People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
My past is my business. The Honeydrips: Here Comes the Future (ft. Ring Snuten)
"Schizophrenic homemade pop with bluesy acoustic guitar, fragmented electronic beats, occasional beeps and whistles, and lazy vocals looking for a tune." -Listen.com
The worst part is the banality which is and this is the really banal part also the best part.
It's cold out there every day, what is this Miami beach not hardly. Masaaki Yuasa: Mind Game (clip)
Just settling in for long winter's naps: High-school me would be pleased. Current me is mostly only embarrassed (ongoing awkward phase! terrible hasty uncritical pseudo-poetic blogspots! ...at this age?!). Never trying to cause headaches so pump up the volume, till the next episode. No time for anything else only time only this
One day we'll run out of puns.
Then the chorus sang about/ your shoulder Felt: Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky
Now there's poetry in an empty Coke can. Jeremy Jay: Airwalker (xpost via p4k)
Who needs a meaning, anyway? I'd settle any day for a very fine view. Roy Ayers Ubiquity: Running Away (12" version)
P.S. Alain Finkielkrautrock just posted this "hippie not hippie mix" by Copenhagen's Djuna Barnes. Downloading now, looks interesting.
MP3s Like it says on the T-shirt like it says on your face like it says on your heart on your sleeve on your bedroom wall on the cover of your zine on your bumper sticker. Atlas Sound: You Belong to Me (track three from this free Altitude Sickness EP, via Deerhunter blog)
Next year, a film will be released showing the Rolling Stones performing as sexagenarians. It will receive mostly favorable reviews. Martin Scorcese directs, and, according to Mitch Glazer, editor of the New Yorker's recent "Movies Rock" special issue, the Rolling Stones "are playing with more daring and heart than ever"... Rock wants to be cool. So it flirts with death. Pop wants to be heard; sometimes this happens. Twee simply has other things to do... KEITH RICHARDS GETS CREDIT FOR TRYING.
Life is stressful when you're successful. The New Birth: Dream Merchant
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host of MSNBC's "Hardball" (11/19/07): Well, let me tell you, let me tell you, there’s two—Michael, there’s a big difference between what happened to Al Gore and what happened to Bob—John Kerry.
John Kerry got hit unfairly by the Swift Boat, attacking his service to his country. They conflated his opposition to the war when he came back, which we can all argue about, and his service to a country, his country, which is not really arguable. They trashed him.
But, in terms of Al Gore, he is the one who said he created the Internet. He’s the one who put out the word that he was the subject or the role model for Love Story, that he pointed the—the country’s attention to Love Canal. He stuck himself into that story.
And when Martin Peretz’s daughter wrote that piece in the Vanity Fair a couple months ago, I’m sorry. She didn’t make the case. Gore got himself in those problem areas—
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: —by vanity and showing off and trying to make himself cool. But John Kerry got unfair treatment. I think there’s a big difference, guys, big difference in how those two were treated.
MICHAEL CROWLEY, of The New Republic: That may be so, but not—
MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you, Chuck Todd.
CROWLEY: That’s not how most—many Democrats feel.
MATTHEWS: Well, why would you expect a partisan to think anything more than partisan? That’s what partisans do think.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: Of course you think you were rooked.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: Everybody that loses an election says they were rooked, OK?
CROWLEY: Sure.
MATTHEWS: And they blame it on the umpire.
CROWLEY: Right.
MATTHEWS: Keep it up. Thank you, Chuck Todd. Thank you, Mike Crowley.
CROWLEY: That’s the audience they’re speaking to. Thank you.
The oft-cited (around here) Bob Somerby recently posted some old Lexis-Nexis excerpts that are pretty illustrative. A typical scene on Chris Matthews' influential MSNBC show (oxymoron?) "Hardball," back when Al Gore was on the campaign trail:
MATTHEWS (7/29/99): Is Al Gore just incapable of putting, like, one foot in front of the other in this campaign? He’s a professional politician—
REP. JOE. SCARBOROUGH (R-FL): Yeah. He’s awful.
MATTHEWS: —who acts like an amateur. I don’t get it. Did you ever see the movie “Altered States?” I mean, his face is, like, getting contorted in some of these—there’s bubbles coming out of his forehead!
