March 11, 2009

I feel like I’m no longer in the grapevine, but why hasn’t Spank Rock taken off to find MIA levels of exposure? 

I heard this back in 2006 and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Perhaps it’s best that I haven’t heard anything since, keeps it fresh. The video is also good, made of equal parts Atari, ritalin, and Nam June Paik. 

•
February 23, 2009

"that's the Love Guru"

From Troy Patterson, Slate, on the Oscars last night…

“The Franco-Rogen bit deserves a full-length critical appraisal. By full-length, I mean a Ph.D. dissertation tricked out with all the jargon about the contingency of gender performance and reader-response approaches to the late Pirandello. For starters, it had five or six layers of media analysis. (Franco: “Who do you think is a better actor, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama?”) It rendered strange the familiar Apatovian ideas about masculinity and dude-hood. And it reimagined The Reader as a stoner comedy, a piece of criticism roughly in the same ballpark as Jackman’s terrific reduction of it, in the opening number, to something like the time on Sprockets when we dance.”

•
February 17, 2009

confession

redorangeorangeonred:

i have never seen a single clip or episode or anything of the wire …i only just heard of it a coupe months ago …but now i feel i must get it on dvd and watch … .damn peer pressure …apparently if i dont buy it the entire economy is going to melt down …

I’d like to think that my post from ten minutes ago had something to do with this. YOU’RE WELCOME, ECONOMY.

•
André Royo! rodeodog and I have been dutifully watching The Wire, and we’ve made it through the first two seasons. My favorite so far is Royo’s Bubbles, the CI/junkie whose mix of bodily ticks, endless wit and tragic addiction make him a good candidate for best character on TV (our president holds a different opinion, as he told the Las Vegas Sun last year). Bubbles has the distinction of being the show’s pathos, breaching the twin elements of comedy and tragedy that the series balances so well. That is, unless I have my Aristotle all wrong. Ahh… to be several years behind the TV watching curve.

André Royo!

rodeodog and I have been dutifully watching The Wire, and we’ve made it through the first two seasons. My favorite so far is Royo’s Bubbles, the CI/junkie whose mix of bodily ticks, endless wit and tragic addiction make him a good candidate for best character on TV (our president holds a different opinion, as he told the Las Vegas Sun last year). Bubbles has the distinction of being the show’s pathos, breaching the twin elements of comedy and tragedy that the series balances so well. That is, unless I have my Aristotle all wrong.

Ahh… to be several years behind the TV watching curve.

•
rodeodog: ffffound: Tumblr

rodeodog:

ffffound:

Tumblr
•
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Nilsson, “The Moonbeam Song,” from Nilsson Schmilsson 1971

Zen poetry meets lazy pop.

•
February 16, 2009
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Lion in a Coma” Merriweather Post Pavilion, 2009

Finally got the new Animal Collective. Soupy mixes! I still have to get use to it, but at first few listens it’s living up to the hype. The gatefold is gorgeous.

•
February 14, 2009
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“You Love ‘Cos You Like It,” The Hollies, from He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, 1969

Like Herman’s Hermits but with less novelty-appeal and plenty more talent. This is my first attempt at transferring a song from the turntable to my computer. I added a little digital compression, just so the levels could compete with the volume standards today. Another casualty of the Loudness Wars.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

•
February 2, 2009

Sergio Mendes, “Tristeza,” from Look Around, 1968.

•
Olympe Aguado, Admiration, albumen print, ca. 1860 One of my favorite 19th c. photographs … because the concept of a subject is entirely frustrated. What are we looking at anyway? A group of people turned away from the camera and (so we can only assume) absorbed in admiration before a painting that is only partially visible and out of focus. Eat your heart out, Michael Fried!

Olympe Aguado, Admiration, albumen print, ca. 1860

One of my favorite 19th c. photographs … because the concept of a subject is entirely frustrated. What are we looking at anyway? A group of people turned away from the camera and (so we can only assume) absorbed in admiration before a painting that is only partially visible and out of focus. Eat your heart out, Michael Fried!

•