty and godliness, the Virgin and Venus, in the Wellings of the lonely and the poor. The unmentionable magnetic power denounced by evil lawmakers in this our shabby country--oh, everywhere, in Estoty and Canady, in "German" Mark Kennensie, as well as in "Swedish" Manitobogan, in the workshop of the red-shirted Yukonets as well as in the kitchen of the red-kerchiefed Lyaskanka, and in "French" Estoty, from Bras d'Or to Ladore--and very soon throughout both our Americas, and all over the other stunned continents--was used on Terra as freely as water and air, as bibles and brooms. Two or three centuries earlier she might have been just another consumable witch.

update: hey annotations.

painful

2007-05-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

this is the opposite of the bacon of the month club, right?

give literature one more chance

2007-05-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

so i'm halfway through the emperor's children (shoutout to somerville resident claire messud), and liking it so far enough to want to keep reading it.. but i'm just not getting the same kind of enjoyment and value from this book as from the new lcd soundsystem and miranda lambert albums, which are both *really something*. as it stands, so much of the pleasure of reading is subtle and classical, and i'm not sure how to change this. maybe it would help if claire messud put on a reading and really brought down the house with a fiery rock performance of one of the chapters.

what should a live literary performance even look like? certainly not a reading behind a lectern in a fucking bookstore, where so little is invested in the *look* of the thing. at the absolute least, i demand a costume change between chapters. but then you worry about getting into mcsweeney's-style tweeness. so it would be essential that the costume changes rock! and that there be fire and a light show. see: what kind of bookstore would allow any of this??

on the other hand, you would want the rock to be organic to the literary performance, and not imposed externally through music or other traditional rock tropes. so you'd need some way to literalize metaphors onstage, through lights and perhaps through temperature changes. but this would have to also avoid becoming a mere dramatization of the work, since (a) the virtue of a good work of fiction isn't just in its dramatic qualities and (b) drama has a tendency to run emotional roughshod over all other qualities.

this isn't just idle thought. if books are going to compete as a cultural force in the coming years, they're going to have to start thinking a lot more about live performance. don't think you're immune from napsterization, book industry! start carrying the flame!!

oh my golly

2007-05-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

my dog the copyright infringer:

(p.s. my parents take full responsibility for directing/choreographing this video and setting it to music..)

groupies

instant classic: summer jams edition

top 10 movies of the decade (+ featured performer)

top 6 greatest bands ever!

urgent & key gladwell/simmons dialogue

bim bimma you stole me nan's zimma

Taxes

how did i miss out on this in buenos aires?

not much else to add

clarissa explains it all

fried trout

holla

zizek bragadoccio

making movies

Happy Birthday Simha!

Happy birthday to Simha!

spell-checkers and fake words

so, now you own it...

Orals

Happy Birthday, Perry!

Bingo

Worth watching

Exciting Concert News!

Class of 03

manhunters

reunion 2008!!!!!

best 3 songs to open an album ever?

That made me want to puke

This show is awesome

notice & comment

some mid-july thoughts

silver jews shoutout to SF

linguistic permutations

throw away your calendar and saddle up your salamander

Fingers Crossed

one tree hill: an exegesis

130 herbs

religion and politics

for those about to roll

holla

pathos of victory

yeah, people should read this, right?

comics! not bad!

handling: two comments

"stuff white people like"

tha top 10 songs of 2007

ROFLcon '08

an altruistic fluke?

molartown kenny brown?

if you're a weasel...

so community-minded

oh man

Tag Cloud

so much text

vampire slayer weekend

regarding the executive branch

instant classic

update from the orpheum

indie cred.. rising...

the movie i'm most looking forward to since ernest goes to camp

loyal to the bank of america

Best ever comment on a youtube video

Campari Lounge

this is a pretty good dinosaur comic

i don't know if lipitor works (and i hope it does)..

liveblogging wedding 07!!

UPSET OF THE CENTURY

i don't want to jinx anything...

the three best albums in the world, right now

internal rhyme scheme

par for the [rhymes with course]

who is unreasonably excited

publicity!

more hbo

video of the week

if you feel like dancing

"objections constitute dialogue"

who's excited about the...

top 7 summer jams!

i'm only doing this because some people didn't know what lolcats was