So now every journalist at the D.C. cocktail party will totally know about that snarky zero point zero concept review young Matthews just handed out. Watch the zany Irishman go:
MATTHEWS: What mode was he in? Was he in, was he in the quiet mode, or that sort of Clutch Cargo craziness he gets into, or was he—
MARY BOYLE (former Democratic Ohio Senate candidate): No, no, but he was—
MATTHEWS: —or was he in the “Altered States” where the head starts to bubble? What state was he in today?
And the highbrow policy discussion continued. Pay these men millions of dollars, please:
SCARBOROUGH: She says, “Al Gore was loose.” That’s when he’s at his worst. Remember the Olympics, when he was clapping like this? And you’re, like, “My God, the guy can’t even clap.” Did they—what—did they teach—
MATTHEWS: OK.
SCARBOROUGH: I mean, he—he’s in trouble. And it feeds on itself and he looks more like a dork than he, than when he’s not trying.
One of Matthews' favorite lines was to say Gore was the White House "bathtub ring." At one point, Matthews would opine, "He doesn't seem very American, even." Why, Gore would lick the bathroom floor to be president! (His opponent, by contrast, obviously had no interest in wielding power.) Women probably think Gore is a "wimp," Matthews would muse. This went on for the two years leading up to the closely fought election of 2000.
Pretty much every journalist in Washington, D.C., (update: even ones I respect!) would like to be on dude's show. We're not talking about Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or William Kristol, or even their more polite face, David Brooks. We're talking about Chris Matthews, who actually has some pretense of objectivity because he was once an aide to Tip O'Neill. Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of the ostensibly left-leaning Salon, wrote earlier this year about how much she just luvvvs Matthews-- and by golly, now she's a regular on his show. This is how your George Bush / Fred Thompson / Rudy Giuliani sausage gets made. They're bringing 1888 back. Everybody else is totally not cool, and I mean like A.R.E. Weapons or Jet here. Or Plain White T's.
The managers are on my case, and are waiting for me to slip up. Hello Saferide: I Wonder Who Is Like This One
Criticism, especially pop music criticism (though maybe it only seems that way because pop crit is, well, what I do), gets derided a lot. "Dancing about architecture," or "people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read," etc. But done right, articulate expressions of how another person is affected by a piece of music can be an integral part of how we process it, and come to appreciate it, ourselves.
For instance, I can tell you that when I set out to write about a record, well, sometimes there are definitely those fortunate instances where I listen to something once or even a few times and all of a sudden I feel as if I understand exactly how it works for me. So then I write about that. More often, though, I have to listen and listen, take tons of notes, and then reflect carefully on the experience to pick out the most interesting aspects of the music, the elements that helped draw me into it.
Writing about those points should ideally become a key to help other people enjoy the music, too, or at least understand why it affected you a certain way and compare/contrast their own experience. Like a cheat guide to a video game, but an inexact, subjective one. If the elements that turned you onto a certain record are things that another person hates, then they'll know they are probably going to disagree with you.
I didn't really see the appeal of Burial's previous effort, even though I'd read the praise in Wire and heard the next-big-thing hype revolving around dubstep. What I never saw (maybe I just missed it) was much writing explaining clearly what people actually LIKED about the stuff; I remember presuming it must just sound awesome if you're at a club with great subwoofers, but maybe not at home. It's not so much that people need description of what music sounds like, or a context for why the artist is hip or, god help us, "important"-- if you're like me, anyway, you just want someone to point out why a song is aesthetically pleasing (or not) to them, and show you what to listen for to feel the same way. In some cases, the hooks are obvious, but not always.
Burial is an imperfect example. Much of the writing out there, even by people I really like, remains of the "It's genius, duh! Plus, I heard it first!" variety. Still, the more I've read about the new one, the more it has made sense to me-- thanks, Philip. (Of course, this album is an especially imperfect example because Burial made this one easier to "get", by adding vocals and trimming out a good deal of the fat.) Or, like, if someone sends you the Atlas Sound album and you don't know where to begin, I can point out the track that seems like a good entry point, and why.
Whatever, I'm not getting paid to write this and in fact should probably get back to writing what I'm paid for before the Bobs have to threaten to stop bringing in Dunkin Donuts on Fridays.
A big chunk of writing that includes my own has been decried as "pretentious" or "elitist." But even to whatever extent those charges are true, I'd like to think I'm usually pretty populist about it-- not, ugh, "middlebrow" (now there's a LOADED term), but rather, just someone who helps make those flashes of unfamiliarity accessible for bigger numbers of people, by laying out one person's path for making them familiar, how one dude made these moments part of himself. As we all get exponentially more inundated with new media, technology, and ideas all the goddamn time, I think that's a pretty useful metaphor for how we increasingly go about our lives. Not horse- and buggy-era (rich, influential, computer-illiterate) geezers like Larry King, maybe, but certainly those of us who spend a portion of our working and personal lives that once would've been embarrassing-- and now seems only typical-- on the internet.
Larry Kudlow is a Steve Martin character, not a real person.
And I don't even have time to practice. Josh Ritter: The Temptation of Adam (live at Webster Hall)
LOST BOYS OF THE LIBERAL PRESS CORPS: We’ll admit it! We’re the ones who e-mailed those articles to Digby, the ones she discussed in Wednesday’s post. Since some of her commenters didn’t seem to “get” why the reports were worth discussing, we thought we’d suggest a few points.
One of the reports in question appears on-line at The New Republic. Headline: “Jenna vs. Chelsea/Who's the least virtuous first daughter?” The other report appears on-line at Newsweek. Headline: “Who’s the next Jenna Bush?” In the latter, a half-witted fellow named Andrew Romano sniffs his way through the underwear drawers of nine female relatives of politicians (including one who is 6 years old). He is trying to judge who wins the right to serve as the slut of his latest thigh-rubbing confection.
Comments:
Brainless: Do you have any idea how dumb you have to be, as a male, to write panty-sniffing garbage like this in the year 2007? How mindless a magazine has to be to put this rot-gut in print? According to Newsweek, Romano “graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University in 2004 with an A.B. in English and a certificate in American Studies.” Simply put, that’s a tragic admission.
Endless: Alas! Though culture is always part of the mix, the sense of male privilege driving these pieces (“droit de sophomore”) seems to be bred quite deep in the bone. Omigod! Absent appropriate guidance, each generation of young, callow males turns out just as dumb as the last one. Almost surely, many progressives thought this type of churlishness had been snuffed out by the early 70s, at least among “liberal” men. But these attitudes return with each generation. We gentlemen are just more resentful—therefore, dumber—each and every time.
Consequences: Do you trust a magazine which would print such a piece to cover the White House campaign of the first viable female candidate? In the past few weeks, Clinton has been trashed by Chris Matthews in astonishing ways; his lunatic conduct continued last night. (Tucker Carlson is little better—although he’s less influential.) Few “liberals” have found the heart to complain—or even to notice what’s happening. But then, our liberal leaders have long ignored Matthews’ woman-trashing, going all the way back to the late 1990s (more on these topics next week). This is A-OK with our tribe. Absent the unusual person like Digby, our tribe doesn’t even notice.
Speaking more specifically, the ugly sexual trashing handed to Naomi Wolf during Campaign 2000 did tremendous damage to Candidate Gore. Needless to say, the high-minded boys at your “liberal journals” didn’t say a word about it; it was left to several major conservatives (William Kristol, William Safire) to speak up on her behalf. You have already paid a gigantic price for the empty hearts of these weak, empty boys. The sexual trashing dished to Wolf was astounding. It did tremendous damage to Gore—and it passed without liberal comment.
A final note about consequences. When you see a collection of liberal scribes who think it’s OK to trash young women this way (down to age 6), do you think they will ever defend you against the wider values of their plutocrat bosses? Over the course of the past fifteen years, your interests have been shipped down the river at “liberal” journals as the plutocrat press corps’ major fixers have trashed a succession of Major Dems, including (for two years) Candidate Gore. Do you think a bunch of boys who sniff their way through underwear drawers will ever stand up to the Russerts and the Matthewses? To the powerful interests which hired them—which stand behind them? Their empty hearts and outstretched hands are perfectly clear as they publish this swill. They’re letting you know who and what they are—a lesson we liberals have had a hard time absorbing in the past dozen years.
Go ahead—sniff your way through that pair of reports. Good grief—you’re gazing on the souls of the lads who are supposed to be defending your interests! Then, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/3/03, which conveys a small sense of the sexual trashing handed to Wolf in November 1999. After scanning this pair of new reports, perhaps we all understand why “liberal” journals said nothing about this in real time—and perhaps we finally see how Bush ended up in the White House.
P.S. Audio from that Josh Ritter show is available over at Solitary Show Goer.
P.P.S. Contra Digby in the post linked by Bob, I believe Jonathan Chait is one of the most astute political journalists working today. I also think it's silly and idiotic to use one stupid thing published by a magazine or website to somehow supposedly contradict the work of another person who writes for that magazine or website. By doing this, Digby is proving Chait's point: Apparently, Digby isn't serious about ideas, only about winning an argument by whatever demagogic means necessary. Average bloggers in not understanding the difference between what they do and what a guy like Chait does shocka. To be sure, plenty of professional journalists are equally non-reality-based. But just because every asshole has an opinion, it doesn't follow that every asshole with an opinion takes care to back it up logically and with thorough research of the facts at hand. Chait typically does; he is a pro in every sense. If we try to turn the internet into a medium for tendentious propaganda, the geezers with the most money to sponsor such propaganda will always win; see talk radio, FOX News, Maureen "Al Gore is so feminized he's practically lactating" Dowd, or Tim "There Once was a Man from Nantucket, I mean, Buffalo" Russert. Ultimately, democracy would be better served by having more Jonathan Chaits-- people who will make articulate, reasoned arguments about the issues based on careful reportage (even when we may disagree with his conclusions)-- than by more DailyKoses or RedStates.
P.P.P.S. Matthew Yglesias, another political writer I'd consider worth emulating to an extent, has more on Tim Russert and why it's difficult for us whippersnappers to respect any journalist who considers this pathetic social climber (a man who, with his wife, has succeeded so well at said climbing that he's now BFF with his Nantucket neighbor, Jack Welch -- even while writing books asserting his blue collar-ness and work ethic) worthy of their respect. In short: "It's true that Tim Russert is a tough questioner... But while I wouldn't want to say that 'tough questioning' is a bad thing, making toughness the goal is perverse. The goal should be to inform the audience." Matt overlooks here (as, Bob Somerby would argue, most young liberal journalists do, perhaps because it increases their future employability among millionaire pundits who really do respect Russert) that Russert's questions are inevitably tougher for politicians with whom Jack Welch disagrees, and that Russert is a serial liar about Social Security, but still.
And with that, enough procrastinating.
OK, P.P.P.P.S. The Quick and the Ed quotes a Washington Post piece opining that "peer review" is the ideal way to get rid of crappy teachers: "Since teachers are harder on each other than any principal, he says, having them review each other's teaching practice, assignments, exams and lesson plans would result in evaluations that 'weed out the incompetent while preserving the basic idea of tenure.'" When this Quick and the Ed post was read aloud here on the sprawling offnotes campuses, the low-income-school teacher in our life LOLed, adding, "That's terrible!" So there you have it-- the WaPo columnist has been teacher-reviewed.
I saw Jens Lekman at Webster Hall two weeks ago. Lekman is one of my favorite music-type dudes out there these days. I saw Josh Ritter at Webster Hall last night. He was better, and the crowd-- notwithstanding the douchey dudes next to me who kept talking loudly about Goldman Sachs right through the encore, until I kinda threw a cup at them, and they said, "That asshole again?", because earlier they were talking loudly about getting another beer and I said I'd take one, too, thanks-- was even more fun, singing along to pretty much everything, even the old stuff ("Harrisburg"!).
New York Timesmen, if it turns out you were there too I owe you a free coke.
Eric Bachmann, thank you for playing "New Drink for the Old Drunk" and for being so graceful in front of an audience that had probably mostly never heard of Crooked Fingers OR Archers of Loaf.
